Head’s up to a very deep resource: Pat Kane’s The Play Ethic. Kane web site lists a ton of outward bound resources on play and experiential learning. On the Wikipedia page about him, it is written,
As co-director (with partner Indra Adnan) of the human potential consultancy New Integrity, Kane is developing a comprehensive “play audit” for organisations, institutions and enterprises, based on his research into the past, present and future of ludic culture.
To realise the power and potential of play for your organization/enterprise requires a range of learning experiences and techniques – one of which is certainly the experience of playing itself, in all its different modes (from physical to intellectual, from emotional to cultural).
This got me to imagining what one might do were one to execute an “exploration audit” of an organization. Hmmm. Beside, play, both an ethic and aesthetic I share with Pat, I’m interested in how groups, teams, organizations, intentionally deploy exploratory capabilities.
Sometimes, while channel surfing, my attention latches onto one of the religious channels. I call it ‘doing research.’ Well, it is a guilty pleasure–watching theocrats. (See Frank Schaeffer: Spaceship Jesus Will Come and Whisk Us Away for a good take.) Glenn Beck provides another guilty pleasure, although I depend on Crooks and Liars and MediaMatters to pluck the ripest insanity out of a sea of lunacy.
Beck is a masterful architect, but of what, I’m not sure. He’s not really a polemicist or propagandist in the sense that both those dispositions usually presume coherency. His basic argument is structured as a sort of daft hermeneutics, connecting dots, but doing so incoherently across domains. It all ends up, usually, in the same place: a cabal of Marxist elitists are planning to take over the country and “control every aspect of your life.”
The aspect that evokes cognitive dissonance is Beck’s appeal to freedom from control, while offering at the same time, an analysis that could only be practically powerful were persons to accept it uncritically ‘en mass.’ For Beck, America is free when there is a monotheism of individuality, and if you’re so individuated as to disagree, well then, you’re helping to destroy the country.
What would be the nature and inherent cognitive complexity of someone who would buy Beck’s binary paranoia, who would follow his connected dots to their satisfying conclusion: slaughter or ark? Decades ago I wondered the same thing about who possibly could find Ayn Rand’s insipid version of logical rationality reasonable.*
Jason Richwine, unintentionally unleashing silliness in The American, the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute, Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?, ponders anecdotal counter-factuals, while missing the point of Lazar Stankov’s research, Conservatives and Cognitive Ability. Heck, Richwine misses the point even though it’s pointed to in the paper’s title.
Richwine does mention that conservatism isn’t defined deeply enough in Stankov’s research. I’d love to see a factor analysis of policy-oriented beliefs meshed with a meta-analysis of several orders of cognitive complexity and personality constructs. For example, is there a correlation across the range of the former beliefs with binary attitudes? How does ideological certainty correlate with tendencies having to do with reducing complexity, anxiety, and dissonance? I don’t think Richwine read the paper though, because Stankov’s work is not primarily concerned with ‘smarts’, and is, in fact, focused on a very complex meta-analysis, very close to my intuition about what I’d like to see.
In our work, conservatism is captured by a score — usually a factor score — obtained from several scales that were not developed specifically for the measurement of conservatism. Thus, it incorporates measures of Personality (Big Five from IPIP), Social Attitudes (Saucier, 2000; Stankov & Kneževi?, 2005), Values (Schwartz & Bardi, 2001), and Social Norms (GLOBE; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004) — a total of 43 different subscale scores.Nevertheless, ouranalyses show the presence of a factor of Conservatism that has loadings from subscales from all these domains and captures many constructs that are included in the nomological net of Jost et al. (2003) and Wilson (1973). This factor is expected to correlate with cognitive ability for reasons outlined above. What are the other factors that emerge from the analysis of 43 subscales? Are they also expected to correlate with cognitive ability? Stankov (2007) found three domain-related factors. They are quite different from the Conservatism factor in that they show very little overlap between the domains.
These are:
• Personality/Social Attitudes. This is usually a bipolar factor contrasting Personality traits on the negative side and Social Attitudes on the positive side. Loadings of Personality traits on this factor are typically lower than loadings from the Social Attitudes measures. In some of our analyses, this factor splits into a separate Personality factor representing “good” evaluative processes (or perhaps social desirability) and a Social Attitudes factor representing anti- or amoral attitudes towards social objects (Stankov & Kneževi?, 2005). • Values. See Method section for the interpretation of this factor.
