Category: Moral

All I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum

You may have seen it but it deserves wider circulation – Robert Fulghum’s guide for life – if only…….

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.
These are the things I learned:

* Share everything.
* Play fair.
* Don’t hit people.
* Put things back where you found them.
* Clean up your own mess.
* Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
* Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
* Wash your hands before you eat.
* Flush.
* Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
* Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
* Take a nap every afternoon.
* When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
* Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
* Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
* And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
[Source: “ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN” by Robert Fulghum.

See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/ ]

I guess most of us would say families and communities and kindergarten but it is a wonderful condensed version of a basis for ethical behaviour.

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All postings to this site relate to the central SunWALK model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Being human – an American high school principal´s view

Many years ago a copy of this letter came my way – supposedly issued by a high school principal to his/her teachers on the first day of school.

It was seminal in the development of my world-view  – and it is worthy of re-circulation;

Dear Teacher

     I am a survivor of a concentration camp.  My eyes saw what no man should witness:

        Gas chambers built by learned engineers.

        Children poisoned by educated physicians.

        Infants killed by trained nurses.

        Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.

        So, I am suspicious of education.

My request is: Help your students become human.  Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmans.

Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human. 

SEE ALSO: http://www.hmh.org/ed_faqs.asp

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

“The Self is an ocean without a shore”: Bill Viola, a perfect match of spirit and form?

THE ARGUMENT The past lives only in the present in that our consciousness is marked and shaped by those whose insights we come to re-realize – including those that come from the great spiritual teachers. Memories are like art and sacred writings that are simply marks made – but marks made that can transport us to our own high realization in inspired consciousness. Bill Viola is now re-presenting us through his mastery of one of newest of mediums, video, with access to that spiritual core at the heart of the great world wisdom traditions. Is this a perfect post-modernist match of spirit and form?

In my SunWALK model about ‘what it is to be human‘ and about ‘how can we spiritualize education without the exclusivity of sectarian religion‘ I was inspired by several quotations as well as by Seamus Heaney’s poem Personal Helicon.

Bill Viola from ‘Ocean Without a Shore‘ – click to see full size – Source artdaily

“One of the things the camera taught me was to see the world, the same world that my eye sees, in its metaphoric, symbolic state. This condition is, in fact, always present, latent in the world around us .”
– Bill Viola

I was interested to see news about Bill Viola’s recent work ‘Ocean Without a Shore’ (shown at Chiesa di San Gallo, Venice). Viola’s website cites the following two inspirations;

“The Self is an ocean without a shore. Gazing upon it has no
beginning or end, in this world and the next.”
Ibn al’Arabi (1165 – 1240)

From the Viola site we learn;

‘Ocean Without a Shore’ is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in the church of San Gallo become portals for the passage of the dead to and from our world. Presented as a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the video sequence documents a succession of individuals slowly approaching out of darkness and moving into the light. Each person must then breakthrough an invisible threshold of water and light in order to pass into the physical world. Once incarnate however, all beings realize that their presence is finite and so they must eventually turn away from material existence to return from where they came. The cycle repeats without end.

The work was inspired by a poem by the 20th century Senegalese poet and storyteller Birago Diop:

“ Hearing things more than beings,
listening to the voice of fire,
the voice of water.
Hearing in wind the weeping bushes,
sighs of our forefathers.

The dead are never gone:
they are in the shadows.
The dead are not in earth:
they’re in the rustling tree,
the groaning wood,
water that runs,
water that sleeps;
they’re in the hut, in the crowd,
the dead are not dead.

The dead are never gone,
they’re in the breast of a woman,
they’re in the crying of a child,
in the flaming torch.
The dead are not in the earth:
they’re in the dying fire,
the weeping grasses,
whimpering rocks,
they’re in the forest, they’re in the house,
the dead are not dead.”
(from David Melzter, ed. Death – An Anthology of Ancient Texts, Songs, Prayers and Stories (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984)

The Ibn al’Arabi quotations reminded me of my attempt to portray our state in visiting ‘the shoreline’ and encountering the unknowable Whole – in my Personal Myth and the four key qutations (SEE below)

The poetic sense of the dead speaking in the ‘dying fire, the weeping grasses’ etc is secondary for me to how they live on in the consciousness that we possess, because of them. Our spirits continue to live out their consciousness through ours.

FOUR KEY QUOTATIONS

The Ibn al’Arabi quotation also reminded me of the inspiration I got from four key quotations in relation to a sense of the Whole and to a panentheistic and Universalist perspective I hoped that they contributed to the leitmotif that made of the thesis parts, a whole;

Text 1)

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer
the shoreline of mystery.” Unknown author

Text 2)

The search for reason ends at the shore of the known;
on the immense expanse beyond it
only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
It alone knows the route to that
which is remote from experience and understanding.
Neither is amphibious:
reason cannot go beyond the shore,
and the sense of the ineffable
is out of place where we measure, where we weigh…….

Citizens of two realms, we must all sustain dual allegiance:
we sense the ineffable in one realm;
we name and exploit reality in another.

Between the two we set up a system of references,
but can never fill the gap.
They are as far and as close to each other

As time and calendar, as violin and melody,
as life and what lies beyond the last breath.

The tangible phenomena we scrutinize with our reason,

The sacred and indemonstrable we overhear

with the sense of the ineffable.

Heschel A. J. (1971), Man is Not Alone, New York: Octagon Books p.8

Text 3)

Tao, the subtle reality of the universe

cannot be described.

That which can be described in words

is merely a conception of the mind.

Although names and descriptions have been applied to it,

the subtle reality is beyond the description.

One may use the word ‘Nothingness”

to describe the Origin of the universe,

and “Beingness”

to describe the Mother of the myriad things,

but Nothingness and Beingness are merely conceptions.

From the perspective of Nothingness,

one may perceive the expansion of the universe.

From the perspective of Beingness,

one may distinguish individual things.

Both are for the conceptual convenience of the mind.

Although different concepts can be applied,

Nothingness and Beingness

and other conceptual activity of the mind

all come from, the same indescribable subtle Originalness

The Way is the unfoldment of such subtle reality.

Having reached the subtlety of the universe,

one may see the ultimate subtlety,
the Gate of All Wonders.

Ni, Hua-Ching (1997), The Complete Works of Lao Tzu, Santa Monica, USA: Seven Star Communications – Tao The Ching (‘Chapter’ 1)

Text 4)

….set then yourselves towards His holy Court, on the shore of His mighty Ocean, so that the pearls of knowledge and wisdom, which God hath stored up within the shell of His radiant heart, may be revealed unto you….
(Baha’u’llah: Proclamation of Baha’u’llah, Pages: 8-9)

The past lives only in the present in that our consciousness is marked and shaped by those whose insights we come to re-realize – including those that come from the great spiritual teachers. Memories are like art and sacred writings that are simply marks made – but marks made that can transport us to our own high realization in inspired consciousness. Bill Viola is now re-presenting us through his mastery of one of newest of mediums, video, with access to that spiritual core at the heart of the great world wisdom traditions. Is this a perfect post-modernist match of spirit and form?

The mystic inner core of the great world wisdom traditions is incorrectly named as Perennial Philosophy

• There’s a reality beyond the material world:
• Which is uncreated.
• It pervades everything,
• but remains beyond the reach of human knowledge and understanding.
• You approach that reality by:
• Distinguishing ego from true self
• Understanding the nature of desire
• Becoming unattached
• Forgetting about preferences
• Not working for personal gain
• Letting go of thoughts
• Redirecting your attention
• Being devoted
• Being humble
• Invoking that reality
• Surrendering
• That reality approaches you through:
• Grace
• The teacher
• You’re transformed so that you embody that reality by:
• Dying and being reborn

Two views of the structure of Perennial Philosophy are HERE

Viola in our sea of uncertainty, and maelstrom of violence, is helping us re-connect.

