My reflections on life out of school...
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: Paul Harvey...NPR...whatever sounds good on the radio:):)...
Topic: human folly
Life after graduate school...has been kind of lonely...

I think it's being in an environment where people take intelligence seriously that I miss...and just being around people who take intelligence seriously...

I love judging debate tournaments for exactly that reason...to be around people who take smart seriously...

But I miss being around it more of the time...

And specifically smart policy study/discussions...and smart people study/discussions...

I miss them...

I took them seriously when I was in school...because I knew they mattered...

But I didn't realize until I left school just how much the world is run differently...how crassly calculating most people are...for purposes that are far less noble than what ideas are best on their merits...and how often these less noble purposes get confused, at best, and are explicitly covered in more noble purposes for purposes of manipulation, at worst, with higher purposes...

I think what I've realizing...is that Einstein was right about problem-solving in its nature...

That we can't solve problems at the level at which we encounter them...

And that most people are busy trying to do just that...which means most people -- as they stubbornly stick with the same failing strategy -- look a little insane...as they keep trying to solve problems the same way that they haven't been able to be solved before:):)...

Most people encounter problems...and they want them solved...and they, often -- if not more often than not -- have very little sense of responsibility in the solutions to those problems, at all...more than happy to pass the buck or to blame someone else...whether or not an adequate solution is available to the problems encountered or not...

And they'll choose the easiest solutions possible, often...even if they do not resolve those problems, substantively and in the long term...

Which leaves just a few people...

To really think about solutions to problems...

And to develop solutions that transcend the level of solving them that has not solved them, thusfar...

Meaning...by the nature of problem solving...solutions to problems must occur at a different level at the one at which a problem presented itself...

Because the level at which the problem showed up...

There wasn't an adequate solution to the problem...

That's why the problem is still around:):):)...

I don't know why most people don't feel the kind of responsibility for problem-solving that I feel...why they don't think at these deeper levels...or take seriously the idea that it would help solve the problems if they did...

I do think that much of it is because...for all our talk about making schools work to support high expectations for all students...

The truth is...

Up until this point in history...

We've not had terribly high expecations for students or for people when it comes to learning...

And the consequence is a lot of adults...who don't feel the same level of responsibility for issues of importance...that they want younger people, and kids, in particular, in schools, to experience...without adults serving as better models...

Which just isn't possible, frankly...

Whether we like it or not...

If we want students or kids or anyone following our lead to emulate any virtue...

We have to embody it...

We can't just demand it...

Because demanding it doesn't provide the example that a child or a student or anyone following us needs to embody the virtues that we say we want them to embody...

And most parents and teachers and other adults are just too used to the "do as I say, not as a do" philosophy of life...that they just don't quite recognize that people can only do what they have examples and leadership for...

A lot of my examples are from history and from stories, luckily...

Because...often...the adults in my life as a child and as a student...

Were good people...

But people who demanded a lot more than they offered...

It's an entitlement problem...

That everyone suffers from...

Rich and poor...educated and uneducated...young and old...

We all just want more than we're prepared to offer...

And it's not a sustainable way to create the room for generating the kind of authentic responsibility that comes when people have more freedom in their lives...

To screw things up...

And to find a way to get them right...

I want to spend more of my time with people take responsibility and the thought that goes into it as seriously or close as I do...

But I know very few of those people...

Because so many people...are far too busy...

Looking after their own asses...

In a world that gives them all kinds of incentive to do so...

And then pretends like it is more honest and that we are more honest...than we really are...

And waits for the sorry ass realities that we all spend time bitching about...to just go away...rather than us taking responsibility for making them better...

And that level of responsibility can only happen with more freedom...and with taking freedom more seriously, generally...

It is severely limited without that kind of freedom...

And the lack of freedom distorts the landscape...

So that people keep trying to use the same failed strategies over and over again...

For fear of facing the penalty for doing otherwise...

It's foolish...and it can only be changed...by people getting more honest about it...

And my life will feel kind of wasted...if I don't at least try:):)...

And the short term results look pretty great, overall, with all of the frustrations that I've dealt with getting us to that point:):):)...

It'll just take more freedom for people to take more responsibility over time that will really improve so many problems that we encounter...and try, foolishly, to demand solutions for:):):) (we are all such dumbasses, sometimes:):):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):):)...

