~ Rev. Bruce Jacobs, 25 September 2006
group dynamics: September 2006 Archives
I opened with a strike. It counted for Lava though, contributing to his high score of 160. I bowled as if I was him because Elodie, one of the first-time bowlers, needed a lesson and Lava was off getting a beverage. By the time Spare Man (formerly Little Brother, but who needs endearments when they have a cat?) and Hot Stuff finally arrived we were well along in the first game. Maria led her lane through the fifth frame, proclaiming, “I should play with them – they are my team!” She scored went on to score a personal best. :-)
I had not intended to blog about bowling because I taught earlier and thought that would be my post-of-the-day. I’m still going to write class up (because the students are awesome), but after ten minutes I knew it was going to be a good night on the lanes. So I handed out my new business cards (much simpler than the cumbersome informed consent form…although I may still have to get to that eventually…or not…)…
Despite Spare Man’s disparagement (“That’s not how you relate to people!”), I added five more people to Reflexivity’s zone-of-something: Ivan, Shaun, Insa, Elodie, and Silja. We always have quite the diverse mix, but this was like international night: Romania (2), Germany (2), US (2), France (1), Columbia (1), Nepal (1), Guatemala (1). In no particular order. :-) (If I remembered inaccurately or am otherwise misinformed, please correct me.)
Conversation flowed as freely as the bowling balls – in and out of the gutter. :-) I fielded a couple of questions about the blog and my work…it only took 45 seconds for Silja to tell me, “It’s getting complicated.” Yes yes yes! Awful how my character just keeps on doing that! Insa tolerated me for awhile longer but I have a suspicion she was just humoring me. :-) Juan kept trying to jinx my ball into the gutter but it backfired on him every single time: “Who’s going to tease who?” he queried. Speaking of which, the mysterious email I received in Spanish this summer was attributed to a jug of sangria: “I was a little happy when I sent it.” Meanwhile, Lava worked to get his spin back, Shaun showed no mercy, Spare Man and Spare Woman battled it out to the last frame of the last game, I received two (count them, 1, 2!) “gay fives”, and was challenged by a (diminutive) public interest group about the integrity of this blog in the public sphere: would someone’s high score of 175 appear or not?
“Two more,” I hollered at Spare Man as he tried to close a 30-pin gap in Game 2. Gutter Girl thought I was talking to her, as if two more pins would make a difference. :-o Who knows? Sometime they might!
Blow or hug?" Zeynep wondered out loud while the birthday candles melted onto her rich chocolate cake. It was past 1 a.m. in Amherst. Not exactly the time one would expect a party, especially having just completed a cross-country flight. "Welcome back!" she said to me and Little Brother. (We spent our summers in Turkey and Romania, respectively.)
Anuj (creative visionary and primary organizer) wasn't there for the pre-party, playing chauffer while we discussed (among other things) the differences between "simply connected surfaces" (no holes) and non-simply connected surfaces (has holes). (Did you know that mathematicians begin by ignoring 3D space, collapsing everything into 2 dimensions?)
[What comes next is an exercise in mathematical metaphorics. I am probably stretching them completely out-of-shape.] [[Oh well.]] ;-) Anuj will be pleased (?) to learn that he has no holes. [Steph has a few about the size of cannonballs but that's another story!] He is not a torus (Steph, btw, is a Taurus but oh-so-close to Gemini).
Once Zeynep arrived the party rollicked on! Rajiv took pictures but I bet he didn't get one of Alenka's gift of a beaker filled with flowers. I am so jealous! I want one!!! Jake is back to being sleep-deprived. John and I compared political notes on Turkey. Tate jumped in (and was just getting ready to tell me how wonderful commutable matrices are when Zeynep arrived - next time?)
Lava looks totally manly. Ricardo spoiled Anuj's golf swing by taking video. Sue (sp?) and Clara (?) kept to themselves in the kitchen but I did walk in on some kind of bizarro knife play - I ducked into the bathroom fast. Did I miss anyone?
My evening didn't end when I left. Just to add some more excitement, someone (who is learning how to drive) decided to weave over the center yellow line. What are those flashing lights behind us? Sigh. Fortunately, the cop bought my explanation that he weaved, "Probably just because we were talking." It didn't hurt that my registration and driver's license were current. And that LB didn't say "We just left a party!" Instead he said we were going to "Amherst" and coming from "Amherst." I added, when the cop pressed, that we were at an apartment on Pleasant St. Unbelievably, the cop accepted the most ragged learner's permit you've ever seen and issued only a verbal warning. Whew!
Or don't, but know you're often making decisions before you're conscious of the factors influencing them.
I bought the book Friday night because I took it as a sign. This review by the enlightened librarian finds a problem with its "lack of forthcomingness" but I'm not sure harder evidence will do more to convince people than the stories he tells? I guess this book didn't become as popular as his previous one, The Tipping Point.
