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Thinking and memetics
Logic and emotions
Nonlogic and emotions

At schools we mostly teach only facts, some teachers in a bit more interesting way and some in a bit less interesting way. But thinking is not only a set of knowledge. Above all it is the ability of creation of new ideas. How do new ideas come into being? What kind of process do we have to master to be able to create a new idea?

Basically, it is really simple, we have to learn constantly compare, seek for links, which no one has seen before. Many things can help us to start such a process, be it just a simple word, a gesture, TV show, a book or a film, or whatever other sort of information media. As by definition cultural information is a meme. And so we are in memetics.

With the help of cultural information we can influence our human surroundings and our children. Therefore, I would like to mention here what happened at one school. Shortly before Christmas we went with all the students to the cinema to watch a new Czech film. I left the cinema after 7 minutes. The film was a real catastrophe, a disaster, the firs scene of the film was filled with dirty words, the second one showed one of the main characters masturbating, and the third scene showed a Czech actor who made a stupid person out of himself..

Above all I did no like the feel being a teacher and being forced by the school management to go and see such a film together with the students. It may show reasonable to mention here that the students were in the ages from 15 to 20 years. Spite the fact that the teenagers are in this age already sexually active, I do not see any reasonable need to go with them to cinema to watch a film where sex is degraded to just simple up and down movements.

There are several hooks in it which I consider strange, at least. First, how is that possible that no one from the teaching personnel did not stop the film, second, how come that the person responsible for the film had not seen the film before to make a judgment about the pedagogic quality of the film, the level of cultural information which should be passed over to the students. I really do think that it is necessary to work against cultural information presented in so called new Czech film creations, which according to my point of view, serve only as a reason for paying the salaries to the Czech actors, and in no way can they serve as an example of positive approach to life, upbringing, nor such films fulfill the basic requirements as a source of information. It is just an embarrassing Czech cultural garbage and misuse of the film material.

From the point of view of memetics it is really interesting to consider the behavior of the teacher, responsible for choosing the film. While meeting some of my colleagues I criticized the film and I said that I really cannot be expected to watch such nonsense. The responsible teacher replied that the film was really good Then, a second teacher got on her side to protect her against me with sentences like: ….”but students liked the film.”

Now, it is necessary to analyze such behavior. First female teacher felt being offended and did absolutely nothing but to protect her position and the choice of the film. The reason for such behavior is the fact that the teacher does not have character enough to admit a mistake. Usually, slightly primitive people do not admit their mistakes. They have the feeling they would fall down from the horse back they think they are sitting on, above all other people. She had made several mistakes not only one: first, she had not seen the film before sending the whole school to cinema to see it, second, by not stopping the film and giving the students some other activity, and by really primitive way of defending her previous mistakes. As she was aware of this, she called other female teacher to help her out of the trouble. This second female teacher did nothing else than getting on her side and helping her to defend her. By this she did admit her low level of her character; at least she revealed that her ability to recognize quality of a film is extremely low.

A little bit more background information about the second female teacher. Recently she let out her satisfaction about entrepreneurs being forced to pay income taxes even when they are in red numbers. She herself has been never self-employed.

I am really fascinated by the impertinence of some people who construct opinions in their heads on topics they have completely no idea about.

According to my point of view, the worst about that is that all these people are university educated and teachers. I consider it a disaster when a teacher speaks about something he has no idea about. It is obvious he / she cannot be a good teacher. If they were they would realize how impertinent it is to talk about topics one has no idea about. The next disaster is that it is possible to expect such teachers to behave in the same way in the classroom, e.g., they most probably talk about things they have no idea about.

Here we might recall Karel Capek’s book “The war of Salamanders” and salamander Andreas in the London Zoo. This salamander had political opinions according to the British newspapers. The zoo worker who took care of Andreas was a simple man and he read his newspapers out loud. Unfortunately, many people make up their minds that way, including teachers, the simpler ones. They then spread their opinions without bit thinking about what they say. In such a way many disinformation come to being, and unfortunately, many people trust such disinformation.

We, people, have our experiences and our enviousness and our dissatisfactions with our own life, and most probably some more emotional experiences, such as sex and the place in the hierarchy in human society.

All these motives force us sometimes to make things which are not purely logical and they do not correspond with sound thinking, but they picture the emotional state of the person. As an example might just serve the hate of employed people against self-employed people. It is nothing but emotional scream. No one of these people have ever had to take really care of themselves, always the work was prepared put in front of them and it has been paid for. The enviousness and the feel of inferiority in the hierarchy of human society force such people to speak against somebody who are above them. In fact, they speak about something they have no idea about.

And such people do upraise and teach our next generation. I assume that the next generation will look accordingly. And therefore the shift in emotional thinking is so slow. We might say that the emotional advancement can be measured in millimeters only in several generations.

# posted by Dalibor @ 10:32 AM