[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [xmca] The Study of Procrastination and the Procrastination of Study
- To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
- Subject: Re: [xmca] The Study of Procrastination and the Procrastination of Study
- From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:08:46 -0700
- Delivered-to: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
- Dkim-signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:reply-to:in-reply-to:references:from:date:message-id :subject:to:content-type; bh=ak0zQ+wLpnIx8iyczmCd2i/0Rg7rsfKv+gM/ojk3krk=; b=g/cnpCNKMD0qeSKnOcjv9SG8kMGZoBZ6EgFA2Njx7Afb3iPU7HHZq84ZishuSUg5fX b3+r8Ji5my7eHAsbdAto+BNaHgPxBIPqPihzoJZ6SSWhOgFPsK49AL6462fuR4j49len ALxAlxdWxAg/YaIkUFTic84xi/0W6MS2A2BbMfJecrhumYYSzwXLIDyB1890b+1Mj7Cq 9xH3yp+w5q30LEUeGAxudOoB0xOTp1PsFnueFb2cegvWJpUayD+N19tLImuJdib8V+2H +YfLV9RzIEIEA2PeiLwHof2qiHgV4+s/k7vG0cKSRgOTR/8SjumvfbCAiZ+ko7yd/wvc dqaA==
- In-reply-to: <20120712102454.HM.b0000000008eGE4@kellogg59.wwl1642.hanmail.net>
- List-archive: <http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/private/xmca>
- List-help: <mailto:xmca-request@weber.ucsd.edu?subject=help>
- List-id: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca.weber.ucsd.edu>
- List-post: <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
- List-subscribe: <http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>, <mailto:xmca-request@weber.ucsd.edu?subject=subscribe>
- List-unsubscribe: <http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>, <mailto:xmca-request@weber.ucsd.edu?subject=unsubscribe>
- References: <20120712102454.HM.b0000000008eGE4@kellogg59.wwl1642.hanmail.net>
- Reply-to: lchcmike@gmail.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
- Sender: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
Ah, delighted to see you re-appear, David. When there was all that xmca
chit chat about development of higher psycn
functions using language I was hoping you would be pointing us to examples
from your work, which I believe there
are plenty of.
Gotta bail, but not before welcoming you back.
mike
On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 6:24 PM, kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net> wrote:
> First of all, belated thanks to Mike and Huw for their concern about my
> cyber-health. At Huw's suggestion, I junked the yahoo account (they must
> have the WORST news on the internet, and the biggest bevy of bigots
> commenting on it) and resubscribed.
>
>
>
> It took me a while! Partly it was thanks to a ferocious spam filter at
> uni, but mostly it was because I have been reading...well...actually...you
> see...to tell you the truth...it's all about the psychology of
> procrastination.
>
>
>
> Procrastination is something I have always meant to write about but never
> quite gotten around to. It seems to me that a good deal of Vygotsky's
> method, both for studying the development of higher psychological functions
> and for studying literature, has to do with the artificial generation and
> observation of procrastination and its role in making actions deliberate
> and ultimately moral (and also in robbing them of any actual utility and
> significance).
>
>
>
> For example: In Act Three, Hamlet makes a bloodthirsty speech:
>
>
>
> ….Now could I drink hot blood
>
> And do such bitter business as the day
>
> Would quake to look on.
>
>
>
> He then happens upon the king at prayers. Hamlet draws his sword. Hamlet
> raises his hand. And Hamlet does not strike, because to kill the king at
> prayers would send him to heaven.
>
>
>
> Now, many critics—including Vygotsky (1971: 171) have considered this
> reason frivolous. More religious (and less anachronistic) critics, have
> been offended by Hamlet’s belief that a human being can decide whether
> another human is to be damned or saved, simply by killing at the right
> instant. (The truly religious believe that evil humans simply cannot repent
> at the last moment, and this is in fact the solution that Mozart shows us
> in his opera *Don Giovanni, *and it sometimes seems to me that our
> debates over assisted suicide and the over the moment of conception show a
> similar obsession with the moral significance of precise timing.)
>
>
>
> No, there is no contradiction here. As the Ghost says, one of the horrors
> of the king’s death is that he died without confession (“unhouseled,
> disappointed, unaneled”), and it’s for this precise reason that he is now
> tortured in purgatory by day, and only allowed to communicate with his son
> at night:
>
>
>
> Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
>
> And for the day confined to fast in fires
>
> Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
>
> Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
>
> To tell the secrets of my prison house,
>
> I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
>
> Would harrow up thy soul, freeze they young blook,
>
> Make they two eyes like stars start from their spheres
>
> And each particular hair to stand an end
>
> Like quills upon the fretful porpentine
>
> But this eternal blazon must not be
>
> To ears of flesh and blood!
>
> (1.5.10~21)
>
>
>
> Blasphemously or not, Hamlet believes that the king’s brother has sent his
> father to purgatory by simply murdering him without a confession and
> without the last rites.
>
>
>
> Hamlet, who is no theologian but an ordinary moralist like the rest of us,
> cannot imagine that justice would be served by sending his evil uncle to
> heaven while his father is still being purged in hell. It is no wonder that
> Hamlet finds it so hard to carry out the ghost’s instructions even when the
> means, the leisure, and the opportunity are all given.
>
>
>
> I sometimes feel that way about xmca, particularly when I contemplate the
> enormous amount of reading required to participate intelligently. But one
> thing we learn from Vygotsky is that intelligence, like procrastination, is
> sometimes a consequence and not a cause....
>
>
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
>
>
>
> <kellogg59@hanmail.net>
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca