The Haunting

I think I have been haunted
By a girl that I saw.
She was young and fair
Long golden blonde hair


I saw her for a flash
As I drove down the road
A dark picture
On a stick
Flowers and a cross.


Could it really be
That someone so young
Fell dead at the side
Of the road,
On the way to the
Casino?


So I googled her fate:
"Dead girl Rama Road Casino"


She was 23 with a future
That I got to live
These past 26 years-


Two kids, a home, 4 cats, and memories-
And she didn't- She is gone;
I got to live; she got to 23.
[does it even matter?]
I feel her presence


And somehow


I think I have been haunted
By a girl that I saw.
She was young and fair
Long golden blonde hair.

SHOULD WE SHARE?

Should We Share? (by: Tom Johnston- Sep. 24, 2011)



In a  period of great transformation it takes time for people’s minds to focus on the transformational issues at hand. Here, in 2011, certainly a year worthy of being called transformational, with the Jan 25 Revolution in Egypt, the Western economies in decline and technology continuing to shake things up, our culture is being ripped in two diametrically opposed directions.



Some people are passionate about using the tools of technology to share their thoughts, their creativity and their passions online; and many want to collaborate and achieve and grow in ways never before dreamed of. Any artist can now be published instantly, and can share their work for free, for the pure pleasure of sharing their human passion and creation. Humans want to share food, they want to share ideas, and they want to share their passions. I can think of no greater or nobler deed in life than engaging in the creative process, collaborating, and sharing the fruits of that effort with others with material value($) being secondary.




The other direction western culture is heading is in corporate control and ownership of everything including our genes, our water, and our creativity- Imprisoning every creative urge of humanity with lock and key only to be opened with a dollar bill($). Who was it that said: “Money is the root of all evil.”? And the attitude of this is: Anyone who got anything for free is engaging in piracy.” Remember those commercials demonizing innocent people for file sharing? (Movie Piracy)



We are emerging out of an era that has a meme (a behaviour) that is in its best, achievistic, and in its worst, narcissistic. Don Beck developed the ideas of Clare Graves with something called “Spiral Dynamics”. We develop through eras and periods and epochs and those eras can be mapped. The individualistic, achievistic era- Beck uses the colour Orange- is best represented by the recent scientific and industrial revolutions. The behaviour is the goal achiever, the industrialist, the inventor, the self made ‘man’/"woman", hence achiever and narcissist. In the documentary “The Corporation”(see link later in article) the movie compares the qualities of a corporation with that of a psychopath. It will do anything to maximize financial profit. Spiral Dymanics
Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics website

Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j22/beck.asp

Today, in 2011, many people are reminding us that no one is self made- they had a school system, a town system, a water system, etc. around them. “Ubuntu”, a free open source platform that replaces Windows (and extremely well I might add), took that word from an African worldview: “I am what I am because of who we all are.” (translated by Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee).

The Spiral Dynamic eras we are moving into are called: Green and Yellow (in that order). Green has us coming out of our individualistic, narcissistic stupors and realizing that we are destroying the earth in our hyper consumer obsession with wealth and ownership at all costs. Green is letting us know that it is in fact at all costs. As the polar icecaps melt we will see exactly what those costs will amount to. Perhaps, instead of taxing the corporate rich we’ll be putting them in prison for crimes against humanity. (See the documentary, The Corporation” http://www.thecorporation.com/ )

Of course we are completely complicit in the destruction of the earth as long as we continue to obsessively visit those dollar stores and corporate big box stores in order to get the latest gadget.

The next level in Spiral Dynamics, Yellow, is called Systemic-Integrative. "Express self for what self desires, but to avoid harm to others so that all life, not just own life, will benefit." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Dynamics#Yellow

Thinking globally, we can now start to get clarity on how we are inadvertently hurting others and our earth by living in our own little gasoline and all-you-can-eat-buffet lifestyle. I can think of no other symbol that better represents this Yellow era than THE INTERNET.

As we come out of our Orange narcissism, we enter Yellow Web 2.0 where the individual can see that who he/she is, is also who so many others are. We can put up our tweets and our pics, and our Facebook profiles and we can learn about our own humanity in all its strengths and weaknesses. Never before could we be virtually in touch with so many diverse cultures, ages, genders, attitudes, etc.

This culture of sharing, is really identity sharing, and it means that everyone is out of the closet. That’s right, for better or for worse, our identities live, not in the town square, or on the soap box at the park, but in a globally public domain. (and by the way there’s more of a chance of being physically assaulted in the market square than there ever will be of living online. In fact physical violence is virtually impossible online)

And so, out of the closet, we rise up by offering insightful information and opinions; we rise up by starting a Poetry blog; we rise up by respectfully disagreeing with some-one's tweet. We engage in discussions; we change our opinions because of what we are discovering, not because of mainstream information but in spite of it. We rise up by being the creative beings that we always knew we were.This is more than evolutionary; this is revolutionary.

