General DeDe

Introducing: General DeDe!

This recent October I coined the term "DeDeDe" and offered it as a possible alternative to deschooling. Deschooling was only part of Illich's opposition to compulsory ritual in modern kleptocracies. He wanted us to De-License, and to De-Professionalize and to De-Regulate: all a part of DeSchooling.

Today I offer a related coinage: General DeDe. I, Paul Knatz, long nicknamed pk, occasionally called other names, both good and bad, propose that you may regard all pk deschooling writing as authored by General DeDe.

Picasso's name became a symbol of his powerful art: still, it was his surname, his patronymic surname. Pablo Picasso Ruiz became known as Pablo Picasso, then simply as Picasso! The likewise great Hokusai was not born with that name. He became known, loved, revered, by variations of his birth name, then dubbed himself Hokusai: which abbreviates Japanese slang which suggests "old man, crazy about painting." By golly, it means the same thing Picasso came to mean!

So, August Paul Knatz, Jr. I was born. Paul I was called, then pk. Now I'm the crazy old man, committed to Deschooling: to deregulation, to delicensing, to opposing the over-professionalization and the over-specialization of everything: all related to opposing government regulation of anything!

The first part, General, is itself a complex: largely a complex joke. I'm an Illich disciple but also a Bucky Fuller disciple. Bucky called himself a generalist, taking a stance against over-specialization. I second that proposal (even if I'm far from the hundredth to do so: I one hundred and nintety-fifth it!)

The term also recalls John Sutter to me: the first widely known white man that the expanding United States stole from. American settlers didn't give much of a damn what we took from the natives, we didn't much care how we treated the Irish or the Chinese let along the imported slaves. But we were typically less forthright the way we stole property from those we thought of as white. We stole Sutter's land, killed his livestock, and helped ourselves to his gold, all in violation of treaties with Sutter in which his New Helvetia was recognized as a sovereignty. (Now I don't believe in sovereignty, but neither do I believe in kleptocracy!) Anyway, Sutter promoted himself to Colonel once he discovered a route across the Rockies, first white man to do so, and developed the Sacramento Valley. A bit older he promoted himself to General: General Sutter. The same kleptocracy plagiarized my Free Learning Exchange and its offer of cybernetic digitization of resources both human and material, with peer matching and feedback. Illich's design, which I offered to implement at cost (enough for workers to live on being part of the cost)