	id AA08430; Mon, 14 Nov 94 06:30:17 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 80


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 80
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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DAVE EMORY -- JULY 5, 1992
Observations on America's 216th Birthday
 
[...continued...]
 
DAVE EMORY [continues]:
There are a number of things in this particular tape that I would 
ask you to observe. (It's about 15 or 20 minutes in length.) I 
would note George Bernard Shaw's observations about the nature of 
intellectual reality; his observation that it is basically 
reactionary, and that if you want to be popular, you're gonna 
have to do what everybody else does. However, if you do what 
everybody else does, you are gonna share *all* of their faults. 
And that's a very, very important observation, in my opinion.
 
I would also take note of George Bernard Shaw's observations that 
people basically, they basically do what everybody else does. 
That is one of the problems. And again, if you want to be 
popular, do what everybody else does. But you will also share 
their faults.
 
I would also note that George Bernard Shaw emphasizes that if you 
deal with people you don't like, if you see things that you don't 
like, you should set about trying to correct those things. 
Because that's what it's all about.
 
Well those are words of advice that I, myself, believe in very 
strongly. And I'm gonna play you now this section of tape. And 
again, George Bernard Shaw is speaking upon the occasion of his 
80th birthday, and he's talking to young students of the sixth 
form. He talks about school, he talks about the nature of 
intellectual reality, social reality, and ultimately, an 
encouragement to committment and to non-conformity. Again, as 
George Bernard Shaw said, "Reasonable people adapt themselves to 
the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to 
themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable 
people."
 
Well in that context, I like to think of myself as an 
"unreasonable" person. I would encourage you to become the same.
 
The following tape segment comes about as close as I could to 
presenting "Dave Emory's Credo." This is a rigorous credo, one 
which I have lived up to only imperfectly to date. Indeed, I 
think the moral, intellectual, and social principles presented by 
George Bernard Shaw would do well, would serve well as the 
established principles, the goals of a lifetime. And he lived to 
be considerably older than I am now: this was on the occasion of 
his 80th birthday; I'll be 43 in September.
 
So those of you who are taping, get ready to go for about 15 or 
20 minutes. This is George Bernard Shaw, talking to young 
students:
 
  Hello, sixth. I have been asked to speak to you, because I 
  have been celebrated through my eminence in the profession of 
  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Shakespeare.
 
  Aeschylus wrote in school Greek, and Shakespeare is English 
  literature, which is a school subject. In French schools, *I* 
  am English literature! Consequently, all the sixth forms in 
  France shudder when they hear my name.
 
  However, don't be alarmed. I'm not going to talk to you about 
  English literature. To me, there's nothing in writing a play. 
  Anyone can write one if he has the necessary and natural turn 
  for it, and if he hasn't, he can't. And that's all there is 
  to it.
 
  However, I have another trick for imposing on the young: I am 
  old. Over 80, in fact. Also, I have a white beard. And these 
  two facts are somehow associated in people's minds with 
  wisdom. That's a mistake. If a person's a born fool, the 
  folly will get worse, not better, by a long life's practice.
 
  My having lived four times over you gives me only one 
  advantage over you: I have carried small boys in my arms, and 
  girls, and seen them grow into sixth form scholars. Then into 
  young men and women in the flower of youth and beauty. Then 
  into brides and bridegrooms, who think one another much 
  better and lovelier than they really are. Then into middle- 
  aged *pater familias* and anxious mothers with elderly 
  spreads. And finally, I've attended their cremations.
 
  Well now you may think much of this, but just consider: some 
  of your school fellows may surprise you by getting hanged! 
  Others, of whom you have the lowest opinion, will turn out to 
  be geniuses, and become one of the great men of your time. 
  Therefore, always be nice to young people. Some little beast, 
  who is no good at games and whose head you may possibly have 
  [unclear] for indulging a sarcastic wit and a sharp tongue at 
  your expense, may grow into a tremendous swell. Like Rudyard 
  Kipling. You never can tell.
 
