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Transformative Anthropology III - Gas Stop
2009-08-16 16:29:00 I had the good fortune to reacquaint myself this week with a friend from 40 years ago. After explaining my research into the fragile contingencies underlying life changing events, she offered a terrific example, and, additionally brought a new term into my thinking on these matters. She told me about meeting a future employer at a ... More About: Stop , Anthropology
Transformative Anthropology III - Gas Stop
2009-08-16 16:29:00 I had the good fortune to reacquaint myself this week with a friend from 40 years ago. After explaining my research into the fragile contingencies underlying life changing events, she offered a terrific example, and, additionally brought a new term into my thinking on these matters. She told me about meeting a future employer at a gas station, on the occasion when both had stopped at the same station, you know, for gas! The thing is: a stranger approaches her, recognizes her because she had taken note of her reputation in some public notice or the like, and strikes up a conversation. What followed, eventually, was a job offer. And, what followed from taking the job were all sorts of other events that, in concrete respects, stand on the foundation of her changing jobs. What would have happened had the soon-to-be new employer and employee not stopped in the gas station at the same moment? No one can say, but it’s as if such a speculation is about an alternative universe, rather... More About: Stop , Anthropology
Kseniya Simonova - Sand Artist
2009-08-13 18:16:00 Hat tip to Huffington Post (*). Here, ((Kseniya Simonova)) recounts Germany conquering Ukraine in the second world war. She brings calm, then conflict. A couple on a bench become a woman’s face; a peaceful walkway becomes a conflagration; a weeping widow morphs into an obelisk for an unknown soldier. Simonova looks like some vengeful Old Testament ... More About: Artist , Sand
Kseniya Simonova - Sand Artist
2009-08-13 18:16:00 Hat tip to Huffington Post (*). Here, ((Kseniya Simonova)) recounts Germany conquering Ukraine in the second world war. She brings calm, then conflict. A couple on a bench become a woman’s face; a peaceful walkway becomes a conflagration; a weeping widow morphs into an obelisk for an unknown soldier. Simonova looks like some vengeful Old Testament deity as she destroys then recreates her scenes - with deft strokes, sprinkles and sweeps she keeps the narrative going. She moves the judges to tears as she subtitles the final scene “you are always near”. *Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine’s version of “America’s Got Talent.” More About: Artist , Sand
What the Wind Blows
2009-08-13 02:19:00 Reflexive Orders of Awareness - A Schema Some examples should suffice to unpack the notion of reflexive orders. First Order awareness is automatic, and not directed. If you ever have driven a car and noted at some point that you ‘were on automatic,’ and then been amazed at this lack of consciousness about being a driver, you’re recalling what it feels like to be on automatic, in, as-it-were, First Order awareness. “I barely remember consciously driving to work today! I was thinking about something else, pre-occupied.” Second Order awareness adds to this awareness of what you are doing. A good example is learning how to ride a bike, where–at the beginning–the new rider has to consciously turn against the tilt out of balance. This is conscious attention paid to what you are doing. This awareness has a very narrow focus. It’s not optional. Third Order awareness adds to this additional modes for awareness. In the example of driving, thi... More About: Wind
What the Wind Blows
2009-08-13 02:19:00 Reflexive Orders of Awareness - A Schema Some examples should suffice to unpack the notion of reflexive orders. First Order awareness is automatic, and not directed. If you ever have driven a car and noted at some point that you ‘were on automatic,’ and then been amazed at this lack of consciousness about being a driver, ... More About: Wind
Transformative Anthropology II.
2009-08-09 01:39:00 A handful of questions one can direct to a subject or to their self are easily enabled to drill into the fragile web of contingencies that are structurally necessary to human development. 1. What brought you to live where you currently live? 2. What brought you to work in the field you currently work in? 3. What was ... More About: Anthropology
Transformative Anthropology II.
2009-08-09 01:39:00 A handful of questions one can direct to a subject or to their self are easily enabled to drill into the fragile web of contingencies that are structurally necessary to human development. 1. What brought you to live where you currently live? 2. What brought you to work in the field you currently work in? 3. What was the circumstance via which you met your current partner? 4. What brought you to your current central interest, (or avocation, or hobby, or passion?) There are, of course, many such questions like these four. In conducting an inquiry along these lines, what I have found is that the narrative offered in response contains propositions about features of a necessary founding circumstance Those propositions tell of required features. For example, I met my future wife at a party in September of 1993. For this to happen, I had to be in Cleveland and be invited to the party. I had to know the party-givers, and, they had to be in Cleveland too. So did my future wife. There are en... More About: Anthropology
Transformative Anthropology I.
