"Morality is the symbolic generalization that reduces the full reflexive complexity of doubly contingent ego/alter relations to expressions of esteem"

Although I found the reader on "The Networked Professional" a highly stimulating read, I must admit, that I don´t really agree with challenging the usefulness of every concept, as the failure and success of each individual idea depends very much on the context, the personality of the person dealing with a situation and at what point in their life they are. I found that in a historical context many of the theories have worked in the past, they might not work right now, but could possibly work again in the future.
I also had to think a lot about myself and who and most of all where I am at this moment in my life.

At first I took a good look at the theory of cooperation and the closely affiliated game theory by the political scientist Axelrod. I played a game of "prisoner´s dilemma"and to be quite honest, thought it was rather dull, but then again maybe I should have given it more than one chance...
I can see, how the game theory might help predict, how people, markets, countries and organisms would react to a specific threat, but can´t see how it has helped predict, let alone prevent the many financial crises we seem to be stumbling into (in an "oh..oups...I did not see that coming"-manner), where few are playing a successful game at the expense of many.
Further research led me to the book "After hegemony: cooperation and discord in the world political economy" by Robert Owen Keohane (1984), in which he describes, how cooperation with the hegemony the United States represented after the Second World War, led to an overall survival of the western world and ideas and thus gave me a good enough example of successful cooperation.

"Sophisticated institutionalists do not expect cooperation always to prevail, but they are aware of the malleability of interests any they argue that interdependence creates interest in cooperation" (pg.8)  




Next I decided to take a closer look at "Communities of Practice" and the book by the same name from Etienne Wenger. The general idea of this theory seems to be that learning is part of a process that happens through engagement in social relationships.

"Being alive as human beings means that we are constantly engaged in the pursuit of enterprises of all kinds, from ensuing our physical survival to seeking the most lofty pleasures. As we define these enterprises and engage in their pursuit together, we interact with each other and with the world and we tune our relations with each other and with the world accordingly. In other words, we learn.
Over time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore, to call these kinds of communities communities of practice" (pg. 45)


This of course led me to think a lot about the community that comes together every day in the microcosm of a theatre, where sustained engagement of each individual working there, be it technician, musician, actor, singer, seamstress or dancer, leads to overall processes of learning- especially, when personal or professional interests collide. I see a certain need to openness and a will to learn and embrace new and different situations. Especially in the world of art, where the need to cultivate a strong ego through being colorful and different is practiced and leads to a lot of explosions. However sustained engagement within a community of practice such as the theatre also leads to a better understanding for other departments and thus provokes learning.
Personally I find this a useful concept, as I am confronted by it every day. I do however want to strongly hold on to my belief, that you can only learn from another person, if you really want to and if you have the cognitive ability to do so.

Next- without wanting to be to abrupt, but I need to get on with it, I would like to report on my closer look at Social Constructionism. I started off by punching the German word for constructionism in to "Wikipedia". Little to my surprise it came up with many options. There is a philosophy, you can construct international relations, then of course we have our social aspect, the term exists in the psychology of learning, maths, architecture, art and literature. Then I took a good look at the book lying to my left (now covered with little yellow page-markers), "Die Wirklichkeit der Medien" by K. Merten and  S.J. Schmidt. (the reality of media). It explains how Social Constructionism is one of the many forms of constructionism around. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann pioneered this field in 1966, when their book "The social construction of reality " was first published.  One of the first things the book lays out in the first chapter on the reality of the observer is that the term must never be confused with the colloquial version of it meaning a creation of something.


"...Ganz im Gegensatz dazu benutzen Konstruktivsten dieses Wort, um Prozesse zu bezeichnen, in deren Verlauf Wirklichkeitsentwürfe sich herausbilden, und zwar keineswegs willkürlich, sondern gemäß den biologischen, kognitiven und soziokulturellen Bedingungen, denen sozialisierte Individuen in ihrer sozialen und natürlichen Umwelt unterworfen sind. Über so viele Bedingungen kann ein Individuum überhaupt nicht verfügen...Wirklichkeitskonstruktion widerfährt uns mehr als dass sie uns bewusst wird- weshalb wir die Konstruiertheit unserer Wirklichkeit erst dann bemerken, wenn wir beobachten, handeln und kommunizieren...." (aus Die Wirklichkeit der Medien pg.5, "Die Wirklichkeit des Beobachters" by Siegfried J. Schmidt.)


The reader states, that we construct meanings and experiences of the world through social interaction and that effectively our understanding of the world is a construction or creation of our own making. I have always understood and believed in that fact and you cannot deny, that two people- no matter how much they share or how alike they are (even twins), will always experience things differently, depending on their life experience, personality and attitude. We construct our reality, give names to things and I find it interesting to observe, how subtle differences in language for example cause a completely different understanding of the same thing.


"Kaum ein Problem hat die Europäer so beschäftigt wie die Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Sein und Bewusstsein, nach der Möglichkeit oder Unmöglichkeit wahrer bzw. objektiver Erkenntnis." (aus Die Wirklichkeit der Medien pg.6, "Die Wirklichkeit des Beobachters" by Siegfried J. Schmidt.)


(There is hardly a problem that has occupied the Europeans as much as the question of the relationship between the being and the consciousness, of the possibility or impossibility of true or objective knowledge.)


It seems impossible to write about Constructivism without mentioning the German Sociologist Niklas Luhmann. He saw society not as a collection of humans with blood circulating in their veins, but as a closed process of social communication.


"Ein soziales System kommt zustande, wenn immer ein autopoietischer Kommunikationszusammenhang entsteht und sich durch Einschränkung der geeigneten Kommunikation gegen eine Umwelt abgrenzt. Soziale Systeme bestehen demnach nicht aus Menschen, auch nicht aus Handlungen, sondern aus Kommunikationen." Luhmann, Ökologische Kommunikation. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1. Auflage 1986. ISBN 3-531-11775-0, 1986, S. 269.




Maybe it is this strong head through the wall point of view that lead me to the next point (aha...) Connectivism. Obviously today all things are connected, especially through the internet, but it is also very clear to me, that through connecting to other people you can not only learn. I can really associate with the theory that was introduced, that learning does not exist in peoples heads, but is in fact all around us and can be freely accessed (or not) according to our needs. As I am sitting in a library surrounded by thousands of books and at least 20 or so people, reading, studying, typing away at their computers it seems like a logical thing to say.
Connectivism makes complete sense in the fast-paced word we live in today. As our foundations rapidly change you have to be quick to decide and adapt to new situations and thus rapidly choose which connection must be stronger or weaker in this moment. "Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision" Siemens, G. 2004


Right now I feel like I am completely running out of steam (+the library is closing) and probably whoever has read this far should be rewarded a prize. (Alternative Nobel Peace Prize anyone???)
I have covered all points save affiliation, which actually interested me the most out of all the ideas given and lead me to almost completely read...I can not help noticing that I am finding psychology- especially from a social point of view frightfully interesting. Maybe that is the point of it all. I always believed that every performing artist has to have a great understanding of society and all its key players.
I hope I haven´t bored anyone and I wish even more so that the days would have 36 hours to fit in all the reading, thinking and writing I would like to do.