E.M. Forster: The Machine Stops

I'm at the beginning of this short story, which was written in 1909. It's about a world in which people live in a safe, enclosed bubble and communicate, listen to music, do whatever they want - at the touch of a button.

The CPSIA bill made me wonder aloud with Tim how far the government intends to go in creating a safe environment for children - will it end by children being raised in hermetically sealed padded rooms? (Of course, the padding would need to be phthalate-free . . .) After all, even the world itself is made of dirt, and who knows how much lead might be in dirt.

And Tim said it reminded him of a short story he had to read for AO. It's here; I've only just started it. But I'm finding it eerily possible of the direction we could be going in:

"Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs . . . she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere - buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world. "

"Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking?"

I wonder what, in 1909, could have given anyone the idea that this kind of thing could ever be possible, even in the imagination?

The New Book Banning

From an article by Walter Olson (thanks to Katie for posting this)

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article:

"It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse."

"Whatever the future of new media may hold, ours will be a poorer world if we begin to lose (or “sequester” from children) the millions of books published before our own era. They serve as a path into history, literature, and imagination for kids everywhere. They link the generations by enabling parents to pass on the stories and discoveries in which they delighted as children. Their illustrations open up worlds far removed from what kids are likely to see on the video or TV screen. Could we really be on the verge of losing all of this? And if this is what government protection of our kids means, shouldn’t we be thinking instead about protecting our kids from the government?"

You Can't Buy These Books Anymore

Thanks to the CPSIA ruling that went into effect today, any and all products marketed for children age 12 and must go through an expensive test to be certified as being under specific limits for lead. This includes books printed before 1985, even though no child has ever been harmed by lead from a book. Thanks to our government, these books are now considered hazardous substances, and, since they haven't been republished after 1985, they are no longer legal to sell anywhere, at any price. One thrift store was seen boxing up their inventory of used books and throwing them away. It's no longer legal to distribute or sell them. They can't even give them away without risking a hefty fine.

What is your local thrift store doing to comply with this law? Do you know what your library plans to do with their children's section?

____________________________________

I Went to the Animal Fair; a book of animal poems, some classic, some contemporary. This book hasn't been reprinted since the 1960's; used copies will no longer be allowed to be sold.

Richard Halliburton's classic book of fascinating places; for many, a cherished childhood favorite that inspired a life-long desire to travel and see the places he wrote about. Children will no longer thrill to his description of the Golden Gate Bridge or Hoover Dam because this book hasn't gone through the certification process now mandated by law. Existing copies are now considered hazardous substances--illegal to distribute.

A book that explains scientific heroes of discovery through history and basic scientific laws for pre-teen boys. Since it doesn't comply with CPSIA's post-1985 rule, this book can no longer be purchased.

The third book in the series about a charming, mischievous Chinese boy. The first two books have been reprinted in paperback, but this one hasn't been reprinted - and any existing copies are now illegal to sell.

A page from The Tasha Tudor Sampler - it includes three books in one little volume. All the pictures are just as sweet as this one - but this book can't legally be sold anymore.

Poetic Knowledge - the rest of ch 2

I finally finished ch 2 of Poetic Knowledge, although I'm not sure I understood it fully, and I'm not sure I'm any better off for the few things I did understnd.

Taylor emphasizes the ability of "estimation," which is the innate ability of knowing what's normal and good, and being aware that something isn't right without actually going step by step through a rationlization process. It's talking with someone and sensing that the person isn't quite right. It's like a sixth sense. Maybe it includes social cues? Little Red Riding Hood's power of estimation failed her when she met the wolf who asked her where she was going, and she wasn't alarmed.

He gives a definition of "fear" as "the consciousness of ignorance in the face of some reality."

Poetic knowledge is like the power of estimation: it's the ability to recognize and discern from sensory input without going through a conscious thought process - like the guide Charlotte Mason wrote about who saw vultures circling overhead and knew there was a lion nearby.

There are two kinds of will. There's the passive kind that recognizes instinctively and appreciates when it comes across something good - as if there's something placed inside us that knows good/beauty from bad/vulgar. And there's the active will that chooses between one action and another - this is the will that CM spoke of. The two wills are different in that one is a will of being, and the other is a will of doing. The passive will recognizes good instinctively and loves it, and desires it, but not in a conscious, rational, deductive way.

And there's this concise definition of poetic knowledge: "poetic experience where all the knowing powers are functioning prerationally with reality."

Poetic Knowledge more of ch 2

This is from pages 32-42

Augustine wrote about God being at the center of our soul and mind, illuminating our stored memories. This was his explantion for those "aha!" moments we have. Similarly, Charlotte Mason wrote about those times when we sleep on a problem, and wake up suddenly knowing the answer. She thought it was divine, too.

