Circularity and Balance

Allow me to reframe F.O.'s belief in civil and rational discourse in this post. It converges with my own aims; call it confirmation bias.

In any discussion,

"... the development of a critical approach to our own understanding of, as well as to existing knowledge about, the world is fundamental for students and educators alike."

- Anonymous

Let's ignore the part about "students and educators" for the moment to talk about critical reflection. Critical reflection is one of the higher-order cognitive skills of mankind, and like other such intelligences, is prized both for itself as well as for its practical usefulness.

In terms of style, critically reflective discussion can go one of two ways: circularity, and balance.

Valuing critical reflection for itself, i.e. ‘understanding of the world’ as in the quote, does not convey the world's impact upon our own understanding as in the ‘person-in-environment’ perspective, and therefore has its limitations in real life. This refers to people who hold their opinions very firmly and refuse to budge from them.

One could think of the discussion between two (or more) such "critically reflective" people as a circle on a plane. They will endlessly be at cross-purposes. Now hold the image of circle on plane firmly in your mind for later comparison.

What distinguishes circularity from balance?

Balance is where discussion moves away from going round in circles to going somewhere else. You have two (or more) people who hold their opinions firmly but can be budged due to rational or emotional persuasion, or what F.O. calls civil and rational discourse.

So instead of limiting themselves to two dimensions on the flat plane (you say to-may-to, i say to-mah-to), it is possible that they still go round in circles but in a screw sort of symmetry instead.

This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "screw you".

But more seriously, screw-type critically reflective discussions takes you places; if you have a preference for exploring circles in flat planes, screw-type discussions gives you a wonderful variety of circles to play with. And if you have the other preference for learning from others (balance, or screw-type discussions), civil and rational discourse is a great way to gradually do so without too much cognitive dissonance occurring.

These are possibilities.

(Update 02/01/07: While searching for something else, I have just come across one of Catherine Lim's articles in which she says "One gets the surreal feeling that everyone seems trapped in a Samuel Beckett-like circularity that nobody knows how to break out of". How apropos. Link here: 'Utopia or dystopia' ST 10 May 2005)

Not.

It's the middle of the workweek, but I thought I'd drop in to say ...... something very unoriginal, that makes me smile nonetheless.

The seven stages of life:

Not old enough to know better
Old enough to know better
Not old enough to know
Old enough to know
Not old enough
Old enough
Not

*chuckles* Not. Indeed...

Happy holidays, especially to you who "read the blog and kinda got this gut feeling.." and to you my brother in the Alliance of Awfully Long Names. Have a joyous 2007.

Statement of purpose

The goals of this blog are as follows:

1. to assist in the ongoing social constructionist creation of the Singaporean blogosphere as a shared platform for civil and rational discourse,
2. to advocate for specific causes the author of this blog believes in, over the long term,
3. for the author of this blog to commit herself to engaging in heuristic learning with other people on matters of substance, so that we may all grow and mature as individuals and as a cohort,
4. for Singapore society to eventually become more vibrant, more open and more democratic.

The author of this blog is not affiliated with any political party and does not wish such affiliation. She blogs as an empowered private citizen of this country and will continue in this capacity and only this capacity. Draw what inferences from that you will.

The author also likes chocolate, for your information.

The Values of (Social) Work

Often I am asked about my profession: "Like that need training ah? So many volunteers around, all can do the same thing as you, only give out food and chitchat what".

(The other question I am frequently asked is "Like that can earn money ah?" Of course the short answer is No, absolutely not, but the payoffs come in other forms.)

I illustrate the first question with an analogy between physics and social work:

Work is done on an object if and only if:
1. a force is exerted on the object, and
2. the object moves as a result of the force exerted in 1.

If a force is exerted on the object but it does not move, no work is done.

If the object moves but not because of the force exerted on it, no observable work is done either, and the system is artificial and bounded wrongly - we must look outside this defined system for the source of the force. Implicit assumption: There is a force.

So the popular conception of social work is like saying that work is done only because the force of human generosity and compassion is exerted on the object. Whether any effect is achieved seems to be irrelevant. And if such effect is observed, it seems to be "understood" without question that it must have been due to the force of human generosity and compassion acted on it. This view of the profession is so ... wrong.

I have not even begun to look into the efficiencies of such forces, yet. :) And that is why social work is a profession and not a mere leisure activity.

Comfy Chairs

From the ST, Dec 16 2006:

... thousands of middle-aged managers who lost their jobs during the late 1990s downturn and have yet to make their comeback.

Many have tertiary education, speak good English, own private property and used to hold middle and senior managerial positions paying $5,000 to $20,000 a month.

But these days they shuffle around office buildings and shopping centres, a tatty plastic bag of dog-eared CVs and documents in hand, looking for job-vacancy signs.

They first ended up on the chopping board after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Since then, the forces of technology, management de-layering, right-sizing and outsourcing have shoved even more off their comfy swivel chairs.

[...]

In particular, psychiatrist and suicidologist Chia Boon Hock, who has studied thousands of suicide notes, is keenly watching this vulnerable group. He notes that the chief reason why those aged 45 to 59 kill themselves is financial. (emphasis mine)

Sitting on my comfy swivel chair at home reading about other mature adults being shoved off the ultimate Comfy Swivel Chair ... struck fear into this one's heart, especially when I am wondering about my own financial future here from age 40 onwards.

