A Tale of Two Authors

How did Naomi Klein become Naomi Klein?

Take a look at what Wikipedia has to say about the family (educational) culture from which she emerged:

Klein was brought up in a Jewish family with a history of left-wing activism, as was her husband, Avi Lewis. Her paternal grandparents were Marxists who began to turn against the Soviet Union after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and had abandoned Communism entirely by 1956. Her grandfather, an artist, was fired from Disney for labour organizing. Her father Michael, a physician, was a Vietnam War resister (her parents moved from the US to Canada to avoid the draft) and a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her mother, film-maker Bonnie Sherr Klein, directed and scripted the anti-pornography documentary film, Not a Love Story. Her brother Seth is director of the British Columbia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Her in-laws are Michele Landsberg and Stephen Lewis, son of David Lewis. (1)

What life work would you suspect might be impelled by the cultural opportunity made possible to Naomi Klein by her immediate family? Yep, you’re right.

Among her writings, two books: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and an earlier No Logo: Taking Aim at Brand Bullies. In addition, her activism worldwide which confronts oppressively undemocratic and unsustainably exploitative socioeconomic behavior of a powerfully few.

Here’s a link to Naomi Klein’s website. Below is a YouTube video of her discussing The Shock Doctrine:

Naomi Klein is no Chris Langan–the no-account “genius” (loser?) whom Malcolm Gladwell contrasts with the outlier Robert Oppenheimer in the Outliers. But does Naomi Klein conveniently fit in Gladwell’s all-male club of celebrated/celebrity outliers? Let me explain.

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers is “simpler” by Einstein’s measure than it need be. A friend Nancy’s use of the phrase “alignment of the stars” seems an appropriate description of Gladwell’s explanation of why extreme “success” happens; in my view, Gladwell seems more an astrologer than astronomer, more mythologist than scientist.

Perhaps inadvertently, Gladwell purveys to parents/educators hungering for confirmation that pushing their children/students through a schooling culture of competitive credential accumulation is what’s really best for them. Take advantage of (and ace) training opportunities and hold your own self-promotionally when encountering gatekeepers and you’ll get to work in somebody’s big house and out of the field working as a lowly hand. The more time and effort you devote to making yourself useful and to gaining the appreciation of your superiors/clients, the greater you’ll see your success (narcissistically) in their mirrors. Where’s the personally, uniquely creative dimension in this male-dominated scrum for fame and fortune?

In a world where the 44 richest people (all men) have acquired as much wealth as the poorest 2,500,000,000, do you think that Gladwell’s “astrological” account is as sufficiently explanatory about the reality of a variety of less conspicuous and less fanfared forms of real success (on-the-ground?), and even outliers’ success itself? It seems to me that there is a scientific account based on testable, simply stated principles, akin to an evo-devo explanation of “natural selection,” which broadly explains social success of human groups and the individuals who are identifiable within them.

Ecopolis: City of the Future

I’m watching a re-broadcast of Dr. Daniel Kammen’s six-part series on cable’s Science Channel titled Ecopolis. Here’s how it’s described: “A blueprint for city life in the year 2050, Ecopolis can benefit from new ‘green’ technologies being explored today that will lead to a more sustainable urban experience tomorrow.” Wow, I’m thankful for a Nobel Prize winning geek with a bent for communication and activism and a group of science video programmers who produce for cable TV broadcasting such positive visions of real possibilities for sustaining ourselves in cities of the future.

The River City Project

Are you folks aware of The River City Project? Although I have no hands-on experience with it, it seems worth investigating. I learned about it in a tweet on Twitter about fifteen minutes ago from Scientific American magazine, which lead me to their online article which includes it in a discussion of learning science virtually.

Here’s how the Graduate School of Education at Harvard begins its introduction to this project:

With funding from the National Science Foundation, we have developed an interactive computer simulation for middle grades science students to learn scientific inquiry and 21st century skills. River City has the look and feel of a videogame but contains content developed from National Science Education Standards, National Educational Technology Standards, and 21st Century Skills.

metaphors for naturally occurring god-awareness

Neither the sketchy historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth, nor the abstract theological construction of him which has buttressed the cultural supernaturalism of Western Christianity over its history despite its thousands of contentious parochialisms, is as potentially foundational for a twenty-first century spirituality worthy of meeting human needs as is the metaphor for a shift in (god-)consciousness presented by Deepak Chopra in his 2008 book titled The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore.

The “spirituality” that moves me personally (one of several “inspirited” mind states quite altered from everyday concerns) is rooted in natural evolutionary and personal developments in the histories of real, not other-worldly beings, and flowers in human propensities for awe of a wondrous ecology in which we are all interrelated and beautiful from the scale of galaxies to that of viruses. The awakening–the discovery by persons individually and in common–of a deeply personal and original awareness of connectedness and resonance between their inwardness/mindfulness/self-interest and the naturally nested physical and human cosmoses in which they exist is for me the “educational” foundation upon which a materially sustainable, culturally enjoyable, and commonly just global community of located communities of learners and collaborators is possible.

What intrigues me is how much today’s findings in various neurosciences and in re-formed social sciences support longstanding traditions in authentic, essentially non-creedal, inherently human, spiritual endeavoring.

I intend in time to write about this convergence of a “naturally human” spiritedness which motivates exploratory and creative ventures into mysteries of being with the interdisciplinary sciences which attempt to understand that motivation in neurological/psychological and social/cultural terms of falsifiable evidence.

A sage insight from old India (i.e., “The measure of enlightenment is how comfortable you feel with your own contradictions.”) is even more applicable to living successfully with the complex and wonderful resources available to dynamically in-form/re-form each of us personally in our twenty-first century lifetimes.