-
cats rule
nogutsnoglory blog-
If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite variety in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection. [Charles Darwin (1859) On the Origin of Species]
-
“It is essential to such a government, that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.” James Madison -
All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. -Benjamin Franklin - IO9
- Pistol Cams, the Mammoth Camera, and Other Odd Vintage Cameras May 18, 2013While many of us today use our cell phones as cameras, "point and shoot" had a very different effect when your camera was shaped like a handgun. Here are some of the weirdest vintages cameras, from cameras shaped like pistols and watches to one that could photograph an entire train at once.Read more... […]
- A heartbreaking short about a mother's loss, set in a lunar mine May 18, 2013Shona has spent two tours working a dangerous lunar mine so she can pay for her daughter's expensive medical treatments. But the ultimate loss comes while she's still on the job, and Shona isn't sure she can return to Earth.Read more... […]
- The ram-skulled god is ready to invade your nightmares May 18, 2013Jeff Christensen paints oil portraits from a more macabre dimension, spotlighting fearsome gods, tortured monsters, and animals engaged in vicious magic. They would serve as fabulous concept art for a surreal horror fantasy film.Read more... […]
- Concept Art Writing Prompt: The Dragon Walker May 18, 2013It's a lovely day for a walk, especially if your walking companions happen to be of the fire-breathing variety. Let's hear the tales you have in store for this lovely lady and her unusual entourage.Read more... […]
- What happens when Leonardo Da Vinci faces off against Dracula? May 18, 2013Not a dream! Not a hoax! Last night's episode of Da Vinci's Demons pit Leonardo against Vlad the Impaler, and our hero's usual scheming and quipping isn't quite as successful as he hoped. Spoilers ahead.Read more... […]
- Pistol Cams, the Mammoth Camera, and Other Odd Vintage Cameras May 18, 2013
- Make Blog
- More Wheeled Wonders at Maker Faire May 19, 2013
- Tall Bike Bobby: From Vancouver to LA on a Hand-Made Bicyle May 19, 2013
- Radio Shack Unveils the New Delta Series Mini PC Board at Maker Faire May 18, 2013
- Arduino Announces New Wireless Linux Board May 18, 2013
- A Photo Tour of Maker Faire May 18, 2013
- Weird Universe
Category Archives: adult learning
Teaching Cartoon: Secret of a Long Life
In fact, it is only recently that most people survive long enough to encounter the unique maladies that “show up” in the territory of the long-lived.
The Evolution of Human Longevity from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages: An Analysis Based on Skeletal Data
by Jesper L. Boldsen & Richard R. Paine
Free Play Means Free Plus Play
Free Play Softball league – tag – all historical posts
Findings – The case study suggests that play in a ludic learning space can promote deep learning in the intellectual, physical, spiritual, and moral realms.
The capacity for such integrated judgment seems to be borne out of transcendence, wherein the conflicts that those of us at lowe levels of insight perceive as win-lose are recast into a higher form that can make everyone a winner, or can make winning and losing irrelevant. And finally, with centering comes commitment in the integration of abstract ideals in the concrete here-and-now of one’s life. When we act from our center, the place of truth within us, action is based on the fusion of value and fact, meaning and relevance, and hence is totally committed. Only by personal commitment to the here-and-now of one’s life situation, fully accepting one’s past and taking choiceful responsbility for one’s future, is the dialectic conflict necessary for learning experienced. The dawn of integrity comes with the acceptance of responsibility for the course of own’s own life. For in taking responsibility for the world, we are given back the power to change it. (D.A.Kolb)
Above was originally quoted in the first blog post about the Free Play Softball League, eight years ago.
Learning to play, playing to learn
A case study of a ludic learning space (pdf)
Alice Y. Kolb
Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
David A. Kolb
Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Abstract
Purpose- In this paper we propose an experiential learning framework for understanding how play can potentially create a unique ludic learning space conducive to deep learning. Design/methodology/approach- The framework is developed by integrating two perspectives. First, we draw from multidisciplinary theories of play to uncover the underlying play principles that contribute to the emergence of the ludic learning space. Then, we examine the formation of a ludic learning space through a case study of a pickup softball league where for fifteen years, a group of individuals diverse in age group, gender, level of education, and ethnic background have come together to play. Findings – The case study suggests that play in a ludic learning space can promote deep learning in the intellectual, physical, spiritual, and moral realms. Originality/value- This paper uses the play literature to inform the experiential learning concept of the learning space.
