Conspiracy theories. Theories about shadow governments. Theories about who really pulls the strings. This stuff could be true. It could be total fabricated malarkey.
I think the Founders were wise to keep higher-level government small and light, and keep power close to the ground in localities.
It seems to me that with so much power concentration at the top, and with so very much complexity at the top, too, there is no way of knowing what the "real" relationships are that are controlling things.
Having a universal currency and universal banking system seems part of the problem. "Borders," such as the borders inherent where you have local units of power and local units of currency, are like skin, they are the surfaces/thresholds or transition-points where visibility happens; a thing that crosses a border creates a "spark" or "stimulus" at the transition.
Unity is the consolidation of small systems into one - the elimination of borders. Unity has been sold to the world in terms of the values of efficiency and power: unify all the little shoemakers into Nike Corporation, and you make your shoes so much more efficiently, at less cost (so the sales pitch goes). The trouble is, all that efficiency and power ends up in the hands of very few people, and covers ever larger domains of peoples and geographies -- peoples and geographies who, being remote from that center of concentrated power, are not taken much account of when that power is exercised.
Where there is too much unity, e.g. people at the top sharing a globalized power system - its globalized monetary, communication and transport mechanisms - nefarious things either go on in the dark, or are imagined to be going on in the dark. The lack of visibility creates a projection screen upon which the people cast images.
The mass media attempts to control the images on the screen, manufacturing messages of happiness and trust in the authorities.
The people divide relative to the messages being broadcast, some taking them at face value and defending them, others taking them ironically as mere masks of darker forces behind the screen.
The "real" is no longer accessible - not, at any rate, at the level where most of us believe our identities exist: at the level of general "society," the "nation," the "world."
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Part 4: Face to Face Democratic Culture
The dialogue continues. My friend's latest reply, followed by my response:
3. Forget skill building and role playing, etc.. This assumes good intentions. I'm wondering more about actors as pretenders. Liars. Sociopaths, even. People who are good enough actors to fake their way through a process like T group. Who can fake authenticity. Who use language to manipulate and take advantage of people committed to candor and self-discovery and disclosure. Iago. Or just people who are seeking their own advantage at the expense of the group.
I wonder what happens to the "arrangements to support authenticity" if you do not, or cannot, assume that everybody comes to the party with good intentions. Because I think you cannot.
4. A sentence in a later chapter of The Kindness of Women focuses the television point and might be a place to start talking about the internet. Ballard is again talking about the 1960s: "The media landscape had sealed a Technicolor umbrella around the planet and then redefined reality as itself."
My response:
First, briefly, I wasn't so much talking about "role" playing, I was talking about "playing" with different modes and levels of expression. But on to your main stuff.
What happens if you fake, pretend, lie in t-group? Well, if you are a good enough actor to fake your way through, then you fake your way through. That's totally okay and permissible, if that's the way someone wants to go. If someone pulls the wool over everyone's eyes, congratulations. But let me tell you that person would have to be a really, really good faker. And, the self's intentions aside, no matter how pure someone's intentions are when that someone says something, no matter how authentic he or she is being, there is likely someone in the t-group who is going to be suspicious of that person and their intentions, at least or especially early on in the group's life. That's an interesting discovery in t-group. Intentions don't really matter for anything until people have satisfied their criteria for trust (and people typically need to keep resatisfying those criteria over and over as a group changes and new topics and levels of intimacy are plumbed). Whether good or bad, a person's intention is only part of the equation* -- each of the other dozen or so participants also carries a part of the equation, that is, in how they receive that person's words or actions. (To recur to your example: Iago needn't have been much of a problem had Othello only received him differently.) Part of what's so cool about t-group is that it's not just two perspectives dealing with this sometimes insoluble issue of trust in a world where intentions can't be known for sure, it's 14 different perspectives.
[*The equation for what, you might ask? The equation of wordly reality. That is a part of what's going on here for me: we are working with the presumption, what if the determination of what is "real" were a wordly standard and not a subjective or objective standard? We can't know your intention. We achieve (or do not achieve) trust; we live in a state of trust, or we do not. The world comes into being through our interactions and the dynamics of our emotioning and through the assumptions that we knowingly and unknowingly share. Iago's intentions and actions were something. Othello's intentions, assumptions, emotions and actions in response were something too. The lived reality that came about as a consequence of the resulting actions is not reducible to the intentions by any means.]
I have considered "pretending" in t-group as an experiment (being very consciously false and "acting"), but I have never done it nor seen anyone try it that I'm aware of. I would need to think more about why I've so far decided not to do it. (Maybe I will bring the topic up overtly in a t-group sometime). Mostly, I think, I am afraid about breaching trust -- but it's a very interesting topic. It's important I think that t-group is all talk and relating, with no extrinsic reward beyond that. Thus there isn't really any "advantage" to be gained by faking or lying. It's not really necessary to lie in order to hide, because one can always set boundaries, openly or privately, in deciding what to reveal or not reveal. What motive would one have to fake, lie and pretend one's way "through t-group"? It seems the only possible motive would be a desire to be liked, loved or admired, and so it would be a self-defeating proposition. The t-group itself wouldn't need to care, really, if someone were, as you say, to try "faking authenticity." You get to do whatever you want in a t-group, and then you suffer the consequences in yourself and in your relations with others, whatever those consequences might be.
So what I'm realizing is that, contrary to your assertion, good intentions need not be assumed at all -- and, in fact, in the way the theory of the course is taught, they are explicitly not to be assumed (or rather, the key is to become more aware of when people are making assumptions, and more aware of the status of assumptions as such). Part of the model that the t-groups are based on says that intentions and motivations are known only to the individual (and even then sometimes not clearly so). All each of us has to go on to make sense of the actions and words of others are our own observations of extrinsic behavior, our own emotional responses to such behavior, and the thoughts and judgments that come up for us. You cannot really know someone's intentions.
Moreover or nonetheless, people in the group do make assumptions one way or another regarding people's intentions. Some are more apt to assume than others - usually at their peril. Sometimes the people in a group do in fact assume that a person is acting from bad intentions. Then the group works with that and its consequences. Liars and sociopaths do show up in t-group. People with mental instabilities show up. I've heard of some fairly dramatic cases. T-groups agree not to permit violence or abuse - the facilitator's baseline job is to protect people from abuse, to make sure no one gets run roughshod over in a harmful way. In rare cases, people do get run over. I've never heard of physical harm happening to anyone in a t-group, but I have heard of rare cases where people have been psychologically traumatized. The worst a sociopath could do is to gain trust, find a person's vulnerable spots, and go for as much blood as he or she can; if a person doesn't have the psychological resources to brush something like that off, a person could get hurt pretty bad, I suppose. Good intentions aren't assumed. For my own part, I am interested in being real and authentic, and I believe in my own good intentions, and I am interested in finding out how I sometimes get in the way of what I most want -- which is probably more often a matter of poor assumptions rather than poor intentions. [And that is a very key point.]
[Yes - it's more often a level of poor assumptions rather than poor intentions. This may be where writing, print and mechanically-reproduced thought introduce or amplify dangers. The act of speaking and the act of trust-making in the moment are severed from one another. Wisdom is "received" without necessarily being relearned in the moment or giving space for the examination of assumptions and responses. We are invaded by propoganda. We are fed assumptions as if they were truth.]
But reconsidering what you were saying, I could see this issue of good intentions being pressed at another level. Now I'm thinking that you were right all along in one sense. For there is a way in which -- despite everything I've just been saying and without I think undoing any of it -- there is a way in which good intentions are in fact necessarily assumed. For me, this goes back to that thing I recalled saying to you in the BART station a long time ago [see first posting in this series], and it recalls Maturana's words about the necessary preconditions for the emergence of languaging: people have to want to hang around with one another, or they must in fact spend a lot of time together getting to know and experience patterns of being together and mutually-responding to one another and to shared circumstances and experiences, before language can possibly emerge. Similarly, for a group to sit together in a circle and agree to conduct themselves in the way prescribed by t-group -- that takes a lot of assuming of good intentions. For two people to agree to sit at a table together in striking distance from one another, that assumes a certain level of safety and trust. (In the genteel worlds of Stanford and the Bay Area, that's not all so hard to arrive at; what about in a world at war? You might not be able to bring people together in such a circle at all, and if you got them there, they might not be able to hold back from violence. I don't know.)
At some level, if you are to have a world at all, you must assume good intentions, at least provisionally, with no guarantees. Finally, you have to live with yourself as a person who assumes good intentions or a person who chooses to prioritize and live with fear and suspicion.
3. Forget skill building and role playing, etc.. This assumes good intentions. I'm wondering more about actors as pretenders. Liars. Sociopaths, even. People who are good enough actors to fake their way through a process like T group. Who can fake authenticity. Who use language to manipulate and take advantage of people committed to candor and self-discovery and disclosure. Iago. Or just people who are seeking their own advantage at the expense of the group.
I wonder what happens to the "arrangements to support authenticity" if you do not, or cannot, assume that everybody comes to the party with good intentions. Because I think you cannot.
4. A sentence in a later chapter of The Kindness of Women focuses the television point and might be a place to start talking about the internet. Ballard is again talking about the 1960s: "The media landscape had sealed a Technicolor umbrella around the planet and then redefined reality as itself."
My response:
First, briefly, I wasn't so much talking about "role" playing, I was talking about "playing" with different modes and levels of expression. But on to your main stuff.
What happens if you fake, pretend, lie in t-group? Well, if you are a good enough actor to fake your way through, then you fake your way through. That's totally okay and permissible, if that's the way someone wants to go. If someone pulls the wool over everyone's eyes, congratulations. But let me tell you that person would have to be a really, really good faker. And, the self's intentions aside, no matter how pure someone's intentions are when that someone says something, no matter how authentic he or she is being, there is likely someone in the t-group who is going to be suspicious of that person and their intentions, at least or especially early on in the group's life. That's an interesting discovery in t-group. Intentions don't really matter for anything until people have satisfied their criteria for trust (and people typically need to keep resatisfying those criteria over and over as a group changes and new topics and levels of intimacy are plumbed). Whether good or bad, a person's intention is only part of the equation* -- each of the other dozen or so participants also carries a part of the equation, that is, in how they receive that person's words or actions. (To recur to your example: Iago needn't have been much of a problem had Othello only received him differently.) Part of what's so cool about t-group is that it's not just two perspectives dealing with this sometimes insoluble issue of trust in a world where intentions can't be known for sure, it's 14 different perspectives.
[*The equation for what, you might ask? The equation of wordly reality. That is a part of what's going on here for me: we are working with the presumption, what if the determination of what is "real" were a wordly standard and not a subjective or objective standard? We can't know your intention. We achieve (or do not achieve) trust; we live in a state of trust, or we do not. The world comes into being through our interactions and the dynamics of our emotioning and through the assumptions that we knowingly and unknowingly share. Iago's intentions and actions were something. Othello's intentions, assumptions, emotions and actions in response were something too. The lived reality that came about as a consequence of the resulting actions is not reducible to the intentions by any means.]
I have considered "pretending" in t-group as an experiment (being very consciously false and "acting"), but I have never done it nor seen anyone try it that I'm aware of. I would need to think more about why I've so far decided not to do it. (Maybe I will bring the topic up overtly in a t-group sometime). Mostly, I think, I am afraid about breaching trust -- but it's a very interesting topic. It's important I think that t-group is all talk and relating, with no extrinsic reward beyond that. Thus there isn't really any "advantage" to be gained by faking or lying. It's not really necessary to lie in order to hide, because one can always set boundaries, openly or privately, in deciding what to reveal or not reveal. What motive would one have to fake, lie and pretend one's way "through t-group"? It seems the only possible motive would be a desire to be liked, loved or admired, and so it would be a self-defeating proposition. The t-group itself wouldn't need to care, really, if someone were, as you say, to try "faking authenticity." You get to do whatever you want in a t-group, and then you suffer the consequences in yourself and in your relations with others, whatever those consequences might be.
So what I'm realizing is that, contrary to your assertion, good intentions need not be assumed at all -- and, in fact, in the way the theory of the course is taught, they are explicitly not to be assumed (or rather, the key is to become more aware of when people are making assumptions, and more aware of the status of assumptions as such). Part of the model that the t-groups are based on says that intentions and motivations are known only to the individual (and even then sometimes not clearly so). All each of us has to go on to make sense of the actions and words of others are our own observations of extrinsic behavior, our own emotional responses to such behavior, and the thoughts and judgments that come up for us. You cannot really know someone's intentions.
Moreover or nonetheless, people in the group do make assumptions one way or another regarding people's intentions. Some are more apt to assume than others - usually at their peril. Sometimes the people in a group do in fact assume that a person is acting from bad intentions. Then the group works with that and its consequences. Liars and sociopaths do show up in t-group. People with mental instabilities show up. I've heard of some fairly dramatic cases. T-groups agree not to permit violence or abuse - the facilitator's baseline job is to protect people from abuse, to make sure no one gets run roughshod over in a harmful way. In rare cases, people do get run over. I've never heard of physical harm happening to anyone in a t-group, but I have heard of rare cases where people have been psychologically traumatized. The worst a sociopath could do is to gain trust, find a person's vulnerable spots, and go for as much blood as he or she can; if a person doesn't have the psychological resources to brush something like that off, a person could get hurt pretty bad, I suppose. Good intentions aren't assumed. For my own part, I am interested in being real and authentic, and I believe in my own good intentions, and I am interested in finding out how I sometimes get in the way of what I most want -- which is probably more often a matter of poor assumptions rather than poor intentions. [And that is a very key point.]
