Why I should have gotten my proverbial ass kicked in grad school...

(...even though it wouldn't have done a bit of good:):):)...)

We just got an email from a counselor about a kid we've been dealing with...

This kid isn't doing anything in class...and the parents are angry with the teachers because he's making bad grades, right now...

And the parents have been threatening some kind of punitive action from the district if we don't fix it...

When the only thing to fix...is that this kid needs to start doing his work...

And the whole thing...how much the teachers care, despite all their faults...how little the kid and the family have done and how much they've demanded...

And most of all...how hard it is for the parents to just face up to the fact that this kid is failing...and not even trying...just burns my ass...

And the whole thing has led to a new rethinking on my part of my experience in grad school...

I was a really brilliant student in grad school...I think most people would agree...

But I was also a young man...who made an awful lot of mistakes...in relationships with professors...as a person...and as a student...

I was not this kid...I tried with all my heart and soul, really...quite different than this kid, really...the truth was and is that my sights were far higher than any of my fellow grad students and many if not all of my professors...

But I was also a little shit, too...I was definitely no angel...and I fucked up a lot...

And when we're shitheads...we...like this kid...need people to be honest with us...and we need to be honest with ourselves...

Now...like this kid's family...an awful lot of people spend a lot of time avoiding being honest with ourselves...and letting others be honest with us...

And...a lot of times...we just don't know why or what we've fucked up...

But the one more important fuck up than any other in those situations...

Is bullying our way through issues, like this family is doing...so we can avoid our own shortcomings...

Which is what is so popular and yet so fruitless these days...

And the biggest shortcoming of all being avoiding a more honest conversation...

What is wrong with us, I wonder all the time...that we so desperately avoid being honest with ourselves and with each other?...what is it that we think that it serves?...

I'm guilty of it, too...I have the easier conversations, first, generally...and the harder conversations after the easier conversations have been expended...

But I don't avoid the hard conversations in the way that most people do...at least not generally, I don't think...I generally encourage them...even the hardest conversations...as much as I feel safe to...

There's many tough conversations that I've tried to have with people that I've not been able to have...

But one thing that I realized out of this situation at school...and just being responsible for kids, generally...

Is that though I wish that I, first and foremost, and my grad school professors, secondarily, had handled my situation in grad school better...

They had plenty of reason to be pissed at what a shithead I was being, at the time...something I wasn't able to say at the time...because it's easier to be honest with myself about it as I watch kids do it all the time...

My advisor was kind of a shithead, too...in a very different way...and I definitely was beyond tired of having him ride me all the time...

But I understand, better, now, the real limitations that he and I and all of us were facing...and that I and these teachers face today...

And I just don't have any bad feelings about the situation, anymore...

And the big lesson I'm learning about life...

The much bigger lesson to be learned for life...

Is that no matter how much the bad shit in life sucks...which it often does...

And no matter how much the struggle in life...

Really what matters...more than anything else...in the big picture...in life...and in my life, as much as for people, generally...

Is the learning...

Really...

Because all the other stuff people want in life...the money...the power...the sex...the drugs...the fancy vacations...the big houses...the fame...the popularity...

Whatever...

All the other stuff is just foolish if it comes at the expense of the learning...

I would, in a million years, rather have the toughest life...with groundedness and wisdom and the learning that make these possible...

Than an easier life...where I have all of those rewards -- the money, the power, the sex, the drugs, the fancy vacations, the big houses, the fame, the popularity -- with too little purpose...

Fairly or unfairly, this was my impression of Brandi's mother-in-law when I first met her...

And I just could hardly live with myself if I lived like that...

And I certainly would feel like quite the shithead when I met a woman better than me if I were to choose this path...

And know in my heart that having the self-respect that comes with being honest with yourself...and being with a woman that I really respect...

Is far more important than any reward I could ever get in life...

I don't understand, really, why people would live different than that...

Except...that like these parents...they are desperately avoiding an honest evaluation of themselves and others about who they are...

And what a sad life to live, really...

And what I know for sure, now, about the world...

Is that the only way it works through its problems...

Is if and when it decides to get honest with itself...no matter what the mitigating circumstances...

And it's the only way that we will grow...as individuals...and as a culture...

That we start getting more honest...with ourselves...and with each other...

And everything else is just bullshit...and will remain so...until we face the things we don't like to face...

Many if not most of the ways that we bullshit ourselves and one another have to do with how punishments and punitive means of dealing with problems just complicate them and lead to suppression of more honest assessments of life...

But in the biggest picture...as individuals...and as a culture...and for the lot of humanity...

Being honest with ourselves and others is the only and most important thing that really matters in life...

And those who don't believe this...are those who have just gotten too lost in their own excuses and their own less than honest and often blatantly dishonest self-concepts...and consequent relationship with and outlook on the world...

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

Have a good night, everyone...

Love,
Ben

Dreaming...

Do you know what one of the most taken for granted freedoms in America and the democratic world is?...

Dreaming...

Our capacity for the American dream...and for dreaming, generally...

The ability to imagine something better...for yourself...for the world...whatever...

And the freedom to realize that dream...and to make it happen...

I have many dreams...

A freer world...where free peoples taken freedom seriously...and support one another to choose better lives, freely...and, as much as possible, without coercion...

A world where people become better people...and treat each other better...because it's the right thing to do...and who have the freedom to treat each other however, within some limits, without persistent power battles...as they promote stronger consciences...for themselves...and for others...

There's a million elements to my vision of a better world...

But there's one dream, in particular, that I have...that I'd most like to see realized during my lifetime...

I'd like to meet a girl...who shares similar ideals...who shares an open appreciation of similar universal values...a girl who's honest...and sweet...and compassionate...and generous...and courageous...and mature...

Someone with a sense of perspective...and a great sense of humor...someone with a healthy libido...and whom I'm attracted to, primarily, because she's just so damned impressive as a human being...

Someone who I admire...and look up to...and who inspires me...and makes me want to be a better person...

At each point in my life I've had this with the person I've been with...though as I grow, my standards for what impresses me are raised as well...

I'd like to meet someone who can keep up intellectually...that's my secret dream that I feel almost embarrassed to admit because it's so rare to meet people of that kind of intelligence...

I guess I'm just feeling kind of uninspired, right now...because I can dream about that kind of person all I want...

But I have very little control, at all, over whether or not she shows up in my life...I meet many girls who seem interested...but I've yet to meet anyone, including the teacher at my school I was interested in but for whom my interest is waning the more I get to know her, who really fits the bill...who really seems like my soul-mate...

And maybe that will have the effect of making the heart grow fonder when I finally meet that girl...

In the meantime, though...

My life is fine...but it still feels uninspired...

Melissa and I have talked about cleaning up the apartment to invite some people over and then I'd have some people to feel inspired to cook for...

And I think I understand, now, why so many women feel so attached to their families...

Because once their husbands die...or if one or the other of them end their marriage...

Finding another soulmate is a really drawn-out process...at least it's been so for me...

I suppose I would likely find a close friend who would essentially be my significant other if my spouse were to die before I do...

But finding a soul-mate...finding someone that you really share that kind of deep and knowing love with...

Turns out to be a really rare thing, I'm learning, much to my misfortune...

That saddens me, immensely, I have to say...and it's nooone's fault, of course...it's just life...

