How fear distorts perception...and life...and how freedom offers us a better way...

Melissa and I watched this really great documentary, tonight, called A State of Mind, about two North Korean gymnasts, that was an amazing and rare inside look at North Korean society...

The girls are very talented...and the film is almost a propaganda film for the North Korean government, it's so uncritical of what is being said and what different points of view are on the problems in North Korean society...though still a fine documentary...

But the thought I came away with strongest from this film...was a much stronger appreciation for the freedoms in democratic societies...

It is always so ironic to me...and something that never fails to amaze me...

How much peoples in freer and more democratic countries like the United States...will perpetually take those very freedoms and democratic guarantees for granted...constantly calling for more limitations on their freedom...more harsh treatment in the name of doing good...and remaining stuck in fear about those freedoms...that often quickly dissipates...the more openly those freedoms are practiced...

The girls in this movie...are disciplined...they definitely love and respect authority...in a way that is spooky, really, much of the time...so much do they adore Kim Jong Il, the North Korean dictator who has starved and so seriously repressed his people...

They are every parents' dream...

And it is a creepy dream to watch unfold, I must say...

The movie gave me so much more appreciation for all of my students...for all of their independence...and rebelliousness...and the chaos that often unfolds when they get a chance to exercise their freedoms...that they can and do learn better social norms for mutually managing that freedom...

It's amazing to me...how a society like North Korea...can be so obsessed with group loyalty...at total expense of both individuals...and consequently...of individual responsibility...or any responsibility, much of the time...the Arduous March, the most recent bout of mass starvation that North Korea experienced, is blamed on American and Western economic sanctions (a bad policy, I must admit) rather than as a natural consequence of North Koreans' foolish faith in Communist totalitarian rule...and the fact that North Korea is dependent on the United States and other Western countries for foreign aid and that those same countries are wholly independent for food and all of their economic needs and live with an abundance unprecedented in human history does not seem to phase the film's North Korean citizen commentators...

More than that...is the fear that the North Korean government...and North Koreans live with...and which leads to terribly irrational policies...their fear of the West and American imperialism being the most obvious...but other examples including the lack of free international markets to compensate for problems like food shortages (and issue that Amartya Sen has commented on, at length, in books like Development as Freedom, and which he understands all-too-well in his own home country of India) and the longest lasting and most serious border movement restrictions during the SARS epidemic, despite no confirmed cases of SARS being discovered in their country...

This fear borne of too little freedom and openness, often producing more fear, is a problem all over the world, I believe...it is more pronounced in less open societies like North Korea...but it is present to one degree or another in all countries, including democratic countries like my own home country of the United States...it profoundly distorts understandings of the world outside the boundaries of those fears, in my study and experience, and it makes progress along a whole range of issues more difficult because of this distortion in peoples' perceptions of reality...

The beautiful thing about this movie...is demonstrating just how good and decent North Koreans...like good and decent Americans...can have so many distorted and foolish beliefs about their own world and the world outside of their study and experience...how North Koreans often see the failures of their Communist system as the function of their struggle to be self-reliant and independent of international pressures for them to give up their Communist system...and how those pressures are, generally, counterproductive, making North Koreans more resistant to the influence of the democratic community and more committed to the Communist model of government that is so responsible for so many of their miseries...

And Americans do the same...afraid of the world outside of their study and experience...afraid of the very freedoms that make them so great...and carrying around so many irrational attitudes and making so many irrational policies in the name of those fears and distorted perception...

It's the long story of humanity's history, really...and it is a history replete with profound mistakes and self-destruction and destruction to others borne of such fears...and a distorted sense of what fears are justified and what fears reflect the persistent paranoia of humanity facing new challenges...many of which are, in part, further facilitated by the freedoms that offer them the opportunity to deal with those problems more effectively and responsibly...

Our fears so often produce obsessions about experiences unknown...that distort our sense of the realities behind those fears...and our sense of purpose in the face of realities that we are concerned about...

And the saddest legacy for humanity...

Is that no matter how many people these fears and our failure to let them go has killed, imprisoned, oppressed, limited, and otherwise hurt...in the 20th century, alone, nevertheless over the course of humanity...

We still cling to them...like a security blanket that never offers any real security...

And we still, thus, live with the problems that the fears, themselves, and not even those things that we are afraid of, create for our lives, together...

Drug use and abuse is an excellent example of obsession created by fear...both for and by drug users and abusers...and for and by those who seek to legally restrain people from using certain illegal drugs...

All for naught...a drug war that accomplishes almost literally nothing...and drug abuse that is a self-destructive waste of potential and life...

Fear of foreigners -- as opposed to a reasonable fear of terrorism, where being aware of foreign involvement in terrorism might be relevant -- is a similar irrationality held tight to by North Koreans and Americans, alike, no matter how much it hurts both natural born citizens of those countries and those seeking to get inside their borders...

So many fears that parents and teachers have for children only create obsessions for those children with defying the adults responsible for their welfare and rebellion that often leads to the exact problems that those adults are so concerned about...

And the irony is...it is the free and independent nature of democratic societies...and of the individuals who live in those societies...that makes them so much stronger and more productive and smarter and more decent and generous...

As theologians and our religious forebearers discovered long ago...

Our consciences are better developed...with a respect for free will...rather than with the terribly concering obsession with group and national loyalty and security at the expense of freedom and individuals that more traditional societies like North Korea regularly engage in...

I definitely recommend this documentary...for an inside look into North Korean life...and for an inside look at a totalitarian society...

And for a well-deserved appreciation...for the freedoms...that democratic societies like the United States...offer the people within their borders...

And a reality check...for all of those who romanticize a society of more serious deference to authority...the fears that produce restrictions on our lives...rather than creating freedom to facilitate greater responsibility...for our individual lives...and our general welfare...

And the movie helps me to appreciate those same freedoms...which...no matter how much hardship I have experienced from our still far too punitive and harsh and controlling tendencies in American society...are available to me...on a level unparalleled in much of the world...

And which I would much rather practice imperfectly and not always with consequences that are fair or constructive...

Than not have the freedom to practice them at all...

A reflection that inspires me...to take advantage of the life I have...no matter how imperfectly experienced...in a country where I have more freedom to live it well...than perhaps any other country in the world...

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

Love,
Ben

Being myself...being with people who are themselves...and being better people, together...

I've been in kind of funk, today...just thinking about the times in my life when I've been a real shithead...of which there has been plenty...

You know what kind of life I want...as much as possible...

I want a life...

Where I can be myself...

And where others can be themselves...

Shitheadedness and all...

Not to rationalize or excuse the shitheadedness...

To face it honestly...

But where I can be with people as I am...and as they are...and not as we wish that we were...which just seems kind of a waste of a life, really...

Since it's bullshit...

I want everyone around me...

To feel at ease...

About their racism...their homophobia...their sexism...their immorality...they're drug use...they're violence...they're greed...their laziness...their self-centeredness...they're sectarianism...they're hate for foreigners or Republicans or Jews or whatever...and to face up to their bullshit...and then just love and accept themselves and each other for it...

To just be themselves...and face up to their lesser selves...they're baser qualities...

And to just feel accepted for them...and to accept themselves for them...and...ideally...to accept me for them, as well...

To me, that's what real love is...everything else is bullshit...

And I'd like to meet a woman...someone who does that better, as well...someone who loves others and herself, for real...someone who can love people even for all of their bullshit...without making excuses for it...but without wanting to control them or hurt them, necessarily...we all want to control or hurt people, of course...but someone who wants to avoid doing either, as much as possible...

