A reflection on charismatic leadership

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I am naturally skeptical about charismatic leaders, but I have seen its power in action.

Just before GEN Petraeus left our college to take command in Iraq he gathered faculty and students in our large auditorium, which seats 2500.

He spoke in a very relaxed manner, hardly the tone you might expect for a guy getting ready to take on the most politically sensitive mission around, one frought with peril, and which could go wrong in a thousand different, easily imaginable ways

It was surprisingly intimate moment, as he spoke humorously with and about his aide de camp and some of the other majors in his morning running group

he spoke frankly about the challenges ahead and the values we were going to use to see our way thru the fog and danger.

after about 10 minutes there was a palpable feeling that we were in good hands at the top and that we were going to prevail, and that if there a way thru the forest we were going to find it

it was the opposite of demagoguery, yet charismatic in its own way in that it was authentic, and appropriate and somehow “fit” who we all were at that moment in time

So, I am intrigued by charisma, where it comes from, how it works, why it works, and all that jazz

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Reflecting on self-directed leadership in a military college environment (an action research approach)

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The purpose of this assignment is reflect upon my learning through this course and to describe what I am doing to provide for the development of leadership capabilities in those who look to me for direction and guidance. My professional work centers on preparing Army organizational leaders for a world of complexity and uncertainty, and specifically in designing a teachable curriculum that satisfies both the accreditation system and the needs of individual students and faculty. As a result of many cycles of action research involving a variety of stakeholders, I have been designing curriculum that seeks to maximize the opportunities for student and faculty Voice in all phases of the classroom experience, including: design, preparation, delivery, assessment and follow-through. Because the strategy represents a significant shift from the traditional methodology, I am finding many leadership challenges and opportunities throughout the program. I will explore a number of important themes and strategies in this paper.

Chaos and complexity theory point towards a need for multiple points of view and an accommodating culture and practice in order to account for uncertainty in the world. Leaders set the stage for an organization that seeks to thrive under these conditions and therefore become primary leverage points in setting the conditions for success. Because our students are not objects at a distance,  not third-party objects of study but rather thinking, feeling human beings with insights and experiences and discretion, we have shifted our design team composition to include routinely groups of students in the form of focus groups and co-researchers in the action research tradition. Incorporating students in the design of lessons that will be taught that academic year represents a paradigm shift.

I am shifting our feedback system to incorporate more qualitative assessments from both faculty and students. This is a departure from our standard practice of relying exclusively on quantitative instruments. Our new feedback system for programmatic assessment is much more from the mixed methods tradition, which seems to me to be central in going forward in our efforts to understand and appreciate complexity. My intent is that the mixed methods approaches in the classroom will expose students and faculty to this methodology as a way to prepare them with a useful tool beyond the boundaries of the college environment.

I am systematically pursuing outreach and connections with faculty and curriculum designers from other teaching departments  in order to establish a network-centric approach to integrated curriculum design. This is taking the form of a leaderless, self-directed workgroup, with group norms and processes emerging to take the place of formal assigned individual hierarchical leadership. This self-directed work group presents recommendations of consensus to the traditional leadership of the College and is proving to be more and more influential with each successful project.

Because collaborative and adaptive leadership represents a shift in the cultural and operational perspective of the college, students and faculty, it is necessary to build up a resource and reference base that can be used to justify and support our inquiries. We are building a set of wiki’s and blogs that are interactive in order to prepare for our new lineup of lessons, to support collaborative learning inside the lessons dynamically, to document the results of our in class inquiry and to expand the knowledge base both for future lessons and for the field force in general. There is evidence to show that our students and faculty are getting the hang of this technique. This is reshaping the way we approach lesson preparation and our resource base and it is carrying over into our distance learning and remote site teaching strategy. Remote site teachers now have access to our growing experience base on the wiki and blog and can use that in their classroom for air where they do not possess personal experience and expertise.

Finally, I am working with interested others in formalizing our new approaches into college policy and SOP in order to lock in our games in the college’s infrastructure. Without these changes, initiatives are only as enduring as the energy of the interested parties. By incorporating them into our explicit rules and policies, we can institutionalize changes and ratchet our way towards success.

