Reflecting on Erich Fromm’s “To Have or To Be”

Erich Fromm is an influential social philosopher and prolific writer, whose life work offers a provocative synthesis of Western capitalism, Marxist humanism and socialist rational planning. He defines two modes of being: “to have” and ” to be”, and examines the characteristics and values of lives led in each mode with respect to materialism, politics, religion, spirituality, knowledge, love, sex, language and economics. He asserts that modern living is dominated by the “to have” mode and generalizes it as a soul-less and thoughtless pursuit of material things that disrespects the human soul, love of nature and fellow humans and leads to unsustainable pursuit of things which can lead to poverty, war and extinction.  Fromm discards the idea that either conventional Western capitalism or Soviet-style communism offer a way out of the darkness, since both systems remain entrenched in the “to have” mode of being.  He offers an escape from this bleak vision of the future, by suggesting that a shift to the “to be” mode of being will bring a change in perspective and behavior at the individual, family, tribe, state and national levels. He asserts this change can bring lives back into harmony with the needs of the human spirit and permit sustainable societies to emerge.His utopian vision of modern living blends the freedom, liberty and productive power of Western capitalism, the central planning and rationality of Soviet style communism, and the tempered and non-materialistic spiritual centeredness of Buddhism and European- style mystics like Meister Eckhart. A society organized along these lines could manifest as economically linked villages of perhaps 100 families. They would be voluntarily joined in support, satisfying the legitimate needs of healthy living through the free exchange of goods and services produced by craftsmen. As craftsmen, people would take pride in and develop a sense of identity through their careful, mindful work and whose stewardship of precious resources would be reflected in a sustainable, respectful partnership with nature and their fellow man. Appetites are suppressed to just those that are commonly and wisely thought to be legitimate. Common spiritual needs are valued and encouraged at each level of social organization. Language itself is amended to reflect the importance of creating “states of being” that reflect nurturing, loving spiritual lives, families, and communities. You will notice this description is full of passive voice, because it is never quite clear “who” will be taking the lead or being the instrument of action in a transformation on a species level. I will address this later in greater detail.

I admire the scope, depth and breadth of Fromm’s vision, and the passion he brought to his life work, and his commitment to living his principles, as seen through his direct engagement with the dominant issues of his day. He was a social philosopher who lived his words and put himself into the arena of ideas and actions to make a difference. He made a positive difference in the lives of millions and those who worked closely with him testify to his optimism, energy, and basic human goodness. Granting all of that, and acknowledging that I have changed my opinion of Fromm’s work after spending time in background research and reflection, I want to engage his work in two useful ways: through disinterested philosophical discourse, and through an abbreviated dialectical materialism: a method of argumentative inquiry that would have come naturally to a Marxist. I decided on this approach after Dr Armstrong asked what Fromm might have said in response to a couple of extended Moodle discussions that were critical of some of his positions.Constructivism is a world view that asserts we are active participants in the creation of our knowledge of the world, particularly in the human, social areas of our lives. There are two well-known forms of dialogue that have been instrumental in the development of social, political and economic knowledge: the disinterested philosophical discourse of ancient philosophers described so well by Hadot (2002) and the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx, which is a fusion of Hegel’s dialectics and Feuerbach’s materialism with roots that reach back to the ancient Greeks as well. (S.E.P, n.d.) (Mao, 1938)  

Hadot’s discussion of discourse is thorough. Discourse obliges you to set aside your own perspective,  to accept the other participant’s positions and truths, and to transcend disinterestedly to a new perspective which leads both to increased self knowledge, knowledge of the other, and to a new appreciation of the synthesis that is possible through a fusion of different opinions. There is a sense of philosophical cooperation and wisdom in play for true discourse. (Hadot, 2002)Marx’s dialectical materialism describes a dialogue between opposing views as a struggle between forces, with each committing passion and insight to argue a position. The initial argument is known as the thesis, the opposite view as the antithesis. Out of the tension of the vigorous exchange between thesis and antithesis, a broader, more comprehensive synthesis is created, which contains elements of both previous positions but which can be said to resolve the tension, encapsulate the essence of both, and  move on to a new and deeper understanding of the situation. As an example, Marx characterize the struggle between owners (thesis) and workers (antithesis) over the means of production as a dialectic which becomes resolved into a synthesis of communism, after the tension of class warfare has run its course and been resolved.