But it's one of life's greater natural tragedies, I think...

Almost invariably the better moments in my life have been when I was in love...and I've been feeling more ready for it, in the last few weeks and, especially, in the last few days, than I have in quite a long time...

I guess I'm getting over Brandi, more authentically...and I've matured quite a bit, personally...

And I'm more consistently passing up opportunities to have casual sex...

Which allows me to freely choose...to relive a part of my young adulthood that I really loved and that I really love to relive...

Which is when I was a young high school and college student...

And I just wait to date people...and I would always look for love...

I didn't have any casual affairs, per se, when I was a kid...I lost my virginity to a friend rather than to a girlfriend...but it was a very loving, tender experience that I really value in retrospect far more than the casual encounters I've had since then...

And before Brandi...all of my most intimate encounters were loving...rather than merely sexual...

And I've missed that feeling...that I haven't had, completely, since Brandi and I were together...

I guess because of a broken heart...perhaps within and after Brandi's and my relationship...

But I miss being in love something fierce deep down in my soul...

I want to be passionate about someone again...I want to be passionate about life again...I want someone to support me in that passion...to nurture it...and to tell me every day and every night that it's worth it...that someone else thinks that it matters...that someone else cares like I do...or preferably more...

I miss that kind of love...truly, madly, deeply...

I haven't seen anything like it in several years...

But I also have faith...now based on experience...that generally things get better over the long haul...even as we might face setbacks in the short run...

It would be nice to talk with someone who really understood the world and people, better...who had wisdom to share with me...who understood my concerns...or who didn't and disagreed and made powerful arguments against my ideas in ways that I found persuasive (something that would be quite a feat, I must admit, since I've found nothing even close, up to this point, even among the most brilliant thinkers:):):)...

Someone who values freedom the way I do...and who values people that way, too...

Someone who I would watch with people and think, "How the hell can they all take so for granted what an incredible person they have amongst their midst?"...

That's the girl I want to marry...and to spend my life with...

But right now, she's just a dream...

I've not met that girl...Brandi was as close as I've come...as much, in great part, because we nurtured each other's dreams as because of anything that was Brandi alone...

I imagine it's just harder, at this point in my life, to find someone like that...because my standards have just been upped so much...

It's been a long time since I've felt free to dream like I've been dreaming lately...

I feel like C.S. Lewis...tapping into a tender, beautiful, imaginative part of himself to share with children and adults, alike, to help then transcend their own smaller, pettier priorities...to help them to aspire for something more beautiful and substantial...and dreaming of a relationship that might be worthy of his love...

I'm listening to this far too ugly and mindless debate about illegal immigration in the United States, right now...

And I just want to believe that we have something better to offer our children...than this ugliness and foolishness...

And now I understand why people would freely abandon their opportunity to pillage and plunder in the world for their own benefit...to paint a picture of a better world...

Because this world is just so uninspired...and uninspiring...

And inspiration is something that is too rare...and too deeply needed to abandon...

How could I possibly look at the world as it is and say to myself...

"This the world that I want for my children"...

"I want a world where we fight over the pettiest priorities...where noone takes responsibility, really...where everyone looks for someone to blame or pressure or sue or strongarm or threaten or otherwise demand that they get their way, whether it serves them or anyone else or not, for real...where hurting one another is done too lightly...and being thoughtful about how we use power is far too rare"...

"I want a world where people forever take freedom for granted...no matter how much it offers them opportunities not possible without it...where people, generally, never really appreciate, fully, the beauty of really powerful drama...or really insightful thought...or deep meaning in even their every day lives, so absorbed are they in the smallness of the world as it is...and so much do they perpetuate that smallness with their whining and bitching and moaning and demanding lives that they feel no responsibility to create"...

"I am satisfied with a world where people don't really ever fully appreciate a moving story or film or book or poem or artwork or play or other creative production...or a powerful connection with other human beings...or completely experience the moment of a beautiful sunset, or a rainy drive through the Pacific Northwest, or looking up into a California Redwood, or a mountain landscape against an ocean background, or snowshoeing through Estes Park, or any such similar natural wonders"...

"Because they're all just so complacent in their smallness...and in the smallness of the world"...

But I just couldn't possibly be satisfied with that world...with this world...in that way...

And I want someone, again, with whom I can dream of a better world...

It's been a long time since I've done that with someone...

And I've really only done it once in my life...

But I'm ready again...to do that with someone who's ready...when that will be I don't think I'll ever know...until I meet her, I suppose:):)...

I'd better get home, here, soon:):)...

I hope everyone is having a great beginning of the week...

Though my Shocks lost on Friday...I did realize, today, that what I think my colleagues -- especially my older colleagues -- so appreciate about me, right now...is my undaunted positive attitude...in the face of so many reasons...so many excuses...to be uninspired...

Somehow I still find inspiration...

What I want is someone to offer that kind of inspiration to me, as well...

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

Love,
Ben

Who I am...

I was realizing, today...after dealing with several different teachers, this week...

That I no longer, at all, identify myself politically, primarily...

I identify as a person who strives for excellence...and virtue...and thoughtfulness...

I grew up thinking of myself as a liberal...as someone who was compassionate and forgiving and smart and decent...

But I've learned in my short life that being compassionate and forgiving and smart and decent isn't at all a liberal quality exclusively...and that many liberals lack these important qualities, as a function of their own individual strengths and weaknesses...

I do use force less often than most teachers and think it should be used less often than most people in most situations...

But there are times when I use considerably more force than many teachers...and probably would than other people in many situations, depending on the situation...

The key terms in my ideas...least possible necessary aggression...

Are "possible" and "necessary"...

The big problem with the use of force, generally...is that people use far more force than is necessary...or is productive...or constructive...or useful...or fair...or decent...or compassionate with others...

But there are times when there really is no other more reasonable way to handle a situation than to use the least possible necessary force, and many times more force is needed to handle a situation than I would prefer...but it is needed...

And I've been learning...that contrary to my prejudices on the matter...conservative does not at all mean less compassionate, necessarily...and that liberal does not at all mean more compassionate...

Two of the best teachers I work with, right now, are conservatives...one is a liberal, I think...or a moderate...and the worst teacher I work with, right now, appears to be a liberal...

That is not always true...

The other best teacher in the building, period, right now, I think, is a liberal...and I'm someone who has identified as a liberal and a Democrat most of my life...though, to be fair...and the point of this post...is that I am much more an independent, these days...

I have many, many conservative views that I share and many, many liberal views that I disagree with, even as I often agree with the intentions of many policies advocated by those I disagree with on a policy level...

I oppose gun control, but I don't own a gun and I am very much in favor of responsible gun ownership...and my desire to see more responsible gun ownership has everything to do with why I favor gun rights, which I think are critical to more responsible gun ownership...

I oppose the drug war, even as I am not a drug user...I barely drink, anymore, except for very moderately and only smoke in the most stressful and/or painful situations...but I want drug use to happen responsibly...and I am quite convinced that the most responsible drug use and experimentation would happen with more freedom for people to do and experiment with drugs rather than with less...

I oppose campaign finance regulation, even as I seriously favor its intentions and very much believe that money must become unentangled from a more honest and credible democratic process...

