I can’t choose one.  Well, I probably could, but my second choice is so amazing that I had to mention it for 2009 as well.

Two books that I read this year that I absolutely loved were Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and No Impact Man by Colin Beavan.

I cannot say enough about either of them.  I wish I could say they changed my life, but that’s sadly not entirely true.  They have, however, changed my way of thinking about a lot of things.  For realsies.  (Sorry, I’m BWT [blogging while tired] so eloquence is out of the picture.)  That being said, the lack of life changing is totally my fault.  These were both impulse buys at Barnes and Noble, from just killing time by wandering around a bookstore.  And they were the best impulse buys ever.  I highly highly highly recommend them to everyone.  Ishmael is already on the required reading list for any potential husbands and all my future children.  (Don’t worry, neither of those lists actually exist.)  I think the fact that I read them right after each other really enhanced the experience.  Just…read them, okay?!

I really could go on for ages about both books, but I’m getting sleepy and I open tomorrow (although by the time this posts I’ll have four minutes until I clock out…) so I’m gonna stop now before I make any less sense.

This post is part of the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

Daniel Quinn has an intriguing and quite plausible take on sustainable living.   I read 3 of his best known works recently (Ishmael,  My Ishmael & Story of B), one after another in a span of 2 weeks, after Ishmael captivated me.

All 3 books read like a novel and so not tough to consume.

He says civilization as we know it (agriculture, religion, city-building, industrial revolution, rich-poor divide, famines, poverty, man killing whole species to satisfy his hunger, population explosion, food shortage etc. all leading to unsustainable living and eventual collapse) is just a fleeting moment in the larger human time-scale.  Our history books cover only these last few 1000 years.

Before civilization happened, we have the black box called pre-history, which is seldom studied.  This pre-historical period is believed to have been a much much longer time period.

In terms of proportion, human civilisation is just a small fraction of overall human history.

And man has lived the entire pre-history sustainably in perfect harmony with his environment.

In the name of civilization, we are destroying the world and ourselves.

Now, how did the pre-historical man live?

1.  He was predominantly a hunter-gatherer and lived in small tribes.

2.  He considered himself just another animal in the food-chain, albeit fleet-footed and powerful.  He didn’t disturb food chains by cutting off links.  We are now doing that by killing whole species like rodents, foxes, fishes etc.  If one species reduces in numbers dramatically or becomes extinct , both its predator and prey are affected.  This causes a domino effect across all other parallel food chains, which can eventually destroy all life including humans.

3.  His tribal population was controlled by food availability.   He didn’t have a food shortage problem like we have now.  During seasons of lesser food, he didn’t breed.  So he managed to control the number of mouths to feed.

4.  He didn’t practice agriculture, which can be described as food production and storage.  He just hunted what was available.  Agriculture means we produce food at will.  More food leads to more breeding……more population, and this seems to be a scientifically proven fact.  More population needs more food….and so it goes on.   Good bye to sustainable living.

I think the fundamental threat to sustainable living is population explosion, unabashed consumption and wastage.

Daniel Quinn deserves a read by everyone of us.

Credit imagine: gettyimages.com

“Oamenii nu au în ei nimic fundamental defect. Dacă le dai să pună în scenă o povestire care îi pune în armonie cu lumea, ei vor trăi în armonie cu această lume. Dacă le dai să pună în scenă o povestire care îi pune în conflict cu lumea, aceștia vor trăi în conflict cu această lume. Dacă le dai să pună în scenă o povestire în care ei sunt stăpânii lumii, ei se vor comporta ca și cum ar fi stăpânii acestei lumi. Și dacă le dai să pună în scenă o povestire în care lumea e un inamic care trebuie subjugat, ei o vor subjuga la fel ca pe un inamic, și într-o bună zi, inevitabil, acest inamic le va sta la picioare, răpus, cum se întâmplă acum cu această lume.”

Eu aș vrea ca măcar unii din noi să punem în scenă prima povestire, iar pentru asta trebuie să ne depărtăm de celelalte. Cred că primii pași îi facem deja, încet dar sigur!

“If I am too cold for human friendship, I trust I shall not soon be too cold for natural influences. If appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. Those qualities which bring you near to the one estrange you from the other.

It is hard for a man to take money from his friends, or any service. This suggests how all men should be related.”

– H.D.T., April 11, 1852

Dear Henry –

Apologies for the lapse — I took a day off to focus on Africa stuff! But since you were an activist like me — and a fine one, too, unlike me! — I know you haven’t even peeped.

Here’s what I am coming to realize now. The more I read you, the more I discover what a fine line you tread between human affinity and naturalistic detachment. You’d be dismayed if you witnessed the way we live now. America is now in its fast-paced, technological heyday, and I think people are increasingly suffering from a double loss: detachment from the natural world and from each other. I’m not the only one around here who thinks we’re past our sell-by date, and let me count the ways: as a leader in the world, as a citizenry, as human beings. Somewhere down the line, perhaps we lost the signal. Some thinkers you would easily consider friends if you met, like Derrick Jensen and Daniel Quinn, make the case that most of us forgot how to engage one another, turned greedy and started worshipping the god Profit rather than holding ourselves accountable for the welfare of other people and the world we all inhabit. And once it’s done, they all say, the damage is irreparable. Many other radical thinkers blame it on technology. (“Luddites,” I can hear the corporate bigwigs spitting contemptuously as they shake their graying, fat, and mostly white heads).

How did our iPods estrange us from not only the forests and fields and ponds, Henry, but from one another? And how do we live with ourselves when the benefits of civilization are bought so cheaply, at the price of human dignity and sometimes human lives? I won’t even get started with the non-human lives; the list could fill the remaining entries in this blog and I have only one year to write it. Put simply, maybe it’s this: in your day, human friendship and natural influences were two separate things. Now they are one and the same…rendered absent or meaningless by a slew of other forces which our race has learned to wield dangerously and thrash around in countless ways. Abusing such things as money and technology, we have taken your cherished individualism a step too far. This is evidence of the same human frailty, passed down from one generation to another — and an entire movement has begun, in spite all odds, to try to reverse the damage.

Finally, on the topic of money, which you mention as an aside in your journal: I heard again from my friend Eddy the other day, who is trying valiantly to convince me that my pursuit of fulfillment is delusional. He insists the world will only pay me in exchange for something it wants. That message is well-meant, but I don’t remember that I ever disagreed.

Am I delusional?…Wait — don’t answer that!

Very Gratefully,

Hannah

P.S. Your contemporaries labeled you a delusional contrarian, and now you’re exalted as the father of American environmentalism and contemporary spirituality. I marvel at our culture’s uncanny knack for bestowing a person with such posthumous hindsight. Not that I’ll ever be getting any.

[...]
— Dar să revenim la povestea noastră… După cum ai spus, omului i-a trebuit mult, mult timp ca să se prindă că lui îi erau destinate lucruri mai măreţe decât ar putea realiza trăind ca un leu sau ca un urs marsupial. Timp de vreo trei milioane de ani el a fost doar o parte din acea anarhie, a fost doar încă una din făpturile acelea care se tăvăleau prin mocirlă.
— Corect.
— D-abia acum vreo zece mii de ani el şi-a dat în sfârşit seama că locul lui nu era în mocirlă. A trebuit să se ridice din mocirlă şi să ia în sfârşit treaba în mâini şi s-o pună în ordine.
— Corect.
— Dar această lume nu s-a supus cu smerenie stăpânirii umane, nu-i aşa?
— Nu, nu s-a supus.
— Nu, lumea l-a sfidat. Vântul şi ploaia dărâmau ceea ce omul construia. Jungla lupta să ocupe din nou câmpiile pe care el le-a golit pentru culturile sale. Păsările înhăţau seminţele pe care el le semăna. Insectele ronţăiau lăstarii pe care el îi îngrijea. Şoarecii jefuiau recoltele pe care el le aduna. Lupii şi vulpile furau animalele pe care el le înmulţea şi le hrănea. Munţii, râurile şi oceanele stăteau în loc şi nu vroiau să se dea la o parte din calea lui. Cutremurul, inundaţia, uraganul, viscolul şi seceta nu vroiau să dispară la comanda lui.
— Într-adevăr.
— Această lume nu s-a supus cu smerenie stăpânirii umane, aşadar ce a trebuit el să-i facă?

— Ce vrei să spui?
— Dacă un rege vine într-un oraş care nu se supune stăpânirii sale, ce trebuie să facă el?
— Trebuie să-l cucerească.
— Desigur. Pentru a deveni stăpânul acestei lumi, omul trebuie mai întâi s-o cucerească.
— Dumnezeule, am spus şi aproape că am sărit de pe scaun, mi-am dat o palmă peste frunte şi toate cele.
— Da?
— Auzi asta de cincizeci de ori pe zi. Poţi da drumul la radio sau la televizor şi o auzi în fiecare oră. Omul cucereşte deşerturile, omul cucereşte oceanele, omul cucereşte atomul, omul cucereşte elementele naturii, omul cucereşte spaţiul cosmic.
Ismael a zâmbit.
— Nu m-ai crezut când ţi-am spus că această povestire e ambientă în cultura ta. Acum înţelegi ce am vrut să zic. Mitologia culturii voastre vă bâzâie în urechi atât de constant încât nimeni nu îi mai dă nici cea mai mică atenţie. Bineînţeles că omul cucereşte spaţiul cosmic şi atomul şi deşerturile şi oceanele şi elementele naturii. După mitologia voastră, el pentru asta s-a născut.
— Da. Mi-e foarte clar acum.
[...]

Ismael
Daniel Quinn

Aici niște poze cel puțin interesante despre regatul nostru.

This is the transcript of a talk given by Daniel Quinn, to an audience of homeschoolers .  Quinn first caught my eye with his novel, Ishmael. Several friends of mine had read the book and spoke highly of it. Later, when I began studying modern schooling, I discovered this little gem. Enjoy!

