Experience versus Theater

I want to establish two basic pictures, then overlap them, jiggle them, get new patterns.

Bees spend most of their time in the hive: a bee-made environment. Honey bees are social creatures. The busiest worker, the farthest ranging forager, still spends a great deal of time lounging around the hive, while other workers work. One-third of the time the forager ranges the hive's environment; two-thirds of the time the bee is surrounded by BeeCity. Wolf pups spend their most helpless days in the den: a natural environment modified by mother wolf: at least to the extent of her warmth, her fur, her tits ... her licking up their crap after them. But the pack of wolves work much of the whole of their land environment. They may tred lanes but they don't pave highways, erect structures, legislate laws. New paths are seldom trod: and when they are, they'r'e cut by the alpha wolf: alone. Man as a baby lives in a totally artificial environment: and as an adult worker still encounters only managed environments. "Reality" for TV means a carefully managed cast wearing scripted costumes on some "island": surrounded by producers, directors, coaches ... cameras ...
The alpha buck may blaze a new trail; some young buck who hasn't won a confrontation yet may go off into the woods all withershis; the tenured professor 99% of the time covers ground already well mapped, and generally by others.
Even our language, though it resists management, is perpetually tampered at. (I just wrote a piece for example on societies, with political motivation, forever recasting the meaning of
murder.)

That's one picture, sketched briefly. The other is that any thing, any institution for example, is potentially ambiguous. That is, a school may be used to train engineers, as well as possible, as fast as possible; or a school, even the same school, may be used prevent learning, to govern and stunt it. If the student is doing math twelve hours a day, then the student is not likely to be also reading Wittgenstein, or writing manifestos. The society may send a young man to West Point hoping for a follower who can also lead, technically proficient at war, to be put in harm's way; or, if Eisenhower's White House hears of imminent attack, grandson David could be sent to West Point to keep him out of harm's way.

We live not on earth but in a world, a social artifact. The Jew who resides at 112 West 112^th Street, apartment 3A, does not live in the same world as the Baptist who resides at 112 West 112^th Street, apartment 3B. The kid who goes to Friends Academy does not learn of the same world as the kid who attends PS 189. The guy who digs ditches for a living does not work in the same world as David at West Point.
And our managed environments are managed for shifting agendas in a society of ever-shifting powers. One senator is committed to oil: finding it any where, any way; another is committed is keeping water for the cattlemen; down the hall is a senator committed to getting water for the sheep herders. All the talk is of the people ... whatever the hell that means. One upon a time all the talk was about God, or about the Church. Before that, all the talk was about rain magic.

Eden is not Nature; though Eden is palmed on us as though it were nature. This and that world is palmed on us as though it were the earth. This and that culture palms itself onto its (not typically voluntary) members as though it were life. Man is a subset of life, one of many. Confusion however is to the advantage of the managers.I joined the navy to see the world
And what did I see? I saw the sea.That was a funny gag in 1946. Though as we grow up and die off, fewer and fewer people will remember what the song was about. Navy recruiters advertised See the world. Hell, people had come home from WWI and they had seen Gay Paree.I pause to interject a Tolstoyism. Few people, including the educated, have a clue what their motives are: until they read about them in the paper, or are told by some priest, or some Freudian. After the priest, you can say, "The devil made me do it." After the Freudian, you can say, "I couldn't help myself."
In all cases, our managers, would-be and actual, want us all to be in the same story.
Any of these points can be expanded indefinitely. I intend to expand some. But I quote the post-war musical to bring the concept of synecdoche into our weave. Synecdoche is the figure by which we say Behold a sail when we mean Look at the boat. We symbolize a whole by a part. As I have argued nature was already using synecdoche when it programmed caterpillars to climb toward the light in order to find food. Leaves are not a part of light, but they are generally found, by caterpillars, in the direction of light. The association has worked, keeping caterpillars alive, for many a year. And, you see, my point is that cultures also use synecdoches, associations: sometimes to enlighten; more often to confuse.

I'll go on about schools when I return.