I'm tired of fake overwhelming genuine...and cyncism overwhelming idealism...

I want someone in my life who takes being genuine and being idealistic and being a sweet and vulnerable and being decent to others seriously...

And someone who has a sense of humor...a sense of proportion and perspective about life...a sense of what matters and what doesn't...

And a vision of life not based on spite or control or vegeance or superficiality or money or whatever stupid fuckin' things people base their lives on...

I want someone who I instantly know is an amazing person...because she makes me want to be a better person in her presence...

It's been a long time since I've met a person like that, nevertheless a woman...

Maybe that's what I'm missing...

Meeting people who inspire me, again...

Because anyone who wants to control me...

Does not inspire me...

And anyone who wants to control you...

Is not really a friend...

Or anyone who really cares about you, at all...not really...

They're your jailor...not someone who loves you...

And I'm just not interested in living my life with someone who wants to control me...

I want someone who can love me...and continue to grow...and give me space to grow...and to not believe in some mythical time or place when they are done growing...and impede everyone else around them, as a consequence...

People who want to control me...or who rationalize a right to control me...will lose my company, soon enough...

I just don't have any use for it...or for them...as long as trying to control me is the way they relate with me...

How hard is that?...to not want someone to control you?...to just want someone to love you...and to trust you...and to trust that when you fuck up...absent all kinds of foolish efforts to scare and pressure you...that you'll take responsibility for your bullshit...

Someone who lives with a sense of purpose...without having to control people...and specifically...to control me...

I'm not Bill Clinton...I won't settle for Hillary Clinton...

I want someone whose heart I can trust...which is very rare, these days...

I do have to say that despite what shitheads adults can be on this count...that the next generation, in my school, at least, looks like they do a better job of this...no surprise, of course...and a reason to hope...

But there's got to be at least one woman from this generation who I can trust and who challenges me and supports me in a way that facilitates growth for me, in this regard...

Because if there's not...

I don't see much use in working on behalf of any cause...

None of them really inspire me all that much...without the opportunity to think freely about them...and choose them freely...and to not have people trying to force my hand, all of the time...

No friend who does that is much of a friend, at all, as far as I'm concerned...no family member really loves me who is looking to control me...

And I don't need anyone's love...which is conditioned...on the right to control me...

And as painful as it is to live without some people in my life...

I'd rather live without them...

Than live with the lie...that it is okay...or constructive...or good...to control me...or anyone, for that matter...

People can be good...and still live with the ugliness and bitterness in their hearts...that leads them to want to control others...

But being good also means facing that ugliness and bitterness...

Contemporary entertainment...movies...music...theater...

It's penchant for darkness...it's tendency towards ugliness...so much of the cynicism and unoriginality...

Reflects our own ugliness...and bitterness...and darkness...

We should definitely embrace it about ourselves, I think...

But without facing it...

Our culture stays mired our own desire to escape from ourselves...who we really are...our real lives...fantasizing of a life where pain is avoidable...

And leaves us the shitheads that we become...when we refuse to take responsibility...for our shitheadedness...

Personally...I'd rather live with the hope...that people can and will transcend this less honest...less mature way of avoiding the tough work around being good and decent people...rather than faking it...to avoid all of the pain...

Than live with the dishonest reality...that we are all really doing our best to be better people...to be the best people that we can be...to be decent to ourselves and one another...

When we spend so much time trying to avoid what nasty, bitter, ugly people we can be...

It is our only hope, really...

And I'd rather live with the hope...

Than the ugly reality...like it's better than it really is...

How petty and immature and small most people can be...

And I'd like just one woman whose view of the world is bigger than all of that...

George Orwell's 1984 features Winston Smith...a man disillussioned by the totalitarian world of Big Brother...who seeks love...to try to find some hope...amidst the bleak realities...of total control over his life...

What we need is not some middle ground between totalitarianism and freedom...between total control and love...

What we need...is more freedom...and love...generally gentle and decent guidance and engagement...and sometimes a stronger hand, when nothing else seems possible, and when a stronger hand will help and not make things worse...but always realistic and thoughtful and loving...

Not some pale imitation based on some artificial middle ground...between totalitarianism...and freedom...

We need a world...where people live out of their consciences...and where we are more readily and often and seemlessly engaging each other...and living out of more independent...and more genuinely interdependent consciences...

And I'd rather hope for that world...

Than live with this one...pretending that it is the best that the world has to offer...

How anyone could look at this world and think that it is the best that people have to offer...or presume, arrogantly, that we will ever pass the laws and make the rules and pressure for change and force a world that will be the best that we have to offer...

Is well beyond me...it is hubris in the extreme...it is what the Greeks warned us all against most, in all of their philosophy and literature...

And now I know why it was the most serious of human errors that the Greeks wrote about...

As someone who has been guilty of it, more than once, myself...

If humanity is unredeemable...it is our own damn fault...because it is our responsibility...to redeem ourselves and one another...

And if we can't do that...then our hopelessness is not the result of something beyond us...

It is the result of our own goddamn cowardice...

And then there really is no really good reason to save or redeem or protect or defend us, anyway...

Because we haven't earned defense or redemption...

And then it really doesn't matter...

Any of it...

Either we find the courage...to be better people...

Or there's no reason to debate it, at all...

Because none of it really matters anyway...

And none of us matter, either...

Being better means freely facing our ourselves...our strengths...our flaws...our talents...our weaknesses...

And we do that best...

Without pressure...without force...without vengeance...without hate...

We do it best with love...and with honesty...and with a commitment to freely giving up our worst behavior...to be our best selves...

Everything else is us giving up...

And while quitting is not unredeemable...

It's not a virtue, either...

And certainly shouldn't be held up as the standard for goodness...when it is clearly cowardice in disguise...

And I just have no time for cowardice...

And I would like to meet one girl who is similarly unwilling...to accept that kind of cowardice in herself...

Today I'm facing my own cowardice...

In hopes of meeting a woman who similarly aspires to be a similarly worthy and decent human being...

I don't understand how so many people can live the lie about themselves...and pretend that it is the truth...

But I know one thing is for goddamned sure...

I'm not fooled...

And I'll stand for a higher, more honest, more decent standard...as long as people stand for a lower standard for themselves and for others...

It makes me so sad that people would settle for so much less for themselves...

And I'll hold them to a higher, more honest standard...

Until they can do it better for themselves...

We've got a movie we're in the middle of...A Very Long Engagement, starring Audrey Tautou...I guess I'll get back to the movie and do some cleaning...

And wonder about how long we can lie to ourselves and each other with impunity...

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

Love,
Ben

The root of all evil...conceit...human stupidity...and too little Red Stripe...

After a very long week...working through the remaining pain in my heart around Brandi...and dealing with a bureaucracy that, too often, seems intent on getting in my way...

...and listening to teachers have the dumbest ideas about how to improve student achievement...rather than doing the work to get a fire underneath these kids' asses around school...and a fire under their own, as well...

I have decided...that there are many things that impede progress for humanity...

Avarice...ambition...cynicism...hate...vengefulness..control and power...greed...lust, sometimes...and maybe even some gluttony...definitely a lot of sloth...and wrath...and envy...and whole truckload of vanity...

All kinds of ugliness...of aggression...disguised as nobility...

And a whole lot of people lying...to themselves...and to one another about all of it...

But none of it is the biggest human evil...

The biggest human evil...

Is the conceit that many people have...that their ignorance doesn't really matter...

It's stupidity at two different levels...

The first is just having no real clue about what's involved with a deep sense of responsibility around the issues that people claim to deserve an audience for their views on...

