¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 The campaigns for the 2014 elections in the USA reveal a crying need for UPLIFT, a program to increase the competencies of the whole population- both “educated” and “uneducated”.  There wasn’t a shred of attempt to “educate” the population by either party. What we witnessed was the broadcasting of emotionally loaded messages designed to instill fear and indoctrinate. Political strategy today attempts to rig the system by whatever means possible. Warped “values” replaced “issues”.  Uplifting is required of politicians and all of their stakeholders, constituencies, the media and corporations. The so-called leaders are as much “out of it” as the voting populations they attempt to manipulate (never properly inform or assist in their learning and development).

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 The whole electoral process was Theater of the Absurd. Total Farce.  Imagine an alien observer limited only to information related to the election – from all sides. Hot words, such as global warming, immigration, jobs, the economy, abortion, God, etc. were bandied about in word salads disguised as information.  The process continues, without losing a beat, as the focus shifts to 2016.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Maybe those who chose not to vote intuited the absurdity and saw no merit in the “lesser of two evils” rationalization. Why bother oneself with worry and wasted time when you have no agency. Many who did vote were acting in response to some single issue (woman’s rights, fracking, police brutality, etc.) where voting might result in a short-term gain.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Those of us who know something is seriously wrong propose various models of action that don’t call for a strong educational component. They propose organizing and acting prior to learning. When learning is called for, it is always for others.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 There should be no competition between  organizing and learning.  OLLO, Organizing-for-Learning=&=Learning-for-Organizing is a nu, proposed conceptual scheme.  It is much more than calling for concurrent organizing and learning. It seeks to better comprehend how the two processes are deeply intertwined. The apparent slowness of and resistance to education (one rationale to avoid the need for uplift) can be rapidly changed to rapid & relevant learning in the context of OLLO. There is also a (not always acknowledged) slowness of and resistance to “being organized” and a belief in one’s inability “to organize”.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 OLLO entwines learning and organizing. It is NOT about learning how to organize-in-general or organizing to operate institutions of education.  There is a distinct process  Learning/Organizing (on a mobius strip so neither is before the other) that manifests both “in the moments of process within living humans” and patterns of asynchronous interaction distributed over space and time.