Citations
755 RK: Case study research: design and methods. 2 edition – Yin – 1994
601 Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development – Kolb – 1984
526 Thought and Language – Vygotsky – 1962
468 Mind in society – Vygotsky – 1978
268 The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, transl – Maturana, Varela – 1988
219 1872) The Expression of Emotions in Man and the Animals – Darwin
163 R: Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior – Deci, Ryan – 1985
153 How we think – Dewey – 1910
152 1871) The descent of man and selection in relation to sex – Darwin
114 Truth and method – Gadamer – 1960
111 Qualitative Case Studies – Stake
86 Childhood and Society – Erikson – 1950
83 Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being – Ryan, Deci – 2000
73 Play, dreams and imitation in childhood – Piaget – 1999
61 The ambiguity of play – Sutton-Smith – 2001
60 Conflict, arousal, and curiosity – Berlyne – 1960
47 Homo Ludens – Huizinga – 1938
46 The interpretation of dreams – Freud – 1976
34 Playing and Reality – Winnicott – 1971
16 Punished by rewards – Kohn – 1993
15 Animal play behavior – Fagen – 1981
14 Play and its role in the mental development of the child – Vygotsky – 1967
6 Qualitative inquiry and research design – Creswell – 2007
6 The hurried child – Elkind – 1981
6 1898): The play of animals – GROOS
5 Intentional icons: Towards an evolutionary cognitive ethology – Bekoff, Allen – 1992
4 play and games – Callois, Man
4 Man meets dog – Lorenz – 1994
4 S.: Ideas are born in fields of play: Towards a theory of play and creativity in organizational settings – Mainemelis, Ronson
4 Does play matter? Functional and evolutionary aspects of animal and human play – Smith – 1982
3 Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology, Rice University Studies, 60(3):53-92. [reprinted, in a slightly changed form – TURNER – 1974
2 The school and society and the child and the curriculum, The University of Chicago – Dewey – 1990
2 Play: An interdisciplinary integration of research. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation – Kolb – 2000
2 The Playful, the Crazy and the Nature of Pretense – Miller, S – 1974
2 Relationship play therapy – Moustakas – 1997
2 Social play in the domestic cat – West – 1974
1 A critical reanalysis of the ontogeny and phylogeny of mammalian social and locomotor play: An ethological hornest’s nest – Bekoff, Byers – 1981
1 Animal play – Bekoff, Byers – 1998
1 Evolution and play – Brown – 1995
1 An ethnographic study about a casual sport context”, Unpublished manuscript – Calhoun – 2007
1 Drawing on the right side of the brain, Tarcher – Edwards – 1989
1 The power of play, Da Capo Lifelong Books – Elkind – 2007
1 Why people play – J – 1973
1 Play and behavioral flexibility – Fagen – 1984
1 Applause for aurora: Sociobiological considerations on exploration and play – Fagen – 1994
1 A team with no name: Winning is not about keeping score”. Unpublished manuscript – Goldman – 2002
1 Chimpanzee and others at play – Goodall – 1995
1 Smart moves, Great Ocean – Hannaford – 1995
1 The endangered minds, Simon and – Healey – 1990
1 A comparative approach to play: Cross-species and cross-cultural perspectives of play in development – Height, Black – 2000
Scrappers Edge Freeplayers 6-5!
April 28. Day Two of season twenty-seven. 9:45am, Field #8, Forest Hills Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio? Drizzling.
Then a busload of 9-11 year old boys and their minders unload and inform us they have a permit for the hallowed field for this day.
We count our numbers and seems their are eight, and we will commence to practice the game of softball. We make our way over the the fenced in softball fields. Another team is practicing on the northwest diamond–no doubt for the opening week of league play–and Dave asks of them if they will engage us in a friendly game.
“No.”
Later, with a light rain falling, a second inquiry is made and this other team agrees to a game. As it turns out, our spontaneous opponent is a co-ed team in the co-ed league. (We’d be co-ed too; alas…) They inform us in the league they are in the men bat on their ‘off batting side.’ However, for the purpose of what amounts to a scrimmage-type game, they decide not to do so.
We play four innings, and the line score looks like this at the end:
What fun was had! After the game, the two teams collided in gratitude and high fives and hand shakes. We mentioned anybody is welcome to join us on Sunday mornings. We told the Scrappers,
We’ve been playing pick up games for decades here on Sunday mornings.
April 21. Opening day and we have eleven, then Pete shows up and we’re twelve. It was a crisp day. The metal bats could transfer quite a pointed zing at times.
Freeplay Softball league
Sunday mornings 9:30; game time 10:00am
Open to participants 16-116 years of age; any gender; any background
We try to keep an accurate score.
Posted in adult learning, speculations
Tagged Cleveland Heights, Freeplay Softball, play
Leave a comment
Sometimes, the Bad Wallpaper. . .
The internet comes through sometimes; make your own.
Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist) /ambiguation/ Idou ho Anthropos
I am not a
man, I am dynamite. And with it all there is
nought of the founder of a religion in me.
No, man, you’ve been socked into a random script ideally matching your very thoughts with a comic family circus.
Nothing that might not happen in a universe of fortuity
[Dharma as Chance, 2012 S.Calhoun, digital construction]
After we had dinner at Cafe Tandoor, I stood up, put on my coat, and turned around to see right behind me all along hanging on the wall all along was a beautiful, intricate Buddhist tapestry depicting the Dharma Wheel. I chuckled–synchronicity.
