wallpaper dinding

Obviously I have thought about heaven (and Francis Thompson) in the last week. Whilst the physical pain of grief (and it is physical - which surprised me) has subsided, I have wondered about where he is, what he is doing, who he has met, etc. I'm sure he'd have wanted to chat to Graham Greene, or Evelyn Waugh, or Alec Guinness and Charles Laughton. But talk where? Are the pubs? Theatres? Universities? I'd be a bit disappointed if there weren't. But then Thompson reminds us that it is in us: "tis ye, tis your estranged faces". They are still our pubs, our theatres, our universities.

I'd often thought (I think I said this to him) that the only thing we can say with certainty about death is that it constrains our capacity to act. But it only constrains it. It doesn't stop it altogether. My dad lives on in the hearts of those who love him. He lives on in the art and writing and books he left behind. And those things still have causal power, over which I feel a certain shepherding responsibility.

But I wouldn't exclude the possibility that the causal power of the dead extends to mechanisms that we cannot apprehend. We just cannot know this; but we should have the sense and humility to acknowledge the possibility.

The Kingdom of God - Francis Thompson (1859–1907)

O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,—clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

Upholding the principal of "everything is relevant" which I always emphasise with my students, I want to write about my experience now at a very difficult time. There's too much to say about my dad so soon after he has gone - I will do that another time when things have settled down. Right now, it is my experience of grieving (which I have not really had since I was a child) that is dominating my thoughts.

Grief is a strange phenomenon. No-one can really know what the experience might be until they are experiencing it. That is because it is hard to get a feel for an experience where the meaning of the world is transformed in ways which are outside our current comprehension. For the person experiencing it, the world is transformed. For those who sympathise with that person, things are 'as normal', although most people recognise the impact of the loss and offer condolences which serve to acknowledge the fact that there has indeed been a transformation. For myself when this happens, the impact is very emotional: "Did I imagine that the world just changed? No, the world has really changed." - and it hurts.

So the pain, the condolences, the tears and the transformation go hand-in-hand. The sense of identity which I had, having become certain of its security, is challenged by something that happens in my environment. The inter-dependence, history and togetherness which my independence often tries so hard to escape, returns to remind me of my own dependence, history and the need to be together. On the one hand, it is comforting; but on the other, I know it is reminder of what is true, what relates to the primeval existence of the species, and it is a challenge to reflect; more importantly it is a challenge to reflect on that which is universally recognised by all other human beings.

So why the 'waves'? Maybe it's a kind of oscillation between two forms of life: the old one, of known habits, and the new one where those same habits reveal their entwinedness with the person who has died and consequently show the world as transformed. The pain of grief marks the difference between the two: it causes a breakdown. In doing so, it also starts the healing. Slowly life, death, history, togetherness and inter-dependence are reconciled: the oscillations lessen as time passes. What I am left with is a deepened sense of the wonder, beauty and sacredness of life and a love for the world which is more profound, and certainly more keenly felt, than it was before.

But as I think about that, I think my dad would like this: in the entry on 'Algebra' in W.H. Auden's 'commonplace' book "A certain world", Auden wrote:

David Hartley offered a vest-pocket edition of his moral and religious philosophy in the formula
where W is the love of the world, F is the  fear of God, and L is the love of God. It is necessary to add only this. Hartley said that as one grows older, L increases and indeed becomes infinite. It follows then that W, the love of the world, decreases and approaches zero.

I'm not feeling very well at the moment: a post-Christmas cold and a general sense of irritation with the world are weighing on my judgement. However, I find that in such states I get things done. This is often because nothing seems good enough. Everything needs more attention. Consequently, I tend to take (rather ill-tempered) action to try and move things along, fix things, etc. Although I can't see it at the moment, I have a feeling that when I am feeling better, I will be pleased I took some of this action (although the results of my lack of temper might have some consequences!).