Love,
Ben

Big picture...and small...
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: Schindler's List...Steven Spielberg...
Topic: human folly
OK...my friend, Katherine Shelly (I'm still trying to get a straight name on this mysterious woman:):), has got me thinking...

Bonnie, Baylor, and Dutchess...SBPBJ...katherineshelly.blogspot.com...

On my Blogspot post, "Why did I do all of this?"...

Why did I do all of this?...

Shelly writes...

"You will find no matter where you go that some people will care about the rules and regulations and some people will care about results. There are detail people and there are big picture people. Clearly you are a big picture person.

However... the world needs both kinds of people. The big picture people look for where we're going and why, and project our future into a 3-D that we can imagine and dream. The detail people make sure that we get there more or less intact."

I do believe that there is a lot of truth in what Shelly said in that comment...

And I think the quotation by John Gardner that she posts on her blog really seems to get what it is that I'm frustrated with in much of my life...

"Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."
-- John W. Gardner

Shelly is totally right...and I actually very much appreciate so many of the people in my life, my personal life and my professional life, who help me take care of the important details of life...

It was one of the biggest things, actually, that I really appreciated about Brandi...that whenever we went somewhere...or did anything...or if we organized anything...that she was so brilliant with all of the organizational details...maybe I didn't tell her or thank her for that, enough...

And there are a million people, at work, who I appreciate for their help around the details of my work and professional life...and really could not navigate my work without their help...

Beth, in the office...Linda and Sheila and Nancy and Jo Annette, for all my complaining about the IEP process...my step-mom, Marilyn, and my dad...for all their help...even Tom, my advisor, when I was in grad school, had a real knack for the details of school bureaucracy...

What frustrates me is exactly what Gardner gets at in that quotation...

It's not my light, necessarily, that I get frustrated with people being a part of...in fact, quite the contrary...I very much want to share that light with as many people as possible...

What I get frustrated with...is that when I make so much effort to get out of the way of so many people...and to just support them to do a great job...that so many people keep finding ways to get in my way...force my hand...to impose a smaller detail on my bigger picture that I am more than open to appreciating and working proactively on if they would just give me the chance to do so without trying to arm wrestle me in that direction...

And much more upsetting to me...to impose a smaller priority on my bigger priorities...because they are foolishly conviced...that if they don't force my hand...then they're smaller priority will be igored...

The irony being...that it is without a doubt in my mind...just the opposite...

The fact of the matter is...that when you force my hand...the consequence will range from either your goddamn lucky that I do anything for you...or certainly that I'll do anything for you, again...to I will resist and avoid doing anything for you...until you get off my back...

If it's important, I'll do it...after I get over what a prick you were for forcing my hand around it...

And people do this to me, all the time...without thinking...and often as a part of an on-going and quiet debate with me about whether they can or should force their way around issues...

A debate that they have, generally, thought very little about...and that they, for whatever reasons, think that I'll appreciate their point of view if I just see just how much they can get me to do...if they just make clear how I have no choice in the matter...

When the truth is...that when they do that...when I'm in good faith...they are goddamned lucky that I am doing anything for them, at all...

Just once...in my too short life...

I would give my left kidney...to be work with people...to date someone...to study somewhere...

One day...I'd just like to be around people...

Who just let me be...just let me be me...

Who let me excell...and suck...and just be myself...

Without all the pressure...and without forcing my hand...and without trying to get their way...

Without trying to impose themselves on me...or their preferences...or their ideas...or their high horses...or whatever the fuck they feel like they just have to impose on me and everyone else or else the world is just going to fall apart or go to hell in a hand-basket...

When the sad irony to all that foolishness...

Is that I and everyone else...would do a whole hell of a lot more for everyone...for every cause...

If people didn't push us all around so goddamn much...

I don't admire pushy crusaders...for big causes or small...who self-righteously bully their way through difficult or even simple issues...

They annoy the fuck out of me, is the truth...

And they get in the way of my efforts...

To surpass their expectations...not just meet them...

That's the small-mindedness of it all...

I've got to go give a neighbor a ride to the grocery store...

Have a good night, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Liars...the whole lot of us...
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: Chicago...Catherine Zeta Jones...Richard Gere...Renee Zellweger...
Topic: human folly
If you haven't seen Chicago, yet, I definitely recommend it...

What I love about this movie...is how much it bears witness to what liars everyone is...

Good people...not so good people...low down, dirty people...

