Stories: Life in Books

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  • merc,

    Where words are, fear is not.
    One day Mr Riddley I suspect you will have your own publishing adventure, if you so choose. Me, I couldn't write a novel to save myself (well I could fudge one), something about extending the line, but many have, many and worthy.
    Post number of the beast loometh, 14 to go...I sound like the brother in The Wasp Factory, however forever departing, he was as I recall forever arriving. Brilliant novel that, if only for the altar, with the dogs head, ah fetishes, where would we be without them?

    Since Dec 2006 • 2471 posts Report Reply

  • 81stcolumn,

    My grandfather was a Welsh miner, quite proud of the fact that he could read at all, and doubly proud of the fact that he could teach said skill to me. My earliest days were spent with 365 bedtime stories and Reed’s wonder tales of Maori land (sent to me from my Nana in Auckland. I could read somewhat sooner than all the other kids I knew. At infant school I was often found asleep in the small library with Britannica on my lap.

    At juniors I remember distinctly being accused of stealing books; the problem being that no one actually thought I was capable of reading them.

    The first stand out book for me was an illustrated copy of Pilgrims Progress. I loved the tale and missed the metaphor altogether. Worse than that I thought the illustration of Apollyon was soooo cool. No surprises that I ended up an atheist.

    War mags yep, Biggles yep, Hornblower Yep, Famous Five yeuuch, Henry Treece Yep, Encycopedias Yeaah, and rather strangely Aircraft of the Fighting Powers. I skipped the Bible. Solzhenitsyn proved too much too soon but Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov were cool with me.

    I went through a MacDonalds phase reading sometimes as many as three pulp specials a day. I returned to school after one such summer, bored with ordinary words and looking for something new. I started with Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves; but I came back to Siegfried Sassoonand a book I had seen on the desk of an old mentor many years before; The Memoirs of George Sherston. I felt betrayed that Sherston wouldn’t go back at first, but then my life truly changed.

    There were only two rules at my boarding school; don’t tell ever and don’t tell anyone; behind this veil lived bullying and abuse. I broke ranks and told about the bullying of one boy by my then best friend and the biggest kid in my year. I regard it as one of the few good things I ever managed at school. The kid who was bullied the most was never sure whether to thank me or not, after all he’d gone from being a victim to a nobody, almost overnight (we later got into a fight which led to me beating him very badly, something I still regret deeply). Despite the beatings, the property destructions and the fights that followed, I never regretted that act. The change was to set me on the road to political activism, protesting and all sorts. At one stage I was the chaperone to the UK’s only lesbian pool team. For many years Tao Te Ching brought peace and space to my mind.

    Later I read Marx, Mein Kampf, and the Bible but I managed to mix this with Iain Banks, Gibbo and Phillip K Dick (Far more fun). Thomas Hardy changed the way I felt about life and DH Lawrence changed the way I saw people. Oh and I finally read Tolkein; errrrm seven times.

    At University I read Gillies and Aronson in close succession; neither people nor sciences were ever the same again. I launched into poetry going backwards in time from Larkin to Shakespeare. I even finished Foucault’s Pendulum but failed Solzhenitsyn a second time.

    I courted my wife by reading AA Milne and the Zig Zag Kid by David Grossman to her. My sister coincidentally is married to a writer and manages a bookshop.

    Nawthshaw • Since Nov 2006 • 790 posts Report Reply

  • 81stcolumn,

    what's good about behaviourism though, is its intolerance of unfalsifiable theory,

    Funny, given that in its earliest incarnations it was really just a model without a viable explanation.

    which gives it a ton more credibility than most of the alternatives. and it also acknowledges the intimate connection between the organism and its environment (in extremis that the organism is the environment,

    The sexy version of this comes from JJ Gibson (1979) http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=BJGCuje64FcC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PA1&dq=%22Gibson%22+%22The+Ecological+Approach+to+Visual+Perception%22+&ots=66AAAf05K9&sig=nQz-Lz71cjkI3hGC9vpedAVLjcI#PPP1,M1
    Regardless of you view behaviourism, it is worth reading Fodor’s ideas at the start of The Modularity of Mind which points to the notion that Behaviourist approaches are unlikely to provide a complete explanation of behaviour; however parsimonious. Behaviourism alone will never explain why we crash cars more often when using mobile phones for example.

    which coupled with the assertion that 'mind' is at best an irrelevant metaphenomenon, makes it all very zen - for those that like such things),

    Like this stuff ? Read the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Churchland

    which in turn has rather important political implications the rise of cognitivism on the other hand (the theories of which are invariably unfalsifiable),

    Falsification isn’t really the big problem of cognitivism, rather it struggles with theoretical regress. Worse still the basic theory of information that underpins it makes no sense at all. For all its shortcomings cognitivism gives us concepts of memory span, limited capacity , Fitts Law and Hicks Law which have proved robust and useful over time.

    was very convenient for those wishing to reassert the rightwing myths of 'rugged individualism'

    It seems strange then that the majority of right wing rhetoric pointing to carrot and stick lives entirely within behaviourism as does the over use of tests and tables. Indeed the right mis-used early ideas of self determination by just failing to consider all the needs associated with self determined/motivated behaviour – Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness.

    and total self-determination, and all the social and political eshewals of responsibility that that entails.

