In a bind or facing a dilemma?

Some of you have probably asked yourselves at some time or another, "Just what does he do with all his time everyday?" It's a legitimate question, and it deserves a legitimate answer. It's very simple, really: I wonder. Yes, I wonder a lot.

Obviously, as anyone who has read even a small selection of these posts will tell you, I wonder about a lot of things. But the thing I probably wonder about more than anything else is whether "things" (whatever they may be, or whatever you may perceive them to be) are ever going to really change. Oh sure, there are little things here and there: the distribution of parties in Congress or parliament, the price of fuel, the weather ... everyday, normal, things. No, I'm talking about significant changes, like saving the planet, stopping global warming, invoking a more equitable economic system ... not-everyday, big things. The more I wonder, the more I wonder why I wonder.

Most people who are in a position to read these posts don't really want to change anything at all. They've got a little bit of whatever that allows them to at least think that things aren't all bad and that, basically, they're doing OK, and they're concerned that if anything fundamental changes, the world as they know it will come to an end. I can understand that. Really. I think it's unjustified and unnecessary, but I understand how someone can come to think like that. In fact, in the course of my wondering, I believe I know why it is so easy to start thinking like that: fear. Yes, simple, basic, fundamental, existential fear.

The life we lead, the lives we live are tenuous at best. They can drastically change or end suddenly, without warning, for no apparent reason at all. Just ask anyone who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness without having even suspected they were ill, or someone who lost a loved one in a traffic accident or plane crash, or someone comes down with a major illness and sees their life savings flushing down the drain. There are more than enough of these people around, and there is not a thing that any of them ever did to "deserve" their fate. It was simply the luck of the draw, bad luck, if you will. It wasn't their "fault". They didn't do anything wrong. They are not being punished by any Higher Power. Whether you like it or not, and whether you want to admit it or not, lots, if not most, things in life are simply decided by pure chance. Or are they? We know all that rags-to-riches, Horatio Alger crap is no more than that: just crap. If working hard translated into financial success then practically all the women in Africa would be billionaires, but they're not.

And that brings me to my bind, or dilemma ... I haven't yet decided which: how do I get any of you to see that things really aren't the way you think they are? You, I, we all live under the delusion that those simple platitudes we were fed as children, those inspiring Bible quotes we get at Sunday school, those "authoritative" descriptions of how things are are, well, untrue. And if that's too strong a word, how about inaccurate? inadequate? irrelevant? impractical? less than factual? I don't care. You choose.

Oh, I know that there is a good number of you who know that you need to sit down and seriously re-evaluate a lot of things you believe. I also know that most of you will give it a bit of thought and then you'll put it aside. At some point, though, what we think and what we believe has to line up with what we do. It's this latter part that is so often ignored. It's about what we do.

And that's what I wonder about more than anything else: when are we going to actually DO something?

Humility ... what a concept

You shouldn't get the idea that I'm picking on my fellow humans. I'm not. I'm merely pointing out that I'm of the opinion that we think we're better than we are. Maybe a bit of humility would serve us well.

It's OK not to know things. None of us can know everything. Some people are good at history, others at math, others in biology, science or physics, others know a lot about how we think the mind works, but nobody knows everything. That's OK. Since we can communicate as easily as we can, we can always get insights, knowledge, and information from others, be it personally or in written or recorded form. Things are always better with a little help from our friends.

The difficulties start appearing immediately, however. How do we know if what we're being told is correct? Most often we don't, because, well, we're not experts in that field, that's why we turned to someone who knows more about than we do. To accept what we given, we have to trust the source. That's a rather large problem these days, isn't it? Trust, that is. Who can and do we trust? And why?

The closer we are to the source, the easier it is. We can see how they act, how they treat us and others, what they do in their spare time, how others see them. The farther away they are -- physically, socially, psychologically, etc. -- the greater the challenge. In these cases we have to resort to other means: reputation, personal history, evaluations by others, on the external side; and coherency and consistency of argumentation and presentation, supporting data and evidence, and the like on the internal side. It's pretty obvious that most of us aren't very well prepared for the latter, at any rate. Those items belong to the realm of critical thinking, which we all like to claim we do, but hardly ever do in reality. In fact -- and I find this especially mind-boggling -- it is actively discouraged in school these days, and some states, like Texas, have active movements to have it officially eliminated from the school curriculum. How sad is that? But how did we get to such a place?

