Jack Park wrote:
> I confess before all who would read this, and, as they say, the front
> page of the NY Times, that I was a lousy student until I entered grad
> school. One size just didn't fit this writer.
Pretty much the same here.
College was good for teaching me how to be disciplined about studying,
though.
And that was a useful thing to learn.
I was a big fan of Summerhill. The guy figured out that a kid could
screw around
and have fun for 11 years, then buckle down for two (as a much more
mature
teenager) and learn enough to pass college entrance examinations and
become
a decent engineer. So why force kids to march in lock step for 11 years,
when
they could be pursuing their passion, whatever it was?
(Of course, most students screwed around for a month or two before they
got
bored and started going to classes. But even in this hard core example,
the
results were great.)
Then, too, I am fond of noting that an aborigine spends 2 hours a day
providing
for his/her needs. Now, granted their needs are a lot less. But when
does
"civilization" become a thinly-disguised version of slavery, made all
the more
poignant by the fact that we appear to "choose" it?
It is for that reason that I am a big fan of a social "safety net". It
should be
possible to live, and get by, with very little effort. If you lived in
spartan
surroundings -- yet still had the chance to pursue your passion,
whatever it
may be, then I think a lot of good would come out of such a program.
The trick, of course, is to figure out a way that someone living in
otherwise
spartan surroundings has the means for doing whatever it is they want to
be doing -- writing a program, building a boat, learning to dance, or
whatever.
But if a way can be found to do these things, then possibly people can
be at
once happier, and likely far more productive, than ever before in
history.
These be but utopian dreams -- but I have never quite given up on the
master
plan I dreamed up in college. I figured I would need to encasulate it in
three
books:
* One on the nature of utopia -- how a reasonably utopian
civilization
could be devised.
* One on the nature of power and charisma -- how one manages to
change a society
* One on a simulation of the current state of the world, with a
roadmap
leading from there to the utopian vision.
Thirty-some years later, I confess to being someone stymied on chapter
one
of the first book! But it is still a dream.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Fri Oct 19 2001 - 22:23:04 PDT