2009-08-08 01:00:00 I’m going to try here to rope in a few colleagues to respond in public–here–to something I’ve been playing around with off and on for four years. To set this up, here is an edited version of an email I sent to a friend in February. I have a very important intellectual inquiry to address to ... More About: Anthropology
Update - nogutsnoglorystudios
2009-08-07 06:39:00 Dub Collison mix - Family Blessing Jazz. Downloadable with a streaming taste. enjoy I refashioned the cover for the mix into some more naive! art. More About: Update
CHABRIS & DAWKINS - IN KIND
2009-02-18 00:26:00 Last-Minute Changes. Scientific orthodoxy says that human evolution stopped a long time ago. Did it? (Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2009)Â Christopher Chabris ‘psychology professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.’ Â Where it is written: But scientists do disagree over the pace and time-span of human evolution. Â Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending begin “The 10,000 Year Explosion” with a remark from the paleontologist Stephen J. Gould, who said that “there’s been no biological change in humans for 40,000 or 50,000 years.” They also cite the evolutionist Ernst Mayr, who agrees that “man’s evolution towards manness suddenly came to a halt” in the same epoch. Gould and Mayr do not constitute an orthodoxy. There is no orthodoxy that makes the claim Chabris has attached to it. Evolution doesn’t stop, and it doesn’t stop for the cockroach and the hagfish and those bacteria that are apparently little changed... More About: Dawkins
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION
2009-02-17 02:01:00 I’ve been thinking about writing a brief essay about the crossing of folk psychological prejudice and surface economic schemas, which is to suggest how people articulate their sense of economic conditions. Were I to do so I would highlight how ideological prejudice often trumps the usually bare schema and how this schema is bare because it barely corresponds to actual macroeconomic dynamics. But last night I saw a news clip from Friday in which Rep. John Boehner asserts the alternative Republican stimulus plan would have created “7 million jobs at half the cost.” I had to go find it, and I did. Here’s the summary of its provisions. Economic Recovery and Middle-Class Tax Relief Act of 2009 Subtitle A?Income Tax Reductions Sec. 101. 2003 tax reductions made permanent. Sec. 102. 5 percent reduction in individual income tax rates. Sec. 103. Repeal of alternative minimum tax on individuals. Sec. 104. Reduction in corporate marginal income tax rates. Subtitle B?Red... More About: Creative , Destruction
PROPINQUITY
2009-02-14 22:00:00 Almost immediately after going online in 1995, I ran into new friends via email discussion lists. This was a comfortable mode for me although when I look back at my experience I recognize how I let a lot of counter-productive personality impulses stream online too. Nevertheless, I can name the people who I am in relationship to today, to some degree, by virtue of our falling into the same discussion locales way-back-when. In noting this, I title this post hoping to hint at the paradox of proximity as it is obtained in the online world. I have met face-to-face but three of my online friends, Lexie, Hugh, and Heward. Let me sing some praises on behalf of friends. Heward Wilkinson, a UK-based psychotherapist and philosopher of science and social science has published a book, The Muse as Therapist. A New Poetic Paradigm for Psychotherapy (Karnac.) I bet this has been the book that has been percolating for all his life. I’ve fallen out of touch with Heward for about four years, bu...
HOPING FOR MASTERY
2009-02-13 14:18:00 Posted to DailyKos, Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaks truth to power during the re-election campaign of 1936. For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace?business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me?and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration ...