Everyone has down-periods, and our moods generally have an enormous impact on our creativity. Since so much effective agency has to do with timing and seizing the moment, shifts in mood, psychological well-being, and physical wellness  all have a bearing on the unfolding of events. Yet we rarely acknowledge it. Our systems have to be designed as though people inhabited flat 'mood spaces', where there are no fluctuations of feeling. Yet, having designed flat systems, we should not be surprised if the actual behaviour with those systems is a little erratic. The danger for us is to assume that behaviour is as flat as the intended behaviour that is presupposed by the flat system.

To make such an assumption is basically to fail to anticipate what is likely to occur, and consequently to lose control of the situation in which the system operates. Yet, in our thinking about socio-technical systems, we need not be so poor at anticipating the behaviour of people. Only a terrible teacher would ever make such an assumption about their class - and they would be destined for a rather vexing experience! 'Flat systems' present us with an opportunity, because for all the other unknowns about human experience, we can rely on the fact that the system will always behave the same (I always thought this was one of the most interesting things about Learning Design).

But we need richer models of people, and within those models, it would be reasonable to think not only of the 'well' person, but also of the 'unwell' person; not only of the 'good' person, but of the 'bad' person; not only of the 'authentic' person, but of the 'inauthentic' person... and all  the shades in between. Psychological models are unlikely to help (at least on their own): ecological models are needed. And whilst it seems ambitious, it is not impossible to begin to model the shades of being in social situations.

I believe that we posses a rich array of cybernetic models of forms of life, and that these models are often commensurable. The Viable System Model, Luhmann's social systems model, Bowlby's models of attachment, models of anticipatory systems and eigenforms... the dynamics behind these mechanisms are sufficiently rich for us to conceive of both wellness and unwwellness, of authenticity and inauthenticity, and the relationships between the viability of an organism, the communications it makes, and the attachments it maintains.

And curiously, as I write this, I feel slightly better (still coughing though!). It is as if through the effort of looking upwards, of dragging myself back onto my feet is at once transformative of my perspective and the communications I make, but also predicated on the depression which I seeks to escape. In other words, the unwellness is fundamental and constructive in the process. I'll have to stick that in my model and play with it!!

I'm in the pub at the moment because my university is still closed for Christmas! The pub has a different atmosphere to the University: it's relaxed, is aesthetically interesting, people around me are also relaxed and very varied (the old drunk in the corner, the young students around a table... and the geeky academic blogging on his laptop!)... and the food is better (and cheaper) than the University. And it's got WiFi, so I can Skype my colleagues, catch up on email, etc. But I'm conscious that the form of life I live here is different from that which I live when I go into the University. Here I can reflect, think, write, eat, drink, piss and fart with relative impunity. With regard to the latter two, I simply wouldn't risk it in the University! But the others are not so easy either. Because my form of life in the University is to walk (from office to office), talk, drink (coffee), bump-into (whilst drinking coffee), organise, strategise, talk to students, bemoan, nudge, remind... and struggle (sometimes) to find time to piss, but certainly to find a place to think. And farting is out of the question.

Not that any of that is bad... it's just different. A different form of life. But it leads me to reflect that my academic life needs both the pub and the University. It also includes a bigger library  (where I can occasionally fart) and the church (where I would never dream of farting). But these reflections lead me to the astounding conclusion that my favourite places to think are places to fart. Farting and thinking seem to be related. But more than that, I seem to benefit from traversing different forms of life (I wouldn't want to think (or fart) all the time.. I benefit from the stuff on-campus too, which gives me something to think about).

I am lucky in being able to traverse forms of life and to integrate them. But also it is important to recognise the barriers between forms of life within an environmental setting. My experience of the pub is different to that of the barmaid. Her experience of the pub is much like mine of the University, except that her time is filled with serving customers, pulling pints, making coffee, organising rotas, etc. Farting is probably out of the question. She told me about her disappointment about not being able to spend Christmas with her family. That is another form of life, but for her, quite separate from the form of life behind the bar... and the two sometimes conflict. But she doesn't seem too unhappy.

