Entertaining while ‘engendering’ a vital debate about education.
The time limited link to watch this documentary is here:
Previous portrayals of the poor, street, and slum, life of places like Bombay as depicted in Shantaram, the 2003 novel by Gregory David Roberts, and perhaps like the novel itself, first appeared as an illuminating western perspective until it became quite obviously incredulous and lacking genuine context, even for fiction. The welfare of India’s poorest young girls is a topic the west and east have little discussed but still mostly disagreed upon.
This was most notable perhaps when the late polemicist Christopher Hitchens published his book “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice”in which Hitch criticized her efforts to alleviate the suffering of Calcutta’s poor and claimed, outside his assessment of her character, that those efforts since based in religious dogma and motives, ensured that the wretched situation there was actually compounded by such interference. Hitch went on to explain that the one thing that has positively changed life outcomes for poor young women is ensuring that they have sovereignty over their own bodies. The long and arduous route to that societal shift in the subcontinent of India must obviously traverse education.
A snatched still from a single moment of the journey in the documentary.
The Road to Vrindavan begins with its creator Ravi Chambers understanding that immersing himself in even the planning of the central arduous journey at the centre of the film may somehow echo his previous unintended exclusion of those most dear and closest to him, as he acknowledges the effects on others of his other journey to Vrindavan as a Hare Krsna monk twenty years previously.
Jeff Gomez has in recent years articulated the shift from Campbell’s heroic journey to concepts around shared storytelling, the collaborative creation of story universes to inclusive, transmedia, and an expansive equality inspired ‘collective journey’ this very personal documentary film by necessity requires a sort of simpler immersion in the individual threads of our collective imagination.
Interviewees along Ravi’s fund raising and fact finding journey introduce terms like ‘significant importance’ and ‘authentic’ with respect to Indian Culture, Indian Tradition, and the defined roles assigned to men and women in their society. Ravi conducts his interviews with a forthright sensitivity and perhaps because of the subject matter, the obvious emotional, intellectual, physical, and maybe spiritual investments he’s making in this documentary this ensures it becomes a rich tapestry of all these elements, from the natural splendour of the countryside to the sprawling human hubbub of various urban spaces, to fresh faces of young girls each of whom has her own individual special story, the vibrancy of colour, the texture of personality and ultimately the exploration of possibility.
Just as with the ideas within it, the film itself expands its intellectual, theoretical, and ultimately sociological breath to broaden the question beyond simply the education of young girls, it does so without ever resorting to becoming academic or abstract, issues with inheriting the wisdom within tradition, societal evolution without inherently damaged historicity swamping progress, become developing backdrops to the imperative questioning at the centre of the documentary.
Here I must confess my personal connection to this story as I am a long time family friend of Ravi’s parents, but this story while about cultural, societal, gender, community, and broader questions, is ultimately about these personal stories, and the relationships between them, it is about men and women, parents and their children, what is acceptable to us as individuals and as parts of our communities, what are our responsibilities to each?
The Road to Vrindavanis a timely and very well produced reminder about individual and collective bravery, gender roles, rights, and gender sensitization at a time when violence against women is on the National agenda in India. Unlike that book Shantaram, the truth and authenticity of ‘The Road to Vrindavan’ increase as the documentary itself evolves, ‘be inspired films’ has delivered a film really worth watching and certainly a documentary very much worth discussing. Go watch it and Enjoy…
Thank you for your unsolicited confidential message xxxxxx,
Rather than simply delete your message, I thought it might also be ‘nice’ to respond to you personally here on linkedin first, before deciding whether to post my reply below publicly on my own timeline or elsewhere, as a kinda critique.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. it’s secret…
I’m sure at one point this whole thing sounded like a really good idea in that room, I can tease using scarcity and exclusivity appeals via simple (& cheap) personalized direct linkedin message, invite a broad cross section of connections and filter later using three (reinforcing) questions to build community via our promise of exclusive value, intimating that my actual bog standard value proposition is so really good it needs to be ‘secret’.
