Talking Stick and Spirituality LO20267

Jean Alvarez (jxa27@po.cwru.edu)
Wed, 23 Dec 1998 09:11:45 -0500

Replying to LO20249 and a couple of messages from previous days:

Whoa, Bruce. I was going to back out of this thread, but am drawn back in
this morning. I remember that this thread picked up a couple of weeks ago
with someone inquiring why we should be cautious about the use of symbols
like the Talking Stick. Since then I think we've moved from a kind of
gentle advocacy to adamant advocacy which makes reflective conversation
pretty hard.

A couple of examples. "Political correctness" as a negative term
discourages those who want to be sensitive to other cultures---it easily
becomes a dismissive term: a close-down rather than an open-up
intervention. While I agree that fear of saying the wrong thing (of being
"politically incorrect) can shut down a conversation and make people
afraid to explore ideas, accusations that an idea or approach is "PC" has
virtually the same effect.

In my thinking about the Learning Organization, I've come to think that
the key, for me, is to find in myself a "learning posture," that
encourages me to say, I wonder why this is happening, I wonder what this
means, I wonder why we see this differently. So I've been uneasy with the
exchange about the Talking Stick when it has moved away from curiosity and
exploration, to dismissive answers.

The anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson has written interesting things
about multiculturalism---in its worst and best manifestations. (I think
it's in her book, Peripheral Vision.) As I recall, she suggests that
adaptive multiculturalism, the appreciative gleaning and adoptive gleaning
from another culture, can only be built on the hard work of understanding
one's own culture---its strengths and limitations. I think I've felt
through much of this thread that we were missing the element of
self-reflection that I'm working to cultivate in myself and in my clients.

Hope this is helpful.

Jean

Jean Alvarez
Organizational Leadership
1439 Marlowe Ave.
Lakewood, OH 44107
(216) 228-8253
(216) 941-3430 FAX (flag for Jean Alvarez)
jxa27@po.cwru.edu

-- 

jxa27@po.cwru.edu (Jean Alvarez)

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