Ah well. Sometimes I worry about the possibility of becoming ever more reactionary and bilious as the days thunder past, but then other times, other times, I just throw up my hands and give in to it. There is just no alternative. For instance when reading the cringe-making ‘Mission Statement’ on the Web site of what sounds like the most cringe-making educational institution one could possibly imagine. The kind of place that makes one want to, I don’t know, dress up as a combination Wall Street shark and Ramboesque thug and roam about kicking small children and grinding the faces of the poor.

We teach of the need to heal from the traumas of living in less than a just, sacred and sustainable world; to resist the further destruction of people, planet and the more than human world; to create alternatives which inspire us to live differently in the world; to change consciousness from an objectifying and reductionist paradigm to one that is holistic and systemic; and finally of the need to overcome the fallacy of the isolated, autonomous individual and recognize the communal and ecological self.

Oh lordy. Doesn’t it just make you want to round up a crowd of your noisiest most obnoxious friends, if not that nice group of slit-eyed punks you passed on the corner, and go there and stand around and point and laugh? And then beat them all up? Doesn’t it?

It ought to be illegal to say stuff like that. But sadly it’s not. A dreadful teasing friend of mine found the Web site of my old school once and had himself a fine old time quoting bits of it to me and falling to the floor laughing. But that’s none of my doing – they didn’t talk like that in my day, I can assure you! No nonsense about forming our holistic spiritual beings, thank the goddess. I learned of the school and Mission Statement from the interesting blog Critical Mass, though for some reason Erin O’Connor passed up the chance to make fun of the loathsome fools.