That’s an old 1960’s advertising trick but hey that was 60+ years ago..
I can call the initial linkedin message ‘a confidential message’, to set tone and general expectation to message recipients.
I then basically create a standard linkedin group to help form a community which we can later migrate to our own branded platform and then monetize.. we will have plenty of time to come up with better branding, simply: Secret… XXXXX XXXXX group… is initially cleaner.. until we get some additional creative talent on board..
We could later do a hot takes handbook on our success building the group. Group content can also be repurposed with our new branding.. it’s a digital playbook waiting to be complied..
We could use the hottakes handbook as clickbait reward for newsletter sign up, it can be one pillar of our broader content planning.. inbound strategy dev is underway.. what about an infographic ?
One central omission from your initial collateral and your thinking xxxxxx is that to many human beingsSecretscan be a damaging psychological phenomena.
Since before whispers were invented, secrets have caused suspicion, misunderstanding, disinformation, guilt, lack of trust, betrayal, in our current post truth age, where disinformation is causing unnecessary and major political, medical, and personal, difficulties for a whole range of people and societies globally, why would any genuine thinking person want to be involved with some cheap social media ‘secret’..
Why would anyone in their own proper mind be enticed to carry additional and unnecessary psychological weight ?
FOMO ? – STFU !
Does any ‘normal’ individual really want to receive a completely unsolicited ‘confidential message’ ?
In normal circumstances I would just delete both buckshot marketing message and the connection but with all the crap currently in our world, seeing this kinda stuff from a Harvard educated CMO, a consultant, is honestly disturbing.. I need to point this cheap trickery out.
I was blessed to bring three sons to adulthood, one of the main tenets of my parenting was to have no secrets, to advise my children that yes each person could and should have personal stuff that is their’s alone, and they correctly have the choice about what they share with others.. or what they don’t.. but never be forced to carry a secret for someone else.. anyone who would ask you to do that, really needs to look at their own motivations and expectations.. and the worth of that secret, before asking you for a reply..
That final bottom line (doorknob) NLP attempt in the message:
“And remember, it is our big secret 😏”
is simply infinitive wrong..
Having written the reply above to the message below, I decided to post it here for my regular readers instead rather than dignify the unsolicited message with any form of response, I chose to leave it unanswered… and deleted the connection who sent it.
BELOW the Text of the original Message with clear redaction so as to avoid unnecessary embarrassment. and below that again an image of my desktop with the message with lots of colorful redaction to protect other identities..
Hi, Michael!
You have received a highly confidential message 🔒
I see, you have experience and expertise in the XXXXXX area, so I thought it would be nice to give you an invite to our Secret XXXXXX group.
As a member of our group, you will have full access to: •
XXXXXX-oriented courses
•Fascinating interviews with XXXXXX experts
•Most recent XXXXXX news
•Quizzes, questionnaires and polls
•Discussions of pressing problems with XXXXXX leaders
•Funny XXXXXX jokes and memes
This offer will be valid for only some days, as we have a limited number of invitations.
If you want to be one of the lucky ones and get into our group, let me know about it, and I will send a short 3 question brief to make sure you can join.
And remember, it is our big secret 😏
I am starting to write a regular newsletter which is (hard to believe I know) more opinionated, considers more topics than presented here, in hopefully more detail with additional links of interest and references, that is if enough people sign up to it.. its about all sorts of stuff…. so I’ve called it:
Edited Version..
