I've still been processing the last session of Interpersonal (COM118) and decided to go ahead and post in the class blog. Will be interesting to see if anyone actually keeps up with it....posts did at least 48 hours after the class officially ended. :-)
January 2004 Archives
CBS refuses to air anti-Bush ad. Shannon Payne sent this along.
Tom Atlee compiled this list:
It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet.
-- Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
In the solitude of the heart we can truly listen to the pains of the world
because there we can recognize them not as strange and unfamiliar pains but
as pains that are indeed our own. There we can see that what is most
universal is most personal and that indeed nothing human is strange to us.
There we can feel that the cruel reality of history is indeed the reality of
the human heart, our own included, and that to protest asks, first of all,
for a confession of our own participation in the human condition.
-- Henri Nouwen,, author, Catholic priest and member of L'Arche Daybreak in
Toronto.
_ _ _ _ _
The afternoons under the tree are very important: it's when the older
people gather for a conference. The mango tree is the only place to meet
and talk, the village has no larger venue. People assemble eagerly and
willingly, because Africans are collectivist by nature, and possess a
great need to participate in everything that constitutes communal life.
All decisions, such as who should get how much land to farm, are made
collectively, and each resolution must be adopted unanimously. If
someone has a differing opinion, the majority must persuade him to
change his position. This can drag on endlessly, because the discussions
are famously garrulous. If someone in the village is quarreling with
someone else, then the court convened beneath the tree will not try to
ascertain the truth, or where justice lies, but will set itself the sole
task of ending the conflict and conciliating the warring sides, while
granting to each that he is in the right.
-- Ryszard Kapuscinski, "The Shadow of the Sun, My African Life," (p. 315, transcribed by Richard Moore)
_ _ _ _ _ _
There is an urgency. There is an urgency to slow down. So I believe we should pause and reflect. Doing this alone is great, but I feel more and more it is important to reflect with people: From the slowing down and reflecting [with] people, strong sustainable decisions emerge. We have to take time to listen to the diversity around us. I am working alot with music now and more and more as I work with groups here I see how it represents us. If you do not stop and listen in music you cannot play with the others. But still you have to hold your distinct identity or it will all sound the same. The greatest music also descends into madness and chaos and comes out the other side again something new but connected. Sambe bands are a classic example of this. So we should make our decision making processes more like creating music, where we have to listen, communicate and rock it from our distinctness, welcoming our diverstity to the table, because it makes us sound fantastic! When we hit it, we feel the groove, in our hearts, bodies and souls, and right in the middle of everything.
-- Tim Merry
_ _ _ _ _ _
We feel empowered when we feel capable of dealing with the forces that affect us and those we love; we feel disempowered when we feel that our fate is in the hands of others who do not fully recognize or care about who we are. Empowerment is ... about a way of organizing a community so that the knowledge and wisdom of all the participants is utilized and respected.
-- Mark Gerzon
_ _ _ _ _
If diverse ordinary people are given adequate information and a chance to deeply hear each other and reflect together about public affairs, there is a natural tendency to come to see a larger picture together, through each others' eyes, and to then wrestle in good faith with the implications of that larger picture, so that in the end they find that their diversity is a resource, stimulating each other into remarkable creativity. Suddenly options that make sense to all or most of them emerge -- possibilities often unseen by any of them when they began talking.
-- Tom Atlee
_ _ _ ___
Everyone sat down, and the magic started happening. People started to listen. People realized that they had much more power as part of a process of learning and sharing than as a solo voice harping on a demand. People spoke of their needs, shared their ideas, explored possibilities with one another. The animosity, the militant activism, was drowned out. It wasn't shouted down by the crowd, but quieted in the minds and hearts of each of the 5000 individuals who became part of a larger voice. Not a voice of conformity, but a voice of unity that had room for a diversity of themes and tones and overtones.
-- A description by a participant in the AmericaSpeaks Listening to the City 21st Century Town Meeting.
_ _ _ _ _ _
Journalist Ray Stannard Baker came to see that "Politics ... was in its essence the method by which communities worked out their common problems. It was one of the principle arts of living peacefully in a crowded world."
