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CHAPTER
II
strange bedfellows
The blossoming of the computer age gives
a whole new perspective to Po. Computer awareness class discussions often
center on computer "pioneers" with much of the talk revolving around the
role of Apple in the early years (late '70s). Wozniak and Jobs created
one of the first home-market micros in a garage in California. They were
very much the creative hippies and struck a sympathetic chord with many
loyal customers who saw them as "the little guy" pitted against the corporate
giants. Their company grew and for a while all factions of art, science,
creativity, pleasure, business and young and old came together - but only
for a while. The unique marriage of these strange bedfellows fell apart
as one of them, big business, outgrew the marriage bed...indeed, he outgrew
the bedroom. The company creators felt uncomfortable as business administrators
- their interest lay in creativity and in developing new ideas. The yes/no
element of the "marriage" pushed them out of the bed and hired a real business
man to run the company. He certainly had the experience, he used to sell
Pepsi. Apple continues to make money but somehow much of the grassroots
spirit is gone and many would argue that so are the fresh ideas and creativity
which were so evident in the early years. No Po No Mo'
pellucidar
This whole business of writing seems to
be a constant quest and seems to lead one from one step to another up some
horizonless inner wall of some infinite sphere.
find your own voice
Every class and piece of required reading
in Dean Robin Enns' graduate writing is concerned with the importance of
imagination and the releasing of imagination in writing - of finding one's
own voice. Writers are encouraged to write from their own experience or
perceptions in a style that is an idiom or match for their true characters.
More and more I find my self reaching back into my formative years to acknowledge
from where some of my inspiration has come.
the moons of barsoom
Writers such as Ray Bradbury and even thinkers/scientists
such as Carl Sagan acknowledge a debt to the pen of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Bradbury writes:
A number of people changed my
life forever in various ways. But Mr. Burroughs convinced me that I could
talk with the animals, even if they didn't answer back, and that late nights
when I was asleep my soul slipped from my body, slung itself out the window,
and frolicked across town never touching the lawns, always hanging from
trees where, even later in those nights, I taught myself alphabets and
soon learned French and English and danced with the apes when the moon
rose.
But then again, his greatest gift was
teaching me to look at Mars and ask to be taken home. I went home to Mars
often when I was eleven and twelve and every year since, and the astronauts
with me, as far as the Moon to start, but by Mars by the end of the century
for sure. We have commuted because of Mr. Burroughs. Because of him we
have printed the Moon. Because of him and men like him, one day in the
next five centuries, we will commute forever, we will go away... And never
come back... And so live forever.
I too did all of this, but the difference is
I never learned to express the legacy as Bradbury learned to do so well.
springboards across
the mersey
Lennon and McCartney were often amazed at
the serious in-depth analyses made of their songs. Like most limitedly
schooled rock musicians they chose words for their sounds and absurdity
and purposely left the lyrics ambiguous so that "deep thinkers," and even
- rechh - music critics, could use them as springboards to launch their
own imaginations. Perhaps this is all that any great writer or composer
should be expected to do.
there ain't much
PO in death
Death seems to make its presence felt in
cycles. Our cross-the-road neighbour is engaged in a death struggle with
cancer - just another in a long line of victims in our immediate community
over the last few years. Meanwhile, Uncle Don - Mom's brother - has had
a series of very serious heart attacks. He looks great considering that
he has gone through agonizing pain and has kept death at bay with nitro
tablets - morphine - intensive care hook-ups, etc. They warn me that the
condition is handed down through the mother's side of the family - not
very reassuring - maybe I'm next. I'm not the first to ponder death.
