Layer 525 . . . Great Artists, Enlightenment, Zen, Dawkins and Obscurity

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In the previous blog I wrote about some of America's greatest living artists, and it seems to me I need to say a little more on this subject. The job of an artist is ultimately to raise awareness, to express, celebrate and comment on the human condition, and to bring a little (or a lot) more enlightenment into the world.

There should be no doubt that artists such as Dylan, Cohen, Springsteen and Young fulfill all of these criteria. Anyone who doubts Dylan's credentials as an artist and a poet should read Christopher Ricks' wonderful "Dylan's Visions of Sin" and Michael Gray's "Song and Dance Man - the Art of Bob Dylan", and also pay careful attention to Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man".

Anyone who questions Leonard Cohen's right to be called a great artist also ought to pay attention to his words, his poetry and his music, and then allow themselves to go "a thousand kisses deep", or simply take a walk down "boogie street".

Bruce Springsteen's art, on the other hand, is based on a very different sort of poetics, and a determination to speak to his audiences clearly and directly, without obscurity, but without being in any way patronising or underestimating their intelligence. Of course there will still be idiots like Reagan who completely fail to understand the irony in a song like "Born In The USA", but Bruce has learnt to live with this as a fact of life.

Neil Young also comments on his country and his fellow humans through songs like Ohio, Let's Impeach The President and Restless Consumer.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/11/layer-84-music-politics-neil-young-and.html

http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/therestlessconsumer_wm.html

Neil's all-time masterpiece may well be the Sleeps With Angels album, and in particular the track "Change Your Mind", which not only has brilliant lyrics but also features scintillating, extended guitar solos which tear at the senses and wrench emotions from stony souls. Try listening to this track on decent headphones with the volume turned up in a darkened room, with or without the video on the screen -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGZWPgScALU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWXy-8vNxrs&feature=fvsr

You'll need to be in it for the long run though - all 14 minutes and 55 seconds.

http://www.neilyoung.com/   -  Horse Back -  This is even longer!

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Enlightenment and Obscurity

You have to hand it to Richard Dawkins - he draws attention to some pretty important stuff and gets people talking:

What is the proper place for religion in Britain's public life?

Britain became engulfed in a culture war last week as secularists and believers clashed over the role of religion in public life. Even the Queen intervened to defend the Church of England's role. Richard Dawkins, whose survey about Christianity in the UK ignited the row, defends his position on secularism, faith and tolerance in conversation with Will Hutton of the Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/19/religion-secularism-atheism-hutton-dawkins

Once again Will Hutton ventures into territory he's not really qualified to have strong opinions about. It's not clear from this article that he really understands secularism.

On the other hand, Oxzen has issues with Dawkins' disbelief in what some of us are calling spiritual intelligence. He's not the only one who fails or refuses to understand this crucial intelligence. Most people do.

Here's what Oxzen said in Layer 12:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-12-spiritual-intelligence.html

Key concepts for developing spiritual intelligence can be found in schemes of work with a sharp focus on human values. These are values that are subscribed to by humanists and by people of no particular religion, as well as by members of the many different faith communities throughout the world – values that give meaning to life and help to direct our most positive beliefs and actions. They are values that help to make our families, our communities and our societies better places to live in for all of us. Without such values we descend into strife, conflict, selfishness and aggression.


The following list is a summary of the key words and concepts we need to understand as part of a curriculum for human values and spiritual intelligence.


TRUTH
Curiosity, Equality, Honesty, Integrity, Intuition, Optimism, Truthfulness, Self-knowledge,
Reasoning


LOVE
caring, compassion, friendship, forgiveness, generosity, helpfulness, joy, kindness, tolerance, sharing, sympathy, patience


PEACE
calmness, contentment, dignity, discipline, happiness, honesty, humility, understanding, patience, reflection, self-confidence, self-control, self-discipline, self-respect, optimism


RIGHT CONDUCT
Contentment, Courage, Dependability, Duty, Ethics, Gratitude, Good behaviour, Healthy living, Helpfulness, Leadership, Initiative, Unity, Respect, Responsibility, Sacrifice, Self-confidence, Self-sufficiency, Simplicity, Perseverance 