-- Bill Moyers
_ _ _ _ __ _
The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air,
capital, labor, or technology. It is our willingness
to listen to each other and learn from each other
and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right.
-- Donella Meadows
_ _ _ _ _
In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.
-- John Stuart Mill
_ _ _ _ _
Our pursuit of sustainability is not challenged by our technical capacity, but by our capacity to work together effectively towards common goals.
-- Iona Campagnolo, former Fraser Basin Council Chair
_ _ _ __
With our ability, as humans, to examine our actions, both in advance and in the process, and change our patterns of action if we choose to do so, why, when we are unhappy, need we even go so far as fighting, let alone killing?
-- Letter From Martin Edwards in Baghdad, 3/29/2003
- - - - - - -
"No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind."
-- Napolean Hill, "Think And Grow Rich".
_ _ _ _ _
Let us put our minds together and see what kind of life we can make for our children.
-- Sitting Bull
A post by Barry Wellman on this listserv lead me to Clay Shirky's article originally, now, discussion continues.
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: howard dean, social movements and clay shirky (Rhiannon Bury)
2. Re: howard dean, social movements and clay shirky (elijah wright)
3. Academy and the Internet (Verhulst, Stefaan)
4. Think Tank: Greeting Big Brother With Open Arms (fwd) (david silver)
5. Workshop program German Online Research 04 (Uwe Matzat)
6. Reviewers for the annual AoIR conference (Kathleen O'Riordan)
--__--__--
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:59:14 -0500
From: Rhiannon Bury
To: air-l@aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] howard dean, social movements and clay shirky
Reply-To: air-l@aoir.org
Hmmmm. I read the piece and have a mixed reaction. On the one hand, I
agree with the first point that Dean may have "accidentally created a
movement (where what counts is believing) instead of a campaign (where
what counts is voting)." My interpretation of this statement is that
those who believe do so strongly but their numbers are alas insufficient
in our Western system where democracy gets reduced to showing up at a
polling system every fours years or so.
However, the remainder of the piece explicitly shifts to blaming Dean
supporters for not bothering to get their butts out in the cold to
vote. Even in my limited following of this story from newspaper (Globe
and Mail) and radio (CBC) in Toronto, I have read or heard nothing to
suggest that Dean supporters who were eligible voters in these
caucuses didn't do so. In fact, I thought Dean supporters shipped in to
help rally the troops (okay, bad choice of metaphor for the only real
anti-war candidate). Can anyone clarify?
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Bury, Ph.D.
Women's Studies
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario Canada
rbury@uwaterloo.ca
Barry Wellman wrote:
>Clary Shirky has a nice essay on the Howard Dean and Iowa situation, that
>fits nicely with what Chuck Tilly and I have posted here in complementary
>ways:
>
>http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/01/26/is_social_software_bad_for_the_dean_campaign.php
>
> Barry
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
> Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director
> wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>
> Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto
> 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162
> To network is to live; to live is to network
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
>
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--__--__--
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:07:12 -0600 (CST)
From: elijah wright
To: air-l@aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] howard dean, social movements and clay shirky
Reply-To: air-l@aoir.org
> agree with the first point that Dean may have "accidentally created a
> movement (where what counts is believing) instead of a campaign (where
> what counts is voting)." My interpretation of this statement is that
didn't someone mention this same meme in an article a couple days ago, but
as attached to Bush and the Republican party rather than to Dean? It
seems to be one of those binaries that is emergent and rolling to the
forefront on these cold, wintry days....
elijah
Also about large group dynamics? This is posted on Many 2 Many: A group weblog on social software.
Clay Shirky argues that Dean has created a movement of believers rather than a campaign of voters. Interesting comments follow.
Visited with Sam last night for a couple of hours. Finally. He was in pretty good spirits and had good energy - he's just recovered from an awful flu-bug that actually sent him to the hospital for a short stay. He really enjoyed seeing his niece, Jennifer, at Christmas and is looking forward to another visit from her and her mom (his sister, Edith) in February. He got lots of good Christmas presents (and is still doling some out to company) and enjoyed time with his friends and god-children.
