MARKETING WITH JACKSON 4/20/19
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Video will be available tomorrow.
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Today's episode is a lively and diverse discussion of such topics as the Military and depression. This past week was spent in a Combat Life Savers course at Fort Drum NY, in which I was partnered with a young Lieutenant from the Military Police for all of the exercises. We covered medical care for combat situations, the primary 3 include care under fire, tactical field care, and tactical evacuation care. There is a lot to learn, and as we found out first hand, these skill-sets are made an order of magnitude more difficult when in a simulated combat testing environment. Our final test included an obstical course initiated by a live bomb explosion and entailed a team of 4 evacuating a manican over a hill, 2 walls, a bridge, through a tunnel, and under a treacherous barbed wire net. We were in our "full battle rattle" which includes an IOTB which is an armour plated chest protector, a helmet, protective glasses, gloves and a helmet. There are specific commands that the leader of the group gives for each action, including lifting, lowering, rotating, and reassembling the carriers for narrow impasses.
Immediately after returning the victim we assembled outside a room blaring live fire sounds and flashing lights in a dark room with testers overseeing several manicans. Once we found the victim, there was a laundry list of tasks to accomplish to effectively treat him, including returning fire, placing a tourniquet, moving the victim to safety, performing a blood sweep to check for arterial wounds, checking airway, inserting an NPA, (a tube into the nose), assesing and treating gunshot wounds, and inserting NCD's which are needles that puncture the lungs to relieve pressure against the heart which is called a "tension pneumothorax". We then fill out a document including encrypted codes of the situation to communicate to the helicopters for a MEDIVAC.
I was beyond impressed with my young Lieutenant partner, and I was moved by his dedication to service. The tester said we were the best group yet, and although I can't take the credit for that, I do find it easy to work together with such people.
Immediately after returning the victim we assembled outside a room blaring live fire sounds and flashing lights in a dark room with testers overseeing several manicans. Once we found the victim, there was a laundry list of tasks to accomplish to effectively treat him, including returning fire, placing a tourniquet, moving the victim to safety, performing a blood sweep to check for arterial wounds, checking airway, inserting an NPA, (a tube into the nose), assesing and treating gunshot wounds, and inserting NCD's which are needles that puncture the lungs to relieve pressure against the heart which is called a "tension pneumothorax". We then fill out a document including encrypted codes of the situation to communicate to the helicopters for a MEDIVAC.
I was beyond impressed with my young Lieutenant partner, and I was moved by his dedication to service. The tester said we were the best group yet, and although I can't take the credit for that, I do find it easy to work together with such people.
At the risk of my extrapolation of further inciting sleep upon the unwitting reader of this lavishly self absorbent text, I will not fail to mention that my new digital project is incredibly energizing to me for this reason among others:
I have spent all of my previous project time painting and drawing things and I don't really have any idea how I did it, I'm not even an expert painter, I don't know the rules or the techniques of the masters, and my hand isn't even that steady to draw well enough. All of that work and I have my art to show for it, and I can tell you about the project as a whole, but I can't tell you about architecture, or any technical novelties that might be relatable to other fields having to do with my project. It's a balance of colors, an energetic momentum, a culmination of motion, a serene stillness interrupted by bombasity, a portrait of discipline and an obliteration of the impossible. You don't click mesh tools- insert edgeloop, edit mesh-extrude, rightclick-face-select face(s)-right-click-assign new material-marble, select deformers-non linear-bend to create an archway, you just grab a compass (?) and draw it.
I love technical details as you can see form my work, and my vocabulary and communication methods have always taken on this aspect. Maybe I owe some of my talents to my great grandfather Ellis Parker Butler who was the most published author of the Pulp Fiction Era (please see below for Disney recreation of one of his stories)
When I was 19 I had a small apartment in the East Ave commons in Rochester NY where I attended GED class after I dropped out of school. A friend and I would skateboard and cause general discord- he bought a camcorder and we filmed a "show" called the Jackson and James show in which I was a news broadcaster talking about international relations in very complex jargon and he was the co-anchor who had no idea what I was talking about, he would inevitably tackle me out of the chair and we would brawl while I was struggling to convey the latest news to the deserving subscribers.
