From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Feb 20 2000 - 16:28:01 MST
> Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net> wrote:
> >
> > > How can we avoid passing on similarly inappropriate values
> > > to the next generation?
>
> Howard Rothenburg wrote:
>
> > Also, what is the short list of skills that we would recommend?
This has really got me going now. Short list?
0) Reading
1) Reasoning
2) Programming?
3) Speaking?
4) 'Rithmetic?
Poverty is a great motivator. It was for me. On the other
hand, it motivated me to do the wrong things. My poverty during
college motivated me to study hard, yet it also caused me to
choose a major (engineering) which I would not have chosen
otherwise. I would have chosen astronomy, which is exactly
what my younger and richer cousin did.
How many of us ate top ramen noodles in college? They
could be purchased for 11 cents a pack; two of them
with koolaid made a 25-cent nutrient-free meal. I and
my compatriots practically lived on the stuff for four years.
Inappropriate for today's young scholars. We crammed
four of us into an apartment made for two. We bought not
one stitch of clothing the whole time, or if so, from the
Goodwill. {8-] We bought our books used, and resold
them at the end of the term. [Fortunately I have been
able to locate and rebuy a copy almost all of them.]
There was a Newsweek cover that came out in '81 titled
"Wandering Jobless in America" with a young family
in a worn out pickup huddled under a freeway overpass
cooking over a campfire. I removed that cover and
posted it above my desk with a sign saying "STUDY
HARD spike, otherwise this is YOU, pal."
At the end of my schooling, I was able to pack everything
I owned into *one old suitcase* which I tied onto the
back of a very well used motorcycle, rode to Seattle
to start my career. How very different will be the experience
of the new generation! Honest to dog, my friends I cannot
even *imagine* what it would be like to start one's college
or one's adult life with the money-thing *already* out of the
way. What is the motivator? Why work? Why bother?
Do we have any rich young among us who know that road?
Sorry about the long windy post but consider: how many
of us were brought up to toil in order to help out our family?
None perhaps: we were past that as a society by the time
most of us were born. But now, how many were taught
to toil in order to earn money, to trade for the toys we
wanted? Most, right?
OK, now, consider what has happened to manufacturing
and society since then, consider the kids born in the 90s.
This whole concept will not sell to them, reason: *They
dont have the room* or the time for the toys they want. There
are few kids and many adults now, so they get gifts all the time,
and secondly, plastic toys are really cheap! So my 6 yr old
friend has a bedroom crammed to the RAFTERS
with barbie doll junk, with video games, with trucks and
cars and stuffed animals, so now, why should they toil
or do *anything* the least bit unpleasant to have more
of... this stuff? You could randomly go into her room
and collect a lawn-sized garbage bag full of randomly
chosen toys to haul away, she would never miss them.
Furthermore she has a couple hundred dollars in loose
bills her aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc, have sent her,
yet is without a clue where she would put the toys that
she could purchase.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot bring myself to say
that hard work no longer matters, only correct investment
strategy. That goes so hard against everything I have
always believed, I just cannot grok that message.
Is this not *exactly* the future we often talk about on this list?
Manufacturing goes exponential, stuff gets really cheap,
people have plenty of the necessities and many of the luxuries,
without really even trying. Security cameras are everywhere,
never blinking, in the daycare, in the school, on the playground,
the kids dont mind a bit. They always just *assume* they are
being watched always, they know no other way. Privacy?
Whats that? Hunger? Want? Never heard of it.
We question our most fundamental values. But it isnt future;
its already here, at least for today's very young. Ill be damned
if I know how to guide them. spike
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