Layer 404 . . . Taoism, Yin Yang, In Our Time, Young People, Spiritual Intelligence, and Discovering The Way

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Young People

You have to feel sorry for young people today. How are they supposed to make sense of a world so complex, so raucous, so treacherous?

There are something like 500 TV channels in the UK alone. Millions of books, hundreds of magazines, and a billion websites. How do they make sense of any of that? Where to start?

How do they figure out who they are, what they should do, what's worth aiming for? Whose voices are worth listening to? Where is there a reliable compass, and a decent map?

Is it worth going anywhere at all?

Taoism

In Our Time   -   Radio 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wlgbg

From the IOT website -

An ancient Chinese tradition of philosophy and religious belief, Daoism first appeared more than two thousand years ago. For centuries it was the most popular religion in China; in the West its religious aspects are not as well known as its practices, which include meditation and Feng Shui, and for its most celebrated text, the Daodejing. (Tao Te Ching)

 http://www.thebigview.com/download/tao-te-ching-illustrated.pdf

http://www.beatrice.com/TAO.pdf

The central aim in Daoism is to follow the 'Dao', a word which roughly translates as 'The Way'. Daoists believe in following life in its natural flow, what they refer to as an 'effortless action'. This transcendence can be linked to Buddhism, the Indian religion that came to China in the 2nd century BC and influenced Daoism - an exchange which went both ways. Daoism is closely related to, but has also at times conflicted with, the religion of the Chinese Imperial court, Confucianism.

The spirit world is of great significance in Daoism, and its hierarchy and power often take precedence over events and people in real life. But how did this ancient and complex religion come to be so influential?

From the programme:

Lao Tzu is the great sage of Taoism, and the author of the key text - the Tao Te Ching

Yin-yang is a key concept.

Taoism is a complex philosophy – not a religion

The Tao includes several concepts in one word:

    * the source of creation
    * the ultimate
    * the inexpressible and indefinable
    * the unnameable
    * the natural universe as a whole
    * the way of nature as a whole

The Tao means The Way, The Path.
The Way of Heaven, The Way of Nature, The Way the Universe operates.
It's more than just a moral code.
The fundamental pattern and harmony of the universe.

Taoism is known as The Watercourse Way since water moves from the heavens to earth, and then flows naturally across landscapes until it becomes part of the great ocean, and prepares to rise again to the heavens as vapour. At least that's MY take on it.

Actionless action is seen as the ideal way of living.

This final point, about 'actionless action', seems to me to be the key and the best test as to whether  'experts', like the guests involved in this programme, really do see through to the essence of Taoism and the notion of 'actionless action'.  The people on this programme failed to convey adequately the idea that it's all about discovering the true essence of oneself and then living in accord with it - which the true self can do instinctively, which is the real meaning of actionless action. Instinctive intelligence allows us to do things without conscious thought and action. But it can take a lot of hard work to develop instinctive intelligence if our upbringing has filled our head with a lot of rubbish that needs to be identified, discarded, and replaced with ideas and ways of living that are more appropriate and more enlightened.

Another key point, I believe, is that we can't act spontaneously and instinctively if we're living lives that are shackled by inappropriate professions and occupations, inappropriate religious beliefs, inappropriate fears and anxieties about punishments by 'gods', inappropriate relationships, inappropriate expectations of ourselves, etc. Finding our true, individual Tao is therefore essential to discovering the path that's appropriate for us as individuals - no matter how deviant, bizarre, off the wall, etc, that path might seem to others.

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Previous blogs concerning Taoism, Zen and yin-yang philosophy:

Layer 138   http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/03/layer-138-class-unhealthy.html

Layer 139  http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/03/layer-139-wabi-sabi-yin-yang-and.html


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These extracts are from elsewhere on the BBC website:

Taoism at a glance

Taoism is an ancient tradition of philosophy and religious belief that is deeply rooted in Chinese customs and worldview.

Taoism is also referred to as Daoism, which is a more accurate way of representing in English the sound of the Chinese word.

Taoism is about the Tao. This is usually translated as the Way. But it's hard to say exactly what this means. The Tao is the ultimate creative principle of the universe. All things are unified and connected in the Tao.

* Taoism originated in China 2000 years ago

* It is a religion of unity and opposites; Yin and Yang. The principle of Yin Yang sees the world as filled with complementary forces - action and non-action, light and dark, hot and cold, and so on

* The Tao is not God and is not worshipped. Taoism includes many deities, that are worshipped in Taoist temples, they are part of the universe and depend, like everything, on the Tao

 * Taoism promotes:
          o achieving harmony or union with nature
          o the pursuit of spiritual immortality
          o being 'virtuous' (but not ostentatiously so)
          o self-development
    * Taoist practices include:
          o meditation
          o feng shui
          o fortune telling (I Ching)
          o reading and chanting of scriptures

Before the Communist revolution fifty years ago, Taoism was one of the strongest religions in China. After a campaign to destroy non-Communist religion, however, the numbers significantly reduced, and it has become difficult to assess the statistical popularity of Taoism in the world.

The 2001 census recorded 3,500 Taoists in England and Wales.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/taoism/ataglance/glance.shtml

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This is also from the BBC website:

There is something fundamentally honest and psychologically healthy in being oneself and striding forward with one's vision facing directly ahead, instead of trying at every turn to satisfy abstract standards of goodness established by a reigning orthodoxy. This is what te/de is all about.    -         Professor Victor Mair

The One

The One is the essence of Tao, the essential energy of life, the possession of which enables things and beings to be truly themselves and in accord with the Tao.

