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Nor Do We Live Alone
University of Wisconsin, Parkside (UWP)
California State University, Dominguez Hills(CSUDH)
Created: July 12, 2011
Latest update: July 12, 2011
E-Mail to Jeanne in L.A.
E-Mail to Susan at UWP.
But how did I help?
You played with me
until we figured it out.
Thank you.Remember the old song?
"Look down my rain barrel,
"Slide down my cellar door,
"And we'll be jolly friends forever more."It takes a village. It takes listening to the other, and wondering as you speak, what the other might say. It takes the Other.
It's all about relatonships. We are social creatures. That means that we become lonely and need interaction with others of our kind. Without that, we miss out on a lot. Some of us need this more than others. Some of us choose lonely occupations, writing, art, creative innovation. But if there's no one to play with, it's like getting up on the stage to perform, and no one's really listening. Without the other to listen, in good faith, we can't perfect our ideas, test them in the world as it's made up of others like us. That was the problem with the True Believer, who was an autodidact, who taught himself, chose his reading on his own, questioned and found answers on his own.
But something was missing. That something was the easy camraderie of being able to ask foolish questions, to pose a million, "yes, but what if ..."s, and to know that it was OK to ask all those questions, OK to be wrong, OK not to know the answers. And to keep trying, until we got it right. Increasingly, there is so much to know that we can no longer master the universe of knowledge. Now, we're learning that we need those who have gone before to point the way, to question what we were so sure we had right, to remind us that learning never ceases. the play, the camraderie, the freedom to risk stretch the corners of our minds. And they satisfy thereby our very real need to learn.
My understanding of the need to listen came from Sartre, from Bakhtin, from Maria Pia Lara. So not I want to tell you what I learned from them, so that you might stretch the corners of your minds, and grow and learn your whole life long.
Discussion Questions and jeanne's Plausible Answers
What's Your Answer?
- What if there is no one there? What is the sound of one hand clapping?
jeanne's thoughts: This question follows my suggestion that this work comes from Susan being willing to play with me. For many a year, most of which we couldn't really be together. So we were like the children in the song. But the relationship grew and grew and one day we knew, what all this had been about. As Serge Kahili King says in the last sentence of his article,
"The thing to remember, in this context, is that you are trying to change how you think or feel about the country, not trying to change the country. It's a subtle but important difference, and it applies to people as well as countries. . . ."If this idea catches on we can introduce a Huna koan (the actual Hawaiian phrase is "nane huna," a hidden riddle or conundrum): 'What is the sound of one person loving?' "
- What if you couldn't come to play? We are lucky in the day of the Internet.
- What has the fast track done to our time to listen in good faith to one another? Ah, yes. That is the question.
References
- One Hand Clapping by Serge Kahili King.
- Koan
"consists of a story, dialogue, question, or statement, the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking but may be accessible through intuition. One widely known ko-an is "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?" (oral tradition attributed to Hakuin Ekaku, 1686–1769, considered a reviver of the ko-an tradition in Japan)."- Austin's categories of language
"Austin described three characteristics, or acts, of statements that begin with the building blocks of words and end with the effects those words have on an audience. Locutionary acts: “roughly equivalent to uttering a certain sentence with a certain ‘meaning´ in the traditional sense.” Illocutionary acts: “such as informing, ordering, warning, undertaking, &c., i.e. utterances which have a certain (conventional) force.” Perlocutionary acts: “what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing, persuading, deterring, and even, say, surprising or misleading” (109). Austin focused on illocutionary acts, maintaining that here we might find the “force” of a statement and demonstrate its performative nature. For example, to say “Don´t run with scissors” has the force of a warning when spoken in a certain context. This utterance may be stated in an explicitly performative way, e.g., “I warn you, don´t run with scissors.” This statement is neither true nor false. Instead, it creates a warning. By hearing the statement, and understanding it as a warning, the auditor is warned, which is not to say that the auditor must or will act in any particular way regarding the warning."
From Chapter 2 of my dissertation: "Understand and Act: Classical Rhetoric, Speech Acts, and the Teaching of Critical Democratic Participation." This is a truncated overview of speech-act theory. . . .
* * * * *
- Newspapers: Labeling here is based on an article by Ashley K. Vroman on the impossiibility of labeling newspapers by ideology. I personally go along with the conclusion of the conservative Media Research Center's L. Brent Bozell III: if the paper never met a conservative cause it didn't like, it's conservative, and if it never met a liberal cause it didn't like, it's liberal.
But then, what about the Wall Street Journal whose news staff is considered liberal and its editorial staff considered conservative? Does that make them a tad schizophrenic? Not unless we all are. None of us humans are completely inflexible. Sometimes we think like liberals, and sometimes we think like conservatives, and sometimes we just plain forget to think before we speak.
Luckily, journalism has worked hard at maintaining a thoughtful and rational standard that we be honest and fair in what we report. Today we need to think on this a little more, because some popular media are more concerned with reporting "opposing" than "fair" perspectives, and are terribly careless with the meaning of "facts." jeanne 06.25.2011
- Liberal Newspapers:
New York Times - Los Angeles Times - The Washington Post
The Boston Globe - The Chicago Tribune- Conservative Newspapers:
The Wall Street Journal - The Washington Times - The New York Post
Manchester (N.H.) UnionLeader - The Oklahoman- Los Angeles County Library. Online service.
- World Cat Online search for finding books available in your local librairies. This may have become far more essential as funding for librairies is being cut. Check it out.
- PolitiFact.com
PolitiFact.com will give you extensive information on what's truth and what's rumor and what's not in news reporting and viral vidoes and e-mails. This is offered as a Public Service by the St. Petersburg Times, for which we thank them profusely. These are times for checking your facts.
* * * * *
- Newspapers: Labeling here is based on an article by Ashley K. Vroman on the impossiibility of labeling newspapers by ideology. I personally go along with the conclusion of the conservative Media Research Center's L. Brent Bozell III: if the paper never met a conservative cause it didn't like, it's conservative, and if it never met a liberal cause it didn't like, it's liberal.
But then, what about the Wall Street Journal whose news staff is considered liberal and its editorial staff considered conservative? Does that make them a tad schizophrenic? Not unless we all are. None of us humans are completely inflexible. Sometimes we think like liberals, and sometimes we think like conservatives, and sometimes we just plain forget to think before we speak.
Luckily, journalism has worked hard at maintaining a thoughtful and rational standard that we be honest and fair in what we report. Today we need to think on this a little more, because some popular media are more concerned with reporting "opposing" than "fair" perspectives, and are terribly careless with the meaning of "facts." jeanne 06.25.2011
- Liberal Newspapers:
New York Times - Los Angeles Times - The Washington Post
The Boston Globe - The Chicago Tribune- Conservative Newspapers:
The Wall Street Journal - The Washington Times - The New York Post
Manchester (N.H.) UnionLeader - The Oklahoman- Los Angeles County Library. Online service.
- World Cat Online search for finding books available in your local librairies. This may have become far more essential as funding for librairies is being cut. Check it out.
- PolitiFact.com
PolitiFact.com will give you extensive information on what's truth and what's rumor and what's not in news reporting and viral vidoes and e-mails. This is offered as a Public Service by the St. Petersburg Times, for which we thank them profusely. These are times for checking your facts.
* * * * *
Farlex Free Online Dictionary:
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