Jeremy Banned from Facebook Group

“Banned” is a little hyperbole. Thrown out is a tad closer.

And I like getting thrown out of things. It’s become a habit.

Usually it’s because I won’t conform, or behave in an “expected” way. In the FB group AT Global, I kept asking people to try my services. I behave normally for a business, but they don’t like it.

It all started with STAT – doesn’t everything?

It was 2000 and I was preparing an application to have my training school in Japan be STAT-approved. Imagine that? Me – being under STAT’s bureaucratic control. Let’s be honest, it was doomed from the start.

At the time, I believed I could conform. Bruce Fertman called me a good boy scout. He was right. I was trying.

I discovered at the time that ISTAT – the Israeli member of STAT’s Affiliated Societies – had an 8-to-1 Student-to-Teacher ratio enshrined as it’s “Standard”. STAT was still 5-to-1.

Hmmm, I thought – why can’t Japan be like Israel?

Therefore, my Japanese Training School application to STAT in 2001 was based on an 8 to 1 ratio. I flew all the way to London, from my family holidays in Sydney, to be interviewed by the panel. It was a hoot.

I thought my request was reasonable. Apparently not. “Please amend your application to 5-to-1” the committee insisted.

They may as well have asked me to go bankrupt.

I resigned. The rest is history. 212 potential members lost, and counting...

Yesterday, Kerin Black finally ran out of patience, and threw me out of Alexander Technique Global for breaking her rules. Nothing new about that. (see above).

Global is a Facebook group with 2,773 members. Kerin has sole control. She started on April 15th, 2012, and has nursed her little baby into the biggest meeting place on Facebook for AT teachers, trainees and devotees. As someone attempting to fuel a revolution in our Profession, it was obviously a great resource.

But no more. Yesterday, Kerin removed me from the group.

I am not going back.

This Daily is not part of a campaign to get me back in, change Global’s policies, cause an outcry or anything equally stupid like that.

Global doesn’t need me. I don’t need Global. Simple.

(I am not going to the Chicago Congress for similar reasons).

Instead, this whole episode serves as a test case to demonstrates a deeper and more serious malaise in our Profession. I want to open a debate that goes to the heart of why our Profession is still so hopelessly obscure.

I hate most “Institutional” places, even though I run one my Self.

My staff are constantly exasperated – as I imagine poor Kerin felt – at how quickly I change my “rules”. When you own your business, you can do that. However, these days I have also come to see that if I am too reckless, I damage my own business.

I do get it. Why rules appear. Their utility in bringing harmony to a larger organization. Doesn’t stop me hating the practise…

The moth-creep of bureaucracy eating little holes out of our elaborate tapestry is upon us all.

I agree with Alexander’s thoughts in his Bedford lecture:

“You will understand from what I am going to tell you what a terrible thing it is to have fixed institutions and constitutions. They cannot take truth.”

Even Kerin’s carefully crafted guidelines. Global is a nascent example of “institution creep”.

I’ll explore that in tomorrow’s Daily…

TOMORROW: The Policy that Got Me Thrown Out and Leaves a Profession in the Quick Sand.

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