 I experienced both of these modes of dialogue and constructive knowledge in my readings of and reflections on Fromm’s work. The effect of the two different modes on my thinking has been instructive for me and serves to demonstrate the utility of both modes. I like the idea that they contribute both heat (the dialectic) and light (the discourse) to my own understanding of Fromm.

 Dialectic:

 The dialectic generated heat from my emotional reaction to my initial reading of Fromm, as I discovered deep seated and argumentative reactions to his assertions, conclusions, and matters offered in in evidence to support his claims. These responses have roots in my undergraduate days as a student of Asian history and political science in the 1970s when I did a lot of work in the historical events surrounding socialism and communism in Asia and Europe, while simultaneously experiencing and exploring non-Western cultural and religious responses to the challenges of defining and living the good life as seen by Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists.

 I read Fromm from that perspective: as a modern who sought to synthesize the ancient and modern thoughts of the good life and human nature with the tidal forces that were defining and shaping human culture through economics and political struggle. I understood his perspective and rationale for opting to follow the path of enlightened Marxism with its foundations in rationality and central planning, its concern for social justice, and his belief that freedom includes the ability to shape our destiny through choice and action, even if it means confronting and opposing what has been thought of as human nature combined with the power of tradition.

The heat came from the difference between his choices and my own, since I have chosen a different approach to understanding, framing and drawing policy conclusions from the same data set. My beliefs and values follow along the lines of valuing individual freedoms in the traditions of Payne and Locke, the political freedoms and limited government of Jefferson, the lack of central planning found in the tenets of laisse-faire capitalism, and the intellectual humility and disbelief in the perfectability of man epitomized by Twain. When the dialectical smoke had cleared though, I found room for Fromm and I to coexist:

Here are three samples of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis threads that I worked through in the dialectical tradition. In each case Fromm plays the role of thesis, as is his right as “first speaker” since we are using his text, not mine. They are representative of the more than 20 different annotated emotionally charged differences I discovered upon my first reading.

 a. Tennyson’s poem: Fromm’s thesis is that Tennyson’s speaker tore the flower from the ground to understand it, while the enlightened spirit became one with it as co-members of the scene. My antithesis is that it is a matter of interpretation as to whether Tennyson’s speaker killed the flower, since it could have carefully and mindfully been moved to a new place for examination and understanding without harming it. Indeed, later in the book, Fromm describes the wisdom of a Japanese gardener who transplants plants without harm to create beautiful, spiritual gardens. My synthesis is that while the passive appreciation of the flower in nature is groovy, it is the Western scientists’ inquiry which leads to new knowledge of the world around us, but that a science without humble mindfulness can easily lead to disaster for the race given the reach and consequences of modern technology.

 b. Human nature and central planning: Fromm’s thesis is that we can reshape our actions beliefs and destiny through the power of rational thought and disciplined action, and that we can design a universally applicable, better life for everyone. My antithesis is that man is in equal parts, a rational and emotional being; that there are limits to rationality and the persuasiveness of logic and reason; that life is too complex to be reduced to centrally planned, universal designs for the good life; and that the political realities of life do not permit simple transitions due to the nature of power.  My synthesis is that we can appeal through dialogue and discourse to the good that is in human nature, and aspire to an improved life for others, and that rugged individualism is not the ideal life for everyone either, despite its personal appeal to me.

 

c. Black and White classifications:  Fromm’s thesis is expressed in absolute terms, making mutually exclusive distinctions in almost every category he considers. Examples include his unqualified support for the success and goodness of the sexual revolution of the 1960s; the characterization of language itself as a conscious means whereby those in power create the meaning of individual words to further their materialistic agenda; that the choice of capitalism must inevitably lead to unbridled appetites for more and more until we exhaust the planet. He takes everything to its logical and often illogical extreme to dramatize the differences in the modes of beings and in the choices presented to people and nations. My antithesis is that there are checks and balances between your values, between members of your family, between friends, interest groups, communities, branches of government, and between nations themselves. Further, these checks and balances are adaptive and dynamic and that it is in the peaceful accommodations and adjustments we make that we have hope for a better future for all; that there are limits to how far a theory or model may be taken to explain phenomena; that there is a limit to the region of fit for any theory. My synthesis is that black and white characterizations can be useful to make dramatic statements that get your attention; that sometimes taking things to the logical extreme is a valuable way to demonstrate the very need for the compromise and discourse that I favor. Discourse:

            After declaring a week of truce for reflection and research, I engaged Fromm discursively. I researched his background, his other writings, and the testimony of friends and colleagues concerning his impact on their lives as a scholar and a person. I found that by conducting dispassionate research, I was able to transcend the heat of the dialectic, which actually helped me to complete the synthesis portion of each dialectic thread where I’d experienced an emotional reaction. The syntheses in the three example of dialectic above were only reached after a cooling off period of discourse, research and reflection.

             I found that the heat of the dialectic helped me raise the energy to conduct the research. Once engaged in research, my natural curiosity took over and carried me deeper than I would have gone if just motivated by a need to be right in some fanciful, contrived “argument” between Fromm and me. Fromm’s Germanic background reminded me of Hesse’s story of Magister Ludi and the Glass Bead Game, where a traditional game continued to be played long past the time when its origin, relevance and importance had been forgotten.

             I grew to respect for Fromm’s independent thinking, even as it caused him to depart over and over again from groups once friendly to his thinking, and where he could have remained and enjoyed the fruits of inclusion. He was a German Jew who left both Germany and the Jewish faith in search of a better life and a deeper spirituality. He was a trained psychologist and psychiatrist who left the confines of the Freudian, Rogerian and Jungian schools of thought to elaborate his own ideas of personality and psychological balance. He was a social philosopher who engaged in the practical worlds of politics and punditry by fighting peacefully against nuclear proliferation and  the Vietnam War , and in support of social justice. He was a prolific scholar, yet he wrote many popular books that made his ideas on the good life accessible to the masses. He was a systematic thinker, yet his ideas and concepts evolved through time as he reflected on his experience and the world around him. He was a good friend and a generous humble person by the accounts we have from his friends and co-workers.

 And so, I find in Fromm all the elements of the good life defined by Socrates and the ancients.  He is a man of passion, intellect, scholarship and good works, who lived an examined life, and who sought to apply his values in daily life.  If he and I disagree on certain aspects of how precisely to define the good life and how completely we might propose a design for a good life for all, surely the world is large enough for us to both live in it at the same peacefully and in mutual support.

In the course of thinking about this paper, the design of its concept and flow, the research I conducted, the Moodle discussions where I began to partially explore some of these ideas and in the actual writing this paper, I found the heat of dialectic and the light of discourse to be useful and enlightening. I think that the combination of both perspectives was more important that the exclusive use of either by itself would have been. To have applied just the dialectic would have resulted into an argumentative essay between Fromm and I, whereas a pure discursive paper, with the energy of passion, may have been a theoretical inquiry without the motivation to go beyond my own beliefs.

 In conclusion, I have enjoyed and learned from my engagement with the life  and works of Erich Fromm.

References:

 Currie, N. (2008). To Have or To Be.  frieze magazine: a leading magizine of contemporary art and culture.. Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.frieze.com/comment/article/to_have_or_to_be/

Daniels, V. (2003). Lecture notes on Erich Fromm.  Victor Daniels’ Website in The Psychology Department at Sonoma State University.  Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from   http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/frommnotes.html

Fromm, E. (1976). Fromm: To have or to be? New York: Continuum.

 Hadot, P. (2002). What is Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Infed editors. (n.d.) erich fromm: freedom and alienation, and loving and being, in education. infed: the encyclopedia of informal education.  Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.infed.org/thinkers/fromm.htm

 Maccoby, M. (1994). The Two Voices of Erich Fromm: The Prophetic and the Analytic. The Maccoby Group: Agents of Change. Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.maccoby.com/Articles/TwoVoices.shtml

  Mao, T. (1938). Dialectical materialism. Marxist Internet Archive. Retrieved Noc 17, 2009, from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_30.htm

