Guns & Gnosis

Under the Grade Gun

Dear Dialogue & Dialecticians and Colleagues
Across the Curriculum Plus Gen Ed Thinkers
wondering about the Core Fundamentals.

Ok: we’re all under the gun, no doubt. My talk
of grade-gun remission is foolishness. Wistful
thinking: oh, if only we all weren’t under-the-
gun it would be liberating. Liberal Art even.
Pipe bomb dreams.

I model Gun Relief in my courses, broad margins
for error & room for playgrounds surrounded by
the heavy artillery (rigorous disciplinarity): building
I scream parlors in hell. Missives Impossible.
Fool’s Paragraphs. Un-postponed joy.

Here’s a Gregory Bateson image I like a lot

GUN-WISE

rifle shot gun
fixed target moving target
one shot at a time batch of shot

Bateson uses these 2 variations on a single activity
(SHOOTING) to model 2 radically different
(incommensurate) aspects of
System Self-Correction.:

FEEDBACK & CALIBRATION

Feedback

In firing a rifle at a fixed target, one aligns carefully—
sight with target and shoulder and trigger-finger, each a
step of self-conscious-self-correction informing the other
steps of the shooting-system: light, target, sight, gun
weight, grasp, light & then slowly squeezing off a
“round.”

BANG. Check target for further feedback adjustment.

Good work. We teach composition and maybe other stuff
LIKE this. Each event a singular & momentous achievement
—hit or miss, feedback “grade” & now, let’s sit down and
workshop: talk about IT: how you did, what are you going
to do next time to improve? What’s your score.
Etc.

Calibration

In shooting duck or skeet (moving targets) it’s incommensurately
different, and yet over all: the same deal, yes? GUNS & Gnosis.

Target shooting: fixed and moving. Here’s the difference.

To get GOOD at Shotgun Duck & Skeet Moving -Target Shooting,
I got to be being CALIBRATED and RECALIBRATED in the
proceess: my whole system in a Big Batch Sense; sighting target
flapping overhead, swivel from hip, aim automatically, semi-
consciously (no close and careful feedback of target-to-gun-sight )
and BLAM BLAM.

Consciousness?

I must lose it in the process and rely on muscle memory and repetition.
NO time to take my time, true? The more shooting the more
calibration the more the PROCESS is practiced-into whole-
system movement. I lose myself to gain shotgun capability.
In service to a “higher” power, true? Shotgun muse.

Of course feedback (call it digital processing: conscious
and unconscious) and calibration (call it analogical process:
conscious and unconscious) are going on in both kinds of
shooting, sure. But rifle-shooting foregrounds a slow concentration
and single-shot-crucial-conscious adjustment, re-adjustment, while
shotgun shooting foregrounds whole system automated body language
so to speak.

Now: here’s what I’m asking.
Which of these 2 kind of shooting --rifle or shotgun
best characterizes how we Do Education in School?
Single event hype-up the conscious moment?

or

Big batch shoot-from-the-hip to calibrate my
embodimental manifestation to be taking care
of business under the radar say and know I’m
getting better & good over time?

We could turn up the distinction. Polarize it.
Put it in play; then wonder about the ratios and
the relationships. Feedback and Calibration. Single
shot and batch shooting and how the 2 processes inform
our . business: in doing math & physics, say; biology,
chem, ah the humanities and the arts. Fixed and
Moving target practice getting better and Good..