The Deliberative Mind: Proactive, Reflective, Prescient, Egalitarian

The Virus and Survival

John F. Deethardt II — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:32:53 +0000

The virus is a living organism that wants to live and thrive, just like any living being. It seeks a place that is hospitable for its home. Then it finds itself under attack by inhospitable changes in its environment. Like most living entities, it has to change in order to thrive, to live a happy, productive life. Its evolutionary task is to adapt to the new environment. It has the capability of most other life (not the living fossils which have gone up a blind alley of development with no way out), to mutate, to utilize some variation in its genetic toolbox not useful at the time before the situation changed. But now the variation that just happened to be there opportunistically is taken out of the tool box and tried out and found useful in this new situation.

It has found a fortuitous adaptation for continuing a healthy survival.

If that “bug” were one that is called “h1n1″, then it has beaten the immunization with which it was being attacked. And human beings are in trouble again with a new pandemic.

On the other hand, if the “fossil fuel” virus is met with the “renewable energy” habit, then the human race has extended its life span on planet Earth, and met a moral responsibility to future generations, some of whom will be the great-great-grandchildren of the present generation.

Can Faith Bypass Religion? One Example: The Ft. Hood Killings

John F. Deethardt II — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:42:48 +0000

Religion has the structure. The structure is an organized attempt to structure faith, to take hold of faith and discipline it to make it do what the structure intends. Faith can play in the fields like a pick-up game of softball or basketball or football or kick-the-can or sandbox.

But religion cannot abide that use of faith; something more structured will be more useful for the organizers’ purposes. Surround faith with more ritual to make it more solemn and serious and consequential. Out of that base proceeds the building of buildings and a population of professional “herders” (shepherds), practitioners to instill certain conforming behaviors, especially for the acquisition of wealth for the building and the compensation of the herders and for the perpetuation of the structures. For that, one important, overarching motivator is setting the threat or promise of an afterlife of eternal bliss or damnation, which will finally take absolute charge of the being’s faith.

There are the strays and “blacksheep” who take a faith outside the formal structures and put together a narrative independent of that dictated by religious structures of regimented belief. I have heard the dictates of religion. I have tried to practice them. They did not conform to what my intelligence took me to and taught me to do.

The ultimate motivator was a fiction, a nice story to comfort the herd, one not based on reason. Reason, in all of its formal and informal practices, must be applied as far as it can go before admitting any speculative outcomes. Most tire of that difficult pursuit and give up the chase too early and accept the easy-out of submission to the herders. The reasoner may never exhaust the different forms available, but he may follow many lines before admitting defeat or satisfaction with the conclusive narrative he has developed.

Faith can and will and should bypass religion. Are you in the herd? For people who have not pursued the sources of faiths outside the herd, the herd is still a good place to be. To be thinking outside the herd and having a faith based on the narratives of unreason constitutes the social catastrophes by which we are all horrified, embittered, devastated, shocked, distressed.

We must root out and expose every ego-narrative that is destined to confound and threaten us. AND DO IT SOON, EARLY IN DEVELOPMENT, IN ITS INCIPIENT STAGE, TO SALVAGE SUCH LIVES. That is a major task and goal for humankind.

An example: the shooter at the recent Fort Hood, TX, killings (11-5-09), unbelievably a major by rank, a psychiatrist in mental health, and a man of Middle Eastern descent, was heard to complain about his imminent deployment to the war in the Middle East. The narrative was there to be heard, understood, and acted upon, before his unconscionable, terroristic act (probably related to his ethnic background). A case in point. Attend to, become attuned to the narratives you hear! That should be a future field of one’s basic education.

My personal belief about that catastrophic act perpetrated by Maj. Malik Hasan, the mass killer, is that he suffered from a fatal cognitive dissonance between his role in the American armed forces in conflict with his family origin in the culture against which he was to be dedicated to make war. His being a psychiatrist treating the men who came back from that war with stories of their own dissonance exacerbated his personal situation. He knew what he was experiencing and going through. For him, there was no out.

My Comment on My Page, G.B. Shaw’s “Preface to Androcles and the Lion”

John F. Deethardt II — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:22:54 +0000

I am not happy for the people who have found Jesus. I believe such true believers may let their Jesus crowd out all other opportunities for intellectual and emotional growth and for reading about the natural world instead of the supernatural and preternatural worlds, for instance. Their usual concerns swing between god and the devil; if they should stop swinging, their feet would touch the earth again for the natural experience of science. I did it. I used to take my religion very, very seriously. O, how I prayed! How I debased myself! But it became impracticable.