Earlier Susan and I had lunch with her cousin and her cousin’s husband–oh, yes at another Cleveland Heights cafe, The Stone Oven–and we spent a couple of animated hours describing chapters in our four different lives. Of course, having lunch together joins those four lives for a moment. I would add as joining those lives ‘again,’ but in truth this lunchtime meeting-up constituted my first extended visit with this lovely couple.
People who know me obviously already understand discussing deeply anything is one of my favorite things to do. I’m not always careful to avoid jawing too intensely about my own interests. There was for a spell something of that in our moment together. Luckily, Susan is expert at reigning me in. Still, I took advantage of the situation to first explain a bit about my research focus, and then deploy my interest as a possible launch pad for discussing what happened in our lives; what’s the story; and, ineluctably and implicitly from this, how did we get to this moment?
Fortuitous events may be unforeseeable but fortuity does not mean uncontrollability of its effects. Paradoxically, people can bring personal influence to bear on the fortuitous character of life (Bandura, 1998). They can make chance happen by pursuing an active life that increases the number and type of fortuitous encounters they will experience. Chance favors the inquisitive and venturesome, who go places, do things, and explore new activities. People also make chance work for them by cultivating their interests, enabling beliefs and competencies. These personal resources enable them to make the most of opportunities that arise unexpectedly. Pasteur put it well when he noted, “Chance favors only the prepared mind.” At a much earlier era, the philosopher Seneca, portrayed seeming serendipity as “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” The harder one works the luckier one gets. Even the distinguished lay philosopher, Groucho Marx, insightfully observed that people can influence how they play the hand fortuity deals them, “You have to be in the right place at the right time, but when it comes, you better have something on the ball.” Personal development and engagement in a wide range of activities gives people a hand in shaping the courses their lives take. Albert Bandura (2011) But What About That Gigantic Elephant in the Room?
Fortune strikes. In ‘explaining myself’ I made a bit of a hash of some of my explanations, going meta in the case of defining the word fortuity, and, just getting my synopsis of the plot of The Three Princes of Serendip mixed up with another tale. I shall now recover both elements.
various Wheels of Fortuna
First, let’s lean on the Oxford English Dictionary.
fortuity a chance occurrence.
1. a chance or accidental occurrence
2. fortuitousness
3. chance or accident
f. forte by chance, f. fors chance
1712 Addison Spect. No. 293 ?4 The highest Degree of it [Wisdom] which Man can possess, is by no means equal to fortuitous Events.
Fortune
ad. L. fort?na, related to forti-, fors chance, and ferre to bear.
1. a.1.a Chance, hap, or luck, regarded as a cause of events and changes in men’s affairs. Often (after Latin) personified as a goddess, ‘the power supposed to distribute the lots of life according to her own humour’ (J.); her emblem is a wheel, betokening vicissitude.
fortune (n.)
c.1300, “chance, luck as a force in human affairs,” from Old French fortune “lot, good fortune, misfortune” (12c.), from Latin fortuna “chance, fate, good luck,” from fors (genitive fortis) “chance, luck,” possibly from PIE *bhrtu- and related to base *bher- (1) “to carry” (see infer).
The social history of chance in human life is fascinating. One of the meta aspects is: how the fortune teller delivers advance notice of future fate, and, in doing so, brings the future backward to its beginning. This is a modern way of describing the time-honored effect of having one’s fortune told, and clearly the bridge to having the future foretold is a single step long.
In a modern sense, the notional beginning is radically different than it was way-back-when, say, during the eras during which fortune telling is common to most cultures. (There’s much which could be told about this subject.) The beginning, in the modern (or phenomenological) sense, is at the point the foretelling breaks the heretofore hidden chain of future events. A fortune teller creates a new beginning by bringing to the surface and into the light events in the future. From that moment on one knows their fortune; and, knowing one’s fortune paradoxically changes/cannot change every/anything!
Merton and Barber’s work provides a cornerstone in book length form of the surprisingly small academic literature about serendipity. The literature itself is mostly entered in the fields of social psychology (Bandura, Krantz, et al) and sociology of science (Merton, Barber, J. Austin, et al.)
Wikipedia’s treatment of The Three Princes of Serendip is fine.
“In ancient times there existed in the country of Serendippo, in the Far East, a great and powerful king by the name of Giaffer. He had three sons who were very dear to him. And being a good father and very concerned about their education, he decided that he had to leave them endowed not only with great power, but also with all kinds of virtues of which princes are particularly in need.”
The father searches out the best possible tutors. “And to them he entrusted the training of his sons, with the understanding that the best they could do for him was to teach them in such a way that they could be immediately recognized as his very own.”
When the tutors are pleased with the excellent progress that the three princes make in the arts and sciences they report it to the king. He however still doubts their training and summoning each (of his sons) in turn, declares that he will retire to the contemplative life leaving them as king. Each politely declines, affirming the father’s superior wisdom and fitness to rule.
