March 9, 2018
Dear Everyone:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
--Santayana
Put another way: Learn from
the mistakes of others. You
can’t possibly make them all yourself.
That’s all well and good.
But what happens when the examples in history don’t fit the current
situation? Like now.
Let’s face it: We are living
in the middle of a sociocultural upheaval possibly unlike anything else
faced by humankind. The last
time something like this happened, it was set off by the adoption of the
printing press
in Europe, which put a lot of people out of work (professional
scribes); which led
to the Age
of Enlightenment; which brought on the age of Revolutions (America,
France,
etc.);
closely followed by the
Industrial
Revolution, which put even more people out of work.
Example: In
Merry Old England,
the introduction of
cloth mills meant that more money could be made by raising sheep
than by raising crops. So
large landowners pushed their tenant farmers out in favor of shepherds.
One shepherd cost the landowners a lot less and they made far
more money selling wool to the mills.
Too bad for the farmers, who only knew how to grow crops.
Today, it’s the
Information Age. In
other words:
Computers, in their
many, many different forms.
There’s the one on your
desk, the
one in your pocket,
even the one on your
wrist.
Modern manufacturing plants now run more on automation than on manpower.
And all the workers, pushed out of jobs by computers, and unable,
or unwilling, to learn new skills are blaming their favorite scapegoat:
Illegal immigrants.
In reality, if you look at the statistics, the flood of immigrants into
the United States has declined to a trickle.
Not counting the perfectly legal immigrants that software
companies are
clamoring for, largely because these immigrants are happy to work
for far less compensation than equally qualified home-grown workers.
And just look at the
Publishing Industry, which has been on Tumble Dry for absolutely
decades now.
“O brave new world…” --
Shakespeare
So what does history tells us about all this monumental change and how
to live through it? Did I
mention the Age of Revolution?
It’s already happening. See
Brexit and the
election of Donald J. Trump.
Speaking of President Trump, there’s been a lot of attention paid in the
media, formerly knows as the “Press”, to a contretemps involving (what
else?) a woman.
Stormy Daniels,
an actress who specializes in “Adult Entertainment”, which used to be
called
pornography, is believed to have had an “intimate” relationship with
Donny the Trumpet approximately one decade before he decided to become
the Leader of the
Free World.
When asked, during an interview that took place over half a dozen years
ago, Ms. Daniels reported that the sex was “textbook generic.”
Umm… Textbook?
Porn Stars have textbooks?
I know that, according to undercover (!) work done by
Gloria Steinem,
Playboy
Bunnies were
required to read a great deal of provided material and take exams,
including a
pelvic exam, to prove they had learned Everything A Playboy Bunny
Needs To Know.
But where, exactly, does a Porn Star acquire the requisite textbook?
Amazon
immediately springs to mind, of course (how appropriate, given the name
“amazon”); but where
did aspiring Porn Stars turn to prior to Amazon?
Walden Books?
Barnes
& Noble?
Borders?
In which Section would they expect to find it?
Or did they order directly from the publisher, who would deliver
it in a plain, brown wrapper?
What does a Porn Star Textbook look like?
Can you imagine the Chapter Headings?
Or would you prefer not to?
And what kind of tests did they take?
Multiple choice? Fill
in the blank? (The mind
boggles!)
Were they proctored?
There’s an interesting conversation to have while making small
talk:
“What do you do, Mr. Smith?”
“I’m a Porn Star Exam Proctor.”
“Really!”
Love, as always,
Pete
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