There is proficiency in dissection...

The whole field of education is affected -- There is no end of detail that is without significance.

Education would begin by placing in the mind of the student the nature of knowledge -- in the dead state and the nature of the force which may energize it.

This would clarify his field at once -- He would then see the use of data.

But at present knowledge is placed before a man as if it were a stair at the top of which a DEGREE is obtained which is superlative.

nothing could be more ridiculous.  To data there is no end.  There is proficiency in dissection and a knowledge of parts but in the knowledge--

It is imagination that --

That is : life is absolutely simple.  In any civilized society everyone should know EVERYTHING there is to know about life at once and always.  There should never be permitted, confusion --

There are difficulties to life, under conditions there are impasses, life may prove impossible -- But it must never be lost -- as it is today --

I remember so distinctly the young Pole in Leipzig going with hushed breath to hear Wundt lecture -- In this mass of intricate philosophic data what one of the listeners was able to maintain himself for the winking of an eyelash.  Not one.  The inundation of the intelligence by masses of complicated fact is not knowledge.  There is no end --

And what is the fourth dimension?  It is the endlessness of knowledge --

It is the imagination on which reality rides -- It is the imagination -- It is a cleavage through everything by a force that does not exist in the mass and therefore can never be discovered by its anatomization.

It is for this reason that I have always placed art first and esteemed it over science -- in spite of everything.

Art is the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality -- Poetry

The effect of this realization upon life will be the emplacement of knowledge into a living current -- which it has always sought --

In other times -- men counted it a tragedy to be dislocated from sense -- Today boys are sent with dullest faith to technical schools of all sorts -- broken, bruised

few escape whole slaughter.  This is not civilization but stupidity -- Before entering knowledge the integrity of the imagination --

The effect will be to give importance to the subdivisions of experience -- which today are absolutely lost -- There exists simply nothing.

from Spring and All by William Carlos Williams (1923)

No Little Thing

Plato—reprehending a boy for playing at nuts, "Thou reprovest me," says the boy, "for a very little thing." "Custom," replied Plato, "is no little thing." I find that our greatest vices derive their first propensity from our most tender infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and afterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of the subject: first, it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then more sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak and young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor depend upon the difference betwixt crowns and pins; but I rather hold it more just to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in crowns since he does it in pins, than as they do, who say they only play for pins, they would not do it if it were for money? Children should carefully be instructed to abhor vices for their own contexture; and the natural deformity of those vices ought so to be represented to them, that they may not only avoid them in their actions, but especially so to abominate them in their hearts, that the very thought should be hateful to them, with what mask soever they may be disguised.

***

I do believe, that no so absurd or ridiculous fancy can enter into human imagination, that does not meet with some example of public practice, and that, consequently, our reason does not ground and back up. There are people, amongst whom it is the fashion to turn their backs upon him they salute, and never look upon the man they intend to honour. There is a place, where, whenever the king spits, the greatest ladies of his court put out their hands to receive it; and another nation, where the most eminent persons about him stoop to take up his ordure in a linen cloth. Let us here steal room to insert a story.
A French gentleman was always wont to blow his nose with his fingers (a thing very much against our fashion), and he justifying himself for so doing, and he was a man famous for pleasant repartees, he asked me, what privilege this filthy excrement had, that we must carry about us a fine handkerchief to receive it, and, which was more, afterwards to lap it carefully up, and carry it all day about in our pockets, which, he said, could not but be much more nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrown away, as we did all other evacuations. I found that what he said was not altogether without reason, and by being frequently in his company, that slovenly action of his was at last grown familiar to me; which nevertheless we make a face at, when we hear it reported of another country. Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature, and not according to the essence of nature the continually being accustomed to anything, blinds the eye of our judgment. Barbarians are no more a wonder to us, than we are to them; nor with any more reason, as every one would confess, if after having travelled over those remote examples, men could settle themselves to reflect upon, and rightly to confer them, with their own. Human reason is a tincture almost equally infused into all our opinions and manners, of what form soever they are; infinite in matter, infinite in diversity.

***

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom; every one, having an inward veneration for the opinions and manners approved and received amongst his own people, cannot, without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor apply himself to them without applause. In times past, when those of Crete would curse any one, they prayed the gods to engage him in some ill custom. But the principal effect of its power is, so to seize and ensnare us, that it is hardly in us to disengage ourselves from its gripe, or so to come to ourselves, as to consider of and to weigh the things it enjoins. To say the truth, by reason that we suck it in with our milk, and that the face of the world presents itself in this posture to our first sight, it seems as if we were born upon condition to follow on this track; and the common fancies that we find in repute everywhere about us, and infused into our minds with the seed of our fathers, appear to be the most universal and genuine; from whence it comes to pass, that whatever is off the hinges of custom, is believed to be also off the hinges of reason; how unreasonably for the most part, God knows.

