I think that the dyssynchronies in these cases are within a single
timescale (or rate-scale) range; up to a factor of ten, usually less.
What makes the link to the next higher (slower) rate-scale is that it is
the patterns that are allowed/favored, disallowed/disfavored by these
dyssynchronies for some (and synchronies for others) become life and career
trajectories (or parts thereof) on the longer timescale (slower rate-scale
of change and completion). This seems in fact to be rather a typical
mechanism, and I will emphasize it more in the next version of the model
(with thanks to Mike Cole, who stressed it in a conversation last month).
This is then part of the answer to how short bits of our lives add up to
longer life-trajectories. It is not just that the N-1 bits do or do not
lend themselves to level N lives, depending on whether they can synchronize
into these longer term patterns, but also that WHICH level N life patterns
are available are further constrained by still higher-scale N+1
(institutional-historical-cultural) patterns. Those N+1 constraints
(boundary conditions on self-consistent solutions at level N) do NOT
directly control at what age or point in the school curriculum you found
yourself too busy with other things to catch a particular career train, but
they do constrain what career trains there are, their schedules, etc. They
don't make your life, any more than deciding not to register for
biochemistry this semster does. But your life is what emerges at level N
from whether or not any possible cumulation of N-1 decisions and actions
winds up being consistent with some N+1 pattern of the larger society.
(Obviously I am oversimplifying by reducing the relevant number of levels
here to three; but the principle of the 3-level logic, the 'sandwich
relations' is what I am trying to clarify.)
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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