Desire

CURRENT PROGRAMS (*introductory) & PRESENTATIONS

Play of Opposites

Sympathy and Antipathy, and Polarities, in Experiential Learning Tool: The Play of Opposites*

Opposites, dichotomies, and polarities turn out to be the raw material for playful exploration and stirring insight in this prototypical squareONE design for transformative learning. Random draws of paired elements turn out to be powerful ingredients of spontaneous insight, or problem solving or hypothesis generation. The investigation is grounded in a model for growth based in keen observation, following intuition and deep meaning-making.


Mobius Strip

Out-of-the-Box or Beyond “Boxes?” Tool: Mobius Strip*

This is squareONE’s half-hour tool. Two sides are brought into unity by the material trick of the mobius strip. What happens when do the same thing using two ideas and the unifying skills of human intuition, creativity and self-awareness? (We demonstrate this tool using Skype. stephenc.calhoun)


Axial Matrices

2 by 2 or Four Squared! Tool: Approach-a-tron; Four-Squared*

Two tools are interactively investigated and then both are blended together into a vital synthesis. The Four-squared is a flexible format for informal evaluation and also funds a compelling mode of discovery. The Approach-a-Tron generates random symbolic and picture data from a limited set for the purpose of inspiring novel reflections and fortuitous meaning-making.


A GAmbler
Teaching Cartoons Tool: Teaching Cartoons* 

Laughing is a key to learning! Do you know that there are practical yet hidden treasures of insight secreted away in common print cartoons? Do you know that many cartoons possess a hidden function and are instrumental in the way they allow for a direct, experiential access to self- knowledge? During this one session workshop learners will engage experiential methods to decode and reveal the wisdom hidden in cartoons. Then, as a kind of riotous finale, participants will collaborate on creating their own original teaching cartoons, secret wisdom and all. Obviously this is not a workshop for the humorless! Exploratory learning at it’s funniest.


Experiential Learning in the Library, in Seven Parts
Part 1 TRANSFORMATIONAL BEING AND EXPERIENCE
Part 2 DYNAMIC PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Part 3 NOVEL PATHWAYS THROUGH THE LIBRARY
Part 4 SERENDIPITOUS SEARCH-INTERNET APPLICATIONS
Part 5 COLLABORATIVE APPLICATIONS-DATA DUETS
Part 6 HUNTING AND GATHERING
Part 7 THE NEW LIBRARY-PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

This extended program takes part in a library. It is wholly focused on addressing this question:

“How would I use the library to help me gain self-knowledge and to help support my own evolution and self-artistry?”

Program Page


Music & Experience

Rhythm River: Imaginal Musicology and the Origins of Sonic Archetypes and Consciousness, in Four Parts

Part 1: The Spike Fiddle
Part 2: Kalahari Dreams
Part 3: Color of Sound
Part 4: Ancient Sound


Presentations:


Practical Pareto Efficiencies and Controlling your Panel melds two frameworks for experiential learning in the mode of reflection and self-knowing. A practical Pareto Efficiency, the 80/20 Principle, provides a structure for evaluating effort and commitment. Controlling the Panel provides a structure for slowing down, observing, making choices, and, doing experiments in self-awareness. This interactive workshop is equal parts innovative synthesis and pragmatic toolmaking.


The Desert Koan concentrates on a trio of (Zen) koan-like aphorisms, taken from Middle Eastern mysticism and versioned by translators for English speakers. While the main focus of this program is upon a playful and participatory attempt to unlock some of the aphorism’s teaching potential, something of the nature of the developmental system will be explored as a matter of the sociology of religion and the psychology of transformative learning.


The Situation of Serendipity in Adult Development, in three parts

Part 1: A workshop on constructive fortuity, serendipity, and how we each got here
Part 2: Pseudo-Serendipity and the Surprising Narrative
Part 3: The Hard Problem of Serendipity


Gregory bateson

Orders of Exploration – An Introduction to Human Cybernetic Discovery and the Reduced (Gregory Bateson) Set, in Four Parts

Part 1: The Short View of: General Human Systems, Orders of Observation and Participation, and Meta-Systems
Part 2: The Reduced Bateson Set, Its Deployment, and Experiencing its Use
Part 3: Practical Human Cybernetics and Applied Ecological Wandering
Part 4: Tools of Self/Social Awareness


Transformative Anthropology and Civic Knowledge Generativity – in the cosmopolitan setting

Melds squareONE’s tools and models for Exploratory Learning and Transformative Anthropology into a program aimed at the following goals: (1) training folk anthropologists to conduct informal inquiries into the human life world in a community; (2) learning about one’s own self in the social interplay and continuous context making that is part of any community; (3) promoting insight into the entanglement of human relationship and enactment that constitutes the human universe of a community; (4) a working knowledge of the concepts of Social Awareness and Human-centered Cybernetics and social autopoiesis