Two fingers to this year 2020
When my loving mother passed
And all that economic talk of plenty
was exposed as rich men’s lies at last
our fifth world war, after drugs and terrorism,
became a virus of normal people’s frontline heroism
politicians proved their lack of worth, dumb death
of wisdom
disinformed, cerebral malnutrition from a spin filled
kingdom
we the people look to each other and our burning
earth around us
that us, this we, these common people, locked down,
look up only to see
that double digit trouble becomes our starting price
of being frank and free
fingered fear and trepidation visited upon each nation
as a global planning spree
of dumbing down, rising prices, complex processes
reducing critical capacity
inconvenient truths dismissed, slandered silenced
theories of silly conspiracy
don’t fall for them vote for me, vote, vote often,
believe you have a voice, a choice
between the corporations and my mini me,
the nanny state supported on all fours
by those who set the ceilings and the floors, of wealth,
access, and growing successful fear
that keeps you near, believing friends or enemies
among their economic rubble
but when you burst that bubble,
only then begins their real double digit trouble
I am starting to write a regular newsletter which is (hard to believe I know) more opinionated, considers more topics than presented here, in hopefully more detail with additional links of interest and references, that is if enough people sign up to it.. its about all sorts of stuff.. so I’ve called it:
The raised concentration of trees in the distance above the river at the centre of the twilight image is Castletown motte, or Cúchulainn‘s castle. In simpler times it was part of our teenage playground, and where my friends and I first encountered the material reality of Irish mythology taught at school. My photo also shows the reflection of the planet Venus in my local river from a point on ‘the big bridge’.
Modern industries have created their own myths to serve their purpose of profit and shareholder value. We as a society daily participate, spread, and reinforce such market driven myths; the myth of efficiency, the myth of merit, the myth of equality. Societies solely driven by economics and market forces visibly stratify various groupings, Shakespearean Plebeians below their Patricians or an Aristocracy above born into a right to rule. As above, not so below. Today’s billionaire class are both figuratively and literally out of sight.
There is evident entitlement that accompanies being in a more economically advantageous ‘position’. Whether the offspring of a surgeon or clock-maker or child of an unmarried mother, one of the greatest myths to persist in Ireland today is the possibility and desirability of social mobility, the idea that we are born into one economic level in our society but can and should ascend (further compete) in(to) higher social positions, enjoying consequent improved personal prosperity. Were it true, might it be worth wanting ?
The American Dream was built on such a concept, European fairy stories are crammed with it, believing in the proximity of attainable prosperity rungs keeps a globalized lid on the archetypal parochial Irish begrudger while also encouraging various arms of the Irish civil service to intermarry one another. We love the idea that such myths are really truths. There is justice and fairness and people in power will do the right thing, despite so much evidence to the contrary.
The benefits of Success are no longer about a shared myth but just another hard commercial commodity to be bought and sold, listed and exploited, aligned and structured, a fact that makes me quite sad.
A recent press release from my local football club aligns them with a british gambling company through shirt sponsorship, I had already reached 100 meaningless spam comments on this website a number of weeks ago, those two unconnected facts prompted me to write this post.
Disclaimer: Beware all proclaimed experts and advisers, like the three arriving above, rumored to be Irish government advisers developing arts council policies.
If you want to make money writing, then write computer code.
If you wish to explore your humanity write poetry.
If you’d like to network in the writing world write short stories.
If you really want to destroy your writing soul, why not try crafting literary essays.
If you want to seek specific career advancement write academic material.
If you want to pursue your dreams write print novels.
If you want to connect, write journalism.
If you want to make enemies write reviews.
If you want to make films write screenplays.
If you want to make lingering mistakes write spiritual literature.
If you enjoy emotional purgatory write brand communications.
If you want to tackle social or societal issues write plays.
If you want to be helpful write manuals.
If you want to be accommodating write invited articles.
If you want to waste your valuable time and energy write a blog.
If you want to be depressed write comedy.
If you want to go into deep financial debt write computer games.
If you subconsciously crave creative obscurity write digital literature.
If you want to create value write business plans.
If you want to be a writer, read everyone and anyone who calls themselves a writer.
If you really want to be a writer, write anywhere, on anything, anytime.
If you want to be an original writer prepare for poverty.
If you want to be a popular writer befriend other writers, particularly those you don’t like.
If you want to be a truthful writer live freely inside and outside your writing.
If you want to be a successful writer, write, write a lot, and then get an agent.
