Tony White

Social engineering

noreply@blogspirit.com (Graffiti) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:20:00 +0800

I always find this a very interesting topic. The ways and means people will use to get others in a society to behave a certain way. It can be as simple as the speed limit for driving a car, you get them to behave by taking their money away. I recall in Singapore many years ago they had a law where if a university educated man married and had a child to a university educated female then he got taxation benefits that non-university educated parents did not.

Haven’t governments tried that throughout history - apartheid and the aryan race just to name two - and fortunately it has never been successful. Imagine what we would be like now if governments could actually be successful in engineering who mated with who in a society.

I heard a most interesting talk on the radio the other day about China’s one child policy. The man stated that it is now estimated that there are 50 million children in China who are a second child. Yes, there are 50 million people in China who have no birth certificate, who can never get a passport and who officially do not exist. Imagine the impact of that. Firstly they will be ripe for exploitation - unless you do what I want then I will dob you in - and they are going to have to have a massive black economy to support them all as someone who does not exist can’t pay taxation. It seems that governments cannot engineer the human sex drive but I suppose that wont stop them trying.

Anyway closer to home they are bringing in a new law in the state where I live. They want to reduce teenage truancy which is closely related to crime in the community. Another piece of social engineering who’s goals are most meritorious in my view. How they plan to do it is by withholding welfare payments from parents who’s teenagers do not attend school. Well fancy that!

Now there is some good engineering!!

Firstly, its discriminatory in that it only effects poor parents and not the ones who have a job. And I can tell you that there are plenty of rich kids who are truants. I see them regularly in my work. A mother will bring her 14 year old highly rebellious daughter to see me, to get her repaired. This child’s sole goal in life is to defy authority and of course that includes not going to school. Indeed just getting the child inside the door of my office is a major logistical exercise as in the teenager’s eyes I am authority even before we have ever met. Often I ask the mother how she managed it and sometimes you get an answer like she paid her daughter $20 to get her to come to counselling!! Yes that is right. The parent pays the counsellor to counsel the child and pays the child to be a client!!

I tell you what, you earn your money when you counsel such very rebellious teenagers. They are not easy clients. It truly tests the counsellors skills. If you can just somehow manage to weave your way through all the rebellion and get underneath it and make some real contact with the child then you have made it and some good changes can occur. Sometimes you get there and sometimes you don’t.

Unfortunately this welfare withholding piece of social engineering is based on a faulty assumption. This is no better articulated than in the editorial of the “West Australian” newspaper where in discussing this program the editor states, “The aim is surely unobjectionable: to get children from such families to attend school regularly. Education is the means by which such children are given the opportunity to break the pattern of welfare dependency”

And the faulty assumption is? School = education. You can make a child go to school but you can’t make it learn. You can make a child sit in a classroom but you can’t make it get educated. Oh well!!

He looks rebellious. Apparently if he is made to go to school that means he will learn. According to the Australian government one causes the other to happen.

Furthermore who would want to be a teacher now! They are going to watch their classrooms start to fill up with children who don’t want to be there, who don’t want to learn and who angry about it all. You don’t need three guesses to work out who is going to take the brunt of that anger.

Then there are the other children in the classroom who do want to learn and they are going to be adversely effected because the teacher is spending all the time coping with the welfare driven disruptive student.

And finally there is one other point. People are usually attracted to those things which they are good at. They will naturally seek them out like skills in art, or music or sport and yes academic ability as well. The vast majority of truants aren’t good at it. They are academically challenged or they are dumb as they have been called numerous times before and as they call themselves. Putting such children back in the classroom will only further reinforce their “dumbness” to themselves and their self image is further crushed into the ground. And that is one common feature in many social experiments. The people effected, end up worse off than before the social engineering was implemented in the first place.

He is good at taking baths so he will naturally do it of his own volition.

I am all in favour of getting truants to do some structured activity. A very good idea for sure. Putting them back in the classroom is a very bad idea.

Graffiti

Sign, sign everywhere a sign

noreply@blogspirit.com (Graffiti) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:02:40 +0800

By now you all know how I am often banging on about graffiti and what it represents in youth and so forth. Well guess what?

Last nite my front wall got graffitied and here it is

So what do you do with it? I suppose when you first see it is is a bit of a shock. It is very bright and and probably covers a square meter. I guess when it happens to people’s homes they go straight into their racket. Some get angry, some get sad or frustrated I suppose.

I took a minute to look at it and it certainly is on the artistic end of the graffiti continuum. Actually I think it looks quite good. So I think I will keep it there for a few weeks/months and then get the council to paint over it and wait for the next one.

“Sign, sign everywhere a sign”

Graffiti

Self disclosure

noreply@blogspirit.com (Graffiti) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:25:00 +0800

Roses states:
“I think it's funny how you don't disclose a lot. Actually, i'm the same.”

Graffiti responds:
My level of self disclosure Roses?
In the past have been told that I am a bit of a closed book. So I do agree with that as there are some areas that I am very private about.

But

In other ways I am not at all. I have stated openly on this blog about my life script and how I am like Eeyore and Popov the clown. Indeed in some areas I would say that I am quite exhibitionistic. Hey, I am a bit narcissistic so I have to be!

At a week long workshop recently there were some people there who were my clients, trainees and colleagues. I got up and did a piece of personal work (as the client) in front of them. I spoke in depth about my early relationship with my mother, her personal demons and how that impacted on me as a child and so forth. So I have no problem with that and that is very disclosing of self.

I always find it entertaining when therapists and trainers say they would never do a piece of their own personal work in front of their clients or trainees as it would damage them and traumatize them. When that is not the real reason at all. They just feel insecure about showing self like that in front of the client. Their perfect persona may come crashing down. Which is OK for them not to self disclose in such a way if they do not want to, but it is just funny how they give a fake reason for doing so.

