The USA - how’s Obama doing?
ODD Circle Tue 28th Apl 09 at The Blue Mugge Pub
Notes using Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope and articles from www.opendemocracy.net
1. Hope’ is the word, from his book and from his speeches which carries infectious resonance. Yet, already Naomi Klein writing in The Nation this month has sign-posted ‘hopebroken and hopesick’… What are our hopes, reservations and fears?
2. Geoffrey Hodgson, director of Reuters’ Foundation Programme, Oxford
“No American president has started with more personal ability or more sheer good-will from around the world than Barack Obama…”
At the recent G20 “Obama spoke of a new, more subtle, more truthful style of leadership”.
3. We’ll seek to list actions, plans and policies outlined since inauguration and assess merits.
4. Seeing Obama from another nation’s perspective: Daniel Lichanian on France’s Obama fixation: “During the past eight years the French thought of their homeland as far superior …. Now they celebrate the USA for… an elevated politics that many fear is unattainable in France”.
5. OpenDemocracy sought views from their authors from around the world on these three questions regarding Obama: a) one thing you hope for b) one thing you fear c) one piece of advice. Here’s a summary:
From a British professor: hope; ‘take immediate and sustained action on climate change’; fear… ‘unable to break free of past policy on Israel and Afghanistan’; advice… ‘play it long’
From African Foundation for Development: hope… ‘at last, a formal apology for slavery and dispossession of native Americans – the two original sins of the Republic’; fear… ‘business as usual’; advice… ‘Trust your instincts…your appeal for change’.
From Germany: hope… ‘the USA actively engages in conflict resolution, starting in the middle-east.’ fear… ‘protectionist tendencies… US special interest groups and other international players…’ deflecting, de-railing Obama. advice: ‘Pursue global policies in the most inclusive way’.
From Egypt: hope ‘steer a course… energetic and ambitious … but not aggressive; fear: ‘could yield to the ‘wounded lion’ impulse in US politics; advice: ‘be yourself’.
From Japan: hope: ‘the world is in fact round… there are people living beyond America’s horizons’; fear: ‘Obama’s America regains confidence in the wrong way’ ; advice:
‘he remains true to his acceptance speech “I’ll always be honest with you”.
5. A quote from The Audacity of Hope: at the end of the Politics chapter:
“… in a democracy, the most important office is the office of citizen”.
ODDc Programme The Blue Mugge
Summer 2009
Tue 28 Apl The USA - how’s Obama doing?
based on www.opendemocracy.net (odn)
Tue 5 May Local Railways based on N. Staffs experience.
Tue 12 May Feminism Reviewed based on New Left Review, Apl 09.
Tue 19 May TV - dumbing-down arguments put - and challenged…
based on BBC Thinking Allowed (TA)
Tue 26 May To be decided: topical issue or
Heidegger based on BBC In our Time (IoT)
Tue 2 June Confidence…
Tue 9 June Book > Film: The Reader
Tue 16 June Karl Marx - an up-date. (IoT)
Tue 23 June Cuba 2. (Odn)
Tue 30 June To be decided: topical issue or
Humour and Stand-up Comedians
Tue 7 July Local Government - with Democracy4Stoke, as case study
(Odn)
Tue 14 July The Lunar Men - inc. our debt to engineers (IoT, June 03))
Tue 21 July To be decided: topical issue or
Two poems from paintings
Future themes: for Autumn 09 and 2010...
Suggestions from the group/s: English everywhere: why learn a second language? Intuition; A look back at ‘target culture’ and ‘performance management’; Singing; Science - public expenditure debated; The Honours List - Why? The Football Phenomenon - from Matthews to Beckham: Faith Schools re-visited.
Linked to Odn, Conflict Resolution - the Middle East; Burma - a history and up-date; New Technology - social and political implications; The Data-base State;
'How to talk about things we know nothing about' (Feb 08); Climate Change 5: - nuclear fusion and other developments…The State of India; Journalism and Power; Renewal of Politics...