I suspect that not everyone in this audience knows who I am or why I’ve been invited to speak to you to day. After all, I’ve never written a book or even an article about home schooling or unschooling. I’ve been called a number of things: a futurist, a planetary philosopher, an anthropologist from Mars. Recently I was introduced to an audience as a cultural critic, and I think this probably says it best. As you’ll see, in my talk to you today, I will be trying to place schooling and unschooling in the larger context of our cultural history and that of our species as well.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with my work, I should begin by explaining what I mean by “our culture.” Rather than burden you with a definition, I’ll give you a simple test that you can use wherever you go in the world. If the food in that part of the world is under lock and key, and the people who live there have to work to get it, then you’re among people of our culture. If you happen to be in a jungle in the interior of Brazil or New Guinea, however, you’ll find that the food is not under lock and key. It’s simply out there for the taking, and anyone who wants some can just go and get it. The people who live in these areas, often called aboriginals, stone-age peoples, or tribal peoples clearly belong to a culture radically different from our own.

I first began to focus my attention on the peculiarities of our own culture in the early 1960s, when I went to work for what was then a cutting-edge publisher of educational materials, Science Research Associates. I was in my mid-twenties and as thoroughly acculturated as any senator, bus-driver, movie star, or medical doctor. My fundamental acceptances about the universe and humanity’s place in it were rock-solid and thoroughly conventional.

But it was a stressful time to be alive, in some ways even more stressful than the present. Many people nowadays realize that human life may well be in jeopardy, but this jeopardy exists in some vaguely defined future, twenty or fifty or a hundred years hence. But in those coldest days of the Cold War everyone lived with the realization that a nuclear holocaust could occur literally at any second, without warning. It was very realistically the touch of a button away.

Human life would not be entirely snuffed out in a holocaust of this kind. In a way, it would be even worse than that. In a matter of hours, we would be thrown back not just to the Stone Age but to a level of almost total helplessness. In the Stone Age, after all, people lived perfectly well without supermarkets, shopping malls, hardware stores, and all the elaborate systems that keep these places stocked with the things we need. Within hours our cities would disintegrate into chaos and anarchy, and the necessities of life would vanish from store shelves, never to be replaced. Within days famine would be widespread.

Skills that are taken for granted among Stone Age peoples would be unknown to the survivors–the ability to differentiate between edible and inedible foods growing in their own environment, the ability to stalk, kill, dress, and preserve game animals, and most important the ability to make tools from available materials. How many of you know how to cure a hide? How to make a rope from scratch? How to flake a stone tool? Much less how to smelt metal from raw ore. Commonplace skills of the paleolithic, developed over thousands of years, would be lost arts.

All this was freely acknowledged by people who didn’t doubt for a moment that we were living the way humans were meant to live from the beginning of time, who didn’t doubt for a moment that the things our children were learning in school were exactly the things they should be learning.
I’d been hired at SRA to work on a major new mathematics program that had been under development for several years in Cleveland. In my first year, we were going to publish the kindergarten and first-grade programs. In the second year, we’d publish the second-grade program, in the third year, the third-grade program, and so on. Working on the kindergarten and first-grade programs, I observed something that I thought was truly remarkable. In these grades, children spend most of their time learning things that no one growing up in our culture could possibly avoid learning. For example, they learn the names of the primary colors. Wow, just imagine missing school on the day when they were learning blue.
You’d spend the rest of your life wondering what color the sky is. They learn to tell time, to count, and to add and subtract, as if anyone could possibly fail to learn these things in this culture. And of course they make the beginnings of learning how to read. I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest an experiment. Two classes of 30 kids, taught identically and given the identical text materials throughout their school experience, but one class is given no instruction in reading at all and the other is given the usual instruction. Call it the Quinn Conjecture: both classes will test the same on reading skills at the end of twelve years. I feel safe in making this conjecture because ultimately kids learn to read the same way they learn to speak, by hanging around people who read and by wanting to be able to do what these people do.

It occurred to me at this time to ask this question: Instead of spending two or three years teaching children things they will inevitably learn anyway, why not teach them some things they will not inevitably learn and that they would actually enjoy learning at this age? How to navigate by the stars, for example. How to tan a hide. How to distinguish edible foods from inedible foods. How to build a shelter from scratch. How to make tools from scratch. How to make a canoe. How to track animals–all the forgotten but still valuable skills that our civilization is actually built on.

Of course I didn’t have to vocalize this idea to anyone to know how it would be received. Being thoroughly acculturated, I could myself explain why it was totally inane. The way we live is the way humans were meant to live from the beginning of time, and our children were being prepared to enter that life. Those who came before us were savages, little more than brutes. Those who continue to live the way our ancestors lived are savages, little more than brutes. The world is well rid of them, and we’re well rid of every vestige of them, including their ludicrously primitive skills.

Our children were being prepared in school to step boldly into the only fully human life that had ever existed on this planet. The skills they were acquiring in school would bring them not only success but deep personal fulfillment on every level. What did it matter if they never did more than work in some mind-numbing factory job? They could parse a sentence! They could explain to you the difference between a Petrarchan sonnet and a Shakespearean sonnet! They could extract a square root! They could show you why the square of the two sides of a right triangle were equal to the square of the hypotenuse! They could analyze a poem! They could explain to you how a bill passes congress! They could very possibly trace for you the economic causes of the Civil War. They had read Melville and Shakespeare, so why would they not now read Dostoevsky and Racine, Joyce and Beckett, Faulkner and O’Neill? But above all else, of course, the citizen’s education–grades K to twelve–prepared children to be fully-functioning participants in this great civilization of ours. The day after their graduation exercises, they were ready to stride confidently toward any goal they might set themselves.

Of course, then, as now, everyone knew that the citizen’s education was doing no such thing. It was perceived then–as now–that there was something strangely wrong with the schools. They were failing–and failing miserably–at delivering on these enticing promises. Ah well, teachers weren’t being paid enough, so what could you expect? We raised teachers’ salaries–again and again and again–and still the schools failed. Well, what could you expect? The schools were physically decrepit, lightless, and uninspiring. We built new ones–tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of them–and still the schools failed. Well, what could you expect? The curriculum was antiquated and irrelevant. We modernized the curriculum, did our damnedest to make it relevant–and still the schools failed. Every week–then as now–you could read about some bright new idea that would surely “fix” whatever was wrong with our schools: the open classroom, team teaching, back to basics, more homework, less homework, no homework–I couldn’t begin to enumerate them all. Hundreds of these bright ideas were implemented–thousands of them were implemented–and still the schools failed.

Within our cultural matrix, every medium tells us that the schools exist to prepare children for a successful and fulfilling life in our civilization (and are therefore failing). This is beyond argument, beyond doubt, beyond question. In Ishmael I said that the voice of Mother Culture speaks to us from every newspaper and magazine article, every movie, every sermon, every book, every parent, every teacher, every school administrator, and what she has to say about the schools is that they exist to prepare children for a successful and fulfilling life in our civilization (and are therefore failing). Once we step outside our cultural matrix, this voice no longer fills our ears and we’re free to ask some new questions. Suppose the schools aren’t failing? Suppose they’re doing exactly what we really want them to do–but don’t wish to examine and acknowledge?

Granted that the schools do a poor job of preparing children for a successful and fulfilling life in our civilization, but what things do they do excellently well? Well, to begin with, they do a superb job of keeping young people out of the job market. Instead of becoming wage-earners at age twelve or fourteen, they remain consumers only–and they consume billions of dollars worth of merchandise, using money that their parents earn. Just imagine what would happen to our economy if overnight the high schools closed their doors. Instead of having fifty million active consumers out there, we would suddenly have fifty million unemployed youth. It would be nothing short of an economic catastrophe.

Of course the situation was very different two hundred years ago, when we were still a primarily agrarian society. Youngsters were expected and needed to become workers at age ten, eleven, and twelve. For the masses, a fourth, fifth, or sixth-grade education was deemed perfectly adequate. But as the character of our society changed, fewer youngsters were needed for farm work, and the enactment of child-labor laws soon made it impossible to put ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds to work in factories. It was necessary to keep them off the streets–and where better than in schools? Naturally, new material had to be inserted into the curriculum to fill up the time. It didn’t much matter what it was. Have them memorize the capitals of every state. Have them memorize the principle products of every state. Have them learn the steps a bill takes in passing Congress. No one wondered or cared if these were things kids wanted to know or needed to know–or would ever need to know. No one wondered or ever troubled to find out if the material being added to the curriculum was retained. The educators didn’t want to know, and, really, what difference would it make? It didn’t matter that, once learned, they were immediately forgotten. It filled up some time. The law decreed that an eighth-grade education was essential for every citizen, and so curriculum writers provided material needed for an eighth-grade education.

During the Great Depression it became urgently important to keep young people off the job market for as long as possible, and so it came to be understood that a twelfth-grade education was essential for every citizen. As before, it didn’t much matter what was added to fill up the time, so long as it was marginally plausible. Let’s have them learn how to analyze a poem, even if they never read another one in their whole adult life. Let’s have them read a great classic novel, even if they never read another one in their whole adult life. Let’s have them study world history, even if it all just goes in one ear and out the other. Let’s have them study Euclidean geometry, even if two years later they couldn’t prove a single theorem to save their lives. All these things and many, many more were of course justified on the basis that they would contribute to the success and rich fulfilment that these children would experience as adults. Except, of course, that it didn’t. But no one wanted to know about that. No one would have dreamed of testing young people five years after graduation to find out how much of it they’d retained. No one would have dreamed of asking them how useful it had been to them in realistic terms or how much it had contributed to their success and fulfilment as humans. What would be the point of asking them to evaluate their education? What did they know about it, after all? They were just high-school graduates, not professional educators.

At the end of the Second World War, no one knew what the economic future was going to be like. With the disappearance of the war industries, would the country fall back into the pre-war depression slump? The word began to go out that the citizen’s education should really include four years of college.
Everyone should go to college. As the economy continued to grow, however, this injunction began to be softened. Four years of college would sure be good for you, but it wasn’t part of the citizen’s education, which ultimately remained a twelfth-grade education.

