[FRIAM] "certain codes of conduct"
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Wed Jul 29 20:00:55 EDT 2020
I haven't been able to retrieve the reference but I recently read/heard
something about the fact that post-feudal economic/political
organizations inherited the paradigm of managing scale and complexity
through hierarchy. Capitalistic Republics/Democracies and
Socialist/Communist societies with "Central Planning" are both
effectively structured this way, in spite of attempting (each in it's
own way) to empower or equalize the "common (hu)man"...
I think what Guerin has been babbling <grin> about most recently (at
least since Stockholm) is his vision of what an otherwise organized
"collective awareness/action/consciousness/intelligence/etc" might be as
well as what I think Glen might have been gesturing-at when he
criticized Nick's recent offering up of BHL vs NJL.
I'd be interested in more discussion of what I think Glen is alluding to
with a purists notion of "Collective Action". It might be
contradictory to "talk about" something which is inherently not about
talking/language, at least (or may entirely) in the common sense of
"language".
I could rattle on a few more paragraphs describing my own half-baked
ideas, but I'll save that until maybe there are more well-baked ideas on
the table.
- Steve
On 7/29/20 3:02 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> Eric, thank you for your reply. Forgive me for suggesting a larger
> systemic problem, connected for me to the problems in our democratic
> system, our global economic system, and our international governance
> system--and also ultimately related to the existential threat of the
> collapse of the living systems that nurture our species.
>
> The democracy and Constitution our founders gave us at the end of the
> 18th century has structural flaws we have tried to overcome. The
> global economic system that the victors of WWII gave us at Bretton
> Woods in 1944 has similar structural flaws that we have also tried
> (not very hard) to overcome. The United Nations that emerged a year
> later in 1945 to convene a new international order shares similar
> structural problems. There is a pattern here. At its core is
> domination and exclusivity.
>
> The present hesitant shifts in the old narratives--and relationships--
> that created our major social, economic and political systems are the
> result of gladiators and dragon-slayers finally targeting the positive
> feedback loops that keep reinforcing historic institutional design errors.
>
> I'll stop here, because I'm even boring myself.
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 9:49 PM Eric Charles
> <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com
> <mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Nick, the "ire" is perfectly fine. I didn't need to couch my
> statement in that way, and doing so obviously opened me to Merle's
> response.
>
> Merle,
> I think the social criticism is generally valid, but as a critique
> of college in particular it is feeds a general confusion about
> what college should be about, which ultimately speeds the fall of
> the system it seeks to reform.
>
> One of the obvious legitimate functions of college is
> indoctrination into a profession. If you don't want to be
> indoctrinated into a profession that college indoctrinates people
> into, then college probably isn't for you. If you get out of
> college not-indoctrinated-into-a-profession, something has gone
> wrong. For example, if you want to get a degree in psychology, you
> need to learn to write in some reasonable semblance of APA style.
> That includes its own horribly arbitrary set of grammar rules,
> formatting and the like. It is screwed up, in some sense, but it
> isn't imperialist oppression aimed at minorities. Arbitrary norms
> are found in all professions, and conforming to them is part of
> being "professional". Also, if you got a degree in psychology,
> without anyone forcing you to learn how to approach problems,
> write reports, criticize articles, etc., in the manner that
> professional psychologists tend to do those things, something has
> gone wrong. If you want to think about psychology-related stuff in
> the way you already think about those things, then don't go to
> college. If you want to learn to think about them in the way the
> professional community does, then college might make senes. (Note,
> I'm /not /saying you have to /agree /with how the professional
> community does things, just that you should be able to replicate,
> with some reasonable accuracy, the standard professional
> approach.) Where you start from doesn't really matter; though the
> curricula /should /be more adaptive to the starting place of the
> various students, by the end you should be professional
> indoctrinated, that's the whole point.
