In previous columns I’ve mentioned Murray Bookchin’s popular assembly model, implemented in Rojava in north-eastern Syria, in which decisions are handed up from local communities, rather than down from a distant centre; and the highly successful participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, wh

t outcome convinced him that the working class, as such, was not going to be the primary revolutionary agent. Contrary to Marxist predictions, capitalism was not going to so “immiserate” the working class that it rose up in rebellion against it. Rather, workers were going to try to make improvements in their working conditions within capitalism

Over the seven years that archaeologist-to-be Margaret Murray sent in wordsto the Dictionary, she managed to contribute 5,000 slips.

The box in the archives held two further address books belonging toMurray, and the following summer, in a box in the Bodleian Library, I foundanother three address books belonging to the Editor who had preceded him,Frederick Furnivall. As I worked my way through them, it became clear thatthere were thousands of contributors. Some three thousand, to be exact.

urray’s house at 78 Banbury Road to receive post (it is still there today).This is now one of the most gentrified areas of Oxford, full of large three-storey, redbrick, Victorian houses, but the houses were brand new whenMurray lived there and considered quite far out of town.

The physicistsStephen Wolfram and Brosl Hasslacher introduced me, in the early1980s, to chaos theory and nonlinear systems. In the 1990s, I learnedabout complex systems from conversations with Danny Hillis, the bi-ologist Stuart Kauffman, the Nobel-laureate physicist Murray Gell-Mann, and others. Most recently, Hasslacher and the electrical engineerand device physicist Mark Reed have been giving me insight into the in-credible possibilities of molecular electronics.

Murray edited the OED from his grandly named ‘Scriptorium’, which was in fact a large corrugated iron shed, built first in the grounds of Mill Hill School, where he taught, and then in his garden at 78 Banbury Road.

How Harriet Tubman is remembered and honored

A five -dollar Bill Murray.

one of the earliest thinkers to warn us of its dangers was Murray Bookchin, who in 1962 summarized cogently what an ecological understanding of the world means and what it does to our understanding of our place within it:The critical edge of ecology, a unique feature of the science in a period of general scientific docility, derives from its subject matter—from its very domain. The issues with which ecology deals are imperishable in the sense that they cannot be ignored without bringing into question the survival of man and the survival of the planet itself. The critical edge of ecology is due not so much to the power of human reason—a power which science hallowed during its most revolutionary periods—but to a still higher power, the sovereignty of nature . . . ecology clearly shows the totality of the natural world—nature viewed in all its aspects, cycles and interrelationships—cancels out human pretensions to mastery over the planet.[7]

The underlying theme tyingthese myths together is that poverty is often perceived to be an issue of“them” rather than an issue of “us”—that those who experience povertyare viewed as strangers to mainstream America, falling outside accept-able behavior, and as such, are to be scorned and stigmatized.

Murray, D. M. (2000). The craft of revision (4th ed.). Boston: Harcourt College Publish-ers.

Judith Sargent Murray

“Lines Occasioned by the Death of an Infant,”

social ecology formally emerged with the work of Murray Bookchin

That student’s name was Pauli Murray. Her law-school peers were accustomed to being startled by her—she was the only woman among them and first in the class—but that day they laughed out loud.

that he was influenced by no other motive than a bare pusilianimous attachment to a woman!

It doth not appear that she was governed by any one sensual appetite; but merely by a desire of adorning her mind; a laudable ambition fired her soul, and a thirst for knowledge impelled the predilection so fatal in its consequences.

Strange how blind self love renders you men; were you not wholly absorbed in a partial admiration of your own abilities, you would long since have acknowledged the force of what I am now going to urge.

upon this point we will never contend for victory

would interfere with our more peculiar department,

If we meet an equal, a sensible friend, we will reward him with the hand of amity, and through life we will be assiduous to promote his happiness

And if we are allowed an equality of acquirements, let serious studies equally employ our minds, and we will bid our souls arise to equal strengths.

for after an education which limits and confines, and employments and recreations which naturally tend to enervate the body, and debilitate the mind; after we have from early youth been adorned with ribbons, and other gewgaws, dressed out like the ancient victims previous to a sacrifice, being taught by the care of our parents in collecting the most showy materials that the ornamenting our exteriour ought to be the principal object of our attention; after, I say, fifteen years thus spent, we are introduced into the world, amid the united adulation of every beholder.

Thus David was a man after God’s own heart, yet see him enervated by his licentious passions! behold him following Uriah to the death, and shew me wherein could consist the immaculate Being’s complacency. Listen to the curses which Job bestoweth upon the day of his nativity, and tell me where is his perfection, where his patience–literally it existed not

I know there are who assert, that as the animal power of the one sex are superiour, of course their mental faculties also must be stronger

Pity that all such censurers of female improvement do not go one step further, and deny their future existence; to be consistent they surely ought.