Tzu Jan

Tzu Jan is usually translated naturalness or spontaneity, but this is rather misleading.

One writer suggests using the phrase 'that which is naturally so', meaning the condition that something will be in if it is permitted to exist and develop naturally and without interference or conflict.

The Taoist ideal is to fulfil that which is naturally so, and the way to do this is Wu Wei.

Wu Wei

The method of following the Tao is called Wu Wei. This can be translated as uncontrived action or natural non-intervention.

Wu Wei is sometimes translated as non-action, but this wrongly implies that nothing at all gets done. The Tao Te Ching says:

    When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

    Tao Te Ching

Wu Wei means living by or going along with the true nature of the world - or at least without obstructing the Tao - letting things take their natural course.

So Taoists live lives of balance and harmony. They find their way through life in the same way that a river flowing through the countryside finds its natural course.

    The world is a spiritual vessel, and one cannot act upon it;
    one who acts upon it destroys it.

    Tao Te Ching

This doesn't stop a person living a proactive life but their activities should fit into the natural pattern of the universe, and therefore need to be completely detached and disinterested and not ego-driven.

Perfect activity leaves no track behind it; perfect speech is like a jade worker whose tool leaves no mark.

    Tao Te Ching

And certainly pure Taoism requires individuals to live on the basis that the world is working properly, and that they therefore should not interfere with it.

Yin Yang

Yin Yang is the principle of natural and complementary forces, patterns and things that depend on one another and do not make sense on their own.

These may be masculine and feminine, but they could be darkness and light (which is closer to the original meaning of the dark and light sides of a hill), wet and dry or action and inaction.

These are opposites that fit together seamlessly and work in perfect harmony. You can see this by looking at the yin yang symbol.

The yin yang concept is not the same as Western dualism, because the two opposites are not at war, but in harmony.

This can be seen very clearly in the symbol: the dark area contains a spot of light, and vice versa, and the two opposites are intertwined and bound together within the unifying circle.

Yin and yang are not static, the balance ebbs and flows between them - this is implied in the flowing curve where they meet.

Ch'i

Ch'i or qi is the cosmic vital energy that enables beings to survive and links them to the universe as a whole.

Qi is the basic material of all that exists. It animates life and furnishes functional power of events. Qi is the root of the human body; its quality and movement determine human health. Qi can be discussed in terms of quantity, since having more means stronger metabolic function. This, however, does not mean that health is a byproduct of storing large quantities of qi. Rather, there is a normal or healthy amount of qi in every person, and health manifests in its balance and harmony, its moderation and smoothness of flow. This flow is envisioned in the texts as a complex system of waterways with the "Ocean of Qi" in the abdomen; rivers of qi flowing through the upper torso, arms, and legs; springs of qi reaching to the wrists and ankles; and wells of qi found in the fingers and toes. Even a small spot in this complex system can thus influence the whole, so that overall balance and smoothness are the general goal.

Human life is the accumulation of qi; death is its dispersal. After receiving a core potential of primordial qi at birth, people throughout life need to sustain it. They do so by drawing postnatal qi into the body from air and food, as well as from other people through sexual, emotional, and social interaction. But they also lose qi through breathing bad air, overburdening their bodies with food and drink, and getting involved in negative emotions and excessive sexual or social interactions.

  -  Livia Kohn, Health and Long Life: The Chinese Way

Immortality

Immortality doesn't mean living for ever in the present physical body.

The idea is that as the Taoist draws closer and closer to nature throughout their life, death is just the final step in achieving complete unity with the universe.

Spiritual immortality, the goal of Daoism, raises the practices to a yet higher level. To attain it, people have to transform all their qi into primordial qi and proceed to refine it to subtler levels. This finer qi will eventually turn into pure spirit, with which practitioners increasingly identify to become transcendent spirit-people. The path that leads there involves intensive meditation and trance training as well as more radical forms of diet and other longevity practices. Immortality implies the overcoming of the natural tendencies of the body and its transformation into a different kind of qi-constellation. The result is a bypassing of death, so that the end of the body has no impact on the continuation of the spirit-person. In addition, practitioners attain supersensory powers and eventually gain residence in wondrous otherworldly paradises.

   - Livia Kohn, Health and Long Life: The Chinese Way

Knowledge and relativity

Human knowledge is always partial and affected by the standpoint of the person claiming that knowledge. There can never be a single true knowledge, merely the aggregate of uncountable different viewpoints.

Because the universe is always changing, so knowledge is always changing.

The closest a human being can get to this is knowledge that is consistent with the Tao. But this is a trap because the Tao that can be known is not the Tao. True knowledge cannot be known - but perhaps it can be understood or lived.

