processing speed doesn't make it more intelligent.

In some cases, we can see how "quickness of thought" is correlated with different modes of understanding, and we have no reason to believe that the faster consciousnesses necessarily yield knowledge of greater import. Their scrupulousness may in fact cause them to be endlessly fascinated with microscopic details, like a cat chasing a moving point on a wall cast by a beam of light. If there is a pattern to the flash, or even a pattern in its pattern, it will go entirely unnoticed.
What reveals at once conceals, but intelligence testing does not appreciate how slower minds coincide with slower patterns and can appreciate them in ways not accessible to those much quicker. It is this sort of mentality that leads people to state that cows are "stupid", when in fact their intelligence is elegantly rhythmically in synch with the type of situations they are likely to have to deal with in their lives. Herbivores, in general, do not need to plan quickly how to eat because their food is not a moving target.
A comprehensive intelligence must strive to modify the rate of thought using different types of activities in order that the universe may be allowed to reveal itself in as many orderings as it can.

my respect for the weed community

It is often considered a good practice to not led weedy species go to seed. This is suggested as a way of preventing the accumulation of viable unwanted seeds in the soil, reducing our requirements for weeding in the future. However, there seem to me several reasons why this is not a necessarily a wise practice. Couldn’t it simply encourage a different type of more vigorous weeds in the soil (such as those that propagate rhizomatically or through seeds that are blown in from a far distance)? And won’t this greatly reduce the diversity of the natural community and the biodiversity potential (and therefore, at the very least, the resiliency) of the land, and encourage the most pernicious weeds at the expense of those whose spreading requirements are more exacting? In particular, wouldn’t the number of leguminous species likely go down, and with it an important player in the self-sustaining potential of the land?
In my garden, there are no weedy species that I don’ let seed, though I don’t let all of every species propagate. But my goal is not extinction and my criteria not genocidal: I instead look at relative abundance, edibility, allotropy, medicinal value and lighting effects. A note on the latter: I believe the spread of Cyperus rotundus is due to a vigilant effort to destroy all weeds without considering how some are capable of blanketing this difficult species from the sun. I have personally experienced a crash in Cyperus stands solely through maintaining a Synderella nodiflora groundcover (whose glass slipper I’ve now found), which emerged naturally after I let it. I suspect that weeds themselves will be our most faithful, long-term weedkillers (as well as our ploughs and fertilizers) should we decide to eventually become a species for whom sustainability means something sustainable. Trees are often enlisted, and may be appropriate assistants against some species such as Imperata that are too tall to be smothered, but it seems to me that our first line of defense is often overlooked.
It is the machete and the sloping land that favour a continued relationship with our plant community by physically preventing the possibility of local botanical holocausts. The rate of destruction is slow enough and the possibility of complete success remote enough, that the resource-poor farmer is fated to having to live with weeds. This means that every possible use of each weed sharing land with our crops is of highest importance. It is no coincidence therefore that these farmers are those with the greatest botanical familiarity (and 2,4-D dispersers, the least) with these plants. But their knowledge is far from complete and should be looked on as a system co-evolving recursively with the evolution of the farmer’s context –in this case, the field. For example, the edibility of a weed is by no means conclusively established by indigenous folk in an area. There are even some weeds that are considered inedible in one part of Laos but sometimes consumed in another, such as Crassacephalum crepidioides, which I’ve yet to hear of eaten in the North. My favourite example though is the wild Celosia. This plant is collected and sometimes even grown as a vegetable food in many African countries, but in this part of Asia it is routinely cleared to make way for Brassicas and other familiar greens. It tastes benign, is easy to incorporate into many dishes and has beautiful flowers that are often visited by various species of predatory wasp. It also has a long non-woody taproot that probably provides quick channels for water inflow after its annual floral exuberance has weaned and it withers its way towards transformation. I can’t think of a better food candidate for a post-industrial dinner table. This year, I will collect the seeds of this species and broadcast them in a plot as a vegetable, alongside all the villagers growing their strips of picky mustard greens.
The idea that these weeds are invasive species not “supposed to be here” is both dangerous and false. It is dangerous because it pits purity against contamination in a Hitlerian judgment that leads us to think of some species as “bad” and requiring extermination in order to regain a now tarnished Eden. It is false because it is based on an incorrect conception of ecosystems - and idea that ecosystems were, before humans, in some sort of idyllic harmony. In fact, the dynamism brought through the migration of species, by wind, by floating, by piggybacking on others, has probably propelled the evolution of species and has made many beautiful and interesting species what they are today, as the pine beetle would surely help the pine if eventually allowed to fulfill its destiny undisturbed by human management. In the end, it is inevitable that these great swaths of forest, gradually depending on more and more human interventions, eventually become so separated from their environmental contexts that they become weak and wholly dependent creatures, and surely a much greater long term danger than their being attacked at present volumes. If villagers have discovered medicinal and other values for introduced weeds, it is just as probable that other species have also now found some use of them and have accepted them into the biological community stewarding the land. This does not mean that other potentially invasive species should be let loose without abandon. Novel species in established ecosystems do cause shifts in other members of the community and in some cases displacement and extinction. But, be the time we’ve noticed it, the transformation is already well underway. What it does mean is that we realize that we can’t go back in time without huge sums of money and energy in order to solve a problem that Mother Nature solved already, when she fixed it so that, as the permaculturalists realize, “the problem is the solution”.

