Of mice and men
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
Now, i wanted this to be brought up later, but it should serve as a good wake-up call.
So, you hear it a lot on how a Resource Based Economy won't punish criminals, since it's fault of the environment, and they wanna change people, not take out our vengeance on them.
Which sounds pretty nice, but you should ask yourself "what does it mean, and how did Jacques come up with this stuff?"
Well, looking over his recommended reading list1 might provide us some clues.
You might see a little guy called B.F. Skinner, which i mentioned before, keeps popping up.
You might see his books, like "Verbal Behavior" or Walden Two, Skinner’s science fiction book, on that list, as well as Skinner’s Verbal Behavior.
Add also Looking Backward by Bellamy, as well as Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics.
Skinner is perhaps most well-known for his operant conditioning chamber2, aka the rat box.
The rat box is a pretty creepy experiment, which involves locking rats, pigeons, monkeys, flies and other animals into cages, and giving them food and rewards if they do good, and in some cases, electrocuting/placing them in intolerable heat/other ways of punishing them if they don't do what you want.
Pretty disturbing conditioning, with massive potential for abuse, that even if successful, will result in brainwashed people that act like robots.
One can see the seeds of this robotization in "Looking forward" where the 2 main characters conversations consist of either praising the system Fresco created, constantly reminding themselves how people before the Resource-based economy got implemented were a bunch of stupid, selfish, brutal savages, or quoting famous people to support the first 2 viewpoints.
It's pretty animalistic and mechanical, and if you listen closely to just about any of Fresco's videos, you will realize he was mechanizing people in real life. People are reduced to machines in his strict empirical philosophy, only to be conditioned.
You can also see what I’m talking about especially in his YouTube called, “How to Raise Children”. It’s rather frightening. You can plainly hear he’s talking about manipulation, and Skinner conditioning. There is no love, care, or gentle nurturing mentioned in this clip.
- – C. S. Lewis
Now, i wanted this to be brought up later, but it should serve as a good wake-up call.
So, you hear it a lot on how a Resource Based Economy won't punish criminals, since it's fault of the environment, and they wanna change people, not take out our vengeance on them.
Which sounds pretty nice, but you should ask yourself "what does it mean, and how did Jacques come up with this stuff?"
Well, looking over his recommended reading list1 might provide us some clues.
You might see a little guy called B.F. Skinner, which i mentioned before, keeps popping up.
You might see his books, like "Verbal Behavior" or Walden Two, Skinner’s science fiction book, on that list, as well as Skinner’s Verbal Behavior.
Add also Looking Backward by Bellamy, as well as Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics.
Skinner is perhaps most well-known for his operant conditioning chamber2, aka the rat box.
 |
| Way of educating human beings, according to the Venus Project |
Pretty disturbing conditioning, with massive potential for abuse, that even if successful, will result in brainwashed people that act like robots.
One can see the seeds of this robotization in "Looking forward" where the 2 main characters conversations consist of either praising the system Fresco created, constantly reminding themselves how people before the Resource-based economy got implemented were a bunch of stupid, selfish, brutal savages, or quoting famous people to support the first 2 viewpoints.
I'm not exagerating at all.
Here is a compilation of their dialogue i scrapped:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PTFErEYbLtyKxI1nLgZx_ITlc9EM1WnEzGDui7uijd0/edit
It's so sterile and ideological, it makes north korean cinema seem more spontaneous and life-like.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PTFErEYbLtyKxI1nLgZx_ITlc9EM1WnEzGDui7uijd0/edit
It's pretty animalistic and mechanical, and if you listen closely to just about any of Fresco's videos, you will realize he was mechanizing people in real life. People are reduced to machines in his strict empirical philosophy, only to be conditioned.
You can also see what I’m talking about especially in his YouTube called, “How to Raise Children”. It’s rather frightening. You can plainly hear he’s talking about manipulation, and Skinner conditioning. There is no love, care, or gentle nurturing mentioned in this clip.
Speaking of children, this is derived from Skinner's statement in Walden Two that a person needs to be strictly monitorized since birth, to develop correct behaviour.
So to all of you that have kids, don't believe for a second you'd be allowed to take care of them.
Fresco made it strictly clear that parents cannot be trusted to take care of their children, since they might raise them wrong.
All of them are to be born and raised in communal birthing and raising centers, and educated "properly" through operant conditioning(aka the above mentioned rat box).
Not that you could love them, as parents.
The word "love" and "beauty" was to be BANNED from the dictionary.
You can see this semantic word-play in action, online. Watch Fresco’s YouTube called: “Love is Bullshit.” It’s a good example. Fresco evasively changes the word “love,” to “like”, and thus eliminates love from the human lexicon.
No, i'm not joking.
Love is a bad word that generates attachment and must be eliminated from the lexicon for the good of society. You could "like" people, in your free-love, non-attaching ways, but the family is at best, a convenient thing social engineers can use for their own ends3.
He also believed that language must be strictly subordinated to empirical fact.
So any attempts at clever wordplay, ambiguity, double meaning, metaphors, and everything that makes language enjoyable, though confusing at time, and simply isn't describing stuff in a mechanical way must be strictly rooted out and destroyed, since it might generate misunderstanding
Which to any of you that have studied linguistics, if only at an amateur level, might know this is insane, and how literally how no language has ever developed.
