The village is in a state of turmopil over the water supply. Last year the town hall put in a new water supply causing havoc as they dug up the roads and laid the pipes. The new did not replace the old, which comes from a small reservoir on the hill: some people plugged themselves into it and maintained a tap with the old, some changed over completely, others stuck with the old and a few, especially those with cows, started using the new without fitting the compulsory meter.
Since the workmen made a mess of the roads in their efforst to lay the pipes, the town hall now wants to asphalt over the evidence of their sloppy workmanship. This will tidy things up but it will also mean that the old pipes will be impossible tog et to when they need repairing- a frequent occurrence since they are not buried deep enough to avoid frequent breakages when a heavy tractors pass over. This coinicides with the realisation that the water company is not so obtuse that it hasn't noticed the a disproportional use of water compared to the amount metered: the water thieves are going to have to pay for the new or sort out the old.
The issue divides the village. Those who use their houses at weekends and for holidays are content to pay for the new and forget the old because they are unlikely to reach the minimum metered anount and the charge is reasonable. Those with cows of course want to sort out the old supply but they want it to be a communal effort to defray some of the expense.
No one can agree on anything excapt perhaps that the best method of going about things is to have endless meetings where no one says what they mean until afterwards, when they huddle off into groups and make bitter imprecations against those who are slowing things down. You can't use the water for watering your garden or filling your swimming pool, they say. Well, go to hell then and don't count on my money. Ahh, so you won't help that means I won't help with the village fiesta. You wait and see, I'll be the first to say no to someone else's plans.
Will the old supply be saved? The clock is against it. When the council finally comes with the asphalt wagon, which is already parked at the junction like an unwieldy club of Damocles, the pipes have to have been moved. This makes it a race against time.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Culture Shock- Being Back in Britain
I'm getting culture shock from being back in Britain for a visit. The supermarkets are full of a miscellany of body types and shapes decked out in clothes that range from the vulgar to the extravagant, the streets are deserted after six in the evening and the bars are filled with young women with fat legs in short skirts that cover too little. Their boyfriends stand in mannish groups swearing unimaginatively about the football.
England smells damp. You notice it as soon as you get off the aeroplane. And Somerset has a rich, damp cow manure odour that drifts into Taunton town centre, where it competes with diesel fumes, fried food and cheap deodorant.
As a naive young man in New York in the eighties I scoffed at my American friends' notion that the English were still getting over the loss of Empire only to be struck by the layers of division and snobbery when I returned after a year. Now, coming back from Spain, I am struck again by how stratified society is here. There is a much greater diversity of dress and manners, and young people have a litany of terms that pigeon-hole the different groups: Yah, Toff, Hooray Henry at the upper end and the abusive chav and yob at the lower end, with a whole range of types the anonymous middle classes adopt to attempt to differentiate themselves.
In England people wear clothes as a badge of their difference. 'You're not going to wear those chavvy trainers?' I am asked. They are far too white and new.
Money can't get you up a social notch. I catch myself scoffing at a young man bragging about his 'brand new lotis (Lotus)'. Posh car; common accent.
The plebs shop at Asda's or Tesco's (always adding the vulgar possessive) filling their enormous trolleys with ready meals and cheap alcohol. The upper crust go to Sainsbury's for the variety or County Stores, which is the one remaining grocery store in the centre of town. There I see well-scrubbed senior in blazers and cravats looking out a crappy wine they will pass off as quality whilst their powdered spouses peruse the preserves and pickles.
A brief drive in the country shows that the villages have been taken over by professionals who maintain houses that would have been knocked down in Spain. There are trees that have been planted because they look good and everyone has a flower garden. This is almost the reverse of Spain: the hoi polloi in the villages the shabbily dressed proles in the towns, whereas in Spain the village is full of culture-less country types and the educated aspire to live in modernity in cities.