• Social Norms. Several Social Norms scales from GLOBE study (House et al., 2004) load on this factor. In this paper I report the analyses based on a smaller (22) number of variables that correspond quite closely to the solution obtained with the full set of 43 measures. Smaller number of variables is employed in order to carry out simultaneous (i.e., multilevel) structural equation modelling of individual- and country-level data that has not been reported in the past.
There is no empirical evidence or theoretical arguments in the literature that suggest a relationship between cognitive ability and Values or Social Norms.2 Thus, it is reasonable to assume that these two constructs do not correlate with cognitive measures. The situation is different with the Personality/ Social Attitudes dimension. Jost (2006) reports that Conscientiousness (positively) and Openness to Experience (negatively) correlate with Democrat/Republican voting preferences of the states within the U.S., interpreted as reflections of liberal/conservative tendencies. Openness to Experience is also known to correlate about .30 with measures of intelligence (Stankov, 2005; Stankov and Lee, 2008). The other side of this bipolar factor, Social Attitudes, captured by Toughness, Maliciousness, and Betaism (i.e., non-PC motives for behavior), have qualities reminiscent of Dogmatism and Authoritarian personalities that are often seen as components of conservatism (see Jost et al., 2003). Since in our work they define a factor that is separate from conservatism, it is reasonable to assume that there is a separation between thuggish and rough Social Attitudes trait and Conservative syndrome that captures not only social attitudes but also Values, Social Norms, and Personality traits. These rough social attitudes are also likely to be related to cognitive ability—they often reflect difficulties or disinclination to make fine-grained analysis of a problematic situation (see Wilson, 1973).
Snap! Maybe the article was so complex it caused Richwine anxiety? I wonder what Glenn Beck would think?
Glenn Beck: “I really like our Constitution, I’d like to see it enacted. Let’s fix it and get back to where our founding fathers are.”
Loony, yet, “crazy ass sh*t, but. But, more than a few people do agree with Beck. This is so even if such people couldn’t tell you anything intelligent about what the founding fathers actually thought; what they contested among themselves; and what were their various radically liberal principles.
Here’s a conjecture (of mine) about ideology and history. There is no extant or past example of a form of governance for which it could be demonstrated that it’s procedures of governance wholly and absolutely are realized solely as a matter of adherence to ideological principles. This is falsifiable if it can be shown that there exists or has existed a form of governance for which, in its application of its principles, every instance was/is entirely consistent with principle.
Let’s imagine there are people who are committed to some set of principles in the following, narrow way:
Our endeavor is to instantiate a set of principles. We believe this for two reasons. First, because this set of principles is the best of all possible set of principles. Second, that the principles are best, is verified by the fact that their truth is the most reasonable truth upon which any possible set of principles could be based.
News for social, fiscal & national security conservatives who believe in God, family & country. We seek to uphold the rights of citizens under the U.S. Constitution, traditional family values, Republican principles / ideals, transparent & limited government, free markets, liberty & individual freedom. The ARRA News Service is an outreach of the Arkansas Republican Assembly. However, all content approval rests with the ARRA Editor. While numerous positions are reported, our beliefs & principles remain fixed.mission
Our political climate in the U.S. is very interesting in this year, unfolding now, after the election of Mr. Obama. Several developments have taken me by surprise. Obama surprised me by not partnering his financial system bailout policies with policies aimed to help right the economy of main street from the bottom up. It was also surprising that he didn’t articulate in concrete, instrumental, terms what kind of reform he would endorse, and insist upon, to end the depredations of the speculation-driven shadow economy.
Then, he moved to reform health care and laid it in the laps of his congressional majorities.
In light of these developments, I’m not in any way surprised that people have been stirred to reactionary and (called by me,) restorative activism. Nor was it surprising that they oriented their dissent positively around their patriotism, and, negatively, around their primal fear that the government is posed to strip from him or her so-called freedoms.
But the worst part? It allows the federal gov’t to be in charge of every aspect of your life. Every decision you make on a daily basis can be linked to “healthcare.” You drive an SUV? You’re contributing to pollution & that increases asthma…..you need to pay more! Since we have direct access to all of your accounts we know you own a 4-wheeler. That’s dangerous………you need to pay more! We see that you eat at McD’s twice a week. That’s bad for you……you need to pay more! YOU OWN A GUN??? THAT’S DANGEROUS! YOU NEED TO PAY ALOT MORE!!
These liberal fanatics will most DEFINITELY use the federal gov’ts financial stake in your everyday lifestyle choices to CONTROL THEM. Your decisions will no longer be your own, they will be decisions that will be for the “collective good.” And they will be MANDATED & CONTROLLED by the gov’t. And in order to “nudge” you into compliance with their ideology of how you should live your life, they will simply put a financial burden on you if you choose differently.