And the second...is pretending that not knowing...doesn't matter...

When it clearly does...to any dumbass...not trying to defend their own goddamn conceit...their own goddamn ego...

Pretending like it doesn't matter...

Or trying to get around the tough issues...by playing at the margins of the smaller ones...

Because...ultimately...

Stupidity is one big lie...

It's the lie...the self-deception...that being smarter just doesn't matter...or that you can't do it, anyway...

I'm not talking about more simple and innocent ignorance...

I'm talking about arrogant stubborn stupidity...

The kind that likes to pretend that it knows better...when deep down...it knows damn well...that it doesn't...

It's the kind of stupidity of a Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report...writing about the world as if he really does understand it better than all those intellects who outclass him...

Or Robert Kagan...

Or David Horowitz...

Or Christopher Hitchens...

Or Noam Chomsky...

Or Rush Limbaugh...

Or Bill O'Reilly...

Or Michael Moore...

Or James Carville...

Or any number of pseudo-intellectuals...who often have interesting contributions...

But rarely have anything of any deep significance...

It's conceit that pollutes our democratic discussions...and undermines a more honest and reflective and intelligent discussion...

But at its base...this kind of conceit...is just foolish...and stupid...

It's like the conceit of a faith-healer...

When a surgeon is needed...

The surgeon may not have perfect answers...

But he, generally, has better answers than the shaman...or the mystic...

And the political world, especially...

Is so full of shamans and mystics and faith-healers...preaching the word of God or the universe or whatever their angle may be...and knowing not a really a damn thing about what is involved with being responsible for the issues that they preach about...

That it is the most foolish form of stupidity that I can imagine, really...

Innocent ignorance steps out of the way...and lets someone who knows what they're doing do the heavy lifting...

Arrogant stupidity...keeps insisting on getting its way...even though it doesn't deserve it...

Because it's just figured out...that it can manipulate to get its way...

And because the people involved just want their way...and they don't want to engage in all of the energy and effort and thought and debate and rigorous standards of all of these things that are involved with really knowing what the fuck you're doing...

It's just arrogance...that hasn't been humbled, yet...

And stupidity...that just doesn't see what a dumbass it is yet...

Stupid is as stupid does, as Forrest Gump says...

And we'll all survive stupidity...

Though it does have consequences...

And if we're smart...

We'll stop pretending that stupid and smart doesn't matter...

And start taking more seriously the task of understanding issues far more thoroughly that we do, currently...that we always seem to have plenty of opinions about...smart...stupid...good, bad, and ugly...

Maybe this generation we can beat this stupid cycle of progress impeded by human arrogance...and stupidity...

By raising and being an example to a generation of kids...

Who all take smart seriously...no matter how much or how little they excel at it...

And if we can all learn to set aside our foolish conceit...

That our ignorance about...whatever...doesn't really matter...

When it so clearly does...

And the smart thing to do...would be...

To embrace it all...face it honestly...have a beer...and just be a little smarter about it in the future:):)...

I've got a Red Stripe calling me at home:):):)...

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

Love,
Ben

Have you ever bet your life on something?...

Have you ever believed something so strongly...believed in its capacity to change the world for the better so powerfully...

That you bet everything on it?...

I did...

I've been feeling like that was a bet I would never get credit for, lately...

But something tells me that I couldn't have gotten as far as I've gotten, this far in life...

Without something of substance to it all...

My principal has been really great, lately...

I think she's maybe trying to create the space for me that I need...I hope...

I've always said...that...after Conrad Jestmore...my high school speech and debate coach...and later high school drama teacher...

That the most important thing I've ever wanted from my coaches and teachers and bosses and leaders of all kinds...

Was to just get the fuck out of my way, much of the time...

And my principal...is not just a great teacher...

She seems to be trying to do just that, lately...

Which I really appreciate...

What I need, now...is a muse...

Our school psych...the girl I had the big crush on...has a boyfriend...

The math teacher, though...the one who was friendliest to me when I first arrived at Eisenhower...

Is single, as far as I know...

And she does seem to glow, these days, when I look at her:):)...

She reminds me a lot of Brandi, actually...

Though she does seem to be learning to get over her young idealist's cynicism...

I don't know...I just know I need to get over this pain that I feel on my heart letting Brandi go...

And Brandi not talking with me has left me a little gun-shy about getting into a relationship where I might really fall in love, again...

But Molly did ask me out the first time we hung out...

So I guess it's my turn, this time...

I was just...so deeply invested in Brandi...

My heart just feels so bad...so terribly bad...letting go...I think I'm the only one who will really know how terribly my heart has ached letting Brandi go...

I would have done literally anything for Brandi...

And now I barely know her...

It's the most tragic thing I've ever experienced in my life, really...

No matter how painful...and unfair...the financial and employment troubles I experienced after grad school were and are...

Losing Brandi is definitely the most tragic thing that I've ever experienced in my lifetime...

I sometimes wonder if she'll ever know just just how powerfully I loved her...how deeply I was invested in her...just how much she took for granted...

I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one who will ever really know...

It's amazing how much love will inspire you to do things, isn't it?...

That force...and pain...and threats...never could...

Brandi will probably never know just how integral she was to helping to shape me...and my ideas...

Noone will, I don't think...except me...

I don't think I've ever cried so much in one evening...I'm sure I've had some pretty weepy nights...but it's been a long time since I've cried like this...

I don't think Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry has ever felt so sweet to me as it does tonight...

I better try to sleep, now that I can...

Goodnight...

Love,
Ben

After Neoconservativism...

Francis Fukuyama just became the American conservative international policy scholar, of note, as far as I'm concerned, after his Sunday New York Times editorial on February 19th...

Francis Fukuyama...After Neoconservativism...

After reading this brilliant article, I am ashamed to admit that I have not read The End of History, the book that made Fukuyama famous...I'm familiar with its thesis of liberal democracy being the end of humanity's political development, and believe there is much positive to be said of that thesis (though I very much see a much longer view on humanity's political development, that, as DeToqueville wisely observed, stretches far beyond governmental institutions as each of us play a role in guiding its course)...a thesis that he comments on, briefly, in this article...

I'll have to read a copy as soon as I get a chance:):):)...

Please check out this article, when you get a chance:):):)...

Love,
Ben

For the most part...we're all in this boat together...

I was just telling Melissa...about my fundamental issue with politics...and all of the most serious problems among people today...

Which is...

That we are constantly fighting...and engaged in power battles...and arguing...and identifying...

With one group against another...with one ideology against another...with one political party against another...with one kind of people against another...

Now...there are clearly times when we have to act when people are acting destructively towards us or people we love...or people we care about...or people we identify with or ally with...and, sometimes...given trust in the relationship...when they are acting destructively towards themselves...

And the terrible and needless tragedy to the whole thing...

Is that better ideas...stronger thought...about how to deal with the problems that face us...

Not only transcends ideology...or groups...or parties...or personalities...or whatever...

But that the largest picture...

Is that policy...ideas...politics...conflict...whatever...

Is supposed to look out for all of us...for all of our interests...

Each of us...

And all of us...

As much as possible...

It would serve all of us, better...

If we thought of each of us...like family...

And by family...I mean a strong family...

Where everyone really does look after everyone else...

Or, at least, that is the standard that they aspire for...and are held to...

Jay P. Greene is a Harvard education policy thinker who just came out with a really exciting book about vouchers and public school reform that I was perusing, today...

But the one thing that struck me while I was reading it...was...

That what has always bothered me aboout education policy debates...