John Major's desire for a classless society is seen most clearly where the town joins the country, in the garden centres, DIY superstores and trading estates which are the common ground of the Englishman. If you were to put all the social classes into a pot and boil them down for a couple of decades you would come up with some sludge resembling this: Classic FM on the tannoy and pseudo-classical garden statuary cast in cement; a shopping trolley culture masquerading as self-improvement.
Oh to be in England again!
England smells damp. You notice it as soon as you get off the aeroplane. And Somerset has a rich, damp cow manure odour that drifts into Taunton town centre, where it competes with diesel fumes, fried food and cheap deodorant.
As a naive young man in New York in the eighties I scoffed at my American friends' notion that the English were still getting over the loss of Empire only to be struck by the layers of division and snobbery when I returned after a year. Now, coming back from Spain, I am struck again by how stratified society is here. There is a much greater diversity of dress and manners, and young people have a litany of terms that pigeon-hole the different groups: Yah, Toff, Hooray Henry at the upper end and the abusive chav and yob at the lower end, with a whole range of types the anonymous middle classes adopt to attempt to differentiate themselves.
In England people wear clothes as a badge of their difference. 'You're not going to wear those chavvy trainers?' I am asked. They are far too white and new.
Money can't get you up a social notch. I catch myself scoffing at a young man bragging about his 'brand new lotis (Lotus)'. Posh car; common accent.
The plebs shop at Asda's or Tesco's (always adding the vulgar possessive) filling their enormous trolleys with ready meals and cheap alcohol. The upper crust go to Sainsbury's for the variety or County Stores, which is the one remaining grocery store in the centre of town. There I see well-scrubbed senior in blazers and cravats looking out a crappy wine they will pass off as quality whilst their powdered spouses peruse the preserves and pickles.
A brief drive in the country shows that the villages have been taken over by professionals who maintain houses that would have been knocked down in Spain. There are trees that have been planted because they look good and everyone has a flower garden. This is almost the reverse of Spain: the hoi polloi in the villages the shabbily dressed proles in the towns, whereas in Spain the village is full of culture-less country types and the educated aspire to live in modernity in cities.
John Major's desire for a classless society is seen most clearly where the town joins the country, in the garden centres, DIY superstores and trading estates which are the common ground of the Englishman. If you were to put all the social classes into a pot and boil them down for a couple of decades you would come up with some sludge resembling this: Classic FM on the tannoy and pseudo-classical garden statuary cast in cement; a shopping trolley culture masquerading as self-improvement.
Oh to be in England again!
Maturity
What is maturity? I know a mature cheese because it is smelly and matured wine has a thicker flavour, but maturity in people is different altogether. It´s not just a question of ageing: there almost seems to be a moral dimension to the question fo growing up. Experience does not necessarily make you wise.
I wanted to write about maturity because I had come across the extraordinary phenomenon of children being more mature than adults. This led me to think that perhaps there is a developmental process that gives maturity. Maybe some people miss out on a couple of steps.
I like the idea of develpomental phases. It seems a useful way of describing the world of behaviour, particularly in children where it is very clear when a stage has not been reached. The child who does not get recognition for reaching a developmental milestone continues to exhibit fears, anxiety, attention-seeking behaviour, dependence and the unfortunate tendency to revert to infantile states, which then leads on to failure to integrate socially. People, including other kids, don´t recognise babies in older bodies, they just see irritating behaviour.
There are also developmental phases in learning: if you come across a child with a learning difficulty but no cognitive problem it seems likely that there is a psychological dependence on an infantile state.
I think parents have quite a lot to do with this and I have written elsewhere about the facility they have for making the child powerless by taking away her free decisions or negating her ability to choose by imposing ´improving´ adult tastes. This is the tyranny of the ´stupid´adult (who might, incidentally, be very clever, but who has this blindness to the person in front of him).
