Tag: connections

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Pondering Courage and More

Just pondering a recent Facebook post….


Some people hate. I’ve had people tell me to hate some one, some group, or some thing. I can’t muster up the energy to do that. Some people lash out with toxic aggression (seems to be a trait of the United States “mindset.” And, then there are people who can remain calm in the midst of turmoil and act with no fear for themselves. Neerja Bhanot was one of those people. 


I think there are many people who have these attributes, but who fortunately are never put to the test. There were a plane full of people on United Airlines flight 93 headed to Washington on 9/11/2001. We see many such people during the big disasters that becoming more frequent. We see it among teachers, doctors, nurses, firefighters, policeman….. We see these qualities among mothers and fathers. We also see it among dogs, who will put themselves at risk to help or protect others without any training or request. 


But, here in the U.S. and in many other places around the world, aggression and violence are valued and promoted. The toxicity of anger, hatred, and violence is a pandemic in the U.S. that is a greater threat than the pandemic of Covid-19. In fact, this pandemic of aggression-hate-violence is so threatening that it is likely to bring down this country along with a huge death toll. We find ourselves in a pandemic of delusional psychosis (a) on the “right” of the political spectrum (I don’t know what to call it) and (b) on the left, which seems to be stuck in another kind of delusion of normalcy and self-absorption. 


If only we had a vaccine for this pandemic….

FACEBOOK POST:

Gregory Hilton —- Snietpstemebeiir 10, otedrne2019  · 

33rd Anniversary: Flight Attendant Who Saved American Lives Shot Dead By Terrorists.

She was the youngest person and first civilian to posthumously receive India’s highest award for gallantry. 


This week in September 1986, Flight Attendant Neerja Bhanot, 23, of Chandigarh, India was shot dead while shielding three children on the hijacked Pan Am Flight 73. 


She is credited with saving the lives of 360 passengers when radical Islamist terrorists hijacked her aircraft in Karachi, Pakistan. She informed the pilots who used their escape hatch to get away. When the terrorists demanded to know who the Americans were on the flight so they could execute them, Bhanot gathered all passports and hid those belonging to Americans under seat cushions.


The terrorists confused and unable to determine the national origins of the passengers didn’t execute anyone. When Pakistani police raided the plane she was able to nearly singlehandedly evacuate all the passengers as the firefight ensued.


She was one of the last people on board and found three children still hiding. As she led the children to safety the surviving terrorists spotted the children and opened fire on them. Neerja jumped in the way of the bullets and was mortally wounded.


She was able to evacuate the children to safety before dying from her wounds. She also posthumously received a “Special Courage” award from the government of Pakistan and recognition from the U.S. Department of Justice. The 2016 Indian Hindi-language biographical thriller drama, Neerja, is about her life.

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The Dissolution of the Personal and Social Fabric

by Jeff Bloom
posted 2020-02-07
first posted in the Exploratory Nook & Store Blog

Disconnected Connections… New York City (Jeff Bloom, 1970)

From individuals to families to society to the global context, the connectedness or integrity of individuals, as well as social integrity is crumbling. Although throughout history there have been conflicts and acts of incredible aggression towards one another, we seem to be entering a new and frightening era of disconnection at all levels of scale.

We disconnect with ourselves, while falling into patterns of not engaging in our worlds, not being kind to ourselves, feeling sorry for ourselves or feeling somehow entitled, or acting out in ways that are hurtful and dishonest. Family life for many is similarly disconnected from the beginning. And, as families grow older, family members disperse with varying degrees of disconnection to others in the family. Schools and classrooms have become more like factories, where teachers, by not particular fault of their own, attempt to mold children into some sort of clones of “normality,” while focusing on teaching to tests and forgetting about the beautiful diversity, creativity, emotions, and individuality of each child. In societies, people rarely interact with one another in meaningful and empathetic ways. We’re divided by politics, religion, skin color, language and accents, nationality, livelihoods, how much money one has, or how many and what kinds of “things” one owns. We also suffer from lack of long-term relationships. People move away from their childhood community, then continue to move chasing dreams and money or running away from oneself or various forms of aggression, loss, and upheaval. The same patterns of disconnects are occurring globally. As we’ve become a global “society” of sorts, we’ve also increased the psychosocial, emotional, and cognitive demands on people from extremely diverse cultures and belief systems.

