kevin champion

Using hook_views to programmatically filter a view in Views 3, Drupal 7

2011-12-13T20:26:00.000-06:00

There is a real dearth of documentation, examples, and tutorials out there surrounding how to use hook_views to do anything useful in general. There is even less out there specific to Views 3 and Drupal 7. I recently found myself in a situation where I needed to programmatically filter a view using hook_views. I needed to filter one content type by a taxonomy term, given only the nid of a node of a different content type which contained in it a field with values related to the taxonomy I needed to filter on. I tried a number of approaches within the Views UI in an attempt to accomplish this, but was thwarted by what I think are a couple of bugs in Views 3 (subject of another post altogether).

When you look at the hook_views documentation, it's quite a challenge to figure out which hook you need. In my case, I wanted to hook into the view as early in the process as possible because I was attempting to add a filter, which I thought would need to modify the database query (in the end, I'm not sure it actually modifies the query, but rather just the display properties). As a result of my assumptions, I figured hook_views_pre_view to be the best choice.

I started tinkering by selecting the view and display I was wanting to modify, and then inspecting the view object for that view/display combination.

function lsadataclassify_views_pre_view(&$view, &$display_id, &$args){
if ($view->name === 'protection_measures' && $view->current_display === 'page'){
}
}

Gist Raw

Given the massive view object, I didn't know what to do. I tried looking through to find the likely location of the filters, but wasn't sure how to construct a new one. I found multiple locations that seemed to list filters and didn't know which one to edit. The breakthrough happened when I discovered an answer to a stackoverflow question. Translating that answer to my view, it turned out the path in the object to the properties I needed to modify was:

$view->display['page']->handler->options['filters']

Gist Raw

I was still confused about how to construct a filter from scratch, but at that point it dawned on me to modify the view in the UI to add the filter I wanted. Doing this allowed me to see it show up in the view object, at which point I could just modify its properties, rather than have to go through and create the filter from scratch. This worked because I essentially just needed a way of dynamically changing the term tids to filter by based on some custom logic related to the nid argument that was passed in via the url. As a result, I performed my custom logic and created an array of tids to replace the view's taxonomy field array of tids. The result looks like this:

function lsadataclassify_views_pre_view(&$view, &$display_id, &$args){
if ($view->name === 'protection_measures' && $view->current_display === 'page' && isset($args[0])){
$node = node_load($args[0]);
$sensitivity = $node->field_research_sensitivity[$node->language][0]['value'];
$tids = array();
switch ($sensitivity) {
case 'high':
$tids = array(5, 6, 7);
break;
case 'moderate':
$tids = array(6, 7);
break;
case 'low':
$tids = array(7);
break;
}
$view->display['page']->handler->options['filters']['field_pm_sensitivity_termref_tid']['value'] = $tids;
}
}

Gist Raw

Unfortunately, this wasn't the end to my problems. This successfully filtered the view as I needed it, but because this view is a part of a more complex display pattern which involves attaching a node edit form to each view row and allowing all of them to be submitted upon clicking one submit button (subject for yet another post!), this new dynamic filter broke my display. The cause turned out to have to do with the way in which hook_views_pre_view interacts with the view in conjunction with how the function views_get_view_result works.

In order to pull off the complex display, I was calling views_get_views_result to retrieve the result of this view so that I could get access to the node objects of the view (and not just the rendered html output of the rows). As it turns out though, views_get_view_result was not recognizing my hook_views. Instead of getting the view filtered by my dynamic hook_views filter, I was getting the view result with all the possible rows unfiltered. I think views_get_view_result only operates on the view itself irrespective of the display properties. I was clued into this idea by some obscure comment in a Drupal forum which suggested that in order to access the view with its display properties applied, you needed to use views_get_view instead. All my attempts to implement the suggestion there failed for me.

After searching around quite a bit, finding some useful information about views_get_view_result here, but ultimately exhausting all the sources I could think of, I set to examining and testing each of the views api functions that might prove useful for this. After trying out views_get_current_view, I stumbled upon views_get_page_view. While views_get_current_view returned the full view without my hook_views filter applied, views_get_page_view did not! The end result using views_get_page_view is slightly simpler than using views_get_view_result because I don't have to pass in the view name, display, and arguments. It looks something like this, retrieving the view and looking through the result to store the node objects in an array for use later:

$view = views_get_page_view();
//drupal_set_message(dprint_r($view2, TRUE));
$pm_nodes = array();
// loop through each row of the view which contains a node
foreach ($view->result as $key => $entity){
// node of protection measure
$pm_nodes[$key] = $entity->_field_data['nid']['entity'];
}

Gist Raw

I run barefoot

2011-08-19T01:26:00.004-05:00

I run barefoot.

I have been running barefoot for one year and one month. In that time I've amassed 265 miles of barefoot running. Running barefoot has made running enjoyable to me for the first time in my life. For that reason, running barefoot has introduced me to the whole world of running, and gotten me back into doing daily physical exercise for the first time in quite a while.

One of the clearest results of this, even though it took me a very long time to be aware of it, is realizing that my emotions are embedded in my body. What I mean is that my body seems to be the vessel for my emotional self, and I've found that exercising my body opens my emotional self up to conscious awareness to a degree I don't ordinarily experience in everyday waking life. In part I began to run again last year as catharsis, and I think many people run and do other forms of exercise for that very reason and are very conscious about it. When I pause to reflect upon it, it seems rather obvious, but my experience of the effect running has on being more aware of my emotions is anything but obvious. In contrast, it's quite illuminating.

Over this summer it has been quite interesting as I became more and more conscious of this daily transformation that would take place by simply going for a run. I would go through my day trying to accomplish as many tasks as I could. Most of my thinking throughout the day would be about tasks, things, doing. In the evening I go for a run, and when I return my thought patterns shift and I cannot focus well on tasks and doing. Instead, I think about people and long for connection. My focus transforms to being instead of doing.

The more I have witnessed this transition, the more acutely aware of it I have become. I now notice shifts happen during my runs, distinct moments where I become cognizant that something just changed. As I've increased my distances over the summer, I even began to notice that this shift tends to occur quite strongly at around the 7 mile mark in any given run. What's most interesting to me, however, is the phenomenology of how I experience the changes.

When a shift occurs, or even just after my run is over, I notice this very strong feeling of relaxation. There is an obvious bodily relaxation that occurs with exhaustion and recovery from the physical effort, but what's more interesting is a sort of mental relaxation. It feels almost like a bunch of barriers or walls just dissolve before my conscious witness, like I let go of a bunch of things I was holding onto. This effect can be quite strong at times, and as a consequence the shift can take on almost nihilistic overtures. Sometimes it feels like nothing that I was thinking in the previous 10 minutes, last hour, or entire day matter one bit. Sometimes it immediately transports me to a place that wonders, in almost an existential sense, what matters in this life anyway. But more often, it's more subtle than that, and just causes me to think about friends old and new, longing to be with someone, longing for connection. In more extreme instances, which usually come when I run longer distances, this feeling is tangibly immediate and I want to connect directly with fellow runners and walkers on whatever trail I'm on.

In my ordinary daily life I can get so absorbed in todo lists and accomplishing things that I'm unable to relate to my own emotions, let alone anyone else's. As a result, this feeling of relaxation and heightened emotional connection is something I welcome and want more of. I am starting to view running as a technique for breaking me free of my singular focus and disconnection, a reliable tool amongst very few others in my toolbox. During and after I run I feel more connected, compassionate, and forgiving. I'm less hard on myself and more understanding with others. Perhaps most important, I desire to be with friends and family, something that for me is an elusive feeling in my ordinary solitary lifestyle and circumstance.

Using a more archetypical abstraction, I feel more in touch with the feminine archetype of humanity that is more in tune with the body, more focused on being instead of doing, and more aware of emotional states. Becoming conscious of this is a meditation for me, one that has made me more aware of just how bifurcated my ordinary day-to-day life is, biased towards the masculine archetype of doing instead of being, and rule-based rational thought patterns rather than intuition-based awarenesses. In sum, I feel more whole, and this is a good thing.

I want to become more and more aware of the impact of running on my inner balance and be able to know that it is a tool I can use to evoke a more whole representation of my self. I also want to take heed not to transform this tool into a dependency ie. something I feel I need otherwise I'm not ok. I simply want to be able to use it when appropriate, and be aware when things are not going well, that it might be able to help. I know from experience that it is not simple for me to be aware of such techniques and employ them when they're most needed. Indeed, a large part of my realization about the effect of running on my awareness of my emotional self is a lament that I did not wake to this reality sooner, and save unnecessary suffering in the process.

Crisis of significance - final video

2009-05-07T02:27:00.007-05:00

After a marathon of video editing, I'm still amazed at the amount of work and tedium involved in creating a video. Nevertheless, here's my final draft of my video on the Crisis of Significance. For background on where this came from, check out the paper on which it was based.

Crisis of Significance by Kevin Champion is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Crisis of significance - first video draft

2009-04-27T01:20:00.003-05:00

I finally got a reasonable draft up of my video (at least one I'm not so ashamed of I won't dare make it public!). It's really amazing how much work making a video is and how it challenges you to think in a much different way than, say, writing a paper. At least, hopefully, the final product is much more entertaining than a paper!

Crisis of significance video "script"

2009-04-13T00:28:00.006-05:00

As a result of running out of time, here is my outline/"script" of my video on the crisis of significance created by the modern world. It represents about one third of my overall video, the other parts of which I will post the script of asap.

1-Modernity brought anonymity into the lives of ordinary people.
-random footage of things modern: steam engine, factories, railroads, cities
1-Industrial labor caused individuals to work in system where they are anonymous functionaries.
-assembly line footage
1-The system needs the individuals to be anonymous so that they are replaceable > system is redundant.
-assembly line footage: visually bring out idea of replaceability
1-The industrial system also caused people to live in larger communities closer together.
-footage of early industrial cityscape, people moving amongst it
1-In this environment, everyone does not know your name.
-footage of random functionary type interaction, cheers theme song, maybe pic of cheers
2-To cope with anonymous roles/circumstances, individual experiences less real vs. more real selves.
-footage???
2-On the assembly line individual feels less real than at home with her family.
-flash btwn assembly line individual and Mrs. Cleaver/other individual at home
2-Individuals begin engineering their sense of self, a metaphor of industrial engineering
-footage of industrial engineering, putting together of pieces, engineering drawings
-contrast footage of person being put together (operation) as symbol of engineering the self?
2-Engineering the self creates uncertainty, no longer certain of who she is (it is an intuitive dilemma for a human to experience feeling not/less herself (not existential uncertainty, just practical uncertainty))("how am I not myself" I Heart Huckabees)
-I heart huckabees scene (not copyright kosher?)
2-Individual becomes uncertain of others just as of self > anonymous social relations
-footage of individuals relating with blacked out heads
3-The source of the engineering of the self is being in anonymous roles/circumstances
-footage (need symbol for "engineering the self") person in crowd?
3-More anonymous roles/circumstances => more engineering => more uncertainty
-footage person in bigger crowd (more of symbol for "engineering the self")
3-We form meaning/significance thru our relationships with others
-people hugging, kissing, crying, shaking hands, family, lovers
3-The more uncertainty of ourselves/others the more difficult it is to form meaning/significance
-footage of ppl around each other not hugging, kissing, crying, shaking hands
3-Crisis of significance in the modern world
-still pic of something that represents the modern (can be contemporary) world: cityscape?

Video outline

2009-04-07T11:18:00.001-05:00

The following is my first outline for my final project video in Digital Ethnography.

Modernity brought with it a "crisis of significance"

anonymous social relations introduced to everyday life

system requires these relations

engineering of the self

individual experiences less real selves

individual feels homeless

struggles to find meaning when anonymous

this grand shift cannot/does not fully explain contemporary predicament

Today, in the postmodern "information age", we experience "crises of significance"

last 50 yrs we've moved from modern techno-economic society to postmodern

movements from 60s, 70s
manifestation in academia
emphasis on information/connectedness

now feel both modern and postmodern "crises of significance"

postmodern struggles to find significance anywhere

plagued by relativism, deconstructionism
meaning found in surfaces/surface level evaluations

attempt to fight off anonymity to increase surface meaning

everything's amazing, no one's happy

more connected than ever, yet pervasive loneliness ensues

The future will yield a reintegration of significance

we, the world, will only survive for so long experiencing all selves as less real
ultra-connectedness offers opportunity to see all selves as real

Saag Paneer Recipe

2009-04-05T14:45:00.010-05:00

Some people have requested the recipe to the Saag Paneer dish that Lindsay and I frequently make. As with the Punjabi Samosas, it comes from my favorite Indian Cookbook.

Before starting this dish, you will need two ingredients that you may have to prepare. First, you will need paneer. Paneer is a simple cheese made by boiling whole milk and adding something acidic (vinegar, lemon juice) to separate the curds and whey. The whey is then drained out and pressed for several hours to form the cheese. It is then refrigerated and fried. You can purchase frozen paneer from an Indian grocery and sometimes from international or oriental groceries. Here in Manhattan, you can usually get it at the Shamrock Indian gas station/grocer. I've also been able to find it occasionally at the International Food Store.

However, Lindsay and I have always found that frozen paneer does not compare to the real/fresh thing. So, if you have the courage and time, we recommend trying to make your own paneer! (We've also noticed that you get more yield and a better cheese from using milk from Jersey cows instead of Holstein, probably because they produce a higher butter-fat content milk --- in Manhattan, Emrich's Creamery milk, which you can purchase at Peoples Grocery, is from Jersey cows. Most all milk you find in grocery stores is from Holstein cows.)

Paneer - 4 cups 1/2-inch cubes of cheese

1 gallon (16 cups) whole milk
1/4 cup white vinegar
Vegetable oil for deep-frying

Heat milk to boiling in 6-quart Dutch oven or stockpot over medium-high heat, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.
Stir in vinegar; remove from heat. The milk will immediately separate into curds (solids) and whey (liquid). *** watch very carefully because as soon as the milk begins to boil it will rapidly expand and overflow your pot if you do not remove it from heat right away
Line large colander with cheesecloth or muslin; place in sink. Pour curds and whey mixture into lined colander. Lift edges of cloth; swirl in sink once or twice to remove excess liquid. Completely wrap curds in cloth; return to colander. Place a large jar, Dutch oven or stockpot filled with water or similar weight directly on curds. (I usually put 4 5lb. weights inside a stockpot) Leave undisturbed in sink 5 to 6 hours to drain.
Remove weight and remove cheese to cutting board; discard cheesecloth. Cut cheese into 1/2-inch cubes. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours or up to 12 hours.
Heat oil (2 to 3 inches deep) in wok or Dutch oven over medium high heat until thermometer inserted into oil reads 300 degrees. (we sometimes pan fry the cheese and sometimes deep fry it)
Add about half the cheese cubes to hot oil. Fry 4 to 5 minutes, turning occasionally, until light golden brown. Remove with slotted spoon; drain on paper towels. Repeat with remaining cheese cubes.
Tightly cover and refrigerate cheese up to 3 days or freeze up to 2 months.

The second ingredient that you may need to prepare ahead of time is the spice mixture garam masala. You can purchase garam masala from a variety of grocery stores. Each garam masala is slightly different. Just like the paneer, however, Lindsay and I have found that making your own fresh garam masala yields the best flavor.

Garam Masala - 1/4 cup spice blend

1 tablespoon cumin seed
1 teaspoon cardamom seeds (removed from pods)
1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 dried bay leaves
2 three-inch sticks cinnamon, broken

Heat 6-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Place all spices in skillet, and roast 2 to 3 minutes, stirring constantly, until seeds crackle, spices turn one shade darker and the mixture has a nutty, sweet aroma. Transfer to a bowl, and cool 3 to 5 minutes.
Place roasted spice blend in spice grinder. Grind until mixture looks like the texture of finely ground pepper. Store in an air tight jar at room temperature for up to 1 month; beyond that it will start to lose its full flavor.

And now the Saag Paneer...

Saag Paneer - 6 servings

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
5 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons finely chopped gingerroot
1 cup tomato sauce
1 tablespoon coriander seed, ground
1 teaspoon cumin seed, ground
1 teaspoon grond red pepper (cayenne)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
2 packages (10 oz. each) frozen chopped spinach, thawed (do not drain)
2 cups 1/2-inch cubes fried Homemade Cheese (Paneer)
1/2 cup whipping (heavy) cream
1 teaspoon Garam Masala

Heat oil in 3-quart saucepan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and gingerroot; stir-fry 1 to 2 minutes or until garlic is golden brown.
Stir in tomato sauce, ground coriander, ground cumin, ground red pepper, and salt; reduce heat to low. Partially cover and simmer 7 to 8 minutes or until thin film of oil starts to form on surface of sauce.
Stir in undrained spinach. Cover and simmer 8 to 10 minutes or until spinach turns a light olive green.
Stir in Homemade Cheese. Cover and simmer 3 to 4 minutes or until cheese is hot; remove from heat.
Stir in whipping cream and Garam Masala.