I once heard a lecture on the radio by Gerald Heard about the egression of consciousness into a new frame of reference, suggesting the evolution of consciousness. Consciousness grows? Changes? Yeah! Epiphany!! I discovered me. My consciousness began me. I was empowered. I was my own higher power. The power to create the being I want to be. Emancipated, to take up my care of my own life.

That began my inquiry into philosophy. I am happy to say, my derailed intelligence began to recover, getting onto a different track from that track that had stunted my intellectual growth. I shifted from being a pray-er to a reader. I had my antennae up for seeking “consciousness”.

This Shaw tract, a preface to one of his pretty simple plays (made into a movie) was an eye-opener. Also, read the great American philosopher, Bertrand Russell. Then read Carl Sagan, or “A Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris. Or, read Christopher Hitchins. And you are off, retrieving your life from an extreme wallowing in raptures of Jesus, who may have been an historical character who had a remarkable story. But so have many other great historical personalities who, unfortunately, have come along in a time of burgeoning population and consciousness. The population of prophets has grown exponentially with the overgrowth of population and have become lost in the crowd.

Please, Jesus lovers, grow! Use your brain power! Do not divert all of it into a blind alley of life. You will retain that goodness, but transfer most of your heat into advanced study.

Such is my thought and feeling every time the boys and girls show up at my door to put me in touch with their raptures, as if I had none of my own. Their mission is to witness, I know, with the gospel, “the good news”. I always become emotionally charged, feelings I have a hard time explaining to myself, but I become very emotional. Lately, I have had more to say by way of challenge to them.

I also have the distinct suspicion that my house has been marked as a special place to send their initiates. Sort of like the way hoboes in the great depression and afterward used to mark with chalk some cryptic hobo-sign, the street curbing perhaps, the place for a good meal, and perhaps a place to sleep overnight in the basement on an old mattress by the furnace. (My Mom did that.)

Pres. Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

John F. Deethardt II — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:09:44 +0000

The President’s honor has received much negative reaction from those who would flunk his presidency. Rush Limbaugh aside — he is merely an “entertainer” who is the best flypaper for the advertisers who make RL very wealthy — enough to be able to afford buying a professional football team which he could turn into the first all-white team in the league — the flies get fried brains and perish on a strictly Limbaugh diet — the Obama critics I have heard in the reports, even those who are usually friendly to Obama, have missed the mark in general saying that the President has not done enough to warrant the honor. I believe they all are all wrong. The have overlooked some basic accomplishments and not given him the credit he has earned.

The prize originates in Europe. That is where a substantial amount of the President’s best work has been done. Face it, the President’s speaking is a potent force. In many instances, it has been dynamite. Nobel himself made a lot of money making dynamite, a very destructive force. With his wealth, he then created a very constructive force, the Nobel prizes in many fields, one of them for peacemakers. Wouldn’t you say resident Obama is basically a peacemaker? Just think of his attempts to establish consensus on issues. Just think of his series of post-election speeches in Europe. In all of his appearances in Europe, he mustered huge crowds.

I think of him standing before an audience of Islamic people in Egypt doing his “just words” best to bridge the gap. That was a very substantial analysis of the situation in the Middle East, Israelis surrounded by Islamists. Not quite, but pretty close to bearding the lion at the entrance to his den. Ah, the bully pulpit!

The constant devaluing of the power of speech underlies most of the negative criticisms. Our culture is rhetorically retarded, on the whole. I dream of our culture having communication skills equal to their beautiful pearly whites.

Was there no sense of pride in seeing an American president being honored by the huge presence in Germany, France, and so on? We here had the reports, of course, but that is not the same as being there.

The Nobel Peace Prize is a European prize, suffused with European values and European money. Later he speaks to the world through the United Nations advancing the American perspective that may govern policy for the next four (eight?) years.

That prize of European origin is meant to influence, with prestige and treasure, the one civilian who commands a powerful armed force as the highest source of central control, the commander-in-chief. It made me think of the greatest of ironies: endow the general of all the armies with a peace prize. What is he to do with all that armed might? Put him in a bind they did.

Each and every destructive citicism is made through the ant-eyed view of the world. And we all know how ants “see”. They have feelers, and they leave a stinking scent trail wherever they go. (RL and his followers, the blind leading the blind.) There go the ants on the hot pavement, oblivious to the forces that may come crushing down on them.

I have tried to present a much broader perspective of Persident Obama’s honor

The Movie, “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days”

John F. Deethardt II — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:48:15 +0000

German made. German acted. For the German people. Finely acted. Portraying the Nazi system of justice, the Nazi ideology, the Nazi automatons. (The Nazi salute had the valuable function of detecting and enforcing compliance, and may have had some brain-washing effect.) Also portraying some German heroes, a German heroine dying for Redefreiheit (freedom of speech). One most interesting scene portrays the German bureaucrat in conflict with that heroine.The script and director of this film reveals the underground feelings toward the Nazi automata. Very subtle signs in the facial affect of the antagonists and protagonist could only be directed by a German. Look closely. It pays to have some familiarity with that period and the nature of German society at that time. (I taught the German language in secondary school in the late 50s.)

