Macrobiotic Life

I have found one new personal blog, full of awesome gardening tips, permaculture oriented:

http://www.permaculturinginportugal.net

Many different topics are discussed there and I like author’s well said, one sentence explanation of the present education problem:

Meanwhile putting 3 children through school in Britain forced me to reassess the whole subject of education. It was painful and frustrating watching their enthusiasm and curiosity fading under the pressure to cram uninspiring ‘facts’ (much of which, on closer examination, is only opinion) into their heads for the next test, while their health deteriorated and their social relationships became superficial and competitive, defined by what they owned and consumed rather than by who they are.

How can we find ourselves in the culture of capitalism?
We are determined by the idea of ever rising GDP.
We are tied by the artificial value of money.
To grow GDP every year, it’s totally necessary to consume, to throw out things for the reason that you can buy new – without consumerism, the present economic system couldn’t continue/prosper.
And we are totally determined by this present economic structure.
We agree to study deliberately, to become professional, to get a good job, to earn money, to spend money and to fulfil the dream of the stupid logic of the few idiotic leaders.
We are sheep, domesticated to create other sheep, to accept the present logic of the humanity, to accept the growing GDP logic, to accept the illusionary value of the paper money, to be stressed by the rules of the capitalism, to accept the masquerade of the political game.
Only when you have enough time, to study, to read, to question everything, you can start to see behind this curtain.
But it’s still very hard, because you are not learnt to question thinks – the educational system is in the favor of remembering facts, instead of critical thinking. When you do tests from the remembering of the hard facts, it’s also easier for the teachers to give you a grade, but it’s very hard for them, to grade you based on your critical thinking. So, just learn the historical facts, biological, economical… and repeat them – ok, a little bit freedom is given you to think, but this freedom is nothing compared to the totality of this Universe – we are still confined in the barriers of the dogmatic belief systems around us – the brain is able only to repeat the old.
It’s a very devil trap put upon us right from the beginning – that’s why I say, we are poor sheep – but I don’t blame us – who can blame the poor people that hadn’t time, or God given interest to ponder about things.
It’s like a Matrix and very few are lucky to see through it.
But when you start, when you get more glimpses, you can’t retrace – it’s impossible and you will struggle… you can get mad, or you can get braver, healthier, but only after a long inner/outer fight with the System – but return path is closed in the moment, you realise the basic logic, the core Truth that determines you – the Nature laws.
In the present families, they are making wars against each other for totally stupid matters – about proper education of their children (which is really devil education from the perspective of Nature, but your life becomes much harder without it in the present System), about brand of car, television, whatever… giving energy to maintain their phony social status, copying whatever is the present modern way of behaving – this all eats a lot of energy and logically, you have no energy left to question it all – you are lost in the Sheep land.

There are core things much more important than a good job, than a University education, than a proper marriage….
These things are hidden in a very simple things, so much simple, that our rational mind can’t accept them – again, because we were trained up so.
The simple things are found on the way of Heart – in the intuition, in the feelings, emotions – without questioning them with the mind if they are good or bad, if I can feel them or not, because it’s appropriate by the measure of present Sheep’s behaviour.
We need to trust in Ourselves, our feelings, emotions – but it’s very hard, it’s risky, we fear to stay immersed in them for a longer time – everything from the System gives you message that you are Unique, you are Different and causing you to fear, to return to the average behaviour.

Ahh.. what a Trap put upon us.. from our nearest to us – from parents, grandparents – we are poor repeaters – but you must still find hope in all of this, even when the logic says there’s no – as I said, the logic is very constricted, thinking in the barriers of the known only – the Heart sees much father and the Consciousness is the total Truth.

Who am I talking to anyway?

Many people give up on learning after they leave school because thirteen or twenty years of extrinsically motivated education is still a source of unpleasant memories. Their attention has been manipulated long enough from the outside by textbooks and teachers, and they have counted graduation as the first day of freedom.

But a person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free. His thinking will be directed by the opinions of his neighbors, by the editorials in the papers, and by the appeals of television. He will be at the mercy of “experts.” Ideally, the end of extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically. At that point the goal of studying is no longer to make the grade, earn a diploma, and find a good job. Rather, it is to understand what one’s experience is all about. From that will come the profound joy of the thinker, like that experienced by the disciples of Socrates that Plato describes in Philebus: “The young man who has drunk for the first time from that spring is as happy as if he had found a treasure of wisdom; he is positively enraptured. He will pick up any discourse, draw all its ideas together to make them into one, then take them apart and pull them to pieces. He will puzzle first himself, then also others, badger whoever comes near him, young and old, sparing not even his parents, nor anyone who is willing to listen. . . . ”

The quotation is about twenty-four centuries old, but a contemporary observer could not describe more vividly what happens when a person first discovers the flow of the mind.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial, 1990)