Questions, Intuitions, Revisions: Telling and Re-Telling Stories About Ourselves in the World A College Seminar Course at Bryn Mawr College

This week, while you're gathering data for your project on tacit knowing, we'd like you to post your thoughts about this *new* painting by Sharon Burgmayer (you can click on it to make it bigger):

What do you think this painting is saying that Sharon Burgmayer doesn't know she knows? In Polanyi's language, what was Sharon "attending from" when she made this picture?

Looking forward, as always, to hearing your thoughts--

Anne, Haley and Paul

Sorry for the inconvenience.
Anne

Anne

Found this while looking for a paper topic. Go and try it out. The results might surprise you.

Project Implicit

Our class discussions have led away from the matter of playfullness however, and we have explored more sinister questions of Deep Play in suicide bombing, war actions, suicide as a result of mental illness and pornography. It was argued that because participants in these acts were taking a calculated risk with regard to their beliefs that it constituted a 'play': a leap of faith.

I disagree, but only now realize my reasoning is personal. Let me explain. There has been a tacit assumption in our discussions that Deep Play is a desireable practice; that we can use this concept in our approach to assignments, our studies, our lives. It is therefore, at least partially, virtuous. This is agreeable to me. However, if that is the case, and if suicide, war and pornography are forms of Deep Play, it follows that there is also some virtue in suicide, war and pornography. Because my ethical code tells me that these things are wrong to a large degree, I must eschew any concept that ambiguously affirms them.

The concept of Deep Play, therefore, only has value to me if it is closely pared with my personal ethical code. Unfortunately, not everyone follows my personal ethical code and even so, my code isn't complete. Many people in this world do not have a sound enough grasp on 'the rules' to know when and where they can be pushed. Without this paring of Deep Play and Ethics, are we adequately challenging ourselves to do what is right?...to know what is right? However much I appreciate the liberation Deep Play has introduced to me, I recognize that it cannot be a guide for my behavior.

The bright spot of the day was that I had begged Paul Grobstein for a working definition of tacit knowing and (being the wonderful person he is), he shared the following:
"tacit knowing?everything going on inside us that we don't know is going on inside us."

I thought, solid!! As in finally, a solid foothold on what tacit knowing might mean and consequently, how it might be manifested in ways we can now see (since we're now looking). Background: my students and I had left our last meeting more confused than enlightened about Polanyi's theory. But armed with Paul's definition and Anne's (mighty goddess is she) short hand that "tacit knowing?implicit knowledge?instincutal behavior," I felt confident about our ability to break through this conceptual haze.

Not so much. Sigh.

So, fellow QIR folk, if you would share your understandings of tacit knowing with me, with my students, I'd be ever so grateful.

And if you can say something about how you are thinking about making a claim, telling a story about the data you've collected on tacit knowing, that would be schway as well.

Your most humble servant,

HST

P.S. I'm watching "Medical Detectives" on TLC as I write this and just heard that some folks are genetically pre-disposed (and others emphatically not) to smell cyanide—is that an example of tacit knowledge?

As my c-sem classmates know, when I was 24 I spent six months as a farrier's apprentice, learning to shoe horses and do some blacksmithing and welding. Polyani's concept of indwelling made a lot of sense to me when I thought about how I learned to use a hammer, first in shoe-making and progressing on to little animals, leaves and flowers. If I thought about it too much I would have a very hard time getting the metal to do what I wanted. If I "let it flow" I had great success. Although I didn't think it consciously at the time I understand what he means about these external objects becoming part of your being. But it also was somewhat particular. With my 2lb hammer I did my best work and easily got into that "flow" thing. With a 1lb or a 4lb I was very distracted by the feel (too light, too heavy) and finished projects with difficulty. Also, while I slipped easily into a rhythm while working with metal, I couldn't hammer a nail into wood to save my life!

Then I was thinking about animals and tacit knowing. When you pick up a horse's foot it automatically redistributes most of its weight to the other three legs--although there are those who prefer to lean on the farrier! Anyway, I believe this redistribution is tacit knowledge, right? Well, there was one horse we used to do that didn't know how to do this. If you picked up his foot he would fall over! Two of us would have to lean against him and hold him up while the third would lift the foot up and work on it. This horse was about ten years old and had always been like this; my teacher had been working on him for the horse's entire life. He was mentally sound and fine in every other way except this. I would guess that there was some sort of problem with his brain function but it seems so strange that it would only manifest itself in this one particular way.

Interesting, I think!

more importantly than the things i found out was my process and reaction to deep play and the things i had found out about its practices. after i came to understand how deep play was defined i felt like it was this term that was applied liberally. a little too liberally. so i struggled with what was "deep". it felt like this bizarre form of white priveledge in the sense that there is no risk so great that if i lost everything i wouldn't have access to all of the material goods i needed. if i gambled and lost and damaged myself, there would still be care available to me, so i saw deep play as something that people of a first world culture of luxury could in no way partake outside of a little summertime x-games. the idea that we can even risk anything, that truly CANNOT be replaced, that there is no possibility of replacement and that would really mean the difference between surviving and not seems very slim to me. if i lost my life my family would still eat. if i lost my family i would still eat. in other words, loss of one thing does not consititute loss of everything in a culture where resources are plentiful to the point of luxury.
---
after that rash of reaction i started poking around on google. what was called "deep play" that wasn't porn was Diane Ackerman, porn for your soul. her words are warm honey. and more warm honey until you are a little sick with the indulgence. but she said, "deep play should really be classified by mood and not activity. it testifies to "how" something happens, not "what" happens"-she also calls it in ackerman-speak "transcendent play" and here is a little list of my favorite words before i was sick of it:

rapture, ecstacy, relish, whole, thrall, small brilliant space, gorgeous fever, lustrous, keen- and talked about "having a love affair with the world." "the day's fulfillment" now you see: spiritual porn. it sounded delightful. i wanted some. i cried a lot. i hadn't even remembered the word "rapture" existed until then. it was balm and i was bleeding.