Nay, while we are pursuing the needle, or the superintendency of the family, I repeat, that our minds are at full liberty for reflection

I can add, that when once attained, they require no further mental attention.

an unhappy Hymen would then be as rare, as is now the reverse.

A mind, thus filled, would have little room for the trifles with which our sex are, with too much justice, accused of amusing themselves, and they would thus be rendered fit companions for those, who should one day wear them as their crown.

Is she united to a person whose soul nature made equal to her own, education hath set him so far above her, that in those entertainments which are productive of such rational felicity, she is not qualified to accompany him. She experiences a mortifying consciousness of inferiority, which embitters every enjoyment.

At length arrived at womanhood, the uncultivated fair one feels a void, which the employments allotted her are by no means capable of filling. What can she do? to books she may not apply; or if she doth, to those only of the novel kind, lest she merit the appellation of a learned lady; and what ideas have been affixed to this term, the observation of many can testify.

the sister must be wholly domesticated,

the one is taught to aspire, and the other is early confined and limitted.

May we not trace its source in the difference of education, and continued advantages? Will it be said that the judgment of a male of two years old, is more sage than that of a female’s of the same age

Are we deficient in reason? we can only reason from what we know, and if an opportunity of acquiring knowledge hath been denied us, the inferiority of our sex cannot fairly be deduced from thence.

Is the needle and kitchen sufficient to employ the operations of a soul thus organized? I should conceive not, Nay, it is a truth that those very departments leave the intelligent principle vacant, and at liberty for speculation.

Assuredly great activity of mind is thereby discovered, and was this activity properly directed, what beneficial effects would follow.

so extremely ready are we, that the very first thought presents us with an apology, so plausible, as to produce our actions even in an amiable light.

The province of imagination hath long since been surrendered to us, and we have been crowned and undoubted sovereigns of the regions of fancy.

I know that to both sexes elevated understandings, and the reverse, are common. But, suffer me to ask, in what the minds of females are so notoriously deficient, or unequal.

But imbecility is still confin’d, And by the lordly sex to us consign’d; They rob us of the power t’improve, And then declare we only trifles love

And in past times some men have sunk so low, That female records nothing less can show.

As if a woman’s form must needs enrol, A weak, a servile, an inferiour soul; And that the guise of man must still proclaim, Greatness of mind, and him, to be the same

While others, emulous of sweet applause, Industrious seek for each event a cause, Tracing the hidden springs whence knowledge flows, Which nature all in beauteous order shows.

But some there are who wish not to improve Who never can the path of knowledge love, Whose souls almost with the dull body one, With anxious care each mental pleasure shun; Weak is the level’d, enervated mind,

And Genius, led by Study, wears the crown.

THAT minds are not alike, full well I know, This truth each day’s experience will show;

I would, I must repeat, by all means guard them against a low estimation of self. I would leave no charm undiscovered or unmarked, for the penetrating eye of the pretended admirer, to make unto himself a merit by holding up to her view; thus, I would destroy the weapons of flattery, or render them useless, by leaving not the least room for their operation.

when the voice of adulation should assail her ear, as she had early been initiated into its true meaning, and from youth been accustomed to the language of praise; her attention would not be captivated, the Siren’s song would not borrow the aid of novelty, her young mind would not be enervated or intoxicated, by a delicious surprise, she would possess her soul in serenity and by that means, rise superior to the deep-laid schemes which, too commonly, encompass the steps of beauty.

to be hung up as a pleasing picture among the paintings of some spacious hall

but, it must be your part, my sweet girl, to render yourself worthy respect from higher motives: you must learn “to reverence yourself,” that is, your intellectual existence; you must join my efforts, in endeavouring to adorn your mind, for, it is from the proper furnishing of that, you will become indeed a valuable person,

I would, from the early dawn of reason, address her as a rational being

from my lips she should be accustomed to hear the most pleasing truths, and, as in the course of my instructions, I should doubtless find myself but too often impelled to wound the delicacy of youthful sensibility.

whence arise the sweet perfume of adulation, and when she can obtain the regard due to a merit, which she supposes altogether uncommon.

they assiduously guard every avenue, they arrest the stream of due admiration, and endeavour to divest her of all idea of the bounties of nature

I would, therefore, have my pupils believe, that every thing in the compass of mortality, was placed within their grasp, and that, the avidity of application, the intenseness of study, were only requisite to endow them with every external grace, and mental accomplishment.

to teach young minds to aspire, ought to be the ground work of education

Ne’er taught to “rev’rence self,” or to aspire, Our bosoms never caught ambition’s fire;

But, lost to conscious worth, to decent pride, Compass nor helm there is, our course to guide: Nor may we anchor cast, for rudely tost In an unfathom’d sea, each motive’s lost,

Self-estimation will debasement shun,

May stimulate to most exalted deeds, Direct the soul where blooming honor leads;