The king is pleased, but fearing that his sons’ education may have been too sheltered and privileged, feigns anger at them for refusing the throne and sends them away from the land.
The lost camel
No sooner do the three princes arrive abroad than they trace clues to identify precisely a camel they have never seen. They conclude that the camel is lame, blind in one eye, missing a tooth, carrying a pregnant woman, and bearing honey on one side and butter on the other. When they later encounter the merchant who has lost the camel, they report their observations to him. He accuses them of stealing the camel and takes them to the Emperor Beramo, where he demands punishment.
Beramo asks how they are able to give such an accurate description of the camel if they have never seen it. It is clear from the princes’ replies that they have used small clues to infer cleverly the nature of the camel.
Grass had been eaten from the side of the road where it was less green, so the princes had inferred that the camel was blind on the other side. Because there were lumps of chewed grass on the road the size of a camel’s tooth, they inferred they had fallen through the gap left by a missing tooth. The tracks showed the prints of only three feet, the fourth being dragged, indicating that the animal was lame. That butter was carried on one side of the camel and honey on the other was evident because ants had been attracted to melted butter on one side of the road and flies to spilled honey on the other.
As for the woman, one of the princes said: “I guessed that the camel must have carried a woman, because I had noticed that near the tracks where the animal had knelt down the imprint of a foot was visible. Because some urine was nearby, I wet my fingers and as a reaction to its odour I felt a sort of carnal concupiscence, which convinced me that the imprint was of a woman’s foot.”
“I guessed that the same woman must have been pregnant,” said another prince, “because I had noticed nearby handprints which were indicative that the woman, being pregnant, had helped herself up with her hands while urinating.”
At this moment a traveller enters the scene to say that he has just found a missing camel wandering in the desert. Beramo spares the lives of the Three Princes, lavishes rich rewards on them and appoints them to be his advisors.
This story is where the word serendipity came from.
Serendipity
[f. Serendip, a former name for Sri Lanka + -ity.
A word coined by Horace Walpole, who says (Let. to Mann, 28 Jan. 1754) that he had formed it upon the title of the fairy-tale ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’, the heroes of which ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’.]
The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident. Also, the fact or an instance of such a discovery. Formerly rare, this word and its derivatives have had wide currency in the 20th century.
I’m reminded of the equivalent story that stands as the counter-factual, Sura 18, “The Cave,” verses 60-82; the adventure of Moses and Khidr. Syed Abu-Ala’ Maududi’s commentary crystalizes the truth (for believers of a certain kind) that serendipity is but a veil.
The story of Khidr and Moses has been related in such a way as to supply the answer to the question of the disbelievers and to give comfort to the Believers as well. The lesson contained in this story is this “You should have full faith in the wisdom of what is happening in the Divine Factory in accordance with the will of Allah. As the reality is hidden from you, you are at a loss to understand the wisdom of what is happening, and sometimes if it appears that things are going against you, you cry out, ‘How and why has this happened’. The fact is that if the curtain be removed from the “unseen”, you would yourselves come to know that what is happening here is for the best. Even if some times it appears that something is going against you, you will see that in the end it also produces some good results for you.
Kizzy and Sonny. Kizzy (from Kismet) was a stray kitten that found her way to our back door. I would guess our back door is the best back door for a stray to come up to! Sonny’s story is not dissimilar. While visiting the veterinarian with our two older cats, we noticed a kitten on the counter in the waiting area. Hard to miss! We learned somebody had left three kittens in a box in the parking lot the day before. With that the aid plucked a bluff colored kitten out of a waste basket full of shredded paper, and told us, “This one is spoken for!” Soon enough he was spoken for, and so Sonny comes home, learns to fly, and, becomes the central character in yet another story of serendipity.
Kismet
(Turkish from Arab., qisma, ‘share, portion’).
The allocation of whatever occurs, hence the acceptance in Islam that God determines all things: see QADAR.
fate. XIX. — Turk. — Arab. (Pers.) ?ismat portion, fate, f. ?asama divide, apportion.
kismet
fate, destiny. The word comes (in the early 19th century, via Turkish) from Arabic ?ismat ‘division, portion, lot’, from ?asama ‘to divide’.
.
Explaining my research is dull compared with eliciting person’s recollections of decisive serendipities in their own life. Yesterday I surely made the set-up a bit too complicated, yet we got the meat of the inquiry soon enough. As it always happens, whether or not I am informally or formally documenting these recollections, the recounting brings to the light of day spectacular, decisive chance events.
(This inverts the fortune teller’s strategy!)
Yesterday I learned of a decisive: lark road trip passing a corporate sign reminding the ‘subjects’ of a past employer and so providing the spark to investigate job opportunities–somewhere nearby the sign itself–and then subjects are accelerated through a hiring process–as in: hired on the spot.
This led me to remark, “It’s good to keep an out for the big “W” sign, the W standing for wisdom.”