I oppose most regulations of the economy even as share most of the intentions involved, including and especially around matters of the environment and wealth inequality...

I am committed to reforms around wealth equity including education reform and commitments to international aid and development...but believe that they would best occur with more decentralization, self-determination, autonomy, freedom, and commitment by the individual citizens of each country, freely, rather than with compulsion and coercion...

And yet I favor freedom for law enforcement and soldiers to handle matters of security with their best judgment about the use and need for force without serious legal interference except in the most extreme cases...

In short...I favor freedom...and its capacity to offer people better opportunities to have open and honest and serious debates and discussions and to develop serious and not-so-serious thought and conscience...

And the kind of freedom that most people in more free and democratic societies take for granted every day...and the opportunity it offers to develop all of the benefits of this and every free society that so many of their citizens forget are so freely available to them in ways that they are not to others in less free and democratic cultures...

It's ironic that free societies whose many values and benefits are made available by such freedom so take it for granted, right now...

And it is the most important reason, I think, for why I don't take it for granted, in the same political moment...

Because it is just so sad and scary how much most people do...

I am not a conservative...or a liberal...

I am a freedom-loving citizen of America and the world...

Who has accomplished the rare achievement...

Of developing original ideas...around the use of the use of least possible necessary force and aggression, with an eye toward assertive and thoughtful leadership, with implications for policy, psychology, economics, education, criminology, and a whole host of fields...

And though full of frustrations and heartbreak and shock at the lack of thought and courage in the world...I am, on balance, very much enjoying the opportunity to play those out in real life...in real schools...with real people...and complicated and challenging social situations...and to learn a whole hell of a lot, in the process...an education all on its own...

And what I'm most surprised by, now almost 3 and a half years into my life as an adult and not in school...

Is how much most people believe in classical virtues, in the abstract...and how little most people practice them, in reality...

How they practice them, more, in free societies...and given more freedom within those free societies...and when they are offered that freedom in less free societies...

And how they practice them less...honesty being the most important of them...in less free societies...and in less free situations within both more and less free societies...

But what I'm most pleased by...

Is finding out how much of the world...is shaped by the important debates and discussions and thinking and development of public and private conscience in those free societies...

For real...not just as an abstract notion of universities...

I am so tickled by the irony that I am the most idealistic and the most realistic of my colleagues:):):)...the most thoughtful and the most practical of my colleagues...

It's been so interesting to find out just how many people who take intelligence and education less seriously live their lives blinded by abstractions about the world and all kinds of mistakes of logic and perception...

Intelligence and education and character and decency and compassion and all the rest of the classic virtues really do matter...

And they don't have to be lived separate from our baser, crasser, more rough-edged selves...quite the contrary...we would all live healthier, smarter, better, more integrated lives with more freedom to just be ourselves -- good, bad, and ugly -- with ourselves and with one another:):):)...

The common denominator to what stunts our growth, individually and culturally, is repression...too much force with too little real purpose or constructive consequence...

And the common denominator to what supports and facilitates our growth is freedom...and the serious responsibilities that come with that freedom:):):)...

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

And go Shockers...my alma mater, Wichita State University, is in the sweet sixteen tomorrow night against George Mason, the alma mater of a good friend of mine, Joe Kennedy, from intercollegiate forensics...

The Shocks haven't been in the sweet sixteen since 1981, the glory days of Shocker basketball, when Antoine Carr and Cliff Levingston led one of the most successful teams in Shocker history...

Until this year, that is...both USA today columnists I read, today, favor WSU over George Mason, despite the fact that George Mason beat Wichita State at home earlier this year...

So you will likely find me in some sports bar, somewhere, Friday night, hopefully with good company (I'll be hanging out with the girl I've been interested in this Friday after school, I imagine)...

...watching my Shockers beat the shit out of George Mason, I hope:):):)...

...or celebrating a good year with hopefully a close game for a team that has much reason to be proud of itself:):):)...

So go Shocks:):):)...and have a good week and weekend, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Learning about why it matters the kind of person you are...

I'm learning a really important lesson, today...

It's about loyalty...what inspires it...and why it matters...

My principal made a serious mistake, recently, that she's taking some licks for among the staff, today...

She wants to avoid flunking students and pissing off parents without giving every effort to make sure that they pass they're classes...

That's the good part of her thinking...

Here's the bad part...

She decided to issue an executive order to the staff that they had to use one hour of their planning time per week to tutor students in danger of failing their grade...not their classes, per se...but the entire grade for this year...

Now...caring about how well the students who are struggling the most do is not a bad idea, at all...it's not only a great idea...its the entire basis for my life and work, right now, in schools and in public education...

The mistake my principal made was in execution...she decided to order/force/whatever the hell you want to call it teachers who are already in good faith to do something that they just weren't quite on board with, yet...especially when most of them can think of 2 million other things that they could do, in good faith, with that hour of time...

And the staff grumbled about it the entire time, today...

For good reason...

They weren't included in the decision...

She should have made the more patient decision...of presenting a good idea...and getting staff on board...rather than twisting their arms on something that was a good idea, anyway...

Now...if she pulled this shit all the time...she wouldn't keep her job for very long...

In fact, Kansas City Kansas Public Schools just fired someone who made decisions like this more regularly...

And the reason why she can get away with it...

Is because people trust her, more, than they trust most bosses or principals or administrators...

And they trust her more...

Because she trusts them more, generally...

Not because she twists their arms...or forces them to do shit all the time...the only people who believe that this is the path to strong leadership at this point...are just either such sadistic control freaks that they just can't see straight anymore...people who don't force very often, and thus get away with it when they do...or dumbasses...most people who believe in this means of leadership falling into that third category, whether or not they fall in the first two or not:):):)...

And today I learned...that when I trust someone, more, personally...even when I think that they've done a dumbass thing...like twist arms when its not necessary or wise...

That I'll back them up...and just work at smoothing out the execution...

Even if it means being kind of on board with what I think was a mistakenly executed decision...

And that is how people get away with bullying their way through some tough issues, sometimes...

Because people trust them...

They trust their good faith...

And the reason why shit gets so fucked up in the long term...in the biggest picture...

Is because we never quite get figured out that this is only something that can be done occassionally...and that it should be done as infrequently as possible...

And that it often involves people forgiving what shitheads we were for forcing their hand, in the first place...

The problem is...

Most people don't forgive others like I do...

I want them to...

I expect them to...

I think it's their responsibility to...

But they often don't...

And that can become a serious problem down the road...

As the less mature in the adult world...persistently undermine the efforts of the more mature of the adult world...

Dr. Ogburn has taught me...that given the right person...and given my own much larger sense of the world, today...

That I can forgive this stuff pretty easily, anymore...

But not into perpetuity...

And if I can't forgive it that long...

I know damn well that most people won't...

And the sad, fucked up part of the whole mess...

Is that this kind of foolishness is fed by the very kinds of bitching and moaning and demanding and other kinds of less responsible bullshit of thos same less forgiving teachers and parents and all kinds of people who've just gotten used to demanding that something be done to improve education...or whatever random demand they have about the world, these days...

Rather than doing the tough, patient work to make that happen...

I think I understand why people just don't want to face up to their foolishness on this one, now...

It's because they just don't understand it...as little as they try, sometimes...

