From: "Robert A. Rosenberg" <hal9001@panix.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 16:09:19 +0800
To: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Subject: Re: [rant] A thought on filters and the V-Chip
Message-ID: <v02140a06ad3333c01cc6@[165.254.158.237]>
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At 10:26 1/29/96, Duncan Frissell wrote:

>What parents are attempting to do when they restrain their children's access
>to "sex and drugs and rock and roll" (or Republicanism for that matter) is
>to mediate their "spiritual" environment to keep them from becoming
>hardened.  They know the kids will grow up, they just want them to grow up
>in a nice way.

Another way of looking at it is that the parents want to raise their kids
to be mindless types who do not force their parents to actually question
their own mindsets. If they can program their kids into brainwashed clones
of themselves, there is no need to think about other belief systems.

>Note that in spite of what liberals might think, fundamentalist Christians
>are less likely to divorce,

probably due to the fact that divorce is a null-concept when applied to
fundamentalist Christians (ie: It is not something that they "can do" under
their mindset).

>less likely to report spousal beatings,

Is this "less likely to report spousal beatings" or "less likely to HAVE
spousal beatings TO REPORT"? - If the former than again it is due to having
a mindset that says that it is ok to beat your spouse (or be beaten by
him/her) while if it is the later then that is a positive aspect of their
mindset/belief-system.

>less likely to kill themselves,

Again mindset - if you follow the rules and be a good boy/girl you will be
rewarded after your death. Killing yourself is a "bad" thing and against
the rules thus is not something you do if you want your reward after a
"natural" death.

>and more likely to measure high personal satisfaction levels on standard
>psychological tests than are, say, readers of The Nation.

How culturally neutral are these tests and what are they supposed to be
measuring. Also are they designed to produce/force a designated result (it
is easy to generate a desired result or prevent an undesired result by
designing the questions to get specific types of answers). Note: I am not
questioning your claim but only asking if the claim has any relevance to
the real world as opposed to the world as you want it to be portrayed by
the test results.