It's time to build: a New World's Fair(cameronwiese.com) |
It's time to build: a New World's Fair(cameronwiese.com) |
Is there supporting evidence of these assertions? There are some interesting ideas in here, but I’m not seeing anything to back them up.
Have calls to action/RFPs, and have a conference of some sort - the goal is to have one cohesive demo per track. Distribute this thinking across the world, like Pioneer.app does instead of consolidating it in one country or geographical area.
And live cast it to everyone.
Both takes are missing the mark about what a World Fair is about. Here's why.
The 3 decades after 1945 were a time when economies of formerly allied nations were booming. In France, these years äre known as the "Trente Glorieuses". Many more countries had their own "economic miracle" during this time. Even West-Germany and Austria had their own "Wirtschaftwunder" as their economies bounced back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_econ...
Many parts of the world were still formal colonies to Western nations, or their economies hadn't fully modernized yet to a point where a sizable middle-class has access to democratized /commoditized comforts of a Western lifestyle e.g. aviation, healthcare, education, even sanitation, access to media and so on.
Not to mention the spectre of the Cold War that loomed over these decades.
Against this historic backdrop, the fair is notable because it was a showcase of mid-20th century American culture and technology. That shouldn't really come as a surprise since it was firmly organized within the sphere of influence of America's hegemony.
Such were the times in 1965. And they are incomparable to 2021. The organization of a World Fair in 1965 happened in a vastly different context, with vastly different incentives, interests and motives then it does in 2021.
The author misses that completely and marches blindly onward hence:
> Today, World's Fairs have been rebranded as "International Expositions" that occur every 5 years, and are a hollow shell of their former glory. They no longer showcase the promise of the future or celebrate achievement. Instead, they serve as national branding exercises, infrastructure development projects masquerading as innovation, architecture competitions, and an opportunity to promote tourism. If anything, they're the perfect representation of our current vision for the future: unfocused and uninspiring.
> But it doesn't have to be this way; we can't afford for it to be this way.
> The world has changed dramatically since 1984. We now live in the most incredible time in human history. The internet has brought billions of people together and tech companies have given us supercomputers in our pockets. We're starting to build hyperloops and supersonic jets. We're on the cusp of incredible breakthroughs in genetics, biology, medicine, food science, energy, transportation, manufacturing, computing, and robotics. We're finally going back to the moon and then on to Mars. We've once again seen the power of a collective vision with the record-breaking development of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The World's Fair is a reflection of the World in 2021 and the future. With the complexity of representing 7.8 billion people, an array of sovereign nations which didn't exist in 1965. It's an event which competes with against the complexity of a exploding plethora of modern mass media, new stakeholders, emerging markets, and so on fueled by globalisation, digitization and automatisation.
A Fair isn't just an marketing event, it's a global forum that aims beyond other events that present themselves as global fora or gatherings. It's an opportunity for nations and peoples to present a showcase to the world. It gives them the chance to put a message out. In that regard, the World Fair is akin to that other global event where the world gathers: The Olympics.
The organization of the World Fair is no longer rooted in the political or economical global hegemony of a handful of "first-world" (for lack a better term) nations showing off their industrial might and international prowess, such as it was during the latter half of the 20th century.
The Fair is now also home to many new nations and upcoming economies or regional powers who are making their entrance to the World's stage, and to whom the importance isn't plain "technological innovation" but above all showing themselves to the world, what they have to offer to the world, what their aspirations are, what they hope for the futre, and taking part in the global forum.
In that regard, the vision for World Fair extends far beyond technology per the offical website:
https://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/what-is-an-expo
For sure, there's going to the Moon or Mars, and there are hyperloops and driverless cars, or there's even developing a COVID vaccine. These are wonderful developments. But are they really the developments that need to be put front and center at World's Fair at the expense of everything else? Are these the only developments that should matter to 7.8 billion people in 2021?
The second part from this article seems to voice a want for the World's Fair to limit itself to showcasing technology, engineering and media. To me, it sounds like not much more then a want for being able to indulge in advertising when visiting the Fair. And that comes across as, well, rather tone deaf.
A World Fair isn't about merely basking in the marvels of technology or innovation. It's about the humans and humanity that are represented, visit and meet at a Fair.
