Meeting Minutes.

Meeting minutes summaries will now be posted weekly, for people that couldn’t show up. We’ve got many weeks that we’ve met, and I’m finally posting the meeting minutes for them. Whew.

First meeting (awhile ago)

The topic was reform vs. revolution. It was discussion-based.

• We went around in a circle and proposed our personal ideas of what is needed to fix deep systemic problems, whether it was reform or revolution based (not violent revolution!)
• Proposed that we be more open, more creative with art, coffeehouses, speakouts, etc
• Emphasized that change of self is very important to whatever movement is going on
• Vigorous application of your ideal self and your potential everyday is a good idea
• For true revolution, EVERYONE needs to be supporters
• Ran into questions of communes working with medicine, supplies, etc (get into that at a later meeting)
• “Things that work, Survive”.
• Talked about the name, unschool, being too abrasive to people.
• Talked about all-one concept: everything is part of the whole
• Discussed the concept of change: People both need to be educated and also empowered to take action
• Art as displaying the beauty and the scale of trying to help everything
• No definitions. No standards.

Second Meeting : Venus project and Zeitgeist movement

• Where do we go from here? Possibilities of technology
• Our current state of affairs is mostly unintentional. Noone wanted war, poverty, etc
• “Spaceship Earth” Concept covered: Earth and all creatures as one, no seperation of nations, people, material, etc
• The idea of competing ideas, not people.
• Technology replacing processes that are menial tasks, more autonomous, more freedom
• Went over social conditioning, false lessons, “Right and Wrong”
• Reforming our world starts with ourselves
• Means need to equal the ends
• Idea of memetics: spreading ideas exponentially
• Voluntary society

Third Meeting: Social Construction. Heated conversation.

• 2 groups: Oppressed and Privileged.
• Privileged group: perpetuated by oppressed, norms, media, power, etc
• Oppressed group internalized message that they should be “normal”
• “Duties” and how that buys into the system, filling “roles”
• Colonization of the mind: Oppressed group is so oppressed they think what they are doing is acceptable and not questionable
• Advocate model: actively resisting norms and standards
• Patriarchy: System run by men for men.
• To be an active resistor, you must learn of your privilege compared to others
• Did pie charts to see how privileged we were. If it was full, you were the most privileged. Mine was full!
• To be “privileged” means the ability to ignore oppression or the ability to recognize it and resist
• If we had a society with no categorization of people, social equity would be reached
• Recognize the imperfection of language
• See people for how they choose to be seen

More meeting minutes coming up next week. Cheers.

Un-open your coke.

Coca-Cola is everywhere at UNH. I’m fairly certain they fund the sustainability program.. 😦

Why don’t we do something about it? What’s so bad about Coke, you ask?

1) Coke is NOT a local business, obviously. That means the majority of the money spent on coke products DOESN’T go back into the community.

2) Homogenized, “standard” products, as opposed to a unique product offered by a business in the seacoast area

3) Overexploitation and Pollution of Water Sources in India (indiaresource.org), Mexico (ciepac.org), Ghana and elsewhere  (polarisinstitute.org)

4)Aggressive Marketing to Children of Nutritionally Worthless and Damaging Products (commercialexploitation.org and schoolpouringrights.com)

5) “Coca Cola has contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilize extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders”- (Killercoke.org)

Anyways, the answer is pretty simple. I believe we should eliminate vending machines completely, because they waste tons of energy and promote a wasteful lifestyle (eating packaged food shipped from faraway places is NOT green). BUT a step in that direction would be something like…eliminating COKE from UNH! Tons of other colleges have done it, so lets roll!

For more info, check out killercoke.org.

University PD. Bless their souls!

“The mission of the University of New Hampshire Police Department is to support the University in creating an environment that is conducive to higher education by protecting life and property and assisting members of the University community.”

Pulled this off the UNH Police Department homepage. What a sham.

First off, we have no “good Samaritan policy”. It basically is a policy initiated by some colleges that relieves students of their alcohol offenses if they are calling for medical help from alcohol poisoning.

Students at UNH, however, get in trouble when they call for help.

Also, just last week drug-sniffing dogs raided the minis, looking for pot most likely. How is that protecting students? Sounds to me like a nice way to “show enforcement” to please the officials in New Hampshire..

Also, the fact that police can arrest you for having a few beers in your fridge, even when not drinking them, is atrocious. I’m thinking we need a little leeway here..Am I wrong? Maybe a student movement to reduce the UNH department’s power on campus?

One more thing. The university is considering adding a bunch of cameras around campus. Well, sounds like a safer place after the cameras are installed right? Wrong. Cameras actually aren’t effective deterrents of crime, and even after crimes are committed they arent very useful (Look it up). Then theres the Orwellian-esque surveillance aspect…Who knows how these can be abused by the PD? We’ve seen their work on drug and alcohol charges, who knows- If you “look drunk” on camera it could be proof, right?  Or maybe it will push students into a state of fear, a ominous police-state always watching could certainly do that…

Seminar One

Hi all, and welcome to unschool.

First Seminar: Congratulations, you have engaged resistance already.  Something brought you here, and in this action, you have defied the constructs of all you have been raised into.  You are beginning to experience the effects of this deconstruction. Although you may have felt that change cannot happen, a simple engagement of your mind IS the change.

It changes exponentially because the more conscious you are, the more you become.

In this, you naturally attract others to question things. A simple, proven way to fix things is to identify the cause. Only when you identify the cause  can you fix the problem. Looking at the system now, society may identify ways to fix something without finding the cause. This mindset is flawed, in the sense that even if these things  do get fixed, the problem manifests itself in yet another form.

That is because we’re still within the boundaries of this system.

If the way to fixing things IS identifying the problem, than what would we find to be the problem? The problem is ourselves. War, Oppression, Racism, Hate, Spite, and Greed will all persist if we don’t fix ourselves.  Fortunately for us, this problem is fixed instantly. All it takes is a choice between fear and love. I’ll explain:

As humans, we are sentient, and conscious. As humans, we have unlimited potential. The same way the body evolves, the mind evolves as well. What we  are now witnessing is  a new evolution of the human mind. This evolution is based off of a core principle:

The only thing stopping you from evolving is fear of expanding yourself.

Therefore, fear is objective to oneself. There is no fear unless you think there is. Even then, its an illusion.

I have felt the disparity of letting the logical self let fear take over. The feelings may go one way while the mind doubts the feelings, and you trust the mind. I tell you this: your feelings have not been pointless. They are linked to the natural urge towards expansion of the self. The feelings come first as a designator, and the mind follows to give you free will on what to do with those feelings.

That is where you choose  either fear or love. Its simple, you have the choice.  Always.