What's everyone reading these days?

[RonOnGuitar]

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Hey Ron - you like CDs or only use cassettes?

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I listen to both. Cassettes are cool if you want to share something with a friend and, if they don't like it, they can easily record Barry Manilow or something over it, lol.



One lass I know would buy old 8-track tapes at sales and the used goods & 2nd-hand type stores, where they were sold very cheaply, e.g. 10 cents. She had an 8track player that she used as the player/source to convert to another format - cassette, CD. She managed to get a good amount of her faves and other curious music odds & ends that way!



(That reminds me, I think my local library is having a used book sale this weekend! Always a great way to spend an afternoon, get inexpensive reading and help out the library!)

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Can you email me?

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Sure thing, Chris!

[PANick11]

I started 'Daemonomania' by John Crowley last night...



It looks to be another good one..(John Crowley is an extrordinary writer)



Just finished Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian...which was wonderfull!!



read "The Laughing Sutra" by Mark Salzman Last week and that was a GREAT book!



and I'm always reading socio-cultural anthropology and material culture stuff because that's my job....





I would love to study German!!!!....

I'm hoping to take it at the community collage next year if I can find the time..

My dearest friend is German and lives in Munich.

She speaks english very well ,

but I've always wanted to write to her in her first language.

I managed to blunder my way through Germany for a month without speaking the language and people were remarkably patient...

I understand German enough that I can at least get the basic Idea of what people are saying...

most of the time...

but still...I'd really like to speak it....



and French as well.....



P.

[bbchris]

Ah Ron is such a smart guy!! Yes I look forward to your email!!



PANick! You always read such interesting stuff!! ANd with regards to learning German - I thought the same way as you "when I have time" - all I did was make it a "MUST" -



i.e. I changed my thinking to 'I must learn German NOW' and I went to and got graded at the Goethe Institute and started Intermediate classes in April. I've met lovely people and pushed myself to learn and remember more. It's the best thing I've ever done. I love learning!! And like you PANick I really want to be able to communicate in German with friends like Mike Burn!! wooooooooohoooooooo

|Blah Blah|Thinking Out Loud|Jane Eliz||Talk Soup |

[questionnaire]

That's great, but be careful who you allow to teach you. Opening a mind too wide is an easier and more effective method of repression than trying to keep it closed.

[bbchris]

hahahaha What's your fear with learning? I'm guessing one of your most important basic human needs is 'certainty' - You have to be right - hence your beliefs cannot be questioned. Or am I harping up the wrong tree??

|Blah Blah|Thinking Out Loud|Jane Eliz||Talk Soup |

[PANick11]

well...I can get in to a class that starts in June but only if at least 8 people enroll..

so far only 4 of us....so I may have to convince a few people that they need to learn to speak German!!



we'll see.







P.

[bbchris]

Only 8 people in a class! Great size!! So you need to convince another 4 people? Put a notice up in a few places - learning German is something people WANT to do but think it's difficult - once they see your signs they will follow on. June is still 3 weeks away!! I see you being successful and learning German PANick!! wooooooooohooooooooooo

|Blah Blah|Thinking Out Loud|Jane Eliz||Talk Soup |

[4teetoo]

i'm reading the course again. things are really changing in my life, and i want it to continue. even my music is completely different.

what do you think of the course, chris?

btw, i watched your live disc at work the other day at the mental health drop-in center, and everyone commented on how beautiful you were, and then they freaked out because of your british accent! lol

.smack.

.what.would.u.do.if.u.weren't.afraid.

purge.

grasp.

incite.

[questionnaire]

"hahahaha What's your fear with learning? I'm guessing one of your most important basic human needs is 'certainty' - You have to be right - hence your beliefs cannot be questioned. Or am I harping up the wrong tree??"



No, not fear or need for certainty, Chris, just decades of experience in the world of education and ideas, and the knowledge that there are too many shoddy products being sold by charlatans in the bazaar. I have very few 'beliefs', because I see most things in a state of what Hegel and Marx called the 'dialectic' and Nietzsche called 'constant becoming', so with most things - which are largely dependent on circumstances and relations to other things - there's no point in ossifying a belief that will just have to change alongside changing circumstances and relations anyway. However, having largely rejected my own 'beliefs', and indeed the principle itself, means that I can no longer buy anyone else's because, of course, to me they have nothing of value to sell.



However, because that is not a belief, it may change, but only if I see what was once a belief put into action in controlled conditions and constantly, without exception, fulfill all of its predictions. Then that belief can be validated and transformed into knowledge. Two standard ways of passing off suspect beliefs as knowledge are 1) create an illusion of the circumstances required to validate the belief, or 2) make the belief so abstract and other-wordly (like 'heaven', for instance) that it does not need to prove itself. The standard way of preventing a more feasible belief from proving itself is to engineer specific conditions in which its principles cannot possibly operate and in which a whole cluster of shoddy alternative beliefs can proliferate. Belief-traders are not interested in producing quality ideas, only keeping the bazaar open, flooded with novelties and full of customers.



