Rolla Lewis
Chris,
Your Sunday group defines what it means to be a participatory leader. you are creating space to continue the conversation and foster a genuine dialogical learning community. Thank you.Bill, could you send me your email: <rolla.lewis@cobb.institute>. I have a question unrelated to this course and content. Thanks, Rolla
I love this conversation. Thank you, Bill, Matt, and Mark. Bill, especially you, for your openness and vulnerability, which evokes felt-sense courage.
Two things:
One, let’s not forget Daoism. I’m not sure how much Whitehead knew about Daoism, but he and Cobb’s process-relational ideas resonate with the Chinese and their Daoist, C’han Buddhist traditions, as well as the more statist Confucian traditions.
Two, Whitehead’s racism. I wish I could say that he was not racist and colonialist. Maybe I’m misreading what he says in Science and the Modern World: “The struggle for existence has been construed into the gospel of hate. The full conclusion to be drawn from philosophy of evolution is fortunately of a more balanced character. Successful organisms modify their environment. Those organisms are successful which modify their environments to as to assist each other. This law is exemplified in nature on a vast scale. For example, the North American Indians accepted their environment, with the result that a scantly population barely succeeded in maintaining themselves over the whole continent. The European races when they arrived in the same continent pursued an opposite policy. They at once cooperated in modifying their environment. The result is that a population more than twenty times that of the Indian population…” (p. 206).
I’m not going to unpack that one. I’ll just point to David Graeber and Matt Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything to challenge the assertion of that Native Americans “barely succeeded in maintaining themselves.” I point to Diamond’s classic Guns, Germs, and Steel, with all of its limitations, as pointing out how slaughter, germs, and technology helped exterminate Native American cultures.
I’m not certain if Whitehead was familiar with Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, which illustrates mutual aid and cooperation among animals without the need to modify the environment. I’d love to know if Whitehead was familiar with Kropotkin or the French geographer, Elisee Reclus, who said, “Humanity is nature becoming self-conscious.”
Thanks, Joe.
Heart breaking. One has to wonder if the Trail of Tears history is taught in the high school now.
I remember reading about the Trail of Tears in high school. It wasn’t until later and when I was working with Native American kids in California that I learned about the destruction of Native peoples in CA.
Hello Eric,
Excellent questions. I’m glad you asked in the detailed manner you did.Yes, your springboard project can be a (1) research paper; my point is: so what? How is all this thought informing your life and the lives of those around you?
I view the most important class or program assigned research papers as what Ken Macorie referred to as an I-Search paper. Where you explore an idea that makes a difference to you and others. Such work is more relaxed but also rigorous in that you are exploring questions that make a difference in some ways. Frankly, I get bored reading academic research papers having a formal and restricted format: thesis, key topics, arguments, and evidence. I want to read something other than a meeting the term paper requirement sort of thing.
I’m riffing here, but in my own lifescaping action research model, I have two formats:
One, the Participatory Inquiry Process (PIP)
1) Initiating Conversations and identifying challenges
2) Engaged inquiry
3) Collaborative action
4) Community assessment and reflectionTwo, Appreciative Inquiry Process
1) Relational connection
2) Relational dialogue
3) Relational action
4) Relational assessment and reflectionI’m not saying to use these because they are collaborative and participatory processes involving other people trying to bring about something more desirable in their school or community.
The point is that they answer the big question: So what? because they assess and reflect on what was done. The question I’m wondering about is: What impact did this Cobb Institute Certificate Program have upon you and those around you? Such a question gets back to experience. What was your experience and how is that experience informing your viewing of or action in the world?
All this reminds me of something Mark C. Taylor says, “Creative emergence occurs along the margin of neither/nor: neither too much nor too little order, neither too much nor too little disorder.”
Obviously, I’m in brainstorming mode. I hope this is helpful. I hope it also opens up space for you to play rather than merely creating a proposal and project where you write an academic research paper having a formal and restricted format: thesis,key topics, arguments, and evidence.
Thank you for asking on the discussion forum. This makes our conversation open to all.
At the same time, feel free to email me at Rolla Lewis <rolla.lewis@cobb.institute>.
This is lovely and hopeful. Yes, it’s about small groups making huge differences.
Kathleen,
Thank you for expanding on Mary Oliver. Yes, the flourishing life must include the urban and rural poor. Zugmunt Bauman wrote a book titled, Moral Blindness where he talks about stepping around the homeless and not taking those in need into consideration. Miss Rosie illuminates that need to consider and act to help the poor. Thanks for shining a light on this.Hello Bill,
First, thank you for the resources. Yes, I have used Focusing and other books for years. I used Focusing and connecting to felt-sense to develop my chi kung and tai chi practice.Second, I will fully support you in offering a Pop Up. I’m glad to hear that you put practice first, followed by theory.
Also, even as Dean of the Certificate program, I am very clear that no one needs a certificate.
I see the purpose of the Process Thought and Practice certificate program as 1) Providing space where students can learn within a caring and supportive learning community that invites learners to challenge each other in constructive ways, 2) take a series of high quality courses that explore process-relational thought and practice, 3) develop a springboard project where they explore and share how they are putting process to practice….. I could go on but those are key points.