Perhaps also Viola is showing us that video can do more fully what photographers – Minor White for example – have longed to do – to ‘en-form’ the spiritual?

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Ancient wisdom: insights from Sufi sacred Islamic poetry

I came across this wonderful poem in The Sufi Book of Life by Neil Douglas-Klotz (p.56)


‘I’ and ‘you’ focus light

like decorative holes cut

in a lampshade.

But there is only One Light.

 

‘I’ and ‘you’ throw a

thin veil between

heaven and earth.

Lift the veil and all

creeds and theologies disappear.

 

When ‘I’ and ‘you’ vanish,

how can I tell whether I am

in a mosque, a synagogue,

a church, or an observatory.

Shabistari – Sufi poet

We think that the idea that truth is one and all religions are the same at their core – that as Ghandi said,”God has no religion”- as being modern but here we can see these ideas in this poem from the 13th/14th century.

In looking for more information I came upon the material listed below. It set me thinking along a theme that first took my interest long ago. So much wisdom that we desperately need is enshrined not just in the philosophy of the past but also in ancient poetry and other forms of literature.

A wealth of wisdom and sacred insight can be ‘sipped at’ the Poetry Chaikana

What is a Chaikhana?

A chaikhana is a teahouse along the legendary Silk Road pilgrimage and trading route linking China to the Middle East and Europe. It is a place of rest along the journey, a place to shake off the dust of the road, to sip tea, and to gather together to sing songs of the Divine..

So enjoy visiting the tea-house.

The complete text of Shabistari’s The Rose Garden is HERE

You can find out more about Shabistari starting with Wiki HERE

Another good place to start re Sufism and beautiful poetry is the UK Rumi organization HERE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Wilber, heart-knowing, head-knowing, and the 3 ‘voices’ through which we engage with reality

Heart-knowing, head-knowing, and the 3 ‘voices’ through which we engage with reality

The three intrapersonal ‘voices’ of human engagement, have previously been presented as Caring, Creativity and Criticality.

Our Caring, Creativity and Criticality ways of engaging are developed through internalizing the voices of parents and family and then all of the Humanities, the Arts and the Sciences experiences we have at school and in the wider society.

 

Corresponding to the three voices we have three ways of knowing:

1 the ‘social-others-centred’ way of knowing – in the case of Caring

2 the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’ way of knowing – in the case of Creativity and

3 the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’ way of knowing – in the case of Criticality

So;

Caring, the ‘social-others-centred’ way of knowing = the internalized voice of the Humanities, and is about engaging with reality via the moral viewpoint

 

Creativity, the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’ way of knowing = the internalized voice of the Arts, and is about engaging with reality via the subjective viewpoint

 

Criticality the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’ way of knowing = the internalized moral voice of the ‘Sciences’ and is about engaging with reality via the (supposed) objective viewpoint.

 

NB Criticality is wider that what is normally meant by the Sciences and scientific methods. It includes philosophy and such activities as Eng Lit criticism. Why? Because it is about reasoning and other ‘left-brain’ objective activities. The participant assumes the position of being objective and is learning or teaching about phenomena – s/he is not learning or teaching in the phenomena – a distinction that correlates with that between ‘knowing that’ (Paris is the capital of France) and ‘knowing how’ (being able to dance a response to a tragic event).

 

Heart-knowing and head-knowing, left-brain and right-brain

Heart-knowing, the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’, is seen as partly an innate, intuitive way of knowing and seems to relate to right-brain activities.

 

The ‘methods of the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’’voice’ seem to relate to right-brain activities.

 

The third form, i.e. social knowing, is seen as deriving from the cultural interpersonal matrix of family and community relationships, internalized as the Caring seems to draw upon both sides of the brain (as do architects!).

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

 

 

 

 

Heart-rending testimony of an Afghan woman in Fazal Sheikh’s online book, ‘When Two Bulls Fight the Leg of the Calf is Broken’

afghan-woman.jpgBe sure to visit Fazal Sheikh’s on-line HERE

Take a look at the heart-rending testimony of an Afghan woman in ‘Fazal Sheikh’s online book When Two Bulls Fight the Leg of the Calf is Broken’.

Here is a short extract;

‘When our great Islamic revolution succeeded, we thought our day of deliverance had come. Finally we would be free and independent. Afghanistan was released. But once again women were treated as the goat in the game, pulled this way and that by one faction or another. Once again, on all sides, indiscriminate bombing and rocket-attacks, bullets and mines killed Afghan children in their mother’s wombs. We were forced to flee with bare feet and uncovered heads to escape the killing. Some of us fled to foreign countries and became refugees. It should not be forgotten that some of us were forced to flee to Moscow for our safety!

I shall never forget how so many of us spent frightened lonely nights waiting patiently in the front line for a single loaf of bread. How many of us were abducted by armed men from Mujahedin parties in the middle of the day in busy streets. How many of us were raped. How many of us threw themselves from buildings to keep their chastity. How many of us were taken from the scorching refugee camps in Jalalabad to become a commodity for men in neighboring countries. How many widows were forced to sell themselves to feed their families.

Those who have come to power, those with guns, continue to leer at us, to make fun of us, to take pleasure in harassing us. These men who think of themselves as the defenders of our faith, as our fathers and brothers sent to protect us, are the same ones who call us “Honey”. They say: “Don’t come out of your bottle, the flies might touch you.” The flies are the men that rush at you. Others tell us that we are “live wires that must be covered.” It is a pity they don’t recognize us as individuals, as fellow human beings. Over the loudspeakers they announce that years of holy war has simply been to cover Afghan women in Muslim dress.

That, dear brother, dear father and son, I am sure was not the purpose of the holy war……’

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Of course people need water and food but as Maslow pointed out long ago security is a comparably important need.

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Story and storying: the teacher’s self as text in reform of education

Parker Palmer in, The Courage to Teach, (1998 p.3), says that his book:

explores the teacher’s inner life, but it also raises a question that goes beyond the solitude of the teacher’s soul: How can the teacher’s selfhood become a legitimate topic in education and in our public dialogues on educational reform?

It turns out that this site is an attempt to answer Palmer’s question.

In a similar vein Sondra Perl (1994), (in Laidlaw, Mellett and Whitehead 2003) says:

Stories have mythic powers. To know this … is to know the shaping power of the tale. But how, I wonder, do we see beyond the boundaries of a familiar story and envision a new one? What, in other words, are the connections between texts we read and the lives we live, between composing our stories and composing ourselves?

Stories are one answer to the question; ‘What is it that makes of the parts a whole?’.  Story-making of our experience is in-built.  Conversely we tend to read the world according to the stories to which we subscribe, or that we ourselves have created.  A religious world-view would be an example of the former.  Concerning personal stories and how we construe the world see the psychology, and methodology, of George Kelly HERE

I am seeking on this site, and have sought in my thesis, to see beyond the familiar stories of my life, and of education as it is has been, and, through ‘a re-composing’ of my life via autobiography, my teaching and dialogues, I have sought to envision a new story for education.  This is what is meant by ‘applied autoethnography’.