Since that workshop I have asked my clients and trainees what was their reaction to seeing me do that. All of them (so far at least) have said that they admired me for doing so and indeed it has helped them therapeutically and they see me as more real now. Certainly no one has been traumatized by it.

Keeping up appearances

Graffiti

Signs

noreply@blogspirit.com (Graffiti) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:05:00 +0800

There were two good articles in the “West Australian’ newspaper today by Paul Murray and Zoltan Kovacs. Discussing how we live in a nanny state and how paternalistic governments can be and so forth.

One comment made was “We’re largely over-governed because we want to be”. A most refreshing comment and one that I fully agree with. Why are we living in a nanny state? Because we want to be. Well I don’t, but most Australians do. So it is the electorate who is responsible for the nanny state not the government.

One always hears people banging on about how politicians lie to us and put spin on this and that. Most politicians are OK people who don’t want to lie, so why do they? Because they know that if they tell it as it is on certain topics then we, the electorate will rapidly ‘un-elect’ them. So it is us, the voters, who say to the politicians tell us the truth but if you do then we will kick you out of office. So it is the voters who are responsible for political spin on this and that. We elect people who we know are going to lie to us, so that is our responsibility. In the final analysis a politician is merely a reflection of the attitudes of the electorate.

And to the nanny state. I went to the beach the other day and as you walk to it from your car you are confronted with all these signs about shallow water here so don’t dive, rocks over there so be cautious, beware of rips, jellyfish and so forth. Fuck! I thought. All they need is one sign which says, “Remember to assess the environment for potential dangers” then the rest is up to me. I don’t need the government to do it for me!

Here is a picture of me when I was a long haired freaky person

With all those signs I was reminded of a great song that was around when I was a long haired freaky person. We used to love this song and sing it at parties when it was played. It is by Telsa and titled “Signs”

And the sign says "Long-haired freaky people need not apply"
So I put my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said you look like a fine outstanding young man, I think you'll do
So I took off my hat, I said "Imagine that, huh, me working for you"

[Chorus:]
Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs
Fuckin' up the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign

And the sign says "Anybody caught trespassing will be shot on sight"
So I jumped the fence and I yelled at the house
Hey! What gives you the right!
To put up a fence and keep me out, or to keep Mother Nature in
If God was here, he'd tell it to your face, man, you're some kind of sinner

[Chorus]

Oh, say now mister, can't you read
You got to have a shirt and tie to get a seat
You can't watch, no you can't eat, you ain't supposed to be here

And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" - uh!

[Solo]

And the sign says "Everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray"
But then they passed around a plate at the end of it all
And I didn't have a penny to pay
So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own fuckin' sign
I said, "Thank you Lord for thinking 'bout me, I'm alive and doing fine", oh

[Chorus 2x]

--------------

One thing that does concern me is how much the youth in particular just accept what the government tells them and it is like they want the government to tell them what to do. When I was young (I always promised never to say that) the government was the enemy. What they told you to do you didn’t do and you certainly didn’t ask them what to do!!

However there is one thing that the youth of today do do which shows they have spirit and gives assurance that they have a mind of their own - graffiti. The government constantly tells them not to do it and they keep doing it. They are making up their own signs!

Graffiti

Objectophiles

noreply@blogspirit.com (Graffiti) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:00:28 +0800

Freud came up with some very good ones, none better than the concept of Polymorphous Perversity. What a great sounding term isn’t it? But what does it mean?

Well according to Freud all of us were born polymorphously perverse. Did you know that you were once perverse? Every newborn infant is born with this sexual orientation as we can call it and slowly it reduces over time until the child is about 5 years of age. That is in normal human development.

Each newborn has no sexual orientation. That is their erotic focus is not fixated on any one “thing”. As a result they find many different things erotic and sexually arousing. Hence they can quite readily have incestuous sexual feelings and are fully bisexual in their orientation. Of course as they have not yet developed any conscience these erotic attractions go on guilt free in the young child’s mind.

As the child develops slowly but surely the variety gets smaller and smaller until eventually they have an erotic focus or sexual orientation that is quite specific. For the average heterosexual that means they are sexually attracted to a member of the opposite sex of approximately the same age.

For some people this does not happen and they don’t develop a quite specific focus. For instance the bisexual could be seen as such a person. The true bisexual in the psychological sense has a sexual orientation to members of both sexes. So they remain more polymorphously perverse. Interestingly enough Freud would argue that these people are less neurotic than your average heterosexual or homosexual.

The human psyche. A strange thing it is at times.

The way the child gets its sexual focus more specific is by the defence mechanism of repression. The child simply represses each sexual focus that its Parent ego state deems as inappropriate. So this person is more neurotic and highly defended than the person who remains polymorphously perverse. They remain more in their Free Child ego state and less neurotic.

Then we have the problem of what becomes the person’s sexual focus and orientation. Our society says it should be heterosexual to a person of approximately the same age. Indeed it is becoming more acceptable or ‘normal’ to have a homosexual orientation to a person of approximately the same age. Of course sometimes neither of these happen and then we get people like the “Objectophile”. The person who develops a sexual focus towards and inanimate object. Like a wall or a bike or a painting. These people will develop the same form of attachment and feelings towards the object as others develop towards a human partner. They fall in love with it in just the same way.

Indeed this is the psychological mechanism behind many of the fetishes. The man who develops a foot fetish ot breast fetish in one way is an objectophile. Although he usually wont admit it to his wife, he is not actually in love with her but in love with that particular part of her anatomy. The rest of her is just happens to be attached to the foot or the breasts.

This person is not polymorphously perverse as they have developed normally in that they have a specific sexual focus. But their sexual focus or orientation is deemed by their society to be odd, neurotic and maybe even illegal.

Graffiti