And that's all there is to it. If you've got the paneer and the garam masala, this is a pretty easy and quick dish to make. It's best served over fresh basmati rice (with naan if you've got it!).

Enjoy!

A crisis of significance

2009-03-29T22:09:00.008-05:00

Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner outlined the concept of the homeless mind in their 1973 book, The Homeless Mind. In it, they detail how, due to the technologized and bureaucratized mode of production in the modern world, our very identities have bifurcated as we carry out the roles of technological production. As Berger et al. note, "the individual now becomes capable of experiencing himself in a double way: as a unique individual rich in concrete qualities and as an anonymous functionary." (Berger et al. 1973 p.34) In dealing with a whole host of anonymous roles we are confronted with by bureaucracy, we start to experience different parts of our identity as more or less real than other parts. And to the extent that we experience parts of our identity that are less real, we tend to suffer meaninglessness and anomie (i.e. it becomes very difficult to find meaning while flipping burgers in a fast food chain). Our minds are homeless so long as we suffer the anomie created in large part by the modern modes of technological production.

Anomie and the concept of the homeless mind (Berger et al. 1973) are useful constructs to help explain what has been termed a "crisis of significance" (Wesch 2009) in the contemporary world. Both of these concepts originated in sociological discourse and help to explain how technological and bureaucratic structures brought about by the rise of modernity have affected the individual. Growing up in the contemporary, postmodern, world the individual has become more self-centered and self-conscious than ever before (Twenge 2007). Anomie and the homeless mind offer a framework to bridge the gap between the modern and postmodern worlds by demonstrating how the contemporary individual is both self-centered and suffering from a crisis of significance.

Originating in academic discourse with Max Weber (Orru 1989), but not made popular until its use by Emile Durkheim and later Robert K. Merton (Deflem 1989), anomie has been predominantly used in sociology to mean rulelessness or normlessness. In this context, a situation of anomie occurs when there is a combination of ineffectiveness of society's regulative power and a lack of rules to regulate an individual's behavior. While Merton used anomie to develop a theory of deviant behavior in individuals, others extended anomie to the psychological and psychiatric domains. (Deflem 1989)

In psychology, anomie describes a situation in which an individual "withdraws from society and loses interest in what is happening around him." (Marx 1966) This withdrawal is caused by the individual perceiving the social order as "lacking meaningfulness or usefulness" or by "his perception of constant conflict in the basic goals of life." (Davol and Reimanis 1959) Merton founds the causes of this conflict in the social structure, hearkening back to Durkheim's analysis that anomie occurs when social (organic) solidarity has not been realized (Deflem 1989).

By looking at the macro level technological and bureaucratic structures of modernity, anomie can be described as a sense of homelessness in which the individual's identity bifurcates when faced with performing in anonymous technological or bureaucratic roles. The very nature of technological production necessitates the proliferation of anonymous functionaries and this anonymization becomes internalized in the individual, causing him to begin to engineer, just like technological production, his own identity. This bifurcation of identity can cause the individual to experience meaninglessness about his social roles i.e. anomie. (Berger et al. 1973)

While this critique of the modern (i.e. industrial revolution to 1950?) modes of production is brilliant, it is only partial. This critique resuscitates many of the great modern philosophers (Marx, Weber, later Durkheim) to express relationships between modes of production and the individual psyche. Nonetheless, while it provides insight into the "crisis of significance," it does not and cannot fully explain it. One of the reasons it cannot is because it is largely a critique of the modern structure and we have moved over the last 50 years increasingly into a postmodern, "information age", structure. So, along with this critique of the modern structure, we need a critique of the postmodern.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the western world saw the emergence of a new level of consciousness in a significant portion of the population. In academia, this shift is reflected in the emergence of the postmodern schools of thought in a variety of disciplines. I feel Berger et al. were a part of this emergence and due to that, were able to see clearly the dynamic of the modern structure. For this reason, their critique elucidates so many important truths, none more prominent than that of the homeless mind.

However, when taken in context of developmental studies (see spiral dynamics), a more complex view of the homeless mind emerges. In this context, an individual will feel homeless when he is at a developmental level either below or above that of her surrounding culture (see levels of development). The individual below that of her surrounding culture might not feel at home because she is being pulled up to a higher developmental potential by her surrounding culture. Equally, the individual above that of her culture might not feel at home because she is being pulled down to a lower/previous stage of development by her surrounding culture. Someone at a postmodern level of development (green meme) might feel homeless in a modern culture, which I believe is what inspired Berger et al. to write The Homeless Mind.

Berger et al. were not explaining their own developmental dynamic; instead they were explaining how a premodern individual (someone with a center of gravity in a premodern stage of development) would feel homeless in the face of a surrounding modern techno-bureaucratic structure and culture. Their own developmental dynamic gave them great insight into the premodern/modern dialectic because they were both beyond modern (postmodern) and thus could see the modern structure clearly, and because they shared a certain developmental solidarity with the premodern level of development as being equally non-modern stages (premodern is non-modern just as postmodern is non-modern).

If my hypothesis is correct, that Berger et al. were largely explaining how a premodern person feels in the face of the modern world, and if we are now fully living in a postmodern world, we would greatly benefit from understanding how the modern individual feels in the face of the postmodern world. For instance, how does the modern individual feel homeless in the postmodern world? What structural dynamics are in play and how are social relations and identity being negotiated? Also, given the hypothesis that Berger et al. were able to provide such a brilliant account because they were themselves at a postmodern level of development (at least in theory), in order to discover the dynamics of the modern/postmodern homelessness, we would need individuals at a post-postmodern level of development to provide the explanation.*

Present day homeless mind

Since the 1960s and 1970s, the significant shift of people to a postmodern level of thought has become increasingly manifested in the physical world. This manifestation can be seen most clearly in the development of a fully fledged information economy which has caused a techno-bureaucratic shift in the structures of society. While this shift has been underway for many years, right now we are seeing its effects clearly with the simultaneously massive technological development in the capabilities of computing and networking (internet) and massive ecological, economic, and cultural crises expressed through global warming, the world-wide banking crisis, and the polarized political landscape.

One of the primary characteristics of postmodernism is connectedness. Postmodernism in theory is characterized by breaking out of the boundaries and categories put in place by the modern world. In education, this is seen in the emphasis on cross-disciplinary, multicultural, holistic, and interdisciplinary studies. It becomes clear that no one discipline and no one perspective can provide all the answers. Over the last 50 years, this theoretical connectedness has been expressed in the physical world through media. Television, cell phones, and the internet have added both a new level of connectivity and new ways to connect. Just as postmodernism in education pushes to break down walls between disciplines, in the physical world it pushes to break down the modern silos of industry and information. No where is this more evident than in the current crisis and perhaps downfall of the newspaper industry. This modern industry, made possible by modern technological development, is being subverted by postmodern technology and postmodern ways of accessing, disseminating, and relating to information.

While we are currently seeing a stunning expression of the postmodern shift via crisis in the physical world (ecological, economic, political), we are also experiencing the "crisis of significance" individually in new ways and for new reasons. Increasingly, our roles as anonymous functionaries in the modern world are being replaced by computers and machines. Instead of experiencing the anonymous bank teller, we now experience the anonymous ATM; instead of the anonymous department store clerk, we now experience the anonymous online checkout form. This replacement has led to a suggestion that there is a coming renaissance for creativity and human-centered capacities in the professional world (Pink 2006).

Berger et al. said in 1973 that the bifurcation of our identities in the modern structures allows us to perform some of our roles "tongue in cheek" as we experience our self in certain roles as less real than our self in other roles (Berger et al. 1973 p.34). With the connectivity of the postmodern world, it seems that we are in a position to be ever more aware of the different roles we perform and our different selves in those roles. With increased awareness it then seems that we either experience these roles almost entirely as less real aspects of our self, always struggling to discover some core identity from which to act, or we experience them all as real parts of our self and attempt to integrate them into our concept of self much like an interdisciplinary course might attempt to integrate multiple fields. While these are two opposite approaches, culturally we seem to have adopted the former as evidenced by high levels of apathy.** While individuals experiencing the modern form of the crisis of significance are vexed by having to perform roles that are less real, they at least experience the contrasting roles as real. However, it appears that postmoderns experience the crisis of significance as a struggle to find significance anywhere; a struggle to experience any of their roles as real, authentic, and not anonymous.***

In the face of this experience, the postmodern trend has been to indulge in surface level realities, and attempt to fight off the anonymity of the less real selves by fixating on celebrity. In popular culture this leads us from the MTV generation to today, in which postmoderns want their celebrities to be as real and authentic as possible (Real World, reality TV, etc.) and want just as badly to be celebrities themselves. Thomas de Zengotita, Jean M. Twenge, and Ken Wilber have all analyzed and documented this situation using a variety of methodologies and collectively reinforce each other by showing how self-centered and narcissistic the postmodern culture is. They also all agree that no one individual or group of individuals is at fault for this self-centeredness; rather it is a result of structural development occurring as a dialectic between the external physical/technological world and internal consciousness.

The postmodern homeless mind results in a total absence of significance. The individual finds it hard to feel at home anywhere and in the face of this, has a tendency to regress to surface level evaluations of meaning. While there are countless explanations for the contemporary predicament that faces the self, by tracing this concept of a "crisis of significance" through premodern, modern, and postmodern permutations, it is hoped that a useful perspective arises that is able to contextualize how we may experience ourselves today. Since our current lack of significance is so dire, it seems that our next great shift (post-postmodern?) will have to reintegrate significance back into the self.

Footnotes

* In spiral dynamics this level is represented as the first stage of the 2nd tier of development; in Integral theory this is the first Integral stage.
** This situation parallels closely theoretical postmodernism in which deconstructionism took over many disciplines in the late 1970s and 1980s. While many people dismiss postmodernism as just deconstructionism, there are others who push for some sort of reconstruction after deconstruction. Perhaps reconstruction after deconstruction could be considered a sort of post-postmodernism and integrating all the parts of ourselves as developmentally higher than experiencing all aspects of ourselves in our various roles as less real selves.
*** This is most exemplified in the emergence of existentialism in popular culture (see I Heart Huckabees).

Sources

Berger, Peter L., Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner. The Homeless Mind: modernization and consciousness. Random House: New York, 1973. http://books.google.com/books?id=rvcYAAAAYAAJ&q=homeless+mind&dq=homeless+mind&lr=&
Davol, SH. and G. Reimanis. The role of anomie as a psychological concept. Journal of Individual Psychology, Vol. 15 (1959).
Deflem, Mathieu. From Anomie to Anomia and Anomic Depression: a sociological critique on the use of anomie in psychiatric research. Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 29, No. 5 (1989), pp. 627-634. http://www.cas.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zanomie.pdf
De Zengotita, Thomas. Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It. Bloomsbury Publishing: , 2006. http://books.google.com/books?id=aQ8oHAAACAAJ
Lawrence, Jeanette A., Rachel Benedikt, and Jaan Valsiner. Homeless in the mind: A case-history of personal life in and out of a close orthodox community. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr., 1992). SpringerLink http://www.springerlink.com/content/q74666265306756r/
Marx, Robert J. Anomie and the community of the faithful. Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Oct., 1966), pp. 291-295. SpringerLink http://www.springerlink.com/content/u97336m63043r445/
Muniz Jr., Albert M., and Thomas C. O'Guinn. Brand Community. The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Mar., 2001). The University of Chicago Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/254335
Orru, Marco. Weber on Anomie. Sociological Forum, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 263-270. Springer http://www.jstor.org/stable/684494
Pink, Daniel. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. Riverhead Books: , 2006. http://books.google.com/books?id=TeDAAAAACAAJ
Twenge, Jean M. Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before. Simon and Schuster: , 2007. http://books.google.com/books?id=tV4M1hpG-3wC
Wesch, Michael. From Knowledge to Knowledge-able: learning in new media environments. Academic Commons, January 2009. http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/knowledgable-knowledge-able
Wilber, Ken. A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality. Shambala: , 2001. http://books.google.com/books?id=PYBKcyEBEZQC

30 day turned into 10 day raw trial

2009-03-09T21:50:00.003-05:00

We finished our, what turned into, 10 day raw trial on Friday. Besides the poor planning on our part and getting sick, it was a fairly successful trial. I am still not sure if the sickness I experienced was detox or something else. After I got better, the last five days of the trial were not as difficult or painful. After starting out well, Lindsay tended to feel worse in the last few days, having intense cravings and bodily discomfort.

I did not succeed in maintaining weight, and ended up losing around 5 lbs. for the whole trial. Ordinarily this would not be a problem, but since I am already at a low weight after months of slow weight loss, I would rather have not lost the 5 lbs.

I think we will probably try for the whole 30 days once more. However, I think we will wait until we can get relatively cheap fresh produce from the farmer's markets. I also do not want to try again until I have put on some weight. So, right now I have fully shifted from eating only raw foods to trying to gain weight as fast as possible. Contrary to what a lot of people experience, it is very difficult for me to gain weight and not very difficult to lose it (this was the case even before I became a vegetarian). While this seems like a blessing, and is in many ways, it has been difficult to deal with this as a male in our culture. Boys and young men are taught about ideal body image just as females are (granted not to the same degree), and I have always struggled to be comfortable with myself and my body the way it is.

For many years I tried with varying degrees of intensity to put on weight and become more muscular. As a soccer player and golfer in my adolescent years, it was always very important to increase strength to improve performance. My drive to succeed in sport caused me to want badly to become stronger, but my desire was outmatched by the difficulty of gaining weight in my body. My sophomore year in college was the only time in my life when I've successfully gained weight, but I did it by eating a lot of junk and taking protein supplement.

So, now I am faced with the same predicament I've had many times before, how to put on weight. Only this time I'd like to do it with the increased challenge of maintaining at least 35-50% raw diet and moving closer and closer to a vegan diet. I really have no idea how to do this beyond just not skipping meals and getting on a core muscle resistance training regimen, so if anyone out there knows more about this, please do share! I am genuinely worried about this challenge because it is like facing an old demon for me.

Hopefully, in a couple of months, I'll have put on 10-15 lbs. and we'll be ready to succeed at the 30 day trial!

30 Day Raw Trial - Day 1
30 Day Raw Trial Update - Day 7

Theory of meaninglessness

2009-03-08T21:36:00.004-05:00

I will be presenting the following ideas on Tuesday.

The concept of the homeless mind, first introduced in 1973, is that due to the technologized and bureaucratized mode of production in the modern world, our very identities have bifurcated as we carry out the roles of technological production. As Berger et al. note, "the individual now becomes capable of experiencing himself in a double way: as a unique individual rich in concrete qualities and as an anonymous functionary." In dealing with a whole host of anonymous roles we are confronted with by bureaucracy, we start to experience different parts of our identity as more or less real than other parts. And to the extent that we experience parts of our identity that are less real, we tend to suffer a crisis of significance, meaninglessness, and anomie (i.e. it becomes very difficult to find meaning while flipping burgers in a fast food chain). Our minds are homeless so long as we suffer the anomie created in large part by the modern modes of technological production.

While this critique of the modern (i.e. industrial revolution to 1950?) modes of production is brilliant, it is only partial. This critique harkens back to many of the great modern philosophers (Marx, Weber, later Durkheim) to express relationship between modes of production and the individual psyche. Nonetheless, while it provides insight into the "crisis of significance," it does not and cannot fully explain it. One of the reasons it cannot is because it largely a critique of the modern structure and we have moved over the last 50 years increasingly into a postmodern, "information age", structure. So, along with this critique of the modern structure, we need a critique of the postmodern.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the western world saw the emergence of a new level of consciousness in a significant portion of the population. In academia, this shift is reflected in the emergence of the postmodern schools of thought in a variety of disciplines. I feel Berger et al. were a part of this emergence and due to that, were able to see clearly the dynamic of the modern structure. For this reason, their critique elucidates so many important truths, none more prominent than that of the homeless mind.

However, when taken in context of developmental studies (spiral dynamics), a more complex view of the homeless mind emerges. In this context, an individual will feel homeless when she is at a developmental level either below or above that of her surrounding culture. The individual below that of her surrounding culture might not feel at home because she is being pulled up to a higher developmental potential by her surrounding culture. Equally, the individual above that of her culture might not feel at home because she is being pulled down to a lower/previous stage of development by her surrounding culture. Someone at a postmodern level of development (green meme) might feel very homeless in very modern culture, which I believe is what inspired Berger et al. to write The Homeless Mind.

Berger et al. were not explaining their own developmental dynamic; instead they were explaining how a premodern individual (someone with a center of gravity in a premodern stage of development) would feel homeless in the face of a surrounding modern techno-bureaucratic structure and culture. Their own developmental dynamic gave them great insight into the pre-modern/modern dialectic because they were both beyond modern (postmodern) and thus could see the modern structure clearly, and because they shared a certain developmental solidarity with the pre-modern level of development as being equally non-modern stages (pre-modern is non-modern just as postmodern is non-modern).

