Feels like spinning plates

[Ivo Banaco]

:-)..well Adam let's continue our good humor of course and yes, I also like
to "wrestle" with intellectual vigor, and genuine (from the heart)
arguments. So I will pick where you left (does this sound familiar?)...

Your question: "So what do you think about my comments above?" Full of
meaning this apparently simple question. The context is our potential
crossing about education.

My answer: It felt like spinning plates (as I remember a great song from
Radiohead right after I've read your question). What I mean is that there is
not one single point in your argument that showed fundamental disagreement
with me. You played very well with words, emphasised important aspects but
you moved very little forward from my arguments. I felt that we reached a
platform of mutual understanding that was not clearly emphasized by you
(even though it's there, textually).

So if I criticize you with that, I'll try to move forward and stop spinning
the plate (I don't know if this expression means anything to you as I
understand it...).

Let's bring an important topic, I think. I disagree about your preference to
use rapport instead of tele. Even tough they can both be used as synonyms,
tele is much more universal (for the ocidental world at least) and rapport
is much more US oriented. If that is your intention (your writings being
directed to US audience) that's OK with me. But in my opinion, tele reach a
wider range of people, and with a supposedly universal phenomenon that we're
trying to define that could make the difference. What do you think? ;-)

Ivo


On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 4:46 AM, Adam Blatner <ablatner at verizon.net> wrote:

