Dumbing Us Down
Morgan Folk writes:
Wow. I am half way through.
I have looked into various kinds of schooling philosophy.
This man was a teacher for 30 years in New York and he spent time in the low income schools as well as in the affluent schools.
This book feels like truth but also feels offensive ??
He discusses the design of compulsory schooling and how the various constructs come together to make (intentionally) compliant people who consume and trust authorities. Woah.
A great and relatively short read that I am definitely enjoying.
Fall Seven Get Up Eight
If you have read the story of the life of Abraham Lincoln you would appreciate that it is not how many times you fail that is important, it is that fact that you get up and try again after each failure.
Why Arguing Does Not Work
I had a discussion with someone on the subject of our disagreement on US politics. They had told me in effect that Trump was bad because he incited the storming of the Capitol. I sent that person a small sample of the inflammatory remarks by four Communist US politicians regarding the Antifa/BLM rioting.
The person’s response was to suggest we not talk about politics because we have different opinions and we are each only going to pull up examples to support our own opinion.
At that point it struck me that the person had zero interest in the aquisition or acceptance of data to determine truth but only in gathering data to support their apparently fixed and unchangeable viewpoint. In other words they operated like a one man debating team rather than a data collection and evaluation processing unit. This is, of course, why nobody wins an argument. All each person’s communication does is more firmly fix the other person’s viewpoint.
Opinions, viewpoints, fixed ideas and conclusions are all well and good but to use them instead of and in contradiction to data, facts and evidence is a sure path to destruction and death, individually and collectively. Evidence Western civilisation circa 2021.
The situation has deteriorated to a point where most people do not (and perhaps cannot) differentiate between facts and opinions.
Start Where You Are
They Alter The Facts
Don’t Be Too Big To Do The Small Things
Intellectual Bravery
I was struck by this recent observation from Timothy Clark in his HBR article on cultivating “Intellectual Bravery”:
“Intellectual bravery is a willingness to disagree, dissent, or challenge the status quo in a setting of social risk in which you could be embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way. When intellectual bravery disappears, organizations develop patterns of willful blindness. Bureaucracy buries boldness. Efficiency crushes creativity. From there, the status quo calcifies and stagnation sets in.
“The responsibility for creating a culture of intellectual bravery lies in leadership. As a leader, you set the tone, create the vibe, and define the prevailing norms. Whether or not your company has a culture of intellectual bravery depends on your ability to establish a pattern of rewarded rather than punished vulnerability.”
You can tell a lot about an organization by what gets punished and what gets rewarded. Stanford professor Bob Sutton famously observed twenty years ago that many organizations follow an unspoken motto to “reward success and inaction, punish failure.”
He advised instead to “reward success and failure, punish inaction.”
20-year-old filmmaker wins award for powerful 1-minute film about marriage
Amazing what can be conveyed in just 60 seconds.
You may not be able to understand their words, but the gestures and subtitles help to convey the beautiful message of this short award-winning film made by 20-year-old Iranian filmmaker Syed Mohammad Reza Kheradmand.
The film, called Thursday Appointment, recently won an award at the Luxor African Film Festival, a non-profit organization that encourages and celebrates film-making from Africa.
The powerful short movie depicts an older married couple reciting the Poem of Hafez to one another in the car, when they stop at a red light and notice a couple fighting loudly with their young daughter in the back seat. The older couple make a gesture that says a lot about their own marriage, and about how married love can help reconcile and restore others around us.
https://aleteia.org/2020/01/02/20-year-old-filmmaker-wins-award-for-powerful-1-minute-film-about-marriage/
A Legal Way To Fight Back And Burden Our Attackers With Personal Liability
There is a brilliant notice you can serve on the Australian government ministers that will, if enough of us do it, cause them to back pedal so hard on the subject of mandatory vaccines that you will hear the tyres squeal around the world! Click here https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/Notice_Govt_Form.pdf to download and print the document then send it off.
Do you know that a NOTICE becomes legally binding on both parties if there is no written objection to the notice?
Do you know that if this Notice is not responded to as directed in the notice, then the other party (employer) automatically becomes contracted to your conditions stated in the notice?
Do you know that a Notice is able to be used as evidence in court but a letter is not?
Do you know that signing or autographing your name on the right side of the page makes you the creditor (person in charge) of the contract, the debtor (the one who must take action) is always detailed on the left side of the document?
Do you know that you can put any value on your life as YOU choose? We are not bound by their grossly unfair compensation rates of their choosing, we can set our own value on our own lives.
Do you know that the introduction by all countries of the Hague Convention agreed to International Contract Law (Universal Commercial Codes) almost 70 years ago? This means that every law or supposed law and statute is a CONTRACT and if you have no written objection to it then you have agreed to the contract.
This document is written as a NOTICE and becomes CONTRACT by either the other party response or acquiescence (lack of response or a response not in the way detailed in this notice).