Stop Waiting For Superman

I just finished watching Waiting for Superman, an emotionally evocative documentary about students in American schools.  A large part of the film focuses on the dilemma of educational reform in an environment of ironclad tenures that are vigilantly defended by teachers’ unions.  The documentary briefly mentions that these teachers unions arose decades ago because of mistreatment of educators (as is the history of most unions).  Now, those unions have become very politically powerful and they work to protect teachers, even if that protection comes at the cost of student success.

But wait! What is meant by “protect teachers?” Are teachers who just sit in class waiting for the day to go by because they can’t stand their jobs actually “protected?” I had one of those teachers who said we didn’t even need to talk to him because our assignments were written on the chalkboard.  He would spend the class time reading his newspaper with the soles of his shoes staring at us.  Maybe he had his eyes down there because he was definitely sitting on his head. 

Are hating kids and feeling miserable about the classrooms and hallways teachers inhabit 5 days a week something to be preserved and protected?  No, the real meaning is that their salaries are protected.  Or more to the point, their access to a means of living protected.  No wonder.  In an economy where every person must sell themselves on the labor market as their ONLY means of earning a living (unfortunately, there’s no alternative economy in which people are provided free access to life’s resources in our wonderful FREE market), it only makes sense for them to defend their tenures/salaries/means of living.  So, teachers, who have a decent degree of social respect for their professions, and sufficient incomes to fight for their means of life, are able to “protect” their livelihoods.  Students, and particularly students of non-wealthy parents, are not able to access a meaningful education.  They suffer the consequences of this broken system throughout their lives.

The film tries to end on a high-note with a review of the KIPP school program, which has had undeniable success in producing students with better test scores.  I’m not sure how the schools function in terms of student well being, but let me leave that aside for the moment.  These KIPP schools are scarce, and because they receive public funding, they must use a lottery system to determine who gets admitted.  The film follows five kids and it shows them anxiously waiting to hear if their number gets called.  You can also see the other parents and children in the background nail-bitingly attending each utterance from the announcers hoping the next name or number called is theirs.  As the number of names called grows and the available seats reduce, the sense of desperation on their young faces makes you want to rush in and rescue them all.  You hold on to hope to the last number, because that’s how all movies resolve the climax—at the last minute, and in the favor of the protagonist.  Not in this case.  It’s real life and most of the featured kids don’t get called.  The shattering of hope for the kids makes it difficult to hold back the tears.  Then, the realization on the parents’ faces that not only have their children missed an important opportunity to improve their lives been lost, but that they, the parents, have let their kids down.  Mommy can’t make it better.  She can’t throw money at the problem and make it disappear.  Their daily fight with the cruel market world, against which they try to insulate their kids, is a losing battle.  The system is king, and they are the pawns.  Somehow, they must summon all remaining strength not to let their sense of defeat, worry, and despair spill over onto their kids.  They have to console their children because it is their pain that takes priority at that time.  Despite every Herculean effort to shield their kids from the continuous battle to provide a better life, their kids know.  The kids know that their parents can’t protect them from the harsh world.  They know that the impact of this lottery is not just about where to go to school, but a lottery about how their lives will turn out, and it’s looking less and less favorable. 

These are the unsparing sacrifices we make to perpetuate our outdated, insufficient, and barely-above-savage social system.  All those people who work so hard to critique a resource-based economic model to find any unpleasantry, any objection, any difficult challenge that would be faced in an RBE amaze me in that they seem to overlook all the heartache of our current system.  It’s like they measure an RBE against a fictional utopian standard, in which everyone gets everything they want and problems are extinct.  They use that to argue against an RBE, without noticing that their measurement should be against our current system.  Proponents of an RBE do not expect utopia, just a life and planet a lot better off than what we have now.   With all the road kill caused by our current system, it feels like there must be a thousand better options, which is all we need—better!  And it sure is time for better, unless we want to continue to watch lives hinge on the outcome of lotteries.  

Regarding The Educational Imperative

It is commonly understood in the Zeitgeist community that education is the means by which we can move into a transitional economy, which will evolve into a transformed society that respects and advances each person’s well being. By educating people, we intend to promote the value shift that becomes necessary to survive on this planet—the shift we have all experienced through recognition of certain vital facts that dismiss outdated understandings of human nature and faith in the monetary-market regulating paradigm.  After being disabused of these cultural myths, and comprehending a unifying perspective that twines the seemingly disparate strings of planetary suffering into the rope and noose of a core social danger, we are compelled to share with each other.  Such is the sensible response.  Like the sentinel meerkat warning its playful clan that danger threatens them all, we cry out in hopes that we will be heard and our clan will act.

