Ed The Massey lectures were given in Australia as the Boyer lectures, and a companion book with the title below was produced.
I have copies of both the book and the tape of the lectures here in Australia regards ----- Original Message ----- From: Ed Weick To: futurework ; [email protected] Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2009 6:32 AM Subject: [Futurework] The missing Massey The Massey Lectures have been held annually since 1961. I've never listened to them, but have read several of the publications resulting from them, including the most recent one by Margaret Atwood on the role of debt in society and human behaviour - a very good piece of work. However, in 1996 there was no Massey Lecture. As explained by Google: "There was no lecture in 1996 because the Ideas producers and the selected lecturer, Robert Theobald, could not agree on what constituted a sufficient manuscript for the lecture." This morning I found myself exploring the nether regions of my hardrive and in so doing found a draft of what I believe was to be Theobald's lecture, even though it's dated 1988 and he refers to it as a speech he's going to give in Toronto. I recall exchanging emails with him at the time, so I believe that he sent it to me. I'm attaching it in case you want to see what the missing Massey probably dealt with. All I've done was fix up the paragraphing a little. It's the original even though it's dated today. And it obviously still needs quite a lot of work before it could be considered as being in final form. Google suggests that what would have been the lecture has been published as "Reworking Success; New Communities at the Millennium", which I've not seen. What Theobald, an economist but a rather strange and different one, is concerned with is that we live in a world of illusions, misconceptions and immorality. Given the way we are, we lie to ourselves, place undue emphasis on the wrong kinds of things (e.g. economic growth), and try to personally benefit from the fact that we are going down the tube. He argues that our behaviour is determined by deep structures which are determined at a mythic level, and that is where we need to fix ourselves up. He suggests we do so via the arts and by seeing ourselves as living in the moment and not in a longer period of time. The ideas and writing are at times quite fuzzy but they do give one a sense of where he is trying to go. Yet I may have it all wrong. Take a look at the draft yourselves. But don't try to contact Theobald. He died in 1999. Ed ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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