Ego and The Swarm | teachnorthern - 1 views
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I’m finding it impossible to escape the thread of ‘ego’ running through the last ten days.
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Terry Elliott on 30 Jan 14I am having trouble, too. In fact I find myself moving from ego to eco, from tree to root, from node to network in a kind of leap of faith.
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Independent learning is tough. Independent thinking even tougher.
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I agree and I want to add that the task of interdependent learning and thinking is even harder. It is so hard for me that I am not sure I am even doing it. I trust that this share annotation is one simple way of doing interdependence. The hard part is figuring out what is happening in the mix that rises above the mix. What is the reintegration that happens as we bake our variety into the cake? What is the final baked product?
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I’ve thought about Tragic Life Stories (actually the name of a department in WH Smith) and the way in which they dominate not only TV and popular news media, but stories about adult learning too.
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I file this under 'everybody's a critic'. Each of us has a set of personal and professional filters for the buzzing profusion of life that pushed into us every day. The tabloid filter is quite simple; it bleeds, it leads. There are lots of schema (some might call them assumptions or presumptions). Diversity is good--a presumption. Dependency is bad--a presumption. The problem with all of these presumptions is that they are habitualized into near-instinct quick filters. Hence, the birth and perpetuation of the blindspot. Dammit.
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I want a dialogue that begins, “I can’t do this thing you asked me to do, in this timeframe,” and continues with, “What are you assuming, that is stopping you meeting the deadline?” – designed to search only for a strategy to get past whatever barrier has set itself in the way.
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This is heavy pull here. The filter/value of keeping deadlines is self-referential. You make the filter because that cog is needed to fit into the larger machinery of the institution. You must have deadlines in order to have order within the term or semester. We wouldn't want to treat others unfairly, unequally (even more filters). Thus the system creates the circular logic that justifies the values of the system. The heavy pull is to dump the trash can that holds the whole mess together and say, "Well...it's a mess. Let's try something else." What you are asking for is the right to be messy. The system struggles against such illegibility. Mightily. So mightily that subversion (one of the tools of messification) is inevitable and iconoclasm becomes a way of life in that system. Or we become 'silent runners'. Does this analysis seem true to what you are saying? I ask in the spirit of interdependence.
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Bernard Williams ‘fetish of assertion’
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So, released from time to time from the imperative to obey my ego, I walk happily into the swarm.