and Transcendental Romanticism
as well as Colleagues Across the
Curriculum
Premise:
Anyone with a laptop =
the smartest kid in class.
(It’s not what we know: it’s whether we can put it
in play that counts)
Introducing my Fall 2009 Courses Without
Borders & Analogies Across the Curriculum
Series, promoting Pedagogies for the Post
Literate Neo Oral Age of Emergent Values
and Phenomena.
.
Call for IDEAS: Notions, potential memes,
patterns, bits of deep grammar or ecologic,
archetypes, curiosities, hidden assumptions,
controlling metaphors, conundrums & koans,
parables & paradoxes, contradictions begging
for exorcism —whatever brings delight:
Hit Reply to All: Facebook of our own,
Twitter on steroids, Sustainable and
Sustaining Converse Action.
(Or what’s a college for?).
Sampling
LANGUAGE-ing
A) “I learned a new word in school today, Mommy.”.
B) “I learned a new sentence in school today, Mommy.”
If you were a parent—mommy or daddy—or even now,
childless and anticipating bringing new life and curiosity
into the world: would you receive either of these declarations
(A/B) with equal equanimity? Interest? Tend to pay more
attention to one over the other? Wonder, at the difference?
Turn back to your newspaper and affirm: “Yes, dear:
good for you.
No, seriously.
If you will indulging me my meta-force and let A & B
represent (stand for) 2 KINDS of learning
“word” learning, on the one hand;
“sentence” learning, on the other
better yet: if you can pump up the difference between
Word-ness and Sentence-ness
and polarize the two realms so that they don't contaminate
each other (conflate, collapse, confuse), then I would ask
you to wonder about your own school-room learning
(of which you are expert): would you say it was more of
the kind called WORD-learning or more of the kind called
SENTENCE-learning?
Maybe some ratio. In which case: which of the two kinds
dominated you—in your experience.
Which of the 2 has more POWER
(potency, potential, possibility):
a WORD or a SENTENCE?
If you are unable to see or tell the difference between
WORD-ness and SENTENCE-ness, than the last
question is probably meaningless. You may have learned
lots of information but not how to put it in play.
FICTION-ing
It's all fiction. Need we argue? Fiction is the mother of Fact
and Faction. Consider what happened to you this summer.
Tell me about it—or anyone: the whole truth and nothing
but the truth?
Nonsense. Impossible. You leave most of it out.
You sample, select, specimen-ize: fashioning a fiction,
a composed version with arbitrary beginnings, middles, ends.
Not the Whole. Not even close. A representation. A fiction,
is all. We are all liars—all the time. It's the denial and
cover-up that generates the psychic toxic waste and
thickens the bozone level, true?
Writers often call their work: Liar's Craft.
Who would you rather hang with: honest liars
or those claiming to be truth-tellers?
No, seriously.
TRANSCENDENTAL ROMANTICIZING
“Genius is the enemy of genius,” says Emerson.
In those days “genius”(the word) wasn't such a
big deal—meaning “spirit,” is all. Generate,
genetics, genesis, genes, generalization.
all kin to “spirit” and “genius”.
I've heard folks say, I'm not religious but I am spiritual.
“Genius,” is what they're claiming: one's muse, calling,
vocation, inner voice, personal relationship with jesus.
Socrates called it his idios daemon: private tutor, guide.
Idiosyncratic idiocy is what “genius” indicates: the
source of any one's inspiration, contribution to the whole.
Some realize it, can break thru & listen (obey).
Most can't pay that kind of attention, blocked by
common sense and convention.
That's why “genius is the enemy of genius”
Someone else's eclipses if not occludes
my own—genius bumps into genius
like bumper cars, beep beep, and I can't
easily transcend.
Your goodness must have edge to it, else it is none.
The doctrine of hated must be preached as counter-
action to the doctrine of love when that pules and
whines. Emerson, “Self Reliance.”
Disturbing sentences.
Or descriptive.
Which?
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