Aug 31, 2011

Spielzeug Self

Shorter former corporate attorney:  make sure your kids play in a purposeful, directed way that will build them up into high IQ future CEOs and project managers and who are both successful and compassionate, as well as focused on achieving goals set by superiors and kind to strangers, because there's nothing in those fucking double binds that could possibly shatter a fragile ego shaped and formed and stretched to the rack of the tyranny of success.
at

12 comments:

  1. Rhys Ap ThomasAugust 31, 2011 at 10:34 PM

    You actually read that article? You are a braver man than I Jack!

    I come across that sort of shit and end up running and screaming like a little girl just to get away.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jack CrowAugust 31, 2011 at 10:48 PM

    I did read it. This is not to my credit. Seems the author honestly believes that children can be taught to be mindfully aware and executive egos primed for success, at the same time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anatole DavidSeptember 1, 2011 at 6:58 AM

    The worst of St. Benedict and de Sade drilled, for greater glory, into the skulls of children.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jack CrowSeptember 1, 2011 at 9:38 AM

    Now that's a truth, Anatole.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©September 1, 2011 at 12:12 PM

    I tend to avoid the Huffington Post.

    And here's the amusing reason: until I got the winetop, I using an old refurbished Dell stack running Windows M.E.

    Nothing would kill that thing quicker than clicking on the HuffPo. It generally would require a cold reboot.
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  6. PharrellSeptember 1, 2011 at 1:01 PM

    You're absolutely right, Jack.

    And on a related note, there really is nothing worse than this new obsession on the part of all these parents with turning their kids into hyper-achieving meritocrats who are learning 3 languages at age 5, calculus at age 7, and tennis at 6 months old. ugh.

    look, there's nothing wrong languages. and tennis is fun, and so on. but that kind of meritocratization of the kids is a reflection of the belief that all human life has been devalued unless it can serve the needs of global technocracy.

    maybe it's become true, and now all of American life has now become a tournament and only the most slack-shouldered, vitamin-d-deficient, hoody-wearing nebbishes among us will be able in the future to get healthcare and a middle-class income in the white-collar world. but fuck that -- the goal then is to rebel against those conditions...

    ReplyDelete
  7. PharrellSeptember 1, 2011 at 2:42 PM

    and, I realize there were some things in that rambling that were inconsistent (how can they be vitamin-D deficient if they're playing tennis? etc.), but....

    ReplyDelete
  8. zencomixSeptember 3, 2011 at 8:05 AM

    I stopped reading after "Presented by Flintstones... Find out which specially formulated multivitamin is right for your kid."

    ReplyDelete
  9. Jack CrowSeptember 3, 2011 at 8:05 AM

    Thunder,

    It's to my shame. But, at least I don't read the Times or the Post.

    Pharrell,

    That's an apt turn of phrase: "perhaps all life [is a] tournament."

    I've no problem with an honest agonism, myself, but it's only sporting atop a baseline hedonism.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Jack CrowSeptember 3, 2011 at 8:06 AM

    Heh, Zen. If you don't tailor their minerals to their activity, your kids are screwed...

    ReplyDelete
  11. PharrellSeptember 3, 2011 at 12:35 PM

    Jack,

    I agree completely. Honest agonism, real sport is bracing.

    The kind I object to, as you say, is the kind that our country has produced, that says, "play for your healthcare! Only the top players will enter the middle class."

    And moreover "white-collar sports," where the goal is that the least athletic, the one who has been sitting in his chair the longest, wins.

    ReplyDelete
  12. RichardSeptember 7, 2011 at 5:38 PM

    Jack, yes, you can link to my post about Bill Keller

    ReplyDelete