I was out with half of Drunk-with-Power and Cautiously-Concerned-with-Confidentiality. We had a wondrous meal in honor of Robin, who is still getting settled at the University of Chicago (and planning her birthday party).
It was a sign because I wavered between titling a poem I wrote last week "Wink" or "Blink". The content/effect of the poem (both in its conception, writing, and hopefully reception) is along the precise lines of Gladwell's book: "Blink is concerned with the very smallest components of our everyday lives - the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that spontaneously arise whenever we meet a new person or confront a complex situation or have to make a decision under conditions of stress" (2005:16).
I don't recall that I'd heard of this book before seeing it on the table in Raven.
:-)
Gladwell goes on to ask, "What would happen if we took our instincts seriously?" (17). I've been asking this of myself for awhile now. He argues a kind of unconsciousness (not Freudian), called the adaptive unconscious.
It's fallible, of course, subject to betrayal, being "thwarted" (14), "thrown off, distracted, and disabled" (15). Hence, one must practice reading and applying it. Been there and still doing that!
ps. I really need to figure out how to add audio because reading this is not complete without hearing Marvin Gaye kicking it as I type.
The bachelors have been reduced from five to three (and one of them is actually taken but his partner is back home in India.) I will move out soon (when I stop procrastinating). I don't WANT to leave, because I keep getting introduced to new yummy food (recipe for
sabudana khichadi below).
While we ate, we engaged in a lengthy political discussion. [sidebar] (Well, they did, mostly I listened. The guys drift into and out of Hindi and English. I've deduced that they've made a decision to include me - or at least make the topic accessible - when they use English. Otherwise they're just doing their thing while I'm doing mine - usually on the computer. :-) Very comfortable.) [end of sidebar]
During the reprise at dinner time, Ambarish complained (!) "why do we always talk about right and wrong?" Perhaps as preparation for the extraordinary upcoming conversation hosted by Dropping Knowledge?
They have a one minute video describing a global Table of Free Voices. If you register you can rate the questions for discussion on September 9th - the questions have gone through a generation and prioritization process on the web over the past several months, being cut from 20,000 submitted to 500 condensed. Now they're working on the top 100. (Barry Wellman posted info on this to the aoir-listserv. Thanks.)
This is what Koushik, Puru, and Ambarish were debating, inspired by a question posed by The Bohemian the night before. Their examples were based in India, especially the urban/rural split and the efforts of the Maoists there. Dada kept arguing that basic citizenship will resolve most problems: "Whatever you are doing, do it with absolute honesty. Basic thing - do primary school teaching with absolute honesty; whatever else you do is bonus." He had several personal examples illustrating his own process of learning good citizenship. Puru argued against the idealism of this solution, describing four individual options:
1. I don't care, just get along the best I can: the system will do what it does with/without me.
2. I embrace the system, i.e., try to make money.
3. Work inside the system toward change.
4. Work against/outside the system.
As I listened I thought, these orientations are evident in these units of languages I've been calling discourses. Perhaps the challenge I perceive, and the juxtapostion I seek to both co-create and proactively engage, is at the "places" where these orientations meet? Because there is an incommensurability between the person who can choose Options 1-3, and the person who is forced into Option 4. Anyone with a choice has relative privilege compared with those revolutionary movements who do not experience this luxury. (It seems possible to me that one point of contention is whether or not choice does exist, and to what extent. Another point is the transition process from an orientation/mode of Option 4 to one of the others: both systemically - institutionally and culturally - and individually.)
Ambarish argued that everyone simply keeps on moving: one chooses a point-of-view and tries to implement it. The key that he emphasized, is that there are consequences regardless of which choice one makes. The "consequence" I'm trying to resist is a predetermined channeling of viewpoints/discourses into more-or-less "traditional" lines. By "traditional" I mean customary to that political perspective or point-of-view, and I include my own!
Puruman claimed there is "no answer in any of the four options." I agree. Any "answer", if there is to be one, must be a confluence of the options, it must include/accommodate them all.
Dada offered a phenomenological example of time and living. He revisiting a movie they had watched the previous night (Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi) (situated in the 1970s) and argued that we make parallel choices now - living "in this time" with the choices made, for instance, by people living in the time of the 1920s in India (during the revolt against the British).
There were many other nuances, examples, and illustrations. I could imagine this conversation in various forms (different languages, different contexts) and the same overall pattern (individual range-of-choice vs systematic impositions & constraints, circumstantial differences setting distinct and variable limits, the struggle of finding adequate points of leverage, the resistance of the elites to change).
I missed the moment to actually submit a question to the Table of Free Voices event, and - in truth - I'm still formulating it, but I know it is along these lines. It was fitting that the evening ended with a game of Carrom, which illustrates the precise challenge of dialogue: how do we shift patterns of talk that produces sharp (even if minute) concussions to talk that allows some kind of merger or blending? Simultaneously, can we develop skills to absorb the subtle shocks of real difference and work past them together?