>
> In addition, college functions to indoctrinate people into a
> certain part of society... or at least it used to. Because,
> traditionally, most college graduates don't get work in exactly
> the thing they studied, this "hidden curriculum" has often been
> more important than the obvious curriculum. College graduates
> should be able to read, write, and math at a certain level,
> generally think through problems at a certain level, be able to
> present ideas to an audience in spoken or written form, be able to
> adapt to arbitrary assignments with a certain level of comfort, be
> a team leader, be a pro-active follower, etc. Here again,
> colleges /should /be more adaptive to the starting place of the
> various students, but that doesn't mean their end point should be
> abandoned. Here you see big differences between colleges, based on
> what they are preparing you for. A college like Swathmore or
> Bucknell is preparing you to be able to do those things for
> different audiences than Oberlin or Penn State. If you are at a
> school that is well designed to prepare you for something you
> don't want to be prepared for... that's not imperialist
> oppression, that's your having made an unfortunate choice of
> where to go.
>
> Frankly, most colleges currently suck at those two goals, and most
> other functions you might want them to have. It is easy to find
> studies showing that lots of people graduate college without high
> school level reading, writing, and math abilities. It is also easy
> to find students who graduate with almost no indoctrination into
> the field of study they were purportedly pursuing.
>
> Under those conditions, it is not surprising that people view a
> college degree as largely symbolic marker, required for entry into
> the job market or some such nonsense. However, the solution
> shouldn't be to make college degrees even less indicative of
> having attained particular skills. The less a college degree
> indicates having a certain variety of skills, the less value is
> provided to employers to select based on the presence of a degree,
> and the less value it gives a college graduate to have a degree.
> Returning to the indoctrination thing, we can see the (potential)
> flaw in the criticism of the curriculum. It doesn't make a lot of
> sense to say, "I really want a degree from Rutgers, because
> employers value degrees from Rutgers, but I also think Rutgers
> should change its curriculum to not be so strict in only letting
> people graduate if they actually have the skills employers value."
> The value of the degree, particularly to a person trying to get
> out of a bad situation, is entirely based on its reliably
> indicating some set of skills, and the ability to write in a
> semi-formal manner is one of those skills (to return to the more
> narrow original context).
>
> If you formed a solid college curriculum around mastering skills
> other than those traditionally trained in college, that would be
> fine (and I think that is what Nick is struggling to get at). And
> if those skills were valued (economically, or merely for personal
> growth) then a degree from that college would be a reliable
> indicator of that specific valuable achievement. But that is very
> different than allowing students to get through college with
> whatever skills they arrived with, just because you are afraid
> that enforcing /any /strict requirements might make you an
> imperialist monster. The former creates a marketplace for students
> to choose from, while the latter just guarantees that college
> degrees continue to become less and less valuable, particularly to
> the people who most seek to benefit by getting them.
>
> (Sorry, that ended up longer than intended.... but it's late... I
> don't think I can get it tighter right now... and your question
> deserves a reply.)
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 11:21 PM Merle Lefkoff
> <merlelefkoff at gmail.com <mailto:merlelefkoff at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> And why, O Eric of a deep understanding, are you not a fan?
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 8:17 PM Merle Lefkoff
> <merlelefkoff at gmail.com <mailto:merlelefkoff at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Clearly the implicit bias is that all of these reading
> requirements were written by White men. In an attempt to
> redress this problem I have noticed lately that the NY
> Times book review seems to be bending over backwards to
> review books written by women of color.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 7:03 PM Frank Wimberly
> <wimberly3 at gmail.com <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I'm trying to remember my freshman English class.
> Every other Friday we had to submit a five hundred
> word essay on the class readings. On alternate Fridays
> we had to write an in-class paragraph or two on those
> readings. The readings included the following:
>
> Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
> Victory by Conrad
> The Republic by Plato
> All the King's Men by Warren
> Brave New World by Huxley
>
> Numerous essays on personal integrity by various authors.
>
> I don't see that any of those had to do with
> unconscious racism or implicit bias unless the
> personal integrity essays did. I think I had to read
> The Invisible Man by Ellison but that may have been in
> a later year in a political science or US history
> class at Berkeley.
>
> All this was 54 years ago.
>
> Frank
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
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>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
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>
>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
> mobile: (303) 859-5609
> skype: merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
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>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
> mobile: (303) 859-5609
> skype: merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
>
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