Once when I was over there with the U. S. Army, I went to a German movie house. Film of the opening of the concentration camps, the places and instruments of the deadly business there, and the huge piles of clothing and artifacts and of the emaciated bodies of the victims being were shown, some walking out, most naked and dead lying in heaps. (“Arbeit macht frei” over the entrances, “Work Liberates”.) The house was packed tight. I sat toward the rear. The German people sat upright in stony silence.

I did research in Germany on the history over the twenty-year period after the war, focusing on instruction in communication, to determine the training of the German populace in public communication, which was one of the means by which the Nazis attained power. I found no stories at that time of cases of Germans standing up to Hitler’s regime, of course. There was the attempt on Hitler’s life by some German officers.

Are Republicans Irrelevant? No!

John F. Deethardt II — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:27:11 +0000

Republicans are not merely irrelevant. Republicans are shot-through with AGGRESSIVE IRRELEVANCE. They practice “aggressive irrelevancy”. Their flooding of townhalls with irrelevant rabble-rousing. Birthers. Deathers. The non-viable healthcare “cooperatives”. The “You lie!” heckler’s veto. They will say and do anything to delay or obfuscate or defeat any reform that looks like Medicare-for-all or any appearance of success by Democrats and Pres. Obama.

All the deadly viruses and parasites are not “microscopic” life forms that can kill you.

I hope you saw Keith Olberman’s “Special Comment” on health care, 10-7-09. If you did, give yourself a gold star for good citizenship on your forehead where everybody can see it and ask what it’s for. Then you can engage them on the topic.

An Explanation of “Villainy” and “Heroism”

John F. Deethardt II — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:46:48 +0000

Relative to the health-care issue, there are two opposing factions. One is taking the role of the villain, and the other is taking the hero’s role. The villain will exploit, diminish, and minimize, or in some fashion enslave another person or persons for the villain’s own advantage. The hero’s acts exalt and maximize the others’ well-being.

The heroic act usually involves some greater or lesser element of self-sacrifice, to an ultimate extreme. Most of us most of the time are not heroes. Ask what the two opposing parties have to gain or sacrifice in their pleadings for or against the single-payer, Medicare-like form of health-care reform. Isn’t it crystal clear that one party has taken the villain’s position, and the other the heroic decision? Dissemble all you like, but the payoff of the Republicans’ stance against the Medicare-like (which, to me, is something more than the so-called “government option”) system of single-payer health care for all in the United States HAS BEEN SUBSTANTIAL.

But when this issue is eventually resolved, one way or the other, the basic problem of the politics in this instance will continue in all the issues that will follow. The Republicans have grossly disfigured their way of conducting the nation’s business. The health-care issue has put on Republicans, their party, and their blue-dog Democrat lap-dogs the mark of Quasimodo, king of the fools. Poor saps, they, and those who praise them, will have been elevated to the seat of scorn and shame for their historical ugliness as they continue to think of themselves as beautiful and wise. Their venality is contained in their re-election coffers.

The supporters of the single-payer plan are those who dutifully pay their taxes knowing that their burden now will be greater having taken on an obligation to provide health care for all U.S. citizens under all circumstances. That we might consider to be a form of everyday heroism that is so widespread its story will not be told, the masses of the able picking up their part of the tab for the unable. It would be one substantial fulfillment of the General Welfare promise made in the Preamble to our social contract. Yes, one promise made by the Constitution toward the General Welfare of all citizens has “socialized” good health. A vision of a more perfect union has been “socialized”.

NOW! ONWARD TO EDUCATION! To a nation that is both HEALTHY and SMART!

“Single Payer or Bust!”

John F. Deethardt II — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:40:56 +0000

Go to this web site, to read where the rubber gloves meet the road,
championing the single-payer system:

I copied this definition from their website:
“Single Payer: a system of payment that redirects current health care monies, both public and private, into a single public [coffer? strongbox?] that covers everyone.”

http://www.madashelldoctors.com/

“Single Payer or Bust”

MORE FROM THEIR SITE:

Everybody In! Nobody Out!
Town Halls. Videos. D.C. White Ribbon Rally!
Media. Motor Home. Blog. Care-A-Van.
Theme Song. Mad Logo and Press Kit.
Meet the Docs.
Our Route.
The Plan.
What We Want.