AUTHENT-I-CITY
2009-02-06 22:28:00 I’m reading a new book Integral Urbanism by Nan Ellin. I’ve copied out the text laid over graphics here because it crystalizes something of my own perspective. Also, although her conception of ‘integral’ owes something to Ken Wilber, in the main her writing obtains a very fine phenomenological reckoning with a quasi-transdisciplinary cast of mind. (My comments follow the clipping.) Hybridity As ecological success is measured by the capacity of our planet to support all life forms, urban design success should be measured by its capacity to support humanity. Learning from best practices, an Integral Urbanism offers guideposts along that path toward a more sustainable human habitat. In contrast to escapist, cynical, or purely mercenary tendencies, Integral Urbanism aims to heal wounds inflicted upon the landscape by the modern and postmodern eras as manifest in: Visually unappealing places Impoverishment of public space and heightened perception of fear Diminish... More About: City
DANCING FOR ALL
2009-02-03 22:22:00 More from the quinttych. If this is the last one to be posted individually I’ll have to post the entire totem. Wait, one more to go. More About: Dancing
NOT THIS
2009-01-28 22:48:00 I’m digging through old back-ups looking for something. Not this. Still; Harry Stapp, Tuscon 1996, from his talk, Science of Consciousness and the Hard Problem. The “Hard Problem” has several aspects. From the perspective of science the question “Why does consciousness exist?” can be compared to the question “Why does the electromagnetic field exist?” A physicist can answer this question by giving an account of the important function that the electromagnetic field plays in workings of nature, as they are represented in his physical theory. Of course, consciousness plays no role at all in the classical mechanics account of nature, and hence no functional answer is possible within the classical-mechanics conceptualization of nature. Since it is unreasonable for nature to have such a nonefficacious component, the question of `why consciousness exists’ becomes essentially a plea for a...
APPLE OF MY EYE
2009-01-24 16:04:00 I had no problem with the mouse. Although I had thousands of hours ‘in’ on this mechanical word processor called a typewriter, when I first started using a computer it was 1984. I recall that it was in September of 1984 that my friend Pilch hauled The Macintosh out of a closet and gave it to me. At the time it was about a $2,400 gift, and, in 1984 those many hundreds of dollars was an unimaginable sum for mw, Pilch’s slack-to-a-fault long haired pal. But he had no use for it. He was a programmer doing project work for Burroughs and I have no idea what he was using for a computer. Still, his setting the Mac 128k given to him aside soon enough became my unbelievable gain. It’s hard for me to relate to what the original Mac platform offered–me–even though I used it for eight years. As a user you would stick the system floppy into it, load in the system into temporary memory and follow on with the program disc, do the same, do your work, and save to... More About: Apple
THE MIDDLE WAY
2009-01-20 23:54:00 The inescapable conclusion from all this must surely be that our interdependence, bringing us together into a common equation, across the oceans and the continents, demands that we all combine to launch a global offensive for development, prosperity and human survival. Nelson Mandela January 31, 1991. Download MP3 inaugural address Trails of troubles, Roads of battles, Paths of victory, I shall walk. The trail is dusty And my road it might be rough, But the better roads are waiting And boys it ain’t far off. Trails of troubles, Roads of battles, Paths of victory, We shall walk. I walked down by the river, I turned my head up high. I saw that silver linin’ That was hangin’ in the sky. Trails of troubles, Roads of battles, Paths of victory, We shall walk. The evenin’ dusk was rollin’, I was walking down the track. There was a one-way wind a-blowin’ And it was blowin’ at my back. Trails of troubles, Roads of battles, Paths of ... More About: Middle
WHY ARE WE HAPPENING TOGETHER RIGHT NOW?r
2009-01-19 00:46:00 Sitting at the local coffee shop, waiting for a business partner to arrive so that we could discuss a project, I decided to kill time by opening my laptop to check my email. In my email was a post from a friend and in his email was a link to a youtube video of a Congolese musician. A few minutes into the video, I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder. A stranger interrupts me to ask about the video I’m watching and listening to on ear buds. This person saw the video playing on my screen from their spot at an adjacent table. As it turns out the stranger is interested in the african dancers that are part of the video. Inviting the stranger to join me, I share a replay of the video with her. We strike up a conversation. It ranges over our shared interest in music and the arts. After telling her I have collected a wide variety of music resources over many years, she mentions that she is an artist for whom music and dance is a key source of inspiration. We set up a future engagement to ...
HEROIC SENSEMAKING
2009-01-16 13:43:00 A bit of synch yesterday: I’m listening to the audio book of Malcolm Galdwell’s Outliers and had reached the section in which the author digs underneath the tragic safety record of Korean Airlines for a spell of 10 years. His basic hypothesis is that cultural factors reinforced an overly deferential, hierarchical flight deck attitude. This in turn set up the potential for cascades of human error to impose fatal results on airliners. One of Gladwell’s main points is concerned with behaviors on the flight deck which undermine real time judgment, communication between flight crew members, and, objectivity and interpretation of circumstances. When I turned on the TV and happened upon the unfolding story of US Airways flight 1549, it became clear right away that the flight crew on the Airbus 320 were also outliers, having ditched a heavy airliner in the Hudson River without serious injuries. At the same time I noted the gathering heroic interpretation of what was pre...