We live in an era of constant fascinating biological and cosmological discoveries. In the past 3 years we have entered the era of gene therapy healthcare with several genetic treatments recieving approval by he FDA. We are on the cusp of break even if not effective fusion energy.
I cannot deny that the financialization of everything has diminished the moral imperative of some of these efforts but to act as if no one is attacking big problems is silly.
I am 100% confident I would not be hirable by NASA, confident enough in that assertion to shut down without trying. I think you may have some bias from your media bubble coloring your perception if you truly believe what you wrote is true.
I really wish we could recenter our society on collective benefit with the financial aspect considered as one of many values involved.
The 1964 World's Fair had another GM exhibit. Colonization of the Moon. Underwater cities. None of that happened.
What could we have in a World's Fair now that looks ahead? Colonization of Mars? Mars sucks as real estate. There may be research bases there someday, but as a self-sufficient area, it would be tougher than Antarctica or a continental shelf. Robots may some day be a thing, but they still don't work well in unstructured environments.
Fast forward to 2020 and she is spending hours every day on video calls with her grandchildren.
We might have missed on some of our dreams from 1964, but not all of them. We’ll miss more in the future if we don’t articulate them.
I want a roboticized home that cleans itself, that is able to do autorepairs, rooms reconfiguration. I want an auto-laundry and an auto-kitchen. I want it smart enough to manage air flow, temperature and humidity efficiently. I want all that to be voice activated. Please make it offline to not depend on some cloud thingies.
I want a powerwall and solar panels, I want an automated herbs garden. I want things to be upgradable and fixable without destroying walls.
If you give me room on the exhibit, I'll throw in an automated greenhouse to produce a lot of the food and maybe an automated workshop that would be able to produce/repair small items.
That's doable, that's not here yet, but we have most of the tech.
The next frontier is not space, it is automation. I would go to a World's Fair that showed a future where we would have less work to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney%27s_Carousel_of_Pr...
It showed the progress of the kitchen over the years and ended with a push button kitchen like The Jetsons
I agree with you though. I want all of the things you listed. In particular, I want something that can dust (clean all the dust from my shelves, tables, books, etc..). I wonder if it could be done with small drones that can fly into the shelves with tiny dusters.
I want my walls and ceiling to be displays like from Total Recall for cheap (say under $500 per wall)
I want sound proofing between apartments, also cheap so there's no excuse for an apartment not to have it.
Even so, I'm in, if it comes with an option to not be voice activated. Nothing about modern computing is more frustrating than voice interfaces, except perhaps windows updates.
Solarpunk needs a lot of development though. One issue seems to be it too often coincides with someone's idea of a futuristic Utopia.
Hence it is conflict free, rather boring and doesn't do much to stir interest.
Mars has something of a CO2 atmosphere, and might have more accessible water. The soil may be more usable as well.
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard (...)
With a few more years of AI, I want software that can automate engineering - so, I can say “figure out a factorio layout that makes 1 rocket per minute”. Then “play factorio from scratch to liftoff”.
Translated into the real world, I want to a robot that can build a brick wall, and an AI that can design and manufacture the brick wall building robot. I think this is structurally the same problem as “play factorio” - the only difference being a few orders of magnitude of complexity.
Ultimately I want to be able to take a few minimal pieces of robotics and drones and stuff into the wilderness (or Mars) and say “build me a house like this with working solar panels and plumbing”, and it can gather resources, design and assemble intermediate machines (Eg sawmills) and bootstrap the manufacturing needed to arrange atoms in any specifically described way.
This is both a utopian and dystopian technology. At scale the same technology could be used to both clean up the great pacific garbage patch, and convert the Amazon rainforest into a massive industrial wasteland. I don’t think this is as far away from our current technology as we imagine it to be. (Decades not centuries)
"Ok, AlexaDev. I want you to build a SaaS with the following product requirements ..."
[after a half-hour chat]
"Alright Dave, the MVP is in your shopping cart at a price of $5,000. If you host on AWS then I will be your product development team and evolve your service based on usage statistics and customer feedback for an additional $2,000 monthly subscription fee."
(Of course things will be different, as source code will be proprietary walled garden stuff besides some OSS config scripts, there'll be no fixed-price, and AWS is abstracted away behind the AI services)
half-/s
I think the pace of change is such that we can't predict what will be with much certainty, but we can imagine and capture the public's imagination. That may help drive change toward what we want to see, and I think that in itself might be a good reason for a World's Fair - not to predict a future, but to collectively imagine the future we want so that we have a more clear cut vision to strive for.