Please go to that web site for much more. I am personally unhappy with the lack of leadership in the drive for health care for all, in the spirit of those docs. in the spirit of Ed Schultz. I am thinking of people close to home, like my sons. I believe that the burden that falls on business to provide health care is a drag on small business. I think that all small businesspeople would benefit from a single-payer system. Everyone knows that small business is the largest part of all business. The nation is being woefully retarded by big-business health insurance. Those are the facts in a nutshell as I see them. I think, what a reign of ignorance in this society. Very sad!

I hear the name “Eric Cantor” and I am mad as hell.

I hear the name “snake in the grass Grassley” and I’m mad as hell.

I hear the name “Max-imize Medical Profits Baucus” and I am mad as hell.

Put those with the others of the coalition of Dems, so-called “blue-dogs” and
you have government people with the power to make laws that favor
a health-care-for-capitalistic-profits system.

Venal. Salable. Mercenaries. And their constituents who put them there are also responsible for the miseries those venal Congresspeople have caused. Never forget the people of those insane societies who select venal people to speak for them. They have perpetrated a grave error that must be corrected as soon as possible. Those “venals” in Congress want their pockets lined!

No matter who dies!

No matter who suffers excruciating pain from illnesses and diseases
as they languish in beds without physician care.

Our society has produced health-insurance moguls who are the ugliest monsters which no horror movie could ever conceive.

The Mayo Clinic has just come out in favor of the public health care option.

Our ship of state must begin to turn and sail against the anti-single-payer forces.

Calling All Talk-Show Hosts! DO THIS: a model of democratic problem solving!

John F. Deethardt II — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:06:42 +0000

All get in touch each with the others!

SOMETHING NEW!

SOMETHING INNOVATIVE!

NEVER BEEN DONE!

NEEDED RIGHT NOW!

THE PURPOSE: to demonstrate the heart of democracy as problem-solving discussion.

Every talk show: Ed Shultz; Bill Moyers; Keith Olberman; Chris Matthews; Charlie Rose; George Stephanopoulis; David Gregory; Jim Lehrer.

All of you cooperate to put the program on over the same one-two weeks period.

All of you choose the same format.

All of you take the same topic, a problem statement: “What is the best system of health care for all citizens of the U.S.”

All of you devote one entire program to that topic.

All of you choose your five-six best discussants, preferably five, composing a small group interaction. Attempt to get a mixture of viewpoints built into the group composition.

Each of you acts as moderator to preserve concentration on the topic and progress to the stated end.

Each group interaction is to strive for consensus on a final statement as a solution to the problem. If not consensus, as near to it as the group can produce.

Each group shall follow these steps in the process and the moderator shall be the one specially charged to keep the discussants adhering to the process:

(1) Define the terms of the issue statement.

(2) Brainstorm a list all possible solutions to the problem.

(3) Evaluate the pros and cons of each of the possible solutions.

(4) Choose the one best solution.

(5) Put the one best solution into operation, in this instance, as a summary report.

The moderator can do this, unless one of the discussants wants to, or is appointed to make the summary statement.

The group members will probably be rather high-powered intellectuals, with known biases, styles, egos. It will be a rare and valuable experience to see such prominent and productive people working cooperatively in a group to resolve an important issue. They will have to be democratically oriented in order to meet their charge, operating from a “heterocentric” viewpoint, rather than the opposite viewpoint.

There is glory to be attained by the group that succeeds. A model, a norm, for all society, will be set. A moment for learning the essence of democracy.

(A snowball in hell’s chance? An ice cube
in the melting pot?)

What Is a Republican, and Republicanism?

John F. Deethardt II — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:34:01 +0000

The ant has not changed its form in millions of years. It has adapted to a form of living and surviving and gone up a blind alley of evolution where change is impossible. In its adaptation, it has lost adaptability. Adaptability is a capacity for change, for learning, a readiness to do or become something different and new. As circumstances of the environment change, the learner, the adaptable one, can have a better chance of surviving. But the ant has become a living fossil. Oh, it has endured! But just look at the lowly form it has to survive all those eons. To survive and endure at the human level, maintaining the greater complexity of human existence, is the goal and ultimate horizon.

Is there an eqivalent model of the ant among human beings? There is one influence that will convert a reasoning being into a living fossil. I call it “ideology”. The Republicans have adopted the anti-government ideology of Ronald Reagan which has made their party an alliance against regulation, taxes, single-payer health care, and all such laws that would encourage the sharing of wealth. To the Republicans, greed is good. In their behavior, they have become the party of “NO!” They have mocked the slogan of the Democrats, “Change we can believe in!” Republicans do not want any change, and, like the ant, are in danger of becoming living fossils. Their adaptability through reasoning from any premise other than wealth is being lost. They are having a devil of a time finding a new figurehead for their ideology, which saw years of practice under the reign of President Bush.

