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lesbian-bird-talks · 3 years

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On: Appare-Ranman

This is my first official post, so hello and welcome! My name is Pidge, pronouns in the bio.

This blog is entirely for me to just rant and rave about the anime I’m watching, probably long after they’ve finished because keeping up with seasonal anime would take much more out of me than I am willing to give.

I don’t know how to work Tumblr well so don’t mind me too much if things look shitty! I’ll figure stuff out eventually. Also, everything will be going under the break for people who’d like to avoid spoilers! Appare-Ranman came out in April of this year, but I know there are people like me who like to wait until a series is fully out before you go back and binge it. There will also be a TLDR at the start if you’d just like to read that!

TRIGGER WARNING FOR MENTIONS OF RACIST IMAGERY

TLDR; The anime is okay. My favorite part was the relationship between Kosame and Appare, but I really wish they had done more with the interpersonal relationships between the other characters. The fight scenes are lackluster, there are large plot holes that aren’t ever explained, and most importantly one of the more important side characters is a black man with a noose around his neck. I’d give the anime a 2.5 - 3/5.

STORY

Lets start this off with a basic summary of the narrative. Appare-Ranman centers around the duo Appare and Kosame. Appare is a genius inventor with big dreams and a lot of ambition, but less than great social skills. Kosame, on the other hand, is a cowardly swordsman who’s tasked with the job of looking after Appare. Due to a series of events, the pair end up in the middle of the ocean, stranded on a steam ship Appare built, and have to be rescued by a freight ship. The pair end up stranded in America, and enter a cross-continental race to earn the money to head back home.

When I first saw the plot synopsis of this show I was super excited! I really like the idea of having such a contrast between old-school Japan and 1700′s America. On that aspect I wasn’t disappointed. What DID disappoint me were some of the more gaping plot holes in the story. The first of which being how in the HELL are two Japanese men fresh off the boat communicating with Americans?

A freight ship captain might be able to speak Japanese since his business is overseas, although him having a translator would be more realistic. But what about the other citizens? Why can Appare walk right up to the owner of a car shop and ask him for a job? Eventually I let it go while I was watching, but it irritated me that it was never explained. The plot itself doesn’t have too many big twists and turns. And when it did, I can’t say I cared about them all that much?

Jing’s race helped to reinforce the themes of doing the impossible and not letting others define what you’re capable of, but it felt very hamfisted in it’s message about femininsm and “girls can do the same things boys can”. I got tired of them repeating that so much, and I really wish Jing had been the one to punch that smug bastard at the end of the race instead of her boss. He doesn’t get the right to defend her after not even giving her a chance until she nearly crashed.

Kosame killing the person who killed Hototo’s family felt,,,very rushed. And something that should have been used as an experience to develop Hototo’s character, who I believe stayed pretty static along with the rest of the cast, was instead used to develop KOSAME, who apparently lost his mother as well. Speaking on that - I laughed at the scene that showed Kosame’s mother getting killed. I giggled at that shit and you wanna know why? Because the way it was set up was ridiculous.

The murderer hops out of the bushes, he slashes his sword across the mother’s back, and then just... runs away down the street.

We do not learn why he does this, we just see it happen. It’s meant to be a dramatic reveal about Kosame’s past and yet it’s almost comedic in it’s suddenness. But I also laugh at a cockroach singing scat so what the hell do I know?

The latter half of the story doesn’t really contain any huge flaws, and most of it’s weaknesses come from the fact that the cast itself is fairly weak and I just couldn’t get invested in the stakes. When Sofia got kidnapped I just didn’t care all that much. The only two things I knew about her character was

a. she could drink a lot

b. she took up her mother’s role as Al’s caretaker

That was virtually it. If she lived or died I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Which is really bad when this is meant to be the climax of your show, this is when I should be the most invested.

CHARACTERS

Most of the characters are fairly one note, with none of them having anything that makes them particularly stand out beyond their odd choice in fashion.

Speaking of odd choices in fashion, lets talk about Crazy TJ

The singular black character in the show, and you put a noose on him? Your singular black character, and you decide that you want to make him violent with questionable morals? Your singular black character, and you make him as unempathetic as you possibly can? I love anime god BOY HOWDY do I hate how racist anime can be.