I have spent all of my previous project time painting and drawing things and I don't really have any idea how I did it, I'm not even an expert painter, I don't know the rules or the techniques of the masters, and my hand isn't even that steady to draw well enough. All of that work and I have my art to show for it, and I can tell you about the project as a whole, but I can't tell you about architecture, or any technical novelties that might be relatable to other fields having to do with my project. It's a balance of colors, an energetic momentum, a culmination of motion, a serene stillness interrupted by bombasity, a portrait of discipline and an obliteration of the impossible. You don't click mesh tools- insert edgeloop, edit mesh-extrude, rightclick-face-select face(s)-right-click-assign new material-marble, select deformers-non linear-bend to create an archway, you just grab a compass (?) and draw it.
I love technical details as you can see form my work, and my vocabulary and communication methods have always taken on this aspect. Maybe I owe some of my talents to my great grandfather Ellis Parker Butler who was the most published author of the Pulp Fiction Era (please see below for Disney recreation of one of his stories)
When I was 19 I had a small apartment in the East Ave commons in Rochester NY where I attended GED class after I dropped out of school. A friend and I would skateboard and cause general discord- he bought a camcorder and we filmed a "show" called the Jackson and James show in which I was a news broadcaster talking about international relations in very complex jargon and he was the co-anchor who had no idea what I was talking about, he would inevitably tackle me out of the chair and we would brawl while I was struggling to convey the latest news to the deserving subscribers.
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Above: Later Disney recreation of Jackson's great grandfather's story.
Left: East Ave Commons |
Traumatic Brain Injuries and Everyday Life
We learn about these injuries in the military. Tell tale signs can be confusion, headache, fatigue, and depression. Treatments generally include lots of rest, they can induce a 48 hour sleep if need be, followed by numerous hours of downtime, doing things like watching TV (hopefully not the news networks), and generally relaxing.
Overtaxed, emotionally and physically tired people dot the landscape in our everyday life, and some of them are you and I.
I grew up skateboarding- everyday, for hours a day I would be flying down staircases, and wearing through my shoes, and my skateboards, and my body. This characterizes my everyday life, always moving forward on something or other, wearing myself down; people have a lot to show for there hard work, the US being one of the hardest working countries- but for everything accomplished, there are lots of things that weren't; "trash" you could call it, thousands of things that weren't done properly, kick-flips not landed, falls, scrapes, bruises. Negative reinforcements in our lives serve to provide incentives for improvement, and dissuade us from folly, but they are taxing mentally. Even raising a family has this effect- managing relationships, temperaments, time, and activities- being constantly engaged and trying to simultaneously rest and affect others at the same time.
In the bible the sabbath is preserved as a day of 'solemn rest' and it's not until you actually try such an activity that you discover how solemn it really is. Sure you can sleep for a time but then your awake again, checking your phone, playing a video game, watching a series, or growing anxious about the many uncertainties in life. Of course you enjoy down time with family and friends, but many either do not have that luxury, or have not coordinated properly the advantage of achieving successful rest through such potentially volatile activities.
One in 6 Americans take anti-depressants. And then there are the ones who don't seek help for various reasons, ie, not having health insurance. Or the ones who don't believe that drugs are the solution? Hundreds and hundreds of millions of people experience depression in the world, and if you look at the 1 in 6 in the richest country on earth, what are you going to find in 3rd world countries where food is not a given?
Years ago, a close acquaintance of mine was talking to me about their depression and they mentioned "there is no cause for it, no reason behind it, I just feel so depressed". Not good, not good, not good, is what the brain is telling people- simplify that into "there is not enough energy to supply me with the proper nourishment for all that I am expending". Monetary energy is not what needs to be evaluated in every case, but emotional energy, fun energy, sexual/romantic energy, and very importantly that which is made available by group dynamics such as a conglomeration of like minded individuals.
