In Memoriam

Yesterday we had a party for people who have left our stream over the years. This unprecedented event seemed to go very well. We didn't have a huge turn out (about 20 people, plus children), but everyone who came seemed really happy to be there.

For some reason, though, I felt sad and melancholic. I couldn't really put my finger on it during the event, but I believe that it was because yesterday represented the end of an era. Old Mr MacLaren would never have countenanced such an event - he took a pretty hard line on "leavers" - and when it finally happened, at the School's Waterperry home, it seemed to hit home that he really is gone now.

A few years ago I read a book called "Built to Last", which was a study of businesses that have lasted a long time, and why. One of the case studies was Disney, a company that went through a period of drifting immediately after the death of its founder. The authors of the book said that the problem with Disney was that for 15 years the first question everyone asked was "What would Mr Walt have said?" The company only began to revive itself when the management stopped asking this question and started to think for themselves. In fact what they did was restate the company's objective, which is to create happiness. Whether or not one likes Disney films, it will be evident that "How can we make people happy?" is a better question than "What would Mr Walt have said?" ... click "Read More"

Mr MacLaren's passing in 1994 was a dramatic event. I well remember the journey to Waterperry that night. Although we didn't yet know it, the elements seemed to express what had just occurred: it was the biggest electrical storm for years in the south of England. In the papers the next day I read how a girl playing football had been killed by the lightning. He was a force of nature, and I can't resist recalling here what Andrew Marvell wrote of Oliver Cromwell:

And like the three-fork'd lightning, first
Breaking the clouds where it was nurst,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide:

...

Then burning through the air he went
And palaces and temples rent;
And Cæsar's head at last
Did through his laurels blast.

'Tis madness to resist or blame
The face of angry Heaven's flame
And if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due

Or perhaps it goes back even further - to the original genesis of the School in the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Gurdjieff, too, was a titan, and one with iron in his soul. He taught that unless someone had come under discipline, he did not really exist as a human being. Cruel stories cluster around him: how he made a fortune defrauding small-town mayors while working for the Russian railway; how he tortured horses so that they would obey no-one but him while he made his escape from Russia in 1917; his admiration for a Corsican bandit who would stare through his gunsight at a stretch of road for hour after hour, attention never wavering, waiting for the next victim.

Of course, there is much more to Gurdjieff, but if I overemphasize the cruel and harsh, it is because I think it's that element that passed out of the School yesterday. No longer will someone who leaves the School be ostracized; no longer will the fear of ostracism scare people into staying; and no longer need we see ourselves as superior in order to justify such behaviour.

This is, of course, a great day for the School. But if it also marks in some way the passing of Mr MacLaren, then perhaps it is natural to feel a certain sober regret. For all his foibles and his hardness, much to the man is due.

It would be interesting to hear what others felt yesterday, or in general about the recent developments.