Is that...sometimes...it's as if...some people argue about education policy...like we're arguing for some kids' success...and not others'...like some kids' success...has to come at the expense of others'...

Rather than all kids' success...being something that we're concerned about...and that we hold ourselves to the highest expecations around...and that we all root for...no matter where they go to school...no matter it gets paid for...no matter what stronger or weaker choices that adults make in supporting the success of all students...

And that's the same I feel about all people...

That policy...that our discussions about people...

Need to be looking out for the interests of all people...all the time...as much as possible...

Sometimes those interests come at odds...and we need to sort through that fairly and with integrity to all the people involved...

But...generally...they don't come at odds...generally...supporting each person...means supporting all people, better...

And all policy discussions...and life discussions...need to happen in that larger context...with that larger purpose...with that larger idea in mind...

It's one of the things I love about this movie...

That sense of love...that sense of family...where...despite all our quarrels...

We're looking out for one another...

For real...

Not fake...

And when we're not...

That we feel and hold one another to a sense of accountability to that ideal...

That falling short is not an excuse to give up on the ideal...

It is recognized honestly...to hold each other and our ourselves accountable...to live up to that ideal...

And the fundamental ideal...for each of us...

Is that we do good in this world...out of a sense of free will...out of a freely developed and freely chosen conscience...

Not because we're scared of one another...and not because we're scared about what others might think about us...

But for real...

And that we cut through the bullshit...through the denial...around how not living up to that ideal means that won't get there...no matter how much we try to, futily, force our way...ultimately...to nowhere...

Without our consciences...without our higher and highest selves...guiding us..

There is no way...

And coming to terms with that...

Is the only way...

To get where we want to go...

Everything else...

Is illusion...

And self-delusion...

And deception...

And self-deception...

It is...

Denial...

And there is no way out of it...

Until we face it, honestly...

For the most part...

And as much as possible...

We're all in this boat together...

And there is no way out of that one...

No matter how much we ignore it...

No way...

Obviously Osama Bin Laden has to be captured...or die in the process of capturing him, if he threatens those trying to capture him...

And obviously we need to use good judgment about who we can trust more and who can trust less...

And that judgment will always be subject to thought and experience...

But...for the most part...

We are all in this boat, together...

And it will be a much smoother and more productive and smarter ride...

If we all learn to have discussions about the voyage...

With everyone in mind...

And not just the groups we try to hide within...

Scared of some or another group of people...

That's what Martin Luther King taught...what Ghandi taught...what Jesus taught...what the Buddha taught...what the enlightenment thinkers taught...what America's Founding Fathers taught...

James Madison's famous Federalist Paper #10 is dedicated to this theme...the theme of factions...

Madison is talking about how factions manipulate government for their own purposes...

But the general idea...is that there are many among us...

And the truth is...that...it is often...

Us...

All of us...

Who divide ourselves in different groups...

Losing track of the bigger goal...

Which is a world that looks after all of us...

For the most part...

One big loving family...

Are there members of the family who fall far below the standards of decency and humanity and respect for differences of thought and conviction and all of the values that we take for granted?...

Definitely...

The people who killed their fellow Muslims over this whole cartoon nonsense in Denmark and France...

Definitely fall far below the mark of basic expectations of humanity...

Hamas...rationalizing terrorism...to get a better land deal from Israel...

Obviously fall far below the mark of basic expectations of humanity...

But...generally...

We are all in this big ass boat together...

Looking after one another (or at least we should be)...

Working to lift each and all of us up...

Rather than giving into our worse instincts...

And lifting ourselves and others up...

Means embracing those worse instincts...

And then heading to higher ground...

We all gots 'em...

To we might as well ante up...

Embrace them...

And head to higher ground...

Together...as much as possible...

And always working to reach back...

And lift others up with us...as we head to the highest ground:):):)...

If you haven't seen Elizabethtown, yet...I definitely recommend it...

A pretty remarkable love story...and story of family...

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

Love,
Ben

This note is for Brandi (since she's been reading, lately)...

I didn't want to upset you by writing, directly...

But I did want to tell you to check out Elizabethtown, when you get a chance...

There are a million coincidences in this film...

But the big thing that I thought only you would appreciate as much as me...

Was the custom-designed car-trip home by Claire for Drew...where Claire (Kirsen Dunst) has Drew (Orlando Bloom) stop off in Memphis...to check out the National Civil Rights Museum...and Sun Studios...they play U2's Pride in the Name of Love while he's looking at all of the displays that I thought, for sure, they would never put into the film...

And then he goes through Wichita on the way home...

Oh...and an ex-fiance with a overengaged academic career...named Ben:):):)...

It's another great Cameron Crowe flick for anyone wanting to see Cameron Crowe's second great love story...

Highly recommended:):)...

Love,
Ben

Building a Better World

No school tomorrow...President's Day...and I have plenty of work to do...so it will be a refreshing bit of time to get some of that work done...

I finally got a bit of insight, today, that I've been needing this week...

I've been kind of discouraged, this week, about why I care so goddamn much about serious thought and helping others...when it hasn't always paid off for me, in a more self-centered way...meaning, financially or whatever other kinds of ways that many people center too much of their lives around...

The insight I got...

Was that when I feel shitty about me...or choices I've made...

Generally...it's because I've not really cared much about others...and how my choices affected them...I've cared about myself more...

And I just don't want that in my life...

I like caring about others...

I like caring...

I like giving a shit...

Even with all of its disappointments...

And even with all of the disappointments I feel with myself, sometimes...

I like having my heart open...

Even with all of the pain...and lessons to be learned from that pain...that an open heart invites...

What I miss, I think, actually...

Is not my naivete about caring about others...about giving a shit about the world...

It's the taken for granted feeling that this is how good people should live their lives...

The feeling I had when I was a kid...

Before a lot of cynical folks tried to convince me of just how naive my idealism and compassion were...

Francis Fukuyama has an article in today's New York Times that a good friend of mine sent me that I'm enjoying reading very much, right now (I haven't finished it yet...it's a pretty long, involved, and very thoughtful article)...that kind of gets at this feeling...

Francis Fukuyama...After Neoconservativism...

So does an article I read by Daniel Pipes in the Winter 2005/2006 edition of the National Interest...

The National Interest...

The theme that both of these articles picks up on that I really appreciate...

Is the need for some sense of idealism to guide us...

And for me...that idealism is a feeling that I can just take for granted...

That caring...about doing a great job...about others...about life...

That it really matters...

That it's a good thing...

Even with all of its disappointments...

The shittiest choices that I think any of us make in life...

Are the ones where we just didn't care enough about something...

About others...about ourselves...about doing a good job...about being thoughtful...whatever...

And I just take for granted, again...that idealism...that caring about my deepest values...about aspiring to be my best...even as I fall short...often...

That caring...about others...and about doing a great job of looking out for others...

That this matters...that it matters independent of any cynicism that I or anyone else might feel in the moment...

That's what idealism means...

It doesn't mean naivete...we just associate it with naivete...because many of us feel most idealistic when we were more naive...because we didn't know about all the pain that the world had to offer us...and we sometimes get stuck in that pain...and that's when the cynicism sets in...

When idealism, ironically...doesn't need for us to be naive...or unaware...

Even though all of us who at least at a certain age know the times when we knew a lot less than we do, today...

Idealism just needs for us to give a shit...for us to care...about others...about ourselves...enough to open ourselves up...to new ideas...to new thinking...to questioning whether we might be wrong...to questioning our most sacred assumptions...