I have posited before that "group mansions" may be a relevant partial solution. Middle class people can afford a $200k house, take 10 families and they can buy a several million dollar house, specially designed for communal entertainment and eating venues. Division of labor states that watching the kids, cooking, and general administrative tasks would be comparativly easier, and with the proper matchings even the children would constitute a group of benefactors from such arrangement's.
In post Napoleonic Europe there were laws that forbade gatherings, and Metternich, the chancellor of the Austrian Hungarian Empire, was ruthless in this way. Sometimes I feel like this anti-communal aspect of society has lived on in the European-American tradition, while in Asia you have such phenomena as "group yoga" where several hundred women at a time will convene to practice some form or another of martial arts. You can go to bars but often the sound in drowned out by loud music, and the peddling of alcohol serves to dilute the potentially beneficial stranger to stranger dynamic into a kind of consortium of chaos that often times is not even remembered the next day.
We don't live in a revolutionary society, and even if we did the people cannot overthrow the government with all of there fancy bells and whistles, so this point is mute these days.
I have posited that one of the only immediately justifiable instances of basic income would be social media ads; finding like minded people to share your experiences and perspectives is more important than finding the right products to buy, and if you look at social media like "main street" not being promoted basically puts you not on main street, but literally in the back allies where nobody is going to go unless you are actively promoting outside of social media, which for people experiencing depression, is more than likely not going to be the case. Is it possible to find a kind of "Wikipedia" for social media? Or at least one that lets the ads pay for the servers and staff but not a feeding frenzy harvesting your email passwords, email contacts, using your camera to measure your facial gestures, and recording your speech to target you with relevant ads before censoring your speech and blocking you on political grounds?
Students need to be around like minded people. Especially in urban scenerios where you have a vast canvas of institutions and students, providing them with venues that will be condusive to peaceful coexistance with like minded students just makes good sense, and being in an environment where you dont even know 95% of the people you pass through in the hallways has an earmark of the kind of society where people find themseleves atomized and isolated, and although people are programmed to help each other and create communities, if you give me 10,000 tons of concrete, i can't do anything with it on my own.
In our culture of "go see the doctor" anything you say negative about how your feeling requires a visit to the doctors. I have this ongoing feeling in my own life that I'm "in prison", It's a product of this or that, but I don't have people in my life and my family are very far away, and I can't entertain myself that well, so it's like even when I get off work, I'm still going back to work, and it feels like prison. You might say "go see a doctor" but I know that it's not depression it is a structural condition of my life. I don't feel that much emotion, I don't relate to causes or feel that much affection or make connections with people, even after thousands of dollars spent in advertising for my artwork; they might say: "that must be a diagnosable problem". Even down to minor issues like feeling a cold coming on, I feel like people are just corralled into the doctors office. The doctor is not going to fix you all the time. I'm in favor of self treatment, but the lobbyists at the medical faction don't want you to have access to potentially harmful treatments. If it was up to them you wouldn't be able to scale high mountains and they would require a cage over hot air balloons. You have probably heard of "self medicating" - why do you think it has such a negative connotation?
There is a structural funnel into the doctors office that is so long lived that you grew up with it so you really never question it, your not allowed to do this, not allowed to do that, anything out of the ordinary whatsoever they can actually reach into your life and take your own children away from you. This is the wrong time in history to be packing the doctors office; we have a severe doctor shortage in the US, because other primary care professionals do not have the legal right to treat you independently or prescribe medicine, evan though the instrumentation these days just requires a machine to take a test and a database to search the treatment. medical inflation is at an all time high, and the costs are so exorbitant that they are being shopped around to 'Obamacare' 'medicare for all' and even single payer plans. Even if there is no universal health care, anybody with a problem can show up to the ER and get treated by law, so that is arguably more expensive than actually providing insurance! And anyone poor enough can have health coverage under Medicaid. With all of our new capabilities to enhance longevity and treat previously untreatable diseases we need to vastly increase the number of practitioners who can actually treat people, lower the threshold for prescriptions, and in so doing we will vastly reduce healthcare prices, and the quantity and price of medical equipment.