If my hypothesis is correct, that Berger et al. were largely explaining how a pre-modern person feels in the face of the modern world, and if we are now fully living in a postmodern world, we would greatly benefit from understanding how the modern individual feels in the face of the postmodern world. For instance, how does the modern individual feel homeless in the postmodern world. What structural dynamics are in play and how are social relations and identity being negotiated? Also, given the hypothesis that Berger et al. were able to provide such a brilliant account because they were themselves at a postmodern level of development (at least in theory), in order to discover the dynamics of the modern/postmodern homelessness, we would need individuals at a post-postmodern level of development to provide the explanation (in spiral dynamics this level is represented as the first stage of the 2nd tier of development - in Integral theory this is the first Integral stage).

All of these developmental dialectics lead me to wonder how we feel homeless now? For what additional reasons do we currently suffer a "crisis of significance"? How are these reasons likely to evolve given the whole developmental spectrum and developmental dynamics?

30 Day Raw Trial Update - Day 7

2009-03-03T21:49:00.004-06:00

This has definitely been a rough 7 days. Despite all our preparation, Lindsay and I both find ourselves completely unprepared. At least now we have recipes books and the equipment we need to make raw meals, but we certainly do not have the mindset it takes to plan so far ahead in order to have food to eat day in and day out. It seems like each recipe takes 3-7 days to make (from sprouting to soaking to preparing to dehydrating)! More importantly, neither of us have found staple meals that are relatively easy to prepare and that we genuinely enjoy eating.

But, this has been a rocky start for other reasons. After the first couple days I started having occasional stomach aches and cramps. Then, on Saturday I woke up vomiting (sorry for the full disclosure). In bed most of the day Saturday, I didn't eat much of anything. Since then, I've relied on Lindsay to do all the shopping and preparing of food and she's done an awesome job! Nonetheless, after getting sick on raw foods, I'm still queasy about eating more raw foods. Until yesterday, I was still experiencing mild stomach discomfort.

Throughout these pains, Lindsay has been thinking that maybe something is wrong beyond the detox symptoms we're likely to experience without eating any cooked foods. It's really tricky trying to figure out if the problems are real problems or just detox symptoms. Most of the detox symptoms reported on such a diet are very wide ranging and vague. And most people simply say that you have to use your intuition and go to the doctor if you think something is wrong. However, there are two slight problems with this advice:

Most doctors advise against a raw diet and don't understand the reasons and motivations for trying such a thing. For instance, the last doctor I saw did not even understand vegetarianism, so I find it difficult to believe that a doctor would be sensitive to such a radical diet. My dad recently mentioned what we are doing to his doctor, and his doctor kindly said that he thinks it's a really bad idea.
When undergoing something so challenging, it's really difficult to determine what my intuition is vs. my desire to eat cooked foods again.

Anyway, as I said in my previous post, we'd likely have to shorten the trial because we will be traveling in a couple weeks. So, we've decided to shorten the trial to just 10 days for three reasons:

We'll be traveling and likely won't be able to maintain the diet while traveling.
The pains we've experienced and the unsureness of not knowing if they were caused by legitimate detox or something else.
Buying so much produce at this time of the year in this location (middle of Kansas) is incredibly expensive. It seems like a better idea to try this long of a trial during the growing season when we can get fresher, cheaper produce from the farmer's markets. (This is something we had in mind before starting, but we were anxious to get the trial started because we'd already been putting it off for months)

30 Day Raw Trial - Day 1
30 day turned into 10 day raw trial

Updating anomie

2009-03-01T21:47:00.003-06:00

Context:

To explain why the current hyper-networked and technologized world is inhabited by more narcissitic, individualized, and unhappy individuals than ever, an updated view of anomie and the homeless mind is needed. This will involve contextualizing the extant research and theory to its timeframe and theoretical period. Importantly, this will allow us to go beyond, and include, modernist critiques in an integrated and evolutionary analysis of the "crisis of significance."

My hypothesis is that even though the analysis given in The Homeless Mind is brilliant, it was written for a particular context that may not be totally applicable today, some 36 years later. It was written in an intellectual epoch that saw a great shift in thought and discourse which is usually described as the shift to postmodernism. This shift was spurned on by a large movement in the center of gravity of the American and Western population, namely from a modern center of consciousness to a postmodern center of consciousness.

In order to update the concept of the "homeless mind" and the concept of "anomie" I will scour the literature trying to find theoretical evidence for their existence today. With the findings, I will attempt to string together a complete picture of the "crisis of significance", demonstrating the different arguments for its existence or non-existence over time. Lastly, I also plan to begin cross-posting my research to Integral Life. As I utilize an Integral framework to guide me, I hope to engage the Integral community in some sort of dialog to ascertain their view on the matter and to potentially receive assistance with my analysis. This could lead to possible interviews down the line if what I post sparks interest.

Anomie in the postmodern world

2009-02-25T22:35:00.006-06:00

Anomie and the concept of the homeless mind (Berger et al. 1973) are useful constructs to help explain what has been termed a "crisis of significance" (Wesch 2009) in the contemporary world. Both of these concepts originated in sociological discourse and help to explain how technological and bureaucratic structures brought about by the rise of modernity have affected the individual. In the contemporary, postmodern, world the individual is more self-centered and self-conscious than ever before (Twenge 2007). Anomie and the homeless mind offer a framework to bridge the gap between the modern and postmodern worlds by providing reasons that the contemporary individual is both self-centered and suffering from a crisis of significance.

Originating in academic discourse with Max Weber (Orru 1989), but not made popular until its use by Emile Durkheim and later Robert K. Merton (Deflem 1989), anomie has been predominantly used in sociology to mean rulelessness or normlessness. In this context, a situation of anomie occurs when there is a combination of ineffectiveness of society's regulative power and a lack of rules to regulate an individual's behavior. While Merton used anomie to develop a theory of deviant behavior in individuals, others extended anomie to the psychological and psychiatric domains. (Deflem 1989)

In psychology, anomie describes a situation in which an individual "withdraws from society and loses interest in what is happening around him." (Marx 1966) This withdrawal is caused by the individual perceiving the social order as "lacking meaningfulness or usefulness" or by "his perception of constant conflict in the basic goals of life." (Davol and Reimanis 1959) Merton founds the causes of this conflict in the social structure, harkening back to Durkheim's analysis that anomie occurs when social (organic) solidarity has not been realized (Deflem 1989).

By looking at the macro level technological and bureaucratic structures of modernity, anomie can be described as a sense of homelessness in which the individual's identity bifurcates when faced with performing in anonymous technological or bureaucratic roles. The very nature of technological production necessitates the proliferation of anonymous functionaries and this anonymization becomes internalized in the individual, causing him to begin to engineer, just like technological production, his own identity. This bifurcation of identity can cause the individual to experience meaninglessness about his social roles, anomie. (Berger et al. 1973)

While the causes of psychological and sociological anomie have been detailed in the context of the modern world and the shift to modern technological structures, the investigation has not continued forward into the contemporary postmodern world. Anomie has not come out of the vast theoretical changes that occured in many fields in the 1960s and 1970s. A postmodern perspective opens the opportunity to see the homeless mind as just "one of a range of possible personal cultures that can be constructed within any social environment." (Lawrence et al. 1992) Taken a step further, it is now possible to view the individual at home in the commercial and technological milieu in which he lives (Muniz et al. 2001).

To explain why the current hyper-networked and technologized world is inhabited by more narcissitic, individualized, and unhappy individuals than ever, an updated view of anomie and the homeless mind is needed. This will involve contextualizing the extant research and theory to its timeframe and theoretical period. Importantly, this will allow us to go beyond, and include, modernist critiques in an integrated and evolutionary analysis of the "crisis of significance."

Sources

Berger, Peter L., Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner. The Homeless Mind: modernization and consciousness. Random House: New York, 1973. http://books.google.com/books?id=rvcYAAAAYAAJ&q=homeless+mind&dq=homeless+mind&lr=&
Davol, SH. and G. Reimanis. The role of anomie as a psychological concept. Journal of Individual Psychology, Vol. 15 (1959).
Deflem, Mathieu. From Anomie to Anomia and Anomic Depression: a sociological critique on the use of anomie in psychiatric research. Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 29, No. 5 (1989), pp. 627-634. http://www.cas.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zanomie.pdf
Lawrence, Jeanette A., Rachel Benedikt, and Jaan Valsiner. Homeless in the mind: A case-history of personal life in and out of a close orthodox community. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr., 1992). SpringerLink http://www.springerlink.com/content/q74666265306756r/
Marx, Robert J. Anomie and the community of the faithful. Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Oct., 1966), pp. 291-295. SpringerLink http://www.springerlink.com/content/u97336m63043r445/
Muniz Jr., Albert M., and Thomas C. O'Guinn. Brand Community. The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Mar., 2001). The University of Chicago Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/254335
Orru, Marco. Weber on Anomie. Sociological Forum, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 263-270. Springer http://www.jstor.org/stable/684494
Twenge, Jean M. Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before. Simon and Schuster: , 2007. http://books.google.com/books?id=tV4M1hpG-3wC
Wesch, Michael. From Knowledge to Knowledge-able: learning in new media environments. Academic Commons, January 2009. http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/knowledgable-knowledge-able

30 Day Raw Trial - Day 1

2009-02-25T17:56:00.006-06:00

Today marks day one of Lindsay and I's 30 day raw trial. After doing a 5 day raw trial back in August, we have been gearing up to try an extended trial. This gear-up has included reading more about a raw/living foods diet, preparing more raw recipes, and purchasing a Vita-Mix blender, a dehydrator, and a couple of raw recipe books. While we hope to make it to 30 days, we may have to modify the plan because we will be traveling to prospective graduate schools in mid March, perhaps making completing 30 days too difficult. We'll see...

Since last August I have been eating only raw foods during the day at work and cooked foods only at night. So, for the last several months, I have been eating about 35% raw/living foods (I didn't generally follow this on the weekends). Over the last few weeks, I have tried to extend the day time raw eating to the weekends, making my current diet about 50% raw/living foods. This, however, is far different from 100% raw, but I hope my increase in raw foods will make the transition easier.

My main goal is to actually gain weight during the trial. Since August, I have been consistently losing weight and I start this trial at 172 lbs. For my height, I am underweight and would like to build back some of that weight in muscle. One of my tests for the trial will be to see if I can healthily put on weight. I think this will be a good test to see if 100% raw foods can be healthy for me. What most excites me about the trial however is the potential mental clarity and energy gains. Many raw foodists go on and on about the difference between eating cooked and living foods and I am hoping 30 days will be enough time for me to get a glimpse.

While we are shooting for 100% raw, there will be some technical exceptions. For instance, I plan on drinking pasteurized almond milk, some pasteurized juices, and tea. I also plan on eating dark chocolate, some rolled whole grains, and these small organic ginger chews I occasionally eat. While perhaps not pure 100% raw, I think we will get close enough. It is really difficult to strike a balance between doing this diet for real and being practical and I am concerned that we will be too hard on ourselves, souring the whole experience.

So, wish us luck!

30 Day Raw Trial Update - Day 7
30 day turned into 10 day raw trial

Anomie and the homeless mind

2009-02-23T21:24:00.006-06:00

Broadly speaking, the task I've set out to undertake is to provide an explanation for what I hypothesize is a penetrating sense of meaninglessness and a loss of significance in the modern world. This crisis of significance is for me self-evident, but I seek to outline the evidence for it as my research deepens (two early sources: Mediated and Generation Me).

Anomie is helpful concept to analyze the crisis of meaninglessness because when psychologically internalized by an individual, anomie can be described as a sense of meaninglessness. Taken etymologically, anomie means "the absence of ultimate guiding values." (Orru) Elsewhere, it translates to "rulelessness" or "normlessness". Historically, the word was first used in sociological and psychological contexts by Max Weber, but it was made popular by Emile Durkheim, and years later by RK Merton. The connection between the absence of norms and a sense of meaninglessness is not intuitive, however, Berger et al. have a response that connects the two concepts in their notion of The Homeless Mind.

As Lawrence et al. explain, Berger et al.

identified different forms of discontent that all can be classed as feelings of being homeless. This alienated feeling arises in the contradictory contexts in which inhabitants of economically changing societies find themselves. Not only are more people being uprooted from their original social milieu, but, succeeding social contexts do not easily function as their cultural"homes" (p. 184). People alternate between highly discrepant and often contradictory social worlds, and as they inhabit succeeding environments, they are prevented by the economic, technological and bureaucratic interests of burgeoning institutions from developing frames of reference that give them a sense of knowing where they are going, what is expected of them, and how to develop and maintain relationships that transcend anonymity.

This is a description of a pervasive feeling of homelessness created by the technological and bureaucratic structures we live in. The individual struggles to make sense of all the institutions he interacts with and roles he plays and especially struggles with both relating anonymously and functioning in anonymous roles. The introduction of these anonymous relations causes the individual to become, "capable of experiencing himself in a double way: as a unique individual rich in concrete qualities and as an anonymous functionary." (Berger et al.)

This experience of his own identity extends beyond and the individual can start to treat other people and parts of his own identity just like modern technology treats material objects, as mere components. (Berger et al.) In turn, this componentiality leads both to an absence of meaning in social relations and to a lack of human norms for guiding those social relations. Instead, the human norms and rules disappear and are replaced by functional and componential norms and rules, those which ensure the continuation and proliferation of technological production. As Robert J. Marx puts it, "[a]s cities become more crowded, as anonymity becomes more characteristic of American life, the moral and social rules under which men live become increasingly depersonalized and devitalized."

But, this rather dire modernist critique of technology and bureaucracy is not an exhaustive account of the contemporary world. In fact, Lawrence et al. suggest that the homelessness in the mind is much more fluid:

Feeling not at home expresses one of a range of possible personal cultures that can be constructed within any social environment. By following the sociogenetic principles of bi-directional transmission of culture, and co-construction of personal culture, feeling not at home, together with feeling at home, can be seen as normal, internally constructed, and transformed responses to Berger et al.'s (1973, p. 17) cultural packages.

Some go so far as to suggest that the present postmodern world is much more capable and autonomous than The Homeless Mind makes us out to be. Indeed, one potential problem with using macro societal structures to explain changes in individual consciousness is that they tend to make the individual out to be an automaton, forced to think and behave a certain way. In a more contemporary article entitled "Brand Community", Albert M. Muniz, Jr. and Thomas C. O'Guinn outline an argument for a widening notion of community that paints our collective "homelessness" in a different light:

We theorize that late twentieth-century consumers are very aware of the commercial milieu in which they live, and are more comfortable in their level of grounding than modernist tradition has been willing to grant. The postmodern consumer is in fact quite self-aware and self-reflexive about issues of authenticity and identity.

So, if one potential backlash of the anonymization of social relations is an increase in individualism and a tendency to revere celebrity and even micro-celebrity, what are the ramifications if, as Muniz and O'Guinn suggest, we are "self-aware and self-reflexive" about our individualism? What are the ramifications if instead of feeling homeless, we are actually finding a home in the very products of the technological and bureaucratic structures that potentially created the alienation in the first place? And, if any of this is true, what role is the advance in technology and media playing to enable said "rediscovery" of "homeness"?

Sources

Berger, Peter L., Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner. The Homeless Mind: modernization and consciousness. Random House: New York, 1973. http://books.google.com/books?id=rvcYAAAAYAAJ&q=homeless+mind&dq=homeless+mind&lr=&client=firefox-a
Deflem, Mathieu. From Anomie to Anomia and Anomic Depression: a sociological critique on the use of anomie in psychiatric research. Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 29, No. 5 (1989), pp. 627-634. http://www.cas.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zanomie.pdf
Lawrence, Jeanette A., Rachel Benedikt, and Jaan Valsiner. Homeless in the mind: A case-history of personal life in and out of a close orthodox community. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr., 1992). SpringerLink http://www.springerlink.com/content/q74666265306756r/
Marx, Robert J. Anomie and the community of the faithful. Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Oct., 1966), pp. 291-295. SpringerLink http://www.springerlink.com/content/u97336m63043r445/
Muniz Jr., Albert M., and Thomas C. O'Guinn. Brand Community. The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Mar., 2001). The University of Chicago Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/254335
Orru, Marco. Weber on Anomie. Sociological Forum, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 263-270. Springer http://www.jstor.org/stable/684494

What is anomie?

2009-02-23T13:53:00.004-06:00

One of the things I'm doing is exploring anomie in the modern world, its causes and effects. But, this has been based on my understanding of anomie as a sense of meaninglessness experienced in an individual. This, as it turns out, may be a little off the primary meaning of the word. Instead of meaninglessness, it is more commonly understood as normlessness. For instance, Oxford English Dictionary says:

1. Disregard of law, lawlessness; esp. (in 17th c. theology) disregard of divine law. Obs.

2. Also commonly in French form anomie. [F. (Durkheim Suicide, 1897).] Absence of accepted social standards or values; the state or condition of an individual or society lacking such standards.

Wikipedia corroborates:

Anomie, in contemporary English language is a sociological term that signifies in individuals an erosion, diminution or absence of personal norms, standards or values, and increased states of psychological normlessness. It is a social condition in which norms are weak, conflicting, or absent.[1] When applied to a government or society, anomie implies a social unrest.

