A reflection on “intentional living”

 

Consider Socrates’  choice to join the army and constrain himself to the dicispline and regulations of the army in defense of Athens. he made a choice to submit to those constraints because he made a principled value judgment that it was worth giving up some of his freedom and comfort in support of a higher value for him: defense of Athenian democracy.

I dont equate  a “philosophical life” with  a life of complete autonomy and unlimited choice.  The philosophica;l life is worthwhile precisely because it helps us make the tough tradeoffs in a way that are consistent with our values. Your decision to wear the uniform and accept the constraints allows you to support other values you place higher than the freedom to wear PJs.

You probably have decided that a choice to wear PJs might prohibit you from earning a living to supoprt your self and family and achieve other goals you value more than maximum comfort.

To me the philosophical life comes from a desire to live intentionally, to make choice son the basis of your own values, and not simply as an animal life form reacting instinctively and thoughtlessly to random environmental pressures. To live intentionally is to ask of your self, “which intentions?” and “what values?” and “what tradeoffs?” It is then fair to examine our decisions for consistency and integrity.

Principles mantter precisely because of the consequences they lead to.  To select principles without consideration of the consequences begs the questions about the values that would allow such a decision.

Living a “full time philosophical life” in this schema, becomes an extraordnary effort: to live intentionally in all things?! and with consistency to set of carefully chosen and prioritized principles?! thats the work of a lifetime for sure, a worthy goal. Its an ideal that led the Stoics and the Buddhists to ask of themselves, each in their own way, what’s the difference between want and need? They came to different conclusions, as did the Epicureans etc  but they all shared the goal of living the examined, consistent, intentional life.

Thanks for your patience to let me think out loud

Reflecting on criticism and “Silent Philosophy”

Silent Philosophy

The world is full of critics – there has never been a shortage of critics! If you ever try to do something new you will definitely attract critics. The words of critics can take away all our inspiration and leave us wondering how to respond. However, if we can respond with silence, we maintain a great dignity. The critic wishes to provoke us, but by maintaining silence we are showing that it is beneath our dignity to respond to their false criticisms. It is like they are trying to give us something, but by refusing to accept their gift, the negativity remains with them. By maintaining silence we remain completely detached from their negativity. We can just concentrate on doing the right thing.

There was a young aspirant who wished to learn the meaning of life so he traveled to meet the most famous philosophers of his age. The first philosopher gave a very great and lengthy explanation on the meaning of life. The aspirant was suitably impressed and awed by the magnificence of his deliberations. However, straight away this theory was criticized by another philosopher. He cogently pointed out many deficiencies in his system; instead he pointed out another philosophy, which he argued was far superior. Like this several philosophers came to argue their case for having the best philosophy. Some said truth could not be discovered in this life, others said that truth was in a particular book. However, with so many conflicting philosophy’s the aspirant just became confused.

The aspirant decided to travel deep into the forest where he came across a yogi deep in meditation. His face expressed a countenance of deep equanimity, peace and, contemplation. Eagerly the aspirant asked the yogi what was the meaning of life. To this question, the yogi did not flicker even an eyelid, but continued in his deep meditation. The aspirant was disappointed, but remained inspired by the consciousness of the yogi. The next day he came back and his repeated question, the yogi maintained his silence. It was then that the aspirant realized the meaning of life could never be explained in words. At this point he began to learn meditation himself.

Sri Chinmov

 

so, how did the critics go from offering analytical insights, ie alternate points of view from their perspective to “false criticisms”? Isnt that classification the same thing we are accusing the critics of doing? Judging?
And if the criticisms have validity, why is silence an appropriate and improved response than engagement?

I dont accept silence as an improvement by default. That exchanges the value of “dignity” for one of “mutual engagement”, and i dont see that as an improvement necessarily..

If we take the position that dialectic, the exchange of thesis and antithesis, [producing synthesis is a way of creating knowledge not accessible to either individual on their own (and this is the basis of social construction of knowledge), the strategy of silence is a rejection of fellowship and engagement and pursuit of knowledge.

If we reject that knowledge can be pursued, and sit in silence whenever queried, then we are house plants, and are not using the gifts we seem uniquely to possess in the animal kingdom.

That position rejects the Socratic method of inquiry for example.

I accept that there is argumentation for the sake of argumentation and that anything can be deconstructed. I reject argumentation as an end and consider a lot of post-modernism and critical theory as a waste of oxygen. I reject disengagement for the same reason.

