That “witchy” background is great. I have to wonder what your comments might have been if you had run with whatever that theme might have inspired. Given the title of your post, combined with the background, and for a few seconds I wondered if you were actually going to discuss the paradigm shifts needed to educate more witches (or shamans, magi, mystics, or heretics). This came to my mind because I’ve been studying Roman paganism lately, and I was surprised to discover that in the pagan Roman Empire (well before making Christianity the official religion), witches were burned. I think of witches today as pagans, so I assumed pagan Rome would have been witch friendly. But I forgot that Rome was first and foremost an empire, and there’s just something about empire that suppresses wisdom in all its forms. Maybe your use of that background was more auspicious (in the Roman pagan sense) than you were consciously aware.
Isn't it? Another time I'll record in front of a wall she painted. I've been described as a woman not afraid of her own walls, and she's inherited that intrepid quality.
Now you've really got my mind spinning. I'm thinking about the curricula for esoteric wisdom teachings. Rob Brezsny had a post on Create Yourself with Generosity and Style, and I gifted this episode to him in the comments. I think he's the guy to design that curriculum.
Cassandra did take a class on witches in college, and she's designed her own Tarot deck with meditations. When I was nine months pregnant with her, I read one of Rob's horoscopes that said, "An aspect of you that has never before manifested is about to be born." With two daughters after my own heart already, I wondered what that could be. So that's why I named her Cassandra, as the one who could tell the future in a way that could be heard.
I’m so glad you led me here! So many gems in here! Ok, I see we’ve had a lot of overlapping influences like agarro and Robinson, but I find your suggestions on how to handle higher education with students caring for themselves and expanding their education sources like traveling so insightful and I so very much agree. I had told my kids that instead of going to college, when they’re at that age, we should invest in a year of traveling where we take the first six months and do it as a family whilst visiting all kinds of interesting sites around the world and then the two of them (the twins) should backpack by themselves and experience cultures by serving a mission they believe in and live while working with their hands. And after they’ve learned what they could, they can come back home and if they’re really into it, see what college can teach them too.
I love this: “you can’t untangle a snarl from the middle—as soon as you pull one thread, it tightens the noose around someone else’s neck.” - as much as I want my partner to take advantage of the 10k forgiveness as he is getting crushed by his Sally Mae loans (having paid for it for over 20 years now and still not scratching the principal amount), I think of my kids and how they’ll get saddled with that.
I’m still reading your book (I had to reread a couple of chapters as I was trying to wrap my brain fully around them) but I will finish it next week while flying for my trip. I’m very much looking forward to discussing.
I'm so glad you came here too, Tonika. It is mothers who need to solve these problems, I'm 100% convinced of it. We're the ones who are neck-deep in the practical, the day-to-day, the relationships. We know what will work.
When you get to that stage, there's a book called Alternatives to the Peace Corp. It's worth checking out because taking advantage of young people who want to do something meaningful is another scam.
I'm responding without reading what I wrote, so sorry if I'm redundant, but I'd design student loan repayment (and third world 'debts') to term out once twice the principal has been paid. That's a limit Islamic usury laws set and I think it's a good one. Also NO intergenerational debt in either direction. And I think I'd put a 10 yr limit on repayment unless payments are deferred.
But I hope for any kind of relief in the meantime, so if $10K loan forgiveness is available, he should certainly go for it.
I can't express my gratitude enough that you're wrapping your brain around my book. Fadi Lama in my current comment threads finally got his copy delivered by his son and has started it. The lines that he picks up on blow me away because I've been waiting for so long for someone to 'get it.' And now I have you both, and Julius Skoolafish just got it (having his daughter order it from Amazon as a present, so he didn't get the bad karma) and I look forward to that. I can say with zero modesty that the more someone knows, the more appreciation they have for it. You need to already be in the weeds and sorting through what's edible before it becomes just the guidebook you need for survival. ;-)
Oh gosh, that's so true. But you know, part of the reason that your book is so compelling isn't just that it's trying to talk about economics. It's economics and social implications from your unique perspective, specifically as a mother. And that makes for a very interesting lens. We've never tried it that way, have we? It's always a bunch of know-it-alls thinking they have the answer and we're just getting deeper and deeper into this shit.
