Four quotes:
"Institutions are formalized mind-sets. These too can be witnessed. To become aware of those sets but see right through them from outside is the most reliable way not to get stuck or burned out by them. We master the rules, but we don’t let them ultimately define us or narrow our field of perception. We encompass the craziness of the situation, so we can be skillful within it or playful when there’s nothing to do but ride through the contradictions. Then we share a sense of the absurd with whoever else is inclined to see it that way. Whoever feels a little lost can find relief in our presence, in our tent, around our desk.
None of this means that we just suspend judgment forever. We observe...but there is action to be taken too. If we are serious in our criticisms of the practices and habits of helping organizations, however, we’ve got to be light, free, and sufficiently above it all to see where we can untangle the knots and bring about change. Everything is always changing anyway. With the perspective of the Witness, we can see just which pressures, applied with the precision of a judo chop, can move the mass."
Ram Dass and Paul Gorman. How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflection on Service. (1985) New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. p. 199-200.
“I think that any form or any way in which you’re not productive is disruption. Anything that takes you out of the system where you are producing something — I don’t mean creating, I don’t mean the things that nurture you and serve you and are generative for you — but when you drop out of the system and you are not productive, it will have consequences. But those consequences are part of the imagination of this system that says that we have to be producing and we have to be making something happen in order for us to have value, in order to effectively know who we are.”
Rev. angel Kyodo williams, in a dialogue in “Radical Dharma: Love.” Printed in Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation. Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 2016. p. 140.
"Many people, liberal and conservative alike, are deeply offended by critiques of compulsory schooling. Every day we’re told that schools hold the key to equalizing opportunity, that the proper credentials will allow poor and marginalized people to participate fully in society, and that education provides the only legitimate path out of poverty. The question is a difficult one. Are schools social levelers or do they reinforce the class pyramid by tracking and sorting children from a young age? Presumably they do both."
“Unschooling: Trusting our kids to be curious.” Astra Taylor. Originally in n+1. Reprinted in Utne Reader, Nov-Dec 2013, p. 47.
"Your academic degree and job title do a lot to shape your workplace identity. But you don’t let your fancy credentials go to your head and shape your self-identity. Whenever you have a choice in your interactions with coworkers and clients, and with people in your life outside the workplace, you downplay your formal education and your position within the system, recognizing that it would be elitist to imply that such credentials make you even a bit more deserving of respect than other people. When you identify yourself, you don’t adorn your name with titles such as “Dr.,” “PhD,” “Professor” or “Esq.”
* * *
For if your own degree and job title lend validity to your conclusions, then the paper credentials and positions of your establishment-oriented colleagues lend validity to the opposite conclusions. And there are more of them than there are of you."
Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes Their Lives. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) Kindle Edition.
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