Creating an applied dialectical and dialogical educational method of
interacting with individuals educationally
Intention
This social philosophy experiment is designed to empirically test and develop an applied dialogical and dialectical method of engaging educationally, dialogically and dialogically with different individuals in South Africa and working with them on qualitatively transforming their lives, personal empowerment and experiences of self-fulfillment, a meaningful and productive life and wellbeing in what they seek to achieve for themselves professionally and personally. The intention of developing this method is to put together an educational and ontological method that is specifically adapted to the unique individual needs of the other person that he or she can use to empower him or her and his/her life and career. It is directly catered and tailored for him or her to fulfill his or her ambitions and needs in the most suitable and workable way for him or her in his/her professional practices and lives. The intention of this project is also to examine my own values, ambitions and intentions, as I work out this value-laden empirical method of qualitatively transforming individuals’ wellbeing and fulfillment as an empirical work on its own extent and merit and right.
The war in israel/Palestine/Gaza resumed. I was discussing it.
Israel is a very diversed made up of various sects, beliefs, backgrounds and countries of origins. Religious, traditionalists, ultradharedy, sedulars, liberals, immegrants from every country in the world all looking down at each other and nursing complexities, superiority or inferiority conflicts. The only thing in common is fighting for their survival against the arabs who want to throw the Jews in the sea.
Here are extracts from
Francis Fukuyama (1992). The End of History And the Last Man. New York The Free Press
on the need of war as a way for cirtizens and people to unite and nurse experiences of pride, patriotism, being united and recognised
There is a growing issue of socio-economic gap and extremely high cost of living. There are shortages of affordable housing in the desired cities and a better quality of life in the centre of Israel and the large cities than in the rest of the country. This is as the country iis moving from the socialist model of the pat of a state that takes care of all its citizens from conception to burial and provides them with economic security, the highest and free quality of education, healthcare and nursing, as well as heavily subsised transportantion, food and housing. And into a neo-liberal model of a extreme wealth and luxury to the few and people working for the private owned companirs, shares holders and board who are only intersted in making money.
Does the war help?
What will happen when all the wars are over and people will want to equality, dignity and humanity and their security again? Who will they fight once the Arabs are no lnger the enemy?
In my last post here I cited Fukuyama's (1992) discussion how war brings people together, avoid softness ands boredom and lead to progress and transformation
Francis Fukuyama (1992). The End of History And the Last Man. New York The Free Press
p. 329
A liberal democracy that could fight a short and decisive war every generation or so to defend its own liberty and independence would be far healthier and more satisfied than one that experienced nothing but continuous peace.
p. 329
Hegel believed that without the possibility of war and sacrifices demanded by it, men would grow soft and self-absorbed; society would degenerate into a morass of selfish hedonism and community would ultimately dissolve.
p. 330
Hegel says
War is horrific but also experiences of heroism and sacrifice, friendship and valore take on new and more vivid meanings, and life transformed by the memory of having participated in something greater than themselves
Common purpose in the quiet days of peace would be hard
Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause.
of a just cause because
They will struggle for the sake of struggle.
They will struggle…out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by a peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they struggle agaiubst the peace and prosperity, and against democracy.
Paris 1968 example – France one of most free and prosperous societies no struggle and sacrifice in their middle-class lives went to streets
Rejected life in a society in which ideals had somehow become impossible.
p. 331
World War I
European publics simply wanted war because they were fed up with dullness and l;ack of community in civil life.
Public demonstrations for war across Europe
Much of the exuberance of those crowds reflected the feeling that war meant national unity and citizenship at long last, an overcoming of the divisions between capitalist and proletariat, Protestant and Catholic, farmer and worker, that characterized civil society.
Testimony
wanted Sense of togetherness and war
1914 – Europe experienced hundred years of peace since the last major continent-wide conflict settled by the peace of Vienna
This period century saw the flowering of modern technological civilization as Europe industrialized People became bored and wanted and demonstrated for war. This led to World War I and World War II and about hundred million people dead.