 MGM830 Moodle entry authors. (2009). Assorted.  MGM830 Moodle discussions. Retrieved Nov 15, 2009, from http://www.instituteforadvancedstudies.net/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=26503

New World Encyclopedia editors. (n.d.) Fromm, Erich. New World Encyclopedia.  Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Erich_Fromm

 Pace, G. (1977). Erich Fromm Interview: To Have or To Be.  scribd. Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.scribd.com/doc/8895007/Erich-Fromm-Interview-To-Have-or-to-Be

 Raapana, N, & Friedrich, N. (2005). What is the Hegelian Dialectic?.    Crossroads: the Kjol Ministries. Retrieved Vov 15, 2009, from http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/05/dialectic.htm

 SparkNotes Editors. (n.d.). SparkNote on The Communist Manifesto. Retrieved November 17, 2009, from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/communist/

 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy editors. (2008). Karl Marx: Theses on Feuerbach. The Stanford Encyclopedia on Philosophy (SEP). Retrieved Nov 17, 2009, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#2.4

 

Reflections on critiquing the writing of others

Giving feedback about the paper is a way to show who you are and how much you care about the author.

Suppose, in your opinion,  the author has made a glaring error in logic or has not supported the thesis, or mischaracterized an opposing view, and because you are concerned about hurting their feelings, you don’t say anything.

How are you helping them? By letting their paper out into the world?

If you were right about the paper, and didn’t tell them, shame on you.

If you were wrong about the paper, that should emerge in the continued dialogue between professionals and now you have a chance to sharpen your own tool. You miss that chance if you don’t CRITIQUE THE PAPER, NOT THE PERSON.

If you comment on the paper without regard for the human who offered their vulnerability, their knowledge, their insights, THEMSELVES to you, try remembering to walk a mile in their shoes and ask yourself, before sending, have I been fair? have I been constructive? What is the tone of voice I used?

If you would say things anonymously about the paper in a double blind, but not to their face, that says more about you than about the paper you are critiquing.

Envision the paper as it leaves their hand and lands on a community table of knowledge for consideration. Focus on the paper on the table, not the person who offered it. The paper is not the person; restrict yourself to examining what has been offered. Don’t assume you know anything about their feelings or how they might take it. They have offered a piece of academic writing. Your duty is to evaluate it academically, while remembering there is a person on the other end, eventually.

The author has given us all a gift. Respect the gift by giving it your best critique: with support, with care, with your best work.  Respect the author for their gift and vulnerability. The critiques we offer are more important than anything we are likely to write on our own, and we will do a lot more of them than our own writing.

If you are an author, recognize the boundary between your Self and your paper. Be clear about what you are asking for when you offer it for review. If you want self-esteem more than honesty, you’ll get both, but not as you might want it.

A reflection on action research “storytelling”

What follows is a 1st person, stream of consciousness  reflection written to my mentor & committee chair.  

I describe  what it was like to record a 10 min video “telling the story” of  some preliminary findings emerging from my action research cycles into curriculum and adult learning. 

The video is hosted  at YouTube.

It will be shown at an international conference in Athens, as part of the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) annual conference, as part of a bundle of reports from the Future(s) of Education project, an international  participatory action research network.  

Dr Alana:  

i am just glad to get it out of my head  

i had a real out of body experience recording that one;  

i  am a very effective briefer in person, because i can read the audience pretty well.  

i have recorded hundreds of mini lectures etc for my business and for use here at the college on various topics.

i have never, ever needed more than a single take to record, decent and sometimes even inspired voice-overs  until  last night and that briefing.  

I literally needed about 30 takes to get thru it; most i stopped when less than a minute into it because the tone just didn’t feel right

 i think it has to do with being a fish out of water, and the difficulty i felt in trying to tune my story for an audience i couldn’t see, but more importantly didn’t have empathy for

because the audience characteristics still feel fuzzy to me, i couldn’t call up the right tone, voice, persona to apply  

 this caused me to have almost a split personality in the moment, when i am ordinarily dialed in

 i had a “talking part” and a “look ahead part” that is concerned with shaping the transition to the next point/slide  

but now i had a disconcerting 3rd part that was trying to anticipate the possible reactions of an unfamiliar, and hard to imagine audience  

this is what made me feel so out of sorts

 until i “wore out” the last, 3d part and was able to trust in just telling the story, and accepting the vulnerability of knowing that i couldn’t know the audience, i found i just couldn’t get thru it.  