Story and Personal Myth in making our selves, and our education, whole

island.jpg

My personal myth Island, Shoreline and Ocean –

a view of story in Personal Development and in Holistic Education

Introduction:

By way of an introduction here are a few succinct thoughts. Skip this if you want to go straight to my ‘personal myth’;

Myth operates in us – its part of being human – like philosophizing. Therefore we should make the most of it – in terms of the mythology we make, and that with which we choose to identify.

Story is central to our meaning-making and how we (choose) to make sense of the world and give account of our encounters and experiences.

Myth, as opposed to story generally, is about our deepest concerns and is characterized as narrative that gives account of the unknown and unknowable as well as some of the known. E.g. we die but we don’t know what, if anything, happens after that. Myth creates and is derived from beliefs.

Myth intrapersonally is the clothing we give to the psycho-spiritual dynamics of inner experience.

Myth interpersonally is the stories we tell each other to explain encounters with the (mainly) unknown and unknowable.

Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth is a must because it makes clear the relationship between myth and religion and world-views.

“Without myth, cult, ritual and ethical living, a sense of the sacred dies,” says Armstrong. Without the discipline of mythical thinking and practice, it was difficult for many to avoid despair. The dark epiphanies of the 20th century can be blamed on “the absence of a viable mythology” that could help us face the unspeakable. Guardian review by Tim Radford

A personal myth operates in us whether we choose to articulate it or not. It is closely allied to what one psychologist called ‘our personal script’ and the another (Kelly) called our set of ‘personal constructs’.

We can help in healing ourselves by articulating our personal myth in comparison and contrast to the group myths around us – or that exist as historical artifacts.

Restorying, (e.g.by writing different versions of) our personal myth can enable us to re-frame our personal experience and gain degrees of control and depths of energy that previously were denied us through locked-up pain.

Creating a personal myth can facilitate better self-understanding and there is potentially a powerful tool for teaching and learning.

My personal myth is here;

The ‘Island, Shoreline and Ocean’ personal Myth

The personal myth that follows was written as a ‘one-page’ way of expressing a) a sense of the relationship with the cosmos, the Whole, and b) of a range of the ideas in, and behind, SunWALK. Jane is part of me, perhaps the same Jane as in Jane’s Short Story in Chapter 1.

The personal myth is an attempt at re-storying one kind of knowing. A felt need to undertake a re-storying of knowing can lie in acknowledgement of the fact that we know, and need to know, and need to express that knowing, in more ways than the empirical-reasoning mode – hence Island, Shoreline, Ocean. To admit other ways of knowing, is to admit that in our wholeness we are more than our senses and our reasoning. It is also to admit that in our knowing we are surrounded by mystery, which we encounter. We in various ways give accounts of those encounters.

3:3 Island, Shoreline and Ocean

a personal myth concerning the nature of mystical experience & its relationship to consciousness, & to knowledge creation – as such it is an attempt to include as much as possible of what I learned during the eleven year journey of the thesis – in a ‘one page’ story

The sun always woke her. Every day Jane walked through her garden, inspecting this plant and that, analysing what needed to be done. The quest was never-ending. Sometimes she sat a while on an old tree stump in order to consider the tasks and challenges, trying to work out the feelings and puzzles of what didn’t seem quite right, what didn’t feel quite right. What she couldn’t physically arrange she sometimes tried to paint or write – she had an imaginary garden as well as a real one. Sometimes she looked at her neighbours’ gardens, wondering if that would give her inspiration, but she was always left with the feeling that her most important answers came from elsewhere.

Every day beneath the practical considerations she felt a longing. Having made her review of her garden Jane walked over the fields, across the two streams that eventually made their way down to the sea, and along the cliff, and down to the shoreline. At the shoreline she breathed in her sense of the infinity of the ocean, along with the ozone-heavy, sea-weedy, sea air.
Frequently she imagined the island’s shoreline around the island’s circumference. In her mind’s eye she saw each place being shaped in some different way by the ocean – which was sometimes gentle, and was sometimes awesome in its relentless might. Sometimes the feelings that filled her were so powerful that she was overcome. Sometimes the beauty of being in the presence of the ocean was so great that she felt that neither garden nor painting nor poetry would ever fully satisfy the deepest longing.

Often after such reverie she slipped into the sea.

The sea had so much salt that she just floated. And, when the temperature was right, in floating, eyes closed, she lost all sense of where she ended and where the surrounding sea began. There was no separate sea, no separate self – it was just ….. being. It was always that way, just being. At such times she felt both full and empty, both powerless and at that same time she felt herself to be the very ocean that insistently carved and re-carved the island shoreline.

Mostly at that point she just wanted to stay, to be just part of this place between land and sea, like a driftwood sculpture, ocean-polished, that had been thrown up after a long journey from some river bank, high up some vaguely-remembered river. The shoreline was exquisitely the best of places. But she always took that first step. A first step on the walk back to her garden. And with the walking the experience that was ineffable started to give up insights and possibilities to both refine the garden, and to extend it into some more of the island’s familiar, wilderness, space.

In the evenings she and her friends sat beneath the moon, in whichever was the most interesting of their gardens, at that particular time, and they discussed the issues that concerned them. They all, more or less, had similar such deep experiences as Jane. The ongoing conversation was what united them, along with their respect for how they clothed so differently, in imagination and form, the experiences that were ineffable.
C. from an unpublished doctoral thesis by Roger Prentice, Northumberland ver July 2003

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Karen Armstrong’s book A Short History of Myth is HERE NB Read the Customer Reviews which are excellent and ignore the Editorial Reviews which are carping, mean-spirited and self-serving!

Relevant book that looks interesting Restorying Our Lives: Personal Growth Through Autobiographical Reflection HERE

Island map SOURCE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Postmodernism and Modernism as the Frame and The Mirror

bush-faces-of-the-dead-795931.jpg‘Bush faces of the Dead – Source and a PoMo (Postmodern) primer

Postmodernism as the Frame and The Mirror

Further to my previous post re postmodernism I found this useful and stimulating;

“If the postmodern is a collage — as some critics have suggested — or if collage is itself a kernel of the postmodern, what does this mean for our way of understanding the world?” The Frame and the Mirror uses this question to probe the distinctive character of the postmodern situation and the philosophical problem of representation…………

More than an introduction to the postmodern, The Frame and the Mirror advances our understanding of the contemporary world by relating its features to the peculiar characteristics of collage. Ultimately, Brockelman shows how collage demands that we reinterpret modernity, conceiving of it as suspended between a loss of certainty and a new kind of knowledge about the human condition.

In doing so, his work challenges many of the claims made in the name of postmodernism — and offers in their place a new and ironic view of the cultural space in which contemporary and historical events occur.

from a review of The Frame and the Mirror: On Collage & Postmodernism by Thomas P. Brockelman 2001 Northwestern Uni Press

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This is only a fragment from a review but the key idea is that the past ideal was to mirror reality – either external reality as in a landscape or ‘internal reality’ in say the agonized energy of Van Gogh paintings. Now there is much greater consciousness about any ‘frame’ (context) that surrounds an object. Often there is much greater understanding about the ‘who, when, why, for whom, how etc’ of its creation.

 

In this spirit of postmodernism we can re-contextualize or re-frame anything from the past – for any one of numerous reasons. Reasons might include attacking the current status quo or attacking the status quo at the time of the original objects original creation.

 

This provides endless opportunities for novelty. We can take anything and re-contextualize it to create endless kaleidoscopic novelty. But do we also need a fixed point, an orientation, a harbour in a sea of change? I believe we do. That is we need a balance between that which is fixed and that which is open to change. But we can’t return to the past. Going back to earlier forms or over-simplified forms (fundamentalist religions) is to duck reality. The only position that can satisfy current challenges is a universalist one that includes a new form of humanism. Yes include the great world religions and philosophies – whatever leads us to be more just, true, good and beautiful. This universalist position above all recognizes oneness and arises from empathy and compassion towards all others of the species. Our humanity is our resistance to endless novelty that without some fixedness will only bring insanity.