NON-VIOLENCE
appreciation of others, brotherhood / sisterhood, citizenship, compassion, concern for all life, consideration, cooperation, unwillingness to hurt, equality, forgiveness, global awareness, good manners, loyalty, social justice, service to others, respect for people and property, unity, universal love, collaboration

My feeling is - without having read his book on science, religion and atheism - that Dawkins and his ilk set up a false dichotemy with God on the one side and total disbelief in any sort of spiritual intelligence on the other . . . . . .  whereas most people neither have any definite belief in God nor any disbelief in the 'spiritual'. This would appear to be a perfect example of the wisdom of crowds - that the majority of people believe there is something within most of us that directs us towards the values and virtues listed above - in the broad categories of truth, love, peace, right conduct and non-violence. The question is not whether spiritual intelligence exists, but where do we sit on a continuum that goes from high spiritual intelligence to low spiritual intelligence?

The two most spiritual words I know are lovingkindness & enlightenment. Professor Dawkins has a problem if he can't understand or reckon with these key Buddhist concepts. I commend him in a spirit of lovingkindness for his stance in favour of atheism, but I'd recommend him to pay greater attention to Buddhist philosophy and metaphysics.

Enlightenment? Don't know what it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_(spiritual)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensho

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Layer 64 Darwin, Dawkins and the Muppets.

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People are even more staggeringly stupid than even I had thought. I don't even know where to start with this.

I was contentedly watching a Channel 4 programme made by Prof Richard Dawkins called The Genius of Charles Darwin. I'm no kind of a scientist, and I've no idea where and how I came to understand natural selection, but it clearly explains biological diversity and the origins of species. It’s logical, and it makes perfect sense.

What makes no sense whatsoever is the idea that everything was created by "God". It's blindingly obvious that 'creationism' and 'intelligent design' are complete nonsense.

And yet . . . Dawkins was doing his best to teach Darwin's ideas to what seemed to be a group of intelligent sixth formers. They were apparently 'bright' young people, who clearly understood the ideas behind natural selection and the origins of species. They considered the fossil evidence, and the evidence from the study of DNA. It all seemed to make perfect sense.

And then the majority of these students calmly let Dawkins know that the theory was all very interesting - but they couldn't possibly accept it as truth because it conflicted with the teachings of their religion.

Fucking hell!! Christians and Muslims. Closed minds. Crackpot ideas. Blind obedience to ludicrous nonsensical claptrap. Unquestioning subservience to religious doctrine and unscientific bollocks.

Doomed. We're all doomed. There's no hope. Multiple intelligences? There are millions of these muppets who don't have even a single intelligence. Logic, reason and enlightenment have no place in their poor brainwashed lives. They’d rather go along with some version of a creation myth than risk upsetting their elders and making waves in their family and their community. And things seem to be getting worse, not better. How can this be?

I suppose it’s understandable. These days there are plenty of communities, sects and cliques who feel alienated and persecuted, who cling together for support and reassurance, who feel beleaguered and threatened, and reject the orthodoxies of their supposed enemies and persecutors, for fear of becoming like them, which clearly mustn’t happen.

And of course people like Dawkins have long ago identified themselves as atheists, non-believers, godless infidels, and probably sons of the devil. This makes them the enemy - automatically. Forget their espousal of scientific truth, and their insistence on rigorously questioning and testing anything and everything. They might be RIGHT in logic and reasoning, but they’re WRONG to reject God and all his works, and therefore they’re just plain WRONG.

Jesus. There’s no hope. Turn back the clocks. Stick your heads in the sand. Refuse to contemplate plain old facts, which have no legitimacy any time they happen to conflict with what some ancient scribe happened to write hundreds or thousands of years ago.

Obviously the Big Bang is wrong. It never happened. God created the entire universe, and continues to be responsible for everything that happens under this and every other sun. He said ‘let there be light’, and there was light.

Hold on. I feel the need to find some common ground, some third way, some sort of compromise here. Why can’t the fundamentalists just say, “God created the Big Bang”? That’s something we might all go along with. Why not? God created the Big Bang as some kind of experiment, and then sat back to see what happened. He was curious to know what would happen if this mother of all explosions kicked off.

