Wayseeing

Deep down something has bothered me for years, from education onwards I have felt like I am being programmed to conform to a set way of life that does not feel right. At the age of 15 I discovered Bill Hicks, perfect timing for formative years which further confirmed my feelings. A few years later with grunge music and in particular Rage Against The Machine I felt I had found the right theme tune and just the right T shirt to wear for school.

Skip forward a number of years and reading Sir Ken Robinson's The Element helped me realise why I had felt like this, something I was lucky enough to have a personal conversation with him about over lunch one day. I started to realise there were lots of people like me who felt this way and it was obvious what was happening, our process of education was indoctrinating people into a very slim model of humanity:



I was lucky enough to have a parent that encouraged me to go with my flow rather than try to conform despite how painful that would sometimes be, but not all parents do this to the detriment of their children; as is beautifully summed up in the concept of "The Back Up Plan".

But it does not stop at education, so much of the programming of society now is based on a flawed concept and is slightly more sinister than we suspect, that sense of why we feel anxious about ourselves - our status and our security, this has been programmed into us, as explained in Alain De Botton's Status Anxiety and further explained in Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self (I strongly urge you to take time out to follow some of these links and read/ watch)

All of this approach to life and programming people was okay for the industrial age, but in a new connected age, the wheels are starting to come off as Seth Godin explains in his book The Icarus Deception



When you start to understand how we got here and how some of the thought processes were deeply flawed (as explained in The Lonely Robot) you will start to realise it is not you that is at fault, but the logic of the system that is trying to get you to play it's rules. As Professor Falken in War Games explained, "The only way to win the game, is to not play the game"



In this connected age, our programmed way of working isn't going to work anymore, we need to sense make more as explained in the Cynefin Framework. You need "Wayseers" to do this, you need positive deviance.

I now understand why as a kid I was such a fan of Chaplin's "The Great Dictator", the final speech spoke volumes to me:



I know there are others who feel the same, so spread the words and stand up for a different way.

Wayseer FF from Jon Harman on Vimeo.

ATTENTION: All you rule-breakers, you misfits and troublemakers - all you free spirits and pioneers - all you visionaries and non-conformists ...

Everything that the establishment has told you is wrong with you - is actually what's right with you.

You see things others don't. You are hardwired to change the world. Unlike 9 out of 10 people - your mind is irrepressible - and this threatens authority. You were born to be a revolutionary.

You can't stand rules because in your heart you know there's a better way.

You have strengths dangerous to the establishment - and it wants them eliminated, So your whole life you've been told your strengths were weaknesses - Now I'm telling you otherwise.

Your impulsivity is a gift - impulses are your key to the miraculous,

Your distractibility - is an artifact of your inspired creativity,

Your mood swings - reflect the natural pulse of life, they give you unstoppable energy when you're high and deep soulful insight when you're low,

Been diagnosed with a "disorder"? That's society's latest way to deny it's own illness by pointing the finger at you. Your addictive personality is just a symptom of your vast underused capacity for heroic, creative expression and spiritual connection. your utter lack of repression, your wide eyed idealism, your unmitigated open mind - didn't anyone ever tell you?! these are the traits shared by the greatest pioneers and visionaries and innovators, revolutionaries, procrastinators and drama queens, activists on the social scene, space cadets and mavericks, philosophers and derelicts, business suits flying fighter jets, football stars and sex addicts, celebrities with ADD, alcoholics who seek novelty, first responders - prophets and saints, mystics and change agents.

We are - all - the same - you know
'cuz we're all affected by the way -
We are - all - the same - you know
'cuz we're all attracted to the flame -

You know in your heart that there's a natural order to life,
something more sovereign than any man-made rules or laws could ever express.

This natural order is called "the Way."

The Way is the eternal substrate of the cosmos. It guides the very current of time and space. The Way is known by some as the Will of God, Divine Providence, the Holy Spirit, the implicate order, the Tao, reverse-entropy, life-force, but for now we'll simply call it "the Way." The Way is reflected in you as the source of your inspiration, the source of your passions, your wisdom, your enthusiasm, your intuition, your spiritual fire - love. The Way takes the chaos out of the Universe and breathes life into it by reflecting divine order. The Way, when experienced by the mind, is genius, when perceived through the eyes is beauty, when felt with the senses is grace, when allowed into the heart ... is love.