There is a philosophical school in China known as the Legalists who took the argumentative tricks of the Greek Sophists for example to an absurd extreme. they would argue that “a white horse” is neither “white” nor “a horse” since the linked words created a unique entity that neither word alone could properly represent. They anticipated critical theory by 1500 years, and were just as useless for real people living lives, and seeking “right thought and right action”.

Why would i choose not to try on the insights and considerations of trusted others? of careful arguers? am i so sure of my own judgment all the time that I can be completely confident that i can write off disagreement as “false criticism?” That makes us only as smart and wise as we individually are.

That also happens to be poor evolutionary behavior. we have evolved successfully on the basis of social cooperation and sharing. we know this from evolutionary biology and anthropology. Voluntarily opting out could be seen as an evolutionary backwards step.

I conclude that it matters how and why we engage in constructive criticism. I acknowledge that something that may be truly classified as “false criticism” should not be rewarded with opposition, but that we cannot a priori distinguish between good and bad criticism until after we have enaged in good faith dialogue

A Reflection on Personal Learning Environments, blogs and wikis

Dr John Persyn  from the Dean of Academic Operations  started up a study group to look at what InstructorNet could/should/might/ought be. He made the mistake of asking me to think out loud. If you don’t disagree with anything that follows, or at least wonder what I am smoking, then I have failed 

I take the InstructorNet working group inquiry questions to include: 

1. What should InstructorNet be and why should we care? 

2. How can we give Voice (and action) to instructors to better align resources with efforts 

3. How do we improve the connections among the members (nodes) of an Instructor Net (I am thinking of this as a utility function:  bringing electricity/water to rural areas) 3. What technologies will unleash classroom excellence? 

4. How do we eliminate the boundaries of walls, bricks, mortar and time to support lifelong learning across the force (for our demographic to begin with)? 

5. How do we shift from an Industrial Age frame of education to a Network-centric, connectivist frame? 

(a short oversimplification and misstatement of Connectivism: the knowledge resides dynamically in the network, its participants and their connections, and has a shelf-life; the network adapts its tacit knowledge much more quickly than its explicit knowledge in response to an increasingly dynamic environment, and so we need nodes of cognitive excellence creating knowledge artifacts rigorously, but connection modes and tools that facilitate making the tacit knowledge explicit AND the ability to sense educational needs and assemble rapid response teams of connected nodes from across the network, etc) (I’ll develop this definition better later) 

Useful metaphors:

1. An “InstructorNet Mall” of available resources in one spot for instructors to meet their needs 

2. A Google “Knowledge Map” of available content that’s searchable, zoom-able, and subscribe-able thru RSS so the network alerts you for items meeting your interests instead of waiting for you to craft a search every time you feel a conscious need. 

3. The Amazon/EBay “smart network” that automates the search and recommend function based on stated interests AND by remembering searches & paths 

4. Customer Service center for instructors seeking help 

5. Tour guides/Marketing Aide to demonstrate “How to use these resources” 

6. Magazine model of info mgt/distribution: a targeted demographic, whose readers shape the course of the magazine/tools (Dear Readers! We listened to you!)  Lean 6 Sigma techniques have a way of accomplishing this, and a partnership with an LSS project seems like a natural one 

Other work to be done:

1. Considering how we encourage/reward professional writing like lesson notes, course content, blog/wiki work that contributes to the practice of knowledge, in the same way we have tied promotion and retention to academic writing. 

2. An FDP that incorporates more ideas related to “Master Classes in graduate teaching” on a regular basis. Some ideas include:

                a. Group learning vs Team-Based learning.

                b. RSS in the classroom (and blogs and wikis and podcasts…oh my)

                c. Live dialogue mapping skills to frame group discussions better (Google “Compendium” for demonstrations)

                d. How about giving Voice to faculty to let them nominate classes they want to receive, or challenges they face, and target the top vote getters? 

3. An InstructorNet Mall should have a “store” that has searchable index of available, recorded FDPs with quick summaries of what’s available for the individual instructor looking to sharpen his practice. 