this is the same phenomenon I spoke with Prof Mike Wesch, the digital anthropologist at Kansas State University, and world thought leader on social dynamics in social media: the camera eye represents the unlimited, unfathomable infinite future of all possible audiences across time and space who can be looking in on the “telling moment”.  

in a sense, its like coming face to face with the unblinking eye of God and wondering what she is thinking  

 it is trust that lets us get thru that moment, the accepting of vulnerability, that creates the empathy that hopefully fills the story, as told, with hope.  

that’s a clumsy way of trying to express my meaning of the risk and vulnerability to “telling” and why it can be such a powerful learning moment, and why we need to model it, embrace it, encourage it, and support it. 

Your “producer’s draft” was exactly what i needed to be able to get out of my own comfortable fishbowl; 

you gave me a bridge to the audience that i could not create on my own.  

this has become an interesting reflection to me already  

please put the video on the website, and any or all of this reflection as you deem suitable  

have a great time at the conference!

Reflecting on the source of qualitative judgement

Profitable ETF Trading techniques: Finding a quality Mastermind Trading Group

Finding a mastermind that’s right for you.

  In a previous article I described some of the ideal qualities of a Mastermind for traders and the reasons why the social connections and personal support are so important fr the lonely profession of trading. Maintaining emotional balance and energy are so important in this career.

How do you go about finding a Mastermind that fits you?

There are a number of different ways and what’s more important than how you find it is the sense of fit you get once you are in it. If your trading style is to focus closely on a small group of symbols, you may have some luck with going to a yahoo or MSN stock room to look for similarly interested traders who hang out in the discussion boards. You will be quickly able to determine who the genuine professional traders are. Chances are though, that the low signal to noise ratio of the discussion boards will chase away the dedicated traders. But, if you do find someone or some group of people genuinely focused on real trading, you can invite them to a discussion area or a Mastermind forum somewhere else where, by invitation only, quality traders can gather to refine their plans.

Most stock gurus (in the positive sense) will have discussion areas on their websites, which is nice, because you know that the members there will share a common approach to the markets, and may be able to help you reduce your learning curve, particularly if the forums have been there for a while and have some archives or help files to share.

There are a number of financial advice or traders websites where many different kinds of traders will generally gather to discuss a wide array of trading ideas, systems, books, websites and so forth. These will generally not be focused enough for you to materially improve your trading, although you may find some people who are kindred spirits and may be interested in sharing some collaborative space elsewhere to mutually support the groups trading styles.

Elite Trader or ETFconnect are typical of these kinds of sites, with Elite trader being very eclectic and ETFconnect having the added quality of being much more narrowly focused on Exchange Traded Funds.

Local investment clubs, library interest groups or members of a church with an interest in investing offer low risk ways of finding like minded individuals that may fit nicely with your age and personality type. The only downside may be that as interests diverge you may introduce an uncomfortable element into a close personal relationship.

If all else fails you will find many hits going through Google or yahoo searches, but you will have to sort through a lot of noise these days to find a good group of actual traders.

Far more important than where you find a community of like minded traders is the commitment you will make to each others’ professional development and emotional support, but it is true that you will have to start somewhere finding people who are also looking for a mastermind. A good mastermind will go a long way towards improving your individual performance as a trader, and so it is worth the effort at searching, finding and participating in it.

Reflections on Qualitative Research techniques: interviewing

Wow 1: Lofland and Lofland p.37.  “…It is precisely the “spy quality” of covert research in closed settings that raises questions about it propriety in social science”

 It strikes me that even if you take care to protect individuals by withholding their names, your results may end up introducing harm if the organization you are reporting to or for, takes actions to “get” the problem makers thru changes of policy.  These are the kinds of 2d and 3d order effects that you may end up subjecting subjects too even though you are hiding names and identifying features. I am thinking hard about the privacy rights of people in public places, wondering when the need to know and study outweighs the rights of privacy.

 

Lofland & Lofland, p.41 “…the ethical concerns engendered by covert research do not fully disappear with the decision to be a known investigator, but are merely muted….” 