[Yes - it's more often a level of poor assumptions rather than poor intentions. This may be where writing, print and mechanically-reproduced thought introduce or amplify dangers. The act of speaking and the act of trust-making in the moment are severed from one another. Wisdom is "received" without necessarily being relearned in the moment or giving space for the examination of assumptions and responses. We are invaded by propoganda. We are fed assumptions as if they were truth.]
But reconsidering what you were saying, I could see this issue of good intentions being pressed at another level. Now I'm thinking that you were right all along in one sense. For there is a way in which -- despite everything I've just been saying and without I think undoing any of it -- there is a way in which good intentions are in fact necessarily assumed. For me, this goes back to that thing I recalled saying to you in the BART station a long time ago [see first posting in this series], and it recalls Maturana's words about the necessary preconditions for the emergence of languaging: people have to want to hang around with one another, or they must in fact spend a lot of time together getting to know and experience patterns of being together and mutually-responding to one another and to shared circumstances and experiences, before language can possibly emerge. Similarly, for a group to sit together in a circle and agree to conduct themselves in the way prescribed by t-group -- that takes a lot of assuming of good intentions. For two people to agree to sit at a table together in striking distance from one another, that assumes a certain level of safety and trust. (In the genteel worlds of Stanford and the Bay Area, that's not all so hard to arrive at; what about in a world at war? You might not be able to bring people together in such a circle at all, and if you got them there, they might not be able to hold back from violence. I don't know.)
At some level, if you are to have a world at all, you must assume good intentions, at least provisionally, with no guarantees. Finally, you have to live with yourself as a person who assumes good intentions or a person who chooses to prioritize and live with fear and suspicion.
Part 3: Face to Face Democratic Culture - My Friend's Challenge
My friend challenges what I said in the prior post (June 20th) - my reply follows below:
1. I'm not sure why "human beings are born as loving animals" has anything to recommend it more than "human beings are born in sin." The former is probably meant as a corrective to the latter; but in my mind they have the same status as assertions about the human condition. To Maturana's example of the mother and child in consensual coordination, I suppose, you could set up Augustine's description of the child sucking enviously and jealously at the breast. Interesting to think about the two together.
2. Discovering the authentic: nothing more difficult than being a baby. Or laughing or crying...but beyond that? That will only suffice for a moment, or a little while. Unless of course we are talking about achieving some state of bliss in which human purposes and intentions, etc., stop mattering. The difficulty, as I understand it, is establishing or creating or finding authenticity beyond that -- in language. Which is where we have human purposes and intentional actions and so on, in that other level of consensual coordination; and these purposes and actions sometimes conflict. So one way people have found around conflict is persuasion, rhetorical artifice, language that is usually slippery and has been problematic for philosophy/ontology since Plato.
3. I bring up Plato also because I wonder: what room is there in all this for rhetoricians, or actors, or people who pretend, or theater? What do you do with an actor in a T-group? Would he be a disruptive presence, as long as he was acting? What about a talented rhetorician, who talked in carefully balanced sentences, or employed elaborate figures of speech to lead people away from their own convictions and to his? There were good philosophical reasons for Platonic hostility to these types -- and to rhetoric and theatricality in general.
4. Your point about mechanical reproduction. What is the status of television in all this? Television, it seems, is incredibly problematic in this context. And you remind me of a passage I read just the other day in J.G. Ballard's The Kindness of Women. The main character is out for a walk with his children to a place they call "Magic World": it's a film and television lot, where the kids find big, oversize props to play in, etc.
The rectangular stages of Shepperton film studios rose above the trees. Their presence dominated the town as much of the marine world of the reservoirs. Many of the programmes we watched on television were filmed in
the streets of Shepperton, and its leafy avenues stood in for locations all over England. In Henry's intense four-year old mind, Shepperton had begun to colonise the whole country.
These confusions of image and illusion gave Shepperton its special charge, as if true reality rested in the merging of the two. Next door to us lived a married couple whose daughter was a minor television actress. Twice a week the children watched her appear in one of their favourite series, and sometimes would turn from the screen to see her in Charlton Road, stepping from her car on a family visit. Henry and Alice would rush out to greet her, taking for granted that her real character lay somewhere betweeen her fleeting street self and the far more solid broadcast figure on the screen.
And so on...This is set in the early 60s. Nowadays we all live in Shepperton, don't we? A TV set that has "colonised the whole country", where the "street self" is "fleeting" and the "broadcast figure" is taken to be
"more solid." TV validates and confers the status of reality on to things. Which, if you think about it for more than a second or two, makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
My reply was as follows:
1. The Augustine comparison works for me. I would say that both envy and jealousy originate with loving (I'm not envious or jealous of things I dislike). Augustine I believe views sin as "original" and (I think) more or less Platonically subjects the world to judgment relative to posited ideals. I would say instead that "sin" would begin with actions based on suppression or denial of the originary love -- this is basically Nietzsche's position on "ressentiment"; Nietzsche, though, seems to embrace animal instinct and make languaging secondary in a way that comes up short for me. (For me the whole orientation I'm taking is congruent with a post-Nietzschean, pragmaticist, Heideggerean or whatever-you-want-to-call-it turning away from metaphysics, i.e. from Platonism and traditional western rationality.)
2. Also coherent with this: Ong locates Plato in the transition from oral- to chirographic- (writing-based) thinking, suggesting that Plato idealizes "essence" on the model of writing: it becomes "as if" the words were there first -- i.e., for Plato, otherworldly ideas rather than experiential relations are posited as the origin and locus of the real (cp. Plato's own metaphor that represents the "ideal" realm's relation to the mundane as like the relation that the carpenter's "blueprints" have to the actual material bed that is produced from them). Mere worldly experience is subjective, second-rate, emotion-laden,etc.
I didn't intend a dichotomy between emotioning and languaging as you seem to have understood me. Languaging always occurs in and comes out of a context of emotioning - the baby, the body, the biology, is always there behind anyone's words, laughing or crying or otherwise, nor does it disappear in the languaging.
3. I've seen the acting and performance come up in t-group in interesting and productive ways. Whether it's a disturbance or not depends on the group and circumstances, I suppose. I've seen group members play with "performance" as a way of trying to expand and intensify their communicative repertoire - perhaps a useful skill-builder for inhibited, self-damping types.
4. I like the take on TV and Ballard's Shepperton story, which seems on point and right on the money. The world we experience is everywhere mediated by these television images coming in from on high, "colonising the whole country" and, now, even world. (The analphabetics above all are felled with shame over their simplicity, leaving their "old" world and "primitive" traditions of orality behind, aspiring to these wesetern images.) Television is huge here, and then there is the internet - how does that play in?
1. I'm not sure why "human beings are born as loving animals" has anything to recommend it more than "human beings are born in sin." The former is probably meant as a corrective to the latter; but in my mind they have the same status as assertions about the human condition. To Maturana's example of the mother and child in consensual coordination, I suppose, you could set up Augustine's description of the child sucking enviously and jealously at the breast. Interesting to think about the two together.
2. Discovering the authentic: nothing more difficult than being a baby. Or laughing or crying...but beyond that? That will only suffice for a moment, or a little while. Unless of course we are talking about achieving some state of bliss in which human purposes and intentions, etc., stop mattering. The difficulty, as I understand it, is establishing or creating or finding authenticity beyond that -- in language. Which is where we have human purposes and intentional actions and so on, in that other level of consensual coordination; and these purposes and actions sometimes conflict. So one way people have found around conflict is persuasion, rhetorical artifice, language that is usually slippery and has been problematic for philosophy/ontology since Plato.
3. I bring up Plato also because I wonder: what room is there in all this for rhetoricians, or actors, or people who pretend, or theater? What do you do with an actor in a T-group? Would he be a disruptive presence, as long as he was acting? What about a talented rhetorician, who talked in carefully balanced sentences, or employed elaborate figures of speech to lead people away from their own convictions and to his? There were good philosophical reasons for Platonic hostility to these types -- and to rhetoric and theatricality in general.
4. Your point about mechanical reproduction. What is the status of television in all this? Television, it seems, is incredibly problematic in this context. And you remind me of a passage I read just the other day in J.G. Ballard's The Kindness of Women. The main character is out for a walk with his children to a place they call "Magic World": it's a film and television lot, where the kids find big, oversize props to play in, etc.
The rectangular stages of Shepperton film studios rose above the trees. Their presence dominated the town as much of the marine world of the reservoirs. Many of the programmes we watched on television were filmed in
the streets of Shepperton, and its leafy avenues stood in for locations all over England. In Henry's intense four-year old mind, Shepperton had begun to colonise the whole country.
These confusions of image and illusion gave Shepperton its special charge, as if true reality rested in the merging of the two. Next door to us lived a married couple whose daughter was a minor television actress. Twice a week the children watched her appear in one of their favourite series, and sometimes would turn from the screen to see her in Charlton Road, stepping from her car on a family visit. Henry and Alice would rush out to greet her, taking for granted that her real character lay somewhere betweeen her fleeting street self and the far more solid broadcast figure on the screen.
And so on...This is set in the early 60s. Nowadays we all live in Shepperton, don't we? A TV set that has "colonised the whole country", where the "street self" is "fleeting" and the "broadcast figure" is taken to be
"more solid." TV validates and confers the status of reality on to things. Which, if you think about it for more than a second or two, makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
My reply was as follows:
1. The Augustine comparison works for me. I would say that both envy and jealousy originate with loving (I'm not envious or jealous of things I dislike). Augustine I believe views sin as "original" and (I think) more or less Platonically subjects the world to judgment relative to posited ideals. I would say instead that "sin" would begin with actions based on suppression or denial of the originary love -- this is basically Nietzsche's position on "ressentiment"; Nietzsche, though, seems to embrace animal instinct and make languaging secondary in a way that comes up short for me. (For me the whole orientation I'm taking is congruent with a post-Nietzschean, pragmaticist, Heideggerean or whatever-you-want-to-call-it turning away from metaphysics, i.e. from Platonism and traditional western rationality.)
2. Also coherent with this: Ong locates Plato in the transition from oral- to chirographic- (writing-based) thinking, suggesting that Plato idealizes "essence" on the model of writing: it becomes "as if" the words were there first -- i.e., for Plato, otherworldly ideas rather than experiential relations are posited as the origin and locus of the real (cp. Plato's own metaphor that represents the "ideal" realm's relation to the mundane as like the relation that the carpenter's "blueprints" have to the actual material bed that is produced from them). Mere worldly experience is subjective, second-rate, emotion-laden,etc.
I didn't intend a dichotomy between emotioning and languaging as you seem to have understood me. Languaging always occurs in and comes out of a context of emotioning - the baby, the body, the biology, is always there behind anyone's words, laughing or crying or otherwise, nor does it disappear in the languaging.
3. I've seen the acting and performance come up in t-group in interesting and productive ways. Whether it's a disturbance or not depends on the group and circumstances, I suppose. I've seen group members play with "performance" as a way of trying to expand and intensify their communicative repertoire - perhaps a useful skill-builder for inhibited, self-damping types.
4. I like the take on TV and Ballard's Shepperton story, which seems on point and right on the money. The world we experience is everywhere mediated by these television images coming in from on high, "colonising the whole country" and, now, even world. (The analphabetics above all are felled with shame over their simplicity, leaving their "old" world and "primitive" traditions of orality behind, aspiring to these wesetern images.) Television is huge here, and then there is the internet - how does that play in?
Friday, June 20, 2008
Part 2: Face-to-Face Democratic Culture (see 6/19 post)
A very dear and good friend of mine had some reservations about my earlier posting (June 19, on needing local institutions to develop face-to-face democratic culture). It seems what I said about "authenticity" didn't quite sit wholly right with him. Here's part of what he said:
My resistance, skepticism, fear, call it what you will --centers on two things:
1) the difficulty of identifying or finding or discovering the authentic (how do we do that? how can we be sure we are not being caught up in language even as we do that? etc. etc.); once we are already thrown into the world of language and history (once we are historical subjects) is there any going back? Any way out?
2) It's worth considering that history provides some cautionary tales about people trying to get back to or usher the authentic into the world. It is, or it can be, a Utopian impulse. That's where I start to worry about bloodshed.
Here was my response to him:
I am recalling once when you and I were in a San Francisco BART station together, many years ago, and I had a flash of thinking, that every single "word" in our language -- because its usage rests at some level on a mutual agreement and on mutual listening and understanding -- at some level represents an instance of love. You really liked the thought. In response, you talked about Augustine's notion of community -- I think it was "things loved in common."