Though there are some people who are just kind of arrogant pricks who make others' life miserable...because they just don't give enough of a shit to do otherwise...

I'll cut Dr. Ogburn the slack she needs on this one, right now...

Because I know she's operating honestly...

And that is the only thing that lets us get away with this dumbass mentality around forcing our way, these days...

When people trust that we fuck this one up in good faith...

And even then...I guarantee...they will only do so for so long...

We will have to face facts on this one very soon...

Because we can only bullshit our way through it for so long...

Before the bullshit catches up with us...

By the way...

I think I handled my conversation with Dr. Ogburn about this very well...I am one diplomatic son-of-a-bitch, I have to say that...I very nicely made clear why the only thing that gives her the slack to throw her weight around on this issue or any other issue...

Is that people don't force the issue with her...or enforce the rules all that strictly:):):)...IEP's put some restrictions on how kids' spend their time...that Dr. Ogburn and I thought it was best to put aside...

So we could accomplish the purposes of the law...rather than the letter of the law...

Which is to support kids in learning more and better...

Kind of ironic, isn't it?...

Honest people will only be able to avoid contradictions like this one for so long...

And eventually they'll have to face them...

And I promise won't even tell people I told you so:):):) (ok, maybe I might say it a little under my breath:):):)...but only to remind people to doubt me at their own risk:):):)...

I'm a brilliant fuckin' sum-bitch is what I am:):):)...

Who is learning to suffer foolishness...even the high stakes foolishness...more gladly:):):)...

I guess it helps that I've had to suffer more of my own more gladly over the short course of my own lifetime:):):)...

And here's the real kicker...

If I'm as hopeful as I am...and I one hopeful sum-bitch, too...

And I still have been seeing the world as starkly as I've been seeing it, lately...like in the last 6 years or so...

That's a really, really, really, really, really, really, really...

Bad sign:):):)...

I see a lot of really good people...

Making a lot of really stupid decisions, right now...

In good faith...

Conservatives...liberals...even some radicals...although some members of all of these ranks are arrogant and often recalitrant pricks in my experience, as well...

And the biggest saving grace...

Is that there is no way that young people are watching this...

And thinking...

"We better live just like our parents do:):):)...the world they've created is too good to be true:):):)"...

Generally...they will think...

What a fucked up world our parents have created...

And what the fuck is this with forcing my hand all the fuckin' time...

Just like every generation of kids thinks...

The trick is...

Will they be able to give it up as adults...

And that really is the trick...

In the meantime...

It so limits our growth...

As individuals...

And as cultures...

The girls that I thought I handled too heavy-handedly before Spring Break appear to either have been in bad faith and thus not hold anything against me...or have forgiven me in the meantime...

There is a boy in my first hour class that I'm quite concerned that I have alienated with too tough of tactics...

And I'll have to work to reverse that in the next week or month or so...

And do you know the only thing that gets us all through this whole damned thing?...

That we settle for so little, for one...meaning our high expectations in the abstract are quickly forgone in the real world once we've fucked things up enough...

And two...that people forgive our stupid asses for being such pricks...and even that doesn't happen, much of the time...

Just ask Larry Englebrick...our former assistant superintendent...

And just ask my grandfather...whose eldest daughter...my mom...wouldn't talk to him till the day he died...and wouldn't go to his funeral when he was dead...

The truth is...that the only thing that's kept us all going this long...humanity, that is...

Is all the love and forgiveness and bigness of at least some of us...

To overcome the pettiness and ugliness and cowardliness of the rest of us...

And the great thing about dark times, right now, for that kind of love and forgiveness and the freedom that it naturally gravitates to...

Is that ugly times...call for love and forgiveness and courage and otherwise bigness and virtue...out of even the most petty among us...

The biggest amongst us are creating more freedom...while the most petty keep trying to control the rest of us more and more...

And right now is a quiet referendum on all that control...

And the answer to that referendum...slowly...patiently...but more assuredly...over time...

Is for more freedom...and less control...

And the reason it takes so goddamned long...

Is because there are more petty people among us...

Than big people...

And the petty just keep getting underneath the feet...

Of the big people...

And because even the big people...are having a hard time thinking through this thing...in a more comprehensive way...

Which is why I do my work:):):)...

I better get home and get some sleep so I can be fresh, tomorrow...

I've got an IEP on Friday...

But I've decided the main purpose of the IEP meeting, from now on...will be to eliminate, as much as possible, the ability of the IEP to bully anyone at all, anymore...and to have an informal and more substantive process...that is built around students' educations...and not around a foolish legalism...my real work with the IEP's, now...is to take the teeth out of them...and to have the process serve students...and teachers...rather than be used as a weapon for or against them, anymore...

I've got to get home:):):)...

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

Love,
Ben

The pettiness of politics...school and otherwise...

A major district administrator got fired today, it appears...

He was not well liked, it seems...and may have been something of a prick to a lot of folks, from the hearsay I've been privy to, today...

The funny thing is...I spent most of the time listening to the conversations about this administrator wondering...

"What is it that most district administrators are needed for anyway?"...

Money is a reason I hear quite a bit...

Though money and the people who access it would better serve schools if they were closer to individual and autonomous schools and staff, I think, rather than having a monopoly over an entire district...

And I have to say that the money people...

Versus the people who do the real work in schools...and in most places...

Do seem to bring down some pretty hefty bounties for their troubles...more than most other people in schools, in business, in life...

Which is part of the reason...a good one, I think...that they aren't very well liked...

My dad is the money guy in his work...he's a corporate real estate developer...I like my dad...he's got a good heart...and he's got the qualities of money people that make me understand why people don't like money people very well...he doesn't tolerate disagreement or conflict very well...even though the stakes are high...so the need for open disagreement is greater, not less...and he's kind of greedy, these days...which is just kind of distasteful for those of us who do our work to do the right thing rather than to bring down the greatest rewards...it's kind of a petty way to live life...which is why it annoys those of us who live our lives around bigger priorities so much...but being bigger people...we tend to suck it up...and keep doing the right thing for the right reasons...because that's just what bigger people do...

I have a lot of problems with district administrators, state administrators and legislators, federal administrators and legislators, lawyers and regulators and all sorts of layers upon layers of administration and imposition that is generally very distant from the day-to-day operations of school...and which impose all kinds of priorities that are generally lesser than the important ones in schools...but which satisfy someone's pet concern or someone's concern about being sued...

There's so much that goes on in schools...as in life...that has very little to do, at all, with doing our best job...that have everything to do with petty and personal agendas and priorities...a million assessments for kids from a million different layers of bureaucracy...far too many to be useful...a million different behind-the-scenes fears by teachers and administrators that have to do with petty political concerns about whom will be offended by hearing or facing what reality...

It's a really interesting microcosm...school politics...of the problems of the society at large...

The sense of entitlement that so many people feel...the lack of responsibility that many people feel, including the people charged with those responsibilities -- I mean teachers and administrators, here -- for the consequences of decisions made...the fruitless and self-destructive blame games and burden-shifting...the petty personal politics...and the general lack of a sense of purpose in a field that is infused with ideals that carry great purpose...

And in special education, in particular...it is the seemingly endless and perfunctory bureaucracy and paperwork...that satisfies so little real concerns...and so many petty ones...