4. UCTV (University of California “TV”) is a branded channel on YouTube with thousands of hours of content of their best instructors delivering on their best topics. 

                a. Why don’t we have Geoff Babb’s China lectures recorded and available in a catalog of Quality? Or Chris Paparone giving his best pitch on technical rationality and ADCON? 

                b. Why doesn’t the college actively seek and reward these mini-centers of excellence?  The Foundation should give cash awards to the mini-lecture each month that has the most (downloads x the highest quality rating) (like Guitar Player of the Year) 

                c. MIT has put their entire curriculum online. We need to do a better job of finding the tacit expert knowledge and making it explicit. We have replaced the value of SME for an industrial Age approach to standardizing curriculum delivery around uniformity, discipline and control, at the expense of risk, artistry, and informed speculation (some evidence that is loosening up I assert, by looking at Dr Kem’s study group pilots, and Dr Paparone’s innovative use of the Blog of Log to engage student critical thinking and professional writing in the new milieu under control) 

                d. The students should be able to give cash awards to their picks for instructor of the Section. Or POGs redeemable for valuable cash prizes at the PX. Or student nominations for Excellence in Innovation, or for Trying Really Hard Even Though The Experiment Blew Up In The Lab But Didn’t Hurt Anybody (the TRHETTEBUITLBDHA award) 

                e. Students should be able to record a 20 second praise  for instructors or AAPs, filed by AAP and instructor to guide next cycles towards our real excellence, that is searchable only by students.  Need more emphasis on Rate Your Instructor mechanisms 

5. I think we need a DDE rep on the team to assist the inquiry 

6. I think the instructor needs survey is essential 

7. I’d like to see a process map of instructors of all forms for CGSS: an operational graphic, who, where, what, and their AO and AI. We write curriculum for them in a vacuum; they have little to no voice in our design decision-making 

8. The instructors need a persistent forum for nominating “the policy that most gets in the way of my effective teaching is…” with room for public, persistent dialogue, instead of periodically asking for feedback snippets that get lost in the OPTEMPO 

9. Personal Learning Environments (PLE):

                a. Officers and faculty should have a profile page in their Personal Learning Environment that identifies, in one place their research interests and their research offerings. 

                b. It should have links to their writings on blogs, papers, wiki’s available, with their ability to make their writings public or private from their personal page. 

                c. It should have an RSS aggregator/reader integrated that automates a wide daily search of the early bird, BCKS AKO, DKO, Joint knowledge online, Small Wars Journal; in fact a listing of highly recommended sources they can check off for inclusion in their search, with the list expanding as a function of the community-wide ratings hit a threshold. 

                d. It should have a world class search engine that truly gives us ask once, search many capabilities; unlike AKO. All you need to know about AKO search is that when you search for “FM 3.0 download”, the first link is NOT to where you can download the manual. (I have a current screen capture, but don’t make me use evidence, because I will if pushed to the limit) 

                e. The amount of information being added to the Web each day is so large that we cannot afford bad “Search” AND we cannot afford to wait for people TO SEARCH, especially since we can give them a Voice in creating their default, persistent, context sensitive, active search profile on a Personal Learning Environment 

As part of the InstructorNet workgroup, I am focusing my personal efforts on:

1. a short summary of various educational applications of wiki, blog, podcast, RSS with bibliography

2. If I can find some practical details PLE (personal learning environment)info, I’ll do that as well

3. Creating a departmental resource catalog to support the ideas noted above.

4. Encourage the shift from Industrial Age to Network Age education

 

 

The face of future warfare or a phenomenon emerging from complexity without attribution?

Here is some underreported insight that supports the theme of “Money as a Weapon System” which should give you a moment of pause.

 

LiveLeak reports this interview of Rep. Paul Kanjorski. At 2 minutes and 20 seconds in the video below, Kanjorski explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a “tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars.” According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occurred over the period of an hour or two. And it gets worse. Kanjorski paraphrases the following disclosure by Bernanke and Paulson:  (emphasis added):

 

            On Thursday (Sept 18), [2008]at 11 in the morning the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the U.S., to the tune of $550 billion was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped a $105 billion in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be further panic out there.

                       

            If they had not done that, their estimation was that by 2pm that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed… It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it…

 

 

We are no better off today than we were 3 months ago because we have a decrease in the equity positions of banks because other assets are going sour by the moment.

 

To consider: 

1. Was this on the order of magnitude of the Bay of Pigs in terms of potential?

2. Where does this situation (connectivity and propagation characteristics of the global economic digital network) rate on the list of Top Threats in the National Security Strategy?