Summerhill helps children to achieve maturity by giving them the opportunity to reach their developmental milestones freely without waiting for that approval that ´stupid´ parents are so slow in giving. It also reflects back the infantile behaviour and says, "This is infantile", which is a desireable message, is not complicated and, importantly, does not mush together sentimental ideas of loving and nurturing with the simple celebration of acting appropriately.
Coming back to adults who are more immature than children, it is clearly the case that a 50 year old may continue to act like an adolescent and transform relationships into unresolved authority battles with an ageing or dead parent. A 30 year old can suckle, a 40 year old can have 2 year old tantrums, a 60 year old can be seeking approval eternally for her decisions.
Perhaps, in therapy, these developmental missteps could be resolved and useful change come about, but since these´problems´are so universal the mass diagnosis of therapy seems excessive. In practice we tend to accept that there are people we work with, socialise with and live with who are mature and others who are not. Just recognising this immaturity is valuable.
I don´t want to change the world, but I think it is a valuable service to the world to work with children and help them to reach their developmental milestones so that they do not continue into adulthood as the kind of irritating and self-indulgent adults that we all try to avoid!
I wanted to write about maturity because I had come across the extraordinary phenomenon of children being more mature than adults. This led me to think that perhaps there is a developmental process that gives maturity. Maybe some people miss out on a couple of steps.
I like the idea of develpomental phases. It seems a useful way of describing the world of behaviour, particularly in children where it is very clear when a stage has not been reached. The child who does not get recognition for reaching a developmental milestone continues to exhibit fears, anxiety, attention-seeking behaviour, dependence and the unfortunate tendency to revert to infantile states, which then leads on to failure to integrate socially. People, including other kids, don´t recognise babies in older bodies, they just see irritating behaviour.
There are also developmental phases in learning: if you come across a child with a learning difficulty but no cognitive problem it seems likely that there is a psychological dependence on an infantile state.
I think parents have quite a lot to do with this and I have written elsewhere about the facility they have for making the child powerless by taking away her free decisions or negating her ability to choose by imposing ´improving´ adult tastes. This is the tyranny of the ´stupid´adult (who might, incidentally, be very clever, but who has this blindness to the person in front of him).
Summerhill helps children to achieve maturity by giving them the opportunity to reach their developmental milestones freely without waiting for that approval that ´stupid´ parents are so slow in giving. It also reflects back the infantile behaviour and says, "This is infantile", which is a desireable message, is not complicated and, importantly, does not mush together sentimental ideas of loving and nurturing with the simple celebration of acting appropriately.
Coming back to adults who are more immature than children, it is clearly the case that a 50 year old may continue to act like an adolescent and transform relationships into unresolved authority battles with an ageing or dead parent. A 30 year old can suckle, a 40 year old can have 2 year old tantrums, a 60 year old can be seeking approval eternally for her decisions.
Perhaps, in therapy, these developmental missteps could be resolved and useful change come about, but since these´problems´are so universal the mass diagnosis of therapy seems excessive. In practice we tend to accept that there are people we work with, socialise with and live with who are mature and others who are not. Just recognising this immaturity is valuable.
I don´t want to change the world, but I think it is a valuable service to the world to work with children and help them to reach their developmental milestones so that they do not continue into adulthood as the kind of irritating and self-indulgent adults that we all try to avoid!
Oviedo Shopping Centre
We are surrounded by stuff. It grows into heaps and piles that is stored and used, wears out and is thrown away or moulders in corners. Most of it is rubbish but the traditional bourgeois conception of life is to distinguish between the good and the bad by acquiring quality stuff: high value is put on the craftsmanship and materials that go to make quality stuff.
The ´traditional´ avant garde artist cocked a snook at this bourgeois conception of taste, laughed at its frequent gaucherie and made pleas for a different aesthetic. This was based on the on the ´seeing eye´so that art could become more than just a collection of crafted objects and the artist´s vision became as important as the objects he left behind.