Most people cannot sense the Way directly. ... But then there are the Wayseers. The keepers of the flame. Wayseers have an unexplainable knack for just knowing the Way. They sense it in their very being. They can't tell you why or how they arrived at the right answer. They just know it in their core. They can't show their work. So don't ask. Their minds simply resonate with the Way. When the Way is present, so are they.

While others are blind to it, and society begs you to ignore it, "the Way" stirs you inside. Neurological repression blocks most people's awareness of the Way - censoring all thoughts and impulses from the unconscious is their prefrontal cortex - the gestapo of the brain -  nothing which violates its socialized programming even gets through; but your mind is different. your mind has been cracked wide open to the Way - by some miraculous genetic trait, some psychotropic chemical or maybe even by the will of your very soul, your brain's reward pathways have been hijacked - dopamine employed to overthrow the fascist dictatorship of your prefrontal cortex - now your brain is free of repression, your mind free of censorship, your awareness exposed to the turbulent seas of the unconscious - through this open doorway divine light shines into your consciousness showing you the Way. This is what makes you a Wayseer.

90% of human civilization is populated with those who's brains are blocked to the Way.  Their brains are hardwired to enforce the social programming indoctrinated since birth. Unlike you they cannot break out of this programming, because they have not yet experienced the necessary revolution of mind. These programmed people take social institutions and rules very seriously. Society is full of games programmed to keep peoples' minds occupied so they will not revolt. These games often cause sick fixations on peculiar protocols, power structures, taboos and domination - all subtle forms of human bondage - This distinct form of madness is not only tolerated by the masses but insisted upon. The programmed ones believe in rules so forcefully they become willing to destroy anyone who violates them.

Wayseers are the ones who call their bluff.  Since Wayseer minds are free to reject social programming, Wayseers readily see social institutions for what they are - imaginary games.  Wayseers comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Helping those who are lost in these games and refuse to help themselves is a calling of many Wayseers. Since Wayseers are the ones who keep contact with the original source of reality - they are able to disrupt societal conventions and even governments to realign humanity with the Way.

The Wayseers are an ancient lineage. A kind of priesthood - carriers of the flame - ones "in the know."  There must always be Wayseers to reform the dizzying psychotic spinning gears of society - giant mindless hamster wheels obscuring the pure blue sky, keeping humanity shackled in a darkened cage - so Wayseers are called - to shed light on the madness of society - to continually resurrect the timeless transcendent Spirit of Truth -

Wayseers reveal this divine truth by devoting themselves to the birth of some creative or disruptive act expressed through art or philosophy, innovations to shake up industry, revolutions for democracy, coups that topple hypocrisy, movements of solidarity, changes that leave a legacy, rebellions against policy, spirit infused technology, moments of clarity, things that challenge barbarity, watersheds of sincerity, momentous drives for charity

We are - all - the same - you know
'cuz we're all affected by the way -
We are - all - the same - you know
'cuz we're all attracted to the flame -

This is your calling, Wayseer.
You've found your tribe.
Welcome home.>

Keep Shining

Elizabeth Miles (@ikenceo) was one of my first contacts on Twitter back in the day, always warm and inviting. Our connection was through law and technology initially, however we rarely talked about either. Our conversations were always about children, Peppa Pig, learning, animation, the arts, the importance of creativity. A passionate lady with a large heart. I'm glad we met in real life a number of times at Tweet Ups and always had a great natter. It was through these conversations we struck upon her love of a rare piece of Disney animation by Salvador Dali that was in the depths of the Disney vaults and I too had seen snippets when I worked at Disney, it was great to find the piece for her, it's the only thing I was able to do for her.

Walt Disney y Salvador Dali - Destino HD from Ivan Wenger on Vimeo.

I'll miss Elizabeth, somebody so giving and open that I felt I knew her better; from our online chat and few real life meetings, than some people I have known for years. One last #FF video to say goodbye and here's hoping your warmth keeps shining down.

FF Sunshine from Jon Harman on Vimeo.

Arthritic Stigmata

My historical disdain for education has amused me over the years, particularly the irony of ending up working in legal education, if I could go back in time to explain this to my 14 yr old self, he would stare at me in slack jaw wonderment. Why? Because in my formative years I held a strong distaste for both education and lawyers. I'll come to the lawyer bit in a moment, but let's first zero in on the education bit.

