Jacque Fresco - Are we educated yet?

We lie to our kids, and then we expect them to be honest.
Including Spanish subtitles. Con subtítulos en español.

This journey tries to relate Fresco's observations to the theorems of Nobal laureate Konrad Lorenz who, together with Nikolaas Tinbergen, is considered the pioneer of modern ethology. It ends with excerpts from another great work of observation. Two years before his death in 1996, Carl Sagan laid out a choice for humanity in "The Pale Blue Dot - A Vision of Human Future in Space". Check it out.

This is part two of a series composed of excerpts from a lecture Jacque Fresco gave in Graz, Austria. Thank you again, Leo da Silva, for organizing this event.

camera / editor: Nick Gruber
Spanish subtitles: Javiera Castillo Arze

http://www.youtube.com/user/jajavihex

Somebody said, do you think the machines will have emotion someday?

No, they won't, because they serves no purpose.

I'm going to tell you what i mean by that.

If a woman is in an automobile accident, with their kids in the back of the car,

the car turns over, and gasoline starts flowing towards the engine,

which is hot, and will explode.

Which she says, oh my god, my kids were trapped in the car, and the car is in fire, and breaking out,

i hope that somebody comes to help.

And she picks some wood and smashes the window, take the kids out,

that is emotions converted into action.

We are not going to see emotions, which is said what you do with it.

Are we educated yet?

I think i can say this.

That most people really don't know how to raise children.

I wanted to communicate with my little boy

when he was just a few months old.

Then, that is a time when you can't communicate with a language.

But he was in a crib. And i put a ball, painted in yellow, and went into the crib. A real ball.

And the kid saw it, and he struck out, and he grabbed it.

When he grabbed it, lights went on in a circle, above the crib.

So he let go. He was so amused by it, he let it go and he started...

Because it stopped. He didn't know why it stop.

But there in the crab, the ball 6 times,

he knew that ball made the lights go on.

Once that was established,

i put a different color ball at the other end of the crib.

And he crawled over, before he can speak, and grabbed that ball right away.

But no lights were on the ceiling.

He looked up, but on the wall, lights went up and down this way, you see?

And he knew that he controlled the ceiling lights,

and this one controls the wall lights.

And the time he was 3 or 4 months old, he had 6 panels of lights.

And when he went to these pans, he squeezed one,

mom would come in and change his diet.

So, in other words, your children really want to know how the world works.

And the kids want to know everything.

And we get a jacket, a stalker and the Mickey Mouse club.

Kids are really ready to learn how the body works, how the heart pumps blood through.

Parents don't know those things.

So, when we say, should we educate our own children?

You can't. Unless you are educating yourself.

“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” (Victor Hugo)

You know, a priest said to me, i don't believe you.

I know two people in the same home,

one became a priest, and the other a gangster.

If the environment is everything, how you get those differences?

And i said, in the minute that you treat one kid different than the other,

you will get the differences.

“I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the schoolboys that educate my son.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

You give kids Cinderella, artificiality,

and you tell them that beyond that, all you tell children to be honest.

When they say, where the babies come from?

The stock brings you a baby. That is a lie.

Then you ask the kids, say,

daddy, the Santa Claus climbing down every cavity, and i say yes. That is a lie.

And so we lie to kids, and then we tell them to be honest.

You know, we lie about everything, almost everything.

That is the kind of world we live in.

But so full of shit, that there is no bad language, it is just that way.

So, if you really want a better world,

you have to know what makes criminals, what makes artists,

what makes great painters.

Environment makes a gangster or a priest.

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)

I went to a group of psychologists, and said,

do you believe in such a thing as human nature?

So i said yes, one is jealousy.

And i said, give me an idea of what you mean by jealousy.

I always used to know to try to understand the other person.

He said, when i reached for my cat,

and put it on my laboratory, my dog growls.

That is what i mean by jealousy.

“Learn, compare, collect the facts.” (Ivan Petrowitsch Pawlow)

So i said i'm going to show you some experiments that i have done.

I had a dog and cat, and i always had a lot of dogs and cats,

and raccoons and other animals.

And i'm interested in their behaviour.

“I have found the missing link between ape and civilized man: it is we.” (Konrad Lorenz)

I gave the dog fresh leaver, a little bit. And then i picked up the can.

[was this repetition a mistake from the video author?]

I did that 20 times.

And when i reached for the cat, the dog yells that way.

So, if we were inborn, in which they don’t grow. You know what i mean?

It was their condition, it would a vaguest tell, when i picked up the cat.

Incubator-hatched geese imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they see

within a “critical period” between 13-16 hours after hatching.

Konrad Lorenz, “Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins”

“To gain a desired prey, a dog or wolf will do things that,

in other contexts, they would shy away from;

run through thorn bushes, jump into cold water

and expose themselves to risks which would normally frighten them.

All these inhibitory mechanisms act as a counterweight

to the effects of learning mechanisms.

The organis cannot allow itself

to pay a price which is not worth paying”.

“A closer examination shows

what these being not only do not damage each other,

but often constitute a community of interests.

It is obvious that the predator is strongly interested

in the survival of that species, animal or vegetable,

which constitutes its prey.

It is not uncommon that the prey species derives

specific benefits from its interaction with the predator species.”

“The pace of human ecology is determined

by the progress of man’s technology.

It is governed by mechanisms of positive feedback,

defined as a mechanism which tends to encourage behavior

rather than to attenuate it.

One particular kind of positive feedback occurs

when individuals of the same species

enter into competition among themselves...

for many animal species, environmental factors

keep intraspecies selection from leading to disaster.

But there is no such force

which exercises this type of healthy regulatory effect

on humanity’s cultural development;

“All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening

understanding of the natural world that surrounds him,

his technological, chemical and medical progress,

all of which should seem to alleviate human suffering...

tends instead to favor humanity’s destruction.”

Yet... “A completely new ecology (Economy) which corresponds

in every way to humanity’s desires... could, theoretically,

prove as durable as that ecology

which would have existed without his intervention.”

We that wonders from the beginning.

When the fruits were not squeezed right when they were there.

We followed the earth from the ancients‘ migrations.

We rejoiced and refreshment.

A few of us cooperating. Accomplished what many of us each hunting alone, could not.

Making it on our own as the newest question to imagine, as was settling down.

Working together, we protected our children from the lions and the hyenas.

We talked on the skills they would need. And the tools.

Then as now, technology was the key to our survival.

It might be a familiar progression, transpiring on many worlds.

A planet newly formed, placidly revolves around their star. Life slowly forms.

A collided scrap of perception of creatures involves.

Intelligence emerges, which reaches up to a point, conferring on our survival value.

And then, technology was invented.

In a large number. But there is such a thing as laws in nature.

And these laws can be reviewed by experiment.

And that knowledge was lost.

Can be made up the saves,

and to take lives, both on unprecedented scales.

Signs they recongized grants enormous powers.

In a flash, they create world out in contradictions.

Some planetary civilization see their way through,

place limits on what man must not be known.

And safely pass through the tunnel of the pearls.

Others, not so lucky, forces improvement parish.