It's pretty simple, really: like I've mentioned before -- just last time, in fact -- what we accept as true and right and proper and correct depends more than anything else on what we believe to be true and right and proper and correct. We all go into the evaluation from a biased position. Some folks are aware of this and try to adjust for it; others have no idea that they do it, so they tend to come across rather arrogant, know-it-all, or dogmatic. If you ask me, any of these last three characteristics is a dead give-away. People who really know stuff tend to be just slightlyl humble about their knowledge. They try, in any number of ways, to take the edge off their own authority. A lot of things we think we know a lot about turn out to be quite incorrect a bit farther down the road. The entire course of human history and knowledge is littered with wrecked and abandoned things-we-knew-for-sure. In my mind, the mark of a truly intelligent person lies not in how right s/he thinks s/he is, but rather is how open they are for the possibility that they might be wrong and willing they are to adapt what they think to accommodate the new data and information.

The observant reader will recognize that there is more involved here than initially met the eye. We're not talking only about knowledge, but apparently belief and attitudes need to and do play a role in what is said, and in what we are willing to accept. It's worth stopping to think about.

And now what?

Yes, and now what? Good question. If I only knew.

For those of you who may not be aware, the number 7 plays a significant role in our lives. In the Middle Ages, a child became an "adult" at 7 because s/he could distinguish between right and wrong. Later, we moved decided that 14 was the age at which an individual could decide about his/her own beliefs as s/he had reached the age of reason. Even later, we decided that one was actually an adult when one turned 21, and a lot of places think so even today. Humans are, it is true, subject a 7-year cyclic development pattern, and in our tradition, we have 7 days of the week as well. In the Ancient World, there were (and still are) 7 visible planets ... the list goes on and on, but I believe you get the point.

What many more of you may not be aware of is that each individual's year is divided into 7 phases as well. It starts when you're born and it stops when you die. These aren't biorhythms in the true sense of the word, just phases that, surprisingly enough, are analog to the phases we experience in our 7-year developments throughout life. If I were to give you "key words" to associate with each of these phases, they would be (1) Action, (2) Consolidation, (3) Transition, (4) Stabilization, (5) Creation, (6) Harmonization, and (7) Rest. It is an interesting exercise to reflect upon one's own life in terms of these key words and one's own development over the years. It is also interesting to think about when one did what in one's current life and how those actions/deeds/accomplishments reflect those key words as well. Be that as it may, I have found that these cycles play a unignorable part in my own life, and as fate would have it, I have just entered my own 7th cycle for this year as well. I don't know about you, but I find myself in dire need of recharging my physical and mental batteries starting 6-7 weeks before my birthday. And that's where I am right now.

In all this talk of change, lately, I believe it is time for me to make a few changes myself. Besides begin in need of a bit of rest, I feel the very strong need to start bringing a few things together, harmonizing them if you will, in general. What this means in very practical terms is that here, where the Celtic New Year is upon us (a mere coincidence, I can assure you) -- after all, it is Halloween (which is hardly a holiday in these parts, though I know my American friends and acquaintances will be outdoing themselves), which marked the transition from the light to the dark part of the year -- I shall be slowing down a bit.

For the past couple of years, I've been posting every second day. The next post, however, and those that that follow will be in three-day intervals for a while ... at least until the end of the calendar year (and isn't it interesting just how many "calendars" we each have). I need more time to think. I want more time to reflect. I feel it; there is reason for it; it makes sense (to me); so, I don't see why I should fight it.

I hope all of you who have been true to my blog thus far will continue to be so. (You are part of a very small -- but as I like to think, very select -- group of individuals. You are, of course, free to share these posts with whomever you may please.) I thought it only fair to let you know of the change.

As our good friend Heraclitus was fond of saying, panta rhei.

Making fertilizer

The Germans have a saying that I just absolutely love, Kleinvieh macht auch Mist, which literally means that even little animals produce manure. It's not what any particular contributor brings to the effort, in the end, it is the total of all efforts that matter. In that barren wasteland we call everyday life, it would be nice to think that we could get something blooming.

You see, the important thing is not whether any one of us individually does anything. That much should be clear by now. The strength of anything is in its numbers and the more of us who make the little steps, the larger the leap forwards that is possible.

If we were all getting ourselves sorted in the ways I've suggested, what we would notice is that there are increasingly more and more people like myself. We would begin to see that there are more of us with more in common than we thought. What we have in common, believe it or not, is something that transcends racial, gender, religious, political, or even fan affiliations. We would simply recognize that there are more real people around than we originally thought.