This tradition is evident in every gallery of Modern Art and, even though the story is old and the fable a little worn, I continue to enjoy it. There is something exciting about the Modern Art story. I want to look at an example of a building that expresses the conflict of the modern beautifully.
On a visit to a shopping centre in Oviedo I was struck by the extraordinary beauty of what, on the face of it, is an extremely ugly building. There is a large central space, a stairwell for the five or more floors. This stairwell is occupied by escalators, stairs and ramps so that, looking down into the pit, you are confronted by a mesh of bars painted in a nasty yellow that floats over the gray of the floors and the acid blue of the supports.
Behind this visually powerful structure is a delicate play of lights and gray tones surrounding them: the emphemerality of the twinkling seems to be saying something about the hidden spaces as well. There is constant movement. People are walking and standing on escalators, wholly dominated by this powerful structure, the minor tints of colour in their clothing swamped by the blue and yellow grid. As they disappear to the bottom layer they become less distinct and clear and then they disappear into the hidden spaces- the shops.
The experience of this shopping centre is more arresting than any work of art I have seen in a museum or gallery recently. It is visually enchanting. It entirely repudiates bourgeios notions of taste with is blue and yellow colour combination. It ought to be ´tacky´and ´nasty´ but with the effect of the hole, softening the colours, and the twinkling lights and grays, which give them an almost magical context, the experience of looking becomes delightful.
At the same time there are levels of meaning in this work- not meanings that I have put there, but meanings that arise naturally from the meditation on this extraordinary experience. The people are oblivious to the beauty of the structure and instead are attracted to the twinkling lights. Even the visual power of the yellows and blues cannot distract them from the enchantment of the ephemeral and they, therefore, become willing participants in the dance, the visual spectacle seen from above looking down or below looking up.
Not only this, but you can engage directly with the work by riding the escalators, walking the ramps or climbing the stairs. Then you can watch as the bars of yellow change in configuration around you and meditate on personal and cultural meanings. Bars mean cages; ascent and descent recall heaven and hell; the pit itself with its levels and layers recalls the vision of Dante. One is tempted to look for a guide to help question the people in various degrees of stupour or trance.
Then there is the final irony- appropriate since, in this age, irony is the defining tone of aesthetic experience- that the work refers to its own place in the history of Modernity. Within it the new bourgois searhc for objects of quality on the shelves of the stores. The commercial centre, which I have looked at as the work of art, is ignored in the quest to acquire more stuff.
Some voices may even decry the ugliness of the monstrosity that has been erected to service our appetites. However, like the best of Modren Art, this work interacts with, expresses, comments upon and at the same time remains elusive to, the world in which it exists. It is a masterpiece.
The ´traditional´ avant garde artist cocked a snook at this bourgeois conception of taste, laughed at its frequent gaucherie and made pleas for a different aesthetic. This was based on the on the ´seeing eye´so that art could become more than just a collection of crafted objects and the artist´s vision became as important as the objects he left behind.
This tradition is evident in every gallery of Modern Art and, even though the story is old and the fable a little worn, I continue to enjoy it. There is something exciting about the Modern Art story. I want to look at an example of a building that expresses the conflict of the modern beautifully.
On a visit to a shopping centre in Oviedo I was struck by the extraordinary beauty of what, on the face of it, is an extremely ugly building. There is a large central space, a stairwell for the five or more floors. This stairwell is occupied by escalators, stairs and ramps so that, looking down into the pit, you are confronted by a mesh of bars painted in a nasty yellow that floats over the gray of the floors and the acid blue of the supports.
Behind this visually powerful structure is a delicate play of lights and gray tones surrounding them: the emphemerality of the twinkling seems to be saying something about the hidden spaces as well. There is constant movement. People are walking and standing on escalators, wholly dominated by this powerful structure, the minor tints of colour in their clothing swamped by the blue and yellow grid. As they disappear to the bottom layer they become less distinct and clear and then they disappear into the hidden spaces- the shops.