If you knew you wanted to be a writer aged 12 years old start saving ‘therapy money‘.
If you regard writing as an art rather than a craft buy a paintbrush.
If secluded daily writing excites you, try writing curricula.
If you really want to be ‘just a writer’ then write away right away.
If you’ve read down this far, you’ve reached point 30 and already know you know but were just checking in.. just in case…
I am starting to write a regular newsletter which is (hard to believe I know) more opinionated, considers more topics than presented here, in hopefully more detail with additional links of interest and references, that is if enough people sign up to it.. its about all sorts of stuff.. so I’ve called it:
In Ireland, we have culture night similar to how fortunate children have Christmas. One day per year when we are allowed what our imaginations may (or may not) have desired.
Government appointed quangos decide what constitutes our national culture, and therefore which precise presents are officially available. The commodification of Culture in Ireland has become a successful thriving industry in itself. Brand Ireland sells. Brand managers and various administrative layers have become self proliferating, perpetuating.
Artists, Writers, Musicians, Performers are invited to participate in this very special night and consequentially further endorse this destructive commodification that entirely reinforces the market society Ireland has become in recent decades.
As others have observed once we begin to put a price on various community and social activities, we convert public good to public goods. Our greedy rooms of economic experts can then begin their projections of worth, value, and profits in these ‘markets’.
As we put a price on any commodity we also ensure that access to it is then governed by wealth levels. Markets are also fundamentally about competition. Participants become consumers. Money becomes central.
But it’s Free…. ??
In Ireland wealth can be directly linked to political access, in a country who’s cronyism and nepotism have always at very least bubbled about in the background, to be connected is really everything for some. Surely there is no deliberate irony in Culture Night’s tagline: Connect through culture.
As someone who has been independently creative and creatively engaged with the arts and technologies, within and outside commerce/business for about forty years, I really do understand the dilemmas and dichotomies facing any artist offered either a crust or the promise of wider exposure, having paid the price of being both broke and hungry as a result of my own (foolish ?) artistic ( & Life) choices, is it then ironically rich of me to suggest to any struggling artist they consider not uncritically taking part in this constituted culture market (the culture night ritual itself is now 15 years old).
‘Free’ today has become more marketing terminology than any kind of liberation, loss leaders and free downloads are hooks and flytraps for the less aware consumer, terms and conditions apply, as always.
Culture and Banks
The books on the right in the image above are (some of) the great writer Iain M. Banks science fiction ‘Culture series’ novels, ones I’ve already read, the pile on the left are the ones I have yet to read. I am not going to offer any spoilers here, except to say that ‘The Culture’ are an advanced amalgam of races which contain advanced technologies, higher intelligence and a lot of mind. A sophisticated Utopian civilization one in so many respects often counterpointing the vast swath of dystopian visions offered elsewhere in science fiction and other future focused fiction, it can be highly dense imaginative optimistic writing.
Culture (without reference to Iain M Banks or the likes of Joseph Campbell or Edward Burnett Tylor) is also fundamentally concerned with shared Values, Beliefs, and Rituals.
The great societal pause created by Covid 19 remains a (tragic) opportunity to find ways to assess and reassess these shared values, beliefs, and rituals. Surely our leaders would agree, now is a time to open our minds as much as our hearts ?
Imagine a vital debate making decisions about what all this arts stuff actually is, and to whom is it important? How and why any of this is called Culture, what that might really mean beyond the superficial, what effects arise out of these decisions long term ?
Imagine specifically questioning promoted and funded varieties easily found ‘free’ on culture night, yes the endorsed and officially rubber stamped varieties, the specific brand of ‘culture’ which on September 18th will seep out through our screens and devices, that agreed upon type of arts, endorsed and asymmetrically shared by what is ultimately a hegemonic few, Again what is it really ? and what is it’s actual purpose, is there any alternative view ? Well it is a debate that simply won’t happen in Ireland.
