called from footers of A-E. NB. id lostCrit renamed to Crit.
Francis Thompson wrote this in 1890; yet, as the tsunami of digitization impassively immures the old world, to me it feels very apt today.
In a world driven by data, questions are expected to be simple and science to answer them instantl. But questions of wellbeing are complex and chaotic; and the answers of science simply pass them by.
Alone and lost in a foreign state, to find my way, first I needed to be sure where I was. The elementary facts on this I found were familiar, and seemed hopeful, so my goal then became to present the knowledge central to ourselves and society in them, free from the looping rhetoric that had hidden it from me. Simply stated these facts now seem mundane; however, in bringing them together I have found them disturbing.
In looking at the facts the concept of the brain as being recursive emerged; and I realized, what I have felt all my life to be setting me apart was not just inexperience and angst but a lack of fluency. Often understood as careless, argumentative, and arrogant, even experts did not recognize this was just an adaptation to ontogeny.
In writing about these things I have learned about what I thought I knew, about words, expression and culture, and unfortunately I am not a writer, as although over two thousand years ago Lao Tzu wrote, "Sincere words are not pretty. Pretty words are not sincere, pretty words still charm, while discordant ones are dismissed and often offend. On the other hand perhaps it is simply hubris that has kept this site a work in progress.
contents of n_A1pre_Chaos.php inserted into footnote 'Chaos' in e_Preface_Footnotes.php via PHP-include, - called from e_Preface.php#infoHum and A1-Footnotes.php#A14..
Chaos refers to the apparently random states of disorder and irregularity exhibited by complex, nonlinear, dynamical systems actually governed by interconnectedness, underlying patterns, and self-organization. While these systems are deterministic, their predictability is limited as it is is impossible to completely know their actual state at any point in time and the smallest difference in this from what has been assessed leads to behaviours that diverge exponentially over time from that foecasted —a characteristic often referred to as the Butterfly Effect.
The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it?
Since the Prussian model was decreed by Frederick the Great in the 18c, education and well-being, rather than being defined in relation to the well-being of individuals, have in practice increasingly been defined in relation to their fitness-for-purpose for the social economy —with criminality and deviance defined in relation to expected social norms.
Having been widely implemented, throughout the world, to serve the various needs of industrialization, the Prussian model has almost completely replaced Socratic education. The role of schools, pre-schools, universities and hospitals has come to be defined within the context of maintaining social stability and economic growth, with the work of well-being professionals and educationalists organized to service national economies and their governance.
The aim of the Socratic method is not to elicit the repetition of accepted facts, but rather to demonstrate the complexity, difficulty, uncertainty and assumptions lying behind people's statements and argument. In this way, it probes the value systems and beliefs that underpin people's actions and decisions; however, by demanding the fundamental re-examination of these it constitutes a real and present threat to the coherence of their lives.. While Socrates is famous for saying that the unexamined life is not worth living, for this belief, and its practice, his fellow Athenians condemned him to death; —the real fate for a one-eyed man in the kindom of the blind.
e_Preface_Footnotes.php#InProgress
In 2012, my goal was to simply articulate ideas I had developed over the previous eight years living and working in Finland. Oblivious to the narrative challenge this involved I imagined my lack of social fluency irrelevant; the internet surely providing a ready audience. The project, however, inexorably revealed the centrality of both, not only to the writing required but also in my life.
e_Preface_Footnotes.php#fathersAshes
In Macaulay's epic poem these words stand out, an ironic, defiant cry against his Whig view of history and its racialist account of the militarized, financial and mercantile interventionism of the British Empire — a 'Great Game' that continues to this day in central Asia, defending British 'interests' from Russian 'influence'.
My father was born in Ukraine, his father from Yorkshire a Polish princess his mother. A Russian palace their home he was interned. Then repatriated to England, and sent to be schooled. In love with Nemesis he died alone. And I loved her too, in Finland, fifty years on.
e_Preface_Footnotes.php#Macaulay, linked to from [fathersAshes].
Both quotations from Macaulay's Minutes On Education In India, 1835-1837, collected from records in the Dept. of Public Instruction, Calcutta, by H.Woodrow, printed by C.B.Lewis, at The Baptist Mission Press. 1862.