Moon missions had been suspended until last year or so. If NASA had kept at it, I'm sure some level of colonization, at least rotating manned missions a la ISS would have happened by now.
A world without war, where laws were enforced equally on the mighty and the weak alike?
Well, to start with, the massive restructuring of industry and everyday life needed to mitigate or begin reversing the effects of climate change.
I do a lot of double/triple clicking to highlight text as I read online (fidgeting, but also helps keep track of where I am). On your site, triple clicking unintentionally hits the twitter share button, which opens a new, unwanted window. Bit annoying.
Medium does something similar, but they offset the button so you have to move cursor in between clicks to actually trigger the button.
Specific, common, digital tics. Another one is control-s after a single line changed. Something immensely satisfying about selecting that perfect block of text and making that “altered document” asterisk go away.
> After the six-month run, the Expo had attracted well over 70 million visitors. The Expo 2010 is also the most expensive fair in the history of World's Fair, with more than 45 billion US dollars invested from the Chinese Government
I don't know enough about Expo2020 to agree or disagree, but I assumed the author's assessment above was in reference to the series of which the Dubai exhibition is a part.
If you haven’t been, there are thousands of art projects at a grand scale, things that take up blocks of space a piece, and they are built by artists from around the world, giving everyone a global perspective of what is possible.
I also love the idea of showcasing what is possible for a society. There is a true sense of community, immediacy, and collaboration where everyone there is an active participant.
There are dozens of smaller events with similar properties, likely one nearby.
I kind of feel that these were the exact goals of the original world fairs too.
At any rate, World's Fairs are still happening, just not in the US... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_fair
...wait eagerly for Jessica Watkins to take the first step on Mars
There's an unfortunate name collision, I didn't know who Jessica Watkins was so Googled her, and the top results are for a Jessica Watkins who participated in the attack on the USA Capitol... I spent a moment pondering what her link to Mars was.. but farther down the results list is NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins.
It's a shame that the astronaut has her search results cluttered by the insurrectionist. Back when I was doing online dating, I shared a name (and similar age and nearby city) with the brother of a recently convicted serial killer, searching for my name brought up articles about him... I warned potential dates that if they looked me up online, I'm not that guy (which, I suppose, is exactly what the brother of a serial killer would say).
You lost me at “Hyperloop”. How is that a vision of the future when we know for a fact that the idea doesn’t make practical sense?
Every school and career choice I've made was based on some inspirational spark that hit me there.
I'm a little younger, and Tomorrowland at Disney was that for me.
Most Fairs struggle with this because the organizing body has no control over the content of most of the Pavilions. By privately organizing and operating it, the new World's Fair will function more like Epcot where we craft the experience pulling in corporations, countries, and ngo's as we see fit.
Lastly, the Fairgrounds are generally split up into themes with each of the companies/countries hosting their own Pavilion. The map from the 1964 New York World's Fair is a pretty good example of this: http://www.nywf64.com/maps01.shtml
For example, over a hundred years later, Chicago is still making money from the economic, social, and infrastructure benefits of its fairs.
Because of the way the economy works, this can be said of absolutely any expenditure anywhere anytime for any reason. If even one project laborer buys a cup of coffee on the job, at least $4 of value then gets sent out into circulation in a way that has been plausibly colored by the construction of the Big Money Pit of 1849.
At some point in the last twenty years or so, it became less about companies demoing next year’s products and more about really grand visions of the future (of course, where the company in question was the centerpiece of this grand vision). I believe it was Panasonic in 2020 who had a huge booth showing off a flying car concept, accompanied by a wall-to-wall LED display showing a video of families in the future taking it to work/school/etc.
Once I realized that CES is less of a marketing event and more of a modern World’s Fair, I really started to enjoy it a lot more. Even with the corporatism. Can’t wait to (hopefully) go again next year!
But Burning Man to me seems like a bit of a World's Fair. I met some people who brought a massive insect-inspired art car from Australia..
You can see more innovation in an afternoon spent on blogs than you would ever see in a 6-month long, static display of corporate bullshit.
