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Episode #471 - Breaking the Human (Ascent of Humanity #11) |
| ⌚ Mon 13 July 2009 ☻Charles Eisenstein (reading) |
 Download Hour1 Download Hour2We continue reading Charles Eisenstein's Ascent of Humanity, specifically chapter 5 on the mechanisms of social control used to break the spirit. We review the paltry offerings used to seduce people to assent to domination by the machine. |
 The agenda of social engineering explains the emphasis that psychology — the "science" of the mind—has always received in pedagogy (the "science" of teaching) ever since Horace Mann advocated phrenology as the key to a successful classroom. As in other realms of humanity's "ascent", we follow Galileo's prescription of applying measurement to learning in hopes of turning it into a science. We can then deploy the whole gamut of technologies based on standardization, efficiency, management, and control. The object of education — the child — becomes the object of technology. School is an aspect of a vast enterprise: the engineering of the human being, the human mind, the human psyche, the human soul. An audacious ambition indeed: not the accidental result of an historical blunder, nor the plot of an evil conspiracy, but implicit in the original audacity of technology. On the deepest level, the purpose and motivation of education is to apply the Technological Program to the ultimate frontier: society and the human being. As technology in general seeks to improve on nature, educational technology seeks to improve on human nature.
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Music: David Rovics
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