So there. They don't teach you this stuff in school.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/taoism/beliefs/concepts.shtml

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Layer 397 . . . The Ashes, Intelligent Cricket, Kevin Pietersen, Human Intelligences, Lifelong Learning, Fully Evolved Humans and A Positive View of Human Potential

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Intelligent Cricket
More on Instinctual Intelligence. This is a quote from the guy who's been credited with restoring Kevin Pietersen's form and self-belief, Graham Ford:

"I believe that with a player of his talent, the more work he does, the more the body naturally finds ways to anchor those good feelings to bring his game together. It allows him to operate on autopilot. During his time out here [in South Africa] that all started to happen."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/05/the-ashes-2010-kevin-pietersen-graham-ford

In other words, KP had lost touch with his natural instincts, which had served him so well as a young player. As such, he needed to re-learn, through hours of practice, through hours of learning to get back into 'the zone' whilst batting, how to achieve a perfect balance of mind/body/spirit, and begin again to play 'naturally', instinctually, without letting negative thoughts intrude - confident that his calmer mind would allow the right instincts - developed in hours of practice - to operate spontaneously and without inhibition, no matter what the opposition hurled at him.

Of course the Aussies bowled the occasional unplayable ball, and KP still made the odd mistake, but overall there has been massive improvement as a result of working on his 'autopilot'.

The other key intelligence he's done work on is his emotional intelligence. He's been learning to control his natural aggression, his exhuberance and excitability, and knows that the opposition will always try to tempt him into slogging every ball through excessive self-belief and indeed hubris.

He's also acquired a more mature attitude, become a more responsible individual, and a better team player - recognising that his main responsbility is to preserve his wicket and avoid giving it away cheaply as a consequence of glory-seeking and ego-gratification. This is the third dimension of intelligence - social intelligence.

Out-thinking the opposition in terms of strategy and tactics is cerebral intelligence (CQ?) Becoming fitter, better balanced, more supple, with greater strength and stamina, is part of physical intelligence.

Being able to enjoy oneself more by being 'in the zone', and maintaining appropriate self-belief, concentration and confidence, is part of being spiritually strong and spiritually intelligent. As is the determination to practice harder, avoid distractions, become more humble, become more appreciative of one's team mates, etc.

England's togetherness is palpable, a far cry from four years ago when there was tension between captain and coach, and cliques within the dressing room. Pietersen insists that improved results are not the only reason.

"There's definitely more to it than that," he said. "Yes, winning does go a long way, but also keeping your feet on the ground and making sure you keep working hard, keep trying to improve as an individual, a human being and also as a cricketer. Those are the key attributes for a happy dressing room."

For Pietersen, in particular, to speak so warmly of the collective effort emphasis the achievement of Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower, as captain and coach, in instilling a sense of purpose and ambition.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/07/kevin-pietersen-ashes-united-england?intcmp=239

Maintaining humility, avoiding hubris, working hard, working for the benefit of others, having a realistic sense of purpose and ambition, respecting oneself and others, trying constantly to improve as an individual human being - these are all aspects of spiritual intelligence, and key attributes in becoming a fully evolved and fully actualised human being. [see Layer 20 - A Positive View of Human Potential]

If the England management would like to get in touch, then Oxzen can supply them with a comprehensive list of 'virtues' to aim for and develop.

And talking of virtues - much respect to Ricky Ponting for the way he conducts himself both on and off the field - recently in very difficult circumstances. Australia have been very fortunate to have him as their leader. People have been using words like 'humiliation' as a consquence of England's recent excellence and Australia's struggles, but Ponting, in spite of playing well below his best, has maintained his dignity pretty much all the time, whilst still competing strongly and showing proper aggression on the field. He was also capable of showing his largeness of spirit in the way he congratulated his opponents after the match, after such a crushing defeat.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/dec/06/the-ashes-2010-pietersen-clarke

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/06/the-ashes-2010-second-test
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Layer 379 . . . Education, Supporting Teachers, Changing Schools, Ken Robinson, and a Royal Wedding

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Aaaaaarrrgggghhhh! Camilla described the announcement of the royal engagement as "wicked"!!!!!!!!!!!

According to Wikipedia, William Windsor (known as Billy), was a goat who served as a lance corporal in the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh, an infantry battalion of the British Army, from 2001 until 2009.

William and Kate are both 28 years old and complete twats. Embarrassingly so.

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For more on the value of silence, and on instinctual intelligence and intuition - visit Layer 104.

Also this page in the London Review of Books for a list of books about silence -

http://www.lrbshop.co.uk/home.php?cat=418

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Start The Week

"Through poetry we can make the people we love live forever."

On Start The Week this week there was a conversation about the way in which a great poem can make someone - i.e. its subject - immortal. A great poem can capture the absolute essence of someone. The really great thing about Dylan's tribute poem to Woody Guthrie is that it captures the spirit of the man and his life without really describing the man at all - simply likening him to a lamp or a candle or an oil well, or the magnificence of the Grand Canyon, or a bringer of hope. That's real brilliance.

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Education Oxzen

Katharine Birbalsingh and John Bangs were on the radio yesterday talking about underachievement and behaviour in English schools. Ms B, of course, created a stir by speaking out polemically at the recent Tory party conference.

How to improve classroom discipline, eh? Hmmmmmm.

Ms B believes we need to be 'a lot harder', impose 'a lot more structure', and 'show less compassion' towards the problem kids. Oh well - that should do it.

Thankfully John Bangs spoke really well about the need to make learning "far more exciting, far more relevant". He accused Ms B of talking 'hyperbolae', though he meant hyperbole. He recommended we pay attention to what people like Tony Sewell say about anger management, about motivating kids properly, and about using 'a range of disciplinary techniques and classroom strategies'. He also pointed out that it's not helpful to make generalisations about schools.

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To really understand what's wrong in our most challenging schools it's worth reading the whole of an article that was published in today's Education Guardian.

