American Culture - A Modern Ship of Fools

Note, the following words are not those of this blogger but they reflect what this blogger also sees.

"The Cognitive Dissonance We Feel Because Of Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, And Kevin Spacey, Weinstein, ...DT". And let's add 'Cosby', Levine and many more.

"The TV personalities are just that - marketable masks and the smartest, most fluid self-diguisers (and very likely the most sociopathic) are the ones most likely to vanquish all other competitors by whatever means and reach the 'king of the hill'. Unfortunately this is the 'universal' of American culture; it's a daily lesson imprinted with force and through the talents of our best writers and artists who have been diverted from grand art and literature into generating luridly violent and sex-filled media extravaganzas which will crown 'kings of the hill' for a few weeks or months of short-attention-span popularity. But even in America's transistory popularity cycles, immense amounts of money can be made. Thus we have the ascent of the Lauers and Spaceys, assisted through co-partners like the Hollywood producers...it's all a ship of fools captained by grinning death masks. And there seem to be no pure Angels. "

As posted previously several times in this blog, America seems to have sunk morally (but ascended commercially)to nearly unretrievable depths of commercialization of nearly all aspects of American culture, for prurient purpose. Much money has been made of our American journey through Hell.

Something Wonderful Is Happening in Kenya (but not in America)

PREFACE TO THE 'PREFACE'.
This post was started to inform the 'PerchedEye' followers of the author's personal sense from his outreach activities (notably remote video interviewing of international youth for admissions to american colleges) that the youth of developing (and underdeveloped) nations were on to something big that may/will soon explode into a political-economic, cultural revolution enabled by a new technology, the blockchain concept (Satoshi Nakamoto, 1994). The 'Nakamoto' concept became the Bitcoin phenomenon, etc...but is applicable to many other areas! The point: while youth in developing regions have entered into an exciting self-potentializing era, American youth are being forced into fighting their citizen-parents for literal survival...against the American market model that gives higher priority to gun sales than controlling guns to help save the lives of American school kids murdered at their desks,... in American schools.

While making the refreshing and heart-warming observations about how youth in less privileged areas of the world were 'catching fire' from the internet and blockchain potential, this blogger almost as quickly became aware of a disheartening comparison that American youth were not experiencing an intellectual 'catching fire' but contrastingly, it seems American youth have entered into a dark valley.... of frightening non-importsnce...wherein the American culture, led by, driven by and shaped by market modeling, has cast aside its youth as almost a foreign species or annoying insects to be ignored and, most tragically for our American culture, un-mourned after too-normal mass-school-kid killings except for pro-forma fortnight 'condolences' followed by a quick look away and search for the next, big profit news broadcast opportunity.

America's youth are ritually, and in reality, sacrificed and cannibalized in obeisance to the market-god and deprived of services to promote their health and education as if they are some parasitical, non-human burden on America, whatever America is these days. That this makes no sense, not to invest in the education and health of each generation in order to assure American capability to compete with other nations, appears some alien concept to our government.

But there are signs this apparent American mal-interest in its youth is changing, although not by the efforts of its 'adults', but by forceful insistence from its youth to 'have a heart', change, stop the BS. Just like the blockchain =excited youth in Africa, Myanmar,India, and elsewhere, America's youth have realized that if their adult protectors can't get it together to change things, the 'kids' will do it for them and themselves. Hence, in America, in reaction to the February 14, 2018, mass-school-shooting in Parkland, Florida, the survivor students have spoken out that the now-American-normal-condolences from politicians (instead of serious gun control) just will not do.

Unbelievable! America's children have to speak up for themselves in such a situation. They are, admirably but so sadly, forced to speak out in their vulnerable, young, still learning what it's all about, as youthful as fifth grade, ...they are forced to, and are, speaking out (and eloquently) that 'Hey, guys (adults in Congress), we're being murdered out here, literally, no joke, throw a bone, do something about these guns, please..motherf..kers!!

America has come to this?!! Our kids have to scuffle and scrape, even in their 5th grade state of not-yet-weaned, to find the words they haven't yet been taught,...to plead for their own lives and safety. SHAME AMERICA!!

The point is that the youth in developing areas (and in the dirt floor villages) have used what internet resource available to 'learn how to learn' by picking up new knowledge on their own to gain new insights (and uber-perspectives) on their lives, their goals, the challenges to their goals and above all...to acquire new intellectual skills to formulate workable solution options for them and their conditions.

