From a 2016 post at the blog of Boston psychology professor Dr. Peter Gray on a topic I think about more and more now that I’ve seen up close how the continuous, inescapable stressor that is public school life (i.e. pushy, condescending instructors who train kids to take certain tests well) can have on a shy, sensitive child:

“Children now often spend more time at school and at homework than their parents spend at their full-time jobs, and the work of schooling is often more burdensome and stress-inducing than that of a typical adult job. A century ago we came to the conclusion that full-time child labor was child abuse, so we outlawed it; but now school is the equivalent of full-time child labor. The increased time, tedium, and stress of schooling is bringing many kids to the breaking point or beyond, and more and more people are becoming aware of that. It can no longer be believed that schooling is a benign experience for children. The evidence that it induces pathology is overwhelming.”

It’s always nice when I can find a good quote from a book on my Kindle, because I can then do a simple cut-paste here.  In some cases, like this one, I must pull out the physical book from my collection of dusty, decades-old, ex-library books, and painstakingly type up the quote myself.  The book in question is ‘The State of the Union’, Liberty Fund Edition, a priceless collection of political and cultural essays by my favorite writer, Albert Jay Nock.  The essay from which the quote is derived is ‘Liberalism, properly so called’, a Nockian history of how the meaning of the term ‘liberal’ was twisted from its original meaning of the expansion of free choice, a removal of State power from as many areas of life as humanly possible, to it’s exact opposite: the use of the coercive power of the State to force societal change in desired directions:

“Liberalism…contemplated a type of society organised around a system of voluntary cooperation; a system of original contract, free contract. This system is best illustrated by the example of an industrial concern like the Standard Oil Company. The individual need not work for Standard Oil unless he wishes to do so; he is not conscripted. His acceptance of the Company’s rules is a matter of free contract; he is not coerced; he may leave if he does not like them. His wages, hours and conditions of labor are fixed by consent; if they do not suit him as proposed, he is free to refuse them. Under this system the individual is regarded as the unit of ultimate value. The logic of this position was that society as a whole would gain more from the aggregate initiative and enterprise of groups pursuing various ends in free association and by such means as of free choice should seem best to them, than it would from the efforts of groups pursuing prescribed ends under coercion…

…Liberalism held that society’s work should be carried on, its responsibilities met, and its difficulties dealt with, by the application of social power, not governmental power; social power meaning the power generated and exercised by individuals and groups of individuals working in an economy which is free of governmental interference – an economy of free contract. This follows logically from the conception of government inherited from Whiggism in opposition to Toryism’s conception of it. Toryism held that the ruler derived his authority from God and distributed that authority to his agents in various degrees according to their function; therefore the agents exercised power by divine right ad hoc, responsible only to the ruler, who in turn was responsible only to God. Whiggism, on the contrary, regarded rulership as purely a civil institution established by the nation for the benefit of all its members, with no inherent power of its own, and responsible only to the nation…

…When the Whigs came into power they kept all the foregoing tenets in mind, and so did the early Liberals who succeeded them. They worked steadily towards curbing the government’s coercive power over the individual; and with such effect, as historians testify, that by the middle of the eighteenth century Englishmen had simply forgotten that there was ever a time when the full “liberty of the subject” was not theirs to enjoy. In this connexion the thing to be remarked is that the Whigs proceeded by the negative method of repealing existing laws, not by the positive method of making new ones. They combed the Statute-book, and when they found a statute which bore against “the liberty of the subject” they simply repealed it and left the page blank. This purgation ran up into the thousands. In 1873 the secretary of the Law Society estimated that out of the 18,110 Acts which had been passed since the reign of Henry III, four-fifths had been wholly or partially repealed. The thing to be observed here is that this negative method of simple repeal left free scope for the sanative processes of natural law in dealing with all manner of social dislocations and disabilities. These processes are slow and usually painful, and impatience with them leads to popular demand that the government should step in and anticipate them by positive statutory intervention when anything goes wrong. The Liberals were aware that no one, least of all the “practical” politician, can foresee the ultimate effects, or even all the collateral effects, of such interventions, or can calculate the force of their political momentum. Thus it regularly happens that they bring about ultimate evils which are not only far more serious than the specific evils which they were meant to remedy, but are also wholly unexpected. American legislative history in the last two decades shows any number of conspicuous instances where the political short-cut of positive intervention has been taken towards remedying a present evil at the most reckless expense of future good. The Prohibition Amendment is perhaps the most conspicuous of these instances.”

