In Defense of Childhood
Protecting Kids'`````````````````````````````````` Inner Wildness
By Chris Mercogliano
($22.95)
Order your copy today!

Joseph Chilton Pearce and I agree.
In Defense of Childhood, a new book by
Chris Mercogliano, is a must read for anyone interested in children, education or a sane society.

Chris explores how the changing environment is changing our children. The innate genius of childhood, what Chris calls the inner-wild, is being caged, tethered, domesticated by irrational adult fears and polices that blossom in fear. A thirty year history as director of the Albany Free School, working with regular and highly challenged children, gives Chris a unique perspective. Everyone needs to read this book!!

"Let’s review the chief nemeses of inner wildness briefly and in the most basic terms: fear causes a need to control, and control causes domestication. Any serious discussion of what we can do to prevent further damage to childhood—and reverse some of the existing damage—must first address this equation. Following this logic, the fear that sets the landslide in motion is based primarily on a perception of danger. I emphasize the word “perception” because it is the critical variable. This brings us to a parallel equation: fear is an emotion, and emotions are not rational.

I have covered a lot of ground in this book, traveling from birth to adulthood with stops along the way to delve into history, parenting, biology, psychology, education, sociology, philosophy, literature, and occasionally my students’ or my own personal stories. My goal throughout has been to assemble the entire puzzle, to examine as thoroughly as possible the far-ranging alterations to American childhood, their origins and development, and, most important, how they are affecting the tender inner selves of our children. If we don’t ask these hard questions, our efforts to change things for the better are often reduced to putting Band-Aids on compound fractures and dabbling in the latest popular trends. Inner wildness is endangered, but it need not become extinct. In fact, as I look around me today, I see much that inspires cautious optimism. "

Joseph Chilton Pearce
The Biology of Transcendence
 (295 Pages, Hard Cover $22.95)

Order your copy!

Transcendence, defined (by Webster) is the ability to rise above limitation and constraint. Transcendence is an evolutionary imperative, a built-in genetic function, which, if not fostered and developed, leads to violence in all its forms. An analysis is made of current cultural practices of child-birthing, rearing and education which directly and clearly cripple the transcendent drive which shapes all of human development. A principle metaphor around which the book is woven is the late medieval concept of creator and created "giving rise to each other" as creation, that is, the creative process of life itself and man's mind are a mirroring-dynamic, each bringing the other into being. Written for the average reader, avoiding complex language and using concrete examples, explanatory diagrams and pictures, the book utilizes recent research in the neuro-sciences, and the new discoveries in neuro-cardiology, (the "brain in the heart"). Current cultural practices that interfere with neural development are discussed, graphic new magnetic imaging of the brains of normal and violent people both verify and visually depict the results, while the final section explores an eminently practical solution.

Playing by Heart
The Vision & Practice Of Belonging
By O. Fred Donaldson, PH.D.
($22.95)
Order your copy today!

Playing By Heart is a contemporary hero’s journey, leaving behind the safety of cultural identity to discover something vast, authentic, universal and true, a state of being and relationship that Fred Donaldson calls Belonging.

From a conversation between Fred and Michael Mendizza:

We make a bargain with our children very early. “Give up the original state of belonging that you know as an infant, and I will provide for you the goods of the culture.” At that age, the people presenting us with this bargain are all we know. We have no choice. So we accept the bargain and it seems appropriate. We start to buy into those rewards and never realize that they can never get us back what we gave up. We get trapped into thinking, “if I just win more, if I just get more stuff, I will feel the sense of belonging and wholeness that I felt as an infant.

The whole culture feeds this feeling of not having or being enough. Ultimately, we find out, many of us not until it's near our death, that these culture games can never meet the needs of this original belonging because they focus on such small parts of us. They can't meet that need, not just belonging to family or a team or a country, but belonging to life itself. That takes a huge sense of safety and love that the little belongings don't provide for us. But we're never told that.

Once you've lost that original sense of belonging to life itself, you end up doing the things necessary to defend yourself and keep those boundaries around you secure. Those little belongings, whether it's a family, a culture, a gang, a team, hook you into doing the things that keep you as a member. Membership becomes exceedingly important and you are valuable only as long as you're a member. It doesn't matter whether it's a sports team, an urban gang, a member of an army, it's all the same process. You are good only as long as you abide by the terms of membership and participating in contests is the primary way we prove this allegiance.

Being a member is absolutely crucial to our survival. We're never told that there is a membership outside of all the cultural memberships. We knew that in our original belonging and that's what play helps us discover again.

Play has taught me is that life comes with it's own pattern. That pattern is a sense of belonging that's immensely powerful, yet very hard to get a hold of. And not believing in that, we go for the frosting, the illusions of prestige, money and so on. Once hooked into that, the cultural counterfeits, it's extremely difficult to let them go.

Once we assume that our real self, who I really am, is depended upon the goods, the services, and prestige the culture provides, then I loose control of my own sense of value and well-being. I become attached to the cultural image I have accepted about myself. My connection to people is defined by what they offer me. Once I am cut off and my sense of self becomes attached to things out there. I loose touch with my true value. I forget how to reach back and find out how to play, how to love. I don't know what safe means because safe has always been these other things, a big home, a car, money and fame.

If I can discover a quality of relationship that is really safe, then I don't need to defend myself, then you don't need to defend yourself from me. Now we can focus our energy in creative ways. Once you're safe and not dissipating energy in self-defense, then it's a much easier to communicate, to love, to be kind and do all those things that we'd really rather do than hurt and defend. Play begins when we discover this safe place, that we belong, right here, right now, with all of life.