It was in the good years following the war, when there were often more jobs than workers to fill them, that our schools began to be perceived as failing. With ready workers in demand, it was apparent that kids were coming out of school without knowing much more than the sixth-grade graduates of a century ago. They’d “gone through” all the material that had been added to fill up the time–analyzed poetry, diagramed sentences, proved theorems, solved for x, plowed through thousands of pages of history and literature, written bushels of themes, but for the most part they retained almost none of it–and of how much use would it be to them if they had? From a business point of view, these high-school graduates were barely employable.

But of course by then the curriculum had achieved the status of scripture, and it was too late to acknowledge that the program had never been designed to be useful. The educators’ response to the business community was, “We just have to give the kids more of the same–more poems to analyze, more sentences to diagram, more theorems to prove, more equations to solve, more pages of history and literature to read, more themes to write, and so on.” No one was about to acknowledge that the program had been set up to keep young people off the job market–and that it had done a damn fine job of that at least.

But keeping young people off the job market is only half of what the schools do superbly well. By the age of thirteen or fourteen, children in aboriginal societies–tribal societies–have completed what we, from our point of view, would call their “education.” They’re ready to “graduate” and become adults. In these societies, what this means is that their survival value is 100%. All their elders could disappear overnight, and there wouldn’t be chaos, anarchy, and famine among these new adults. They would be able to carry on without a hitch. None of the skills and technologies practiced by their parents would be lost. If they wanted to, they could live quite independently of the tribal structure in which they were reared.

But the last thing we want our children to be able to do is to live independently of our society. We don’t want our graduates to have a survival value of 100%, because this would make them free to opt out of our carefully constructed economic system and do whatever they please. We don’t want them to do whatever they please, we want them to have exactly two choices (assuming they’re not independently wealthy). Get a job or go to college. Either choice is good for us, because we need a constant supply of entry-level workers and we also need doctors, lawyers, physicists, mathematicians, psychologists, geologists, biologists, school teachers, and so on. The citizen’s education accomplishes this almost without fail.
Ninety-nine point nine percent of our high school graduates make one of these two choices.
And it should be noted that our high-school graduates are reliably entry-level workers. We want them to have to grab the lowest rung on the ladder. What sense would it make to give them skills that would make it possible for them to grab the second rung or the third rung? Those are the rungs their older brothers and sisters are reaching for. And if this year’s graduates were reaching for the second or third rungs, who would be doing the work at the bottom? The business people who do the hiring constantly complain that graduates know absolutely nothing, have virtually no useful skills at all. But in truth how could it be otherwise?

So you see that our schools are not failing, they’re just succeeding in ways we prefer not to see. Turning out graduates with no skills, with no survival value, and with no choice but to work or starve are not flaws of the system, they are features of the system. These are the things the system must do to keep things going on as they are.

The need for schooling is bolstered by two well-entrenched pieces of cultural mythology. The first and most pernicious of these is that children will not learn unless they’re compelled to–in school. It is part of the mythology of childhood itself that children hate learning and will avoid it at all costs. Of course, anyone who has had a child knows what an absurd lie this is. From infancy onward, children are the most fantastic learners in the world. If they grow up in a family in which four languages are spoken, they will be speaking four languages by the time they’re three or four years old–without a day of schooling, just by hanging around the members of their family, because they desperately want to be able to do the things they do. Anyone who has had a child knows that they are tirelessly curious. As soon as they’re able to ask questions, they ask questions incessantly, often driving their parents to distraction. Their curiosity extends to everything they can reach, which is why every parent soon learns to put anything breakable, anything dangerous, anything untouchable up high–and if possible behind lock and key. We all know the truth of the joke about those childproof bottle caps: those are the kind that only children can open.

People who imagine that children are resistant to learning have a nonexistent understanding of how human culture developed in the first place. Culture is no more and no less than the totality of learned behavior and information that is passed from one generation to the next. The desire to eat is not transmitted by culture, but knowledge about how edible foods are found, collected, and processed is transmitted by culture. Before the invention of writing, whatever was not passed on from one generation to the next was simply lost, no matter what it was–a technique, a song, a detail of history. Among aboriginal peoples–those we haven’t destroyed–the transmission between generations is remarkably complete, but of course not 100% complete. There will always be trivial details of personal history that the older generation takes to its grave. But the vital material is never lost.

This comes about because the desire to learn is hardwired into the human child just the way that the desire to reproduce is hardwired into the human adult. It’s genetic. If there was ever a strain of humans whose children were not driven to learn, they’re long gone, because they could not be culture-bearers.

Children don’t have to be motivated to learn everything they can about the world they inhabit, they’re absolutely driven to learn it. By the onset of puberty, children in aboriginal societies have unfailingly learned everything they need to function as adults.

Think of it this way. In the most general terms, the human biological clock is set for two alarms. When the first alarm goes off, at birth, the clock chimes learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. When the second alarm goes off, at the onset of puberty, the clock chimes mate, mate, mate, mate, mate. The chime that goes learn, learn, learn never disappears entirely, but it becomes relatively faint at the onset of puberty. At that point, children cease to want to follow their parents around in the learning dance. Instead, they want to follow each other around in the mating dance.

We, of course, in our greater wisdom have decreed that the biological clock regulated by our genes must be ignored.
What sells most people on the idea of school is the fact that the unschooled child learns what it wants to learn when it wants to learn it. This is intolerable to them, because they’re convinced that children don’t want to learn anything at all–and they point to school children to prove it. What they fail to recognize is that the learning curve of preschool children swoops upward like a mountain–but quickly levels off when they enter school. By the third or fourth grade it’s completely flat for most kids. Learning, such as it is, has become a boring, painful experience they’d love to be able to avoid if they could. But there’s another reason why people abhor the idea of children learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it. They won’t all learn the same things! Some of them will never learn to analyze a poem! Some of them will never learn to parse a sentence or write a theme! Some of them will never read Julius Caesar! Some will never learn geometry! Some will never dissect a frog! Some will never learn how a bill passes Congress! Well, of course, this is too horrible to imagine. It doesn’t matter that 90% of these students will never read another poem or another play by Shakespeare in their lives. It doesn’t matter that 90% of them will never have occasion to parse another sentence or write another theme in their lives. It doesn’t matter that 90% retain no functional knowledge of the geometry or algebra they studied. It doesn’t matter that 90% never have any use for whatever knowledge they were supposed to gain from dissecting a frog. It doesn’t matter that 90% graduate without having the vaguest idea how a bill passes Congress. All that matters is that they’ve gone through it!

The people who are horrified by the idea of children learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it have not accepted the very elementary psychological fact that people (all people, of every age) remember the things that are important to them–the things they need to know–and forget the rest. I am a living witness to this fact. I went to one of the best prep schools in the country and graduated fourth in my class, and I doubt very much if I could now get a passing grade in more than two or three of the dozens of courses I took. I studied classical Greek for two solid years, and now would be unable to read aloud a single sentence.

One final argument people advance to support the idea that children need all the schooling we give them is that there is vastly more material to be learned today than there was in prehistoric times or even a century ago. Well, there is of course vastly more material that can be learned, but we all know perfectly well that it isn’t being taught in grades K to twelve. Whole vast new fields of knowledge exist today–things no one even heard of a century ago: astrophysics, biochemistry, paleobiology, aeronautics, particle physics, ethology, cytopathology, neurophysiology–I could list them for hours. But are these the things that we have jammed into the K-12 curriculum because everyone needs to know them? Certainly not. The idea is absurd. The idea that children need to be schooled for a long time because there is so much that can be learned is absurd. If the citizen’s education were to be extended to include everything that can be learned, it wouldn’t run to grade twelve, it would run to grade twelve thousand, and no one would be able to graduate in a single lifetime.

I know of course that there is no one in this audience who needs to be sold on the virtues of home schooling or unschooling. I hope, however, that I may have been able to add some philosophical, historical, anthropological, and biological foundation for your conviction that school ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

This post is coming to you in bullet points because my life is all over the place right now…but not necessarily in a bad way. It’s the end of the quarter, I have papers to write and projects to present – you know how it goes. Anyway, since my last post I have…

• visited my high school and caught up with my two favorite teachers. I might be running a workshop with the newsmagazine staff over my winter break, which I think will be really exciting.
• slaved over a 10-page paper that I hope my soc professor deems A-worthy
• witnessed my little sister’s first (informal) driving lesson:

• handed out candy to people well over the age of typical Trick-or-Treaters

how my mom did our four pumpkins this year…if you can’t tell, the top two are eyes, the middle one is a nose, and the bottom is a mouth. Ain’t she creative?

• turned these

• into these…

ugh, upside down. Just go with it. These were the bomb.com and the recipe can be found here.

• accepted an internship (!!!) – more about that another time, perhaps
• read an incredibly thought-provoking book for my soc class. I finished it a good 45 minutes ago and the wheels inside my head are still turning. I would definitely recommend this to pretty much anyone.
• scheduled my classes for next quarter, including the oh-so-daunting Communication Law. Ruh roh?

Tomorrow is my last day of class for the week, and I only have soc because history was canceled (!). This weekend, my little sister in my sorority’s best friend from home is coming in and it’s one of my friend’s 21st birthday party, so I’m sure something exciting will happen. Next week is the last week of classes, and I couldn’t be more relieved. This quarter hasn’t been bad by any means, but I am so ready for a break.

I promise once break starts I’ll have better posts, but, alas, school takes precedence over blogging.

Ştiu, o să pară un articol mistic. Asta e.

Am citit mai demult Ismael, o carte care mi-a plăcut extrem de mult, şi azi mi-am amintit de povestea aia cu Meduza (e la pagina 26, iată linkul ). Cam de la povestea asta mi-a venit ideea cu articolul următor. Nu ştiu de ce. Nici nu ştiu dacă va avea vreo legătură până la urmă cu Meduza, deşi ceva îmi spune ca va avea.  E tot o poveste. Eu nu ştiu să scriu altceva decât poveşti. Asta e, dacă mă simt mai apropiat de intuiţie decât de raţiune.

