Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The Grand Canyone of Neediness

If people lived forever
if they never got any older
never dying, always healthy,
do you think they'd bother to think
hard about things, the we're doing now?

I mean , we think about just about everything,
more or less--philosophy, psychology, logic,
religion, literature. I kinda think, if there no such
thing as death, that complicated thoughts and
ideas like that would never come into the world.
-May Kasahara, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles


Dear C__N___

Taking IT to us

Basement Writers Lives (almost).

Because I'm an old guy--what May Kasahra says
makes more sense than when I was bullet-proof
growing up, and mortality was as credible to me
as starving children in India. Had no impact on
finishing my spinach.

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet,
and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable
or even earnest advice from my seniors.


Thoreau makes sense. Overstates, of course.
But it's in the spirit of one of those profound
truths, the opposite of which is another
profound truth.

Generation Gap.

I'm trying to dis-illusion my students with the
go-for-it, taking care of business getRdone
dominant frame of mind which you & Maslow
describe as the # 1 priority: first-things-first
in Education.




We had a dean years ago that wanted to tend
to all that Liberal Art (vs liberal arts) stuff--
but first: we had to get the infrastructure in
place. Got to "build the roads, first, Sam:"--
THEN shangri la la. As if IT were chronological.

Had another colleague told me I shouldn't try
to teach THEORIZING because "they" don't
know enough YET, Sam.

First-things-first is a linear and sequential
and consequential Way of Thinking. It rules.
The poor we have with us always, basic needs--
health care etc. Who can justify sitting around
bullshitting about Big Ideas & PeakExperiences
when there is so much Good to be done?

The FACT is: the values of Liberal Art and the
values of the liberal arts are incommensurate,
and "hostile" And do not Just Get Along.

Choose your team (your "master," or if you like
"magistery").

It don't mean you aren't every day in real-time
wrestling and wrangling these 2 sets of Values.
But it means that you have chosen one set as
your over-all "ruling" paradigm, pattern, patron,
frame of minding...

This is an old guy ("presbyter" ) talking.

Any young guy in his "right" mind will appropriately
say, yeah yeah sam all well & good once I get my
degree and job and down the line I'll switch teams.
But not now, damnit. As if IT were chronological.

IT, I said.

Makes good sense. Opposite of a profound truth is
another profound truth and "without contraries is
no progress." We don't do so good in turning up the
play of contra-diction and paradox in our cover-the-
ground & get-R-done agenda.

I would confuse the issue. In order to promote
Dean Kahl's (whom you quote) Cycle of Learning.

"Learning is a cycle of confusion always followed by clarity"

Senior-itus


xxxooo, Geezer (Presbyter)

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