I believe that you have something important to offer the Cobb Institute learning community, beyond the certificate program. Helping the community see how Gendlin integrated Whitehead into his own theory-practice, and sharing how they can integrate Gendlin into their own life-practice would be a valuable contribution to the Cobb Institute learning community. Start with the idea if introducing and enticing a group. Once you have done one Pop Up, you’ll be able to see where you want to go from there. Does that make sense.
Also, feel free to explore the Pop Up idea with me via email: <rolla.lewis@cobb.institute>. I think you can complete the forms and submit them. Use my paragraph encouraging you as one of your reasons. I’m your cheerleader on this.
Bill,
I really appreciate how you bring Gendlin and Whitehead together. Take a look at Leslie’s note to the group this week inviting folks to submit proposals for Pop Up courses (1-2 sessions) for the Cobb Institute. I think you could offer a focusing orientation to the process-relational community that could be quite inspiring and helpful.Leslie’s note is in: An outsider with a request Started by: Leslie King.
Also, I would love for you to even offer a Gendlin for beginners reading list. Most folks get overwhelmed seeing a huge reference list. I think three to five books to get oriented would be quite helpful. Focusing helped me a lot when I was learning tai chi and improving my deeper listening skills as a counselor and teacher.
With appreciation, Rolla
Hello Neil and Bill,
Bill, thank you for your thoughtful and compassionate response. I think recognizing the ableist cultural context is vital and the need for empathy. I hope my comments were not ableist or lacking empathy. If so, I apologize. I was actually trying to point to the supportive and compassionate learning community, that although not a therapy group, can be quite therapeutic. I hope what you have said models how the community invites members to challenge each other respectfully, and in my case, help me to see where I might not have been helpful. Thank you.
I am moved how you offered Neil help in orienting him to anything that is going on here or providing any support. Again, you are modeling advocacy and being an ally. Add in how you pointed out Richard Livingston as being a remarkable resource and you are showing that the cohort and Cobb Institute are caring and supportive communities.
What more can I say, thank you.
Kathleen,
I should have remembered an exchange we had before in a previous course, where we talked about the Bodhidharma (active ca. 500-540), who talked about the transmission of ideas. This is the David Hinton translation:A separate transmission outside all teaching
and nowhere founded in eloquent scriptures,it’s simple: pointing directly to mind-heart: There
seeing original-nature, you become Buddha.I recite this everyday when I walk in Forest Park. It speaks to helping me see, experience, and feel the forest fresh, letting go of busy mind and thoughts, listening deeply, and listening even more deeply, and opening up to the freshness in every moment…..
Townsend Solitares are in the forest this week. They fly to the Pacific Northwest all the way from Central American and even as far away as Argentina, so I’m told. They are only around for a couple months, at best. I’m like a bird evangelical at times when I see someone. I stop and ask them when the solitare sings: “What’s that bird?” They say they don’t know and I point out what it is and where it came from to sing for them in this moment. Some people thank me. Others see me as a crazy old birdman…. Such is an example of my transmission of ideas….
Neil,
First, sorry for the ouch. I am oriented to resilience. I speak out when I think someone is going to diminish their experience or traumatize themselves rehashing past experiences as a life pattern. My work promoting resilience points to helping folks with negative experience to be informed by their trauma, recognizing it as something that happened (in the past), it is in the past (as something recalled), and that they (the victim, the wounded, etc.) can choose to let go of being stuck by forgiving (not forgetting) the persons or situation by moving forward in ways where they seek connection with compassionate individuals and communities. The research speaks to having a connection with one caring person as a core to fostering resilience; I think your conversation about your dog points to a caring connection that I have not seen in the literature. Regardless, the resilience research is pretty robust and shows that people do not have to define themselves by their wounds and traumas, they can move on with their lives in ways that are engaging, vibrant, creative, and flourishing.Your life is a work of art; make it beautiful. I should have said that and left the rest.
Second, glad to have the Barton Flats connection. My Indian Guide tribe spent time at the Boy Scout Camp in Barton Flats, too. Most the time I spent there was with my family in a log cabin built in the 1920s. When we started going there in the 50s, there was no power, stream fed water, and an outhouse. As time progressed, power, a bathroom, and other features appeared. Still, it remained rustic, and Barton Flats remains a place where many lovely family stories emerge.
Love the conversation. Sorry if my soap boxing made it sound like I was proposing a singular pathway that was political. No, youth need many things, and spiritual and/or philosophical grounding is one of them. My concern is that spirituality could be seen as a way to fix environmental anxiety in youth. Kids need spiritual and philosophical grounding, hopefully the type that helps them see themselves as participating in living ecosystems, a living planet, and living cosmos.
I also think we have to create systems that foster youth participation in confronting challenges. This is a call for intergenerational engagement where elders listen to and mentor youth is local actions in schools, communities, etc. Chet Bowers talked a lot about this in his work.
Hello Dennis and Bill,
I love this conversation and sharing. I love Matt. Yes, he is wise beyond his years. He is humble, adventurous, and brilliant in his thinking, too.Being an academic, I too have experienced being in a silo. Sadly, it was part of the game. If you wanted to move from assistant to associate to full professor, it was important to know the unspoken rules and how power played in your organization. I could whine but I learned it, and within it, and developed counseling programs that focused on meaningful work that oriented graduate students in social and ecological justice rather than merely completing courses, getting a job, etc. Some of our students got the message and are still advocating for social and ecological justice in their settings, and others went on to get jobs where they replicate whatever practices they were oriented to in their settings when they got hired.