3. Is the Secretary of the Treasury the main effort for interagency?

4. Would you rather have a great Secretary of the Treasury or a great Secretary of Defense?

5. Could this enormous withdrawal have occurred without planning? or is it a property of densely connected networks that go beyond planning and control? ([Hint: if you answer no, you have some work to do]

 A friend replied:  

I saw this interview last week.  My father is a President of a bank, so I often turn to him for his opinion and perception on the financial markets.

I’d like to tackle your comments one at a time.

1. Was this on the order of magnitude of the Bay of Pigs in terms of potential?

I think the situation was very dangerous, but the solution that was applied was nothing more than a pressure bandage on a single wound.  Our country is over $10T in debt.  The money that was released by the Federal Reserve is money that is borrowed from other countries – mainly China and the Gulf States.  Shutting down the markets was the only thing they could do, but it did not address the core issue – we have too much debt.

Would the country have been crippled if the run on the banks continued?  Absolutely.  Again, I do not think that the measures applied since SEP 09 have done much to solve the economic problems of this country.

2. Where does this situation (connectivity and propagation characteristics of the global economic digital network) rate on the list of Top Threats in the National Security Strategy?

In my opinion, in the top three, quite possibly number one.  The US economic system is built on some very shaky ground.  For the first time in US history, there are more governmental jobs than jobs in the manufacturing sector.  We have become a service based economy.  Due to the overconsumption of our government and our people, we have a national debt of $10T and it’s growing to even larger extremes.  

The amount of foreign investment in this country is massive.  The Arabs – mainly from the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia – have quietly poured hundreds of billions if not trillions into the US economy since the 1970’s.  The Chinese own hundreds of billions if not trillions of US Treasury bonds.  One of many countries could have been behind the sudden withdrawal of funds – setting an example that the US financial system was collapsing.

The connectivity associated with the 24 hour global financial market has become too vast and too complex to manage.  Add in some horrific if not illegal financial practices – the Madoff Ponzi scheme, the use of derivitives, and credit default options – and the system cannot be sustained. If the bottom of the pyramid is built of mud, and it starts raining, what happens with the top of the pyramid.

3. Is the Secretary of the Treasury the main effort for interagency?

No.  Interagency operations should have no permanent lead.  They should task organized as appropriate.  I also am confused by the question – main effort for what?

4. Would you rather have a great Secretary of the Treasury or a great Secretary of Defense?

Since we are a capitalist country, in theory at least, a great Secretary of the Treasury is mandatory.  All other governmental functions are reliant on a stable economy at the least, and a growing economy is desired.  The Department of Defense is reliant on taxpayer funds, which are derived from the state of the American economy.  Going back to my thoughts on debt, it is possible to cut governmental functions to save money and lower taxes for the American citizen.  

Without a strong American economy, you cannot have a strong military.  Look to the Great Depression and the state of the Army from 1929-1937 for an example when our country has a weak economy…a weak military is sure to follow.

5. Could this enormous withdrawal have occurred without planning? or is it a property of densely connected networks that go beyond planning and control?

I tend to believe it’s more related to your second question than you first.  It is possible that this was a planned effort to send a message to the US.  The Chinese would probably do something like this because of the massive amount of T-bills they hold – we’ve reduced rates on them to literally zero on the short term bills.

But I think human psychology has a huge part to play in this.  If I recall correctly, this was around the time when Lehman Bros. was allowed to fail, and no one realized how interconnected they were into the mortgage markets.  When the government allowed them to fail, it sent a message to many people in the world that there was a significant problem with the US economy and the financial sector.  I think it led to some wise financial gurus saying “I have to get some of my assets out of the financial sector and banks before it is too late.”  After you reach a certain point, you then hit a level of panic.  It would be instructive to see an hour by hour breakdown of the $550B worth of withdrawals to see if the snowball was gaining momentum.  I think this would confirm my belief that people were starting to get real scared about the viability of the market.

And as we’ve all seen, the following weeks saw more giants of the American economy begin to falter.  AIG, Chrysler, Ford, and GM – not to mention other financial firms like Merrill Lynch and banks such as Bank of America and Citibank – have all had major problems with solvency.

I’d like to conclude this entry with something too many people within our military have forgotten:

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden said he is trying to bankrupt the U.S. through its war on terror, a strategy he says felled the Soviet Union two decades ago in Afghanistan, according to a translation by al-Jazeera television of his full, videotaped statement.

““The mujahedeen recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan — with Allah’s permission,” bin Laden said in the video that aired on the Qatar-based satellite network, according to the translation, posted today to al-Jazeera’s Web site. The channel aired portions of the statement on Oct. 29.”

