A Prelude to the upcoming semester from my professor for a Fiction course:
Liberal Art
(Frame Discourse)
REDUNDANCE
(Nature is redundant, thank god-no
matter what the English Teachers say.
If you didn’t GET IT last time,
there is always another bus
leaving the station.
IT, I said: do I have to spell
IT out?)
Liberal Art (as opposed to the liberal arts,
the various disciplines and major subjects)
has no common definition but I call it the art
of escape: getting out from under, through,
over, away from and yet in, under,
trapped, confined, nailed down:
a disconnect yet
connected.
It's a practice, life-long sport: getting out of the
cave, bubble, box, culture, convention, closet,
yet Still Inside: hooked-up
yet running free.
“A consummation devoutly to be desired.”.
You can maybe see: I'm describing something
like a frame of mind, attitude, outlook, state
of soul (Psyche) and way of being-not not
not information, statistics, data, the facts
and fictions of the various disciplines & majors.
Imagination counts more than knowledge,
said Einstein. Every kid with a laptop is
“the smartest kid in class”
and it's not what you know but whether
you can put it in play. Don't you agree?
I'm trying to construct a FRAME here:
a context for my courses: a collective
mind-set DIFFERENT than for all them
other courses you take.
It always feels like trying to build an ice cream
parlor in hell without doing injustice to HOT or
COLD. I want them separate but equal so as to
sustain and appreciate the nature of TEMPER
and TEMPERATURE. Got to love hell and ice
cream both!
Were we In Class right now, you could object
and take issue with everything I've said: insist
on clarification or argue what I've omitted,
overlook, left out. We could be having pretty
good converse-action here-practicing
liberal art.
THINKING
I will go so far as to say Liberal Art is the Art of THINKING
about thinking-of getting smart. Admit it: you've never had
a course in THINKING, true? Who has? I never have.
It's always taken for granted, like walking, breathing-although,
lately some of us need instruction on how to breath: “just breathe,”
they say-inhale and exhale the chi; conscious of each breath as if
that were liberating.
So consider Liberal Art as (among other ways to talk about it)
the Art of Thinking-as opposed to thinking about this or that,
chemistry or biology, women's & environmental studies,
sociology, language and literature... .where we are using/
abusing THINKING to get some deal done, yes?
Instrumental thinking on the one hand;
the Liberal Art of Thinking -the Sport
Thinking for Thinking's Sake on the other hand.
You got a problem with that?.
A female student years ago strongly advised a mess of us
“professors” at a meeting: “Your job is to teach us how to think.”
The next day in class I asked: how many here don't know how to
think and want to know: raise your hand.
I might as well have asked: “How many here don't have a sense
of humor and want to get one?”
Last spring I asked who here's an idiot, raise your hand.
One did.
The etymology of “student” and “study” share a root with “stupid”
I.E. steu-to be struck by a stick. Stunned, stunning. Stupor. Ouch,
ooo, damnit: prerequisite to Get Smart. I say this over and over.
In certain Zen practices the student is given koans-parables:
questions he can not answer in the conventional terms of his
understanding and gets whacked with a stick until he's stunned
stupid and ready for study.
A version of this in Kill Bill 2--as Uma Thurman is
trained for her vengeance quest. (She's an “idiot:” from L.“idios”--
personal, private, individual which is to say: unique, one of a kind
-original: pure idiocy!.)
A former dean sent me an article where an educator claimed
at a professional conference: “we don't teach students how to
argue.” I'd been trying to encourage a kind of genial joyous
FIGHT CLUB in the classroom-you know the movie, bloody
violent, sure: but then it turns out it was all psychological: a
metaphor for coming to terms with one's “wholeness.” given
the divided self that makes closet schizophrenics out of all of us
-torn between 2 lovers, so to speak: our spiritual and our
material selves and why can't they just get along?
Need we argue?
How to Think About
Thinking About Thinking
as opposed to just plain
Thinking
or
What do we Think About
When we Think About
Thinking?
or
What do we Think About
when we think about
What do we Think About
when we think about
Thinking?
All right: it IS presumptuous and liable to cause offense if not ridicule
to claim to teach anyone how to think. I've been trying to learn ever
since that student said it was what we should be doing. I don't think
it can be done unilaterally. Like trying to learn rugby all by myself.
I think thinking is a reciprocal deal-a converse-action: a game or sport.
There is nothing wrong with those sentences about thinking, by the way.
Perfectly well-formed. You might think about them and how it is they
differ from each other significantly even though they are all about the
SAME THING.
We will read texts together-literary, linguistic, & our own
ongoing responses to each other and to the ideas of the course.
Here's the challenge: to what extent can we think about the subject matter
of the texts AND think about ourselves THINKING about these texts-so
as to be thinking about our thinking AS WELL as just plain ordinary thinking?
Would you have a problem with this?
WE can also talk about HOW we're talking about these texts and about
THINKING-so that we get better at talking and talking about our talking.
As loopy as this sounds-and IS (thinking looping back on itself recursively,
talking looping back on itself recursively-self-consciously), this is a form of
dialectical practice (dia-lectic: talk which talks across itself).
It also called “metalogue” (as opposed to dialogue) AND, in the original sense:
ARGUMENT
from Gk. argo: “the shining,” building up a shared “edifice” for collective
excellence (ex-from; kel: the hill, column-view from the top)
“argument” has taken on negative stigma--hateful: destructive, tear
another person down: prove them wrong. Originally it is an act of
collaborative genius. Jason and the Argonauts, sailing for the
golden fleece; Argentina-city of shining lights. How come
this good word has become a bad word? Think about it.
(So many innocent descriptive words get twisted by the common sense:
“suffer”-to stand up under;
“school”-leisure time;
“sin” - essence, being;
”evil”-up from under, below;
“idiocy” - personal, private;
“conspiracy”-breathing together;
“student”-in a stupor, stunned...
Good words gone “bad.”)
Collaborative Genius
This is an important idea in business and research where creativity and
invention are a premium: making stuff, putting out a product, generating
sales-the front end, golden goose, of a consumer society.
“Wait'll they get a load of THIS!”
Got to have it!
And it's not what we know but whether we
can put it in play that counts.
In a recent article on Collaborative Genius, (google Keith Sawyer) among
other characteristics of the context for creativity and the mothers of invention
recommends the building of::
an environment which
encourages failure
an environment which
recognizes the liability
of clarity-the benefit
of vagueness & confusion,
and indeterminacy
These two environments stand out as diabolically (another innocent word
meaning “to throw across”) antithetically (“against the thesis”) opposed to
the SCHOOL ROOM ENVIRONMENT where individual acquisition of
knowledge and skills is “encouraged” by grade-gun driven institutional
hire education. .
Ice Cream Parlor in Hell.
How to build an environment for loose play and experiment, fooling
around with idea inside a dominant environment of accuracy-compulsion,
clarity-addiction, get R done cover the ground take the credit and run?
It's an environmental issue.
Do I overstate? Or under? Need we argue? If we were all together in
a classroom right now we could correct my exaggerations,
question my assumptions, expose my operating and
controlling metaphors, insist on clarification,
beg to differ-watching our words.
Or any one could punch reply or better reply to all-and we're in business,
building up a shared frame of mind for stunned, stunning and stupid study
together. Practicing the Liberal Art, life-long sport.
Consider or Ignore,
Best, Sam
**i cannot wait for school to start!**
(Frame Discourse)
REDUNDANCE
(Nature is redundant, thank god-no
matter what the English Teachers say.
If you didn’t GET IT last time,
there is always another bus
leaving the station.
IT, I said: do I have to spell
IT out?)
Liberal Art (as opposed to the liberal arts,
the various disciplines and major subjects)
has no common definition but I call it the art
of escape: getting out from under, through,
over, away from and yet in, under,
trapped, confined, nailed down:
a disconnect yet
connected.
It's a practice, life-long sport: getting out of the
cave, bubble, box, culture, convention, closet,
yet Still Inside: hooked-up
yet running free.
“A consummation devoutly to be desired.”.
You can maybe see: I'm describing something
like a frame of mind, attitude, outlook, state
of soul (Psyche) and way of being-not not
not information, statistics, data, the facts
and fictions of the various disciplines & majors.
Imagination counts more than knowledge,
said Einstein. Every kid with a laptop is
“the smartest kid in class”
and it's not what you know but whether
you can put it in play. Don't you agree?
I'm trying to construct a FRAME here:
a context for my courses: a collective
mind-set DIFFERENT than for all them
other courses you take.
It always feels like trying to build an ice cream
parlor in hell without doing injustice to HOT or
COLD. I want them separate but equal so as to
sustain and appreciate the nature of TEMPER
and TEMPERATURE. Got to love hell and ice
cream both!
Were we In Class right now, you could object
and take issue with everything I've said: insist
on clarification or argue what I've omitted,
overlook, left out. We could be having pretty
good converse-action here-practicing
liberal art.
THINKING
I will go so far as to say Liberal Art is the Art of THINKING
about thinking-of getting smart. Admit it: you've never had
a course in THINKING, true? Who has? I never have.
It's always taken for granted, like walking, breathing-although,
lately some of us need instruction on how to breath: “just breathe,”
they say-inhale and exhale the chi; conscious of each breath as if
that were liberating.
So consider Liberal Art as (among other ways to talk about it)
the Art of Thinking-as opposed to thinking about this or that,
chemistry or biology, women's & environmental studies,
sociology, language and literature... .where we are using/
abusing THINKING to get some deal done, yes?
Instrumental thinking on the one hand;
the Liberal Art of Thinking -the Sport
Thinking for Thinking's Sake on the other hand.
You got a problem with that?.
A female student years ago strongly advised a mess of us
“professors” at a meeting: “Your job is to teach us how to think.”