And all the ways that this collection of petty politics consistently undermines the more important purposes of education and schools...

The sad thing is how often much of this is self-undermining...parents who undermine their children by looking for foolish excuses for their failures...teachers and administrators looking for the same...and far too little realism and understanding by those involved with education of one another...for its own sake, as much as for improving situations...

And everyone...so totally lost in all this pettiness...

That they lose track of the really important purposes of schooling, too often...

The learning...the aspirations...the character building...the nurturing of intellect...and of a value on education for its own sake, independent of how it improves net worth or other less important purposes...

And amidst all of our pettiness and cynicism...

We have really arrogant expectation that our kids be better than we are...or are willing to be...in the face of such smallness...

And that they simultaneously...just adapt themselves to our smallness...

Rather than us...living up to our greatness...and leading them with our examples...

It makes me sad that so much of education in America gets lost in this nonsense...in private schools as well, I'm sure...and depending on the private school, more so, I'm quite sure...

And it reminds me that education...at its best...lives in the hearts and minds of those who take it seriously...more than in the bricks and mortar of school buildings that house its activity...

Why we choose to live our like this...not just teachers and administrators and parents and kids...

But all of us...school politics just being a microcosm of life politics...and by politics I mean all of the pettiness of our existences...

Why we'd all choose to live like this I have no idea...

I hate it...

And yet I don't know what to do about it, most days...

Maybe I'm just tired and need a good night's sleep...

But it would be nice to think that we could put aside our desire to avoid being responsible for bigger priorities...and put the pettiness aside...

I don't know why most people avoid the bigger priorities...or why I feel such a strong sense of responsibility to care for them...

I just know that no matter what we do...

Everyone has choices to make with their lives...

And that those choices affect all the rest of us...

And just feeling kind of disappointed with the human race, rather than cynical about it, today...

I know that we can get better...I just know that we also spend an enormous amount of time choosing otherwise...

I'm exhausted...I need a nap in a major way...

Have a good week, everyone...

Love,
Ben

The possibility that I might give up teaching...

Last Friday...our last day before Spring Break...I had an administrator strong arm me on something that I was in good faith on...

I've felt awful about it all week...it's totally ruined my Spring Break...

So...

I've been thinking about leaving teaching for good...

My administrator is a liberal...and is either a radical or no doubt influenced by radical hubris right now...

So I want to make the failure of that path...the path of forcing and bullying and strong-arming one's way through life...

As clear and as stark as possible for her...

And so I don't have to deal with it ever again...

I'm going to tell her the next time I see her that I don't know if I'm going to be teaching for the district next year...and that I'm thinking about leaving teaching for good...

Because I don't like being strong-armed...

And if they can't cut it out...

Then I'll find a new profession...

I want the message to be as clear and as unambiguous for radicals and liberals drunk with power right now as I possibly can...

And if they can't cut it out...

Then there is no reason for me to teach any more...

Because I'm not going to teach or do any of my work...teaching, scholarly, or otherwise...

In an environment for I'm going to be threatened and arm-twisted and strong-armed, all the time...

I couldn't do my best work in that environment if I wanted to...and there's no reason for me to do work on behalf of ideals that noone really believes in anyway...

I'll either find a profession where I don't deal with it...

Or I'll go do something where I'll get paid very, very, very well for the privilege...

This is why I'm not a liberal, anymore...

Because I never, ever, for the rest of my life...want to belong to a group...that bullies good people in good faith...ever...ever...ever...

Not liberalism...not conservativism...not radicalism...not Democrats...not Republicans...

Not any group that does this...ever again...

I'd rather just not belong to groups...to just avoid friends and others who do this...to just give up all affiliations that require that I think or say or do what others want because they fuckin' say so and without regard to my conscience...

I owe an apology to some kids that I strong-armed on Friday, I've been so wrapped up with the pressure from my colleagues to be tough...

Because I'm not doing this, any more...

And I'd rather leave the profession...and all of my work...

For good...

Rather than give into the ugly, self-centered fancies of bullies...

No matter what group they belong to...

Have a good weekend, everyone...

Love,
Ben

What I'll do if I give up teaching...

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about what I'd do if I gave up teaching...

I have decided that if I get fired from this job, that I'm giving up teaching for good...too much headache for too little good...I'll just resign myself to the idea that public education is just too fucked up to be helped or that my perspective is just too fucked up to be helped...as well as all the folks who want more choice and less bureaucracy to run things in public education and in education, generally...

Either way, I'm moving on to something else...

I've been giving serious thought to just giving it all up, frankly...let the cynics run the show...I don't know if I could ever fully do that...but maybe that's what people need...a world where what we have is all we have to hope for...maybe they'll find it in themselves to dream up something better...

But I do need to find something somewhere that supports my full potential rather than always settling for small-minded people always losing focus on the things that matter...

I've been joking with Melissa, lately, about just how original all the folks talking "force" these days as the way to solve all their problems are...

I mean we've never really tried force as a means of solving problems over the course of humanity...we've just always been such pansies...

Jesus' crucifixion...stoning women for adultery and prostitution...the numerous wars dotting the maps of history for land and spoils...religious oppression...oppression of women and minorities...

It's all been one long hippie-fest...

Dumbasses...

It's a thesis which is just so blatantly stupid that I can hardly believe that intelligent people could take it seriously, at all...

And that really is the crux of it...

At some level...I guess my question...is whether people can stop being so blatantly stupid in the face of clear evidence to contradict their poor assumptions about life...

Or whether I should just resign myself to the permanent stupidity of humanity:):):)...

I don't think people are permanently stupid...

Stubbornly stupid, definitely...

But not necessarily permanently so...

They do usually get to right answers after fucking up with the wrong answers after some time...

I'm just not interested in being peoples' guinea pig, any more...

I'd probably work some odd jobs...maybe go into investment banking, like Bill Bradley...

Who knows....anything, for awhile...just to get away from the insanity until it passes...

All I know is that I'm not intimidated any more by all the threats and bullying in so many different arenas that I and everyone else has been dealing with for at least the last 3 years or so, in earnest...

After awhile...threats and punishment gets overused...and then it's just not effective, any more...

And I figure that the scholarly work is only useful if people think it's useful...and if not, then I'd better mosey my way along to something else...

Maybe film?...or theater?...

Who knows...

Anyway...

Just preparing for the worst, since I've seen enough of it, already, in my lifetime...

If you haven't seen Finding Neverland, yet, I highly recommend it...a really beautiful movie...about how lost adults get in their cynicism...and how much they lose track of what it's like to be a child...especially while they are with children...the theme of almost every great children's story and author, really...check it out when you get a chance:):)...

Love,
Ben

There's this girl I've been thinking about...

I have this girl I've been kind of interested in, at school...

Last Friday we sat and talked for about a half an hour at our cars after our weekly trip to the nearby bar, Hoops...

She's a sweety, this girl...she's a math major...and a math teacher...she doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, but she gets a feeling of satisfaction and purpose out of working at our little inner city middle school...

I've encouraged her to become an economist...to use her math smarts for something bigger...as well as being a teacher, of course:):)...I'm learning to encourage the moon from everyone I see...especially someone who might have interest in a life of the mind, but who just lacks the confidence...

In the meantime...I think she likes me...