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A reflection on Hunt’s “Leadership: A new synthesis” (1996)

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remember that Hunt is writing his synthesis in 1996, and he comes from the leadership discipline, not education or cognitive neuroscience. He is good when it comes to synthesizing existing literature, but his excursions into the future of “what-if” are not very convincing.

There has been a lot of important work done on the very issues of rationality vs intuition, on (control & prediction) vs (emergence & adaptation), but it hasnt come from the land of leadership.

I have been doing a ton of research in this area, and in fact the limitations of rationality, and the implications for leaders, leadership skills, organizations and culture, strategic planning and operational execution are precisely the reason i started this program.

my mission is to figure out what leaders need to know, be, and do to manage problems & opportunities outside of the bounds of rationality and convention, and then design and deliver a teachable curriculum that prepares students and faculty for fuzzy situations and coalitions. where goals, cultures, standards, criteria, resources, time horizons are much closer to chaos than order, and with no interest among the stakeholders to move away from the apparent chaos.

I take Heifetz as representative of the state of leadership which has apparently spent the last 2 decades trying to micro-refine the individual models of leadership, and which in my opinion have been left behind by the nature of the challenges for organizations. Even seen as a consultants handbook, Heifetz is comfortably situated inside conventional, stable organizations trying to tweak their way to success.

Back to your point.

The rationality vs intuition debate is best developed from the world of decision-making and cognition. The essential and representative authors to read are Gerd Gigerenzer & Gary Klein, on intuition and heuristic decisionmaking. William Poundstone’s “Labyrinths of Reason” is an excellent introduction to the limitations of rationality. James March on decision-making systems is foundational. Mintzberg is pretty good on recognizing the implications Tversky & Kahneman’s Nobel prize winning work on cognitive biases and behavioral finance is the top level theory basis (spanning 40 years), and all of these guys connect back to the incomparable Herb Simon’s bounded rationality from the 1940s, and which still is some of the best writing and thinking in this area.

The most promising area of current research is found in the fields of emergence, chaos and complexity theory (including complex adaptive systems) but there are miles to go to connect these ideas to the leadership disciplines

So, i think Hunt was intuiting that something else was needed, but hadn’t connected to that body of work.

There is another whole discipline that’s waiting to be incorporated: education, especially adult education, and that’s where i seem to be centered: in the preparation of leaders for these new demands/considerations, while satisfying the constraints of an accreditation system which values certainty, objectivity and standardization.

it seems to me that education lags about 20-25 years behind the cutting edge, as accreditation’s fascination with certainty, objectivity and standardization reflects what was thought to be essential in business and commerce 2 decades ago. So education is just discovering that which the rest of the world is abandoning (or at least moving well beyond)

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A reflection on leading and managing a complex Participatory Action Research curriculum project

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1. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to examine my current leadership skills. I will describe and reflect upon a recent curriculum project that I was in charge of at the US Army command and Gen. staff College. I will use a lens of the Bolman and Deal four Frameworks to evaluate my leadership skills in each frame and look for opportunities to extend my skill set in each (Bolman and Deal, 2008). Since my project is continuing  into a second year, I will use this paper to prioritize and guide my professional development.

2. Description of the Situation

The U.S. Army Command and General  Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas is the centerpiece of the Army leadership development focusing on field grade level, organizational leaders. The year-long course is divided into approximately equal thirds. The first third is the core curriculum received by all Army majors and focuses on critical and creative thinking, leadership, history, change management and basic organizational level doctrine. The middle third, known as the Advanced Operations Course (AOC), is focused on 1500 resident officers whose career path will take them back into tactical field units in leadership positions. The final third is an elective period where students can meet their own particular educational needs based on interest and follow-on assignments.

This past year ,the middle third of the course underwent an extensive redesign and reengineering process which represents the largest single change to the curriculum since its current form was originally implemented five years ago. I was responsible for approximately 1/3 of the redesign program which focused on the addition of new material concerning the largest educational gap in the Army as identified by senior Army leaders, field unit commanders, faculty and students. I received a set of ambitious and broad design principles from the college’s senior leaders and assembled a team of students, faculty, curriculum designers, and recruited experts from Army proponent organizations in order to create a teachable block of instruction that addressed the identified gaps

3. Desired outcome for the situation:

We defined two dimensions for our endstate: organizational outcomes for the college, and curriculum outcomes to address the educational gap.  Our participatory action research design team, consisting of curriculum developers, faculty and students identified the top six desired organizational outcomes, as follows:

