[WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offendingMuslims|the Daily Mail

[Nick Thompson]

Bill,

I still think the two are related.  The people who watched kitty genovese get clobbered assumed a social fabric in which women dont get beaten to death under their windows and didnt think it their particular responsibility to try to save her life.   The milgrim subjects assumed that the world was not the sort of place where experimenters allow participants to actually torture one another.  And, in fact, they were right.  Well, in that particular instance.  

My former colleague, James Laird, who does research about this sort of stuff, thinks I am a real bonehead about it, so you neednt take my views too seriously.

Nick


----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Eldridge
To: nickthompson at earthlink.net;The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: Carl Tollander
Sent: 5/24/2007 8:48:16 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offendingMuslims|the Daily Mail


Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Carl,

I am trying to get my Psych 101 in order:  Was the kitty genovese incident
the one that led to that horrendous series of experiments that demonstrate
that if you give people a shock console (or what they THINK is a shock
console) and ask them politely to do so, they will cheerfully use shocks
that they think are lethal, just so long as they are told to?  
 
Unfortunately not - it's about how neighbors ignore horrible things going on in their insular world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese

What it really might represent is how facts are distorted to make events look worse than they
are, especially when a newspaper's involved:

http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-nytimes-3.html

I use to live across from a bar, and one night I saw two guys squaring off on a sidewalk and
a third come from behind and break a bottle over one's head. I was on the phone to 911 in
a flash, and by the time I'd quickly described the scene unfolding to the dispatcher, the 3 of them
were giving each other hugs and going arm-in-arm back into the bar to drink some more.

In a similarly bad neighborhood where I flipped my bike and broke my collarbone, I was
staggering around in a great deal of pain, but got a car to stop (cautiously) late at night in just a few minutes,
and they were a great help in getting me to a hospital. Good Samaritans still exist.

I'm intrigued by one line in the article, "But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades
at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged
what was taught in some local mosques." It makes it sound like there's a good balanced way of explaining
the Crusades as anything but a good deal of Euro-thuggery intent on dealing a good come-uppance to
the well-entrenched local population some thousands of miles away. Would make for good entertainment
to hear this rationale at least.

Personally, I think most grade school teachers are better off trying to teach simpler, less contentious topics
well (even if ignoring whether Columbus was actually Catalonian and other possibly interesting side issues)
instead of being too focused on fuzzy goals of teaching tolerance and sensitivity, as if there were much
of that in history.

Regarding humor and genocide, I think of the Nazis as a pretty humorless, mystical bunch.
Somehow it didn't seem to deter them from genocide.


reminds me of the stoners that jg showed us at arrowhead, who would run out
from the crowd, throw a stone, and then sink back into the anonymity of the
crowd.  

Thought experiment:  if all humor were forbidden, would genocide be
possible???  In the Pleistocene context, with many small groups in
desperate conflict for unpredictable resources, what was humor FOR?  

N


 
[Original Message]
From: Carl Tollander <[hidden email]>
To: <nickthompson at earthlink.net>; <wedtech at redfish.com>
Date: 5/24/2007 2:52:28 PM
Subject: Re: [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid
   
offending Muslims|the Daily Mail
 
Nick asks:
  >Do we need a science of Comparative Genocideology?

Closest I've seen that starts to address this is Chapter 15 from Philip
Bobbit's book "The Shield of Achilles"
titled "The Kitty Genovese Incident and the War in Bosnia".  I'll bring
it by FRIAM.

C.
   



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



 
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[Bill Eldridge]

The link I sent with this notes that of the 38 people who saw Kitty "get
clobbered"
only a couple would have seen an actual knife or had an idea that she
was in real danger
or seen anything (and many of the tenants were old and would have had a
tough time
figuring out what was happening when they'd just been waken at 3am, the
streetlight
was dim, etc.)

Most just heard a noise in front of a usually noisy bar (this night it
closed early after a fight),
some saw a woman get up off the ground and walk away (if slowly),
perhaps a few
actually saw the man by her before he ran away and she got up and walked
away.
She apparently yelled something one time, didn't keep screaming. (Of
course if she
was in bad shape she quite likely couldn't have kept screaming but she
did walk away).
One who realized she was in danger said she called the police, but in
those pre-911
days lots of calls were lost and callers were regularly abused for
annoying the police
with non-serious matters (you had to identify yourself to report a crime
back then).
One observer called the police but got scared to speak and hung up.
Another was
very very drunk and didn't want to deal with the police. For those that
didn't realize
it was a knife stabbing, they would have reported an assault, which
would have brought
out the police in about an hour, too late to help Kitty.