We're all plagued by the same frustrations. We're all faced with similar challenges. We're all uncertain of where things are going and what any one of us can do about it. We're all unhappy that nothing seems to work right. And I'm certain we're simply sick and tired about hearing about all the bullshit. OK, that is manure, but it's much more than we need.

What's really worth noticing here is that at bottom it really is more about "we" than "me". I know this isn't the first time I've brought this up, but we need to start putting things into a proper perspective. Politically, economically ... out there, in the "real" world, it might seem that it's the "me" that's important, but when we take a good hard look at it all, we realize it really isn't. What matters most is always closer to home.

So, why not take that as our starting point. My own way of changing the world is not in thinking any one thing in particular, rather I find it is in keeping the dialog going, in taking some time to rethink what I thought I knew and in bouncing these other ideas off still other folks that I'm talking to. The world I live in today is in so many ways not the world I lived in a year ago. And that's a good thing. That the world itself hasn't got a lot better ... well, that's something we still need to work on.

But even more important, and I believe, impressive, is that there are more of "us" than I thought, even if we don't agree on everything. We agree about what counts. Isn't that a start?

Is that it?

Good question. And the short answer is "no".

Recently, I was having something of similar discussions with two different friends. These guys don't know each other, and though both are different from me, they are also, as would be expected, very different from each other, although both are what most people would likely describe as "conservative". No, neither is rabid, nor so far "right" that the Republican party starts looking attractive, but they both shudder when I intimate that a position they've just taken has been traditionally considered a "liberal" one. My point is, they're both pretty normal. The overlap between the discussions was the question of what we, as simple "little people" can do about all the evil being perpetrated by all the "big guns" out there in the world, be it the government, industry sectors, banks, whatever.

When looked at that way, there is as good as nothing that we can do to change anything. Voting doesn't matter if politicians have been bought. Standing on the street corner holding a sign doesn't have much impact if nobody reads it. And I'll be the first person to tell you that trying to play their game is as deadly as is trying to stop tanks with rocks. No, none of us is going to change much by taking things head on.

For those of you who read my post last time, you will have noticed that each of the five points I raised has nothing to do with confrontation, persuasion, or manipulation. In fact, all that any of those points have to with is each one of us ourselves. Aside from all new-age, pseudo-enlightened puffery, the fact of the matter is that if we change ourselves, we change the world. It's not important that no one other than us see it. It's not about making an impact or change so that others will tell us how cool, or great, or impressive we are. It doesn't really matter. All that matters is that each of us is in tune with and satisfied with ourselves. If we are, in a non-self-centered, not conceited kind of way, the world is -- technically -- a better place, but we can't possibly think that our job is now done.

Truth be told, if you do manage to get yourself sorted and headed in the right direction, what it means is that you are now ready to get to work. Yes, the work will be hard, it will be long, it will make demand upon demand, but it will also be just one step at a time, a little here and a little there, yet we will see we're getting somewhere, too.

After all, you've got to start somewhere.

What does it mean?

Over the past few posts I really haven't said anything that most of us don't know or suspect to be true. And a lot of you are simply asking yourselves why there is such a discrepancy between what we know and suspect and what we experience. Let's face it: it really doesn't look like things are getting any better "out there". I'm not saying the answer to the dilemma is simple. It isn't. What I am saying is, the approach to a "solution" is. Please note: I didn't say it was easy, I said it was simple. Nothing worth having comes simply.

No, the reason why things aren't getting any better, even though we know deep down what is wrong, is because at heart, we're probably just frightened, little cowards. Oh I know that sounds harsh, but how do you say that gently? I don't know either, that's why I said it that way.

Let's face it: Americans know they live in a violent society, yet they still scream for more violence (harsher prison sentences, more guns, more suspicion of others). We all know that the banking industry literally got away with murder, not just theft, and we let them get away with it. We know that capitalism as currently practiced benefits the smallest minority, but we shout down, insult, and condemn anyone who dares question its validity. We in the Western democratic societies all know that we're being systematically stripped of our rights and our freedoms, and most of us just sit by and think that it's not up to them to change the system.

And that's why all of us share in the guilt for the crimes and the blame for the situation. It's not somebody else's fault, it's ours. And as long as we don't own up to it, we're being irresponsible on top of everything else.

Why don't we act? Why don't we speak up? Every time we think, "well, I got mine, everybody else has to see how they get theirs" we retreat into our cowardice. Every time we complain about the government intruding into our lives, we are showing our fear. Every time we argue that you can't fight city hall, we are declaring our impotence. Every time we simply say nothing at all and only think our part, we betray our integrity. And every time we say, "it's not my problem", we betray our humanity as well.