Our clan is stubborn, though.  Many will not listen, and some will react violently.  The pugnacious status-quo defenders already notice that something is “wrong with the world,” but their ideological helmets constrain the expansion of their perspectives.  They’ve already committed themselves to this battle, so deeply entrenched in a worldview where war is the only means to resolve the problems.  To peer above the trench is not an opportunity to see if the war is worth fighting; it’s just a risky move that will end with a bullet to the head.  To be exposed to the body of evidence gathered under the Zeitgeist library beckons the inner skeptic, anthropologist, and psychologist to lay bare a history of woe and a “self” identified with that woe.  Make no mistake! Even those who have been most advantaged by this system have at least some awareness that their profit has come at the cost of their conscience.  Wounded are we.

Those that do not listen because they “have better things to do” are generally too busy “keeping their heads above water,” not realizing the forces that conspire to drown them.  Or they have an artificial divide between their lives and the rest of the world.  This lack of awareness may be natural in the sense that we are not born with a mature understanding of the complex relationships that exist in, around, and between us.  It does not mean that no effort should be made to displace that ignorance.  Humans are not born literate, but we make considerable effort in educating people to become so because it provides them with unceasing access to useful and entertaining information.  Similarly, every effort should be made to foster people’s understanding of the ecological framework in which they live their lives, and the ways in which nature circumscribes our behavior. When we have a better grasp of what limits nature sets, we actually gain more freedom from what our minds conceive as “the limit.” Nature is a much bigger thinker than we are, which is why scientists discover unimagined life forms, cosmological marvels, and invisible realities.  Charles Darwin recognized this when he stated, “We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it” (Descent of Man).

The goal of the Zeitgeist Movement to educate is necessary and logical.  We cannot create a new, sustainable, and emergent society without a comprehensive education to allow the maturation of ecological perspective (I use the term ecological in the broadest sense possible, inclusive of the interconnections among earth, society, and psyche).  The predominant conception of “education” needs to be examined.  When people discuss education, there is a somewhat narrow view that it means sharing written or verbal intellectual information that will stir one to question their own ideas and revise when reasonable.  We intuitively know that this isn’t always effective, but we persist anyway.  The Zeitgeist Media Festival and Media Project are addendums to the educational campaign that seek to connect emotionally with people.  

Ultimately, the movement is concerned with accelerating a value shift, and my purpose in writing this article is to encourage members to embrace an omni-directional approach to “education.”  Some people will be moved by the plentiful intellectual output, and some by the artistic output, but for this movement to reach critical mass, it will need to reach a very diverse population of different motivations.  A common conclusion is that either people wise up or they will have to deal with painful bio-psycho-social disasters.  Various forms of protest, so-called “sustainable community” projects, and cooperative farming are seen as outside the scope of the Zeitgeist Movement.  Alternative currencies like time banking or community-based “dollars” are properly criticized as corruptible and inadequate for accomplishing the lasting change we need. 

I understand and appreciate these criticisms and they serve to remind us—repeatedly—that we should not lose sight of the bigger picture.  However, such community-based initiatives can be seen as a learning tool to show members of our communities that we can and should work together.  Strengthening social bonds and social responsibility will give us pause before rewarding behavior that is loyal to the prevailing “golden” rule: profit over people.  Rampant misguided individualism, ideologically driven by “freedom from society” and “my property” are colossal barriers to the value shift that is necessary for a new society to take root.  Scientific evidence will compel a definite segment of the population to overhaul its value system, but as we can see with religions, reasoning alone will not suffice.  Direct experience in real situations that challenge people’s beliefs regarding human nature and social systems requires them to reach beyond their conditioned reflexes and ideas.  Protests, community projects, and alternative currencies may provide those challenges at different levels of meaning for a greater variety of people.  There are, no doubt, many other forms of situational challenges, but it is important to ask if a particular situation can serve as a transformative educational tool.  So, let’s not get stuck in confined paths of “education” and be open to a broad, multi-layered approach. Besides that, people will want to be activists in various ways, and that is the promise of a resource-based economy: people contributing in ways that fulfill them with an understanding that social interest and personal interest need not be in conflict with one another.  When we help each other, we help ourselves.

