Scott MacLeod's Anthropology of Information Technology & Counterculture: African lion: Reading the inspired, Quaker, Abolitionist John Woolman, and I was wondering how Quakers might create a Ken Burns-informed documentary of Woolman, or even a film, Woolman's and the Quaker concept of "tenderness" or "becoming tender," Someone on a Quaker list was searching for the book "The failure of the Quaker experiments (1900-1940) in corporate social responsibility"

Sunday, December 2, 2012

African lion: Reading the inspired, Quaker, Abolitionist John Woolman, and I was wondering how Quakers might create a Ken Burns-informed documentary of Woolman, or even a film, Woolman's and the Quaker concept of "tenderness" or "becoming tender," Someone on a Quaker list was searching for the book "The failure of the Quaker experiments (1900-1940) in corporate social responsibility"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Lion_waiting_in_Namibia.jpg

At a San Francisco Friends' Meeting study group this week, we were reading the inspired, Quaker, Abolitionist John Woolman, and I was wondering how Quakers might create a Ken Burns-informed documentary of Woolman, or even a film. Let's find a Friendly, budding film-maker to do something like this. I'd love part of such an interpretation to focus on Woolman's use of the word "tender," so present in his journals, and emerging from a Friendly milieu/culture/language, and from 250 years ago.

Quakers - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Quakers_-_Religious_Society_of_Friends (was - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Quakers_-_Religious_Society_of_Friends)

(See, too, the nontheist Friends / Atheist Quakers, WUaS wiki page - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Nontheist_Friends_(atheist_Quakers%3F) (was -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Nontheist_Friends_(atheist_Quakers%3F) ))-

and the Peace and Social Justice Studies - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Peace_and_Social_Justice_Studies
(was - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Peace_and_Social_Justice_Studies ).

In thinking about the possibility of an inspiring, Quaker, Abolitionist, John Woolman film, documentary, or even a virtual world, production, and in looking for possible Ken Burns-inspired documentarians, screen-play writers, producers, directors and actors (not Quaker hagiographers), I found this on the web -

"The abolitionist John Woolman (1720-72) has been described as a "Quaker saint," an isolated mystic, singular even among a singular people. But as historian Geoffrey Plank recounts, this tailor, hog producer, shopkeeper, schoolteacher, and prominent Quaker minister was very much enmeshed in his local community in colonial New Jersey and was alert as well to events throughout the British Empire. Responding to the situation as he saw it, Woolman developed a comprehensive critique of his fellow Quakers and of the imperial economy, became one of the most emphatic opponents of slaveholding, and helped develop a new form of protest by striving never to spend money in ways that might encourage slavery or other forms of iniquity.

Drawing on the diaries of contemporaries, personal correspondence, the minutes of Quaker meetings, business and probate records, pamphlets, and other sources, John Woolman's Path to the Peaceable Kingdom shows that Woolman and his neighbors were far more engaged with the problems of inequality, trade, and warfare than anyone would know just from reading the Quaker's own writings. Although he is famous as an abolitionist, the end of slavery was only part of Woolman's project. Refusing to believe that the pursuit of self-interest could safely guide economic life, Woolman aimed for a miraculous global transformation: a universal disavowal of greed."

(http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2012/06/john-woolmans-path-to-peaceable-kingdom.html) ...

I'd like such a documentary to focus on Woolman's and the Friendly leading / experience / concept (if these are helpful words) of "tenderness" or "becoming tender" ...

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

Although Philadelphia Yearly Meeting suggests there is a video about Woolman -

http://www.friendsmedia.org/kidsquake/videos.htm -

I haven't seen anything further than this mention.

Perhaps PYM could be a funding source for a proposed film.

Someone on a Quaker list was searching for the book "The failure of the Quaker experiments (1900-1940) in corporate social responsibility," about which I responded: ...

Here's World University and School's Quaker, wiki (editable), subject page: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Quakers_-_Religious_Society_of_Friends . You'll find here the Earlham (College) School of Religion's Digital Quaker Collection's library catalog - http://esr.earlham.edu/dqc/links.html. (I searched once but didn't see this book) - but there's a form where you can ask. I'll soon add links to Swarthmore's and Haverford's to this Quaker wiki, but WUaS's Quaker wiki pages can't be of more help at this time. (The Digital Public Library of America should be online in April 2013 and may offer access to it, although I haven't heard of any Quaker collections participating in this yet. And here's WUaS's Library Resources' wiki subject page - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources - for free, online resources, potentially in all languages and countries). Please add further information to this WUaS page if you find some. I'm interested in the contents of this book for WUaS itself, because WUaS is significantly Quaker-informed as an university organization, is like Wikipedia with MIT OCW, with plans for free bachelor, Ph.D., law, and M.D. degrees, as well as plans to be in all 7,413 languages and greater than 205 countries ...