The experience of this shopping centre is more arresting than any work of art I have seen in a museum or gallery recently. It is visually enchanting. It entirely repudiates bourgeios notions of taste with is blue and yellow colour combination. It ought to be ´tacky´and ´nasty´ but with the effect of the hole, softening the colours, and the twinkling lights and grays, which give them an almost magical context, the experience of looking becomes delightful.
At the same time there are levels of meaning in this work- not meanings that I have put there, but meanings that arise naturally from the meditation on this extraordinary experience. The people are oblivious to the beauty of the structure and instead are attracted to the twinkling lights. Even the visual power of the yellows and blues cannot distract them from the enchantment of the ephemeral and they, therefore, become willing participants in the dance, the visual spectacle seen from above looking down or below looking up.
Not only this, but you can engage directly with the work by riding the escalators, walking the ramps or climbing the stairs. Then you can watch as the bars of yellow change in configuration around you and meditate on personal and cultural meanings. Bars mean cages; ascent and descent recall heaven and hell; the pit itself with its levels and layers recalls the vision of Dante. One is tempted to look for a guide to help question the people in various degrees of stupour or trance.
Then there is the final irony- appropriate since, in this age, irony is the defining tone of aesthetic experience- that the work refers to its own place in the history of Modernity. Within it the new bourgois searhc for objects of quality on the shelves of the stores. The commercial centre, which I have looked at as the work of art, is ignored in the quest to acquire more stuff.
Some voices may even decry the ugliness of the monstrosity that has been erected to service our appetites. However, like the best of Modren Art, this work interacts with, expresses, comments upon and at the same time remains elusive to, the world in which it exists. It is a masterpiece.
Summerhill Takeaway
I was a teacher at Summerhill School for six years and now I am not. I want to reflect on a question that many visitors to the school posed. ´Freedom is all very well here,´they would say, ´but this is a privileged setting. What can we take away from Summerhill?
What can you take away? And how can you avoid confusing or perverting the message when you attempt to transplant it into another situation? I have seen enough of ´family meetings´that try to ape something Summerhillian in the home to know that this is a perversion. I´ve seen parents being bullied by their children under the name of liberty so it seems that freedom itself can be perverted. And I´ve seen school councils with a democratic appearance that merely reinforce the heirarchical and authoritarian structures of the schools in which they have been ´gifted´by improving adults. No, if you want to take something away it must be something more honest and less obvious.
Children tend to say they like being at Summerhill because they can ´do what they like´. This simple idea is difficult to grasp and even when you have grasped it intellectually it takes a long time to enact. Do you do what you like? Think back over the past week and consider well whether you were doing what you liked, what you chose to do. Think also whether you liked waht you were doing.
Typically adults say things like: ´That´s all very well, but you can´t just do what you like. If everyone did what they liked the world would come to a standstill.´ Or they might say, ´You can´t just do what you like all the time. If you did the world would come to a standstill. Sometimes you have to face up to the real world. There are unpleasant things that you have to do. You may not like them, but they have to be done.´ Or they might say, ´I´ve had to give up a damn lot in my life to get where I am. You can´t tell me I would have done all that if I´d done just what I liked all the time.´
Well, Summerhill doesn´t come to a standstill. It seems to carry itself forward reasonably well without insisting that people do things that they don´t want to. And I suppose for those children, their world is just as real as the real worlds of those who fill their experience with things they don´t like doing. Besides, there are some areas in which the absolute ´do as you will´idea is moderated by the requirements of living in a community. This is the famous Summerhillian distinction between freedom and licence: you can do what you like so long as it doesn´t interfere with someone else´s freedom to do what they like.