"Letting the university take care of all of students’ needs—food, housing, healthcare, policing, punishing misbehavior—can be infantilizing for young adults. Worse, it warps students’ political thinking to eat food that simply materializes in front of them and live in residence halls that others keep clean"
To be fair, this Nick Burns sounds kinda green with envy, lol. I say this as someone who went to a fairly typical state university in 2002-2006, then grad school from 2006-2011 at another, and assuming things have not become radically different since then (aside from trigger warnings, wokeness, and cancel culture, that is).
As the saying goes, moral indignation is 2% moral, 48% indignation, and 50% envy.
Some of your ideas on education have come to pass with the Internet.
MIT alumni are effusive about their online classes, which are in many cases free unless you want to receive credit for attending.
Years ago someone, (Jeanne Meister? a Deloitte book on education?) said that studies had shown that when a professor made a comment that struck the students as unique, it popped up in discussions across campuses, because it was shared among friends who had gone to high school together.
Thank you for all the suggestions, I haven't gotten to most.
Thank you Elizabeth! What I'd love to see is the best of both worlds--students listening to recorded speakers who a real live teacher has chosen, while they're doing something useful like farming, cooking, cleaning, building. Then coming together to eat and discuss, under the direction of someone asking provocative questions. And having assignments where they engage with the material creatively.
It's actually teachers and the act of teaching that I think we need more of--as you and I know personally, anything you want to learn is amply available on the web to a paralyzing degree. Economically, your mission is to distribute the ^200/ mo. education subsidy as widely as possible. So small, in-person inexpensive classes are better than free--although certainly lectures from everywhere should be used and maybe there's a way to thank those people with gift carets.
Oh and sorry I haven't yet responded to your email, although my latest YT (hoping to get it up on Substack tonight) gives an oblique answer: Winning Hearts, Changing Minds: https://youtu.be/U53qAH22HP8.
Please don't feel urgency to respond - especially while planning something as wonderful as a wedding.
I ran through your YT playlist on Socio-Spirituality two weeks ago, but while I was multi-tasking ... I'd like to get back an comment on multiple topics, but have decided it would be better to stay with the most recent.
That's so excellent that you ran through my whole playlist AND were multitasking! I hope you got something worthwhile out of it--by which I mean some chore done that's been hanging over your head. I'd like to take vicarious satisfaction in that ;-)
What we really need is a full debt jubilee across the board, and not just for student loans either (but certainly those as well). Kinda like the ancient Israelites had every 49 years. It can be done easily with a few keystrokes on a computer, thanks to Monetary Sovereignty / MMT.
As for college specifically, there are plenty of other countries like Denmark where it is not only free in terms of tuition, but students actually get a stipend as well. Be like Denmark. Again, Monetary Sovereignty / MMT means that money is no object for those who create it.
As for UBI, which I fully support: the oligarchs with their so-called Great Reset will eventually inevitably offer us something kinda shaped like UBI, but theirs will have plenty of strings attached. We must then beat them to it, with one that has NO STRINGS ATTACHED. The working class will gain much more bargaining power as a result. Goodbye oligarchy!
They will NOT own us. And they will NOT be happy, lol.
Buckminster Fuller would be proud.
Oh, and we need to abolish usury as well. That is the single biggest driver of our inane and insane addiction to growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host.
More to the point, what exactly do these four (or more) years of college REPRESENT in our minds, at least subconsciously? A temporary holiday away from a life of modern day serfdom otherwise. But when you scratch the surface, and see all the many strings attached, you find it's really not a holiday from serfdom at all, but part and parcel of same.
Heya, Ajax. You're right about college representing the last hurrah before a life of drudgery. I see that desperation under the veneer of carefree partying all around me in the college rentals.
My thoughts on UBI you'll see on the other thread of The Reset's Three Agendas. But I have a YouTube that also speaks to it, that I think is funny, from before I was doing Substack. It's Adjacent Nation on Russell Brand & Krystal Ball: https://youtu.be/p-rBc8XfmyA
"In Russell's intro to his interview with Krystal, he talks about creating an Adjacent Nation with no mortgages, taxes or student debt. From my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, I describe my Regeneration Nation that turns debt and taxes into a system of community reciprocity. I reimagine money as the blood of the body politic, bringing energy. Krystal compares the populism of Bernie Sanders to the 1930's agrarian movement. Using The Wizard of Oz, I show how they differ and what we can learn from those politically savvy farmers."