Selection from IoT achive: A History of History, (Jan 09); Aristotle’s Politics - what makes a good society? (Nov 08); The Multiverse (Feb 08) & Galaxies - black holes etc (Jan 06); Numbers in Nature - the Fibonacci sequence (Nov 07) & Symmetry (Apl 07); Human Evolution (Feb 06) & The History of the Brain (May 08); Materialism (Apl 08); Socrates (Sep 07) Hobbes (Dec 05) The Arabian Nights - the art of story-telling (oct 07); King Lear (Feb 08); Samuel Johnson and his Circle (Oct 05); Jean Paul Sartre (Oct 04); John Ruskin (Mar 05) The Trial of Madame Bovary (Jul 07)
Selection from Thinking Allowed: Demography and Death (Oct 08); Scotland Independence ((Mar 08); Gender Voting (Oct 07) & The Rational Voter (May 07); Grandparents (Dec 07); Cities and ethnicities (Apl 08) and Balti Britain (Sep[ 08); The History of Hunger (Dec 07) & The Wealthy Irish (Jan 08);
Chinese Capitalism - concepts in education (Dec 08); Women and domesticity (Nov 08). Adam Smith (Jul 07).
Open Circle or ODD Group
Tuesday 7th April 2009 at The Blue Mugge Pub, Leek
Citizenship (3)
Intro: This topic is becoming a ‘termly regular’ for the group - understandable given the fast-developing issues which it contains. This session was to examine the impact of the Sustainable Communities Act.
However, the Committee on Standards in Public Life launched a new inquiry (their 12th) last December: “Local Leadership and Public Trust: Openness and Accountability in Local and London Government” which poses some new and very relevant questions about the consequences of ‘citizenship’.
SusCom 07: On 14/10/08 Hazel Blears invited councils to make bids for assistance under this Act which could be to “reverse the decline in local services ... deal with fuel poverty ... protect the environment” and even promote greater “participation in civic and political activity” under the rubric of. ‘social well-being’. By 18/12/08 no less than 37 local authorities had applied (about 10% of the total of 389). These included Newcastle-under-Lyme but not Stoke-on-Trent. [Update at the meeting.]
Can Government really be serious if it leaves such issues to voluntary participation by councils ?
The late (and lamented) Sir Bernard Crick’s 1998 report “Educaton for Citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools” drew only sporadic Government enthusiasm but resulted in the establishment of the subject on to the national curriculum in September 2002.
Sir Keith Ajegbo’s 2007 Curriculum Review “Diversity and Citizenship” made several recommendations which built on the original three concepts of moral and social responsibility, community involvement, and political literacy and it does seem that the Sus Com Act opened several doors for these.
What mechanisms exist, or can be initiated, to take advantage of opportunities under SusCom 07 ?
In previous ‘citizenship’ sessions reference has been made to the Rowntree ‘Power (to the people) Report’ but this seems to have been largely ignored by Government - despite its impeccable research credentials.
Is there a method to ‘get this on the publicagenda’ or must there be a completely new approach ?
Local Leadership and Public Trust: “Modern Local Government: In Touch with the People” was the 1998 White Paper which influenced all subsequent legislation (2000 and 2007 Loc Gov Acts particularly) and said: “the emphasis ought to be on bringing the views of their community to bear on the council’s decisions and on scrutinising their performance”. This led to a dichotomy with Government preference for elected mayors (as ‘strong and recognised leaders’) on the one hand and the results of 37 referendums in England which have rejected this concept in 25 of them. These are some questions asked by the CSPL:
In para 2.24 of the report (www.public-service.org.uk ) the requirement to appoint a ‘lead member’ for childrens services is highlighted - does this conflict with other aspects of decision-making by other parts of the authority - especially the mayor or leader, and accountability as a whole.
Openness and transparency (and thus implied accountability) are supported by the requiremnt to produce forward plans of key decisions and the right of citizens to information (FoI) and request explanation.
CSPL invites comments regarding how well the openness and accountability work.
Questions:
Further sections deal with the role and accountabiliity of senior officers, how they may be held to account and the conflict between their support for the executive and their support for scrutiny. The traditional relationship (“officer proposes; member disposes”) between members and officers has been changed by new legislative requirements. This may also have been affected by the new partnerships which have been thrust on to local authorities through PFI - which may conflict with local authorities’ traditional values.
redmik.
Kierkegaard - Why?
ODD Circle Tue 31st Mar 09 at The Blue Mugge Pub
Notes using the BBC radio 4 programme In our Time March 2008 with the title
Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling in Copenhagen.
1. Why discuss Kierkegaard when several of our group have never heard of him and some find ‘intellectual’ and philosophical discussion daunting? We may begin by re-visiting an earlier basic question: what have theologians and philosophers done for us?
Melvyn Bragg’s comments in his Newsletter on the programme make a good starting point.
2. ‘K. was the first philosopher I met in my late adolescence who seemed to speak directly and simply to where I … was having difficulty in standing. His Christianity made it easy to identify with him because I had been brought up in a strong and persistent Anglican tradition… His joust with Reason appealed very much to millions of us then and now and in the future, who wanted there to be thought and feeling which went beyond reason but could not reason our way to that.’