Whereas Dictionary.com provides the following:

a state or condition of individuals or society characterized by a breakdown or absence of social norms and values, as in the case of uprooted people.

The confusion for me comes when I think of normlessness, I think on the societal level, as in the society is without norms, rules, laws... However, there seems to be a usage of anomie that historically has attempted to describe the normlessness of the individual, the subjective individual experience of normlessness. This internal individual experience is much closer to how I've been conceptualizing the word as a sense of meaninglessness or an absence of significance.

This is confusing to me though because it would then follow that meaning and significance come from norms? For some reason this is not an intuitive connection or conclusion for me. Maybe it's because I'm young, or a member of Generation Me, or simply idealistic, but I don't see how norms lead to significance and meaning. Instead, I tend to think of them as being oppressive and undermining.

Any help? Does this make sense to you?

Expertise

2009-02-21T20:22:00.002-06:00

I've always been very interested in people who are really good at what they do. I recently ran across an article from a psychologist who has undertaken a great deal of study to ascertain just what it is that makes someone a world class expert. By doing long-term studies of chess players, advanced musicians, and sports players, K. Anders Ericsson found that an individual's level of expertise is in direct proportion to the number of hours of deliberate practice that individual has undergone in the given domain. Namely, he found that it takes an individual 10,000 hours and 10 years of deliberate practice to obtain world-class level of expertise.

I found the whole article intriguing. It highlights a number of trends that are indicative of all the world-class individuals. For instance, these individuals, when they practice, tend to focus on improving particular skills that they are not yet masters of, instead of just playing or doing what they already know how to do. They also tend to practice with a great deal of intensity for around five hours a day, often requiring a nap afterwords. Overall, I found the article to offer a great deal of hope as it debunks the common perception that it is the gifted or the talented who are the ones with world-class skill.

Situational behavior

2009-02-18T21:21:00.002-06:00

Since first learning about Marshall McLuhan, I've always been a fan. I've read Understanding Media, and while I did not understand it, I thought there were a wealth of interesting ideas within. I feel like he falls into a certain class of theorists who are visionary. As such, I tend to forgive them of any wrongdoing and simply praise them for their visions. However, Joshua Meyrowitz rightly takes McLuhan to task in "No Sense of Place." He demonstrates that McLuhan, by design, failed to unify media studies as a discipline because he provided no theory or methodology. Meyrowitz goes on to suggest that there can be theory and methodology in the examination of the affects of media on social behavior and points to several other theorists working on the task (Ong, Carothers, Watt, Eisenstein, etc.).

Meyrowitz shows that there is a distinction between medium theorists like McLuhan and Innis and those who look at situational behavior. He goes into the work of Erving Goffman to describe that all social situations are pretensed by frames. These frames have subtle clues that let us know what to expect in the given environment. Within these frames, we have "frontstage" faces and presences and "backstage" faces and presences.

I would love to write more, but I can't keep my eyes open... :(

Media Ecology

2009-02-16T22:01:00.006-06:00

Media Ecology occupies a strange disciplinary place as it seeks to understand the effects of media on the world. With a predominantly sociological background, Media Ecology studies the impacts of different media on human beings. While seemingly straightforward, this discipline has always confused me slightly because two other disciplines seem to cover the whole of what Media Ecology studies, anthropology and communication (or communication studies etc.). And yet, media ecologists have been some of the most profoundly inspiring and influential theorists I have ever read, McLuhan, Postman, Carpenter.

Basically outlined, Media Ecology suggests that media are not neutral conduits for information, but that each alters information in fundamental ways (McLuhan's "the medium is the message" is useful here). From this, it then surmises that each media has particular and discoverable biases built into it that shapes the way that media will be experienced. Lastly, it goes further to say that due to its non-neutral nature and its biases, media creates certain effects on people due to its use.

In the present world, it seems we need to take the study and investigation of media ever more seriously as new influential forms of communication pop up with increasing frequency. A perfect case study is the rise of Twitter and micro-blogging in the last two years. Clive Thompson suggests that Twitter creates a sense of "ambient intimacy" for its users by providing an always on channel of social information streaming in and out of consciousness.

Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends' and family members' lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.

One of the results of this affect that microblogging seems to create a small town type environment amongst people separated by long distances; they know many very mundane details about each other which build to give a sense of intimacy. While this may certainly be the case, it is not all a rosy picture. As Thompson duly notes, most people are skeptics about this sort of "statusing." They feel it is more narcissistic blabber being thrust on the world by one of the most narcissistic generations to ever come into existence. I certainly do not fall into line with many of these skeptics, I do think the ways this medium negotiates identity should be carefully studied.

I wonder if the popularity of microblogging is directly related to this sense of "ambient intimacy." I further wonder how it interacts with the culture of micro-celebrity that has grown fervently, is it a contradictory impulse or does it promote micro-celebrity? (on the one hand it is clearly a self-centered enterprise, providing personal details to the world, and on the other hand it is clearly creating a communal effect for many people, perhaps due to "ambient intimacy") Lastly, I wonder in what ways ~~anonymity~~ our need to be known manifests itself through different media.

Cybercultural studies and the role of ethnography

2009-02-11T20:18:00.011-06:00

The history of cyberculture studies is fascinating for one main reason, the arguments people make haven't changed in the twenty some odd years of it's existence! As David Silver describes, the discourse about cyberculture generally fell into one of two camps: utopian or dystopian. Scholars and the mass media alike have either raised cyberculture to the level of panacea, or argued that it is single-handedly destroying the world as we know it. While I can see this as a rational and likely dialog when the original networks were being built and the first generation technologies were mediating cyberculture, I am shocked that I still see this simple dichotomy expressed today. Even more, I am stunned that I often fall into one of these camps, defending the internet as the potential savior to all the negative things I see in the world.

I find myself in a difficult position as someone who engages the web, both personally and professionally. I constantly feel the pressure to defend the way I use technology and the work I do attempting to enhance technology against some fictional "bad-man" who is set to prove the dystopian scholars and journalists right, and render all my hopes and efforts fruitless. Unfortunetely, in my own mind and in social/professional situations, this often puts me in the position of the utopian advocate, defending and explaining why this internet thing is really important. I say unfortunately because I find it makes it really difficult for me to maintain a balanced perspective, one that healthily integrates the utopian and dystopian. It also forces me into a sort of trap, where I end up thinking about cyberculture in meta-theoretical ways, treating it as an it, rather than engaging cyberculture as process.

Of course the processual view is equally frustrating. While scholars look at particular parts of the web, particular communities, and study them in ethnographic fashion, I often find this approach less than appetizing. Most often, these studies end up commenting on a very simple point, that cyberculture is much like real culture, and can legitimately be thought of and studied as such. While this is an important point, it is hardly worth rehashing numerous times. What I find lacking in this more "nuts and bolts" perspective of the web is the theory of the utopian/dystopian argument. It's missing a critical compenent that outlines why this is important and what it allows us to say about our lives and humanity itself - it's missing meaning.

So where we end up is not far from where cybercultural studies began. Many people are attempting to bridge the gap between the real and cyber worlds, showing the impacts of cyber activity, or the lack there of (digital divide), on the real world. While important, much of this study seems to outline simple ideas and idiosycratic notions.

Just beneath the gaze of academia and popular culture is an emerging sense that cyberculture is no longer a thing unto itself that is separable. It is now becoming an integrated part of our thoughts and theories, offering commentary on every aspect of society. While we try to study cyberculture, it is studying us. Just as we make discoveries and weave theories, it is making damning commentary on all of our best efforts. There is a certain agency about cyberculture, one that is beginning to undermine all of our notions about the institutions that make up society. There is something afoot, something like an adolescent child finding her voice and declaring that she is no longer a projection of her parent's will, but a fully formed human being all her own.

Cyberspace/the internet/the web viewed as an organism, not a static it or a simple process, but a full fledged evolutionary organism seeking its own enlightenment, offers a metaphor that will become increasingly more salient. This organism is a grand act of creation, an interweaving of collective knowledge and consciousness as vast as can be imagined. As a grand manifestation of human creativity, it is clear that anthropology must engage it. But ethnography will not survive if it continues to see the internet as a thing or as a machine without agency (no matter the complexity). Ethnography must engage it as an organism, as a being; it must join the creation; it must create. As cultural anthropologist Neil Whitehead says, "in the realm of cyberspace it is only through active participation that there is anything to observe at all."

Stunted by postmodern reflexivity, anthropology has been stagnant for many years now, unable to reconcile human agency with cultural holism. Cyberspace seems to offer a light out of this morass, an opportunity to participantly observe by creating. By creating in cyberculture, we are simultaneously participating and observing, and all through an act of near narcissistic auto-ethnography. But, the hyper-social online environment acts like a mirror that reveals the external projection of an individual to her internal perspective. It liberates creations of their creator by making them living social commentary. And so, as Whitehead demonstrates, this form of creation "is not just the presentation of theory, but rather an active performance of theory."

Thus, the task is to create a digital ethnography...

Networked Individual / Virtual Ethnography

2009-02-09T11:50:00.019-06:00

Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks, Christine Hine's Virtual Ethnography, and Thomas De Zengotita's Mediated are all providing interesting insights into the digital world. As I start studying the causes and consequences of anonymity in the contemporary world, they will each prove a useful guide, offering different and diverging perspectives on our present situation.

Benkler's treatment of the community aspects of cyberspace deeply resonates with my own experiences. By providing a discussion of the empirical research on the question - do computer mediated communication and the internet facilitate the breakdown of community while simultaneously increasing individual autonomy? - Benkler shows that we have actually just increased the amount of communication we do. Rather than decreasing community, we are maintaining community and communicating in loose form with more people. Despite popular sentiment, internet users do not report spending less time with family and friends, and instead report less time watching television. This resonates directly with my own subjective experience of my internet use. I feel I remain more connected with more people and use the mediums available to me to nurture and support those connections.

One very interesting aspect of Benkler's analysis comes in his conclusion where he offers a rather optimisitic outlook:

The conceptual answer has been that the image of "community" that seeks a facsimile of a distant pastoral village is simply the wrong image of how we interact as social beings. We are a networked society now-networked individuals connected with each other in a mesh of loosely knit, overlapping, flat connections. This does not leave us in a state of anomie. We are well-adjusted, networked individuals; well-adjusted socially in ways that those who seek community would value, but in new and different ways.

Seemingly in contrast to the sociological analysis of modern technological and bureaucratic structures made by Berger et al., Benkler says we are not in a state of anomie. Maybe Benkler is not saying that we are not in a state of anomie, but simply that internet communication is not causing anomie. In either event, it is difficult to see us as "well-adjusted, networked individuals." Of course, this just begs the question of who "we" are, if we are referring to all individuals or some individuals, those with vast experience or little experience. I can entertain an optimistic future where we collectively harness these technologies as they evolve into more and more usable software and devices, but it currently seems like we are haunted by the possibility of becoming "well-adjusted, networked individuals," falling far short of such a vision. While we are networked, I am not convinced we are well-adjusted. Perhaps for good reason, as we've had very little time to adjust to many of the social networking software that we're engulfed in.

In another sense, maybe the networked individual is well-adjusted, but in a way that secures survival, not necessarily healthiness. The mediated individual is in a much more precarious negotiation of healthiness, desparately seeking attention in a world of too many options. As De Zengotita outlines, before CMC the individual was much less focused on the self, much more rooted in a world that was not tailered to her every desire. Today, however, this individual is over saturated in a world of too many options, causing strife and a deep-seated yearning for attention. The negative forms of this strife result in narcissism and extreme self-centeredness, which can be connected easily to unhealthiness.

Nevertheless, to explore the realities of either optimistic or pessimistic views of the networked and mediated environment, we need some way of studying the environment, some new form of ethnography. As Hine elaborates, the internet presents challenges to our notion of culture and the ways of studying culture. Instead of bounded units, culture in the mediated world is much more interconnected both in physical and informational terms. Yet, we know that culture is developing and reformulating despite the absence of defined boundaries. For her, this means that we end up having to abandon hopes of a holistic ethnographic description and instead follow the links and connections.

Hine's suggestion that holistic ethnography is not possible in the virtual world came as a shock to me as it is such a pillar of anthropology. Yet, and even though it frustrates me, I think she is right. We end up with a stark dichotomy when thinking about ethnography, we can attempt to encapsulate all nodes of the hyper-interconnected cultural mediascape or we can abandon holism and adopt personalisitic relativism, telling our story of our experience doing "fieldwork." Hine seems to suggest we tread the line between these two extremes, recognizing the limitations of trying to explain it all and the importance of the online cultures and how they are affecting humanity.

As I think about approaches to digital ethnography, I feel that the object of study is just as much the mediums that mediate digital relationships, as it is the people using the mediums. Traditional ethnography, with its emphasis on learning the native language, parallels this closely as a holistic approach necessitates the study of the language along with the people who speak it. Not only do ethnographers have to understand the mediums, but they have to engage in them completely to be able to interpret the experience from within.

Digital Ethnography - Final Trailer

2009-02-05T00:46:00.002-06:00

The technological advancement of the Industrial Revolution forever altered the way people relate to each other by bringing them closer together and giving them a more informed view of the world. Up until this point, extant technology limited the size of most social structures and the scientific understanding of the people within them. At risk of making an over-generalization, the world was much more tribal.

One of the unique features of a more tribal world is that people are more connected to each other; everyone knows and is known by all members of the tribe. The revolutionary advancement in technological production damaged the tribal structure and replaced it with anonymous social relations. Reflecting the componentiality of industrial labor, the individual's social relations and identity simultaneously bifurcated. As Berger et al. note, "the individual now becomes capable of experiencing himself in a double way: as a unique individual rich in concrete qualities and as an anonymous functionary."

The presently globalized world is far different from that of the Industrial Revolution, but it still suffers from a crisis of significance, with generationally increasing levels of both narcissism and apathy. The sense of uncertainty and personal unrest created by the anonymization of social relations and identity is only amplified by new media that exponentially increase our physical and informational connectedness. The hyper-individualization of the western world, and its perverse fixation on celebrity, is a likely response to this sense of anomie, always seeking to liberate individuals of their anonymity. I want to explore anomie from its inception and trace its impact on culture, society, and the individual in the current and future worlds.

Second Video, Second Trailer

2009-02-02T01:00:00.003-06:00

Here's my second trailer for Digital Ethnography. It was just as difficult as the first one, although I understood a little bit better the planning and type of thinking needed. Nonetheless, I'm not too happy to have spent half of my birthday creating this :(

I didn't have time to do any transitions or fine tuning, so consider it a rough draft.

Anonymity Articles App

2009-01-29T21:45:00.012-06:00

In response to Karl Fisch's request after Dr. Wesch posted information about the little web app I put together for the Digital Ethnography reading/research assignment, this is a little insight into how I created the app (Arvind also wrote on the Zoho blog). To create this app for the Digital Ethnography assignment I just modified an existing structure I created for Kansas State University Libraries. In it, my goal was to create an ultra-usable interface that would utilize both the expertise of library organization systems and web 2.0 technology.

By putting the reference books online in this format as a virtual annotated bibliography, my hope was to evoke serendipity in the users so that they can find interesting content based on its relationship to other content. In this vein, making the presentation very visual and very interactive was of prime importance.

The Reference Books app was actually based on a New Display Books app I created for similar purposes. I spent about a year working a few hours a week to learn javascript in order to make the app do what I wanted it to. Okay, enough babble, on to the nuts and bolts.

In order to create the Anonymity Articles page I grabbed the JSON feed from the Zoho Creator form that Dr. Wesch created. For the library instances, I setup custom forms to help drive the design. To do that I just went to the form view, clicked More Actions > Export Data > JSON Feed.

The JSON Feed is a feed tailered extremely well to javascript as it sends the information in the database in a preformed object. For non-coders, it just looks like one long string of text. This is ideal for javascript because it can then be parsed out into its component elements very easily. So, after copying the feed, I paste it into a script in the html page, which when run, goes to Zoho Creator and gets the database information.

Surrounding that script, there are a number of other scripts that are pulled into the page to do other things. There is a script from Zoho to use their API to create custom form interfaces to add entries to the database in the app, there is a script from Google to enable embedded book previews, there is a script from jQuery to aid in javascript effects and ease of javascript writing, and there is a script that I wrote to take the JSON feed from Zoho, parse it out, and inject that data into the interface of the page. Here is the javascript used for the anonymity articles, reference books, and new display books (for js pros, keep in mind I'm a self-taught newby).

As the html page is loaded, it grabs the data from Zoho, and my javacript file does all the work to get it to display and function appropriately. Most of the divs in the html file are empty because they are injected with content via the DOM with javascript. In the books version of this app, the javascript would also take the ISBN numbers from the books and query Google Books, Amazon, and LibraryThing for information about the books, book cover images, and book previews. The interface loads 10 actual entries at a time, and so everytime new entries are selected, the javascript queries those services ten times. Where it cannot get anything from them, a blank book cover image appears (in the case of articles, this happens with all the entries).

