Why??

For now is the time to be born to the world.

Currently obsessed with… social entrepreneurship…

A social entrepreneur is a visionary leader with a high-impact social innovation who takes our society forward by helping to create a picture for the future that is stronger than a nostalgia for the past.

Social entrepreneurs are mavericks who refuse to accept the status quo. They look at the world, are dissatisfied with what they see, and resolve to change it. They are both dreamers and doers; imagining a brighter future and setting about making that dream into a reality. They are true entrepreneurs; innovators who are passionate and resourceful, who are prepared to take risks and who apply their energy, drive and ambition to effecting social change in Ireland.

My heroes are whistleblowers and social entrepeneurs

Honour, courage, initiative, passion, stamina and style.

Dare to make a difference!!

www.socialentrepreneurs.ie

www.socialedge.org

Why I love people
Becaue... Ya see that old guy just walking very unremarkably down the street with his ordinary clothes and normal walk and common look, he's the worlds leading authority on south american butterflies, he had a daugther once but she died, he loves to play harry potter online games, is passionate about helping undergraduates around the world with zoology projects and does meditation twice a day, he also has a silver medal for the marathon he ran in the LA Olympics in '84 He was a busker for twenty years and played at the oscars thats poetry!

Obbsessions put on hold...
Ethical Consumerism baby Make a difference while you shop check out www.ethicalconsumer.org and the work of art that is www.ethiscore.org

The plan;
get a degree and help people, spend a few years in the majority world and float along happily living off my good karma! Figure out my niche and get really passionate fighting for the cause, my cause, maybe go back to college as one of those crazy mature students who ask all the questions, so i can fight for the cause smarter!! Then maybe organsie and file stuff back in Ireland for a couple o years(filing oh ya!!) or else fuck off back to Africa! Thats the plan!! Gotta love the plan!!! why Africa you ask? well I hear they speak french there! et Je speak Francais trés well!!

The plan revised;
After the degree work on my to do list for a year or two while getting some experience so I'll get on the Masters in Counselling Psychology in UCC. A sample of the to do list - Set up an Ethical Consumer magazine in Ireland - Produce a radio show and podcast on social entrepeneurs - Help out the Young Social Innovators programme any way I can perhaps through aiding them come up with a better facilitator training programme.

Happiest When
Going clubbing with friends or having long intimate conversations with them over tea and chocolate icecream, chocolate muffins or just chocolate i'm easy goin!!! organising, documenting and filing for a cause! i know i'm a freak, but sure you knew that already. And cuttin shit down with a fucking big axe. arrrgggggg!!! its theraputic i'm tellin ya.

Quote
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears” Kahil Gibran "Our doubts are traitors they make us lose the good we oft mite win be fearing to attempt" in Measure for Measure by Shakespeare

Scared Of
Being boring, not finding my niche, losing my friends, not making a difference and not finding her

Alrite so i'm pretty much off the oreos now
im clean!
So this new obsession this critical pedagogy stuff has hit a new record.
My level of obsession has hit new hights to the extent that I now want to dedicate my life to it and can't stop reading academic books, like homework books like.

To find out more about Aaorn's obsession check out these links;

http://freire.mcgill.ca/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critica...

Book Review by Spyros Themelis

Nowadays it is becoming increasingly rare to find intellectually stimulating works that also engage in political committed analysis of modern societies. Peter McLaren and his companeras y companeros have given us a compelling and high-quality book* that manages to balance both of these elements skilfully and with great success.

In more than 500 pages we have an uncompromising and refreshing volume which is certain to have a lasting impact upon educational theory, politics and pedagogy. However, its reach is not restricted to academia nor is it directed at a specific audience. Rather its broad range appeals equally to all those who have not lost hope for the transformation of society.

There are five different sections in this volume, each one having a distinct thematic priority but underpinned by the same principle: the realisation of the corrosive and alienating influence of neo-liberalism, postmodernism and capitalism in our lives and the urgent need for critical resistance and active participation in a project of social transformation. This is a project that "transcends the limits of historical structures" and requires "agency as a form of both intellectual labour and concrete social practice, in short a social praxis". In harmony with his previous works, Peter McLaren's writing is characterised by a materialist conception which rejects the pervasive neo-colonial attitudes and forms of oppression, a view (and a way of living) that his co-authors seem to share.

The first section deals with educational policy, the politics and the praxis in critical pedagogy. The authors exemplify, in a disciplined and rigorous manner, the current educational conditions as much in the United States as elsewhere. Neo-liberalism's invasion into schools and educational sites, its colonising and undemocratic pedagogies, its humiliating, market-driven educational policies, are laid bare in order to expose the ideological arsenal that props them up.


Above all there is the belief that educators can bring about this change. Critical educators are those who can align themselves with the possibility of the restoration of historical materialism, those who can arise above the "crisis of credibility of the socialist project" and who believe in the "power of collective struggle".

In the second section, the contributors lay the foundations for revolutionary or critical multiculturalism. Educators are encouraged to re-orientate their pedagogy and embrace revolutionary or critical multiculturalism in order to reconstitute the ills inflicted by capitalism. Social injustices, racism and "whiteness" are all the outcomes of capitalist social relations which remain to be radically challenged and displaced through the practising of revolutionary multiculturalism.

It is suggested that the neo-colonial relations of exploitation, domination and alienation will have to be overturned. Critical educators face the challenge of shaping decolonising pedagogies and allowing for possibilities to see outside the social universe of the capital. Karl Marx's last sentence of the Communist Manifesto could be nowhere more appropriate than here: "The proletariats [and the educators] have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

The progressive ideas and inheritance of five influential intellectuals are developed in the third section. The relevance of Gramsci's theory about the role of intellectuals in respect to ideology and hegemony is proposed as a means of change for educators who want to face the new challenges. The anti-foundationalism and "Jacuzzi populism" of the modern philosopher Rorty are exposed, although the need for philosophy in critical pedagogy is recognised. Such an approach is provided by Paulo Freire's revolutionary humanism and commitment to democratic socialism. The section is completed with a succinct sketching of Harvey's historical materialism and "real-and-imagined geography of r