Dear Learners and Dear Greg,
You wrote:
>This is the first time I have felt compelled to speak out.
>John Truty in LO23264 "For what end" brings up a topic that has been
>rumbling in my mind for a while too.
The spirit of your contribution reminded me of a poem in one of Scott
Peck's books.
I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air
go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the
men and women laughing in the diners and
sleepers shall pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: "Omaha."
And what I wonder might be the mental state of the driver of this
impressive but ephemeral train, hurtling through it's own peculiar history
to an uncertain demise?
'Insatiably desiring, infinitely plastic, totally passive and always a little
bit sleepy; unpredictably labile and disloyal (to products); basically woolly
minded and non obsessive about traditional truth; relaxed and undemanding
with respect to the canons of traditional philosophy, indifferent to its
values, and easily moved to buy whatever at that moment seems to help the
underlying personal inadequacies- this is pecuniary philosophy's conception
of man and women in our culture.
It appears that Madison Ave. is not so much a 'street of dreams' but rather
an 'alley of contempt.'
A famous advertisement carries this message to the impresarios of
advertising,
' -And once you have got this narcotic viewing/apprehending habit, you are
hooked- as witness the fact that every year our ratings climb ... we
deliver almost as many people as football, week in, week out.' New York
Times.
So, you/we are 'delivered' thus differently and according to the
subject/object relation. The Eagle has flown and the crows line up on the
telegraph wires with just enough room to ruffle their feathers as they view
the contents of the vacated nest.
The business community ;-) must be watchful of such momentary
illuminations as given here by the anthropologist Jules Henry, lest the
'cover' or 'cloak' of benign CARING be blown away on the most gentle of
truthful seeking breezes.
The occasional release of our 'free energy' from the constraints of
maintaining the 'existing order' to create a new and 'higher orders',
without and within, is the work we may, you may now 'choose' to dedicate
some imagination to.
Daydreaming helps.
Leonardo's for daydreaming, -
'Men shall walk and not stir, they shall speak with those who are not
present, they shall hear those who do not speak. And it shall seem to men
that they see destruction in the sky, and flames descending therefrom
shall seem to fly away in terror; they shall hear creatures of every kind
speaking human language; they shall run in a moment to diverse parts of
the world without movement; they shall see the most radiant splendours
amidst darkness. 0' marvel of mankind! What frenzy has thus impelled you!
You will speak with animals of every species and they with you in human
speech. You shall behold yourselves falling from great heights without
suffering any injury; torrents will accompany you, and will mingle in
their rapid course.'
Sounds awfully like 'entropy production', that last phrase...
Now, 'the children' since you mention schools.
'Homo Sapiens train (culturalise) children for the roles they will fill as
adults. So an Eskimo trains his children to hunt and put his spear into a
dead polar bear and the modern American child turns on the television and
absorbs commercials, so that the former becomes a skilled hunter while the
other a skilled consumer.'
'-The American child, like the modern child of any developed nation is taught
and trained to insatiable consumption of impulsive choice and infinite
variety in a world that starves, lacks real democracy and shrinks and
shrivels by the hour.'
The brain is MADE into a 'box'.
Sound and feel familiar?
It (this not so modern 'pragmatic' - if it works, wear it - and
'pecuniary' - if it looks nice, buy it- philosophy) works on an assumption
that a child's brain retains most what gets in there first. There was a
case I will not detail but will allude to, in which a North American
advertiser sought to 'burn' (aka 'brand';-) into the brains of our
children through the 'learning tools' of the kindergarten via a bespoke
book of the alphabet. -'G' is for General Motors...¦'O' is for Oxo etc'
and with each Corporation paying for the privilege. -There was indignation
and uproar from some parents, 'Brainwashing', they cried. Pecuniary
philosophy educates to buy, inspiration means to inspire to buy, dreaming
is about 'products and ownership' visions are means to achieve them.
Sound familiar?
They are vast and subtle the ways of 'pecuniary philosophy', even into the
domain of toys.
In the UK the perk of Company cars are termed 'toys for the boys...'
The idea then is apparently to burn the images of 'brand' names into the
minds of children early so they will learn to be loyal customers in
adulthood.
What is a brand I asked? 'It is a promise kept.' replied the marketing
guru with a grin.
'So many priests, so little spirituality.' Camus
And, of course he omitted to mention the 'burning steel' that scars and
'marks' for life and reduces the individual as to a herd.
'Schools metamorphose the child, giving it a kind of Self the school can
manage, and then proceeds to minister to the Self it has made.'
Mmm, MANAGE and MINISTER in one telling sentence.
Why do we recoil from what advertisers are said here to do?
'Is it because they (the children) are unable to defend themselves? We
resent an attack on such a defenceless being? Or, more powerfully yet,
that we find embodied in children the last vestiges of our squandered
decency? We want to hold him/her dear.'
BUT what a distance between DESIRE and NEED.
What a chasm.
How shall we 'bridge' that?
What lies we live in truth, do we not?
'The Flower-Eyed Wonderment of Babes;
The Phantasy of their Play;
The Joy of Christmas'
-The brand image created on
Television and embedded in
The minds of children assures
Good volumes for these items...
(New York Times, 11th November 1960)
Repeat, November 1960
Yes, you've seen it.
It WAS you and it remains you who 'were' those children. It was your/our
very 'culture' speaking of/to us.
You/we were those children; you/we are those children.
Do not mistake a 'church' for a 'spiritual home'. Nor mistake a 'priest'
for a 'holy man'.