When an individual entry is clicked, the javascript uses jQuery and a jQuery plugin called Facebox to pop the entries up into a light-box. In the articles version this shows the summaries/abstracts and in the books version this shows a bigger book cover image, links to more information about the book, and a book description. In the books version, there is also the option for the user to add tags to the book, allowing folksonomy to help determine the organization.

The tags are collected from the whole JSON feed and then a function lists them alphabetically and determines how big they should look. When you click on a tag, it delimits the entry results on the left to only those entries that have that tag. The tag cloud modifies itself to show only the collective tags of those delimited entries, and thus you can continue to narrow the results (this is sometimes called faceted browsing). The same concept works with the custom search, also javascript driven.

This web app fits very well into the concept of "situated applications" that Zoho Creator is suited so well for. They have an excellent post about this concept and an enlighteningly simple graph to illustrate what situated apps are. Emerging web services enable us to create some amazingly customized web pages with relatively low cost on its creation. While this particular app took me well over a year to create, the vast majority of that time was spent learning basic coding skills.

I look forward to continuing to develop this idea. I am currently working on using hash tags to make the app interact with the browser's back/forward buttons and to give each entry listing its own url. I am also working on cleaning up the code as I learn better coding techniques, along with working on making it easier and easier for a lay-person to input their own data and get the app to work.

I hope that at least some of this is coherent and offers a little insight into how this application was created. I find it very difficult to write about given the amount of time and energy I've invested in it. Please feel free to leave comments and perhaps from them, I will create more targeted specific explanations of the components involved.

Digital Ethnography Project Proposal

2009-01-28T23:33:00.003-06:00

Here is my 250 word (or so, actually 270) project proposal for Digital Ethnography. After struggling to wrap my head around the concept of anonymity, I gained a good deal of clarity in the last couple of days. After Dr. Wesch laid out a likely road map for the overall project (the combination of the 16 students semester long efforts) I began to get a sense of the wider picture and saw what and how I could fit in.

While the topic is online anonymity, there is no way of addressing it without also delving deep into theoretical and structural history, identity, law and politics, culture, etc. In this case, by framing my project as an explanatory approach to what many feel is a "crisis of significance" in the world, I will have a wonderful opportunity to explore some deep theoretical insights while grounding them in societal, cultural, and individual realities. Rereading select passages from The Homeless Mind, I was inspired by the elucidation of the connection between structural realities and individual subjective experience.

The technological advancement of the Industrial Revolution forever altered the way people relate to each other by bringing them closer together and giving them a more informed view of the world. Up until this point, extant technology limited the size of most social structures and the scientific understanding of the people within them. At risk of making an over-generalization, the world was much more tribal.

One of the unique features of a more tribal world is that people are more connected to each other; everyone knows and is known by all members of the tribe. The revolutionary advancement in technological production damaged the tribal structure and replaced it with anonymous social relations. Reflecting the componentiality of industrial labor, the individual's social relations and identity simultaneously bifurcated. As Berger et al. note, "the individual now becomes capable of experiencing himself in a double way: as a unique individual rich in concrete qualities and as an anonymous functionary."

The presently globalized world is far different from that of the Industrial Revolution, but it still suffers from a crisis of significance, with generationally increasing levels of both narcissism and apathy. The sense of uncertainty and personal unrest created by the anonymization of social relations and identity is only amplified by new media that exponentially increase our physical and informational connectedness. The hyper-individualization of the western world, and its perverse fixation on celebrity, is a likely response to this sense of anomie, always seeking to liberate individuals of their anonymity. I want to explore anomie from its inception and trace its impact on culture, society, and the individual in the current and future worlds.

Digital Ethnography Trailer

2009-01-22T08:16:00.001-06:00

I have concluded that video editing/creation is an incredibly complex art form. There are so many elements to take into account that it is very difficult to pay attention to all the details and tell a story through the video. Compounding this is that it is a very visual form (obviously) and thus requires visualizing the end result in order to produce something. I don't know if this is because of the way my mind works, but I find this incredibly challenging. I liken the process to stretching muscles you've never stretched before, it feels like I'm stretching "brain muscles". New media consistently present us with this challenge, and I am reminded once more of just how difficult coping with a new media (and thus new way of thinking) can be.

This is the first video I've ever created. It is a trailer for the project I will be working on this semester in Digital Ethnography on Anonymity. I have been thinking about this project for months now, and I still don't feel like I have a good direction to take the project in. Anonymity is directly connected to identity, in fact they may even be opposites. What is identity? What is anonymity? How do digital media mediate these two concepts?

I have several small thoughts about these questions, but none are inclusive enough to grasp the big picture. I am fascinated by developmental psychology and would like to analyze applying certain models (Erikson, Kegan etc.) to the internet. In this vein, digital competency would need to be looked at, perhaps creating a developmental line for it. But, this is a big undertaking and I'm not sure it is the best way to approach anonymity. I would also like to do a quadrant analysis of anonymity, dissecting the range of perspectives with which we can look at the phenomenon.

Despite those and other ideas, this is my video. In it, I was trying to get at the idea that there are a plethora of "small selves" that we engage in and use to make up our identity. But, it is my opinion that these small selves are all relative parts to the whole that is our authentic self. The authentic self is absolute, and thus presents a dialectic between the relative selves. The internet, for those who engage in it, is objectively exposing all of our small selves to the world, which is simultaneously creating a small self crisis and an aggrandizement and celebration of the small self. Juxtaposing an anonymous video on negationism with a clearly not anonymous video on the authentic self, I hoped to show two different approaches to my question "who am I?"

In writing, it sounds like I had this grandiose idea that I then set to video, however the reality is much the opposite. After struggling with the "nuts and bolts" of video editing for the first time, these thoughts and this video just kind of emerged of its own volition.

On an unrelated note, check out my new comments system below! I figured out how to install Disqus in my template, so now you can leave a comment using a Disqus account, your Facebook account, or (appropriately) anonymously, and you can leave video comments with Seesmic too!

Discovering Bon Iver

2009-01-07T22:06:00.000-06:00

An amazing thing happened to me today. I discovered Bon Iver. This morning, my friend Felipe, sent me a couple of links (1 2) to some videos of the musicians Bon Iver. The videos are wonderfully magical as they immediately transported me from my cubicle back to Spain, perhaps not consequently, where I first met Felipe. There, I remembered the way Spain felt and the magical moments I had in atmospheres not dissimilar to those depicted in the videos. Felipe is a beautiful musician himself and would often capture a room and elevate it to what seemed like a whole different world with his guitar, voice, and charisma.

#93.1 - BON IVER - Lump Sum
by lablogotheque

Bon Iver has a fascinating story, one that I'm not surprised is the origin of this shockingly beautiful music.

#93.3 - BON IVER - For Emma, Forever Ago
by lablogotheque

Amazing music is truly transcendent for me, it lifts me up above my daily drama and proves to me once again that everything is going to be alright. It shows me beauty and connects me to something much larger and more important than myself.

For the gift of Bon Iver and Felipe's friendship, I am deeply grateful. Thank you.

Professor of the Year

2009-01-01T12:46:00.000-06:00

Back in November, I had the extreme honor and privilege to attend the 2008 U.S. Professor of the Year awards ceremony in Washington D.C. I was there to introduce my mentor and former professor, Dr. Michael Wesch, as the 2008 National Outstanding Doctoral and Research Universities Professor. After my first class with Dr. Wesch, I realized that there was something truly amazing about him; he showed me that good teaching is transformational as it facilitates the growth of both student and teacher in the process.

Popularly known on a global scale for his videos on YouTube about technology and education, I am so incredibly happy that Dr. Wesch is being recognized for his teaching on an equally grand scale. Below is the video of my introduction and Dr. Wesch's acceptance speech.

thesixtyone gem

2008-12-08T11:37:00.001-06:00

It'll make you smile

2008-12-07T20:06:00.001-06:00

Twitter Talk

2008-11-10T20:58:00.001-06:00

Last week I gave a Techbytes talk about Twitter, generational differences, and web 2.0.

Twitter? What's that? Nov. 06, 2008

In the current and ever evolving technological environment, we are presented with an increasing number of mediums through which we can communicate in our school, work, and personal lives. To compound this issue, we are also at a generational nexus point in which a new generation of young adults is graduating and entering work environments having grown up and gone through college versed in many of the new emergent mediums. This presentation will address some of the new forms of communication, expectations the new generation has for its work and school environment, and how we might more effectively and appropriately communicate.

Stream the video of this talk with Windows Media Player

Our Fourth Instinct

2008-11-02T11:35:00.001-06:00

This seems to me to indicate support for the "God" impulse extending to all sentient beings, not just humans.

The well-known psychologist Ronald Siegel has written about the drive of human beings to seek out alternative states of consciousness. These are seen as a fourth major instinctual drive among all animal species. Siegel has documented hundreds of cases where animals seek out and consume natural psychoactive substances. De Rios, too, in her cross-cultural studies has explored beliefs that animals teach human beings about hallucinogenic plants.

It's amazing to me how pervasive this instinct is in myself and in the wider society around me. In recent explorations of raw dieting, I have become very aware of the mind-altering effects of ordinary food. I find hunger and the resultant cravings to be a normally unconscious force that when revealed to the conscious eye are tremendously powerful.

"We" are coming

2008-10-28T20:23:00.000-05:00

Integral Politics

2008-10-24T12:23:00.001-05:00

Integral Institute has spun off a for profit company, Integral Life. Their new social website launched back in August and new content is starting to come out. One of the latest is a wonderful treatment of Integral Politics in the context of the current election. In one of the modules they go in and dissect/analyze McCain and Obama's acceptance speeches. It's really nice to hear something out of the Integral community on the current political situation.

Dear Mr. President

2008-10-24T12:18:00.001-05:00

Michael Pollan writes a letter to the next president of the United States. As is his style, he craftily weaves together how the top 3 priorities of the presidential candidates and shows how they all could be dealt with by taking action about Food.

Best part of the article, Pollan recommends the new president turn the White House lawn into a massive garden.

On Blogging

2008-10-23T13:54:00.001-05:00

Great article from Andrew Sullivan about blogging. I've been following him for a couple months and have found his blogging style to be both overwhelming and invigorating.

Alone in front of a computer, at any moment, are two people: a blogger and a reader. The proximity is palpable, the moment human—whatever authority a blogger has is derived not from the institution he works for but from the humanness he conveys. This is writing with emotion not just under but always breaking through the surface. It renders a writer and a reader not just connected but linked in a visceral, personal way. The only term that really describes this is friendship. And it is a relatively new thing to write for thousands and thousands of friends.

Torturing Democracy

2008-10-23T09:28:00.001-05:00

Lindsay and I watched this last weekend. It's a pretty sobering and damning account of what our country has done. I can't say I'm surprised, but it's completely different after watching it and hearing accounts from the prisoners and others who stood up to this tragedy.

It's very clear that this behavior on behalf of our country has made the world a much more dangerous place and our position in it much more perilous. The irony would be funny were it not so tragic.

Raw/Living Foods

2008-10-23T09:15:00.000-05:00

If you're interested in raw/living foods, you might want to check out the Rawkathon going on this week. Steve Pavlina blogged about it. I've been listening the last two nights. It's nice to hear voices of people who have made the commitment to raw foods and have pioneered the way for others to follow.

Lindsay and I are planning to attempt a month trial after our 5-day trial went fairly well.

I Voted

2008-10-23T09:11:00.001-05:00

I voted yesterday. I must say it was a much different feeling than four years ago when I had to vote from Spain. The sense of hope slowly building in me for several months made the occasion much more important than it would be otherwise. My sense of hope makes me equally nervous.

Oh yeah, if you didn't know, you can vote early in most states. May be important as the record turnout expected could render election day quite a mess.

Creative Commons

2008-10-15T11:43:00.001-05:00

Vote

2008-10-02T12:50:00.001-05:00

thesixtyone gem

2008-09-11T16:17:00.001-05:00

Politics

2008-09-05T21:04:00.000-05:00

I generally hate them. I feel like politics brings the worst out of everyone. I feel elections bring the worst to the forefront. I find it hard to pay attention to politics and not get utterly depressed. With that said, I have some thoughts on the current situation.

While I was shocked at the McCain/Palin ticket, I have thus far been much more shocked by the reaction of the majority of those who oppose McCain/Palin, Republicans, conservatism etc. In some of the mainstream media, in the blogosphere, in the twittersphere, and in friendfeed, I've found it odd that everyone's reaction seems to be that she is a good pick from the democratic perspective and that McCain clearly made a mistake. They then go on to demonstrate factual evidence about her inexperience, her unfactual statements, and all of the controversial aspects about her personal and professional life. While I agree with most of what is being talked about, and I think it is really important, I find it upsetting that few seem to recognize that this is only one perspective to look at the situation with. This is largely a perspective that values "truth" and the facts. Coming from this perspective, the world operates and relies on truth and thus untruth cannot prevail. This translates to the idea that if we expose the "truth" about McCain/Palin that Obama/Biden will inevitably win.

I find this shocking because from an integral/developmental/spiral dynamics perspective, this is just one worldview/lens with which we can look through. Namely, it is the orange scientific rational conventional worldcentric worldview. While many Americans are operating at/coming from this perspective, it is not the only worldview and not even a majority. More strikingly, it does little for any worldview below it in the developmental holarchy, which are also the worldviews the republicans get their base from. The amber/blue ethnocentric mythic membership blue collar worldview has an entirely different set of "qualifications" with which they would judge a candidate. Instead of truth, facts, logic, and experience, they are looking for whether the candidate is "one of us", "with us or against us", and thus focus a lot on values and other cultural mores (mythic god religion). The red egocentric, selfish, pre-pre conventional worldview has an even more limited perspective in which the qualifications of the candidate are more personally related and less connected to larger realities. So, they're likely to be very influenced by the people around them in influencing them about who to vote for. As egocentric, it's really about them anyway, so the choice of candidate has to do with seemingly arbitrary qualities such as "I like him", "she is funny", "he's boring", "my parents vote for them so I do to". Just like amber/blue, red relies upon logic and facts even less. Better put, they still rely on logic and facts it's just that they're egocentrically verified (in contrast to ethnocentric facts and worldcentric facts).

What this means to me is that pointing out facts from a logical scientific perspective is only one of several perspectives that needs to be addressed. And, with the issue of boomeritis, it seems like development dictates that this is a really hard task for left/democrats to accomplish because they fly predominately from orange to green. What this means is that if Obama is coming from and operates at green during the election, it will all backfire due to boomeritis. I think this is primarily what's happened for the last two elections. Democrats have come from green/orange and their green sentiments have rendered them unable to see the whole spectrum of development. As happens with boomeritis, they have come to a place of flatland where they are no longer able to make judgements and thus cannot effectively fight back against opponents. Red worldviews see this as weakness and pounce, taking the power. Since the republicans have a stranglehold on both red and amber/blue, it seems they have the developmentally demographic advantage.

However, the x-factor is second tier yellow/integral consciousness. I have read several people lamenting the absence of integral commentary on the election and specifically on Obama. I myself have been a little surprised not to read more people making declarative claims about his center of gravity. Nonetheless, I think this election will tell us both a lot about where he is coming from (green or higher?) and potentially will tell us a lot about the effectiveness of integral theory in one of the most important real world event/decisions for our future. My hypothesis is that the only way Obama can win this is if he is operating healthily from at least second tier yellow. While I suspect and hope that he is, I hesitate to understand how I am to make a judgement about any other individual's center of gravity (especially in the context that I am not so confident of knowing my own center of gravity). So, I've kind of slipped into this place where I'm allowing the outcome to tell me about the center of gravity of Obama. Consequently, I'm also putting integral theory and integral concepts up for debate because I think a great deal of evidence points to Obama being integrally minded. However, if he is not aware of and/or does not effectively address the simple problem of worldview I noted above, then I give him no chance.

Raw Food Trial: Day 5

2008-08-30T14:26:00.000-05:00

On day 5 of our trial, yesterday, I woke up with tons of energy. I actually woke up an hour before my alarm clock, something that never happens to me! I think it is because I forced myself to eat more on Thursday night. It also could be accumulating effects of the raw cleanse. Lindsay said she woke up and just wasn't hungry. We've both had strangely long periods throughout the week where we just weren't hungry. I've heard this is a characteristic that happens with a raw diet, you don't need three meals and often times have long stretches of not being hungry.

For Lindsay, the overall effect of the week was feeling "cleaner". She feels like her body is more clean and clear and feels liberated from needing cooked foods. I think this is a good way of describing the way I feel as well. In fact, I'm writing this at 2:30pm on Saturday (day 6) and neither of us has eaten cooked food yet. One thing I am worried about doing is putting cooked food up on this pedestal, due to cravings or hunger, and then getting totally disappointed in it. It seems like it would be kind of wasteful to go back to cooked food and come to find out that it's not that great anyway. As I've mentioned before, Lindsay and I are both the type who really enjoy pushing ourselves to extremes and challenging ourselves to always take that next step. In that vein, it's really nice to do something goal oriented like this together because we are able to support and push each other. I suppose we already have the daily challenge of raising a child, but this is nice because it is a choice we made to make our lives different/better. I strongly believe we are our best in relationship when we're working as a team on something.