They had an exhibit called “MoneyZone” which included a tunnel made out of £1 million in crisp fifties.
Good times.
Also, the "science showcase" is a thing of the past, the BIE switched to "individual country showcase" a couple of years ago, which makes the whole thing a lot less appealing IMHO, but that's another issue.
It's overall a nationalistic country level flex at the expense of the local area. It's part of why only big countries host it, the side affects will only affect one city and you have other places to sustain the nationwide economy despite the hit.
That's not what a world's fair is. A modern world's fair would be essentially a bunch of companies showing off their latest inventions, in a highly coordinated and controlled way, for marketing purposes.
A better analogy would be something like E3, a video game convention which is struggling to find its purpose in a world where it's easier and more effective from a marketing standpoint to just release a video of your new game. I think it's no coincidence that world's fairs stopped being as important right around the time mass communication became ubiquitous.
But to refute more directly, the unplanned interactions with other visitors, being able to talk directly with makers who built the things you’re seeing, the viral sense of wonder; all are good reasons to have it in-person.
Better parties, though.
One futuristic thing that has stuck with me from the Millennium expo was a demonstration of structural/mechanical and electrochemical simulation of the human body with computers, for example the skeletal, muscular, and circulatory systems. Which of course can be augmented with models of various organs and micro-level models of cellular interaction and cell internals. The brilliant bit seemed to be the idea of using a finite element and/or modular decomposition, potentially at multiple levels of resolution and abstraction. It seemed like the sort of thing that could yield huge benefits in medicine, health/fitness, education, and video games/animation. ;-)
But
I am also very Cold War revival. We should be launching competitive science wars with each other, not unlike the Olympics. Set objectives, set time periods, when the time and objective expire all knowledge gained is pooled and published for the world, for free. National or International propaganda campaigns to recruit for teams. Spies, espionage, moles. Not just a science fair, but something a bit more dirty and fun.
Complete with threats of total annihilation?
> We should be launching competitive science wars with each other
Don't we have this now with competitive global capitalism? I guess it's not the nationstate so much now as the multinational corporation, though, that are the entities competing.
I can kind of understand your wish for a Cold War revival - we certainly had more of a sense of national purpose during that period. But it was driven by fear of the other and I'm not sure that ultimately that's a good motivation.
You'd think that maybe something like a global pandemic would give us a national purpose that would have brought us together, but look what happened, just more fracturing: anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, even covid-deniers.
Apparently, the American pavilion was not among them:
Now that the US Pavilion has been open for several days, its reviews, to be generous, are mixed. Visitors, after a two-hour wait, enjoy the upbeat attitude of the student “ambassadors” who greet them in Mandarin — but few are impressed by the three films that constitute the US Pavilion’s content. (One reporter noted that the price for the three shorts, about $23 million, is more than the production costs of the Oscar-winning film, The Hurt Locker.) The “American people’s” sole walk-on are brief vignettes that flicker on the screen and then are gone. Chinese visitors are reported to have remarked, especially after the hype and long wait, “We expected more from America.” Visitors exit the theater into a large hall dedicated to fawning over the 60-odd corporate sponsors whose names and brands are the only aspects of American life and culture to which the pavilion accords recognition.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/an-epic-failure-of-planni_b_5...
The architecture was pretty good in a few instances, but the cultural elements were about as good as I'd expect from a board of tourism.
I'm heading out there next month and will hopefully find something inspiring to help shape our efforts.
In other words, the clearest route to getting people excited about a World Fair involves sacrificing the reason you'd want people excited about a World Fair.
You have a point for sports, but concerts? They have their moments, but for the most part, it will be the same set list and the same performance they did in Cleveland a week ago.
I'm talking about the Space Race. There might have been some fear of space lasers and spy satellites and whatnot, but for the most part, landing on the moon was purely about pride and bragging rights, and who gets to swing a bigger stick. We need more of that, to get people excited, and to push what we can acomplish, and maybe to make us a tiny bit more reckless. Exploration can be dangerous.
I also believe, from a marketing perspective, branding it as a War and not a competition would engage people more. Football level fanaticism. People arent going to wear jerseys and cheer for a Science Fair the way they would for a Science War. I can imagine selling War Bonds to promote the Science War, with nice prizes, to engage and reward people.
