From the Archives: Passion in Individualistic Cultures

Text on paper reading "Open doors remind people of passion" accompanied by two thought balloons reading "we are always learners" and "tell me who you are, and your story!"
A snippet from a graphic recording I did in 2016 that seems to fit with this post!

Futurity.org – Autonomy sparks on-the-job passion. This article from 2011 caught my eye only late last year about Xiao-Ping Chen’s research at the University of Washington. It reflects on individualistic and harmonious passion. (I like that latter term!)

I have been thinking a lot about the destructive power of individualism in the US lately. If every individual sets their behavior on individual gain, our society suffers. If we are all in lock step and lose diverse thought, our society suffers. (Yeah, oversimplification!) So we need harmonious passion.

“Harmonious passion comes from intrinsic motivation,” explains study co-author and doctoral student Dong Liu. “You are passionate not only because you are interested in the work, but because it identifies part of you. It defines you.”

The research team found that harmonious passion facilitates increased workplace creativity—acts of devising new and improved ways of doing tasks, from an ergonomic shift on an assembly line to an innovative marketing campaign. The study is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Some people, Chen explains, are naturally predisposed to be passionate about their work. These people will exercise creativity whatever the environment. The rest, however, could develop harmonious passion if given a degree of autonomy to decide how they will execute their tasks—even when pressure to perform is external (think deadlines) rather than internal.

https://www.futurity.org/autonomy-sparks-on-the-job-passion/

Of course, context matters, but the frame of individualistic and harmonious passion allow a different frame of reference that might be useful these days!

Franzen: Technology Provides an Alternative to Love

childs drawing of a network of hearts and the caption "love is powerful."

Jonathan Franzen wrote in a NYTimes piece back in January of this year something that keeps haunting me. This quote may be beyond what is appropriate – and yet, go read the whole thing.

Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer.

To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.

Let me suggest, finally, that the world of techno-consumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn.

Its first line of defense is to commodify its enemy. You can all supply your own favorite, most nauseating examples of the commodification of love. Mine include the wedding industry, TV ads that feature cute young children or the giving of automobiles as Christmas presents, and the particularly grotesque equation of diamond jewelry with everlasting devotion. The message, in each case, is that if you love somebody you should buy stuff.

A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb “to like” from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products — and none more so than electronic devices and applications — is that they’re designed to be immensely likable. This is, in fact, the definition of a consumer product, in contrast to the product that is simply itself and whose makers aren’t fixated on your liking it. (I’m thinking here of jet engines, laboratory equipment, serious art and literature.)

But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist — a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable.

via Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com.

From the Archives: Sensing Our Changing Roles

Well this little post has tried to be born into the world twice. Time to give it light. I’m going to leave it exactly as it was with it’s last draft date of 2015. Seems to me the image suggests so much that is relevant today!

A blog post from Peggy Holman on  Changing Roles in Changing Times from way back in February of 2014, came across my screen today and triggered one of those moments “blog this, Nancy!” While Peggy’s post was about the changing roles in journalism, the image she included from the Berkana Institute was what caught my eye.

From Peggy Holman, adapted from Berkana Institute's

From the Archives: 2008 Hyper Optimism about MOOCS

I found a REALLY old one full of the hope and optimism of 2008. Leaving it as is, with just the addition of cheerful flowers. I want to feel optimism again!

image of 5 colorful imaginary flowers on a light cream background.

I should be doing a hundred other things than blogging at 8:30 at night. No wonder I have weird dreams. But I really wanted to jump into the flow of posts and conversations about Massive, Open, Online Courses or MOOC’s.

I’m referring to Stephan Downes’ and George Siemen’s generous offering, “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge”, a twelve week, open offering they are getting ready to launch. No small feat. For anyone who has ever designed and offered an online collaborative learning event, it is a lot of work. An act of love. (Yes, Stephen, LOVE!) But what happens when 1200 people want to play? This reminds me of the lovely conundrum Leigh Blackall is in with 90 people signing up for his Facilitating Online Communities course. It is raising all kinds of fun questions about how to scale social learning.

So, can a ‘course’ scale to 1200 people as a social, connected learning event? What does that look like? How do we set our expectations? While Stephen and George are creating a course (see this page) I suspect that something wholely different will be experienced by many. It is a delicious set of possibilities and challenges. I’d like to question if it is even a ‘course’ in the way we have come to understand the word. Of course, with academic institution sponsorship, one can understand the name, but what I think this is is a Massive Online Learning Happening (MOLH!). Or a Massive Online Learn Fest (MOLF!). Or maybe a Massive Love-Learn-In. (MILLI!)

Seriously, this is networked learning.  But what a great learning edge to find out what happens when you really OPEN the doors.

Thanks to Stephen and George’s course blog, we’ll have a line of sight in to the action, even if we aren’t able to jump into the actual event. (I confess, the thought of it alone kind of makes me tired!)

So here are my questions:

  • How much will end up being about content delivery, how much about meaning making through individual reflection (especially evidenced in this case by blog posts) and how much will be socially constructed through interaction and meaning making between people (reading and commenting on other blogs, shared creation on the wiki and conversation in whatever conversation spaces crop up).
  • What are the implications of such a large group and the large possibility that they will have wildly different experiences — will what they learn be wildly different? Does that matter?
  • What are the implications of those paying for credit and support? How do they feel about “sharing” the course with 1000 other people?
  • What is the impact on the learning facilitators? Will the size of the group push them back to the traditional role of information providers? Will they only interact with the paid participants? Will they get any sleep for 12 weeks????
  • How does this compare/is this related to what we know about other types of online events?

Associations Should Consider the MOOC | Mission to Learn
I suspect I don’t really even need to spell out how the MOOC model could be of value in the association sector. Or for nonprofits hoping to engage a large group of stakeholders around a cause. Or for businesses seeking greater engagement with their customer base.

Just taking associations as the main example, imagine bringing together a significant slice of your audience online – member and non-member – over a period of days, weeks, or even months to engage on a topic that is central to their day-to-day work. Not just an online conference with a line up of presenters – plenty of that has already been done with widely mixed results. Rather, an event that is truly facilitated, in which key thought leaders help evoke shepherd audience input and participation, taking advantage of social media-driven Learning 2.0 approaches.

The potential seems tremendous. And not just for professional development or continuing education. I sincerely hope this idea will not be relegated to that. This is the stuff of missions.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of what Siemens and Downes are doing will not even be the course itself – though I have no doubt that will be incredibly valuable, and I plan to participate – but rather observing the thinking and processes by which the course comes about. Siemens and Downes have been documenting their efforts on the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge blog, and have also engaged in at least one podcast interview so far on EduTech Talk.

From the Archives: Visual and Audio “Getting Into Online meetings” Ideas

Back in 2020 and 2021 some of my friends and colleagues refused to get stuck in the same-old, same-old of starting meetings online. Fisher Qua showed me a Music Labs experimental tool and playing with it (in this clip) opened possibilities of co-creating visually and aurally that could start a meeting in a way that immediately changed our participation and experience.

A bit wild, sure, but why do we seek so much to maintain the status quo? Why do we snap back to the safe, predictable, without even considering if it is still useful? Time for more creative destruction. Make space for something that is more useful. What meeting starting habits have you creatively destroyed? What new practices emerged from that space you created?