[Xmca-l] Re: Rogers day

Mon Aug 20 20:38:21 PDT 2018

Hi Douglas,

I realize I probably should not have said "re-tinder the flame" because "flaming" is usually considered pejorative in an listserv context. Beg pardon, I should have used a different metaphor! I did not mean it pejoratively at all.

"Re-knit the thread?" 😃

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2018 8:36:03 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Rogers day

Hi Douglas,

Thank you for re-tindering the flame of original intentions.

I would like to add to what you stated "to try to create a system of shared responsibility," there must also be an accord concerning consent as well. Not all people are mentors and not all are mentees, but of course there is a great need for both to bring novices into expertise and for experts to remember what it is like to have beginner's mind, for continuity to exist across knowledge lineages and across generations. These strands are not so visible, and it's much like crashing weddings to participate in that kind of give and take.

When you say,"So I think there is a good deal to be said to go back to first principles, and to think what children need, because adults need it too." That was something I intended but perhaps I did not say so easily as you did. Really we each want to be safely vulnerable and feel that we matters, and that when people listen to us, it is with positive regard that I witnessed in documentary footage when Fred Rogers is relating directly to children in the room.

There might be a part of us that cringes at the manner that he speaks to children, but I wonder if that says more about our defensive habits to protect our vulnerability than it says about him. That's why I remain convinced that courage and curiosity, two qualities I saw in Fred Rogers during these interactions, are worthwhile qualities to nourish in ourselves.

I'm not sure if I am articulating this very well, but it seems that the gaze we participate so readily (perhaps because of today's media literacy we are now inured from the barrage of insults and division in the agora) is to gawk at the victims of hurt and the action of wounding so much easier than we do at the perpetrators who enact the harm (aka victim blaming). With this sort of gaze, the distraction becomes complete, because the flow that would allow something beautiful to emerge has been interrupted and misdirected.

That is frequently how children feel silenced and come to feel that what they think and feel are not important.

Then, we also suffer a loss because we do not understand the full dimension of lost opportunities (which is impossible to know, really), which I think you faintly captured for me when you said "you expect [those of your community] to be successful in ways neither you nor they can yet imagine." That that opportunity for spontaneity becomes forfeit when there isn't the space or trust for kindness.

It's the interrupted daydream, instead of a sensed, relaxed wondering-perceiving that could be done together (in partnership or in community) and in flow.

There is so much in your post that I will rest and cogitate more upon it. Thanks.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Douglas Williams <djwdoc@yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2018 2:02:47 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Rogers day

Hi, everyone--

I'm going to reply to this earlier post, and bypass the others for the time being, which has the look of a misunderstanding. Forgive me if this sounds naïve or off point, but it is something for which Annalisa's comments struck a chord.

As someone engaged in industrial work practice, and with enough trial and error experience to have seen what worked and what didn't, Kurt Lewin's Action Research seems a practical extension at the adult economic level for what Fred Rogers advocated for children in development: Instead of an autocratic order-and-obedience approach, based on rules and discipline, where the manager "knows," and the worker carries out actions by direction, it is more productive--in quantifiable terms of measurable output and quality--to try to create a system of shared responsibility, in which leaders are mentors who teach, and those who report to them are nurtured, their ideas sought, their opinions respected, as they collectively engage in an exploration of ways to do their work more effectively, more productively. To the extent that I've been able to work in such systems, and help to maintain them, I think there's something important here. Establishing value in the community in which one works, and the things that one is producing, and the quality that one is delivering, in my experience very much is related to the sense that the individuals in that community matter, and that they have a sense that their community has an investment in them, personally. Participation in decision-making comes from the basis of one's ability to understand more fully the technical issues one's group is trying to address. And if the organization is working well, then the leader actually does less direct leading, in the typical forms of monitoring productivity, or ordering subordinates what methods to use, than transmitting the goal, and preserving the ability of the group to engage in team problem-solving to address that goal.

I think charisma, in the form of the response one receives by communicating that you value people as people, and because you value them, you expect them to be successful in ways neither you nor they can yet imagine, is precisely what you need to achieve economically. That doesn't mean that you can't say that people failed, but it does mean that you can't say that they failed because they are stupid people (you wouldn't have hired them if they were), or start micromanaging them prevent them from their inevitable mistakes, because they aren't you. It doesn't mean that you can't provide more mentoring, or more training, or say that someone is taking the wrong approach. But it has to be done in the form of validating of the individual as an agent, a stakeholder in the common goal. And it should ideally be done in discussion and consensus, in an environment in which everyone is learning, not scolding. To the extent that people can find a sense of validation as an agent in the world, helping a community of peers at varying levels of experience and understanding, and mentors, helping the group to engage in the work of understanding and production needed to produce the goal, to that extent work can be emancipating as anything people can engage with in daily life.

The direction of society and industrial practice is full of autocratic strains, of leadership asserted, rather than earned, demanded from others as due rather than extended by others with hope. It seems to me, as someone who sees the tug of war that goes on in many different areas of our common experience together, that it wouldn't hurt to step out of seeing this is a problem of an academic research question, or a work problem, or a question of economics, but as a problem generally of dealing with denial, repression, and exclusion that is happening to families, communities, workplaces, and far too much of the lifeworld these days in which we all live. So I think there is a good deal to be said to go back to first principles, and to think what children need, because adults need it too.

