Time squeeze

[Adam Blatner]

Regina asked in May, how do we change the world?
    As I'm cleaning up old emails, I thought I'd take a stab at the answer. My fun word 
for now is "infrastructure," what what I mean by that is that we promote SKILLS. Most 
people don't know how to
  -- improvise
  -- resolve conflicts (using role reversal, other problem-solving methods)
  -- enjoy the insights of sociometry, the ideas implicit there,
     (and the associated sensitivity to the dynamics of rapport that adds better judgment 
in situations)
   -- empower their meta-role or inner manager and dis-identify with the specific roles so 
they can better use role distance to adapt, negotiate, modulate attitudes or acts, etc.
    -- become more aware and sensitive to nonverbal communications in self as well as 
others
          and as a corollary, working with one's own body energy, posture, activity
     -- warm up gradually
     -- warm down when it is needed, de-role a bit, dis-engage, etc.
     -- let go
     -- open to higher values
     -- surrender a bit to "higher power"
     -- notice the differences between too much in the past, or worry, and how to return 
to the present, the now...
       ... and the list goes on.

    I envision this stuff becoming a core part of the mainstream curriculum in schools, 
taught at different levels for different age groups
    I envision Moreno's ideas being integrated into all sorts of settings...

      Also, it's important to go beyond Moreno, to recognize that as valuable as his 
techniques and ideas are, they still represent only a small fraction of all the other 
kinds of learning, psychology, skill-development, maturation, etc. that is available.
         As a corollary, exploring how we can discover and take into psychodrama more 
influences and ideas from other approaches!

       That's all for now.. Open to comments. Warmly, Adam

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "REGINA SEWELL" <sewell.2 at osu.edu>
To: <list at grouptalkweb.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 6:28 PM
Subject: Time squeeze


>
>
> Adam,
>
> Thank you!  This issue you talk about... hustling to get by... no time...   Doing more 
> and more work and, in real dollars, making less and less.  All the while the rich get 
> richer, and the number of people living in poverty is expanding.  And the middle class 
> is too busy working and struggling to really do anything about it.  Govt. statistics are 
> starting to show this but don't capture it really because many of the undocumented 
> folks - the most exploited group - don't show up in these statistics.
>
> And yet, there is more to it.  We are so sucked in to  consumer capitalism.  Most people 
> truly feel they "have to have" things to function... a cell phone, a lap top, cable tv, 
> high speed access to the internet, a car, a microwave oven (note that many of these 
> things are about time utilization....  to make us more efficient...  so that many people 
> (I actually find this appallling) can even conduct business, or at least network or 
> connect with friends while you're on the toilet).   But if we weren't working so much to 
> pay the cell phone and  high speed internet bill, we might have time to actually cook 
> and wouldn't need that microwave and talk to people on the cell phone in the car.  And 
> we wouldn't feel like such zombies at the end of the day that we just need to tune in to 
> anything on cable to numb out.
>
> It seems to me that part of this "spinning" you described is what Lewis Yablonsky was 
> talking about when he talked about Robopaths.  It also sounds like what Marx was trying 
> to describe when he talked about alienation over a century ago.
>
> And the catch is, how do we change this world?  How do we use our skills to challenge a 
> system so huge that even social revolutions (the Russian Revolution, the Chinese 
> revolution) did little more than forestall?  At a practical level, how do we get people 
> in the door to work on issues of time when they feel like they have so little?
>
> regina sewell
>
>
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