Why are new teachers leaving in droves?

Nearly half of all newly qualified teachers leave the profession within five years. Charlie Carroll went on the road for a year, working in the most challenging schools, to find out why

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/16/teaching-problem-schools

The idea, when it came, was fully formed, sparked by a surprising statistic I read one morning in the staffroom: nearly half of all England's newly qualified teachers were leaving the profession within their first five years.

I wanted to know why.

So I took to the road to find out:

I spent a year travelling through the 10 areas of the country that were deemed as having the most challenging schools, one month in each, and teaching in those schools. By witnessing the frontline, I could find an answer to why so many teachers were fleeing the profession, and I could journey through my own country – and experience it as I never had before.

My working day was dominated by confrontations with aggressive, disaffected or miserable teenagers.

These were children with a proliferation of asbos; children on terrifyingly high dosages of Ritalin; some with criminal records and, already in their short lives, histories of violence.

I had also seen in these challenging areas some wonderful schools, which, beset as they were with their difficult intake, would still thrive against the odds – three of the schools I had worked at in particularly difficult areas had achieved outstanding status in their most recent Ofsted inspections. What was it, then, that set these schools apart?

It had felt to me in these schools that a teacher really could make a difference. Supported by good and hands-on senior management teams – rather than by shadowy headteachers who rarely enter their classrooms – the teachers knew that any sanctions they implemented would be backed up, which empowered them, in turn, to support and encourage their students to achieve to the best of their capabilities. In one school, when a pupil shouted an expletive at me, the head put him on a temporary exclusion for swearing at a teacher. This kind of thing is what counts.

My aim had been to find out why so many teachers were leaving. And I think I did find my answer – a score of them, in fact, and a few ideas about what can be done to make things better. In order to stop teachers leaving, it's useless throwing money at them (no teacher teaches for the money), or implementing structural innovations such as academies or free schools. Instead, changes need to be made at a much more fundamental, frontline level, which involves supporting teachers and assisting them to support their students to learn and achieve to their maximum capability – which is, after all, what teachers train to do.

Such changes are not dramatic or expensive. They merely require a slight shift in the cultural attitude. With more power to stop violence in the classrooms, with more freedom to exclude those students who cannot cope with mainstream education, with smaller class-sizes, with an enhanced communication between teachers and parents, with protection for teachers against the overwhelming fear of litigation, with the encouragement of a zero-tolerance approach to such unacceptable misbehaviour as violence and psychological abuse (such as cyber-bullying), and with the removal of the league table culture – where schools are unfairly ranked by a cold system of results-based numbers – perhaps teachers would be encouraged to remain in their profession and continue to provide the service so invaluable to this country's future.

I still teach, and at times still love it, but I don't know for how much longer. For, until such changes are implemented, it is this teacher's opinion that the professional exodus will continue.

• Charlie Carroll is a pseudonym. All names have been changed. On The Edge by Charlie Carroll is published by Monday Books, price £8.99.

The great thing about this piece is that hits the nail right on the head. Yes, there are poor teachers who can't cut the mustard and can't cope, but there are also thousands of teachers who would be able to cope and even do well if they had the proper backing of senior management that are determined to get to grips with the really challenging kids and their families. It's true that this requires the determination to spend hundreds of hours of unstinting attention focused on the aggressive and disruptive kids, talking with and counselling children and parents - but there simply is no other way.

You try to understand why the kids are unable to show proper self-control and why they lack so much emotional and social and spiritual intelligence. Then you make it very clear to them where the boundaries lie, and what action will be taken if they fail to control themselves, fail to opt into the school's ethos, and fail to keep within the boundaries. You then apply the sanctions you have outlined in your discussions, which will be gradual, and not harsh, but will eventually end with fixed term and even permanent exclusions.

Of course this assumes that the school is also doing its utmost to make every part of every day worthwhile for the kids - enjoyable, stimulating, rewarding, creative, satisfying and motivating. The child has to WANT to come to school.

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Ken Robinson and the Coming Education Revolution

Everyone who's interested in education simply has to take a look at this brilliant video of Ken Robinson talking about education and schools, and changing paradigms:

http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/video-sir-ken-robinson-changing-education-paradigms-rsanimate/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded

http://www.sirkenrobinson.com/

Also this TED talk:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4964296663335083307#

See also Layers 162, 171 and 233. 

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Here's something I've missed about Sats, the schools' boycott, the NUT, the NAHT, and Gove

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315657/End-SATs-11-year-olds-2-years-teachers-boycott.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1192939/Tories-pledge-abolish-SAT-tests-11-year-old-children.html
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Layer 104 Gore Vidal, New Approaches to Politics, and Instinctual Intelligence.

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The Guardian’s New York Review of Books supplement yesterday carried a review by Jonathan Raban of a new collection of Gore Vidal’s essays (chosen by Jay Parini), under the headline ‘The Prodigious Pessimist’.

In the review Raban points out that the phrase “goré vidal” in Russian means ‘he has seen great grief!’, and sometimes colloquially, “fuck you!”. Synonyms for ‘goré’ include disaster, calamity, misery, anguish, woe, melancholy, depression and yearning.

Vidal actually changed his first name to Gore when he was 14 years old - from Eugene - supposedly on account of the fact that his maternal grandfather was Senator T.P. Gore of Oklahoma. However . . . who’s to say such a precocious wit didn’t know exactly what he was doing?