You have to be able to say "no". You have to want good things for others as well as yourself. You have to stand up and speak. You have to stand up and be counted. Wake up. Get involved. Do your part. It's that simple. It's not easy. It's simple.

A new beginning?

Well, it would seem we now know what we're dealing with. Even though the votes haven't all been counted ... and it wouldn't be the first time if all of them aren't ... it appears the result is clear enough. I have to say, though, I'm terribly disappointed: Mickey Mouse didn't even place. I knew I had my hopes too high. I suppose my countrypeople are simply not as courageous as they would like to think they are. Oh well, at least they used to talk a good game.

Of course, the spin machines are red-lining right now, not just to "explain" why the loser lost but why the apparent winner isn't one anyway. No, it's not just a manner of who wins and who loses, it's apparently more about arrogant winners and sore losers. What a display of maturity this has been ... again.

So, have we got a new beginning or not? What do you think? I know what I think: not even close. We're in for a whole lot more of the same old same-old. The three parts of the puzzle haven't really changed a bit: Obama knows his address for the next four years, a couple of whackos were kept out of the Senate but the balance of power hasn't changed, and the House remains, for all intents and purposes, the same. No, nothing has changed, it's simply the day after.

More than anything else, though, I think what was shown most clearly is just how split the United States is. I don't want to hear all of the shifting-to-the-center crap: the US isn't the center of anything and they have no center, just a dividing line. The expect status quo was maintained in 43 states, only seven were even contested, and the results show how undecided they were. No, after all the hype, all the ranting, all the rhetoric, things haven't really changed a bit. I think that's what we need to take from this. Another four years of the same old same-old.

I suppose we who live outside the states can be pleased that American troops won't be invading anywhere soon, that no more bombs than usual will be dropped on unsuspecting heads. Anyone inside the states better watch their backs, though. We also know what we're dealing with and pretty much what we can expect, so I suppose that's a bit of a comfort as well. We can think about things that matter and what we want to do about them while the rest of the system just rots away from the inside.

So, the people have spoken, but they don't have the last word. That's a responsibility left to others. The Republicans will continue to whine, the Democrats will continue to scratch their heads, and the people, well, they'll just be left to themselves, as always. Nah, I don't care what you say, it doesn't look good for the home team. Where is Mickey Mouse when you need him?

How do you get what you don't want?

We're brought up wrong. We're told from as early as we can remember that we should learn to please others, to obey, to conform, to fit in, to not make waves, to ..., well, you get the picture. This is not to say - and I'm back to that either-or thing - that we should tick others off, disobey, be non-conformist out of principle, make waves. No, it's not either one way or the other. The Golden Mean lies somewhere in-between.

Life's analog, not digital. There are shades of pleasing and displeasing ... there are decisions to be made like obeying authority or one's conscience ... if the range of acceptability is wide, conformity loses some of its edge ... there may be more similarities than we think between wave-making and peace-making. No, life plays out in the gray areas, not at the edges.

That's what makes all so difficult, isn't it? How do you know? The answer is, you don't (and, by the way, nobody else does either, regardless of what they're telling you). That's why simply acknowledging what you don't want, avoiding what doesn't contribute to our feelings of happiness, success and the rest, is so effective. But you can't do that if all you can say is "yes".

Our upbringing teaches us, more than anything else, to simply say "yes". Yes to what others want, yes to authority, yes to so-called standards, yes to not making life too difficult for anyone else. All of this, however, does eventually lead us to making more trouble for ourselves. Balance is what we are seeking, though. The Golden Mean is all about balance, and there is only one way to head in that direction: we have to learn to say "no".

I have nothing against pleasing others, if they deserve it, but not on principle. I have no problem obeying if the order makes sense, is ethical, and isn't harmful. I have no issue with "standards" that aren't absolutes, that allow for individual variation and diversity. There are some groups and clubs to which I don't want to belong. There are times when some folks simply need a wake-up call. All of this is only possible, however, if we can simply say "no" when we have to.

We don't like hearing "no", I know. But it's every bit as important, if not more so, than even saying it. It takes courage to say it, and you need integrity to hear it. Neither are in overabundant supply these days, but they could be, if we learned to say "no" when it counts.

What we certainly don't want at all

Regardless of what we may think we want, I'm pretty sure that one thing is certain: we don't necessarily want others telling us what we want. I can understand that. I'm on your side. What most of us don't realize, though, is that sometimes the slightest change of perspective can open up previously unsuspected possibilities. That's the real value in the via negativa.