"Learning to Learn". Pericles21 has observed exciting examples of this 'movement'of self-learning for change. A youth in east Africa needs some basic Japanese ability to study Japanese graphic arts to create graphic representations of traditional lore and moral lessons from the past?? Simply get some basic vocabulary off the internet and practice in real utility-time chat, or video conferencing, with a youthful compatriot in Japan. No need anymore to wait for Western teachers (European or American) to drop from the sky.

The phenomenon at the root of this coming (maybe now) revolution is the youthful creativity of the human spirit that is ever-present, extends across all races and conditions and is always ready and curious to pick up a new tool. (Another example of the miracle of human evolution, the youthful human brain).

Perhaps most significant for the political-economic playing fields in these areas, these youth see a way to use the blockchain concept of ultra-fast communication turnaround to finally to resolve the intertribal 'frictions' which historically and consistently have prevented developing and underdeveloped areas...especially in, but not limited to, Africa, from achieving their on-paper potential.


PREFACE. (the original)
This blog, "Something wonderful is happening in Kenya (but not in America)" was drafted before the movie, 'Black Panther' was released to American theaters in February 2018. I was much surprised when I saw it, for several reasons - one, it is a broadly appealing work that does not indulge in racial jingoism (supremacy, boasting, etc) but presents a flavorful taste of a human-oriented culture; two, it highlights the role of tradition as sanity-preserving; three, it highlights youth as the bubbling up of hope and optimism; four, it is above all hopeful for humanity in general, globally, where there is respect for everyone. And lastly, five, 'Black Panther' shows us a path for humanity to live with, and purposefully control and guide, advanced technology. That 'Way' is through community, mutual respect, and above all nurturing our young. Africa, and many other superficially 'less developed' global regions have not the degree (currently) of technical advancement America has, but Africa, like many other superficially less developed global regions, has retained its perhaps most important resource for the future - a fundamental base of tradition and social ethics that will serve as glue to hold together community and individual social sanity. This theme of 'tradition' is at the foremost in 'Black Panther' and it is the foremost theme of this post and in previous posts written by this blogger about his experiences in Africa and other so-called 'underdeveloped' tribal cultures around America and internationally, around this planet.

This highlight post focusing on the planet's youth is also a commentary on America's youth and how, with some few exceptions, America's youth seems lost in superficiality and life without substantial meaning, value and purpose. This blogger has posted on this theme of America's perpetually generation of lost youth who grow up to be even more drifting child-adults. But America's depths of shallowness are cyclic and like the 'Vietnam' revolution, there appears to be a rapidly coming early teen dispair-turning-to-disgust revolt over America's almost unique overabundance of guns and their misuse to commit mass killings which curiously, but tellingly, are focused in what America has always touted, to itself and the world, as the safest spaces on the planet, America's school rooms full of its children. For decades, America has been unsafe for its children. but in the crowded atmosphere of special interests, America's children have been crowded to the back and often just trodden under like so many unfortunate, inconvenient vermin. We have 'funded-out' our children - defunded grade school education, privatized just about all that remains of public education, come to regard entry college as not a national resource to be invested in (as the rest of the world does or wants to do) but as something seemingly to be jealously held from reach of our children unless they want to accept massive personal debt. Nowhere else in the developed nation community do we see America's cannibalist, 'resentful' attitude toward its children. That is the difference between the environments that America's children grow up in and the nurturing environments (at least in intent) of less developed nations.

The result has been quick-fix solutions to the shortage of technical workers resulting from America's regressive college cost attitude....we raid and rob the technical workforces of developing nations in particular..at lower than standard wages...our own children be damned!

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Blockchain, petaflops, distributed databases also know as a blockchained database system, convergent hybridization (of ethnic units and nation states). Are any of these familiar? I bet if 'Blockchain' were to be reframed in its popular shell as the principle behind the commercial 'BitCoin' investment phenomenon, even the moderately informed reader would quickly reference at least a few sparks of memory that it all has something to do with making money. Or at least something related to monetary wizardry (gimmickry?) ...certainly one would probably recall just enough to remember that one made a mental note to stay away from investing in BitCoin offerings - 'too good to be true', or too complex for a weekend wanna-be-trader. And one could pat oneself on the back for having found that warning memory note ...indeed the BitCoin treasure ship left port some time ago and has disappeared over the horizon with its cargo of hard-partying blockheads (Hmmm, a new meme, BLOCK-Heads). But it's frothy wake hasn't disappeared. Rather, the BitCoin waves keep growing in strength even as the specific cryptocurrency phenomenon itself appears about to fall off the edge of the earth...into oblivion as one more get rich scheme.