I agree that a different motivation would be better, but right now we have none, which is worse.
That’s already here again. We may as well do something good with it.
I find it sad that nowadays dystopias have become the only depictions of futures.
Kim Robinson's Mars series stands out as a seminal example. Also one of his Three Californias triptych is a classic hopepunk story.
Looking over https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/hopepunk there's a lot I'm not familiar with, but can attest to the fundamentally optimistic takes in Andy Weir's The Martian and Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries.
Fun remark I heard in a startup's pitch: "If you have a hole in your wall, it is cheaper to buy a TV to hide it than to order a repair".
Way quicker, cheaper, and easier than actually patching the wall and trying to match paint, and it got our deposit back, which was important since we were all broke seniors with no money coming in until we started our jobs. I've often wondered if anyone ever changed that filter! (My wife won't go for this method, so I've gotten pretty decent at matching drywall texture since then...)
Scophony and Eidiphor, though, were clever pre-CRT systems with more potential. Eidiphor big-screen television projectors were patented in 1939, and were in use into the 1990s.
Of course this was far technically simpler than "proper" video telephony, as they required dedicated point to point circuits rather than function over a regular phone line. Most of the effort to popularise video-telephony was not the concept itself, but solving the engineering challenges of making it work over the regular phone network and making the devices small and cheap enough. In that respect the booths at the '64 World's Fair would have been impressive demonstrations of progress toward that goal.
[1] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/nazis-introduc...
[2] https://www.mirror.co.uk/usvsth3m/before-second-world-war-na...
To try to bring back growth to pre 1970 leavels alone would cause horrific environmental destruction we cannot afford. In addition to taxing the environmental externalities, we also need to shrink the workweek and disburse UBI to the point where labor is in demand again. Only then will future automation work the way we want it to, and the way it did in the past.
Three things
1) Spend the money on blackjack and hookers
2) Spend the money on a new bridge
3) Burn the money on a bonfire for giggles
Those three have very different "distant consequences"
2) Money ends up in the local economy
3) Currency deflates, making all owners of currency richer, and as long as nobody expects deflation to continue, stimulates the economy.
It's basically the equivalent of the Olympics of the business and science world; of you are granted the honour of hosting, you go out of your way to extend an olive branch.
I mean, they're pretty great overall but all the problems you think the USA has, they have in spades. And while they are great they aren't solely because of ideals as much as luck of their conditions forging a good culture and climate for success.
The organizers put the USSR and Nazi Germany directly across from each other... talk about "unifying vision" ...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/09/21/when-paris-invited...
In the case of (1) there is a no bridge
You've already disproven your "All expenditures stimulate the economy equally" claim with your explanation of (3)
I had no idea. Hackaday explains as well as some other things I’d not though about.
https://hackaday.com/2017/08/17/living-on-mars-the-stuff-you...
Yes. It will be true for any planetary body that does not have a magnetosphere. But Venus has a magnetosphere. So you can do the old "stick a fucking metal rod into the ground" trick as long as your metal rod doesn't melt... because Venus.
Actually if you pay attention to HI-SEAS[0] this has been a cause of an accident (since they replicate Mars habitat.
This problem also, obviously, applies to any planetary body which does not have a magnetosphere. So you don't have magnetic north and you don't have a safe potential ground.
Also; very few countries has a need for facilities with the capacity the Olympics require, so this would be a huge burden for most of them.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/abandon...
Also Nationalism isn't just flags, hate and hands in the air, it's also an outward expression of ideas and ideals raised on a pedestal to say look how great we are. Such as getting to say "we are all about competition and entertainment" as a story to tell the world as a form of soft power.
As with...all...of its Olympic bids, LA was not the first choice for the 1984 Olympics. It basically got those Olympics (and 2028, and the 1932 Olympics), because nobody else wanted to host them. In 1932, the world was in the throes of the Great Depression; in 1984, the previous Olympics had bankrupted their hosts; for 2028, hosts of the 20xx games exuberantly built new facilities only to see them wither into decay from non-use (Brazil, China, even London).
Thus, LA's bids have always focused on fiscally responsible games. As with the previous 2 iterations of the LA Games, LA will not be building many new facilities solely for the games. Indeed, currently, LA plans to build no new facilities for the games, though there will be temporary structures/courses built for the swimming events, the BMX and MTB racing events, and NBC will be paying for a temporary media center. Currently, all $7 billion of the estimated costs are being funded by the private sector.