When the murderer did come back and find Kitty, it was behind the
building next door,
not the same apartment building. The link also notes that a lot of the
"witnesses" were old
people who wouldn't have seen or heard well, and would have been in no
position for
heroics, only to call the police. But for most, the incident ended when
they were woken
up by a yell, they looked to the window, they saw a woman get up and
walk away.
In short, a typical non-event in noisy tumultous New York.

Of course the NY Times presented this very differently, and thus the
hyper-example
of citizen apathy. But I also think of cases like these in the middle of
civilization and
heavy news coverage, and can only imagine how distorted our reporting of
events
in the Middle East, Asia or Africa is.

[Not long ago I read someone's evaluation of the Third Wave anecdote
from the
Whole Earth Catalog. In this case it turns out that it wasn't nearly the
big to-do
that the teacher made it out to be, but the teacher basically made a
career out of
repeating this "informative lesson" of how Nazism could have started,
even sucking
in Stewart Brand. The more important lesson there being, "How could this
bogus version
of events stick around for so long without anyone questioning it as
obvious bullshit?"
Which possibly relates back to the original thread - in my school we
didn't study the
holocaust even though I read "Rise & Fall..." for summer reading -
perhaps the
schools actually thought there were lots of other topics they could
teach well,
rather than simply caving to possible concerns about Moslem students as
the paper
asserts.]

Nicholas Thompson wrote:

> Bill,
>  
> I still think the two are related.  The people who watched kitty
> genovese get clobbered assumed a social fabric in which women dont get
> beaten to death under their windows and didnt think it their
> particular responsibility to try to save her life.   The milgrim
> subjects assumed that the world was not the sort of place where
> experimenters allow participants to actually torture one another.  
> And, in fact, they were right.  Well, in that particular instance.
>  
> My former colleague, James Laird, who does research about this sort of
> stuff, thinks I am a real bonehead about it, so you neednt take my
> views too seriously.
>  
> Nick
>  
>  
>
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     *From:* Bill Eldridge <mailto:dcbill at volny.cz>
>     *To: *nickthompson at earthlink.net
>     <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net>;The Friday Morning Applied
>     Complexity Coffee Group <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
>     *Cc: *Carl Tollander <mailto:carl at plektyx.com>
>     *Sent:* 5/24/2007 8:48:16 PM
>     *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to
>     avoid offendingMuslims|the Daily Mail
>
>     Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>     Carl,
>>
>>     I am trying to get my Psych 101 in order:  Was the kitty genovese incident
>>     the one that led to that horrendous series of experiments that demonstrate
>>     that if you give people a shock console (or what they THINK is a shock
>>     console) and ask them politely to do so, they will cheerfully use shocks
>>     that they think are lethal, just so long as they are told to?  
>>      
>     Unfortunately not - it's about how neighbors ignore horrible
>     things going on in their insular world.
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
>
>     What it really might represent is how facts are distorted to make
>     events look worse than they
>     are, especially when a newspaper's involved:
>
>     http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-nytimes-3.html
>
>     I use to live across from a bar, and one night I saw two guys
>     squaring off on a sidewalk and
>     a third come from behind and break a bottle over one's head. I was
>     on the phone to 911 in
>     a flash, and by the time I'd quickly described the scene unfolding
>     to the dispatcher, the 3 of them
>     were giving each other hugs and going arm-in-arm back into the bar
>     to drink some more.
>
>     In a similarly bad neighborhood where I flipped my bike and broke
>     my collarbone, I was
>     staggering around in a great deal of pain, but got a car to stop
>     (cautiously) late at night in just a few minutes,
>     and they were a great help in getting me to a hospital. Good
>     Samaritans still exist.
>
>     I'm intrigued by one line in the article, "But the same department
>     deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades
>     at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced
>     treatment of the topic would have challenged
>     what was taught in some local mosques." It makes it sound like
>     there's a good balanced way of explaining
>     the Crusades as anything but a good deal of Euro-thuggery intent
>     on dealing a good come-uppance to
>     the well-entrenched local population some thousands of miles away.
>     Would make for good entertainment
>     to hear this rationale at least.
>
>     Personally, I think most grade school teachers are better off
>     trying to teach simpler, less contentious topics
>     well (even if ignoring whether Columbus was actual ly Catalonian
>     and other possibly interesting side issues)
>     instead of being too focused on fuzzy goals of teaching tolerance
>     and sensitivity, as if there were much
>     of that in history.
>
>     Regarding humor and genocide, I think of the Nazis as a pretty
>     humorless, mystical bunch.
>     Somehow it didn't seem to deter them from genocide.
>
>>     reminds me of the stoners that jg showed us at arrowhead, who would run out
>>     from the crowd, throw a stone, and then sink back into the anonymity of the
>>     crowd.  
>>
>>     Thought experiment:  if all humor were forbidden, would genocide be
>>     possible???  In the Pleistocene context, with many small groups in
>>     desperate conflict for unpredictable resources, what was humor FOR?  
>>
>>     N
>>
>>
>>      
>>>     [Original Message]
>>>     From: Carl Tollander <carl at plektyx.com>
>>>     To: <nickthompson at earthlink.net>; <wedtech at redfish.com>
>>>     Date: 5/24/2007 2:52:28 PM
>>>     Subject: Re: [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid
>>>        
>>     offending Muslims|the Daily Mail
>>      
>>>     Nick asks:
>>>       >Do we need a science of Comparative Genocideology?
>>>
>>>     Closest I've seen that starts to address this is Chapter 15 from Philip
>>>     Bobbit's book "The Shield of Achilles"
>>>     titled "The Kitty Genovese Incident and the War in Bosnia".  I'll bring
>>>     it by FRIAM.
>>>
>>>     C.
>>>        
>>
>>
>>
>>     ============================================================
>>     FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>     Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>     lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>>
>>
>>      
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