The next day in class I asked: how many here don't know how to
think and want to know: raise your hand.
I might as well have asked: “How many here don't have a sense
of humor and want to get one?”
Last spring I asked who here's an idiot, raise your hand.
One did.
The etymology of “student” and “study” share a root with “stupid”
I.E. steu-to be struck by a stick. Stunned, stunning. Stupor. Ouch,
ooo, damnit: prerequisite to Get Smart. I say this over and over.
In certain Zen practices the student is given koans-parables:
questions he can not answer in the conventional terms of his
understanding and gets whacked with a stick until he's stunned
stupid and ready for study.
A version of this in Kill Bill 2--as Uma Thurman is
trained for her vengeance quest. (She's an “idiot:” from L.“idios”--
personal, private, individual which is to say: unique, one of a kind
-original: pure idiocy!.)
A former dean sent me an article where an educator claimed
at a professional conference: “we don't teach students how to
argue.” I'd been trying to encourage a kind of genial joyous
FIGHT CLUB in the classroom-you know the movie, bloody
violent, sure: but then it turns out it was all psychological: a
metaphor for coming to terms with one's “wholeness.” given
the divided self that makes closet schizophrenics out of all of us
-torn between 2 lovers, so to speak: our spiritual and our
material selves and why can't they just get along?
Need we argue?
How to Think About
Thinking About Thinking
as opposed to just plain
Thinking
or
What do we Think About
When we Think About
Thinking?
or
What do we Think About
when we think about
What do we Think About
when we think about
Thinking?
All right: it IS presumptuous and liable to cause offense if not ridicule
to claim to teach anyone how to think. I've been trying to learn ever
since that student said it was what we should be doing. I don't think
it can be done unilaterally. Like trying to learn rugby all by myself.
I think thinking is a reciprocal deal-a converse-action: a game or sport.
There is nothing wrong with those sentences about thinking, by the way.
Perfectly well-formed. You might think about them and how it is they
differ from each other significantly even though they are all about the
SAME THING.
We will read texts together-literary, linguistic, & our own
ongoing responses to each other and to the ideas of the course.
Here's the challenge: to what extent can we think about the subject matter
of the texts AND think about ourselves THINKING about these texts-so
as to be thinking about our thinking AS WELL as just plain ordinary thinking?
Would you have a problem with this?
WE can also talk about HOW we're talking about these texts and about
THINKING-so that we get better at talking and talking about our talking.
As loopy as this sounds-and IS (thinking looping back on itself recursively,
talking looping back on itself recursively-self-consciously), this is a form of
dialectical practice (dia-lectic: talk which talks across itself).
It also called “metalogue” (as opposed to dialogue) AND, in the original sense:
ARGUMENT
from Gk. argo: “the shining,” building up a shared “edifice” for collective
excellence (ex-from; kel: the hill, column-view from the top)
“argument” has taken on negative stigma--hateful: destructive, tear
another person down: prove them wrong. Originally it is an act of
collaborative genius. Jason and the Argonauts, sailing for the
golden fleece; Argentina-city of shining lights. How come
this good word has become a bad word? Think about it.
(So many innocent descriptive words get twisted by the common sense:
“suffer”-to stand up under;
“school”-leisure time;
“sin” - essence, being;
”evil”-up from under, below;
“idiocy” - personal, private;
“conspiracy”-breathing together;
“student”-in a stupor, stunned...
Good words gone “bad.”)
Collaborative Genius
This is an important idea in business and research where creativity and
invention are a premium: making stuff, putting out a product, generating
sales-the front end, golden goose, of a consumer society.
“Wait'll they get a load of THIS!”
Got to have it!
And it's not what we know but whether we
can put it in play that counts.
In a recent article on Collaborative Genius, (google Keith Sawyer) among
other characteristics of the context for creativity and the mothers of invention
recommends the building of::
an environment which
encourages failure
an environment which
recognizes the liability
of clarity-the benefit
of vagueness & confusion,
and indeterminacy
These two environments stand out as diabolically (another innocent word
meaning “to throw across”) antithetically (“against the thesis”) opposed to
the SCHOOL ROOM ENVIRONMENT where individual acquisition of
knowledge and skills is “encouraged” by grade-gun driven institutional
hire education. .
Ice Cream Parlor in Hell.
How to build an environment for loose play and experiment, fooling
around with idea inside a dominant environment of accuracy-compulsion,
clarity-addiction, get R done cover the ground take the credit and run?
It's an environmental issue.
Do I overstate? Or under? Need we argue? If we were all together in
a classroom right now we could correct my exaggerations,
question my assumptions, expose my operating and
controlling metaphors, insist on clarification,
beg to differ-watching our words.
Or any one could punch reply or better reply to all-and we're in business,
building up a shared frame of mind for stunned, stunning and stupid study
together. Practicing the Liberal Art, life-long sport.
Consider or Ignore,
Best, Sam
**i cannot wait for school to start!**