1. Produce a quality staff recommendation for AOC force generation  curriculum and an elective for “spillover” material
2. Produce an  interdepartmental “application- level “curriculum fully integrated through the AOC Working Group process
3. Employ an inquiry- based research process that models the principles of group-learning in real time, which can serve as an example for other inquiries in important topics
4. Establish an infrastructure that supports student learning while in attendance, and after graduation as a reachback
5. Create a knowledge base that focuses on support of our student and faculty population, and which synthesizes quality research & knowledge from Army staff and support organizations
6. Document the staff process that will support our ongoing accreditation and scholarship standards

Our desired student curriculum outcomes were:

1. Students applied the Army process map to build ready forces
2. Students are aware of concepts, challenges, and best practices
3. Students and faculty contribute to the growing body of professional knowledge
4. Students use a team oriented approach
5. College provides a reach back capability for graduates to stay current
6. Curriculum establishes linkage to lessons  in the Core  and Parallels
7. Create opportunities in electives for deeper inquiry

4.  The Bolman and Deal Four Frameworks summary: Bolman and Deal created a four framework approach to leadership situations, which enable change agents to systematically view multiple approaches to an issue. Here is a summary of the four frames and a characterization of  leaders  (Clark, 2004)

a. Structural frame: emphasizes creativity and seeks to establish clear goals and roles and coordinated activity established by authority policies and rules. The structural leader is a social architect whose leadership style is analysis and design.

b. Human resource frame: focuses on the needs and motives of individuals who live and work in social systems, and considers opportunities for participation and shared decision-making as a way to enlist commitment and involvement. The human resource leader is a catalyst and servant who looks to support advocate and empower.

c. Political frame: based on negotiated collaborative political structures aiming to find trade-offs for scarce resources, and emphasizes conflict resolution and balancing interests. Political leaders are advocates who seek coalition building and the distribution and balancing of power and interests.

d. Symbolic frame: focuses on culture, meaning, believes in faith by examining and supporting since making through symbols, metaphors, stories and other narratives. The symbolic leader is a prophet who seeks to inspire through multimedia communication and visioning.

5. Skills used:

a. Structural frame: bureaucratic structure and existing policy were important parts of my leadership strategy as I sought to leverage existing infrastructure. For changes to remain permanent and meaningful, it was clear to me that our design group had to create  infrastructure changes. In many cases this involves a carryover into the political frame as we considered how to build coalitions to gain approval for our structural changes. As much as possible we tried to make our recommendations fit within the existing formats of college policy in order to ensure we did not jeopardize our accreditation, which is an important value for the college.

b. Human resource frame: from the beginning of the program design sessions, I made sure that we kept our discussions centered on students and their educational needs and outcomes by emphasizing the concept of  student Voice. After the first meeting, it was clear that we also needed to incorporate faculty Voice in order to accommodate a variety of educational methods which in existing policy was difficult because of the needs for a standardized curriculum for accreditation. This proved to be a very difficult set of values to sustain throughout the design process because the natural tendencies of developers and faculty were to revert to traditional methods with which they were comfortable. Having students as members of the design and development teams, however, ensured that this remained visible throughout the process.

c. Political frame: this turned out to be a crucial component of the entire process. Because of initial successes with our wiki and blog, and the early incorporation of Army-staff level action officers, we got a lot more senior leadership attention than I expected. This made the project a high-stakes payoff and it quickly became an area where competing values emerged as teaching departments lobbied for time and resources to reflect their goals. At the same time, when we used a political process to negotiate the structure and content of the curriculum, there were many faculty who considered it business as usual. My opinion was that only a political process would allow us to integrate the multiple perspectives. I could have chosen to have our directorate’s position dominate the proceedings but it was clear to me that an integrated curriculum was necessary for the students. This was a position that students also shared, which helped me carry the day.

d. Symbolic frame: throughout the project I tried to emphasize the importance of the top down and bottom’s up gap analysis which pointed to this set of curriculum topics as being of central importance to the Army. By connecting the purpose to the bottom’s up and top-down vision to establish its relevance and create the energy to see us through the change. I created top-level vision diagrams in order to highlight in a visual way the broad outlines of the program and used very visible blog postings to maintain progress reports for the population at large. The senior leader in the college, the Deputy Commandant, was an important source of symbolic strength as he had committed fully to our vision and endstate.