My Week at Occupy OC

I have spent the past week at Occupy Wall St in Orange County in Irvine.  Occupy is not a Zeitgeist Movement event, but it is a meeting place of people who are feeling and acknowledging the failings of our current system.  People of many different backgrounds are passionate about alerting the public to the dangers of our economic system and they desperately want it changed. 

There is a good deal of time spent on the operational needs of this "village," as it is called.  I am inspired by the way people are relating inter-personally and organizationally.  People are working cooperatively, not competitively, and that has created a real sense of community.  There is a large food tent, where donations from the public are stored, and people can eat and drink what they need.  The village is growing organically, not by some pre-determined blueprint.  It is open to ideas from other occupations, but has found on some occasions that the logistical characteristics of other locations do not help the flow in Irvine, so they are modified to fit the needs of Irvine's village, for now.  Its structure is emergent.

There is deep-seated commitment to leaderlessness, and self-expression, even while recognizing the risks involved of intentional misrepresentation.  For example, a general theme of Occupy protesters is that endorsing a particular political candidate is not the solution, but there are a couple of people who have shown up with Ron Paul posters.  Thankfully, they have not remained very long.  I would say the majority of protesters understand that politicians are bought by the highest bidder, and they cannot be relied upon to protect people's access to life goods. 

Personally, my experience has been intense, productive, and exhausting.  I've engaged with a lot of people from completely different cultures, ages, educational backgrounds, and personal perspectives.  I let them know that while I share the perspective that our current system is failing and has led to a towering income disparity between the 99% and 1%, I understand this problem to be systemic.  I made a short speech to the group on the first day of occupation to let them know that even if we got rid of the top 1%, the next group would rise to take their place.  I have a sign that reads, "The answer is NOT jobs" next to a picture (circulated on the net) of an Asian girl working at a sewing machine with a Nike logo.  I have another sign with an image taken from the Zeitgeist Media page that shows two men holding bats while shaking hands with the question, "How can we trust each other if this is business?"  A journalist working with the OC Register took a picture of me with that sign and it's on their website: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/occupy-323151-irvine-city.html?pic=2   (picture 16)  My message to him while he was "interviewing" me got a little garbled, but I realize that it didn't fit within the standard soundbyte meme of contemporary journalism.

Perhaps one of the most interesting discussions I had was with a man who grew up in China, but has lived in the US for several years now.  He was telling me that during "Communism," children were encouraged to follow their interests in careers which they enjoyed.  He said the difference in earnings between doctors and janitors was quite small, so money could not be an incentive for any single career path.  In discussing other elements of society, we arrived at a cultural norm, which instructed people to subjugate their interests for that of the collective.  This is a common theme in collectivistic societies.  In America, the norm is the reverse (individualism).  All social interests are expected to be secondary to self-interest.  As I see it, both are out of balance.  The decision to elevate one's interests above the collective or vice versa are matters that cannot be resolved in abstraction.  We do this somewhat naturally in other settings.  For example, if I'm out with a group of friends and they all want to go to a cafe, I will go even though I don't drink coffee.  I won't go everyday, but sometimes, I will go for their sake.  To understand this point, which seems rather simple, but has far-reaching effects, takes education.  I don't mean education in the traditional sense of learning a discrete subject such a math, but of education in the sense of how to relate to others and what the dynamics of group interaction are.  I think religions see themselves as having roles in this sphere of education, but they get so clouded by speculations and rituals that the real work remains undone. 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's fair to say that humans often have narrow perspectives.  There is so much information out there that a single human brain has to filter out a lot simply to function.  People who honestly investigate one topic in depth usually fall into the field of science, and their findings surprise us because they do not frequently confirm common assumptions.  Once this pattern of exploded assumptions is repeated, people begin to realize that their knowledge is always tentative.  With that in place, there is more space to look at oneself and one's reactions to new ideas.  It also can lead to greater compassion, along the lines of, "If I've been wrong so many times, maybe other people are also victims of misunderstanding, and their actions reflect that misunderstanding."  The solution then is about education:  emotional, physical, intellectual, and social.