Try Michael de Certeau's classic essay 'What We Do When We Believe'.

[ED1G]

Woo Steve



not long for the FQF !!



Paul

NEW : RHYTHM CALLED LOVE Video

Down And Dirty Video : BITCH Video : LOOK AT ME Video

Business As Usual . com



Soundclick

[questionnaire]

I'd forgotten about that, Paul.



Better book in a rehearsal!

[bbchris]

Hey Steve,



Just getting back to you re: learning.



I think that first of all we should discuss what learning is and what it is not. Learning, first off, is not accepting everything a teacher tells you without a skeptical eye. Education should be, more than anything, an exercise in critical thinking. The problem with education (at least in the United States) is that too many teachers and professors get caught up in Academic Orthodoxy (teaching their points of view as gospel and acting as if there is no other possible solution or point of view that is valid.) There are so many social mechanisms that support and reinforce this tragic condition in our system. A good teacher encourages you to research and discover for yourself. Don't read one book on say, the Civil War. Read 20 or thirty, read research by others, find actual writings by those who lived at the time and find out who they were, where they were from, how might their findings, opinions, and observations be colored by their own experiences and beliefs. Make sure to read opposing books with opposing ideas, many researchers will write a paper in response to suppositions of another scholar and challenge their ideas, offering alternative or new ideas which point to different perspectives and conclusions. Compare and contrast the points of view you have discovered, look for inconsistencies and find out why they occur. Then develop your conclusions based on what you have found and then realize that you could still be totally wrong! Why? Because your conclusions will be based on your limited research, as broad as it may have been or appeared to be. This is what learning really is and yes Steve you are right about knowledge and ideas being relative to changing circumstances and environments. (By the way everyone else; Hegel was a 17th/18th Century philosopher and Marx a social theorist most noted for his Communist Manifesto.)



That being said keep your mind WIDE open, but learn to think critically, filter, discuss and debate, look for what seems out of place and challenge it. I sense your comments to be a remark more directed at my involvement with Anthony Robbins, rather than learning German! However, I have never found Robbins to be dogmatic, preachy or make any claims to having sacred knowledge.He invites you to experience the process and it is a very individual process and he encourages you to discover what your limiting beliefs are and what your empowering beliefs are. He never tells what your beliefs are. He is introducing you to a process of self discovery and personal empowerment. He talks about spirituality, not religion. I don't know about you, but I have yet to see any shaved headed Robbinites wandering around in robes singing his praises and handing over their fortunes to him.



Steve, I'm sure your heart is in the right place. There is no real truth is there? Just different versions....



Is it possible that you think so much; to avoid having to work on yourself?

|Blah Blah|Thinking Out Loud|Jane Eliz||Talk Soup |

[questionnaire]

Chris, I agree with you totally about the importance of critical thinking, but of course critical thinking is not 'relativism', where all opinions are equally valid. So the idea of keeping your mind 'wide' open all the time is not the objective of critical theory. You must close your mind very slowly to the aspects of the world and the ways of understanding it that the process of critical thinking has criticized 'out of the game'.



I've been in the professional thinking game a long time now, and my work is published regularly alongside major international philosophers - such as here - but all I'm going to say to you is that my mind went through two very important stages. Firstly, it began opening at an alarming rate, taking everything in and considering every opinion and perspective. Then, decades later, it went through a process of selective closing as I became skilled and confident enough to select out what was worth keeping and reject what was not. As you said yourself, 'filter', but that is the most difficult part of the process. It took me a long time to realize that most of the things that have been thought and said by very famous people are complete rubbish, often concocted to serve personal or political ends.



You're very right about US education - all my American exchange students complain about the narrowness of thought that prevails, oddly, in the so-called 'land of free thinking and free speech'. But it's also the land of Elmer Gantry, they have a long tradition of evangelism, and many of them have it down to a fine art. When modernity opened the Pandora's box of free thought, it had no control over what came out, good, bad or indifferent.



Am I trying to put you off Robbins? Of course I am! Don't give him any of your money, Chris, everything you need is available in any public library. Do I want to work on myself? No, not really, I have given up thinking that I will ever be perfect, and it would be a convenient distraction. I'd rather work on getting rid of Bush and Blair and getting my son through his driving test - and the music, of course! The idea that we have to change people to fit society and business is a cul-de-sac; our politics were healthier, our minds were clearer and we were far less self-conscious when we were intent on changing society and business to fit people.

[B L Z Bubba]

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It took me a long time to realize that most of the things that have been thought and said by very famous people are complete rubbish, often concocted to serve personal or political ends.

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And conversely, those who expose that fact get suppressed for the most part.

www.songplanet.com/edisonfreeman



Strive not for success, but for accomplishment.



edison is

[questionnaire]

"And conversely, those who expose that fact get suppressed for the most part."



100% true, Edison. Socrates, Diogenes, Luther, Marx, Nietzsche and Trotsky to name but a few.