I like how Humberto Maturana talks about some of the preconditions of languaging in the loving relations of human animals. He has a wonderful piece about mother and child reflecting one another's movements and expressions, developing what he calls "consensual coordinations," and he talks about how it was necessary for human beings to live together a long time in groups in stabilizing consensual coordinations before languaging could emerge -- on top of that, as it were, as a basis -- as consensual coordinations of these consensual coordinations. I.e., our shared knowing of shared patterns of experience is a necessary precondition for talking, and talking itself is a consensual coordination relative to such shared experiencing.
As to the difficulty of finding or discovering the authentic -- first, it's not something difficult; not in the way I mean it. It's in fact the easiest, most natural and most ordinary way of our being. We are not talking about something esoteric to be arrived at. I am not talking about anything more difficult than being a baby, or being an adult and having a good laugh or a good cry or a fear -- and when did anyone need to "be sure" he or she was "not being caught up in language even as we do that"? My interest has little to do with fear of being caught up in something or in somehow getting out of or away from language. My dad said "be a doctor or a lawyer, so you get respect." That was language. I was aware at some point I didn't feel good about accepting that advice. You could say, I suppose, that the "not feeling good" came from some perspective "outside" of my dad's languaging. Bush says "they want to kill us because they hate our freedom." That's language too. Sure there are cautionary tales and it's possible to construe any talk about authenticity (or about anything else) as something scary and worrisome. A utopian impulse, I take it, signifies a mismatch between ideal and practical, with potentially dangerous consequences. Yes, that can be very dangerous. Sounds like authentic fear. So where if anywhere is there room to talk about love and community?
My response to your question -- "the difficulty of identifying or finding or discovering the authentic (how do we do that?)" -- is what I was writing about in the first place. My talk about "how we do that" has had to do with the importance of orality and face to face relating in a culture of "mechanical reproduction" (to use Benjamin's term), in an age of mechanically-reproduced and promulgated words and images. So I am making specific proposals about arrangements to support authenticity.
"Authenticity" is a word popularized in philosophy by the early Heidegger of Being and Time. It also happens to be a big t-group word. 14 people sitting face to face in a circle, speaking and being present to one another, processing together their responses to one another, their feelings, their judgments regarding one another's purported authenticity, regarding involuntary outbursts, etc. I can never fully be "sure" of another's authenticity. I can never really be "sure" of my own. Simply raising the question, I know, introduces the uncertainty. But I also have known many moments where the question is not there and I am being in the moment, enjoying and loving being with others. T-groups are one place I have seen whole groups move over time from a place of anxiety and caution to an increasing sense of safety and intimacy, playfulness and love.
Are we naturally loving animals? Delight is natural and reactive, and opens us towards the other. Fear is natural and reactive, and we flee or fight. We want love. Do we desire fear? My sense is that we are drawn forward, all of us, by a desire for engaged concord.
My resistance, skepticism, fear, call it what you will --centers on two things:
1) the difficulty of identifying or finding or discovering the authentic (how do we do that? how can we be sure we are not being caught up in language even as we do that? etc. etc.); once we are already thrown into the world of language and history (once we are historical subjects) is there any going back? Any way out?
2) It's worth considering that history provides some cautionary tales about people trying to get back to or usher the authentic into the world. It is, or it can be, a Utopian impulse. That's where I start to worry about bloodshed.
Here was my response to him:
I am recalling once when you and I were in a San Francisco BART station together, many years ago, and I had a flash of thinking, that every single "word" in our language -- because its usage rests at some level on a mutual agreement and on mutual listening and understanding -- at some level represents an instance of love. You really liked the thought. In response, you talked about Augustine's notion of community -- I think it was "things loved in common."
I like how Humberto Maturana talks about some of the preconditions of languaging in the loving relations of human animals. He has a wonderful piece about mother and child reflecting one another's movements and expressions, developing what he calls "consensual coordinations," and he talks about how it was necessary for human beings to live together a long time in groups in stabilizing consensual coordinations before languaging could emerge -- on top of that, as it were, as a basis -- as consensual coordinations of these consensual coordinations. I.e., our shared knowing of shared patterns of experience is a necessary precondition for talking, and talking itself is a consensual coordination relative to such shared experiencing.
As to the difficulty of finding or discovering the authentic -- first, it's not something difficult; not in the way I mean it. It's in fact the easiest, most natural and most ordinary way of our being. We are not talking about something esoteric to be arrived at. I am not talking about anything more difficult than being a baby, or being an adult and having a good laugh or a good cry or a fear -- and when did anyone need to "be sure" he or she was "not being caught up in language even as we do that"? My interest has little to do with fear of being caught up in something or in somehow getting out of or away from language. My dad said "be a doctor or a lawyer, so you get respect." That was language. I was aware at some point I didn't feel good about accepting that advice. You could say, I suppose, that the "not feeling good" came from some perspective "outside" of my dad's languaging. Bush says "they want to kill us because they hate our freedom." That's language too. Sure there are cautionary tales and it's possible to construe any talk about authenticity (or about anything else) as something scary and worrisome. A utopian impulse, I take it, signifies a mismatch between ideal and practical, with potentially dangerous consequences. Yes, that can be very dangerous. Sounds like authentic fear. So where if anywhere is there room to talk about love and community?
My response to your question -- "the difficulty of identifying or finding or discovering the authentic (how do we do that?)" -- is what I was writing about in the first place. My talk about "how we do that" has had to do with the importance of orality and face to face relating in a culture of "mechanical reproduction" (to use Benjamin's term), in an age of mechanically-reproduced and promulgated words and images. So I am making specific proposals about arrangements to support authenticity.
"Authenticity" is a word popularized in philosophy by the early Heidegger of Being and Time. It also happens to be a big t-group word. 14 people sitting face to face in a circle, speaking and being present to one another, processing together their responses to one another, their feelings, their judgments regarding one another's purported authenticity, regarding involuntary outbursts, etc. I can never fully be "sure" of another's authenticity. I can never really be "sure" of my own. Simply raising the question, I know, introduces the uncertainty. But I also have known many moments where the question is not there and I am being in the moment, enjoying and loving being with others. T-groups are one place I have seen whole groups move over time from a place of anxiety and caution to an increasing sense of safety and intimacy, playfulness and love.
Are we naturally loving animals? Delight is natural and reactive, and opens us towards the other. Fear is natural and reactive, and we flee or fight. We want love. Do we desire fear? My sense is that we are drawn forward, all of us, by a desire for engaged concord.
Mistaking My Hats for My Mind - Part 2
Optional title: "The Skewered Self's Friendly Jesters"
My friend who lost her mind and then found it again wrote me a note saying she liked my post about minds and hats. This was my response to her:
Just as, when you were recently expressing a knowing that your recent dark period would pass -- even while you were in the midst of it -- and I appreciated the power of that knowing, so I find, in allowing that there are many minds that take me up at different times, a certain relief — a freedom from the impulse schooled in me to point to and evaluate a presumed singular self. Instead, I start to entertain a new image, of selves and perspectives as stepping stones I can skip among, maybe ever more deftly and with wider and wider freedom of movement and dance.
How often I paralyze myself when asked a question: what are you feeling, why did you say that? Gasp. I presume a singular self that must or should have a singular response: I presume a why that will pin me to a place like a bug or butterfly in a box. When and if I shake the paralysis, I begin to see all the many layers of self and feeling always that are there, and that seem to appear in the instant I look for them, and I feel relief to discover my own plurality, that every self skewered by a pointing finger is accompanied by a merry bunch of open-armed jesters.
My friend who lost her mind and then found it again wrote me a note saying she liked my post about minds and hats. This was my response to her:
Just as, when you were recently expressing a knowing that your recent dark period would pass -- even while you were in the midst of it -- and I appreciated the power of that knowing, so I find, in allowing that there are many minds that take me up at different times, a certain relief — a freedom from the impulse schooled in me to point to and evaluate a presumed singular self. Instead, I start to entertain a new image, of selves and perspectives as stepping stones I can skip among, maybe ever more deftly and with wider and wider freedom of movement and dance.
How often I paralyze myself when asked a question: what are you feeling, why did you say that? Gasp. I presume a singular self that must or should have a singular response: I presume a why that will pin me to a place like a bug or butterfly in a box. When and if I shake the paralysis, I begin to see all the many layers of self and feeling always that are there, and that seem to appear in the instant I look for them, and I feel relief to discover my own plurality, that every self skewered by a pointing finger is accompanied by a merry bunch of open-armed jesters.
Mistaking My Hats for My Mind
A friend told me she had lost her mind again. I told her that I keep misplacing mine as well, over and over, and am glad then to keep finding it again, as seems to happen if I'll just agree to take my turn waiting for it to show up once more.
However, there has been a new awareness of late. As I've lost and rediscovered my mind on recurring occasions over recent weeks, I have been remarking a note of lingering puzzlement -- this is a note that may have always sounded in the past, but that I haven't really bothered to pay attention to. The puzzlement is that, having refound my mind enough times after sinking into confusion and sometimes despair, I am no longer sure that it's my mind that I've found. Am I this happy and engaged one, or am I the despairing one? Am I the one engaged in this way, or in one of the other ways? Is it my "mind" that I am occupying? Or perhaps it's that I have several minds that I take up in alternation. It's all rather confusing. Then I start to ask myself, how do I know that any of these minds I occupy is mine?
Oliver Sacks wrote about the man who mistook his wife for a hat. I am the man who mistakes or takes -- I'm not sure which -- my minds for hats. I wonder which hat most suits me? I certainly look better in some than others. I would say that I change minds like hats, except that on further reflection it seems to be the minds that do the changing, not me. I don't take up my mind, it takes me up. I don't find it, it finds me. I simply seem to suffer the consequences of looking differently. (Whether "looking" is here active or passive seems to be part of the question).
Now I wonder: either this means that I'm a hat being tried by different minds, or it means that the hats are the ones in control.
Goodness me. Look at this. I don't know if I'm a mind or a hat, or whether any one of one belongs properly to any one of the others, or whether this is all a wondrous game of shapes and colors at play.
However, there has been a new awareness of late. As I've lost and rediscovered my mind on recurring occasions over recent weeks, I have been remarking a note of lingering puzzlement -- this is a note that may have always sounded in the past, but that I haven't really bothered to pay attention to. The puzzlement is that, having refound my mind enough times after sinking into confusion and sometimes despair, I am no longer sure that it's my mind that I've found. Am I this happy and engaged one, or am I the despairing one? Am I the one engaged in this way, or in one of the other ways? Is it my "mind" that I am occupying? Or perhaps it's that I have several minds that I take up in alternation. It's all rather confusing. Then I start to ask myself, how do I know that any of these minds I occupy is mine?
Oliver Sacks wrote about the man who mistook his wife for a hat. I am the man who mistakes or takes -- I'm not sure which -- my minds for hats. I wonder which hat most suits me? I certainly look better in some than others. I would say that I change minds like hats, except that on further reflection it seems to be the minds that do the changing, not me. I don't take up my mind, it takes me up. I don't find it, it finds me. I simply seem to suffer the consequences of looking differently. (Whether "looking" is here active or passive seems to be part of the question).
Now I wonder: either this means that I'm a hat being tried by different minds, or it means that the hats are the ones in control.
Goodness me. Look at this. I don't know if I'm a mind or a hat, or whether any one of one belongs properly to any one of the others, or whether this is all a wondrous game of shapes and colors at play.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Part 1: Face to Face Democratic Culture -- Another Take on Why We Need Local Institutions to Develop Face to Face Democratic Culture
I’m going to go on a a thought-riff here and thought I would share – don’t know if you will be able to make it through, though.
I just now finished a delicious read about the transition from oral cultures to writing- and print-based cultures. (It’s my second book on the subject – this one is “ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind” by Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders. I have a third in line: “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,” by Benedict Anderson. The first was “Orality and Literacy,” by Walter Ong.)
I love this stuff because it is deeply related to how I understand my own vision and work, and touches on why I deem it of such central importance to our world that we create institutions for the development and cultivation of face-to-face local democratic culture.
In part ABC is about how the establishment of State power required the invention of print and how, with the standardization of writing that print was able to enforce and which (in the form of “grammatical correctness”) won the culture over as a shared “value,” the “nation” itself first becomes possible as a political entity. (Benedict Anderson will call the “nation” an “imagined community” because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion [through the nation]. ... In fact, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact are (and perhaps even these) are imagined.”
My sense is that all of this is profoundly connected to Heidegger’s characterization of the modern age as the era in which truth becomes identified with “the certainty of representation.” Illich and Sanders say something similar when they characterize the modern era as an age of “literacy,” an age that lives as though represented words on the page (e.g. of newspapers and laws and standardized texts, etc.) were primary and not secondary. Bush says there is a terrorist threat, and “ta da” there is — fear rises up everywhere in self-fulfilling response and the country and world are reorganized.
Such an age is one in which adequation to norms, standards and models (i.e. conformity to published standards of success, conduct, beauty, status, etc.) is strongly enforced, putting psychic pressure on the self — we are all judged by the centralized eye that has arisen thanks largely to trans-communal print culture.