I feel depression in my life, but it always has a cause, and the vast majority of sufferers have a cause for there depression but maybe they can't sort it out from all the chaos. take the school shooting crisis for example, and the rampant rampages that people see fit to embark on, these devastating examples are the bursting of the head of the infection, there is a deeper cause in society that has to be found. Gun control and censorship are not the long term answers to this problem, just like antidepressants are not the solution to depression. Granted, 24/7 news coverage of a horrific gun crime is going to propel would be lime light baskers into action- I would encourage the discourse in such events to focus on the macro-social phenomenon that dually brings millions together into mass schooling, mass news consumption, mass video viewership, and masses living in close proximity, yet excludes individuals and leaves them even more isolated than they would be than if they were living in a small rural farming village. Even a small learning disability, or ethnic/religious difference, or physical abnormality can have the dual effect of discouraging individuals from seeking companionship, and causing others to rebuff such efforts.
I have so much shit to do I'm not going to sit there and wonder why a Muslim store owner is so apathetic to his clientele at the corner store on MLK BLVD, but meanwhile there is a complex dichotomy; racial, religious, and cultural, and personal that is emerging from the clash of cultures, the purchase of alcohol, and the dealings with many urban poor who were denied the niceties of a clean family upbringing. A mismatching can help or hinder, an equilibrium forms, and the inevitable disaffected parties return to their places of congregation with their stories of adversity which fuel further discord. Integration is a strong foundation for a sound society, but there are assets involved which complicate matters between people- certainly you don't want to "live" with people whose values are opposite of your own, but you don't mind peripheral dealings, and in time, given relative longevity, the gaps can be closed and a harmonious society can be uncovered.
TRADING DISCIPLINES
Resilience training is a priority for the Army, and these excersizes are to test your ability to adapt to mental stress so that in combat you are not subject to the kind of shock that would leave you unable to adapt in a very demanding situation. The Army asks a lot of you, and people inevitably meet the challenge, and even surpass it.
Physical fitness is a very important aspect of military life, I like the fact that my inordinate disposition toward rigorous physical exertion has an outlet which helps me career-wise. Lots of people in any such venue try to get out these things, before a long run they suddenly "fall ill" or develop some kind of physical condition that magically doesn't appear on the x-rays but is severely prohibitive.
At Fort Lee they stood us out in the cold for very long periods of time, actively discouraging us from wearing "sniffel gear" with inadequate gloves and no facial protection. I like to protect my face in the cold because I have sensitive skin and my face turns beet red in no time. It makes you a little bit unhappy to stand there, and this is an intended circumstance to acclimate you to harsh conditions, and turn you into a better soldier. So this is one of the things that army asks of you.
The Army has a list of things it asks of you to do that are not fun and require circumscribing your personal aspirations for the sake of good discipline and acclimation as I have stated. So you can look at the 'unhappy things' they ask of you and put them in a ledger under debits, and the fun things you can still do, and put them under credits. The trick in this query is to align the debits and credits to maximize the discipline, and trade off the debits that might be unnecessary, I call it "discipline trading". It's a habit of tough young red blooded men to parade around the base in there t-shirts when it's 20 degrees outside, they need to realize this is not healthy and i unecesary given the massive arsenal of warm weather gear we have and are capable of producing. The "fighting spirit" can be devastated by freezing temperatures, just look at the Napoleonic and Germanic invasions of Russia. You have to rely on the apparatus to keep you warm. I haven't found any studies that have proven cold weather acclimation, although i could be wrong. training to rotate cold weather gear may be more useful, as you are colder when stationary, and hotter when in motion, seeking that balance that will keep you from sweating is a tricky task especially with armor plated gear on. Warm weather gear over the plating may be appropriate.