  Well it's no use, you know, brooding about such things or 
  being told about them by your father. You must have known the 
  people personally, as I have. Now that's what makes a 
  difference between your outlook on the world and mine. When I 
  was as young as you, the world seemed to me to be 
  unchangeable, and a year seemed a long time. Now the years 
  fly past before I have time to look around. I am an old, old 
  man before I have got over the habit of thinking of myself as 
  a boy. You have 50 years before you. And therefore must think 
  carefully about your future and about your conduct. I have no 
  future, and need not care what I say or do.
 
  Now you all think, don't you, that you're nearly grown up. I 
  thought so, when I was your age. And now, after 81 years of 
  that expectation, I've not grown up yet. The same thing will 
  happen to you. You will escape from school, only to discover 
  that the world is a bigger school, and that you're back again 
  in the first form. Before you can work your way up into the 
  sixth again, you will be as old as I am.
 
  The hardest part of schooling is the earliest part, when you 
  are a very small kid and have to be turned into a walking 
  [unclear]. You have to know up to 12 times 12, and how many 
  shillings there are in any number of pence up to 144 without 
  looking in a book. And you must understand the printed page, 
  just as you understand people talking to you. That's a 
  *stupendous* feat of sheer learning! Much the most difficult 
  I have ever achieved. Yet I haven't the faintest recollection 
  of being put through it. (Though I remember the governess who 
  did it.) I can't remember any time at which a printed page 
  was unintelligible to me, nor at which I did not know without 
  counting that 56 pence make 4 and 8 [i.e., 4 shillings, 8 
  pence]. This seems so magical to me now, that I sometimes 
  regret that my governess did not teach me the whole table of 
  logarithms and the binomial theorem and all the other 
  mathematical shortcuts and [unclear] as well. Perhaps she 
  would have, if she'd known them herself.
 
  It's strange, that if you learn anything when you are young, 
  you'll remember it forever. Now that I'm old, I forget 
  everything in a few seconds and everybody five minutes after 
  they've been introduced to me. That's a great happiness, as I 
  don't want to be bothered with new things and new people. But 
  I still can't get on without remembering what my governess 
  taught me. So cram in all you can while you're young.
 
  But I'm rambling.
 
  Let us get back to your escape from your school or your 
  university into the great school of the world. And remember 
  that you will not be chased and brought back. You will just 
  be chucked out, neck and crop, and the door slammed behind 
  you.
 
  You will find the new school a very disorderly one. What 
  makes school life irksome until you get used to it, and easy 
  when you do get used to it, is that it's a routine. You have 
  to get up at a fixed hour, wash and dress, take your meals 
  and do your work -- all at a fixed hour.
 
  Now the [unclear] routine is that though it is supposed to 
  suit everybody, it really suits nobody! Sixth form scholars 
  are like other people: they are all different. Each of you is 
  what is called an "individual case", needing individual 
  attention. But you can't have it at school. Nobody has time 
  enough nor money enough to provide each of you with a 
  separate teacher and a special routine, carefully fitted to 
  your individual personality like your clothes and your boots. 
  I can remember a time when English people going to live in 
  Germany were astonished to find that German boots were not 
  divided into "rights" and "lefts". A boot was a boot and it 
  did not matter which foot you put it on. Your foot had to 
  make the best of it. You may think that funny, but let me ask 
  how many of you have your socks knitted as "rights" and 
  "lefts". I've had mine knitted that way for the last 50 
  years.
 
  To get properly stuck into a moneymaking profession, you have 
  to pass examination. And this you must set about very clearly 
  to do, or you will fail. You must not let yourself get 
  interested in the subject, or be overwhelmed by their 
  magnitude and by the utter impossibility of any human being 
  mastering them all. The scholar who knows everything is like 
  the little child who is perfectly obedient and perfectly 
  truthful -- it doesn't exist and never will. Therefore, you 
  must go to a crammer.
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."
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