Adam Blatner

Well, there you are, whether you’re aware of it or not, needing if not awaiting my efforts to change you for the better. Please forgive me for not being able to offer much more than the tiniest nibble at the ineffable monumentality of the challenge, but I’m just a little person, a member of a species that is only part-way along in its evolution, and with some dim awareness that even if we were fully evolved, humans, in ten thousand years, “bright shining as the sun,” as the verse from “Amazing Grace” says, are far from helping a lot. Even beyond that point, imagining humanity to be at its fullest potential, we may be yet far from doing all that much to advance the over-all agenda of the Cosmos. Oh, well, one does what one can.

Actually, I’m quite enthusiastic (literally: en- in; theos-god; iastic– whatever..filled?) over a number of channels that I ally with, feel a part of, want to support, to advance, and perhaps to which I may even add a little something!

Attending a local historical society event celebrating my wife’s heritage as a descendent of early Texas pioneers, I was reminded of the whole genealogical trend, expanded of late by the use of computers and the internet. Not my thing, though I don’t devalue it for others. Roots can go into the past, or broadly into the present or the future. For me, I am excited about being part of a number of movements that are in transition from the recent past into the near future: 
  – medicine, new developments in healing, prevention
  – the movement of psychological-mindedness towards the mainstream
  – the movement of inter-spirituality and the shift from content of what is believed to the process that addresses the functional adequacy of believing, how it can work to help people build towards a better world
    – promoting improvisational spirituality for those who might want to do that sort of thing
   – the development of better theoretical systems for psychology, psycho-physiology, applied social psychology, and the overlaps of these trends with other cultural trends (including integration, synthesis, generation of novel sub-contexts or fields of exploration, etc.
   – furthering popularization of creative activities, personal doing of dancing, singing, improvisational dramatics, drawing, cartooning, and so forth
   – promotion of flagrant imaginativeness, fantasizing, making up stuff, mental improvisation, humor, play,
   – promotion of ways people can help each other to do all this
   – furthering critical thinking and component activities, such as people learning about semantics, semiotics, the awareness of the prevalence of types of rhetorical devices, propaganda techniques, logical fallacies, and other types of illusion
    – recognizing non-rational seductions of the mind that lead into folly, illusion, avoidance, support complacence, and many other pitfalls
    – the use of better theories of mind and society (based on role theory)
    – the wider use of a host of action exploration techniques derived mainly from Moreno’s psychodrama, and also from others’ techniuqes (e.g., drama in education, improv, etc.)     Etc.  That’ll keep me busy for now.