I love caring, is the truth...I hate the disappointment...but that's not because I hate caring...it's because I love caring...and disappointment is a natural function of caring...and having the world be less than my ideals...which is perpetual, as long as I am always and forever expanding my ideals:):):)...

You know what my best memories of life are?...

When I cared so goddamn much...

And I didn't even think twice about caring...

Because I hadn't accumulated all this crazy pain and disappointment on my heart:):):)...

That's why I have such fond memories of that summer in 1998:):):)...

I was naive, to be sure...I was young...and totally in love...and I really had no clue about the world...

But I also just cared...without questioning it...I just cared...because I knew...that that was the right thing to do...no questions...I just knew that I cared...and that's what animated my idealism...and that's what animated my life:):):)...

You know why I love Dar Williams' February so much?...even though it's so terribly sad and needlessly tragic...very much like Brandi's and my break-up?...

Because it is so clear just how much she cared about the guy that she's singing about in this song:):):)...

It's so beautiful...if you ever get a chance, you really gotta check out this song...February...

Maybe Katherine's right:):):)...maybe I'm just being a drama queen:):)...

Life doesn't always work out the way we want it to...and sometimes we fall flat on our faces:):):)...

But you know what?...

I would definitely...without a doubt...rather fall flat on my face...trying to do some small or great good in this life...than fail doing anything else...

Because it matters to do good...it matters...not to be a perfect person...which doesn't exist...but to be a better person...to be someone who is thoughtful...who makes choices...and sometimes fucks up...but then makes better choices from the lessons learned...

And having that kind of outlook on the world...

Makes all of the failure...and disappointment...and pain...

Well worth it...

That feeling...that taken for granted feeling that caring...that idealism...that doing the right thing....and that loving ourselves and each other through all of the successes and failures, the moments of inspiration and the moments of disappointment...that all of this matters...

That feeling is worth more than any price that you could ever put on anything in this life...

It's the feeling I love most, in this world...

And there is no price you can put on that feeling...

And nurturing that feeling among young people...is one of more worthy ways that I can imagine living my life:):):)...

I have much to contribute in my lifetime, I think...

But maybe that more sustained sense...of commitment...of idealism...of caring and keeping my heart open...no matter the obstacles...no matter how many obstacles...and how many disappointments I face along the way...

Maybe that's the most important legacy I leave with my life...

Because it is out of that idealism...that sense of possibility...and hope...and commitment...

That everything else flows out of:):):)...

Is just so goddamn priceless...

Living a life that you love...

And loving it enough to feel it to its fullest:):):)...

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

Have a week that you can give a shit about...

Love,
Ben

Liars...the whole lot of us...

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 motherfuckers (humanity, that is)...

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

I've been noticing all the negotiating...

As I listen to it on NPR...

As I reflect on it over the course of my life...

As I watch it in my school...

As I am a part of it, daily...

I think...

Thank god we don't study negotiators in schools...

Because, generally...

They fuck everything up...

Our honest sense of the world, first and foremost...

And an honest sense of themselves...and ourselves...

I sometimes wonder if anyone really cares about the merits of a discussion...

If all people care about are getting their way...

I sure know very few people who care about the merits...

And a lot of people who always want to get their way...

The girl I want to marry...is more committed to doing good...than to getting her way...

I don't know that I've met that girl, yet...

But I'll keep my eyes open...

Love,
Ben

Why'd I do all of this?...

I've finally hit an obstacle I can't get around...

My beef with the IEP process, right now...

Is that it is set up to be fairly perfunctory and meaningless...

Money drives the process...don't get the IEP's done on deadline...then you lose money...whether that serves the kid or the family, at all...

I was trying to inject something more purposeful in the process...

And two great things that have come out of that kind of seriousness brought to the process...is that two of my parents who do not normally show up for IEP meetings have committed and one has definitely shown up for the meeting...no matter how much people told me that they wouldn't show...or that I shouldn't pick up a mother of one of my students, as I did for my last meeting...

There are monetary penalties attached to veering from the way the process is set up...and it makes much of my time now, amidst the process, more perfunctory and meaningless...

Meaning...

I have very little ability, at this point -- until I find something different -- to spend some of the time I work on this really time-consuming process...doing it in a way...

...that I...nor anyone else...

...really cares too much about...

It's been the trap I've been trying to avoid since I left school...

To stop caring...or to care so much less...as so many people in life, do...

And now I've got no way around it...at least for a portion of this process (the actual meetings I will still treat purposely and substantively)...

But this part of the process...I'll have to treat perfunctoraly...because there really is no way around it...that makes any sense at all...

And...today...it helped me come to terms with the very sad fact...

That the reason I left school the way I did...

The reason that I went through all of the financial burdens that it created for me...

The reason I went through all the hell I went through for 3 years after school...

Was because I cared more about this shit, than most people do...

The school work...the policy work...the theoretical work...all of it...

I just wanted to get away to think and to do the best work, possible, without having the artificiality of university life undermining my efforts...

But I'm coming to terms with the fact that most people...

Just don't give much of a shit...

At least compared to how much I've cared...

And I just foolishly lept from a Ph.D. program...

Which would have guaranteed me more money...

Which would have guaranteed me a much easier time finding a professor's position...

Which would have guaranteed me a better connection to a fairly prestigious program...

Which would have avoided all of these bad feelings that now exist between my professors and me...which look pretty irreconcilable, at this point...

I could avoided all of that...

If I just would have cared less about what I was doing...

And now...after all this time...

Now I've hit a point in my job...

Where I have to care less...whether I like it or not...because the law demands that I care less...no matter if it supports students or limits students more or less or not...

Noone really cares, really...that's kind of the point...

What they care about...

Is meeting the deadline...

Purposely...or not...

I'm such an idiot...

I care more about my job...

I care more about my ex-girlfriend...

I care more about my friends...

I care more about my professors...

I care more about the future...

I care more about people, generally...

Than almost anyone else that I come in contact with...

And the sad, stupid, tragic irony of the whole thing...

Is that noone really gives a shit, really...certainly not about me or anything I've done...

In fact, a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to either undermine what turns out to be my probably pretty foolish decision to leave school...just because noone really gives a shit...except my advisor...who was pretty pissed about the whole ordeal, apparently...

And I'm fucked, financially, at so many different levels I can hardly count them all, over the whole thing...

And literally not one person gives a shit...

Both about anything that I've been so passionate about...

Or about me...and about why I might take my work that seriously...

I'm such a fuckin' moron...

I should just learn to think conventionally...and look out for myself...and not give too much a shit about anyone else...

Like most people do...

It's just that I feel kind of empty inside when I do that...like I feel right now...realizing what a fuckin' sucker I feel like, right now...

The kids don't care...

The teachers don't care...

My professors don't care...

And none of my friends or family really care...

The way I do...down deep...even when I'm not feeling it in the immediate moment...like right now...

I should have just gotten into insurance and banking...

And not really given much of a shit...

And learn to look out for myself, better...

And had I done that...

Brandi might not have sped away like she did...

And I might not feel so goddamn lonely without someone to care about anything in this godforsaken world like I do...

I feel like a goddamn fool, is what I feel like...

Which has to be refreshing to an awful lot of folks...who could have told you that I was a goddamn fool a long time ago...

It's so discouraging to find that almost noone really cares about whether they have the best ideas or not...

And only about whether they get their own way...

But that does seem to be the world that we live in...

I've got an IEP to finish up...

I've got this foolish fucked up life I've made for myself to consider...

Have a good night, everyone...

Love,
Ben

Why so much of a culture's problems are left up to its thinkers and writers and critics...

I think I understand why so many of a culture's problems are left up to its great authors...