"Death may be beautiful; dying is not." "It
is so much like our own lives when we stand in perfect vigour and feel
so much that time has given us all his flowers... ...and that the next
work of his idle fingers will be to steal them one by one away." "As we
advance in life we acquire a keener sense of the value of time." There
ain't much Po in death. Lights on/Lights off... "Sans teeth, sans eyes,
sans taste, sans everything."
the crucifixion
The same Sunday morning programs on my one-eyed
video friend which get my writing juices flowing also bring me to a realization
of De Bono's criticism of the sharp polarization of 'good' and 'evil' and
the resulting intolerance, arrogance, righteousness, and dogmatism bred
by the fear, sin, and guilt associated with the Crucifixion. Although I
respect dedication and personal commitment, I can't help but get a little
impatient, annoyed and even somewhat frightened by many of the over-zealous
missionaries who try to force their particular brand of religion on every
moving thing. Their god has chosen some pretty second-rate people to represent
him/her. I'm reminded of the Shangri-la philosophy in Hilton's Lost Horizon
"The jewel has many facets." "Our people would be quite shocked by having
to declare that one [religion] was completely right and another completely
wrong." "It is possible that many religions are moderately true." Think
of how many religious wars and how much destructive prejudice could have
been avoided if a more tolerant Po-like premise had been followed by civilization.
Any crackpot can justify anything he does by saying it is the will of God.
God is on our side. God's word. God's will. God's only son?
divine love
As De Bono suggests, the world might have
been a better place if somehow the Crucifixion had been dropped; this would
have emphasized divine love rather than the dangerous yes/no arrogance
associated with this historic death. I see so much of what passes as religious
thinking as being anti-intellectual - a spewing of platitudes without thinking
-"Thou shalt not...Thou shalt not...Believe without questioning - Fahrenheit
451 - 1984? Elmer Gantry - Wyndham's Chrysalids? Jimmy Swaggart - Jimmy
Bakker - Jimmy Jones - Jimmy Snow. A "religious person" can do just as
much harm to his fellow man as an non-religious person and can usually
do it with less humour and more prejudice and misguided intentions. As
with all Yes/No proponents, since an idea that is right is absolutely right,
there can be no point in going further to look for a better idea. This
smugness of logic cuts off creative exploration by making it unnecessary.
They dare not question and this leads to incestuous tail-chasing within
the parameters set by traditional doctrines.
crutchifixion
There are many people in my circle of acquaintances
who owe a tremendous debt to their religion (although many of them are
tithing it off annually at a rate of 10 per cent of their incomes). Their
beliefs have helped them whip personal devils, emotional trauma, grief,
failed relationships, misfortunes, chemical dependency and have helped
them to get their lives back on track. So many of us have soft emotional
underbellies and I guess it's a matter of whatever gets us through the
night.
cosmos
I consider myself very religious but I guess
I have taken a lateral loop around the 'middle man' - I've gone right to
the top - The Cosmos. This is infinity... timeless... everything and more...
beyond our imaginations... a question mark... creation and destruction
constantly - before our eyes... ever expanding - ever contracting... minute
- colossal... Theory and Practice (whoops! how'd that get in there - we'll
leave it - I think it fits).
feet of clay
I have had many idols throughout my existence
- I have believed in many people and things but they have all developed
feet of clay. I expect a belief in a mystical being would meet with the
same end - certainly none of the popular gods appear to be doing much to
alleviate suffering, disease, injustice, unhappiness and man's inhumanity
to man on this infinitesimal speck in the Universe. I have never tried,
till now, to formulate these thoughts into words - this is not a popular
stand to take in a country where most people will mouth what they believe
are Christian beliefs without question.
stop the future
"manitoba schools face teacher shortage"
brandon sun
My frustrated, out-of-work "Master's friend"
threw this headline at me the other day. All efforts to find work as a
class seven teacher for the last three years have met with dismal failure
and rejection. He is not alone. We have, and are producing many teachers
who are falling through cracks in the system. The fact that hundreds of
education graduates can not find work should be some indication that the
mill is turning out teachers not meeting the needs of today's society.