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[Phil Henshaw-2]

So... the 'crime' is often 'the believable story'.. !    Bill's
description of how story's take on a life of their own that simply
doesn't check out is excellent, and so often very true.    There's so
much to making a story 'believable' other than the facts, like
fulfilling a mass prejudice, or being entertaining, or settling scores,
etc. etc.    There's also the variety of 'convincing but false' story
that comes from our inability to understand why we just don't understand
the real conspiracies of nature.    Just take a look at the fabulously
contradictory 'story worlds' of religion and politics if you doubt the
obvious.      Is there anyway to get a story straight??    I just assume
every contradiction holds a true secret, but I can't find much of anyone
who likes that at all.
 
 

Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/>    

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Bill Eldridge
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 2:15 AM
To: nickthompson at earthlink.net; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group
Cc: jlaird at clarku.edu
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid
offendingMuslims|the Daily Mail



The link I sent with this notes that of the 38 people who saw Kitty "get
clobbered"
only a couple would have seen an actual knife or had an idea that she
was in real danger
or seen anything (and many of the tenants were old and would have had a
tough time
figuring out what was happening when they'd just been waken at 3am, the
streetlight
was dim, etc.)

Most just heard a noise in front of a usually noisy bar (this night it
closed early after a fight),
some saw a woman get up off the ground and walk away (if slowly),
perhaps a few
actually saw the man by her before he ran away and she got up and walked
away.
She apparently yelled something one time, didn't keep screaming. (Of
course if she
was in bad shape she quite likely couldn't have kept screaming but she
did walk away).
One who realized she was in danger said she called the police, but in
those pre-911
days lots of calls were lost and callers were regularly abused for
annoying the police
with non-serious matters (you had to identify yourself to report a crime
back then).
One observer called the police but got scared to speak and hung up.
Another was
very very drunk and didn't want to deal with the police. For those that
didn't realize
it was a knife stabbing, they would have reported an assault, which
would have brought
out the police in about an hour, too late to help Kitty.

When the murderer did come back and find Kitty, it was behind the
building next door,
not the same apartment building. The link also notes that a lot of the
"witnesses" were old
people who wouldn't have seen or heard well, and would have been in no
position for
heroics, only to call the police. But for most, the incident ended when
they were woken
up by a yell, they looked to the window, they saw a woman get up and
walk away.
In short, a typical non-event in noisy tumultous New York.

Of course the NY Times presented this very differently, and thus the
hyper-example
of citizen apathy. But I also think of cases like these in the middle of
civilization and
heavy news coverage, and can only imagine how distorted our reporting of
events
in the Middle East, Asia or Africa is.

