Replying to LO30233 --
Dear GD and LO,
Credos not Kudos.
I was effectively, very effectively, required to stop my formal education
early. I was then at sixteen intended to become 'cannon fodder' for the
last days of the industrial age, i.e. to become a 'clerk' like my father
did, after his war service or become some menial appendage to some
Newtonian clockwork machine. As a matter of fact, I did all these things
for a number of years until I just clean ''broke''.
One reason I have a personal regard for our LO colleague, Barry Brownstein
is because he is a champion of the 'gateway', to tertiary education,
learning at a distance, correspondence learning, e-learning, call it what
you may. That was my personal escape route. Hours of personal study and
research, after the days work. Wolsey Hall, Oxford. An institution in
which, for the first time, I was treated with some 'dignity' and 'respect'
and as a person with 'potential'. (The capacity to 'become'). I craved
without knowing food like this, "By definition children and learning is a
human activity which least needs manipulation by others. Most learning is
not a result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered
participation in a meaningul setting."
The 'manipulators' are, today with the invention of this medium,
everywhere.
GD I am with you in what I sense are your misgivings. The way I read it in
the skies today, is in a new phenomenon...it goes under a guise...using
the term...'naked'...''naked leader''...I think it refers to the
possessor;-) of said 'title' and being bereft of 'bullshit'.
Is it a 'bottom up' phenomenon?
Thinking of metanoia, paradigm shifting....I see 'connections' as do i
sense others, between authentic 'religious conversion', metanoia, paradigm
shifts...and a nervous breakdown. (Think >> ceremonies in primitive
societies, used to induce (educe?) transit to 'higher' states)...people
everywhere here in UK under all sorts of stresses and strains, living at
edges of banality...mostly smart arse ;-) media induced...sunk in home
owner petit bourgeois consumer values (sic) run amok...A famous and
respected UK artist was quoted today as saying, " Twice a week I attend my
zen mediation classes. But there is always a time when I need some real
'empty mindedness', so then I turn on my t.v and I watch two hours of
Newsnight (current affairs) on BBC2"...
''The end of culture as we know it'' (DP Dash). Possibly.
Someone called Anthony Wallace envisions people as having
'mazeways'...mental models of sorts...''-that allow for the maintenance of
behavioural regularities in order to act in ways that reduce stress at all
levels of the system...repeated information that his 'mazeway' isn't
effective he/she has to choose, take the strain or choose a new paradigm"
...I think, GD that this is what some of those you refer to have 'latched
onto.' Brand;-) New 'new age' gurus.
Such 'prophets' have proliferated in Africa and other third world
countries...In Lagos a proliferation on them, " - they (the messiahs) have
gone so far as to create their own trade union." A stunning report isn't
it, since it in no way could have been information likely to be accessed
by the author of the Billy Budd syndrome.
My take? Our deepest psychological and spiritual needs are in a state of
gr owing crisis.
My preferred 'Naked' gurus, messiahs?
St.Francis of Assissi.
Mandela (who used to strip bare to wash in the open every day of his
confinement)
These ' NAKED' others?
Let us save up our pennies and buy them a collective ''codpiece'' ;-)
At, you have just written on mentors...I found this from Samuel Johnson :
"The task of our present ------ ;-) is very different; it requires
together with that learning which is to be gained from books, that
experience which can never be attained by solitary diligence, but must
arise from general converse, and accurate observation of the living
world."
Here is something some-one (anonymously) wrote beside a painting, which
they created on a workshop. People as young as eight months and as old as
seventy attend these, so guess the age of the author.
Paint Rain
When paint rains
People open their souls
And out pours a choir
With songs of joy,
In harmony and sounds of music
Paints, a message
That tastes of
Strawberries and cream,
Painting the inside
Of the body and feeling
The soul.
Love,
Andrew
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