> we look forward to doing so again in 2028
Oligarchs and capitalists benefit, the masses lose though. Especially those most vulnerable socioeconomically.
Ask those who want to immigrate, and ask the recently immigrated who now want to preserve what they have.
As long as the government doesn’t lose money, I’m happy. Plus it will be nice to get to LAX without driving a 30 minute loop through the terminals. I’m very excited about that line.
The difference between these 2 is mostly known in continental Europe where it became very pronounced in the 20th century, but the psyche of the rest of the world (US included) still has to go through a learning excercise. And this knowledge is also quickly fading in Europe itself. There is no healthy middle ground when it comes to nationalism (not patriotism)
Look at how and why people want to be in the USA and look at those things as worth caring about. Try to make your country better for everyone and be happy/proud about your efforts and those of your predecessors.
Have you taken a good look at your own country.
Have you taken a look at yourself?
> I’ve seen people from all over the world wear or display their own country’s flags.
You may have imagined it. If not, could you say where? It is a uniquely American thing. I mean, Indians will pull out a flag quite often, but they're perpetually at war with their neighbours so it's kinda understandable. In the US you'll see flags on houses in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, owned by people who've never met another foreigner. It really is bizarre behaviour.
> "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Why is it bad to declare your commitment to the country you’re born in and it’s values? It’s not like you can’t leave (except for the IRS) if you don’t like it.
It's just indoctrination. I mean, commitment to your country is implied. Do you stand up, put hand on heart and pledge allegiance to your family? Your church? Your friends? Why would you do that for your country? It's nationalistic nonsense that has no place in a modern, democratic society.
Why should a child be forced to do that? What if you just don't agree with the values?
> It’s not like you can’t leave (except for the IRS) if you don’t like it.
For most people, it is exactly that you cannot leave.
Why would you declare commitment to a country just based on the fact that you were born there? Say you were born in North Korea, would you still do it?
I dunno, I’d rather declare my commitment to a country that actually deserves it.
wasn't the London one supposed to have been done cheaply and effectively, in contrast to the splurge of the previous two?
For comparison, the combined total of LA's three Olympics (adjusted for inflation and including the forthcoming games) is well below $10 billion.
I didn't pick the marriage ceremony my culture used. If it involved a hand over your heart I wouldn't have worried about it.
> Why would you do that for your country?
That specific gesture aside, perhaps because I cared about the ideals it represents and the words in the affirmation.
> It's nationalistic nonsense that has no place in a modern, democratic society.
No. Without some sort of bond to those around me why would I respect their views enough to allow a democracy? It's because we share some goals and ideals. If I thought you hated the things I loved about my country I might see you as an enemy, and vice versa, but if we see that we share our dreams we can survive not sharing any other opinions.
I just quoted the entire pledge and there is no semblance of that. Interesting how every reply has a different, deep interpretation of it. There must be some cultural context that is not possible to get from the outside.
What does "allegiance" mean to you? I looked it up in a dictionary and saw it described as essentially "commitment".
Lot’s of flags in Italy including regional flags like Siena which has 17 different flags corresponding to the parts of the city. Lots Italian and Vatican flags in Rome.
I’ve met a Costa Rican tourist in Europe who had a flag hat, shirt, backpack, and a small flag in hand.
> I’ve met a Costa Rican tourist in Europe who had a flag hat, shirt, backpack, and a small flag in hand.
That's very common with tourists, and it makes sense... you're travelling through other countries, representing your own. Same with carrying a flag in a protest or at an international sports event.
That's very different to putting up a flagpole in front of your house to fly a national flag.
I think we either have very different concepts of what indoctrination is, or there is much more beyond the pledge itself, and that is where the real issues are?
You keep saying morals and values. Which part of the pledge pertains to morals and values? It was still said during a time of complete racial segregation. Did the practically unchanged pledge teach children about the morality and values of that? Or domestic internment camps during WW2? What about during the Vietnam war? What deeper nuanced meaning am I missing where it balances "freedom and liberty for all" with the massive expansion of the post-9/11 surveilance state?
It's got nothing to do with morals or "values".