6. Skills that could have been used:

a. Structural frame: I could have emphasized more interim written reports to lock-in procedures and SOP changes during the year-long program, instead of waiting for the conclusion to make permanent infrastructure changes. I wasn’t aggressive enough in incorporating administrative managers from the higher headquarters in our process in order to enlist them in our change program. I should have offloaded more technical work to others in order to maintain my focus on the creative and guidance processes. I could have used more faculty from different departments in building the interdepartmental curriculum .

b. Human resource frame: I should have committed more group resources to the faculty development program once we had completed the design and production of the new curriculum. I expected that the lesson plans could stand on their own and being trained in the usual way, and I was surprised at the amount of pushback. I should not have been surprised, however, knowing my peers, and more resources in this area would’ve been helpful. I could have used more student and faculty Voice in telling the story of our change program, instead of using my own personal blog and wiki reports; this would have placed the ownership for our program more in the hands of students and faculty and less in our group. I could have spent more resources on providing timely feedback to students and faculty based on their design inputs, as I’m not sure I did enough in that area to satisfy them. I could have emphasized more of the value of flexibility in our central design; we had a lot compared to our traditional methods, but I don’t think I emphasized enough what we had achieved. I should have put more effort into rubrics and examples from different faculty members of the design team in order to demonstrate our commitment to flexibility in the classroom.

c. Political frame: because I enjoy the political dimension of this program, I was too willing to frame this as individual or group winning and losing compared to the status quo; I should have put more focus on strategy and tactics and cooperative solution finding than in winning and losing. I should have planned for more interim rewards for cooperative and supportive behavior both for members of my team and from among the faculty that voluntarily supported the effort. I should have spent more energy on changing the mindset of the “warring state” to one of the cooperative tribe with respect to integrating departmental issues; the “warring states” is the default orientation of most interdepartmental programs for proposed change. I should have created a central interdepartmental design team in the form of an alliance to maintain momentum across the college. I could have spent more energy incorporating team members from other military colleges above and below us in the hierarchy in order to create a continuous wave of change.

d. Symbolic frame: I could have used more of our inside group-produced artifacts in the lesson plans themselves in order to improve the acceptance of the new lesson plans. I could have made better use of our wiki and blog sites to support collaborative design and collaborative teaching in the classroom. I should have used more strategic communications avenues and media to bring students on board with the program for change before we went into execution. I could have used more partnership programs with field units to demonstrate the relevance of our material to the students follow on assignments.

7. Lessons learned: I found this reflective exercise to be very useful in generating insights for me. Here are my ten most important takeaways.

a. In an interdepartmental, complex process it’s important to publish everything with transparency and trust everybody.

b. It’s not enough to ask for feedback from customers or in this case students and faculty, it’s important to engage in multi-loop dialogue and demonstrate a willingness to adapt to their requirements.

c. Tell the story at every opportunity to everyone that you can find, because the accumulation of small strategic communications events all add up to strategic success in the long run.

d. Leave no stone unturned in enlisting support even if you don’t think you need it or you think you have more than enough. There will come a time of surprise when you need every extra resource and it will be too late then to try to find them.

e. Reinforce the main effort in every action, even if it is only a supporting or shaping effort. Because resources are limited, everything must support the endstate.

f. Aggressively look for connections between departments, teams, resources, opportunities; in a network environment you never know where the next connection will come from that can make the difference between success and failure.

g. The moments of positive emotion and inspiration must be followed and supported by long periods of preparation and perspiration.

h. Question the boundaries that seemed reasonable early in the design, because you may find that your initial efforts have changed the game.

i. Reinforce the essential partnerships between key stakeholders in order to define success as group success.

j. Be open to unexpected opportunities to achieve unplanned successes. This is an extension of the idea of looking for connections. Sometimes the moment will show you unexpected treasures if you’re open to picking them up and making them yours.

REFERENCES

Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (2008).Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice and leadership. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

Clark, D. R. (2004), Bolman and Deal’s Four Framework Approach.  Retrieved March 7, 2010

from http://nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/ahold/isd.html

Representative Army capstone documents defining the requirements for new concepts in leadership.