Today I was diagnosed with degenerative arthritis in my my big toe, initially it made me feel old beyond my years and then I fixated on the injury that had led to this. My doctor explained that arthritis in someone as "young" as me was likely the result of a childhood injury, had I broken my big toe in childhood?

Bang! I was instantly taken back to the incident with 12 yr old me, we had been instructed by our teacher to move some antiquated school desks in our classroom. Believe it or not, in the mid eighties I was working on a wooden desk with an ink well from the Victorian era. As we moved the desks, somehow mine toppled over and landed on my toe. 

Crack! What followed was excruciating pain, I remember crying in agony. My teacher then proceeded to taunt me about being in pain, deriding me in front of the class about not being able to handle it. I asked to see the nurse and he denied that of me and subsequently made me hop the 2 miles home after sitting for 3hrs in excruciating pain. Other old school friends have confirmed this memory today, along with a list of other atrocities (putting a metalwork ruler across a fellow students knuckles and then sitting on it), just so I know that I have not exaggerated this. 

When my mother complained to the school about the teachers behaviour it was rigorously denied. That was the moment that I lost faith in education, the moment I realised it wasn't about learning. I just switched off and spent more time taunting teachers who seemed intent on constantly telling who and what I was. It's been at the back of my mind ever since and now I have a constant throbbing in my toe to remind me on a daily basis, an aggravation of sorts. 

A short time later I had an after school job which was essentially a posher version of a paper round, I was a post boy for a small solicitors office. 

I disliked them with a passion too. Until I worked in that office, I never had any idea the level of contempt people could have for another fellow human being. Rude, obnoxious and vile. 

It was the first time I was hyper aware of the class divide, I was Ronnie Corbett to John Cleese in that famous class sketch.They weren't just rude to me, they were as bad to their clients, immensely patronising and demeaning. The nail in the coffin was when one day I had been held up because they hadn't signed some documents that had to be at the DX office within 10 minutes and it was a bike across town.

I sped along down the hill, slipped on the pedal, caught my foot in the wheel and went over the handlebars. Crack! Smashed my collarbone on the kerb and knocked myself out. I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance and came to as they wheeled me in.

When we got home there was a message on the answer machine from the firm stating that they had heard I'd been in an accident and it was imperative to know - did I get the post to the DX? No enquiry at all as to my well being.

I was particularly proud of my mum's Tuckeresque tirade of abuse in response the next day and I was fired with immediate effect.  Which was a shame as I still had the keys to their DX box, the only ones apparently. I'm both slightly ashamed, but also proud of my 15 year old self at depositing the keys off a bridge into the River Wensum. Another broken bone, another dislike chalked up on the board. 

So by the age of  15 I had a formative assessment of the legal industry and education as two equal levels of Dante's Inferno that were both seemingly underpinned by high levels of arrogant patronising attitudes.

So how on earth did I end up here?

This is the rather strange flip side to the coin. I realised in my career that whilst I despised the machine of education,  I loved learning, it was a wondrous life affirming thing and I also discovered a favourable leaning to copyright law and contract law in a geeky way.

I didn't realise I loved learning until I eventually scraped my way to University and aligned my passions with an excellent learning environment. We called my Uni - "a rubber roomed environment" - meaning somewhere we tried, we failed and we practiced until we became skilled. A course designed by a Disney imagineer who was years ahead of others in education. As I studied broadcasting I became fascinated in the business side which enveloped a vast array of commercial contracting and I discovered a great book: Art of the Deal by Dorothy Viljoen which opened my eyes to the beauty of commercial law.

By the time I ended up in legal education I had overcome my initial dislike of law and education and found a new glimmer of inspiration, that said I saw a lot of echoes of my original dislikes around and thus have set about trying to disrupt and change where I can, I like the term my Oxford mentor gave me "positive deviant". 

So as I sit here contemplating my aching toe and wondering if my collar bone will go the same way, I reflect on the bizarre nature of having this arthritic stigmata that spurns me on to change legal education wherever and however I can.

Work Globally, Live Locally - Disruption

This morning I awoke to see more news on the phases on the HS2 train project and can't help thinking that by the time it is built, how we work will be very different and the need to commute to large urban settlements to sit at a desk in an office or cubicle will seem somewhat redundant. The way we think about jobs, careers and the economics of these is where I see mass disruption occurring, breaking the shackles of the industrial age which are embedded in our management culture, our education system and our growth strategies. They're broken though, and we are trying to hang onto them in the same way HMV tried to cling to the high street. The next generation are already wising up to how broken this system is, when are we going to....