Perhaps we should just say "if you feel so strongly about your country at the age of 15 that you want to recite a prayer to it every morning then you can in your own time".
Pledging allegiance to the things that protect and serve you. Support for something larger than yourself. The American ideals in the constitution and on the statue of liberty, even if you don't feel others support them as much as they should.
The USA is a tremendous country that has done more to build protections for people into its law than almost anywhere else. You should see this and support it even if there are problems. America pledges equality and it's actually available. There's a reason the entirely of South America would move to the USA today, and it's a flattering reason if you'd look at it.
> It was still said during a time of complete racial segregation.
No, that never happened. Even during slavery, only some states practiced it and it was distasteful elsewhere, and even in those states it wasn't universal. Small help to a slave, sure, but your representation isn't fair.
> Did the practically unchanged pledge teach children about the morality and values of that?
Of the country that fought a hard war to end slavery, and is trying for equality? I dunno, you don't seem to have heard that message.
> Or domestic internment camps during WW2?
Meh, war is tough. When you're shooting some people it seems less bad to merely imprison some. Find a solution for the war itself and then let's talk about the imprisonment which were practiced to prevent more killing. Also, Canada did worse in its internments. More theft from the victims, and even worse scapegoating.
> What about during the Vietnam war?
What about? It was a badly chosen war that was guaranteed to go past the initial semi-principled stand into a huge quagmire of a proxy war. Dumb idea and bad. But are mistakes forever damning?
> What deeper nuanced meaning am I missing where it balances "freedom and liberty for all" with the massive expansion of the post-9/11 surveilance state?
So, like the Vietnam war, it's a mistake. But fight to save what you've got rather than equating it to the worst dictatorships. It's also a forgivable thing though, to overreact to murder. It took the UK and Ireland a long time to trust each other after the troubles.
You should be proud to be American. Your country at least tries to right wrongs.
Have you seen footage of North Koreans pledging their allegiance to their government? Dial that down a little and you get (some) Americans. It might seem normal to you, having been born into that bubble, but believe me the average patriotic North Korean feels the same.
Patriotism is just tribalism, and while it was crucial five centuries ago, it's a cancer on any modern society.
You're literally just inventing stuff to get upset about. There's no dictator in America. When you pledge allegiance to the country - or when someone else does - they aren't saying they'll serve anyone's orders, they're affirming their support for something that's actually great. Whatever about the hand and heart - that's a bit demonstrative, but the sentiment is a good one - a better one than almost anywhere else.
It would do you good to try to see the good, before you destroy one of the last remaining bastions of opportunity with ... whatever moral relativism you're on.
> It might seem normal to you, having been born into that bubble
Lol, did you just assume nonsense about my life or what. No, but I can see from outside that you're pissing on the best thing you'll ever have because it isn't perfect. You can't see that what makes it great is the intent.
> Patriotism is just tribalism
No, blind patriotism to any country you're stuck in, is. Patriotism to a country that tries, and succeeds, to be better than most, that's just acknowledging that you've got it good and have a duty to extend that to others.
> it's a cancer on any modern society.
The exact opposite. The lack of patriotism you so embody is the cancer. If America isn't good enough then which country would you work to support? Who is good enough that you won't righteously tear them down?
Leave America and sponsor a migrant on the way. Let them appreciate the thing you despise.
So I think these long rambling replies do more to confirm the message you are replying to than you realise.
I don't think you know what rambling means.
> You seem really, really incessantly upset
It's just so nice of you to care if I'm upset. I love you too.
> about the idea that not everyone practices patriotism in the same way as you.
No. Just saddened that they feel the need to denigrate the opportunity when there are so many clamoring to get it. So stuck in hatred of America they can't see that most of the world disagrees, and they're the ones in the bubble. Practice however you want, the hand/heart thing and the pledge are not the issue.
Of course it hasn't. Those countries suck because they are not the USA. USA on top = the natural state of things. USA! USA! USA! Think critically about the actions of the country and the shadow which it casts to this day? Suck it up snowflake or get out!!
It's exactly your kind of bland patriotism, devoid of any appreciation as to why things are the way they are, that the person you where replying to was talking about. And it's part of the reason as to why things are the way they are.
I think perhaps you view patriotism as a core part of why America is in the position it is today, but unfortunately to think that is to ignore history.