TRADOC, (2009). A leader development strategy for a 21^st century Army.

TRADOC Pam 525-5-500. (2008).  Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design.

Army Regulation 6-22 (2008): Army Leadership

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making your own way, following your dream

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/jobs/13boss.html?fta=y another story of brave women in business, making their own way, on their own terms. very cool, and…math! inspiring advice i’ve shared with my daughters

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“I am the President: you MUST trust me” Newspeak anyone?

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RealClear Politics highlights an obvious issue; obvious unless you are a journalist or a true believer in government in general or Obama specifically:

Would President Obama and the Democrats‘ legislation allow government to come between citizens and their choice of doctors and insurers? Obama promised it wouldn’t. Republicans said it would, and this was one of the aspects of the legislation that led them to characterize it as a government takeover of health care – the same characterization that Obama chastized the GOP for today.

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Haiti and the little red hen

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there are some countries that are complaining about the motives that the impute to the US with respect to the military forces engaged in relief operations in Haiti. Most of those countries are not in a position to provide significant humanitarian relief to the area in that they are quite confident in denigrating the US efforts.  No one likes the US, no one is in favor of our rampant consumerism, and no one would do it exactly the way we do it. Nevertheless, we are there with overwhelming support of a humanitarian nature with as much security as seem sensible and we can fully expect to be underappreciated except by the people whom we are supporting. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

We are still in capable of gaining the strategic communications message environment to our damage. I suppose it comes from a natural dislike for spin and nuance and a preference for direct action. I don’t know that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Thanks, France

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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

 