It is a strange chaotic situation when there is such a demand for teachers
in many areas while in the waiting room there is a cattle call of out-of-work
professional.
country cousins
"the more change there is, the more
chaos will there be,
since chaos is caused by differing rates
of change in different parts of the system"
The rural areas seem to be taking most of the
brunt of the current upheavals in education. There is a reluctance of city
dwellers
to relocate to small towns due to the current stigma attached to the rural
lifestyle. A lower standard of living, inadequate housing and amenities,
lower wages, flack about being over-paid, lack of teaching resources, a
scarcity of people in one's own age group and social status...these are
just some of the problems facing a teacher considering a move to the country.
Instead of alleviating the problem, technological advances seem to be compounding
the problem. The Information Age, Computer Age, and Global Village concept
all seem to be hastening the exodus from the country. Perhaps it is time
to make the assumption that we are all Canadian persons living in a global
village as part of a Global Village where our links to our neighbours are
via technology and English. It doesn't take much of a mind shift to see
that it is just as feasible to make links to the global community from
Strathclair as from Brandon.
academic irrelevance
"the universities used to be the
centres of thinking, but they are now dropping out of the scene ... old
style intellectual habits have no relevance to the modern world"
Sadly, many institutes of "higher learning"
seem to be wrapped up in navel probing and rear-view mirror gazing. Many
professors are so concerned with 'publishing' that their classes 'perish'.
Surely, one can preserve academic traditions and remain a member of the
intelligentsia and still bring a '90s relevance to courses...too many "P"s
and not enough "cues"... Pipes - patches - puppies (hush) - pulpit - past
- preach - papers - prestige - publish or perish - passivity - preserve
the past - plato - passe - pablum-for-the mind - piss-up-the-wall measurement
of achievement...let's hatch a phoenix.
old style thinking
and the real world
We have been equipped to defend ideas but
have not been given any tools for changing ideas. More and more the gloom-and-doom
artists are making themselves heard. We are surrounded by talk of the good
old days when times were simpler and better. My mother often calls me into
the retirement lodge to adjust her VCR, TV, stereo, or digital appliances
and I am always amazed at the limited range of interests her lodge-mates
possess. My mother, who reads everything in sight and is a world news fanatic,
is a little out of sync with many of them - they constantly complain about
lack of things to do and the long, long days. Many of these doomsayers
are stalled in a time warp of their youth - perpetuating the likes dislikes,
dress, speech, habits of their formative years - forgetting just how bad
the 'good ole days' really were - now awash in a sea of new technology
and values - a sea not necessarily 'gooder or badder', but infinitely more
exciting.
flight and fight
Many of the problems experienced by young
people and indeed, a large segment of the rest of society, stem from their
being saddled with an old-style thinking system which is inadequate to
deal with the modern world. Class discussions bring out some scary attitudes
and beliefs - a direct result of their lack of coping strategies. Evangelists,
cults, astrology, mysticism, drugs, satanism, the world of heavy metal,
a distorted view of sex, glorification of mindless violence - are all ways
of coping with a world they don't understand. Even scarier is that these
are pretty straight-laced kids from stable homes.
PO as a skill,
reverse gear and change tool
The experience of creating analogies and
metaphors
in my graduate writing is one which shall stay with me. It is not that
I have never thought in, or created, metaphors but now the whole process
is somehow legitimized - it may even be a wild, runaway stallion until
I can get a saddle on it. To many of us, approaching the technology and
grok of the year 2000 is akin to driving Aunt Nelly's Model 'T' in from
the country to explore the big city. Travelling slowly, with shaky steering,
intermittent brakes and unreliable reverse gear, we leave behind the pastoral
plains with their straight-and-narrow country roads. We suddenly find ourselves
in a loud, congested urban setting with traffic jams, fast lanes, slow
lanes, passing lanes, back lanes, and dead ends. There are vehicles of
all shapes, sizes and speeds navigating by-passes, under-passes, over-passes
and day passes through intersections, stop lights, yield signs, radar traps,
toll gates, bridges, crescents, bays, potholes, detours and pile-ups. There
is an interplay of speeders, crawlers, tailgaters, truckers, patrolmen,
impaired drivers, hotdoggers, cyclists, joggers, jaywalkers, pedestrians
and dogs. It soon becomes evident that, to cope, we need new skills in
communication, law interpretation, lane changing, reverse driving, defensive
driving, courtesy, braking, accelerating, map reading, sign reading, parking,
entering, exiting, maneuvering, maintenance, and interaction.
everyone's a critic
Accepting criticism as being directed toward
your work and as not being of you as a person is one of the hardest things
with which an artist has to contend. He has already overcome his severest
critic - himself - and has exposed his soul to the world. A tearing away
at this offering becomes very hard to accept as anything but personal criticism.
