Extraordinary Discourse Podcast

Rocking The Narrative From Jesus the economist to naughty little monkeys. Chinese Art and Greek Art Rumi/Barks The Prophet said, “There are some who see me by the same light in which I am seeing them. Our natures are one. Without reference to any strands of lineage, without reference to texts or traditions, we drink the life-water together.” Here’s a story about that hidden mystery: The Chinese and the Greeks were arguing as to who were the better artists. The king said, “We’ll settle this matter with a debate.” The Chinese began talking, but the Greeks wouldn’t say anything. They left. The Chinese suggested then that they each be given a room to work on with their artistry, two rooms facing each other and divided by a curtain. The Chinese asked the king for a hundred colors, all the variations, and each morning they came to where the dyes were kept and took them all. The Greeks took no colors. “They’re not part of our work.” They wen...

Elephants In The School System The theme of schooling has played a part in this mural since the beginning: here it surfaces as the dominant theme for the duration of this associational documentary. So here are the great educational mavericks, those powerful defenders of children who saw and named the elephants in the school system. Links: The Ultimate History Lesson, five hours with John Taylor Gatto School Sucks Podcast John Holt on YouTube A. S. Neill on YouTube 1 What did you learn in school today, Dear little boy of mine?  What did you learn in school today, Dear little boy of mine?  I learned that Washington never told a lie, I learned that soldiers seldom die, I learned that everybody's free, That's what the teacher said to me, And that's what I learned in school today, That's what I learned in school. 2 What did you learn in school today, Dear little boy of mine? What did you learn in school today, Dear little boy of...

High-value flotsam on the rising tide That rocks all boats I think it's [the Occupy movement] thrown open an almost kaleidoscopic sense of possibility... We have no idea yet where it all might lead if the democratic culture we're trying to build really does take root. The main thing Occupy did was to throw open the imagination, to get us to start thinking on a scale and grandeur appropriate to the times. David Graeber 'A Kaleidoscopic Sense of Possibility': Interview with David Graeber on Democracy in America Lynn Stuart Parramore AlterNet

Chopped Chautauqua There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after. J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit Sometimes game-changing, immensely lucrative epiphanies lie on the far side of seemingly esoteric inquiries. Questioning the Mission of College New York Times By FRANK BRUNI Published: April 20, 2013

Freedom Dossier Fun with fear, death, slavery, and much else! I know of no other manner of dealing with great tasks than as play. Nietzsche In the world to come, each of us will be called to account for all the good things God put on earth which we refused to enjoy. The Talmud In the language of enchantment, there is this sense of a living continuum that cannot be cut up or divided because of the symbiotic interactions and interpenetrations of everything within it. The lexicon is enormously wide, its spheres of reference global. Everywhere, categories overlap. Surprise synchronistic connections lead us into spell-binding ecstasy. Things configure in their own way, woven together as if in some divine aesthetic kaleidoscope. This is not doctrinal religious practice, but an aspect of "opening to shakti"-the dynamic life force that animates everything. One could say that these works are beautiful, except that the word itself all but vanishes in the glit...

Liberation Miscellany We have to be in the culture making business, and soon. Real culture is not built on bad myths of superiority or inevitability or victory. It is built by people willing to learn and remember the stories that slipped from view, the rest of the truth that the empire won’t authorize. Stephen Jenkinson

Hints from the Edge Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. Jesus, Matt 13, 47 The chorus of springtime sings: Commodity labor for necessities sucks. It is a mass distraction, a miserable diversion from our evolutionary potential, which is teetering on the edge of a birth - or our death. These long trains of thoughts, past towns familiar and unfamiliar, are hints from the edge, looking down and in (depth psychology) and out to the socioeconomy in contractions or throes or both.