ANCIENT HUNT
2009-01-14 14:01:00 click to enlarge Another pane from my ?Quinttych.? More About: Ancient , Hunt
YEAR OF THE OX
2009-01-12 14:07:00 In two weeks the Chinese calendar will flip to The Year of the Ox. What a fine archetype–of sorts–for our world of trouble, a world where carrying the burden and ox-like tenacity might realize ‘heavy duty’ changes. The ox in the ten Ox herding stages transforms from the regenerate instinctual beast to the white beast of burden. The latter is patient and a hard worker, is tamed and able to channel its wild instinct into the task at hand, err, at hoof. Here on explorations I have drafts to fine tune. For example I’ll be taking up the interesting fact of integral research which occurs outside the hermetic confines of the Wilberian in-group. two different transformational learning tools are close to being baked in the squareONE oven. One of them requires video documentation and so my readers can expect moving pictures. Stay tuned.
SPACE DEEP AND IMAGINARY
2009-01-09 03:26:00 buffer needs 30 seconds:total video length is 30 minutes I’ve assembled two versions of my latest ‘learning curve’ experiment with iMovie. This is the classical version, Serene Alleluias, (title taken from Messiaen’s Serene Alleluias of a Soul Desiring Heaven of a Soul Desiring Heaven, that closes the music track,) and the jazz version, In a Silent Way, is posted over on nogutsnoglory and a lo-fi version on transformative tools. These versions in flash at 15fps don’t do the 24fps HD production justice, so if you want something more deluxe track me down. I’d like to start making my ‘world hed music’ in mixed-media formats. The assembled two voyages, authored under my design pseudonym Hippie Goat, exceeded my expectations. More About: Space , Deep
BLUE SHADOW
2009-01-05 17:26:00 *Fool, n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscient, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude, and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught nations war–founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine, and Chicago. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from everlasting to everlasting–such as creation’s dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existance headed the procession of being. His grandmotherly hand has warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man’s evening meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the universal grave. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit... More About: Blue , Shadow
HAPPY NOUS YEAR
2009-01-01 09:14:00 On youtube there is a series of videos, apparently excerpted from a longer documentary, that features the renowned-in-his-time counter-cultural figure, self-proclaimed Sufi , misterioso teacher, charlatan, Idries Shah. I joined the ten parts and present it here; 49 worthwhile minutes beckon. Pay attention! My string of adjectives is not intended to underplay Shah’s reputation, such as it has been able to be sustained. He was a walking library of Sufic esoteric material, yet, he also brought these traditional secrets to proto-new age stages in the sixties. He walked a weird razor’s edge in maintaining that these materials could retain their power even when stripped of their context, as long as the context of the user was precisely calibrated to these bare-of-context materials! Speaking of post-modern Sufis, I recommend the volume by Ian Almond, Sufism and Deconstruction. A comparative study of Derrida and Ibn ‘Arabi, (2004:Routledge.) A rigorous mysticism, moved towa... More About: Happy , Year
WHY NOT MUSIC?
2008-12-21 12:18:00 Why Music ?, appearing December 19 in The Economicist, summarizes some of the theories evolutionary anthropologists have been floating to explain why music is a pervasive feature of human life. In reading this article about subject matter I am long acquainted with and, moreover, about a question I have recently focused upon, I saw how the treatment ...
RHYTHM RIVER PROMO
2008-12-19 21:25:00 The Rhythm River pages are up at squareONE. I made a quickee montage to promote this latest tool; albeit the development unfolded over twenty years. Music is Kayyam, from my 2002 recording In Khorasan. It can be streamed in its entirety (scroll down) over at nogutsnoglory studios. More About: Promo
OBSERVING THE OBSERVER - NOT!
More articles from this author:2008-12-17 12:54:00 On December 16, The Uncertain Future of News, (WCPN Stream,) joined host Dan Malthrop with Lauren Rich Fine ContentNext, Kent State University and Ted Gup Case Western Reserve University to discuss the imploding old print newspaper media. The discussion was interesting but it didn’t really capture the confluence of trends, one of which is most ... More About: Observer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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