Let's be clear on one thing: you're not off the hook for thinking, and sometimes I think deciding what you don't want can be more challenging than deciding what you do. The disadvantage to having to make such a decision is that you have to do it all on your own. Deciding what you don't want is almost by definition a communal obligation. You need others to decide what to leave out. Anyone can say what should be put in. This is what may be most challenging when getting used to taking this new course of action. You've got to do it with others.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that you don't have to do a lot of persuading. You don't have to convince the others you know what you are talking about, you only have to explain why you don't like something, why you don't think that something should be included. The pressure, in a certain sense, is off. It's like our idea of "home" that we talked about a week or so ago: we all know when we don't have it, even if we can't say what it is we should have. In other words, the way is open for exploration, experimentation, open-endedness, tentative solutions, and more. The pressure isn't on to get it right the first time, but to find out what works and what doesn't, what we can live with and what we can't. But, the comfort in it all is in knowing you don't have to do it alone.

If our little excursion into the notion of "home" brought us anything, it should have been the recognition that if you're home alone, it's really not home. It may be the place you live (or the circumstance in which you find yourself), but it's not home. You can't be home alone, regardless of what Hollywood may think.

One side effect of all of this is that if we're not alone, we will, inevitably and unavoidably, not feel so lonely. We will recognize there's more than one of us wrestling with the issue, that it's not up to us to save the world all by ourselves. We can start developing a feeling of togetherness. The next thing you know, you could find yourself in a community. Who knows what might happen? The possibilities are endless.

Even more of what we don't want

You'd be surprised at how many situations can be dealt with via the negative. In just a little over a month, my fellow countryfolk will be playing democracy again, and I have the feeling that most of them (at least most of those I know) will simply be voting against the other guy. That's not what I'm talking about at all. Voting for Obama because you don't like Romney (or vice versa) is not the via negativa, it's good old-fashioned avoiding.

The via negativa is never just either-or. If you've got a system that really only allows for that, well you really haven't got much of a system, and it's time to start thinking about what kind you want ... at least you've made a first step when you recognize that only either-or choices is not what you want. That's closer to what I'm talking about.

As it is, either-or's are out. I mean, who really needs them? When are they really applicable? Why don't we have more third, fourth, fifth or hundredth choices. OK, maybe 100 candidates for President may be too many, but you get the point. Why is it that it's either Windows or Apple? White or brown sugar? Peas or corn? Diesel or unleaded? Why do we just settle for the choice of two? We've come a long way as a civilization, what with our industrialization and technological advances, but somehow we fail to see the real advantage in a little diversity, a range of options instead of a simple either-or.

To get more choices though, you have to know that you don't want just two, and you have to say it. My point is that if you want more than two, then you're already allied with all those folks who want three, those who want ten and those who want a hundred; that is, with everyone who doesn't want just two either. Sometimes I figure we're simply getting in our own way because we are so used to things being this way or that. It's time to get over this limitation, expand our horizons and maybe even get something done.

After all, whether we decide on three, five, or more choices for anything, we at least have the option to try them out and see how they work. It all starts with not wanting two. What we end up agreeing on can come in the course of talking, discussing, and even debating the various options we have. And one of the biggest advantages of all is the fact that it might just get us talking to one another again. Not a bad side effect, if you ask me.

What we don't want

Just like our reflection on Bowen's song showed us, home can be a lot of things to a lot of people. Regardless of what we might specifically think it is, one thing is certain, we are dead certain when we don't have it. In other words, it almost seems as if we have a clearer idea of what it isn't than what it is.

This isn't all that uncommon really. When it comes to the really big-ticket items ... Gd, Life, Happiness, Peace of Mind, Success ... we really can't just sit down and explain it to someone, describe in detail what it is. About all we can do is say what it isn't. When we have a clearer idea of what something isn't, all of that knowledge (and it is truly knowledge, for it aids us in doing things), can be brought to bear on our striving toward those ideals. Instead of seeking the positive things, the positive characteristics, it is often easier to simply avoid the things that will thwart our efforts. If you want to be happy, start avoiding things that make you unhappy. You may not get to your goal all at once, but you're certainly closer.

This approach isn't anything new, that's for sure. St. Thomas Aquinas and his fellow Scholastics made great use of it. They even had a name for it, the via negativa (the negative way). This isn't the curmudgeon's get-into-jail-free card, it is just a more pragmatic approach to staying out of trouble, hence out of unhappiness, which by default puts us closer to what we really want to be, namely happy. The method, this approach, if you will, has fallen somewhat out of favor in our modern, be-positive world, but there are those around, like the Swiss author and consultant Rolf Dobelli, who promote it very actively and make it the centerpiece of their own activities.