 More later on these trends.....

Work Globally, Live Locally - A New Beginning

For a while now I have been musing on an idea of "Work Globally, Live Locally" as a new model of living and approach to work, breaking free of big economic hubs of urbanisation and commuter pain. I'm still forming my manifesto, which may end up like Jerry Maguire's memo - but we'll see.

In the meantime, have a flick through PSFK's Future of Work Presentation, it will be one of the things that I base my thoughts on.

PSFK Future of Work Report 2013 from PSFK

Paper Bullies

There has been a lot of bullying behaviour on Twitter et al recently and it made me think of a story from a New York Teacher:

A teacher in New York was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform. She had the children take a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stamp on it and really mess it up but do not rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how scarred and dirty it was. She then told them to tell it they’re sorry. Now even though they said they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. That is what happens when a child bully’s another child, they may say they’re sorry but the scars are there forever. The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home.

Please take time to pause for thought when getting caught in heated debate online or teach your children this valuable lesson.

Retrospective Rationalising

Hmmm, there seems to be a new idiot zeitgeist surrounding the topic of rape at the moment, either to somehow build a straw man argument around abortion in the US or to defend Julian Assange in a bid to perpetuate what seems the most convoluted conspiracy theory I've heard in a while.

I'm not going to try and cover the facts of these recent cases as they have been covered expertly by countless others in far better posts.

I want to turn my attention to this phenomena of various people, predominantly men, trying to redefine rape. Why do they do this?

I'm hyper aware as a man myself I am potentially walking into a minefield here, but I think it is quite simple - no simply means no, before or during.

So why all these re-classifications by people? I think it is what I would call retrospective rationalising. What do I mean by this?

Put simply I am convinced many men in their past have been in a scenario that was either extremely borderline or was rape. This is probably quite hard for them to reconcile.

I think this is because of the fact that rape narratives for so long were of the violent stranger definition, therefore all other forms of non consensual sex don't or rather can't fit into the "legitimate rape" category because to do so would make countless men who do not consider themselves rapists to realise they have raped or nearly raped in their past, hence the post rationalisation we are seeing.

Bold and sweeping generalist statements I know, but let me explain my rationale.

I can already think of a handful of situations in my own formative years where I could have come quite close to crossing that boundary in a terrible mess of hormones, opportunity and drunkenness. I'm thankful I didn't but I do recognise the possibility of it amd that is scary. I think there are countless others who know this too, but won't admit it and won't recognise that it would be rape.

That's a sad indictment isn't it? That as men we have not had this conversation about where the boundaries are and what it means, recognising that our testosterone is a powerful driver that we have to control, particularly in adolescence or the discussion has been had and we didn't listen.

Thankfully I never had too much über testosterone flowing through my body and thus became deeply irritating in sexual encounters by asking multiple times for clarity on consent - if I could have had a contract I probably would have because in my brain it deeply concerned me about either being coercive or pushy in this arena as so many teenage men probably are.

I think I thought about it a lot because I had the unfortunate encounter of being in a public toilet and listening to a group of lads conspiring to gang rape my sister when she was 15. They didn't know I was her brother.
I don't think they realised they were conspiring to rape her either, just spike her drinks until she was unconscious later at a party and then all have "a go on her", they were deliberating which order they were going to do it when I intervened and pointed out I was her brother.

Sadly I have heard a number of similar discussions like this over the years, this I think is more common than most realise.

Too many men also think the predatory approach is all part of the game, there's an element to this approach that also starts to validate rape in their minds too.

I've been on the receiving end of predatory males persistence before, I've started politely to state that "I'm sorry, but I'm not gay" to still be lightly molested by grabbing and once having my exit blocked and locking of the door, I thought then I was going to be raped myself and that feeling of violation of your consent and your personal space is unforgettable. Sadly I think women have many more stories of incidents like this with men than I do.

So I think there are many things in the melting pot, there was a severe lack of discussion about rape being about non consensual sex and the different forms that takes and may still be. Too much emphasis on rape as a violent stranger assault narrative.

Not enough discussion or education with young men about respect and consent in sexual encounters.

So when I hear people re defining rape in the ways I've heard of late, I tend to think that they have a situation in their past which is consciously or subconsciously making them retrospectively rationalise the subject.

These are just thoughts and happy to hear your thoughts.