This is particularly a disaster for many where the norms of conformance and privilege include biological features such as skin color — i.e. there is an inherent racism (which goes beyond skin color to the deepest unseen parts of every self) in the measuring of authentic reality according to artificial standards of value (which are presumed to be essential truths but are in fact socially constructed). What our culture lacks therefore are organized institutions for the celebration and surfacing of the ab- pre- or sub-normal, which is the ground out of which all norms arise and which is also the unspoken, living, fiery ground that keeps us aware of the artificial nature of all our norms and rules and languagings, which awareness is our opening into constant love and creation together.
All this is of a piece: economics and society got reorganized in conformity with the factory form and technological reproduction, both made possible on the basis of standardized models realized mechanically in productive machinery. Standardized reproducibility became the standard of scientific truth (reproducible experiments, reproducibly represented) and of technological progress — these notions of power and truth became the consensus around which thought and culture begin to reorganize themselves, leading however to something like what Nietzsche called nihilism: i.e., to a crisis of authenticity. The crisis of authenticity was fated, of course, due to the self measuring itself relative to promulgated models while having no forums for the individual to manifest or risk touching the extra-normal, for fear of being scapegoated. The uniqueness of the individual self’s experience has been put out of bounds, such that the authentic self has no opportunity to exercise influence and therefore no means of gaining unique identity through public action — the authentic self relying on upwelling, unwilled, “risky” experience in the presence of others. The channels must be reopened that allow and encourage the touch between the deep authentic unique self and the wider public and its thinking.
A few excerpts from Illich and Saunders, who talk about how there was no such thing as “correct” spelling until quite recently in history, i.e. after the promulgation of cheap printed materials and then of dictionaries, etc. -- a phenomenon that Sanders and Illich associate with the “bureaucratization of language.”
Mark Twain in Huck Finn, the authors suggest, intentionally reproduces Huck’s words with oral-dialect-like “misspellings,” e.g. “sivilization,” to thematize the coincidence of established power, privilege and “progress” with the enforcement of rules of correct writing and grammar. What do advertisements today do but ceaselessly promulgate norms, standards, aspirations to privilege and consumption?
A few excerpts from one passage of _ABC_:
“the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson ... Both set out to civilize Huck by teaching him the rules. ... In this emerging world of literacy, correct spelling offers the key to the correct look of literacy, the visual check on a person’s education, in much the same way that skin color is a key in this book to freedom or slavery.”
“Anyone who is able to read Huck Finn is obviously literate, literate enough to harbor the impulse to correct Huck’s mistakes, for the mistakes loom as boulders impeding the smooth and steady flow of the reader’s fluency. ... [Thus] this book forces us to read in an aristocratic way .... The inner self that sits in judgment, silently corrects Huck’s speech.”
“There is a whole world in Huck Finn that is closed to those without literacy. They can’t, for ironic example, read this marvelous work .... And yet we must recognize a world rich with superstition and folklore, with adventure and beauty, that remains closed to those who are too tightly chained to letters. ... By the end of the 19th century, very little territory remained. Only small pockets of orality still survive in the country—mostly rural, mostly poor, mostly black. The rest is literate in the most sweeping way.”
I just now finished a delicious read about the transition from oral cultures to writing- and print-based cultures. (It’s my second book on the subject – this one is “ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind” by Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders. I have a third in line: “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,” by Benedict Anderson. The first was “Orality and Literacy,” by Walter Ong.)
I love this stuff because it is deeply related to how I understand my own vision and work, and touches on why I deem it of such central importance to our world that we create institutions for the development and cultivation of face-to-face local democratic culture.
In part ABC is about how the establishment of State power required the invention of print and how, with the standardization of writing that print was able to enforce and which (in the form of “grammatical correctness”) won the culture over as a shared “value,” the “nation” itself first becomes possible as a political entity. (Benedict Anderson will call the “nation” an “imagined community” because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion [through the nation]. ... In fact, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact are (and perhaps even these) are imagined.”
My sense is that all of this is profoundly connected to Heidegger’s characterization of the modern age as the era in which truth becomes identified with “the certainty of representation.” Illich and Sanders say something similar when they characterize the modern era as an age of “literacy,” an age that lives as though represented words on the page (e.g. of newspapers and laws and standardized texts, etc.) were primary and not secondary. Bush says there is a terrorist threat, and “ta da” there is — fear rises up everywhere in self-fulfilling response and the country and world are reorganized.
Such an age is one in which adequation to norms, standards and models (i.e. conformity to published standards of success, conduct, beauty, status, etc.) is strongly enforced, putting psychic pressure on the self — we are all judged by the centralized eye that has arisen thanks largely to trans-communal print culture.
This is particularly a disaster for many where the norms of conformance and privilege include biological features such as skin color — i.e. there is an inherent racism (which goes beyond skin color to the deepest unseen parts of every self) in the measuring of authentic reality according to artificial standards of value (which are presumed to be essential truths but are in fact socially constructed). What our culture lacks therefore are organized institutions for the celebration and surfacing of the ab- pre- or sub-normal, which is the ground out of which all norms arise and which is also the unspoken, living, fiery ground that keeps us aware of the artificial nature of all our norms and rules and languagings, which awareness is our opening into constant love and creation together.
All this is of a piece: economics and society got reorganized in conformity with the factory form and technological reproduction, both made possible on the basis of standardized models realized mechanically in productive machinery. Standardized reproducibility became the standard of scientific truth (reproducible experiments, reproducibly represented) and of technological progress — these notions of power and truth became the consensus around which thought and culture begin to reorganize themselves, leading however to something like what Nietzsche called nihilism: i.e., to a crisis of authenticity. The crisis of authenticity was fated, of course, due to the self measuring itself relative to promulgated models while having no forums for the individual to manifest or risk touching the extra-normal, for fear of being scapegoated. The uniqueness of the individual self’s experience has been put out of bounds, such that the authentic self has no opportunity to exercise influence and therefore no means of gaining unique identity through public action — the authentic self relying on upwelling, unwilled, “risky” experience in the presence of others. The channels must be reopened that allow and encourage the touch between the deep authentic unique self and the wider public and its thinking.
A few excerpts from Illich and Saunders, who talk about how there was no such thing as “correct” spelling until quite recently in history, i.e. after the promulgation of cheap printed materials and then of dictionaries, etc. -- a phenomenon that Sanders and Illich associate with the “bureaucratization of language.”
Mark Twain in Huck Finn, the authors suggest, intentionally reproduces Huck’s words with oral-dialect-like “misspellings,” e.g. “sivilization,” to thematize the coincidence of established power, privilege and “progress” with the enforcement of rules of correct writing and grammar. What do advertisements today do but ceaselessly promulgate norms, standards, aspirations to privilege and consumption?
A few excerpts from one passage of _ABC_:
“the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson ... Both set out to civilize Huck by teaching him the rules. ... In this emerging world of literacy, correct spelling offers the key to the correct look of literacy, the visual check on a person’s education, in much the same way that skin color is a key in this book to freedom or slavery.”
“Anyone who is able to read Huck Finn is obviously literate, literate enough to harbor the impulse to correct Huck’s mistakes, for the mistakes loom as boulders impeding the smooth and steady flow of the reader’s fluency. ... [Thus] this book forces us to read in an aristocratic way .... The inner self that sits in judgment, silently corrects Huck’s speech.”
“There is a whole world in Huck Finn that is closed to those without literacy. They can’t, for ironic example, read this marvelous work .... And yet we must recognize a world rich with superstition and folklore, with adventure and beauty, that remains closed to those who are too tightly chained to letters. ... By the end of the 19th century, very little territory remained. Only small pockets of orality still survive in the country—mostly rural, mostly poor, mostly black. The rest is literate in the most sweeping way.”
Thursday, May 22, 2008
A Photo a Day for 18 Years - Jamie Livingston
Starting in 1979, Jamie Livingston took one polaroid a day for 18 years, until the day he died. His friends spent years putting together a website where his photos can be seen.
Captivated, I started thinking about how Descartes became famous as a mathematician by imagining that a curve could be conceived as a series of infinitesimally small points, and therefore could be approximated at different levels of refinement as a finite series of discrete points, which could be plotted on a graph with two axes, x and y.
Considering Jamie's polaroid-a-day over 18 years, I thought to myself:
Cavemen didn't have the capacity to make the photos. They didn't have the capacity to make optically accurate visual representations, and I'm sure they didn't try to do that or even consider doing that.
All they had was the talk part to keep memory alive. What would they have talked about with regard to Jamie Livingston? Not a photo a day.
That makes me wonder what does it do to spread a life out in a photo a day? Where does it take one's mind and heart to spread a life out that way?
Maybe what we enjoy, in considering something like Jamie Livingston's 6,697 polaroid photos, is the tension we experience between the ingraspable living essence and the absolute regularity of a quasi-mathematicized temporal interval.
Jamie was a friend of my friend Ken Ross.
You can more about Jamie and the story of the website at mental floss and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn
Captivated, I started thinking about how Descartes became famous as a mathematician by imagining that a curve could be conceived as a series of infinitesimally small points, and therefore could be approximated at different levels of refinement as a finite series of discrete points, which could be plotted on a graph with two axes, x and y.
Considering Jamie's polaroid-a-day over 18 years, I thought to myself:
- Here we have a life represented as a finite series of discrete points.
- Here we have a life represented as a finite series of discrete points.
- Here we have a life represented as a finite series of discrete points.
- Here we have a life represented as a finite series of discrete points.
Cavemen didn't have the capacity to make the photos. They didn't have the capacity to make optically accurate visual representations, and I'm sure they didn't try to do that or even consider doing that.
All they had was the talk part to keep memory alive. What would they have talked about with regard to Jamie Livingston? Not a photo a day.
That makes me wonder what does it do to spread a life out in a photo a day? Where does it take one's mind and heart to spread a life out that way?
Maybe what we enjoy, in considering something like Jamie Livingston's 6,697 polaroid photos, is the tension we experience between the ingraspable living essence and the absolute regularity of a quasi-mathematicized temporal interval.
Jamie was a friend of my friend Ken Ross.
You can more about Jamie and the story of the website at mental floss and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Kurt Lewin: Field theory, Group dynamics, Democracy
Original source (lightly edited on this page): http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm
Kurt Lewin: Field theory, Group dynamics and Democracy in groups
Field theory
Here we will note only the key elements of Kurt Lewin’s field theory. To begin it is important to recognize its roots in Gestalt theory. (A gestalt is a coherent whole. It has its own laws, and is a construct of the individual mind rather than ‘reality’). For Kurt Lewin behaviour was determined by totality of an individual’s situation. In his field theory, a ‘field’ is defined as ‘the totality of coexisting facts which are conceived of as mutually interdependent’ (Lewin 1951: 240). Individuals were seen to behave differently according to the way in which tensions between perceptions of the self and of the environment were worked through. The whole psychological field, or ‘lifespace’, within which people acted had to be viewed, in order to understand behaviour. Within this individuals and groups could be seen in topological terms (using map-like representations). Individuals participate in a series of life spaces (such as the family, work, school and church), and these were constructed under the influence of various force vectors (Lewin 1952).
Hall and Lindzey (1978: 386) summarize the central features of Kurt Lewin’s field theory as follows:
In this we can see how Kurt Lewin drew together insights from topology (e.g. lifespace), psychology (need, aspiration etc.), and sociology (e.g. force fields – motives clearly being dependent on group pressures). As Allport in his foreword to Resolving Social Conflict (Lewin 1948: ix) put it, these three aspects of his thought were not separable. ‘All of his concepts, whatever root-metaphor they employ, comprise a single well-integrated system’. It was this, in significant part, which gave his work its peculiar power.
Group dynamics
It is not an exaggeration to say that Kurt Lewin had a profound impact on a generation of researchers and thinkers concerned with group dynamics. Brown (1988: 28-32) argues that two key ideas emerged out of field theory that are crucial to an appreciation of group process: interdependence of fate, and task interdependence.
Interdependence of fate. Here the basic line of argument is that groups come into being in a psychological sense ‘not because their members necessarily are similar to one another (although they may be); rather, a group exists when people in it realize their fate depends on the fate of the group as a whole’ (Brown 1988: 28). This is how Lewin (1946: 165-6) put it when discussing the position of Jews in 1939:
[I]t is not similarity or dissimilarity of individuals that constitutes a group, but rather interdependence of fate. Any normal group, and certainly any developed and organized one contains and should contain individuals of very different character…. It is easy enough to see that the common fate of all Jews makes them a group in reality. One who has grasped this simple idea will not feel that he has to break away from Judaism altogether whenever he changes his attitude toward a fundamental Jewish issue, and he will become more tolerant of differences of opinion among Jews. What is more, a person who has learned to see how much his own fate depends upon the fate of his entire group will ready and even eager to take over a fair share of responsibility for its welfare.
It could be argued that the position of Jews in 1939 constitutes a special case. That the particular dangers they faced in many countries makes arguing a general case difficult. However, Lewin’s insight does seem to be applicable to many different group settings. Subsequently, there has been some experimental support for the need for some elementary sense of interdependence (Brown 1989).
Task interdependence. Interdependence of fate can be a fairly weak form of interdependence in many groups, argued Lewin. A more significant factor is where there is interdependence in the goals of group members. In other words, if the group’s task is such that members of the group are dependent on each other for achievement, then a powerful dynamic is created.
