Re: [xmca] Just the Change Lab? For Helena et al

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Perhaps, Larry. Fits with my thinking in the attached.
mike

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Mike
> I found this response to Helen thought provoking. In particular this
> comment:
> "What is fantasy for your lived reality may be reality for his lived
> fantasy"
> I have been reflecting on our understanding of "imaginal realms" and how
> these realms are juxtaposed to another's lived reality.
>
> John Sallis is an American philosopher whose project is to reclaim another
> understanding of *imaginal realms* which is NOT reduced to fantasy,
> fabulation, phantoms, or unreality.
>
> Mike, in your comment and Dylan's lyrics the understanding of *truth* is
> changing from notions of *correctness* MAY *be* changing to a notion of
> *truth* AS DISCLOSING what has been concealed.
>
> As another example of the times changing I recently watched a 3 part TV
> series  called *Dhrama Rising*which follows the Buddhist notion of dharma
> [as way of life] *rising* as it has been introduced into the West as a
> cultural-historical engagement with the realm of modernity.
>
> The complexity and polyphonic *interpretations* [appearing from within a
> cultural-historical lens] created by this interweaving created a sense of
> wonder and amazement at the deepcultural transformation and metamorphosis
> occuring in  these times that are a changing. In my imaginal realms I
> intuitively feel this fluidity of thought as conceptual interweaving in
> relation to imaginal realms which has a quality OF a new
> beginning/FOUNDING. Imaginal NOT located within private subjectivity but in
> more romantic notions of the imaginal realms. THIS realm is not phantasy or
> fabulation and in-forms thought in new relational intertwinings.
>
> Mike, your comment opens up a space [a clearing] to question if the
>  imaginal is always fantasy? [in contrast to truth?]
> That way of understanding *truth* and *phantasy*may be only one particular
> schema or genre or framework with a particular sense of presence [and
> concealment]. THIS way of life which pre-judges *foundations* over
> *foundings* [new beginnings] as notions of *truth*.
> If I am chaining I apologize but your questioning the understanding of
> *work* also throws into relief notions of *play* and opens up clearings for
> reflection on what really *matters*.
> *Playing* as participation WITHIN activities  may be a novel way to
> reflect on our current notions of *working* as something we do as a
> necessary *work* before playing. THIS may also be a particular historically
> formed schema or genre or framework which no longer *holds* our imaginal
> yearnings.
>
> On the other hand, this could be merely the fantasy of nostalgia,
> articulating a yearning left over from the 60's when I was listening to
> Dylan as a young lad.
>
> Larry
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 9:14 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi All- I am addressing this note to Helena but I assume that many are
>> interested in the issues
>> they raise and so much is going on, its a wonder anyone can keep track!
>> This will be a long note. I am inserting
>> some song lyrics into the message for reasons that will become clear if
>> you
>> are interested in reading. If not,
>> delete any ole time.
>>
>> Helena. You write:
>>
>>
>> My problem with his creative approach to research is that he acts as if
>> the
>> whole world has moved on to whatever he's studying next. He talks about
>> "the
>> historical development of work," "work..transformed from mass production
>> and
>> mass customization to co-configuration of customer-intelligent products
>> and
>> services with long life cycles", "post-bureaucratic work", 'work as "a
>> living, growing networkŠnever finished," etc etc. This may be true of
>> "work"
>> as it occurs in the Change Laboratory,
>>
>> Two or three comments here (the third including the first poem/song by Bob
>> Dylan).
>>
>> First, you might consider the differing national/cultural contexts that
>> you
>> and Yrjo inhabit.
>> What is fantasy for your lived reality may be reality for his lived
>> fantasy. He is a Finn, working
>> in Finland. The land of Nokia, of Linux and perhaps the world's most
>> successful public school system.
>> It is a country that does not make its way, economically, in the world, by
>> the overwhelming power of
>> its military, its control over foreign governments through