She's young...she's 23 or 24 (I'm not clear on that one, yet)...she's, by far, the smartest and most confident and most mature and socially aware of the teachers at Eisenhower and of the women that I hang out with regularly...who are often married, at my age...

So being 23 or 24...I think she's nervous, for reasons I completely understand, about taking on what would likely be a very serious relationship...at an age when she's not sure if she's ready to commit...

But it's nice to have intelligent and committed and purposeful conversation with a girl, again...and it's nice to talk with someone, again, who values people more than things...I'm sure, seeing the choices that other girlfriends I've had (I'm speaking broadly, here, rather than just the girls I've dated) that money will be a temptation to her...which I can't offer, right now...it's a temptation that it seems fewer girls than not, at my age, pass up, when they have the chance...though perhaps I'm just being cynical:):)...

Which is fine with me...because while I am fine with greed -- meaning when people value money over other people or over love or over something more important -- and think people should embrace it in themselves...

I'm looking for something better in a woman...so if this girl can't offer it, I'll look elsewhere...not all women live their lives like that...and I have no interest in settling for one who does...

This girl does have a lot of the qualities of someone who might be able to successfully pass up the temptation...

It'd be nice to find a woman who I might actually be able to fall in love with because she really believes in love...for real...they're rare in this age range, I'm learning...

Sadly...

So many women get jaded by bad experiences with love...and I just want to find one who can challenge and support me...and who believes in love...or can believe in love, when the time is right...

In the meantime...she's a friend...and one I can talk with intelligently...and have someone who can half-way keep up...and challenge and support me, too...

I've got errands to run...

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

Love,
Ben

History, people, and judgment...

George Will wrote a column in the Washington Post and our own Lawrence Journal World Sunday morning that got me thinking...

Steroids and Spring Training...

I don't know, frankly, how future generations of people and historians will think and write about Barry Bonds...

I imagine they'll write about him just as he is...

An amazing hitter and scorer who also did steroids...with far less harsh a light with the benefit of time and better judgment than George offers in his column...

But what George got me thinking about...

Was how foolish it is for good people to always try to conform to contemporary standards of judgment...

How history judges us, always, by the standards of future generations...not older generations...since older generations have long since died and are thus not able to write more contemporary histories...

And the whole thing got me to thinking about how foolish it is, period, to live one's life trying to please others, at all...how unpredictable others' judgments can be...

That's how I try to live my life...

And I get better at it the more people threaten to hold judgment over me or to hurt or threaten me in some way...

In psychology...we refer to how punishment loses effect over time because aversive treatment no longer threatens as well after its use...which is why dictatorial and totalitarian regimes often use uglier and uglier punishments and methods over time to keep control of their populations...because the initial methods wear off, over time...democratic regimes, as well, as it turns out...

But the great thing about human development...

Is that it is not based on any government's advances...

It is based on the advancements of peoples...of individuals...and cultures, societies, and other groups of peoples over time...

Governments can facilitate that growth with more adaptive means of providing security while providing for the freedom of its citizens...

Or they can hinder that growth...

In which case...self-respecting people...and really all people, over time...

Learn to value the freedom...and their own learning and growth...over the control of their governments...

...or their teachers...or their parents...or their bosses...or other people with authority...

I'm learning this lesson the hard way, right now, with some students who are following my example in ways I never predicted:):):)...

All people do this in reference to one another...it is just facilitated, best, in freer environments...where it can be best supported and nurtured...

George, I think, is overestimating by far how seriously his opinions will be taken by future generations...

The hard fact of history and reality...

Is that people in every generation...will think for themselves...and make their own judgments about what they think about matters like Barry Bond's steroids use and baseball abilities...and those ideas will change over time...as their thinking changes...

There's a lot that George writes that I appreciate...especially lately, with the more libertarian tone in his thoughts...

But George, like me, probably like every writer...overestimates how seriously his ideas will be taken by future generations...

Who do one thing without any exception...

They think for themselves...

Whether we want them to or not...

And something tells me that the more we try to force our way into their hearts...

The more they will ignore us...

That's something I've learned from experience, unfortunately...

I hope I'll never have to learn that lesson ever again...

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

Love,
Ben

Justice...and its counterfeits...

Slobodan Milosevic died this morning, according to Reuters...

Milosevic death robs victims of justice, foes say...

The Prosecutor says justice was denied...and yet something tells me that if the attempts by Milosevic's security officers to kill him would have succeeded, most people would be saying that justice had been done...

So what we mean by justice, often, is that we are able to hurt someone...not just that they are hurt...or that they die...

But that we get the sweet satisfaction of revenge...

Slobodan Milosevic is dead...he perpetrated horrific crimes against humanity...

And the saddest legacy of all that he left with us...

Was the unsatiated vengeance that many of his foes feel in their hearts...no matter how dead he might be...

Love,
Ben

Why I won't settle...

There are two things in the world that I care about more than anything else...

Doing work that helps people in the most substantial ways...and education as the foundation for that kind of work...

And falling and being in love with someone who knocks my socks off...

They are the two most important non-negotiables for me in my life...

Being in love powerfully, again, being most important to me...

I compromise all the time on the first of these...

With a view to always increasing the standards...

Meaning...compromises are always temporary...

Ideals are works in progress...

But when I was in love with Brandi...it was for real...and there's just no other way I could live my life, frankly...

I will make all kinds of compromises in my life...

But I will not settle when it comes to love...

I can't...because I know it's bullshit...which means my partner and I are cheated if I am not with someone who really impresses the shit out of me, as a human being...

All of the women that I've loved have impressed me at some level...

But I need a partner who is more like me...and who will challenge me to be better...and support me in being so...

And as I think about the opportunities for love in my life, right now...I think all the time about how I cannot settle...

I cannot...

It would be a lie...

To me...

To her...

To everyone...

I need a woman who impresses me like no woman has ever impressed me before...

Or else I will always be pining for Brandi...

That is the bottom-line...as much as I hate to acknowledge that...

I know in my heart that I can find a woman who challenges me at the deepest levels to be better...

But I've not known a woman like that in an awful long time...

One day I will...

I'll just keep saying that to myself and maybe it'll make it true...

In the meantime...

I'll just hope that whomever I find...will be someone who will open me up in ways I've never been opened up before...

Which was the case the last time I was in love...

And is the only way I know what real love looks like, any more...

I just realized that I've never given up on anything in life that I really cared about, I don't think...I can't name anything really important that I've ever given up on...

So giving up on Brandi has been about the hardest thing I've ever done in my life...because I so rarely give up on something or someone that really matters to me...

But Brandi's given very few choices on this one...she's clearly not even really interested in friendship...we are acquaintances...and I don't have much option, at this point, to have anything else with her...

But the memory of our love is the standard by which I will judge all future loves in my life, whether I like it or not...and if it means that I'm a bachelor for the rest of my life...that is the way that I will judge all loves...and I won't know love until someone exceeds...and we both exceed...that standard...

It really is the intangibles that matter most in life, I think...and love really does matter most of all...

I think I finally understand the tragedy in this song...

I've got to get something to eat and to finish this IEP:):)...

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

Love,
Ben

My reflections on life out of school:):)...

Life after graduate school...has been kind of lonely...

I think it's being in an environment where people take intelligence seriously that I miss...and just being around people who take intelligence seriously...