More Augustine:

"He [the student] learns not by means of spoken words, but by means of the realities themselves and his senses . . . He is taught not by [the teacher's] words, but by the Realities themselves made manifest to him by God revealing them to his inner self."

This sounds to me like CM's concept of ideas. They originate from God, and are transferred from mind to mind by words, books, music, even a look. It isn't the words or music that teach; it's the ideas that enter a mind and the mind responds to the ideas.

The simple, hard-working life of Benedectine moks illustrate poetic living. The idea of getting back to the earth, appreciating birds singing, time to refelct - sound appealing. But then the author goes on, and I'm reminded of the book Old Ramon by Jack Schaeffer. Old Ramon is an old shepherd apprenticing a youth, and the sheep they're tending are actually a lost flock of ancient Inca sheep necessary to revive their old religion, so the youth is actually being trained to carry on the ancient way of life. He asks questions, and the old shepherd gives him wise, cryptic answers that are frustrating to me because they never answer the question. The poetic mode is being held up against the scientific mode of progress. When it comes down to it, I think I fall more on the scientific way of progress. So - I'm thinking maybe this book isn't for me. Maybe I'm too INTJ to wrap my head around a poetic way of looking at life. INTJ's are called "systems builders," which the opposite of the poetic mode.

There's a quote from Newman that says:

"As science makes progress in any subject matter, poetry recedes from it. The two cannot stand together; they belong respectively to two modes of viewing things, which are condradictory of each other. Reason analyzes, investigates, numbers, weighs, measures, ascertains, locates, the objects of contemplation, and thus gains a scientific knowledge of them. Science results in a system, which is a complex unity; poetry delights in the indefinite and various as contrasted with unity, and the simple as contrasted with systems. The aim of science is to get a hold of things, to grasp them, to handle them, to comprehend them; that is, to master them. . . Poetry does not address the reason, but the imagination and affections."

I haven't given up on the book; I imagine there are helpful things about how to educate. But I feel like an outsider now, looking at how other people live and think.

Poetic Knowledge Ch 2 (1st half)

This chapter is called The Philosophic Foundations of Poetic Knowledge. It's a long, long chapter, and I feel like the author is working very hard to define the difference between poetic, and knowledge and philosophy - and he loses me. I'm getting bits here and there, but I'm not sure I'm getting the big picture. But here goes, anyway. This is going to seem disjointed, but that's because it feels disjointed as my mind struggles to make sense of what I'm reading.

Poetic knowledge has to do with the order in which things are taught. It's like training a pianist to have perfect technique, without first teaching him to love music. In the ancient past, leisure was considered a time for renewal and growth - leisure was necessary to learning. In our day, we've redefined leisure to mean free time to be entertained, but we've lost the reflection that the word originally included.

Modern education tends to compartmentalize: we pass through and discard stages to progress to the next phase in the same way that we leave childhood behind and discard our toys when we grow up. It's like leaving one room, shutting the door, to enter the next room. But a poetic concept would be more like adding on. Nothing is ever left behind, everything is kept and becomes part of the whole person. It's more like the rings of a tree.

This is a nice quote from Socrates: "But to love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way . . . for the object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful."

Aristotle said that "the practice and exercise of virtue is the goal of education."

With poetic knowledge, "truths are grasped intuitively."

There's a section about music having power to form character that I didn't find too convincing. Something about "in this 'musical' way of experiencing reality there is a judgment of the senses that begins to 'tune' us to our world, naturally." But if that's the case, I wonder what that implies as far as insipid kindergarten songs? Or putting geography/math facts to simple tunes to aid memorization? If music truly has power to form character, then shouldn't it be put to a higher use and purpose?

Poetic knowledge can be likened to a sense of wonder and awe, and St. Augustine connected it with love: you can't enjoy and internalize something without loving it. So, learning has to include loving the thing being learned. I think this relates to Charlotte Mason: "The question is not--how much does the youth know when he has finished his education--but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care?"

"...Christian philosophy would say that love is ultimately in the will, but what is also being recalled to mind from this tradition is that the objects of love are first placed there by the senses, sensation, and the emotion of love. An important point of the ancient, classical, medieval tradition on man as knower was the consistent view that it was the whole person who experienced the world--not just the eyes or just the mind, but the composite being, body and soul, man."

Andrew Louth is quoted: "We can see in the writings of the twelfth century--on both sides of the growing divide--a separation between mind and heart that had not been the case with the [church] Fathers. With Augustine . . . knowledge and love are held together: there is a coherence of love and knowledge--we cannot love what we do not know, nor do we progress in knowledge if we do not love."

