top of page

The Work of Dr. S. Minsos

In Brief

FUNDAMENTALS OF SOCIALIZATION: The Matrix Game of Weird Tit-for-Tat

 

"Weird Tit-for-Tat facilitates exchanges of thoughts and and assigns labour. Our first dominator in the game of Weird Tit-for-tat is Mother. Mother’s energy is as it was, and ever shall be – given at HER expense for the good of another. Being frightened about the culture club’s chances for survival, Mother is severe. Mother demands respect. Mother instructs children on not only the courtesies enabling harmony in a close-knit group but also the crucial, life-saving behaviours to help them survive. The role of Mother the despot sounds familiar. Our first despots, be they benevolent or cruel, introduce us to public manners. 

"Where is our motivation to forego our competitive natures to make teams? How is it that selfish players can group up and stick together to act as single competing units? We know that individual survival traits (such as the aforementioned deception and envy) can be detrimental to a team's cohesiveness. Certainly, we function as individuals. We cheat. We lie. We love. We make individual choices (in a social situation will we dominate, comply or defect?). But here's the rub. To complicate our individualism, we have a herding instinct. We want make a herd (culture club)? That means we will have to make manners.

Like the desire to speak, the desire to herd is an instinct. Wisest herding choices can be explained mathematically (Nash), but finding the genetic source of an instinct is a cognitive mystery beyond the pay grade of mathematicians and economists.

 

When Mother gives Her children particular words, those which are appropriate to their herd, and when Mother demonstrates the polite way to socialize within the herd, Mother is complementing instincts already in place in the child. 

"Although Mother [the dominator] drums into us the importance of following the rules, teenaged players who slavishly follow the rules lose a competitive edge – for the good or ill of their various culture clubs. Music is a good example."​ Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies, p94

Author owes boundless gratitude to the opus of brilliant Sara Jeannette Duncan

(1861 - 1922).

To learn more about S. Minsos career and contributions, click below.

CELA and Eschia Books,

Audiobook

Sky Walker, Tehawennihárhos. Book 1. Mark Demeda, Reader. David Stinson, Production Manager. Available for borrowing at CELA libraries. Book 1 of the Mohawk Trilogy, Sky Walker Tehawennihárhos, was chosen for audio production by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta.

Available on Amazon Audible.ca.

I’m a paragraph. Double click me or click Edit Text, it's easy.

Margaret E. Atwood @MargaretAtwood Nov 25, 2022

Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies by Susan Minsos. ⁦@PhillipsPOBrien A propos of left-right convergences. Plus a bonus: Are women funny? [Check out] goodreads.com 

Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies

Read More >
Blue Flower

Foreword Magazine Review

Rating: 5 stars out of 5  "[Charter's] lovable, intricate characters and the challenges that they face every day, from protecting their lands to safeguarding their hearts, are an irresistible draw." Lillian Brown

Publications - Print & Audio

Botany

Audiobooks.com

Sky Walker Tehawennihárhos and the Battle of Vinegar Hill, Book 2, DELC, producer. Elijah Lucian, reader. Eric Svilpis, production manager.

Sky Walker Tehawennihárhos, DELC, producer. Elijah Lucian, reader. Eric Svilpis, production manager.

Three Rascals Press

Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies. Kindle and paperback available on Amazon.

DELC

Sky Walker Tehawennihárhos: Charter, Mohawk Trilogy, Book 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Dragon Hill Publishing

Sky Walker Tehawennihárhos and the Battle of Vinegar Hill, Mohawk Trilogy, Book 2. Writer awarded Canadian 150-year commemorative pin for books 1 and 2 of the trilogy, recognizing their contribution to Indigenous Truth and Reconciliation. Lectures to public (on the Grand River Navigation Company's scandal), sponsored by Government of Canada grant, given at the University of Alberta, and later, at MacEwan University during her tenure at the latter as Writer-in-Residence.

Great Plains Quarterly

Reviewer, “The History of Prairie Theatre” by E. Ross Stuart.

Course Co-Designer

Summer (for teens) and Winter (for High School teachers in Public and Catholic High School systems, Edmonton) drama classes and exhibition, and An Introduction to New Canadian Playwrights, done consecutively. Co-creator, with Sally Williams. Sponsored by Government of Alberta.

Spotted Cow Press

I’m a paragraph. Double click me or click Edit Text, it's easy.

Squire Davis and the Crazy River

Weird Tit-for-Tat: The Game of Our Lives

Podcast with Bob Chelmick (CKUA) about the matrix game of socialization, producer, Spotted Cow Press. 

Culture Clubs: The Art of Living Together

Read More >

Published, Human Universals

and Cultural Illusions

Focus on Canada and Japan, published in Reports of Serial Lectures on Canadian Studies. Tokyo: Meiji University, Centre for International Programs. As head of the Canadian Studies program at the University of Alberta, Dr Minsos was invited to lecture at Meiji University, Japan. 

Pink Flowers

ERA

PhD Dissertation 

Narration, Dialogue, and Plot Structure in Duncan's The Path of a Star, The Imperialist and Set in Authority

​MA Thesis – Toward a Myth of Community: James Reaney's Trilogy: The Donnellys

Image by Chua Bing Quan

Canada Theatre Review - Author

"The International Fallacy at the House Shocter Built."

Eschia Books

Sky Walker Tehawennihárhos, Mohawk Trilogy, Book 1

Principal Reviewer, NeWest Magazine

Canada New Play Reviews

Presenter

British Association of Canadian Studies, Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK. Topic: English-Canadian speech and British expressions.

The SIX Principles of Weird Tit-for-Tat

Neural artificial intelligence (AI) is neither conscious nor self-conscious.

Humans' "pretending" AI is a self-conscious agent is so threatening to the existence of Homo sapiens, one feels breathless just thinking about it.

Daniel Dennett on AI: “The real danger, I think, is not that machines more intelligent than we are will usurp our role as captains of our destinies, but that we will over-estimate the comprehension of our latest thinking tools, prematurely ceding authority to them far beyond their competence.”

S. Minsos on AI: A human and an AI chatbot should NEVER play the matrix socializing game – Weird Tit-for-Tat. Humans are boss, now, forever and always. 

1.

The shape of a culture club is a triangle (a few dominators regulate many compilors), and the triangle, a graphic of a power structure, exists within the never-ending circle of life. The herd reacts to current affordances – all power structures are the same, only manners differ, culture club to culture club;

2. 

One "Race". 

3. 

No Gods. 

Six Principles

Consulting

4. 

Our limbic system does not fight with but complements our intelligence (get your machinations off the limbic, AI.);

5. 

Contemporary affordances affect an individual's socio-political choices - who dominates, who complies, who defects;

 

6. 

Female is the biological default.

No God - Just Us

bottom of page