Several sources for further exploration:
1. Explorations of Fortuitous Determinents of Life Paths
Albert Bandura (1998) A Comment in response to:
2. Taming Chance – Social Science & Everyday Narratives
David L. Krantz (1998)
published in Psychological Inquiry
3. Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective
Albert Bandura (2001)
4. The Structure of Serendipity
M. DeRond (2005)
Books:
Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty
James H. Austin
Luck: The Brilliant Randomness Of Everyday Life
Nicholas Rescher
Serendip at Bryn Mawr (my late mother’s alma mater-go figure)
The structure of what I term constructive fortuity has not been worked out in any robust way, to this date. In noting this, it is also true that the popular literature on serendipity is mostly a literature about luck. It has grown exponentially over the last several years. Such books tend to mystify the subject matter as much as clarify it.
My own musings and reports are always attached to this item here on the blog. Strategic Serendipity.
(It’s not a goal yet, but I would like to help derive a structural model from the qualitative reports–perhaps beginning with a taxonomy of constructive/structural elements, with these given to explicate dynamics such as micro and macro cruxes, orders of contingency, and other stuff–and not ending with formalizing the model because mathematicizing it is way beyond my abilities.)
Posted in adult learning, serendipity, social psychology
Leave a comment
A Knotty Issue of Development
If you were asked, ‘How do you reduce prejudice, prejudicial behavior, bias?’ how would you respond?
Just the other day I was asked this same question by a good friend who has been charged with teaching college sophomores something useful about how to, as she put it, think, feel and behave, in a diverse social environment.
It strikes me as a difficult and complex problem, and, also, one that is itself prone to being addressed in unreasonable and biased folk-psychological estimations of how, in effect, prejudice and bias can be said to operate.
Is the mitigation of prejudice against the opposite gender simply a matter of unlearning a pattern of response, or simply a matter of replacing this same pattern with a new behavior? My friend and I discussed empathy in terms of being the kind of ‘simulation’ that could serve this simple ‘replacement’ formula.
We moved onto consider bias being partly a consequence of inaccurate evaluation; with this possibly being a crucial aspect of a biased learned response. This seems, to me, closer to the developmental knot of bias, in that inaccuracies of evaluation often are straight-forward threads of such a knot.
This also allows for experiential approaches to revealing the evaluative aspects of how people experience different, other persons.
The following formula summarizes our intuition.
presence + ignorance + humility
= (more accurate evaluation) increased potential to reduce biases in evaluation
detail
presence: intentional focusing of external (object) awareness, while also being reflective and introspectively sensitive to emergent internal content (Note-Presence constitutes an active, vigilant behavior with respect to sub-conscious and automatic, or otherwise habitual, upwellings of inaccurate evaluation.)
ignorance: knowing ahead of time what you don’t know (Note-Ignorance contextualized by: knowing how one might both choicelessly and choicefully fill in the blanks with: prior knowledge; stereotypical knowledge; ad hoc knowledge; sub-conscious intuitions: prejudicial knowledge
humility: willing submission to being attentive without prior knowledge (Note-Submission is equivalent to also being willing and able to entertain an experiment through which one closely observes the nature of their own participation in their own experience of instantiating inaccurate evaluation.)
Posted in adult learning, experiential learning, folk psychology, speculations
Tagged bias, prejudice
Leave a comment
Freeplay Oddities
A lot of weird stuff happens in the Freeplay Pick-up Softball League/Universe. It’s the nature of this game; meaning our ongoing experimental game (every Sunday at 10am, Forest Hills Park, Cleveland Heights, Field #8.)
One of the oddest things transpired yesterday when our one and only super duper star Mark Jr. shifted to the pitcher’s mound to pitch the last inning. In breezy conditions he acquitted himself adequately enough. We, the batting team, laid into him but he brought his laser-like focus to the task at hand.
Dave B. at the bat.
Action shot as Francis drives the spud into the hole, if you can pick it out skipping among the leaves.
Kofa In, Kolb in Hawaii
Set-up for autumn play with home plate where 2nd base is; looking north.
Kolb leaves for Hawaii and Kofa shows up for the second time this season. Go figure but once a Freeplayer, always a Freeplayer.
Notes on synchronicity and creativity, friendship, sustainability, and, an amplification of parts multiplying the whole; plus Elvis
SCalhoun, 2012, The Transcendent Function
The process of coming to terms with the unconscious is a true labor, a work which involves both action and suffering. It has been named the “transcendent function” because it represents a function based on real and “imaginary” or rational and irrational, data, thus bridging the yawning gulf between conscious and unconscious. It is a natural process, a manifestation of the energy that springs from the tension of opposites, and it consists in a series of fantasy occurrences which appear spontaneously in dreams and visions.
