Good to hear from you Charles, and to be reassured that Theobald's thoughts
were not wasted.
Regards, Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Charles Brass
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 7:54 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The missing Massey
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
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