I found this, and now maybe is a good time to learn it by heart, not the
words but the meaning, simple enough. -
'The central issue is Love of learning for its own sake, not as the
creature of drive, exploited largely for survival and prestige. When
learning is loved for itself (-as any and every child should be so loved),
noise is at a minimum and never endangers the subject matter. Creative
cultures have loved the 'beautiful person' -meditative, intellectual and
exhalted. As for the creative individual, the history of great
civilisations seems to reveal little about creativity except that it has
had an obstinate way of emerging only in gifted individuals, and that it
has never appeared in the mass of the people. Loving the beautiful person
more we might alter this.'
I nurture many thoughts about the future- beliefs like some small trees on
a windswept hill; '-that mankind has a destiny of perfection nature holds
mysteriously in store for him.'
But-
Another vision stands in the way... a failed renaissance.
Master Leonardo; tell me about love and learning.
'Love only makes me remember, it alone makes me alert.'
And what of our 'knowing' things in the world?
'Speculatore delle cose; non ti laldare di conoscere le cose che
ordinariamente per se medesima la natura conduce, ma rallegrati di
conoscere il fine di quelle cose che son designate dalla mente tua.'
That is beautiful, but I need a translation.
'Investigator, do not flatter yourself that you know the things nature
performs for herself, but rejoice in knowing the purpose of those things
designed by your own mind.'
Perhaps you will tell me about your experience of fear, desire and learning.
'I am drawn by my ardent desire, and once impatient to see the great
abundance of strange forms created by that artificer, Nature, I wandered
for some time among shadowed rocks. I came upon the mouth of a huge cave
before which I stopped for a moment, stupefied by such an unknown thing. I
arched my back, rested my left hand upon my knee;-) and with my right
shaded my eyes; several times I leaned to one side, then the other, to see
if I could distinguish anything, but the great darkness within made this
impossible. After a time there arose both a fear and a desire, fear of
the dark and menacing cave; desire to see whether it contained some
marvelous thing.'
Thank you, that is beautiful and fitting too and reminds me very much of
something else I know. What is that you say... ?
'The abbreviators (of works) do harm to knowledge and to love, for the
love of anything is the offspring of knowledge, love being more fervent in
proportion as knowledge is more certain. And this certainty springs from a
complete knowledge of all the parts which united compose the whole of the
thing which ought to be loved. True it is that impatience, the mother of
folly, is she who praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long
enough to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as our
human body. And then they want to comprehend the mind of God, which
embraces the whole universe, weighing and mincing it into infinite parts
as if they had dissected it. 0 human stupidity! Do you not perceive that
you have spent your whole life within yourself?'
How much time did I spend with my child last week?
But most of us cannot enjoy the human capacity to digest fully and evolve
emergently anything akin to the kind of encompassing comprehension that
your mind and that of the de Lange's of this world seem able to do. What
shall we do?
My mind was shifted to a diverse part of the world, time and space, newer
and older world together.
I am slipping.
'The appearance of art amid the energy and confusion of life's movement
can obscure it's form and reduces it to something like a flash of light. -
Even in the case of painted objects, such as memorial posts or hollow log
coffins, which remain visible until they rot away, the brightness quickly
fades. -Smudging helps to obscure the form of the painting; reducing
brilliance- dullness protects people from the power of the design and
maintains power over knowledge. The power resides in revelation. Its
rarity and the shortness of its duration thus enhance the impact of the
moment of seeing, -'
This is becoming ephemeral.
'Like a rainbow?'
'Very much like a rainbow.'
'And is that not very real to you?'
'The form or the content?'
'Both assuredly.'
'The colours most assuredly?'
'Indeed.'
'How many colours are in your rainbow?'
'Let me count them, violet, blue, green, red, and yellow. Five.'
'And I counted only seventeen million.'
De Kooning the artist explains how he prefers not to confront reality, but
to dip into it.
'Each new glimpse is determined by many, many glimpses before.
It's this glimpse which inspires you- like an occurrence.
And I notice those are always my moments of having an idea that maybe I could
start a painting.
Everything is already in art- like a big bowl of soup everything is
already in there: and you just stick your hand in, and find something for
you. But it is already there, like a stew.
There's no way of looking at a work of art by itself, it's not self
evident it needs a history; it needs a lot of talking about: it's part of
a whole man's life.
Y'know the real world, this so called real world,
is just like something you put up with,
like everybody else.
I'm in my element when I am a little bit out of this world:
then I'm in the real world-
I'm on the beam. Because when I'm falling, I'm doing alright; when I'm
slipping, I say, Hey, this is interesting!
It's when I'm standing upright that bothers me: I'm not doing so good; I'm
stiff.
As a matter of fact, I'm really slipping most of the time, into that glimpse.
I'm like a slipping glimpser.
I get excited just to see
that sky is blue and earth is earth.
And that is the hardest thing-, to see a rock somewhere, and there it is:
earth coloured rock,
I'm getting close to that.
Then there is a time in life when you just take a walk: and you walk in
your own landscape.
Willem de Kooning Sketchbook Three Americans, 1960.
Last year I was almost invited to speak on any topic I chose to a hundred
senior students at a private high school. (Public School, so called in the
UK).
The topic would have been 'learning in the Toa'.
The headmistress maybe heard the wind speaking and I was not confirmed, or
maybe it was something else that did not happen that might otherwise have.
Maybe.
If there were one thing I would restore to the world of LO it would be
imagination.
I do not know what PDSA is, but it makes me want to cry, I don't know why.
'Education is a wonderful thing,' said Oscar Wilde, 'but it is well to
remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be
taught...¦'
Just a glimpse!
Best wishes,
Andrew Campbell.
[Host's Note: There were several special characters in your msg Andrew. I
had to replace them with '...' ..Rick]
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