Idiot: from Greek idiOtEs one in a private station, layman, ignorant person, from idios one's own, private; akin to Latin suus one's own -- more at SUICIDE

This notion of yours is aligned with the anti-christian forces. Find the Christ in the community of the human heart or self destruct as your dead religion killed your God. Our's is still alive and can be found in your heart! Look into the world outside yourself...neuro-cardiology for example can help educate in Steven's sense beyond your self imposed hermitage.

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Replying to:

Mathew Fox is a Catholic bashing ex-priest. I cannot believe that this was posted on Gatto website. Why not allow white supremacist to advertise? I think all Catholics are offended by him and anyone posting his lies about the Church.

http://forums.catholic.com/printthread.php?t=52134

I guess in Libby's religion it is ok to attack other peoples' religions. I do not attack her religion please do not attack mine. If you want to follow Matthew Fox go ahead, but please do not proseletyze his brand of intolerance on Gatto.

I have no idea what this has to do with education.

Moderator, I agree with you Fox has a lot of axes to grind against the Catholic Church. But it's better to counter quotes with more quotes that show him for what he is than simply to demand he not be quoted. Discredit him. The same for white supremacists (like "honest" Abe Lincoln). There are going to be different opinions, free speech is always best-and it's ALL about education/indoctrination. There are a lot of different religions and worldviews on this board as well as some who dislike Christians. Trying to stifle them doesn't advance the cause of Christianity or Catholicism. Don't object to their speech, prove them wrong- debate them.

and their less than benevolent influence on the formation of compulsory schooling in the United States. He certainly saw through some of the fallacies of Calvinism, and, I hope you'll notice, a concept of unity that he describes as Catholic. He did not say, oh yes, we have to accept Calvinism and respect that religion because some people believed in it and it was sacred to them, and I have no right to analyze predestination or ****ation through reason. In footnotes, he does, however, say that he was talking about the religions as they existed during that historical period, not today. I wonder what he would say about some religions today if they promulgated the same types of dogma.

Yet you accuse me of religion bashing. My rap sheet on this board is so long now that I can't even remember all the accusations.

Here's a "good example" from Gatto on the Gatto site that directly pertains to education.

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From John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education, Chapter 5, "True Believers and the Unspeakable Chatauqua"


<< Godless, But Not Irreligious
True believers are only one component of American schooling, as a fraction probably a small one, but they constitute a tail that wags the dog because they possess a blueprint and access to policy machinery, while most of the rest of us do not. The true believers we call great educators— Komensky, Mather, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Mann, Dewey, Sears, Cubberley, Thorndike, et al.—were ideologues looking for a religion to replace one they never had or had lost faith in. As an abstract type, men like this have been analyzed by some of the finest minds in the history of modern thought—Machiavelli, Tocqueville, Renan, William James to name a few—but the clearest profile of the type was set down by Eric Hoffer, a one-time migrant farm worker who didn’t learn to read until he was fifteen years old. In The True Believer, a luminous modern classic, Hoffer tells us:


'Though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, shaping the world in his own image. Whether we line up with him or against him, it is well we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.'


It looks to me as if the energy to run this train was released in America from the stricken body of New England Calvinism when its theocracy collapsed from indifference, ambition, and the hostility of its own children. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, shortly after we became a nation, this energy gave rise to what Allan Bloom dubbed 'the new American religion,' eventually combining elements of old Calvinism with flavors of Anabaptism, Ranting, Leveling, Quakerism, rationalism, positivism, and that peculiar Unitarian spice: scientism.1

Where the parent form of American Calvinism had preached the rigorous exclusion of all but a tiny handful deemed predestinated for salvation (the famous "Saints" or "justified sinners"), the descendant faith, beginning about the time of the Great Awakening of the 1740s, demanded universal inclusion, recruitment of everyone into a universal, unitarian salvation—whether they would be so recruited or not. It was a monumental shift which in time infiltrated every American institution. In its demand for eventual planetary unity the operating logic of this hybrid religion, which derived from a medley of Protestant sects as well as from Judaism, in a cosmic irony was intensely Catholic right down to its core.

After the Unitarian takeover of Harvard in 1805, orthodox Calvinism seemingly reached the end of its road, but so much explosive energy had been tightly bound into this intense form of sacred thought—an intensity which made every act, however small, brim with significance, every expression of personality proclaim an Election or ****ation—that in its structural collapse, a ferocious energy was released, a tornado that flashed across the Burned Over District of upstate New York, crossing the lakes to Michigan and other Germanized outposts of North America, where it split suddenly into two parts—one racing westward to California and the northwest territories, another turning southwest to the Mexican colony called Texas. Along the way, Calvin’s by now much altered legacy deposited new religions like Mormonism and Seventh Day Adventism, raised colleges like the University of Michigan and Michigan State (which would later become fortresses of the new schooling religion) and left prisons, insane asylums, Indian reservations, and poorhouses in its wake as previews of the secularized global village it aimed to create.

School was to be the temple of a new, all-inclusive civil religion. Calvinism had stumbled, finally, from being too self-contained. This new American form, learning from Calvinism’s failure, aspired to become a multicultural super-system, world-girdling in the fullness of time. Our recent military invasions of Haiti, Panama, Iraq, the Balkans, and Afghanistan, redolent of the palmy days of British empire, cannot be understood from the superficial justifications offered. Yet, with an eye to Calvin’s legacy, even foreign policy yields some of its secret springs. Calvinist origins armed school thinkers from the start with a utilitarian contempt for the notion of free will.

Brain-control experiments being explored in the psychophysical labs of northern Germany in the last quarter of the nineteenth century attracted rich young men from thousands of prominent American families. Such mind science seemed to promise that tailor-made technologies could emerge to shape and control thought, technologies which had never existed before. Children, the new psychologies suggested, could be emptied, denatured, then reconstructed to more accommodating designs. H.G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau was an extrapolation-fable based on common university-inspired drawing room conversations of the day.

David Hume’s empirical philosophy, working together with John Locke’s empiricism, had prepared the way for social thinkers to see children as blank slates—an opinion predominant among influentials long before the Civil War and implicit in Machiavelli, Bodin, and the Bacons. German psychophysics and physiological psychology seemed a wonderful manufactory of the tools a good political surgeon needed to remake the modern world. Methods for modifying society and all its inhabitants began to crystallize from the insights of the laboratory. A good living could be made by saying it was so, even if it weren’t true. When we examine the new American teacher college movement at the turn of this century we discover a resurrection of the methodology of Prussian philosopher Herbart well underway. Although Herbart had been dead a long time by then, he had the right message for the new age. According to Herbart, "Children should be cut to fit."


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1 This essay is packed with references to Unitarians, Quakers, Anglicans, and other sects because without understanding something about their nature, and ambitions, it is utterly impossible to comprehend where school came from and why it took the shape it did. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that I am always referring to movements within these religions as they existed before the lifetime of any reader. Ideas set in motion long ago are still in motion because they took institutional form, but I have little knowledge of the modern versions of these sects, which for all I know are boiling a different kettle of fish.

Three groups descending from the seventeenth-century Puritan Reformation in England have been principal influences on American schooling, providing shape, infrastructure, ligatures, and intentions, although only one is popularly regarded as Puritan—the New England Congregationalists. The Congregational mind in situ, first around the Massachusetts coast, then by stages in the astonishing Connecticut Valley displacement (when Yale became its critical resonator), has been exhaustively studied. But Quakers, representing the left wing of Puritan thought, and Unitarians—that curious mirror obverse of Calvinism—are much easier to understand when seen as children of Calvinist energy, too. These three, together with the episcopacy in New York and Philadelphia, gathered in Columbia University and Penn, the Morgan Bank and elsewhere, have dominated the development of government schooling. Baptist Brown and Baptist Chicago are important to understand, too, and important bases of Dissenter variation like Presbyterian Princeton cannot be ignored, nor Baptist/Methodist centers at Dartmouth and Cornell, or centers of Freethought like Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and New York University in New York City. But someone in a hurry to understand where schooling came from and why it took the shape it did would not go far wrong by concentrating attention on the machinations of Boston, Philadelphia, Hartford, and New York City in school affairs from 1800 to 1850, or by simply examining the theologies of Congregationalism, Unitarianism, Hicksite and Gurneyite Quakerism, and ultimately the Anglican Communion, to discover how these, in complex interaction, have given us the forced schooling which so well suits their theologies. >>

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Replying to:

Mathew Fox is a Catholic bashing ex-priest. I cannot believe that this was posted on Gatto website. Why not allow white supremacist to advertise? I think all Catholics are offended by him and anyone posting his lies about the Church.

http://forums.catholic.com/printthread.php?t=52134

I guess in Libby's religion it is ok to attack other peoples' religions. I do not attack her religion please do not attack mine. If you want to follow Matthew Fox go ahead, but please do not proseletyze his brand of intolerance on Gatto.

I have no idea what this has to do with education.

  >>>>>>Reading a book on the history of counterculture recently the author had these words in his final chapter, "A functioning, decentralized, distrubuted anarchy on a nine billion person planet isn't going to happen, kids. Not in my lifetime and not in yours. A more realistic, gradualist approach to a less authoritarian future is called for. But hey, very few want to seem unhip to their rad friends by confronting this dreary truth."<<<<<<<<<<

Are you sure that this is "truth"? It certainly seems a lot less likely that 9 billion people can be completely stripped of their individuality, centrally controlled, and kept ignorant in the age of the Internet.

>>>>This is a pivotal point. Neither schooling, nor drugs, nor communications or anything else seems to be exempt from the long hand of those who want to run and guide things. And I believe that many do so because they believe they can do it well.<<<<<

That's because they do it with schooling, drugs, and communications. Indoctrination and reinforcement. People can't want what they don't know about or understand. They lead lives of "quiet desperation", neurotic and anxious without understanding why, filling the voids with centrally prescribed nostrums that do little to help.

>>>>Either Lew Welch or Phillip Whalen said something to this effect--sometimes you can just step aside and let the machine roll right by. I think this is true.
My stance in this crazy, beautiful, glorius mess of a modern world is one I stole from the poet Gary Snyder. He believes that he long view of history will show the modern era-gas powered/mega states/corporations- to be an eddy in the flow of civilization.<<<<<<

This may be true. The learning and wisdom of the ancients were lost (some are still being re-discovered) until the establishment of the university system in the middle ages and classical education. The control freaks are well on their way to blasting us back to the stone age, if they succeed and mankind survives he might have to start all over again.

>>>>>Of course some believe that we are in a linear mode of history and that we will head to some final endpoint, and while that may be true I don't see it, nor do I buy it. It makes for good drama but the reality is we'll probably just keep mucking along.<<<<<

Even if you don't believe in "end times" there is no denying the inevitability of another asteroid or the Yellowstone caldera ending "life as we know it", perhaps all human life, except perhaps the "leaders" safe in their bunkers. Now that will be an interesting world, no one left but the controllers. Maybe that's what that rapture story is all about.

>>>>>>>In keeping with this tact I side with what has sometimes been called the great subculture. This subculture is represented as a subcurrent in all the great civilizations-Taoism, Zen Buddhists, Sufis, Gnostics, Tantrism etc...
Snyder describes this "ancient shamanistic-yogic-gnostic socioeconomic view" as one that holds --"Mankind's mother is Nature and Nature should be tenderly respected; that man's life and destiny is growth and enlightenment in self disciplined freedom;that the divine has been made flesh and that flesh is divine; that we not only should but do love one another.<<<<<

It's pretty obvious we don't all love each other.

>>>>>>>This view has been harshly suppressed in the past (and I would add the present) as threatening to both Church and State." (Thank the Lord.)
To his fine words I would add that the Great Subculture is one that values mankind and the Divine-Respecting that some things are unknowable but at the same time utilizing practical technologies- meditation, yoga, exertion, training, study, diet and the like to facilitate higher levels of awareness, such that the infinity of Now can be seen or at least recognized and honored.<<<<<<<

I'm not sure what this means. One man's Church is another man's prison, another man's higher awareness is seen as embrace of paganism. I'm with you as long as no one is forcing either.

>>>>>This is where my allegiance lies. Not with States, not with Religion, but with Creation, with (Wo)Man. Some will talk of God and Revelation and I say Amen, but look deeper. There is a current that flows beneath monstrous edifices of civilization that whispers to us, that says we don't have to give our power away, that we can trade and interact with each other minus the imposed hierarchies of scared little men who fear their own being so greatly they want to lord over others.<<<<<

If you mean absence of force and the free market, I'm with you here also.

>>>>To break through the fear it is necessary to work tirelessly and investigate the negative and harmful potential of the Unconcious. Recognizing and dealing with these forces can free us from them. Denying and hiding from them makes them powerful, makes them the boogeyman, the Devil, Original Sin. In doing so the job of the Church and State is done, we don't need them anymore to look after us.<<<<<

Original sin exists. We are all born flawed and capable of great evil, but usually only commit little evils. Call it sin or flaw, no one is born perfect and worthy of ruling others. Organized religion and the State look after no one but themselves, using the control of others to do so. All organizations are highly suspect, but especially those with "noble purposes".

>>>>So, while I don't think that we will wake up any day soon with a radically decentralized world and beautiful local economies that value the innate goodness of womankind and mankind,<<<<<<<<

Goodness is not innate in man (or woman), it is this thinking that has spawned moral relativism. This is not to say that there aren't some pretty good people out there. But none of them should hold power over other people. Even the "good" ones generally make utilitarian decisions that hurt someone somewhere, for the "greater good".

>>>>>>I do believe that we can tell the stories around the campfire that point to a better world, a better way, preparing the ground for those who come after.
Perhaps this is such campfire?<<<<

I believe it is. But the last time I discussed such things around a real campfire my socialist brother in law started sputtering and ran off with a 6 pack. He couldn't justify his Faith but couldn't abandon it either. Sigh.

>>>>Instead of looking at the negative and getting down, fearing the great Powers that Be, let us cultivate that which is good and beautiful, that which can't be destroyed. The lotus roots itself in the muck and bursts forth in beauty. Flowers can bloom in bloody pits brimming with offal.
I have hope. When I bow my head touches the floor. Until all beings are enlightened...<<<<

We have little other choice (sorry to be negative). Exposing the Powers that Be for what they are will go a long way toward de-legitimizing them.

From "Brave New World Revisited":
"Under a scientific dictator education will really work-with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.....Meanwhile there is still some freedom left in the world. Many young people, it is true, do not seem to value freedom. But some of us still believe that, without freedom, human beings cannot become fully human and that freedom is therefore supremely valuable. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them.

JS,
You said, "I believe it is. But the last time I discussed such things around a real campfire my socialist brother in law started sputtering and ran off with a 6 pack. He couldn't justify his Faith but couldn't abandon it either. Sigh."
Maybe he is a thug, witch doctor or a mooch. Maybe he knows what he is but can't find the language to obscure that fact from you.
From General Semantics I have came to understand that it is imperative to understand the symbols used to manipulate us and to understand what our own standards are.
It seems to me that the Planned Simplicity movement is about responding to our own standards and refusing to respond to the symbols used to manipulate us.
Once I realized that it is easily seen that the chief symbol used by our wannabe political masters is fear.
Ron

Interesting that you say that, Ron. In the book "Brave New World Revisited" I quoted above Huxley makes a point of the fact that language and symbols are of primary imporatnce in the conditioning and reinforcement process. And as we see nowadays, meanings of words and ideas are changed, they become code words for different ideas entirely. Like "No Child Left Behind". An education in this use of language and symbols is very important, but it is not supported, even by a lot of libertarian types. This is because they still want some degree of indoctrination so some type of cooperation with the system is achieved at the expense of individual freedom and choice. I think this is why people are so rabid about school "socialization". What they really are worried about is kids buying into the system as they did so they will get their goodies that they think they worked for, keeping the hive going. But as Huxley points out, people are not that social, they are more like dogs in packs than ants or bees in a hive. I think my brother in law is just "socialized". He is an extremely nice man, but one of the "quietly desperate" types.

I read BNW every few years to see how much more true it is. It's getting there.
"No child left Behind"-I wonder if they used that to appeal to all those who love those Rapture books by Tim Lahaye?

LOL. I never thought of that.

ok i need help im writing a paper about odysseus!!!! can anyone help me???? please!!!!!

JS,
" I think my brother in law is just "socialized". He is an extremely nice man, but one of the "quietly desperate" types."

JS, can't you imagine the mental condition of a person that bought into socialism as a young person, perhaps as a child, and has gotten to the point they realize the system doesn't and can't work. Going further they come to realize the entire socialist system operates on the basis of unfulfilled promises. He will never get back what he has put into the system nor will he ever see the promises to him and others fulfilled. Worse at this time in his life he has no idea how self reliance and capitalism would work to his advantage -- don't forget in the schools where he was socialized he was also shortchanged on any knowledge that is required to stand on his own.
Ron

Hakim Bey ( if you look him up be warned he is a Radical Anarchist-Not a pretty picture Free marketer) wrote a book called T.A.Z. (Temporary Autonomous Zones) in which he described how individuals who want to be free in an increasingly top down world will seek out time and place where they can express themselves and be free. As the poster above mentioned most people enjoy being captives, slaves if you will. Freedom is hard stuff. That's why I say I don't think you will see a free flowing anarchy or decentralization any time soon.
Just wondering, but you seem very radicalized to your notion of anarchy and decentralization. Is this because it is a new one? I've been all about what you preach for a long time and I've had a chance for it to soak in and the initial urgency has passed.

I don't think my views are urgent as much as just strong. You are right, some folks don't want freedom, and I'm not against them not having it at all. If people want to live as hive creatures, joiners, or part of a herd of 10 minute haters that doesn't bother me, I think they should be free to do it, I think they should be free to contract into slavery if they want. The thing that bothers me is the well-meaning people who think that "we" must cure all social ills which automatically defaults everyone into the herd of slaves working for others (which I believe is now 107 workdays out of the year). When they say "we" they are taking my choice and freedom from me. Of course if I object I am selfish, hate the poor, etc. I don't mean to preach, I usually respond when someone posts something that needs to be supported or refuted. I have had these feelings and ideas for my entire life but never understood really why until I got online and read people who thought as I did. I have been in work and school situations where we were put through the consensus shaping process, facilitation, all that change-agent stuff. I encountered it again when I was active in my kids' school, I just didn't understand what was going on, the process being used on us. So, no, this isn't a new passion, although my conversion to Christianity is.