The natural process by which the opposites are united came to serve me as the model and basis for a method consisting essentially in this: everything that happens at the behest of nature, unconsciously and spontaneously, is deliberately summoned forth and integrated into our conscious mind and its outlook. Failure in many cases is due precisely to the fact that they lacked the mental and spiritual equipment to master the events taking place in them. (C.G. Jung; The Synthetic Or Constructive Method, Two Essays In Analytical Psychology, p.80)
In addition to inherent duality of Universe
There is also and always
An inherent threefoldedness and fourfoldedness
Of initial consciousness
And of all experience.
For in addition to (1) action, (2) reaction,
(3) resultant,
There is always (4) the a priori environment,
Within which the event occurs,
i.e., the at-first-nothingness around us
Of the child graduated from the womb,
Within which seeming nothingness (fourthness)
The inherently threefold
Local event took place.
R. Buckminster Fuller, Intuition, 1972, p. 14
Wandering Through Friendship
Many years ago, my three closest male friends were named Bob, Bob, and Chris. I met each of them in Middlebury Vermont sometime around 1976, after I had arrived in Middlebury to work the music desk at The Vermont Book Shop. As it happened, only one of the ‘Bobs’ was still living in the area when I departed in 1991. That is important because the bonds forged with the three men had everything to do with our mutual proximity, and, eventually, this proximity was attenuated and so became diminished.
As it turns out, over twenty years later, I know how to contact two of the three, yet I’ve lost touch with all three. One of the Bobs, about whom I will tell of momentarily, I didn’t stay connected with right from the moment he left Middlebury in the late-eighties. (Yeah, I should google him!) It was with Bob P. that I first enjoined a discussion about the nature of friendship. After all, we were friends. I forget how it came up and I forget what it was that we discussed, but I do remember having the discussion and also remember our agreeing on two elements: to be known by another is to, then, do the work of knowing one other.
For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. Paulo Freire
Another consequential incident happened in 1992. I became friends with my boss, Patrick, and tis dovetailed in an absolutely synchronistic way with me working through unconscious images and the suggestions of Marion Woodman in her book The Pregnant Virgin. This book, for me personally, is the most profound book on masculine psychology. Paradoxically, its subject matter is feminine psychology, and yet its treatment of male friendship literally rapped me a little bit awake, like a Zen master might have done.
From that moment I became a close student of the nature of friendship. I made an experiential inquiry into my own friendships. Because it is my own mature nature to make a study of human phenomena as a participant and observer, eventually I organize my tentative comprehensions and modest understandings into my provisional knowledge of same–whichever subject is in my sight. So, it next becomes possible for me to know, and, articulate, my personal phenomenology and practice of friendship, and these are entangled in what amounts to an aesthetic of friendship.
By the way, I don’t lay any of this on my close friends, unless our collaboration in friendship happens to step back into this so-called “meta” viewpoint, stepping back at such a point into a dialog about that which comprises our different viewpoints (or aesthetic,) on the practice of friendship. This hasn’t happened betwixt my friends and me, and, paradoxically, I’m sharing this with anybody who happens upon this published description; including friends.
Friendship and a Colorful Symbol
One time it happened is when I explained to my close friend Holly that ‘to be a close friend of mine means for me to have entered the most close in circle of friendship and intimacy.’
Obviously this kind of differentiation is not uncommon–when you reflect upon your relationships. She and I discussed what this differently meant for us, being in relationships which could be qualified in terms of closeness and whether or not someone was, in both effect and practice, in our inner circle.
In noting this particular approach, a crucial point to understand is that feeling my way through a human phenomena like this is part and parcel of what I do just in being who I am to be. This point of fact goes along with two elemental aspects that qualify, for me, a friend being in my inner circle: one, such a person has put in the necessary time; two, such a person has mutually submitted to the actuality of each of us being who we happen to be.
The essence of marriage is friendship. The secret of life is friendship. The core of love is being a friend.
Posted in adult learning, analytic psychology
Tagged friends, friendship, psychology
Leave a comment
The Eyes Have It
Rachel S. Smith is a Senior Consultant and the Director of Digital Facilitation Services for The Grove Consultants International in San Francisco, CA. Rachel develops ways to integrate technology into visual practice. She has a deep understanding of new media and its application to education through her previous role as Vice President for Services of the New Media Consortium, and prior experience leading her own graphic design company. Rachel is a skilled visual facilitator and recorder and works with groups both both face-to-face and virtually. She blogs at http://www.digitalfacilitation.net
Digression. via David Sibbit David Sibbit is one of my main guys. He and I are part of the presumably shrinking group deeply inspired by the work of renegade transdisciplanarist, and pre-cursor integralist Arthur M. Young (1905-1995). (Wikipedia) Grove International offers an Arthur M. Young The Theory of Process poster. And, there’s lots of video on Youtube.
A
Posted in adult learning
Tagged Arthur M. Young, graphic facilitation, proto-integralism
Leave a comment
Freeplay Softball Exemplars, Debacles, and Experiments
As a student of the mechanics of swinging a bat at the softball, this Freeplay Softball Season, and once again, my top rating goes to our founder, David Kolb. His compact swing is matched with a steady sightline on the ball to produce an effortless flat trajectory off the bat. On our rock-hard bumpy field this season his line drives have on a number of occasions rolled endlessly for homeruns.