i will admit the state of my being dictated both my reactions and my desires. my heart was a bad accident at which i could not stop staring. so then i thought:

what would the gamble look like that would ever make me want to love another human again? i mean, how big would the possible payoff have to be in order for me to even attempt it and might it be possible there is no reawrd large enough? and what sort of bullshit is it to call everything "deep play? you know-like how much further can it be devalued? and if the risk is really there, then it is always there, and that seems like an awful lot of horrible stress, so what is the point of even trying it and putting this big epic label on it?
---
i don't know if it works yet to turn to that which you reject for the answers you might need, so forgive me if it turns out i have no clue how to make this all make sense- but that is waht i kind of did. i wanted to give diane ackerman a chance. so i read on, "...to play is to risk, to risk is to play."

i cried again. becaue when you love you think you are playing, and when that love is gone, you think you were risking. but you are talking about the same thing. point goes to Diane Ackerman.
---
i have thought a great deal about love and loss, the only two conditions i have ever existed in for any great length of time in the frame of deep play, of risk and reward. about attachment and suffering, about play and achievement. risk is only risk because someone is attached to an outcome. if you don't care, there is nothing to lose. liberating for me in that nice california buddhist way. but then for me it came down to a question of living, loving, and loss. i think maybe i thought i could choose love again- you know- the grand and noble risk for the grand and noble payoff- but it really seemed like all signs were pointing to knowing when to stay down on the mat because life is about to kick my ass if i even try to get up so if i was smart i'd play dead. i haven't come to any greater understanding/conclusion about deep play per se, but it has made me examine risk...and risk makes me wonder about love-

diane ackerman, in a less oozy moment asks, "how does one wipe the mental slate clean, choose to be...wholly open to the world?"

oh, were that all it would take.

And then, there's that title, "The Pool of Bethesda" -- site where Jesus reportedly healed a man who had been suffering for nearly 40 years. He asks the man to forget about all of society's "should's", do's and don't. He asks him to think only about whether he WANTED to be healed.

I think that the artist is in a place where she had decided that she wants to be healed. She is located with the dead tree and stump, but basking in warm light from a benevolent sun. It feels as though it is rising, not setting. The flowers she loves are prominent, almost too large in scale for the other things in the painting. Even the dead tree is painted to reflect (and absorb?) the sun's warm light.

But what about those turtles? Is she feeling the tugs and turmoil of menopause... the demise of her own fertility along with a new birth of her own self "on the other side of that bridge"?

Inquiring minds want to know!!!

Burgmayer is the (asexual) nude figure on the shore of the lake. In a meditative position, this person attends to the rhythems of the current and all the life that flourishes by it-- the swaying reefs, hungry fish and melodious frogs. In the brush, nocturnal animals set out from their hidden dwellings. So much lives at once. Even in this peaceful setting, it is impossible to focus only on the moonbeams penetrating her skin.

I believed the sun was setting, and I wondered why. It occured to me that always assume the sun is setting, because my fondest memories of the sun on the water was at summer camp, where the sun would reflect on the water like that. The sun setting does not carry the normal, sad lierary intonations. (I don't mean intonations, I just can't think of the right word.)

"Forgetting lines happens to the best...Who really knows the reason? To anyone who has been on stage w/ much to do, not knowing what to do next, the experience is like the centipede stopping to think which of its many legs it should move--and becoming paralyzed. Quick recovery is possible. Or not. An actor spooked by the experience is cast out of the world of that character and into the cold, w/ no protection..."

Tacit knowing, in this account, is not just what we know that we don't know we know. It's also what we know that, called to our conscious attention, we cease to be able to perform...

Now: WHAT will happen as a result of your writing this next set of papers? What of what you know that you don't know you know will you cease to ... ?

Anne

The lesson for next time is not to figure this out 9 hours before the paper is due...but at least i figured it out. let's discuss in class tommorow.

We know things, tacitly, Jessie, that we don't know we know. We bring them into consciousness, make them "known" to our thinking selves...and THEN we can interpret them, give them an explanatory framework, a story that "makes sense of them"--perhaps in order, eventually, to change them.

Along this line, a cautionary tale. The NYTimes Book Review featured an essay this Sunday (11/24/02) called "Defending Dr. B": a review of a new autobiography, Rising to the Light: A Portrait of Bruno Bettelheim, by Theon Raines. Turns out that. in interviews w/ his biographer, the man who taught us all about the therapeutic power of fairy tales

"withheld meaningful details--alternately talking about his life in the abstract, distanced manner in which he wrote about it, and delivering canned (and sometimes questionable) anecdotes familiar from earlier biographies....He was unwilling to discuss his first marriage, his relationships with his children or his months at Dachau and Buchenwald. Raines interprets this opacity with racidal charity, insisting that Bettelheim is protecting his privacy, refusing to revisit a painful experience or modestly avoiding bragging. A less charitable intepretation might be that Bettelheim kept his stories vague in order not to trip himself up...."