Nothing has ever transformed society so quickly in so many aspects; Schools, Businesses, Artists, Politicians, Philosophers all have changed the way they go about their activities because of the Internet.

Some INTERNET Background and How its Nature is Sharing

The Internet began as a military tool to maintain another level of communication in case the other systems (phones etc.) went down during a war. It was then passed over to the scientific world so that scientists could share their data. Along came Unix(1969) and later Linux , Linux being one of the greatest examples of open source free software. The Internet runs mostly on free Unix operating systems.

In the 60’s M.I.T., AT&T (Bell Labs) and General Electric developed an experimental operating system and due to many problems, began to withdraw from the program. One of the scientists, Ritchie, says,

"What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form. We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication."  (emphasis mine) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

Today there is a curious and wonderful quality of the Internet: It’s anarchical. It can’t be controlled by government (Free Speech) and it can’t be controlled by corporations(file sharing). Now, this remains to be seen, but the very nature of the Internet will make it very difficult to put chains on. The reason for this is that the Internet is a network of nodes and roots and connections and there is no central controlling origin.

Picture: Tree of routing paths (from The Opte Project)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

The Effect of the INTERNET


The result of this is a great deal of power over information placed in the hands of the masses- from old retirees to teenage hackers and hacktivists. This power is not well liked by Government and Corporations because of the loss of power and money due to the masses engaging in free speech and file sharing.

I believe that Government and Corporations will have to adapt the people and not the other way around. This process will be tumultuous. Corporatocracies will not give up wealth because the nature of a corporation is to make money at all costs (yes, even cost to humanity- especially costs to humanity)



In terms of artists getting paid, Professor Lawrence Lessig addresses the issue. Rather than declare file sharers criminals, as has been fairly successfully put over on the general public, he proposes putting in place a way of directing money from the consumers to the artists which is fair. Look at the link below specifically between minutes 8 and 18. Lessig identifies the desires of people to collaborate, share and create, and the government response. He also offers some new and innovative approaches to paying artists.

Prof. Lawrence Lessig on File Sharing and Piracy(Vimeo)

The government in its “Infinite Wisdom” creates more file sharing every time it tries to bust a network. This is the anarchical nature of the Internet. Gordon Graham on Anarchy (University of Aberdeen)



Hopefully this will mean in the future no one will become a billionaire because people like their songs. In the Yellow communal age there is no need for someone to become a billionaire. Even if they are Philanthropists, philanthropy will be a communal, group process rather than the public naively hoping the rich guy contributes.

This future is a long way away, but the Internet has given many of us a vision of a better world, a world where we are occupied with creativity and sharing, rather than producing products and consuming. Maybe a day will come when we will reminisce and feel shameful that we actually purchased bottled water.Ultimately, it is not the Corporations or the Government that will decide; it is the masses and their day to day creating and consuming behaviour. Do we want to be shoppers, or creators?

"What We've Always Known About Education"

Here's an interesting take on "Education". What do you think?

What We’ve Always Known About Education    (From Will Richardson's Blog)

So this morning it’s David Weinberger that’s got me thinking. No doubt, David has been one of my favorite Web philosophers for a long time, someone who almost always seems to open the window just a bit more for me. Today, it’s this:

…we knew all along that atoms were never up to the job. We knew that the world doesn’t boil down to even the best of newspapers, that it doesn’t fit into 65,000 articles in a printed encyclopedia, that there was more disagreement than the old channels let through. (What they called noise, we called the world.) We knew that the crap pushed through the radio wasn’t really all that we cared about, or that we all cared about the same things within three tv channels of difference. The old institutions were the best fictions we could come up with given that atoms are way too big.

And I’m wondering, deep down, have we known all along that this idea of an “education” was really a fiction, something we created out of necessity with the implicit understanding that in a world limited by atoms, it was never really the end all, be all, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances? And if we didn’t know that, can we admit that now?

The circumstances have changed. We’re no longer constrained by atoms. For 125 years we’ve been making the learning world small, and now the world is all of a sudden big…huge. All of a sudden, the walls have been obliterated. Learning is unbound, and “an education” is next.

The work now is in making the transition happen in ways that don’t hurt the kids or teachers currently in our schools. In ways that prepare our kids for a learning world where atoms still matter, but for very different reasons.  A peaceful revolution of sorts that starts…where?

Limerick for my class

There once was a Writer's Craft
Whose students were certainly not daft
When the teacher said "Write it"
They became quite delighted
And everyone started to laugh!

Meta Program #2 Toward and Away From

I discussed the Meta Program Sameness and Difference in my 'Seeker' blog. We have another Meta Program within us (of course Meta Programs are just ways of looking at our humanity- a model to help us understand. We don't really have software in us) [do we?].

The Meta Program Away From and Toward is especially helpful in understanding ourselves and others in terms of goals and motivations.

Let me tell you a story.

I had a friend once who had not taken a holiday for a long time. She liked to work. She had a sameness about that. Finally her holidays were approaching and her boss was going to make her take them.