Such a debate isn’t happening because our entire arts and culture industries, the culture markets in Ireland, are currently decimated by Covid 19, the response for the most part has been vested and established interests clambering with begging bowls to government.
Plenty of people who get up in the morning and many many others state their cases for support and special treatment to survive in today’s highly competitive marketplace they actually helped create, continue to endorse, and help preserve, albeit perhaps unwittingly.
The temporary reduction in our national VAT rate is interesting because it should serve to remind all of us that anyone who pays for commodities, also pays tax, and thus participates in our various markets (or market segments) whether they happen to get up early or not.
Even when the Irish exchequer is borrowing money, it is all the people’s money if not our children’s money they are borrowing, the continued use of that money to impose a market ideology through the arts should also reside at the heart of any potential debate about how that money is spent. I’d like to write here about the GAA and my admiration for it and what it does at community level, however that would make this piece far too long, so another day perhaps..
What exactly constitutes our contemporary ‘culture’ and what effect does it have on the future direction of our arts ? No one I have seen or read in the media has ever questioned this aspect of policy in this specific manner ? We get lots of commentary in the organ of record but little actual informed analysis as to the longer term detrimental effect on various parts of our broader society.
It seems shouting about diversity or inclusion, droning on about access, counts as sufficient critical analysis of strategy. In business culture eats strategy for breakfast yet these efficient government agencies produce only focused ‘strategic’ plans, to which everyone and their mother are often invited to contribute, diluting the very concept of focused strategy. We love commissioned reports in Ireland, almost as much as we love the cans we kick down the road.
I am obviously aware that writing on this topic like this at this time may myopically characterize me as some kind of begrudging curmudgeon, ‘oh come on allow people to enjoy themselves and their arts in whatever manner they wish’. But to argue that is to miss the point of seeing culture commodified and economically mined to the detriment of those who probably most need the greatest access to it, the poorer in our society.
To consider this uninvited open contribution to culture night worthy of critical appraisal or rebuttal is to accord me more influence or attention than I want, merit or deserve, while my website in its previous form had hundreds of thousands of visits, I never promoted it outside my relatively small circle of friends, friends from across a broad spectrum.
Are there already enough middle class minds, or refusenic working class nogins like mine, wallowing in these cultural wastelands we create as we emulate our own personal hero or heroin ? I would like to imagine that if prompted the current gatekeepers and purse-holders could recognize the longer term value of reform to all parts of our society, or perhaps I am confused and really being Utopian ? Or should I just accept that as with all markets, there will be winners and their most certainly will be losers and it’s not my job to point that out to anyone.
Yet part of the joy of Arts and Culture is learning, education, exchange, participation is a broadening or deepening experience, it is absolutely vital that the poorer in our society have access to the arts. Will culture night offer them that access ? I very much doubt it, will culture night offer anything other than a back slapping celebration of the status quo, of the status of those arts sectors as a primarily promoted activity that strategically supports the continuance of a market society more interested in profits than participants, I again very much doubt that also.
I was lucky that the community arts I experienced were to me nothing to do with culture or organizations nor endorsements nor conformance, they were created by the community that enjoyed them, very very little if any funding was ever received and they were created with a view to allowing my then working class community to experience themselves as others may see them/us/me. I have made many friends through the arts… I have learned a lot from and through the arts, I have an enormous respect for artists and practitioners, and recognize that communities of practice tend to share certain values, perspectives, beliefs, they are a form of sub-culture in and of themselves..
But as Terence McKenna wisely said: Culture is not your friend….
So led by the least among us, until we ask for this debate, inform ourselves, share information, there will be no change and market forces will continue to erode the public good in favor of public goods, competition will continue to create Darwinian conditions and arts and culture will become fully and only elitist pursuits.
However I see a brighter future, perhaps not one so entirely different to what Banks himself wrote so extensively about, a future that imagines enlightenment, de-commodification, fairness, understanding, appreciation, where the most reported pandemic in history became a catalyst for positive, genuine, authentic societal change on Culture Night..