For me, I think this is one of the aspects that has struck me as being an important aspect of the narrative arts, from the ancient Greeks onward, the part that Socrates (or Plato's version of him) rejects in The Republic. The Ancient Greek dramas were a form of social problem-solving. Dante and Milton both discussed the political issues of their day in their religious epics. The problem-describing and solving aspect of narrative an assertion that Shelley makes in saying that poets were the unelected legislators of the world, and William Carlos Williams was getting at in saying that It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die every day for lack of what is found there. And in this context, it is the imagination of a kinder neighborhood than one's own that makes children listen to Rogers, and adults, too. It is the ideal of a kinder workplace, that really sees in someone one part of their potential, even if it is not visible now, and maybe just a small part of the vast amount of what could be, that makes work empowering. It is only through interactions in a community that cares that people are able to become whole--really, to come into being as people, rather than shriveled imposters in their own minds, as alas, we see in the current President of the United States. That this nation has such a president is a terrible commentary on the nature of our communities and lifeworld.

So in that sense, I think the narratives of Mr. Rogers imaginary neighborhood are related to the democratic leadership that Lewin talk about--and I would be interested in having references to where they might relate more specifically to things in CHAT theory too, as part of my own development in a world of practice, where I find myself continually in need of learning.
Regards,
Doug

On ‎Saturday‎, ‎August‎ ‎11‎, ‎2018‎ ‎10‎:‎51‎:‎40‎ ‎PM‎ ‎PDT, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:

Hi Peter and Charles and venerable others,

Well first of all I certainly did not mean to be crude myself when I spoke of anxiety as "weakness" which is why I put it in quotes. I understand anxiety can be debilitating, and I did not intend to be flip about it (positive regards to Peter). No one likes to be anxious, it is a very negative feeling, but there is something about the nature of anxiety in which it makes us feel weakened, not strong. If I might point out how universally it is that anxiety is an unwelcomed experience because it seems to obstruct us from performing our best, or just from feeling strong in ourselves, vulnerable. What is the purpose of anxiety?

We agree that the virtue of Vygotsky's approaches arises from the ways in which he looked optimistically rather than orient from limitations of deficiencies and pathologies. What can the patient do, not what can the patient not do. His work was not about bell curves nor was he interested in defining what was normal. What I've always admired about the work is that it provides a pathway to consider outliers.

But getting back to the Rogers? I was considering in my post the importance of positive regard. There is magic in it. At the same time, is so easy to take it for granted. Whether we are dealing with growing children, as Fred Rogers did, or dealing with unwell patients therapeutically as Carl Rogers did.

(I find the title of a work of C Rogers, "On Becoming a Person" to be a very compelling one)

Development is much easier when we don't have to deal with the pollution of ridicule or anxiety-producing interactions and I think that is true in the therapeutic relationship too, even experimental democracies.

Was it the case that Vygotsky was interested in opening that up for examination (the "that" being positive regard), because it has to do with emotion and affect, and not cognition. Though sometimes it almost feels that he set emotion to the side to deal with later. Or am I wrong about that.

I understand that he looked to Spinoza to consider the place for emotions, and then there is meaning. If one studies Vygotsky and neglects to understand what meaning means to his work, well...the work would be meaningless ! 😊

If you see the film Won't You Be My Neighbor and watch how Fred Rogers speaks to children, how they are utterly mesmerized by him, I almost wonder if Vygotsky had that same sort of charisma with the people around him.

What is the function of kindness and positive regard?

I looked up the wiki page on Roger's "Unconditional positive regard" here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_positive_regard

and it mentions at the tippy top: "The central hypothesis of this approach can be briefly stated. It is that the individual has within him or her self vast resources for self-understanding, for altering her or his self-concept, attitudes, and self-directed behavior—and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided."

and then later: "The main factor in unconditional positive regard is the ability to isolate behaviors from the person who displays them."

The section "Criticism" on that page, Ruth Sanford argues how we can't hold unconditional positive regard to everyone we meet (that this quality is dependent upon how deep the relationship is), though I disagree and I believe that we can hold positive and it is a matter of habit and inner persistence to cultivate unconditional positive regard for everyone, including the self. Then Albert Ellis seemed to think there is a conundrum about the "unconditional" in unconditional positive regard, because the idea is that the client cannot learn to have unconditional positive self-regard unless it comes from the therapist first, which is itself a condition.

(Of course I'm thinking, but this is also Vygotskian because it is first outside, then inside! It is social! But does that mean it is never there, or does it mean it is latent?)

Additionally: "While Ellis strongly supported unconditional positive regard of clients, he believed they could, and had better, accept themselves and adopt unconditional positive regard of themselves whether or not their therapist or anyone else does."

Which seems to say that positive regard is necessary for self-growth. And the lack of it is actually an obstruction, which means that positive regard is the necessary condition, it is an engine for growth. (Some might call it love).

So when I think about positive regard, whether conditional or not, what is interesting is that it MEANS something, it is an essential ingredient to our growth and development.

WHY IS THAT? What does it do for us? Then, (for contrast) how does positive regard relate to judgement and anxiety? It seems it is the absence of judgement and anxiety.

Judgement and anxiety (to me) are products arising after dividing ourselves from something, they diminish us. I don't believe judgement and anxiety can occur if there is unconditional positive (self) regard. There's a thought experiment for you.

Having said that, I am considering Peter's condition, and I don't mean to say that he has no positive self-regard conditional or unconditional or that his anxiety is a product of low-esteem. I don't mean this at all. But certainly there can be a possibility for managing anxious moments through having positive regard and having it unconditionally, whether from a fellow traveler or from within (with self talk). It might be cheaper than medication and more effective in the long run. Though I understand that might not present an immediate solution.

Where I'm going is this: What is anodyne of that positive regard? How does it operate? Why does it work (when it does work)?

I am not sure if I am quite making my point, but thank you for allowing me the attempt make it.

Kind regards, without condition!

Annalisa
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