The pressures on individuals and social groups that have been leading to massive changes in the dynamics and relationships within oneself, between people, and even to our environments and to learning itself, has not been a recent onset of some singular cause. This trend has been going on for millennia.

From the beginning of humankind, people have clustered together. We are social animals, after all. We have always wanted to be loved and appreciated. At the same time, we have helped and cared one another, we have protected our social groups, and we have worked to maintain the integrity of our group. Some current tribal cultures that have kept and valued important aspects of their lineages, of their belief systems, and their ways of life. As a result, they have been able to maintain a certain individual and social integrity. David Maybury-Lewis’ wonderful TV series and book, Millennium: Tribal Wisdom in the Modern World, provides a powerful examination of the wisdom found in such tribal societies. And, that wisdom is based on notions of connectedness and interdependency, as well as on the relationships to their environments, to their ancestors’s wisdom, and to one another.

However, the increasing disconnectedness across most human societies has been due to a variety of changes in technologies, in the way humans have organized their societies, and in the way that philosophies and religions have viewed people and the living natural world. From the first wood and stone tools to huge passenger jet airplanes, humans and their societies have undergone huge and dramatic changes periodically. This sort of pattern of big changes after periods of very little change is similar to Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of punctuated equilibrium in biological evolution. I suppose we can refer to these big social and cultural changes as “punctuated equilibrium in cultural evolution.”

Some of the big moments of changed occurred with the technological advances of manufacturing of wood and stone tools and of controlling fire. All of a sudden humankind could hunt more easily, keep warm, and cook food. Pottery allowed food to be stored and even transported. And, with each transportation advance can huge changes in the mixing of culture and trade. Horses, the horses pulling vehicles with wheels, boats and ships allowed travel up and down rivers, across lakes, and then across the oceans. Trains provided for fairly rapid travel from one place to a distant location. Motorized vehicles suddenly made huge differences in travel to places of work and even migrating across one’s country or to other countries. Propeller planes and then jets made travel across the country or halfway around the world possible in only a matter of hours instead of days, weeks, or months. Each such change made huge differences in how we related with one another, with our environments, and with ourselves. These changes transformed violent conflicts from face-to-face battles in relatively contained areas to remote killing and destruction from an armchair or from miles above ground. The extent of disconnection has seemed to increase exponentially. Even when driving a car, we can curse and disparage other drivers and drive in ways that are like video games, but with much greater risks. We can shop without ever talking directly to another person. And, we can sit at family dinners and be totally engrossed in a remote world, while never even talking to our families. We can walk through forests listening to music or talk shows and never hear a cricket, a bird, or the wind rustling the leaves of trees. We no longer allow time to relate to our own experiential worlds or to wonder about big questions.

Although all of these advances are not necessarily “bad,” we have allowed the technologies to usurp our hearts and minds. As with technologies, we also have succumbed to ways of thinking that separate us, from the Biblical notion of the Earth is here for humans to use as desired to the separation of humankind from nature by René Descartes to the Ayn Randian ego supremacy and to the notions of technology as savior. As a result of all of these changes mixed with greed for power and money and the separation of the elite and wealthy from everyone else, we are now facing major intertwined issues across all sectors and contexts of our lives and our environments.

As Robert Bly discusses in The Sibling Society, we live in a society of adolescents and run by adolescents. The lineage of increasing disconnects and superficial learning and thinking promoted by schools, families, and societies has brought us to a point where our fellow citizens do not have “the thinking and conceptual tools” that have been side-stepped by the politics of schooling, where the agenda, under the guise of raising standards and improving teacher accountability, is to keep the general population “dumbed down” so that they can be controlled. A wide assortment of resources that discuss aspects of this agenda can be found in the Learning and Teaching section of The Exploratory Nook & Store, where many of authors follow the history of intertwined contexts and agendas that have contributed to our current state of affairs. Other authors offer ways to counter such agendas through the way we can create contexts of deeper learning and complex thinking.

© 2020 by Jeffrey W. Bloom

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Confusion – Double Bind or Connection in the Classroom

Recently, I was reading part of A Letter to My Students that I had sent them a few days earlier. Among the ideas that I mentioned were ideas of learning as non-linear and of learning as pattern thinking. After I finished a student asked the question, “… but how do patterns fit?” She went on, “they seem to be linear.” I started to respond, then I asked her to explain and she said, “oh, never mind.”

