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Thought of the Week Archives
August 2001
August 6
When we see that staying with a pain from which we habitually recoil can
lead to...transformation, it makes us question one of our basic assumptions:
that we must reject that which does not feel good. Instead, we discover,
even pain can be interesting.
Mark Epstein
Thoughts without a Thinker
August 13
Extending this lesson, however, using confluent approaches, one might
have the children remain on the dreary assembly line, perhaps all day...
A large number of people in our technocratic society are faced with this
kind of frustration and despair. We are told that society needs assembly
lines because of the demands for increased production. At the same time
we know of the dramatic need for individual members of society for some
sense of fulfillment, for actualizing or realizing themselves in some
way. So we now have a polarity, a direct confrontation between the needs
of individuals and the needs of society: that individuals need to feel
that they are doing something personally meaningful in a major area of
their lives, that they are exercising their potential creativity no matter
how humble the work, that they are doing something which makes them feel
less like a part of a machine and more like a human being; but the society
in which these individuals live demands increased production, and the
individuals themselves may be partially responsible for those demands.
Thus we have a classical ambiguity -- in effect, almost a paradox. What
is the answer? There is no single answer. There are many possible answers.
- George Isaac Brown
The Live Classroom (p. 104)
August 20
The one sure principle of composition, as of imagination, is that nothing
comes from nothing; ex hihilo nihil fit: nothing can be made from
nothing. Recent textbooks in compostion have begun to show signgs of an
interest in the subject of invention, thought he process seems unclear,
if not misconceived. The first use of language that a student of composition
has to learn, I think is in the generation of chaos. If we don't begin
there, we falsify the composing process because composition requires choosing
all along the way, and you can't choose if there are no perceived alternatives:
chaos is the source of alternatives. If we are unwilling to risk chaos,
we won't have provided our students with the opportunity to discover that
ambiguities are, as I. A. Richards has said, "the hinges of thought."
- Ann E. Berthoff
The Making of Meaning (pp. 74-75)
August 27
A few random thoughts on boundaries from Ken Wilber's book No Boundaries
The particular thing about a boundary is that, however complex and
rarefied it might be, it actually marks off nothing but an inside vs.
an outside. For example, we can draw the very simplest form of a boundary
line as a circle, and see that it discloses an inside versus an outside...
But notice that the opposites of inside vs. outside didn't exist in themselves
until we drew the boundary of the circle. It is the boundary line itself,
in other words, which creates a pair of opposites. In short, to draw boundaries
is to manufacture opposites. Thus we can start to see that the reason
we live in a world of opposites is precisely because life as we know it
is a process of drawing boundaries. (p. 19)
...every boundary line is also a potential battle line, so that just
to draw a boundary is to prepare oneself for conflict. ..."Where to draw
the line?" really means, "Where the battle is to take place."
The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites
because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is
also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one's boundaries,
the more entrenched one's battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the
more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am
obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure.
The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death becomes. The more
I value anything, the more obsessed I become with its loss. Most of our
problems, in other words, are problems of boundaries and the opposites
they create. (p. 20)
...those lines [in nature], such as the shoreline between land and
water, don't merely represent a separation of land and water, as we generally
suppose. As Alan Watts pointed out so often, those so-called "dividing
lines" equally represent precisely those places where land and water touch
each other. Tat is, those lines join and unite just as much as they divide
and distinguish. These lines, in other wards, aren't boundaries!
- Ken Wilber
No Boundary (pp. 19-20)
Comment:
Wilber goes on to make the point that "a line, whether mental, natural
or logical doesn't just divide and separate, it also joins and unites."
It occurs to me that the line that is being drawn between school and society
is just such a line. For example, George W. Bush (I'm sorry, but I can't
use the word President) is accentuating the "boundary/battle" line between
school and society as a means to push his agenda for vouchers and standardized
education (which also will benefit certain corporate interests). But is
the problem really on the school side of the boundary line?
It is very easy to draw a line, a boundary, between school and society
and say that school is not doing its job. The truth of the matter is that
the school is a part of society. The sidewalk in front of our schools
is not a boundary separating "us" from "them." It is a line we use to
differentiate two different areas of one culture.
To blame the schools exclusively for problems is foolish. In Jungian
psychology it is called "projection," where we project those character
attributes we don't want to acknowledge or admit onto someone or something
else. Then we can attack in the other what we don't like in ourselves.
Society has abandoned its children, turned them into a market, into a
corporate bottom line. We have stolen their childhood from them by forcing
upon them adult decisions, adult challenges and adult duties (such as
working). Society has done this, not the schools, but the boundary the
politicians have drawn between them (society) and us (teachers or schools)
is a very convenient tool to allow the society to deny its own failings.
School becomes a scapegoat.
We even draw boundary lines within our schools and our classrooms.
The high school where I teach has football "rallies" in with the opponent
is mocked and vilified. The boundary line is drawn. The great irony is
that without the opponent, there would be no game. Our opponents are not
on the other side of the boundary; they are the necessary, complimentary
opposite in the game. It is the tension between the opposites which creates
the excitement, and the boundary, rather than separating us, is the point
where we join in an expression of sport. I have tried, with little luck,
to change the nature of the rallies. Unfortunately, our school reflects
the culture which creates it: confrontational, punitive, self-centered,
proud to a fault, and "number one," whatever that means.
Of course lines of demarcation are needed. Lines are how we sort and
classify different aspects of our world. However, we must realize that,
as in the case of Wilber's circle, the part is still of in the whole.
(You can't even use the word "part" without implying "part of something,
a whole"). Draw lines to aid understanding, but remember that the map
is not the territory. Erase the lines when the they have helped understand
the whole.
Beware of those who tell you that lines/boundaries are permanent. We
must be careful is when we are encouraged to draw boundaries -- between
school and society, between college prep and non college prep, between
us and our environment. When someone tries to convince us that the lines
are real entities and not just temporary tools for better understanding
the whole, we must become suspicious. We are being distracted from the
true nature of our world. Lines of demarcation are necessary, but artificial
borders are not. Borders are used to separate and contain, to control,
to manipulate. When someone draws a border, a line between "us" and "them,"
look to your wallet or to your freedoms. Ask yourself what is that person
trying to control or manipulate.
And beware of this same tendency in yourself. When you draw a boundary,
ask yourself what it is that you are trying to keep out -- or in?
Reg Harris
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