cooking the lunch and controlling the rawness of nature

Emptying boxes of books must qualify as one of the slowest activities in life; reading quickly as titles catch the eye collapses into sitting on the stairs , into getting a chair, into becoming engrossed by (in this instance) Edmund Leach on how we are like to gods.

We are masters of our situation and it should be the object of learning that we can come to terms with our surroundings rather than obliterate them in panic at the otherness of things.


As he says, "The unique and astonishing thing about human beings is not simply their capacity to analyse the contents of the world around them, but their capacity to create. Every one of us is an artist with words....as you speak you generate conciousness; what you create is yourself. That is a god-like activity."

Our education system is founded on taking things apart to see what they are, and then things are dismantled, or dead, when it should be about putting things together to see what can be created and alive.