Teacher Teach Me

[realimposter]

From a Nock essay on education

Comments

Whose fault?

[realimposter]

'In discussing the effect of all this, I wish to make it as clear as possible that I am not laying the slightest blame upon our educators. They had to take the system as they found it; its faults were none of their making. They had to meet measurably the egregious demands of a noble but undiscriminating sentiment, a preposterous misconception of the democratic principle, a childish reverence for bigness, and an exclusive preoccupation with profit-making. It is a large order; if in practice they were able to meet these demands by ever so little obliquely, one might reasonably ask no more. With this clearly understood, we may observe that one immediate effect is a calamitous overlapping of effort, whereby the lines marking off the school from the college and the college from the university have been obliterated. As in the case I cited, the university is doing work that by the handsomest possible concession one would say should be done in the eighth grade. The secondary school and the undergraduate college, again, are overlapping on the

Of Relevance to the O.T.O.?

[realimposter]

What really struck me about this comment is how much we see this trend playing out in the O.T.O. and Thelemic communities. I mean, how many aspiring Magickians bring this attitude to their Work? Look at how the current O.T.O. structures local bodies and the rules governing them like an elementary school. The LBM has to push the cart and there is no expectation that the rank and file will do anything unless they're told to.

[lhasa7]

Since you mention Thelema in the comments to this, I thought I’d note that for me the big question here is ‘What constitutes a legitimate teaching tradition or spiritual authority?’ Since I could never fully submit myself to the Crowleyan tradition (and still have reservations as to its sources), I could never muster the resolve to do the work.

Trial and error

[realimposter]

I think the big issue with your question is that it automatically leads one into the quagmire of paralysis-analysis. There is, IMHO, no way to completely "validate" a spiritual authority standing from the outside, just as there is no way to validate the legitimacy or efficacy of a doctor when you haven't entrusted yourself to their care. Sure, the diploma may say "Harvard" but are they any good? Or better yet, will their services prove any good for you

Re: Trial and error

[lhasa7]

Right, and my previous statement was a little misleading, in that I did sort of poke my head in the door at one point. But this question was always sort of lurking in the back of my mind, and I never felt that it was properly addressed by the folks I was in contact with. Which is not to say that I wasn’t lazy or diffident as well in my own right.

Otherwise, I tend to the notion that ‘Truth is one, paths are many’, and it’s up to the individual to figure out what works for them. I haven’t really made a mature effort with Christianity and am probably tending in that direction these days, though the obstacles are not inconsiderable. I do feel sort of an instinct to cultivate what I was given at the outset. And the sort of Vedantic thing I was drawn toward at one point seems to lack what Richard M. Weaver called ‘the power to bind’, which seems sort of necessary to me on some level.