Bettelheim committed suicide three days after these interviews ended. Raines shaped them into a worshipful biography, one that attempted to repair Bettelheim's damaged reputation; the reviewer thinks Raines didn't succeed, that such debunkings are "perhaps necessary correctives, reminders that even the most charismatic intelligence is no guard against human weakness."

The sense I make of this story is that refusing to consider one's tacit knowledge can be...deadly.

Anne

The comments of others or her perception of others could be the second term that she "attends to" and her reactions to her perceptions could be the first term that she "attends from". When she sees others achieving she feels insignificant. She is "attending from" this insignificance.

Anne asked me to provide my story of "the pool of bethesda". A link at the bottom of this posting will take you to that story.

It's been great fun all year to have your readings of my different paintings. "fun" doesn't in fact capture it though. It's been enlightening, provocative, affirming, confirming and moving. You've been revealing my tacit knowledge all along, in fact, with your readings--and not unfrequently with some surprising ideas for me to contemplate!

Try adding onto your tacit stories this conscious one:
http://www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/Chem/sburgmay/watercolors/bethesda/

Sharon

bethesda story

Contrast that with the incredible energy and power you feel when seeing a magnificent sunset. I lived in Naples, Florida on the Gulf of Mexico for twenty years. I never tired of seeing the extraordinary sunsets there. There is nothing ashen or chalky in a sunset. The sky fills up with a vibrant kaleidoscope of color that changes dramatically with every inch that the sun gets closer to the water....every shade of red, yellow, orange, blue, purple,.... If you are fortunate enough to be sitting near the water, you hear the waves caressing the beach and you feel the powerful pull of the tide. You smell the depths of the water as the warm breeze blows soft upon your cheek. The palm trees sway. Looking into the horizon you see only water and sky, no outside distractions. At this moment you feel the power of nature around you and you feel it within you.

Why? How can this be? Who is the giver, the sustainer and the taker of life? You cannot say, but you "know." The same spirit and energy that sets the sun is also available to you.

Sometimes we do not own this. And maybe this is what Sharon Burgmayer is trying to capture here. Sometimes we turn our backs on our life, we put our heads down and refuse to look at the sun, we refuse to live life to the fullest, we may even lose the will to go on. "Do you want to get well?" Jesus asked the invalid at the Pool of Betheseda in John 5:1-15. We must allow the mystery and beauty of this question to resonate within our being and listen for the answer.

It could be a man for all we know....
I guess thats what bryn mawr will do to you... hehehe

How bout "being" or "human".

"It" seems pretty void of characteristics, maybe its supposed to represent all people, not just one sex or another.

I thought you all might be interested in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week (11/29/02), entitled "Words, Science, and the State of Evolution," by Lawrence M. Krauss, which is available online @ this address http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i14/14b02001.htm . It continues the discussion we were having several modules ago (!) about the creationism/evolution debate in education, but adds to it a very pointed query about the imprecision of language--and its consequences for scientists in particular:

"In many ways, words are a scientist's enemy. They lack the precision of numbers, and their potential ambiguity makes them ill suited to describe or help predict physical phenomena. Opponents of science can also use words to confuse matters when it comes to scientific education."

For more on the range of language use (science aiming for the particular and transparent, humanities to the evocative and allusive) see two earlier conversations, one among CSem profs on "The Two Cultures" and another in the Language Working Group on the same topic.

Just doing my job as the English prof in the bunch!
Enjoy--
Anne

Okay, okay, so I know it's not good forum etiquette to write twice in a row...but I'm just trying to tie up *all* loose threads before I go away for four days...

& want to pass on to you all a website Ro. just passed on to me: it's Storytelling: A Scientist's Perspective: John Seely Brown: Unlearning the Tacit is Hard!!!!. This is a story about Brown's (re-)learning to manuever a motorcycle, an experiment in trying "to bring the tacit to the explicit," @ the end of which he observes that "getting at that, and bringing that up to the surface so that you can do something about it is incredibly complicated....it is almost impossible to get hold of [tacit knowlege], reflect on it and work with it....part of the power of stories...is actually creating a framework that our mind seems to understand. You can at least begin to think about how to challenge some of this type of knowledge that is tacit."

You can learn more about John Seely Brown and a talk he gave on "Learning, Working and Playing in the Digital Age" at http://serendipstudio.org/sci_edu/seelybrown/seelybrown.html

Have a great Thanksgiving! (and I'll try to keep my thoughts to myself while you do).
Anne

After reading Sharon's explanation of her new painting, Pool of Bethesda, I found myself disappointed with my out-of-context interpretation. Our interpretations were all over the gym. Some of them may have randomly hit closer to home for her.

In this week's assignment (observations etc on collected data), I referenced Vygotsky: "to understand another's speech, ... we must understand his thought,...we must understand his motivation," and I proposed that tacit knowledge may be best articulated if we engage "understanding" people to form the right questions.... questions that can prompt us to "get down" on our tacit knowing.

I can't help wondering what questions and insights we would have offered to Sharon if we had done the exercise knowing (i.e., understanding her thought and motivation) beforehand.

Have a great Thanksgiving!
Ro
ps... yes, Anne, I'm quoting the reading I couldn't find useful to the exercise :-)) So, what else is new!

So I lied...I'm NOT keeping my thoughts to myself after all (can't stand to!)

I'm feeling the need to defend the last posting assignment: my rationale was that, if you had known beforehand about Sharon's intentions in painting, you would have felt bound by those, unable to go exploring the rich ways you did, digging for what she did NOT know she knew.....

