Parti-tioning Identity

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The Freeing Discipline of Wonder

So I was blogging for Thinking Parents today at Snook, about individualism versus institutionalism:

I pretty much hate "versus" applied to any two things. I choose the -ism suffix to mean anything (not just religion) that becomes dominant dogma, elevating some system of belief or aspect of being to an all-purpose imperative, too much of one good thing to the exclusion of others. The one tool that makes every problem look like it needs a good hammering.

In this sense, individual-ism and institutional-ism are indeed opposing mindsets pitted against each other. Ugh!
. . . So today I'm remembering Mortimer Adler's oxymoronic definition of education as the freeing discipline of wonder, and wondering myself where learning without schooling can catch the most light without throwing off too much heat, across the full spectrum of individual and institution?

Two books came to mind in this context --
"The Hedgehog, The Fox, and the Magister's Pox" by Stephen Jay Gould is about reconciling science with the humanities, or how to understand them as an integrated whole, and "The Ant and the Peacock" is about reconciling this seeming paradox in nature: are individuals or collectives favored?


JJ Ross's picture

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hmmm. i received this email from NARAL today. i'm not sure i like it much. there's just enough ignorance in it to piss me off. i mean, what century are we in that "latinos" and black women are the *only* women of color? what happened to asian, arabs and native women? and the three "pillars" that are being organized around, community control, holistic health, and positive motherhood, sound like they have been re-written by some over anxious white dude who doesn't want to piss off the white women who support NARAL (established women of color org's *do* organize around these things, it just sounds like the fierce women of color language has been co-opted). and the email title is as follows: " It's time to Recognize! the reproductive health needs of women of color". ummm, is it really time? forty years after women of color started organizing on their own because white women couldn't bear to make us a part of the movement, it is *finally* time?
grrr.


— Brownfemipower, blog publisher
woman of color blog: NARAL "supporting" women of color


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