Montaigne, bk 1, ch 22

Why Things Don't Change--or Your "Vote" is Meaningless

Okay, here's something that makes sense to me...what about you?

All forms of government beyond the city level--beyond the very local--are corrupt. (Likely they are also corrupt locally, but there is a real face-to-face opportunity to call this out and make changes.) They are corrupt in any number of ways...the systems themselves have been "re-engineered" to serve a different purpose than what was likely the original intention.

Okay, no need to blame things--people seem to want to game everything they can and I don't have the ability to call chicken or egg on any of this. I tend to simply believe that the folks that find their way to the the "top" of systems are folks who want to/know how to use that system to their own best advantage. That does not make all of us intrinsically corrupt(able). We are weak though. And I think it's why we give so many fraudulent persons a pass--we know that we are weak and who knows what we might do should we be given the keys to the kingdom.

Okay, in that case, there should be "fail-safe" systems in place to help balance the drive for power and money in those who are at the top. Now, this is the idea of "checks and balances" in the system of government we have. However, those "top-feeders" have infiltrated all of these branches of government and no longer seem fit to form these "checks"--definitely there is no longer any ideological nor practical balance. Ideologues abound but their ideology tends to be centered on off-shore accounts in the caymans. So, in this very surface account, your vote is meaningless--and in our current system, you also don't care about how your government operates as long as you can find a way to keep living the way you want to and believe you might get a little more some day. It's very "self" centered in every way. We only care about other people, on the whole, as means to our own ends. I do not believe this is healthy or necessary--in other words, I believe this is learned behavior, not intrinsic to our being.

Okay, here's the idea, old as the hills, or at least the Greeks in Athens...government by lottery...like jury selection I suppose.

This creates very clear requirements for the polis as a whole. We must groom every single one of our citizens to be capable of managing whatever role might come their way by lottery.

This means REAL education for everyone...the type of education that fosters thinking and not testing ability. We need elastic, ethical minds. We will all be each others' keepers in this way.

Rules and policies MUST be simple. Why should they be complex? No good reason. Complexity serves the cabal of insiders only. Simplicity can serve us all well.

I'm out...what are your thoughts?

Divergent Thinking

A friend shared this on the FB...spend the 10 minutes on it and return here.



These are my facebook comments--sue me for recycling:

In the end it's a VERY TALL order for change as it requires a dissociation from the idea of education to a purpose like work. One can say it has a purpose and if you were in ancient Greece you'd call it happiness (but not in a facile sense)--eudaimonia --which is apparently better thought of as "flourishing". This must be distinguished from products and consumption and being consumers and producers, which, to my mind, is far from promoting human (and other animal) flourishing.

Re: divergent thinking and the genius of the 5 year-old.

One might also note that mere "living" might require you "reduce" to ideas that achieve the goals of shelter and food (ie, you get "dumber" or reduce your potential in order to eat) rather than remain a "divergent" thinker, a mind in the state of potentiality. One might now argue that we no longer NEED to focus on mere living and and so could then encourage a return to divergent thinking and creativity--I believe this was marx's point about freeing the laborer to be an artist.

Devaluing the Word

From a Facebook post on a Friend's wall (a degree of digital separation) that I vampirically sucked out to offer here, via this digital medium.

I am in a English/linguistics class right now about slang, and one of our textbooks, written by the professor, is about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's called Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon. I thought about you and your birthday party one year at Uptown, with the Buffy theme, in class today. I hope you are doing well in New York.

Seriously.

Now, ehem, I was sharing a rant with a friend the other day regarding Border's closing in Dekalb, IL (the Bloomington, IN store closed right before Xmas) and their bankruptcy and this rant was primarily about Reading and to my mind access to reading material. Bookstore closings are not awful, I would argue, if they send us back to libraries, if they send us back to reading as a very critical act in the development of the human soul, both collective and individual. If they send us back to books that are measureless deeps to sound. The commodification of "the Word"* has made the Word cheap. I believe it should be free, but not cheap.

This devaluation is endemic of our urge to consume...pulp fiction writers were paid pennies on the word (still?)...and one can see how easily this affects (infects) our educational institutions.

What do you suppose "Slayer Slang" has to teach us? One of my professors made a very important point that often goes unheeded though it is quite obvious: there is only so much time to read and study--choose your texts wisely.

I'm sure there will be folks who will argue that though Buffy is "entertainment" so was Bleak House and Middlemarch and Clarissa and Shakespeare (though not Moby Dick if sales are indicative). Is this a very serious debate? It's hard for me to see this as anything other than a symptom of the consumption society. Professors are commodities; texts are commodities; degrees are commodities...We are selling empty words, empty ideas (like our food industry, yes?).