[Not long ago I read someone's evaluation of the Third Wave anecdote
from the
Whole Earth Catalog. In this case it turns out that it wasn't nearly the
big to-do
that the teacher made it out to be, but the teacher basically made a
career out of
repeating this "informative lesson" of how Nazism could have started,
even sucking
in Stewart Brand. The more important lesson there being, "How could this
bogus version
of events stick around for so long without anyone questioning it as
obvious bullshit?"
Which possibly relates back to the original thread - in my school we
didn't study the
holocaust even though I read "Rise & Fall..." for summer reading -
perhaps the
schools actually thought there were lots of other topics they could
teach well,
rather than simply caving to possible concerns about Moslem students as
the paper
asserts.]

Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Bill,
 
I still think the two are related.  The people who watched kitty
genovese get clobbered assumed a social fabric in which women dont get
beaten to death under their windows and didnt think it their particular
responsibility to try to save her life.   The milgrim subjects assumed
that the world was not the sort of place where experimenters allow
participants to actually torture one another.  And, in fact, they were
right.  Well, in that particular instance.  
 
My former colleague, James Laird, who does research about this sort of
stuff, thinks I am a real bonehead about it, so you neednt take my views
too seriously.
 
Nick
 
 

----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Eldridge <mailto:[hidden email]>  
To: nickthompson at earthlink.net;The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee  <mailto:friam at redfish.com> Group
Cc: Carl Tollander <mailto:carl at plektyx.com>
Sent: 5/24/2007 8:48:16 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid
offendingMuslims|the Daily Mail

Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Carl,



I am trying to get my Psych 101 in order:  Was the kitty genovese
incident

the one that led to that horrendous series of experiments that
demonstrate

that if you give people a shock console (or what they THINK is a shock

console) and ask them politely to do so, they will cheerfully use shocks

that they think are lethal, just so long as they are told to?  

 

Unfortunately not - it's about how neighbors ignore horrible things
going on in their insular world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese

What it really might represent is how facts are distorted to make events
look worse than they
are, especially when a newspaper's involved:

http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-nytimes-3.html

I use to live across from a bar, and one night I saw two guys squaring
off on a sidewalk and
a third come from behind and break a bottle over one's head. I was on
the phone to 911 in
a flash, and by the time I'd quickly described the scene unfolding to
the dispatcher, the 3 of them
were giving each other hugs and going arm-in-arm back into the bar to
drink some more.

In a similarly bad neighborhood where I flipped my bike and broke my
collarbone, I was
staggering around in a great deal of pain, but got a car to stop
(cautiously) late at night in just a few minutes,
and they were a great help in getting me to a hospital. Good Samaritans
still exist.

I'm intrigued by one line in the article, "But the same department
deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades
at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of
the topic would have challenged
what was taught in some local mosques." It makes it sound like there's a
good balanced way of explaining
the Crusades as anything but a good deal of Euro-thuggery intent on
dealing a good come-uppance to
the well-entrenched local population some thousands of miles away. Would
make for good entertainment
to hear this rationale at least.

Personally, I think most grade school teachers are better off trying to
teach simpler, less contentious topics
well (even if ignoring whether Columbus was actual ly Catalonian and
other possibly interesting side issues)
instead of being too focused on fuzzy goals of teaching tolerance and
sensitivity, as if there were much
of that in history.

Regarding humor and genocide, I think of the Nazis as a pretty
humorless, mystical bunch.
Somehow it didn't seem to deter them from genocide.



reminds me of the stoners that jg showed us at arrowhead, who would run
out

from the crowd, throw a stone, and then sink back into the anonymity of
the

crowd.  



Thought experiment:  if all humor were forbidden, would genocide be

possible???  In the Pleistocene context, with many small groups in

desperate conflict for unpredictable resources, what was humor FOR?  



N





 

[Original Message]

From: Carl Tollander  <mailto:[hidden email]> <[hidden email]>

To:  <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> <nickthompson at earthlink.net>;
<mailto:wedtech at redfish.com> <wedtech at redfish.com>

Date: 5/24/2007 2:52:28 PM

Subject: Re: [WedTech] Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid

   

offending Muslims|the Daily Mail

 

Nick asks:

  >Do we need a science of Comparative Genocideology?



Closest I've seen that starts to address this is Chapter 15 from Philip

Bobbit's book "The Shield of Achilles"

titled "The Kitty Genovese Incident and the War in Bosnia".  I'll bring

it by FRIAM.



C.

   







============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org







 




  _____  


============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org


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