October 23, 2002
Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada
12:02amYesterday, Suzy mailed me Never cry Wolf, by the famous Canadian biologist Farley Mowat. The wording flows easily like a good book should, and it is humorous. I finished reading the second chapter in psychology class tonight with Tom. The prof was knowledgeable, but the presentation was dry and I struggled to pay attention. I learned more from the movie that took up the second half. The eloquent speech and visual aid made it entertaining.
A prof in the film said that he and three colleagues emitted themselves into psychiatric hospitals saying they heard voices in their head, then acted as normal once in. On average, he said each patient receives only 6 minutes or less of contact with staff per day, and rarely do they get visitors. He said psychiatric hospitals often become "storehouses for the sick;" its where we put people who don't fit into our society. And often the caregivers even become desensitized and don't give the respect they deserve as human beings.
Back in the middle ages, mentally ill people were thought to have demons, and often got tortured and killed. Rebels and intellectuals who challenged authorities were also labeled insane and locked up. Black slaves in the American south where said to have a psychological disease called "traptamania"-- the obsession to seek freedom, for which they were locked up or shot.
"Anyone can be mentally ill depending on the situation," the Phd. said, and it can occur at anytime in life from a flu fever, a car crash or taking drugs such as acid. 3-6 million American woman have fear of open spaces, agoraphobia, which includes leaving the house, going to a store or anywhere there are people. Mom tells me it's because their nerves are shot from lack of B vitamins. "The best sources of B-vitamins are in whole grains usually," she says, and north Americans eat too much refined food like white beard and white rice that have the nutrient rich kernel removed leaving only the white starch. The article she just handed me says, "White flour has lost 93% of its fiber, 95% of its vitamin B1, 79% of its B2, 87% of its B3, 89% of its B6, 76% of its pantothenic acid, all its folic acid, all its biotin, and all it's vitamin E."
Last week I dropped into an old folks home asking for old lumber stacked out front looking ready for the dump. Waiting for the carpenter, I went into the dingy bleak common room where a half dozen mentally ill old folk were silently staring at a small TV bolted to the ceiling in the opposite corner of the room. The framed copies of paintings on the walls were faded brownish orange and dusty. "So do you ever get any entertainment in here?" I asked. A middle aged man, the youngest by far, bearded with a ball cap and weighing about 300 pounds, pointed to the TV, "That's it." No body visits. They were the people society didn't know what to do with, and the forgotten. It was so sad. So little stimulus. If you were not deathly depressed when you went in... you would be soon after.
The video also said that "manic depression is the common cold of psychology." Mr. X accused me of being manic, and maybe I am a little-- bouncing intensely between euphoric elation and sorrow for the world. Real problems occur when people feel that there is no hope things will get better, which can lead to life draining anxiety, substance abuse and suicide. When I start to feel myself getting pulled down for whatever reason, I go outside for a reality check, swing in the forest or visit a friend. With school and work so often structured as it is, it is not always so easy for everyone. Tom often gets depressed when he doesn't get to climb enough. It gives us a fix of adrenaline and serotonin, and a shift in perspective on life, forcing us to focus on the present moment at hand, not troubles of the past or uncertainties in the future.
After psychology class, over a 12 inch works pizza at Romanos, Tom and I discussed coming to terms with the transience of life, how health and the carefree nature of youth are fleeting. He told me about coming across a chart detailing levels of happiness and at the top was self-actualization, the ability to be completely satisfied with where you are in life and try to make the best out of every situation. This is what we need to be teaching in schools, and living-- awareness of spirit and positive thinking.
Gary, the waiter, sat down with us, as there was no one else in the restaurant, and we talked about how it is stupid that the senate is still appointed not elected; that tax money should stay in our community for health and education where it can be accounted for, not squandered on bureaucracy; how the highways should have tolls like in Nova Scotia-- user pays; and how Torontoians with burning eyes gridlocked in traffic and rich Americans who see our land is on sale 50% because of the weak Canadian dollar are starting to buy up our province seeking peace and quiet-- especially after 911.
Last week after political Science class, Tom and I went to a friend's apartment to jam and I found this:
As long as people are terrified and blindly obedient-- regardless of the legitimacy of the sources of these emotions - a state of national security acts as a smoke screen to veil unjustified and illegal attacks on civil liberties at home, as well as obfuscate aggressive policies abroad which, ironically, will only provoke more incidents like the crimes against humanity that claimed more than 3000 lives in New York. Fear has pushed the Patriot Act through, indefinitely restricting our First and Fourth amendment rights, an on October 2, 343 billion of the dollars that were nowhere to be found for healthcare, homeless shelter, school or social security, were funneled straight into the pockets of Boeing, General Electric, Lockheed and others. If we are not vigilant, fear will shut down our systems of checks and balances, extending the WTO and approve union busting Fast Track, putting thousands out of work here at home at the very least.
From: The Smell of Smoke, by Margot Pepper, from a collection of writing called September 11 and the US War - Beyond the Curtain of Smoke, by Roger Burbach and Ben Clarke.
The following are excerpts from Dumbing Us Down, The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, writing by New York State teacher of the year, John Taylor Gatto. I'd been wanting to read it for awhile and found it at Leanne's house. She got it from the library.
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.
It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its "homework."
Whatever education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who enjoys whatever they are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.
What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is one right way to proceed with growing up. That's an ancient Egyptian idea symbolized by the pyramid with an eye on top that's on the other side of George Washington on our one-dollar bill. Everyone is a stone defined by position on the pyramid. This theory has been presented in many different ways, but at the bottom it signals the worldview of minds obsessed that control of other minds, obsessed by dominance and strategies of intervention to maintain that dominance.
Mass-education cannot work to produce a fair society because its daily practice is practice in rigged competition, suppression, and intimidation. The schools we've allowed to develop can't work to teach nonmaterial values, the values which give meaning to everyone's life, rich or poor, because the structure of schooling is held together by Byzantine tapestry of reward and favor, grades, other trinkets of subordination; these have no connection with education-- they are paraphernalia of servitude, not freedom.
Turn your back on national solutions and toward communities of families as successful laboratories. Let us turn inward until we master the first directive of any philosophy worth of a name, "Know Thyself." Encourage and underwrite experimentation; trust children and families to know what is best for themselves; stop the segregation of children and the aged in walled compounds; involve everyone in the community in the education of the young: businesses, institutions, old people, whole families; look for local solutions in place of a corporate one. You need not fear educational consequences: reading, writing, and arithmetic aren't very hard to teach if you take pains to see that compulsion and the school agenda don't short circuit each individual's private appointment with themselves to learn these things. There is abundant evidence that less than a hundred hours is sufficient for a person to become totally literate and a self-teacher. Don't be panicked by scare tactics into surrendering your children to experts.
Teaching must, I think, be decertified as quickly as possible. That certified teaching experts like myself are deemed necessary to make learning happen is a fraud and a scam. Look around you: the results of teacher-college are in the schools you see. Let anybody who wants to, teach; give families back their tax money to pick and choose-- who could possibly be a better shopper if the means for comparison were made available? Restore the congregation system by encouraging competition after a truly unmanipulated free-market model-- in that way the social dialectic can come back to life. Trust in families and neighborhoods and individuals to make sense of the important question, What is education for?" If some of them answer differently than you might prefer, that's really not your business, and shouldn't be your problem. Our type of schooling has deliberately concealed that such a question must be framed and not taken for granted if anything beyond a mockery of democracy is to be nurtured. It is illegitimate to have an expert answer that question for you.