Who reads philosophy; who reads history; who reads works of science if not our students? (Professionals in these fields included of course.) Who instructs them in the vast knowledge that is "at the back" of these texts? The texts that speak to us through time via their conversations with other thinkers and writers--texts talking to texts, arguing with texts, will need some explication.

Does the Slayer Lexicon lead us into fields where wisdom is sown?

Sometimes it simply seems as if we are in a hurry to only and always be the "blank slate" culture. Buffy is unique and contains all you need to know. Study it deeply and you will be initiated into the mysteries of the human and the universe. There is no need of further study.

Erasure...

Plus, I can get that on my Kindle.



*I worked at a bookstore in Clayton, MO and one day a man asked for assistance in locating copies of the Qur'an. Taking him to the aisle (no pointing as direction!) I showed him the myriad copies and translations. But it turns out he didn't want to buy one. He wanted to chastise me for selling them. "This is not for sale. This is the word of God. How can you sell this? Who are you to sell the word of God?" I honestly don't remember how I responded--probably via the fail-safe "would you like to speak with a manager?"

Slaves to the Idea of the Tower

My friend Marc over at Disquiet reviewed Doug Rushkoff's recent book about technology, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, while proscribing its dictates into a "guide" for musicians in the technological age. That review is linked below.

Rushkoff's product page (link below) says this:

The debate over whether the Net is good or bad for us fills the airwaves and the blogosphere. But for all the heat of claim and counter-claim, the argument is essentially beside the point: it’s here; it’s everywhere. The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? “Choose the former,” writes Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.”

I commented on Disquiet's FB post:

I always feel ambivalent about these kinds of self-help books for the Age of Technicity. On the one hand, the train of obeisance and acquiescence to our future with mediating machines has left the station (about the time real trains left the station!), but on the other I always want to fight against "acceptance manifestos"--there is no real way to "manage the machine" and in the end the only folks that can remotely pretend to are already those working that angle of the tech game (already a specialization in the world of our current view of the magic of technology). I feel it's closer to an addiction and this would be like saying to the smoker, just be sure to grow your own tobacco so you can be the one addicting yourself in just the right amount.

Further to the point--Rushkoff is a self-promoting "counter-revolutionary" (no clue what that means in this context) and "expert" in all things digital, but who, to my mind, is like an embedded "journalist" in the current terror campaigns--he's promoted the very war he sends back dispatches from and profited by this medium and speaks from within its parameters.

His goal has always been to make you comfortable with the medium that is remaking you.

Don't fight it, Brother, Sister...learn the best way to please IT and IT will smile upon you.

This is a real concern and has been one for aeons regarding our knowledge of the world. Philosophy has debated this knowing the world via "theory" or "practice". Of course, it's not a very real dichotomy as the two must go hand-in-hand (like lovers are supposed to; there's a thin line between love and hate).

But I think the worst thing has been happening; practice is all most of us "know". We know there is a machine and we know what we can see and use of the machine--my "knowledge" of the laptop I'm using is literally a surface knowledge...plastic keys, power cord, etc., I know nothing of its guts; I know even less of it's software (though I can name some programs).

One might believe that knowing programming will help you "direct" technology to your benefit (and it might create economic opportunities for you, I can't disagree)--but knowing coding is also a surface knowledge.

What do I know of anything? is finally a very important first question. Nothing is my best answer at this point (thank you, Michel).

I know that given the above you have to assume that I am skeptical of most of this kind of reaching after technical skill without understanding the history of our machine-driven species (emphasis on "driven"). I know nothing of how anything works--cars, computers, airplanes, refrigerators, animal bodies, atoms, bombs, seeds. Yes, I can find out the "guts" of most of these things. Yes, that is my responsibility (and I take it this is likely Rushkoff's message at bottom--I didn't read the book, only the review and the promotional page), but what am I learning?

How to better "use" technology? Perhaps this is all we can do. If so, then I propose the President add "philosophy of technology" to his list of educational priorities--I don't think it was in the SOTU. We are, as Hedges has detailed in a talk linked to in a previous post here, erasing the subjects of our liberal arts education like languages, art and music at all levels and re-tooling what's left of them to be subservient to all-mighty STEM. Just as one learns languages best at the earliest age of immersion, so too one can learn philosophy. Our children begin as philosophers but are quickly turned into technologists. "Why" is discouraged; "How to" encouraged.

I often wonder if real wisdom lies not in knowing the consequences of your "practice" but rather in knowing that a tower stretching to the heavens is irrelevant and makes us simply slaves of the idea of the tower.

Review of Program or Be Programmed by Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet.com

Rushkoff's Product website

Episteme and Techne--Stanford

Montaigne

Teaching Tech

Philosophy for Kids