At the end of the week I weighed 180.5. Having forgotten to weigh myself at the beginning of the week, I would venture a guess that I lost up to 5 lbs. One of the main things that attracts me to doing something like this is the challenge and the unfolding that happens when trying something new. The unfolding is really the ability to see something from a new perspective which comes about by performing an injunction, an experiment (just like the scientific process). In this case, I can see what life would be like on a raw diet. I can see and appreciate a perspective that experiences cooked food as a drug, perhaps an extremely addictive drug. And at the end of the day, even raw food is a drug. Which leads to one of the most intriguing parts of this whole thing. Food, like drugs, possessions, money, emotions, is just another part of this relative plane of existence and with it is characterized by impermanence, duality, and relativity. And thus, in the big picture, it's not that important. Granted, on the relative plane, it's really damn important! But in my life I've had numerous experiences of something different, something permanent, something singular, something ultimate. In this case, a different plane of existence, an ultimate plane. The ascetic life attracts me because I think it has the chance of giving me more easy access to this ultimate plane. And in this vein, perhaps the less time I devote and preoccupy my attention with what I am going to eat the easier it will be to re-purpose that time and energy towards more ultimate concerns.

What I am really striving for though, is a balance. I want to be as healthy as I can be in this body and in this physical life so that I can be a better person in the world. So that I have more energy for those around me whom I love so much. So that I have more energy and clarity to explore my own consciousness. So that I have more energy, inspiration, and insight to be an impactful presence in this world in a more global sense. And so one last reason for doing this trial and hopeful outcome is that in doing this we can be an inspiration for anyone who comes across this to try something new in their own life. To give back the inspiration to the world in payment for the inspiration we were given by those individuals who took innumerable leaps and trials before us. And for me personally, as I've said in a previous post, I want to be the type of force that pushes you off the edge when you're staring at it wondering if you should/could take a step.

I'll provide more updates if we end up extending the trial...

Raw Food Trial: Day 1
Raw Food Trial: Day 2
Raw Food Trial: Day 3
Raw Food Trial: Day 4

Disappointment

2008-08-29T20:12:00.000-05:00

I am struggling to deal with what I am claiming to be a generational and personality difference. I created a new format for the InfoTech Tuesday newsletter website utilizing my knowledge of best practices and principles in order to drastically reduce the amount of work it takes to publish it weekly, to enhance the interface giving users multiple options for how they want to view the news, and to include many feedback loops so that readers could be more than just passive receivers of the newsletter. I put a lot into the project, as I do with anything I commit myself to. After a very successful launch and good level of reader participation I thought everything had gone perfectly. A day later I started to hear rumblings that someone somewhere was not happy about what was going on on the website.

I still don't know who instigated this or exactly what their motivation was, but today I had to remove commenting, remove all of my own comments, and remove all profile information. I thought that I was getting a chance to be a part of a very progressive move on behalf of the university. Come to find out, they probably didn't know what I was creating and don't seem to think it is a good idea. After talking with several people, all of them trying to calm me down mind you, I am starting to see that the features I built in may be threatening to the highest levels of the university, namely the people concerned with the image of K-State. I can see that this type of transition is a big step in a radically new direction. But my way of dealing with this is to stand behind you while you're contemplating taking that step, and push! I am this way by my nature, but I also know that this is what is needed because for us humans, change is scary. It's a scary step to have to make, but the other side is so amazingly better that you wonder why you hesitated.

In addition, I have expectations for organizations in terms of websites and web presences. As a user I have always been disappointed in K-States services. I really thought I was going to be able to be a part of changing it for the better so that others wouldn't have the same disappointment I had.

I guess this is a way of calming myself down, because as you can tell, I'm not too happy. I'm sure I'll feel differently tomorrow, and certainly won't remember this 5 years from now. Nonetheless, I think there is something really concrete going on, and I think it's happening everywhere. I think we're reaching a generational nexus point and my angst is a manifestation of it. I think our institutions currently have no way of dealing with the clash between the elders in charge and the young people doing the work and wanting to go about it differently. I've been running into this too often to think there isn't a pattern here.

I was so upset I vlogged for the first time. What do you know!

Raw Food Trial: Day 4

2008-08-29T08:37:00.000-05:00

After waking up tired and hungry, I had a pretty good day yesterday. Overall it seems to be getting a bit easier, probably because the anxiety of the change is fading. For instance, when going home from work yesterday and Wednesday, I didn't experience the same anxiety about what I was going to eat for dinner. Last night I made a conscious effort to eat more. I finished off the soup we made Monday night and had a full glass of fresh carrot, orange, ginger, and apple juice. I think I do better consuming raw liquids than solids. There is just something about the crunchiness of raw fruits and vegetables that has always bothered me. I'm much better now, but when I was a kid I wouldn't eat anything raw and crunchy.

Lindsay feels like it is getting easier and easier. We both really like the challenge and the commitment of doing something like this, almost to the point of making it worth any physical or psychological pain we might experience (it's part of the challenge after all!). She commented last night that there is something liberating, freeing about making a commitment like this and sticking to it. I very much agree and think she puts it really well. On a practical level even, the more restrictive you declare your diet, the easier it is to choose what to eat - less choices. I found this out a little over two years ago when I stopped eating meat. It really made eating in a restaurant so much easier because instead of something like 40 choices, I had 2.

On the physical level, both of our bodies feel a little better/healthier, but not significantly enough to say that it is most certainly because of the raw diet. I feel that it would take about 4 times this long to start to feel the most potent and beneficial physical effects I've read about. Knowing the end of our trial is near brings a little bit of sadness to me. I always want to take advantage of the situation and so part of me feels like we should keep going and continue to push ourselves. This is especially poignant knowing how difficult it is to get started (make the decision, commit to it, deal with the initial anxieties/cravings). Part of me feels like it would be a waste to stop now. The other part can't wait to eat some real food!!!

And so we enter day 5.

Raw Food Trial: Day 1
Raw Food Trial: Day 2
Raw Food Trial: Day 3
Raw Food Trial: Day 5

Raw Food Trial: Day 3

2008-08-28T08:11:00.001-05:00

At the close of day 3, I was very glad there are only 2 days left! Yesterday my diet was much the same as the previous two days. For dinner we had leftovers from the first two nights plus a small pea soup I made and a cucumber, onion, and tomato salad Lindsay made. Thanks to Adam, I weighed myself, something I unfortunately forgot to do at the beginning. After work I weighed 182.5 and at bedtime I weighed 180. This is about ten lbs. below my average, but I think I started losing weight a couple of weeks ago. I didn't experience the cravings so intensely yesterday, partly because my mind was preoccupied with some issues at work and partly because Lindsay discovered that eating soaked oats as a cereal is very filling! Lindsay also remarked that yesterday was much easier than the first two days and that she didn't experience very intense cravings.

My hunch is that I'm not eating as much as I should be. If I were to continue eating just raw foods, I think I would need to start eating more. Throughout my life I've been a picky eater and so I've generally had a difficult time eating enough food to maintain anything more than a rail thin physique. Over the last few years things have gotten better, which I think correlates with taking control of my diet by cooking my own meals and discovering the types of foods that I really enjoy. I have yet to find any entree-like foods on a raw diet that I really enjoy. On the contrary, Lindsay does enjoy salads and other raw dishes. I think that she could realistically make a raw food diet semi-permanent or permanent if she wanted to.

This morning I woke up very hungry and tired. I don't know how much that has to do with the diet and how much of it has to do with being Thursday. I generally get tireder and tireder throughout the week. Even though for the first two days I seemed a bit more energetic, yesterday and so far today aren't sustaining those levels.

Raw Food Trial: Day 1
Raw Food Trial: Day 2
Raw Food Trial: Day 4
Raw Food Trial: Day 5

Raw Food Trial: Day 2

2008-08-26T21:40:00.000-05:00

At the close of day 2, I am now able to start noticing some patterns. My first impression is that during the day I notice little difference to a normal day. Instead of oatmeal when I wake up, I ate a banana. Throughout the day I drank my green smoothie and felt little need for nuts and dried fruit. I made a glass of fresh juice with our juicer at lunch (an orange, three carrots, and a nub of ginger) and ate some bulgar wheat which I soaked in water for an hour, with nuts, dried fruit, and some almond milk.

However, upon leaving work and heading home I noticed the same intense cravings as I had yesterday. I guess I'm hungry at that point anyway, but I seem to crave some sort of comfort food. I start to get anxious about what I will eat and then I begin to have visions about pasta, potatoes, beans, bread, chips... I think I have these sensations normally, but normally I would calm myself down by planning what I would cook that evening to satisfy that craving. Throughout the evening I snacked on a variety of little things while Lindsay made a thai salad with spicy peanut dressing. The salad tonight was much better than the soup last night, but was still not near the same as a normal dinner. I am finding it very difficult to feel full and satiated. Right now I feel full, but it is a very light full. I guess I'd say I am full, but not satiated. The benefit of that is that I don't really feel drowsy or weighed down. It seems to give me a light airy feeling, which I would guess will translate into more energy the longer I eat only raw.

We both remarked all evening about how intensely we were craving certain foods and how we couldn't wait for it to be over. I suppose that's normal. One thing that I keyed upon is that it seems to be so much work to eat raw foods. By this I mean literal physical chewing. I find myself eating 4 or 5 bites of whatever I'm eating to come to the conclusion that it's just not worth the effort. Another day comes to a close with me doubting the efficacy of this whole thing. I know I can do it, but I think it will have to be on pure will power, rather than some sort happy balance that I've found. The good news is that aside from cravings, I've noticed no adverse physical effects. If anything I feel lighter and a bit more attentive.

Raw Food Trial: Day 1
Raw Food Trial: Day 3
Raw Food Trial: Day 4
Raw Food Trial: Day 5

Raw Food Trial: Day 1

2008-08-26T11:23:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, my partner Lindsay and I embarked upon a 5 day raw food trial in which we will only eat raw foods. We are also both vegetarian, so we won't be eating an raw meat either. I have some friends in Ohio who are vegan and sometimes experiment with periods of raw-heavy diets. They were the first to introduce me to the concept of raw foods. Apart from the environmental benefits, I've read pretty amazing accounts about the health gains, energy gains, and mental clarity gains from eating only raw foods. It has been fascinating for me to even think about this concept and about the difference between raw and cooked foods.

For me, going vegetarian wasn't that big of a step or that hard of a challenge. I found very few times where my body craved meat, and most of them occurred within the first three months of the transition. On the contrary, I think committing myself to not eating cooked foods will be a gigantic challenge. I love to cook, I love to eat cooked foods, and I'm not too fond of salads and other raw foods.

During day 1 of our trial, we both experienced hunger throughout the later parts of the day. We found that eating didn't seem to fill us up and so we both rather continuously snacked on nuts, seeds, and dried fruit, kim-chee salad, fruit, and green smoothies (spinach, chard, bananas, celery, water) all day. Last night we made a raw thai coconut soup, which was quite a laborious process. It provided me a little more comfort in feeling full, but I still felt strange. So far the biggest challenge for me seems to be a mental one and a creative one exemplified by the question, "what am I going to eat?!". I think I am making it worse by getting anxious about this question. It's just very difficult considering almost all of the meals I'd ordinarily fix are thrown out the window.

Overall day 1 wasn't too bad. I am pensive thinking about the potentially pure physical forms of withdrawal that could be coming (I've read accounts of intense headaches, body pains, and stomach aches).

Raw Food Trial: Day 2
Raw Food Trial: Day 3
Raw Food Trial: Day 4
Raw Food Trial: Day 5

a few thesixtyone gems

2008-08-25T21:18:00.000-05:00

I bow in appreciation to the creators, users, and musicians at thesixtyone. My friend Adam says that a good heuristic device for determining whether a media is worth using is if it adds value to your life. The new music I've discovered on thesixtyone is worth it's weight in gold and has added immeasurable value to my life.

And, I'm so glad that I don't have to worry about the site falling apart due to pressures from the record industry.

Another Lesson in Expectation and Humility

2008-07-19T18:29:00.000-05:00

In my 4 or so years doing serious and semi-serious web development, I have learned countless lessons. I have learned how to modify existing web spaces, how to create from scratch, how to write html, xhtml, css, and javascript, how to create and edit images, and how to utilize an amalgam of free resources available to us nowadays in order to produce functional web spaces at low cost. All of these things are straightforward and externally locuted skills I've picked up along the way. However, they pale in comparison to the countless internal and emotional lessons I've learned (and continue to learn) in the course of this mini-adventure I've been on.

From the very first seriously creative project I undertook, to create a collaborative online space for Student for Environmental Action, until now I have consistently run into the same internal emotional battle. At various points I've dealt with it better or worse, but I am still baffled by its ability to put me on my ass. In most of my online projects I am expressing a vast array of both my external skills and my internal creativity. When a project grabs my attention, it usually takes hold of me, only to let go when I either see it to fruition or give up on it (to be pushed under in my subconscious). I end up putting so much of myself into these projects, physically and emotionally, that by the time I am ready to show it to someone, I have built up massive expectations for their response. I think I am looking for this person to match the level and intensity that I've put into whatever web space it is with her/his excitement for what I've done. To date, this has never happened, and so I'm perpetually dissappointed. Sometimes I can just brush off the disappointment. Sometimes it refuels me. But other times, the disappointment devastates me and I manage to let it invade all nooks and crannies of my life.

In the latest episode, I recently worked very hard and very solidly for nearly three months on a single project. I had developed a new book display virtual interface for the library that I work for throughout the fall '07 semester. It was a relatively simple web page/app, using javascript to parse and display everything entirely on the client side. Very few people in the library knew about it, but those who did were pretty complimentary. Around mid-May I began hearing from some of my colleagues that they were very impressed with the new books page and some even expressed interest in extending the idea to their own collections of books. Not only this, but a blog post on the central library blog was created drawing attention to the page I had created. This relatively unsolicited support for the work I had done floored me. I was so excited that someone was interested in what I was doing and even wanted me to implement the idea in a different context. So, I set to work further developing it to add a suite of key features I thought it needed.

Nearly three months down the road I was ready to emerge with a new version (it still needs work mind you). The excitement of feeling like people, my colleagues among them, were paying attention and interested in what I was doing propelled me onward. In this excitement I began working on the project at home and off the clock (something I promised myself I'd never do). The more I worked the more excited I got about the interesting and new features I was able to throw together (dedicated search, user-generated tags, enhanced labels, sorting, light box popups, breadcrumbs). About two weeks ago I decided it was time to stop developing new features and cleanup what I had, getting it ready for release.

Last Wednesday I had it ready and sent it off to be put to the live servers. After checking to see that it was working properly, I sent out an email on Thursday to some of my colleagues, those who had been supportive in the past. In it, I included details about the new version and details about he amount of work I had put into it. With my excitement about the new features and my relief to be done with it for a while, I honestly expected to hear back rave reviews. I expected that many of them would reply to me with praise and even suggest that another blog post be created noting the changes. Since most of us work at computers all day and check email constantly, I figured it wouldn't take long. To my surprise, it did. Only one person responded noting the changes and congratulating me. I was devestated. I am devestated. I put a smile on my face and went on with my days (checking my email and getting excited at the appearance of every new message for the chance that it could be something about my work), either ignoring my disappointment or rationalizing it, only to let it creep into my mood and relationships in shadow form.

I write all this not to invoke response from whoever might read it, and not so much to get my emotions out in cathartic fashion. I write this because it viscerally and intensely brings up a core life experience. I want to get mad about this. I want to be mad at my colleagues and mad at the world. But how can that be? That would imply that someone external to me is at fault for my own inner state. How can I honestly be upset about this when my expectations for how my work will be received are both so massive and so prescripted that no one could possibly live up to them? In this vein, how pompous and arrogant am I to have such expectations; as if what I have done is some feat worthy of worldly recognition?! And so, I think I need to own up to my disappointment and anger and be accountable for/to it. To clearly understand that I am the owner of my emotions and the creator of my emotions. To clearly evaluate the motivations behind what I set out to do in the first place, and who I set out to do it for. On a conceptual level, I get this. I understand that I'm creating my own emotional rat race. But in the real world, in my real life, I don't know how to deal with it or stop it.

I honestly don't think I can or should blame myself entirely because it is more complicated than that. I see a proportionally equivalent relationship in the amount of effort and creativity I put into something and the level of expectation I have. I am constantly pushing myself to the next level of creative expression because I feel like it is an expression not limited to my finite self and corporeal body. I feel like in fully expressing creativity, I am just a vehicle through which flows the lifeforce of the all. I also feel that connection to this lifeforce requires a humility that goes beyond the definition and scope of the word humble. It requires a certain opening and surrendering. What I want to be able to do is be that vehicle for creativity and remain ultimately humble. What I am finding through this life experience, is that those two things are at odds with each other. It seems the more creativity I surrender to, the more sacrifice I make, the more creative and effective the end product of my creation, AND the more I have expectations for how it will be received. I feel this contradiction intimately and don't know what to do about it.