Of course, one can't argue with the facts.
Except, as you probably know, Skinner was discredited long ago regarding human complexity and social conditioning. John Eric Rayner Staddon rebuked his claims regarding behaviorism, Noam Chomsky discredited Skinner’s verbal claims, and helped launch the Cognitive Revolution, which superseded skinnerian behaviorism.
Still, there are still areas in which the rat box is still used.
Massively multiplayer online games, social media, gambling and phone apps.
There was even a study made by a Microsoft researcher that explored how you can make online players do what you want, even if they don't like it.
"Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity, and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity you want from your players."
In the immortal words of Cracked.com:
"Notice his article does not contain the words "fun" or "enjoyment." That's not his field. Instead it's "the pattern of activity you want."" 4
So to all of you that have kids, don't believe for a second you'd be allowed to take care of them.
Fresco made it strictly clear that parents cannot be trusted to take care of their children, since they might raise them wrong.
All of them are to be born and raised in communal birthing and raising centers, and educated "properly" through operant conditioning(aka the above mentioned rat box).
Not that you could love them, as parents.
The word "love" and "beauty" was to be BANNED from the dictionary.
You can see this semantic word-play in action, online. Watch Fresco’s YouTube called: “Love is Bullshit.” It’s a good example. Fresco evasively changes the word “love,” to “like”, and thus eliminates love from the human lexicon.
No, i'm not joking.
Love is a bad word that generates attachment and must be eliminated from the lexicon for the good of society. You could "like" people, in your free-love, non-attaching ways, but the family is at best, a convenient thing social engineers can use for their own ends3.
He also believed that language must be strictly subordinated to empirical fact.
So any attempts at clever wordplay, ambiguity, double meaning, metaphors, and everything that makes language enjoyable, though confusing at time, and simply isn't describing stuff in a mechanical way must be strictly rooted out and destroyed, since it might generate misunderstanding
Which to any of you that have studied linguistics, if only at an amateur level, might know this is insane, and how literally how no language has ever developed.
Of course, one can't argue with the facts.
It's science after all.
Except, as you probably know, Skinner was discredited long ago regarding human complexity and social conditioning. John Eric Rayner Staddon rebuked his claims regarding behaviorism, Noam Chomsky discredited Skinner’s verbal claims, and helped launch the Cognitive Revolution, which superseded skinnerian behaviorism.
Still, there are still areas in which the rat box is still used.
Massively multiplayer online games, social media, gambling and phone apps.
There was even a study made by a Microsoft researcher that explored how you can make online players do what you want, even if they don't like it.
"Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity, and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity you want from your players."
In the immortal words of Cracked.com:
"Notice his article does not contain the words "fun" or "enjoyment." That's not his field. Instead it's "the pattern of activity you want."" 4
So, in conclusion, the Venus Project promises to ramp up the same dehumanizing crap that we learnt of zapping rats into doing what you want, that is getting us addicted to gambling5, fatty junk food, social media6, and grinding for stuff in Candy Crush7, World of Warcraft and Overwatch, except this time it will be awesome, since the unsupervised experts controlling how humans should act, think and feel won't be making money off it, so they will be purely altruistic.
Note for fun:
Also, some other things Fresco said a "sane" society should ban, throughout his seminars(mostly 70-82, available on the TVP Educational channel):
P.S.: this is my end of the first series.
Will likely make more, according to whatever idea i have, or according to comment feedback.
1 https://www.thevenusproject.com/learn-more/recommended-books/↩
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber↩
3 There was an excerpt from TVP Magazin i had at one point, but i can't source it, given TVP/Trom Magazine ceased collaborating with the Venus Project, and all editions were given to Roxanne for safe-keeping and publishing on their own site, but Roxanne refused to do so↩
4 http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html↩
5 http://www.petemachine.co.uk/the-reward-centre/↩
6 https://socialmediacollective.org/2012/09/06/addiction-by-design-review/↩
7 https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/apr/01/candy-crush-saga-app-brain↩
Note for fun:
Also, some other things Fresco said a "sane" society should ban, throughout his seminars(mostly 70-82, available on the TVP Educational channel):
-freedom of religion;
-opinions;
-marriage;
-normal people(no, i'm not joking);
-Mickey mouse clubs;
-football matches;
-soap operas;
-soap operas;
-nature lovers(children should learn and witness how animals tear each other, so they will be grateful for living in an RBE);
-saying "happy birthday", "Merry Christmas", etc.;
-dictionaries, because they contain words from the monetary system;P.S.: this is my end of the first series.
Will likely make more, according to whatever idea i have, or according to comment feedback.
1 https://www.thevenusproject.com/learn-more/recommended-books/↩
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber↩
3 There was an excerpt from TVP Magazin i had at one point, but i can't source it, given TVP/Trom Magazine ceased collaborating with the Venus Project, and all editions were given to Roxanne for safe-keeping and publishing on their own site, but Roxanne refused to do so↩
4 http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html↩
5 http://www.petemachine.co.uk/the-reward-centre/↩
6 https://socialmediacollective.org/2012/09/06/addiction-by-design-review/↩
7 https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/apr/01/candy-crush-saga-app-brain↩
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