Anyhow, on to another (related) topic! Margaret had lots of questions about universal grammar, and Molly lots of other questions about the comparative sophistication of different languages, during our class discussion of Pinker's essays on The Language Instinct on Tuesday--questions which I passed them on to Eric Ramey, our resident linguist and organizer of the faculty working group on Language. Eric's reply was very helpful to me, and thought might be of interest to the rest of you, so I pass it on:

"Universal Grammar provides the principles that allow specific grammars to be built. I think its most useful to think of UG as providing a type of alphabet that allows a learner to build a grammar of a language. So of course Chinese and English have different grammars but the principles of how grammars work are the same. All languages have syllables (even sign languages), intonation patterns, syntactic rules, etc. and UG provides the principles to guide a learner in how to figure out the ambient language that they are exposed to.

[Whether some languages are more complex than others]
"is a very difficult question because we don't have a complete analysis of any language. To really answer this question we would not only want to have complete analyses of at least two languages but then also some metric on how to measure 'complexity'. Specific parts of a grammar can look more or less complex. Some languages differ in how many phonemes they have. English has around 50 and !Xhosa has about 140. Does this make !Xhosa more complicated? Who knows? The problem is that simplicity or complexity in one area (like phonology) may interact with other areas (like syntax or morphology) and cause them more simple or complex. To really answer this question we have to measure 'complexity' over the entire grammar. From the sketches of partial grammars that we already have all languages appear to be immensely complex....

The question about how well studied a language is is also very important. Understudied languages I don't think give a representative sample of how complex/simple they are. Very short sketches of grammars rarely cover enough of the grammar to give an impression of exactly how the language really works.

[I also shared w/ Eric Ro.'s observation that it might be more useful /interesting for her to study Black English or American Sign Language than French:]

"Either of these will provide a nice case study to show both the similarities of all languages and also how they vary. Black English is probably more accessible (but has larger social hang ups) because researchers have identified specific ways in which it differs from Standard English. So we can add/delete/modify a particular rule of Standard English and derive Black English. Let me know and I'll give you a few articles about the grammatical features of Black English.

Sign Language would also be interesting to look at but because it feels so exotic it may be difficult to see the similarities. This is primarily due to the switch in modalities (sight and movement vs. hearing/speaking) but there are very surprising cross modal similarities once the switch in modes is normalized for."

He was walking down the slope side of the bridge past this broken building, a straight dark figure and stranger. Come here till i tell you. Where is the sky high and the winds soft and moist and warm, sometimes stained with sun, with peace so wild for wishing where all is told and telling. On a winter night i heard horses on a country road, beating sparks out of the stones. i knew they were running away and would be crossing the feilds where the pounding would come up into my ears. and i said they are running out to death which is with some soul and their eyes are mad and teeth out.
God's mercy
On the wild
Ginger Man.

my love, orah minder

I do not disagree... I need an English word equivalent to the Japanese word, Hai. :-)

Let me try to explain where I am coming from...
The work of this segment was centered on speech and language as they relate to cognitive activities. So the painting presented a new and interesting angle beyond speech. The exercise was to unearth for Sharon what she did not know she knew. As we performed it, a very interesting set of results occurred. What I dug out of the painting left me personally dissatisfied. I did not feel connected with Sharon's tacit knowledge. I felt distanced from it, as if there were a dark screen between us.

From this whole segment, I have come away with the hunch that Vigotsky was maybe onto something enormously applicable... that understanding speech requires knowing the "speaker's" thought and motivation. I am suggesting that it would ALSO be interesting to perform the assignment as "understanding" helpers. Now that we understand her thoughts and motivations, the quality of what we interpret may not be as rich and varied, but may be more useful to Sharon as that which she did not know she knew.

I spoke with a member of the Knowledge Mgmt Group of Phila. who is going to work with me to set up some experiments with a women's group in the area. We discussed the idea of using art-based elements in the experiment. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thank you for the idea!

Question: Is it sun or moon?
Very interesting train of thought. I think we need to learn how to trust tacit knowledge. It can be wrong. It can be revised as we learn a better answer. Or it can be reaffirmed. Either way, from such a revisiting, it becomes more trustworthy. Yes? No?

The most striking thing about this picture, and about many of Burgmayer's pictures, is color. The colors used here are decidedly suppressed, but at the same time they interact very harmoniously and evoke a sense of vibrance (blue and green, no matter how muted always look like life). Without this quality, if the painting were not colored, I find it depressing and uncomfortable to look at. This is because the character on the log appears frozen and suicidal and because the image of the glowing orb is so overwhelming I'm not sure where to look for respite (I see despair, but not hope). The flowers and turtles and out-of-reach tree are not enough to keep my interest - they are in the periphery. They seem irrelevant to the character's suffering. The careful and dimensional color invites me to keep looking though. It is almost soothing.

It is the juxtaposition of a scary image and hopeful, living, beautiful color - sending two different messages. The sum of these messages equals hope beyond hope - the desperate survivor's leap of faith.

as for Sharon's work...I'm a bit in shock that I "got it wrong" (like Oliver Sack's patients?) but I am pleased, because I found a way to connect with the painting. I too, love light and water and their intermingling, and it was was a nice change of [tacit] pace to think about the moon as a beautiful light. As our light has changed from summer to fall to winter, and my habit have changed, I am concious of light and my love for it.
Light as the one constant? or change? perhaps I am still stuck on Butler. comforting, in a sick and twisted way.
anyway, enough incoherence for once. good night!

