Kids in Bars? No!

Wait now. I'm not suggesting that we send our students to bars. I'm saying we find self-actualized people and learn from them, no matter where we find them. They can show us how to teach people to rise above the fray.

But we don't have clubs or churches established for those who transcend. We have groups for the civic minded, the religiously pious, the religiously devout, the religiously scatterbrained, the very smart, the red-haired, and nearly every sort of human being you could imagine. But we have no place for those who transcend the principles, laws, customs, and standards of their culture. However, it just happens that self-actualized people do show up in bars.

Kids won't find many self-actualized people among their classmates. That state of mind is very much an adult perspective on the world, and that perspective today is rare.

Schools don't have much room for revolutionary thinkers. The few self-actualized students in attendance cannot be too insistent about confronting fraud with truth, particularly when the fraud is school policy. It's simply not allowed. And teachers, you even have to be careful how you present revolutionary themes as they arise in literature. If they breach the hot topics of the time, you need to maintain that you are only presenting the possibilities raised by the author, and you must refrain, even if you don't want to, from editorializing based on your own views. You must tread very carefully in schools.

But bars are places where you can find self-actualized people who do not wish to become immersed in the political machinery that squashes most of us into a "basic" lifestyle. I am certainly not suggesting that all people who gather in bars are self-actualized. But a surprisingly large portion of them come to bars seeking out the company of others of their kind, and the local bar is one of the few places we can find each other nowadays.

What? Did I just suggest I am self-actualized? Sorry. Didn't mean it. What I meant is, when I have a moment of self-actualization, or when I'm seeking to experience one, I will go down to the local bar and meet up with some friends I know who are definitely self-actualized.