Worldly success tells me to push on. Emotional and spiritual well-being tells me to stop. But I don't believe in these two being at odds with each other. I don't "buy it" that I have to choose. I don't want to settle for "either/or". Where's my "yes/and"? What am I missing?

How to fully manifest... how to be fully creative... how to have right intention, and thus humility...

thesixtyone Gem

2008-07-15T21:17:00.000-05:00

Punjabi Samosa Recipe

2008-07-02T23:18:00.000-05:00

A couple of people have asked for the recipe I use to make samosas. I've been making them for almost two years and have never been disappointed. All credit goes to my girlfriend Lindsay for buying me the Betty Crocker's Indian Home Cooking (K-State Libraries) book from which comes this recipe and almost all of my Indian cooking knowledge.

* Note, I've modified the recipe in several places, so this is not verbatim out of the cookbook.

20 Pastry Shells (10 Servings)

Pastry Dough:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chilled butter, cut into thin slices
1/2 cup cold water

Filling:

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoon cumin seed
1 1/2 medium onion (I use red), finely chopped (3/4 cup)
1 1/2 tablespoon finely chopped gingerroot
4 1/2 medium red potatoes (1 1/2 pounds or 3 cups - I usually use russets), peeled, cooked and cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1 1/2 cups frozen green peas, thawed
3/8 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 1/2 tablespoon coriander seed, ground
1 tablespoon mango powder (amchur - available at international food store and Indian food store) or 1 1/2 Tablespoon lime or lemon juice
3 - 4 1/2 fresh Thai, serrano, or cayenne chilies, finely chopped (I usually use serrano)
1 1/2 teaspoon cumin seed, ground
1 tablespoon salt
Vegetable oil for deep-frying

Make Pastry Dough:

Mix flour and salt in medium bowl. Cut in butter, using pastry blender or rubbing mixture between palms of hands, until mixture looks like coarse bread crumbs.
Add water, 2 tablespoons at a time, mixing by hand or with wooden spoon. Continue adding enough water to bring dough together into a ball that is neither sticky nor dry. Knead in bowl or on lightly floured surface 2 to 3 minutes or until dough is smooth. Roll dough into 2-inch-thick log. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 30 minutes but no longer than 2 days.

Make Filling:

Heat 3 tablespoons of oil in wok or deep 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add whole cumin seed; sizzle 30 seconds.
Stir in onion and gingerroot. Cook 2 to 3 minutes, stirring constantly, until onion is golden brown and no longer crunchy (be careful not to scald the gingerroot on the bottom of the pan when adding).
Stir in remaining ingredients except oil; remove from heat. Cool completely, 20 to 30 minutes. (if not cooled completely before assembly, hot filling melts butter in dough, breaking down the dough - I have refrigerated the filling overnight without problems, just make sure to get it back to room temperature before frying so that the end product doesn't have cold spots in the middle - I have also had problems assembling samosas in a non-air-conditioned house in the summertime, culprit = butter softening in dough)

Assemble Samosas:

Cut dough into 10 slices. Work with only one slice of dough at a time; cover and refrigerate remaining dough. Roll each slice of dough on lightly floured surface into a 6-inch circle.
Cut each dough circle in half. Spoon as much filling as will fit (usually one big spoonful) onto center of each half; take care not to overfill or pastry will burst and assembly will be difficult. Brush edges with small amount of water. Fold each half over filling to form a triangle; press edges together to seal completely (loose seals will leak when fried). Place on a floured plate to prevent sticking while working with remaining dough (if let set too long at room temp, wet filling will make dough on underside soggy, flip occasionally, refrigerate, or fry immediately). Repeat with remaining dough. (Samosas can be assembled up to 2 hours before frying; refrigerate uncovered on a plate or cookie sheet generously dusted with flour).
Heat oil (2 to 3 inches deep) in wok or Dutch oven over medium-high heat until thermometer inserted in oil reads 350 degrees.
Carefully place samosas in hot oil without overcrowding and fry 1 to 2 minutes (book says 4 to 6 minutes, I don't use thermometer in oil so I may be frying at a higher temperature), turning occasionally, until golden brown. Remove with slotted spoon; drain on paper towels.
Serve samosas as is or with chutneys. (the pastry is delicate and will not remain crispy for more than 12 hours, to extend crispiness, make sure not to cover samosas - leave in open air)

Author's Notes

It's best to work on one round of dough at a time and keep the remainder in the fridge. Chilled dough will be a little stiff to roll out at first, but it's much easier to shape it into triangles.
Leftover fried samosas can be frozen for up to a month. Thaw samosas overnight in refrigerator before heating. To heat, place on a cookie sheet and warm in a 300 degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until centers of samosas are hot.

And there you have it. Any questions?

Communication at Work

2008-06-30T21:30:00.000-05:00

I've recently been thinking a lot about both organizational structuring and the forms of communication used at work. On a personal level, while I enjoy email and probably use it inappropriately at times, I increasingly feel like email is the bane of the corporate and academic worlds. At work I repeatedly find it quite confusing to figure out which form of communication is most appropriate in any given situation. I frequently waste a good deal of time at work processing email that is either inappropriate or misdirected (some of my colleagues spend up to half their day going through email). I also know that I often need to brainstorm ideas or ask quick questions of people. I have found instant messaging to be a boon to my productivity and creativity by giving me the opportunity to run ideas by people in real-time. Just as importantly, IM helps me to know when and if people are available. Even if they are not updating their statuses, I quickly find out if they are available by their response, or lack there of. With new IM platforms being developed and integrated (gtalk, facebook, meebo), I find it an interesting time to be thinking about new possibilities.

If we are all sitting at our computers processing email for most the day anyway, then why don't we start using more synchronous forms of communication that would render many of those emails obsolete?

I'm certainly not the first person to have these thoughts, but not having seen any solutions to this dilemma, I've latched onto the idea and the chance to come up with some practical approaches. While many espouse the Death of Email as our inevitable future, and many more offer practical solutions to solving your own email crisis, I have found few practical suggestions for enterpriselike implementations of new forms of communication. I am encouraged that in my academic workplace I am not alone in at least pondering these types of ideas, but I see little impotace moving in the direction of testing and implementation. So, I want to start developing a concept that would be something like a communications portal. I think we can create guidelines and rules for how to use forms of communication, but there is very little regulation or ability to regulate such things in the real workplace. This leads me to think that what is needed is a Place for a new way of communicating. My hope is that it would, if designed right, function like a magnet bringing people into new ways of communication by a bit of serendipity (giving them what they want without them knowing it).

I wrote up a few thoughts on the matter one afternoon, which goes along with a post by my friend Adam who is grappling with similar concepts in a different environment.

Any ideas?

Integral in depth

2008-05-08T01:14:00.000-05:00

integral praxis: A Brief History of Holons

I have benefited greatly from encountering Mark Edwards both in the above link (and here) and in a 3 part series of talks with Ken Wilber on Integral Naked. In his paper on a basic understanding of Holons within the context of the larger philosophical discussion, he outlines very well Holons, how Ken Wilber uses them, and why they are so pivotal to avoiding the fragmentary and disappointing nature of so many of the academic fields we find in universities and in practice. I recommend the paper to anyone interested in Ken Wilber, Integral, or more simply, why I think Ken's work has been so important to me. Mark does a great job expressing clearly what was once a grand solution to the overwhelming angst I felt for the education system.

http://in.integralinstitute.org/talk.aspx?id=626

In the three part series of talks, Ken and Mark go quite in depth into integral theory. They make a clear distinction between quadrants and quadrivia, even as they somewhat disagree. This is something I had never heard about before, but a dilemma I certainly have run into over and over when trying to apply quadrants to real applications. They also talk about the criticism that is out there for Ken's work, something I had not heard Ken directly address before. Much of his attitude is somewhat arrogant, but at this point I cannot blame him. Mark mentions that he never expected Ken to respond to all his critics out there on the web, primarily because that type of criticism is located outside the realm of proper critique, namely peer review. Hearing them talk about this issue for a few minutes was very helpful for me and assuaged a number of concerns I have and have had when pouring through the critical stuff out on the web. Another unique thing about the talks is that Mark actually has some very poignant questions for Ken about some fairly deep issues with integral theory. I found this to be quite a relief because so many of the things I read and hear tend to be divorced from any sort of well thought out and educated questioning of Ken and the theory. Lastly, they went into what Ken calls Integral Math, which is a way of accounting for the quadrants and quadrivia (perspectives) involved in any event. This was another new thing that I had not heard before and helped me to understand how Ken himself would go about applying the theoretical model to any real world situation. I was very intrigued by the approach and am looking forward to going deeper. I recommend these talks on IN to anyone looking to get into the nitty gritty of the theoretical issues and how their application can be approached.

An Interesting Week

2008-04-24T20:49:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting week. This week I had the opportunity to meet and have discussions with two prominent people who I never expected I'd have the chance to talk with.

On Tuesday Bob Stein, founder of The Institute for the Future of the Book, came to visit my professor/advisor/friend Dr. Mike Wesch here in Manhattan, KS, of all places. Apparently they met and formed a mutual respect and friendship at a conference that Dr. Wesch recently attended. Bob wanted to come and see what Dr. Wesch was up to with his digital ethnography project and to meet and talk with Dr. Wesch's students. In addition, he gave a talk on campus attended primarily by librarians and dig eth students. He gave a presentation oriented around an introduction to himself and how his ideas have transformed over time.

After the talk I had the fortune to go out to dinner with him and a few others. We ate good food and talked about technology, the emerging possibilities, the few educators out there trying to apply current technological possibilities to pedagogy, and the possibilities of Bob's software Sophie. I am continually amazed by occurrences such as these, the opportunities that spring up every once in a while to meet and converse with truly inspirational and influential people.

If that was not enough of a privilege, on Wednesday I got to chat on the phone with Sean Esbjorn-Hargens for an hour and a half. Sean is the creator of the Integral Theory program at John F. Kennedy University, the first fully accredited program in Integral Studies. Sean has been in and around the Integral movement for over 10 years, a founding member/manager of Integral Institute, and good friend and colleague of Ken Wilber. I was totally flattered that he would be willing to talk with me and be so generous with his time. After inquiring about the Integral Theory program, I raised some questions about some of the controversial issues surrounding Integral Theory and Ken Wilber. Sean was recommended as someone who intimately knows about the controversial issues and might be a helpful voice to get a balanced view. From that, the program coordinator John Scheunhage set me up with a phone conversation.

From the conversation I gleaned a number of useful perspectives that have and will help orient my future relationship with the Integral movement. The immediate and most important of these points was his affirmation of my suspicion that things are changing rapidly in the integral movement and that the last 3 years have seen a radical progression. One mark of this progression has been a distancing from Ken Wilber based on the reality that Ken Wilber != Integral. Sean's focus is multi-faceted, but his "meta"-focus is on trying to make Integral Theory an academic discipline. In this vein he helped create the masters program at JFKU and is currently starting an annual Integral Studies academic conference. Much of the criticism around Ken Wilber is founded in a perceived and real lack of academic review of the work. Since he is an author housed outside the ivory tower (a necessary contingent to writing what he has), he has not benefited nor been held to the traditional academic process of review and critique. Many people have been disenfranchised when being critical of his work because it has not been mediated by the traditional academic process. In my opinion, this is neither the fault of Ken nor his critics.

However, many of the critics out there have done themselves and the movement a disservice by critiquing in an entirely personal and non-constructive way. But, in this non-constructive criticism there is an inordinate amount of personal/personality conflict issues raised to cause me to wonder about the person under the facade of Ken Wilber. From Frank Visser, to Michel Bauwens, to Matthew Dallman, plenty of people seem to have clashed with Ken. This brings me to the second most important point gleaned from our talk. Being a personal friend and colleague of Ken's, Sean told me that Ken has a very strong personality. He is not afraid of stating what he thinks and not afraid of calling others out. At the same time, Sean noted that Ken too has a shadow and deals with it in his own way, as we all do. The image I got from Sean's description is very consistent with the type of personality that would clash with others given the right circumstances. This is such an important thing for me to hear because it helps me understand why there is so much negative material out there (one reason, perhaps not even the most important), and also helps me break the tendency to put Ken up on a super-human/godly pedestal. Given the breadth of what Ken has done, I think it is hard not to do this (note that I am here referring to him as "Ken", instead of "Wilber" or "Ken Wilber"). Nonetheless, I think it is detrimental to both my own development and to Ken himself to project this quality. What I think is appropriate and right is to recognize his brilliance without projecting this godlike status.

We went on talking about how difficult and sensitive these controversial issues are given the nature of the content. Since this is largely an emergent field and perspective, the internal processes that go on in an individual discovering a more inclusive perspective can be quite extreme. Often, and due to how Ken writes and projects himself, it is easy to project on him both a fatherly and a godly status. I am guilty of both. But, as an integral perspective would outline, those are projections and issues that must be worked through in order for transformation, and not regression, to occur. This becomes so incredibly tricky due to the complexity of possibilities that all sorts of ugliness is likely, and does come through. I have found all this to be intensely difficult to go through on my own. For that reason alone, I can see it being worthwhile to do the Integral Theory program just for the opportunity to engage with others going through the same things.

While we talked about a variety of other things, including details about the program, the two main points above are largely what I took away from the conversation. That and the sheer amazement that someone with such credentials would take the time to chat with a random stranger in the middle of Kansas!

Quite a flattering week...

thesixtyone Gem

2008-04-10T00:37:00.000-05:00

This song is haunting me.

Integral Education - More Commentary

2008-04-08T23:39:00.000-05:00

Earlier today I left the following comments on Adam Bohannon's blog, more commentary on education:

One thing I find interesting about all this is my romantic vision of what a college classroom was like back in the day, say 50 years ago. I liken this to, what in this context is a very contrasting style, Dr. Prins classroom. In his upper level courses he provides an example of the opposite, no media, no powerpoint, no chalkboard, just him lecturing. I was certainly interested in the content matter of a course such as Anthropological Theory, but nonetheless I found myself engaged day in and day out by the simple task of recording helpful notes based on no visual queues or presentations whatsoever. What happened to me in a classroom divorced of any sort of complexity is that I was driven to engage.

Mind you, this does not do anything to the dynamic his classroom creates, namely one in which his is the voice of God, if you will. He has the content and the answers, and yours is a task of decoding it all. But, I think when the circumstances are right and there is no oppression, this can actually be a good thing. Afterall, aren’t many of our professors our professors because of their proven knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, ability etc.? The tendency is to abuse the position of power, but I like to make room for the chance that a “traditional” approach can work.

Of course, this for me just goes back to the different types of students I mentioned in “Overthinking”. I think a traditional environment will be a successful one if the student profile is suited to it. I used to make a big distinction between Wesch’s style and Prins’ style: Wesch’s whole goal is to make the subject matter apply to the student’s lives, even if that means changing the subject, whereas Prins whole goal is to elucidate the truths of the subject matter, leaving it to the student to force the application in their lives. I suggest and hypothesize that there is a student profile, or level, that would actually thrive more in the second (Prins) style than in the first.

And all of this is simply my attempt to drive in the ideas of complexity, reality, and development into the dialog of education, hoping to broaden our perspectives and push the conversation to increasing the perspectives we take. Too often we end up just latching onto “better” concepts and then simply use them to disprove the previous “worse” concepts. This I think is destructive to what is our actual and shared goal, improved praxis.
...
I totally agree. I would like to apply the same type of simple breakdown in the profiles of students to professors. In this regard there would be preconventional, conventional, and postconventional professors. Moving from preconventional to postconventional is a move of increasing perspectives. So, a professor at a postconventional level of teaching would be including more perspectives than one at a conventional level, and thus, I think, would be a more effective teacher.

Once again I am just trying to put voice, for the first time, to an outline of education using integral concepts. So far I have just suggested that we are all on a developmental continuum, professors and students. My assumption is that students and professors will be more successful when operating from a postconventional perspective-taking ability. However, much of the problems we experience in the classroom could be attributed to disparities between the perspectives of the students and professors, students and students, and professors and professors. I think there is ample evidence for a vast array of complexity in any given educational environment i.e. some students thrive while others are bored, some professors speak perfectly to 25% of the students but 75% are asleep etc. From that point, and depending on the perspective/level/stage/profile they are coming from, professors and students have a variety of reactions.

I think that there are patterns in both the reactions and the perspectives/levels/stages/profiles. However, most of what I encounter in the way of dialog has to do with "good" vs. "bad" professors, professors who care and those who don't, and students who are smart and care and those who aren't and don't. While I think there is truth to this, it is only partial truth at best. I think that we are all exhibiting patterned behavior due to our worldview. Our worldview is largely a reflection of the perspective we're coming from in the majority of the contexts we find ourselves in. We certainly still have agency; I don't mean this to propose a sort of determinism. So, if these things are even close to true, I do believe we have the opportunity to do better than the simplistic type of dialog oriented toward explanation mentioned above.