Because so few people really care about them...
I mean really care...like thoughtfully resolving those problems really matters...

Most people don't care, much of the time, I'm learning...not really...

And some people care enough to do their best...for now...without a lot of thought about the future...

Most people care enough about problems to reinforce their own prejudices...and most smart people care enough to develop sophisticated arguments...to reinforce their own prejudices...

Very, very, very few people...care enough about the world...to operate from the higher intellectual standard...of discomfirming their own prejudices and ideas...rather than confirming...the highest intellectual standard...

A standard that very, very, very few people...take really seriously, at all...

Because most people...even the ones who care the most...

Do not, generally, care enough...to face a problem square on...at its fundamentals...and deal with it...honestly...

Most of the time...people solve problems...for now...

I wish I could think like that, most of the time...

My life would be more boring...and lacking in passion...or love...

But it would be a lot easier...

And fuck if I'm going to keep doing this on my own...if I'm going to be the only one doing this...

After having 3 district administrators make clear to me just how much more important bureaucratic detail was to teaching, since it was bureaucratic detail and not teaching that makes the big bucks from the fed...

And then classrooms full of kids and teachers...none of whom really care about thinking or learning or education in the deepest sense...

I'm just left kind of wondering why I should care so goddamn much...

Probably is not good reason...

Not at the pay I make...

And with the hassle I've absorbed into my life for that higher kind of purpose...

None of my professors really valued it, that much...

Which is why so many people turn to the lazy thinking that is involved with trying to force your way to results...

Because...it's easy to come to that conclusion...

When you don't really care...because you haven't really thought about it...

Because it doesn't involve a lot of thought...

And that's the beauty of it for people who don't care very much about thinking and don't really care that much, in the big picture...

Is that no thinking...is just so much goddamn easier...

Than thinking...

Still...

It would be nice to chat with someone who really does care...

It would make the experience a whole lot less tedious to go through...

And would mean that I would have at least one other person in this world...

Whose commitment to it that I really respect...

That's why there's so few really great authors and thinkers who really get to the bottom of a culture's problems...

Because most people...are just living their lives...caught up in the thick of those problems...

Without really thinking very seriously, at all...

About how to resolve them...

It's taken more than 300 years of secular thought to get the bulk of the world committed to a world of freedom and equity and intelligence...

I guess 100 years, give or take, to get people to take the merits of a question seriously...with a clear commitment to constructive resolution...and not always trying to prove that they are right...because it's just easier than thinking more seriously...is not so bad, with that perspective...

I'm just growing weary of facing my limitations at inspiring others to take the intellectual merits of important matters seriously...

Maybe I can find a smart girl to bitch and laugh about the stubborn fact of recalcitrant human stupidity...

And none of it will seem the total lunacy that it seems to me, today...

I have a couple of IEP's (Individual Education Plan) to work on (why do we do these things, again...I have no fuckin' clue, at this point...and that is the one hundred percent truth...because it definitely isn't because people use them to take the education of kids seriously, that is for damn sure...because they so overwhelm that latter more important goal so often...at least, in my experience, at this point)...

Is my life forever doomed to making way for the stubborn foolishness of the bulk of humanity?...

Today is a day that feels like that, I must say...

Have a better day than me, everyone...

Love,
Ben

Do you ever feel like you're running uphill against the apathy of others?...

That's how I feel today...

The apathy of politicians...

The apathy of administrators...

The apathy of teachers...

The apathy of students...

Anything to get out of responsibility rather than to actually take it, I'm learning...

What an incredible example we have to offer our children...

Love,
Ben

I think I understand my advisor and my teachers and all my higher ups better today than I did before I was a teacher...

We just had a great conversation/venting session about the problems with the current No Child Left Behind Act...

And just the pressure, generally, to do bureaucratic detail that interferes with teaches' ability to do the work that really matters in schools...

Namely teaching...

It's the major philosophical difference that my advisor, Tom Skrtic, and I had about education, I think...

Tom thought you could pressure your way to results (largely because he had no other really great ideas about improving schools)...

And I knew you couldn't...

And so I left when he pushed me too far...

Do you think he'll mind when I gloat about the clear consensus among teachers on this question?...

It's hard to admit when you're wrong, I think...especially when it's something important...

And he doesn't have to admit anything...

He can just go to his grave an angry, grumpy, ill-tempered post-modernist...

And have the world just pass him by...

Or he can do the honorable thing...

And admit he's wrong...

Something he doesn't do very easily...

The truth is...as one of my colleagues said tonight...

The No Child Left Behind Act is like the Wizard of Oz...

Noone really knows how to get the results that they say they want in that law...

They're just hoping...that if they set high expectations (something I very much agree with)...and then pressure they're way to those high expectations (something I very much disagree with)...

Then somehow people will figure out a way...

And they will...

But it will be despite your efforts...

And you'll get that message, sooner or later...

Hillary Clinton will get the message, hopefully, when she loses that Democratic nomination, absent earning it, which she hasn't done yet...

And something tells me that voters will find a way to let Congress and Presidential and other candidates know how they feel this next election...

Because even if most voters are clueless about processes to get to results...and where the problems on most policy issues lie, this season...

They can see shitty results when they see them...

And they will make those choices as consumers of media, as well, I'm quite sure...

As smart, assertive news organizations...rather than foolish, aggressive media organizations...win their readership...

You see...reality is reality...no matter whether you understand it or not...

So when the reality is shitty...

People will recognize it...whether they understand it or not...

The war demonstrates that...

Most voters have no fuckin' clue what's going wrong and right in that war...most really intelligent people have no fuckin' clue what's going right and wrong with that war...

But they can see when things are going wrong...

And they vote and voice their concerns according to that very basic understanding of the reality...even if they lack more developed understandings of it...

That's why politicians should lead...rather than pander...

Because voters, generally, have no fuckin' clue what they're doing...

But they will turn on you on a dime when the results don't go the right direction...

So you better know how to produce results...

And if not...you better find a way to get there...

Stalin did not actually make the trains run on time, in the metaphorical sense...

Because if he did...Communism would have been a success and there'd be very little debate about the issue...

But Communism was clearly not a success...because it couldn't produce results...

The only leadership that makes sense, then...is the leadership that takes seriously trying to understand how to create results...and honestly facing what's not working now...

And the problem with most voters...politicians...media folks...etc...

Is that they are just too fuckin' dumb and chickenshit...

To face up...to what is not working...

And change it...

And because it takes time to learn, as well...

But they will learn...

And we all will...

Because they'll keep dealing with the same dumbass results...until they do:):):):)LOL:):):)...

Dumbasses..."Uh...we'll just stubbornly stick to the same message and we'll make all those bad situations go away...der, der, der"...

Dumbasses...

You can't make reality go away with a bluff...or even with a punishment...and definitely not by staying on message...

You deal with reality...by understanding it...and accounting for it...honestly...not by bullshitting yourself...and others...

And the nice thing about honest people...

Is that, eventually...they start to recognize...when what they're doing isn't working...

And they work to right the wrong...

I do have faith in that...

No matter how badly we fucked up in our dealings with Germany post-World War I...

By the end of World War II...we had realized that we fucked up...

And we cut it out...and learned to be generous, to boot...

Because...no matter how shitty we can be, in the short run...

We are honest...in the long run...

And World War II, for me...is always a great moment to see that...

To see just how low humanity can sink...

All of us...Hitler at the top of that list, to be sure...but all of us...not just the Nazis...

And to see just how high humanity can raise itself...out of the muck...of it's own ugly rationalizations...