It would seem, however, that the old Dale Carnegie power-of-positive-thinking is still holding sway, but how many of you have secretly given up on being positive about everything. You set yourself up for disappointment when you're always striving for something positive and barely ever attain it. Or we do finally attain it and realize it isn't what we thought it would be. Don't you just hate when that happens! I do. No, it would seem that maybe we don't always specifically know what we want. And if we don't, but we don't want to do nothing until we've got it all figured out, well, that's the time to head out on the good old via negativa

It may not be the panacea that some of you may be looking for, but I'm willing to bet it's a better deal that what you've got going right now. What's really good about it is that it can be applied to just about anything we want to achieve, attain, reach, you name it. You don't have to go for the gusto, just avoid what it isn't. It can't be any simpler than that.

So what's stopping us?

If you've been following for a while, I think you can see a pattern forming. We need to talk. In order to talk decently and reasonably to one another we have to acknowledge the other person as an equal discussion partner. If we can do that, we need to be free enough to present a position without automatic and immediate rejection; it needs to be taken seriously. And, we can and will be different, but there is no one different that's always right. I think it makes sense, and the feedback I've received over the past couple of weeks confirm that I'm not the only one that thinks so.

So, the question immediately presents itself as to why it's not working. Oh, I don't mean between you and me. I'm talking in general. There's no real public discussion and debate. There's a lot of ignoring and ignorance being spread around. There's categorical rejection of certain ideas. We would rather label than lucidly consider who is saying what and why. There seems to be a theory-practice divide opening up. Maybe Jan van de Snepscheut was right: "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." What is this hurdle that we can't seem to get over?

I – personally – think the answer is pretty obvious. It's exactly as Pogo once remarked, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

The consequence of the line of thought I've been laying out lately is this: everybody has to change, at least a little bit. I'm not talking about weighing mine against yours or my buddy Jake's change against your Aunt Edna's. No, we simply all have to get off of whatever center we happen to think we're on and take another shot at it all.

From what I can see, nobody's got very many answers, but we've got one helluva lot of problems – or issues, if you prefer – and we need to start thinking about which ones we want to deal with and who else might be interested in helping out. But we won't, because we can't, and we can't, because we really don't want to. Change is something that everybody else ought to do, never something that anyone can expect of us.

Well, I never expect of anyone something I'm not willing to do myself. I've made my move. When are you going to make yours?

Who's responsible?

Actually allowing someone to take on responsibility is a matter of trust, and we are more likely to trust those we know than those we don't. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but it's the usual thing, so it's the easiest place to start. Oh, I'm sure there are those relatively close to you – that is, people in your own neighborhood or community – whom you don't really trust, but you going to have to give it a try.

If you'll recall a couple of posts ago when we were trying to figure whether we could even get here, I tried to point out that all the discussion in the world doesn't help if you don't recognize your discussion partner as your equal. And this is the real crux of the matter.

As long as "the other" is not your equal, there can be no real discourse. If there is no real discourse, there can be no real decisions. And, if there are no real decisions, then things will just continue to get worse, because in the end it's only the anonymous bureaucrats from somewhere else who will be "responsible". And we know they're not responsible at all. This is one of the biggest challenges you'll have to face. If you can't accept someone you can look in the eye, then forget about all those faceless others whom you'll never meet in your life. You won't care; they won't care. And when nobody cares, nothing gets done because no one's responsible.

Like most people you have long proclaimed the equality of all. We all have, but the time has come to put up or shut up. It's not just that you might be responsible for you, you are also responsible for ensuring that this whole thing gets off the ground, and until you allow the other to be your equal, we won't be going anywhere – fast, or slow.

Yes, think global, drink local, and responsibly … and part of that is acknowledging others at the bar. After all, only alcoholics drink alone.

Drink responsibly

Since I had my mind on wine last time, that must have been the reason that I noticed that a lot of advertisements for alcoholic beverages come with the disclaimer to "drink responsibly". I think I know what is meant, but is that what the tagline really means? It would seem to me there are two sides to the responsibility coin: there is that for which you are responsible, and that that you are made responsible for. They don't always match.