Mă gândesc la triburile din vechime şi la cele câteva care au mai rămas şi îmi sare în ochi un aspect foarte vizibil: ei trăiau în natură, în comuniune cu natura şi între membrii tribului existau legături foarte strânse. Mai mult, mie-mi pare că această legătură strânsă între Membrii Tribului – Natură poate fi asemuită foarte bine cu o simbioză. Simbioza este definită în felul următor în dex-ul nostru online cel de toate zilele – “Asociere a două vieţuitoare din specii diferite, care îşi duc viaţa în comun. ♦ (Fig.) Unire strânsă, intimă; prietenie. [Pron. -bi-o-. / < fr. symbiose, cf. gr. syn – cu, bios – viaşă]”. Putem considera natura o vieţuitoare? Vieţuitor este ceva în viaţă. Natura, după mine, este în viaţă în toate sensurile. Aşa că nimic nu mă opreşte să extind conceptul de vieţuitoare, astfel încât să cuprindă şi natura. Din câte ştiu simbioza presupune şi o dependenţă reciprocă a vieţuitoarelor care trăiesc în comun. De exemplu o termită care nu poate mistui lemnul, dar microbii din stomacul termitei pot, iar termita mănâncă ceea ce lasă microbii după ce au mâncat. Nu văd de ce triburile şi natura nu erau în dependenţă reciprocă. Aşa că o să continui de la ideea că tribul şi natura erau/sunt în simbioză. Eu aşa văd lucrurile.

Între membrii aceluiaşi trib exista o legătură strânsă, fără de care tribul n-ar mai fi putut supravieţui. Tribul era format din oameni, iar oamenii fac parte din aceiaşi specie. Ar fi putut exista simbioza între ei? Conform definiţiei, nu. Dar dacă ne imaginăm o legătură aşa de strânsă încât membrii tribului convieţuiau ca un întreg, ca un singur organism? Aş asemui tribul cu organismul uman, în cadrul căruia se petrec extraordinar de multe chestii de care nu suntem conştienţi. Nu suntem conştienţi de existenţa organismului în fiecare clipă, dar atunci când o facem ştim că facem parte din el şi el face parte din noi şi că gândul şi materia nu sunt despărţite, ci formează o unitate. Aici am cam generalizat. Sunt unii oameni care ridică în slăvi materialismul, alţii sunt cu imaterialul, alţii cu ambele, dar privite separat, ca fiind două părţi diferite, dar puţini sunt cei care cred în Holism. Sau mai mulţi. Nu ştiu. Nu i-am numarat. Să ne imaginăm că Tribul  este un organism de felul acesta ale cărui părţi se întrepătrund formând un întreg. Între Trib (organism) şi natură există o relaţie de simbioză, dar aş extinde (extind cam mult, nu?) şi aş merge până într-acolo încât aş spune că Tribul şi natura sunt O singură fiinţă. Termita şi microbii din stomacul ei sunt o singură fiinţă, la fel cum omul şi creierul său sunt o singură fiinţă. Da, dar creierul nu este o fiinţă. Aşa e. Nici creierul fără om nu ar exista la fel cum nici microbii ăia fără termită nu ar supravieţui. Aşa, pentru că am clarificat cât de cât pot merge mai departe, altfel devin plictisitorJ.

Ce mă face să cred în scenariul ăsta? Un fapt foarte simplu şi oarecum demonstrabil. Natura este împotriva sinuciderii. De ce triburile nu distrugeau natura? Pentru că era ca şi cum şi-ar fi extirpat creierul. De ce erau paşnici? Pentru că ar fi durut o eventuală răzvrătire. Aş asemui răzvrătirea cu o boală a unui organism pe care anticorpii o elimină mai devreme sau mai târziu.

Dar, se spune că ar fi existat nişte rebeli care ar fi ales calea răzvrătirii, la Revoluţia agricolă, acum 10 000 de ani. Au format un alt organism separat de natură, doar aparent, care se baza pe exploatarea naturii, adică pe auto-devorare şi autodistrugere treptate.

Cum s-au format ei, nu despre asta vreau să vorbesc. De ce s-au format? Doar un aspect mă interesează. După fiecare perioadă extremă urmează o altă perioadă opusă care se dezvoltă până la extrem ca mai apoi să lase loc unei alte perioade opuse care la rândul ei se va dezvolta până la extrem: Yin şi Yang, aici voiam să ajung.. Cel puţin aşa ne învaţă istoria. După o perioadă de prosperitate extremă urmează o perioadă de criză extremă. simbolul cel mai relevant e Yin şi Yang. Filozofia Tao e cea mai holistică. Iar pe mine mă interesează foarte tare aspectul ăsta al problemei. Ceea ce “aberau” oamenii ăia acum mii de ani despre Tao se potriveşte perfect cu principiile fizicii cuantice de azi. Ce “coincidenţă”. Dar despre asta voi scrie într-un articol separat…

Acum mă întreb şi eu, că tot am ajuns aici, ce dracu legătură e între Tao, Meduza lui Daniel Quinn şi Revoluţia agricolă. Bună întrebare. O să încerc să răspund. Deşi nu ştiu dacă voi reuşiJ.

Să ne imaginăm că acum 10 000 de ani, chiar înainte de Revoluţia agricolă a existat o astfel de perioadă extremă. De ce n-ar fi fost o perioadă extremă? Lumea o ducea mult prea bine atunci. Când organismul o duce mult prea bine, trebuie să apară o boală, iar după boală, organismul îşi revine treptat şi continuă să o ducă bine şi aşa mai departe. Cu o singură excepţie, atunci când boala este incurabilă, cum e SIDA, de exemplu. Ceea ce se întâmplă acum cam aşa pare a fi. O boală fără leac. O extremă boală fără leac care riscă să ucidă întregul organism. Atunci au apărut ceilalţi oameni. Au format o nouă cultură, separată (aparent) de natură, au venit cu conceptele lor de bine şi rău şi derivatele acestora. Cultura lor se baza şi se bazează pe distrugerea a tot ce nu e ca ei. Şi au continuat să distrugă, să distrugă, treptat-treptat, apropiindu-se de extremă, până azi când iată că ne aflăm într-o asemenea extremă.

În cultura asta auto-distructivă, au început să re-apară primele semne de holism. Da, chiar aşa. Numai că Tancul e prea mare de data asta ca să fie distrus. Sau? Cine ştie. Nu putem ştii nimic cu siguranţă. Aceste semne firave au început o dată cu fizica cuantică. Ea ne spune, contrar fizicii lui Newton, că întreg Universul e un mare Întreg, fără parţi independente, aşa cum ne-au învăţat de secole dualiştii sau materialiştii:

Suntem conduşi spre noţiunea de întreg indestructibil, noţiune opusă ideii clasice de realitate separată în părţi ce pot fi analizate independent…Ideile clasice de relitate constituită din componente elementare fundamentale şi de sistem alcătuit prin alăturarea şi aranjarea părţilor au fost părăsite. Spunem acum că interdependenţa cuantică a întregului constituie realitatea fundamentală şi că părţile care se comportă doar în mod relativ independent sunt forme particulare integrate acestei unităţi.( David Bohm)

În cultura asta autodistructivă au apărut primele semne de comunicare acauzală între persoane şi între acestea şi Natură. Bineînţeles nimeni nu crede, pentru că nu pot fi dovedite ştiinţific. Dar ce, Newton se gândea că se va naşte Einstein care-i va zdruncina concepţia sa rigidă despre lume? Eu nu cred că se gândea. Ca o analogie, foarte mulţi spun, Nu se poate, pentru că legile fizicii spun altceva, nu există comunicare acauzală(!!!). Probabil o fac dintr-o încăpăţânare, dintr-o ambiţie de viaţă (toată viaţa au fost siguri de ceva şi deodată vine cineva şi le dovedeşte că s-au înşelat: omul vede numai ce este învăţat să vadă) şi nu se gândesc că aceste legi ale fizicii nu se aplică domeniului contestat. Legile fizicii se aplică numai anumitor sisteme, nu realităţii în întregime. De vreo o sută de ani se lucrează la o teoremă care să explice realitatea în întregime. Dar nici până azi n-a fost descoperită.

În cultura asta autodistructivă, să ne imaginăm că există oameni moderni care pot trăi ca un întreg, ei şi întregul univers, Unul. Nu ca pe vremuri, în păduri, pentru că în stadiul de faţă aşa ceva nu mai este posibil. Pe de altă parte nici nu prea mai sunt păduri pentru a băga toţi oamenii în ele. Să ne imaginăm că doar trăiesc într-o altă formă, dar având aceeaşi esenţă cu modul de viaţă al primitivilor. Trăiesc şi comunică între ei şi cu mediul înconjurător natural, poate la fel cum vorbeau cu zeii primitivii. Să-i numim Homo Gestalt. Poate că nu sunt mulţi. Dar pot deveni mai mulţi. Meduza lui Ismael a greşit când a afirmat că în final a apărut ea, lăsând să se înţeleagă că ea este culmea evoluţiei. Prin asta a exclus orice posibilitate viitoare de evoluţie pentru ea însăşi. Şi tot aşa fac şi oamenii civilizaţiei noastre.

Un foarte posibil cataclism mondial cauzat de această cultură autodistructivă, va împiedica evoluţia celelaltor specii, inclusiv a noastră. Iar dacă noi am ajunge să depăşim stadiul de indivizi separaţi, aşa cum ne învaţă încă paradigma clasică, într-un timp foarte scurt, atunci ar mai fi o şansă. Următoarea etapă în evoluţia umanităţii nu va fi una fiziologică, ci una spirituală. Această etapă spirituală nu trebuie înţeleasă făcându-se analogie cu religia. Ci doar o evoluţie spirituală naturală. Bineînţeles, dacă timpul ne va permite, în această cultură autodistructivă.

I’m sitting here.  In front of the computer.  With the lights off. (Not that it matters, it’s daytime…but the blinds are closed too so…?)  Listening to TANcast.  Drinking…sprite.  From a bottle, so there needs to be alcohol involved somehow.  Just paints a better picture in my mind.  Like a swig of…I dunno.  Even something ‘lame’ like Mike’s Hard Lemonade would do.  I really like Mike’s, actually.  Anyway, none of this matters.

