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Thought of the Week Archives
November 1999
November 1, 1999
[Swiss psychologist Carl G.] Jung vigorously distinguishes symbols
from mere "signs" or "allegories" -- terms he uses interchangeably. A
sign or allegory has only a single meaning. A symbol has multiple meanings.
The meaning of a sign or allegory is denotative. The meaning of a symbol
is connotative. The meaning of a sign or allegory is conscious. The deepest
meaning of a symbol is unconscious. A sign or allegory is consciously
chosen to convey its meaning. A symbol may arise spontaneously, as in
dreams, and even a conscious choice is directed by the unconscious. A
sign or allegory conveys fully the signified or allegorized, so that to
know the meaning of the sign or allegory is to know the complete meaning
of the signified or allegorized. A symbol conveys only a portion of what
it symbolizes, so that to know the meaning of a symbol is go gain only
a glimpse of the symbolized.
- Robert A. Segal
- Jung on Mythology (Princeton University Press)
November 8, 1999
Without movement, there could be nothing created in this universe.
The revolving of the heavens can generate wind, rain, thunder, lightning.
The revolving of the earth enables us to have day and night, the very
cycle of the weather, the seasons, and the growth of plants. Movement
is responsible for creativity.
Followers of Tao value initiative, but mere aggression is not enough.
One needs creativity. This can mean the ability to solve problems, to
think of unusual strategies, or to compose poetry, music, and painting.
In all these cases, one moves in concert with Tao not by blind aping,
but by giving intelligent counterpoint and harmony. Creativity does not
mean the arbitrary making of something out of our cultural minds. Rather,
it is spontaneous movement in tandem with Tao, a movement that will generate
life and not misery for others.
One has reached the ultimate levels of creativity when one has mastered
a skill so thoroughly that it can be forgotten. Look at heaven and earth.
Do they think about crating the weather, the seasons, and the cycles of
growing? They only go on revolving according to their nature, and the
rest is generated without any thought or work on their part. This is truly
effortless action and is considered the highest skill that a follower
of Tao can attain.
- Deng Ming-Dao
- 365 Tao: Daily Meditations (HarperSanFrancisco)
November 15, 1999
Herbert Kohl on Non-Learning
NOTE: We've all had bright students who simply refused to learn what
we had to teach them. In his book of four essays titled I Won't Learn
from You, Herbert Kohl examines the nature of the student who, for
whatever reason, chooses to "not-learn" rather than to learn. The title
essay, "I Won't Learn from You," explores the reasoning behind the choice
to not-learn, and Kohl's argument is both eye-opening and thought-provoking.
After reading it, I can never look at my "tough" students in the same
way again. Most of them are consciously choosing to not-learn from a system
which they feel is oppressive and coercive. Here are four quotes from
Kohl's essay. They give only a taste of the power of the essay, and I
recommend it highly to teachers who care deeply about all of their students
and providing educational experiences that will help them throughout their
lives.
Deciding to actively not-learn something involves closing off part
of oneself and limiting one's experience. It can require actively refusing
to pay attention, acting dumb, scrambling one's thoughts, and overriding
curiosity.... (p. 4.4)
Because not-learning involves willing rejection of some aspect of
experience, it can often lead to what appears to be failure. For example,
in the case of some youngsters, not-learning to read can be confused with
failing to learn to read if the rejection of learning is overlooked as
a significant factor. ... (p. 4.7)
Failure is characterized by the frustrated will to know, whereas
not-learning involves the will to refuse knowledge. Failure results from
a mismatch between what the learner wants to do and is able to do. The
reasons for failure may be personal, social, or cultural, but whatever
they are, the results of failure are most often a loss of self-confidence
accompanied by a sense of inferiority and inadequacy. Not-learning produces
thoroughly different effects. It tends to strengthen the will, clarify
one's definition of self, reinforce self-discipline, and provide inner
satisfaction. Not learning can also get one in trouble if it results in
defiance or a refusal to become socialized in ways that are sanctioned
by the dominant authority. (p. 6. 4)
Not learning tends to take place when someone has to deal with unavoidable
challenges to her or his personal and family loyalties, integrity, and
identity. In such situations there are forced choices and no apparent
middle ground. To agree to learn from a stranger who does not respect
your integrity causes a major loss of self. The only alternative is to
not-learn and reject the stranger's world. (p. 6.8)
- Herbert Kohl
- "I Won't Learn from You" And Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment
- The New Press, New York (ISBN 1-56584-096-8)
November 22, 1999
In premodern cultures and in tribal cultures today, when people move
from one stage of life to another, or when the new task is to be taken
up, they are led through rites of passage, initiations that provide them
with a total experience of the passage they are undergoing. This total
experience prepares the body and the heart as well as the mind for the
new level of being. Even in the last century, a young couple intending
to marry would have to go out and build their own house or do some physical
task that functioned as a rite of passage from one family unit to the
creation of a new one. Even though it may not have been put into a ritual
format, the barn-raising brought the whole town together to support the
young people in this new step.
Today, in our age of intellectual "enlightenment," we have lost this
sense of ritual. Yet there is still a part of us that is less rational
-- or perhaps more than rational; a childlike part of us that needs to
experience the magic of a rite of passage. Again and again, my work with
people has shown me the suffering and confusion caused by our society's
lack of significante rites of passage. ... Every shuch change requires
a movement from one level of being to another. At every threshold something
dies and something comes to birth.
Today there is a deep spiritual void at the heart of our society. We
see it in the self-destructive behavior that is all around us -- in drug
and alcohol abuse, in the epidemic of crime and teenage suicide. This
void may reflect our culture's lack of threshold rituals. Rites of passage
speak to the human spirit. Where there are no rites, spirit is denied.
Ritual lifts us out of the purely personal dimension of our experience
into the universal, thereby reconnecting us with the spiritual realities
of existence, without which life becomes a wasteland.
- Paul Rebillot, with Melissa Kay
- The Call to Adventure: Bringing the Hero's Journey to Daily Life
(p. 6-7)
November 29, 1999
The principle of traditional groups is that its members are free
individuals who entered the group freely. For a person to break the rule
is not a sign of weakness or a momentary failure of the will. It is plain
and irrevocable abdication or resignation from the group. A ritual must
be done at this time to save the group from disintegrating as a result
of this violent disconnection....
The fundamental principle of ritual is that visibility threatens because
visiblity enslaves. When power comes out of its hiddenness, it shrinks
the person that brought it into the open and turns that person into a
servant. The only way that overt power can remain visible is by being
fed, and he who knows how to make power visible ends up trapped into keeping
that power visible.
What I am suggest here is that power, as it is displayed here in the
West, is extremely stressful to those who must work todisplay it. Western
culture derives its power from machines or machinelike processes that
are part of the Machine culture. This is a culture that gives names to
corporations and treats these corporations like living beings. These machine-beings
display incredible power over workers and citizens in Western society.
Whoever creates this kind of visible power is like the outcast I met in
my own native village. Whoever creates this kind of power must then stay
in the service to that which he creates. The visible display of power
by the Machine culture is similar to the unspeakable being spoken. It
generates a force field inside of which one is enslaved. To display power
is to become servile to it in a way that is extremely disempowering. This
is because the service is fueled by the terror of losing the fantasy of
having power.
- Malidoma Patrice Some
- Ritual: Power, Healing and Community (p. 62-63)
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