Well, it's ironic. Considering that we do rely heavily on tacit knowing to function in life, we probably trust that it would not fail us. In the first place, many of us won't even question its presence if we are not "made" to pay attention to it (paper assignment). Then we become perplexed, wondering why it is important to get acquainted with our tacit side. How useful is it?? I have revised my answers to this question countless times since we first start reading the Polanyi article. Sometimes, the famous teach us the most simple lessons in life, reveal to us things we never think to question because it seems so mundane. Tacit knowing is such a thing.

And sometimes, we learn from our fellow class-mates. I'm thinking a lot about what you wrote. Thanks! :-)

I got there because Sacks's suggestion that one can re-incarnate oneself, transform one's subjectification, disavow one's neurobiological identity and revise the structures of tacit knowing withi/in a particular role, flow, or performance intrigues and disturbs (?) me.

There is a movement in modern folkloristics that understands identity as process, as being in flux and emergent in embodied performance. I happen to embrace this theoretical and methodological position.

And yet, I hesitate at the idea that one can "forget" TO BE Tourettic and in that dis-remembering, not BE Tourettic: that one can so profoundly attend away from BEING parkinsonian,so as to not know how to perform parkinson's disease anymore.

Can what we know (explicitly), what we believe, fundamentally alter our being? Or can it only change the stories we tell about ourselves? Are those different things? Anyway, all of that reminded me of poem a friend recently sent to me because the cartoon references reminded her of me.

HST

...and these are only some of the things I believe
By Staceyann Chin

Imagination is the bridge
between the things we know for sure
and the things we need to believe
when our worlds become unbearable

So I know the way my tongue feels
wrapped around a sliver of East Indian mango
I know it reminds me of a time of giant breadfruit trees
skinned six year-old knees
and pungent pimento seeds drying on a sheet of galvanized zinc

I know the sounds I make during sex
know them because my lover makes them for me
when she wants to remind me that I am not always in control

I also know if you are black/ male and Mobile America
the police will pull you over- especially
if you drive an expensive car

I know if you speak differently from the rest of the crowd
chances are your contemporaries have already made fun of you

We all know this world is difficult
because we each have to live here
and in this time of schoolboy bullets
biological warfare and kiddie porn
it takes guts to believe in any God
so I practice on believing in the smaller things
till I am able to make room for the rest

I begin with believing there's a Santa Claus
except I believe Saint Nicholas is a holiday transvestite
and I believe in monsters lurking under the bed
because they give our children something to conquer
before the world begins to conquer them

And I believe in the steady inflation of the tooth fairy
donate more than one nickel to that cause
because a dime under a pillow makes it easier
to endure the loss of a molar
prepares for the greater loss of a teacher
or a mother to the NYPD

And I believe in the identity of the Easter Bunny
believe he's the same person as Bugs Bunny
which means being schizophrenic isn't always bad
means when I'm tired of being a black feminist poet
I could go rally for rights of the new age transsexuals
get them an interview with Rosie O'Donell or Oprah
I believe I could find them a few friends right there on Sesame Street
and contrary to popular belief
I believe Bert and Ernie are straight
believe they're just waiting for the right girls to come along
but I believe Kermit the Frog is a closet Dyke
and that's why he has issues with pushy lesbians like Miss Piggy

And I believe most lovers
will lie to you eventually
and though I believe two wrongs don't ever make a right
--sometimes slashing his tires makes you feel better

and I believe Dharma and Greg are funny
but only if they make you laugh
and I believe Pinky and the Brain are revolutionaries
because-every night-they try to take over the world
like them, I believe there will always be something to fight for
and I believe everyone should believe in something
anything - if it helps you make it through the day
so I believe in Ashanti spirits
in spite of what the pragmatists say
I believe in unbelievable phenomena
like telepathy and karmic shape-shifters
crafting futures from the moon
I believe in that elusive world peace
I believe if I believe - it really could come soon
and I believe in unexpected and capricious friendships
I believe in trusting with the tenacity of a fool

And I believe in believing everyday
-and for as long as we can-
I believe we should believe in something we don't know for sure
acknowledge the range of possibilities
unlimited by what we see
move reality with imagination
we decide what our destinies will be

Can what we know (explicitly), what we believe, fundamentally alter our being? Or can it only change the stories we tell about ourselves? Are those different things?

How are the two separate? At all?? Mind and body are connected. We don't completely control our minds or our bodies. Therefore, the thought of no longer performing Parkinson's disease is impossible. It takes much more than will power or a certain mind-set to rid oneself of such things. Yes, we have power over how we act; however, we do not have power over how nature takes its course.

LIFE IS NOT JUST A STORY. Or (how we tell stories or how stories change). You can tell a story about life, but life is not just a story. A story is completely penetrable; this life leaves us mere mystery and things unknown. Life is not just a story or belief: it is a breath, a handshake, a kiss, a stab wound. Life is not a passive word; it is an action word. If a human lived in a box, of course the world would be a fabrication of his/her mind, but if they were to literally step outside of the box, certain absolutes would astound him/her. He can walk, move across the ground (whether grass, desert or rocks...) he can see the changing seasons, the sun and the moon. Like the rest of humanity, he can see with open eyes, he can explore, he can discover LIFE: the action gallivanting, burning, and charging around us.