So this blog doesn’t cover the 4 book reviews I owe you.  But I guess I’ll tell you which books I’m going to be covering! First is going to be Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  Hooray hoorah!  As most of you know, I read this as part of my list, and now I’m on to Sense and Sensibility.  Which I can’t manage to finish.  Second I think I’ll do this one random book I randomly read.  I don’t really know why, but I found it in my house.  And I read it.  It’s called Spiral Hunt (by Margaret Ronald).  Third will be Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.  I might combine that review with the fourth book’s review, because I read them back to back.  The fourth book is No Impact Man (The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process) by Colin Beavan.  Aaaand I might throw in a very brief review of a book that I’ve read about 20 bajillion times over the years, because Spiral Hunt referenced a lot of the same characters.

For now, we shall discuss Zombieland.

I normally don’t endorse anything that ever in any way, however remote, has anything to do with zombies.  Zombies are one of my greatest fears.  Irrational, yes.  But zombies scare the shit out of me.  But for whatever reason, the first time I ever heard of this movie…I just knew I had to see it.  And I am SO glad that I did.  I wasn’t scared for a second.  I was a little grossed out at times, but all in all, it was brilliant and mostly just hilarious.  There was a great cameo that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Like hella.  There was one moment where [character name] [verb] [famous person (cameo)] that I was laughing so hard I was almost crying.  I cry a lot, but rarely from laughter.  So there ya go.

The acting was pretty swell too.  Woody Harrelson was super funny, super weird, and it worked so well for him.  I don’t really know him as anything but Woody from Cheers…and this was definitely different from that.  Jesse Eisenberg was cute.  Very Michael Cera, but I forgive him.  He isn’t quite as much of a pansy as Mr. Cera.  Which is good when you have to kill zombies.  Emma Stone is my new lesbian crush.  She plays the badass really well, she’s hot, and she does a really great impression of [actress/character] from [famous movie].  (This extremely spoiler free.)  And I think I’ll always love Abigail Breslin.  She’s just too cute.

So, yea, as I accidentally told Jeremy via text last night… “Dude.  If you haven’t seen Zombieland get your ass to a movie theatre STAT.  That movie is a requirement for life.”

And now for something completely different:

Texto elaborado para a disciplina de Sociologia da PUC-SP no curso de História

O filme “Corra Lola, corra” nos possibilita pensar em diversas possibilidades acerca da perspectiva do entendimento de história a partir da interface fílmica, pois se encararmos que a história é – enquanto ciência disciplinar de origem ocidental – uma concepção de tempo que nos é, muitas vezes, imposta por uma forma de racionalidade onde esconde outras possíveis alternativas de entendimento temporal, a temporalidade que o filme nos mostra ao longo de seu percurso nos faz refletir sobre o passado, o presente e o futuro.

De acordo com a noção de Santos (2002) sobre a indolência da razão ocidental o tempo é apresentado como um fragmento do rastro de cometa que se estende ao infinito do espaço, portanto o futuro é ampliado para poder comportar o crescimento acelerado do mundo civilizado, ao passo que o passado é estático, fixado a uma realidade já posta, definida, assim o presente é a mera repetição desse passado opressor. Os sujeitos da história ficam então a mercê de um futuro determinado pelo passado restando-nos somente olhar para tudo de forma a contemplar as dores de um presente efêmero.

A forma pela qual o filme é disposto – enquanto abordagem epistemológica do tempo – nos revela a negação do desperdício das experiências do passado, pois ao passo que as personagens, em seus últimos suspiros, acionam a memória e relembram conversas que já tiveram atualizam seus significados para as dificuldades que enfrentam no presente, assim possibilitando-os retomar seus esforços para uma nova tentativa, mas já precavidos de empecilhos experiênciados. O tempo aqui se mostra então diferenciado a partir do momento em que olhamos para o passado com a perspectiva do presente, pois mergulhados no presente, no qual tudo coexiste simultaneamente, o passado se transfigura[1] criando uma nuvem nebulosa repleta de incertezas, aqui se manifesta a possibilidade de um novo futuro.

Quando realizamos tal empreitada efetuamos três processos dos quais merecem ser ressaltados. A primeira esta na valorização do presente, pois é no presente que podemos observar as experiências que não devem ser desperdiçadas, essas experiências é que nos vão levar à passados. Tal procedimento chamo de rastreamento ou tracking[2].

Para entendermos o que digo sobre rastreamento temos que retomar o momento em que “o ser humano” veio a ser “ser humano”, muito bem expresso por Quinn (2002). Diversos estudos arqueológicos hoje nos dizem que o que nos tornou seres inteligentes foi o reconhecimento de padrões, e que conseguimos alcançar tal efeito através do consumo de carne animal, ou seja, proteína, desenvolvendo assim nosso cérebro frontal, mais especificamente, o córtex cerebral. Porem hoje já se sabe que essa teoria esta ultrapassada, pois como que consumiríamos carne se não conseguíssemos caçá-la? Mesmo se comecemos a principio apenas carniças o número existente de animais carniceiros é muito grande, portanto a disputa por carne também seria. Para podermos nos diferenciar de outros animais inventamos a técnica, ou ferramenta mental, da caça, na qual se baseia em rastrear o “alvo-chave”, para tal ação desenvolvemos dois dispositivos essenciais, o olho e a fala.

O olho nos permitiu observarmos o chão e reconhecermos as pegadas, os sinais, sempre em formato de fragmentos, deixados pelos animais que perseguimos. Tais sinais, padrões fragmentados, uma vez que relacionados à figura do animal desenvolveu a técnica da caça, portanto partindo do presente o caçador rastreava a trilha fragmentada deixada pelo animal, conseguindo encontrá-lo e abatê-lo. Este reconhecimento de padrões, de pagadas fragmentadas fez com que nosso cérebro mudasse de estrutura, ou seja, alterasse suas redes neurais. Todavia o desenvolvimento do olhar ainda não nos tornou “seres humanos”, pois seria com a inclusão da fala que terminaríamos tal processo.

A fala nos possibilitou passar a informação a nosso vizinho, ou seja, a pessoas que se encontram a nossa volta. É com a fala que tal experiência, na qual foi testada por diversos indivíduos muitas vezes, se torna visível a toda uma cultura viabilizando a efetuação desta experiência social de rastreamento para outras pessoas e é neste momento que ocorre a passagem do australopithecus ao homo.

Portanto não foi criando modelos teóricos que deixamos de ser australopithecus. Não foi brincando de Deus que viemos a ser hoje aquilo que somos. Não podemos jogar com o tempo, não podemos achatá-lo dando-lhe aspecto linear e homogêneo, esta não é minha proposta.

O segundo processo refere-se ao como olhamos para o passado quando partimos do presente utilizando o rastreamento. O passado dessa forma deixa de ser estático, não mais está dado, pois no momento em que rastreamos o passado, ou trilha, nos emergem acontecimentos que muito corresponde com a forma que interpretamos ou traduzimos os sinais que vemos, os padrões que enxergamos, as pegadas que observamos. Por isso o processo de tradução dos fatos históricos, ou não históricos, esta intrinsecamente ligada à nossa subjetividade. O passado então por ser transfigurativo, disforme, aponta para um futuro mergulhado na incerteza, sendo que este é o terceiro processo necessário para uma nova compreensão de tempo.

O terceiro processo é, justamente, encarar o futuro como aberto, incerto. Segundo essa perspectiva a retomada das Utopias se mostra possível, mas não com a mesma arrogância que tínhamos antes, mas respeitando as organizações locais autogestionárias, respeitando conhecimentos ditos menores que vem “de baixo para cima” como possibilidade contra hegemônica. Uma nova luta se forma no seio de toda essa fragmentação, uma luta de camponeses, de negros, de homossexuais, de mulheres, de operários, enfim, uma luta por todos os excluídos do sistema capitalista que em sua nova face encontra-se o neoliberalismo, no qual é amparado pela força do Estado. Por isso, antes de tudo, essa luta é uma luta anticapitalista.

O filme “Corra Lola, corra” então nos faz pensar em como nos posicionaremos diante de nossas histórias, portanto de nossos passados, nossos presentes e nossos possíveis futuros. Como dizia o anarquista russo Mikhail Bakunin:

“Foi na busca do impossível que o homem realizou e reconheceu o possível”.

A história não termina por aqui…

Bibliografia:

• BENJAMIN, Walter (1940). Sobre o conceito da História in Obras escolhidas I – Magia, Técnica, Arte e Política. Editora Brasiliense.
• QUINN, Daniel (1996). História de B, Uma Aventura da Mente e do Espírito. Editora fundação Peirópolis.
• SANTOS, Boaventura de Sousa (1996). A queda do Angelus Novus: Para além da equação moderna entre raízes e opções in Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, Nº45.
• _________(2002). Para uma sociologia das ausências e uma sociologia das emergências in Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, Nº63.

[2]Retiro a noção do conceito de tracking ou rastreamento das ferramentas da internet para rastrear na rede informações que são pertinentes ao usuário pelas palavras-chave, assim como realizada pelo Google.

The sun had only been up an hour, so the shadows were still long and cold as the tiny car bounced along the snaking, dirt road. Speaking Romanian is hard in the early morning, so I tried to stick to specific questions–ones which Doru could answer at length while I sat quietly and listened. As we reached Cheile Jiețului, however, my child-like wonder withered my will to sustain conversation. Cheile Jiețului is a gateway (one of many) into the fairytale kingdom that is Romania’s wild places– so I shut up and stared out the window at the tortuously slow symphony of fall color on all sides of me–each note represented a different moment of passing, and every note was a symbol of the suddenly suspended transience of time.

