A subtle denial of ownership is innocence and indifference. The future is always denied with the response, "It doesn't matter to me - whatever you want to do is fine." This is always a lie and just a polite way of avoiding a difficult conversation around ownership.
Ownership is the decision to become the author of our own experience [...] It is the stance that each of us is creating the world, even the one we have inherited.
[...] each time people enter a room, they walk in with ambivalence, wondering whether this is the right place to be. This is because their default mindset is that someone else owns the room, the meeting, and the purpose that convened the meeting.
Every conventional gathering begins with the unspoken belief that whoever called the meeting has something in mind for us. We are inundated with the world trying to sell us something, so much so that we cannot imagine that this time will be different.
The leader/convener has to change this, in a sense to renegotiate the social contract. We want to shift to the belief that this world, including this gathering, is ours to construct together.
The intent is to move the social contract from parenting to partnership.
Renegotiating the social contract with this room is a metaphoric example of how our social contract with the community can also be renegotiated.
If I do not see my part in causing the past and the present, then there is no possible way I can participate usefully in being a coauthor of the future.
[Peter Block]
Community, p.123, 127-9
In words so applicable to the rest of our politically-structured lives, he declared: "The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles." Monderman expressed the matter more succinctly in saying: "When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots."
Formal rules divide us from one another; the more rules that are imposed upon our conduct, the greater the distances among us. Of course, this is the logic upon which the state always acts: to insinuate itself into our relationships with others, substituting its coercively-enforced edicts for our interpersonal bargaining. We become conditioned to look upon strangers as threats, and to regard political intervention as our only means of looking after our own interests.
What if the idea of living without coercively imposed rules was to spread from the streets into all phases of our lives? What if we abandoned our habits of looking to others to civilize us and bring us to order, and understood that obedience to others makes us irresponsible?
As government people-pushers continue their efforts to micro-manage the details of our lives – what foods and drugs we may ingest; how we are to raise and educate our children; the kinds of cars we may drive and light bulbs we may use; the health-care we are to receive; our optimal weight levels; how we are to provide for our retirement; ad nauseam – might we summon the courage to end our neurotic fixations on "security?"[Butler Shaffer]
'Anarchy in the Streets', online article here.
Montaigne disagreed with learning strictly through books. He believed it was necessary to educate children in a variety of ways.
He also disagreed with the way information was being presented to students. It was being presented in a way that encouraged students to take the information that was taught to them as absolute truth. Students were denied the chance to question the information. Therefore, students could not truly learn.
Montaigne believed that to truly learn, a student had to take the information and make it their own.
'Michel de Montaigne', Wikipedia
Individualistic (E7)
The individualistic ego shows a broad-minded tolerance of and respect for the autonomy of both self and others.
Subjective experience is opposed to objective reality, inner reality to outward appearance; and 'vivid and personal versions of ideas presented as cliches at lower levels' may emerge.
'Loevinger's stages of ego development', Wikipedia
The sense of being owned is deadening; the sense of possession means, not so much that a man desires to have the title-deeds of his estate, as that he desires to work for himself and the community and not for a private master.
[…] The new spirit cannot come unless every worker can be made to feel […] responsible for the work he has to do.
[G. D. H. Cole]
World of Labour
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Rights and Responsibilities
Beggars and Choosers
Playing the Art Game | Relational Art
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Attainment of Autonomy
Individual v Environment
Negative Space
Full Spectrum