Crazy TJ isn’t the only one-note character, though. Most of the supporting cast don’t have much going for them. What can I say about Jing? That she’s a feminist who likes to race? And what about Al? The only three words I can think of to describe his personality are “rich white boy”.

I’m unsure of how I feel about Gil, though. On the one hand I think he pairs well with the idea of “the only limits you have are the ones you set for yourself”, with Gil being the immovable object to Appare’s unstoppable ambition. But at the same time he just felt very...over the top. And there was never any time given to explain just how he rose to power or why he may be the way he is, or even why he’s doing what he is. He’s just an indiscriminate killer, and those sorts of characters can be fun, but it’d be nice to know a bit of his history so we can know more about why he is the way he is.

All in all, there wasn’t much that stood out to me character-wise. They were all fairly bland, although there were a few interactions outside of the main three that I found to be really cute, like the relationship between Tristan and Hototo. But for the most part none of these characters would be all that interesting for me to watch go on an adventure outside of the happenings of the anime.

The exception to this being Appare and Kosame. Mostly Appare.

Out of all the cast I really do think these two have the most character development, with Appare learning how to care for and rely on other people more and Kosame learning how to take risks and opening his mind up to new possibilities. I really love their dynamic, and seeing them interact was probably the best part of the show for me. Kosame and Appare are like an uncle and his weird nephew who have a really wholesome relationship. If these two didn’t play the lead roles then I don’t think I would have even finished this show.

And I especially love Appare. He is my son. My little baby boy. I love him with all my heart

CLOSING REMARKS

All in all Appare-Ranman is an okay anime. The concept is interesting, and I did enjoy watching the characters race cross-country, but a majority of the cast is fairly bland, the plot and writing fall short in areas I feel are important, and there’s literally a black man with a noose around his neck. It has quite a few problems, but I like the overall message of not letting other people define your limits for you, and I really enjoyed watching Appare open up to Kosame and the other people taking part in the race.

If there was another season, I’d like it to possibly be done with a different writer. And for Crazy TJ’s design to lose the noose. That shit is gross and I don’t understand what the character designer was doing when they put it on there.

This rating is pretty arbitrary and not based on any scoring system, but I’d give Appare-Ranman a 2.5 - 3/5!

This isn’t the best review by a long shot but it’s just my personal experience while watching the anime over a three-day period. At the end of the day, these are all my opinions! If you disagree feel free to tell me, or maybe point out something you think I overlooked, just please keep it respectful~

#appare ranman #appare-ranman #anime #animeblr #spring anime 2020 #anime review

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appliedtheatreblog · 3 years

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Geese Theatre

Describe in your own words Geese theatres' key theories.

Geese Theatre focus on the rehabilitation of offenders through the medium of Drama and Theatre. This has been proven to develop social consciousness, self control, self-esteem and responsibility in offenders, deterring them from crime again. Geese have three key theories that they apply when facilitating their participants, all of which encourage them to think deeper into their thinking and feelings and evaluate the person they really are underneath how they portray themselves.

The first theory we learn about in the Geese Theatre handbook is Social Learning Theory-

This is using social interactive intervention to facilitate a new skill for the participants. It uses a process of applying a specific skill, so that once all the steps have been completed, participants should have successfully acquired that new skill.

The steps are as follows:-

Assessment/Self Assessment- Teaching what a specific skill requires to be successful e.g- Teamwork requires trust.

Instruction- Recommended procedure to follow for practising that skill. E.g practising teamwork would involve several team building exercises, showing participants how to operate as a contributor towards a team.

Modelling- Facilitators giving examples of the skill, this would normally include how NOT to approach the skill.\

Multiple Practise- Practising the skill whilst increasing difficulty and realism each attempt.

Testing- Testing the skill and giving appropriate feedback, where positive reinforcement is essential in encouraging participants to stick with the process.

Real world practise- An opportunity for participants to practise this skill in their everyday life.

When Geese talk about why this sequence is so important, the following is quoted-

“The sequence offers an important conceptual framework for helping participants to develop new skills in a conscious and structured way” (Mountford et al. 19)

This shows how offering this process would leave an impact on participants, asking them exactly why each skill is important and would benefit them daily leaves an impact which would hopefully lead them to approaching situations better in the future.