Yes, the BitCoin fundamental underpinning, BlockChain networks and dynamics, just keeps on growing. And we now come to understand (or to hear about, certainly) that BlockChains and blockchain digital network principles are very broadly useful and are poised to be the defining technology meme of a new cyber age where Blockchain information and systems management are spread like super-strong (read 'super-secure') spider webs throughout the web and world.

Democracy in 'underdeveloped' regions will be well served by Blockchain principles as it would allow virtually tamper-proof voting even from the 'bush' (the indigenous term for life, away from cities and towns, where the beasts run and play, and eat. With solar electric collection by individual and village cells, voting might be raised to near 100% participation and completely secure...thus removing the factor of political retribution.

How is this to make sense to the reader of this post? For starters, this blog has previous posts detailing impressions of developing areas around the world, but primarily about Africa, in 2009 and in 2017. And as a technically trained blogger and an avid follower of the computer world, one is constantly impacted with the excitement of new developments in applications and associated chip and materials technologies.

And finally, this blogger has for five years served as a volunteer adjunct interviewer of foreign applicants to an American-located 'Alma Mater' university. The interviews are performed remotely using web-based video linkups (Skype).

'Skype', this remote, wed-linked interviewing system has benefitted everyone involved. And after several years, this blogger began to sense a picture of something important going on on the international scene and especially among the outwardly looking youth in Nairobi, Seoul, Ibadan, Myanmar, etc. - the major international nexus points of the developing world. Yes, these youth are striving to go forward and upward but against heretofore impossible odds against them developing anything beyond deep frustration (and anger, viz. 'Boko Haram') which I feel is, at base, the reaction to being blocked.

The youth in these far dispersed nations dream a fantasy of going to higher education, after achieving the near-impossibility of a grade school education. Some, rarely, even dream of colleges and universities in developed countries.

But even if not winning a place in college abroad, they are not 'settling'...they are inventing new horizons without college certificates from abroad. And the web is the miraculous 'wand' that many had in their hands since eight or nine years old - village internet 'centers' (huts with intermittent web access)...but they participated on the global web-forum stage with other youth around the world; even to the point of not waiting for non-existant teachers to teach them the fundamentals of a far-distant languages they need in order to 'speak' with a web-pal on another continent...they teach themselves through internet resources.

But more to the point of this blog - our youthful cohort, let's say in Africa, have 'Learned to Learn'. Using the web. They are not waiting around hoping. The web is opening gates and they are pouring through...discoursing and creating with other youth in far distant nations. In this scenario, our young person in Nairobi, a budding genius in animation (with the intent to develop a Kenyan animation genre incorporating All-East African lore and tradition into animated graphics and web presentations) has developed a rich creative relationship with a a similarly youthful animation group in Tokyo. They burn up the web, they speak a hybrid language of Swahili-Japanese-Korean with added bits of Chinese-Samoan. They are not waiting. They have learned to learn. And they have their own national traditions and moralities to guide them...to resolve their frustration through artistic creativity which humanity has been utilizing since the cave artists of Altamira (Spain,15,000 BCE) and before in Lascaux (France, 25,000 BCE), and Bantimurung (Indonesia, 40,000 BCE).

Our young person in Africa (as an example) chats in self-taught Japanese with an a Japanese anime designer and develops a hybrid anime genre that uses African tribal traditions and lore to re-teach Africa's youth the coping lessons learned over thousands of years, but now spoken syncretically in the global meta-language of the web...in whatever language/language devices required to communicated cross-culturally, inter-linguistically and cross-artistically.

And this cross-fertilization and self-educating is working well. The dreams of the early internet champions just might come true. Pico Iyer was one of the first to observe and write about the cultural impact,absorption and syncretization of modern (Western) technology. Iyer saw how human curiosity and adaptiveness adapted 'foreign' technology and easily (usually) interwove it with traditional social systems (Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East, 1989, Pico Iyer.

