Journey Into Self

"The question they examine is, what is it like to be oneself? What are other people like when they are themselves? All of us are pretty good at carrying the secret of our own loneliness. Now these people will try to discover the secret of being together."

This clip, the documentary called Journey Into Self, is a fascinating view showing us the brilliance that was Carl Rogers as well as the transformative power of group psychotherapy. Get some popcorn and enjoy.



For more about Carl Rogers, check out my blog post here.

Shit White Girls Say (To Black Girls)

As evidenced by my blog and twitter stream, I apparently have been thinking a lot about discrimination in general and racism in particular. What's somewhat sad to me is that each time I write about these issues I shed a certain number of online followers. Some say good riddance -- people who aren't interested in what I'm writing about are leaving. I find that it really bothers me because one of the reasons I do this is that I'm wanting to create forums for people to think about difficult things that they don't have opportunities to think about. I'm sad when I miss out on an opportunity to engage someone in dialogue.

This morning I was catching up on some of the blogs I read frequently. I came across this smart video on en | gender. Some of the comments on YouTube show just how ugly racism can be.

Slave Narratives: Sarah Frances Shaw Graves

Sarah Frances Shaw Graves

It looks like I'm going to be a regular visitor to the digital archives at the Library of Congress. Did you know they have a collection of oral histories taken in the 1930s by people employed by the WPA (Works Progress Administration)? They make for riveting, harrowing, and enlightening reading.

Personal narratives like this are like opening a little tiny window in the fabric of time. Through that window I get to glance back and see an unvarnished, unprocessed, and unadorned view of life at it was. These windows are irresistible--when I find it I need to open it and look through it. Whether it be historical narratives likes these, or more contemporary narratives like the ones told by patients in my office, I'm transfixed. Each window opened gives me another perspective to understand the complex fabric of our shared experience.

Sarah Frances Shaw Graves was born sometime around 1850 somewhere near Louisville. She told her story to a WPA interviewer in 1937. The nameless interviewer wrote this of Sarah:

"Her life story is one of contrasts; contrasts of thought; contrasts of culture, beneficial inventions and suffrage. Not far from her home the glistening streamlined Zephyr speeds on twin rails beside the Missouri River, near the route of the slow-moving, creaking wagons on the ox-road of the 1850s."

Let's open up one of those tiny little windows in the fabric of time and let Sarah speak.

"My name is Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, or Aunt Sally as everybody calls me. Yes'm that's a lot of name an' I come by it like this, My husband was owned by a man named Graves, and I was owned by a man named Shaw, so when we were freed we took the surnames of our masters. I was born march 23, 1850 in Kentucky, somewhere near Louisville. I am goin' on 88 years right now. I was brought to Missouri when I was six months old, along with my mama, who was a slave owned by a man named Shaw, who had alloted her to a man named Jimmie Graves, who came to Missouri to live with his daughter Emily Graves Crowdes. I always lived with Emily Crowdes." 

"Yes'm. Allotted? Yes'm. i'm goin' to explain that," she replied. "you see there was slave traders in those days, jes' like you got horse and mule an' auto traders now. They bought and sold slaves and hired 'em out. Ye'm, rented 'em out. Allotted means somthin' like hired out. But the slave never got no wages. That all went to the master. The man they was allotted to paid the master." 

"I was never sold. My mama was sold only once, but she was hired out many times. yes'm when a slave was allotted, somebody made a down payment and gave a mortgage for the rest. A chattel mortgage." 

A down payment!! 

"Times don't change, just the merchandise." 

I am amazed at how connected I feel to Sarah. Despite having been born more than seventy years before I was, and having died on July 3, 1943, when my grandparents were in their early 20s and neither of my parents were born, I can feel her presence here in my living room as I sit on my couch writing this in an undisclosed location in the Merrimack River Valley. That's the power of a personal narrative.