Formations are an integral aspect of military life, and are needed to provide orderliness and accountability when managing large groups of soldiers. Standing at a position for long periods of time is going to lead to small talk between the soliders, and in a training environment this is generally punished by such tasks as push ups and queries as to why the soldiers are undisciplined in the first place. This leads to divisions within the soldiers with heated words being exchanged and the inevitable socially active groupings being antangonized and countereacting. In my experience, not being one to talk much... I did not really expect silence, in fact the ones who turned on the talkers were really closeted talkers themselves. All this is unnecessary in my eyes, becasue if good discipline was really required in could be attained, either by the force of present enemny, or the simple presence of a drill sargeant. I feel that this also lead to the picking of extra shy soldiers to be the platoon leaders, but thats just my own neglected opinion.
A trading of discipline would be to actually monitor the soldiers, and make sure they are engaged in somthing productive, like the reading of a manual, or the execution of push-ups. Get rid of counterproductive discipline and replace it with real discipline. people have jobs to learn and functionality in the Army, they need to be individually accountable for the work they accomplish and their efficiency and compatibility within a broader system.
Being in a battlefield scenario is going to be a jarring experience that will require extreme discipline and unquestioning obedience to orders, and as I have stated under pressure, it's amazing what falls apart- there were reports of soldiers who in training were supposed to be inserting NPA's in nostrils shirking there responsibilities and just taping the plastic tube to the side of each others faces, then in combat they did the same thing.
People are very protective of how they are treated, and being disrespected is going to cause in some cases irreparable damage to the mindsets of young and old soldiers. I hear a lot of kids saying they will definitely not be reenlisting because they felt they were treated like shit in the military. Being a bit older I can attest to the fact that in many cases I have been treated like a child. After all, the Army is a job just like any other, and a lot of kids think that it's only for them, nagging at me and pestering me about my age. This is another scenario where categorization of people based on shared characteristics would improve job satisfaction.
Philosophically, in the civilian world, I am a person who believes that mistreatment by managers and more tenured coworkers is a factor that contributes greatly to the depression epidemic in our country and world. I don't think that workers should put up with disrespectful bosses, and if they didn't, the bosses would then by definition not be good managers of people. It takes just as much discipline to be respectful seemingly as it does to respect authority, it goes both ways, and sometimes this is ignored by those who do not have direct oversight. "write this 10 page SOP 10 times in two days" can erase all of your sleep and your time, and cause a general disaffection which will effect the Armies numbers adversely, when you could have just said, "accomplish 4 times as much in your workday" and this would be plausible.
Soldiers need better physical fitness. This being said, if you walk into an army fitness center you are going to be dazzled by the blindingly gorgeous specimens that fluttered to earth upon angels wings to grace you with their presence. You signed up for it, thats what you get! The military requires lower enlisted and junior officers to be in shape, and they should be in shape upon penalty of pay penalties, and otherwise. How are you going to countenance a boy straight out of the service, who has all the excuses in the world why he isnt physically fit? That's what he signed up for, the military realizes they are taking responsibility for this aspect of peoples lives that they would not otherwise succum to, they should take it more seriously. Even if you can't do one thing, you can do the other, and if you cant do anything, you can diet. I really hope my fellow compatriots haven't made it this far in my essay, and if they have, you just worked out your eyeballs!
Physical fitness is a very important aspect of military life, I like the fact that my inordinate disposition toward rigorous physical exertion has an outlet which helps me career-wise. Lots of people in any such venue try to get out these things, before a long run they suddenly "fall ill" or develop some kind of physical condition that magically doesn't appear on the x-rays but is severely prohibitive.
At Fort Lee they stood us out in the cold for very long periods of time, actively discouraging us from wearing "sniffel gear" with inadequate gloves and no facial protection. I like to protect my face in the cold because I have sensitive skin and my face turns beet red in no time. It makes you a little bit unhappy to stand there, and this is an intended circumstance to acclimate you to harsh conditions, and turn you into a better soldier. So this is one of the things that army asks of you.
