The crucial importance of ENTERTAINMENT.
Adding one important item to 'Surprising things I learned this year'....

A new view of entertainment.

Expressed best by this Oct item:

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Science is simply a form of entertainment, and we should treat it as entertainment.

We should fund it the same way we fund sports or museums or orchestras or 'serious' theater, via season ticket holders.

Big media is NOT entertainment and doesn't fall into this category. Big Media is toxic Deepstate propaganda, organized and funded by government just like Big Science.

If science is just entertainment, it loses its court-enforced (and usually fake) connection to truth, and thus loses its power to create genocide. Nobody would use a Vaudeville routine or a cartoon or a song as the foundation for government policies. Science should fit in the same category.

Some science is still funded by ticket holders who expect to be educated as part of the entertainment. Farm associations sponsoring research on wheat are similar to museum or orchestra ticket holders.

But real science, like real music, is only secondarily educational. My focus on tardigrades this week helped me to grasp this point. Even if we were still capable of learning, we probably wouldn't learn much by watching tardigrades. They're just fascinating in a dozen ways. The more you learn, the more you get fascinated. You're not watching for the sake of learning, you're learning for the sake of watching.

Entertainment applies for sure to all the 'intelligent' critters from octopuses to mammals. When we're not in immediate survival mode, we love to watch stuff happening. Entertainment merges smoothly into education. Watching somebody else catch a caterpillar or hammer a nail isn't especially interesting; but when the catch misses or the hammer hits a thumb, it becomes entertainment AND education. Smart design, connecting pleasure to learning.

Failure and frustration are EXACTLY the moments when learning can happen. Experiential education, when done properly, creates intentional moments of frustration as doors for learning. Watching entertainment is waiting for failure. When we see a racecar crashing or an outfielder missing the catch or an actor jumbling up a word, we laugh cruelly and start thinking about how the process SHOULD have been done. Learning starts with the rhythm of harsh laughter.

Science as conventionally performed ELIMINATES these moments of failure. Experiments that fail to support the grantor's delusional theory are discarded. Methods and data are dishonestly shaped and manipulated to reinforce orthodoxy and agreement, thus completely evading every opportunity for harsh laughter/learning.

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When we're not in immediate survival mode:

Psychopaths in general, and Deepstate in particular, THRIVE on forcing victims into immediate survival mode. Rules change every minute. Urgent emergency piles on urgent emergency piles on urgent emergency. Learning is impossible when psychopaths are in charge. Learning requires enough stability to distinguish constants from variables. If you never get a chance to create a baseline of normalcy and success, you can't tell the difference between success and failure.

Learning also requires enough leisure to stand back and watch entertainment. Since 1975, and even more since 1990, USA has been totally paralyzed by Deepstate. We work desperately and UNSTEADILY to pay our debts, and we constantly wait for the next jackboot STOMP. Unsurprisingly we haven't been learning anything. If this seems like a dubious correlation, think about the Middle Ages in Europe when psychopathic aristocrats ruled exactly like modern Deepstate.

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Why is entertainment crucial? In the blessed brief lucid interval from 1921 to 1945 we had a much clearer division between entertainment and serious decisions. We were able to look at the world from a realistic and MODULAR distance. Shit that happened in foreign countries was NONE OF OUR FUCKING BUSINESS. If they wanted to have "democracy" or "dictators" that was THEIR FUCKING BUSINESS.

Shit that happened to other people was NONE OF OUR FUCKING BUSINESS. If they wanted to smoke or drink or laugh or cry or fight, it was NONE OF OUR FUCKING BUSINESS unless they tried fighting with OUR family. We could look at other countries and other people and LAUGH or LEARN FROM THEIR FAILURES.

Now everything is OUR BUSINESS. If another country has a doctrine that disagrees with Sheldon Adelson's opinions, we must apply a MILITARY SOLUTION. Sanctions, blockades, wars. If another household conducts its internal affairs in a way that disagrees with Zuckerberg's opinions, we need a MILITARY SOLUTION. Call out the SWAT team. If another person has a cold or flu, it calls for a MILITARY SOLUTION. State of siege, forced imprisonment and starvation, binding and gagging.

We are not allowed to TRUST other countries or other people or even our own fucking bodies and minds. We must constantly SPY on other people and countries to watch for incipient signs of wrong opinions, and we must constantly TEST our health to spot incipient signs of microbes.

We are not allowed to stand back and watch as natural processes like negative feedback and karma and immunity act with natural intelligence. Nothing can be allowed to happen on its own. Nobody is allowed to MIND THEIR OWN BUSINESS. Nobody is allowed to LEARN from experience or by watching the experience of others. Everything requires an URGENT IMMEDIATE MILITARY SOLUTION. Sanctions and blockades and bombs and SWAT teams and states of siege and forced imprisonment and binding and gagging. All of this shit is MILITARY, not scientific or moral or medical.

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What triggered this rant right now?

A random item in a 1939 Broadcasting magazine, perfectly illustrating how we could stand back and laugh:

The broadcaster's idea of how a radio editor gets out his news was presented in burlesqued form in a sketch, written by Bev Dean, of the continuity staff of WCKY, Cincinnati, and presented at the Cuvier Press Club's "Radio Night" in Cincinnati recently. All five Cincinnati stations participated. The sketch presented Dean as "Mussolini Kennedy" of the Post; Elmer Dressman, WCKY continuity director, as "Stalin Rogers" of the Enquirer; and Elmer Baughman, WCKY, as "Hitler Raine" of the Times-Star.

Obviously some long-forgotten inside jokes. What's important is the freedom to use foreign ideas for humor. Now we can't use ANYTHING AT ALL for humor. We can't stand back and laugh at ANY FUCKING THING. The monsters who call themselves "comedians" abandoned entertainment a long time ago, switching to gross arrogant stupid vicious condescension. Current "entertainers", whether left-wing like Bill Nye or right-wing like Rush, and current "scientists" like Fauci, all say the same thing in the same tone. They all say

I AM GOD. YOU ARE SHIT. YOU MUST DIE SO I CAN BE THE SOLE OCCUPANT OF THE UNIVERSE.

In 1939, arrogant condescension was the hallmark of assholes like C E M Joad, and the rest of the media felt free to mock assholes like C E M Joad. Highly popular programs like It Pays To Be Ignorant were devoted to mocking Expert Assholes like C E M Joad. Utterly impossible now.

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Footnote: This new view started in an odd place. A couple years ago, reading biographical stuff in Collectible Automobile as usual, I ran across Harley Earl's rule that there should be entertainment on all sides of a car. The word was unexpected and peculiar in that context, but Mr Earl expressed the point clearly in his chosen designs. The unexpected use started a mental ball rolling.

Labels: endless hell, Entertainment, Trinity House

  ¶ 12:23 AM