 

The ‘portrait’ of President Bush is a kind of mosaic through artificial pixilation. It is also an astonishing assault on the normal conventions of portraiture as well as carrying its political and anti-war message. The image resonates with meanings and part of that is that it refers to modern digital communication except the ‘pixels’ are themselves the images of the fallen. The portrait itself is re-framed – and it reframes the meaning of this particular portrait.

 

 

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Postmodernism at Wiki

Interesting site here on modernism postmodernism and architecture

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

 

 

 

 

 

The ‘Rules for being Human’, Perennial Philosophy and Universalism

life-rules-fist-and-rosedsarose.jpg

These ‘Life-Rules’ by Cherie Carter-Scott, from her book If Life is a Game, These are the Rules are becoming well-known and they seem to me to be are interesting in relation to a holistic perspective, and to the ideas of Perennial Philosophy and a mystical world-view.

When you were born, you didn’t come with an owner’s manual; these guidelines make life work better.

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s the only thing you are sure to keep for the rest of your life.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called “Life on Planet Earth”. Every person or incident is the Universal Teacher.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation. “Failures” are as much a part of the process as “success.”

4. A lesson is repeated until learned. It is presented to you in various forms until you learn it — then you can go on to the next lesson.

5. If you don’t learn easy lessons, they get harder. External problems are a precise reflection of your internal state. When you clear inner obstructions, your outside world changes. Pain is how the universe gets your attention.

6. You will know you’ve learned a lesson when your actions change. Wisdom is practice. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.

7. “There” is no better than “here”. When your “there” becomes a “here” you will simply obtain another “there” that again looks better than “here.”

8. Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate in yourself.

9. Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas; you do the painting. Take charge of your life — or someone else will.

10. You always get what you want. Your subconscious rightfully determines what energies, experiences, and people you attract — therefore, the only foolproof way to know what you want is to see what you have. There are no victims, only students.

11. There is no right or wrong, but there are consequences. Moralizing doesn’t help. Judgments only hold the patterns in place. Just do your best.

12. Your answers lie inside you. Children need guidance from others; as we mature, we trust our hearts, where the Laws of Spirit are written. You know more than you have heard or read or been told. All you need to do is to look, listen, and trust.

13. You will forget all this.

14. You can remember any time you wish.

(From the book “If Life is a Game, These are the Rules” by Cherie Carter-Scott)

TASK:/LESSON

1 Take a look at Perennial Philosophy and the Golden Rule and compare and contrast them to Carter-Scott’s ‘Rules’.

2 Re-write these according to your beliefs and world-view.

3 Find out what Cherie Carter-Scott meant by reading her book.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

The Golden Rule as one aspect of the world-view shared by most holistic educators

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The Golden Rule

Two aspects of the world-view shared by most holistic educators are Perennial Philosophy (see separate post) and the Golden Rule.

 

 

One measure of the challenge facing us is in the following. In looking for short definitions that might be useful I was struck by the fact that several (many?) Western encyclopedias actually refer to the Golden Rule as a Christian doctrine! Ethnocentricity rules! The point is also well pinned down in an interesting article from Arab News by Iman Kurdi

Below are some of the most interesting sites that present and explore the Golden Rule along with some suggestions for lessons and all ages.

 

http://www.jcu.edu/philosophy/gensler/goldrule.htm

http://www.goldenruleradical.org/

Home

 

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR LESSONS/Discussion

1 In what sense is the Golden Rule the same as or different to acting justly?

2 Collect some examples, via interviews, of where the Golden Rule was applied with good effect?

3 Choose several of the problems that exist in the world and see how far you can a) analyze the problem and b) obtain inspiration for steps toward a solution.

poster.gifSource – for your poster Golden Rule info and much more

 

A TOUCH OF IRONY: The Wiki entry on the Golden Rule currently shows the price of democracy in that it is hung up in disputes! Re-named as the Ethic of Reciprocity – has it been hijacked or up-lifted by philosophers! I’m sure it will settle eventually – in the mean time there is a lot of good stuff alread on the site – including additional sources.

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

 

 

 

 

PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY – TWO VIEWS A) BY KEN WILBER AND B) BY DEB PLATT

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Even a cursory glance at the ideological and physical conflicts of today will indicate the desperate need for understanding that enables a ‘clearing in the forest’ of beliefs – one that will enable harmony in diversity.

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On this site I argue that the deepest recognition has to lie in our humanity which we hold in common with all others – I am human, you are human, they are human – we all are human. However since religion exists in many and powerful manifestations the most important of all questions is, “In what ways is there a common light at the centre of of all of the great world religions?” The answer is presented in Perennial Philosophy. Perennial Philosophy is not a particularly good title – something like ‘core mystical reality’ or ‘the great chain of being’ are more accurate, albeit much clumsier titles.

In many ways the appeal to recognize sameness in others, harmony in diversity, is also a call to a kind of federalism. That is to say such a recognition will enable the people of the world to hold an allegiance to the whole as well as to the particular – much as most Americans or Germans hold an allegiance to their national government as well as to their state governments.

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HERE IS HOW KEN WILBER SUMMARIZES THE SEVEN MAJOR POINTS OF THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, IN HIS BOOK GRACE AND GRIT:

1. Spirit exists.
2. Spirit is found within.
3. Most of us don’t realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin,
separation, and duality–that is, we are living in a fallen or illusory state.
4. There is a way out of this fallen state of sin and illusion, there is a Path to our liberation.
5. If we follow this path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience
of Spirit within, a Supreme Liberation, which–
6 marks the end of sin and suffering, and
which
7 issues in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings.

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THIS IS HOW DEB PLATT PRESENTED HER LATE LAMENTED SITE ON WHICH SHE BROUGHT TOGETHER A VAST AND BEAUTIFUL SELECTION OF QUOTATIONS FROM WORLD RELIGIONS

.

If anyone knows what happened to her site please tell me. Her site was a truly great contribution toward religious understanding and its disappearance a great loss. Equally if you managed to copy her site before it was taken down please let me know (onesummit ATgmail.com replace AT with @).

This is the ‘universal’, mystic heart of all of the great wisdom traditions as Deb Platt presented it;

• There’s a reality beyond the material world:
• Which is uncreated.
• It pervades everything,
• but remains beyond the reach of human knowledge and understanding.
• You approach that reality by:
• Distinguishing ego from true self
• Understanding the nature of desire
• Becoming unattached
• Forgetting about preferences
• Not working for personal gain
• Letting go of thoughts
• Redirecting your attention
• Being devoted
• Being humble
• Invoking that reality
• Surrendering
• That reality approaches you through:
• Grace
• The teacher
• You’re transformed so that you embody that reality by:
• Dying and being reborn

Holistic Education doesn’t have allegiance to any one religion or philosophy, but Perennial Philosophy is very important for many and is the position of this site. It is motivated by recognition of the essential oneness of the great wisdom traditions

(SEE also Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy or Chap 2 of Jack Miller’s Educating for Wisdom & Compassion)

From ‘Summer is a-coming in’ (1250) to ‘Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block’ (1994); each generation’s popular song lyrics – for cultural exploration

bob-dylan-freewheelin-lyrics.jpgSource – and lyrics for the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

From SUmair is IcUmin in (1250) to Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block (1994); each generation’s popular song lyrics – for cultural exploration of values and beliefs

Great song lyrics are inspiring. Of course when they are coupled with great music the two have a multiplier effect and become ‘transcendent’. Why? How do the words when combined with the music become so powerful – so powerful that they can ‘take us out of ourselves’ and transport us delightfully?

