08 Jan Words to Ponder #14
Worth remembering as we begin a new year...
Words to Ponder
22 Dec Words to Ponder #13
Posted at 16:08h
in Culture, I Like This, Look and Listen, Philosophy, What's New, Words to Ponder 1 Comment
Today’s Words to Ponder are spoken by Sir Malcolm Muckerex, the pompous and erudite narrator in Fred Newman’s play, “Life Upon the Wicked Stage.” The play was first performed live at the American Psychological Association Convention in 1997; you can watch a video performance of it here. The world is a wicked...
18 Dec Words to Ponder # 12
Posted at 14:03h
in Culture, Human Development, I Like This, Play, What's New, Words to Ponder 3 Comments
Brian Sutton-Smith was a pioneer in researching the intellectual, social and cultural history of play. He passed away this past March at the age of 90. World renowned for the thoroughness of his scholarly writings, he is also very quotable. Here's one of his most famous: The opposite of play is not a present...
05 Dec Words to Ponder #11
"It took nature 100 million years to make the ape stand up and become Homo sapiens. It took us only 10,000 to make knowing...
10 Nov Words to Ponder #10
"Poverty is not a personal characteristic. It is social, it is political, it is one of the ways the world is organized, and it has a history. Radically accepting the poverty of one’s own life and community while simultaneously depersonalizing it makes possible a certain kind of growth/development—especially if one...
30 Oct Words to Ponder #9
"No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child." Maria Montessori ...
24 Oct Words to Ponder #8
Posted at 17:35h
in Activity Theory, Human Development, I Like This, Philosophy, Social Therapeutics, Vygotsky, What's New, Words to Ponder 0 Comments
This week's words are from Fred Newman's and my book, Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist—restructured from text* to poem. To reshape our emotional practice— to decide for ourselves what it is we want to do with anger, joy, humiliation and the rest of our incredibly complex subjectivity (which is nameless) and with the emotions newly created through/in the activity of building community that redefines...
14 Oct Words to Ponder #7
"Some people would say that we need a ground from which to act. We need a shared collective ground for collective action. I think we need to pursue the moments of degrounding, when we're standing in two different places at once; or we don't know exactly where we're standing; or...
04 Oct Words to Ponder #6
Posted at 23:00h
in Creativity, I Like This, Language, Philosophy, What's New, Words to Ponder 3 Comments
This week's words are from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass—a very playful practical-philosopical book containing hundreds of thinking/speaking muddles. Here's two of them. I. White Queen: Let's consider your age to begin with—how old are you? Alice: I'm seven and a half exactly. White Queen: You needn't say "exactually: I can believe it without that....
25 Sep Words to Ponder #5
This week's words to ponder are a few of the wonderfully ponderable quotes atrributed to the great Yogi Berra—baseball legend and a bona fide American wordsmith. (There are lots more in The Yogi Book.) Yogi Berra passed away September 22, 2015 at the age of 90. “I really didn’t say everything I said.” “Don’t...