Show #289

Hello Friends of the Garden!

One of the things I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving is football! No, I’m not a fanatic follower. If anything, I’m becoming less and less interested in sports altogether. It seems that the instant access to media combined with the platform to express personal attitudes/opinions/beliefs have infiltrated the world of sport and tainted it with distractors. I’m thankful for football for the simple reason that it provides a simple, safer, more innocuous battlefield for friends and family with diametrically opposed political ideologies.

Validation is the motivator for most of these ideological differences. When two or more people are in full agreement with any topic or social issue a new truth is born. People are emboldened by numbers. When we agree with others we can stop seeking the truth because we have found the confirmation of our version of the truth. It is so important to be right but it truly has become more important to show that you’re wrong!

The security of finding likeminded people and the subsequent relief from defending your position leads to acceptance. A new truth is born! There is no longer a need to continually seek truth, fairness or equity. The allegiance of the likeminded can obviate the obvious by discounting incontrovertible facts by its origin or more precisely its originator.

Democrats are liars! Republicans are liars! Prolife supporters are liars. Prochoice supporters are liars. The network news is filled with liars. Fox news is filled with liars. CNN is liars! NRA members are liars! Gun control advocates are liars. Environmentalists are liars! Everyone is a liar! How is this possible? Why?

Worse still, after allegiances are established and entrenched, the systemic process of proving why everyone else is wrong becomes more important than why you’re right. The guise of altruism veils the ugly part of disagreement and that is pure, self interest at the cost of all others. All groups will tell you they are acting in the best interests of everyone. Try this one! In order to promote economic growth we must cut corporate taxes. Do you suppose those people that support that thinking also believe that a realistic minimum wage will support economic growth? My guess is NO!

The natural progression in this process of establishing the truth without continually testing its veracity is absolutism. Guns kill people therefore all guns are bad. Muslims commit acts of terror therefore all Muslims are bad. Democrats are economically unrealistic so all Democrats are bad. Republicans are socially unrealistic so all Republicans are bad. Fireworks cause fires so all fireworks are bad. Seems simple really, just get rid of the bad stuff and everything’s cool, like Jews or Armenians or Gypsies or “insert here your choice of detestable heritage”.

My friends and family constantly astonish me when they expose their absolutism by promulgating the notion that the world would be a better place if opposition groups could be eliminated altogether! If we could just get rid of all those stupid “insert your favorite detestable political party here”, we’d be so much better off! What is more ironic is that, regardless of education, neither side admits to being close-minded or at a minimum possibly wrong.

The trouble seems to be in the idea that we all succeed or fail by our own efforts and those alone! The more we succeed the more we insulate ourselves from maintaining sympathy. I feel like it must be a difficult task for Congress to have sympathy for American taxpayers because they lack empathy! Sympathy and empathy are commonly confused terms. Sympathy is when you feel sorrow from the circumstances a person is subject to. Empathy is when you put yourself in place of someone else and identify with the challenges they face. How can a citizen count on economic empathy from a congressperson when it takes millions to be elected?

Here’s the elephant in the room everybody! As awful as it sounds, we are going to have to pay attention and give credence to those we disagree with. We are going to have to decriminalize compromise! You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need (sounds so familiar)! How ridiculous does this sound, what’s best for everyone isn’t what’s best for me! Huh? Why is it so hard for everyone to see this? Once you believe you’re right you can stop thinking! Perfect!

Stubbornness can be a double-edged sword! Righteous indignation is a natural reaction to the recognition of a coordinated opposition. The extremism that usually follows paradoxically unravels the perceived truth. Try this one, bombing an abortion clinic to promote prolife! Or there’s, give more breaks to the rich so the poor can become rich too! Or there’s take away all guns only to killed by illegal guns or give guns to everyone only to be killed by mentally deranged citizens! It becomes impossible to know what to do!

It is time to be proud of compromise! Believe it or not, the founding fathers of our nation had to compromise on things they were diametrically opposed to. At one point our country was diametrically opposed on the issue of slavery, so much so that people needed killing to settle it! I feel safe to guess that most people in America would agree that slavery is a bad thing. This country became the great place it is because of hard work and sacrifice! Guess what? Compromise is hard work, really hard! Want to make America great again? Well, it’s not going to happen without compromise! Time to get on it!