Doru and I were going mushroom hunting, which seemed an apt way to spend a Sunday afternoon in the land of fairy tales. We crossed into the next county, Vâlcea, over a long mountain pass and came to a crossroad where scores of other mushroom hunters had set up temporary camps made of wood, plastic, and nylon. Doru told me that these mushroom hunters were after a different type of mushroom than we were–a kind that is exported to other countries throughout Europe. North of the crossroad, the road heads toward Sibiu, one of the more well known cities in Romania. Ahead it goes to Râmnicu Vâlcea, and behind us back to Petroșani and the Jiu Valley I call home. The last time I was here was over a year ago, and since then a large portion of this road has been widened, grated, and paved. Doru told me this is part of an attempt to establish the area as a center for eco-tourism, and to make it more accessible. It reminded me of all the other ways that Romania has been progressing around me since I arrived 16 months ago.

We parked alongside a river with a crossing–a long, fallen pine tree. Doru poured two small glasses of strong, dark wine and we toasted. “For courage,” Doru laughed before we cleared our glasses in a few, long gulps. Doru pulled on a pair of rubber galoshes, and told me that he was going to wade the river. I had on hiking boots, so my route would be to  ’slowly’ cross by using the tree. I climbed onto it and carefully began to step my way across. Now, as a person who is chronically clumsy, I figured the odds were at least 50% that I’d slip and fall into the water. True to my nature, 2/3 across the river I stepped onto a patch of rotting bark which disintegrated under my foot and threw my balance downward. I suddenly found myself suspended in the air, heading for a bad fall and a cold bath.

However, being chronically clumsy has its benefits: that is to say, I’ve ‘adapted’ to my handicap–I’m really good at falling down.  Instinctively, I kicked my right leg over my body and rolled my trajectory so that I was facing downwards. I planted my right foot ankle deep into the water, which sucked, but I was able to catch myself on the log with both hands and raise my left leg over the river.

“Joem!” Doru yelled, as he quickly sloshed his way upriver. “Are you alright?! Did you hit yourself?!” Doru gave me his shoulder and helped me across to the far bank.

I assured Doru that I had indeed caught myself, and that I was fine. “You scared me…” Doru said. “I have to be responsible for you,” and I knew he was right–my 7 Romanian mothers would scold Doru to death if I broke an arm or leg while I was in the woods with him.

Doru seemed relieved, and passed me two large, woven, plastic sacks from the supermarket. “Last fall I filled two bags,” Doru. “We’ll see how we do.”

He scampered over to a cinnamon colored mushroom craning itself out of the supple earth. “These are what we’re after,” Doru told me, as he plucked off the mushroom’s ‘tail’ and passed the ‘head’ to me to examine. I took mental notes: brownish and sort of spotty– check. Doru took the low ground, and I went higher. The hill was on a steep, north-facing grade, and the trees were dense. It had also rained lightly the evening before, so all roots were slick and the dirt was spongy. Each step I either sunk four inches into wet moss and pine needles or slid down a half meter over wet branches. Doru and I would leave our bags in a spot and sort of zig zag around, grabbing mushrooms, popping off their stems, and putting the caps carefully into our sacks.

Under a pine tree, in a place that felt noticeably more magical than the rest, I found two large mushrooms that weren’t like what Doru had shown me. These two were a deep brown, and their heads came to distinct peaks. These were the sort of mushrooms you’d expect to find in a magic forest,  safeguarded by over-protective gnomes. I carefully plucked the caps from the stems and bagged them. I heard Doru call my name–so I scampered across the hill so that he could keep me in his sight and wouldn’t need to worry about me.

I instantly became aware that I had a problem–I felt like I was grabbing about four different types of mushroom. Some seemed more reddish than what Doru had shown me. Others had distinct, almost black ‘nipples,’ at their crests. Others seemed right, but were grey and rosy colored underneath. I took my half-full bag to Doru and asked him to inspect what I had collected.

Doru dumped the bag onto the earth and began picking through them. “No. No. These aren’t good,’ he murmured and I watched as he tossed away 2/3 of what I had found. “Look,” Doru said, handing me another ‘good’ mushroom to study. The mushrooms I really wanted weren’t brown and spotty– they were latte colored with the occasional light fleck of cream on top. And, underneath, they were a luminescent white that seemed so pure and soft that it almost sang lullabies.

I also showed Doru the two gnome mushrooms. “Oh these–these are good,” Doru said as he carefully took the two caps from me. “These are what the other mushroom hunters come after– you should have left the tails on them, but you didn’t know. We’ll try and sell them later for beer,” Doru said and smiled at me before putting them in a separate plastic bag.

Doru and I moved on, and I now felt more comfortable recognizing the kind of head we were after.  They start deep inside the ground, and grow upwards strong and solid. Hence, they’re usually hidden under swathes of moss and dirt, or on the dim sides of uprooted trees. The young ones have domes, perfectly designed for pushing past the soil into the open air. Older ones flatten out, and become wide, concave cups that catch rain. Because of the precipitation, the older ones are susceptible to mold and rot, growing fuzzy white beards and losing that glowing white sheen– trading it for a faded color like grave water. They are easy to uproot, tail and head together, and the two are separated with a quick, strong pinch at the neck.

As my bag filled, I felt a strange sense of guilt. I almost felt as if Doru and I were pillaging the forest–tramping through to take what we wanted and leaving headless mushroom stalks in our wake. I wanted to take only half of what I found–to leave the rest for other collecters that might wander by tomorrow or the day after. I stopped for a moment to think, my heavy breathing a constantly slowing soundtrack for the forest. But I was  soon able to reconcile those guilty thoughts and continue on (see italicized portion below).

When Doru and I wandered out of the forest about three hours later, he had two heavy bags, both 2/3 full. I was excited with my own contribution: a 2/3 full sack, and a second that was a little over 1/4 full. Doru waded across the river with all four bags, while I slowly inched across the bridge again. This time, as odds would predict, I made it across without falling down.

Doru laid out a spread of canned meat, bread, sliced vegetables, salty sheep cheese, and a beer for me. We ate hungrily, occasionally breaking apart our bites by talking about wildlife conservation, or how warm the recent winters have been in Romania. Doru and I ate hearty, and after the whole beer and another short glass of wine I had a small buzz. So Doru and I packed the mushrooms into the car, and began the trip home.

Back at the crossroads, we stopped briefly so that Doru could sell the two gnome mushrooms I found along with two others that he had come upon. There was a group of hard-looking men hanging out around an electronic scale and a pickup truck piled with wooden crates–these were the mushroom gangsters. The crates were for gnome mushrooms that the men would buy from other mushroom hunters working at the crossroads camp. The mushroom Don was a squat man, and he held a wad of bills totaling a few thousand RON. A young crony in the pickup truck weighed our four mushrooms– they were 600 grams altogether. Although they usually sell for 25 RON per kilogram, the don gave us a 10 RON note. Doru didn’t argue–so we got  in the car and left.

In the car, Doru told me that the man was ‘making fun of us,’ but that he didn’t want to argue. I told him it was fine–we had enough money for two beers, and that was alright with me. On the ride home, we blasted out of the fairytale gate and time suddenly latched onto us, hyperactive and anxious to make up for the three hours we lost away from it. There was sun, and countless packs of people grilling along this part of the Jiu river. I suddenly realized how sleepy I had become, and so I told  Doru we’d have to save our beer money for another time.

“That’s fine Joem,” he smiled at me, and dropped me off at home. “I’ll clean the mushrooms and give you some,” and I told him that would be beautiful, but that I didn’t want many. I said that I would rather go to his house so that we could eat them together, and spend our beer money. Doru told me “this goes without saying.”

This part is preachy, but it feels important to say. Read if you like:
The guilt. In the purest sense of food-getting, gathering is probably the least harmful undertaking humans could possibly embark upon. The mushrooms Doru and I collected were grown naturally, without any sense of aritificals or synthetics. It’s not for profit as everything we collected was for food– for Doru and his family. Hence no worker or distributor or consumer was exploited. The mushrooms were in their prime, and they only live a short while, anyway. If Doru and I hadn’t picked them, they’d simply mold and whither like countless I’d already seen that morning. Finally, some mushrooms have a biological predisposition to being harvested, eaten, and enjoyed. Throughout the million year course of their history, the mushrooms have slowly evolved to taste good and be nutritious. They use decomposing biomatter to regenerate soil, and in turn they can nourish animals. This is symbiosis, and we are an undetachable part of the system, no matter how much we try and resist.

I think that the guilt came because I’ve been reading a lot of Daniel Quinn and Michael Pollan this past year. I’m constantly worried about the impact of overpopulation on the earth, and how the ends seems to justify the means in regards to our food production. I have become so thoroughly disillusioned with how we eat that procuring any sort of sustenance for myself seems selfish and destructive. And while picking wild mushrooms is a billion times more environmentally friendly than buying pesticide treated criminis imported from 1,500 miles away, I still couldn’t shake the recurring thought: “but–what if everybody did this?” I think that’s my underlying issue: that we have become far too many in a world with a limited amount to give.

The only solution I have in this setting is: ‘don’t feel guilty about eating wild foods.’

throes: A condition of agonizing struggle or trouble

Last night, at a business gathering, a woman said to me, in the context of the upheaval of our era, that she thinks we are living in the end times.  She admitted that other generations have felt the same way, but she really thinks this is it.

Yes, this is the feeling of many people in many different generations.  And I know too much history, and so I’m a little reluctant to jump on that bandwagon.

But do you get the feeling that everyone seems a little insecure, maybe more than a little nervous – as though we are in the midst of, in the throes of, some kind of wrenching, agonizing change?  I do.

The Future of Management

In The Future of Management, Gary Hamel hints at such unease:

Unlike the laws of physics, the laws of management are neither foreordained nor eternal…  Whiplash change, fleeting advantages, technological disruptions, rebellious shareholders – these 21^st- century challenges are testing the design limitations of organizations around the world and are exposing the limitations of a management model that has failed to keep pace with the times.

I think he is right.  There is a great inadequacy of models – management models, governing models…  The models we have seem to be lacking, and seem to not be working.  It all seems so unsettling.