As Raban goes on to say, “Grief is his speciality as an essayist, most particularly grief over the decline of the United States from the best hope of the Enlightenment, via its disreputable adventures as a land-grabbing imperial power . . . to its present sorry condition of mass functional illiteracy and corrupt and bloody-handed government . . .”

Some years ago a Guardian reviewer wrote, “Gore Vidal is the most elegant, erudite and eclectic writer of his generation”. That’s about a good an epitaph as any writer could aspire to.

An Observer reviewer said, “Vidal’s combination of learning, wit and distain gets into your blood. He can change the way you think.”

Melvyn Bragg put it like this: “Vidal is the outstanding literary radical of America.”

For many years Vidal exiled himself to southern Italy, and lived in a villa near Sorrento. It’s crazy that he’s so little known or appreciated in this country.

The most recent book of his essays that I have in my collection is one published in 2002 - “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace”, subtitled “How We Got To Be So Hated - Causes Of Conflict In The Last Empire.”

Those essays focus on the destruction caused by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City in 1995 and by Osama bin Laden in NYC and Washington in 2001. A key paragraph in the introduction says,

“Things just happen out there in the American media, and we consumers don’t need to be told the why of anything. Certainly those of us who are in the why-business have a difficult time getting through the corporate-sponsored American media, as I discovered when I tried to explain McVeigh in Vanity Fair, or when, since September 11, my attempts to get published have met with failure.”

Clearly it’s not helpful to finding an American publisher when he writes paragraphs like,

“Since 1947 America has been the chief and pioneering perpetrator of “preemptive” state terror, exclusively in the Third World and therefore widely dissembled. Besides the unexceptional subversion and overthrow of governments in competition with the Soviet Union . . . Washington has resorted to political assassinations, surrogate death squads, and unseemly freedom fighters (e.g. bin Laden). It masterminded the killing of Lumumba and Allende; and it unsuccessfully tried to put to death Castro, Khadafi and Saddam Hussein; and vetoed all efforts to rein in not only Israel’s violation of international agreements and [U.N.] resolutions, but also its practice of preemptive state terror.”

Bearing in mind that this was written before Bush and Cheney really got going in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s no wonder that so many of us are now looking at Barack Obama and wondering what the hell’s going to happen to him, and asking what he can realistically do to change the entire culture and the values of a country (and in particular its political establishment) that was once “the best hope of the Enlightenment”.

As it happens the lead story on the front page of the Observer today is

Obama's revolution on climate change

Barack Obama ushered in a revolution in America's response to global warming yesterday when he appointed one of the world's leading climate change experts as his administration's chief scientist.

The president-elect's decision to make Harvard physicist John Holdren director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reveals a new determination to draw a line under eight years of US policy that have seen George Bush steadfastly reject overwhelming evidence of climate change.

News of the appointment was hailed by scientists around the world, including former UK chief government scientific adviser Sir David King. "This is a superb appointment," he told the Observer.

Revolutionary stuff indeed. And it goes on:

In one telling remark, he added that respect for the scientific process was not "just about providing investment and resources. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted nor obscured by politics nor ideology."

So here’s a U.S president-elect telling the world that ‘politics’ and ‘ideology’ are not going to be allowed to get in the way of solving the world’s problems, and that henceforward policy and programmes in the United States are going to be formulated with reference to facts, to science, and to truth. Which is nice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/21/obama-climate-change-john-holdren

It also leads into the next item, which is:

“Any Questions?”

A very interesting edition of the programme went out on Radio 4 yesterday - the panel was completely politician-free. And it contained Shami Chakrabarti (CBE) and Joan Bakewell (DBE), who are always good value, and pretty wonderful human beings.

Shami was shortlisted in the Channel 4 Political Awards 2006 for the "Most Inspiring Political Figure" award. The award was voted for by the public and she came second to Jamie Oliver - beating Tony Blair, David Cameron and George Galloway. Not a lot of people know that.

Shami made a point of saying on air that the show was so much better for the absence of Parliamentarians. And so it was. The quality of discussion was excellent - intelligent, respectful, insightful and enlightening. No dumb-ass political posturing on fixed positions spouted by political robots who’ve been prepped and briefed to death by Party apparatchiks prior to the programme.

Clearly the majority of our elected ‘representatives’ are incapable of doing any thinking that’s in any way creative, unbiased, not self-serving or otherwise enlightened. There’s always calculation in everything they say - or at least 90% of it, which amounts to the same thing since it’s not reasonable to expect the rest of us to even bother with trying to work out which bits just might be worth believing.

After the broadcast you couldn’t help but ask yourself what Parliament would be like if it was full of enlightened Independents with integrity like Shami and Joan. I for one would like to see both of them in Parliament, but not (out of pity for them) in Parliament in its present form.

And certainly not through having to join either New Labour or the Tory party and having to suffer all the party political bullshit that MPs normally go through as they climb the greasy pole towards becoming a Parliamentary candidate. What a destructive, desperate waste of their time and talent that would be. And what a waste of time once they actually got there, as I’m sure the fast-tracked Glenda Jackson would agree.

In an anarcho-syndicalist system of representation every MP would be elected as an Independent, standing on account of their own views, ideology and characters, and not needing to pretend to agree with the views of a party hierarchy. On entering Parliament they would group together in syndicates both large and small in order to pursue agreed political programmes and agendas.