That “witchy” background is great. I have to wonder what your comments might have been if you had run with whatever that theme might have inspired. Given the title of your post, combined with the background, and for a few seconds I wondered if you were actually going to discuss the paradigm shifts needed to educate more witches (or shamans, magi, mystics, or heretics). This came to my mind because I’ve been studying Roman paganism lately, and I was surprised to discover that in the pagan Roman Empire (well before making Christianity the official religion), witches were burned. I think of witches today as pagans, so I assumed pagan Rome would have been witch friendly. But I forgot that Rome was first and foremost an empire, and there’s just something about empire that suppresses wisdom in all its forms. Maybe your use of that background was more auspicious (in the Roman pagan sense) than you were consciously aware.
Isn't it? Another time I'll record in front of a wall she painted. I've been described as a woman not afraid of her own walls, and she's inherited that intrepid quality.
Now you've really got my mind spinning. I'm thinking about the curricula for esoteric wisdom teachings. Rob Brezsny had a post on Create Yourself with Generosity and Style, and I gifted this episode to him in the comments. I think he's the guy to design that curriculum.
https://newsletter.freewillastrology.com/p/create-yourself-with-generosity-and/
Cassandra did take a class on witches in college, and she's designed her own Tarot deck with meditations. When I was nine months pregnant with her, I read one of Rob's horoscopes that said, "An aspect of you that has never before manifested is about to be born." With two daughters after my own heart already, I wondered what that could be. So that's why I named her Cassandra, as the one who could tell the future in a way that could be heard.
Good to hear from you, Jack!
Awesome article.
I’m so glad you led me here! So many gems in here! Ok, I see we’ve had a lot of overlapping influences like agarro and Robinson, but I find your suggestions on how to handle higher education with students caring for themselves and expanding their education sources like traveling so insightful and I so very much agree. I had told my kids that instead of going to college, when they’re at that age, we should invest in a year of traveling where we take the first six months and do it as a family whilst visiting all kinds of interesting sites around the world and then the two of them (the twins) should backpack by themselves and experience cultures by serving a mission they believe in and live while working with their hands. And after they’ve learned what they could, they can come back home and if they’re really into it, see what college can teach them too.
I love this: “you can’t untangle a snarl from the middle—as soon as you pull one thread, it tightens the noose around someone else’s neck.” - as much as I want my partner to take advantage of the 10k forgiveness as he is getting crushed by his Sally Mae loans (having paid for it for over 20 years now and still not scratching the principal amount), I think of my kids and how they’ll get saddled with that.
I’m still reading your book (I had to reread a couple of chapters as I was trying to wrap my brain fully around them) but I will finish it next week while flying for my trip. I’m very much looking forward to discussing.
I'm so glad you came here too, Tonika. It is mothers who need to solve these problems, I'm 100% convinced of it. We're the ones who are neck-deep in the practical, the day-to-day, the relationships. We know what will work.
When you get to that stage, there's a book called Alternatives to the Peace Corp. It's worth checking out because taking advantage of young people who want to do something meaningful is another scam.
I'm responding without reading what I wrote, so sorry if I'm redundant, but I'd design student loan repayment (and third world 'debts') to term out once twice the principal has been paid. That's a limit Islamic usury laws set and I think it's a good one. Also NO intergenerational debt in either direction. And I think I'd put a 10 yr limit on repayment unless payments are deferred.
But I hope for any kind of relief in the meantime, so if $10K loan forgiveness is available, he should certainly go for it.
I can't express my gratitude enough that you're wrapping your brain around my book. Fadi Lama in my current comment threads finally got his copy delivered by his son and has started it. The lines that he picks up on blow me away because I've been waiting for so long for someone to 'get it.' And now I have you both, and Julius Skoolafish just got it (having his daughter order it from Amazon as a present, so he didn't get the bad karma) and I look forward to that. I can say with zero modesty that the more someone knows, the more appreciation they have for it. You need to already be in the weeds and sorting through what's edible before it becomes just the guidebook you need for survival. ;-)
Oh gosh, that's so true. But you know, part of the reason that your book is so compelling isn't just that it's trying to talk about economics. It's economics and social implications from your unique perspective, specifically as a mother. And that makes for a very interesting lens. We've never tried it that way, have we? It's always a bunch of know-it-alls thinking they have the answer and we're just getting deeper and deeper into this shit.