3. ’One of the distinguishing marks of K’s work is his love of the paradox. He wrote: “One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion…”.
4. ’His view of human existence as a process of becoming rather than simply being a static thing is extraordinarily attractive… the idea of changing from one person to another inside the same body…remains something both attractive and something that feels true.’
………………………………...........................
5. The three philosophers on IoT discussed key questions about the significance of K. and his continued relevance. K’s engagement with Socrates, believing that ‘Truth happens in the ebb and flow of conversations’, where irony and a dialectical questioning is important. Dare we claim that this has happened occasionally in The Blue Mugge?
6. ‘K. was a Christian but against the Church… Christendom socialised Christianity’ which is essentially about the inner-life. Institutionalised Christianity inevitably becomes complacent. K. wants to unsettle that. .
7. K. ‘…did not reject Reason as such’ but emphasised its limitations, its finite perspectives.
What limits? Man’s ‘creatureliness’ . We are temporal beings, always in the process of becoming. There are elements in this process which cannot be rationalised.
8. Socrates believed the Truth was eternal. For K. as a Christian, he believed Christianity is historical and Truth comes into being in that way … is communicated through stories, for example the Biblical account of Abraham and Isaac ‘a dialectical lyric’. Our philosophers find K. very insightful on ‘love’ (‘the sheer demanding-ness of love’; ‘love is about duty to yourself as well as to others’)
9. K ‘as father of Existentialism’ (the word coined later, 1919 and came into English only in the 1940s). Sartre - French philosopher, political thinker, atheist and existentialist - paid tribute to K. in an essay in 1950s. He wrote ‘It is as difficult to become an atheist as it was for K. to become a Christian’. What is Existentialism and where is it and K. placed now?
10. Has K. helped us in any way?
I tried out my first iPhone audio blog on Anthony's "What next?" proposal earlier this evening to the Convention on Modern Liberty post-event party. Turn up the volume and get close to the speakers -- next time I'll try and be closer to the speaker:
Do we get the Politicians we deserve?
Lazy trout ,Meerbrook 30th March 2009 at 19-30 for 19-45 start.
Details at www.oddc.org.uk
How important is politics?
Respondents were given a list of seven professions to rank in the order in which they trusted them, with a score of seven being most trusted and one the least trusted.
The Which? findings were as follows:
• Doctors 6.4
• Teachers 5.4
• Surveyors 4.3
• Solicitors 4.3
• Financial advisors 3.6
• Estate agents 2.2
• Politicians 1.6
Politicians from the past or other countries seem to rate higher - for
example,
Churchill, Gorbachev, Mandela, Obama.... Why?
There was the Sleaze of the 90’s and the Spin of the naughties. How untrustworthy are politicians?
The blame culture – “to err is human, to forgive divine”. What are the good points and bad points of a blame culture?
Most politicians are career politicians these days why? Is it a good thing?
Are there any good politicians?
How do we form opinions of our politicians?
Is spin a new phenomenon.
Why do politicians spin?
Should we distinguish between local, national and international politicians?
What other professions have been vilified over the last 30 years? What were the consequences?
Pets as Kin
ODD Circle Tue 24th Mar 09 at The Blue Mugge Pub
Details at www.oddc.org.uk
Notes using the BBC radio 4 programme Thinking Allowed April 2008.
Laurie Taylor interviewed sociologist Prof. Nickie Charles, co-author of a paper
My Family and other Animals: Pets as Kin.
1 Researchers looking into people’s support groups and family networks were surprised to find that people kept mentioning their pets: 23% put their pets as part of the network of ‘people’ who helped them out…
2. When asked as part of the survey ‘who counted as family’ one respondent, characteristically, replied: ‘We’ve a daughter and son - and our dog, of course’ (with an embarrassed laugh). Laurie followed through on this: questions regarding ambivalence about relationships ‘beyond the species’… Then asking about concerns re. anthropomorphism. Dangers of being “…cute, twee, and sentimental.” Then re. the research on pets, he asked “Is there a prejudice against this kind of study?”
3. Also, in the programme: emotional bonds with pets leading to grieving;
Pets as substitutes for children; ‘…not human…but occupy space within social networks’; pets assisting human contact and relationships - someone says ‘hello’ to Rover first and then…;
“I’m a cat person too…”
Pets as barriers: ‘we’re not going round there again, because of their wretched dog…’;
A British history and culture phenomenon? Researcher found is same survey that minority ethnic groups did not have any pets…
………………………………............................................