A system of proportional representation would at least be a small move towards this, since it would allow small parties that have a decent level of support nationwide to get access to the Commons. But it wouldn’t change the nature of our system, which is about individuals and coalitions we call ‘parties’ vying for power, instead of enlightened individuals coalescing around ideas and policies.

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Instinctual Intelligence

Guy Browning’s columns in Guardian Weekend are always good value. Yesterday’s was “How To . . . Be Instinctive.

Quotes:

The iPod is the enemy of instinct . . . Instinct can make itself heard only in silence, which is why it's almost completely unnoticed and unused in the modern world.

Instinct acts as a kind of behavioural satnav. It's a quiet and reassuring inner voice that will always give you guidance, provided you can be bothered to tune into it.

Instinct is the accumulated wisdom of a thousand generations of human beings hard-wired into our little heads. Sadly, this is then very quickly obscured by the formal process of education.

This irony-filled column would be quite amusing if it’s wasn’t so tragically true that the formal process of education never addresses the need to cultivate and nurture instinctual intelligence, and in fact wipes out any possibility of developing it.

Listening to inner voices and inner feelings is not what instinctual intelligence is all about. As the ironic Len Cohen says,

“I don’t trust my inner feelings,
Inner feelings come and go.”

It’s the perennial problem of differentiating between feelings, emotions, thoughts and instincts, and it’s crucially important that we’re educated into being able to do so. Which is quite a difficult thing to do in a world where teachers and professors aren’t themselves able to do it, or even see the need to do it - to make it central to what goes on in schools, if we really want kids to have a 3-D all-round array of intelligences - intellectual, emotional, social, physical, spiritual and instinctual.

Schools need to teach the theory and practice of sitting (or walking) in silence - to cultivate our readiness and our ability to let what’s within come to the surface of our consciousness, and develop our readiness and ability to focus on what’s within.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/dec/20/ipod-instinct
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Review of Childcare Protection

The NSPCC has become involved in the great debate about the quality of our childcare services.

A damning indictment of childcare services has been made by the NSPCC, accusing both the government and local authorities of abandoning vulnerable children in "extremely dangerous situations".

In a submission to Lord Laming's Review of Child Protection, commissioned by the government after the case of Baby P, the charity paints a devastating picture of childcare services in the UK. Its report reveals a lack of high-level political leadership and calls for substantial changes to the law.

It goes on to condemn local authorities and the government for "losing focus" on child protection issues and criticises a "rule of optimism" among frontline child protection professionals, including social workers. This attitude, the charity says, frequently blinds professionals to the truth of child abuse by families and carers.

The submission denounces the government's lack of focus in child protection issues and reveals a frontline culture paralysed by a lack of trust between professional agencies. It also reveals that social workers are struggling to meet "absurdly" high government thresholds for intervention and allocation of services.

"The NSPCC has been keen to avoid adding fuel to the public outrages generated in recent months, but we are extremely concerned about the fragility of the system," said Wes Cuell, the charity's acting chief executive. "Organisations are struggling to cope with the number of new initiatives to implement and the workforce, which has a number of vacancies and is relatively inexperienced, is being overwhelmed by the complexity of what it is being ask to do."

But the NSPCC's report reveals that, far from improving the system, the Climbié inquiry reforms have weakened local authorities' focus on protecting children. "This has, tragically, been the inadvertent consequence of the inquiry's emphasis on a broader safeguarding agenda, with its emphasis on prevention, early intervention and the supporting of vulnerable parents," said Cuell.

Maggie Atkinson, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, said she found the NSPCC's criticisms of leadership "harder to accept" than those of the system."

Well Maggie would, wouldn’t she? As for me, I say - did any of the Directors of Children’s Services whom she’s trying to shield from criticism ever stand up and denounce the ‘system’ she’s actually willing to criticise? And if they haven’t stood up and put their heads above the parapet then they’re complicit and therefore guilty of a failure of leadership - for that alone, let alone the ineffectualness of their departments.

What are you actually saying, Maggie? They were just following orders? Is that what we pay these people to do?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/21/nspcc-childcare-services-laming-review
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Layer 98 Morris Minors, Outliers, Outright Liars and Oasis.

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Now here’s a thought. The Morris Minor is 60 next year. And someone called Martin Wainwright has just published its ‘biography’. It’s a vehicle that’s still seen on our roads, in spite of having been developed and manufactured initially way back at the end of the 1940’s, when all cars had proper wheel arches, chrome bumpers, thin tyres, wing mirrors, if any, on the front wings, and chrome wheelcaps.

Those were the days - the 1950’s - when new council estates like ours had streets that were virtually car-free, and the few cars you saw parked on them tended to be ancient black Austins, Morrises, Standards, Hillmans, Fords and Vauxhalls, some of them with semaphore indicators, not flashing lights.

I happened to notice when I was out walking the dog yesterday that most of the vehicles in my relatively downmarket part of the city are now BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, VWs, Citroens and Renaults, with a scattering of Fords and Vauxhalls. Not many of them new or nearly-new, but all the same - quality vehicles that are comfortable, quick, safe and reliable.

The Morris Minor was none of those things, but what it did have, and still has, is character and charm. It had individuality and a certain funkiness. It’s a legend, like that other Issigonis classic, the Mini. See also the Beetle, the Fiat 500, and the Deux Chevaux. It’s ripe for an update, a revamp, a retro makeover.