The Marshall plan and the end to imperialism and the rise of international institutions to help resolve matters of war and peace...a clear commitment on the part of democratic nations to ending the anti-semitism that fueled the Holocaust...all the progress Americans made around racial and gender discrimination during that period...the rise of democracy as the preferred form of governance...the opening up of a more egalitarian form of education in the United States, especially with financial support from the G.I. Bill...

And it was a period of progress and remaining legacies around American imperialism and hegemony (the drive for imperial conquest being the driving force behind the war)...Japanese internment...discriminatory immigration policies that kept out Jews and Eastern Europeans after the war...many bad economic policies backed up by ugly power-grabbing court-packing schemes from the Roosevelt Administration...the still remaining legacy of segregation and racial and gender discrimination post-war, despite the best efforts by Harry Truman and the American military to begin to change that legacy in the armed forces, at least...

The Holocaust and World War II demonstrates, for me, humanity at its worst...

And the generosity and forethought of the Marshall Plan...and the progress on a whole list of social issues represents humanity at its best, for me...

We didn't make all that progress by pressuring and lording over the Germans or the Japanese to become democratic and open up their cultures and their economies for growth...

We made all that progress by supporting the Germans and the Japanese...

And letting them make their own decisions about how to run their countries...and to choose how to better govern them...and to be responsible for their own decisions...

And that is the kind of world that we need, generally, today...

A world where we support one another...and give honest feedback to one another...and where we make choices for our lives...and where we are responsible for those choices...

Each of us...

And each group...or institution...that we belong to...

Progressively...and constructively...over time...

I am responsible for the choices in my life...

And I'll take the good with the bad, on that...

And I will hope and work for a better world than the world I live in, currently...

Rather than rationalizing all of its uglier tendencies...

And I will recall the days when I worked to end those legacies...

Rather than answering my grandchildren's questions with rationalizations meant to skirt those responsibilities...

Because I'd rather be Pope John Paul, in my old age...recalling the courage I demonstrated as a young man during the toughest of times...

Than Pope Benedict...trying to explain my cowardice...in the face of evil...

And I can hardly believe the hubris...of cowards like the Pope...trying to claim moral superiority...

When their inferior moral choices are so obvious and clear...

To anyone being honest...

And you want a regime where more force or pressure was used to motivate behavior?...

Try Germany, circa World War II...where Pope Benedict grew up...

Courage matters...

Individuals matter...

And I look forward...to telling my kids...

That when push came to shove...

That I did my part...to do the right thing...

And not the expedient thing...or the easy out...

And I'm looking for a woman...

Who...when push comes to shove...

I can count on doing the right thing...

And not the easy thing...

Brandi's clearly not that girl...or at least she wasn't the last time I talked with her...

But I am learning to appreciate everyone better for all of their weaknesses and their strengths...not just for their strengths...

I am starting to see, better, by looking more honestly at my own weaknesses...

That one of them is not appreciating people, more, flaws and all...not just for their strengths...

I appreciate better, today, how difficult it is to be a good teacher...and a worthy authority figure...and even the best person...

I appreciate better, today...how none of us ever stop growing, hopefully...and all of us are growing, in the meantime...though sometimes growth involves bad choices...and learning that isn't so set on knowing the right outcome or the right direction...

And how...all of the authority figures I've been dealing with...that...for all of their flaws...they are also worthy and decent and intelligent and good human beings...who are all growing and learning, as well...just as I am...and just as we all are...

Maybe if all learned to not try to control one another so much...we might all better appreciate one another...and ourselves...flaws and strength...learning and having lessons learned...

Maybe Brandi...and Jas...and Tom...and everyone in my life that I've had a similar frustration with are all in similar boats...and I just need to give all of them...all of us...more space...and time...and appreciation...for the growth they have to do...

And me, too...

I've got an I.E.P. to work on...

And I'm hungry as all hell:):):)...

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

Love,
Ben

Dreaming of a life I love...

I just got back from a special education district inservice...it was relaxing...to be in a classroom situation, again...to talk with other people dealing with similar challenges as me...to be raising other teachers' expectations with examples of where doing so improves situations...

But the general attitude I've gotten from district folks whenever I've pointed to real limitations on all kinds of great aspirations...not set-in-stone limitations...just more realism in how quickly and how ambitiously different stuff can get achieved...

Is, "too fuckin' bad...do it...or else"...

And the more I get that attitude...

The less inspired and motivated I am to do the work...

It's so fuckin' stupid, really...

And a lot of my solace is found in the same solace that my teachers had with me, as a kid...

Which is...maybe I can learn from what I hate about how my superiors handle things...to improve the way I handle things with my kids...

And maybe they can learn to do it better than me and the rest of their parents and their teachers and administrators and district administrators and politicians and everyone whose decisions impact their lives...

You know what I really dread?...

Is having all the bullshit that goes with this job...and any job, really...

Have me just as frustrated and as lacking in inspiration...that many of the veteran teachers I learn from and look to as mentors and seek guidance from...

The more long-term quasi or not-so-quasi burnout that they experience...

My frustration, yesterday, was that some veteran teachers left me hanging in a discussion with our district supervisor about paperwork...I raised the issue...and even though all of them fret about the issue to me, privately...not one of them talked about it publicly with me...making me look like the first year teacher who just can't hack it...

I felt really betrayed by the whole ordeal...including by some teachers that I really respect and look up to...

And it was just one more in a long line of instances...where I step up to take some big responsibility on my shoulders...

Only to look beside me to find older, more experienced colleagues shirking responsibility that they can get off their plate...leaving more for me to burden...

Things are getting better, I think...

Teachers are engaging in more constructive venting, these days...they're easing up on the kids, which I think is good...though today I was not easing up on kids, since my first and second hours were hell on wheels, this morning...and I just didn't have the patience to deal with them, this morning, or the two hours afterwards...

And what really frustrates me about this whole situation...

Is that if some of unnecessary burdens...the more arbitrary district requirements...the federal regulations...the state mandates...

If some of the more unnecessary burdens were lifted...

I would feel so much more inspired to do a far better job...

And I was feeling more inspired, at the beginning of my school year, before I had hit my head against those same arbitrary requirements...

It's so goddamn stupid...the whole goddamn thing...it's counterproductive...it undermines everyone's efforts...and...in my case...it undermines the efforts of someone who is seriously ambitious in his efforts...in ways that most teachers never are in their wildest dreams, frankly, just considering the scope of my outlook in my work...

It's just so goddamn stupid...

It makes me want to go somewhere where there is more freedom to do good work...

But other than a more laid back university situation (I'm thinking like a Wichita State)...and like Abraham Maslow (who taught at Brooklyn College most of his career) let the chips fall where they may around my ideas...

Where would I go?...

Wichita State is also the last place I went to school that had a serious appreciation for intellectual diversity...meaning that the political science department had conservatives and liberals who peacefully co-existed under the same roof...though a university with active intellectual engagement of different perspectives (like a Harvard or a Stanford) would be more ideal, obviously...

As long as I can care, first, for my primary responsibility...

Being a decent human being...a loving husband...and a really strong father...

I would also like to teach, at some point, after this stint in special education...where the kids need more persuasion, daily and constantly, to care about school...

To work with students who are more internally motivated...without being obnoxious...and with some sense of balance and priorities in their lives:):):)...to care about school...and education...and all the values that come with that:):)...

I would prefer a public university...just because I also very much value a diversity of students and faculty and staff from different backgrounds...and not just overachievers in a more isolated setting, as is often the case, more, with Ivy League schools, I think...

What I'd like...