Recently, on one of the many blogs I read (this one a political blog), I read this quote.  The author is Daniel Quinn from his book Beyond Civilization.  Here’s the quote:

No paradigm is ever able to imagine the next one.  It’s almost impossible for one paradigm to imagine that there will even be a next one.  The people of the Middle Ages didn’t think of themselves as being in the ‘middle’ of anything at all.  As far as they were concerned, the way they were living was the way people would be living to the end of time.  Even if you’d managed to persuade them that a new era was just around the corner, they would’ve been unable to tell you a single thing about it – and in particular they wouldn’t have been able to tell you what was going to make it new.  If they’d been able to describe the Renaissance in the fourteenth century, it would have been the Renaissance.
We’re no different.  For all our blather about new paradigms and emerging paradigms, it’s an unassailable assumption among us that our distant descendants will be just exactly like us.  Their gadgets, fashion, music, and so on, will surely be different, but we’re confident that their mindset will be identical – because we can imagine no other mindset for people to have.  But in fact, if we actually manage to survive here, it will be because we’ve moved into a new era as different from ours as the Renaissance was from the Middle Ages – and as unimaginable to us as the Renaissance was to the Middle Ages.

I think we are in the throes of an agonizing change:  a shift, a true shift.  We think we know some of the causes, but we may be fooling ourselves if we think we know where it is all going.  But – I think the shift is coming.  Don’t you?

———–

You can purchase my synopsis of The Future of Management, with audio + handout, at our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.

It’s September.  Hello!

I know you’re busy, so I’ll be brief.  An update and an announcement.  Short and sweet.

Update: My Tribal Business

Back in June I wrote about a new project I was working on, a concert series I was coordinating with a local art gallery.

As you may recall, the project was an attempt to create a tribal business.  I was trying — for a third time, after two previous fizzles — to implement Daniel Quinn’s ideas (from Beyond Civilization) to create and sustain what Quinn describes as a “coalition of equals working together to make a living.”  Not a killing.  A living.

I didn’t go into much detail at the time, but if you missed it and want to know more, you can read my June post here.

Now it’s September, and the project has ended, and I’m sitting with my notes and my thoughts, trying to decide if the effort was a success or not.   And if it wasn’t a success, does that mean it was a failure?

Here’s the top line: we hosted four concerts.  All the musicians showed up on time and played their everlovin’ hearts out.  The audiences were small but appreciative.  The musicians were paid what they were promised.  We didn’t make any money.  And the gallery is going out of business at the end of the month.

That last point is totally unrelated to the concerts, but even so.  Ouch.

So.  Success or failure?

Here’s what I think.  It was both.  And it was something else altogether, neither success nor failure, but another stone along the path.

And I’m three for three with the tribal thing.

So there’s that.

Also…

Announcement: Signed Books Available

I have a reading of my unschooling manifesto, 101 Reasons Why I’m an Unschooler, coming up, so I’ll actually have some books on hand in the next couple of weeks.  If you’ve been thinking you might like a signed copy, send me a note and I’ll set one aside for you.  The book is $13.50, plus $1.50 for shipping.  Paypal and checks are both accepted.  Use the contact form above to get in touch and we’ll work out the details.

Okay, then.  I said I’d be brief.

I’ll be less brief next time.  Promise.

The Soloist

It certainly seems like a daunting task, to put into action the suggestions I made in part 5.  That was simply a model, and it came to me as I was lying in bed last night after re-reading through “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn.  I am not the most well-versed person in these matters, and a much better model for weaning our society is certainly available.  It is a good idea to keep an open door to more ideas, otherwise we may overlook the one key idea which would lead us away from destruction.

Perhaps another daunting aspect is the need for a large group of people to execute those suggestions.  Perhaps you are like I used to be, among many people who would not view your ideas favorably.  But then, there is still a way to leave your mark, and lure others into wanting to know more about your vision.

As the soloist, it is important to remember a very famous quote by Mahatma Ghandi: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”  You must live in every moment with as much compassion as you can summon.  Establish positive patterns for those around you to emulate, and furthermore incite them to want to know more about you.  When someone begins to genuinely interview you about your ideas and what you stand for, you have done something right.  You have lived in a way that has made them want to know more, other than their very loose interpretation of your actions.  At that point, it may be that you are no longer the soloist, but part of a duo or trio.  And from there the idea can grow stronger, and you may experience the very real possiblity of saving us all from destruction.

Whether you operate alone or not, it is crucial that you take good care of yourself.  When I practiced Buddhism frequently, one principle that was prevalent in the writings of Buddhism was that we must take good care of ourselves before we take good care of our loved ones and those around us.  This may seem to apply to those in an intimate relationship, but it applies to everyone.  How can I selflessly give myself to anyone if I do not regard myself to be of any worth?  We must establish good habits to take care of ourselves, and eat well (mindfully, especially, please consider the implications of what you consume), live well (sunshine, smiling, and exercise), and rest well (perhaps more important than 8+ hours of sleep a night is to establish a regular sleeping pattern, going to sleep at the same time every night and rising at the same time every morning).

If you do not take good care of yourself, mentally you will begin to suffer, and at that point it will be very hard to commit yourself to saving the world, for you can barely save yourself.

To the soloist: you must be bold, and you must be brave.  If you are quiet and not intrusive (like myself) then you will need to summon the courage to suggest to your friends and family to read Ishmael, and to listen to what you have to say.  I exist in a lifestyle where I am constantly listening to what others believe in, but rarely explaining what I believe in.  You may stun the world with your insight and compassion in your worldview.  It is time for bravery.  Even if this all fails, and no one is ever convinced, you will never have any nagging regrets to look back upon.

And soloist, remember the responsibility you must take for yourself.  Re-use any plastic bags you have (or use canvas shopping bags), strive to purchase products from ethical companies, elect mass transit or a bike if you have the opportunity, take a walk outside instead of driving aimlessly in your car.  There is much we can do.  6 billion people making minor changes to their lifestyles for the better of the planet will make a very significant impact on its vitality.

And remember, soloist, that the only way for the large corporations and machines to falter is to abandon them.  The people are what support the balance of these establishments, and if we wish to see them gone we must stop frequenting them.  Be selective, be aware in every moment of the implications of your actions, and remember to seek to live more mindfully by your own actions before you criticize the actions of someone else.

If you are creative, soloist, then produce creative works of awareness and compassion.  Create poems, songs, or writing pieces which will explain to people that there is more than dinner tonight and work in the morning — there is a world ready to be saved!  There are people all around with a dimly burning candle within us, yearning to be let out, yearning to be human and exist amongst humans instead of behaving as robots.  It is not our will to live as robots, so we must make people realize that they are living as robots.  Often, it is not recognized by the robot that they are in fact living robotically.  This must be changed!  We are human, capable of love, and the one true light of this world that can lead it back to providence.

Continuing with the book lists theme of my most recent posts I would like to offer you my collection of 5 books I wish more people would read. I am not arguing that these are the best works of their kind in any category – I don’t pretend to know that much. What I am offering is just a handful of books that I really enjoyed and that I think deserve more attention. (READER ALERT: the direction that this post took was influenced by watching and listening to a lot of non-book media).

• A Rap on Race with Margaret Mead and James Baldwin : With all the press and hoopla that has been generated recently with the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge, this book should be required reading for everyone in high school; and not because it provides answers, it doesn’t. In fact, the transcribed conversation between the eminent ethnographer and the prolific writer is muddled, confusing and contradictory at times. It is filled with what some may consider tangents and anecdotes that don’t provide genuine insight, but instead help to draw in other variables or non sequiturs. These two erudite people, however, had seen a bit of life, and had thought long and hard about issues such as identity and race, and were still stumped by how gnarly anything got once “race” was thrown into the equation. There is a parallel here, as I see it, with the current Cambridge incident. Consider for a moment that Professor Gates is an eminent scholar on racial issues and identity, and that (according to some accounts I’ve read) the arresting officer, Sgt. Crowley was hand-selected to train other officers on issues of racial sensitivity and profiling. If these two men couldn’t deal with each other without seeing race, what hope is there for the rest of us?
•  Common Ground by John Edgar Wideman: Sorry, I’m not done with thinking about the issue and idea of RACE in America, yet. After you’re finished “listening” in on two of the coolest people of the last century wrangle with the problems of seeing the world in terms of black and white, check out this essay by Professor Wideman. This is the first of five essays in a book titled Fatheralong : A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society. We do share common ground, explains Wideman. Turn back the hands of time far enough, and we’re all huddled around the same fire. Turn the hands forward, and we go our separate ways. But look closely enough, and you’ll recognize we never really went very far. Race according to Wideman has become like a net that catches nothing and destroys everything in its path. It is a word for Humpty Dumpty … made to mean whatever it is supposed to mean. Anytime we see the race card dealt, warns Wideman, beware, because the fix is in. 
•  The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin: It appears that this blog post is turning into some list of my Books Everyone Should Read; Special Race Edition. I didn’t start out intending for it to be that way, it’s just that there is STILL talk on the radio and on television about the Professor Gates arrest – (I’ve been working on this post for 3 or 4 days now). Anyway, this book is really a collection of two essays. I especially recommend people read the first essay, “My Dungeon Shook”. It is a powerful and moving letter Baldwin writes to his nephew on the 100^th anniversary of Emancipation contemplating America and its “problem”.
• Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti: It’s been years since I reread this book, but it took just two sittings to whip through it. If you’ve ever read and enjoyed Chinua Achebe’s writing, you’ll enjoy this novel. Both funny and serious, without being overly preachy or nostalgic, Beti’s tale of a failed scholar who must return to live what he thinks is a simpler village life will transport you to a different time and place.
• Ishmael by Daniel Quinn: I’ve recommended this book to both teachers and students, but I don’t think anyone has ever taken me up on the suggestion. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the main character is a telepathic silverback gorilla who thinks he understands the uppity humans and their destructive modern culture. This book uses the Socratic method and turns to ancient sources to ask, “what are the consequences of humans misunderstanding their place in the world”? Not a bad question from such a hirsute fellow Hominidae.

Note from seaworld.org.: “Historically humans and their extinct ancestors were classified in the Family Hominidae while all great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) were classified in the Family Pongidae. However, biomolecular and genetic research along with recent fossil evidence have identified new similarities between species, leading to the reclassification of chimpanzees and gorillas into the Family Hominidae.”