I love judging debate tournaments for exactly that reason...to be around people who take smart seriously...

But I miss being around it more of the time...

And specifically smart policy study/discussions...and smart people study/discussions...

I miss them...

I took them seriously when I was in school...because I knew they mattered...

But I didn't realize until I left school just how much the world is run differently...how crassly calculating most people are...for purposes that are far less noble than what ideas are best on their merits...and how often these less noble purposes get confused, at best, and are explicitly covered in more noble purposes for purposes of manipulation, at worst, with higher purposes...

I think what I've realizing...is that Einstein was right about problem-solving in its nature...

That we can't solve problems at the level at which we encounter them...

And that most people are busy trying to do just that...which means most people -- as they stubbornly stick with the same failing strategy -- look a little insane...as they keep trying to solve problems the same way that they haven't been able to be solved before:):)...

Most people encounter problems...and they want them solved...and they, often -- if not more often than not -- have very little sense of responsibility in the solutions to those problems, at all...more than happy to pass the buck or to blame someone else...whether or not an adequate solution is available to the problems encountered or not...

And they'll choose the easiest solutions possible, often...even if they do not resolve those problems, substantively and in the long term...

Which leaves just a few people...

To really think about solutions to problems...

And to develop solutions that transcend the level of solving them that has not solved them, thusfar...

Meaning...by the nature of problem solving...solutions to problems must occur at a different level at the one at which a problem presented itself...

Because the level at which the problem showed up...

There wasn't an adequate solution to the problem...

That's why the problem is still around:):):)...

I don't know why most people don't feel the kind of responsibility for problem-solving that I feel...why they don't think at these deeper levels...or take seriously the idea that it would help solve the problems if they did...

I do think that much of it is because...for all our talk about making schools work to support high expectations for all students...

The truth is...

Up until this point in history...

We've not had terribly high expecations for students or for people when it comes to learning...

And the consequence is a lot of adults...who don't feel the same level of responsibility for issues of importance...that they want younger people, and kids, in particular, in schools, to experience...without adults serving as better models...

Which just isn't possible, frankly...

Whether we like it or not...

If we want students or kids or anyone following our lead to emulate any virtue...

We have to embody it...

We can't just demand it...

Because demanding it doesn't provide the example that a child or a student or anyone following us needs to embody the virtues that we say we want them to embody...

And most parents and teachers and other adults are just too used to the "do as I say, not as a do" philosophy of life...that they just don't quite recognize that people can only do what they have examples and leadership for...

A lot of my examples are from history and from stories, luckily...

Because...often...the adults in my life as a child and as a student...

Were good people...

But people who demanded a lot more than they offered...

It's an entitlement problem...

That everyone suffers from...

Rich and poor...educated and uneducated...young and old...

We all just want more than we're prepared to offer...

And it's not a sustainable way to create the room for generating the kind of authentic responsibility that comes when people have more freedom in their lives...

To screw things up...

And to find a way to get them right...

I want to spend more of my time with people take responsibility and the thought that goes into it as seriously or close as I do...

But I know very few of those people...

Because so many people...are far too busy...

Looking after their own asses...

In a world that gives them all kinds of incentive to do so...

And then pretends like it is more honest and that we are more honest...than we really are...

And waits for the sorry ass realities that we all spend time bitching about...to just go away...rather than us taking responsibility for making them better...

And that level of responsibility can only happen with more freedom...and with taking freedom more seriously, generally...

It is severely limited without that kind of freedom...

And the lack of freedom distorts the landscape...

So that people keep trying to use the same failed strategies over and over again...

For fear of facing the penalty for doing otherwise...

It's foolish...and it can only be changed...by people getting more honest about it...

And my life will feel kind of wasted...if I don't at least try:):)...

And the short term results look pretty great, overall, with all of the frustrations that I've dealt with getting us to that point:):):)...

It'll just take more freedom for people to take more responsibility over time that will really improve so many problems that we encounter...and try, foolishly, to demand solutions for:):):) (we are all such dumbasses, sometimes:):):)...

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

Love,
Ben

Assertive leadership...

After a discipline meeting between teachers today...I think I'm developing specific ideas for how the principles of least possible necessary aggression impact organizational and school change...

Assertive leadership entails a commitment to a whole host of principles...forgiveness, and a focus on behavior change...

Self-determined self-governance as the basis for self-discipline...

And facilitation and collaboration being a better model of developing relationships around building those skills...than is a relationship of strict authority to try to force chance -- futily -- on those over which a person has responsibility...

Authority is valuable because it provides better models of better behavior...and because authority figures are responsible for correcting and improving the behavior of those for whom they are charged with authority...

But the limits of an authoritarian or authority-based model...of governance...of leadership...or teaching...or parenting...of whatever...

Is that authority neither can create self-discipline...which must be self-determined, by its nature...

But also that authority figures may have lower standards for self-discipline, self-governance, the thought necessary for both, and the learning and growth involved with both, than those they are charged with authority over...

Many, many, many people are more thoughtful, better self-disciplined and self-governing out of that thoughtfulness, and learn and grow at faster rates than does our current President or any significant head of state in the world, right now...

Many, many, many students are and can be much more thoughtful, self-disciplined, and self-governing than their teachers and often, their parents...

And democratic cultures have developed all sorts of ways to account for the fact that higher standards are often developed outside of the circles of authority...

More freedom and room for disagreement...a thriving academic and scholarly culture...a respect for youth culture, as much as for traditional culture, as a means of dynamic change within the culture...values and institutions dedicated to the notions of disagreement and challenge -- political, legal, social, cultural, religious, and otherwise --- and even civil disobedience as means of expressing serious and profound disagreements around norms that a society abides by...

And a dynamic, active, and changing culture of norms development and acculturation...which is part and parcel of a thriving and growing democratic culture...

And what is the bridge between these often very tense relationships between these institutions and values and cultures and groups...

Is an appreciation of reason and reasonableness...of engagement and difference...of thought and thoughtfulness...and mutual respect...that creates the space for differences to be considered and bridged beyond mere compromise and political wrangling...

But it's more than than...

Reason is the standard against which our ideas of how the world should be are arbited and should be arbited...

Because reason is the only standard, in the real world, that really counts...

Everything else is just assertion...

And reason needs for us to account for realities that we don't understand, whether or not we understand them...or at least attempting to account for them, better...even when we are not sure...or are often "too sure" (meaning, unwilling to acknowledge what we are not sure of), as the case often is...

And the reality about people is this...

They cannot be ruled from afar and be responsible...or self-disciplined...or self-governing...

A free society...a self-governing society...a self-disciplined society...

Requires freedom...

Freedom means making mistakes...and it means a more and more open forum for debates and disagreements about whether or not behavior is mistaken or sinful or whatever or whether it is constructive or good...

And accepting that reality...allows us to see the opportunities that come with that freedom...

Even as we might wish for the "good old days" of more authoritarian, dependent, and less mature individual and democratic development...

That is true for schools...

And that is true for American and international culture, generally...

I've got some work to get on...

But I'm getting a better idea of how I might apply these ideas to schools and child rearing...in more specific ways...that still hold people responsible for awareness of the larger picture of people and their behavior, generally...

I'll be back soon:):)...have a great weekend, everyone:):):)...