Again, Imagine that…
If you got this far, sincere thanks for reading, please feel free to share or leave a comment..
William Goldman famously informed Hollywood of this fact in his autobiographical guide to the movie business “Adventures in the Screen Trade“. Every writer is aware of that fact even if it serves only as an emotional rejection safety net. Scientists know this also…
First line Quote from Bantam Books edition 1988..
which is perhaps why there is such emphasis on reproducibility of results when it comes to theories, theorems, where proofs are essential for truth. The need to know is the need to have proof. I have proven, on many occasions that knowing a lot, however large that specific lot may initially seem to some, even relative to other smaller lots, is still infinitesimal if not entirely negligible when compared to what might be known. This being just one true reason why I’m often surprised and shocked at the lack of genuine humility shown by ‘homo humbleless’ i.e. certain academics, writers, business people, and artists. Human ego certainly appears to be one of the most destructive and unforgiving forces on our planet, fueled with these little pools of individual knowledge it’s an utter disaster for those unfortunate to encounter them.
“A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing”
Alexander Pope.. An essay on criticism..
As children our imagination and curiosity drive us to discover more about the world, in my own case it was taking all sorts of things apart, making stages, sets, and theaters from cardboard boxes, using such bits and pieces to create shows and epic linoleum kitchen floor performances for the captive audience of two older grandaunts and a very proud mother. When we grow up so many of us lose that ability to openly experiment in a non self aware way. Our society, despite what social media tries to say, does not suffer such fools gladly, and often being foolish is a true route to creative discovery and imagination.
When someone tells us new truths old books contain, that childish sagacity we once possessed can be driven from us by such convention.
‘Imagination is more powerful than knowledge’ is a quote attributed to Einstein, in my own limited view imagination is an under investigated human phenomenon, some years ago I read Anne Balsamo’s Designing Culture: the technological imagination at work, my own wip print book could quite easily be sub tilted / log lined as ‘the technical imagination at play’.
The difficulty with reaching an end with life long formal education, having experienced it’s primary versions reject me in my earlier life, is the actual perceived worth and value of that formal, formalized and institutional variety of education, learning by earning (or paying for) bits of exclusive institutional paper loses it’s sheen and relevance, particularly when so many of it’s corporatized advocates themselves belong to ‘homo humbleless.’
I lost my thinking, writing out loud (Louth) space when my old website was wiped, I am only reviving my mechanism of public meandering and web rumination. I am looking forward to getting back to making some art, digital art and all sorts of stuff I can only imagine.
Bye Bye old me and old my 40K+ views of my top post ‘google to send me back to that educational blackboard’.
Anything really changed in these last twelve or twenty years ?
Losing all those words, hours, days, was compounded further by the loss of so many original images and artworks, coded stuff, etc, I created. I have always been entirely independent thus my work wasn’t really stored anywhere else. That was my choice.
Thankfully the wayback machine did start storing flash data approximately five years after i originally made the clevercelt website (1996). But that site was under constant spam attacks and I rebuilt it (before losing it) at least eight times in those 25+years.
I will continue to search through older retired and replaced hard drives and see if I can find some of that older work of mine. My old website’s creative technology, technological creativity log line preceded the recognition of the role of a ‘creative technologist’, and just as with save and save often, or comment your code, creative basics got lost in those must and should do moments. Taking our own advice is often something overlooked.
that old version of my website (12+ years of Drupal) was completely corrupted by a spammer, my then hosting provider explained to me, after I requested they please restore that deleted content, that they did not, in fact, provide any back-ups of the server which hosted my website(s)..
The truly ephemeral nature of life reflected in the bleak professional ineptitude of a bunch of ‘chancers’ calling themselves service providers.
and thus moving on to our new beginnings…. Thanks for visiting I really appreciate it..
this new version of my website will be updated with various types of creative content as days and weeks trundle on.. I also hope to excavate some of the more visited/popular legacy content if.. (BIG IF) I can find it.