 

I agree with you that we have just seen the first steps of trying to stabilize the patient with respect to maintaining orderly markets. Miles to go before we get to long-term treatment considerations, and the development of healthy lifestyle issues in our financial markets. At some point we have stop the tactic of borrowing to get out of debt, and rebuild the capital base through savings and production, rather than soliciting the capital of others exclusively.

I also concur on the magnitude and potential consequences of financial meltdown. The interconnectivity and subsequent fragility of global markets seems to have caught everyone by surprise; a classic case of a complex adaptive system that cannot be understood and controlled, but perhaps managed within boundaries; what Dr Paparone (and others)  have described as “messy management”

Acknowledging I am a naïve child in this area, it seems to me that the challenge to interagency effectiveness  is our departmental  structure which can be seen as an attempt to bound all problems within formal domains, giving authority and responsibility (unity of command) to a single department for typical problem sets.  We don’t habitually try to “matrix manage” governmental problems; rather we try to stay in our lanes. When problems spill over boundaries we wander around like  “ducks that have been hit on the head”, and we have no routine “current ops” shop that is designed to coordinate and integrate. The problem seems to be that every such problem will always be a task organization challenge as some lead agency tries to pull a team together. With respect to nation building it seems like DoD, the most resourced, has been trying to take the lead to force IA. In Homeland defense areas I can see other dynamics in play.

Departmental bureaucracies, by their nature, seem ill-suited for routine IA.  Where is the government’s  “G3”? Is it the White House?  You see more “coordinators” there and staff synchronizers than you do true Opns:  I am thinking about the national Security Advisor and the War Czar particularly. A policitical consideration is that the White House gets a some plausible deniability (survival insurance) by having expendable department heads in charge of wicked problems as opposed to trying to direct traffic themselves.

I also concur with the idea of the primacy of the economic dimension in terms of importance of national power (I am doing a lot of concurring here )

I think the better explanation of sudden massive withdrawal s is power of complexity theory and the butterfly effect to magnify feedback in complex adaptive systems as opposed to deliberate planning. The financial markets are wired for the free and full expression of human psychology to be manifest . Momentum ends up having a power all of its own, like an avalanche effect.  John Maudlin, of Frontline Thoughts” has a worldwide readership of over a million, has done a good job of summarizing this vulnerability through complexity and connectivity in global markets over the last couple years. Your dad is probably familiar with him

Designing education for uncertainty

Being comfortable with being uncomfortable is turning out to be an essential element of our curriculum.  Our officers are routinely being put into situations where their training is not helpful or where it can even be counterproductive.  They’ll have to rely on the principles we have educated them on (rather than training) and their own on-the-spot judgment.

It is an interesting design problem to figure out how to create classroom conditions that allow us to experience planning and decision making under uncertainty, which we then cant easily assess to see if we got it right. It represents a large cultural challenge to shift to a world view that encourages us to end the class with a question mark (uncertainty and reflection) rather than  an exclamation point! (the right answer!)

It’s getting to the point that we have to be on the look out for an excessive amount of confidence in our conclusions. This doesn’t mean we dispense with professional solutions and sound judgment, only that we have to remain humble enough, and alert enough to know thelimits of any tentative conclusion or plan we develop.  we know that constant change in the world means we have to have iterative planning and decisionmaking processes, linked up to robust sensing processes that constantly evaluate the fit of our mental  constructions (plans , assumptions, world views, “successful” endstates, measures of effectiveness etc) and the world around us.

College, teach thyself?

My commentary from a discussion thread at the CAC blogs on the topic of General Officers education and selection. I am interested in how we improve the capability of the college to support life long learningi nour student officers (and faculty). I argue that our college should be as flexible as the organizations we are telling these officers they will have to create and lead when they leave our building.

Marshall fired a ton of old guys prior to WW2 who were optimized for their peacetime positions based on their experiences and the nature of the pre-war environment. The discontinuity that was WW2, in Marshall’s judgment, required a bold shift in selection criteria for GO. It’s a young man’s game? But is there a substitute for the years of practical experience and intuition honed by the career paths of GOs prior to their promotion? Doesn’t the top leader have to go through all those formative experiences to develop the skill sets required for the thorniest problems? Perhaps, if you believe that we are looking for leadership to be contained within a single node inside the network organization.

