At 10:15 PM 11/22/98 -0500, "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Don Chisholm:
>
>>Ed, regarding your comment: >It is beautiful, melodic dream-like stuff with
>>birds twittering through it<
>>
>>You seem to loose sight of the fact that about 80+% of the bowlers and
>>factory workers, both in your home town and in Sao Paulo, believe in some
>>story of another. (snip)
>>
>>I'm suggesting it's time to create a story of success. Just because the
>>story might be technically feasible, which I still think it might be,
>should
>>be no reason for its rejection - a good story does not have to have angels.
>>
>>The Story does not have to be followed by, "Halaloolia", but by, "Hell, we
>>can do it!"
>>
>>There is a growing chorus of people suggesting we need change, such as
>>Theobald, Raven, Moore, McMurtry, Rifkin, etc. who all tell of why the
>>existing must go.
>>
>>I'm suggesting it's time we create a story of HOW success could emerge out
>>of a dark time in human history.
>
>Don,
>
>At about this time last year I was in Sao Paulo. While there I attended
>several church services, not Catholic, the established church and the church
>of the establishment, but Protestant and very fundamentalist. The
>Protestant movement is growing very rapidly in Brazil, and Catholicism is in
>retreat, so much so that the Pope himself is concerned about it. The
>movement is doing some things that are very positive. It is giving
>disparate groups of people a sense of commonality and belonging and it is
>pumping money into things like community centers and pre-school education
>for poor children. In doing these things, it is most certainly not
>appealing to logic. It is asking people to help their neighbors and the
>poor across town because God wants them to. And there are plenty of
>Hallelujahs and plenty of guilt trips laid on by clever pastors to move
>things along.
>
>It is difficult to find fault with this process. It is doing good and
>making people happy if, at the same time, guilty. Yet what bothered me
>about it was that it was based on an absolutist view of the world. The view
>of everyone I was able to speak to within the movement was that they were
>absolutely correct on matters of faith, culture and society, and that
>everyone else was wrong. For example, they roundly condemned Carnival as
>the work of the devil, and ever so many of them moved out of Sao Paulo to
>prayer camps when Carnival was on. I could see them banning Carnival if the
>movement became strong enough.
>
>The point I'm making is that the kind of change you speak of would probably
>have to be based on a very strong message, much like the message being
>accepted by the Brazilian poor. But if a message is that strong, it could
>become very dangerous to anyone who disagrees.
>
>Ed Weick
Ed:
Yes, probably the kind of changes I speak of would have to come from a very
strong mindset. I suspect any controlling paradigm gets that way as a
default characteristic of Homo sapiens. But a new mindset could emerge
which endorse openness and not have the virtual walls and enforcement
through guilt, as in the Christian god paradigm.
There are creative young thinkers among us who explore ways into the hearts
and mind of the younger generation using 20 th century tools and
understanding. I've snipped a small piece of a post by Sylvia Austerlic,
(from Argentina, now in US). Sylvia often participants in discussions on
the GPC listserver, and so we know that she is fully cognizant of all the
bad news in the world today, and its implications, and yet she explores new
avenues in story creation.
Let's hope that such seedling ideas can be endorsed by some of us in the
older generation to help shape and promulgate the story of success.
(;-0Sylvia's ideas are so advanced, that I recieved her post of the 24 th on
the 23 rd!!;-)
>From: Silvia Austerlic
>Subject: Systems Approach Application Exercise:
> Design of New Information Systems for Children
>Date: Nov. 24th 1998
>
> "Words without ideas are like sails without wind"
> A Global Quotable Quote from China
>
>@ An Info-Design Proposal for Giving Voice to Nature through Children
>@ The Real-World Impact of the Logic of the Mind on Education
>@ A Non-Systems Approach in Understanding Information
>@ A Systems Approach in Understanding Information
>@ Non-Systems Approach Questions
>@ Systems Approach Questions
>
>
>@ An Info-Design Proposal for Giving Voice to Nature through Children
>
>This WSD assignment calls me for choosing a complex real-world issue, my
>personal daydream at the same time, which is the Design of New Information
>Systems for Children. I've been intensely playing with this idea in my
>imagination, and sharing it in cyberspace, for at least the last past four
>or five months. This might possibly be the seed of my future Graduate
>Project, which down-to-earth interest is to "to work on the design of
>constructive virtual spaces, create alternative mental models, and develop
>cultural maps that can help new actors to express their "virtual
>identities" but also to understand the process and transform cyberspace so
>that it reflects their "real needs" in the real world." (Entry Statement,
>10/13/98).
>
>To put this idea to work in a real-world stage, means for me, as a whole
>systems designer, to apply the collaborative potential of cyberspace
>(understood as a new technological media that promotes a different human
>rationality, a broader cognitive horizon in the pursuit of a new way of
>knowing where more choices are possible) to design informational systems,
>for children of all ages, including their particular environments. The
>future "desired outcomes" of these info-systems would be inspired by the
>metaphor of Giving Voice to Gaia, Giving Voice To Nature, Through Children.
>Voice, in the sense that Peter Elbow describes in Writing With Power,
>'voice (in writing) implies words that capture the sound of an individual
>on that page'.
>As I imagine it today, Giving Voice to Nature would a open-minded proposal
>to empower children, by providing them of a loving communicating
>environment, where they can express themselves, through the Way of Nature.
>The Way of Nature is the way of the shaman, whose task is to heal his self
>and others, by reassociating the dissassociated. It would provide a new
>mindset with which to envision the future of the Planet Earth, with hope,
>love and happines instead of fear, competition and despair. It would be a
>calling for a new mindset, and for envisioning the learning system that
>could emerge if we let it happen.
>In some unkown way (that I haven't fully experienced yet!), I'd like these
>technological info-systems to promote this new way of thinking, whole
>systems designerly ways of knowing. I am placing my voice under the
>umbrella of a new Gaian Paradigm that is now rising as a deeper
>understanding of the cosmos, and humanity's place in it (Bill Ellis,
>Cooperative Community Life-Long Learning Centers). Shortly, this Gaian
>Paradigm suggests that similarities and differences exist within Nature,
>and everything is interconnected at a whole level. The mechanism that
>controls all these quantities is life itself.
////////\\\\\\\\
Don Chisholm
416 484 6225 fax 484 0841
email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Gaia Preservation Coalition (GPC)
http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/gaia-pc
personal page: http://home.ican.net/~donchism/dchome.html
"There is an almost gravitational pull toward putting out of mind unpleasant
facts. And our collective ability to face painful facts is no greater than
our personal one. We tune out, we turn away, we avoid. Finally we forget,
and forget we have forgotten. A lacuna hides the harsh truth." -
psychologist Daniel Goleman
\\\\\\\\\/////////