*

Is it more true that some industries are overhyped and later marginalized, or more that individuals blindly follow trends like lemmings under the 'old social compact' , such lemming-like behaviour subsequently much criticized by the government when things started to go sour? What do you think motivates each and every person's choice of career path?

In another paragraph of the same article, finally even the ST itself has said, "'self-improvement' is a bad word for many in this group, who used up chunks of savings to pay for courses leading to diplomas and degrees, only to find these of little use when the crunch came"! Also see this article by Terence Chong on Dec 11.

Please take heed of your own chairs before they become so much flotsam in the ocean.

"Facing the Challenge of a New Age"

Both Fearfully Opinionated and Kitana have commented recently, with deeply felt sorrow and some bitterness, on how people who graciously leave comments do not always, well, graciously do so. Fearfully Opinionated goes so far as to call his post a "rant" :) , which I would not agree. Perhaps a few words from Martin Luther King may shed some light:

A third challenge that stands before us is that of entering the new age with understanding goodwill. [...] There is the danger that those of us who have lived so long under the yoke of oppression, those of us who have been exploited and trampled over, those of us who have had to stand amid the tragic midnight of injustice and indignities will enter the new age with hate and bitterness. But if we retaliate with hate and bitterness, the new age will be nothing but a duplication of the old age. We must blot out the hate and injustice of the old age with the love and justice of the new.

[...]

Now I realize that in talking so much about love it is very easy to become sentimental. There is the danger that our talk about love will merely be empty words devoid of any practical and true meaning. But when I say love those who oppose you I am not speaking of love in a sentimental or affectionate sense. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. When I refer to love at this point I mean understanding goodwill. [...] we will be able to stand amid the radiant glow of the new age with dignity and discipline.

[...]

I am afraid that if I close at this point many will go away misinterpreting my whole message. I have talked about the new age which is fastly coming into being. I have talked about the fact that God is working in history to bring about this new age. There is the danger, therefore, that after hearing all of this you will go away with the impression that we can go home, sit down, and do nothing, waiting for the coming of the inevitable. You will somehow feel that this new age will roll in on the wheels of inevitability, so there is nothing to do but wait on it. If you get that impression you are the victims of a dangerous optimism. If you go away with that interpretation you are the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficiality. We must speed up the coming of the inevitable.

- Facing the Challenge of a New Age,

December 1956

As this is too long to leave as a comment on their blogs, I have put it here. It is also for my own reference when I wonder the same.

The Blogosphere is an Emergent System

A note by Elia Diodati on Dharmendra Yadav's proposal to form a self-regulating Blogger Association briefly discussed emergent phenomena, as below.

"... the term "Singapore blogosphere" at best describes the transient, nebulous association of cross-referenced, internetworked blogs that nominally claim some affiliation with Singapore; like all emergent phenomena [#3 in original article], there is an inalienable quality of intangibility and ineffability to the very concept of a blogosphere." [emphases mine]

One may say that this is nearly religious in nature; equally it could have been asserted that the blogosphere is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing", but that was not Elia Diodati's meaning. Intangible, ineffable - these are words that bound and enclose in .5pt border the fairy-wisp idea of utter indescribability, and that poorly sing the praises of the extraordinary stability of emergent systems. Elia's cited reference #3 gives a much better picture of emergent systems:

"... orders arises from elements within a system acting independently from one another within a framework of procedural rules or laws that generate positive and negative feedback such that independent behavior takes the actions of others into consideration without intending to do so, and that the impact of that behavior tends to facilitate more complex relationships of mutual assistance than could ever be deliberately created. Such systems generate order "spontaneously." In doing so they can act in unanticipated ways because there is no overarching goal, authority, or blueprint that orders the actions of their components or the responses they make to feedback generated within the system." [emphases mine]

Emergence is the opposite extreme of reductionism; emergent properties are what disappear when things are broken down to their component parts for study. The stability of emergent systems can be observed and verified by small testing perturbations. Such systems can have negative feedback models within, or both negative and positive feedback models within. (A Watt steam governor is an example of a negative feedback model.)

Returning to the self-regulation of the Singaporean blogosphere, Mr Yadav's original proposal of "procedural rules or laws" suggested centralized regulation by bloggers among bloggers, and both Elia Diodati and Bernard Leong have argued that this type of rules breaks down the blogosphere into scrutinizing its component blog posts one by one, therefore constraining the natural "vibrant, organic realm of discourse" and inherent positive/negative feedbacks in the blogosphere. It should be noted that emergence arises from independent factors interacting with each other in positive and negative feedbacks. Small perturbations within the emergent system will self-correct through such feedbacks; bloggers criticize, deterrently ignore, and encourage one another to share views in civil and rational discourse. To over-protect bloggers from the large ocean of opinions is, in my view, destructive to the community, and I leave it to the reader to decide if the proposed centralized regulation is good.

Quotes, Humour, and Beginnings

"A woman’s wisdom is her gift to women. Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to God. So why do you intend to inflict your wisdom on this poor unfortunate man you say you love?"

- Orson Scott Card, Tales of Alvin Maker: Prentice Alvin

from Wikiquote

Because I choose to.
- Neo, The Matrix