The paranoia surprised me. How does one square paranoia with a normative conservative ethos that holds its funding principles to be both first, and, last, and to be foundational, and also holds these principles are the only possible enlightened goal granted by reasoning through the problem of governance? Where does paranoia fit in? Is it possible that such foundational principles are, in fact, extremely fragile?
I don’t think so. President Obama has offered a mild liberalism. The bank bailout was extraordinary, yet a Republican would have had to have done the same thing. (Creative destruction is a notion one can practically hold only when the bombs aren’t falling on your own head.) All such bailouts tend to occupy uncertain spots in any ideology. A bailout is above all expedient and unhooked from conventional, ideological morality. They’re grotesque too.
So far Obama’s maneuvering hasn’t been much like anything we associate, historically, with truly radical presidents; especially those with very novel views of the Constitution—such as Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, and Bush II. Nevertheless, the ideological principles survive, and this suggests underlying principles, aren’t at all fragile. This includes freedom given to be a result of, contingent upon, application of, ideological principles.
So why is paranoia evoked?
My tentative view is: affect is consequential in the current ‘social psychological framed’ ecology. Forged in the magical bake shop of projective identification, specific affect-laden estimations are on offer. So: a messianic leader is scapegoated so as to be the cause of knowing (i.e. unconsciously feeling,) that what is possessed, “freedom,” is to be stolen by the conspiratorial Other, (i.e. an alter.) This inflated threat is to be met and defeated by, ironically enough, the collective personal power of freedom-loving individualists. It’s worth noting that in some quarters, this evil goat is assumed to have super powers, or, alternately, is assumed to be the servant of hidden masters.
Putting the participation mystique aside–may Levi-Strauss rest in peace–what are the embedded chain-of-being regimes supposed in a clash between the red-in-blood red-tending-to-blue meme, and, the blue-tending-to-orange meme. These, given by Grave’s Spiral Dynamics, and, given by me in my deployment of a shadow dynamics* supposing the red shadow of blue conservatism’s ‘traditionalistic’ paternal chain of being comes to clash with the neoliberal paternal chain-of-being of Orange. Pre-modern, the red shadow of blue, collides here with the post-modern orientation toward technocratic problem-solving.
(Or, the atavistic self and identity, is felt to be threatened by the spectral, post-modern selves and identities. Perhaps, were one to dig into the narratives, one would find at their core a clash between the production of certainty and productions of uncertainty.)
Among many curious aspects of this clash, is the gravity given to an emotionalized, largely unconscious, sense of freedom. (I’ve written about this before.) What is it about a notional freedom that one can be dispossessed of, versus, other less vulnerable notions about freedom? Isn’t it interesting that the conservative concept of freedom-under-constraint, a necessary consequence of the pessimistic view of human nature, is subsumed in the shuffle through the emotionally-charged libertarian bake shop!
Then there is the conspiratorial tenor of magical narratives. Of course, it’s long-standing that the government is anthropomorphized to be a kind of beast, capable of devouring freedom. In this respect the conspiracy mongering of Ron Paul, or Michelle Bachman, comes to be of a piece with the extreme supernaturalized conspiracy advocates, David Ickes, Alex Jones, and Michael Tsarion. In turn, the current extremes are merely the contemporary waves of olden conspiracy theories. And, heck, why not share some air time with the truly deluded?
“they’ve been positioning…” they, theY, thEY, THEY!
*I have yet to go into this in detail. However, roughly, my proposal is that the vertical scale of Spiral Dynamic is configurable as a dynamic, oppositional scale. This is able to depict how higher and lower memes serve as descriptive categories, and schema, for shadow dynamics. For example, by such a dynamic scale, the shadow dynamics for the Blue Meme are discoverable as aspects of Red (below) and Orange (above). In my novel (or idiosyncratic,) view, the shadow dynamics then tend to fall (or regress,) toward the lower, more archaic order, while this unconscious propensity is galvanized by fear of the upward pull toward the newer, more complex order.
My notion here supposes that a concept of Blue freedom, will come to be defended at the lower, unconscious level of Red. Similarly, this defense is waged against a super-charged (by way of ‘social cognitized’ projection,) ‘controlling’ Orange. Grant this phenomenology, and the result is that fear of bureaucracy regresses to fear of collective control, control formulated to the scale conspiracy; “conspiracy” being the shadow concretization of Orange—in its worst form.