Reflecting on the ancient philosophers and their practice

Hadot’s thesis is that the ancient Greek philosophers understood philosophy to be a love of wisdom, He placed philosophers in a state of conscious striving, between the already realized perfect wisdom of the gods and the masses of unconscious humankind, unaware or unconcerned with arête (excellence). He examined how four schools and two refinements answered the three common elements of philosophical inquiry: physics, ethics and logic. Based on fundamental assumptions, rooted in values, each discipline defined the Good Life for their practitioners. The physics described the nature of reality, cause and effect, and situated man properly within the world. The ethics described the proper treatment of one’s fellow man. The logic provided a discursive structure of context, concepts and rules for dialogue. Hadot convincingly demonstrates how the six disciplines shared two incommensurable perspectives: (1) that of philosophy-in-action, as a life lived, and (2) the philosophical discourse that critically analyzed the context, concepts and claims of the discipline’s tenets. After tracing how these two perspectives diverged in modern philosophy, Hadot argues that the ancients integrated them to understand and live the Good Life. I argue that this is as valid and important today. I adopt both perspectives to link personal reflections, Moodle discussions and my applications of these insights in my own life as an exercise of the ancient philosophers’ ask?sis (exercise) (Griffin, 2009, p.2). Reflection: The practice of applied philosophical discourse. The observation: Hadot says “ a dialogue is possible only if the interlocutors want to dialogue” (p.63). He describes the essential characteristics of a specifically philosophical discourse: neither imposes his truth on the other, but seeks rather to discover and understand himself through disinterested transcendence of personal perspective. My reflection: the spirit of the philosophical discourse requires values of mutual trust and vulnerability; integrity in representing our position; humility and restraint in order to appreciate your partner’s position; critical thinking skills that deconstruct, analyze and synthesize the essential elements of the argument, and a respect for the nature of inquiry; the maturity to separate your Self from the argument that has been offered for examination. Our discussion board: I offered a discursive opportunity on the subject of a sage who asserted that Silence is an appropriate technique when encountering critics. I proposed that this was the opposite of wisdom, arguing that it allows you to access wisdom of your own making, does not engage in open dialogue with respected others, and rejects the possibility of shared insights and mutual construction of new knowledge. I felt very disappointed that my offer to dialogue was not accepted but I publicly respected the decision. I also have observed another student’s best passionate efforts to push discourse to the forefront, often generating more heat than light, but with more success than I expected. It has become much clearer to me how important Hadot’s prescriptions for successful, responsible discourse are. It is a special form of discussion, whose nature must be explicit and intentional for both parties in order to engage fruitfully, since it approaches values and emotions that are at our very heart and soul. My applications: I am developing formal materials to improve the critical thinking and discursive skills in our college, motivated by student interest and their assessed skill level in argumentation. I’ve helped develop the argumentative essay rubric I shared with group. I discovered convincing research demonstrating how “argument mapping” improves critical thinking skills. Its educational efficacy is so demonstrably superior to traditional means that I have started a campaign to discuss making major modifications to our core curriculum. Creating a rubric is discursive; using it is the practical application, thus closing Hadot’s loop. My latest late night father-son discussions include the ingredients of discourse, particularly the respect for the Other and self knowledge through transcendence. In fact, the outline of this paper’s arguments emerged from the hot tub during one such heated discussion on the nature of Creationist “science”. My son was conflating positions on Creationist claims as science, with worth as human beings to society. Hadot helped me describe a reframing that he was able to see and accept without sacrificing his personal beliefs. I critiqued Strunk & White’s formulaic advice in our first paper, and then disinterestedly applied their formulas to my critique, which measurably improved. This paper is better after re-writing. Writing is thinking, and thinking is hard. Transcending my own initial position has been fruitful and refreshing. I am better able to improve my positions without regret for revising my statements. I expressed my frustration in the lack of discourse in Moodle with the professor, who guided me to think of ways to meet my needs in other ways. This has led me to continue to provide connections of our material to Chinese philosophical traditions (Confucius and the Legalists), insights from the Mahabharata (the epic story of Yudisthira’s principled rejection of Heaven) and the analogy of Hesse’s Glass Bead game in Magister Ludi as an example of discourse for discourse’s sake. I have been trying to improve the quality of my small group feedback, and taking on some essay critiquing outside of my small group. Brief summaries of other reflections and applications. I continue to grow in respect for the courage of my peers to push past their own boundaries. In particular, Mel is working hard on channeling her passion in new and constructive ways, reaching out to other cohorts to engage in discourse even when it’s not popular. That she can do this while double loaded with classes and in China is remarkable. Tamara continues to read deeply and express insights clearly and personally. Reviewing her comments about askesis made me think more deeply about that topic, which led me to this paper’s theme. Andy and Negar each are pressing on through the fog of finding researchable questions while pondering what can seem to be so abstract on the surface: ancient philosophy. I admire that they are asking for more and deeper critiques even when their plate is full. Hadot’s treatment of the bifocal nature of meditation was a nice way for me to reconnect and synthesize my own experience of sitting meditation which in turn can be inwardly focused on your core being, and outwardly expanding in search of reconnecting with the unity of all things. His review of the various ancient Greek traditions and how this practice fits into a larger set of exercises was elegant. The deep review of the six disciplines allowed me to reconnect their tenets with times and places in my life where I had been trying on all of their styles for fit. I have been at various times Socratic, Platonic, Aristotelian, Epicurean, Skeptic, Cynic, with an increasing predominance of Stoic throughout my military career. I sense a return of the Epicurean on occasion, as I follow my bliss more often these days with this program and with youth soccer. I think Hadot, and this review of the principles of “principled discourse” will enable me to engage with both Fromm and Kuhn, about whom I have had well-developed positions, which I am now prepared to transcend to see what I may see. Conclusion: Hadot reconciles the opposing views of philosophy as a guide to living and philosophy as an analytical inquiry into conceptual systems by showing how the ancient philosophers respected both of these incommensurable positions while integrating them in their thoughts and deeds. What comes through most importantly for me is Socrates’ notion that the unexamined life is not worth living, integrating with the idea that critical thinking without practice are words games. Griffin, T. (2009). Ancient Philosophers, paper 2, MGM830, Colorado Tech. Hadot, P. (2002). What is Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press.

Ken - Engaging in dialogue is definitely not easy and one’s desire to do so in a meaningful and thoughtful way is not always accepted. I imagine that there were times at the beginning of philosophy before philosophy that sophists perhaps attempted to create dialogue and they were left standing alone. However, do you think that as we continue to genuinely give of ourself, there is a requisite return of others or is it by luck that we find others who are willing to engage. In other words, does our repeated genuine attempts cause others to participate, or do we just have to get lucky that someone who is of the same dialectic bent ends up in our area of town? Mel