Likewise, William Gibson (cyberpunk genre) foresaw (and still sees and writes about) the importance of youthful adaptability as the vital force that will inhale technology, reshape it to personal and socially good ,or at least socially utilitarian, service thus preserving and driving humanity (Forward? But somewhere not here, for sure!).

There is a 'bubbling-up'happening, or has been happening but is ready to reshape the planet's culture - this is a new manifestation of what I believe is humanity's greatest trait - creativity born of need and/or curiosity. Maybe the latter is an anthropological truth about humanity - there is no separation between burning need and burning curiosity when it comes to human beings 'going all out' to satisfy those urges. Invention invariably bubbles up from seemingly inert soil. 'Inert soil' as portrayed by Western, advanced technology perspectives...which are increasingly being shown to be superficial, corrupt, rapist, mega-captitalist misconceptions of the planet, how not to preserve it and above all how to ignore or exploit its peoples!

"Convergent Hybridization": a natural flow of influences of disparate systems from several directions into a nexus point to form new streams and systems; in this post's context, the confluence of disparate and/or physically distant socio-political-economic systems (languages, peoples, economic systems, etc.).

This process of melding melding western technology with traditional systems in underdeveloped lands, and generating new, hybrid political,ethical, artistic (and economic) systems will be enhanced and smoothed by socio-politically-applied blockchain algorithms! Ah, thank you, Satoshi Nakamoto....whoever/whatever 'he/she/it' may be,..in actuality.

Can't translate? Can't 'Grok'(Aldous Huxley, 1932)? Well, get used to it all because a new culture is showing its face above the techno-waters and as Pico Iyer seems to have predicted, those kids 'out there' in the African villages and 3rd World dust spots where the sun shines on solar gatherers powering sat-linked laptops, the wonderful world of human 'kid-dom' is busy syncretizing a new future. While America's kids are hauling around guns and snorting meth, Africa's kids are busy like bees rigging village energy centers, racing along bandwidth expressways, self-learnng network theory and applications and not waiting for a fancy university to come into the bush and teach them in orderly rows of imported desks in expensive private schools. Yes, in the way of our very distant ancesters the ever present curiosity of the ape species has been retained and indeed strengthened over the millennia to once again shove our rears upwards and onto a new plane. Miracles have a way of happening at any time and anywhere where humans are concerned. Inventiveness, resiliency, adaptability - the trio attributes of humanity are ever ready to pop up and surprise us, assure us, give us peace and hope. We only have to find a way to get around trivial prejudices and open our minds and hearts to the unlimitednesses of human capabilities. And so it is now happening in the villages of Africa where 'untutored' kids are excited to get linked with the global internet...and they come up with WAYS to do that. Proving the best instrument on the planet is still brainpower...and tho an MIT education will be helpful, the village kid is still equipped with the fastest, quantum assisted Ai (bio-logic) system that will not be matched for some time...and he has it for free!

These kids are jumping on stage and techno-boogying with their cohorts around the globe. Hey, shy Tembe in Nairobi sees a brother or sister in spirit in Japan or China who has a neat approach to animation and mrkup? Why get to Learning Japanese or Chinese, or what ever is needed NOW to gain a speaking ability to communicate by video chat and exchange techie stuff. Tembe in 3 months is going to have a nicely functional fluency in Japanese and his Japanese techno-bro will have a similarly functional cross-speech in Swahili. And thus a global synth-speak is born. (Actually, let's now add to Huxley and Iyer, Phillip K. Dick). And little Tembe let's no grass grow under hsis feet when he must learn something that 10 years ago would have gotten him laughed at by the Euro-American tourists should Tembe have told them his dream of chatting up a techie-pal in Tokyo, or Saigon or Myanmar, or Luzon, or Beijing or even Katmandu.

This scenario may just be the future for a new Africa, and elsewhere where youthful human brains imagine without yet meeting and being swamped by 'grown up' realities of survival and dysfunctional social chains. Pico Iyer acknowledges this potential with every opportunity he has to speak at a public forum and I am fortunate to have annual catch up opportunities with him here in his second home outside Japan. Pico still has the magic of letting his audience of readers or lecture attendees see the world through his ever optimistic eyes. The time ago when quaint kids in thatched villages and mountain pass inns were crowded around VHS players have evolved to an ever solidifying reality-becoming of self-motivated, self-educated and university leaders of a hybridized humanity finally pulling together on a righteous path.