This is consistent—well, at least it is to me—with the mental procedures via which contested, soft conceptions–such as freedom–are reduced, reified and objectified. Then the reified conception’s opposite, in this case anti-freedom, is realized and nailed to the alter. Thus, a collective complex is constellated.
Christina aka ZOMGitsCriss k-rina, is Romanian; is forthright; is an ax-wielding heroine. I wouldn’t volunteer to sharpen all of her many axes, but I’d take the stone to the anti-creationist axe.
Here, ((Kseniya Simonova)) recounts Germany conquering Ukraine in the second world war. She brings calm, then conflict. A couple on a bench become a woman’s face; a peaceful walkway becomes a conflagration; a weeping widow morphs into an obelisk for an unknown soldier. Simonova looks like some vengeful Old Testament deity as she destroys then recreates her scenes – with deft strokes, sprinkles and sweeps she keeps the narrative going. She moves the judges to tears as she subtitles the final scene “you are always near”.
*Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine’s version of “America’s Got Talent.”
In this excerpt from my film “Zrareet ! ” my mother-in-law explains how to train a Moroccan husband with a great sense of humor. They have been married for over 60 years.
Gordon Knox, director of the global initiatives project at Stanford University’s Humanities Lab could be considered an instigator of the “post-professional” meme as it applies to the commons and articulations of knowledge and experience on the internet.
Over on our, (being the Netdynam email discussion group,) new group project blog, Netdynam 2.0, I’ve posted Knox’s video, Darwin, web 2.0 and the Role of the Amateur.
From 1989 until I left Vermont in 1991, I lived in a farmhouse in Waltham with Ron and two fine Ethiopian gentlemen and musicians, Seleshe and Kiflu. The latter was known as the ‘world most handsome man.’ The two were brothers and musicians and dancers. During the summer of 1990, I played color percussion very quietly in the four person rhythm section of The New Nile Orchestra on three occasions. Kflu told me with a wink–before the orchestra took the outdoor stage at The Discover Jazz Festival, “You’re okay as long as I can’t hear you.”
We had an immense amount of fun as roommates even if Selesshae Damessae, an internationally famous ex-patriot folkloric musician, wasn’t around much. I’ve never ate as well as I did back then. Ron and Kiflu melded vegetarian and ethiopian cuisine and often Breakfast was the main deal.
Once a month or so during the summer the Jehovah’s witnesses would come by and we’d hang with them on the front porch until they got jumpy as tourists in their own land sometimes do. You have to picture Ron and myself with our long hair, the coal black adonis Kiflu, the Jehovah’s men with us on the porch, with wife and daughters sitting in the car. We extracted their agreement: we’d listen to their scripture reading if they’d partake of our own. However, they’d always book once one of us went into the house to get our book.
Ethiopian music is ancient. Here’s two music videos from the brave and poor land that capture the two sides of the this most unique of countries.
On youtube there is a series of videos, apparently excerpted from a longer documentary, that features the renowned-in-his-time counter-cultural figure, self-proclaimed Sufi, misterioso teacher, charlatan, Idries Shah. I joined the ten parts and present it here; 49 worthwhile minutes beckon. Pay attention!
My string of adjectives is not intended to underplay Shah’s reputation, such as it has been able to be sustained. He was a walking library of Sufic esoteric material, yet, he also brought these traditional secrets to proto-new age stages in the sixties. He walked a weird razor’s edge in maintaining that these materials could retain their power even when stripped of their context, as long as the context of the user was precisely calibrated to these bare-of-context materials!
Speaking of post-modern Sufis, I recommend the volume by Ian Almond, Sufism and Deconstruction. A comparative study of Derrida and Ibn ‘Arabi, (2004:Routledge.) A rigorous mysticism, moved toward the subject drilling deeply beyond it’s (his or her,) self, cannot be about fixing identity.
Annenburg Media provides online and material resources to, “to advance excellent teaching in American schools.” Anybody can sign up and view the online videos. Each is described and most are components in comprehensive continuation of teacher education. I highly recommend A Private Universe. I’ll be working my way through the lot. I just happened upon their web site while googling something else. Like many web sites, presumably not many people know about Anneburg Media. So, it’s a find.
Although I will pour over the satisfying demographic breakdowns in the coming days, the one that jumps out this morning showcases Barack Obama’s victory in every age group except the over-65 one. A new era has dawned. The future trend lines are clear too: doctrinaire conservatism is headed toward hard times as the U.S. heads toward becoming a more tolerant, more diverse society.
