Commencement Speech

[Adam Blatner]

Dear Ed, bang-up speech. I liked it a lot. Especially this paragraph: 

     When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.


      Recent thoughts about creativity theory: The main thing is to shift from focusing on product to focusing on process. This fits with a dream that just preceded my awakening this morning. Point: Clients (and students) need to struggle against the cultural conserves of what is told them, taught them, offered them as formulas. The experience of the struggle is itself empowering and an important part of the therapy! Feeling oneself active, making finer discriminations. Avoiding the illusion that simply winning, destroying the enemy, killing the "father," any of that, would in fact be the optimal solution! Rather, the solution in dialectic is finding how one can take some elements, perhaps many, of the cultural conserve---that which has been created in the past (by oneself or others)---and re-work it in light of present abilities, ideas, environment, potentials. The past can never completely account for the present situation---there are always elements of individuality and novelty that escape the formulas of what may have worked for others.

         So we don't need to begin "de novo," as if nothing previously has been thought about the present situation. In fact, many good minds have given it much thought, many tools are available---such as Moreno's---to use. And yet they will need to be used, modified, revisions or refinements invented, occasionally replaced---for use by and for oneself and perhaps for others, too. This is the creative challenge.

     Well, as you can see, this commencement speech by Hawkin has inspired me, too. 

My final thought: I suggest that kids everywhere would be strenghthened by the experience of teachers, principles, community business owners, and other adults give a talk, once a month, in a school assembly, elaborating as they will on the phrase, "The World Needs You!"    I imagine a banner about 40-50 feet long and 8 -14 feet high strung across the front of the auditorium or gym with this phrase. 

           Thanks!  Warmly, Adam
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