THAT THAT IS IS THAT THAT IS NOT IS
NOT IS THAT IT IT IS
"What are you trying to say?" "Johnny has
absolutely no writing potential!" "Stupid!" "This does not make sense!"
"Why are you wasting my time?" "Very limited vocabulary." "SUBJECT! VERB!
OBJECT!" "Limited perception!" "This is an incomplete sentence!" "I can't
believe the calibre of students today!" "Writing at a Grade 2 level!" "Foolishness!"
"Johnny is thinking on a very immature level" "Immediate remedial help
recommended!" "Johnny requires immediate psychological testing!" "Kids
can't think anymore!" "The kid will never be able to communicate with a
vocabulary of four words!"
THAT THAT IS, IS. THAT THAT IS NOT,
IS NOT. IS THAT IT? IT IS...
...maybe
beyond a clockwork
orange
Vital to the success of the bold new world
of learning is the choice and creation of learning materials. One of my
favourite genres in literature is science fiction and I have set up a wide
variety of writing ideas centered around imaginative fiction - finding
its source in novels, short stories, graphic novels, TV and radio drama,
songs and poetry - anything to break through the walls of the mundane.
Keeping in mind the necessity of collating a useful toolbox of writing
skills I have tried to compile an eclectic potpourri of writing assignments
- all to be done on the computer and all related to Sci-Fi. In the two
months I have been working with my class I have noticed amazing progress
on their part and I feel I have realized my objectives beyond expectations.
They have had the added "bonus" of experiencing the ideas I have gleaned
from Dr. Robin Enns in my Graduate Scholarly Writing course - ideas which
have not really changed my teaching and living philosophy too much, but
have surely helped to crystalize and offer encouragement that I may be
on the right track. The PO philosophy too, was especially elucidating.
grok
The many themes found in current science
fiction provide fertile ground for a multitude of writing and discussion
topics - good imagination releasing stuff. I think it imperative that a
teacher remains open to new ideas and I am constantly looking for new approaches.
It is all too easy to fall into a trap of apathy or arrogance-based smugness.
Smugness of logic cuts off creative exploration by making it unnecessary
- that dangerous logic which suggests that since an idea that is right
is absolutely right, there can be no point in going further to look for
a better idea.
future shock
"science fiction should be required
reading for future 1" alvin toffler
We have a literature about the future...a literature
to take us into the future...and it is science fiction. As with most good
literature much of it is rooted in the analogies, metaphors, myths, and
conventions of the past, but science fiction writers acknowledge that the
power of imagination is limitless - allowing the expansion of our little
spheres of understanding and civilization to the limits? of the Cosmos
- and beyond present human consciousness. Many people, today, are looking
into the future and do not like what they see - they turn for solace in
self-pity, cynicism, alcohol, drugs, religion, and mundane pursuits. But
a futurist is not content to just fret and fume or mark time - he puts
his mental powers to work as he imagines solutions and what marvels could
be. Instead of complaining about the future he tries to do something about
it. Science fiction can lead our minds through an imaginative exploration
of the maze of political, social, psychological, and ethical issues that
confront us. It does not try to predict the future or to stamp scientific
breakthroughs as good or evil. Rather, it uses imagination to explore the
consequences for human happiness and to hold up a mirror to tomorrow to
examine contemporary life. As Issac Asimov replied when asked the question:
"What's left to write about?"
"Only
everything!"
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