Once or twice I’ve heard teachers and/or preachers refer to lyrics in popular song and I’m sure a lot of work has been done in schools and colleges. Here I just post one or two ideas and hope that I get to hear about more such work.

 

I did look many many years ago at some of the lyrics used by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan with secondary school pupils in the context of teaching English in the first school in which I taught. (I’m afraid I am one of those who thought that Bob Dylan did fall from grace with the electric guitar – but no one can take away the diamond-like clarity and poetry of his early work!) Still good stuff!

 

If you can avoid too much initial resistance folk song is, of course, a very interesting vehicle to look at historical events and work-related and class and geographic issues.

 

One of the earliest songs is SUmair is IcUmin in (c.1250)

SUmair is IcUmin in, lU-duh sing cUckU
GrOweth sAd and blOweth mAd and springth the wUduh nU
ow-uh blAteth after lahhhmb, lOth after cal-vuh cU
Bullock stairteth, buck-uh vairteth, mUrI sing cUckU
Well singst thU cUckU; nA swick thU nevair nU
Sing cUckU, nU….

Translation:
Summer is coming in, loudly sings the cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo….
The seed grows; the meadow blossoms, and the woods alivens anew.
The ewe bleats after the lamb; the cow lows after the calf;
The bull leaps; the goat capers*; merrily sing cuckoo!
Well sing you, cuckoo–don’t ever stop now.
Sing cuckoo, now….

Hear the music HERE

Lastly I want to mention films – probably like me you are astonished in having watched a film to see that it had used 30 or so songs and yet you were not aware of them – so looking at the use of popular music in films is another very interesting area.

TASK/LESSONs – a few ideas

1 Look at some lyrics that stand up as poetry and some that don’t but get transformed when coupled with the music.

2 Explore the multiplier effect’ when lyrics and song come together – via a good/great singer.

3 Use song lyrics (and photographs/photography) in ‘reminiscence work’ with senior citizens and multi-generational work.

4 Explore why each generation gets attached to and is defined by (?) the songs that are popular.

5 what are the down-sides of music in films? What part does music play in ‘Hollywood’ type movies?

6 Watch some key/favourite/ important sections of films with and without the music sound-track – what’s the difference and what’s going on?

7 Cows are said to like music – why. If its true and what is known about music in the work-place?

8 Get children to interview parents grand-parents about key music in relation to key events in their lives.

9 Get children to develop a set of images in relations to a particular song that is important to them e.g. Strange Fruit

HERE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE LYRICS AND EDUCATIONAL SOURCES FOR THEM

Every time we say good bye (Cole Porter)

We love each other so deeply
that I ask you this, sweetheart,
why should we quarrel ever,
why can’t we be enough clever,
never to part.
Ev’ry time we say goodbye
I die a little,
ev’ry time we say goodbye
I wonder why a little,
why the gods above me
who must be in the know
think so little of me
they allow you to go.
When you’re near
there’s such an air
of spring about it,
I can hear a lark somewhere
begin to sing about it,
there’s no love song finer,
but how strange the change
from major to minor…
ev’ry time we say goodbye.
Ev’ry time we say goodbye
I die a little,
ev’ry time we say goodbye
I wonder why a little,
why the gods above me
who must be in the know
think so little of me
they allow you to go.
When you’re near
there’s such an air
of spring about it,
I can hear a lark somewhere
begin to sing about it,
there’s no love song finer,
but how strange the change
from major to minor…
ev’ry time we say goodbye.
Ev’ry single time
we say goodbye

Source

Miss Otis Regrets
“Oh, hi! A-heh heh! Is Miss Otis in?”
“Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.”

Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, mmmmmm.
And she’s sorry to be delayed,
but last evening down at lover’s lane
she strayed, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.

When she woke up and found
that her dream of love was gone, madam,
she ran to the man
who had lead her so far astray.
And from under her velvet gown
she drew a gun and shot her lover down, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.

When the mob came and got her
and dragged her from the jail, madam,
they strung her up
on the willow across the way.
And the moment before she died
she lifted up her lovely head and cried, madam.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch.
Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.

Source

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Source

All the things You Are

You are the promised breath of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long
You are the breathless hush of evening
That trembles on the brink of a lovely song
You are the angel glow that lights the stars
The dearest thing I know are what you are
Someday my happy arms will hold you
And some day I’ll know that moment divine
When all the things you are, are mine

 

Source

There is a very funny (and strangely moving) version of All the Things You Are by Peter Sellers – you can hear a bit HERE

 

Of course neither have the lyric and romantic charm and transcendental sweetness of Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block;

 

Author/Artist/Singer: Artifacts
Music Title/Track: Cummin Thru Ya Fuckin Block
Theme ID: 31545
N/A

 

featuring RedmanTo the beat y’all
*rat-a-tat drumming sound*[all] Make it funky (4X)
[Red] My nigga Tame [all] makes it funky
[Red] My nigga El [all] makes it funky
[Red] Redman [all] makes it funky
[Red] Huh, check it outVerse One: El Da SensaiI Ego Trip like Ultramag, sag my Girbauds I drag
competition so listen and raise the white flag
Cause the instructor, of the New Jerz verse dusts
another motherfucker I discover what no other brother
can do, hard to handle and to, stamp
I play Tramp like Grace Jones in that movie Vamp
I’m fit to wreck shit, I dip into the skit
Spit lyrics exquisite, blitted as I hit it
I suppose I knows the ways of the pros
Bros be like, “Oh that nigga’s got mad flows”
Creep’ll get it deep, I got it when it’s strict against
ducks who suck, and didn’t have the best defense
I make shit nice, defies with my device
And if I’m in a rap fight, you can catch a cap, right
Bust it, whassup what did ya ask me?
Crafty with my sassafrass P-Funk, thought been handy
Dandy Mayor Ave., back in the lab create my trap
Dibble dabble in the midst of the Artifact we have
swiftness, I blitz, specific and you dig it
from N.J., the Notty Headed Terror and da SensaiChorus: Artifacts, Redman

Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin block
(repeat 3X)
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin!!

Verse Two: Tame One

Well I come live from the Artifact exhibit as a misfit
Larger than Jurassic Park I lick off like Wilson Pickett
Drama like a talk show I hit more cheese than nacho
Feelin Machu when I Pi on; a Coltrane like Roscoe
Hostile underground fossil, nigga bout to rock ya
So peep it how I freak it check the technique yeah I rock ya
I glide like drips and blaze a trail like I was Portland
When ill stressed, I still rock a vest like Ed Norton
The ill king, taking all things cash, crash, and asses
Backstage passes, V.I.P. all access
I got the props pon cock, fuck the know-nots
Whose techniques are weaker than the graphics for the Gobots
I rock with raw steel like Sue Richards, when Rick smacks her
Up motherfuck that I got more funk than muskrats
With my hocus pocus I can fuck up where ya focus
wit my left hook, dip right jab shuffle I can smoke ya
it don’t matter, cause all my shit is fatter than the
pads on MPC-60’s, hit me you got five second to jet G
Straight from the Bricks, now back to the N.J.
The Notty Headed Nigga and da motherfuckin Sensai

[Red] Hoooaaaahhh! One two, one two, one two
This is for Jersey, haha ahh, ah hah
One two, one two