This fits very well with CM - she wrote about the "Great Recognition," which was her revelation that the separation between secular and spiritual, was an artificial divide that had come about in Christian circles after the medieval era, but originally, there was no divide. Like the whole person who is a composite of various facets, the world is a composite of religious and natural things - it's all God's. I see her Great Recognition as the same thing as Augustine's coherence of love and knowledge based on the wholeness of man - or maybe it's two sides of the same coin?

(Katie, I'm on page 32)

We're All Sick

It started with Miss M, then we all started coughing, and now it's developed into full-blown colds. So, we're watching a lot of movies and Lassie re-runs. I started back on my healthy diet plan a couple weeks ago - two green smoothies without fruit, and a healthy diet with no gluten/dairy/sugar besides that. And, in spite of the cold, I've done very well with that, and have even been on the elliptical for twenty minutes a day. It doesn't seem to be helping the cold. I hoped that eating this well would mean I would never be sick again. Vain dreams, I guess.

I'm spending the down time by looking through etexts at mainlesson.com, looking for books I might use with Miss M this year, and maybe even find some to add to AO. I found one about Abraham Lincoln, and I'm looking at a biography of scientists.

I'm also watching the latest news about the CPSIA lead ruling, mostly by keeping up with The Common Room's blog.

Poetic Knowledge chapter 1

Let me see if I can clarify what the term "poetic knowledge" means.

It's the difference between knowing about a person - his name, address, phone number, where he works, what his favorite color is, where he spends his saturdays - without ever actually meeting the person. But poetic knowledge is like being that person's close friend.

With poetic knowledge, a child discovers that he loves books and wants to read because he enjoys having his stories read to him. But our tendency is to drill him in letter sounds and make him sit through phonics rules until he begins to get the idea that reading is a chore.

In a CM context, it might be the difference between reading facts about local plants, where they germinate, when they flower, how they're pollinated, etc - and going outside and just absorbing the delight of the outdoors and becoming acquainted with plant life first-hand.

Poetic Knowledge

I've started reading Poetic Knowledge by James S. Taylor (no, not that James Taylor!) with Katie - she's already posted on chapter 1; meanwhile, I still haven't gotten through the introduction. This isn't any reflection on the book; I just can't get my mind into gear lately. I've been focused on computer issues - I upgraded to a new computer with Linux Ubuntu installed, and installed Xubuntu (Ubuntu Lite) on the old one to make it run faster and prepared that one for dh. And I've been spending a lot of time figuring out what MBTI types everyone is since I read fellow INTJ Merry K's blog post about the INTJ type. So, I've just been too preoccupied to focus my mind on any serious reading. Even my Parents' Review proofreading project has suffered.

After numerous attempts, I've decided to abandon hope about ever finishing the introduction and just jump into chapter 1.

A few weeks ago, when I first got the book and was all excited about reading it and sharing it, I tried to explain to a friend what I thought was meant by the term Poetic Knowledge. I knew it wasn't knowledge about poetry, but I figured it was a sense of the big picture, including all the big questions everyone wonders about - why are we here, what is happiness, what meaning is there to life, etc. I thought it might be tied in with philosophy.

Here's the definition Mr. Taylor gives in chapter 1:

"First of all, poetic knowledge is not necessarily a knowledge of poetry but rather a poetic (a sensory-emotional) experience of reality. . . What must be at the beginning of this understanding is the phenomenon of poetic experience. Poetic experience indicates an encounter with reality that is nonanalytical, something that is perceived as beautiful, awful (awefull), spontaneous, mysterious. It is true that poetic experience has that same surprise of metaphor found in poetry, but also found in common experience, when the mind, through the senses and emotions, sees in delight, or even in terror, the significance of what is really there."

I think I might have been on the right track, but I'll know more when I read farther. And, when I'm clearer about what Poetic Knowledge is, I'll see if I can put it into words I understand.

birdwatching

write every day just
to stay familiar with words
and learn their ways
                                    like
the pianist who plays each note
a thousand times until
he knows its place by touch.

or is it more like birdwatching?

at the park I saw a man
who fed the birds: he filled his hands
with seed and held them out.
he didn't move. he whistled
and they landed in his hands.
he'd been coming every day for weeks (maybe months)
just to sit
            to watch them
                        wait for them
so they knew him.

people are like birds sometimes.

wouldn't it be nice if
            words came for the asking
faith was instantaneous
            people didn't need to trust?

            but perhaps
it's better this way.