to write is to be written

I would like to become a writer. I don’t know if it is possible now –I’ve gone so many years without training my soul in this way. Why do I want this? Because I want to generate ideas, possibilities. Why? To reinspire, re-enchant, to help people see that underneath the skin of the worlds they’ve grown to accept there is still a magical understory –and always will be too. But if I am unable of accessing it often (the cause of my infrequent writing) then what makes me think I should be investing myself in the role of messenger? Perhaps I should approach writing differently. Perhaps I still have too much conceit when I write, to many hopes and aspiration, and my venture is still not as pure as it is when I draw. Couldn’t writing also be a silent study intended for no one, but whose goal it is to see better? Couldn’t I also engage in as careful as possible description of what I see around me? But words are already so loaded and impure- I can draw the softest, of delicate line when I draw the flower stalk of a nearby Elephantopus, but how much more difficult it is to choose words so free of pretension! And even these words I write now still betray a sense of judgement –and also a fear of being judged. Yes, medium of writing is more difficult than drawing is if one’s goal is as mine is.
Part of the problem is the issue of “expression”. When drawing, I quickly realized that it is not about self-expression. The goal is description, understanding, familiarity, relationship, adoration –and the side effect is expression, but it is expression of the creative force that is producing what is drawn. But with writing, how can I choose words that rid this text of “self-expression”? It is not possible and this is the hidden dagger and hidden hubris behind our consciousness.
How interesting it is, though, that I started off this blog with nothing at all to say but the text winded and wove itself down into this little kernel. There is a movement of the cosmos even here, a rolling wave quite unconcerned with whatever frothing accoutrements my little ego chooses to adorn it with.

colour and the destruction of the holy

bright colours are rare things in nature, except perhaps for sunsets and sunrises. other than that, they are the rarest productions of the forest and meadow, gifts where the sun powers its own chromatic transformation through the flowing engines of the botanical and avian worlds. i find the superfluous use of red, pink, orange, and violet disrespectful and also damaging to the human soul. the abundance of these colours in industrial materials, in paint, clothes, posters and plastics, desensitizes us to the original glory of their sensual essence and prevents us from feeling the humble lesson that these colours have taught us throughout the centuries. to celebrate the proper etiquette towards nature and to regain our visual sensitivity let's clad our being in neutered hues!

curving the x coordinate

Before the invention of the clock, re-occurrence may have been the means of quantifying our temporal stream: the repetitive nature of sunrise and sunset, pangs of hunger, moon faces, menstrual cycles, the succession of plants and the seasons were all used to understand and measure scales of time. It is interesting to consider what time might feel like without anything cyclical at all. Had we not been regulating the soul through these external structures, would a clock have come about so easily? Clocks themselves were originally invented modeling this repetition anyway and the fact that they are still shaped as circles with hands moving around them only to come back to where they began, points towards their ancestry. In order for us to conceive of rhythm as having any value at all in measurement, we would need to have it order aspects of our lives in such a way that our memory of their recurrence served us in some way (as in foraging, agriculture, hunting, as early examples). Had we only repetition of our own making as in drumming or dancing, etc., it is difficult to imagine these creations would last long enough or consistently enough for us to come to believe that such an ordering were anything but a rare patterning in the universe. I therefore tend to think that if there was no external cycling, we would not likely have built a clock and would likely conceive of time as something that flows at different rates at different times - in the way it appears phenomenologically in immediate conscious experience.

What this might mean is that quantifying time and the Cartesian technique of representing it using equal fractions originates out of our location in the Earth. A world trapped in chaotic orbit may have given rise to a "transcendental aesthetic" quite different from anything Kant imagined as necessary for the possibility of experience. Could we imagine that a graphing system where the x axis incorporates cyclical aspects of time? There are three possible ways of doing this that quickly come to mind: using a circle, a spiral, and a cylinder. Each structure has can provide us with new eyes by which to understand the dynamics of a graph-able situation. For example, a simple circle will show the different iterations that the system takes superimposed on itself and will therefore show the overall range of behaviour the object takes. The spiral will show undulations and variations clearly and it will be easy to compare the phenomena at any two or more stages within the cycle at the same point of development, but unfortunately it requires a progressively longer stretch of graph to represent equal amounts of time. This leads to a distorted understanding (but it may be partially resolved by drawing radial lines outwards from the centre point to represent segments of time). Cylinders circumvent this problem and may be easy to interpret if transparent.