This brings me to something I wrote eleven years ago when I was working the ideas and theories of the applied dialectical method and argued how much the self needs to be in war with itself and all the tension that this amounts to in order to move forward, progress and qualitatively transform. I was a piece written in freefall where the words just came to me and fall in me .
Please note here that the freefall technique in creative and therapeutic, cathartic, ontological writing implies throwing oneself into and falling, without a parachute, within the words as they come, the thoughts prior to their full formation in the person’s cognition and the unplanned structures that are being shaped. This is without setting off to contain and internalise them. It is indeed a therapeutic, cathartic and creative writing method that is designed to connect individuals with their innermost intention in writing and to enable them to write with authority and grace. The reader could consult the works of Barbara Turner-Vesselago (1996, 2009), on whose definition of freefall writing I drew in the above description of it, Angelica Wienrich (2009), the Lapidus – Creative Words for Health and Well-being group (Lapidus, 2009), Judy Marshall (2004, 2001, 1999), Natalie Goldberg (1986, 1990 1993) and Susan Wooldridge (1996, 2007) on freefall writing and the use of the freefall technique in creative and therapeutic ontological writing.
In my suggested applied dialectical approach, the enquirer is having an authentic reflective, auto-dialogical, auto-critical and self-analytical conversation, dialogue and discussion with himself/herself. He/she is typing and logging things down within a direct, raw, spontaneous, creative, reflexive and authentic, reflective or de-reflective, free association or Gestaltian freefall mode of writing. She or he is writing for healing, growth, personal and community development, empowerment and self-fulfilment, health and well-being (Lapidus, 2009) and first-person, reflective, free association (Laing, 1967). This happens as he/she sits by himself/herself alone in front of a personal computer or a laptop and can take place in his/her private home, his/her study, a coffeehouse, the local public house or a travelling train on the way to work or pleasure.
As for Gestalt free fall writing, as I already noted above, I draw on the works of Turner-Vesselago, (1996, 2009), Wienrich (2009), Lapidus (2009), Marshall (2004, 2001, 1999), Goldberg (1986, 1990 1993) and Wooldridge (1996, 2007).
Indeed, in her impressive website on Freefall writing at http://www.freefallwriting.com/freefall/home.html, Barbara Turner-Vesselago (2009) noted that
As the name suggests, Freefall invokes the courage to fall without a parachute, into the words as they come, into the thoughts before they have fully formed in the mind, into the unplanned structures that take shape, without prompting, to contain them.
She also expressed in that website her aspiration for freefall writing to help writers to
connect with their deepest intention in writing, and to write with authority and grace.
Similarly, by the term “free association”, I refer to the process of relating ideas without strict preconceived rules of writing and communication. I am meaning by it the practice of writing whatever comes into the mind and feels, senses and experienced to be authentic, true and right. I very much enjoyed the way Laing (1967) in the Bird of Paradise had written about experiences, feelings and life from his work as a psychiatrist and an “anti-psychiatrist psychiatrist” in some sort of very uneasy, emotional, spontaneous and free, and even grotesque, poetic free association writing.
Turner-Vesselago, B. (1996). Freefall: Writing Without a Parachute. Toronto: The Writing Space.
Turner-Vesselago, B. (2009). This is a very impressive website on the Free fall writing technique. www.Freefallwriting.com. Retrieved and accessible from this URL address on the 16th of September, 2009.
http://mysite.nmmu.ac.za/aserper/Meme.htm
After spending three days asking me questions and deconstruting and problematizing my answers and responses, I was told that
the point of the exercise was to emphasize to you the NEED for you to provide a rigorous and detailed account of your method, written so someone else can follow it, explained academically in analytical and evaluative relation (similarities and differences) to grounded-theory and Freire's dialectics, as well as Popper et al., along with an account of how you perform both the (semi-structured) interviews and the post-interview reflections and dialogue. Alongside this, we need to see selected transcripts of interviews and detailed empirical results, and analysis, before we would publish your work.