Peace and love to you all (even the people that don’t agree with me)!

Mike

Show #288

Hello Friends of the Garden!

It’s time to fess up! I’m about to retire from teaching. I’ve been a teacher for 29 years. I’ve taught everything from 11 year olds to 80 year olds. I’ve taught other teachers. I’ve been to the State Capitol to meet with the state superintendent of schools to receive an award for the performance of the school I worked at. There have been a career’s worth of highlights. The melancholy feelings of reaching this stage in life are a reflection of the journey.

At nineteen, I met and married my wife and that point in my life I knew I needed to take a good look at the direction I was headed in. I knew I had to work hard to provide the kind of life for my wife and myself that would allow us to have a modest amount of comfort. I worked at all kinds of jobs in my life. My first job was bagging ice. I’ve been a short order cook, a forklift driver, a parts clerk, an auto glass deliverer, a painter and several other little jobs on my path to becoming a teacher.

I honestly never enjoyed school growing up. An unfortunate aspect of my family’s dynamic led me to going to many different schools growing up. The consequence of frequently changing addresses left me feeling a lack of connection and sense of belonging. I always felt like an outsider because I was. School reinforced these feelings in a natural and organic way. I have always felt this way, even now.

I shake my head and wonder how I’ve spent the greater portion of my life in an institution that caused me such heartache in my formative years. After the birth of my son I knew that I needed to do more to provide for my family. My father was the first person in our family to receive a college degree. He always wanted me to be the second. After years of languishing in assorted other jobs, I decided to return to school to the delight of my parents and my wife’s.

I didn’t start my return to college with the intent of becoming a teacher. I had been conditioned to believe that I needed to get a college degree to make the kind of money that would secure a comfortable lifestyle. I started out as an Engineering Major. In retrospect it now feels a lot like those years before my return to college. I was doing something but I wasn’t sure if it was what I wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted! I have never been one of those people that knew from birth that they wanted to be veterinarian!

At a critical point in my return to college I hit a wall. I didn’t enjoy engineering. I only chose that because it was something my father did. The uncertainty drove me to nearly having a breakdown. I was lost. My wife scraped up the pieces as she has done more than once with me and directed me to education. She had herself returned to school to complete her degree in education. We would at least have that to share. The clouds passed and I poured myself in to the task at hand.

One of the last jobs I had before beginning my career as a teacher was as a painter. I worked as an assistant for an abusive, alcoholic Hispanic man that worked for a property management company. Our jobs mainly consisted of painting government-assisted housing. Everyday was awful! I was never fast enough. I was never good enough. He cursed at me. He used foul language all the time when addressing me. I was made to feel inadequate and incapable. Every mistake I made was noted and used to constantly remind me by my tyrant of a boss. I became keenly aware of my own shortcomings. Whenever I finished a portion of work I prepared myself for the critical examination by my boss. There was always a minor imperfection and attention drawn to address the lack of quality. After time I lost faith in myself.

It’s a horrible thing that human nature often has us amplifying our mistakes and discounting our accomplishments! Why are we like that? Why am I like that? My best guess is that it comes from conditioning. As teacher, you share responsibility for every failure of your students. Every mistake you make as a teacher is noted and associated with the performance of your students. When test scores come out for analysis it’s always about how the teacher can improve. Often at these meetings it is mentioned that it’s all about student learning but the truth is it’s more about teacher learning!

Here’s some more irrefutable truth, they don’t know what works for all students! That whole thing about the educational “pendulum” is true. In my career I’ve witnessed it many times. Practices that were once antiquated and deemed unproductive were replaced with “new” ones to address the foolishness of previous perceptions. Those “new” ideas eventually became antiquated and unproductive and replaced by something that oddly resembled past practices.