This famoous dictum fits just about anywhere. You don´t have to be in a school or institution of any kind. In this world of more-or-less fucked up relationships a bit of ´do as you like´would really untie some knots. For example, next time someone says to you, ´I´ve got to go and see my gran´ you might say, ´Do what you like.´ Not only say it, mind, but truly mean it. Have the deep belief and awareness that what you choose to do is in your own power to alter. This is the case even if you have very limited options to choose from due to circumstances (lack of money, lack of time, pressures of work, family, social and political environments). It is always possible to take back the responsibility for your own decision-making, to turn away the ´helpful´interference of those who want to take away your freedom, and to insist that those around you make their own decisions without making you the butt and scapegoat. Let´s look at each of these dimensions in turn.
Taking responsibility for your own decisions means not existing in servile dependence on what those around you want. That´s not good for you and it´s not good for them either. The dependence can be justified along the lines of ´No-one will love me if I say what I really want, so I´d better find out what everyone else wants first before I reveal anything.´ I think it´s pretty easy to see that unfair this is on everyone around you. Everyone does it a bit, but if you find yourself in a chronic pattern of not doing as you like because you are waiting to find out what others like first, then you need to get a grip and take back the responsibility for your own decisions.
´Helpful´interference can be so subtly disguised that you don´t recognise it. It may be wrapped in emotional or intellectual paper, but the essential import will be the same: what you want to do is less important and vital than what you should do. An example of emotional wrapping would be: ´Mum will be expecting us.´ Do you see how cleverly that takes away all the power and responsibility from you to make the decision about what you are going to do? I bet mum wouldn´t want that either. An example of intellectual wrapping would be, ´There is a requirement to fulfil the conditions of the third clause.´ You can see, I imagine, that by intellectual I do not mean reflective or thinking. These kinds of conditions are frequently imposed by bureaucratic minds- not the triumph of humanity. They like to make you feel powerless but it is easy to reframe the situation by taking control of your ability to do what you like.
If you do this yourself you are doing a lot, but once you have really digested the message you will find that insist others around you do it too: don´t take responsibility for other people´s decision-making because you cannot decide for them what they want. You can tell when you are in one of these situations because you will feel the hackles rising on your neck and start to get the sensation that the person in front of you is not talking to you but to some superimposed image of a parent, teacher or friend from the past. ´I can´t decide what I want until you tell me...´ This is the basic message you want to fend off. And if you do not fend it off there will be consequences: ´It´s your fault that I´m not happy/entertained/successful etc.´ So when someone asks, ´Shall I have an ice-cream?´the only correct answer is, ´Do what you like.´ It may sound rude but it is a hell of a lot better than living in psychological dependence.
So, in a nutshell, I think the best thing you can take away from Summerhill is to do as you like. Pass the thought through your head many times a day and in conversations and social situations always recur to it. If you find yourself saying, ´I don´t really want to be here, but...´just cut yourself short, say what you do want and get on with it. No-one will miss your prevarications if you become more decisive in this way. There will also be a general increase in the levels of maturity around you. I´ll talk about maturity next because the funny thing about Summerhill is that a lot of the kids are more ´mature´than the adults: now why would that be?
What can you take away? And how can you avoid confusing or perverting the message when you attempt to transplant it into another situation? I have seen enough of ´family meetings´that try to ape something Summerhillian in the home to know that this is a perversion. I´ve seen parents being bullied by their children under the name of liberty so it seems that freedom itself can be perverted. And I´ve seen school councils with a democratic appearance that merely reinforce the heirarchical and authoritarian structures of the schools in which they have been ´gifted´by improving adults. No, if you want to take something away it must be something more honest and less obvious.
Children tend to say they like being at Summerhill because they can ´do what they like´. This simple idea is difficult to grasp and even when you have grasped it intellectually it takes a long time to enact. Do you do what you like? Think back over the past week and consider well whether you were doing what you liked, what you chose to do. Think also whether you liked waht you were doing.