Other issues:
4. What do we know about the history of pets, across a range of countries and cultures?
5. Economics: the pet-food industry; the cost of keeping pets - vets. and insurance.
6. The RSPCA - huge sums bequested to animal charities. Positive, or out of proportion? Neglect and cruelty problems.
7. Pets > human health and well-being. Stroking cats and dogs is good for the heart, apparently. Pets and companionship for the old and lonely…
8. Phobias: fears about animals are not irrational - horrendous examples of pet dogs mauling children to death…. Legal issues: rights and responsibilities.
9. The value of pets to children. Animals and pets in literature, films, cartoons and art.
10. Changes in attitude - we humans, the more we learn, are steadily getting closer to our animal relatives. Pets as kin: they are smarter, more beneficial generally than people used to think. ‘Intuitive’ dogs aiding early detection of cancer in humans, for example.
openDemocracy's quarterly London meeting. Bill Thompson led a discussion on journalism, the web and civil liberties. About 30 people made it - many people who had met online as part of the publishing and research volunteer-group, but never in the face -- great human moments, that knowing yet not-knowing someone.
Bill talked of the good old days -- when the guardian website was a computer on Bill's desk, and when he was its sys admin, webmaster, editor-in-chief and coder. He argued that the "good web" --- the liberating forces of the free-flow of information --- necessarily develops along-side all the abuses of technology, including State abuses. Bill's solution to privacy issues: radical transparency.
The discussion turned to "what is journalism-- or whatever you want to call what openDemocracy does -- for in a world where the technology and organisations we're creating can be used for authoritarian means. "Speak truth to power" was Bill's reply. Rosemary and Anthony were not completely satisfied with that: what about making a self-conscious, self-understanding society?
The formal meeting broke up, and I look forward very much to the next get-together.
Supported by WEA and U3A tutors and students. Everybody welcome. Come when you can. Notes are provided (one side of A4) in
advance for each session. Some sessions
are based on Melvyn Bragg's
Radio 4 In our Time (IoT). We
also use as a resource www.opendemocracy.net and www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed/
plus occasionally a specific book, poem
or art work. Participants help with
notes and chairing sessions. No fee
(buying drink/s at the bar keeps us going...).
The Group is non-party and un-sectarian.
For detailed background on the project, see www.weacircle.blogspot.com We are networking and keen to extend
contacts. Some themes may lead to WEA
day and/or residential courses, supported by the Raymond Williams Foundation
(RWF).
2009 Programme
13 Jan: The Convention
on Modern Liberty
- A review of the issues (odn)*
20 Jan: The Law - necessary to protect us from ourselves?
27 Jan: The Future of
the British Pub (based on BBC ‘The
Money Programme')
3 Feb: The USA - an up-date
(odn)
10 Feb: The ‘Precautionary Principle' > the death of science?
17 Feb: John Milton -
poet or politician (IoT);
24 Feb: The ‘under-class' - what's
happening? (TA)
3 March: A painting, ‘Guernica'; a photo, ‘napalmed Vietnamese girl'; a sculpture, ‘Angel of the North‘ Art and Impact.
10 March: The Recession - an up-date
(odn)
17 March: Does the brain
rule the mind? (IoT) Consciousness - 3rd session.
24 March: Pets as
Kin (TA);
31 March: Kierkegaard Why? (IoT);
7 April: Citizenship - 3rd
session. The Sustainable Communities
Act.
14 April: Holiday break... (for
2 weeks, next session on 28th April)
* We may seek to organise a WEA
half-day on this theme, subsidized by RWF,
following through from the London
Convention... One of our group, also a
WEA Leek Branch Committee member, has suggested a short series of WEA/ODD/RWF Saturday mornings on themes
selected from our programme. More on
this after further consultation and discussion.
We have no shortage of themes for the future, but suggestions always
welcome
Abstract Painting - ‘Anyone could do that’?
Open Circle or the ODD group
Tue 18 Nov 08 at The Blue Mugge pub
After individual comment, in turn, on each theme, general discussion and debate will follow
What is Abstract Painting and is it difficult to understand or empathise with? Can anyone do it?
What came before pictures? Why did/do people paint pictures?
What circumstances or conditions have changed the way people paint pictures?
Is there any difference between figurative and representative painting?
‘It’s not the apples I like - it’s the anxiety’ - Picasso on Cézanne
‘Art does not reproduce the visible - rather it makes visible’ - Klee
* There will be several paintings (from books) to compare and contrast.