I think that because they are muted, and therefore more easily overlooked, they are all the more important. It’s not enough to announce once at the beginning; you almost need to have visible “nametag” to remind people of your role, and your dual role if you are researching inside your own organization where you have other usual, normal roles in play. Its like you have to remember to keep reading people their rights, not just the first time, but in each session. 

Lofland and Lofland, Ch 3 Notes: 

Key takeaways:

1. Ethics of power relationships in the roles between investigator and subject. I am attracted to AR precisely because of the equality that is possible when subjects are acting as co-researchers.
2. Relationship characteristics drive ethical and power issues,
3. The ethical status of covert research: and 3 types; deceit by omission is crucial concept
   1. Public research at a distance:
   2. Quasi private: a good discussion of the effect of intent vs results that informs the ethics of being a hidden researcher. The example of the opportunistic researcher in the factory, conducting a study because he is already there to earn tuition vs that of the deliberate hidden researcher is instructive.
   3. Private; norm-fitting behavior that serves to “fit in” and simply to be a member of good standing take on an ethical quality of legitimizing the group norms simply to be able to study.  Has a moral quality to the decision.
4. Good section on ethic resources on page 39
5. Known investigator: sacrifices anonymity for public acknowledgement, at the risk of studying inauthentic behaviors.
6. The importance of social group connections and navigation to assist you in gaining access to key people, events and decision-making. If you have gained social trust you may be entrusted with insights into what are normally private considerations by groups and people.
7. Candid, brief, direct accounts of your research, with a view to explaining simply “why” they should participate, an explanation that avoids a dissertation of an answer.
8. Adopting a “learner” attitude is smart and often productive; should avoid “gaming” or being smug about it though.
9. The issue of respecting boundaries of the subjects and organizations being studied.  Can present some moral decisions of course.  A decision to halt the research because of behaviors you observe that you cannot tolerate will run into the ethical dilemma of non-disclosure that you may have negotiated initially.  The priest’s or lawyers dilemma ethics apply here.
10. Confidentiality issues are central when we are looking for transformational behavior changes. The Vidich case study is a good discussion of these implications on page 51.
11. have to learn to anticipate the kinds of findings that might put you into these decision spaces prior to negotiating for confidentiality and boundary agreements.

 Rubin & Rubin Ch6 Notes: The Responsive Interview as an Extended Conversation

1.      The differences between ordinary conversations and  responsive interviews:

     a.      Continuity over time

     b.      Focused thematic  attention

     c.       Explicit clarification of meaning and intent (spend more time in interviews making the tacit explicit than is usually the case in conversation)

     d.      Difference in purpose between narratives (construct of what happened) and stories (themed to make a point or represent a point of view)

2.      The interview is guided towards the purpose of the researcher; I would agree if you already have a specific informational goal in mid, but how much does this become confirming your own bias and not being open to where the story wants to go needs to go?  Is there a problem with confirmation bias in that observation from p.110?

3.      Guiding away from formal answers through artful question design, although you do have at least a semi formal relationship at work as a researcher. Is this disingenuous?

4.      I like the metaphor as a series of linked stages to structure the interview

5.      The formulas for establishing rapport are at the same time helpful advice, but ironic in that they are rules for being spontaneous and “real”

6.      Easy questions, tough questions, concluding questions, with management of emotional states, and ending with open ended contact options

7.      Good discussion of evaluating the interview as a way to study your own process as well as examining the data itself.  Could have had more advice on how to rehearse the interview ahead of time and having a purpose statement to keep you focused during the process. Ie, “What I must get from this interview is….” 

Lofland, J., David, S., Anderson, L., Lofland, L. (2006). Analyzing Social Settings A guide to qualitative observation and analysis (Fourth ed.). Belmont, Ca: Thomson.

Rubin, H., Rubin, I. (2005). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data (Second ed.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. 