The second theory is called Cognitive- behavioural Theory

When I first stumbled across this I had a reasonably wide understanding of what it entails. This is due to the fact that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is used very often in modern day as a psycho-social intervention to treat mental health, it challenges any cognitive distortions and helps to develop personal coping strategies, improving people's control over their emotions. Geese Theatre uses drama as a vehicle through this theory to challenge and explore the beliefs and attitudes of offenders that may lead to them displaying anti-social behaviour.

Geese explain that offenders often unknowingly place themselves in habitual cycles, which are self-sabotaging and often lead to offending behaviour. By using drama to facilitate this change, Geese starts a conversation which asks ‘Did your choices affect you positively?’ Most of the time that answer is no. They will then ask “What can we do next time to prevent negative outcomes due to personal actions?’

They use the example of exploring a victim's experience on the receiving end of antisocial behaviour. They would create a scene in which somebody would play the victim of something like Robbery, this would help by showing that other people are becoming hurt by their actions, holding them responsible for their actions.

Geese also explain that offenders often have the fixed vision that they are a victim to the system- and other people should feel the pain they do. This is a belief of self-sabotage as they can end up incarcerated due to the extent of their actions, modifying this belief so that offenders feel empowered by opportunity of personal growth, often leads to less offenses in the future.

The final theory is called Role Theory-

This is the idea that we all play a role in society, and that we have total control over how we play roles in our lives. Role Theory is a way Geese can identify skills and roles that offenders could benefit from developing.

They say -”Role Theory observes how we all play roles in our lives which generate behavioural archetypes associated with that role in any given context.” (Mountford et al., 2002, 19)

This communicates how offenders often stick to a role that does not benefit them, for example, young offenders can present themselves as incapable of work (even when they are) because they feel like nobody would hire them. This is them intentionally placing themselves in an unemployable box, Geese’s role theory would come into play here by using drama to teach different job roles to offenders. Such as, the role of an employee, which would benefit them by teaching the behavioural archetypes of succeeding and retaining a job. The biggest message Geese are portraying here is that personal roles are dynamic and can be consciously chosen to benefit your quality of life.

What specifically stood out for you in the Geese theatre reading? (Give 2 examples. Be specific. Did it make you think about something - if so, what? Did it raise questions for you - if so, what are they?)

The first element of Geese Theatres practise that stood out to me, was the concept of ‘The Mask’ this is a metaphor for analysing the inner processes that support the roles we play. It is essentially the ‘front’ we portray to the outside world. Geese attempt to ‘lift the mask’ and go inside the heads of offenders to uncover hidden thoughts and attitudes. This eventually leads to behavioural change as it proves that their inner process leads them to offensive behaviour, challenging the conflict right at its core. What particularly stood out to me, was when it stated that participants would often practice this concept on a fictional character. I think this is such an interesting practise as it shows participants that this can be practised on everyone, meaning people probably perceive them in a way where they believe they are not conducting themselves authentically. I had a think about the character of ‘Javert’ from the musical ‘Les Mis’ and attempted to analyze the hidden thoughts there. This was very interesting to me as it allowed me to see that charter through a deeper lesne, and understand the behaviour that occurred as a result of the inner thoughts. Javert-

Presents himself as a powerful and lawful man, hungry for social justice. Blinded by this and unable to see the good that ex-villain Valjean does for the community. Inner thoughts- disappointed in previous failings to catch Valjean, frustrated he failed his life missions. Feels as though he has nothing else to live for. The result of this inner process was his ultimate demise. However the chance to analyse those inner feelings, may have led to an emotional breakthrough that could have eventually prevented the dark end to his life.

Although this may be considered a far fetched evaluation, I can confidently say that I understand why completing an exercise like this would make an offender feel more able and comfortable to analyze themselves with intention to change their damaging inner processes.

Another concept that I was particularly interested by, is the section that focused on working with resistance, particularly ‘Responding to Resistance’

Geese explain how oftentimes offenders are very resistant to participate in drama because of a fixed idea they have that drama is ‘Silly’ and ‘Just childrens games”. Although this resistance is a difficult bridge for a facilitator, Geese explains how it is important to ask yourself ‘What is causing my person or group to feel resistant or afraid?’ and then ‘How can I modify my approach to accommodate this?’ Offenders often don't want to be tricked into becoming vulnerable, a great facilitator would respond to this fear by ensuring the practise would be entirely based around their boundaries. What particularly intrigues me was that facilitators can utilise resistance to their advantage, participants who are particularly resistant and are seeking out to sabotage the group are often seeking an outcome that works for them in that situation. In this instance, facilitators could respond to the participant in a conversational manner, giving them a response they were not expecting. This encourages new energy and tension into the group, which can be interesting for the participants as it demonstrates how conflict and interpersonal tension can actually lead to creative solutions, not just a power struggle which is more than likely what they are used to.