    Not true - Behaviourism, Ecological approaches and to some extent Freudianism all share in a basically deterministic approach that denies personal responsibility in favour of trained, environmentally driven or subconscious compulsion over which we have no intrinsic control.

    The fascinating irony of this is that society’s great behaviourist bugbear (gambling) seems to be most effectively addressed through the highly self determined approaches of Motivational Interviewing.

    Merc - The add men probably owe more to Bandura and Milgram than they do to Watson and Skinner.

    Nawthshaw • Since Nov 2006 • 790 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    I read (thru surreptitious means) my mothers paperback copy of The Happy Hooker waaaay back in the 70's when I was waaaay too young to be reading such things, it kinda f#cked me up.

    Who knew a girl could get off by humping the armrest on an armchair? Thankyou very much Xavier Holland. You damaged me for life.

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    It all seems so trite and mannered, with such overtones of the Übermensch, that I can't even imagine what it must have been like to be that 16 year old who loved it so dearly.

    I had a similar experience when I watched Purple Rain on DVD recently.

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • merc,

    The add men probably owe more to Bandura and Milgram than they do to Watson and Skinner.

    Yes very true. I was more into Bill Bernbach at the time though in deep Faust denial. Advertising is dead, for me anyway. When I went to bandacamp, I mean University as an adult student to study said Watson and Skinner, I was mortified to learn that as an ex-copywriter I was a real study for the hierarchy...in how to promote the Department and it's courses, bad sign.

    Since Dec 2006 • 2471 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    fair points 81st.
    of course you're right that behaviourism doesn't offer a complete understanding, my point was more that it does have some useful contributions that are often dismissed out of ignorance and numberiphobia (though obviously not in your case).

    in terms of the political extrapolations of behaviourism i would agree that much of it was adopted by the right (probably because of the parsimony of much of theory, which made for nice simplistic misinterpretations). the same could be said for post-modernism, which while intended to be an anti-elitist tool was soon co-opted as a justification for laissez faire governmental non-intervention and abdication of State responsibility for the welfare of its citizens.

    radical behaviourism's focus on the significance of the environment however, was initially asserted as an argument for the necessity of socialism and State responsibility for ensuring its citizens lived in an environment conducive to flourishing. this was developed more in Skinner's appalling eutopian novel Walden 2 for example. of course it was mad, controlling, and somewhat redolent of eugenicism, so didn't really fly much in the Land of the Free.

    but anyway, no big thing. i have no idea who the blessings of advertising can best be attributed to.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • merc,

    Eugenics were practised here, in Dunedin in the mental health system, sterilisation for the mentally impaired, I got that from An Angel At My Table, Janet Frame.
    Advertising you can blame on the Copyists (bloody monks), hence the term Copywriter, hence newspaper copy. Around 1900 in America some bright spark copy editor worked out you could sell the stuff, started with classified mostly and like our friends the realtors, wrote the copy for the client. Then came WW2, Himmler I think had an ad background, the swastika was in fact Goering's family symbol etched into a family fireplace, they simply reversed it, you need a good logo. Alot of ad people end up being paid by politicians, in fact there is an argument for Saatchi shaping some countries. Michael Wall of the cossacks fame was an ad man, failed politican. Mayor Harvey was an ad man. Now PR is a different kettle of fish.

    Since Dec 2006 • 2471 posts Report Reply

  • 81stcolumn,

    F**k I had completely forgotten about that book

    The whole thing makes me kind of sad, when I left my Alma Mater they still applied Skinner in the departmental nursery (shakes uncontrollably).

    Would you trust this man with your kids ?

    Nawthshaw • Since Nov 2006 • 790 posts Report Reply

  • 81stcolumn,

    I took a hiatus from my PhD in the 90's and went to work for a small media company doing IT and design. Mostly we did the odd website and front ends for CD's. Every once in a while when the big kids ran out of ideas they'd come and stir up some of the little fish like us. We did some really spooky viral stuff for a well known drinks company which I don't think ever saw the light of day. However, during the course of one such round of action, my then business partner and I looked at each other and basically figured out what the consequences of our success would be- I quit that day and went back to school. It took me that long to figure out that this wasn't about creating good looking stuff.