These implications can be positive or negative. In the former case one person’s success either directly facilitates others’ success of, in the strongest case, is actually necessary for those others to succeed also… In negative interdependence – known more usually as competition – one person’s success is another’s failure. (Brown (1989: 30)
Kurt Lewin had looked to the nature of group task in an attempt to understand the uniformity of some groups’ behaviour. He remained unconvinced of the explanatory power of individual motivational concepts such as those provided by psychoanalytical theory or frustration-aggression theory (op. cit.). He was able to argue that people may come to a group with very different dispositions, but if they share a common objective, they are likely to act together to achieve it. This links back to what is usually described as Lewin’s field theory. An intrinsic state of tension within group members stimulates or motivates movement toward the achievement of desired common goals (Johnson and Johnson 1995: 175). Interdependence (of fate and task) also results in the group being a ‘dynamic whole’. This means that a change in one member or subgroups impacts upon others. These two elements combined together to provide the basis for Deutch’s (1949) deeply influential exploration of the relationship of task to process (and his finding that groups under conditions of positive interdependence were generally more co-operative. Members tended to participate and communicate more in discussion; were less aggressive; liked each other more; and tended to be productive as compared to those working under negative task interdependence) (Brown 1989: 32; Johnson and Johnson 1995).
Democracy and groups
Gordon W. Allport, in his introduction to Resolving Social Conflicts (Lewin 1948: xi) argues that there is striking kinship between the work of Kurt Lewin and that of John Dewey.
Both agree that democracy must be learned anew in each generation, and that it is a far more difficult form of social structure to attain and to maintain than is autocracy. Both see the intimate dependence of democracy upon social science. Without knowledge of, and obedience to, the laws of human nature in group settings, democracy cannot succeed. And without freedom for research and theory as provided only in a democratic environment, social science will surely fail. Dewey, we might say, is the outstanding philosophical exponent of democracy, Lewin is its outstanding psychological exponent. More clearly than anyone else has he shown us in concrete, operational terms what it means to be a democratic leader, and to create democratic group structure.
One of the most interesting pieces of work in which Lewin was involved concerned the exploration of different styles or types of leadership on group structure and member behaviour. This entailed a collaboration with Ronald Lippitt, among others (Lewin et. al 1939, also written up in Lewin 1948: 71-83). They looked to three classic group leadership models - democratic, autocratic and laissez-faire – and concluded that there was more originality, group-mindedness and friendliness in democratic groups. In contrast, there was more aggression, hostility, scapegoating and discontent in laissez-faire and autocratic groups (Reid 1981: 115). Lewin concludes that the difference in behaviour in autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire situations is not, on the whole, a result of individual differences. Reflecting on the group experiments conducted with children he had the following to say:
There have been few experiences for me as impressive as seeing the expression in children’s faces change during the first day of autocracy. The friendly, open, and co-operative group, full of life, became within a short half-hour a rather apathetic looking gathering without initiative. The change from autocracy to democracy seemed to take somewhat more time than from democracy to autocracy. Autocracy is imposed upon the individual. Democracy he has to learn. (Lewin 1948: 82)
Further reading and references
Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. (1992) Qualitative Research for Education, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Bradford, L. P., Gibb, J. R., Benn, K. D. (1964). T Group theory and laboratory method, New York: John Wiley.
Brown, R. (1988) Group Processes. Dynamics within and between groups, Oxford: Blackwell.
Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming Critical. Education, knowledge and action research, Lewes: Falmer Press.
Correy, S. M. (1949) ‘Action research, fundamental research and educational practices’, Teachers College Record 50: 509-14.
Deutch, M. (1949) ‘A theory of cooperation and competition’, Human Relations 2: 129-52
Elliott, J. (1991) Action Research for Educational Change, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Gastil, J. (1994) ‘A definition and illustration of democratic leadership’ Human Relations 47/8: 953-75. Reprinted in K. Grint (ed.) (1997) Leadership, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gold, M. (ed.) (1999) The Complete Social Scientist. A Kurt Lewin Reader.
Hall, C.S. and Lindzey, G. (1978) Theories of Personality 3e, New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Johnson, D. W. and Johnson, R. T. (1995) ‘Positive interdependence: key to effective cooperation’ in R. Hertz-Lazarowitz and N. Miller (eds.) Interaction in Cooperative Groups. The theoretical anatomy of group learning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kariel, H. S. (1956) ‘Democracy unlimited. Kurt Lewin’s field theory’, American Journal of Sociology 62: 280-89.
Kemmis, S. and McTaggart, R. (1988) The Action Research Planner, Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press.
Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning. Experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall.
Lewin, K. (1935) A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewin, K. (1936) Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewin, K. (1948) Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics. Gertrude W. Lewin (ed.). New York: Harper & Row, 1948.
Lewin, K. (1951) Field theory in social science; selected theoretical papers. D. Cartwright (ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
Lewin, K. and Lippitt, R. (1938) ‘An experimental approach to the study of autocracy and democracy. A preliminary note’, Sociometry 1: 292-300.
Lewin, K., Lippitt, R. and White, R. (1939) ‘Patterns of aggressive behaviour in experimentally created “social climates”’, Journal of Social Psychology 10: 271-99.
Lewin, K. and Grabbe, P. (1945) ‘Conduct, knowledge and acceptance of new values’ Journal of Social Issues 2.
Lippitt, R. (1949) Training in Community Relations, New York: Harper and Row.
McTaggart, R. (1996) ‘Issues for participatory action researchers’ in O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research, London: Falmer Press.
Marrow, A. J. (1969) The Practical Theorist. : The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin, New York: Basic Books
Reid, K. E. (1981) From Character Building to Social Treatment. The history of the use of groups in social work, Westpoint, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Schein, E (1995) 'Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning', Systems Practice, http://www.solonline.org/res/wp/10006.html
Stringer, E. T. (1999) Action Research 2e, Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.
Ullman, D. (2000) 'Kurt Lewin: His Impact on American Psychology, or Bridging the Gorge between Theory and Reality', http://www.sonoma.edu/psychology/os2db/history3.html
Webb, G. (1996) ‘Becoming critical of action research for development’ in O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research, London: Falmer Press.
Winter, R. (1987) Action-Research and the Nature of Social Inquiry. Professional innovation and educational work, Aldershot: Avebury.
Yalom, I. D. (1995) The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy 4e,New York: Basic Books.
Kurt Lewin: Field theory, Group dynamics and Democracy in groups
Field theory
Here we will note only the key elements of Kurt Lewin’s field theory. To begin it is important to recognize its roots in Gestalt theory. (A gestalt is a coherent whole. It has its own laws, and is a construct of the individual mind rather than ‘reality’). For Kurt Lewin behaviour was determined by totality of an individual’s situation. In his field theory, a ‘field’ is defined as ‘the totality of coexisting facts which are conceived of as mutually interdependent’ (Lewin 1951: 240). Individuals were seen to behave differently according to the way in which tensions between perceptions of the self and of the environment were worked through. The whole psychological field, or ‘lifespace’, within which people acted had to be viewed, in order to understand behaviour. Within this individuals and groups could be seen in topological terms (using map-like representations). Individuals participate in a series of life spaces (such as the family, work, school and church), and these were constructed under the influence of various force vectors (Lewin 1952).
Hall and Lindzey (1978: 386) summarize the central features of Kurt Lewin’s field theory as follows:
- Behaviour is a function of the field that exists at the time the behaviour occurs,
- Analysis begins with the situation as a whole from which are differentiated the component parts, and
- The concrete person in a concrete situation can represented mathematically.
In this we can see how Kurt Lewin drew together insights from topology (e.g. lifespace), psychology (need, aspiration etc.), and sociology (e.g. force fields – motives clearly being dependent on group pressures). As Allport in his foreword to Resolving Social Conflict (Lewin 1948: ix) put it, these three aspects of his thought were not separable. ‘All of his concepts, whatever root-metaphor they employ, comprise a single well-integrated system’. It was this, in significant part, which gave his work its peculiar power.
Group dynamics
It is not an exaggeration to say that Kurt Lewin had a profound impact on a generation of researchers and thinkers concerned with group dynamics. Brown (1988: 28-32) argues that two key ideas emerged out of field theory that are crucial to an appreciation of group process: interdependence of fate, and task interdependence.
Interdependence of fate. Here the basic line of argument is that groups come into being in a psychological sense ‘not because their members necessarily are similar to one another (although they may be); rather, a group exists when people in it realize their fate depends on the fate of the group as a whole’ (Brown 1988: 28). This is how Lewin (1946: 165-6) put it when discussing the position of Jews in 1939:
[I]t is not similarity or dissimilarity of individuals that constitutes a group, but rather interdependence of fate. Any normal group, and certainly any developed and organized one contains and should contain individuals of very different character…. It is easy enough to see that the common fate of all Jews makes them a group in reality. One who has grasped this simple idea will not feel that he has to break away from Judaism altogether whenever he changes his attitude toward a fundamental Jewish issue, and he will become more tolerant of differences of opinion among Jews. What is more, a person who has learned to see how much his own fate depends upon the fate of his entire group will ready and even eager to take over a fair share of responsibility for its welfare.
It could be argued that the position of Jews in 1939 constitutes a special case. That the particular dangers they faced in many countries makes arguing a general case difficult. However, Lewin’s insight does seem to be applicable to many different group settings. Subsequently, there has been some experimental support for the need for some elementary sense of interdependence (Brown 1989).
Task interdependence. Interdependence of fate can be a fairly weak form of interdependence in many groups, argued Lewin. A more significant factor is where there is interdependence in the goals of group members. In other words, if the group’s task is such that members of the group are dependent on each other for achievement, then a powerful dynamic is created.
These implications can be positive or negative. In the former case one person’s success either directly facilitates others’ success of, in the strongest case, is actually necessary for those others to succeed also… In negative interdependence – known more usually as competition – one person’s success is another’s failure. (Brown (1989: 30)
Kurt Lewin had looked to the nature of group task in an attempt to understand the uniformity of some groups’ behaviour. He remained unconvinced of the explanatory power of individual motivational concepts such as those provided by psychoanalytical theory or frustration-aggression theory (op. cit.). He was able to argue that people may come to a group with very different dispositions, but if they share a common objective, they are likely to act together to achieve it. This links back to what is usually described as Lewin’s field theory. An intrinsic state of tension within group members stimulates or motivates movement toward the achievement of desired common goals (Johnson and Johnson 1995: 175). Interdependence (of fate and task) also results in the group being a ‘dynamic whole’. This means that a change in one member or subgroups impacts upon others. These two elements combined together to provide the basis for Deutch’s (1949) deeply influential exploration of the relationship of task to process (and his finding that groups under conditions of positive interdependence were generally more co-operative. Members tended to participate and communicate more in discussion; were less aggressive; liked each other more; and tended to be productive as compared to those working under negative task interdependence) (Brown 1989: 32; Johnson and Johnson 1995).
Democracy and groups
Gordon W. Allport, in his introduction to Resolving Social Conflicts (Lewin 1948: xi) argues that there is striking kinship between the work of Kurt Lewin and that of John Dewey.
Both agree that democracy must be learned anew in each generation, and that it is a far more difficult form of social structure to attain and to maintain than is autocracy. Both see the intimate dependence of democracy upon social science. Without knowledge of, and obedience to, the laws of human nature in group settings, democracy cannot succeed. And without freedom for research and theory as provided only in a democratic environment, social science will surely fail. Dewey, we might say, is the outstanding philosophical exponent of democracy, Lewin is its outstanding psychological exponent. More clearly than anyone else has he shown us in concrete, operational terms what it means to be a democratic leader, and to create democratic group structure.
One of the most interesting pieces of work in which Lewin was involved concerned the exploration of different styles or types of leadership on group structure and member behaviour. This entailed a collaboration with Ronald Lippitt, among others (Lewin et. al 1939, also written up in Lewin 1948: 71-83). They looked to three classic group leadership models - democratic, autocratic and laissez-faire – and concluded that there was more originality, group-mindedness and friendliness in democratic groups. In contrast, there was more aggression, hostility, scapegoating and discontent in laissez-faire and autocratic groups (Reid 1981: 115). Lewin concludes that the difference in behaviour in autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire situations is not, on the whole, a result of individual differences. Reflecting on the group experiments conducted with children he had the following to say:
There have been few experiences for me as impressive as seeing the expression in children’s faces change during the first day of autocracy. The friendly, open, and co-operative group, full of life, became within a short half-hour a rather apathetic looking gathering without initiative. The change from autocracy to democracy seemed to take somewhat more time than from democracy to autocracy. Autocracy is imposed upon the individual. Democracy he has to learn. (Lewin 1948: 82)
Further reading and references
Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. (1992) Qualitative Research for Education, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Bradford, L. P., Gibb, J. R., Benn, K. D. (1964). T Group theory and laboratory method, New York: John Wiley.
Brown, R. (1988) Group Processes. Dynamics within and between groups, Oxford: Blackwell.
Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming Critical. Education, knowledge and action research, Lewes: Falmer Press.
Correy, S. M. (1949) ‘Action research, fundamental research and educational practices’, Teachers College Record 50: 509-14.