The 4 Pedagogical Modes of Interaction and the Cultural Curriculum

According to Dewey’s (1916) “theory of experience”, I learn from every experience I have, which, for better or for worse, shapes me and my subsequent actions. Using this lens, I can see that every time I interact with another person, he or she becomes my teacher. If they behave in ways I have often seen before, they further stabilize that way of being for me, as I gradually form general understandings of things in the world through direct experience. These generalizations then become the basis by which I construct further experience, as Eisner (1997), paraphrasing Neisser (1976) explains: “The expectations we acquire from our examination of the particular become a part of our anticipatory schema” (p. 7). However, if I encounter someone doing something uncommon, they show me an alternative way of being in the world. This different way of being presents itself as a possibility, destabilizing slightly my customary schema.

What those around me teach me can be called a “cultural curriculum.” “Curriculum” had traditionally been thought of as the plan a school has for implementing learning (Jackson, 1992). However, the definition of “curriculum” has been significantly stretched and split apart in recent decades (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman, 1996). The notion of the curriculum as a ‘plan’ has been thoroughly problematized (see, for example the ‘hidden curriculum’ in Jackson, 1968), as has the concept that a curriculum is a formative technology limited to learning that occurs within schools (Schubert, 1986). Schubert insists that a curriculum is present in different organizations, from businesses to families. I would add that it is also present in culture, and that it is this curriculum that is taught to me in my interactions with others, forming the basis of Dewey’s argument for the transmission of culture (1916).

I participate in the cultural curriculum not only as a learner but also as a teacher. For the same reason that I am always a learner, I am also always a teacher. Everything I do has some influence on those who come into contact with me, whether I reinforce their old experiences, present them new ones, or find ways to bridge the old and the new. At this time, I am writing this this blog, which I adapted from an old thesis proposal. I am teaching those in this internet cafe through my choices of when and how to study, what to eat and how to relax, and so on. In each case, I am presenting ‘how Ramsey writes a blog.’ Some of the staff here have seen me come in repeatedly over the last few years and have undoubtedly formulated a fairly sophisticated way of understanding my way of "being in the world" -as I have similarly done for them. It is really quite impossible to imagine a circumstance where those who observe me do not learn in some way. You, the readers, are also learning from me, so in some sense I am your ‘teacher.’ Perhaps you have never seen a blog like this one, in which case, you may come to some new understandings as to what the format or topic a blog can take. I believe that embracing the fact that the human relationship is essentially (though not exclusively) pedagogical is important because this perspective allows us to conceive more easily the mutually influential nature of human interaction and the responsibility that goes along with it.

In an extended sense of the word then, I am at all times presenting a “curriculum”. While the overall trend in Curriculum Studies has been away from curriculum development and towards attempting to ‘understand’ what curriculum is (Pinar, et al. 1996), some scholars, particularly those involved with action research (ex. Carson, 1990), realize that understanding requires that we engage in doing curriculum and that these two concepts really need to be united. In a sense then, I am conducting autobiographical action research, in that my goal is to understand what my curriculum is through trying to make it what I want it to be. In other words, my practice and my theory will be in a dialectical relationship, each one informing the other. I hope to show this process through the writing of this proposal. I can think of no more elegant a way of expressing this than in the well-known quote of Freire, which is applicable far beyond the emancipatory, Marxist context for which it was intended: “Action without theory is blind, just as theory without action is meaningless” (1970).

Moreover, because all of my observers are also teachers, also living and interacting and presenting ways of being in the world continuously, it is also true that they are my ‘student teachers’ insofar as they come into contact with me. When I realize this and take responsibility for it, I become a teacher educator. This way of framing our relationship is useful because it prompts me continually to remember that the interactions I have with those around me reverberate far beyond the fixed domains that are usually conceived of. I do not usually consider, in my daily interactions with others, that we are nodes within a cultural entity and that nothing I do or say to another stops when our interaction does. At all times, I am then a student, a teacher, a student teacher and a teacher educator. Each of these perspectives sheds a different light on the pedagogical nature of my relationship with others. My relationship with others is each of these four modes simultaneously, occurring phenomenologically prior to my grasping of these relationships with language. These relationships are inherent in the biological fact that we are co-interacting sensory systems.

art as ecology

Drawing plants as realistically as possible is many things at once: a type of meditation on and intense concentration on a unique pattern of creation; an ecological study of the location, behaviour, light effects, water retention capacities, development, morphology, and the creatures that form a community with the plant; an opportunity to research in a non-linguistic way without imposing interpretations; a respect for the plant that it offers knowledge of itself to us directly and at a rate we are ready for (rather than stealing its secrets through reading botany books, etc.). A plant never looks the same after being carefully drawn even once. Though not describable in words, its uniqueness has come forth through the care the artist has placed when sitting with it and seeing its lines and rhythms.

The goal of drawing is not self-expression, and art of this type is not a narcissistic striving for a personal style or uniqueness. If a style emerges eventually, it is in spite of the artist’s intentions and an expression of the same creative rhythm that is in the plant manifesting in the human. The drawing is an act of humility and a prayer in the face of a being that is infinitely more beautiful than any representation of it. The final product is almost irrelevant.