And lastly, the rest of the world doesn't really agree. I expect you'd be surprised the real damage Trump has done to the reputation of the USA abroad and how much it's tarnished the image you think you had.
Oh my god, I'd never considered that other people have experiences and they differ from mine! Sweet f-ing Jesus, it all depended on you assuming who I was and sarcastically mocking me! Hallelujah!
> Of course it hasn't. Those countries suck because they are not the USA. USA on top = the natural state of things. USA! USA! USA! Think critically about the actions of the country and the shadow which it casts to this day? Suck it up snowflake or get out!!
Do your parents cry when they hear you? I'm not American. I'm not justifying my tribe or anything.
> It's exactly your kind of bland patriotism, devoid of any appreciation as to why things are the way they are, that the person you where replying to was talking about. And it's part of the reason as to why things are the way they are.
Just a week ago I was re-reading a great account of the CIA in Guatemala. I'm quite familiar with the situation in general. I don't think you can even comprehend that someone can know the same facts as you but come to differing opinions.
But, about my patriotism. What do you think you know about it, and what about it is bland? How would we make it exciting? Do you actually have an idea or are you just slinging words around looking for a cheap shot?
> I think perhaps you view patriotism as a core part of why America is in the position it is today, but unfortunately to think that is to ignore history.
You're ignoring 90% of history by jumping up and down as if you're the only one who's ever heard of the CIA. It's pretty reductionist though, and frankly it feels a little racist and insulting to the South Americans, to think that the USA is responsible for the entire continent. I don't think you'd get broad support for your idea from the people of those countries. You're probably acting on some white-empowerment thing where you think you're so powerful you have some sort of skin-color based duty. A bunch of old Brits have a message for you...
Nobody is having the 'X country never did anything wrong' argument with you. For one, I don't think you could come up with a country that didn't (attempt) fuckery, but I don't think it's relevant to the attitudes and that's the core of the point about patriotism. You aren't celebrating some pure history, or your side being blameless, you're celebrating and supporting those around you, and those who will come join you.
And patriotism is even open to one such as yourself. You don't have to adopt anyone's jingoism. You don't need any "us over them". You simply need to find a core of what you want being American to mean, and embody that. If you think people aren't educated enough about history, then educate yourself and share the knowledge - like you do now, but without this "I'm the only educated person in the world" vibe.
If you can't, seriously consider finding an immigrant and adopting a bit of theirs. Support what they find meaningful until you can find it within yourself.
> I expect you'd be surprised the real damage Trump has done to the reputation of the USA abroad and how much it's tarnished the image you think you had.
Hahah, wow. You are not in for a good day. Sorry, but the world doesn't mind Trump one-hundredth as much as you do. I'm not in the USA and I think I have a vastly better idea of how the world views the USA pre/post trump than you do from inside your white-man's burden bubble.
There are hilarious videos of Americans not knowing which president did things, like build cages at the border. Foreign news almost always says "originally built by ..." and gives a fuller story than American news. (I picture you watching CNN, reading Snopes fact-checks, Tweeting your outrage.) Most everyone watching from outside knows that the stuff about walls and immigrants in cages being "Trump-Bad" was nonsense - they were things that every president did and would keep doing, and that the laws of the country and the people voting for those laws fully support. (Interestingly, most 1st gen immigrants in the USA support stricter immigration checks to stop illegal entry.)
I, and certainly my country, are no Trump fan - of the man personally. But his forceful actions on the world stage helped bring peace and are probably the best hope for Palestinian freedom ever but are also the only actions I've seen taken against China despite their posturing against Taiwan, who's our ally as well as yours. Simply calling Taiwan to thank them for congratulating him on his victory was monumental.
So even though he entered into some really annoying trade wars with us we don't have this hate that you do. We sort of grudgingly admit that he got what he wanted and because he was working for you, not us, that he did his job.
No, the rest of the world doesn't agree with you at all. And it's clear why, you're apparently stuck in a loop of yelling at your dad because he just doesn't understand you.
This is why you need some patriotism. You need to find something good and strive to improve and share it, your life is one of bitterness and internalized shame despite being in one of the best places with all the opportunity. And with a pretty good history actually, if you look at it as a unit and compare with the what other people have accomplished. Much to build on.
America is a great tool so grab the reins, wield her carefully, and do good for the world.