Deutch, M. (1949) ‘A theory of cooperation and competition’, Human Relations 2: 129-52
Elliott, J. (1991) Action Research for Educational Change, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Gastil, J. (1994) ‘A definition and illustration of democratic leadership’ Human Relations 47/8: 953-75. Reprinted in K. Grint (ed.) (1997) Leadership, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gold, M. (ed.) (1999) The Complete Social Scientist. A Kurt Lewin Reader.
Hall, C.S. and Lindzey, G. (1978) Theories of Personality 3e, New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Johnson, D. W. and Johnson, R. T. (1995) ‘Positive interdependence: key to effective cooperation’ in R. Hertz-Lazarowitz and N. Miller (eds.) Interaction in Cooperative Groups. The theoretical anatomy of group learning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kariel, H. S. (1956) ‘Democracy unlimited. Kurt Lewin’s field theory’, American Journal of Sociology 62: 280-89.
Kemmis, S. and McTaggart, R. (1988) The Action Research Planner, Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press.
Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning. Experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall.
Lewin, K. (1935) A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewin, K. (1936) Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewin, K. (1948) Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics. Gertrude W. Lewin (ed.). New York: Harper & Row, 1948.
Lewin, K. (1951) Field theory in social science; selected theoretical papers. D. Cartwright (ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
Lewin, K. and Lippitt, R. (1938) ‘An experimental approach to the study of autocracy and democracy. A preliminary note’, Sociometry 1: 292-300.
Lewin, K., Lippitt, R. and White, R. (1939) ‘Patterns of aggressive behaviour in experimentally created “social climates”’, Journal of Social Psychology 10: 271-99.
Lewin, K. and Grabbe, P. (1945) ‘Conduct, knowledge and acceptance of new values’ Journal of Social Issues 2.
Lippitt, R. (1949) Training in Community Relations, New York: Harper and Row.
McTaggart, R. (1996) ‘Issues for participatory action researchers’ in O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research, London: Falmer Press.
Marrow, A. J. (1969) The Practical Theorist. : The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin, New York: Basic Books
Reid, K. E. (1981) From Character Building to Social Treatment. The history of the use of groups in social work, Westpoint, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Schein, E (1995) 'Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning', Systems Practice, http://www.solonline.org/res/wp/10006.html
Stringer, E. T. (1999) Action Research 2e, Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.
Ullman, D. (2000) 'Kurt Lewin: His Impact on American Psychology, or Bridging the Gorge between Theory and Reality', http://www.sonoma.edu/psychology/os2db/history3.html
Webb, G. (1996) ‘Becoming critical of action research for development’ in O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research, London: Falmer Press.
Winter, R. (1987) Action-Research and the Nature of Social Inquiry. Professional innovation and educational work, Aldershot: Avebury.
Yalom, I. D. (1995) The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy 4e,New York: Basic Books.
Kurt Lewin and the Origin of T-Groups
Original source (edited on this page) at http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm
T-Groups: Kurt Lewin and the Origins
In the summer of 1946 Kurt Lewin along with colleagues and associates from the Research Center for Group Dynamics (Ronald Lippitt, Leland Bradford and Kenneth Benne) became involved in leadership and group dynamics training for the Connecticut State Interracial Commission. They designed and implemented a two-week programme that looked to encourage group discussion and decision-making, and where participants (including staff) could treat each other as peers. ... The trainers and researchers collected detailed observations and recordings of group activities, and worked on these during the event in meetings that were initially just for the staff -- however, some of the other participants also wanted to be involved in these staff meetings.
At the start of one of the early evening observers' sessions, three of the participants asked to be present. Much to the chagrin of the staff, Lewin agreed to this unorthodox request. As the observers reported to the group, one of the participants -- a woman -- disagreed with the observer on the interpretation of her behaviour that day. One other participant agreed with her assertion and a lively discussion ensued about behaviours and their interpretations. Word of the session spread, and by the next night, more than half of the sixty participants were attending the feedback sessions which, indeed became the focus of the conference. Near the conference's end, the vast majority of participants were attending these sessions, which lasted well into the night. (NTL Institute)
Lippitt (1949) has described how Lewin responded to this and joined with participants in ‘active dialogue about differences of interpretation and observation of the events by those who had participated in them’. A significant innovation in training practice was established. As Kolb (1984: 10) has commented:
Thus the discovery was made that learning is best facilitated in an environment where there is dialectic tension and conflict between immediate, concrete experience and analytic detachment. By bringing together the immediate experiences of the trainees and the conceptual models of the staff in an open atmosphere where inputs from each perspective could challenge and stimulate the other, a learning environment occurred with remarkable vitality and creativity.
It was this experience that led to the establishment of the first National Training Laboratory in Group Development (held at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine in the summer of 1947). By this time Lewin was dead, but his thinking and practice was very much a part of what happened. This is how Reid (1981: 153) describes what happened:
A central feature of the laboratory was “basic skills training,” in which an observer reported on group processes at set intervals. The skills to be achieved were intended to help an individual function in the role of “change agent”. A change agent was thought to be instrumental in facilitating communication and useful feedback among participants. He was also to be a paragon who was aware of the need for change, could diagnose the problems involved, and could plan for change, implement the plans, and evaluate the results. To become an effective change agent, an understanding of the dynamics of groups was believed necessary.
What we see here is the basic shape of T-group theory and the so-called ‘laboratory method’. Initially the small discussion groups were known as ‘basic skill training groups’ but by 1949 they had been shortened to T-group. In 1950 a sponsoring organization, the National Training Laboratories (NTL) was set up, and the scene was set for a major expansion of the work (reaching its heyday in the 1960s) and the evolution of the encounter group (Yalom 1995: 488).
... Four elements of the T-group are particularly noteworthy ... according to Yalom (1995: 488-9), and they owe a great deal to Lewin’s influence:
Feedback. Lewin had borrowed the term from electrical engineering and applied it to the behavioural sciences. Here it was broadly used to describe the adjustment of a process informed by information about its results or effects. An important element here is the difference between the desired and actual result. There was a concern that organizations, groups and relationships generally suffered from a lack of accurate information about what was happening around their performance. Feedback became a key ingredient of T-groups and was found to ‘be most effective when it stemmed from here-and-now observations, when it followed the generating event as closely as possible, and when the recipient checked with other group members to establish its validity and reduce perceptual distortion’ (Yalom 1995: 489).
Unfreezing. This was taken directly from Kurt Lewin’s change theory. It describes the process of disconfirming a person’s former belief system. ‘Motivation for change must be generated before change can occur. One must be helped to re-examine many cherished assumptions about oneself and one’s relations to others’ (op. cit.). Part of the process of the group, then, had to address this. Trainers sought to create an environment in which values and beliefs could be challenged.
Participant observation. ‘Members had to participate emotionally in the group as well as observe themselves and the group objectively’ (op. cit.). Connecting concrete (emotional) experience and analytical detachment is not an easy task, and is liable to be resisted by many participants, but it was seen as a essential if people were to learn and develop.
Cognitive aids. This particular aspect was drawn from developments in psychoeducational and cognitive-behavioural group therapy. It entailed the provision of models or organizing ideas through the medium brief lectures and handouts (and later things like film clips or video). Perhaps the best known of these was the Johari Window (named after, and developed by, Joe Luft and Harry Ingram). Yalom (1995: 490) comments, ‘The use of such cognitive aids, lectures, reading assignments, and theory sessions demonstrates that the basic allegiance of the T-group was to the classroom rather than the consulting room. The participants were considered students; the task of the T-group was to facilitate learning for its members’.
(This article is from infed.org -- see: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm)
Further reading and references
Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. (1992) Qualitative Research for Education, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Bradford, L. P., Gibb, J. R., Benn, K. D. (1964). T Group theory and laboratory method, New York: John Wiley.
Brown, R. (1988) Group Processes. Dynamics within and between groups, Oxford: Blackwell.
Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming Critical. Education, knowledge and action research, Lewes: Falmer Press.
Correy, S. M. (1949) ‘Action research, fundamental research and educational practices’, Teachers College Record 50: 509-14.
Deutch, M. (1949) ‘A theory of cooperation and competition’, Human Relations 2: 129-52
Elliott, J. (1991) Action Research for Educational Change, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Gastil, J. (1994) ‘A definition and illustration of democratic leadership’ Human Relations 47/8: 953-75. Reprinted in K. Grint (ed.) (1997) Leadership, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gold, M. (ed.) (1999) The Complete Social Scientist. A Kurt Lewin Reader.
Hall, C.S. and Lindzey, G. (1978) Theories of Personality 3e, New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Johnson, D. W. and Johnson, R. T. (1995) ‘Positive interdependence: key to effective cooperation’ in R. Hertz-Lazarowitz and N. Miller (eds.) Interaction in Cooperative Groups. The theoretical anatomy of group learning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kariel, H. S. (1956) ‘Democracy unlimited. Kurt Lewin’s field theory’, American Journal of Sociology 62: 280-89.
Kemmis, S. and McTaggart, R. (1988) The Action Research Planner, Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press.
Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning. Experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall.
Lewin, K. (1935) A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewin, K. (1936) Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewin, K. (1948) Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics. Gertrude W. Lewin (ed.). New York: Harper & Row, 1948.
Lewin, K. (1951) Field theory in social science; selected theoretical papers. D. Cartwright (ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
Lewin, K. and Lippitt, R. (1938) ‘An experimental approach to the study of autocracy and democracy. A preliminary note’, Sociometry 1: 292-300.
Lewin, K., Lippitt, R. and White, R. (1939) ‘Patterns of aggressive behaviour in experimentally created “social climates”’, Journal of Social Psychology 10: 271-99.
Lewin, K. and Grabbe, P. (1945) ‘Conduct, knowledge and acceptance of new values’ Journal of Social Issues 2.
Lippitt, R. (1949) Training in Community Relations, New York: Harper and Row.
McTaggart, R. (1996) ‘Issues for participatory action researchers’ in O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research, London: Falmer Press.
Marrow, A. J. (1969) The Practical Theorist. : The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin, New York: Basic Books
Reid, K. E. (1981) From Character Building to Social Treatment. The history of the use of groups in social work, Westpoint, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Schein, E (1995) 'Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning', Systems Practice, http://www.solonline.org/res/wp/10006.html
Stringer, E. T. (1999) Action Research 2e, Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.
Ullman, D. (2000) 'Kurt Lewin: His Impact on American Psychology, or Bridging the Gorge between Theory and Reality', http://www.sonoma.edu/psychology/os2db/history3.html
Webb, G. (1996) ‘Becoming critical of action research for development’ in O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research, London: Falmer Press.
Winter, R. (1987) Action-Research and the Nature of Social Inquiry. Professional innovation and educational work, Aldershot: Avebury.
Yalom, I. D. (1995) The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy 4e,New York: Basic Books.
T-Groups: Kurt Lewin and the Origins
In the summer of 1946 Kurt Lewin along with colleagues and associates from the Research Center for Group Dynamics (Ronald Lippitt, Leland Bradford and Kenneth Benne) became involved in leadership and group dynamics training for the Connecticut State Interracial Commission. They designed and implemented a two-week programme that looked to encourage group discussion and decision-making, and where participants (including staff) could treat each other as peers. ... The trainers and researchers collected detailed observations and recordings of group activities, and worked on these during the event in meetings that were initially just for the staff -- however, some of the other participants also wanted to be involved in these staff meetings.
At the start of one of the early evening observers' sessions, three of the participants asked to be present. Much to the chagrin of the staff, Lewin agreed to this unorthodox request. As the observers reported to the group, one of the participants -- a woman -- disagreed with the observer on the interpretation of her behaviour that day. One other participant agreed with her assertion and a lively discussion ensued about behaviours and their interpretations. Word of the session spread, and by the next night, more than half of the sixty participants were attending the feedback sessions which, indeed became the focus of the conference. Near the conference's end, the vast majority of participants were attending these sessions, which lasted well into the night. (NTL Institute)
Lippitt (1949) has described how Lewin responded to this and joined with participants in ‘active dialogue about differences of interpretation and observation of the events by those who had participated in them’. A significant innovation in training practice was established. As Kolb (1984: 10) has commented:
Thus the discovery was made that learning is best facilitated in an environment where there is dialectic tension and conflict between immediate, concrete experience and analytic detachment. By bringing together the immediate experiences of the trainees and the conceptual models of the staff in an open atmosphere where inputs from each perspective could challenge and stimulate the other, a learning environment occurred with remarkable vitality and creativity.
It was this experience that led to the establishment of the first National Training Laboratory in Group Development (held at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine in the summer of 1947). By this time Lewin was dead, but his thinking and practice was very much a part of what happened. This is how Reid (1981: 153) describes what happened:
A central feature of the laboratory was “basic skills training,” in which an observer reported on group processes at set intervals. The skills to be achieved were intended to help an individual function in the role of “change agent”. A change agent was thought to be instrumental in facilitating communication and useful feedback among participants. He was also to be a paragon who was aware of the need for change, could diagnose the problems involved, and could plan for change, implement the plans, and evaluate the results. To become an effective change agent, an understanding of the dynamics of groups was believed necessary.