Yes, the Republicans are revealing a very strong predisposition to an ideology that fossilizes their responses to life in contemporary society; they bring with them obstinate, non-adaptive, non-democratic, unreasoning ideology that is retarding democracy. I think that is the core of “conservatism”. I think their impact will signal the demise of representative government as a primitive form of democracy that will become obsolete, a dead fossil of governance and a curious artifact of history, an object lesson for learners centuries from now. They are allowing “foreign” influences” outside the discussion to take over the discussion, influences against which no one can argue because they are not in the room. Power that is not present among the discussants is brought to bear. A defeat of democratic processes.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have adopted the defining slogan that holds change, learning, and adaptability as the guiding behavior. Reason balances many alternatives until one is generally confirmed to be the best, the operational definition of democracy. Ideology free! The mind of the Democrat is adaptable, deliberative. The mind of the Democrat maintains its generalized nature without foreclosing too quickly on alternatives, wanting to hear the full course of thinking. I think that is the essence of “liberalism”, patience to hear, understand, evaluate.

The Republican, the conservative, in discussion usually exhibits a certainty that is unreasonable, even contemptuous of reasonable alternatives, as the very strong desire to over-talk any others in the discussion. A living fossil talking.

“Discussion” Makes Democracy Work! Beware of Unworkable Substitutes, Like “Conversation”!

John F. Deethardt II — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:33:55 +0000

Democracy has a communication TOOLBOX, holding the implements that will construct and repair the superstructure of democracy and keep it humming. Democracy, when achieved, is a real, delicate art-form; it is like building a ship of state inside a bottle. The tools are very finely fashioned for such a difficult task.

Discussion” is the name of the main tool used to carve out of the formless block of “conversation” the final objet d’art, a solution to a problem or issue in the form of a consensus statement (a bill, or a policy).

To repeat myself: democracy wants, desires, aims at, must have consensus. Consensus is general agreement. General agreement approaches unanimity. That is the end result, outcome of the problem-solving continuum. The fall-back position is majority rule, or direct-clash debate, or, voting by ballot or show of hands. Consensus can only be achieved by the single best communication tool of democratic societies, “discussion”. (I have laid out the problem-solving continuum elsewhere.) Judged by that requirement, democratic problem-solving is as rare as, say, that ship built in a bottle.

The requirements of “conversation”? Can you talk?

The requirements of “discussion”? Have you mastered the available relevant information? Do you have the vocal characteristics and the social-emotional balance that serve cooperative action? Do you know the intricacies of problem-solving, group leadership, and the many other dynamics of working with other people representing an array of demographic differences? Are you culturally astute? Would you recognize consensus if you saw it? (There would be a general, positive good feeling of pride in accomplishment and ownership.) Could you adhere to a productive course toward the objective? Would you show patience to give the time to gaining the prize, group cohesiveness toward a final statement?

If you know all that about the group dynamics of “discussion”, to hear nearly all the big mucka-muckas of our society— of Congress, of the state government legislatures, of television, of talk radio— use the word “conversation” is to know that they are neither prepared nor qualified to achieve the democratic solutions we so desperately need. They are steeped in the old mode of “conversation”. They are not versed in the ways of “discussion” (democracy).

We will have problem-resolutions coming from who knows where, probably paid for by big corporate deep pockets buying off the big mucka-muckas with “campaign donations”. It is currently happening in the health-care “conversations”.

What a sorry damnable mess! The health-care “conversations” are sickening to the democratic process.

Our great, recently elected leader wants consensus, the practice of his ideal style of governance. Why doesn’t he take a greater leadership role in turning the “conversations” into productive discussions to achieve a consensus on health care? He should be calling out all those who are not adhering to the requirements of democratic discussion.

“What is your vested interest in that solution?”

“How do you define that term?”

“How do you know that?”

“Let me get this straight! Is this what you said?”

“What is your source for that?”

One prominent example is the illegitimate, corrupt, unfair, mendacious influence of lucrative campaign contributions to key members of the appropriate Congressional committees, with the purpose of buying their votes and the outcome that will preserve the obscene profits of the health insurance corporations.

That kind of “crime against democracy” is as primitive as the early human forms. We live still in the Dark Ages of that form of government that will, in a few hundred years, be observed with disdain as “primitive”. The overriding fact is that it is “CONVERSATION” that is corrupting democratic “DISCUSSION”. Money is talking. In the subdued tones of “conversation” in the back hallways of Congress, or the corporate boardrooms of big medical insurance.