How does the work of Geese theatre company join up with the wider world of Applied theatre and the idea of dominant narratives?

Geese Theatre company are a perfect example of an Applied Theatre company, they work with marginalised groups in modern society and instigate a conversation that leads to social change. They utilize many techniques that other forms of Applied Theatre do, all of which centre around the voices and capabilities of those in spaces where mainstream theatre doesn't normally exist. The idea of ‘dominant narratives’ is a pattern I would argue is present in many forms of applied theatre. A dominant narrative is the dominant social argument applicable to certain social groups or events. An example of this in relation to Geese Theatre is that offenders don't have the capability to change and are the poison that must be controlled in our society. Another example of this looks back at my first blog post where I explored the Theatre and Health company, Target Theatre. This is the company that explores the views on the elderly in our society and the hidden fears they face. The dominant narrative this company takle is the idea that Elderly people have less to contribute to our society as they are not as physically and emotionally available as the younger generation. Both of the dominant narratives I have outlined above are particularly ruthless, but the function of Applied Theatre in relation to these narratives is to inspire that social change that is so desperately needed, yet this form facilitates that change in a marking and inspiring manner.

Bibliography

Mountford, A., Brookes, S., & Baim, C. (2002). The Geese Theatre handbook. Waterside Press.

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trans-cuchulainn · 5 years

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In your opinion, who does Cu Chulainn like more between Laeg and Ferdiad? And do you think Cu Chulainn is capable of choosing between them if forced to? Or does he just like them equally?

i don’t think you can really directly compare them, to be honest… he has such a different relationship with the both of them that it’s not an either/or situation. there are some texts, particularly later/early modern ones, that seem to be casting láeg slightly in the role of ‘fer diad replacement’, but that’s not how he comes across to me in the bulk of the material

if we have a look at them both individually… [this is super long so i’m putting it below a cut to save people’s dashboards. also yes i just did like 45 mins’ worth of literary analysis for a tumblr ask. why am i like this]

fer diad was cú chulainn’s companion / close friend / lover when he was very young, while training in alba with scáthach. they were extremely close, having trained and fought together over a substantial period of time, often in seemingly isolated situations. the text indicates that they shared a bed (which, obviously, doesn’t necessarily indicate that anything homoerotic is going on, but does lend itself to that interpretation).

they haven’t seen each other in several years.

they meet again now for what seems like the first time since their youth, and everything has changed. they’re on opposite sides of a war, both torn by their loyalties to their ruler and to their family (both have a familial connection to the person they’re fighting for). it’s a conflict between childhood (foster brother) and adult (family, land) loyalties, and the adult ones win out. despite this, they briefly recapture their childhood intimacy in between fighting each other, but only for the first two days, before even that proves too difficult to maintain in the face of the violence they’re forced to do one another.

(for the record, the way i personally elect to read their relationship is that when they were young they were extremely intimate and had a vaguely romantic relationship, but i don’t tend to read that as sexual because they are literal children. now, granted, this is somewhat anachronistic and inaccurate because, you know, this is cú chulainn we’re talking about, he supposedly sleeps with scáthach at that age even though he’s like six, but the texts which emphasise his closeness to fer diad – and his youth – don’t mention that aspect, so it has the feeling of a divergent tradition in which he’s a bit older. anyway point is i read them as romantic while they’re in training but then they meet again in the táin and cú chulainn is seventeen and fer diad is a bit older and it’s like. oh damn. oh. oh this is not a feeling i should be having about the guy i’m about to fight but. damn. and then they make out. that part’s sort of canon.)

so that’s his relationship with fer diad. it’s… messy and devastating and that’s where its power lies; it’s got this long period of separation in the middle during which they both grow up considerably which really shifts how they interact with each other, and then this catastrophic reunion under the worst of circumstances.