What we see here is the basic shape of T-group theory and the so-called ‘laboratory method’. Initially the small discussion groups were known as ‘basic skill training groups’ but by 1949 they had been shortened to T-group. In 1950 a sponsoring organization, the National Training Laboratories (NTL) was set up, and the scene was set for a major expansion of the work (reaching its heyday in the 1960s) and the evolution of the encounter group (Yalom 1995: 488).
... Four elements of the T-group are particularly noteworthy ... according to Yalom (1995: 488-9), and they owe a great deal to Lewin’s influence:
Feedback. Lewin had borrowed the term from electrical engineering and applied it to the behavioural sciences. Here it was broadly used to describe the adjustment of a process informed by information about its results or effects. An important element here is the difference between the desired and actual result. There was a concern that organizations, groups and relationships generally suffered from a lack of accurate information about what was happening around their performance. Feedback became a key ingredient of T-groups and was found to ‘be most effective when it stemmed from here-and-now observations, when it followed the generating event as closely as possible, and when the recipient checked with other group members to establish its validity and reduce perceptual distortion’ (Yalom 1995: 489).
Unfreezing. This was taken directly from Kurt Lewin’s change theory. It describes the process of disconfirming a person’s former belief system. ‘Motivation for change must be generated before change can occur. One must be helped to re-examine many cherished assumptions about oneself and one’s relations to others’ (op. cit.). Part of the process of the group, then, had to address this. Trainers sought to create an environment in which values and beliefs could be challenged.
Participant observation. ‘Members had to participate emotionally in the group as well as observe themselves and the group objectively’ (op. cit.). Connecting concrete (emotional) experience and analytical detachment is not an easy task, and is liable to be resisted by many participants, but it was seen as a essential if people were to learn and develop.
Cognitive aids. This particular aspect was drawn from developments in psychoeducational and cognitive-behavioural group therapy. It entailed the provision of models or organizing ideas through the medium brief lectures and handouts (and later things like film clips or video). Perhaps the best known of these was the Johari Window (named after, and developed by, Joe Luft and Harry Ingram). Yalom (1995: 490) comments, ‘The use of such cognitive aids, lectures, reading assignments, and theory sessions demonstrates that the basic allegiance of the T-group was to the classroom rather than the consulting room. The participants were considered students; the task of the T-group was to facilitate learning for its members’.
(This article is from infed.org -- see: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm)
Further reading and references
Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. (1992) Qualitative Research for Education, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Bradford, L. P., Gibb, J. R., Benn, K. D. (1964). T Group theory and laboratory method, New York: John Wiley.
Brown, R. (1988) Group Processes. Dynamics within and between groups, Oxford: Blackwell.
Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming Critical. Education, knowledge and action research, Lewes: Falmer Press.
Correy, S. M. (1949) ‘Action research, fundamental research and educational practices’, Teachers College Record 50: 509-14.
Deutch, M. (1949) ‘A theory of cooperation and competition’, Human Relations 2: 129-52
Elliott, J. (1991) Action Research for Educational Change, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Gastil, J. (1994) ‘A definition and illustration of democratic leadership’ Human Relations 47/8: 953-75. Reprinted in K. Grint (ed.) (1997) Leadership, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gold, M. (ed.) (1999) The Complete Social Scientist. A Kurt Lewin Reader.
Hall, C.S. and Lindzey, G. (1978) Theories of Personality 3e, New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Johnson, D. W. and Johnson, R. T. (1995) ‘Positive interdependence: key to effective cooperation’ in R. Hertz-Lazarowitz and N. Miller (eds.) Interaction in Cooperative Groups. The theoretical anatomy of group learning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kariel, H. S. (1956) ‘Democracy unlimited. Kurt Lewin’s field theory’, American Journal of Sociology 62: 280-89.
Kemmis, S. and McTaggart, R. (1988) The Action Research Planner, Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press.
Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning. Experience as the source of learning and development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall.
Lewin, K. (1935) A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewin, K. (1936) Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewin, K. (1948) Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics. Gertrude W. Lewin (ed.). New York: Harper & Row, 1948.
Lewin, K. (1951) Field theory in social science; selected theoretical papers. D. Cartwright (ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
Lewin, K. and Lippitt, R. (1938) ‘An experimental approach to the study of autocracy and democracy. A preliminary note’, Sociometry 1: 292-300.
Lewin, K., Lippitt, R. and White, R. (1939) ‘Patterns of aggressive behaviour in experimentally created “social climates”’, Journal of Social Psychology 10: 271-99.
Lewin, K. and Grabbe, P. (1945) ‘Conduct, knowledge and acceptance of new values’ Journal of Social Issues 2.
Lippitt, R. (1949) Training in Community Relations, New York: Harper and Row.
McTaggart, R. (1996) ‘Issues for participatory action researchers’ in O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research, London: Falmer Press.
Marrow, A. J. (1969) The Practical Theorist. : The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin, New York: Basic Books
Reid, K. E. (1981) From Character Building to Social Treatment. The history of the use of groups in social work, Westpoint, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Schein, E (1995) 'Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning', Systems Practice, http://www.solonline.org/res/wp/10006.html
Stringer, E. T. (1999) Action Research 2e, Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.
Ullman, D. (2000) 'Kurt Lewin: His Impact on American Psychology, or Bridging the Gorge between Theory and Reality', http://www.sonoma.edu/psychology/os2db/history3.html
Webb, G. (1996) ‘Becoming critical of action research for development’ in O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research, London: Falmer Press.
Winter, R. (1987) Action-Research and the Nature of Social Inquiry. Professional innovation and educational work, Aldershot: Avebury.
Yalom, I. D. (1995) The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy 4e,New York: Basic Books.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Some riffs off Maturana
Some ruminations in progress ...
1.In languaging we mutually coordinate consensual coordinations
2. Languaging is therefore agreeing – reaching agreements on the basis of agreements (the first agreements being mutual co-ordinations of non-verbal activity)
3. Languaging therefore proceeds through the experiencing of discord on the way to accord (ac + coordination)
4. discord discovers autonomy, which is independent localization (independent perspective) and agency, i.e. a separate autonomous thinking, feeling, willing self
5. [Side question: what is a subconscious agreement to remain in undisclosed discord? E.g. two people in co-dependency implicitly agree to not hold one another to account responsibility to self]
6. First-level consensual co-ordinations happen in non-verbal communication between independent animal living systems and might be considered incidences of mutual structural coupling sustained through mutual agency (see parentheses in #2);
6a. The biology is affected by and affects these mutual coordinations, but is not aware of them as such;
6b. This domain of biological beings interacting with one another as totalities does not intersect with the domain of the biological;
7. The consensual co-ordinations are consensual agreements – a form of structural coupling - between biological living systems; they are therefore relations between biological living systems and are therefore not reducible to biological phenomena;
7a. In the co-ordinations between independent biological systems the biology appears as a totality: the "other" appears as a totality to the self, and the concept of self is most likely derived from experience of the other as such a totality;
7aa. One conception of self arises from (or may be derived through) the self folding upon itself, e.g. through denial and repression and self-objectification (which comes from a reaction to others, a dynamic of denial); another conception of self is derived from the experience of the autonomy of another self as a self-contained totality, and the assumption of a like autonomy on the basis of which one goes to "meet" others; the objectified self, folded upon itself, not taking responsibility for itself (caught in denial) is incapable of meeting the Other selves in relations of mutual autonomy, and attempts to catch others in relations of submission and domination;
7b. A biological organism to survive must remain structually intact, and must remain structurally coupled to its environment;
7c. some structural couplings between an organism and its environment, or between an organism and other organisms ( consensual agreements ) are independent of survival – e.g. play or inter-play
8. consensual coordinations between living systems are structural couplings between living systems with some similarities to structural couplings between a living system and its general environment
8a. consensual coordination among a group of persons is more than structural "coupling," it is more than "coupling"; what is a word for "coupling" that involves potentially a large potential number of members? structural "grouping"? Languaging is a mutual consensual structural grouping of organisms each biologically independently structurally coupled with the environment;
8b. for the biology structurally coupled with the environment, there is no environment; hence there is no question of (objectivity) or objectivity;
8c. the consensual structural groupings of organisms are rooted in (objectivity), of which objectivity (without parentheses) is an instance;
8d. when pseudo-consensual structural grouping is achieved through objectivity without parentheses, i.e. domination, a threat-boundary is drawn by a dominator and consensual coordination can go on within the boundaries of the threat
9. the coordination of such consensual coordinations coordinates structural couplings (to create structural couplings of structural couplings) [and/or the coordination of the coordination of structural groupings?]
10. language names the structural couplings and in naming structurally couples
11. the mutual structural coupling – both consensual accords and discords arising on the basis of accords – are more-than-biological
12. the coord of coords is yet another level
13. it can thus be said that agreement and not biology drives languaging;
14. agreement is a group phenomenon that consists in the sustaining of the structural coupling (consensual agreement, accord), which is the public realm or we
15. awareness or experiencing of the we requires cycling between we and not-we, between discord and accord
16. languaging in the form of words-in-use is the heritage and treasure of agreements that houses the achieved “we”
17. an attuning to the agreeing forward – brooking discord in the expectation of new creative accord – is love and being-public (cp. C.S.Peirce: agreement is the end of reason)
18. such attunement actively cultivates power equity in its service
19. languaging as the pathway of agreeing that is evolutionary love
1.In languaging we mutually coordinate consensual coordinations
2. Languaging is therefore agreeing – reaching agreements on the basis of agreements (the first agreements being mutual co-ordinations of non-verbal activity)
3. Languaging therefore proceeds through the experiencing of discord on the way to accord (ac + coordination)
4. discord discovers autonomy, which is independent localization (independent perspective) and agency, i.e. a separate autonomous thinking, feeling, willing self
5. [Side question: what is a subconscious agreement to remain in undisclosed discord? E.g. two people in co-dependency implicitly agree to not hold one another to account responsibility to self]
6. First-level consensual co-ordinations happen in non-verbal communication between independent animal living systems and might be considered incidences of mutual structural coupling sustained through mutual agency (see parentheses in #2);
6a. The biology is affected by and affects these mutual coordinations, but is not aware of them as such;
6b. This domain of biological beings interacting with one another as totalities does not intersect with the domain of the biological;
7. The consensual co-ordinations are consensual agreements – a form of structural coupling - between biological living systems; they are therefore relations between biological living systems and are therefore not reducible to biological phenomena;
7a. In the co-ordinations between independent biological systems the biology appears as a totality: the "other" appears as a totality to the self, and the concept of self is most likely derived from experience of the other as such a totality;
7aa. One conception of self arises from (or may be derived through) the self folding upon itself, e.g. through denial and repression and self-objectification (which comes from a reaction to others, a dynamic of denial); another conception of self is derived from the experience of the autonomy of another self as a self-contained totality, and the assumption of a like autonomy on the basis of which one goes to "meet" others; the objectified self, folded upon itself, not taking responsibility for itself (caught in denial) is incapable of meeting the Other selves in relations of mutual autonomy, and attempts to catch others in relations of submission and domination;
7b. A biological organism to survive must remain structually intact, and must remain structurally coupled to its environment;
7c. some structural couplings between an organism and its environment, or between an organism and other organisms ( consensual agreements ) are independent of survival – e.g. play or inter-play
8. consensual coordinations between living systems are structural couplings between living systems with some similarities to structural couplings between a living system and its general environment
8a. consensual coordination among a group of persons is more than structural "coupling," it is more than "coupling"; what is a word for "coupling" that involves potentially a large potential number of members? structural "grouping"? Languaging is a mutual consensual structural grouping of organisms each biologically independently structurally coupled with the environment;
8b. for the biology structurally coupled with the environment, there is no environment; hence there is no question of (objectivity) or objectivity;
8c. the consensual structural groupings of organisms are rooted in (objectivity), of which objectivity (without parentheses) is an instance;
8d. when pseudo-consensual structural grouping is achieved through objectivity without parentheses, i.e. domination, a threat-boundary is drawn by a dominator and consensual coordination can go on within the boundaries of the threat
9. the coordination of such consensual coordinations coordinates structural couplings (to create structural couplings of structural couplings) [and/or the coordination of the coordination of structural groupings?]
10. language names the structural couplings and in naming structurally couples
11. the mutual structural coupling – both consensual accords and discords arising on the basis of accords – are more-than-biological
12. the coord of coords is yet another level
13. it can thus be said that agreement and not biology drives languaging;
14. agreement is a group phenomenon that consists in the sustaining of the structural coupling (consensual agreement, accord), which is the public realm or we
15. awareness or experiencing of the we requires cycling between we and not-we, between discord and accord
16. languaging in the form of words-in-use is the heritage and treasure of agreements that houses the achieved “we”
17. an attuning to the agreeing forward – brooking discord in the expectation of new creative accord – is love and being-public (cp. C.S.Peirce: agreement is the end of reason)
18. such attunement actively cultivates power equity in its service
19. languaging as the pathway of agreeing that is evolutionary love
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Love Gyroscopics - Some Thoughts on Emotions and Self
I find it useful to gauge the significance of all our emotions relative to one single emotion: love.
My belief is that, because we humans are naturally loving beings, every moment when we sense ourselves feeling something other than love and openness, we are receiving an important signal to pay attention to, a signal that something is out of whack, a signal to reorient ourselves and/or change our circumstances.