Oh and ladies, in reference to tacit knowledge and the painting. Don't ever get down that your perceptions were "wrong". But admire the UNIQUE nature of each of our minds. How, that our different perceptions of the same picture evoke diverging grand and/or grave emotions, ideas, or thoughts. The whole idea of tacit knowing is that there is no right or wrong outside of your own mind. For it is right for you. But as for your colleague or peer it may be the complete opposite. THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG within the painting. It is a personal discovery, one that you decided to share or keep to yourself. But you know you want to share it because it is truly exciting to see how we all see it differently. And it is enlightening to think of new things that you would never have noticed otherwise. I did not know of the "moon", or the turtles or of making the pale figure a woman. And most of all, it is quite an adventure to travel the path of the artist herself!! Thank you Sharon!

i may have just contradicted my own words, you'll have to forgive me, I can't help but think outloud.

George Lakoff (whose Philosophy in the Flesh we read together in mid-November) will be giving a talk this Sunday Dec. 8th at 7:00pm in Carpenter 21

=======================
The Brain, The Mind, and Language
Why They Matter in Personal Life, in Politics, and Throughout the Academic World

Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, and Cognitive Linguistics are presently esoteric disciplines that most people know little about. Yet they are utterly transforming our understanding of virtually every aspect of our lives - especially our personal and political lives. They also have transformative implications for virtually every academic discipline. This lecture will be an overview for a general audience.

Anne, you had mentioned that his Monday activities on campus might also be accessible ... still true? If so, logistics, please.
Thanks,
Ro

A Special Lecture by Judith Houck
University of Wisconsin-Madison
"The Social History of a Biological Process, Menopause,1897-1980"
Sponsored by The Center for Science in Society :

5 December, Thursday
4:00 PM, Park Building, Room 338
3:30 PM, Refreshments, Room 338

Judith Houck is assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison with appointments in the departments of Medical History, Women's Studies, and the History of Science and the Center of Women's Health and Women's Health Research. Her research centers on the history of women's health. She is currently finishing a book on the history of menopause, tentatively titled, More than Hot and Bothered: Women, Medicine, and Menopause in America, 1897-2000. Her next project focuses on the women's health movement
in the United States, 1969-2000.

For information, please contact Tomomi Kinukawa at tkinukaw@brynmawr.edu.

Greetings,
This week's New Yorker (12/9) has an article by Gopnik on fairy tales and the NYR of Books this week (12/19) has one on Flatland and its scientific and religeous implications. Thanks for opening these worlds up to me. Merry Christmas. Meg Devereux

[when I wrote Meg to ask her permission to post this, she replied]

Please post anything. CSem was such an affirming experience for me that I am almost afraid to take a non Csem course. I loved... the rewrites - something not offered back in the'60's. Still a year later conjuring up the delicious discussions etc....Tell your Csems they are lucky to be at BMC. I miss it.

Fast forward to 1991 and Sacks takes Greg to see the Dead at Madison Square Garden. In talking about Greg's blindness he mentions that Greg asks if Sacks can see Jerry's afro, then explains to the reader that Jerry has straight, shoulder-length hair. However, Jerry did not have straight hair. Maybe not quite an afro but it was curly.

Now here is something I did not realize until I was talking to my husband about this last night: Sacks writes that Greg's memory reaches to 1970 and that's about it, but he can remember some things with repetition, i.e., songs, the layout of his ward. When describing the MSG show he claims Greg knows the words to the old songs but not the new ones, and that he sings Aiko Aiko "with gusto." My husband stopped me right there and said, "Well, that can't be if the guy's memory stops at 1970. They didn't do Aiko for the first time until 1977." I guess I should mention that my husband and I are (were?) kind of serious Deadheads; he has been to almost 200 shows and I've been to somewhere around 120. My husband also loves to trade tapes and has about 1800 hours worth of GD shows here at the house.

So how did Greg know the words to the song? Aiko Aiko was first recorded in 1950, I'm not sure by who (Dr. John?) and is filled with nonsense words (or at least another language) that are not easily understandable. Also, there are some lyrics that are particular to the GD version of the song. It's possible that someone on the ward had a tape with the song on it and played it for Greg. The Dead never recorded this on a studio album so it would have to have been a live show tape. So we can assume 1) Greg heard someone else play it way back when and then when Jerry and Co. hit the chords in 1991 he was immediately able to remember the all the words, despite his memory problems or 2) someone on the ward was a Deadhead (why else would they have the live tape—not available in stores, only through trading with others) and they played Aiko Aiko over and over again and Greg learned it that way.

Why am I going on and on about this? It bothers me! Ann asked in class if getting these details right was important to the story. I think so, because for me, it calls Sacks' integrity into question. If he's sloppy with easily verifiable details like Jerry's hair how correct are his other statements? Sacks is using Greg's singing along to Aiko Aiko to support the theory that Greg's damaged brain could recall info prior to 1970-- but there is no way that particular bit of info could have come from that time period. It was mentioned that Greg was able to learn music so why not just say that he learned the song more recently and was able to sing along instead of presenting it as some long lost piece of knowledge? If Sacks didn't realize it was a recent thing, that's sloppy research.

I think I might write Oliver Sacks a note and ask him about this. Maybe he'll respond!

Actually, here's a person who thinks that her life is a story, and one who is often working to revise it to make it better. Every major decision I have to make, every insurmountable obstacle that comes my way, I replay in my mind the possibilities of how the plot would change, in this life story of mine. Perhaps because of the fear of living a life with regrets, of not having my share of contentment when my hair turns white, or committing suicidae at age forty... I am always asking questions about how I could change my life, as a story. Only that it is an ongoing story, a story which I have control over its development. That is revision in a sense; although not going over the old, I am using the old to reconstruct the 'new', to add a different twist, to modify, to experiment, with the material of life. Yes, we can tell a story about life. I agree that life is an action word. But there is a romanticism in seeing life as a story. And this is what I need, for living in the present moment is not enough (Enough of the 'ohms')... I need something deeper, richer, that draws me into the flow, that reminds me to smell the roses on the way, to give me the assurance that I am the storyteller of my life...