How we read is who we are

 

There have been some blog discussions expressing concerns about the either/or problem of academic writing vs blog writing, about how the digitial age is driving us from being a Community of Practice towards communities of interest, inhabiting what Mr Carr (below) describes as “The Shallows”. See this important discussion at: http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/BLOG/blogs/llop/archive/2009/03/03/an-appeal-to-cgsg-students-study-your-doctrine.aspx

Peter Morville offers sobering cautions concering how the act of search changes who you become in the digital age in his excellent book; “Ambient Findability” http://www.amazon.com/Ambient-Findability-What-Changes-Become/dp/0596007655. 

Morville’s idea is that you search for information in order to makeimportant decisions which shapes your world and who you are.  How and where you search them is cucial to shaping the future decisions and person you will become. Taking this idea to the extreme, you could wonder then about the importance to the human race of the particular ranking algorithm that Google uses (or by extension, any/all of the major search providers). If Google is the authority on what response you get from searching, and you then act on that information as if it represents a true reflection of the state of knowledge on the topic of interest, we have a compelling social and human interest in what lies under the hood. The craft of search engine optimization then takes on a whole new moral dimension. If most people act on information found on the first page of returns from a google search, AND you can pay for placement of your site in the google rankings, how are countless social judgments being shaped by something other than a committment to the highest forms of Truth and scholarship?

The very proliferation of information (only some of which can be charitably called knowledge) creates a requiremnt for new cognitive skills to navigate the ocean of informationa nd mis-information and places a higher value on critical reasoning and skeptical inquiry than ever before. It almost drives us to the wider but shallower journeys through literature and media just to ensure that what we have discovered through search has the qualities of completeness and representative sampling of thoughts on a topic. I know that this drives me to search widely and then only to selective depths based on my information needs of the moment on a particular project.

Here are a couple links to some additional, ebtter ideas on this subject: From the article  in The Atlantic “Is Google Making Us Stupid?“ 

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged

And then more from the same author in an excellent follow-on interview:

 

Cooper: You’ve quoted Richard Foreman, author of the play The Gods Are Pounding My Head, who says we are turning into “pancake people.”

Carr: We used to have an intellectual ideal that we could contain within ourselves the whole of civilization. It was very much an ideal — none of us actually fulfilled it — but there was this sense that, through wide reading and study, you could have a depth of knowledge and could make unique intellectual connections among the pieces of information stored within your memory. Foreman suggests that we might be replacing that model — for both intelligence and culture — with a much more superficial relationship to information in which the connections are made outside of our own minds through search engines and hyperlinks. We’ll become “pancake people,” with wide access to information but no intellectual depth, because there’s little need to contain information within our heads when it’s so easy to find with a mouse click or two.

I see this same phenomenon  in my own reading, largely propelled by my focused readings for a doctoral research program, but also based on a need to be widely aware, as a way of marking the locationof depth-knowledge should i need to return for more data and deeper insights. I too haven’t read a long novel cover to cover in the way i used to immerse myself. 

 

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.”

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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
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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.

Asking good questions vs :”knowing where you want to go” in participatory action research (PAR)

In the very beginning of a PAR (participatory action research) project, I would draw a distinction between asking good questions and “knowing where you want to go”.  Going into the PAR with a preconceived notion of a certain outcome or of a preferred method of proceeding, particularly as a researcher, can lead to advocacy. It may conflict with statements to the participants that they have ownership of the process and outcomes.

I find it very hard in my organization (an Army college) to bite my tongue when I already think I know the problem and solution in an AR inquiry.  I have to force myself to journal my position and insights, and let the group find their own way and only near the end, if at all, offer my own opinion. It’s kind of a new role for me but one that has been already paying dividends in the projects I have already undertaken (related to selection and design of curriculum)

It is normal for outside consultants to come in to an organization with expertise and a method, to diagnose, and thent o offer a solution, and leave. The organization’s members would feel like “objects of study” rather than the co-researchers, which is an ideal value of all AR, and especially PAR.

Hopefully the group can generate its own ideas of problem scoping statements,  the values and procedures the group will follow in the research, and the measures of performance and that these will arise from the research and reflection they conduct.

In my own studies of “wicked problems” PAR seems to be a suitable approachm because wicked problems cannot even be defined until a tentative solution has been offered (it’s like working backwards to the problem statement). Now, not every problem in PAR is going to be a wicked problem, but the idea of being open to discovery and letting the group participants sort it out seems essential.