 Oh, there are plenty more titles I think people should read, but I’ll save that stuff for the future. I think 5 recommendations at a time is plenty, don’t you? Sorry for getting stuck on race there for a little bit, I couldn’t help reflecting back some of the information I’m currently taking in. I stand by my recommendations, however, as solid pieces of writing that I do wish more people would read.

Let me know what titles you think everyone should have on their MUST READ list. In the meantime, thank you for stopping by and I hope you are having a great summer.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

Thanks to the efforts of President Alan Rosenberg and spear-headed by First Vice President and Madame Chair Anne-Marie Johnson, with support from SAG Board Members Elliott Gould and SAG Senior Performer’s Committee member Bill Smitrovich, and SAG Senior Committee / SAG Healthcare Safety Net Committee, the Screen Actor’s Guild National Board has voted to support Saving The Lives Of Our Own in their mission to keep long term care open now and for the future, and to restore motion picture and television fund’s commitment of “Taking Care of Our Own”, adding their muscle in stopping the closure of the MPTF Long Term Care facility, and the eviction of the elderly residents who helped build the motion picture and television industry.

Led by SAG actor and Saving the Lives of Our Own activist Daniel Quinn, whose compelling presentation to the National Board eclipsed that of Ken Scherer of the MPTF Foundation – the promise of the continuum of care that was founded by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith will be a continued tradition for decades to come. With Daniel on the dais was Saving the Lives of Our Own activist Nancy Biederman and legal counsel James O’Callahan from Girardi and Keese.

As the reasons for the turmoil within the MPTF leading to the evictions start to see the light of day, it is evident that the days are numbered for those in the heirarchy of MPTF management.

SAG has spoken, and their will and determination bolsters
and strengthens the resolve of the residents and their families to keep the LTC doors open.

More to come on this huge win for motion picture and television industry healthcare, and the elderly and infirm who are yet to be displaced.

Additonal thank you’s to Diane Ladd, Alan Ruck, Esai Morales, Francis Fisher,
Nancy Sinatra, Connie Stevens, and Michele Santopietro among others.

The pioneering efforts of John Schneider and David Carradine will not be forgotten.

This will be a historical win, and we want you on the winning side. If you haven’t already, please register at www.savingthelivesofourown.org. Please invite your friends to join this extremely effective facebook group.

Yours in fighting for the future of motion picture and television industry healthcare – and the rights of the elderly residents of the Motion Picture Home,

Richard Stellar

Cartea:

The Story of B, de Danel Quinn, un fel de  continuare a cărții “Ismael” , de care am amintit aici.

Spre deosebire de Ismael, cartea asta conține și ceva acțiune, înafară de “învățăminte”. Despre ce-i vorba? Un preot laurențian care  e trimis de către superiorii săi în Europa, ca să se ocupe de un caz. Se pare că Antichristul, “B”,  e pe-acolo, își predică învățămintele blasfemitoare, iar cei care-l urmează nu-s puțini deloc, așa că domnu’ ăsta e un adevărat pericol pentru credință și trebuie eliminat. Iar preotul nostru trebuie să se infiltreze direct în cercul lui, să spioneze, să afle ce și cum, dar ajunge să renunțe la credințele sale religioase, în favoarea ideilor lui “B”. Oare ce-i așa de atrăgător în predicile “anticristului”?

Cartea o găsiți aici, puteți să o printați dacă aveți cont.E în engleză.

Ismael, în română –aici.

O chestie din carte care mi-a plăcut în mod deosebit, și nu știu dacă reușesc să o transpun prea bine aici, acum, dar încerc:

Civilizația noastră acționează conform unei viziuni. Una autodistructivă, după cum își dă seama toată lumea în ultima vreme. Iar viziunea asta  e ca un râu, un fluviu care curge, iar râul o ia în direcția asta a autodistrugerii. Programele (de ecologie, sociale, etc) sunt doar bețe puse în calea acestui râu, în încercarea de a-l opri. Dar dacă se vrea o schimbare, întregul râu trebuie deviat de la cursul său, iar bețele din calea lui nu ajută la nimic. Lumea nu va fi schimbată de oameni cu mentalități vechi implementând programe noi, ci de către oameni cu mentalități shimbate, cu o viziune nouă. Odată schimbată viziunea, programele nu mai sunt necesare.

Filmul:

Human Nature

Regizor: Michael Gondry, care a regizat, printre altele  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind și The Science of Sleep.

Producător și scenarist: Charlie Kaufman ( Being John Malkovich și Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

L-am văzut azi noapte, a 2-a oară, după ce prima dată l-am văzut prin liceu. Atunci parcă mi-a plăcut. Acum nu, deși subiectul era unul promițător. Ce urmează sunt niste chestii care mi-au trecut prin minte în timp ce mă uitam, nu o analiză amănunțită sau mai știu eu ce. N-am chef de de-astea acuma

Avem așa: omul civilizat și conformismul său (hilar, în film, că e comedie), și omul necontaminat de civilizație. De nici un fel de civilizație sau cultură ( Unu’ pe care l-au găsit în pădure, crescut de o maimuță. Mă rog, de un om care se credea maimuță).

Prima greșeală: ideea că civilizația noastră e singura. Dacă ceva nu e parte din ea, e catalogat ca “natural”, sălbatic, primitiv. Iar au uitat ăștia că pe lângă cultura noastră și modul nostri de viață mai sunt și altele.

Poate că am luat filmu’ prea în serios, dar: premisele din filmu’ ăsta mi se par  greșite. În film, omul ăsta sălbatic e prezentat cu comportament de maimuță. Și ăsta n-ar fi neaparat un lucru rău, dar oamenii, ca specie, și-au format culturi, cu mult înainte de începuturile civilizației noastre. Omul a devenit om (homo sapiens) pentru că a învățat să folosească unelte, (chiar și unele maimuțe folosesc unelte, nu? ) și-a  găsit adăposturi, apoi și le-a construit, purta haine, în lipsa blănii.  Omul nu trăia singur, dezbrăcat, în copaci. Modul în care e prezentat personaju’ nostru e unul care ridiculizează total omul necontaminat de civilizația noastră, întărind doar viziunea pe care o avem despre “oamenii primitivi”. Liberi fără să aibă absolut nimic. Suntem noi, de 10 000 de ani, și tot ce e înafara perioadei ăsteia, e un hău negru și înfricoșător.

Ok știu, și situația e excepțională. Personajele care îl găsesc pe omu’ din pădure nu găsesc o familie de oameni “sălbatici”, ci unul. Era singur. A fost crescut de unu’ care se credea maimuță, deci oarecum îi sunt justificate gesturile de maimuță. Dacă filmului îi zicea “Ape Nature”, n-aș fi avut nimic de comentat. Dar îi zice “Human Nature”.  În fine, e o comedie, știu. Dacă nu era în regia unuia care a făcut câteva filme foarte faine, iar n-aveam nimic de comentat. Oh well.

A doua greșeală (și am mai vorbit de asta pe-aici): Ideea că omul în esență este rău. Nu-s de acord și punct.

A treia greșeală: Distincția făcută dintre oameni și natură. Sunt oamenii – și de cealaltă parte e hăul ăla negru, primitiv, “natural”, înfricoșător sau idealizat: Natura. Citiți mai mult despre asta aici.

Aș mai continua dar iar mă lungesc prea mult. Sunt și câteva chestii faine în film, nu zic nu. E și entertaining. Patricia Arquette e lovely as always, dezbrăcată sau nu, acoperită de păr sau nu. Mai bine îl vedeți voi. Și poate dacă citiți cărțile de care am zis mai sus, o să înțelegeți mai bine unde încerc să bat.

Muzica:

Most people think, /Great God will come from the skies, /Take away everything/ And make everybody feel high./But if you know what life is worth,/You will look for yours on earth:/And now you see the light,/You stand up for your rights.

It will push your buttons its supposed to..not called wild and feral  for nothing

The food race..

http://www.ishmael.org/Origins/ worth further looking into..

That’s a dramatic title for a post.  It’s what hooked me into reading Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael: An Adventure in Mind and Spirit.  The back of the book features the three-line personal ad that begins the story:  “Teacher Seeks Pupil.  Must have an earnest desire to save the world.  Apply in person.”  Given its serious subject matter, the book might be one of the top ten most important books on the planet.  The book isn’t so much a “how-to” book on saving the world but tries to point out what underlies our drive to destroy the world, which we’ve been doing steadily since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago and which has become more intense and wide-spread since the industrial revolution.

Quinn re-interprets the core stories of Genesis while weaving in anthropological and historical analysis of “primitive” vs. “civilized” societies (or what he renames “Leavers” vs. “Takers”).   For three million years all was well with hunting and gathering until the agricultural revolution.  At this point, the Takers began to break the “law of life,” which fosters life for all:  they began to exterminate competitors, destroy competitors’ food (to make room for their own via agriculture) and deny competitors access to food.  This obsessive need to control our food supply originates in a fear of not being in control of our own destiny, of trusting in higher powers.  In breaking the laws of life, we end up co-opting the role of the gods by deciding who lives and who dies (i.e. the fruit of the tree of knowledge).

In other words, for the Takers the world belongs to man, whereas for the Leavers, man belongs to the world.

Quinn ends with an insightful observation, one that can be viewed in conservative reactions to environmentalist critique of our culture of consumption:

people need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty.  They need more than a vision of doom.  They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them. (243-44)

This new (or, rather, old–i.e. Leaver) vision of the destiny of humankind involves humans being the first to reach sentience and therefore the first to learn that we have a choice:  thwart the gods and die or be Father to all future species evolving to sentience after us.  In this story, “Man’s place is to be the first without being the last.  Man’s place is to figure out how it’s possible to do that–and then to make some room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he’s become” (243).

So Quinn strikes at the mythic roots of our war with nature and tries to re-orient our species by providing the key to breaking out of our captivity to “a civilizational system that compels us to go on destroying the world in order to live” (25).  My hope is that the Albatross contributes in some small way to the change of consciousness that Quinn’s book points toward.