Verse Three: Tame One, MC El

I’m the black king, quick to grease my naps with Royal Crown
and aloe vera representin for the Notty Headed nigga era
However whatever my Posse Packs the Pistols
and my Skwad got the Boom, rid the room, get the bitches

The exact Artifact, who is that, you speak of
Leak my speakers, unique and freakin beats track in fact
I be dat, nigga who you look for, in your worst fears
Peace to my nigga Lord Sear and Samere
Display, niggaz from N.J.
Notty Headed Terror and da motherfuckin Sensai

Outro: Artifacts, Redman

Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s that Notty Headed Nigga cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] Big up to Boom Skwad’s cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump! We’re lickin off the mad shots
[Red] It’s the Artifacts and Redman cummin thru ya fuckin block
Pump! Pump!
[Red] Booyaka
Pump! Pump! (6X)
[Red] For nine-fo’
Pump! Pump!
[Red] Artifacts get dapped like that y’all
*sound of rat-a-tat drumming again*
[Red] Jersey’s in the fuckin house y’all
New York’s live in the house y’all
Newark is live in the house y’all
E-O’s live in the house y’all
Word is bond in the hizouse y’all
I’m in the motherfuckin hizouse y’all
So niggaz get the fuckin balls y’all

 

Source

 

Endpoint

Question: If ‘sewage’ is the spiritual food of choice how precisely did we fail to develop the appetite for the sublime?

 

In parenting we go from almost total control to indirect influence. Intrinsic worth, value, meaning, taste, discrimination are the kinds of qualities most of us hope our children acquire. In this process we have to stay conscious of the fact that if we don’t have (a reasonable degree of) control over our children’s environment someone far less benign will be manipulating them.

 

 

 

‘I am what I eat; Salads, Soups, Sikhism, and Harmony in Diversity – starting with our children

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Discovering the site ‘gateway to Sikhism‘ was one of today’s pleasures.

Discovering the 100+ recipes was also a pleasure and set me thinking.

I’ve heard that one of the last elements of group culture to go in the process of assimilation is food.

Food and harmony in diversity seem connected in many ways.

Firstly of course who in their right mind wants assimilation – of themselves or others. As the (wo)man said, “I want salads not soup” – that was on the question of diversity and its harmony! However what is needed is an understanding of the harmony that can help the diversity flourish. That’s what is in short supply. Perennial Philosophy and a universalist worldview is one way forward. Perhaps this doesn’t require leaving our own culture and religious roots – (although the Baha’is would say, “Yes it does – and that is the ultimate of act of allegiance.”). Gandhi had something interesting to say about this;

“After long study and experience, I have come to the conclusion that [1] all religions are true; [2] all religions have some error in them; [3] all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism, in as much as all human beings should be as dear to one as one’s own close relatives. My own veneration for other faiths is the same as that for my own faith; therefore no thought of conversion is possible.” (M. K. Gandhi, All Men Are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as told in his own words, Paris, UNESCO 1958, p 60.)

He also said, I’m given to understand, “God has no religion.”

Secondly food is one of the great universals – it demonstrates universality in the fact that we all need, and most love it, and its diversity is astonishing!

Thirdly many of us enjoy (too much?) eating our way into other cultures. I’ve not (yet) visited Japan but we had a meal in a new a Japanese restaurant in Brighton (England). Of course we need to go further so that we can touch some other parts of the essential reality of other cultures. In doing so we need to sense both that which is distinctive and that which is universal.

Some of the many cultural and sacred connections between food and culture and ‘acting-in-the-world’ can be seen in the Sikh Langar

Through food we can also celebrate our sense of ‘world citizenship’. I’m not only defined by what I think, or that with which I ‘link’ as the wit said, but also by the cuisines I celebrate!

Our giving and receiving food is of course the continuation of the ancient practice of neighbourliness. Today we can extend this to distant people through giving via charities.

Many years ago a Roman Catholic school I taught in would celebrate another religion’s festival in the morning assembly. Divali and Just as enjoyable – one of the teachers organized that those children would bring in a ‘pot luck’ of ‘Indian’ food. Now for many of the children this was a memorable kind of experiential education!

With our children and our neighbours, near and distant, let’s reach out and break bread – or mix rice – even more!

‘Practical theory’ re: Jane’s Short Story, meaning, interpretation, stories, meta-thinking, the teacher – and generating an antidote to fundamentalism!

logo_triskelion.gif

 

     Teachers, and other professionals, deal in a) texts (written and other kinds) and b) discourse about their meaning and interpretation with students every day.

 

     When we engage with texts we do so in one of three voices – the philosophical-scientific, the creative or the moral-caring. This article comprises the first of a few reflections about hermeneutics in relation to the process of teaching – and in relation to the SunWALK model and ‘what it is to be fully and positively human’ – the main focus of this site.

 

‘Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else’s point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook. Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporary.’ Wiki

 

     1 It makes sense for middle school children, and above, to come to understand that texts represent possible meanings and ‘critiques’ represent readings of texts. It might also be useful from this to understand that readings can both change over time in our lives, but principles might remain constant.

 

    
Developing meta-thinking via periodic re-visits to a useful text

     There are calls for teachers to help children to achieve meta-thinking and one enjoyable way is to re-visit a story in succeeding years with the discourse centred around such questions as;

“How do you read the story?” and

“How do you feel what you’ve learned over last year has changed your views and, what you value – in relation to the story?” and

“In what respects have you, and your thinking, changed and developed over the last year?”and

“How do you read the story now compared to when you first ‘met it’ – what’s stayed the same and what has changed?”

 

     One re-visiting was to Jane’s Short Story in a Roman Catholic middle school. Jane’s Short Story was posted to this site yesterday (8th Aug 2007). I wrote Jane’s Short Story to see how good Year 7 children (11 to 12 year olds) were at de-constructing and critiquing a piece that was deliberately stream-of-consciousness, oblique and cryptic! They surprised me the first time we used the story as a text and they also impressed me with their reflections on how their thinking had developed and the differences they saw on their second encounter.

 

     Such work is also an antidote to the shallowness and superficiality that blights much of what children suffer in school. If you treat children as profound thinkers they show that they are profound thinkers – that’s part of the genius of the process in Lipman’s Philosophy for Children

 

What’s the connection with the SunWALK model?

sunwalk-logo.jpg

 

     PFC Philosophy for Children is the exemplary programme for the ‘IT’ voice, the objective mode of engaging with truth. The spirit flows even more powerfully if we combine IT engagement with working with the ‘I’ voice of creative expression. This means that the children can treat the text, including occasionally pieces by the teacher and/or other pupils both as literary text and as philosophical text. Switching back and forth between the two activities and the two treatments of text becomes a very powerful mode of teaching – including for the third voice, that of the moral and other-centred i.e Caring.

 

What’s the connection with fundamentalism?

     There are many including;

Once you have separated out the different forms of truth-telling, the IT voice of philosophy and science, the ‘I’ voice of Creativity and the ‘WE’ voice of Caring you no longer have to defend texts in inappropriate and very dangerous ways. Treating religious texts as the supreme sources of inspiration for acting with justice, truth, beauty and goodness makes sense. Treating such texts as finite and fixed in their meaning as if they were simply mathematic formulae doesn’t.

     It is we who make the meaning, not God – which is why we should always be tentative in how we assert our interpretations (including this one!). Sacred texts are gifts of meaning-making possibilities. Of course part of the texts is time-related and part constitutes eternal realities, but understanding what we are doing as we engage in objective, subjective or moral truth-seeking helps minimize confusion.

