Stieg Larsson's Millennium

I have just watched Episode One of the first Stieg Larsson film which seems to be a perfect adaptation, with every actor right for their role. It remains to watch the entire Trilogy.

Relevant previous posts are:

Paolo Roberto;
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo;
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo II;
Blofeld's Successors.

Paolo Roberto

Paolo Roberto:

was known in Sweden as a boxer;
played himself in a film about his life;
appears as a character in Stieg Larsson's second novel, The Girl Who Played With Fire;
plays himself in the film of the novel.

Thus, the novel describes him performing actions that he had not performed in real life but did later perform in the dramatization of the text of the novel.

A fascinating fiction-reality interaction.

Drifting

Looking back from retirement, it is clear that I drifted without ambition or career plan. However, what I value most is understanding, not merely in an abstract, academic or theoretical sense. While drifting, I have gained certain levels of understanding:

a layman's understanding of scientific cosmogony and Darwinism from general reading;
an analytic philosophical understanding of theism from studying Philosophy;
a Marxist understanding of society from political campaigning while unemployed;
a critical understanding of Christianity from teaching Religious Education;
a Zen understanding of consciousness from meditating.

I might not have got the third and fourth if I had become an academic.

You Are Light And Darkness

You are light and darkness
And life of the goddess,
Spring and summer and night,
Magic, design delight.
Inspire me with beauty;
No, never unfriend me.

From Aeneas To Mehmed

Aeneas fled from Troy to Italy.
His descendant, Romulus, founded Rome.
A Roman Emperor, Constantine, renamed Byzantium Constantinople.
An Ottoman Emperor, Mehmed, renamed Constantinople Istanbul.

Thus, a long narrative sequence, beginning in mythology and ending in history, links the Ottoman siege of Constantinople back to the Greek siege of Troy.

Having defeated the Byzantine Empire and begun to rule from its former capital, Mehmed claimed to be Caesar of Rome and also possibly claimed to have avenged Troy by defeating the "Greeks" or Byzantines.

Gods change - Zeus, Jupiter, Christ, Allah - but humanity continues - Trojans, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Muslims.

Hail the gods and heroes! What happens next? Who succeeds Mehmed?

Another Merger

I have just had lunch with a former work colleague. She had met another former colleague who had informed her that Lancashire Young People's Service is about to merge with two other County Council agencies called Early Intervention, which was being set up when some of us were leaving LYPS, and CAPSS (Children and Parenting Support Service), with further loss of jobs, this time at managerial level.

I mention this here because it is the latest stage of a process described in the posts, "To And Through A Career," "A Career And Beyond" and "Reorganizations" on this blog back in May last year. I am intrigued that the process continues indefinitely without ever reaching a satisfactory conclusion. Political change seems imminent and will undoubtedly lead to yet more reorganizations of public services. What we have been through would have seemed impossible when I started to train for Careers work back in 1988.

Addendum, 6 June 2014: Today, a conversation with another former colleague revealed that YPS, which has apparently retained that set of initials after all, works alongside Children's Centres under the overall heading of Well Being, Prevention and Early Help but, next year, YPS and Children's Centres will merge as Family Support.

Lack Of Preparation for Life

I emerged from secondary school in 1967, aged 18:

immature, inexperienced, indoctrinated, ignorant, repressed, uninformed, misinformed, misled yet opinionated but otherwise discouraged and demoralized;
unprepared for higher education, work, life or personal relationships;
unable to speak any foreign language although I had supposedly been taught one for the previous six years (however, "French" was a subject to be passed, not a language to be spoken).

Did I get anything from school apart from University entrance exam passes? An introduction, but only an introduction, to study, spirituality and sport. I did not want the sport. I had to develop personal study skills at University several years later. I have changed my spiritual practice twice since birth:

our starting point is determined by parents or society;
we might experiment with an alternative early in life;
we then find which path is most beneficial for us.

So two changes is far from excessive.

What was wrong with that school education? I soon came to disagree with schools that are fee-paying, boarding, single sex or denominational. So the answer is everything.

10/7/13: Any education is an interaction between the institution and each individual. I started out with very definite personal failings and limitations which were exacerbated by the education.