I believe a popular definition of insanity has been, “Expecting different results by continually doing the same thing!” Naturally, education has turned that on its head with,  “Expecting consistently higher test results by continually changing!” Sometimes I would sit in those meetings and wonder by what miracle was it that allowed me to be a college graduate. Clearly my education was flawed by an inadequate delivery system! It was as if I had to accept and agree that the way I learned was inappropriate for anyone today!

For all the time and effort spent by educational experts there isn’t a lot of conclusive evidence to support their results. It would seem that fortune-tellers could be as good as the experts, just another good guesser! Right now, the trend in education is to allow students to make mistakes and learn to express their reasoning as clearly as possible while encouraging them to find their own correct path. It is a profound irony that the assessment of teachers is done completely opposite of the “best” way for students to learn! Teachers are not afforded room for mistakes.

It is a melancholy feeling here at the end of my career as I mentioned before. I can’t help but recall those days as a painter! I feel less capable about my life long career now than I did at the start! I also have become aware of how I have allowed myself to be conditioned personally and professionally to feel that way. My eyes are opening a little and I’m trying hard to give myself the credit for having done the best I could. That’s a tough assignment for a teacher!

Thanks to some important people in my life I’ve been working at learning what makes me happy. I’m finding out what I like doing. I still want to make the world a better place! I want to show I’m relevant! I’m about to turn a corner in life and I feel a positivity returning. I’m also learning how, with the love and support of family and friends, to be as aware of my accomplishments at least as much as I have of my perceived failures. I’m beginning to anticipate that I can move on. As scary as moving on is, I really like the things I’m doing now! It’s getting better all the time! Look out!

Peace and love to you all!

Mike

Show #287

Hello Friends of the Garden!

It’s always nice to be back at the coast. Yesterday, instead of my typical sea-glass hunt, it was time rebuild my little potting bench. I think it turned out pretty good considering it was built completely from scraps!

The real down side of coastal living is the constant deterioration of anything man made! The minute any person puts the final touch on anything, whatever it is, it feels like the Sun, wind, ocean air, and rain all conspire together to return things to its elemental state! The imperceptible decimation seems to lull one into complacency!

I built that workbench at least fifteen years ago and I’ve been coming here regularly over time. The odd thing is I saw the bench falling apart and getting all loose and wobbly and I just dismissed it to be handled on another occasion. This weekend I realized it was time to forego the sea-glass hunt and get it done.

I’m a fairly handy person, I know that, but compared to some of my friends I wouldn’t even claim to know what a hammer is! It has become clear that my parents combined to pass on their dominant self-deprecation genes to me! However, after having spent this much time with myself, I am learning to justify the praise of friends and loved ones against my perceived fatal flaws.

Perfection seems impossible and exasperating! We have religions built around perfection, from Baptists to Scientologists all seeking some unattainable form of perfection. We see perfection as rare and mystical. We actually are blind to perfection! Anything in its elemental state has to be perfect! From that standpoint, my old workbench was slowly working its way to perfection!

I knew I wouldn’t build a bench as well as my friend Mark. I knew it wouldn’t be bad or at least not worse than the old rotting first effort (even I hear my own self-deprecating way). After reconciling between skill and need, I was prepared to accept the implications. In the end, the bench turned out better than the last one, not perfect, but better. I learned a little from the design flaws that helped accelerate the bench’s return to perfection!

Can you imagine a reluctant Henry Ford saying, “Yeah, sure, I can build a car but it wouldn’t be perfect! I mean eventually there would be horrible accidents and I’d need to know about airbags, and I don’t! Think about it people would be killing themselves with my invention! Who knows what else could go wrong! No, I can’t do this.” Cars have come a long way since Henry Ford’s time! Perfection can be imprecise and subjective.

I think we have the same problem with Health Care. The government wants their version of perfection. The people want their version of perfection. The ridiculous thing is that all along this has felt like an “our” plan or “theirs”! As if it’s a yes or no issue.

What if the Federal Government’s job was just to support each state’s preferred health plan? Even better, maybe we could see how dedicated the government is to the protection of the citizenship by really working together to get the very best thing for everyone! Honestly, wouldn’t that affect more people than any losses we’ve had foreign and abroad?

