Dear Susan
I will quote your question and try to answer.
"How equipped is a westerner (an adult) to encourage a non-westerner
(also an adult) to delve into his or her culture in order to access
grounded inspiration. Your post encouraged me to carefully consider
the limits of my influence (too little and too much)."
" And you’re also suggesting in part that western influences undermine
a genuine sense of self in other parts of the world, and for that
reason, try as I might help my students, they will never find their
true selves?
The first issue is that not just the westerner but even the
non-westerner is not in a position to initiate this recovery of
cultural roots. I have often felt that a sensitive westerner is far
more equipped to do this than the non-westerner due to the colonized
mindset we already conditioned with.
Moreover, unless pointed out, the colonized is not even aware of their
state. Education totally disconnects one from one's roots because the
education is totally de contextualized, compartmentalized,
textualized, controlled.
Schooling seems to make one unaware of the politics of knowledge. I
would like to point your attention to a write up I read recently.
I have been on this journey from 1985 or so and in hindsight, I have
realized that one is so trapped that even the question we ask is not
our questions. It was when I started engaging with the non-literate
artisan that I began to get a glimpse of what is 'Indian' culture or
what is to be ROOTED to one's culture. Of course, there is no
monolithic Indian culture. These days I use the term 'contextual
culture' because it is the context that forms one's 'culture'.
Also, I was able to truly understand their cognitive process after I
left reading for few years. Education had made me into a de
contextualized, textualized person who is living in the realm of mind
and language and once in a while 'experiencing' the world using the
frames and compartments created by the 'knowledge' I acquired through
reading. 'Knowledge' in that sense was occluding authentic experience.
The fundamental shift began to happen once I realized that it is the
'process of knowing' that needs to be recovered/ de colonized rather
than 'knowledge'.
After all information (knowledge) can be changed but once our senses
are numbed, distorted and trained, it is very difficult to un-train.
Senses get habituated to function in a manner that is detrimental to
the 'self'.
I have initiated a conference called 'thanima' meaning authenticity
with help of two institutions to relook at 'teaching' aesthetics.
‘Reimagining Aesthetic Unfolding – From Conditioning to Awakening’ was
the name of the second conference and I wish to take this forward
connecting with people who are interested in these questions more
deeply.
As you know most non-western design schools are conditioning their
aesthetic sensibility using the western concepts.
I have also been trying to offer a course on culture called- 'from
knowing culture to being culture- from culture as product to culture
as process- an experiential enquiry into the meaning of culture'.
Today culture is more like general knowledge or few typical 'products'
which you can 'understand' by reading few books!
Now regarding WORLD and the WORD.
"I get that synaptic pruning
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_pruning) affects our
development.I know very little about this, but in speculation, I think
that you’re suggesting in part that a focus on language causes those
synapses to prune in ways that you see as less than optimal".
There is no doubt that our 'biology' is made of experiencing the WORLD
but due to its pliability and flexibility, constant engagement with
the WORD, the cognitive system (tools, process, and structure) gets
rewired. The eye is for seeing and not for thinking. our sense organs
are receiving thought and not the 'object' per say.
The social work students go to the villages and SEE poverty all around!
I would like to point your attention to a study on how reading rewires
brain by cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene of the Institut
National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale in Gif-sur-Yvette,
France.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/11/how-reading-rewires-brain
One more study
Michael Skeide of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and
Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany
Falk Huettig of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in
Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Gianluca Baldassarre of the Institute for Cognitive Sciences and
Technologies in Rome, Italy.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2132589-learning-to-read-and-write-rewires-adult-brain-in-six-months/
World precedes the word.
Another important distinction I would like to make is about
communication and communion. Communication happens in the realm of
language where as communication happens in the realm of 'experience'.
"People have preferences that often lie on a continuum. I read this
too long ago to cite it properly, but Sinatra around '92 or ’94 wrote
that young children exhibit a preference for image or text around the
age of three. That is old research, but it makes sense to me when I
think of some of my friends in the visual or textual arts. So it’s not
just the culture dictating to the young, it is also the young making a
preference known. Are you suggesting/proving that this preference has
been treated like right and left-handedness was in the 1800s? If not,
I’m not convinced'.