If you wish to and are able, bring a copy (or original!) of your favourite painting.
Open Circle or The ODD Group
(Open Democracy Discussion Group)
Provisional Programme - Autumn 2008
Tuesdays at The Blue Mugge pub, Osborne St., Leek 19.30 for 19.45 > 21.15
Supported by WEA and U3A tutors and students. Everybody welcome. Come when you can. Notes are provided (one side of A4) in advance for each session. Some sessions are based on Melvyn Bragg’s Radio 4 In our Time (IoT). We also use as a resource the www.opendemocracy.net (odn) and www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed/ (TA) plus occasionally a specific book, poem or art work. Participants help with notes and chairing sessions. No fee (buying drink/s at the bar keeps us going...). The Group is non-party and unsectarian.
For detailed background on the project, see www.weacircle.blogspot.com This project is now in its third year: we are networking and keen to extend contacts. Some themes may lead to WEA day and/or residential courses, supported by the Raymond Williams Foundation (RWF).
9 Sept: The World Food Emergency - based on Paul Rogers’ odn article,
16 Sept: Rape and the law: ‘beyond reasonable doubt…’?
23 Sept: Islam - The Qur’an - text: peace, terror and politics (TV documentary, C4, July 08 and odn)
30 Sept: Citizenship - engaging people across the generations… - 2nd session.
Against a background of unprecedented cynicism, how can we interest, energise, empower ‘ordinary people’ in the political process? Through our network/s we will seek to discuss this widely, recording views with the aim of organising a high-profile Day School or residential on the theme.
7 Oct: Open - to be decided (contemporary issue or from themes below)
14 Oct: Kierkegaard Why? (IoT);
21 Oct: Consciousness > Materialism (IoT)
28 Oct: Going Nuclear (odn) Climate Change - 5th session;
4 Nov: Open - to be decided (contemporary issue or from themes below)
11 Nov: ‘Culture is Ordinary’ based on a seminal 1960s essay - 3rd session.
18 Nov: Abstract Painting - ‘anyone could do that!’.
25 Nov: Murdoch and Branson - model entrepeneurship?
2 Dec: An up-date on The English Revolution (C17)
9 Dec: Open - to be decided (contemporary issue or from themes below)
16 Dec: Persistent Change (TA)
................................................................................
Other themes, for this term or the future: The widening gap between rich and poor (odn) Pets as Kin (TA); Good prose (Dr Johnson) and a good poem (Sylvia Plath) - why good?; Aug 08 "Our Olympic Heroes" - what/who are heroes?"; Alternative Therapies - Why?; English - the international language? Faith Schools (2nd session); The New Elites - and Philanthropy (TA); Demographics - grandparents…; John Milton - poet or politician (IoT); The Age of Austerity - 1945 > 1951; Cuba - revisited - 2nd session; Wo/men - an up-date and review (TA); Liberal Adult Education - dead or mutating? NATO vs Russia (odn) Scotland - and independence (TA); TV - The Oprah Phenomenon: Dumbing-down, third session (TA); Consumer Culture - the triumph of triviality (New Internationalist essay, Apl 08).
‘Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English Language’
(RW, Keywords, 1976) We’ll go round the group asking those who wish to attempt a brief definition of ‘culture’. No discussion at this stage.
Williams’ 1958 essay begins with a description of a bus journey from Hereford to beyond the border into South Wales, taking in observations of a cathedral which houses the Mappa Mundi: cinema adverts: a Norman castle; farming valleys, the Black Mountains; steel-rolling mills and pit-heads. This leads to the reflection that culture is ordinary ‘Every human society has its own shape, purposes, meanings… (and) … expresses these in institutions, arts and learning… A culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings which are offered and tested’. Discuss
‘There are two senses of culture that I refuse to learn: the Cambridge tea-shop where ‘cultivated people’ (are, in fact), trivial; ‘culture-vultures’, high-brows, superior prigs > the new cheapjacks seeking to influence the ‘mass mind’. Discuss
The strengths and weaknesses of a Marxist and Leavisite view of culture. A summary of this section of the essay will be given, and then discussed.
Finally, 3 wishes: a) ’I ask for a common education that will give our society its cohesion and prevent it disintegrating into a series of specialist departments, the nation become a firm’.
b) ‘More active provision for arts and adult learning - (in 1958) £20 million on libraries, museums, the arts and adult education; £365 million on advertising. Let’s reverse these figures…’
c) Question and oppose a version of ‘mass culture’…. ‘a crazy peddling in which news and opinion are inextricably involved with the shouts of the market, bringing in their train the new slavery and prostitution of the selling of personalities’. Discuss
………………………………................