I really don’t get it! Name a political party. Let’s say the party you picked eventually gains complete dominance and everyone else is relegated to compliance. How is that supposed to work? Really, isn’t that the goal right now? Both groups give all outward appearances of it being bad to work together! How remarkably ignorant is that?

A perfect health plan, are you kidding? Our best hope is that we aren’t hurt too much by their sluggish efforts to help us. I mean hey, we’re counting on millionaires to figure out a fair tax code for our poor, uneducated souls! I’m sure it’ll work out! Maybe we follow Henry Ford. We build a car and plan on it getting better each year! It’s not a perfect plan but it works! C’mon man!

Peace and love to you all!

Mike

Show #286

Hello Friends of the Garden!

Finally! We have clouds! I even felt some sprinkles of rain while enjoying a backyard fire with friends last night. I said the change would do you good comes to mind. I’ve worn pants now on several occasions because it felt cool enough to wear them. I have a couple of friends that always wear shorts no matter the weather. I mean it could be snowing out and they would still wear shorts! It hadn’t occurred to me until just now, but I should ask those friends if they have winter shorts and summer shorts? Probably not!

Seems like there is a lot of change in the air, almost everywhere you look! The examples are all over the place. The whole sexual harassment issue has blown up to amazing proportions. Falling right in to line are the issues of racial and gender inequality. I even read recently that Chinese elitism is on the rise despite efforts to address it! Aren’t they communists? There are about 1,500,000 millionaires in China today!

In his enigmatic epigram, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".  The more accepted translation is, “The more things change, the more they stay the same!” The rich get richer, and the entitled wield influence to the point that they feel they can obviate the law or consequences, globally! Isn’t it an odd coincidence that we have put our trust in the richest Americans (i.e. members of Congress) to create a fair tax code?

Paulo Freire, a Brazilian theorist and educator wrote the book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In that book he makes the assertion that dehumanization is the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed. Sure sounds like the sexual harassment issue to me. From what it appears it sure seems like these women (and men I guess) were treated as objects or conquests. Sounds a lot like the “Black Lives Matter” movement too. For that matter it seems a lot like the “Tea Party” movement too. I guess there’s more than enough oppression for everyone (oh yeah, Islamophobia)!

Right now it feels like the pot is about to boil over on several of these and more social issues. It has become routine to hear about deaths in America on grand scales. No one is surprised to read about the gap in gender wages. To see that an American military person has died ANYWHERE on the globe is a regular event on TV. From the Taliban to Al-Qaeda to ISIS we’ve become accustom to awaiting the next group to arise. Complacency has rooted itself in us all until that oppression is felt personally and becomes the motivation for advocacy!

Things change at glacial speeds, revolutions however, occur in an instant. A tipping point is achieved and a new order is established. Prohibition is a perfect example. At one point we decided as a country to acknowledge that alcohol could not be banished in America effectively despite the efforts of government agencies to do so. Regulating alcohol was the fall back position that was consensus compromise. Marijuana isn’t much different. History books will eventually regard it as much the same.

Pedagogy of Indignation was the last book written by Paulo Freire before his death in 1997. In this book he addresses the necessity to make and remake one’s self throughout a lifetime and the daily tensions between freedom and authority. My guess is that people become so entrenched in their thinking they stop thinking. They never “remake” themselves. They never examine themselves. It never occurs to them that they might be wrong.

“Critical citizenship” is an educational notion that societies will prosper with greater critical thinkers in its populous. Common core standards have been implemented to address the deficit of “career ready” students with critical thinking skills. However, no one really recognizes the deficit of “society ready” students. Sure, let’s fix our ability to compete economically, why bother with fixing how to get along equitably!

It seems to me that the answer is that we have to wait for the new elite to transcend old thinking. Indian gaming came in to existence in the early 70’s after a Supreme Court ruling that stated states do not have the authority to regulate Native activities on their reservations. While Indian gaming may be construed as both good and bad, it has improved the lives economically for many Native Americans.

Like a snake shedding its skin the old guard will die off and the new one will take the wheel. New thinking will come with new people! I just hope those new people have more compassion than compulsion!

Peace and love to you all!

Mike