Dear Linguists, Fictioners, Transcendental
Romantics and my Colleagues Across the
Curriculum,
Coursing w/o Borders series
In my pre-season prelude to you all, Ireminded
you that for what it costs to take my course (or
anyone's) you probably could buy a decent 2nd
hand motorcycle and at least begin a cross
country road trip and maybe wonder about
assessable values and education.
A guy named Pirzig in the late 60's wrote a good book
on this—Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
He was teaching college and burned-out trying to
get across the notion of QUALITY vs Quantity
in his composition courses and figured hell with it—
I'm out of here and took off motorcycling with his
young son to work things out across country and
fruited plains.
Plato and Aristotle and Zen and an anecdotal narrative
of thinking about thinking and ideas. I recommend it.
(My old man told me people are more important than
ideas, and he’s right but I prefer ideas.)
Einstein said the kind-of-thinking that creates a problem
can't be the kind that resolves it-- but he was a genius.
Easy for him to say. Might as well as Joe Fish to define
wet. Tell me what it’s like to be conscious. Be here now.
Calling attention to conflicting values (the worth of an
inside-Jensen-syllabus-driven-assessable goals and
outcomes academic course on any x,y, z
as opposed to the value of a motorcycle
road trip) is de-moralizing in the worst
and best sense.
How is it possible for a system to change (reconfigure)
without de-moralization? Ouch, ooo, shit, hurts,
damnit.:
"The Emperor's got no clothes on" the village idiot calls out—
thinking he's enlightened –and the villagers snarl:
Shut up! you’ ll ruin everything.
Liberal Arts: getRdone disciplines, practical, applied:
all the different ways of talking about HAP –
Fictions and Myths to live by.
You know: your majors & minors & posters &
capstone experiences.
Liberal Art – you tell me .
Do I got always to be spelling these things out?
Epimenides, Procrustes, and Narcissus
walk into a bar . . .
xxxooo, Sam
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What Einstein said was: "a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels." He was speaking specifically of war. The quote that you are fond of could be described as psuedo-Einstein. It has a broader context than he had in mind -- it's smarter than what he actually said. Sometimes a person's genius is in the way they inspire those around them to think about and re-interpret what they say.
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