But if you believe we are in a world of complex adaptive systems, filled with wicked problems, then the probability goes to zero you can have anticipated all the requirements the GO leader must have in place prior to the challenge emerging. You would tend to prefer selection systems that reward the kind of attitude toward learning and developing that Jim Greer describes above, where ideal GOs candidates have a record of modelling the lifestyle of life long learning and building organizations. Particularly if you believe that the solutions for or management of wicked problems are to be found in quickly framing problems and assembling the right team from the network of resources to satisfy the challenge.

In that kind of organization you would expect to see officer students inside Army schools taking on more responsibility for their own education, particularly those attending colleges that aim for graduate level education and seeking to leverage the insights and potential of soldiers fresh from the cauldron. You would expect to see a broad diversity of topics, approaches, methods and reflections, a flexibility towards learning that models the kinds of open and inquiring attitudes we say the future battlefield will require. You would expect risk to be taken within schools, rather than say, an approach of standardized curriculum, methods and assessments that aim to certify performance against an established, seductively time-tested checklist.

within CGSC, for example: do we “give students voice” to shape their personal learning environment? Are our students speaking their minds or are they waiting for permission to speak? If they aren’t speaking is it because they are certain about the probable outcome of their feedback? How much authority do they have to steer their own learning course? We see stats from student feedback in curriculum meetings but there are no students present when we make crucial decisions, and our curriculum meetings are not assessed on quality and performance like we do for every lesson, block, and graded student product. Are students satisfied with the payoff of giving feedback for themselves? Or is it really indirect, weak “feed forward”?

Are our classrooms and learning environments truly a network of learning organizations or are we a set of isolated, compartmentalized homogenized standard parts designed to teach the same things in generally the same way against a single consensus view of what’s required for the next 10 years of service?

If you’d argue that we can’t teach everything the officers will need to know in the next 10 years I’d agree, and then ask if we are helping jointly create the environment that promotes lifelong learning, providing the infrastructure to support it through reachback and the ability to adapt quickly to emerging educational requirements in whatever scope and size is required for the next surprise, rather than trying to get the curriculum “correct and stable, once and for all”.

The Romans had tribunes of the people to directly represent the people, with real authority to act in real time on their behalf. Do our officers have an equivalent voice to take on real responsibility for their education?

Could our college routinely solicit the educational needs of our newly arriving officers in August, do a needs assessment and create curriculum for learning inquiries that satisfied most of the expressed “needs to know” within 3 months? We couldn’t if you believed that each new piece of curriculum would have to be exhaustively researched, vetted and synthesized and approved for mass consumption before the first day of class, and we couldn’t if you thought every new piece of curriculum must meet the standard of “every MAJ for the next 10 years needs to know”. And yet that’s the kind of organizational flexibility and adaptability we are asking them to develop in their units upon graduation. College, teach thyself?

Chapters 25 and 27 of “The Future of the Army Profession” (2nd ed) are scholarly treatments of these issues

Edge.org: this should be interesting and challenging

Sigh: because i dont have enough on my plate to keep my attention fully engaged.  Still, they have some powerful info from one of my heroes, Daniel Kahneman whose intellect spans the whole globe. 

“To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge,
     seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds,
     put them in a room together, and have them ask each
     other the questions they are asking themselves.”

-     -     -     -     -      -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -   
-

Edge.org is the web publication of Edge Foundation, Inc which was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.  Edge Foundation, Inc. is a
nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Edge Editions are usually published twice a month and includes talks with and features written by Edge contributors, as well as news by and about thirdculture scientists and intellectuals. 

Or, you can use the web form at the following URL:http://www.edge.org/subscribe.html

Best regards,
Edge

Time management: benefitting from the commute

a good friend asked for some advice on how to best use her 30 minutes of mass transit commute time: reading vs meditating vs podcasting etc.

I recommend podcasting and/or audio books, because they come in bite size chunks, and there are plenty of them avail for free at the library (i have a ton as well if you needs a load).  you will be amazed at what sticks when you keep dumping goodies into the vast unconciousness of thee brain.

 

i really recommend UCTV on YouTube for quality lectures etc  they have tons of goodies and are downloadable

 

i would also rip all the TED lectures too (from the TED conference in Monterey   www.ted.com) ; they are 18 minutes long (by definition) and that would be a perfect set for a 30 min ride;  they are noble and inspiring too

 

meditation;  the only problem with meditation on the bus is that it’s pretty easy for that to be sleep or daydreaming;  meditation is hard work at being still and in the early stages you want a controlled environment that lets you focus on your inner space. Once you get that under control (if there is such a thing as controlled meditation ) then you can progressively bring the practice into the world.