Yesterday I voted at 10am and then three hours later headed for the Shaker Square campaign office. I have to admit my election day activity represents my total concrete work output on behalf of Barack Obama, Oh, I gave a modest sum of money, more than I ever gave before. However, it was a great day and I spent some precious minutes in the company and most excellent vibes of many who had labored intensely for many weeks and months.
My day was a bit of a saga too. When I arrived at Shaker Square, they were buried in volunteers. They sent me over to the Broadway Avenue office to canvass. However, the last canvassing packet was distributed to the person in front of me in the sign up line.
(The Broadway Avenue Obama office) I was told to go to an address on Miles Road, a ‘canvassing dispersion point,’ to canvass. However nobody was there and so I started to drive back to Shaker Square, while I called various Ohio campaign offices to find out if I had gotten the Miles address wrong. Reaching the state office by cell, it was suggested that I check out the Lee Road office. I turned around.
There I found my home base! Debbie, fourth from the left, was the Red Team leader. She matched me with Kenny and directed us to a polling place at Emile DeSauze Elementary School, deep in the heart of a African-American working class community. Our job was to manage the anticipated lines. Although those lines never developed–the early vote and absentee vote took care of much of the load–I spent the next four hours in Kenny and Liz, (a voting rights volunteer,) generous company. More to the point, I was on the front lines of the most historic political day of my life.
The voter service was excellent at the polling place. Two high school seniors directed voters to the right ward voting booths from the front steps. Needless to say, the voters here were enthusiastic and most understood their history making role.
Kenny, sixty-three, is somebody I won’t ever forget. We talked about political seasons in the past. And, we exchanged something of our hopes for the future. It was a blessed day on the front lines of our 225 year democratic experiment. The high point was rubbing elbows with the committed, and the hopeful.
It’s been a long time-a comin’.
We started our journey to the Barack Obama and his family, and Bruce Springsteen, rally at 1:00pm at the third most easterly stop on RTA’s Blue Line. The gates were to open at 2:00pm and it usually takes 30 minutes to get downtown if you get on the train right away. However, the train was at least 45 minutes late and our total wait was an hour-and-a-quarter. So it was that the crowd at the RTA stop grew from twenty to–probably–well over a hundred. A bus was sent to take some downtown. We waited. The train was crowded and full of joyous ‘socialists!’
Our full train let out its passengers at Tower City where we all joined the growing crowd. Making our way across Public Square, we found a friend and joined her in the line leading to the two outdoor malls where the rally was to take place. It became clear at this point that this was going to be a rally of uncertain but very large size. Soon enough we were directed away from the line headed to the main, prime site. In other words joined the overflow. In this picture you can see the huge Obama puppet.
It’s impossible to show the true size of the crowd from within its midst. We situated ourselves on the south side of Lakeside, about 150 yards from the podium.
I took these shots by holding the camera at arm’s length above my head.
Where we stood (for three hours) ‘our’ people mostly seemed to be 30-60 years of age, and there were lots of young kids.
Although almost an hour passed between when the first round of speakers spoke and the appearance of Bruce Springsteen, the jovial mood of the crowd and its growing size inspired my patience. I had not been a member of a political crowd this size since the round of peace marches in Washington in 1971.
The Boss is so much the bearer of the flame of Woody Guthrie–he is our Woody Guthrie. Amidst the jejune rhetoric expressed in the rightward fear of socialism, it was a highpoint for me to hear Springsteen’s freedom songs. He nailed it.
I don’t know how Barack Obama will face down the problems of our time. But, I strongly value intelligence, the ability to develop a robust and accurate view of the system (or problem) at hand, and, above all, the ability to smartly criticize one’s own perspectives and analysis. It is in fact rare that a candidate for President is so smart and so sophisticated.
My simple wish is that he roll back the Constitution’s slide and be the greatest President since FDR.
My second closest friend Holly and Susan, my closest friend and better half.
Jamie Cohen, musician, actor, writer, producer, artist, and was also a filmmaker our senior year, in 1971-72. We partnered to make a movie for our Cinema class project. It’s intent was to load up so much obscure symbolism that the unsuspecting might take the whole 8 minute flick seriously. For example it started with a roll of toilet paper unwinding itself and bouncing into a house while leaving a trail of itself, only to discover. . . Although it was by far the most well done project, the teacher came to figure out the joke was on him and his pretentious ass. No room for Dada.
In any case, jamie has remained my soul brother no. 1 for 38 years and counting. He gives me reports about his creative efforts. Here are the two parts of a recent collaboration.