    Nawthshaw • Since Nov 2006 • 790 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    i'd add to the history list PT Barnum, Vanderbilt and Ivy Lee.
    there's plenty of political influence coming out of ad and PR agencies i would have thought. you only have to look at the extent to which the vast majority of the general populations' regular source of political information is the msm. and today's msm is now largely gutted of investigatory power thanks to ongoing job-cuts to improve profit margins, so their 'news' teams are particularly susceptible to the influence of convenient, well packaged 'news' sources.

    i hope they weren't applying this one when you left. i had dinner with murray sidman once. he was really frail and really uptight about not eating salt.
    i think skinner's hair looks pretty cool in that particular shot. although, no i probably wouldn't trust him with my kids.
    i agree too that the cross-over between pysch, PR and advertising is a bit spooky at times.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • Ben Austin,

    For every well designed marketing campaign I'm sure there are a dozen rushed, riddled with compromise, badly thought out campaigns. So at least my brief (one year) experience goes anyway.

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report Reply

  • Ben Austin,

    Oh and back to a previous topic I just read Bank's The Algerbriast, which I liked, but wow, the back cover writeup bears little relationship with the actualy story.

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report Reply

  • Ben Austin,

    Oh, and damm I wish i'd used the preview button. WTB Edit feature

    London • Since Nov 2006 • 1027 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    m, thouht you might like this on advertising and the apocolypse. i always liked this guy's stuff:
    http://www.sutjhally.com/articles/advertisingattheed/

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • merc,

    I'm going to read that, but first,
    1. advertising used to be the only way you could pay and be sure you got your message across, think about it, this is far reaching and would need a face to face explanation (and include pamphleteering, sic).
    2. advertising is very regulated, so you can't just say any old thing at all, except..
    3...social marketing and govt. controlled monopolies mean that the largest ad spend in NZ is by the govt. Think about that, it is far reaching.
    Now I will read said article.

    Since Dec 2006 • 2471 posts Report Reply

  • merc,

    OK I scanned it, it has mixed up the market vs. the political model and could only have come from a confused academic. The market is not about producing products and taking them to market any more (for China yes, USA no). The market is to create money through mortgages and loans and then steal the oil with a private army, much abridged of course.
    NZ just simply doesn't understand this, we are hobbits, in Hobbiton before the ring thing. Production and advertising are just too expensive. Advertising is now done by the State using taxpayer money to promote ideology (our stories!). The whole interest rates dialog (!) is really about pushing meme's so people feel part of a fabricated society (ref any Sci-fi). See it is all really an illusion, society doesn't exist, the individual does but as long as you keep the herd watching the lions it's never going to evolve past The Gun. Universities are trapped in this and our own Mr Hood who went to Oxford got pilloried for applying his market model to that ancient place of learning, degrees have become Products, for sale on the global market, hell you could all do it yourselves with Wikipedia and that 30k loan is not going to get you a high paying job, no way. Meanwhile illiteracy rates sky-rocket and Primary schools make cakes for funds.
    There is a plan and it's not pretty, but to activate it, advertising was killed off and the talent(!) moved elsewhere.
    Enough or too much! Blake.

    Since Dec 2006 • 2471 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    lordy. that'll take a bit of decoding m.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • merc,

    Sorry it always happens to me when I read dark backgrounds with white type, but I have only 6 post left to me, am fading fast, think the atomization of the individual, own theories, hyper-noid phase has kicked in, Smiths Dream is on Maori TV, partner had never heard of it, was accidently held on a commune in Coro while filming, need to feel versus necessity to think...peots who must work in offices, paranoid Rimbaud death complex, University presses distain twisted messages, Hunter S betrayed me....arggggggg, I want more life!

    Since Dec 2006 • 2471 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    hang in there Kimosave, break on through to the Other Side. you will see clearly when the rain has gone.
    you have life eternal.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    but I have only 6 post left to me

    yeah, right ...

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • merc,

    Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge, I'm tryin' not to lose my head, it's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under. ?.
    Eternal Life is now on my trail, Jeff Buckley, (though I can swim).
    Yes NI, now 4 to go, that number, 4, 1+2 =3, 3+1 = 4, I plan on not being assumpted, and I've always wanted to ask, are those...real? (And I don't mean the Hammer of Thor).

    Since Dec 2006 • 2471 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    only 5 post left now ...

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    the sword of time is long and thin,
    it doesn't hurt when it beings,
    but as it works its way on in,
    the pain gets stronger, watch it grin...

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    damn, that's meant to be:

    *it doesn't hurt when it begins

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

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