>> technologically-backed coercion, and its ability
>> to manipulate foreign markets. It makes its way by innovation, by being
>> precisely where Yrjo's imaginary
>> is located.
>>
>> When Yrjo wrote *Learning by Expanding *the Soviet Union existed and
>>
>> Finland was a welfare state. Today
>> there is no USSR, there is Putinism/state capitalism, and the rest of the
>> world has taken Capitalism to
>> extremes that were hard to imagine in 1986. And Finland is no longer the
>> welfare state it was. But it is
>> a country committed to living by their wits, creativity, and imagination.
>> Of "living on the cutting edge" which
>> leads to blood of a kind different than that of American (and not only
>> American) capitalism. And different from
>> rampant forms of fundamentalism. I am neither trying to valorize it or
>> criticize, just characterize it as I understand it.
>> Understood from this viewpoint, Yrjo's characterization of THE LEADING
>> EDGE
>> OF HISTORICAL CHANGES IN WORK AS IT IS EXPERIENCED IN MANY PLACES, BUT
>> CLEARLY IN FINLAND, seems less quixotic. Right or wrong.
>>
>> After reading all of the messages after work today, I got myself caught
>> listening to public radio and then to a
>> record. First the radio story, then the record, by way of further
>> ruminations.
>>
>> On the radio program they were talking about the way that many professions
>> are bifurcating around ability to
>> exploit modern technologies so that, for example, CPA's are dividing into
>> two classes: Those who are caught doing
>> scut work, and those who have mastery of technologies that allow them to
>> work and make bundles more money
>> at lower costs. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer ---- in more
>> differentiated fashion. You are absolutely correct in pointing out does
>> not
>> connect directly to issues of already-and-continuing forms of work and
>> issues of scraping together a living John Dos Pasos and John Steinbeck
>> style (witness the current state of Detroit). But it DOES exist in many of
>> the emerging modes of survival in an ever more unequal world.
>>
>> By whim, I had to run some errands after ruminating over all this, and I
>> picked a Bob Dylan record off my shelf
>> to listen to as I drove. Here is the first song I heard. Despite is
>> antiquity, it had a kind  of resonance in the context
>> of the current discussion. At least something to contemplate and maybe
>> argue about. I SO appreciate your writing as you did. Remember, Yrjo is an
>> early and continuing member of this list, so no need to refer to him in
>> the
>> third person.
>>
>> Here is the Dylan song lyrics. I found myself amazed that they did not
>> feel
>> 50 years old, interpreted in a new context.
>> mike
>> _____________________
>>
>>
>>
>> The times they are a changing
>>
>>
>>
>> Come gather 'round people
>> Wherever you roam
>> And admit that the waters
>> Around you have grown
>> And accept it that soon
>> You'll be drenched to the bone.
>> If your time to you
>> Is worth savin'
>> Then you better start swimmin'
>> Or you'll sink like a stone
>> For the times they are a-changin'.
>>
>> Come writers and critics
>> Who prophesize with your pen
>> And keep your eyes wide
>> The chance won't come again
>> And don't speak too soon
>> For the wheel's still in spin
>> And there's no tellin' who
>> That it's namin'.
>> For the loser now
>> Will be later to win
>> For the times they are a-changin'.
>>
>> Come senators, congressmen
>> Please heed the call
>> Don't stand in the doorway
>> Don't block up the hall
>> For he that gets hurt
>> Will be he who has stalled
>> There's a battle outside ragin'.
>> It'll soon shake your windows
>> And rattle your walls
>> For the times they are a-changin'.
>>
>> Come mothers and fathers
>> Throughout the land
>> And don't criticize
>> What you can't understand
>> Your sons and your daughters
>> Are beyond your command
>> Your old road is
>> Rapidly agin'.
>> Please get out of the new one
>> If you can't lend your hand
>> For the times they are a-changin'.
>>
>> The line it is drawn
>> The curse it is cast
>> The slow one now
>> Will later be fast
>> As the present now
>> Will later be past
>> The order is
>> Rapidly fadin'.
>> And the first one now
>> Will later be last
>> For the times they are a-changin'.
>> __________________________________________
>> _____
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>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>
>

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