Sarah gives us a glimpse into the life of a person in slavery that we don't read about in history text books. Her personal story gives contour, shape, and texture to the disembodied facts our teachers lecture about. Sarah also offers us so much more. She was a simple woman. She worked hard and struggled to survive through an era of history that was not kind to people of color. She received no formal education, won no prizes, and left no inventions, books, or other intellectual products behind.

Yet reading her narrative, I'm incredibly moved the the gifts I have received. Sarah mattered not for what she left behind. She mattered because she was here. Her story illuminates her humanity that, in the end, is all we ever really have.

Barack the Magic Negro: Puff the Magic Dragon (Dreaming a Better Dream)

Yesterday my Twitter feed was peppered with a few references to the parody "Barack the Magic Negro." This apparently made the rounds through the media during the last presidential campaign. Somehow I managed to miss it.

The racism embedded within this little ditty is appalling. Many others have spoken articulately about this. Interested? Here or over here are two places you might start looking.

My point is less about racism and more about what kind of world do you want to live in? Does anything about this "political satire" video make you feel better about the world? Does anything about it encourage us to be more than we currently are? Does it teach us to care for each other? Work toward a common good?

I certainly don't see any of those loft goals held inside this video. I see a whole lot of racist, small minded ignorance. I see people with small dreams and small ideas constricting the collective possibility of what we can be.

Also, if I'm being totally honest, my point is that I'm also irritated that a classic song from my childhood as perverted into racism. It's a melancholy song about loss of innocence--and for me a reminder to remain open and curious.

Listen to the original. How does it inspire you to live your life?

Which inspiration do you prefer? 

A Squirrel May be More Relevant than a Dying Child

"A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa." -- Mark Zuckerberg

Living in a bubble, and dealing with them, is nothing new. This TED speaker seems to think that algorithms are in danger of keeping us from other opinions. We've done this for years. Universities and business refer to this peril as being in a silo--being sheltered from other aspects of the school or business and only knowing about the concerns your department or section is concerned about. Politics certainty does this--when is the last time Republicans have listened to someone other than other Republican ideas (unless it is to deride those ideas)? Same for the other side of the aisle. When is the last time Democrats have listened to something other than Democrats (unless, of course, it is to make fun of Republican ideas)?

The problem isn't algorithms. They are just reflecting what we humans do. The problem is humans. We tend to look for information that supports our opinions and ignore the rest. We tend to seek entertainment that is comfortable and familiar rather than look for for something that is challenging and different.

The question here for me is is two fold: (a) do you know the bubbles you are living in and (b) do you spend some time working to look outside your bubble. While the problem for me isn't an algorithm, one solution very well may be. Algorithms that support exposing us to the new, different, and novel can break us out of our bubbles. New businesses that curate ideas and products--and expose us to them in ways that help us discover new things are also an avenue of change.

What do you think?

What Even Happened to Liberal Arts?

Reference

Regular readers of my blog might remember an earlier post that I wrote upon discovering the Library of Congress digital archives. I recently went back for another visit to the archives and pulled up a treasure trove of interesting things.

To the left is one of the images I collected. What caught my eye is the government offering free adult education classes in the liberal arts. Can you imagine that happening now?

Back in 1937 it did happen. Under the auspices of the WPA (Works Projects Administration), interested adults in Chicago would sign up and learn all sorts of interesting things . Stop for a moment and think about that: adults signing up to learn more about the world around them. Art appreciation, perhaps. How about a new language? A painting class? Child development? All were likely possibilities in addition to basic reading, writing, and arithmetic.

I'd like to imagine it was a time where people had the opportunity to be both thoroughly grounded in basic skills (reading, writing, arithmetic, critical thinking) and be exposed to a diversity of thoughts to indulge curiosity and wonder. This is at least my romanticized version of history.

What are things like now? Less curiosity and wonder. That's for sure.

If you have some extra time, and are curious, check out this Frontline episode about some of the perils of for-profit higher education institutions. You might also be interested in this New York Times article that details the fraud charges the Department of Justice filed against one for profit higher education institution.

Watch College Inc. on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Happy New Year

Dream giant golden Buddha-sized dreams -- Ryunosuke Satoro