There are plenty of incentives in our present-day culture to cultivate other feelings than love, to focus on the negative, to be on the lookout for things suspicious, to breed cynicism and distrust. All the negative feelings are valuable, and I don't think it's a good idea to ignore the negatives when they present themselves. But the cultivation of negative emotion, the adoption of negatives as our benchmark reference points, I believe, is a good route to depression and mental illness, not to mention ineffectiveness, inaction and loneliness.
While the wilfull manufacture of good feeling is not advisable, yet noticing what makes us feel good, noticing what we love, and cultivating the openness and vulnerability needed to experience joy and to be sensitive to delightful and delicate good feeling is a key, in my belief, to happiness and power. Noticing when we have a choice to regard our glasses as half full rather than half empty, and choosing to appreciate the opportunity latent in whatever reality, is an essential precondition to success.
If in reading this the word "love" for you conjures something like Hollywood romance, you might be wondering what the heck I am talking about. When I talk about love I don't quite mean the Hollywood kind, the heated romantic attraction of two private individuals.
Instead, I have in mind something in line with the thinking of Humberto Maturana, the great Chilean biologist, for whom love is not only the most fundamental human emotion, it is how we feel when our minds and senses are most plastic, agile, aware and alive.
Maturana defines love as feeling we have when we give "legitimacy to the other in co-existence with ourselves." Love is a willingness to appreciate the other in the other's independent being - whether we are talking about a person, a flower or a sunset. If we are not feeling love, we can be sure that we are not engaging the world with our full power, that we have strayed from our true selves.
Emotions provide an important compass to finding our true path, the path that brings us into relations of love and joy with the world, the path on which we realize ourselves as lovers, leaders, citizen-actors -- attractive beings who create love and energy around them.
Looked at in this way, love can be related to as a kind of centering force, keeping us at the maximum of our power. The chief skill to be developed in personal development, then, is the skill of becoming a human gyroscope, with love our orienting gravitational force. Grow up. Learn how to love.
Now, love doesn't simply mean going all soft and cuddly. In fact, in some circumstances, it's quite the reverse. The more we know what we love, the more we are willing to defend what we love and to act on its behalf. We grow courageous (from the word "coeur," heart), and we grow wise. When other emotions than love rule our perceptions, what we are able to perceive is diminished. Love helps us maximize our awareness, and therefore helps us to act in view of the ultimate consequences we wish to achieve.
I'd be interested in distinguishing different experiences, types, or qualities of love that might fall within the definition I am spelling out here. These might run the gamut from a simple feeling of openness to experience, without any particular charge to it, to the feeling one gets from full and active engagement, "being in the flow" (as Csikszentmihalyi calls it), exercising one's full self to the point of total elation and self-forgetfulness.
Not being in the love zone, on the contrary, means feeling agitated in one way or another. We're "hooked," for instance, by a particular emotion. It might be jealousy or anger. Or maybe we feel afraid, or unsure of ourselves. Whatever the circumstance, each of these emotions, reflected upon, will bear some relation to something that we care about, i.e. to some relation of love.
Trying to develop the self's gyroscope is not an easy task. It's probably a lot harder for most of us than learning to be a good sailor, or card player, or video-game player or what have you. In other words (looking at this glass as eternally half-full), the quest to learn the skill of love will provide you with an endless task with endless room for learning and improvement. It's a good idea to start reframing your fear of making mistakes into a love of learning to learn.
One of the difficulties is that the emotions and the mind are so agile, and move so quickly together - more quickly than we can be consciously aware - that they rapidly take us off track, decentering us, as if into a kind of blinded sleep, until we awake and find ourselves again.
In other words, we react to circumstances - based on instantaneous emotions and unconscious assumptions and expectations - and before we know it, we are acting from a lesser place.
I am reminded of an incident, an experience I had that bears on what I'm talking about. It's probably not quite the kind of story you'd expect me to tell. But here goes.
I remember one day some years ago when I was in college. I had a very important paper due the next day, and I had barely even started on it. I'd committed myself (or so I thought) to hunker down and spend the entire day writing it. Early in the morning, determined, I sat down at my desk with a hot pot of tea and pen and paper.
Come one o'clock, I suddenly found myself hanging out of my second-floor apartment washing my windows! It was if I awoke in surprise to find myself somewhere I did not want to be, doing something I did not want to be doing.
I recognized the power of my unconscious to lead me into procrastination and avoidance. Some chain of events -- perhaps I got up from my desk to take a look down at the street, perhaps I noticed a film of dust on the glass -- had led me into a series of activities, far from my original purpose of doing my paper.
When I rediscovered my commitment to do my paper, I focused my attention and got engaged, and I wrote something I loved. A lot of life is like that. We find ourselves doing something, working hard at it, and yet we wonder how we ever got there because we realize that it's not what we want to be doing.
I guess I'm saying it takes discipline and commitment to follow one's heart.
But how do we discover what we want? How do we know our hearts? The emotions hold they key, or one of several essential keys.
And yet our culture does not support emotional sensitivity. Why is that? Whence our commitment to rationalism and our disparagement or fear of emoting?
Because of our inherited cultural bias against expressing emotion, I think we are by and large in need of special practice if we are going to learn how to be true lovers of people and life.
To develop this sensitivity, we need to create a habit of slowing down, of making space to reflect on the underlying emotional responses, patterns and knee-jerk reactions that give rise to our habitual judgments, interpretations and thoughts, with the goal of gaining new power over ourselves and the choices we habitually make. Larger self-awareness can enlarge the space of choice within which we move day by day.
If you are not feeling love you are not wholly present, not fully open to the other, to experience.
We know the unloving emotions as negatives - fear, anger, dissatisfaction, etc.; negatives by definition don't exist in themselves; they are lessening reactions to something else. Thus to look at them or be gripped by them is to be by definition withdrawn from the positive, to be diminished from fullness of being and presence. Negatives are by definition a pulling away; love is fully turning toward and staying.
Science as we have learned it is a discipline of negation, of exclusion of uncertain, unquantifiable factors, i.e., the non-representational, the non-objective, whatever can't be pointed to. Science is the rigorous discovery of the lowest limit of loving attention. It's observation at its most emotionally minimal. However, it's always emotion that drives the scientist to land in his field of study; it's emotion that motivates him at least up to the point he puts his scientific lenses on.
Learning to see the positivity in relation to which a negative is experienced is to re-own the negation, is to be put back in touch with the power to act, rather than to shrink.
Love is simply finding and staying with what is, the present - and not entertaining the negative gods.
My belief is that, because we humans are naturally loving beings, every moment when we sense ourselves feeling something other than love and openness, we are receiving an important signal to pay attention to, a signal that something is out of whack, a signal to reorient ourselves and/or change our circumstances.
There are plenty of incentives in our present-day culture to cultivate other feelings than love, to focus on the negative, to be on the lookout for things suspicious, to breed cynicism and distrust. All the negative feelings are valuable, and I don't think it's a good idea to ignore the negatives when they present themselves. But the cultivation of negative emotion, the adoption of negatives as our benchmark reference points, I believe, is a good route to depression and mental illness, not to mention ineffectiveness, inaction and loneliness.
While the wilfull manufacture of good feeling is not advisable, yet noticing what makes us feel good, noticing what we love, and cultivating the openness and vulnerability needed to experience joy and to be sensitive to delightful and delicate good feeling is a key, in my belief, to happiness and power. Noticing when we have a choice to regard our glasses as half full rather than half empty, and choosing to appreciate the opportunity latent in whatever reality, is an essential precondition to success.
If in reading this the word "love" for you conjures something like Hollywood romance, you might be wondering what the heck I am talking about. When I talk about love I don't quite mean the Hollywood kind, the heated romantic attraction of two private individuals.
Instead, I have in mind something in line with the thinking of Humberto Maturana, the great Chilean biologist, for whom love is not only the most fundamental human emotion, it is how we feel when our minds and senses are most plastic, agile, aware and alive.
Maturana defines love as feeling we have when we give "legitimacy to the other in co-existence with ourselves." Love is a willingness to appreciate the other in the other's independent being - whether we are talking about a person, a flower or a sunset. If we are not feeling love, we can be sure that we are not engaging the world with our full power, that we have strayed from our true selves.
Emotions provide an important compass to finding our true path, the path that brings us into relations of love and joy with the world, the path on which we realize ourselves as lovers, leaders, citizen-actors -- attractive beings who create love and energy around them.
Looked at in this way, love can be related to as a kind of centering force, keeping us at the maximum of our power. The chief skill to be developed in personal development, then, is the skill of becoming a human gyroscope, with love our orienting gravitational force. Grow up. Learn how to love.
Now, love doesn't simply mean going all soft and cuddly. In fact, in some circumstances, it's quite the reverse. The more we know what we love, the more we are willing to defend what we love and to act on its behalf. We grow courageous (from the word "coeur," heart), and we grow wise. When other emotions than love rule our perceptions, what we are able to perceive is diminished. Love helps us maximize our awareness, and therefore helps us to act in view of the ultimate consequences we wish to achieve.
I'd be interested in distinguishing different experiences, types, or qualities of love that might fall within the definition I am spelling out here. These might run the gamut from a simple feeling of openness to experience, without any particular charge to it, to the feeling one gets from full and active engagement, "being in the flow" (as Csikszentmihalyi calls it), exercising one's full self to the point of total elation and self-forgetfulness.
Not being in the love zone, on the contrary, means feeling agitated in one way or another. We're "hooked," for instance, by a particular emotion. It might be jealousy or anger. Or maybe we feel afraid, or unsure of ourselves. Whatever the circumstance, each of these emotions, reflected upon, will bear some relation to something that we care about, i.e. to some relation of love.
Trying to develop the self's gyroscope is not an easy task. It's probably a lot harder for most of us than learning to be a good sailor, or card player, or video-game player or what have you. In other words (looking at this glass as eternally half-full), the quest to learn the skill of love will provide you with an endless task with endless room for learning and improvement. It's a good idea to start reframing your fear of making mistakes into a love of learning to learn.
One of the difficulties is that the emotions and the mind are so agile, and move so quickly together - more quickly than we can be consciously aware - that they rapidly take us off track, decentering us, as if into a kind of blinded sleep, until we awake and find ourselves again.
In other words, we react to circumstances - based on instantaneous emotions and unconscious assumptions and expectations - and before we know it, we are acting from a lesser place.
I am reminded of an incident, an experience I had that bears on what I'm talking about. It's probably not quite the kind of story you'd expect me to tell. But here goes.
I remember one day some years ago when I was in college. I had a very important paper due the next day, and I had barely even started on it. I'd committed myself (or so I thought) to hunker down and spend the entire day writing it. Early in the morning, determined, I sat down at my desk with a hot pot of tea and pen and paper.
Come one o'clock, I suddenly found myself hanging out of my second-floor apartment washing my windows! It was if I awoke in surprise to find myself somewhere I did not want to be, doing something I did not want to be doing.
I recognized the power of my unconscious to lead me into procrastination and avoidance. Some chain of events -- perhaps I got up from my desk to take a look down at the street, perhaps I noticed a film of dust on the glass -- had led me into a series of activities, far from my original purpose of doing my paper.
When I rediscovered my commitment to do my paper, I focused my attention and got engaged, and I wrote something I loved. A lot of life is like that. We find ourselves doing something, working hard at it, and yet we wonder how we ever got there because we realize that it's not what we want to be doing.
I guess I'm saying it takes discipline and commitment to follow one's heart.
But how do we discover what we want? How do we know our hearts? The emotions hold they key, or one of several essential keys.
And yet our culture does not support emotional sensitivity. Why is that? Whence our commitment to rationalism and our disparagement or fear of emoting?
Because of our inherited cultural bias against expressing emotion, I think we are by and large in need of special practice if we are going to learn how to be true lovers of people and life.
To develop this sensitivity, we need to create a habit of slowing down, of making space to reflect on the underlying emotional responses, patterns and knee-jerk reactions that give rise to our habitual judgments, interpretations and thoughts, with the goal of gaining new power over ourselves and the choices we habitually make. Larger self-awareness can enlarge the space of choice within which we move day by day.
If you are not feeling love you are not wholly present, not fully open to the other, to experience.
We know the unloving emotions as negatives - fear, anger, dissatisfaction, etc.; negatives by definition don't exist in themselves; they are lessening reactions to something else. Thus to look at them or be gripped by them is to be by definition withdrawn from the positive, to be diminished from fullness of being and presence. Negatives are by definition a pulling away; love is fully turning toward and staying.
Science as we have learned it is a discipline of negation, of exclusion of uncertain, unquantifiable factors, i.e., the non-representational, the non-objective, whatever can't be pointed to. Science is the rigorous discovery of the lowest limit of loving attention. It's observation at its most emotionally minimal. However, it's always emotion that drives the scientist to land in his field of study; it's emotion that motivates him at least up to the point he puts his scientific lenses on.
Learning to see the positivity in relation to which a negative is experienced is to re-own the negation, is to be put back in touch with the power to act, rather than to shrink.
Love is simply finding and staying with what is, the present - and not entertaining the negative gods.
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