"Letting the university take care of all of students’ needs—food, housing, healthcare, policing, punishing misbehavior—can be infantilizing for young adults. Worse, it warps students’ political thinking to eat food that simply materializes in front of them and live in residence halls that others keep clean"
To be fair, this Nick Burns sounds kinda green with envy, lol. I say this as someone who went to a fairly typical state university in 2002-2006, then grad school from 2006-2011 at another, and assuming things have not become radically different since then (aside from trigger warnings, wokeness, and cancel culture, that is).
As the saying goes, moral indignation is 2% moral, 48% indignation, and 50% envy.
Haha. Good point. You're really on a 3P binge! I better start producing some new episodes before you run out.
Thanks :)
Some of your ideas on education have come to pass with the Internet.
MIT alumni are effusive about their online classes, which are in many cases free unless you want to receive credit for attending.
Years ago someone, (Jeanne Meister? a Deloitte book on education?) said that studies had shown that when a professor made a comment that struck the students as unique, it popped up in discussions across campuses, because it was shared among friends who had gone to high school together.
Thank you for all the suggestions, I haven't gotten to most.
Thank you Elizabeth! What I'd love to see is the best of both worlds--students listening to recorded speakers who a real live teacher has chosen, while they're doing something useful like farming, cooking, cleaning, building. Then coming together to eat and discuss, under the direction of someone asking provocative questions. And having assignments where they engage with the material creatively.
It's actually teachers and the act of teaching that I think we need more of--as you and I know personally, anything you want to learn is amply available on the web to a paralyzing degree. Economically, your mission is to distribute the ^200/ mo. education subsidy as widely as possible. So small, in-person inexpensive classes are better than free--although certainly lectures from everywhere should be used and maybe there's a way to thank those people with gift carets.
Oh and sorry I haven't yet responded to your email, although my latest YT (hoping to get it up on Substack tonight) gives an oblique answer: Winning Hearts, Changing Minds: https://youtu.be/U53qAH22HP8.
Please don't feel urgency to respond - especially while planning something as wonderful as a wedding.
I ran through your YT playlist on Socio-Spirituality two weeks ago, but while I was multi-tasking ... I'd like to get back an comment on multiple topics, but have decided it would be better to stay with the most recent.
That's so excellent that you ran through my whole playlist AND were multitasking! I hope you got something worthwhile out of it--by which I mean some chore done that's been hanging over your head. I'd like to take vicarious satisfaction in that ;-)
What we really need is a full debt jubilee across the board, and not just for student loans either (but certainly those as well). Kinda like the ancient Israelites had every 49 years. It can be done easily with a few keystrokes on a computer, thanks to Monetary Sovereignty / MMT.
As for college specifically, there are plenty of other countries like Denmark where it is not only free in terms of tuition, but students actually get a stipend as well. Be like Denmark. Again, Monetary Sovereignty / MMT means that money is no object for those who create it.
As for UBI, which I fully support: the oligarchs with their so-called Great Reset will eventually inevitably offer us something kinda shaped like UBI, but theirs will have plenty of strings attached. We must then beat them to it, with one that has NO STRINGS ATTACHED. The working class will gain much more bargaining power as a result. Goodbye oligarchy!
They will NOT own us. And they will NOT be happy, lol.
Buckminster Fuller would be proud.
Oh, and we need to abolish usury as well. That is the single biggest driver of our inane and insane addiction to growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell, which eventually kills its host.
More to the point, what exactly do these four (or more) years of college REPRESENT in our minds, at least subconsciously? A temporary holiday away from a life of modern day serfdom otherwise. But when you scratch the surface, and see all the many strings attached, you find it's really not a holiday from serfdom at all, but part and parcel of same.
Heya, Ajax. You're right about college representing the last hurrah before a life of drudgery. I see that desperation under the veneer of carefree partying all around me in the college rentals.
My thoughts on UBI you'll see on the other thread of The Reset's Three Agendas. But I have a YouTube that also speaks to it, that I think is funny, from before I was doing Substack. It's Adjacent Nation on Russell Brand & Krystal Ball: https://youtu.be/p-rBc8XfmyA
"In Russell's intro to his interview with Krystal, he talks about creating an Adjacent Nation with no mortgages, taxes or student debt. From my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, I describe my Regeneration Nation that turns debt and taxes into a system of community reciprocity. I reimagine money as the blood of the body politic, bringing energy. Krystal compares the populism of Bernie Sanders to the 1930's agrarian movement. Using The Wizard of Oz, I show how they differ and what we can learn from those politically savvy farmers."
Thanks again :)