"The whole idea of tacit knowing is that there is no right or wrong outside of your own mind. For it is right for you."

*Bringing in our class discussions* What is the point of having tacit knowing when what you know tacitly is no longer applicable? Greg for one, knows how to watch TV, he knows how to "SEE"; he lives in a world of his own, but realizing that he is blind. This could be very dangerous to his safety. I personally feel that the "whole" idea of tacit knowing is that the body has a say in how the mind thinks and perceives things. There can be a "right/wrong", "appropriate/inappropriate". We have to adapt to changes in the world, and sometimes, we have to unlearn the tacit which might no longer be useful to us.

"Imagination is the bridge
between the things we know for sure
and the things we need to believe
when our worlds become unbearable"

I went to bed thinking about this quote. It reminded me of the girl who worked in the silk mill (We watched the video "The Women of Summer"). When asked how she could tolerate the dreariness and montony of factory work, she replied that work wasn't boring because her mind wandered away...

I admire her spirit and strength, which I find lacking in myself. It perturbs me to think that given better social-economic circumstances, I have grown up pampered and weak, unable to accept the brutalish reality that life is HARD and UNFAIR. I want a good job, I want to do the work I love, I want this and I want that... All my dreams would come true, if I worked hard enough... When denied something, I become resentful and feel cheated. The opportunity to bridge the gap between imagination and the present has made me greedy.

It's sad though, that fortunate people usually fail to appreciate all that they have. It reminds me of a quote from the article "Behold They Are Women!", Pg 127: "She (Carey Thomas) dismissed the notion that students' economic backgrounds shaped college social structure because she identified with the affluent student, not the one forced to live in pinched surroundings." The sheltered sapling would grow towards the light, becoming strong and useful when it grows into a tree. The wild weeds survive through the tenacity of their will, forever overshadowed and neglected.

missed you ALL (except stalwart Molly!) today--
hoping you're enjoying your snowy day--
we'll just call this one a wash and do what we can in the time we have left to us--

which is: go on thinking on your own, &
write what you can about "the bmc story" for tuesday--

to nudge you along: my organizing questions today
(after watching the video on "women of summer")
were to have been these:

having read this material & seen the video, tell us what you think about these queries:
what is the use of a liberal education?
does it HAVE a use?
by defintion, should it NOT be purposeful?
(see esp. the open ltrs. in the alum bulletin....)

what educational vision(s) does BMC embody
(or present itself as embodying)?
what vision(s) does it deny/refute?
to what degree has your experience here jived w/ and/or diverged from such vision(s)?

we'll talk further about these matters next week--
til then, enjoy your solitary reflection(s)!

anne

What about the physical, the body within this life? This life is material; it is full of matter, matter that we cannot control, events that we cannot control. It is that sense of uncertainty that causes us to hope and put our faith in the future, our faith in what is to come. I want to say there is a balance between the two: you telling and creating the story, and you letting the story unfold as the world affects you. But I know it's more of a struggle. As you continue in your next message, there are people in this world that suffer under their circumstance, that as much as they revise their story they are motionless and change is not possible. And there are people who, affluent and with not many burdens can easily change and manifest their actual thoughts and dreams. If you have the power to do so, all the best to you! But don't tell me that you control the story. When I say life is an action word, I do not only mean the actions we take in life, even though these actions are vital and do shape our destiny or story in so many ways, but I am also talking about the action that life takes on us, you cannot create contracting a terrible disease, or create winning the million dollar lottery, or create the story of your parents dying. These are things that happen upon us, not on what we make happen.

About the tacit— "applicable/ inapplicable" is quite different from "right/ wrong" or even "appropriate/ inappropriate". I agree that the whole idea behind "tacit" knowing is how the mind thinks and perceives things. However, IS it not the case that each and every one of us perceives everything differently? When I was going to analyze Sharon's painting, I knew that if I read everyone's explanation it would affect my interpretation. So I made sure to write my own thoughts before I went back and read everyone else's. It is beautiful that we notice and identify the same moment, place, piece of art, even person as something unique in our own eyes. That is why thought flourishes and constantly changes. I would never see "tacit knowing" as something definitive or concrete, rather it is an abstraction that can be reflected upon but never captured in a bottle or pinned down into a category. It is free like our unconscious. It is continually a revision. We can never unlearn "tacit" but we can add continually to it. It is ever growing, accumulating and once you identify it, it looses the structure you identified. Therefore, right and wrong continue to change, as do what is applicable and inapplicable and appropriate and inappropriate.

Pardon me if I didn't express my thoughts clearly. I agree with natalie that we cannot create stories, and "things do happen upon us". For me, the "things that happen upon us" are the "material of life", the opportunities that allow us to change our story. How it would "unfold" would depend on our decisions in many circumstances...but of course, there are also many instances when the "endings" didn't turn out the way we meant for it to be. However, being able to consciously ask ourselves, "Where do I go from here?" when we are dealing with "things that happen upon us", we are exercising control over the development of the story, and taking agency.

"But your life cannot only be a story; we live to tell a story."