Typically adults say things like: ´That´s all very well, but you can´t just do what you like. If everyone did what they liked the world would come to a standstill.´ Or they might say, ´You can´t just do what you like all the time. If you did the world would come to a standstill. Sometimes you have to face up to the real world. There are unpleasant things that you have to do. You may not like them, but they have to be done.´ Or they might say, ´I´ve had to give up a damn lot in my life to get where I am. You can´t tell me I would have done all that if I´d done just what I liked all the time.´
Well, Summerhill doesn´t come to a standstill. It seems to carry itself forward reasonably well without insisting that people do things that they don´t want to. And I suppose for those children, their world is just as real as the real worlds of those who fill their experience with things they don´t like doing. Besides, there are some areas in which the absolute ´do as you will´idea is moderated by the requirements of living in a community. This is the famous Summerhillian distinction between freedom and licence: you can do what you like so long as it doesn´t interfere with someone else´s freedom to do what they like.
This famoous dictum fits just about anywhere. You don´t have to be in a school or institution of any kind. In this world of more-or-less fucked up relationships a bit of ´do as you like´would really untie some knots. For example, next time someone says to you, ´I´ve got to go and see my gran´ you might say, ´Do what you like.´ Not only say it, mind, but truly mean it. Have the deep belief and awareness that what you choose to do is in your own power to alter. This is the case even if you have very limited options to choose from due to circumstances (lack of money, lack of time, pressures of work, family, social and political environments). It is always possible to take back the responsibility for your own decision-making, to turn away the ´helpful´interference of those who want to take away your freedom, and to insist that those around you make their own decisions without making you the butt and scapegoat. Let´s look at each of these dimensions in turn.
Taking responsibility for your own decisions means not existing in servile dependence on what those around you want. That´s not good for you and it´s not good for them either. The dependence can be justified along the lines of ´No-one will love me if I say what I really want, so I´d better find out what everyone else wants first before I reveal anything.´ I think it´s pretty easy to see that unfair this is on everyone around you. Everyone does it a bit, but if you find yourself in a chronic pattern of not doing as you like because you are waiting to find out what others like first, then you need to get a grip and take back the responsibility for your own decisions.
´Helpful´interference can be so subtly disguised that you don´t recognise it. It may be wrapped in emotional or intellectual paper, but the essential import will be the same: what you want to do is less important and vital than what you should do. An example of emotional wrapping would be: ´Mum will be expecting us.´ Do you see how cleverly that takes away all the power and responsibility from you to make the decision about what you are going to do? I bet mum wouldn´t want that either. An example of intellectual wrapping would be, ´There is a requirement to fulfil the conditions of the third clause.´ You can see, I imagine, that by intellectual I do not mean reflective or thinking. These kinds of conditions are frequently imposed by bureaucratic minds- not the triumph of humanity. They like to make you feel powerless but it is easy to reframe the situation by taking control of your ability to do what you like.
If you do this yourself you are doing a lot, but once you have really digested the message you will find that insist others around you do it too: don´t take responsibility for other people´s decision-making because you cannot decide for them what they want. You can tell when you are in one of these situations because you will feel the hackles rising on your neck and start to get the sensation that the person in front of you is not talking to you but to some superimposed image of a parent, teacher or friend from the past. ´I can´t decide what I want until you tell me...´ This is the basic message you want to fend off. And if you do not fend it off there will be consequences: ´It´s your fault that I´m not happy/entertained/successful etc.´ So when someone asks, ´Shall I have an ice-cream?´the only correct answer is, ´Do what you like.´ It may sound rude but it is a hell of a lot better than living in psychological dependence.
So, in a nutshell, I think the best thing you can take away from Summerhill is to do as you like. Pass the thought through your head many times a day and in conversations and social situations always recur to it. If you find yourself saying, ´I don´t really want to be here, but...´just cut yourself short, say what you do want and get on with it. No-one will miss your prevarications if you become more decisive in this way. There will also be a general increase in the levels of maturity around you. I´ll talk about maturity next because the funny thing about Summerhill is that a lot of the kids are more ´mature´than the adults: now why would that be?
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