There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn't be responsible people. One-on-one, between you and me, well, there's not that much we misunderstand when it comes to the word, but let it be somebody not so close to us, someone just a little different from us and all of a sudden, the word can take on a much stricter, sometimes sinister meaning. Too often – and this is particularly true of too many conservatives I know – responsibility gets lumped together very quickly with "fault" and before you know it, we're blaming people for being irresponsible or for simply being responsible for their own plight, whether they are or not. It's much easier to blame someone than understand them.

I mean, it's quite clear, isn't it, that anybody who has ever collected welfare is a lazy, ne'er-do-well who just wants to live off of other's hard work. When we look at the numbers, though, all the people who have received welfare handouts combined for the last half-a-century haven't collected as much as a handful of bankers who were justifying their salaries and bonuses with the crazy notion that they worked harder than anybody else. We know in the meantime that's just not true. It's clear that a person who took out loans to get a decent education and now can't find a job because they're not looking hard enough. And if they take what they can get – temporary contracts and lower pay, parttime contracts because it saves employers money, well, that's obviously their fault that they can't pay back their loans. Why should we let them off the hook?

No, to me, irresponsible is not knowing what you're talking about, but talking anyway; it's grossly generalizing instead of being informed; it's rushing to judgment without reasoning; it's blaming the victim instead of finding the real perpetrators and holding them responsible.

These kinds of things, though, are best done closer to home. It's the best place to start and where you have the greatest chance of making a difference. Drink responsibly, locally.

Think global, drink local

As I was driving to work the other morning, there was a truck from one of the local wine-growers co-ops in front of me with a marketing tagline that caught my eye, so I made it the title of this post. While the marketing folks certain thought it was cute, there is actually more to the saying than first meets the eye.

We live in an increasingly globalized world. Like anything else, there are up- and downsides to the process. Massive, impersonal, transnational, country-independent corporations are one thing, and they certainly do their part to ensure that mom-and-pop on the corner get pensioned down Memory Lane. By the same token, the global reaction to this phenomenon is also not all that different from place to place. There are increasing numbers of people worldwide who are beginning to ask themselves just what advantage the big players have. In other words, local awareness is being stimulated at the same time.

The more we feel that we're being overwhelmed and overrun by "outside forces", the more we also feel the necessity to circle the wagons a bit closer to home. This is reflected in the various strivings for national independence, be it the Kurds or the Sudanese or the Sri Lankans, the various Balkan states, or anyone else who thinks it's time they had their own country. All of these are, to my mind, a simple reflection of the desire within all of to have just a little more to say about what happens to us, to be just a little more involved in decisions that directly affect our lives.

This is what the vast majority of politicians can't get their heads around. Anonymous decision-making processes being sliced, diced, and compromised perhaps thousands of miles away by people who've never been to our town or our neighborhood just don't make the kind of decisions we make around here.

We've been long told, by parents, teachers, preachers, community leaders, that we need to take charge of our own destinies, but the whole system has mutated away from all that. We've stood by and watched our power simply get sucked away to some anonymous center that isn't the center of anything anymore. Maybe it's time to rethink all this.

Tighter tomorrows

Whether we like it or not, we've got to tighten up our relationships with others. I know I sound like some goody-two-shoes, but if I'm wrong about this, I'd be more than happy to entertain contrary thoughts. No opinions, of course. You can keep them to yourselves. If you've got a well thought-out argument, though, I'd be happy to take it into consideration.

All I'm trying to say is that being together and cooperating with others is as natural as anything can be. All we need to do is accept this simple fact and other things start to follow. Don't get me wrong. If there is anything capable of aggravating you till you're ready to tear your hair out, it's other people. I'm sure we agree on that. But in the end, at bottom, we can't live without them, so if there's anything we need to start doing – and I mean all of us – it's learning to live with others. Yes, everybody has to do it, and since everybody's waiting for the other person to start, we'll never get started. You know that part of you I said was your own self? Well, now's the time to call upon it: you have to start. Not the other person. You. Some things are up to you, and this is one of them.

This isn't a trivial matter, you know. If we don't get started on this, we'll end up killing ourselves off, and the planet will simply breathe a sigh of relief that we're gone. No savior is coming down from heaven to instigate the change. Nobody has a front row seat in paradise. It doesn't matter anyway, most of us still have a bit of time to spend here on this plane, and it is precisely on this one that we need to get our ducks in line. I'm here to tell you: it doesn't make a hill of beans of difference what you think you believe or how fervently you believe it. The only thing that makes a difference, now, later, and if there is one, in the afterlife is what you do here. This is it, folks. This is your only chance. Don't blow it.