Kathryn Hughes’ review of the new book about the Morris Minor mentions the possibility of a complete update and a new version, but also points out that the Nanjing Automobile Corporation of China has, since 2005, owned all the rights to the Morris marque.

It’s impossible to imagine that VW or Fiat (or GM, Ford and Chrysler for that matter) would ever let their brand die and be sold off to the highest bidder, but we do things differently here, and New Labour, like Thatch, has been no respecter of the traditions and skills of our Midlands motor manufacturers, designers, engineers, craftsmen and assemblers, and all that their industry did to help win the last war and bring prosperity to this country when the war ended.

One day I’ll get round to writing a long meditation on what I saw from the inside, as a trainee and a ‘commercial apprentice’ (and I still have my certificate of apprenticeship), within the Midlands motor industry. What a sorry tale of management incompetence and failure that was - with the unions of course getting all the blame for all the problems that caused the indigenous UK motor industry to flounder and sink.

What a sorry tale of management arrogance, incompetence and gross negligence. How could any decent management possibly have allowed the manufacture of rubbish like the Austin Allegro and the Morris Marina, which no sensible person wanted to buy?

A green Morris Minor van was the first commercial vehicle I ever drove, in my first ever job, working part time delivering unwrapped bread for what would now be called a ‘boutique bakery’ - a wonderful Victorian bakehouse set at the end of a row of terraced Victorian houses. I was seventeen and had just passed my driving test in a mark one Vauxhall Viva. Lovely car. Excellent gear change, as I recall. Even then it made the Morris seem outmoded and past its sell-by date.

I’d started the job when the bakery was still delivering bread from two 2-wheeled horse-drawn vans, and as a fifteen year old I had to learn from my cousin how to feed, groom, saddle up and insert the horses between the shafts of the vans. And then I had to learn how to drive them safely on city streets, where many drivers were startled to see such vehicles trundling around like some sort of throwback or apparition from a bygone age.

The two horses, which were stabled right next to the door of the bakehouse, had very different characters. By the time I started they were quite old, and after a couple of years the decision was made to replace them with two Morris Minor vans. Truly the end of an era.

So the Minor has always had a special significance for me, and I feel nostalgic about it, as do many people who take the trouble to keep thousands of them running in spite of their unfitness for purpose.

The wonderful Tony Hawks even had a band called Morris Minor and the Majors, which you can check out on youtube, performing the magnificent Stutter Rap:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JAIOzM7SsMo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Minor_and_the_Majors

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This weekend I’ve read two other reviews that are worth noting:

1. Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell.

Clearly Gladwell has been a minor sensation on his recent visit to this country to promote his book and his ideas.

A couple of quotes from the review, by Derek Draper:

The crucial factor in achieving the extraordinary is to be in circumstances that allow sustained development of innate talent - "a kind of accidental 'hot-housing'" . . .

(NB all those responsible for education policy)

Gladwell does more than regurgitate. He first identifies and then takes hitherto obscure ideas, fills them out into a compelling narrative and adds plenty of anecdote and drama, before finding for them a mass and appreciative audience.

At the book's heart is the revelation that pure intelligence isn't enough. What great successes need is not the highest IQ but a high IQ, accompanied by other factors. What he's saying, in a message that should be seized on by anyone who regards themselves as progressive, is that it is society that provides the conditions for success, rather than the super-talented individual alone.

(The message should also be that other sorts of intelligence plus creativity and imagination are essential, and that IQ alone achieves nothing.)

Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer . . . reached the pinnacle of achievement because his family taught him the social skills necessary to work his way through numerous obstacles.

(NB social intelligence)

Gladwell's previous two books, Tipping Point and Blink, sold nearly five million copies. They eloquently argued that social phenomena are spread in the same way as disease, and that our instinct can be more valid than our circumspection.

(This is a crucial point - that we need to understand and appreciate the importance of instinctual intelligence. Interestingly I had a conversation with my son this morning about how dogs, for example, live entirely in the present, and by instinct, or instinctual intelligence. They have no reference to either the past or the future, and cannot deal with anything through intellectual processes. Trainers of dogs understand that you cannot make a dog learn anything through either punishing them or rewarding them for something that happened even a short time previously - you have to act on what they’re currently doing in order to reinforce or diminish a certain ‘instinct’ or tendency, or else forget about it.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/dec/06/review-outliers-malcolm-gladwell


2. The Hugo Young Papers edited by Ion Trewin - reviewed by Chris Patten

A few quotations:

This is not the single focus of the self-centred diary of a bit-part shit or of a grander political beast on the post-retirement financial make; this is what a balanced and intelligent man found out about what was happening in Britain and beyond over a generation. For anyone interested in the politics of our times, this is a gold mine. Bring your drills, hammers and chisels, and start digging.

For any serious journalist, this volume must be an object lesson in how a clever practitioner should pursue the professional quest for information and insight.

As a peerless political commentator, an old-fashioned liberal intellectual with a rigorous attachment to values and principle, he managed to keep in play a range of contacts that spanned the political firmament, including many whose political careers had never been touched by his own instinctive liberalism.

In this volume, Blair is the missing prince, or perhaps gravedigger. He was clearly one of a small number of politicians who declined to allow the record of their conversations with Young to be published, even after some necessary revision. He stands at the heart of the tale that wends its extraordinary way through these pages - Britain's bizarre relationship with its principal chosen instrument in the pursuit of its national interest, the European Union.