Why can't my life be a story with different themes? Yes, we live to tell a story, to tell many stories. We can make up stories, or tell a story about ourselves. And we allow room for revision upon retelling. But I see myself as living in an ongoing story, and even if my life was so miserable that I have no control over it at all, at least I have the power to end this story, to choose the ways I wish to end it (an extreme example).

When we are revising our old stories, remembering that there is really no right or wrong, we are working to come up with a version that goes well with ourselves. This is apparent in psychotherapy, where family members may tell different versions of the same story to the therapist. Recovery for her patient only occurs when the therapist empowers the patient to change her 'old story' (by helping her develop stronger resources), that is when growth is possible, and healing takes place. If we only live to tell a story, where is there opportunity for real change, altering the story as it unfolds? Why do we even work to revise old stories, if they aren't going to have any impact on our opinions, our actions, or our life?

You say that it is "that sense of uncertainty that causes us to hope and put our faith in the future, our faith in what is to come." I feel however, that many people do get disillusioned with uncertainty. Uncertainty tends to evoke feelings of helplessness and make one hesitant or afraid to make decisions. Yes, we may have faith and hope in the unknown, but that is because we feel either we could have to power to effect change, or be given the opportunity to regain control over our lives. I doubt if a man who is uneducated and jobless has anything to look forward to except striking the lottery, or finding a decent job. He dares to hope because of the reasons mentioned above.

Well, the purpose behind a story, I would say, depends very much on the storyteller. Why is she telling a story? "What is your purpose, you talk with near cynicism of your high position in life, but think of the wondrous things you can do for the world." My purpose was really to fulfil my duty as a student posting my responses on the QIR forum. I merely shared my own reflections on the web about something that has made me rethink the way I see myself, and the world.

About "unlearning the tacit"... I am working on the assumption that the repertoire of behavior that is being classified as tacit is not completely the same for every individual. I would have to think over what you have said :)

Paul and I have been involved this semester in (among other things) the Faculty Working Group on emergence (see http://serendipstudio.org/local/scisoc/emergence/). Our discussion this past Friday morning centered on the notion of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (that the overall direction of change in the universe is from less probable/more organized states to more probable/less organized states....that there is always a net loss of organization in the process. Spontaneous energy flow is always "downhill", never spontaneously in the opposite direction). Key to our discussion was the notion that the tendency of energy to spread out (=entropy) is the essential context for, and productive of, emergent systems. Biological evolution is the ultimate example of emergence--and that process is predicated on the inevitability of risk, loss and death. This final note made me think again, of course, of deep play, w/ an increasing awareness that ALL of life (whether we choose consciously to play it this way or not) is the deepest kind of play.

How's THAT for an early Saturday morning thought?

Anne

You go, girl!...You may have to do a course on deep play just to locate a category for it ;-)

If emergence is the basis for evolution and if that is the basis for life, and if the progression of life requires risk, loss, death, then each evolutionary (generational?) layer plays deeply in order to morph to the next. Or is it that each plays deeply in order to morph WELL to the next state... I mean, does the inevitability of emergence carry the possibility that the next instantiation could just be a regressive mess? If so, is it that there's no choice but to take one's "best shot", given what's at stake? Not sure if this is encompassed in your thought, but I'm on a roll of my own now ;-) Too late.

What I'm thinking--at the micro-level of individual you or me-- is that we each DO choose to die dying or die growing... any neutral, passive state of living/existing is a myth. If we choose to die growing, we each must exert continuous effort, or we will slide into the other state. So, there really is a choice, and that sets the stage for a deep play (maybe): choose to die growing (play for quality, fullness, meaning, self-respect, other's respect...), in spite of the irrational probability of risk/loss/ultimate death.

So, life (progression towards death) is not only full of imperatives to manage risk. Risk management is the game... in order to sustain the longest, fullest run.

Gosh.

---

and the tacit thing is starting to afflict me again.

i might be siding with Haley on this:
"And yet, I hesitate at the idea that one can "forget" TO BE Tourettic and in that dis-remembering, not BE Tourettic: that one can so profoundly attend away from BEING parkinsonian,so as to not know how to perform parkinson's disease anymore."

(i feel however, that i learned more in the thoughts it has inspired than in the thing itself, of which i am incredibly grateful. in fact, i have suffered so much positive transformation in the brief time of the course i couldn't even begin to articulate it.)

however if one can attend away from parkinson's, can one attend away from schizophrenia? can i attend TO schizophrenia if i am largely not? why would it work in only one direction? what if all of this work and writing on tacit knowing as just a way for the patriarchy to continue to own and name all of the mysteries of the world thier names in order to keep the social monopoly in place? like i am more concerned with their desire to name and tag this thing and try to come to some kind of general comclusion about "what we do"-- who is the we? i end up being fascinated even about the idealogy of such a claim, not just the idea itself.

and margaret had a REALLY good point. okay, so we are trying to get it "less wrong"-- so is there anyone who ought to get it "more right?" say... my brain surgeon-- would i be happier if he was okay with my diagnosis being "less wrong?" or would i be willing to jive with this idea if he was an autobiographer instead? who gets extra slack on the thin wire of my belief- a doctor or a storyteller? my point being that while getting it "less wrong" would not negate a story, i think it causes me alarm when we could live with getting it "less wrong" if that meant incorrect facts and not a "less wrong" conjecture or hypothesis. in the past we have talked about elements in the reader that seem false or invalid and if that negates the entire thing or does it have to? so i thought about who gets to be "less wrong", about whom we could LIVE with being "less wrong."

i'd be interested to know what kinds of "less wrongs" & "more rights" other people would trust.
---


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