Captain Oh my Captain

Imagine. 

I think I heard yesterday from the 

bullet presentation  that #1 on 

President  Solnick’s  imagination 

bucket list  is that  we might figure

out how to stand out nationally
as a meaningful  contributor to

institutional higher education—

a repeat somewhat of our 70’s 

experience with the National 

 Endowment of the Humanities: 

its   salute and endorsement of our

Ways of Knowing Core.

That  program  broke us out of 

Swannanoa and our nestled-in-

the-Blue-Ridge habitat. Timing 

is everything. It was a time  of 

 educational reform  across the 

country and we were part of it.   

Linguists and Information Theorists 

define MEANING  as a difference 

that  makes a Difference. Tautological 

in  form,  but it’s clear that the second

Difference is not on the same level (of 

logical type) as the first difference.  

The first difference is merely descriptive.

 The second is evaluative—more than 

just a difference: a difference that makes 

a  Difference—counts for something, 

signifies

Aesthetic on the one hand (literally: view, 

is-what-it-is: denotation ) and Ethic on 

 the other hand (value-added, connotation). 

The Presidential challenge: not just to be 

different, but to be a difference that makes

a difference.  We’re already different although

much of our difference (work and service) 

has been appropriated by colleges and universities.

Because pedagogy (the media, means)  has

always been more engaging to me than 

 content and subject matter (message)—and 

context more significant than text and the

same with background and figure, my vote

for coming up with program difference that

makes a difference nationally would be wondering

how to develop a pedagogical environment that

also encourages failure  as well as sustains

high suspicion of “clarity” 

Sampling my own past posts—redundantly,

presumptively::

“Our universities, however, continue to
teach and operate in the system that is
destroying the biosphere. Adherence
to the old mind-set, the old curricula,
obsolete pedagogy, and shortsighted
planning are producing graduates who
are trained to perpetuate the destruction
of the biosphere.

Business, upon which so much depends,
will never “get it” with graduates like these
entering the work force. “
   (Ray Anderson, our 09 graduation speaker)

“Clarity is not a virtue.

If everything you say is detailed
and explicit, you won’t give your 
collaborators room to run. Put ideas
 out there that are half-baked, ideas

where you’re not even sure what it 
means yet. Put yourself in an
environment that rewards failure. 
Creativity is risky; successful creative

people are also the ones who fail 
the most often.

Creativity is inefficient.

Don’t expect every idea and every
project to pan out. Know when to cut
your losses and move on. “Innovation
emerges from the bottom up,
unpredictably, and it’s only after the
innovation has occurred that every 
one realizes what’s happened. 

Innovation can’t be planned;
it can’t be predicted: it has to
be allowed  to emerge. Like
successful improvisation.

Key to understanding innovation: 
to realize that collaborative webs
are more important than creative
people. The power of this 
collaborative web …is what companies
must tap into if they want to create
a culture that encourages significant innovation.”

Sampling some of Keith Sawyer’s Group Genius:
The Creative Power of Collaboration

               Genius is the Enemy of genius

(Re: Collaborative Genius as opposed to Singular.)

Richard Nixon would say repeatedly:
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear”

I swim in an addiction to clarity.  

Homeland Insecurity Systems demand it.

How diametrically if not diabolically opposed 

a failure-encouraging, clarity-suppressing

environment would be to institutionalized 

academia with its sustainable bias for

cultivating  individual  not so much  

collaborative  genius.