It would have been easy to just continue on with what I had in mind for the rest of class, but I insisted that she explain. As it turned out, she was thinking of patterns as the way in which we might create more rigid, linear, and repetitive approaches to our everyday lives. (Pattern thinking on the other hand is a recursive approach to understanding our world.)

The point here is that we often avoid confusion by solidifying our views or by side-stepping the point of confusion, as the student above was about to do. This event was a classic double bind. The typical situation for a student is that she if she asks a seemingly stupid question, she will look like a fool, especially if she exposes her confusion. On the other hand, she doesn’t ask the question and appear like a fool, she may end up getting a lower grade on an exam or other form of assessment. It’s a no win situation. However, as both Gregory Bateson and his daughter, Catherine Bateson, have suggested, double binds are not necessarily bad events. Avoiding or side-stepping the double bind event is generally problematic since it perpetuates a pathology in relationship. However, if one engages the double bind as a point of potentiality, all kinds of possibilities can emerge. They can be points at which one can connect in ways not possible when immersed in the pathology of a double bind. They also can stimulate creativity, new insights, and novel ways of seeing and relating.

The teaching – learning situation is full of double binds. We see the results of double binds in student dropout rates, in students’ “playing the game” of going-through-the-motions with no real connection, in student passivity, in student resistance, in student “pleasing the teacher” actions, and in the full array of schooling pathologies.

(originally published January 23, 2010)

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The Travesty of “Distance Education”

If you watch television, browse the internet, read magazines and newspapers, listen to the radio, or read bulletin boards and billboards, you’ve been bombarded with advertisements about distance education degrees, like those listed below:

  • “Earn an Distance Degree In 5 Days”
  • “Earn a degree online while you keep
working.”
  • “It’s back to school time-Have you
 registered for your online classes?”
  • “Earn A Degree On Your Sched.”
  • “Earn Online Degree Fast
Under $99/Credit hr. Books Included”
  • “Get Your Education Online at an
Accredited University. Apply Now!”
  • “A Quality Education, Convenient For
 The Career-Focused Professional”
  • “Online, Accelerated, Accredited & Affordable Degree Programs-Sign Up! “
  • “Earn Your Degree Fast. 100% Online.
Class Starts Jan. 4th. Apply Now!”
  • “Earn a Degree & Enrich Your Life!”
  • “Get a top degree at your own pace & 
time from an accredited university!”
  • “The Full University Experience
 Anytime, Anywhere. Learn How!”
  • “Pursue your degree online. It’s 
never been easier. Learn how.”
  • “The Smart Choice For Working 
Professionals.”

The first one is among my personal favorites. This ad really provides one with a great deal of confidence about learning how to write poorly (e.g., “an Distance degree”). It also provides an honest assessment of the value of such a degree in terms of the amount of time needed (i.e., “5 days”). The ninth one also models good writing ( i.e., “Earn your degree fast”). However, the one ad that is probably the most outrageous lie is “The Full University Experience Anytime, Anywhere.”

My sarcasm in the last paragraph does not describe just how disturbed and frightened I am about the very dangerous direction we’re taking in education. The “distance” in distance education is much more than the physical distances that such programs offer to span. The real dangerous distance involves a number of major disconnects:

Disconnect #1: “Education” (as in distance education) has nothing to do with “real” learning.

By “real learning,” I mean learning that not only involves deep and extensively interconnected conceptual understandings, but also involves (a) learning how to think deeply, critically, and creatively; (b) developing an identity as a learner and thinker in whatever disciplinary area one is involved; (c) learning how to participate in the community of that particular discipline; and (d) developing complex and meaningful connections to the discipline and its knowledge, ways of thinking, ways of talking, and methods (of knowledge production, inquiry, communication, and so forth). Such “real learning” cannot take place in an online environment, since it requires the connections and relationships to both the experts and compatriot novices in a variety of settings that include classrooms, hallways, offices, coffee shops, and other places where fellow community members relate.

Disconnect #2: Online programs are based on antiquated theories of learning.

Although a number of education researchers and theorists from the late 1800’s through the latter part of the mid-1900’s promoted approaches to learning that focused on “how to inquire” and “how to produce knowledge,” the force that has dominated our schools and views of education for the past 70 years or so has been rooted in behaviorism and the related mechanistic and positivistic concepts. Although very few people will admit to such a view of learning, actions and language betray that denial.