     Literalism is the denial of God because it is the denial of meaning-making possibilities in relating to sacred texts – it limits the text to fixed and finite meaning – and tends to take us away from the focus on the need to act in the world with justice, truth, beauty, goodness – and all of the other so-called names and attributes of God.

 

     It also allows people to start believing that the ‘others’ have broken whatever covenant is deemed to have existed so that no ‘rules’ of war’ need be complied with.

     Its only in early life that we can prevent the kind of indoctrination of hatred for others. Understanding that spirituality, be it theistic or humanist, is simply the process of gaining the will to act morally is vital. Understanding the ‘voices’ with which engage and the texts that we engage with are all either objectively focused or subjectively focused or morally focused is vital in developing the truly mature mind-set and world-view.

 

Heschel quotes – God, Man, Prayer, Life and Death – and video

heschel-a-j.jpg

The following quotes from Abraham Joshua Heschel have been used to start a page on him on WikiQuotes. Many seem to me to give wonderful glimpses of the wisdom and beauty of this great soul:

God

* “Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine. … to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.”

* “God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.

* “He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor.”

* “We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.”

Prayer

* “Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.”

* “The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God.”

* “The focus of prayer is not the self…. It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the art of prayer…. Thus, in beseeching Him for bread, there is one instant, at least, in which our mind is directed neither to our hunger nor to food, but to His mercy. This instant is prayer. We start with a personal concern and live to feel the utmost.”
* “The deepest passion in any human being is the craving for meaning of human exsistence- God is the meaning beyond”

Man

* “Man is a messenger who forgot the message.”

* “Man’s sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.”

* “The road to the sacred leads through the secular.”

* “Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”

Life and Death

* “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”

* “The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior for our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a herenow.”

I just found a fragment of video – HERE – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6q1puhkUNg

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

SunWALK a model of (holistic) education in a nutshell

nutshell1.gif

SunWALK a model of (holistic) education

The SunWALK model of
spiritualizing (or humanizing) pedagogy sees
human education as: the
storied development of
meaning, which is
constructed, and de-constructed,
physically mentally and spiritually, through
Wise & Willing
Action, via
Loving and
Knowing – developed in
Community, through the
‘Dialectical Spiritualization’ of
Caring,
Creativity &
Criticality processes, all undertaken in the light of the
‘Sun’ of chosen higher-order values and beliefs, using best available, appropriate
content.

So Sun = the values we internalize through which we read the world and see the path ahead.

WALK = Wise and Willing Action driven by Loving and Knowing.

We do the WALKing in the light of the ‘Sun’.

Working with such a model enables teaching and learning to be a spiritualizing/humanizing process and reduces the tendency for education to be just materialistic, mechanistic and atomistic.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

TOO CONDENSED? – LONGER VERSIONS HERE!

DIAGRAM of the SunWALK model

Diagram of the SunWALK model

Fundamentalist science and alchemical religion: a holistic take on ‘Intelligent Design’ versus the ‘modern-scientific mindset’

Draft updated 15.11.07

god-stop1.gifalchemist-250px-william_fettes_douglas_-_the_alchemist.jpg

Fundamentalist science and

alchemical religion:

: a holistic take on ‘Intelligent Design’ versus the ‘modern-scientific mindset’

 

The politico-religious movement that advocates ‘Intelligent Design’, and its rejection by some scientists, is just one of the less bloody battles going on in our world. Is there a solution to this conflict, since it plugs in to other battles that involve a great deal of blood-letting? What and how should we be teaching in schools that might help prevent or heal the conflict between ‘Intelligent Design’ and what has been called the MWM (Modern Western Mind-set)?

 

The ‘Intelligent design’ people make the mistake of using dubious science to promote their religious views and end up, as Karen Armstrong has said, with bad religion as well as bad science. Ill-chosen, or ‘plain wrong’, science would seem to be a fundamentalist as well as a fundamental mistake.

 

Unqualified literalism is seen as one of the chief destructive characteristics of fundamentalism. Another is belief in ‘textual inerrancy’. However Terry Eagleton, in Beyond Theory, has pointed out, that as soon as a text and a (subjective) human being come together the idea that a text can remain absolutely, objectively, ‘fixed’ is inevitably shattered. Each person has a unique history and each textual engagement is therefore unique. (You can only have the cultural records of previous agreements about ‘readings’). Truth and comm-unity codes then become a matter of agreement and mutuality. Of course to maintain a fundamentalist position it also helps if we switch off all critical faculties – to swallow teaching that is falsified through over-simplification, as well as by literalism.

 

The mystical heart of the religious can only be expressed in parable, allegory and symbol. Even if required actions are crystal clear – be loving, be good etc. When religion falls to fundamentalist levels there is – in effect – no longer the need for the individual to be a responsible, autonomous human being. In such a case we can relieve ourselves of the burden of self, not through transcendent experience, but through the capitulation of obedience to an imposed, fixed, interpretation. Then religion is as false as the promise, and premises, of alchemy.

 

On the other hand scientists, when they also happen to be materialists, only value one kind of knowing – the rational-empirical. They invalidate other ways of knowing – rather as women have been invalidated throughout history. Might there might be a connection here?

 

 

Extreme denial of other ways of truth-telling by those who have turned the MWM into a creed can be as fundamentalist as religious extremism. Materialistic scientists, and other MWM de-valuers, need to open up to respecting the positives that can flow from other ways of knowing.

 

What can help toward a solution? Karen Armstrong, most recently in her A Short History of Myth has argued for a re-balancing through a modernised form of mythos to counter-balance the current form of logos. Mythos is not just a matter of myth, as detractors like to argue. The origin of ‘mythos’ relates it to speech, narrative, plot, or dialogue. I would also see it as closer to ‘heart-knowing’, to the imagistic and the ‘gestaltic’. It is a mode of knowing that flows from apprehension of the whole with a subsequent moving toward the particular.

 

It would be good to have the two, or more, ways of knowing validated and seen as complementary. On the head-knowing and heart-knowing front there might be useful correlations with left-right hemisphere brain functioning – but only if you get the philosophy and the science in good balance!

 

Instead of complementariness gradually, in the MWM since the Age of Enlightenment, the only valued, and therefore the only valid, way of thinking has come to be a matter of starting, proceeding and ending, in measurable ‘bits’. But being human is always far more than what can usefully be measured. This monopolism rightly upsets ‘good’ religionists as well as extremists – so much so that they mistakenly reach for bits of science.

 

Before the MWM became a monopoly, in the West, ‘the whole’ had value complementary to knowledge of parts. The ‘ology’ of biology, zoology and geology was the whole – in relation to the particulars of ‘bio’, ‘zoo’ and ‘geo’. It accepted as we do that the ‘ology’, the whole, is always more than we can comprehend, but humility like mutual respect is in short supply. To re-new this lost balance requires first a re-legitimization of a modernised understanding of mythos. It is true that literature, film and the plastic and performing arts have kept us spiritually connected to the mythic but the language to re-factor mythos into our various discourses has to be re-discovered.

 

Were we to have legitimated forms of mythos and logos, the arts and religion, on the one hand and science-reason-logic on the other hand could then be explored in many kinds of complementary relationship. Mythos and logos, the arts and sciences, characterise two ways of truth-discovery as well as truth-telling.

 

The third way to truth is a matter of agreements. A community’s agreements, and our internalization of those agreements as conscience and moral sensibility, is the third voice, the moral. All three are ways to enable us to engage in reality.