I see the poor folk becoming the suckers of the for-profit health-care industry. They simply do not know where their best interests lie. I see base ignorance holding up illiterate signs in raucous support of their true enemy.

CONVERSATION is fun talk.

DISCUSSION is work talk.

We are dedicating ourselves to fun, living in the present, without concern for the futures of policy-making and future generations who will live with our decision not to DISCUSS the problem. NOW is what concerns us. Let the future go hang out somewhere else. Fun fun fun. Gibble-gabble away. Future be damned.

Policy-making by discussion is too hard. A few simple slogans on a placard should do the trick. Some yelling and screaming is exciting. That’s how to exorcise our fears of change.

Our representative democracy is now operating at its worst. Our representative democracy will be viewed as a primitive form of government at some time in the future; that is, if human beings do not fully abandon their powers of reason and become living relics in a new dark age.

Okay Okay! Children! CHILDREN! If you must, you must. Call it “Conversation” then! BUT MAKE IT WORK LIKE “DISCUSSION” As I have instructed you. A rose by any other name is still “discussion”.

Try, TRY HARD! To use the word “talk” instead of “conversation”. “Conversation” is a special form of talk. Use the word “conversation” only when two or more people are engaged in recreational talk with face-to-face opportunity for direct, immediate feedback, NOT FOR THE PROBLEM-SOLVING WORK OF OUR DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY. Show the sophisticated knowledge of your language and communication understanding and skills. Show that you are democratically equipped to be a democratically skillful citizen and ready to go to work for a democratic society. The distinction should not remain subtle, but known by all.

(Oh, diese Kinder!)

In January, the President will deliver the State of the Union conversation.

What is the topic of the pastor’s conversation this Sunday?

The Republican candidate and the Democrat candidate will appear in a town hall conversation this weekend.

The commencement conversation will be given by the junior senator from Colorado.

The validictorian will present his conversation before the senator converses.

The coach gave a rousing conversation at the pep rally.

The journalist met with the CEO in a formal conversation for tomorrow’s edition.

The personnel officer is now conversing with all the applicants.

The priest led the congregation in the Lord’s conversation.

Conversation goes with food and parties and children and dates and courting. It is small talk. light talk, familiar talk, neighborly talk, greeting talk, transportation talk anecdotal talk, stranger talk, incidental and accidental talk, and even, maybe, trash talk.

I suppose the word “conversation” has become the generic for all talk. But there comes the moment when the mind is set on a discussion footing and we must specialize our communication, when the utility of words must finely define certain special usages. That is the function of language, to finely tune the complexity of what we are thinking. In order to see what we are saying, and say what we want to see, so that our minds can operate at a higher level of civility, of governance, of science, of — genius!

After all, we are not children any more. Are we? We are_____ ?

I do not care if you use the term “conversation” if I can discern, at the right time when the gears of speech are shifted to a higher, overdrive gear, that you know and will exhibit in the final analysis what “discussion” is, and you easily hop to it. I will see the “markers” of discussion, like meshing the gears to power up for active listening and a serious, problem-solving, task-oriented drive toward the solution to the problem at hand.

Would you call an 18-wheeler a car? Yes, you would, if you called a discussion a “conversation”. But that is what the naive (communication toddlers) do.

Or you will always be the speaking slouch, slumming through problems with not the slightest idea where you are headed, indulging in the vagrant essence of “conversation”.

Disconcerted Parents Complain About a President’s Pep-Talk to the School Children of America

John F. Deethardt II — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:19:12 +0000

Confronted as we are with the spectacle of U.S. parents who are up-in-arms about the “threat” that Pres. Barack Obama poses something for them to “fear” (as I heard on Ed Shultz’s radio talk show) in wanting to address the young learners in the schools nationwide, we cast about trying to find some way to express our dismay at such behavior. The responses I hear are nearly always attempts to find the most imaginative names to call the “nut job” complainers. Names I will not repeat here, although my first inclination was also to hang on “those people” the worst appellations I could think of. In that ad hominem game I would lose. Why? Because my brain immediately jumps to the realization that name-calling attacks do nothing to get at the grist of the matter.

Ask, rather, why are people acting in a way I consider outside the expected role of good citizenship, which is to enter the issues of the way we treat people who are perceived as different from us, to hear, to empathize and understand, to avoid pre-judgment, to engage in the public dialogue, to consider seriously the functions of citizenship. Teach the children THAT!

The desire to shield children from any controversial situation or topic is to raise them like mushrooms: feed them garbage and keep them in the dark until they will become dutiful fungi.

