I appreciate being appreciated Jay. :-)
this fascinates me and has prompted much verbosity from me today...
<snip> You wrote.
>... level of human interpersonal activity and the level at which
>institutional formations occur which impose the coercive constraints. By
>"level" here I do not mean level in an authority hierarchy, but level in
>relation to material time/space/matter/energy scale of organization. In
>very simple terms, I am proposing that our society has not found effective
>solutions to the basic problem of large-scale social organization, that we
>have taken the wrong path historically in how we mediate between
>large-scale social organization and human-scale social activity. I do not
>doubt that in part we have taken the paths we have because it has suited
>the interests of powerful elites, but I doubt that they have a clue just
>what the problem is that they have led us to such a bad solution for, nor
>do any of us yet really understand where to look for alternatives.
Interesting observation: I see it as similar, that social systems were
organized on the basis of large social system control - can we say The
Crusades?... but that you are right, the universal solutions have failed
miserably, and so ya, imminent social decay must of necessity evolve - and
I don't just mean poor folk being shuffled to a different part of town: I
mean real chaos.
When that hits, it'll be all military. And that is surely the oldest
institution of all.
Do we have any renegades in the military to usurp the inevitable state of
military rule?
<snip>
>In the theory of these issues that I am trying to develop, there are
>supposed to be buffers between scale levels, and there is supposed to be a
>rather substantial degree of freedom for lower levels to quite differently
>satisfy higher-level constraints. This is the way that ecosystems work,
>that biological development works, and that some human cultural
>institutions work ...
there is a problem here with legitimacy, though. Low-level systems OUGHT to
inform higher level structures, but the legitimacy still resides in the
bureaucracy - especially here in Canada, especially in British Columbia,
which is as close to socialist
democracy as one can get. It works as a system, socialist democracy, but
the bureaucratic structure required to maintain all the systems does
paralyze change from the bottom up; in that it is hard for those who are
seviced by socialism to attack the same system that provides social
insurance, free health care and subsidized education.
Many schools in BC are separating from the "state" and starting their own
schools, based on their own beliefs. While this is decentralization, it
will lead to versions of ideological conflicts yet unimaginablee - and yet
these are essential aspects of a socil
eduction/evolution/growth/transgression...
Part of the decentralization strategy allows communities to decide what
the majority of PARENTS want - that can be scary,
which is to say that authorities are intersubjective and THAT makes
analysis messy.
You write:
>but by and large it is becoming less and less the way
>our dominant global views of social organization and cultural control
>operate. I believe this may be extremely dangerous for the human future,
>and not just because of the oppression of those at the bottom of the
>authority ladder. I think it may be possible to formulate political
>principles designed to restore needed freedom and flexibility and insure
>the necessary buffering between levels. These principles may well forbid
>some social practices which are now accepted wisdom about how society needs
>to be organized, perhaps most basically the drive to large-scale uniformity
>in laws, policies, and standards that has been our dominant culture's basic
>response to the long and deadly era of civil wars and sectarian strife that
>created modern euroculture a few centuries ago (not that it's over, or
>unique to us).
You know what I really think? That preventing the inevitable is not always
desirable. Sometimes it has got to blow up before it can be fixed.
The future you predict is inevitable and while that is desperately
immature of us in terms of humanity, I do not believe, not in my heart,
that human beings have evolved
to any pragmatic use for theory or change; but rather cling to the familiar
- which is pretty much still locked in self-consciousness, not social
consciousness...
a sign of maturity, for example, is interest & curiosity; not hypothesizing
and proofing, but which is the dominant mode for any production of new
knowledge? (Measure that muthuh-fuckuh and lessee how many we got!! Hey!!
Deviations! Bummer! Let's ASK questions and then code the answers! YA!
Let's use Klingon Code! YA!")
Science, Jay. Science is both evil and essential, and because of that,
there can be no human understanding of what natural development might be,
because we have never
witnessed it, we have only been able to measure and code. This is so
profoundly dominant, cataloguing, categorizing, library-izing information
that the goal of being an informed citizen is nearly blocked by every piece
of propoganda.
You write
>In the specific arena of education, this analysis may indict standardized
>curricula and perhaps even mass-market textbooks. It may seem a bit odd to
>say it this way, but current trends in education seem to be heading for
>exactly the same sort of ecological disaster as environmental policies, and
>perhaps from exactly the same suicidal logic. JAY.
What concerns me is the embedded belief that others know better than those
who need to know and I say NEED to know because participating in social
systems is greatly enabled with bureaucratic policy & knowledge, discourse
practices, and middle-class whitey values like "being polite" when not
everyone is socialized in the same frames of politeness and procedure.
What if everything that could be standardized was parcelled out as a choice
for schools? What if one school wanted to try something different (happens
all the time) - the problem is that there is this utter fetish for
reparations when we have not nearly seen or understood what damage is done
on a daily basis. 1 in 4 girls today will be sexully assaulted by their
daddies;
every 15 minutes a woman is raped;
in 1992 and in 1998 the headlines of Time read, respectively
"Gays Under Fire: What America thinks" and in 1998, as well recall, perhaps,
"The War Over Gays"
(do we like that phrasing? the war over gays? like, up there? where? How do
I dodge the ricochet?) and Susan Faludi's (1991) The War Against Women...
anyone see a media theme here?
My point is the same, I think, as your's Jay, in that what is lacking is a
certain level of human consciousness not yet evolved. Standardization will
only exacerbate an already unstable system of struggle of ideological
dominance. Caring, and common sense
are not legitimate forms of action of knowledge. Systems need to be broken
down, I think; popular culture should guide a critical curriciulum, and
teacher-education needs to be more liberal arts than "pedagogical" - in
short, less management and more inquiry. I sound like a sick Noam Chomsky
parrot eh?
diane
I suppose what I am admitting is that the system must collapse before anything
new can begin. Otherwise. as you note. we just do the same things over and over
and wonder what is wrong... we know what is wrong and it is irreversible.
Oppressions will be played out to macabre degrees, I am sure, but I do say
it is essential to push even the worst systems to their irreconciliable
extremes: let the thing blow up; potect who you can with knowledge about
how systems work.
I still say an international lobby of students would change more than
educational institutions, lest we forget Kent State,,, not so long ago.
whoa. bummer man[sic]
Jay I find this rather fascinating - thanks for sharing.
diane
"When she walks,
the revolution's coming.
In her hips, there's revolution.
When she talks, I hear revolution.
In her kiss, I taste the revolution." Kathleen Hanna
(Bikini Kill)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^
diane celia hodges
centre for the study of curriculum and instuction,
faculty of education
university of british columbia
2125 main mall,
vancouver, b.c. canada
V6T 1Z4