A newcomer, Dicky, gets runner-up honors in my estimation. His swing is classic. It’s compact, smooth and supported by a predictably timed step into the ball. My guess is that he honed this swing about fifty years ago and has been rolling with the muscle memory for a long time.
This was the third photo I snapped on Sunday, after I exhorted the grumpy element to manufacture a smile. This came after a rout, again. I’m the so-called handicapper, who for nine seasons has been charged with creating well-matched line-ups. My goal is always a one run game. This season this goal has mostly eluded me.
In July we instituted an experiment, calling balls and strikes without an umpire, yet using the surprising convention of a specially-shaped carpet laid over the plate the ball must touch to gain a strike. Also, with two strikes, the batter only gets two free foul balls. So, two experiments aimed to move the game along, and, disadvantage the “Mike Hargrove” school of–what shall I say–selectivity. I’m a charter member of the long at-bat club under the old regime of not calling strikes, although I am also one of the batters who tends to select pitches out of the strike zone. Noting my own example, I’m not a member of the epic at-bat club, and so the hyper-selective hitters in this epic club are compelled to nowadays manage the strike zone. This has been very amusing. We’ve only witnessed one swinging strikeout and one called third strike, and these go along with several more retirements by foul ball.
I mention this because doing experiments is part of the aesthetic of the game, even if we don’t do many experiments at all. Of course the game itself is an experiment unfolded over twenty-six years: one in which anybody over thirteen years of age shows up in our open space to participate in a game about playing, rather than one about the final score.
Routs have little standing. Smile for the camera please.
We All Copy Together
Kirby Ferguson, integrates a number of current topics in less than 10 very concise ‘TED’ minutes.
Kirby’s assumption that precursors must do concrete duty as precedent ideas is wrong. It is not always the case that some particular prior experience is given as part of the sub-conscious flux of creativity simply because its apparent trace is identifiable in the new creative product.
The seeming replication given in holding up the trace of the prior idea is not positive evidence of the creator having experienced the so-called original, prior, idea. Identical ideas may arise in different times and spaces. Also, recombinations of simple foundational materials, such as melodies based in three basic chords, are more likely to be unoriginal, than be original.
Ferguson’s treatment dovetails with my understanding of the “mixing” of fortuity and constructive relations in prior social networks. Old conversations resurface in productive contexts down the road from the original conversation.
Posted in adult learning, serendipity, social psychology
Tagged constructive fortuity, creatives, creativity, creatives, remix
Leave a comment
Yay! Reality
“Our behavior is purposeful; we live in a psychological reality or life space that includes not only those parts of our physical and social environment to us but also imagined states that do not currently exist.” Kurt Lewin
“For the dialectical method the central problem is to change reality.… reality with its ‘obedience to laws.’” György Lukács
h/t Chris @ Subverting Subverting the Genre
Posted in adult learning, social psychology
Tagged Field Theory, György Lukács, Karl Marx, Kurt Lewin, teaching cartoons
Leave a comment
Four Square Matrix – Metaverse Four Square
The explanation for this Four Square Matrix is below.
(I’ve been exploring the format of the Four Square Matrix for over five years on the squareONE Explorations blog: Revisiting the Matrix Part 1 / Class of ’72 / Periodic Table of Visualization, And More / More Matrices / The Acid Test / Matrices – Stacked / Slowing Down to Better Problem Solve)
(SOURCE) To construct our scenario set we selected two key continua that are likely to influence the ways in which the Metaverse unfolds: the spectrum of technologies and applications ranging from augmentation to simulation; and the spectrum ranging from intimate (identity-focused) to external (world-focused).
• Augmentation refers to technologies that add new capabilities to existing real systems; in the Metaverse context, this means technologies that layer new control systems and information onto our perception of the physical environment.
• Simulation refers to technologies that model reality (or parallel realities), offering wholly new environments; in the Metaverse context, this means technologies that provide simulated worlds as the locus for interaction.
• Intimate technologies are focused inwardly, on the identity and actions of the individual or object; in the Metaverse context, this means technologies where the user (or semi-intelligent object) has agency in the environment, either through the use of an avatar/digital profile or through direct appearance as an actor in the system.
• External technologies are focused outwardly, towards the world at large; in the Metaverse context, this means technologies that provide information about and control of the world around the user.
These continua are “critical uncertainties”—critical because they are fundamental aspects of the coming Metaverse, and uncertainties because how they will emerge, their relative and absolute development in various contexts, is yet to be seen.
Combining the two critical uncertainties gives four key components of the Metaverse future:
Virtual Worlds
Mirror Worlds
Augmented Reality
Lifelogging
These four scenarios emphasize different functions, types, or sets of Metaverse technologies. All four are already well into early emergence, yet the conditions under which each will fully develop, in particular contexts, are far from clear.