Children prefer the real world to image or text. But we force books on
them- these days with colorful images! The adult made 'toy' is more
dangerous than books of course as it totally shifts the child's
attention from the real world!
Jinan
On 27/07/2017, Susan Hagan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Jinan,
>
> I’m working hard to see your point, but I’m having a problem with the
> villain you seem to create in language (with its western emphasis?). More on
> that later, but let me go back to our earlier context. The question that
> your original post suggested to me was this. How equipped is a westerner (an
> adult) to encourage a non-westerner (also an adult) to delve into his or her
> culture in order to access grounded inspiration. Your post encouraged me to
> carefully consider the limits of my influence (too little and too much). A
> later post encouraged me to again consider (I’ve thought about this before,
> Hagan, 2007) how a focus on words makes it hard to appreciate shape for
> shape’s sake.
>
> That said, this post is harder to get behind in it’s entirety. While I can
> in part see you point about WORD and WORLD, it seems to me to be as
> problematic as Kjeldsen’s below. He states:
>
> "Words evoke images, and our perception and understanding of visual
> representations are connected to and dependent on our verbal concepts,
> without which
> pictures would be incomprehensible” (Kjeldsen, 2017, p. 124).
>
> Of course images are comprehensible without words! The seminal work of the
> cognitive psychologist Paivio (2007) on dual coding suggests that we work
> with two separate and interconnected systems. We see and understand without
> attaching words to each object (imagine driving if you had to name each
> thing you saw). But we also see and understand by attaching words. (Words
> similarly represent concepts that have no immediate image to link to it.)
>
> If your point is that we have placed too much western emphasis on attaching
> words to images, point taken.
>
> But I fear that it goes further than that. For that reason, I simply suggest
> that pendulums that swing too far either way, and stay there, can no longer
> keep time.
>
> People have preferences that often lie on a continuum. I read this too long
> ago to cite it properly, but Sinatra around '92 or ’94 wrote that young
> children exhibit a preference for image or text around the age of three.
> That is old research, but it makes sense to me when I think of some of my
> friends in the visual or textual arts. So it’s not just the culture
> dictating to the young, it is also the young making a preference known. Are
> you suggesting/proving that this preference has been treated like right and
> left-handedness was in the 1800s? If not, I’m not convinced.
>
> I get that synaptic pruning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_pruning)
> affects our development.I know very little about this, but in speculation, I
> think that you’re suggesting in part that a focus on language causes those
> synapses to prune in ways that you see as less than optimal.
>
> <snip>
> But constant engagement with the word
> during the formative stage configures both the systems to engage with
> the world. The human child is impressionable and the word's
> impression totally changes the tools and processes needed for
> cognition.
> <snip>
>
> And you’re also suggesting in part that western influences undermine a
> genuine sense of self in other parts of the world, and for that reason, try
> as I might to help my students, they will never find their true selves?
>
> <snip>
> In a way all that we do in life is to make ourselves! All our
> activities are, a doing unto oneself.
> We become what we engage with.
> <snip>
>
> While it might be true that none of us will ever find a self unharmed by our
> histories, I think that we can find something that seems genuine, even if
> damaged. And I think that some have said that there is beauty in the damaged
> parts.
>
> It has been really interesting discussing this with you.
>
> All the best,
>
Jinan,
TEXT DISTORTS, DIGITAL DESTROYS, WORLD AWAKENS
http://existentialknowledgefoundation.org/
http://rethinkingfoundation.weebly.com/
reimaginingschools.wordpress.com
http://sadhanavillageschool.org/
https://www.youtube.com/user/sadhanavillagepune
https://www.youtube.com/user/jinansvideos
www.re-cognition.org
http://designeducationasia.blogspot.com/
http://awakeningaestheticawareness.wordpress.com/
https://independent.academia.edu/JinanKodapully
09447121544
0487 2386723
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