"Thanks to Tom and the others who started this ball rolling

What worked for me was having the space to feel and experience some collective consciousness building going on. This was no small thing - very positive.

Step two must maintain and extend that raising of consciousness. Maybe we can share and cross-fertilize the results of the inter-generational group and the next steps group - they have been there before.

This is not only consciousness in the sense of the head - it’s ‘heart’ too - the necessity to harness, people’s desire to live better lives. It’s also ‘hands’ - this has to lived and made happen.

Part of what Rich has identified usually only gets aired in ‘skate-boarding dog’ news slots: that many people are profoundly concerned - scared, frustrated, stressed and unhappy about their lives – “our low lifestyle satisfaction surveys”

Of course this media tactic simultaneously trivializes the idea that (un)happiness is important. Another trait the British – more accurately English middle and working classes have, in addition to anti-intellectualism - is dogged miserable-ism Vs. the status quo. Also our doggedness is matched in contradictory style with idiotic hedonism of one sort or another. So, part of the 'authentic political space' would be an awakening of the right to ask to be happy. Tricky, because the research suggests that happiness comes from social interaction and engagement – flying in the face of dominant culture’s consumerist individualism – Amusing ourselves to death” Neil Postman put it.

A key aspect of the sorry needs to be that if ‘you’re’ unhappy about part of your life - do something about it with some other people, as opposed to buying something to solve it.

So awakenings does need a stronger – and strengthening – story line. This probably requires some more work by those already involved and then a template for proliferating awakenings.

Shaun

"

calling members of the intergenerational learning group:

hi, i was the sponsor of this group and promised to circulate a summary of our discussion + potential next steps

unfortunately an over-zealous late spring clean saw off my notes and idon't have contact details for those who participated

i personally know gordon lawrence & jenny harris but the other four members aren't known to me

all i do have are some sketchy details:

mr royal mail
mr eco-therapist
ms children's author
+
a lady who joined us right at the very end of our discussion for a few moments....

could you get in touch as i would very much like to follow up

i've got a potential venue for an experimental intergenerational learning event & some sketchy ideas about
potential group methodologies

i'm personally interested in moving beyond the psychoanalytic frame to embrace 'systemic' approches which seem to me
more philosophically congruent with the spirit of this enquiry:

discussed the psychoanalytic/therapeutic dimension of our meeting with a friends who observed:

the cognitive and psychoanalytical models of psychology are partially to blame for an idea of separation between man and nature. Gregory Bateson's model, for example, lies on a 'ecological', rather than cognitive-psychoanalytical theory of mind. Ideally, if 'depth' psychology is called into your meeting, your joint story telling should grow psychologically but towards an 'ecological-Gregory Bateson ' model of mind (universe as a dancing game of exchanges of energy rather than the way 'we' process these exchanges, cognitively or psychoanalytical).

this is the model i have in mind for our inter-generational learning experiment > would welcome an opportunity to share thoughts on this the group

speak soon

stephen

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