Magazines:  as long as you can do focused reading while moving, thats ok, but if it turns into page flipping to look at pretty pictures then you are just marking time. I find reading with a purpose takes the kind of controlled atmosphere similar to meditation thats not well suited for a bus.

Hearing the Voiceless- Part 2

In the ongoing conversation re: Action research into an entreprenurial curriculum for middle school and high school age students, one of our fellow students offered a detailed set of interventions based on the initial readout from the first exploratory meeting, a reported by the “insider”.  While the ideas were excellent and interesting, I felt moved to observe the following, having so recently been down the same path myself, of offering solutions when what was needed was a group research involving the students themselves as co-researchers. I replied to the group as follows:

[Name] has some great ideas for what could be powerful interventions at some point. Let me share 2 discoveries about AR and PAR: (1)the importance and power of treating the people in the AR as co-researchers and (2) the power of 1st person AR to inquire into what you, the AR insider, are bringing into the situation from the outside and how you are growing through reflection.

If I said “[Names's] ideas sound as if he has already diagnosed the situation and designed an intervention that will be applied to these humans, so that they will “get the insight” that he has in mind for them, and so that they will amend their beliefs, values, perceptions and insights and behave in the correct eay in the future.” then I am pretty sure I will have misstated his position, since I diagnosed what I thought he was saying without checking in with him. It is a tendency of mine to jump to conclusions. In fact, it is a tendency of our brains, the ultimate pattern-makers, to jump to conclusions on limited data, because this is a good survival habit we have inherited from the Era of Evolutionary Adaptation. But it may not be a very good habit for research-quality inquiry

I have no doubt whatsoever that the proposed interventions and situations could be very powerful. However, I think we’d run the risk of by-passing our co-researchers and their insights if we jumped right to intervention technique without consulting with our co-researchers, the students themselves. In fact we might not be treating them as co-researchers at all, but rather as objects at a distance. The interventions might be working on a cognitive level if they make the connections we’d want them to make, and if they werent making the connections, we might feel a need to insist that they “see” the wisdom we were issuing to them. We’d keep giving them the lesson we want them to get until they yielded and “saw it our way”.

At a fundamental level how powerful could it be for them to self-diagnose, and decide if there were a problem in the way they were treating each other as “members of groups” rather than as people with needs? We have some powerful evidence already that the disasbled students are experiencing significant negative emotional reactions at a root level. They say its because they are being treated in a certain way and have concluded that the able students see them in a certain way. Well, we know the emotions they are feeling are real, but have we assumed their conclusions are true with respect to the enabled students? Are we really ready to proceed with an external diagnosis and intervention? Do the enabled kids get a chance to say anything before we proceed to the intervention we have designed?

In a very gentle way I want to observe that going into an AR with the intent of valuing the insights, values and states of being of the co-researchers is an uncertain and risky business because they get to vote on problem finding and problem solving and design of their own action steps and interventions. It really is open-ended.

I would not be surprised if a group of kids in an entreprenurial curriculum came up with their own innovative way of working together to improve their perceptions and treatments of each other once they had agreed on what, if any, problems they were experiencing in the classroom. especially kids, who are more flexible and open than old fogeys like myself who must be tricked into situations to make us see the truth etc.

The urge to intervene is one I experience a lot, especially when i am in an area i have some expertise in, and where i have had success in the past with results. I am trying to learn to identify my own beliefs and values and trust that the AR process will let me contribute my learnings when its my turn to talk, but to trust in an open, democratic group process to find its own level as well.

Chapter 31 in the Handbook describes an AR team’s experience with how their assumptions and beliefs and experiences at the start of an AR project in a company nearly sabotaged the outcomes because they were certain about what was going on, when in fact their interpretation had missed some important cultural aspects of the organization they were working with. Their 1st person learning, and sensitivity to the moment enabled them to detect the problem, and through communication were able to put it on the table with their co-researchers.

Kristiansen, M. & Bloch-Poulson, J. (2008). Working with “Not Knowing”, amid power dynamics among managers. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. (pp 463-472). London, Sage Publications, Ltd.

Hearing the voiceless

a friend of mine is starting a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project inquiring into an entreprenurial curriculum that has both enabled and disabled students in her classroom. From an email, she said:

I met with the students who are disabled, and we had a discussion on their feelings toward working with their counterparts who are not disabled. Then I explained to them that they were going to be participating in an action research study on building team cohesiveness.

