1a. Webster defines supplication as the "humble and earnest request of" some entitity to pay attention to the supplicant. I find this a useful and most appropriate definition, in line so much with life as with education. For the education of children by a culture is really nothing more than a relationship of supplicants communing across the specturm of human desires of, and understanding about, the future.
1b. Children are ever the special supplicants of all of us. They embrace a sense of being which is, in its genetic pre-conditioned coding, essentially both humble and earnest. We, as adults, ascribe typical childlike characteristics to persons who reflect the innocence and charity of those humble and earnest creatures. Supplication then is a "really real" human condition; and if a proper and respectful relationship of supplication can be established amongst teachers and students then educational environments coevolve beyond formalized structure, indeed beyond imagination.
2. The essential goals and purposes of public education, of suppliantly manipulating children to be better prepared for their future lives within a broad range of cultural parameters and paradigms, are derived from collections of symbolic representations of individuals' thoughts, beliefs, and visions about the future. These collections can be broadly characterized by the Marxian adage so well adopted by George Orwell in 1984: "He who controls the past controls the future; he who controls the present controls the past."
3. From the earliest archaeological interpretations of artifacts created by homo sapiens, the passing on of information has been the single, most significantly-documented, human activity. Regardless of any technological and cultural iconography, all humans have demonstrated the recognition of the need to earnestly communicate a relatively coherent concept of survivability in a predictable future context to their offspring.
4. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, humans, throughout the Gaian bio-sphere, are collectively attempting to supplicate themselves to their own children using such phrases as: "We don't know what the world will be like in twenty years but... There has been so much knowledge created in the last five years that no one knows what's going to happen... The advances of technology can help solve all of the problems created in the last century... You have more information available to you than any person has ever had before, so use it to help yourselves..."
4b. The basic tenet of all the messages is that the future is so unknowable, or more precisely so horribly unthinkable, that the only appropriate generational transfer of knowledge and information should be blessings of hope and good luck. Indeed, many of the themes put forth by those espousing supplication to some non-earthly entities involve a rejection of, or turning away from, those elements that would invoke thoughts or concerns of the future. Thus our current generation of "school children" have been described by all manner of media and academia as the most 'cynical and apathetic generation ever.'
5. This ignores the truly obvious need to provide our children with the best possible foundations upon which they can build new cultures, societies, and yes, civilizations. My immediate thought turns to the late 1800's life of the Lakota/Nakota peoples, faced with the death of all life as they knew it, and yet required by their own humanity to pass on something of themselves to their children. They had only bad dreams of the future. The presence of so much evil in their world could not be dealt with by thinking of going back to the old ways. We have the Ghost Dance to show how this is so. No, it was those shamen who could see beyond the shadows of the days ahead, who were capable of envisioning a generation of Lakota who could live, survive, and endure in the unknown without fear of the darkness and malevolence.
6a. It is the necessary conditionality of visions which opens the future to our supplication. Without vision there can be no doorway to embracing a future at all. Children are constantly presented with visions of the future through their education, whether taken from: books, TV, movies, music, class discussions, peer relations, natural environmental conditioning, genetic encoding, and neuro-transmitter imprinting. If the visions of the supplicants are limited through neglect or lack of attentive foresight then the future is correlatively limited and necessarily bleak.
6b. Likewise, if the visions are limitless, infinite, and overflowing with possibilities, then the children are given the gifts of unimaginable potentiality.
7. The question then becomes: "How do we access visions of the future and 'know' which of these are most possible?" I intend to address three pathways of future prognostication. The first i call statistical massage , the use of quantitative analyses of past and present conditions to predict possibilities for specific cases. The second path could be described as revelations and manifestations , the pathway built through paying attention to dreams, deja-vu’s, and other moments of recognizable "outside of time" experiences. The third and most useful path is the shamanic, that venue of intentioned seeking of visions of the future through all streams of consciousness inclusive of physics, ethno-pharmacology, divination, vision quests, etc..
8a. I intend to examine three arguments that coalesce into the basic premise for the need to revolutionize 21st Century public education. The first involves English as being fundamentally inappropriate for children who must become citizens of a sustainable, bio-diverse GAIA. American English is the language of corporate capitalism and substantially co-creates the egocentric, male-dominated hegemonic, mind-set that destroys life for sake of profit, the system, and the elite. This process begins in childhood when children must learn to use a syntax and grammar which is ego first person singular based while life at this stage {the Body Being} is absolutely dependent upon others to exist. The language conflicts with natural human development. More appropriate and supportive communication skills would be developed through accessing the diversity of languages from indigenous cultures using their syntax’s and grammatical structures to redesign childhood English.
8b.1 My second argument is built around the “natural manifest destiny of Western Civilization”. Most of the founding principles for education in America, and all of the tenets and canons of corporate elitist capitalism, are premised on the “facts” which seem to support the literal domination by one chosen people to control the planet.