We're all liars...

To others...but more difficult to disentangle...to ourselves...

We lie for self-preservation...

We lie to look better...to others...and to ourselves...

And eventually...we can't keep the lies straight...

We're smarter, better, more moral, more decent, more talented, prettier, less profane, whatever the fuck...

Whatever it is that we want to be...

We end up fooling ourselves and others...into believing that we are more of it than we actually are...

Or that someone...somewhere...in some far off place...often in the past...

Was more of those things...and we just have to live up...

Rather than the more uncomfortable truth...

That we are, all of us...constantly self-actualizing...

Constantly becoming more and more what we want to be...

And...consequently...always seeing more and more clearly...just how much we fall short...

And the people who see just how much we fall short...

Are the ones who try to hardest...

Because everyone else doesn't really try enough to really be able to see the difference very clearly...

Amos Hart, the character played brilliantly by John C. Reilly, married to Roxie Hart, cleverly portrayed by Renee Zellweger, is a perfect example of this kind of self-deception by the Average Joe...

Amos lies to himself and others so often about how well his relationship is going with Roxie -- to avoid looking bad for others -- that he completely loses track of the lies...which Billy Flynn, Roxie's never-lost-a-case criminal defense attorney, played by Richard Gere (whose triple threat dancing, singing, and acting performance in this movie bowled me over) brilliantly exploits in Amos' testimony at Roxie's murder trial...

John C. Reilly is so brilliant in this movie because he understands how a good man, an average man, can lie to himself and others so much, to not look bad for others, and still be a good man...it's really an incredible performance...by all the leads and supporting cast, if you ever get the chance to see this really terrific little musical...

It's the most important role that academics and scholars play in our lives, really...

To help us all keep track, better, of all the lies we tell to ourselves and to each other...

And to still have faith in us...even when we don't deserve it...

But...generally...because we do...despite our foolish self-deception...

The major reason why good people lie...

Is pressure...repression...unwarranted force...

Social repression...political repression...legal repression...

And in more autocratic countries...military repression...

And scholars...particularly the best scholars...

Are those among us who can help us see through that deception and self-deception, better...they help us keep track of truth more carefully...they strenghten our standards for truth-telling...and they help us adopt laws, norms, rules, ideas, etc., that will better account for our natural human tendency toward self-preservation in the face of threats...

The best academics, in my experience, get that reputation...because they make stronger arguments...that help us see, better, our hypocrisy and self-deception...

Lesser academics do a poorer job of this...because...like most people...they, themselves, are caught up in the self-preservation...rather than doing their job...which is to help the rest of us to see through it all, better...

By the way...Richard Gere totally got robbed of a Best Actor Oscar nomination for this movie (Adrien Brody was pretty fuckin' good for the Pianist)...no way that Nicholas Cage in Adaptation beats Richard Gere in Chicago...the only one that beats him in that category of the performances I've seen is maybe Brody, who was brilliant in that movie...

Richard Gere, alone, will knock your socks off with his incredible acting, tap-dancing, and singing in this last great Best Picture Oscar-awarded picture...

I've got to go get my haircut...

Have a good weekend, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Goddamn if we aren't some stupid mother-fuckers (humanity, that is)...
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: White Stripes...I just don't know what to do with myself...
Topic: human folly
The fantasy of leaving public schools, heading off to some private university, and blowing off the dumb people of the world has really been hitting me, this weekend...

It's a nice fantasy, isn't it...that you can just get away from all of the stupidity...and find a world of all kinds of smart people to avoid all of it...

The problem is...

It doesn't exist...

We are all dumb, at some level, is the truth...every one of us...me, especially...

What I love about teaching, right now...is that all of the kids...no matter how smart or not they are...are learning to live with and identity with one another, better, no matter where they are situated academically in the classroom...

That matters to me an awful lot, really...

Because I identify with everyone, really...no matter how smart or dumb...

I just get tired of having my efforts limited by people with smaller worldviews...

And I get tired of those same people not taking smart seriously enough...

I just will not settle...no matter how much people fight me...no matter for how long...

I will not settle for a world...

Where some people are smart...

And some people are dumb...

And where there is no expectation that everyone can be smart...

I won't settle for that world...

No matter how much people fight for the freedom to not be accountable to more intelligent standards...

Don't be accountable to higher standards, I say...

Just don't expect to be taken seriously, in the process...