Is to work somewhere...and live somewhere...and spend time somewhere...

Where my natural enthusiasm...curiosity...interest...commitment...and love for life...and for studying...and for teaching...and for education...

Are supported...

Rather than undermined...

By the arbitrary requirements of people...

Who clearly care far less about education...and people...and living a good life...

Than I do...

I'm going home for Valentine's Day:):):)...I'm having a beer:):):)...I'm working on some paperwork and some IEP's:):):)...

And I'm enjoying the freedom of home:):):)...

Have a nice Valentine's, everyone:):):)...

Love,
Ben

Facing ourselves...or not...

I think I'm finally beginning to understand hypocrisy and adulthood...
We had a really great trip to watch the play, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, today...it's a great story...and a great play...about the insanity of witchhunts in Puritan colonial America...and it was a really great opportunity to hang out with the kids in a more unstructured setting...

Many of the kids are really beginning to respond to me...even as I have many situations, still, where I'm not connecting with kids like I want to and I don't why, always...much of it is likely a quite reasonable suspicion of adults and authority figures on kids' parts that I not only shared, as a kid and even as an adult, still...but which I totally understand given how arbitrary many adults -- who are very much in good faith -- can be with kids...

And I guess I'm just understanding it all better, now, from so many different angles...

Adults want kids to not only grow up...but to not always be pushing their buttons and the envelopes of their more limited patience, in the moment...which leads to all kinds of reactions to kids and their behavior that is often both in kids' best interests...but also a way for adults to deal with their feelings, in the moment, as well...

And adults...live kids...like all people...are not perfect...

And they're doing their best given limited understanding...

Just like kids...

Just like everyone...

It's why our focus should be on ways of dealing with behavior that deal with immediate issues and dangers...but are not damaging, long term, to anyone...not only because it gives people time to understand, better, their mistakes...

But because it creates room for everyone to understand the overall context for why authority relationships are not functioning adequately...

Why does terrorism tend to spring, more often and more dangerously, out of more authoritarian cultures?...in all likelihood as both a reaction to authority...but also as an angry and unreasoned means of trying to enforcing moral or political or whatever codes or rules or norms or agendas that terrorists see as being handled incopetently by authoritarian regimes within their culture...

Or...as in the case of Chechen rebels...as a means of fighting for self-determination from what they believe and often is -- in the case of Russia -- the overbearing hand of more autocratic government...trying to solve problems, ineffectively and often oblivious to their ineffectiveness so stuck are they are poor assumptions about reality, with force...that would be better handled with more thought than with more force...

I'm beginning to see the really tricky issue with authority, though...

You have authority figures that need space to act adequately to deal with immediate situations and to maintain some order with limited understandings of reality and limited emotional resources...patience, namely...and a cool enough head...and some confidence and trust that their efforts will not be blithely ignored by those they are excercising authority with...

On the other hand...you have citizens...or students...or what have you...also with limited understandings of reality...and limited emotional resources...namely, patience...who are subject to that authority...

And the latter are suspicious, for good reason, of the former, because the former has the power to limit their freedom...a power that those without authority don't really have over people with authority, except in really bureaucratic, passive-aggressive kinds of ways...

When...really...what people need...in addition to a larger perspective on life...and more patience, as a consequence...

Is communication lines...and relationships...to vent their frustrations...openly and honestly...with each other...

Our team at school is getting better at that...and are getting stronger, together, as a consequence...

We do have a math team lead who is given to a lot of hyperbole, which is not constructive...

But we're all getting better...

And the reason for using the least possible necessary force...or the least possible necessary aggression...

Is that force shuts down communication...sometimes...temporarily...sometimes more long term...

In the case of my mom and her dad...it was more permanent...though that was a relationship that was both of their responsibilities...

There are so many places in my life where lack of communication is the first most fundamental issue around why there is still lingering frustrations between me and someone else...

And many of those situations are either compounded because of that person is or has been an authority figure in my life...

Or compounded by authority issues, generally...

Do you realize how much communication and understanding overwrought authority reaps in our lives?...

A lot...on so many issues I can hardly even count them...

In fact...if I were to name the number one reason why many areas of life where there is not enough understanding lack it...it would be because of overwrought authority creating a lot of secrecy and repression of honest communication and feedback...and an awful lot of confusion, as a consequence...

That is definitely the case between kids and adults, I think...and teachers and students, generally...

My professors often had no clue what I was up to, in my program...in great part, because I did not feel comfortable approaching them about much of my work...

But also because of lack of patience for a more long term and engaged conversation...that would have led to more openness and communication and understanding...

It's so frustrating to me...that after millenia of progress from more openness and freedom and understanding and empathy and communication and sharing of one another...

That people would perpetually resist progress in that direction...

All to satisfy more foolish fears...borne of ignorance...more than of reason...

Ignorance that would be better alleviated by more openness and freedom and communication and understanding and exchange...than by trying to beat the shit out of problems...which is a perpetually popular and perpetually stupid solution:):):)LOL:):):)...

In fact...what really frustrates me...

Is that we are perpetually looking to authority to solve our problems...

And never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever...

...satisfied with the solutions they deliver up...

...or with whomever we elect or authorize or have to live with to exercise that authority...

It's insanely dysfunctional...

And we've got to face it if we're actually going to make some real, substantial progress on it...

Which progress would seriously open up so many million opportunities that I'm sure none of us are completely aware of, now...

But which we perpetually stand in the way of...stubbornly standing by solutions and decisions and choices and policies...that clearly don't work...to anyone with open eyes...

Government is, as a general rule, rather than the exception, stuck in this situation, right now...

And we can deny it...or face it...

Ultimately...those are our only two choices with something as serious with this problem...

I would definitely recommend facing it, for those still not convinced of the need to do so...

But I'm understanding, today, better, the real trick of making the transition from a world obsessed with rules...

To a world based, more...on conscience...

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

Love,
Ben

I never understood the depths of cowardice...

...until I worked among my elders...

I could have hardly fathomed the levels of denial...and pride...and ego...and conceit...and arrogance...

In the human condition...

Until I worked among average people...

I have decided that if things should not work out at this teaching situation...

Then I'm going to get a lucrative job...I'm keeping my mouth shut...and I'm going to be a recluse, like Mr. Salinger (who I understand so much better, now, I think)...

I'm so dissappointed with the human condition that I can hardly articulate it...

I just know that there is literally, without a shadow of a doubt, no way that they are getting anywhere with the prevailing philosophy of forced progress...

It cannot happen...

It is not possible...

And it offends the dignity of people everywhere...

And leaves them all in the same place that they are, today...

Which is completely lacking in responsible for their lives...

I'm just wondering how long it will take people...before a few of them...a few of us...

Have the balls to admit that to themselves and to others...

Because if they don't...if we don't...

We are going literally nowhere fast...

And that is a guarantee...

This political moment...is one of such total and utter failure...in it's ability to achieve its goals...

Through the foolish, stupid, cowardly and ultimately doomed philosophy of forced progress...

That the one silver lining in this generally grey raincloud...

Is that everything that people are trying to achieve with this foolish little philosophy...

Is and will continue to be persistently undermined by it...

Until we choose something different...

Leaving people with the difficult choice...

Between their goals...

And their pride...

Something tells me that pride has to eventually give on that one...

But if I get suckered again...

I'm quitting...for good...

Until someone else antes up...

Pride...or an honest assessment of reality?...

It is the perpetual test that humanity faces...in every generation...

We will pass this test, eventually...

The question...is how long we have to fuck it up...before we face up to our failures...

Have a good week, everyone...

Love,
Ben