I'd like to bring this quote into the discusion:
"We need to continually think against the grain of today's formulaic thinking by keeping in mind that the western theorists who identified the analogs that now frame the meaning of such words as progress, individualism, freedom, emancipation, and so forth were not aware of ecological limits. Their analogs reflected the advanced thinking of their era." Bowers, page 52

idea(s):

• disseminating information about antiblackness in the ever-changing united states, and the transformative power of this information

the #blacklivesmatter movement, as shulman states in his keynote, “update[s] a radical democratic imagination that characterized the great theorists of black power, the american new left, and many second wave feminists.” the idea of “update” is something interesting here to me, given the inherent quality of the #blm as part internet activism – an internet in which “updates” have a certain meaning and connotation about new online information and its availability to the public.

Again, this essay is uploaded in the original color as well as copy and pasted here:

Joie Waxler

Experimental Essay

11/23/15

Basically just lots of jumbled thoughts about BMC, #BlackLivesMatter, the world, and other general musings through the lens of a synesthetic white lesbian

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wonder at the world,

in horrified awe

At its dazzling capacity

to absorb yet another blow.

I wonder at the world,

But mostly, I wonder at myself.

"you are what you eat".

when i was little and first heard this phrase, i laughed, picturing myself as a giant orange or a glass of milk or a slice of pizza. how silly! people don't become whatever they eat.
 as i got older and realized how the saying was commonly used ("if you eat healthy, you'll be healthy"), it made more sense to me. I accepted it, as one does with most idiosyncrasies of language and idiom, and didn't think twice.

 I thought it contradictory that after having read the Friere text, we were assigned quite a few readings for next class…

 “Change is an inherently progressive force, that this is a human-centered universe, that mechanism provides the best explanatory framework for understanding organic processes”

I would really like to talk about the relationship between Freire's idea of contextual literacy and Bowers' proposal that "ecological intelligence takes account of relationships, contexts, as well as the impacts of ideas and behaviors on other members in the cultural and natural systems" (45). This connection is really striking to me... To bring in a third text, Teju Cole's notion of "thinking constellationally..." I don't want to give all of my thoughts away just yet, but I am really interested to see what everyone has to say about the progression of this idea through each text we've read. Bowers also mentions "When we pay attention to contexts, interactions, and the consequences that follow from these actions, we are also exercising ecological intelligence" (46).

Honestly, I found these articles extremely complex and was unable to decode the wording. I would very much appreciate if we could go through them and break them down to better comprehend the readings. 

I believe there are some interesting contradictions in Bowers's article. He bemoans the "loss of intergenerational knowledge," but he also talks about the problem of the "colonization of the present by the past." These are not quite contradictory, as the first implies interaction between generations in the development of knowledge, while the latter implies domination of present generations by those before, but I believe Bowers does not make a strong enough distinction between them.

"About the world within us"

“What's generally seen is that, during disease, the diversity, that rich ecosystem in the gut or on the skin, seems to crash. Just as with a reef or a rain forest, the richer the ecosystem the better.”

I thought this is the interesting idea to talk about because the importance of diversity is what we have discussed through “All Over Creation” and “The Sixth Extinction” and any other readings.

“That starts to raise some questions about, well, maybe using too many antibiotics early in life may be a bad thing. Maybe there could be an effect from the degree to which we live in a sanitary environment.”

*"The first would be to come more aware of how the taken-for-granted cultural assumptions influence whether intelligence is interpreted as the attribute of an autonomous individual."(47) A second suggestion woudl be for participants in a learning situation to reinforce each other in giving greater attention to the cultural and environmental patterns that connect, to the consequences that follow from different behaviors, and how these consequences affect others -in both the cultural and natural systems." (47) 

Then after knowing about Ecological Intellgence, how well can we implement or have we been implementing ecological intelligence in our daily life? (Reflection and Implementation)