He wrote The Sane Society. Erich Fromm: “There can be a society which is not sane. …The state of health of each society can be judged.” (p.21) “…[T]he fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” (p. 23)

Fromm goes on to review the socialization of children (making them ready to participate in society, not become Socialists). Human beings have an “almost infinite malleability”. Those parents in Minnesota, Illinois and elsewhere are in danger of passing on to their children a ”socially patterned defect”. The school children will not know it as a defect because the child shares it with everyone around him. The child’s defect may have been raised to a virtue by his culture.

Fromm speaks of the necessity of humans to unite with other living beings, “an imperative need on the fulfillment of which man’s sanity depends.” A union with a person, a group, an institution transcends separateness, becoming part of something bigger than himself, union with somebody or something outside himself. Sharing. Communion which permits the full unfolding of one’s own inner activity, the experience of love.

Should not a school inside a socially patterned defective culture function to help children survive the insanity of the society surrounding the school?

Is communion with the President of the United States and the senators and the representatives of the state and federal governments not a duty of citizenship? Is Barack Obama not the President of all the people? Can we never put aside political partisanship? For the good of the children? Should not we behave as if all parents have the political and social maturity to forbear any personal prejudices in order to foster the political and social maturity of their offspring? In the military, we were told we salute the uniform and the authority of the man inside it, not necessarily the man himself.

What the President wants to do is bring the President of the United States, a force for government authority which is bigger than most all other forces they are ever likely to encounter, into the classroom, for them only to identify with in the common touch. Government and intelligence and nature always prove to be those superior forces which enter our lives everyday in both large and small ways. We will have significant relations with those three forces. With the genius intelligence of technology, the natural forces of tornadoes and earthquakes and wildfires, and the federal government in the President of the U.S., we come in touch with the world at large. Huge forces to be addressed. Even for the education of children. The huge forces surround them. They must experience them. The intelligence of the computer and the cell phone. The vagaries of nature in the wind, ice storms, car accidents, and sinister, stalking personalities. The political power of the teacher and the principal. Children must and will transcend their separateness and unite respectfully with that world.

Parents are trying to shield their children from the parents’ fears, a misguided form of love. The parents are communicating fear to their children, and the children will take on a cultural defect from the insanity of the society around them, which interdicts their first-hand experience of forces with which they must have some communion. Their love of country and respect for its officers will be thwarted, and sent up a blind alley of defective cultural adaptation. (“The sins of th fathers…” And that’s the way it is.)

I do not know and cannot imagine what the parents “fear”, which was the word used by one superintendent in Minnesota. The President’s race has been suggested. His “liberal” doctrine has been suggested. Those certainly arise from parental racism and political conservatism.

Can a child be allowed and encouraged to learn from an influence differing from that of the parent? We all know about peer pressures.

Can a child ever be expected to make up his or her own mind?

Should a child ever be given the opportunity to express his or her acher or parent, in an advance inoculation against certain content spoken by the President, based upon a preview made by the principal and the teachers?

Can the children be expected to think for themselves?

Should Pres. Obama be censored, aown opinion?

Could the children hear the President’s talk and then be asked what their opinion is?

Or should they be told what to think, by the tes some nasty person like a child molester would be?

Democracy, Mass Expression, and Due Process

John F. Deethardt II — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:57:23 +0000

I have usually put forth the socio-political problem-solving process as the work of the small group. Now I must consider the same problem-solving process of democracy in mass meetings. The ideal laboratory is the small group, but what about studying democratic due process in really large groups, a “town hall”, say?

I watched a town hall on C-SPAN (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) the other night until the wee hours of the morning. From Reston, VA. I cannot remember the name of the Congressman in charge because the significance of the event serving as another and different context for defining democracy did not hit me right away. On second thought, then, I have it.

We experience democratic mass expression mostly in elections. Another really large group expression takes place in the courtroom. They exemplify democratic due process. Small-group problem-solving is probably a feature of the executive branch, when the President convenes the cabinet or any other commission or board of specialists to take on an issue for policy-making. Sometimes, a political leader might have a mass meeting in which the mass is broken up into small groups which are asked to take on the issue and then report back to the group at large. I experienced that at a Democrat caucus just before the election. That was a bust, in my estimation. The groups were not ever “small”, and came down to shows of hands, followed by the public speaking of the group leader.

What I saw on CSPAN was an opportunity for observing an exercise in mass problem-solving. The attendance was very large, hundreds if not a thousand or more. The crowd was unruly, uncivil to the extreme. That’s understandable because citizens rarely if ever have the opportunity for experiencing public expression en masse.

In elections, the only expression is in casting a ballot under the watchful eyes of poll watchers and the rules governing politicking near the voting place. In the court room, judicial procedure is supervised by a judge and a bailiff who enforces order in the court. In both instances, the police power has a presence.

