Good afternoon!
I still have part two of Chapter 9 to read, but I had a lot of thoughts I wanted to get out before I forget them or they get muddied with the rest of the reading.
Chapter 7 goes even deeper in to the idea of narrative. How we use it, its constraints, its universals, and of these he lists 9. Under the #2 Generic particularity, he discusses, among other things, the idea that "we people our world with characters out of narrative genres, making sense of events by assimilating them to the shape of comedy, tragedy, irony, romance." p 135. That genres are "culturally specialized ways of envisaging and communicating about the human condition." Understanding it. Making meaning of it for ourselves and with others by sharing experiences. For me this is profoundly important to learning. I continually catch myself ( as some of you might as well) making references to pop culture: music, movies, TV, etc. It made me think even more about this considering his #7 universality, The Centrality of Trouble. Like in the Matrix when all the people died because the machines provided them an experience devoid of "trouble". That we as humans have to experience a right of passage, a coming in to our own. And if we don't, we'll make something up; hence "first world problems". My constant reference to pop culture is a way for me to make sense of my world through narrative, and to perhaps work my own narrative in when trying to help others make sense of things.
I thought it was interesting the mention of big T truth on page 148. " No sensible human being would deny that the methods of science have vastly increased man's power of predicting and controlling his environment, particularly his physical environment." What did the rest of you think about this quote and the subsequent sentences? Any connections to Davis that you saw?
Also the mention of intersubjectivity on page 161 and the difference between "classical" psychology and "folk" psychology. "A culture's folk theories about the nature of human nature inevitably shape how that culture administers justice, educates its young, helps the needy and even conducts interpersonal relationships- all matters of deep consequence." I think as he mentioned earlier the relegation of these topics as enrichment as far as education goes is a grave mistake. What are your thoughts about how we reconcile hard science with matters of culture in the realm of educating our youth?
All of this again back to the big ideas of culture, knowledge and learning.
The biggest questions for me for this entire text has been, what does it mean? (others behavior, symbols we create, text we write/read) and what have we learned about how we "should" act? To me, thats the point of learning, and thats culture.