>  Dear Ivo, I appreciate your wrestling with me, and I hope we can sustain
> an attitude of good humor and fellowship. But I do wrestle intellectually
> with vigor. So to take you on move by move:
>    1. IB: For me what you are doing (in AB's description of various
> activities below) is sociatry, in the broadest sense of the word.
>             ab: thank you, I think so too.
>
>    2. IB I know that you discredit gross generalizations. But I happen to
> think that there is a place for every level of abstraction, as long as we do
> not get lost in the way.
>         AB: Sure, there is a place. But I think folks get lost all the time
> in mixing different levels of abstraction. Exactly my point! That's what I'm
> criticizing!
>
>     3. IB   From practice to theory and meta-theory and back to practice,
> every level should inform one another. There is horizontal understanding too
> of course.
>        AB: should is very different from does. I suggest that in preparing
> a rational presentation, the points must be rationally coordinated. This in
> fact rarely happens. The way levels can inform each other is by using
> examples, clarifying alternative interpretations, and addressing objections
> or concerns. That's what makes philosophy so dense at times.
>
>    4. IB  From this "cross fertilization" it can come a lot of things,
> such as all things you've presented. For instance, I have some thoughts and
> plans about higher education too. About the emergence of new social
> structures, the links between productivity, criativity and social structure,
> etc.
>        AB: Part of me says, "Right on!" with encouraging enthusiasm.
> Another part of me awaits the specifics of your thoughts and plans about
> education. Can you handle the possibility that some of your thoughts may
> need to be tested, matured, revised, re-formed, sharpened, cross-fertilized?
> That's what happens in the journey of an idea towards practical
> implementation. On the way, a thousand other ideas are (or at least they
> should be) either discarded or revised significantly.
>
>     5. I think this is not a question of lacking of specifc ideas, it's a
> question of really getting together and cross, cross and cross to reach some
> common understanding and build a strategic plan of action.
>        AB: Maybe; but cross-discussion absent specifics is just babbling.
> While enjoying dialogue, there also is a place for individual insight,
> contemplation, planning.
>      Another point---not all that minor: Your use of the term "really"
> always attracts my critical attention, as if there were a "really" that one
> can differentiate from a "somewhat."  Example: Are you really trying? How
> would you know? If you really tried, would you be sure to win?  What if we
> got together and shared ideas without "really"?  Sorry for the pedantry,
> but the less intellectually serious and sometimes those self-styled teachers
> with less integrity often resort to that term, which has a back-door. If you
> didn't get enlightnement or better or whatever, it must be because you
> didn't "really" try. So I don't have to give you your money back. (smile)
>
>    6. IB  You mention the teaching of critical thinking in schools, I'm
> working on the art of learning to learn...which are our differences here,
> let's cross stuff and see where does it lead us!
>     AB: Okay, so what do you think about my comments above?
>                       - - - - - -
>        the points above building on and referring to Ivo responding to
>
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 1:01 AM, Adam Blatner <ablatner at verizon.net>wrote:
>
>>  Dear Ivo, there are several themes here.
>>     1. Noble aspirations and pronouncements and zealous proclamations
>> about political issues can fill a listserve so fast that everyone will bail
>> out. The real problem is whether or not Morenian methods have anything to
>> offer.
>>     2. Unless someone shares very very specific suggestions as to how our
>> approaches may be applied or someone offering a vignette about how something
>> actually was done in a workshop, I'm annoyed by people saying something as
>> vague as
>>          The world has big problems. Let's do something!  Let's call it
>> sociatry!
>>      And naming or describing the problems briefly or at length does
>> nothing to help.
>>
>>  3. I definitely am up on the implication of policies---and indeed am
>> preparing some lectures for peers about the history of medicine; one aspect
>> of which is the history of the discovery of nutritional deficiency diseases,
>> and the very specific problems attending this---local and national political
>> and economic efforts to get better foods to the poorer people. Another
>> lecture is about hygiene and the efforts it took to get folks to build
>> privies that didn't allow hookworm larvae to get into the surrounding soil ,
>> and the decades of work involved---and it still is a problem in the USA, and
>> a giant problem elsewhere in the tropical world.
>>        So it's not a matter of "feeling" political implications. What
>> we're talking about is folly, self-deception, gross ignorance, etc. The
>> remedy as I see it include the following:
>>        1. The teaching of critical thinking in the schools. I'm preparing
>> lectures about that, and sociodrama is a good tool.
>>          2. The teaching of emotional intelligence or practical psychology
>> in education and business. I've been suggesting that role playing,
>> sociodrama, and role theory are good tools again for this.
>>      Relatively little progress has been made so far, and I could use all
>> the help I can get, or perhaps I can help others. But these again are
>> relatively specific problems. (If anyone wants to read the paper on
>> sociodrama in higher education, I'll send it to them. It was in ReVision
>> journal a few years back.)
>>          And so forth. Other examples of sociatry as I see it are
>> practiced more by the Theatre of the Oppressed theatre artists in this
>> country and around the world. How much do psychodramatists know or care
>> about this method? I think there is a lot of room for synergy and
>> cross-fertilization. Also with Playback Theatre, Bibliodrama, etc. I wonder
>> if everyone on the listservice has at least read about my latest anthology,
>> Interactive & Improvisational Drama   at   www.interactiveimprov.com/
>>
>>       But just going into details about the problems is a parental
>> transference: It assumes someone else (i.e. people who "should" know, such
>> as parents, elected officials, etc.) does know and if we just whine and
>> complain they might do something. In fact, others don't know---and for our
>> parents, they most likely didn't know---what else to do. So if you have any
>> specific ideas, go to it. If you don't know either, become a detective, a
>> researcher, a journalist, a networker, but don't just complain on our
>> website, because it only makes us feel helpless, too.
>>
>>         Terms like "group transformation" are overgeneralizations,
>> platitudes, worse than useless because unless they're more specifically
>> applied they misleadingly sound as if there's really something to do. Let's
>> say you're right---let's all group transform. Uh, how do we do that,
>> again?---
>>
>>     I'm saying there's no reluctance at all to move forward to sociatry!
>> It's not a matter of reluctance, it's a matter of having less than a clue
>> about what specifically to do other than to say, rah rah! Sociatry! Rah rah!
>> Moreno! rah rah. blah blah.
>>
>>       Now say I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong: Please give me a few very
>> specific actions or things to do that it makes sense to tell others about,
>> to ask others to play with us about, etc.
>>
>>      Warmly, Adam
>>
>> *From:* Ivo Banaco <ibanaco at gmail.com>
>> *To:* Kim Cox <kimbo.cox at gmail.com>
>> *Cc:* Grouptalk Listserv <list at grouptalkweb.org>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, January 25, 2009 6:28 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: political themes on grouptalk
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> We had this discussion before, and I realize how difficult is to people in
>> psychology field to feel the political implications of their knowledge and
>> practices, particularly if we're talking about group transformation (so the
>> question of individual vs group doesn´t really make sense, it's a false
>> question, as there is no individual apart from group and there is no group
>> without politics). The reluctance to move forward to sociatry is the same
>> reluctance that people have with politics (a dirty word, and I certainly
>> understand why...but it is not that politics we mean, it's the real one...).
>>
>>
>> Sociatry is not, as I understand it, a fix and static way of seeing the
>> "cure of society". What is it a typical professional politician anyway if
>> only a courageous sociatrist but with a weak action plan to cure society.
>>
>> I think we will only get to Sociatry if we stop to see every knowledge
>> speciality as a separate thing of the big whole. If we only have the skills
>> to communicate what we know to each other, if we only know to work together
>> not in a simple inter-disciplinary way but in quantum leap forward to a
>> systemic trans-disciplinary approach to life.
>>
>> Is the "psychodrama movement" prepared to get out of its confort zone?
>>
>>
>> Genuinely,
>> Ivo
>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20090127/fed64e15/attachment.html>