I tried to be positive with her and asked her if she was excited and what would she like to do for her holidays? She looked rather anxious and apprehensive and said:

"I don't know what I want to do. I know I don't want to drive a long way. That would be boring and the last thing I want is to spend my whole holiday stuck in a cramped car."

Well, maybe you should fly off somewhere. Wouldn't it be exciting to fly off to the Caribbean or South America where it's tropical and hot?"

"No", she replied. "I don't fly. The thought of being up thousands of feet in the air with nothing under me but a little steel doesn't appeal to me at all. And I don't want to be uncomfortably hot."

"Well, then, how about going down to the big city and taking in some shows, good food, and a classy hotel?"

"Are you kidding?", she responded disgustedly. Big cities are dirty and noisy and over priced."

"Hmmm", I thought to myself. Then I decided it was time to end our conversation and said, "Well, whatever you decide to do, I really hope you enjoy yourself."

As Friday came, she seemed to me to more and more cranky and stressed out. She left on her holiday and two weeks went by and when she returned to work, I asked her how it was.

"It was awful" she said. "I didn't know what to do so I stayed home."

Now I have great respect for someone who is devoted to their job, but I also appreciate someone who knows how to have fun, relax, enjoy the leisure time that so many of us have. My friend was so focused on what she didn't want, she failed to move toward a deeper, greater and more expansive joy in her life. She spent a lot of time focusing on and moving away from things she didn't want.

Be aware when you are in the 'away from' mode and when you are in the 'toward' mode. Some people are always running away. That's a good thing in some cases. And some people are moving towards: towards their goals, towards better relationships, towards making the world inside them and around them a little better place than it was yesterday.

Starting a New School Year

The Seeker

I have spent a lot of time in my life and especially in my career asking the question: What does it mean to learn? We spend so much time doing it (learning) but I have always been the kind of person who questions everything. All of my life I have been driven by asking the question: WHY?

If there is one thing that defines me as a human being and as a teacher, it is my drive to ask that question. I've learned over the years not to expect to arrive at a definitive answer to the question 'why?' but I have found that I have developed an insatiable curiosity about the world. My curiosity is quite broad; however, if I introspect, I realize that there are things that I have no interest in (cars, engines, doing handyman work etc.). But I have always been interested in people, and what makes them tick, why do they do the things they do, and what goes on in the inner world of their minds? Writers always have a strong curiosity about people. 

That's why they are able to build characters and plots that are intriguing and suspenseful- they know a lot about people and how and why they behave the way they do. 

I tend to be more interested in the philosophical aspect of writing and so I write more non-fiction than fiction.  Writing essays like this is where I'm most at home as a writer. I am curious about human nature, how we live our lives and what it means to live a rich and fulfilling life. I discovered a long time ago that these questions and issues don't 'get answered'; they just keep getting re-asked, with deeper and wiser interpretations. 

And one of the BIG questions is: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LEARN? OR, HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU'VE LEARNED SOMETHING?

I mean, think about it. Forget about school and the classroom for a minute. In your life, can you remember a time when you really know that you learned something significant- or even something insignificant? What was it? What makes you sure that you learned? What did it feel like? What did it look like? What did you do?

This is a challenging exercise because it requires the ability to INTROSPECT, to go inside and think about how you think. Thinking about your thinking is called META COGNITION. Whenever you reflect about relationships, or about your future, or about problems you may have, you are engaging in INTROSPECTION.

We are all SEEKERS in this world. Writers are seekers who want to understand. They are CURIOUS.

There are a few elements that I think are important for learning:

1. CURIOSITY- you can go anywhere you wnat in this world if you have an insatiable curiosity. You don't have to know anything about a subject or issue. If you are curious you can learn. Find the things that make you curious and pursue them. And of course, with the Internet and social media, you can find other people who are also curious about the same things you are.

2. GROWING-  In my research over the years I discovered an interesting idea- that we have these things called meta programs in us. One of them is: SAMENESS AND DIFFERENCE. Sometimes we want to be in our comfort zone and we want things to be the same- same habits, same routine. But, sometimes we want DIFFERENCE. We want CHANGE, GROWTH, something new. LEARNING most often is related to NEWNESS. Be aware when you are moving towards comfort and when you are moving towards change and growth. LEARNING usually requires us to leave our comfort zones.

3. UNCERTAINTY- When we are absolutely certain about something, we are probably going to stop looking for new information and new ideas. Absolute certainty can be very comforting , but it can also stop us from growing and learning. Question your assumptions and you may find an opportunity to LEARN. Seek understanding but be willing to question it.

BE CURIOUS, BE READY TO GROW, AND ACCEPT UNCERTAINTY AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW.

Words Wonderful Words

Words wonderful words,
Wallowing in the wide spaces of my mind.
I Stumbled upon someone's blog
From somewhere in the world;
I read his poem and wept

With joy at the image
That the writer offered me
For free. No ads, no selling.
A gift
From the wonderful world
Of creative urges
And surges
Of the conscious and unconscious mind
Using only one little tool
With 26 parts:
Words.