Flow, Hopper, & Strategic Planning
Create the Space
“Creative mobility in this world requires, at crucial
moments, the strategic erasure of ethical boundaries.
They lose that mobility who cling to beauty, or who
suffer from what the poet Czeslaw Milosz has called
“an attachment to ethics at the expense of the sacred.”
(Hyde)
ThE Damned Moral Sense
That damned human race
(Mark Twain)
I'm trying to create some space for a
"sustainability habit of the mind" to
flourish on campus this semester. Create
the space and then entice our students
(and ourselves!) to enter.
A space that cultivates a life of mind
that takes us on a journey far, far
beyond making choices between light
bulbs and whether or not to recycle!
Deep sustainability space....
Laura:
Imagine and turn up the distinction between ethics
on the one hand and the sacred on the other.
And then consider how it might be that these 2 are
“hostile” on one level (as both Hyde and Milosz
indicate)—that a shared conviction of what is good
& sustainable-worthy (ethic) might actually be
incommensurate with larger wholes (the sacred.).
Distinctions LIKE these, if separated and polarized
and put into play, generate & contribute to the emerging
values and phenomena you anticipate —a shared habit
of minding.,
It’s a meta-environmental issue, isn’t it? How to
re-create an environment (you call it space) that
cultivates a shared aggravation, & dialectic—a
lively ongoing back&forth which is truly academic:
a sustained argument across the curriculum.
A life-of-the-minding environmental issue as distinct from
light-bulbs, recycling, steep slopes, and presidential golf-cart
environmentalism. There’s a difference that makes a difference:
it’s called Minding and WhatsaMatter, Cartesian splits and post
modern objections not with standing.
To make a space, there has to be something like a collective pea
under the mattress, yes? If not (better) a thorn in the side. You’re
not talking about a shared salute & pledge allegiance:
sustainability uber alles..
Hyde’s distinction (above) is a variant on
the transformation vs sustainability dynamic,
the understanding vs explanation distinction,
the kind-of-thinking-that-resolves vs the kind-of-thinking-that-generates
dynamic,
what Gary Hawkins would characterize as a whole in terms of:
The 2 Economies
and why can’t they Just Get Along
Not acknowledging these 2 and their incommensurability is what generates
the psychic toxic ever-thickening bozone level. Need we argue?
The pattern:
2 radically different realms that never
the less are complementary and related
if the radical differences between them
are not collapsed, conflated, or confused
but rather: heightened and exaggerated &
characterized as worthy opponents and
good sport. Got to love the enemy to get
in-game.
Academics.
What in your mind (Laura) would stand for the antithesis to your
Deep Sustainability Team?
Deep Sustainability on the one hand.
s p a c e
Anti-Deep Sustainability on the other hand.
Thesis on the one hand & on the other Anti-Thesis à a synthesis
that does no injustice to either and sustains the worthy opposition.
Other wise IT’s only the sound of one hand clapping,
know what I mean?
IT, I said. Need we argue? How else create space for
lively talk where there has been silence, or where
speech has gone dead or lost its charm…for usually
language goes dead because cultural practice has
hedged it in and some shameless double-dealer
is needed to get outside the rules and set
tongues wagging again. ? (Hyde quoting Plato)
Chattergood: The Hopper, The Flow. The
always at hand—laptop dancing, local food. Liberal Art.
xxxooo, Sam
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