 

Truth and reality might usefully be seen as one but it is vital that truth-telling be seen as multiple. When truth-telling is seen as being of three kinds (at least) the two camps have a way to unite. Ken Wilber has called these three the I, WE and IT ways of knowing truth and reality.

 

The ‘I voice’ of the arts speaks of reality perceived via subjective truth-telling. It, of course, often uses mythos, symbol, allegory and metaphor.

The ‘WE voice’ of the humanities, speak about the moral aspects of reality via what we might call ‘community truth’. ‘Community truth’ is, of course, negotiated according to the society’s political structure. In academe religion is often classed as one of the humanities.

 

The ‘IT voice’ of the sciences uses the objective truth-telling of empirical methods. But we are always more than we can usefully measure.

 

Philosophy which used to combine all truth-telling voices, and from which the ‘fragmentation’ of subjects sprang is all but lost. Matthew Lipman, the developer of ‘Philosophy for Children’, sees the restoration of philosophy as the means to restore wholeness. I prefer to add the contemplative and transcendent as well. Philosophy starts with “I wonder”; the mystical with just “wonder”.

 

If religion has a purpose it is to generate spirituality. If spirituality has a purpose it is to convert good feeling into good action. If religion doesn’t lead to justice, truth, beauty and goodness, etc., we are better off without it.

 

Religion however is in some ways closer to art than to the humanities. The ‘studying about’ versus ‘studying in’ distinction is vital here. Spiritual and moral competency comes through ‘practice and action’ not just through academic knowledge. But religion, or at least first hand religious experience – John Hick’s definition of the mystical – can only, like art, be subjective. Ideally it is universal enough to be agreed upon, agreement being necessary in all knowing/ knowledge as Wittgenstein pointed out. This is why common ground needs to be established, and expanded, and ‘perennial philosophy’ re-looked at. However we can I believe agree only on our human predicament – we all love, hope, need security etc. We can go a bit further with recognizing matters of justice, truth, beauty and goodness, but theology is (rightly) too subjective. Academic theology is often just a version of bean-counting.

 

In education the experiential is vital; doing religion, or at least spirituality, is just as important as learning about religions. If the violent possessiveness and exclusiveness that many people of religion feel could be eased then a pan-religious, meta-religious spirituality could be developed – without denying others their beliefs. In such a ‘non specific-faith-group’ form of spirituality the widening and deepening of consciousness might have a chance. A sense of reverence, a sense of the sacred, a sense of transcendence might then be part of all children’s entitlement Qualities such as respect and humility, that can help inoculate against such negatives as racism, might then thrive a bit more. We can’t go on forever relying on David Beckham and Thierry Henri to band-aid a bad situation.

 

All truth systems only provide degrees of certainty. Demanding scientific certainty of the metaphysical is dangerous – usually to others as minorities – as well as plain impossible to achieve. The ‘healthy doubt’ is vital not just to enable respect for others but to prevent our own excesses. Absolute certainty requires a ‘narrowing of the hearteries’ as well as a closing of the mind. It also prevents humility.

 

The ‘IT voice’ of the sciences uses reason and the empirical to reveal reality via objective truth. But isn’t the overbearing assertion that this, and only this, has human value just as fundamentalist as Christian or Islamic extremists? Deifying science and reason can lose us the better part of our humanity. Debasing religion has the same effect.

 

All three truth-telling voices need to be validated through working with each other and by avoiding making claims from the ground and viewpoint of each other. Religion that pretends to be scientific can end up in an embarrassment of scientism. However each way of knowing can inspire and support the others.

 

 

In the case of religion and beliefs the proof is always in the pudding. Personally I don’t care what a person believes so long as it leads to virtuous action – to the ‘I WE and IT voices’ manifested in the world as some expression of beauty, goodness or truth all conditioned internally as well as externally by the spirit of justice.

 

 

Can extremist-fundamentalist mindset ever be transformed – its in virtually every religion? I saw a flicker of hope on an edition of The Daily Show. Jon Stewart interviewed an ex- fundamentalist, Bart Ehrman, who had been converted to having an open mind! Although the show’s large audience may well believe that Stewart’s satire get’s nearer truth than ‘straight’ news programmes – (is that an I, WE or IT voice?) – Stewart gave Ehrman a largely admiring and straight interview.

 

 

Ehrman was an evangelical Episcopalian (see http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6301707.html ) but through serious studies of the Bible shifted to a ‘happy agnostic’ because of what he found – that the Bible, far from guaranteeing inerrant comfort for the literalist, was a ‘living document’ derived from an almost limitless number of changes effected by copiers of texts down through the ages. His book Misquoting Jesus has become a best seller. It is not clear whether he has received any death threats – or faeces.

The poison of religious hatred can only be overcome step by step, perhaps person by person. Education is vital to such a healing. We could all help in making clear the ideas that separate out the roles of Wilber’s ‘I, WE and IT’ voices.

Shouldn’t we teach these basic different kinds of ‘truth-telling and truth investigation’ ideas in every school? Better still shouldn’t they be a way of teaching in every school? As someone interested in holistic education I see the need not just for the theoretical acceptance of other ways of knowing but also for the praxis that enables them to be combined in discourse by all teachers of all subjects.

In my own teaching in schools I found that using the three voices in ‘creative dialogue’ within the subject discourse of English, and Philosophy for Children, a produced amazing results in pupil performance. A fuller account of this way of teaching is at https://sunwalked.wordpress.com/

There just remains the task of persuading the two camps and, oh yes, HM Government and its TTA.

Dr Roger Prentice

Email: rogerprentice AT bigfoot.com

 

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

 

Lectures

In development

rp-teaching-at-wuhan_uni.jpgAdditional Lecture-workshops

Listed here are examples of a range of additional lectures supplementary to the modules in the 30 unit course.

1 Happiness, Self-understanding and Better Relationships

2 Hard Times, Measure for Measure and the spirit of poetry – a literary take on Holistic Education

3 Seeking a Friendly Face: reflections of holism in contemporary UK art

4 Exploring ‘cinematic’ language and experience as metaphor of holistic reality

5 New Circus and Holistic Education

6 An aesthetic view via an appreciation of the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson

7 Science and Religion: Fundamentalist Science and Alchemical Religion

 

 

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

 

Spirituality, Morality and Humour

marktwainbed.jpg

For many years I was perplexed about the relationship between spirituality and morality. As with all such terms soul, mind spirit etc. – there seemed a lot of confusion, and a great deal of using one term when I thought the individual was talking about something else. (Is soul the consequence of spirit or vice versa – or are they the same reality?

For me, comparatively recently, the difficulty was solved when I heard this: ” Spirituality is the source of the will to act morally.”

 

Goodness is what matters, along with truth and beauty and above all justice. Goodness – write action, morality – is what matters because it leads to human happiness. This is true whether you are an atheist or a believer. What makes you good doesn’t matter. Whether your light comes from Ghandi or Plato or your Aunt Mary or the Buddha doesn’t matter. If you pretend a deep belief and relationship e.g. as a religious person but act badly the consequence is unhappiness.

 

What’s important is to stay focused on morality, the consequences of belief.

 

Another breakthrough came in reading in Ken Wilber about the idea that we communicate in one of the three voices, I, WE and IT. The I voice is the voice of the artist. The IT voice is the voice of the scientist. The WE voice is the voice of morality.

 

All serious communication is about what of these three human concerns. The rest is information.

 

However I’m wondering if we should add as a separate voice that of ‘play’, including the humourist and comedian. They nibble around the edges, may expose insights, transgress and cross boundaries – with good as well as ‘negative’ consequences.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE