Universal Responsibility in a Matrixed Economic World

I am concerned that Obama and his staff are not aware enough of the danger and that his planned policies do not go far enough. Reading up on America's depression era New Deal of the 1930's and the times leading up to it are remarkably like the times we are going though, except no one bailed out the fat cats then (as you know). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal

Agreed bailing out the rich will help prevent some suicides like Adolf Merckle, the German billionaire who slipped from #44 most wealthy person on the planet to number #77 or Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, a fund manager who invested with Bernie Madoff and apparently committed suicide at his office - to me these people's deaths are no laughing matter - not any different than those overleveraged investors who committed suicide on Black Thursday in 1929 or thereabouts by jumping from the buildings they were in. And what is it that Merckle could see that was so scary?

Some people actually laughed in 1929 to see or hear of the suicides, as if those folks deserved it or were somehow different than they were - a few months later, out of a job -- they stopped laughing.

My feeling is that we may be lucky by the end of Obama's first term in office to see any real strides. The only capital that he can really bank on is who he IS, and that the government at least is out of the hands of incompetents (from our standpoint) and warmongering profiteers. Ugh! the sick thing is industrial war complex oldsters really don't get that the world has changed - we ARE in this together just as HH the Dalai Lamas and HH the Popes as well as other religious and secular leaders have long preached. We communicate on an entirely different level, more frequently and around the world. Arguably there is universal responsibility and we are just getting a clue.


For just one example every night that I post a new image on Flickr - I know, no, no, I expect people from around the world will comment on it by the next morning - in one day - all around the world. And the comments in foreign languages I will translate to read and my reply I will translate and respond with - nearly instantly in their language. Even my requests are posted by Flickr in the native language of the person I am requesting their photo from - all with a drop down menu - no effort on my part.

Another example is that of the late Mr. Oscar Grant III, an unarmed African-American man shot in the back and killed in Oakland by the police (by accident or purposely) is instantly seen over the Web from every recording cell phone present - police authorities - placed in their roles to "serve and protect" absolutely can not hide any more behind some story when everyone anywhere can see what occured. And by the way - happy, satisfied people don't protest.

Franklin Roosevelt tried a lot of things to stabilize the economy. The stuff FDR did which was recently dismantled appears to be the root cause of the suffering in the country now, as the rich continue to amass profits while the lower classes lose a place to live. Political leaders can't hide any more either and the results of their efforts for good or bad will be known sooner and in more detail than ever before.

There is also an issue more complex than it first appears, of the average age of baby boomers, as they retire and there are not enough educated people coming into the working social system who can earn enough because education was gutted --- either to make sure that there was no opposition to the will of the wealthy greedy or because self-serving politicos were also too short sighted to see what the results of not funding education would be.

Not everyone is like us, not everyone takes joy in educating themselves, and some education, like primary research is beyond the costs of a single individual to bear, or one person to complete.

Poorer middle-classed housing such as San Francisco's Daly City has inexplicably one of the highest forced foreclosure rates in the country. Economists are researching why but *hey* that is way, way past a dollar short and a day late.

When I asked a religious leader about the causes of being out of work he said "stabilize your mind" and I think that to a large extent - that is the basic root cause of the US current troubles. The fears we have are based on tainted emotions. "The only fear we have is fear itself" another realization by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt that sounds like a call to arms once again with deeper meaning.

We really have to get rid of tainted emotions such as greed and the desire by even those with education and money to willingly inflict pain and suffering on others - such as by torture or slavery - where we can not root it out of ourselves we need to legislate it and make it clear that it is a common goal, a community of the world standard to commit to rid ourselves of afflictive emotions; we need to root out fear itself, greed, and ignorance.

We can’t stand aside and look any more; stabilizing our own minds, taking universal individual responsibility - that is where the future is really at; only then we will have something we can rely on, ourselves as well as each other.


"We'll forward in this generation
Triumphantly ...
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds"

Redemption Song
-Bob Marley

Dr. Sir Ken Robinson says industrial age education kills creativity

There is this speaker, Sir Ken Robinson, who spoke at the TED conference in 2006, and I was so overcome with emotion I nearly cried listening to his videostream. Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity ... and there are things we can do about that ...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

He says--
"Intelligence 1st is diverse, 2ndly it is dynamic/interactive 3rdly it is distinct."

Here's my favorite story of Dr. Robinson from the TED conference transcript:

And eh, anyway Julian and I had lunch together one day and I said, ‘Julian how did you get to be a dancer?’ And she said it was interesting; when she was at school she was really hopeless. And the school in the thirties wrote to her parents and said, ‘we think Julian has a learning disorder.’ She couldn’t concentrate, she was fidgeting. I think now they’d say she had ADHD, wouldn’t you? But this was the 1930’s and ADHD hadn’t been invented, you know, at this point, so it wasn’t an available condition, you know. People weren’t aware they could have that.

Anyway, she went to see this specialist in this oak panelled room and she was there with her mother and she was led and sat on this chair at the end. And she sat on her hands for twenty minutes while this man talked to her mother about all the problems she was having at school. And at the end of it (because she was disturbing people and her homework was always late and so on, a little kid of eight) In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Julian and said I’ve listened to all these things your mother has told me I need to speak to her privately so he said, ‘wait here we’ll be back. we won’t be very long’ And they went and left her.

But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk, and when they got out of the room, he said to her mother, ‘just stand and watch her.’ The minute they left the room she said she was on her feet moving to the music and they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, ‘You know, Mrs Lynn, Julian isn’t sick she’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.’ I said, ‘what happened? She said, ‘She did. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. We walked into this room and it was full of people like me; people who couldn’t sit still. People who had to move to think.’ They did ballet, they did tap, they did jazz, they did modern, they did contemporary.

She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School. She became a soloist. She had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School and founded her own company; the Julian Lynn Dance Company, met Andrew Lloyd Weber. She has been responsible for some of the most successful musical theatre productions in history. She has given pleasure to millions and she’s a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down."
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=ken_robinson

Dr. Sir Ken Robinson gained his PhD in 1981 from the University of London for research into drama and theatre in education. His first book, Learning Through Drama, was the result of a three year national development project for the Schools Council, Heinemann 1977. He was principal author of The Arts in Schools: Principles, Practice and Provision, the report of a national inquiry 1982 Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. This is now established as a key text on arts and education in Britain and internationally. He was editor of The Arts and Higher Education, 1984 Gulbenkian and the Leverhulme Trust, and principal writer for the Department of Education and Science of The Arts in Further Education published in 1986.

He was author of Arts Education in Europe, an international study for the Council of Europe of provision for creative and cultural education in 22 European countries. He completed consultancy reports for the European Commission on the socio-economic importance of the arts to the development of the European Union. Facing the Future: the Arts and Education in Hong Kong, a report on the training of professional artists and on arts education in schools for the Hong Kong Government.

In 1998, he was invited by the UK Government to establish and lead a national commission on creativity, education and the economy. The Commission brought together leading business people, scientists, artists and educators. His report, All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report) was published to huge acclaim.

He has published widely on creativity, innovation and culture. His 2001 book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative (Wiley-Capstone), was described by Director magazine as 'a truly mind opening analysis of why we don't get the best out of people at a time of punishing change.' John Cleese said: 'Ken Robinson writes brilliantly about the different ways in which creativity is undervalued and ignored in Western culture and especially in our educational systems.' His new book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, will be published worldwide in January 2009 by Penguin.

He is an advisor for a wide range of national and international bodies. These include:
The Education Commission of the States
The Girl Scouts of America
UNESCO
The Arts Council of England
The national inquiry on The Arts and Disabled People, chaired by Sir Richard Attenborough, and the Carnegie Council
Chief Examiner, Paul McCartney's Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts
Member of the UK Council for Dance Education and Training (CDET)
Board of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, Chairman of the Education Committee
Governor, Central School of Speech and Drama
Oklahoma Creativity Project
Advisory Council of the Independent Television Commission
Council for National Academic Awards
Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation
IBM Foundation
New York International Arts Festival
Royal Shakespeare Company
Other advisory and consultancy roles have included:
The Blue Man Group
The National Foundation for Educational Research
The British American Arts Association
The British Council
The Royal Court Theatre
The Young Vic
The South Bank Centre
The Design Council
The Royal Academy
The National Theatre
The Royal Ballet

Notable books authored by Ken Robinson include: Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative (Wiley & Sons) and The Arts In Schools (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation)

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

Because he is a great creative speaker some may dismiss his work as 'infotainment' but it does not dismiss his ideas or ideals, nor his credentials. He is speaking about what I experienced from elementary school, junior high, high school through to the University of Washington, what needs to change in education...

Creatively Speaking, Part One: Sir Ken Robinson on the Power of the Imaginative Mind

http://www.edutopia.org/sir-ken-robinson-creativity-video

I think Ken will be speaking at this years 2009 TED conference.