Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. - MPF

circular response - methodology

Hi. I am looking for a methological paper to help me on the circular aspect of the co-construction concept. If you have any hint on this, I would appreciate it ! thanks

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Permalink Reply by Albie M. Davis on February 6, 2016 at 1:23pm

Good luck in your hunt, Julie Garneau! I'm sending along something that did the trick for me . . . that is a way to break away from anything that stood still too long: Below is from an email I send to my colleagues as we looked for answers from Follett.

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I was completely frustrated by trying to use ready made forms fit Follett's fluid thinking. Then, while skimming through The New State, I came across a quote of hers that captured my very feelings.

I have tried hard to get away from any mechanical system and yet it is difficult to find words which do not seem to bind. I am now afraid of this expression - my place in the whole. It has a rigid, unyielding sound, as if I were a cog in a machine. (Follett ~ New State 1918 ~ 65)

And, the artist in me said to myself, "Albie, why are you struggling with this super duper computer (iMac Yosemite) to try to express Follett's fluid thinking? Go into your studio, grab your watercolor paints, paper and brushes and see what happens. And use her far out fully fluid quote on the surge of life as inspiration." (See surge of life quote below watercolor/collage.) Within five minutes I; choose five themes; sketched out a circle; penciled in activities--differing, conflicting, exploring, integrating, creating; wet the paper; dabbed on the three primary colors -- red, blue and yellow -- onto these five spots. From then on a combination of my intuitive sense of how to drip water, and the water's inclination to do its own thing took over. Three primary colors! Pretty amazing. I slapped on a NASA earth I had cut out for another project. Not fit for self-publishing, but it did energize my thinking.

The surge of life sweeps through the given similarity, the common ground, and breaks it up into a thousand differences. This tumultuous, irresistible flow of life is our existence: the unity, the common, is but for an instant, it flows on to new differings which adjust themselves anew in fuller, more varied, richer synthesis. The moment when similarity achieves itself as a composite of working, seething forces, it throws out its myriad new differings. The torrent flows into a pool, works, ferments, and then rushes forth until all is again gathered into the new pool of its own unifying. This is the process of evolution. (Follett ~ The New State 1918 ~ p 35)