The context of educational action

Recently, while working on a paper dealing with learners and technology, I was wrestling with the suggested notion that a sound understanding of the benefits and limitations of the technology along with a clear understanding of design would lead to more effective technology-enhanced instruction. The more I wrestled, the weaker my opponent got. The specific factor under consideration was teacher and student choice. What kinds of choices can and do teachers make when designing learning scenarios? What kind of choices can and do students make when dealing with those scenarios? It struck me that an very important aspect of the scenarios was missing.

Though I'm not the biggest teleologist going, much of what we as humans do is meaningful and purposeful activity (or at least I hope it is). Learning, at least in formal learning situations, should be purposeful. It should get us somewhere or should at least help us to get somewhere where we think we need to go. A long time ago, these goals of learning were simply called objectives, and these described behavioral changes that teachers wanted to effect in their students by the time the unit of learning was over. Over the years, such simplistic goals were deemed inadequate and competences became all the rage, so we have now broadened our horizons and speak primarily of learning outcomes. But how do we know what should come out of learning?

It occurred to me that students are one thing, learners are another. They are two different roles that an individual can take when engaging in the formal learning process. On the other side (of the desk) we have teachers, but given the increase in attention to and implementation of technology to support learning, those that design the learning may or may not be the teachers. In other words, although there are two corresponding roles the teacher can take: teacher or designer, these can actually be different individuals, not just roles.

There was still something missing. Learners are supposed learn particular things in specified situations (and sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't or sometimes they learn things other than those that were planned). Designers are supposed to construct specified situations so that learners have the opportunity to learn those particular things. Ah, ha! It came to be: the interaction of the roles is dependent on the context. That is, the situation itself, the scenario in which learning is supposed to take place also affects the choices that the players in that scenario can make.

The materials I was working with started at the activity level: teachers task learners to do things and they do them as they see fit. But, this task/activity doesn't occur in a vacuum. It's part of something larger, like a lesson. A lesson in turn is part of a block or a unit, which is part of a course, which part of a program, and suddenly I found myself in the center of a matryoshka doll of my own making. These contexts were embedded in one context after another, and as far as formal learning is concerned, up to the educational system (usually of a country) itself. Each layer, if you will places constraints and restrictions on every layer inside itself. To help myself make sense of this, I came up with the following diagram, that I like to call my Model of Eduational Action:

Let me explain a bit about what it all means.

Teachers have a certain amount of freedom regarding which institutions they would like to work at and which programs they would like to participate in. Naturally these are limited by a number of factors, but these choices have little direct impact on learners. Similarly, students can also -- at least to a certain extent -- choose which institutions they want to study at and what programs of study they would like to pursue. In most places these days, they also have a fairly wide range of choices when it comes to individual courses as well. Whole curricula are not generally prescribed from above. To a certain extent, then, students have a bit more freedom here than teachers.

In the other roles, however, things look just a bit different. Teachers can be asked (or assigned) to course teams, that is, those who are responsible for designing and developing the course itself. As noted above, this may or may not be the teacher, rather it could be a designer or educational technologist who gathers input from the teacher and gives it form and structure. (That's the reason the roles on the bottom are in different shades of blue.) Once involved in this part of the context, though, the designer has a lot to say about what is done and how, or at least about what is supposed to be done and generally how the learner may go about doing it. All of these choices precede those made by the learners, of course, and as such place another layer of constraint on the context. The learner shows up only after a lot of decisions have been made about just what s/he should be doing with him- or herself.

The role of the learner and the choices s/he can make are pretty well restricted by the overall context of the learning scenario and the choices that have been made prior to his/her arrival. Depending on their own learning styles, interests, motivations, inclinations, goals, aspirations, and so on, they can decide how to deal with the three innermost layers of our context model: the unit, lesson, and activity. The unit level will most likely be influenced by the learner's strategic goals (what do I want out of this course as part of my obtaining, say, a qualification). The range of choice at the lesson level is affected by the strategy and the learner's own operational requirements. In the end, then, the learner may be able to make certain tactical choices about how they deal with any given activity.

What this little exercise has done for me is make me rethink the notion of learner-centered instruction. I'm beginning to wonder just how feasible the concept is and what role the concept should be playing in the general educational context. All the preceding decisions and layers of context ultimately limit the learner's choice. Given the right set of circumstances, even this last opportunity to choose could be taken away as well, for while all choices may be educationally relevant, they may not all be learning relevant.

This certainly needs more thought, but here in the quiet darkness inside the dolls, one has little else to do, but think.