circa 1920's ? This print warns of the effect if radios get in the education system.
                                             Illustrated is the future year of 2000.

I see there is a common sense among the young that is global and way advanced in social awareness.

Gosh, could it be a new way of seeing things, is a better way! ... Even a better way of teaching? I'm for anything that causes us to examine how we think, especially about the stuff we 'know'.
Persistence Over Time.

Today I looked at my page or profile or profile page, it wasn’t the first time. It occurred to me that we love creating and perhaps most of all creating our own identity. To use a term, revived by the show Scandal, we want to be the ones ‘wearing the white hat’.

When I found my page bore an apparent ad for Whole Foods, my one or two faithful fb post readers may remember I posted a complaint, that I did not in fact endorse shopping at that food store and I did not like the fact that it’s name was showing on my page even though it was true that someone I knew was working there. In the proverbial perfect world such a proclamation when picked up by the the vast machine of human awareness and response (you know the one) would have been sufficient however for it to disappear.

Given the nature of fb to have scores and scores of postings by friends and advertisers in any given day randomly appearing on my timeline on any given refresh, I had to face the fact that even among faithful readers the complaint post was more like a message in a bottle cast into the sea. The apparent ad for a food store, lasted and lasted. This raised the issue of persistence over time.

As the young know and the old usually have difficulty with, we are barraged by signals. Before America, the United States kind, invented advertising as an industry, we did you know, our brainy brain just had to deal with things like, what might hurt? what feels good? in an environment with perhaps a billion less signals calling for our attention each day.
Yes that’s right before the commercialization of our air, land and sea, things which persisted gained respectability, like a mountain or a river, which were considered wise or the Sun coming up in the morning allowing all life on Earth and often becoming a god.

The marketability of mere persistence dawned on the advertisers with the realization that a brand could become trusted and feel good to folks. Much more than just a name a brand could be an icon, a signal of comfort, reliability, value, etc.

Observations About the Tool of Persistence.

I like the concept of a hive, with regard to communities such as man (including women), man not including women, the French, and hives of bees which like the other examples can become alarmed and want to sting almost at the same instant. Our hive would say gosh during one slice of 20th Century time and god! or s__t! at another. We would be fearful of the effects of radios at one time and fearful of computers in the classroom at another. For me the internet makes me much more aware, or so it seems, of such changes in the hive and more aware of the speed with which intangible things change. The hive has an attitude as well as an awareness.

I’m sorry folks but one of the things the old glory of war, British spokesman, Winston Churchill got as right as the 99% rightness of the Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville in his observations of the USA hive, the Americans get things right only after they have tried every other alternative, such are my prejudices as well.
I for instance really enjoy seeing a flock of birds change direction at once and I wouldn’t enjoy seeing bees stinging each other all helter skelter. I’m making the suggestion be it radical left or stubbornly right, that the whole thinking process of our hive may be going through a major change in how we analyze things. And it is my great hope that the analytical potential of our hive may be improving at a pace right now that only those lucky enough to be young or thinking young can perceive of.

You see some of us were quite advanced on the scale of human perception. We felt is was US who grew up in the age of radio and cars and nickel candy bars and who witnessed television’s arrive in our living rooms and take it over pretty much the same day were pretty advanced. Now as near as I can tell, though we once really were advanced in our awareness maybe we weren’t at the peak after all. I suspect that learning, the speed of our young peoples absorption of change is off the charts of what we have come to expect of our good old hive. Could it be that like a new renaissance our very speed of hive assimilation of thought is taking off in a non-Orwellian nice way for the survival of our ... community?

How many of us may be seeing unimagined changes in our hive and are therefore motivated to participate in and promote the very idea of hope for change of things which seem unchangeable.

My Grandfather bought a new large Buick every three years. In fact Grandmother one year called the Buick Dealer and after some convincing had them drive a new one over. They did and without a test drive, she signed the papers and the deal was done. She was happy it was done, while at the same time always expecting that it would be.

I’m guilty of getting my first Apple in 1981 and when my kids, (born in 85 and 86) grew to where they liked pushing buttons they were on it from then on with my encouragement. I always hated the term fanboy, because it referred to Apple lovers for years. You get the idea. It has only been when Steve Jobs was not running the company that any doubts appeared. It pains me now to see the polish is coming off the Apple and I can envision a time when I may be putting down money on a non-Apple devise. Not yet but maybe sometime.

Yes there is that big part of me that just wanted my brand name apple pie, thank you. I understand the desire to know what’s good and feel good about it. In this age the brand of persistence can be obtained in what seems to me a few weeks when it’s part of a dedicated ad campaign purchased by the few who control where all the money went. The good part is I see a growing number who are catching on and who get it.

As a good teacher leads a class to an awareness beyond dates and figures, I see a world where once again the young are seeking mentors in life as well as teachers. The campaign for public education is revived and in better hands with this generation of sincere smart kids. They will persist.