Mechanist, positivist, and behaviorist views are very seductive. They portray a world that is relatively simple and well-structured, with clearly delineated “right answers.” In fact, such a view portrays “learning” as the ability to demonstrate (i.e., select correct answers on tests) one’s recall of specific content knowledge. At the same time, this perspective does not place any value (a) on one’s emotional connections to the discipline; (b) on one’s ability to think analytically, critically, or creatively; (c) on one’s participation in a community of learners or professionals-to-be; (d) on one’s ability to solve problems or generate important questions. Such a view is basically a “deadened” or lifeless view of learning.

More recent research-based and theoretical frameworks of learning (including brain-based learning, constructivist and social constructivism, embodied dynamicism, learning as a complex adaptive system, distributed learning, and others) view learning as quite different. Learning involves much more than simple “book-type knowledge” that is “stored” in one’s brain. In fact, the more we learn about learning, the more we are finding that the processes of learning extend beyond the brain to other parts of our bodies and even beyond our bodies altogether. Basketball players, on-site technology groups, teams of scientists, actors in a performance, and other contexts where groups of people are learning together involves learning that is distributed among and cycles through the physical context and individuals. Conceptual learning is closely interconnected with emotions, values, beliefs, imagery, humor, aesthetics, physical and social experiences, and the whole of our human embodied experience.

When we remove the social experiences and contexts and limit the embodied social experience, we reduce “learning” to the acquisition of knowledge of words and disembodied concepts. When words and concepts are so readily accessible, we do not need education that focuses almost entirely on such knowledge acquisition. We need learning opportunities that focus (a) on the development of thinking that is analytical, critical, and creative (a part of which needs to focus on evaluating knowledge claims found so easily on the internet); (b) on the social negotiation and production of knowledge claims (as processes of participating in learning communities); and (c) on developing complex interconnections with subject matter disciplines that involve emotions, other aspects of our personal “contexts of meaning,” and the distributed aspects of learning and knowing.

Disconnect #3: The possibilities for learning as transformation are severely limited, if not impossible.

Learning, at its best, offers us opportunities to transform. Transformation may be the penultimate “learning outcome.” Such transformations occur when we have engaged in a learning context, when we have been challenged to re-evaluate our assumptions, and when we participate in a social context that both pushes us to delve into the world of ideas and provides the support of a “safe” social environment where we can take risks.

Disconnect #4: Learning as shared human experience does not occur.

As mentioned above, the shared experiences in online environments has a number of problems: (a) actual personal connections cannot happen, where people can see sphere of people and physical context with all kinds of information flowing in complex pathways throughout learning activities (video cannot capture this sphere); (b) shared experiences are limited to written words and possible myopic and/or tunnel-vision video views of others; (c) communication has the potential to be dangerous – that is, to promote disconnected communication where people have no stake in the social connections in an actual physical location; (d) participants cannot smell, feel, touch, and hear (more than whatever is “official,” if that) the context of the physical and social context – all of these senses are important components in developing contextually-embedded learning; (e) people cannot interact with others, including teachers or mentors, and with materials and objects in ways that are more spontaneous. Such interactions are phenomenally more meaningful and relevant to learners.

Disconnect #5: Emergent learning is grossly limited, if not impossible.

One of the most exciting and meaningful learning events occur where some idea, problem, or question emerges from the particular learning community and changes the direction of ensuing activities. Such an emergent curriculum provides a sense of “ownership” (by students) over what is being “studied.” Emergent curriculums value ideas, questions, and problems, while promoting recursive, non-linear approaches to pursuing understanding. On the other hand, almost all online environments are static and linear. Although our system of schooling and likewise most teachers do not promote or value emergent curricular opportunities, they could. Distance education cannot promote emergence. Emergent curricular opportunities occur where the spontaneity of personal interactions, safe environments, and conceptually and materials-rich contexts provide for meaningful, relevant, dynamic, and embodied engagement.

Disconnect #6: Online courses and programs promote a devaluation of engaged and connected learning.

It’s far too easy to play the game of going through the motions or jumping through hoops with little if any emotional and complex engagement in the material. As teachers, we can’t see the faces and body language or look into the eyes of our students as they engage in learning activities. For all we know, someone else is sitting in front of the computer. However, the point is that there is no real dynamic interaction between teacher and students, where teachers can change the dynamics in ways that may further engage students.

Disconnect #7: Learning as induction into a community of practice is one of a severely crippled approach.

As should be evident from the previous six disconnects, online environments are limited in the ability to help induct people into a learning community or community of practice. Virtual “communities” that extend “real” communities may be valuable, but they do not replace “real” communities.

Fundamentally, online distance education is a very poor substitute for education that occurs with groups of people within a physical setting. Of course, many classrooms do not function much differently from those that are offered online. However, we can make changes to such static classrooms, where such changes cannot occur online.

The dangers of treading this path of distance education are summarized in the following points.

  • Learning in a world of easy access to information is omitting the important learning involved:
  • in critical, analytical, and creative thinking;
  • in problem solving;
  • in problem posing;
  • in evaluation of knowledge claims;
  • in promoting knowledge production rather than knowledge consumption among learners;
  • in developing an “identity” as a valued participant in a particular community;
  • in developing the skills and attributes of a community participant;
  • Education is being trivialized.
  • Education is being devalued… even further than it already has been.
  • Learning is becoming increasingly superficial, disconnected, fragmented, and meaningless.
  • Online education is disembodying learning.
  • Online education is undermining the importance of spontaneous social interactions and emergent curriculum.

(originally published December 30, 2009)

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Disconnects – A Brief Initial Exploration

The initial question I posed on my previous post (What is the extent of the disconnects we experience today?) is almost overwhelming. Each of us, if we sit and think about it, can come up with a huge list of examples of the disconnects we experience in our lives. In some ways the list seems endless.

In order to make such a list more manageable, I’ve been thinking for several years that the major categories (there could be more…) of disconnects involve:

  • disconnects to one’s self (psychological and spiritual)
  • disconnects to others, including family, friends, communities, cultures, etc.
  • disconnects to our physical worlds – worlds of work, worlds of play, etc.
  • disconnects to the natural environment
  • disconnects to our mental world, the world of ideas and imagination

The Free Online Dictionary (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disconnect) defines “disconnect” as: “

  • to sever or interrupt the connection of or between;
  • a lack of connection or a disparity;
  • an unbridgeable disparity (as from a failure of understanding);
  • pull the plug… and render inoperable.”

So, when we consider disconnects in our lives, we need to consider, on the one hand, the idea of connection and, on the other hand, how we may be severed or how there may be a disparity within ourselves or between self and other (whatever that “other” may be).

People often look at me cross-eyed when I suggest that people may be disconnected with themselves. We are who we are. How can we be disconnected? However, the disconnections can be numerous. Many of us struggle with disconnections between mind and body, as well as I and other(s). We may feel a sense of awkwardness or self-consciousness as we walk in a public place. We may try to ignore and cover up a particular emotional state, or conversely, we over-indulge in the emotion and ignore everything else. Whatever is happening, there just seems to be an edge of awkwardness or discomfort. Much of this confusion has been handed down to us from Plato and especially Descartes, whose tremendous influence on western societies is known as Cartesian duality (Russell, 1945). Descartes made it official that there were two worlds: one, the physical world; two, the mental world. Although Buddhists consider this duality as basic to the human ego (which interferes with living to our full potential), ever since the 17th Century, the Cartesian duality gave western societies an official “Big Disconnect.” So, rather than dualism as a problem, dualism became the official and correct way to perceive and interact with the world.

————————–

Disconnects pervade our individual lives, our schools, science and its effects on our lives, and society as a whole. All of these issues appear to share universal origins in the patterns of how we layer ourselves and our social structures and of how such layers create other patterns of relations and actions.

The topic of “layers and layering” is worthy of a lengthy and detailed treatment. However, a brief overview may be useful. Layers function to help provide stability in physical, biological, social, and psychological structures. Some layers are mostly physical in nature, like those of buildings and the earth, while others are more functional, such as those of biological organ systems, organizational structures, and so forth (Bloom & Volk, 2007; Volk, 1995; Volk & Bloom, 2007). However, the importance of layers in terms of our discussion of disconnects and connects has to do more with how they define relationships in social contexts and how we develop and use psychological layers as protective barriers. Most of the social layering we experience are hierarchical in nature. Hierarchies are characterized by top-down control. People in the top layers control those below them. However, there are other ways of layering social systems. Those may be referred to as holarchies or embedded layers. In social systems, holarchies do not have the same types of relationships as hierarchies. In fact, you usually see the relationships in hierarchies before you can see the layers. In contrast, you can often see the layers in holarchies before you can understand the relationships between them. An example of a holarchic community can be thought of as an apprenticeship community. The mentor is in the center as the full participant and the apprentices are at varying degrees (layers) of participation as they work toward being in the center (see Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). The center of a holarchy is more one of shared power, rather than the top-down power of hierarchies.

Gregory Bateson described three types of relationships, which may be useful to consider in terms of social connects and disconnects. He referred to “symmetrical” relationships as competitive relationships, where individuals are vying for control. These types of relationships tend to disconnect. The second type of relationship is “complementary” or dominant-submissive. These relationships also tend to disconnect. The third type of relationship is “reciprocal” or one where the parties in a relationship continually negotiate issues in the relationship. These types of negotiable relationships are the only ones that tend to connect over the long term (Bateson, 1972). The interesting questions about relationships and layers revolve around what sorts of relationships arise from different layered social situations. Or, what kinds of relationships are encouraged and supported by different types of layering?

These patterns of layers and relationships can contribute to the great “disconnects” within individuals, between one another, between ourselves and our mental, social, political, physical, and biological worlds. In filling up our worlds with entertainment, internal dialogues, and defenses against entry from the outside world, we begin to lose touch with who we are. Our identities become embedded in notions of work, religion, and whatever our minds discursively generate. The answer to “who am I?” tends to be based upon what we do and upon our superficial characteristics. But, who are we really? In many tribal cultures, identity is based upon one’s place among families, clans, and relationships to others (Maybury-Lewis, D., 1992).

In future posts, I will explore the various kinds of disconnects outlined above and how we might move toward connecting.

————————–

References

Bateson, G. (1972/2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bloom, J. W., & Volk, T. (2007). The use of metapatterns for research into complex systems of teaching, learning, and schooling. Part I: Applications. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 4(1), 45—68. (Available online at: http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/COMPLICITY4/documents/Complicity_41e_Bloom_Volk.pdf)

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Maybury-Lewis, D. (1992). Millennium: Tribal wisdom in the modern world. New York: Viking.

Russell, B. (1945). A history of western philosophy: And its connection with political and social circumstances from the earliest times to the present day. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Volk, T. (1995). Metapatterns: Across space, time, and mind. New York: Columbia University Press.

Volk, T., & Bloom, J. W. (2007). The use of metapatterns for research into complex systems of teaching, learning, and schooling. Part II: Metapatterns in nature and culture. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 4(1), 25—43. (Available online at: http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/COMPLICITY4/documents/Complicity_41d_Volk_Bloom.pdf)

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

(originally published: THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2008)

© 2008 by Jeffrey W. Bloom

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Gregory Bateson: An Introduction

Gregory Bateson at Naropa Institute, summer, 1975

I had the fortunate opportunity to spend five weeks with Gregory Bateson during the summer of 1975. Gregory was an extraordinary man with a huge heart and phenomenal mind. In 2004, his last wife, Lois, mentioned to me, “you know Gregory had a big mind, but he thought with his heart.”

My interest in connections and in patterns that connect is primarily due to these five weeks with Gregory Bateson. Although he towered over almost everyone, his huge presence was a mixture of kindness, intense curiosity, rigorous intellect, and quiet reflection. Even at that time, he was concerned that we, as human beings, had already harmed the environment to such an extent that it may have been too late to save ourselves.

I think it is out of this concern that the notion of connection is so very important for all of us. Without connection, we risk separation(disconnects) from ourselves, from one another, and from the environment with which we are so intimately intertwined.

  • What is the extent of the disconnects we experience today?
  • What contributes to disconnections and separation at various levels (self, others, environment)?
  • What is the extent of the connects we experience today?
  • What can help create more connects (connections) to self, others, and environment?
  • Rather than pursuing school curriculums that lead to deadening our children, what alternative approaches can we take to help enliven our children?
  • How can we combine heart and a rigorous sense of intellect in pursuing connections?

Please join me in these explorations….
(originally posted April 6, 2008)