We gave him the video Nosey Parker, he was going to watch it last night. He just finished watching the 10-part series, Band of Brothers.
I'm now hoping I don't get whatever he had; the third floor was still under semi-quarantine and I had to wear a mask the whole time I was there. (Cross your fingers for me, ok?) :-)
Well, I was a bit aimless after the last session of COM118 yesterday. What a terrific bunch of people and what great work we did. :-) Really good timing for me too, balancing out some of the other drama in my life. We held an "award ceremony" yesterday and I received the Best Mullet, Teacher, Organizer, Energizer and Laugh Awards. We did have fun! Here's the CODA for the Class Poem - based on Muriel Rukeyser's "Effort at Speech between Two People".
Note: someone translated this into Romanian!
"The calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us....
"We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves in the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world..."
---Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 4, 1967, in Riverside Church, New York city
Courtesy of Tom Atlee.
This study from the University of Oregon shows how unwanted memories are controlled.
Full article in in the March 15 issue of Nature, Some Choose to Lose Memory.
Hannah came in to wake me up Thursday morning and plopped herself on the bed, telling me about the day before. I started tickling her toes and she stopped talking and sat stone-faced...I kept tickling and she didn't blink! Finally, I said, "Don't smile!" and she cracked up. I told her that yesterday I'd had to "not smile" for an entire hour. Why? For my class, because it helps people learn how to be confident in themselves when someone isn't always trying to be friendly and make things nice. She said, "You're good at that."
Of course, I had to jump out of bed and chase her. :-)
My students might agree. We had our last communication lab yesterday and some of my "consultations" were along the lines of how they seemed to be in flight from emotions. When they didn't pick up on this, but instead starting to do more and more out-loud thinking, I said, "Run faster!" One of the guys said, "You're relentless" and I laughed. OOPS!
Anyway, they have done a tremendous job and I am very proud of them. They've been posting homework assignments twice a week on their own class blog. Impressive!
The other day, Hannah saw me clip An Irrepressible Idea out of the Newsweek about a biological study that seems to locate brain activity in conscious/unconscious forgetting. She asked a brilliant question:
H: What's that about?
S: Its some proof that people can forget things on purpose or from habit.
H: Why would you want to remember?
S: If you have a problem in a relationship, it could be because you've forgotten something, and if you remember it then it will help you figure out the problem in the relationship.
I think my spontaneous answer was pretty good - but not bad for a (soon-to-be-9) third grader, eh? One of the obstacles to overcome with "selling" the PMA is the worth of remembering something that a lot of effort has gone into forgetting. :-)
The Reformer printed my letter in the Weekend issue yesterday with an interesting insertion. They deleted "your coverage" and added the words "Associated Press article", apparently to distance themselves from it? The author is unidentified on the website and it seems we've already recycled the paper...
Here's my original text - apparently they posted all the letters EXCEPT for mine from that day!
Dear Editor,
I was disappointed to read the bias in your coverage of the trial requiring the use of sign language interpreters. By presenting non-deaf peopleís experience of adjusting to the cultural differences and linguistic issues involved in interpreting as ìa snarlî, you have privileged the difficulties and challenges instead of the possibilities, opportunities, relationships, connections, and solutions that can be reached when language barriers are bridged. Instead of highlighting the challenges as problematic, this (very sad and unfortunate) situation could be framed and utilized as an incredible educational experience in cultural diversity. While Deaf advocates have engaged in numerous attempts to educate law enforcement and the criminal justice system (among other service providers) about the process of interpreting, sometimes that kind of learning is most effective in ìhands-onî situations. I hope that all those involved will turn their energies toward understanding the complexity of the process and work to facilitate their own, and each otherís, effective participation in it - despite, or perhaps because of the inherently adversarial nature of a trial.
Sincerely,
Stephanie Jo Kent, CI (nationally certified ASL/English interpreter)
Dummerston
This story, Language issues snarl ex-Austine staffer's trial was published in this morning's paper. If I could squeeze it in I should go observe...
It's a trick: David Copperfield guessed my card...?!!
Looks like they won't make it this time around.....but they'll be persistent. An airport wasn't enough?
As of today, FDR leads 2:1.
