"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair.

This has been a favorite quote of mine for years. In taking care of my dad last year, I discovered he had a copy of it taped on the wall of his kitchen. It's a reminder of the human frailty around personal interest and seeing things clearly, and it's an argument for consciously building cultural structures that openly and carefully address the temptations of power and control.

I'm reading Buckminster Fuller's Grunch of Giants ("parsing" may be a better word than "reading" in this context) and it raises all kinds of questions about how you help bring a society to a higher level of conscious awareness when the accumulation and retention of power and privilege are such motivating factors. From my view, it can't be some kind of intellectual conclusion that is mandated onto the general populace, it has to be a set of ideas that resonate across economic and cultural boundaries, and have the ability to regenerate with each new generation.

We have lots of voices arguing about education and reform; who is speaking to you with clarity and power right now around what learning means as part of being human?