Jay continued:
> Phenomenologically, we experience
>communities from the perspective of individuals who are parts of
>such communities, and not from the perspective of the community
>itself. Accordingly our moral, political, ethical, and value
>discourses only frame an answer to what is 'good' or desirable
>learning in these terms (i.e. presuming a notion of individual).
>... We do have some
>discourses about what makes a 'good ecosystem' and certainly
>ones about what makes a 'good society'. Frankly, however, I know
>no convincing or persuasive discourses that bridge between these
>desires and those for learning at the individual level. (I know
>our literature is full of them, I just read them as earnest
>efforts but not successful ones).
>
>I am not sure .... that it is possible to link discourses across these
>levels, or... that as participants in a system it is possible
>for us to view the system from its own level, or even to imagine
>such a view, at least in what we regard as our normal states of
>'consciousness'(i.e. by what we consider sanely self-aware ways
>of being-with-the-world, modes of interactivity for which discursive
>meaning is useable).
I don't know if it IS possible (now) "to view the system from its own
level" - we must imagine that view from our own particular, located,
limiting positions. But perhaps the meta-stances discussed in the
not-so-distant xmca strand on play (and other strands I think) may be
crucial to the (collective) formulation of such a view. That is to
say that the meta-stance, the shaping of our self-awareness and
thus in some sense publicizing of our imagined views of the community
from where we stand within it, may make possible some sort of mapping
of the collective whole, envisioning of its effects on its different
parts and thus, next step, on the ways its different parts interact,
so that we can see how the thing continues itself as a system and
imagine better ways, perhaps, to orient to it (and so change it - and
ourselves). I'm not sure I'm making sense, but I know that if I'm
making any sense at all, I'll get help from xmca-ers in making more
sense.
- Judy
Judy Diamondstone
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
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