BoingBoing: New York high school will use CCTV and facial recognition to enforce discipline

The Hill: TSA creates secret watch list of people who may be “unruly” Ed: Meaning any behavior in the airport not indicative of a cowed peon probably. Never should’ve given those idiots badges, even if they’re fake.

Slate: The LocationSmart scandal is bigger than Cambridge Analytica. Here’s why no one is talking about it.

Gizmodo: The Pentagon’s controversial drone AI-imaging project extends beyond Google

The Hill: Big Tech vacuums up our kids’ data, risking their privacy and mental health

High Times: De Blasio orders NYPD to stop arresting people for smoking weed

Reason: NYPD union rep complains that he’s increasingly afraid to arrest people for no good reason

Washington Times: Trump gets FBI, Justice Department to probe claims of spying on his 2016 campaign

The Intercept: The FBI informant who monitored the Trump campaign, Stefan Halper, oversaw a CIA spying operation in the 1980 Presidential campaign

The Intercept: Blacklisted academic Norman Finkelstein on Gaza, “the world’s largest concentration camp”

Military.com: Military helicopter drops ammo on school, busts hole in roof

CNET: Google stands to lose up to $4.3 billion in UK privacy suit

CityScoop: Meet the Israeli company ready to sell city-wide surveillance

Tech Crunch: A simple solution to the encryption debate

Engadget: NASA will create the coldest place in the universe to study quantum physics

Never thought I’d come across this headline: The American Conservative: The sad decline of Barnes & Noble

Vox: Why psychedelic drugs could transform how we treat depression and mental illness

Boing Boing: News crew discovers 40 cell-phone tracking devices operating around Washington D.C.

Activist Post: State sets massive precedent, passes law to effectively ban the NSA

Bloomberg: The U.S. Army is turning to robot soldiers

McClatchyDC: Pasteurization without representation? Kentucky lawmaker wants to boost raw milk

FEE: California (hopefully) learns a lesson about marijuana taxes and the Laffer Curve

Denver Post: Denver police draw guns on charter school staff member in class during search for absent student

Zero Hedge: How the FBI and CIA restarted the Cold War to protect themselves

Tech Crunch: Are algorithms hacking our thoughts?

The Sun: Your future home will be able to detect your moods and if you’re hungry Ed: I remain unconvinced that this future must be inevitable, where our every appliance, including our car and home, anticipates and satisfies every need or discomfort, with virtually no input of our own. Rather than an advance in technology, this focus on “connected” homes, cars, appliances, etc., feels like more of a detour from the practical application of science and engineering rather than the . Social media and new gadgets feel more like ‘bread and circuses’ used to siphon and exploit the data we produce daily rather than real technological advance. It’s not neo-Luddism to oppose new and more insidious ways to slurp up our personal choices and lives. The companies comprising “Big Tech” are really any but, with virtually every company being nothing more than glorified surveillance outfits that gather, and then sell, our data.  The danger is the confluence of factors that are combining to create the most far-reaching surveillance state that’s ever existed.

“Connectedness”, convenience, instant gratification, social validation, are what these companies are selling, not the future.  The important point to always remember is that it won’t be your home that will be taking care of your every need, it will be Google, or Amazon, or whichever company is behind the new “smart house” that’s draining your autonomy and self-reliance.