The source document at Metaverseroadmap.org provides the context and additional provocation. This would be most compelling for students of the history of technology, and socio-anthropologists interested in modernity and post-modernity. Download the PDF available there for the full view of the working group.
How Creativity Works
Posted in adult learning
Tagged creatives, creativity, creatives, motivation, psychology
Leave a comment
Teaching Cartoon: What Everyone Has In Common
My wife discovered a folder with syllabi for a course she taught on social work with couples. The alternative syllabus includes cartoons and this comprised a gold mine of material in the teaching cartoon vein.
This cartoon has long been one of my favorites and yet I had never made a copy for my collection until she produced her find.
Between Anarchy, Hierarchy, Bureacracy; and, the Minimus Link
I spoke to the gang about arriving at the field on time. Offering how it would be neat to commence play close to the traditional ten o’clock time.
How about arriving in a timely fashion, or, agreeing to complete seven innings and go past the traditional noon ending time?
Could we collectively reclaim the principle of playing a full game? Is this year’s collective attenuation of the traditional ten-to-noon time slot a problem?
The Freeplay Sunday Softball league remains an experimental design in practice. The Drs. Kolb have theorized the game mightily, while I have only partially theorized it. And, different than the Kolb’s emphasis on the game-as-learning-space, I’ve had to approach it in terms of its explicit pragmatics, and approach it also as the alignment of these (to a degree) within the concrete action space–out of which game play is evoked every Sunday. It would be accurate also then to state I’ve had to approach it as a once-a-week problem of repeatable organizational development.
My conscious role is to capture the projective identification collectively commensurate with having the minimum authority to assist the initiation of the game. This is an obtuse way to describe the flow of leadership features being pushed upon me and pulled away from me, ending up predictably as enough of a leader to help instantiate the game. This role is connected to predicates, and the most substantial four are: the equipment is stored in the trunk of may car; I make out the line-ups and have done so for nine years; I voice the necessary commands to shift the players to the next step of the initiation of the game; and, I am a willing and sticky enough egoic character with respect to those aforementioned projections.
I was away from the game for four weeks and the requisite authorities were recreated and put upon replacement characters, and this was accomplished without fuss.
After I communicated my entreaty about arriving on time or playing seven innings, a miniature discussion ensued. Several persons stated the noon ending time would remain their ruling assumption; one person stated there wasn’t a problem anyway; two people reminded that we often play six or seven innings in less than ninety minutes. I ended by reminding the entire group that “I could do in the future the experiment of starting on time with whomever was here.”
Whatever.
One player came up to me and suggested, “You’re the boss so you can do what you want.”
Well, yes to a degree, and, ‘no’ to a much greater degree.
I understand my temporary authority has to most rigorously attend to the minimal set of verities. I am one of the principal stewards of those verities. They are marvelously concrete too. The essential one reflects the truth of: commencing the first pitch, batter, play of the game!
After the first pitch, under normal circumstances, my authority fades away, having fulfilled the slim portfolio of duties.
Interestingly, this is given by my privileged perspective–after all, I am one of only a tiny group of participants who have implemented an intentional [1] third order [2] viewpoint; am one of the few who reflect on the game and step back from it and theoreticize about it.
I’m not the boss. Theoretically, my role can be described as mediating the practical Object Relations within the holding field of the game’s ritual space. This way of putting it captures theoretical concerns. What then could be told of the practical way projection works in the matter of holding group concerns together so that group objectives may be predictably achieved every Sunday? It’s OD.
The actual phenomena is much more complicated. None of our group wants me to disrupt the internalized flow of predictable anticipation to bring to their attention a problem of so-called organizational development. The status quo is partly primitive. Don’t bother ‘it!’
Oh, what’s he on [us] about now?
Actually, I go into this, knowing I am in a better position, as against the group, to voice my individual concerns. Nobody had come up to me to ask me to advocate for more group sensitivity to the game’s temporal parameters. My prior experience has been that we may complete seven, eight, nine or more innings of free play softball should we commence the game around ten o’clock. My own view is that more play is better than less play.
However, here is the gist of our case of organizational development: whatever I deem optimal for myself is just so, for myself. Although I could approach this soft need as a group problem–and I did so–what I found out was that it wasn’t a group problem at all. I didn’t smoke out any alignment [3] with my concern at all.
[1] implication of intentional is a determined, directed, effort, rather than the more informal ‘folk-psychological’ and tacit efforts presumptively deployed by players in directing their own efforts to make operative sense of the softball activity when experienced as a meeting of different other minds, so-to-speak
[2] selecting apt analytic/interpretive frames (3rd order) having reflective experience of (2nd order) direct experience (1st order)
[3] a minimus link: given by supposing any need to use organizational development for the sake of obtaining new optimal goals do require maximal linkages.
Learning to Play, Playing to Learn: A Case Study of a Ludic Learning Space, Alice and David Kolb, The Journal of Organizational Change Management (2010)[pdf]