Love,
Ben

Progress...and rising expectations...

We had a conversation after class, today, that helped me understand, better, the issue of progress and rising expectations...

A teacher was commenting that a kid was getting worse...a common lament in a middle school...though one that is generally just a complaint about how far from expectations their behavior seems to be in the moment...

This kid is actually a decent kid...who is off task a lot...and doesn't take school work nearly serious enough...

And I commented to this really very good teacher I was talking with...that he was doing much better...our expectations in the class I work with him in had just increased pretty substantially...so he was still getting in trouble...for more minor issues than in the past...that the lead teacher was tolerating less...because we had found more effective ways of dealing with problem behaviors...

And...largely...because our behavior, as teachers, had gotten better...we had become more self-disciplined...so we could model for kids, better, what it was that we wanted from kids...

And we are becoming more and better aware of both each our own limitations...and each others' limitations...between the two of us...which makes it easier for me to read when the teacher I work with has just had enough...and this kid was just pushing those limits today...

The conversation I had with the second teacher...helped me put into perspective just what I am wanting in terms of progress in the world...

Just how high an expectation I have...and just how realistic I need to similarly be...about how quickly they make that progress...and what all is entailed with that kind of progress...

I've been seeing a lot of it lately...

George Will and Robert Kaplan both wrote pieces, yesterday, basically conceding that democratic development cannot be force...

George Will and Robert Kaplan in the Washington Post...Thursday, Mar. 2, 2006...

Kaplan basically reverses the position of his most recent book to make the argument that forcing democratic change is not desireable (Kaplan's shifting winds are an indication that he hasn't the faintest clue what is going on at the deepest levels policy-wise and psychologically within the international community, right now...and is a needed corrective to the idea that journalists can somehow replace serious policy thinkers to provide the most in-depth analysis of political trends)...

And George Will appropriately invokes the image of one of the greatest conservative political leaders of the 20th century, Winston Churchill, to face the dissappointing realities of trying to force democratic change in Iraq (Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher two of the strongest leaders of the 20 century, though I think there is arguments to be made for the conservative leadership of Charles De Gaul, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac, John Major, and several other very consequential conservative political leaders in the early and latter part of the 20th century)...

Those are two very important concessions from two very important popular conservative thinkers...

Meaning...a consensus is clearly developing...against the idea of forced change, democratic or otherwise...

And what we are waiting for, now, is for the domestic political trends to catch up with the much more sober and realistic analysis of international trends...

Forced progress is not progress...

Because progress necessarily involves freedom...

It is the inevitable basic requirement of progress among free peoples...

Because free peoples cannot choose and internalize values that others way wish upon them...

Without the freedom to do so...

Period...

Everything else is temporary...

And, at best, gives a signal for more long term development...

And, at worse, undermines longer term development...

Of freely chosen values which are critical to self-governance...which is the reason why such freedom is both needed...and why it is so jealously and rightfully guarded by free peoples...

And we are making progress...

Both in creating more freedom...

And in affirming it as a basic value necessary to democratic or any other kind of important change...for individuals...for cultures...for societies...and for states...

Our international democratic culture is making much progress in this vein...

It's our expectations of freedom that are increasing...

And will forever increase...

As long as we remain free peoples:):)...

I've got a meeting to get to:):)...

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

Love,
Ben

Big picture...and small...

Big picture...and small...
OK...my friend, Katherine Shelly (I'm still trying to get a straight name on this mysterious woman:):), has got me thinking...

Bonnie, Baylor, and Dutchess...SBPBJ...katherineshelly.blogspot.com...

On my Blogspot post, "Why did I do all of this?"...

Why did I do all of this?...

Shelly writes...

"You will find no matter where you go that some people will care about the rules and regulations and some people will care about results. There are detail people and there are big picture people. Clearly you are a big picture person.

However... the world needs both kinds of people. The big picture people look for where we're going and why, and project our future into a 3-D that we can imagine and dream. The detail people make sure that we get there more or less intact."

I do believe that there is a lot of truth in what Shelly said in that comment...

And I think the quotation by John Gardner that she posts on her blog really seems to get what it is that I'm frustrated with in much of my life...

"Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."
-- John W. Gardner

Shelly is totally right...and I actually very much appreciate so many of the people in my life, my personal life and my professional life, who help me take care of the important details of life...

It was one of the biggest things, actually, that I really appreciated about Brandi...that whenever we went somewhere...or did anything...or if we organized anything...that she was so brilliant with all of the organizational details...maybe I didn't tell her or thank her for that, enough...

And there are a million people, at work, who I appreciate for their help around the details of my work and professional life...and really could not navigate my work without their help...

Beth, in the office...Linda and Sheila and Nancy and Jo Annette, for all my complaining about the IEP process...my step-mom, Marilyn, and my dad...for all their help...even Tom, my advisor, when I was in grad school, had a real knack for the details of school bureaucracy...

What frustrates me is exactly what Gardner gets at in that quotation...

It's not my light, necessarily, that I get frustrated with people being a part of...in fact, quite the contrary...I very much want to share that light with as many people as possible...

What I get frustrated with...is that when I make so much effort to get out of the way of so many people...and to just support them to do a great job...that so many people keep finding ways to get in my way...force my hand...to impose a smaller detail on my bigger picture that I am more than open to appreciating and working proactively on if they would just give me the chance to do so without trying to arm wrestle me in that direction...

And much more upsetting to me...to impose a smaller priority on my bigger priorities...because they are foolishly conviced...that if they don't force my hand...then they're smaller priority will be igored...

The irony being...that it is without a doubt in my mind...just the opposite...

The fact of the matter is...that when you force my hand...the consequence will range from either your goddamn lucky that I do anything for you...or certainly that I'll do anything for you, again...to I will resist and avoid doing anything for you...until you get off my back...

If it's important, I'll do it...after I get over what a prick you were for forcing my hand around it...

And people do this to me, all the time...without thinking...and often as a part of an on-going and quiet debate with me about whether they can or should force their way around issues...

A debate that they have, generally, thought very little about...and that they, for whatever reasons, think that I'll appreciate their point of view if I just see just how much they can get me to do...if they just make clear how I have no choice in the matter...

When the truth is...that when they do that...when I'm in good faith...they are goddamned lucky that I am doing anything for them, at all...

Just once...in my too short life...

I would give my left kidney...to be work with people...to date someone...to study somewhere...

One day...I'd just like to be around people...

Who just let me be...just let me be me...

Who let me excell...and suck...and just be myself...

Without all the pressure...and without forcing my hand...and without trying to get their way...

Without trying to impose themselves on me...or their preferences...or their ideas...or their high horses...or whatever the fuck they feel like they just have to impose on me and everyone else or else the world is just going to fall apart or go to hell in a hand-basket...

When the sad irony to all that foolishness...

Is that I and everyone else...would do a whole hell of a lot more for everyone...for every cause...

If people didn't push us all around so goddamn much...

I don't admire pushy crusaders...for big causes or small...who self-righteously bully their way through difficult or even simple issues...

They annoy the fuck out of me, is the truth...

And they get in the way of my efforts...

To surpass their expectations...not just meet them...

That's the small-mindedness of it all...

I've got to go give a neighbor a ride to the grocery store...

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

Love,
Ben

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