i think of discourse as living in a marketplace, of buyers and sellers. It is voluntary, both are seeking value for their resources. Each needs to have something to offer, each is in need of something new, and there must be an agreement for exchange under certain mutually acceptable conditions, and you know ahead of time specifically what you want. It’s a varied and diverse market of many interests, and the degree of overlap is probably somewhat less than that of a vegetable market, which has known commodities whose qualities are readily apparent. We are often in the position in the discourse marketplace of not knowing yet what we have or what we need, other than perhaps a desire to engage. We have trust that the discourse may lead us somewhere profitable and perhaps beautiful, at the risk of fatigue, lost time, diversion, frustration, vulnerability. Being human, there is a desire perhaps for comfort and affirmation in our dialogues, which may outweigh the risk/reward of true discourse, which opens us up to scrutiny and uncertainty. If we cannot separate our nascent ideas from our Self, we are constantly at risk of ego loss and reputation loss, embarassment/shame. Part of what may attract us to a particular discursive space is our experience with its inhabitants , our would be partners, its reputation, its tendency to meet all our human and inquiry needs. Probably cant force it without the kind of outside pressure that is long term harmful to the spirit of genuine inquiry and discourse. if you think of Hadot’s list of the “rules for good discourse” you will recognize a social contract that accounts for these issues: respects each other, shows a committment to transcend both individual perspectives, in order to synthesize to a new knowledge to me, Socrates’ questioning doesnt rise to the level of discourse, because he isnt risking anything: he already knows where he is going, and he never has a breakthrough in his own understanding: he always is “reading from the same script”; he is never surprised; he is always sure of himself and where he is going from the moment of the first question. He is much more god-like than philosopher-like in Hadot’s formulation of god-philosopher-common man, since he always manifests pure wisdom. the closest we ever see him in a transcendent state is when he is by himself, in deep contemplation: i argue that he never engages in discourse: he simply takes you where he has already been. Do you ever see Socrates trying on the other’s point of view, or discovering a new insight in any of his dialogues? Of course i speak of Socrates here as the character actor as conceived by Plato, the playwright, and not the man, who probably began conversations over important topics without knowing where he would end up; at least I hope he was like that. Otherwise he was born perfect, or became self-perfected without discourse. To get back to your first point then, I’d say that if you want to engage in discourse, you have to “put up your shingle” and market your product and announce what you want in exchange, and trust the network that when someone who is ready to exchange on those terms shall appear and together you will be able to sort it out. posting your paper was an act of marketting that, to me, shows your willingness to engage.

Ask a Pakistani why Afghanistan matters

If you want to know, ask somebody: (ht: smallwarsjournal)

Afghanistan: Seven Fundamental Questions by Major Mehar Omar Khan

I know we live in a world that is real and is moved by minds – thinking, manipulating, conniving, conspiring, calculating and masquerading minds. Our world therefore seldom has a place for ‘sentiments’ – pure, sincere, honest and spontaneous as sentiments are. But when it comes to war in Afghanistan, I am not deterred by the tyranny of the trend. I like, in fact I am forced, to think through my heart. What else can you do when you see images of your countrymen; innocent and unsuspecting men, women and children; ripped apart by other human beings exploding in their midst almost on a daily basis? How can I not worry about my daughter when I see a pale and empty face of a mother in Kabul or Peshawar, bent like a broken branch of an old, dried up tree; over the dead body of her child? How can I not cry when the soul of my nation is hit and hurt by violence that is so inextricably linked with bloodshed beyond the snaky Khyber Pass? For us in Pakistan, the ongoing struggle in Afghanistan and astride Durand Line is the most seminal endeavor of our history. If this war is won, the entire world stands to benefit. But if it is lost, one country that will be hurt the most is Pakistan – my daughter’s home and her future. War astride the Durand Line is therefore so personal to so many of us.

This war is also extremely personal for thousands of American mothers who await and pray for the safe return of their sons and daughters: bright young men and women who deserve to live and who must never be wasted just because someone considers it politically expedient to continue to muddle along and because setting the course right needs some statesmanship and may also involve some political cost.

Major Mehar Omar Khan, Pakistan Army, is currently a student at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He has served as a peacekeeper in Sierra Leone, a Brigade GSO-III, an instructor at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul, and as Chief of Staff (Brigade Major) of an infantry brigade. He has also completed the Command and Staff Course at Pakistan’s Command and Staff College in Quetta.