(Courses Without Border Series)
When cultures clash. When ideas collide. When bias &
belief systems go bumppety bump. When prejudice and
convictions get it on & homeland security goes all red in
the face… perfect pre-requisite for the origins of invention
& innovation: humor, art, & science.
What, a Joke?
What a Joke!
An English major & Chemistry student, Environmental
Studies person & History addict, Biologist, Sociologist,
Anthropologist, & Religion majors, Gender Studies, Math
people, Music minors and Artists all walk into a cinder
block & florescent classroom at 8 o’clock in the morning . . .
***
Juxtapositions
Toward RUBRICing Creative Process
Figure 6. A very tentative map of the interrelationships
of some emergent emotional forms. This represents an
elaboration of a chart from Koestler (1964) in which he
links humor, science, and art in a continuum.
Here I have interdigitated his with other domains of
emergent cognition-emotion.
This diagram collapses a multi-dimensional space of
possible relationships to depict these relationships with
respect how they map onto four dimensions of semiotic
and psychological functions.
These are inferential effect, affective value, and
communicative intent (dimensions depicted below) as
well as the dynamic development of the bisociative-
blending process Terrence Deacon: “The Artful Mind,”
The Aesthetic Faculty.
https://www.casbs.org/local/artfulmind/deacon_images/index.html
.
**********
Dimitri: “I’m finally beginning to see through you, Tasso.
This whole philosophy business is just playing games
with words.
Tasso. Exactly. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Dimitri: So you admit it. Philosophy is just semantics.
Tasso: Just semantics? How else would you do philosophy?
With grunts and giggles.?
****
Dimitri: This clarifies everything we’ve been talking about.
Tasso: In what way?
Dimitri: What you call “philosophy, ” I call a joke.”
Cathart & Klein, Plato and a PlatypusWalk into a Bar
@@@@
Joke: from Indo European yek : “to speak”: etymology for
joke, jocose, jocular, juggle, jeopardy.
Origins: the act of creating is provoked when 2 or more “matrices”
(habits of mind, cultural forms, ways of knowing, cognitive systems,
rites andrituals, mores and protocols…) collide: a distinguished
statesman in high hat, say, slips on the ice and takes a great fall on
his ass in front of fans and political dignitaries. Basis for humor
(what a joke?), tragic art (what a shame?) or scientific invention
(how 'bout making bearclaw cleats for shoes?)
Clash.
Collision.
Trauma.
Violation.
Disturbance.
Disruption
Turmoil.
Transgression. .
Antagonism
Antithesis
Opposition
Contrariety.
Confusion
Discombobulation
Consternation
Prerequisite for the origins of joke, art, science.
And for the practice of dialectic…
(war games: juggling opposition without letting any team
win: keeping the agon(y) in play & anticipating an emerging
synthesis which does no injustice to the players, opponents,
enemies, teams, contraries, contestants, jousters, duelers, on
the one hand and on the other )
Ms Dialectic Ms Anti-Dialectic
& how they Just Get Along
. . .I was going to say: the practice of dialectic can not begin until
someone gets hurt—not your sticks & stones hurt: more like insult,
offense, what? o no you dint, tweak. twist, monkey wrench,
transgression—a cerebral border crossing, frontier felt but yet
unknown, affective trauma revealing some kind of out-of-the-box,
beyond containment & out of control homeland security violation
so that the opposition an be characterized and put into play..
"A Buddha is as good as an enemy. " And "if you see the Buddha
in the road, kill him."
A couple of koans that hint at the prerequisite for dialectical process.
Got to love the enemy without which: no game. A good joke had
by all. Punch line:.always an emergent value and phenomena.
Eureka. I get it.
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