In the town-hall I saw, there was little policing present. I saw one uniformed officer among the people on the floor. There obviously were hired RRs. One famous RR was called out by the congressman and hustled out by the cop. It was a smart move to keep the police presence understated.

Was there problem-solving when all was said and done? The congressman pulled pre-submitted questions from a box, called out the name of the question-writer who came forward and asked the question aloud over a micrphone. When someone did not come forward promptly, an imposter would come forward and take th place of the question-writer. It required quite a while for people to come forward, the crowd was so large. The imposters were unmasked and expelled.

One crucial element was the presence of a health-care expert on the platform with the congressman. It was Howard Dean. He contributed his expertise as a medical doctor and as a politician (former governor, chair of the Democrat Party, and candidate for President). The “content” expert must be present if democratic problem-solving is to take place in really large mass-expressions of democracy. The congressman himself was prepared to give special knowledge brought from the debates and proposed laws in Congress. He lectured briefly on the myths surrounding the health-care debate and the facts that belie the myths. Howard Dean was especially effective in answering a question about tort reform related to the health-care issue. The man who pushed himself forward out-of-turn to insist on an answer could be observed nodding in satisfaction with the treatment of his question.

All in all, the town-hall meeting was a satisfactory process. There were huge amounts of rabble-rousing (RR) and mayhem. The mass was generally very unruly, uncivil, to the point of intolerable criminality. I say that it is criminal to make such a mess of democratic meetings. Should there have been a greater presence of policing? I think it was just about right. The mass-meeting process can be made workable for the problem-solving function of democratic discussion. About the only communication processes prominent are question asking, question answering and public speaking. The forum I saw could have added a debating process to warm up the audience to the issues by having prepared speakers give alternating, five-minute pro arguments and a five minute con arguments on each of the sub-issues, such as those “myths” that have arisen over the last year on the subject of health care. Then have the question-answering period involving everyone as much as possible.

People want to be heard! They want their questions answered! They want their point-of-view to be heard! In such a press to express themselves, they have little patience to fully experience the orderly problem-solving continuum: (1) stating the problem; (2) defining the terms; (3) listing all the possible solutions to the problem; (4) evaluating the pros and cons of each solution suggested; (5) choosing and stating the one, best solution for the problem as the consensus of the group. The democratic process, which is a civilizing procedure, is being ignored in education of the young. In an over-populated world, that fact will be calamitous for life on Earth.

Sen. Edward Kennedy: Super Wealthy, Super Privileged, but…

John F. Deethardt II — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:40:54 +0000

…there was a marvelous contradiction in him. Can you name it? All the commentators are bringing it up.

I once read a scholarly study comparing and contrasting Ted and Jack Kennedy with Richard M. Nixon. The scholarship, I observed at the time, was trustworthy in sources and the conclusions drawn seemed reasonable. The study raised this question. Why would super-rich Kennedys appear so much on the record of speech and legislative action in support of the ordinary 40-hour-a-week worker, the “common man”? Minimum wages guarantee. Unions. Safe work conditions. Health care for all. And so on. Why would Richard Nixon arise from the worker class of ordinary people and claw his way to the top, without much special care for those on the lower rungs of the ladder, never looking back to help those below as he climbed to the top and affiliate himself with the party of the getting and conservation of wealth? Why was the former a liberal and the latter a conservative? The Kennedys and Nixon. Different beginnings. A reversal of expected outcomes.

What was the difference? What makes a class of “haves” sure to, or not to, remember the plight of those less favored, or privileged? You may have guessed it. It’s the sure sense of an ideal self, called conscience. Wanting to spread the conditions providing opportunity through native intelligence and work ethic. The ideal self and the internal narrative empathizing the narrative of others underlying the concept of the ideal self is inculcated early in life, taught by a parental model that is permissive, rather than harsh, instructive, rather than preachy, loving, rather than stern, empathic, rather than apathetic.

Praise, or, at best, begrudging recognition for Ted Kennedy may not be coming from the nouveaux riches who have not developed that conscience in the ideal way.

To All Congressional and Executive Adulterers, Real and Potential, Past and Future!

John F. Deethardt II — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:24:44 +0000

It’s always hard being an adulterer!

This epigraph was found on the title page of the 1700 edition of The Way of the World , a Seventeenth Century comedy of manners, first presented in 1700, by William Congreve (1670-1729)

“It is worthwhile, for those of you who wish adulterers no success, to hear how much misfortune they suffer, and how often their pleasure is marred by pain and, though rarely achieved, even then fraught with danger.”

I cannot find a movie that has been made of this play. One critique says that one scene is famous for the most profound analysis of the marriage relation ever written, the play being a realistic portrayal of a problem every individual must face in the adjustment to society.