Bob Schwartz

Month: March, 2015

March 25, 2015

Educating Prophets

If we view prophets in a broad sense, in a big sense, not something necessarily biblical or spiritual, not as fortune tellers, but as witnesses, critics, analysts, teachers, and guides, it is something we have always had and needed.

That kind of prophecy may be viewed as a gift, but it is something that can be cultivated and encouraged. That isn’t always to the liking of many. Prophets can point in a constructive direction, but in their role as critics they can also be harsh, and stand in the way of those who benefit and profit from the status quo. So some prophets are more acceptable than others, and some are treated as enemies.

Education, in and out of institutional settings, is a part of cultivating and encouraging prophets and prophecy. That isn’t often, or ever, on the list of what education is for or about. So maybe, if we are intent on viewing education as a path to employment and the jobs of the future, we should make sure to include prophet among those jobs. And should include the sorts of subjects and fields in which prophets and prophecy of all kinds grow.

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March 24, 2015

Harmony Between One God and No God

The harmony between one god and no god, between this god and that god, is work that has been done and will be done. It is often blocked and prevented by something in each that relies on primary distinctions. The disappearance of those distinctions would appear to make that one god or no god, this god or that god, disappear as a particular.

But that isn’t so, since the distinction is, in all authentic cases, what is sought to disappear itself. Even those with no god will say that those with one god or this god or that god have built artificial walls that prevent them from seeing what really is. Those with one god or this god or that god also say that barriers have been built that prevent us from seeing what really is.

That is a harmony, the surrendering of walls between the believer and what is, which is the ultimate mission of those with one god and those with no god. The particulars take on too much significance, the walls take on too much significance. The surrendering of walls is the common and primary task, shared by all.

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March 13, 2015

Freud and Freund

Sigmund Freud

Some dreams are literal or nearly so. Sometimes riding a roller coast is just riding a roller coaster. Some dreams, if you take a symbolic and analytical approach, mean more and say more than the action they depict. That roller coaster might be the story of your day or your life.

The rarest kind are wholly, or at least momentarily, conceptual and intellectual. That is, they are like reading a text or listening to a lecture, wherein an item is dictated or a point is announced.

Last night, a dream asked me to play a word game, to relate two words. It wasn’t quite a request, it was more like a reveal, as in “Look, don’t you see?”

The words were Freud and Freund (the German word for friend). I did not take this to mean that Freud is my friend. I took it to mean that analysis and investigation, which Freud is famous or infamous for, is/can be/may be near the heart of friendship. Friends may not want this or like this, we may not want to do this or complicate the joyful simplicity of a relationship, but it does happen.

Of course, Freud might find the dream and my interpretation of it…interesting. He might expect me to delve more deeply into why he made it into the dream at all, even if only as a name, and why in my dream I was playing word games instead of, say, riding a roller coaster or something equally thrilling. But then, I might ask him, as my freund, to kindly shut up and let me get back to sleep.

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