Terry Eagleton’s lecture paid tribute to Williams’ work on culture and especially for inventing the phrase ‘cultural materialism’. What does that mean?
TE spoke about the ‘creatureliness’ of human beings (our bodies determine quite a lot) but
“Because we have language … we can become truly universal beings doing all sorts of astonishing things which aren’t possible for moles and badgers. They can’t get outside their own bodies as linguistic animals can… let’s face it, because they lack culture they’re extraordinarily limited. I mean, they can’t even construct a nuclear weapon…. That…is the point, the very powers that enable us to create also enable us to destroy… it is hard to have Tennyson without Trident’. Discuss
TE goes on to argue that since Williams death (20 years ago) there have been several key developments: ‘culturalism’ (what does that mean?) and 'movements like revolutionary nationalism and various ethnic conflicts where culture becomes the very idiom in which political demands are framed…. You could define culture in this sense as that which people are prepared to kill for. Or, if you prefer, to die for…' Discuss
Enclose notes for the Blue Mugge pub discussion next Tue 4 Nov. Roger Elkin has prepared these notes and will lead/chair the discussion.
A reminder of programme change: on Tue 25th Nov we will be debating and discussing The Crash, 2008.
Also: Friday 7th November 10.30 - 3.30pm
The WEA has organised:
Celebrating Tawney in 2008.
The 100th anniversary of Tawney's first University/WEA Tutorial Class in Longton.
The speakers are acknowledge experts on the subject.
Venue: Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Hanley
Open Circle or Odd Group
Tuesday 4th November 08 at The Blue Mugge Pub, Leek
Some Poetry Definitions
1 S.T.Coleridge: Poetry; the best words in the best order.
2 W.B. Yeats: Poetry is truth seen with passion.
3. William Wordsworth: Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
4. T.S. Eliot: It is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experiences… a concentration which does not happen consciously… Poetry is not a turning loose from emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.
4Which of the above do you agree with?
5Is there anything that you would add to help to define what you think poetry is… and should do?
6What makes a “good” poem?
7What features make the following poem “good”?
Mushrooms Sylvia Plath
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door. 13th November 1959
Open Circle, ODD Group
A brief reminder that the theme tomorrow evening, Tue 28 Oct, will be 'Consciousness 2'.
I've had a brief chat with Bob on the phone, who will again chair the session, and I enclose a few additional notes which may be used during the evening.
==
-1Consciousness
Additional notes for Tue 28th Oct.
From The Conscious Brain by Steven Rose - former Professor of Biology, the OU.
(Penguin Books, Revised Edn, 1976).
“Consciousness means many things, sometimes simultaneously, often contradictorily.
Thus, it may simply mean a state different from being asleep or in a coma; the reverse of being ‘unconscious’. It may be used to relate to the private world of the mind in contrast with a presumed ‘public’ world of observed behaviour. People speak of ‘altered states of consciousness’ which may be induced by drugs, often implying by this altered awareness or altered perception of the world around.
Consciousness may have a Freudian meaning in which some human acts, or the motivations for them, occur at a level out of reach of the thinking ‘conscious’ mind with its overt rationalisations, buried in some relatively inaccessible ‘subconscious’. Finally, there is the Marxist sense of consciousness.
The difference between these uses of the term is that whilst most of the earlier ones are essentially static definitions, of consciousness as a ’state’ of being, in the Marxist sense consciousness is a dynamic force which emerges in interaction between the individual and his or her environment….
Consciousness in my sense of the term, is a continuously unrolling, continuously developing activity of minds/brains in interaction with their environment, modified, either temporarily or permanently, by changing circumstances.”
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Articles exploring the themes of the fourth international Nobel Women's Initiative conference May 28-31. Jennifer Allsopp and Heather McRobie will be reporting for 5050
Lis Howell On broadcasting
Dan Hancox Revel, Riot and Rebellion
Martin Rose Bliss Was It in that Dawn to Be Next Door
Vron Ware Up in Arms
Jim Gabour Sunday Comics
James Warner Standing Perpendicular, as books do
Markha Valenta Inter Alia: religion, politics, culture
Paul Rogers on Global security
Mary Kaldor on Human security
openDemocracy Ltd, The Print House, 18 Ashwin Street, London, E8 3DL. Tel: +44 (0) 207 193 0676
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