Let’s agree to go along with the religious folk (tee hee!) and agree that God created the Big Bang and therefore the universe, as long as they agree that everything that’s happened since then is down to physics and chemistry, biology and mathematics, and the processes that arise from them, including the self-directed actions of human beings, who alone are responsible for the things they do and the choices they make.

I’m happy to go along with the notion that God is observing us, like some kind of super-scientist, and long as religious folk agree to go along with my notion that God is NOT responsible for all the stupid, ignorant, superstitious, illogical, irresponsible stuff we get up to. And it’s not the Devil or some sort of evil force making us do the things we do and making us think the things we think. WE decide.

Look at it this way. Either God made everything and God directs all our actions, or he doesn’t. Surely an all-powerful God would be capable of defeating a mere Devil? Or is it God’s choice that there should be a Devil hanging around, tempting and corrupting, leading astray and spreading evil?

Is this what theologians and religious people get up to in their working lives and their spare time? Arguing and speculating about the powers of God and whether or not there’s a Devil, heaven and hell? Well it’s a WASTE OF TIME! I’m here to say - stop wasting precious time! Do something useful! Find a hobby that’s more enjoyable and more productive! Grow up! Stop being so childish and idiotic!

OK - you can have your God. He created the Big Bang, and then he either fucked off or He’s hanging around, taking notes, and putting bets on how long these idiot human beings are going to take before they manage to blow themselves up and exterminate the only intelligent, self-aware and self-directing life that’s ever existed in the entire history of time. End of.

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Harold Rosen

Harold Rosen died on July 31st, 2008. He was a brave, committed, wise, visionary and wonderful human being. John Richmond’s obituary in the Guardian sums up his life and work and his impact on educational thinking.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/04/teaching.schools

Certain phrases and sentences stand out.

* a leader of thought in the world of English teaching in the second half of the 20th century. He and his colleagues forged and sustained a new understanding of the subject within the school curriculum

* Harold's own teachings, writings and activities illuminated many people's understanding of the relationship between language and learning, whatever the age of the learner and the content of the learning.

* In the politics of education, Harold fiercely resented - and, when he was still working, fought - the attacks on progressivism from within the Thatcher, Major and Blair governments.

* In 1936, (he) took part in the battle of Cable Street. It was the urgent clarity of the needs of those years - to defeat fascism and to liberate working-class people from every sort of poverty - that formed Harold politically.

* Returning to civilian life in 1947, it was clear to him, that the defeat of fascism must be only the necessary beginning of a shift towards more open and egalitarian societies in the victorious as well as the defeated nations.

* Mentally, he remained trenchant and analytical until the end, and joyful at news of gains in the long educational revolution in which he had played so prominent a part.

* Briefly put, the theory and practice that emerged at Walworth insists that the content of the curriculum that the teacher brings to the class must respect the culture and experience that the learner brings there. It sees the making of meaning in and through language as the essential act in which learners engage and which teachers help to bring about. It says that the best learning is a collaboration between teacher and learner, and between learner and learner.

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Briefly put, this was what I most resented about my own school days, my contacts with teachers, at the first purpose-built comprehensive school in post-war Britain. The failure to show proper respect for the culture and the language that me, and people like me - my friends and relatives - espoused.

Fortunately it was a small minority of teachers that operated in a patronizing and dismissive way. I guess the majority of the staff were young(ish), idealistic, and very caring, very respectful.

But there was Mr Hottot, for instance: an Oxford graduate, as he so often told us, somewhat slumming it, in charge of our French department. It had to come out sometime, I guess. The man was a snob, an elitist, a patronizing, irritating twat. Who said things like, “I can’t understand your slovenly speech”. Yes - he’d like to have sent us to elocution lessons to cure us of our flat vowels, our insistence on having a baath instead of a barth, on following a paath instead of a parth. The fucker had the nerve to parachute into Shakespeare’s county and then try to condemn us for our Midlands accents, dialects and phraseology. Because we were working class. Because we used non-standard English and spoke with something other than Received Pronunciation. The Queen’s English.

So Harold - many thanks, and great respect, for all your work, all your efforts to show linguists and teachers how they should be going about their business - with respect for children and students, and a determination to help them their develop their own individual 'voices' and reach their own individual understandings of the world. It’s been a long and tortuous road towards enlightenment, and the enemies of equality and reason are still in the ascendancy, but the fight goes on.
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