"Tim Rhodes" <proftim@speakeasy.org> wrote:
> Little children hate going to school too, I wouldn't say that makes
> education a form of coercion, though. (However, that isn't to say
> that it can't be.)
According to the definition[1], being forced to go to a place that you
don't want to go (e.g. school) is the very epitome of coercion -- and some
of the interesting consequences of that coercion are very manifest in our
society -- where people are surrounded in opportunities for learning, but
NOBODY WANTS TO! To the extent that we learn, it is because we want to
learn -- not because we are forced (coerced) to.
Interestingly, David Deutsche maintains that coercion is ONLY effective
inside a *tradition* -- e.g. a religious tradition, or the traditional
educational system. From a memetic point of view, this makes perfect sense
as those meme-complexes have evolved over time to BE effective; and any
chance application of coercion by inexperienced humans is unlikely to be as
effective.
ERiC
[1] I posted this last time, but I'll do it again, since it's so important:
"Coercion: the psychological state of enacting one theory
while a rival theory is still active in one's mind. A person
doing one thing while having a real, active wish to do
something else, is acting under coercion. A person not doing
something while having a real, active wish to do it, is acting
under coercion. ..
...Coercion impairs creativity. Its effects are cumulative and
effectively permanent. Coercion destroys a person's ability to
think and solve problems in the affected areas of his mind.
When a person is acting on one theory while still retaining
the wish to act otherwise, that is what we call "acting under
coercion".
-- TCS definition, from the FAQ