Why Education in America Stinks

The root problem in American education comes from the fact that Americans don’t actually much like children. It’s a nation so young compared to one like Finland, that the relationship of authority towards children is more like older sibling/adolescent to younger child than parent/adult to child. Underneath the surface where, at the privileged end of the …

In Praise of Patience

I was cold in the morning, shivering,but I knew the day would warmwith the rising sun. Hearts broken by humankind unkind, humanity inhumane,we bear the meanessof our worldsplodding on, plodding on… between the shadows castby obstacles half-seen,mistaken,misinformed,misunderstood–we go on seeking truth with our broken hearts. Beset by grief,taught guilt and shameand fear by all its names, even so we …

Aldous Huxley saw it coming.

Brave New World is coming… I am convinced, and have been for many years, that when our current dominant ‘civilization’ eats its own foundations out from under itself, the First Peoples of the Americas will still be here. And not just in the Americas: Indigenous peoples worldwide are stirring. They who have cherished and remembered …

The Life Civil

Since humankind began building and living in cities, we have claimed as our own the term civilized. The word describes the next stage of humanity, following from savage to barbaric to civic. It follows from family to clan to tribe and implies something beyond the stacking of bricks, the building of close housing and monumental edifices …

Bad Words

First of all, words are not bad. It takes emotional filters to make them seem bad. It takes intent on the part of the speaker, even of the listener, to make a word bad. Lenny Bruce said it well in his ‘Hard Words’ bit. It’s accessible in this article on the topic. George Carlin is …