I told them I would be recording their conversations throughout the research and using the video camera to record their interaction in groups. In addition, I informed the participants that the research would be available to the public; therefore, various teachers and organizations will have access to the study to improve their strategies in building team cohesiveness in their inclusionary classrooms. 

To my knowledge, no other researcher has focused on inclusionary entrepreneurship classrooms. I also know of no curriculum that is applicable for both students who are disabled and those who are not. As a result, this research will raise some interest in our community and throughout the world.

After I explained the action research to the students who are disabled, they were flabbergasted! Finally, our voices will be heard and others will see how we feel. Our discussion will lead with the following question: What difficulties do students who are disabled and those who are not face when working together?

The disabled students indicated that the students who are not disabled were judging and making fun of the students who are disabled. The students who are not disabled seem to enjoy “tormenting us,” one said, “and making us feel like we do not have anything to contribute or like our suggestions are frivolous and useless.”

The students who are not disabled have no idea how it feels to be disabled. They may not be able to imagine the daily challenges as well as negative stereotypes and other barriers students who are disabled face. One student who is disabled said, “ When I work in my group, the non-disabled students do not listen to my ideas. They just want to implement theirs.” She also explained how uncomfortable she feels working in groups with students who are not disabled. She told me, “I do not like depending on them. I have my own ideas and opinions, but it takes me longer to express what I have to say because of my medication and anxiety I have working with non-disabled students.”

Other students who are disabled echoed the same sentiment. They all seemed to agree that the students who are not disabled did not listen well when they offered ideas or suggestions. The students who are disabled perceived that the students who are not disabled tend to want to impatiently take over and rush through tasks. “They are not sensitive to our disabilities, so they get irate with us and twist our ideas,” one student explained.

Disabled students stated that they enjoyed working with their own peers of similar abilities because they understand one another and are more comfortable. However, the students who are disabled know that schools are moving toward integrated classrooms, and educational institutions are going to start enforcing integration. Therefore, the students who are disabled want to conquer their fears of working side by side with students who are not disabled. They want to challenge themselves to grow and gain more confidence in their abilities. N

evertheless, the students who are disabled still want students who are not disabled to understand how it feels to be disabled. If the students who are not disabled could switch places for one day with someone who is disabled, they would gain a deeper appreciation for the challenges that students who are disabled face on a regular basis. This study will be educational for both groups as they learn to appreciate the struggles and abilities of each group.

what a brave venture! I admire her tackliing such an emotion laden topic.

“giving voice to the voice-less “

i think an essential question for the enabled students might be: “What can (should?) non-disabled students learn from disabled students?” or “What gets in the way of you learning from your disabled peers?” the disabled students could be asked: “What if people don’t agree with your ideas after careful consideration?  What’s more important: to be agreed with or to be listened to?”

The world of complex problems needs people who dont rush to judgment, but rather, make the time to truly listen, and solicit the opinions, perspectives and voices of others, especially those who have traditionally not had a voice. at the same time we want to be able to judge ideas on their merits.

this occurred to me as i was thinking about the double-blind peer review process for the Academy of Management papers (i just received 2 to evaluate). makes me wonder what might result from an experiment where students evaluated suggestions from a mixed group of enabled & disabled students, without knowing who was the originator? talk about opening can of worms!

 it seems to me that we all want to be respected as members of the class/group/tribe/society, and that we want our ideas fairly and impartically judged, no pandering. that’s why orchestras audition behind curtains, so that only the music comes thru to be judged.

that might lead to an inquiry of “How do we demonstrate respect and integrity in our classrooms and in our life? How do we deal with our differences when we dont have a double-blind curtain to eliminate our bias? How do we see each other?”

The Handbook of Action Research chapter 39, has an exemplar on children of terminally ill parents getting the opportunity to tell their own story, in their own voice, in writing, on film and in person, which demonstrates the power of presentational knowledge (Chowns, 2008).

It was interesting how the AR researcher’s expectations changed as the experience went along; Her 1st person AR was to discover, reflect and journal about her own changes as a result of the project. It reminded me of what she isabout to embark on: giving voice to the voiceless, fearlessly.

Chowns, G. (2008). No- you don’t know how we feel. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds) The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. (pp 562-572). London, Sage Publications, Ltd.