And if you want to be taken seriously...

Then learn to deal honestly and constructively with intelligent criticism to improve your thinking and your efforts...

And...if not...expect to be criticized constructively and intelligently until you do (and you should probably expect, realistically, to be criticized less fairly and less intelligently, as well, just to have some idea of what you'll probably have to deal with in the world, fair or not)...

I just don't understand why less bright people don't see how it's in their interests to be smarter...

And how smarter people don't see that it's in their self-interest to have more people to be smarter...

Instead...we...too often...live in these very different worlds...or hold ourselves and one another to very different standards...

Which is just stupid, really...

Because we all live in the same fuckin' world, for goodness fuckin' sakes...

So it makes no fuckin' sense for us to divy each other up...

Into special education classes and gifted classes and general education classes (except when it serves a specific need, with a view to integrating people into shared educational and social experiences)...

We're all smart, at some level and with something...

And we're all stupid, at some level and with something and, generally, many things...

So we might as well face that and then work to hold each of us to similarly high standards of thought, creativity, and performance...

I identify with a guy like Joe Nye...or Amartya Sen...or Abraham Maslow...or E.O. Wilson...or Milton Friedman...or Ronald Coase...or Stephen Jay Gould...or Stephen Ambrose...or James McPherson...or Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot...or Robert Sternberg...

But I want everyone to identify with a guy like Joe Nye...

And to understand how important his work is...to their lives...as much as to some scholarly community that they feel is disconnected from their lives...

And to understand, better, how intelligence reflects a better understanding of even day-to-day realities...not just the big picture...

Some days...I want to escape...into a world of more intelligent people...who can just take me away from all of the inanity of everyday life...

But then I remember that that world doesn't exist, really...

Because a world of exclusive intellect...

Is an imaginary world...

But it ignores the obvious reality...

To anyone with their eyes open...

That we all have to live with one another...no matter how smart or not we are or aren't...

I do enjoy and prefer to talk with other who care about intellect and ideas like me...like I enjoy and prefer to talk about movies with people who really care enough about movies to develop a critical eye for them...or how I enjoy and prefer to talk about art with people who really care enough about art to develop a critical eye for art...or theater...or whatever...

I would reframe Thoreau's observation that most men live lives of quiet desperation this way, for the twenty-first century...

The world is crawling with people living lives of insignificance...making quiet and sometimes not-so-quiet arguments for why the insignificance of their lives and the way they live them should be ranked as live of deep purpose and significance...

And while those peoples' lives are worthy and important, in and of themselves...

They only rank as significant...if they aspire for significance...

And they can only aspire for significance...if they make an honest effort to contribute something great to the culture...

And in the meantime...smaller priorities are...well...smaller...

And they should be treated as such...

And most people...aspire for very little, really...

And so they don't recognized as lives of deeper significance...

Because they never really tried, really...not really...and because they wouldn't take the critical feedback when they got it...

That doesn't mean that any of us have to be intelligent all the time...noone is smart all the time...everyone is stupid, at some level, some if not much of the time...

But everyone does need to aspire...

Because as long as they don't...they aspire for so little...and their smaller worldviews will constantly interfere with the efforts of those who do aspire for greatness...

The conceit of the average person...that they should be taken more seriously than they deserve...no matter how little they've aspired or deserve such serious attention...

And the conceit of the also-rans...those who have aspired, to some degree, for greatness...but who never really achieved it...

Undermine the efforts of everyone...including those who achieve greatness...

To reach higher...to reach beyond their grasp...

As my friend Matt Toplikar says...it feeds their fantasy...of a life without change...without the need to grow...to challenge yourself...and to be challenged...

It is a stupid and self-defeating notion...

That just keeps everyone stuck...

And undermines efforts to innovate...and to develop new ideas...and to transcend the more serious of the mistakes of the culture of the day...

And it always...always...ultimately fails...no matter how stubborn and persistent peoples' stupidity and recalcitrance is...

Because there is no growth in the culture without it giving way to better ideas...

And ideas...like it not...are what drive the culture...

There is no growth in the culture without new ideas...

And there are no new ideas without greater freedom...

No way around that one...

So that is the only direction that the culture can take...if it is to grow itself...out of all the problems that it has created for itself...

I've got to go take a neighbor to pick up her stuff...

Have a good weekend, everyone...

Love,
Ben