All this leads me to focus on a particular question of education:

"How can one move from one form of life to another?"

We do this all the time, and the business of education is to prepare individuals for a new form of life. But the difference between the novice engineer and the expert is the extent to which they not only inhabit the form of life of the workplace, but integrate it with other forms of life they experience. The difference between the student and the novice is the extent to which attachments to teachers and academic structure for support in the environment of work is lessened. The difference between the student and the delinquent is the extent to which attachments are formed within learning environments that nurture development, rather than being spuriously formed to transitory objects (things and people) in an attempt to avert emotional catastrophe.

Particularly in the latter case, the language of 'opportunity' is hollow. In cases of damaged attachments, deep sensual togetherness is required which goes deeper than linguistic and strategic communications of 'opportunity'. Technology is partly to blame for the macroeconomic forces which have damaged attachments. A sensible strategy for dealing with this is to use technology to fix the things that technology has broken. And we all need a place to fart/think!

Whilst I'm working on an EU bid on creativity, I'm wondering about the idea that creativity can be considered to be (in the terrible jargon of the European Commission) a 'transversal competency'. I've struggled with the idea of competency generally, and the business of seeing creativity as 'competency' seems to be the most extreme example. What the commission, governments, education ministries, universities want us to think is that creativity can be taught. Now within that assertion, there is a presupposition that creativity sits within the individual's psychological and bodily predispositions and that these dispositions can be acquired through educational processes.

I have no doubt that creativity can be acquired - I have attempted (and sometimes succeeded) in instilling greater creativity in my students. But I believe creativity is a form of life which sits neither within the person or within their environment alone, but is situated as a relation between the two. In our educational processes to establish it, we change the environment as much as try to influence psychological attitude: indeed, our exhortations to change attitude (which the commission might see as instilling competency), or to play (which is the key to creativity) are themselves changes in the environment of the individual, who would hopefully see our efforts as a 'breath of fresh air' after the staid and oppressive social environment of their everyday practice.

But behind such attempts to 'instill' creativity, there is - when they are successful - something deeper. Because creativity is relational there is something fundamentally good about the situation which transforms the form of life of an individual from one where oppression rules to one where individuals feel free to play. The essence of this is the absenting of fear, for it is fear - which is the human reaction to pathological material and social environments - which gets in the way of creativity.

So that then leads me to think that the logical corollary of creativity as a transversal competency is to see 'goodness' as a transversal competency. What would that mean? Would it mean 'goodness' could be learnt through educational process? Of course, goodness is genuinely transversal - applicable is so many contexts! What would the educational processes around instilling 'goodness' look like? But then we might similarly be tempted to say "goodness is a form of life". Which I think it probably is - and indeed related to creativity, as it is related to the absenting of fear.

What then about evil? Could that too be a transversal competency? Let us say that that too is, for the sake of argument, a form of life.. But unlike goodness and creativity, evil is characterised by pathological relations and by individual fear which either constrains creativity, or focuses it to pathological and selfish ends. Of course it is possible to be evil and creative (think of the Nazis), in a way that it may not be possible to be good and uncreative. But that then gives us a problem in thinking about creativity. Because, for those who wish to assert the goodness of creativity and raise it to the status of a transversal competence, do not want to think about the possibility of creative competence used to do evil. That in itself may be a failure of thinking about competency, not creativity.

Competencies are really forms of life: the form of life of being a doctor, builder, academic, computer programmer or hairdresser. Living creatively is to live a particular form of life (which may co-exist with other aspects of a form of life). Those who elevate creativity as a 'competency' mean to think of creativity as essentially good, where the form of life of creativity is the form of life of goodness, and an absenting of fear. But the idea of instilling a 'creative competency' already contains within it a fear of deeper critique of creative processes (which would highlight the meaninglessness of 'competency'). It may contain the seeds of its own pathological unfolding, and the antithesis of the hoped-for 'goodness' of creativity.