Robert Paterson's Weblog

Fall Surprises - A way of "seeing" the world

Fred who is a great photographer and moral philosopher found this new life while raking up the evidence of the death of the year.

I find his pictures very special. His eye for the natural world is so acute. He sees things that most of us miss

A Bush Victory - New Pilgrims?

History may not repeat itself but surely it moves in great circles. What may be the result of a Bush Victory? Recall the founding myth of America.

400 years ago England, Europe was split by a gulf in culture. One side, owned by the powerful establishment, claimed that God could only be accessed by his chosen intermediaries. Puritans believed that they had a direct and personal link to God. They believed that they could act in the world and were not subject to the institutions of the day.

There was no compromise possible. More than 100 years of ethnic cleaning and blood followed. Huguenots came to England and fueled the economic and social breakout of empire. Extreme Puritans could not remain in England and left for America where they sought to create a theocracy. Later the divisions in England became so great that there was civil war and the King was killed - not in battle. Not hidden away or assassinated but in public after a show trial. In France the opposite took place and the forces of the establishment won not to overthrown until 1789.

In America, the norm has been to pick up a gun when faced with a cultural divide. The final chapter has been an exodus to Canada. It is important to remember that maybe 35% of colonist wanted nothing to do with independence. Maybe at the outset only 20% wanted this. After the War of Independence, the Loyalists could no longer remain in America and many came to Canada.

In the 1850's cultural tension grew so great in the US between the heroic-age agriculturalists and the machine-aged Industrialists that the result was the bloodiest civil war in history with 600,000 dead.

In the 1960's and 1970's those who could not go to Vietnam chose exile in Canada rather than serve a cause that they knew was wrong.

When the cultural gulf is wide enough in America it is naive to think that it can be patched over. The family story of America is one where cultural issues can become the basis for war. We live indeed in dangerous times.

Already the brightest children of the world who would have had no second thoughts about where they might get their PHD, are thinking of Canada. If I was an American, I would fear what a Bush victory would mean. My fear would be no small thing but a deep unease that America could become a culture that I could not exist in. The lessons of the 17th century tell us that over time the more democratic forces win. But that the forces of fear and reaction exert a terrible price.

Early Childhood or Early Parenting?

Cynthia Dunsford posted such a great comment on this site that I felt that it should be seen more easily. So I have posted it in the main part of the blog here. Thanks Cyn.

I heard a CBC radio interview on the issue of daycare for children...

One mother was praising the idea of daycare because it gives her child a chance to be away from her and her husband, so her daughter can learn how to socialize and get along with other children. Play with the toys. The daycare her child goes to has an indoor gymnasium, which she prefers. Maybe she thinks it would be safer and more clean, unlike some of the city parks where kids get hurt all the time and are exposed to dirt.

I think this is an honest slice of where we are as a child rearing society. How did we get from being raised by parents, to this? It seems to be a paranoid, self-seeking approach to child rearing. There are many things missing in today’s approach. The idea of parenting as a responsibility and obligation is still strong, but the intention has been skewed somewhat.

We are at a place where it is acceptable to want to send our children away to be taken care of, and perhaps for some children this is the preferred alternative. Perhaps, though, part of the reason there are so many troubled youth, is that they do not feel connected. Their foundation is based on achievement in an outside world, a world that is still foreign to them. A world their parent(s) know too well, possibly know better than their child’s world.

I think today's parents make many of their decisions based on guilt. They instinctively know that being away from their children all day does not feel good and they try and make it up by over-indulgence, over-protection, over-eating....over-everything. What would happen, for instance, if their child got hurt while playing in park while they were at work and not there to help?

It’s easier to play inside then, to play in an indoor gymnasium with the latest and safest of games and toys.

It seems socialization of children is becoming more of a challenge than ever before. Why? Isn’t daycare supposed to help with that? Perhaps daycare is, in fact, giving children too many tools at too early an age. Are they able to take in so much socializing? Is the idea of socialization of children through daycare just assumed because it’s a large number of children in one room and therefore socialization occurs? Who is monitoring this? What have been their conclusions?

I am doubtful that wanting your children to learn how to socialize is reason enough to send to them daycare. Socialization can occur in the front yard with the other neighbourhood children, it can occur at the grocery store, it can occur at home sitting on the floor with siblings.

It is possible that we are confusing ‘early childhood development’ with ‘early mother/fatherhood development’. Is all this energy in keeping our children busy, in fact, an effort to help relieve our guilty feelings we have from working outside the home, or just an excuse to fill time.

What remains true, in general, is that children will always have a need to feel connected to someone, something, something bigger than themselves, as adults do. Chances are far greater that they will struggle with ‘connection’ if they have little experience with the most basic of relationships, that with parent(s).

Hope and Bugs

Hope is now tempting us with Insect Cuisine. Don't think it will catch on here on PEI

Hope in Thailand

Hope is blogging up a storm if you want to follow her food and bowels - here is the link

iTunes coming to Canada in November

At last!

The death of authority by position - Marketing, Government, Teaching

DAY ONE: KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best. THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are the best.

DAY TWO:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are still the best.

DAY THREE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Ummm... yeah I'm sure they are, but what's all this about some recent video on the net that's supposed to show how you can crack your locks in 10 seconds using a simple Bic ballpoint pen?

DAY FOUR:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just saw that video on a friend's website. And I'm kinda ticked off because I just paid $60 for one of your new locks 3 weeks ago, and I'm wondering if a Bic pen can crack my lock or not... does the pen crack all Kryptonite locks or just one or two models?

DAY FIVE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just visited your website and saw no mention of the Bic pens. What the hell are you doing about it? Are you going to fix the locks? Are you going to give me a refund?

DAY SIX:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: No, they're not. You guys are assholes.

Thanks to Hugh via Johnnie

There is a huge thing happening right in front of us. The Voice of Positional Authority is dying.

What is this voice? It is the voice of authority that comes not from legitimate knowledge or personal strength but simply from the appointed position that the voice has in an institution. It is the marketing voice who thinks it controls the brand. It is the politician who tells us that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is the professor teaches marketing from a text book

In its place the full transparency of the Internet is shifting power away from the Authority of Position to the general authority of an intelligent group called community. The traditional authority does not know how to use the new tools to provide this voice that can be heard and trusted. The traditional authority still thinks that if they tell the lie long enough, that they will escape the consequences.

Isn't this a momentous time! Power is shifting quickly now from Corporate Institution to the Informed Community. The vector is the Internet and the tool is Social Software.

Here via Jeremy via Stephen Harlow more on teaching.

She (Dale Spender) reminded us, as teachers, of the futility of continuing to rely on an authority model when we can no longer rightly claim to be authorities. Instead we must accept the democratisation of information-making and reinvent ourselves as members of a learning community. By learning from each other we will break down this industrial hierarchy.

As the printed word makes way for digital text the education system, based as it is on the printed word, will need to transition or become an anachronism. Learning no longer equates to reading and writing, rather it is better thought of as a process of knowledge production. Spender is convinced that digital texts, which oppose one size fits all education by focussing on the learner's needs, are better tools for this new learning.

Here is where the idea of information comes back into a new perspective. In the pre Internet age, the Institution had the information. The consumer had no other access and had to trust the provider. Much of the value to the provider was mined from the lack of information that the consumer had.

We live now in an age where transparency is ubiquitous. In the Internet age the individual can get all the information she needs by a click of the button. In many cases, the consumer knows more than the sales person.

But consumers do not make purchase decisions based only on pure product information. They want to have the help of experts that they trust. Until now, we asked a friend. We all have the neighbor who knows everything about cars, or the girl friend whose taste in clothes is impeccable, or the financially smart friend who seems to know everything about money. We all know the kid who helps us buy a new computer.

The Internet is putting huge accelerator onto this natural process. Just as Sam Walton got his data from the MIS and then made his decisions by comparing it to his customer conversations, so the consumer gets her data from an information site and then makes a purchase decision by assessing it in an online community that is much more expert than any neighbor could ever be. So now the intelligent new car buyer turns to a site where a community discusses cars. The breast cancer patient turns, not to her neighbor, but to a site where treatments are discussed. The software developer turns to immense sites where his problems are discussed.

For all organizations that have invested heavily in information sites, here is an important point. The individual alone finds the simple information about a car, an illness or a bug not enough. A car buyer may go to the Ford site to check out the information about a new Mustang. But he will then access a specialized car community to help him make sense of the information and to help him make a decision. One-way information sites are merely the starting point for the Internet world.

Decisions to buy or not, to take a treatment or not or to make a software change or not are made in the context of a community opinion. Increasingly these opinions are found in online communities.

There is a decisive shift in power underway. Just as the European Monarchies lost power to democracy after the advent of the printing press, so formal institutions are losing power to communities as the Internet and a set of online community building tools has the same disintermediation effect today.

How then does a corporation fit into this new reality of where power is growing? How would you start to use this information to take advantage of the real new economy? Let Hugh end this post with one of his best ideas:

More later.

Hope is gone

It is my daughter Hope's birthday today. She is 27. I dropped her off at Halifax airport on Sunday and she arrived in Bangkok today. She is safe and sound but I won't see her again until April. There really is something about father's and daughters and I must confess to be feeling bereft. I keep thinking of that song in My Fair Lady - "I have grown accustomed to her face"

I've grown accustomed to her face.

She almost makes the day begin.

I've grown accustomed to the tune that

She whistles night and noon.

Her smiles, her frowns,

Her ups, her downs

Are second nature to me now;

Like breathing out and breathing in.

I was serenely independent and content before we met;

Surely I could always be that way again-

And yet

I've grown accustomed to her look;

Accustomed to her voice;

Accustomed to her face. (more in the continuation)

She first left home at 8 when she finally wore her mother down and won her battle to go to boarding school. The last year when she lived with us on PEI was in some ways the childhood that we missed. Partly why i think that robin was not so sad to see her go. Robin hopes that a more grown up person may return who will not raid her makeup and clothes and who will not tun on the lights on coming back from a party at 4 am. The My fair Lady song she thought of was "Without you" the key snip

Without your pulling it, the tide comes in
Without your twirling it, the earth can spin
Without your pushing them, the clouds roll by,
If they can do without you, ducky, so can I
I shall not feel alone without you
I can stand on my own without you
So go back in your shell
I can do bloody well
Without...

But for her old dad it has just been special to have her here.

Come on April!

No high speed

Sorry I have been so quiet but I have lost my high speed since Thursday last week (Tuesday today). The men from Aliant are meant to have turned up today - it is 5.10 and no sign. AAAAAGH!!!!!!

The power of Myth to Guide us

Brian Alger talks today of the missed opportunity in school to move below the surface of facts and words and to find the meaning of a mythic life. He quotes my favorite author Joseph Campbell.

I had to rush off and find my own Campbell guidelines that I have found so helpful as I muddle along.

....... we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the heropath. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

"..... The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. "Live," Nietzsche says, "as though the day were here." It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal - carries the cross of the redeemer - not in the bright moments of his tribes's great victories, but in the silence of his personal despair."

The Hero of a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell, 1949