I think we can discover an integral practical education. I have started by proposing the three broad developmental stages: preconventional, conventional, postconventional. Wilber often correlates these with egocentric, ethnocentric, worldcentric in a broader perspective. For my purposes here, namely dealing with a specific context, a simple dialectic seems a helpful place to start. In that vein, these could be something like thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Nonetheless, I prefer preconventional, conventional, postconventional because of the directionality of it, oriented in a developmental line or spiral. More later...

Integral Praxis and Daniel C. Dennett

2008-04-03T00:11:00.000-05:00

integral praxis: Religion, Biology and Natural Design

I recently had an interesting interchange on Integral Praxis, a blog I've been following for a few weeks. It means a lot to me that the authors responded thoroughly to my comments. I think this blog is also interesting because it appears to me that they have attempted to intentionally divorce themselves from the popular Integral movement and Ken Wilber. I find this to be a good and refreshing thing, especially after engaging so intensely in the controversy surrounding the movement.

The funny thing about this particular post is that in one of my undergraduate philosophy courses I once wrote a semester long paper about Daniel C. Dennett's ideas, their relationship to Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene, and how they offered a very good philosophical perspective. This is such an ironic occurrence for me as it absolutely highlights the vast changes I've gone through within the last 3-4 years.

Integral Education - First Shot

2008-04-02T22:45:00.000-05:00

I recently left this comment on Professor Mike Wesch's Digital Ethnography blog:

I think it is right on that the situation often created in the classroom is one in which the students and professors are pitted against each other. It seems to be very difficult to create an environment that is conducive to both parties working together to learn. It also seems that grades are a very strong factor in creating this divisive atmosphere. And, it also seems that one way of curing some of these problems is to create a more fluid and circular communication/feedback system that functions to help shape the very structure of the class/education. But, what I find is often missing in discussions such as these is a sense of hierarchy. In this case, Mike's student is clearly coming from a postconventional perspective. I mean this to say that he is not simply complaining about his grade or complaining to get the professor to raise his grade, he is actively abstracting and making a commentary on the very structure of the education he is receiving. This is something far different from the student who comes to see the professor but is just complaining about the grade and perhaps projecting his own emotion about being wrong and wanting a higher grade, a preconventional student. With these two types of students it gets quite tricky because both the postconventional and the preconventional students appear to be the same, namely they both come in to talk/complain about their grade. However, these two are indeed coming from vastly distinct places. Between these two students, and in sharp contrast to, lies the conventional student who simply accepts the grade/situation/system/education regardless of how bad he does on the exam. Only, the conventional student you never see because he never comes into the office to complain.

With this simple breakdown it is clear that there are at least three distinct types of students in the class and it seems that a prudent pedagogy would attempt to create a healthy learning environment for all three. To the preconventional student the teacher would demonstrate the value of hard work, preparation, and most importantly the ability to succeed working within the structure. To the conventional student the teacher would help to break down the structure of the class, push the student to question the purpose of the education, and demonstrate the problems with grades. To the postconventional student the teacher would frame the class to create a healthy environment in which the student can follow his own interests, to allow the student to shape the class in a unique way, and to allow the student to generally flourish by providing support and guidance. It seems to me that the majority of professors teach to the preconventional student, a handful teach to the conventional student, and very few teach to the postconventional or a combination of two or more. With this outline it becomes possible to start to account for the distinct patterns that are available to us and convert them into useful educational strategies. And at the core of this idea is, at the very least, a willingness to entertain a simple and non-value associated (very important!) natural hierarchy.

Well, this is my first attempt at expressing some ideas about integral education. Upon discovering Integral Theory, via Ken Wilber, my first thoughts were in relation to applications for education. I was intrigued by the potential capabilities that an integral perspective could offer to teaching and learning. I wanted to figure out how I could more effectively teach, and by extension, learn. After spending the last year and a half of my undergraduate studies intensely involved in studying less common approaches to education, I was left with a lot of good ideas and few practical clues on how to better teach and learn. I read and became addicted to such people as Charles Weingartner, Neil Postman, and Marshall McLuhan ("Teaching as a Subversive Activity" being a particular favorite).

Anyway, what I found with integral perspectives is that I could finally account for what I felt very strongly, that in any given class I was in, I was teaching to or learning with a vast array of different types of people with a vast array of different intelligences and capabilities. When teaching, I found certain students would really respond to a "subversive" approach, whereas others just stared blankly. With a traditional lecture approach, some would engage, others would fall asleep. The major problem I had was that the only language I had to interpret this phenomenon was that certain students were smarter than others, came from different backgrounds (quality and primary schools and family), or were from entirely different cultures. So, an integral perspective encompassing stages and quadrants opened my eyes to a new language and approach. The comment above is a first approach at broadly defining three stages of the average college student.

I look forward to elaborating on this start and hypothesizing some practical applications for teaching and learning.

Trackback

Responsibility or Accountibility?

2008-03-22T01:41:00.000-05:00

http://in.integralinstitute.org/talk.aspx?id=791

In this third part of this three part talk with Caroline Myss, someone I had never heard of before but found to be amazing, she goes into the distinction between being responsible and being accountable. She talks about how many people claim responsibility but in actuality are only doing so to pass off their behavior instead of changing it. In this view, responsibility is entirely self-serving as it explains away the problems. By owning or being responsible for, there is a distinct void of introspection or basic consciousness. Much better is accountability. By being accountable, you are being conscious of your actions and their potential causes and effects. In this way, accountability is the preemptive approach, whereas responsibility is the explicative post approach. I draw a very interesting parallel to western health's emphasis on reactive medicine, fixing problems by throwing drugs at symptoms. This is in contrast to a preemptive, active living, healthful approach to medicine which deals with the sources of the problems and symptoms.

This was the most notable point of this portion of the talk, primarily because I think I am entirely guilty of claiming responsibility for the express purpose of avoiding accountability.

To bring in a little quadrant, perspectival bent to this distinction, I think Responsibility can only be used in the "You" and "It/They" contexts, not the "I" context (upper-right and lower quadrants, not upper-left). Conversely, it makes sense that accountability can only be used in the "I" context, and not the "You" and "It/They" contexts (upper-left, not upper-right or lower quadrants). Therefore, others can determine whether or not You are responsible, but only you can determine whether or not you are accountable.

Suffering or Pain?

2008-03-20T18:54:00.000-05:00

http://in.integralinstitute.org/talk.aspx?id=957

In this Integral Naked talk Wilber makes a distinction between pain and suffering that he once heard from a teacher somewhere along his path. It occurs at the 10th minute.

Namely, he remarks that Buddhism doesn't get rid of pain, Buddhism gets rid of suffering. This is because suffering = pain + resistance to pain. Therefore, Buddhism attempts to rid a person of the resistance, and thus the suffering. So by not contracting away from the pain we are released from suffering.

This was the most poignant part of this talk with Deepak Chopra for me. It resonates particularly well because at one point I was taught a fundamental lesson about emotion that I carry with me daily. In my version it was nervousness. I had always thought that nervousness was a bad thing, keeping me from performing and embracing the world. As a child I was hyper-emotional in most circumstances, resulting in many somewhat embarrassing bouts of nervousness. A teacher of mine in college reversed my thinking on all this. He told me that the problem was not nervousness, nervousness is a good thing. It motivates and helps us perform to our fullest. The problem comes when nervousness becomes reflexive and you get nervous about being nervous. Being an extremely over-cognitive person, this type of reflexivity is something that plagues me. In those moments I benefit greatly from reminding myself that the problem is not the emotion, I should let that be; the problem is when I get myself worked up about the emotion, when I contract from it or resist it. So, when I am able to not get nervous about nervousness, anxious about anxiety, or resist pain, I tend to be a relatively balanced and sane human being.

Grace and Grit the Film

2008-02-21T23:06:00.000-06:00

http://in.integralinstitute.org/talk.aspx?id=745

This two part talk with integrally informed and motivated Hollywood director Steve Brill is quite remarkable. I have only heard Wilber mention either Treya or Grace and Grit a handful of times, but in this talk he goes extensively into the idea of producing a film version of Grace and Grit. I am quite frightened by the prospect, seeing as how deeply the book affected and continues to affect me. They also talk about the concepts of Integral Art, Integral Hollywood, and Integral Acting.

Beauty and Spirit

2008-02-18T23:57:00.000-06:00

http://in.integralinstitute.org/live/view_ken4.aspx

This video resonates well with me. As I attempt to lead and increasingly spirit and integral-infused life, I find order and cleanliness to be real sticking points. I fear that it is actually ego-driven compulsive behavior, but I suspect there is more going on. I have always had a bit of compulsivity. I have always wanted my physical surroundings to be just right. I am very particular about ergonomics and certain aesthetics, usually with the emphasis on functionality. But nowadays I find it much easier to explain my behavior in wanting things orderly and "just right" by means of this ever present spiritual sense. I also viscerally feel the connection between orderliness in my room and house to an ability to focus in my mind. A few examples of my behavior along these lines:

I clean the kitchen before cooking a meal. It is functionally motivated, but more importantly, an uncluttered kitchen makes for an uncluttered meal.
I tend to first take care of my physical needs, eating, shopping etc. and then move on to my mental activities. Once again, an my mind functions much better having these other aspects taken care of first.
I like to work mornings, have afternoons off.
I find it easiest to access deep states of meditation first thing in the morning, before my mind starts thinking and cluttering.

I generally enjoy beautiful things and find it incredibly liberating to be able to enjoy them in this ultimate context. For that to be okay, is very wonderful. I could list hundreds of things I find aesthetically pleasing that I somewhat repress or don´t allow myself to consider pleasing because of the idea that it is profane (as opposed to sacred, or spiritual, or true). But just as Wilber says, it is all a part of the One, nothing can be separate.

My First Kiva Loan

2007-12-27T13:03:00.000-06:00

As my first Kiva loan, I selected Try Phov fairly randomly. I found it difficult to determine a good basis to discriminate which entrepreneurs I would like to support. I am assuming that if I end up making multiple loans I may discover a less random way to select. Truth of the matter seems to be that all the entrepreneurs are in need. All seem to be attempting to improve their situation.

I noticed while skimming through a couple of amazing things.

It seems that there is still more demand for entrepreneurs to loan to than there is demand for loaners. This is very exciting! All the loans I looked at had just been added today and in the hour or so that I spent reading them, many loans disappeared having met their loan request amount and many new loans appeared to have been added.
There was an entrepreneur from Iraq. I am very encouraged that there are microloaning agencies attempting to operate in Iraq. It is a more risky loan due to security concerns, but it does seem like a pretty good way to "do something" about the mess that we ("we" here being citizens of the U.S or "west", regardless of our personal stance on the war or attempts to prevent/stop it) have contributed to creating there.

Anyway, the point is that Kiva rocks!

The Future of Librarians

2007-12-21T13:34:00.001-06:00

Sexy Librarians of the Future Will Help You Upload Your Videos to YouTube - ReadWriteWeb Annotated

Who could help improve this landscape by maximizing the impact of the read/write web? Super sexy librarians, that's who!

And Now for the Sexy Librarian Part...

From the other direction, though, as any experienced online media producer will tell you - there are steps that you can take to make your media easier for the right person to find. This is going to be an important role for information workers of the future.

Check out this wonderful 3 minute section of an interview that Microsoft's Jon Udell did last week on the Talking With Talis podcast. Udell posits that the librarian of the future will help a growing number of citizen media producers to classify their online media and get it connected to other related content in ways that will increase its discoverability. That is hot.

Imagine a future when you go to the library with a 5 minute video you've just made about last night's Presidential debates and that librarian says to you:

You should upload it to YouTube and tag it with these four tags - two broad and two more specific to existing communities of interest on YouTube and the topic of your video. Then you should embed that video in a blog post along with some text introducing it and linking to some of your favorite posts by other people who have also written today about the Presidential debates. Make sure to send trackbacks to those posts!
Now, I think this is a particularly good video on the topic, so if you're interested I will vote for it on StumbleUpon (as a sexy librarian I have a very powerful account there) and give it a good summary explanation. Any of those are steps you can take that will make your work all the easier for people to discover.

Would that be great, or what? That's only the beginning of what is possible! My point is, while mainstream commercial media may still be what the majority of people online are looking for - there are a substantial number of us for whom that's not the case and as we learn to serve eachother and ourselves better in terms of recommendations, discoverability and relevance - our numbers will likely grow.

Minus the "sexy" part, this is very closely aligned to what I envision to be a useful service for librarians to offer. I think that we should be increasingly focusing our attention on creating useful online tools for patrons to utilize the vast capabilities of the internet and to becoming experts at what is possible online in order to better serve patrons. If you look at the physical makeup of a given library, very few resources are devoted to this sort of evolving role (and I would argue this is still so after recent library redesigns and refocuses, here and elsewhere).

Even more intriguing to me is the point this article makes by fusing traditional and emerging roles of librarians. In one way of thinking, a library is an expert categorizer. So, it would make sense that a main library service would be to not only help patrons find resources through sound knowledge of categorization, but to help them to categorize the resources that are being created. In this role, librarians everywhere would be making a massive push forcing academia out of the "ivory tower" and utilizing the strengths of academia and advanced education to help organize the vast user generated information and categorization of information on the internet.

Comments Source: K-State Libraries: Talking in the Library: The Future of Librarians Annotated

Hope?

2007-12-20T21:43:00.001-06:00

At $1 per Watt, the iTunes of Solar Energy Has Arrived | SolveClimate.com Annotated

A Silicon Valley start-up called Nanosolar shipped its first solar panels -- priced at $1 a watt. That's the price at which solar energy gets cheaper than coal. Curious that this story is not on every front page.

While other companies have been focusing their efforts on increasing the efficiency of solar panels, Nanosolar took a different approach. It focused on manufacturing.

Nanosolar has developed proprietary process technology that makes it possible to produce 100x thinner solar cells 100x faster.

Nanosolar - The Third Wave of Solar Power Annotated

The First Wave started with the introduction of silicon-wafer based solar cells over three decades ago.

The Second Wave came about a decade ago with the arrival of the first commercial "thin-film" solar cells.

The Third Wave of solar power consists of companies addressing the above shortcomings and opportunities.

It is very exciting to me to see this type of thing occurring. There has been a bit of a cultural shift that seems to have happened gradually, but feels like a sudden change. There is a much greater awareness and a much larger number of people concerned about environmental issues. With talk from climatologists and biologists of the impending doom of the planet and humanity only a few years away and the equally millenarian perspective obtained by Moore's Law of technological advancement, Kurzweil's espousing of the coming Singularity, and the most important emergence Integral Theory, I am experiencing this moment as a crossroads. It's an exciting time to be alive, to say the least.

I am especially attracted to this company for it's vision and ability to provide a perspective of evolutionary advancement in the realm of solar technology (a very "integral" aspect).

Are you vegetarian?

2007-12-03T00:06:00.001-06:00

K-State Libraries: Talking in the Library: Are you vegetarian? Annotated

I was going out to eat last night with a friend of mine from India who is leaving town for good. Somehow (although not entirely randomly) we started talking about food and vegetarianism. You see, my friend is a Jain, and therefore by the strict guidelines of his religion and culture, he is to not just be vegetarian, but is also not to eat anything that was grown below ground. That's right, no meat, eggs, OR potatoes, onions, garlic etc.! (In the U.S., he has decided to fore go the restriction on not eating rooted vegetables because it is too difficult)

Why, you might ask?

"Jainism's stance on nonviolence goes far beyond vegetarianism. Jains refuse food obtained with unnecessary cruelty. Many practice a lifestyle similar to Veganism due to the violence of modern dairy farms, and others exclude root vegetables from their diets in order to preserve the lives of the plants from which they eat.^[6] Potatoes, garlic and onions in particular are avoided by Jains.^[7] "

To the left is a symbol representing ahimsa, which is the first of 12 vows a Jain typically takes and means, to not intentionally take life. Due to this vow, eating meat, eggs, and rooted vegetables are prohibited because they are viewed as directly taking life. (source: Religions of the World )

Now I am also vegetarian and so we were talking about why we are both vegetarian, and why some of our friends are vegetarian. This led me to some natural questions, how many people in the world are vegetarian? And, in comparison, how many people in India are vegetarian vs. the number of U.S. vegetarians. After we both guessed at some percentages, I decided to do a little research.

This led me here, here, and here, where I found that we were both wrong in our ial guesses.

India: 31 - 40% vegetarian. With 1,028,700,000 people in India as of March 1, 2001, that makes 318,897,000 - 411,480,000 Indian vegetarians.

United States: 2.3 - 2.8% vegetarian. With 303,328,637 people in the U.S. as of November 9, 2007, that makes 6,976,559 - 8,493,202 United Statesian vegetarians.

And for fun, .2% - 1.3% of people are vegan in the U.S., or 606,657 - 3,942,272 vegans.

Are you one of the 6-8 million? (or, since this is the internet, one of the 318-411 million?)