Whether we admit it or not, human history shows that one race of people were able to use various technological developments and ideas to control the entire planet. Our greatest good comes from our belief in Jesus and our power and strength in technological solutions to life. We are free from the constraints of species identification with the empathetic being and can dictate to all other beings how life should be lived.
8b.2 I believe i can show quite clearly that this notion is philosophically damaged and damaging. It seems to me that the flows of GAIAN evolutionary development enable various programmed systemic genetic codings to “test out” the forms of life to the maximal azimuth of existence. Then when these forms begin to destroy others, the GAIAN wisdom moves to eliminate them and support those that have demonstrated cooperative capabilities and interdependent sharing of existence. This would be exampled by the persistence of indigenous cultural memes even within the individual human beings coding as well as in the supple logical relativity of the Buddhist position, especially with respect to compassion. There is a significant contradiction in the notion that suffering builds character versus the alleviation of suffering for all sentient beings. A society that places an educational value on suffering, especially through coercion, cannot be viewed to be caring, nurturing, nor supportive of bio-diversity and GAIAN wisdom.
8c.1 The third argument grows from the requisite perspective for desiring to be alive in the 21st Century. Major fundamental changes in behavior are absolutely demanded if there is to be human life, as we can conceive of it, in the future. These changes presuppose that much of the current trends in both corporate greed and planetary toxifications continue unabated for one more generation. There is, after all, no intelligent reason to assume that capital will promote radical environmental reform in the face of downsizing and mushrooming baby boomer aging. Therefore it is imperative that efforts be made to support children in their efforts to live in chaotic relations rather than in orderly ones. The relationships children now demonstrate in terms of their own survival in chaos can be used creatively and positively to form intentional community boundaries.
8c.2 By this i mean encouraging groups of students to support their own values and social structures on into the future, rather than dictating moral and ethical coding which only creates order ripe for entropic decay. Likewise offering more creative programs, that address their natural developments and archetypal genetic coding, would build foundations for future community and survival. Examples of this would include: rights of passage, ritual celebration of seasons, staging structured rights of social ordering, etc.. All in all, some major educational reforms must occur for humans to live beyond the imposition of massive deaths that are being encouraged by the elitists who control the capital and governments.
9. I think another question we need to ask is: “Do we as human beings want a better quality of life for ourselves and our children?” If the answer is “YES!” then the fundamental role of all education whether it be publicly or privately supported is to subvert the dominant paradigm. Children must be empowered to destroy the traditions of their progenitors in order to be able to live as truly human beings!!
10. The binding force for all American institutions is the American tradition. Tradition maintains the flow of American ideals and principles as set forth by the makers and preservers of tradition. Advertisers establish tradition through the branding of their product. They create the need for a traditional item. The haute couture debate in academia is currently focused on how the 90’s purveyors of cultural paradigms and traditions are misusing and abusing the counter-cultural activities and values of the 60’s. As the American indigenous native peoples would say, “this is truly a frozen Begging Way.” Americans hold a deep respect for tradition and its rightness of ways. We have been conditioned to need tradition--to keep faith in the established way. The FALLEN STAR BOY MYTH of the Plains tribes speaks directly to the need to destroy the bearers of tradition who hold life hostage by fear.
11. I feel as though i am advocating an educational environment that strongly focuses on the shamanic and on the process of the development and ritualization of OTHER THAN HUMAN WISDOM. There seems to be more and more material that supports my view that the weakness in space/time continuums can be exploited through various shamanic techniques. The non-material substance of the universe becomes malleable; the freedom of Reichian orgone being to literally travel through space and time by non-action in non-space and non-time seems most appropriate.
12. Coulianu's work especially, asserts my own belief that the frameworks of consensually agreed upon ‘universe’ are illusory, and that 'ALL' THERE IS can be accessed through the mind mirror. In other words, rather than sending matter through space at enormous expense of energy, it is simply a "matter" of bringing the place in space to the mind. Inherent within each dollop of a four-dimensional referent of space/time are all of the manifestations, structural configurations, and potentialities of the "creation of" and OTHER THAN HUMAN WISDOM in that object of consciousness.
13. My concern is to "show" the possibility of utilizing the archaic techniques to access this state. Obviously a mass media form requires the mythic struggles within, thereby opening the doors of perception and common sense to awareness. It is then the "story" that is important in the communication. The merging of myth with vision as process to revelation has always been an essential part of creation. This series of essays and annotated bibliography are infused with the ‘process’ as ongoing revelation and manifestation of creatively swimming in the oceans of possibilities of OTHER THAN HUMAN WISDOM. I quite literally let the books open where they would, i let the myth tell me where to look and how to use the texts, i used my three visions to open the paths to reflection and truth---all as process for confirming my faith in the accuracy of my thought.
14. For a GAIA to survive with the requisite complexity and diversity of life, all human educational systems must be destroyed and recreated. The Phoenix of the Wakinyan will guide the future generations towards the harmony and joy that bio-regionally supported, ecologically sustainable, economies will provide for all life.