[Blair was] a prime minister who frittered away the large majorities lavished on him by the electorate and who forsook the chance to augment Britain's influence in Europe, choosing instead to provide fawning and sanctimonious support for Washington's dirty work in the Middle East. So, as Young wrote from his deathbed, our country ceased to be sovereign, making the sort of sacrifice of independence never required in the EU, and was left by Blair "in abject thrall to Bush and his gang". The moral contempt scorches the page.

Talk about looking back in anger - these eleven wasted years; these years of disastrous, unproductive, neo-conservative, neo-thatcherite arrogance, stupidity and cowardice .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/dec/06/hugo-young-chris-patten-blair-brown

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Looking Back In Anger

And talking about arrogance and stupidity, and looking back in anger, there was a long and very revealing article in the Weekend magazine yesterday about Noel Gallacher and Oasis. I’ve never understood their popularity, though by listening to Mr G talking to Russell Brand live on the radio I’ve come to appreciate that he’s a very bright and quick-witted individual with a really good sense of humour.

The music, however, and his appreciation of music, is another story. The magazine piece begins;

Noel Gallagher is listing the world's 10 greatest bands on his fingers, and working out where Oasis sit among this lot. "The Beatles, Stones, Who, Sex Pistols, Kinks, Jam, Smiths, Stone Roses, Bee Gees." He pauses. "I'm putting us at seven ahead of the Smiths cos we've done more." It's classic Gallagher, the great Mancunian motormouth.

It’s complete bollocks is what it is. Where do you even start with someone who thinks like that? Those aren’t even Britain’s greatest bands, let alone the world’s. What they are is just a selection of the best ever POP music bands. The Stones and The Who are the only ones with any blues or R & B roots. The Jam and the Stone Roses are just terrible anyway, though the Beatles had a touch of genius and the Bee Gees wrote and performed some brilliant eclectic songs that appeal to a very wide range of people and age groups.

The Sex Pistols and The Smiths are English eccentrics, brilliant in their own way, but not capable of long life due to the fact that they wrote so little that was of the very highest calibre, and also because of the personality defects of their key members.

The character defects of the Gallacher brothers are very well known, though Noel, at least, used to have some musical talent. But how can he seriously ignore the true greats of the musical firmament - people like Cohen and Dylan, Hendrix and Santana, let alone the great jazzers and bluesmen. This is pure ignorance and stupidity.

Live Forever [from ‘Definitely Maybe’] was Oasis' first top 10 hit - a unique mix of raucous rock and drunken optimism. But while their first album anticipated success, the second (What's The Story) Morning Glory? was about rock'n'roll fulfilment. There was a sense of wistfulness in the famous ballads, Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger, as if Gallagher was already nostalgic for something that had barely started. These two songs became the supreme arm-in-arm, cigarette-lighter anthems of the 90s. They were also archetypal Oasis songs - loaded with emotional meaning, and yet virtually meaningless in themselves (what is a wonderwall, why is Sally waiting, who exactly is looking back in anger?).

He says he often didn't understand his lyrics, yet the larger meaning is transparent - the yearning for something better.

Well if HE didn’t ‘understand’ his damn lyrics then it’s no wonder nobody else could either. As for ‘yearning for something better’ - is that supposed to be insightful, profound or enlightening? ‘Cos it’s not.

Noel regrets that Oasis never did well in America. Well I have to tell him, one of the reasons for that was because Oasis were not very good. America has thousands of decent bands that play great music with real musicianship and some great vocalists. Liam looks, behaves and sounds like a twat. And according to Noel, Liam was supposed to be the focal point and the star attraction of the band. Duh! He was such a tosser he didn’t even manage to get on the plane for the band’s first tour of the USA. Though that could have been a clever move on his part, if he sensed that American audiences were going to react very badly to his drunken, yobbish uselessness.

What interests me is how he managed to keep going when he thought his best work was behind him. He says maybe he shouldn't have done. After Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger became national anthems, he struggled.

"Between ‘Be Here Now’ and ‘Don't Believe The Truth‘, which spans five years, I was putting out records for the sake of it. We shouldn't have bothered, I didn't have anything to write about."

The trouble is nobody told him he was writing rubbish songs. Liam would tell him everything was great because he'd be desperate to get back in the studio and record something new.

"A lot of it I listen to and think only an egomaniac would convince himself that that was worth putting on. I say to my manager, 'You told me it was brilliant.' And he goes, 'Well, you don't tell the goose that laid the golden egg that his arse is blocked up, do you?' " If he'd been really brave, he says, he would have called it a day after Definitely Maybe.

"Morning Glory is for the squares... It's up there with all those great crossover albums like Thriller, and the greatest-selling albums of all time like Phil Collins and Genesis."

So if Morning Glory is just mediocre, meaningless mush that’s ‘for the squares’, which it is, then clearly Oasis should have quit right after their very first album. And yet he has the gall to say Oasis are the seventh greatest band in the world? What an idiot.

As for the Oasis/Blur rivalry, Mr G says,

"Looking back now that fight's all so pathetic over two really quite shit pop songs."

And that’s all that Oasis have ever been about - some really quite shit pop songs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/06/noel-gallagher-oasis

PS Noel couldn’t write decent lyrics, but what he could do was put together some music that had some interesting and satisfying chord changes and some good melodies. Credit where it’s due. Unfortunately that’s not enough to make him a good songwriter.
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