The Army has a list of things it asks of you to do that are not fun and require circumscribing your personal aspirations for the sake of good discipline and acclimation as I have stated. So you can look at the 'unhappy things' they ask of you and put them in a ledger under debits, and the fun things you can still do, and put them under credits. The trick in this query is to align the debits and credits to maximize the discipline, and trade off the debits that might be unnecessary, I call it "discipline trading". It's a habit of tough young red blooded men to parade around the base in there t-shirts when it's 20 degrees outside, they need to realize this is not healthy and i unecesary given the massive arsenal of warm weather gear we have and are capable of producing. The "fighting spirit" can be devastated by freezing temperatures, just look at the Napoleonic and Germanic invasions of Russia. You have to rely on the apparatus to keep you warm. I haven't found any studies that have proven cold weather acclimation, although i could be wrong. training to rotate cold weather gear may be more useful, as you are colder when stationary, and hotter when in motion, seeking that balance that will keep you from sweating is a tricky task especially with armor plated gear on. Warm weather gear over the plating may be appropriate.
Formations are an integral aspect of military life, and are needed to provide orderliness and accountability when managing large groups of soldiers. Standing at a position for long periods of time is going to lead to small talk between the soliders, and in a training environment this is generally punished by such tasks as push ups and queries as to why the soldiers are undisciplined in the first place. This leads to divisions within the soldiers with heated words being exchanged and the inevitable socially active groupings being antangonized and countereacting. In my experience, not being one to talk much... I did not really expect silence, in fact the ones who turned on the talkers were really closeted talkers themselves. All this is unnecessary in my eyes, becasue if good discipline was really required in could be attained, either by the force of present enemny, or the simple presence of a drill sargeant. I feel that this also lead to the picking of extra shy soldiers to be the platoon leaders, but thats just my own neglected opinion.
A trading of discipline would be to actually monitor the soldiers, and make sure they are engaged in somthing productive, like the reading of a manual, or the execution of push-ups. Get rid of counterproductive discipline and replace it with real discipline. people have jobs to learn and functionality in the Army, they need to be individually accountable for the work they accomplish and their efficiency and compatibility within a broader system.
Being in a battlefield scenario is going to be a jarring experience that will require extreme discipline and unquestioning obedience to orders, and as I have stated under pressure, it's amazing what falls apart- there were reports of soldiers who in training were supposed to be inserting NPA's in nostrils shirking there responsibilities and just taping the plastic tube to the side of each others faces, then in combat they did the same thing.
People are very protective of how they are treated, and being disrespected is going to cause in some cases irreparable damage to the mindsets of young and old soldiers. I hear a lot of kids saying they will definitely not be reenlisting because they felt they were treated like shit in the military. Being a bit older I can attest to the fact that in many cases I have been treated like a child. After all, the Army is a job just like any other, and a lot of kids think that it's only for them, nagging at me and pestering me about my age. This is another scenario where categorization of people based on shared characteristics would improve job satisfaction.
Philosophically, in the civilian world, I am a person who believes that mistreatment by managers and more tenured coworkers is a factor that contributes greatly to the depression epidemic in our country and world. I don't think that workers should put up with disrespectful bosses, and if they didn't, the bosses would then by definition not be good managers of people. It takes just as much discipline to be respectful seemingly as it does to respect authority, it goes both ways, and sometimes this is ignored by those who do not have direct oversight. "write this 10 page SOP 10 times in two days" can erase all of your sleep and your time, and cause a general disaffection which will effect the Armies numbers adversely, when you could have just said, "accomplish 4 times as much in your workday" and this would be plausible.
Soldiers need better physical fitness. This being said, if you walk into an army fitness center you are going to be dazzled by the blindingly gorgeous specimens that fluttered to earth upon angels wings to grace you with their presence. You signed up for it, thats what you get! The military requires lower enlisted and junior officers to be in shape, and they should be in shape upon penalty of pay penalties, and otherwise. How are you going to countenance a boy straight out of the service, who has all the excuses in the world why he isnt physically fit? That's what he signed up for, the military realizes they are taking responsibility for this aspect of peoples lives that they would not otherwise succum to, they should take it more seriously. Even if you can't do one thing, you can do the other, and if you cant do anything, you can diet. I really hope my fellow compatriots haven't made it this far in my essay, and if they have, you just worked out your eyeballs!
Thank you for viewing this update, I hope to hear from you soon, have a wonderful Easter.