(bearing in mind a lot of this is extrapolated from how they talk to each other in flashbacks, because we don’t ever properly see their youth together)

láeg is cú chulainn’s closest friend throughout his life. it’s unclear where or when they met. one version of compert con culainn has them raised together, both nursed by láeg’s mother, which would mean láeg is probably not more than a year or so older than cú chulainn (since he’s still nursing when cú chulainn is born). other versions don’t mention this, and it’s not clear at what point they become close friends, but it happened at some point. it’s not even entirely clear what province láeg is from, although i think based on that one version of compert con culainn an argument could be made for leinster, which would explain why he’s not hit by the ulaid’s curse (unless charioteers don’t count).

láeg is at cú chulainn’s side throughout the táin. they’re alone there together for literally months. he’s cú chulainn’s servant, technically, but their relationship has some bizarre power dynamics going on (in the book of leinster MS, cú chulainn repeatedly calls him ‘a mo phopa’, which is a very… respectful/deferential way to refer to an older guy, not really what you’d expect. eDIL claims the term is occasionally used as a familiar way to address a social inferior, but honestly? i’m pretty sure they just put that in to explain cú chulainn using it for láeg. i’ve talked about this a few times on this blog, discussing other ways to interpret it, like ‘bro’, which would lean into the interpretation of láeg as cú chulainn’s surrogate older brother figure. alternatively he calls him ‘daddy’ which. you know. is cursed but also uncomfortably valid.)

they play fidchell together, which is like the medieval irish version of chess, and we learn that láeg wins about 50% of the time. given cú chulainn’s association with lug, who supposedly invented fidchell, this suggests that láeg is not only his equal, but also knows him very, very well – well enough to predict his moves.

láeg is with cú chulainn until he dies; he dies because he’s hit by a spear that was aimed at cú chulainn, who dies later in the same story. he’s in the majority of texts that cú chulainn is in (with a few notable exceptions that i’m working on identifying). he goes to the otherworld on cú chulainn’s behalf, at one point, which is pretty brave of him. cú chulainn trusts him and is closer to him than virtually anybody else. i don’t think we ever see him put that much faith in another person.

can you compare them? i don’t know. based on what he says in the táin, láeg was there when cú chulainn and fer diad were training together. he knows them both, and he knows how close they were. he tries to convince cú chulainn not to fight fer diad, because he knows it’ll destroy him. he’s the one who picks the grieving cú chulainn up and convinces him to stay alive afterwards. (at one point he has to literally tie cú chulainn to a bed to make sure he stays still long enough to heal from his wounds. láeg is the long-suffering mumfriend.)

it’s also worth mentioning here that in the stowe manuscript (and only the stowe MS), fer diad’s charioteer is named as idh mac riangabra, láeg’s brother. this name comes up elsewhere as being conall cernach’s charioteer, and since this is only in stowe i tend not to pay much attention to it, but it seems relevant here, because láeg and idh act as interesting foils for cú chulainn and fer diad. they end up fighting each other in their attempts to protect their masters – more specifically, they fight over the gae bolga, which láeg is attempting to pass to cú chulainn; idh is trying to stop him, in order to protect fer diad. in other words, we have two brothers whose loyalty to their masters is greater than their loyalty to each other, causing them to fight… which is more or less the exact position cú chulainn and fer diad have ended up in.

(it’s not just loyalty that sets them against each other; it’s also shame, and honour, and the fact that medb has straight-up threatened to kill fer diad if he doesn’t, or at least, make him fight a whole group of other warriors, which amounts to the same thing. personally i think if he can hold cú chulainn off for three days and cú chulainn can fight like 30 people at once, fer diad is definitely in with a chance of surviving whatever medb throws at him, but maybe he’s better in one-on-one situations. certainly he doesn’t seem to think he can live through it, and in the stowe manuscript he explicitly laments that “medb will kill me with a host” if he doesn’t fight for her, so…)

that interpretation of the charioteers would place láeg’s bond with cú chulainn as the strongest of this mess of interpersonal relationships, i guess, but i think there are a lot of factors going on and none of them are really free to act on what they want – they’re doing what’s required of them (by society, by their rulers, whatever), no matter the personal cost. i don’t think you can really look at the táin and be like “ah yes, i know what cú chulainn wants, personally” because… do we? do we really? i think he wants a nap. láeg almost certainly does.

so, in the end, i’m not sure it comes down to a question of ‘liking’. if forced to choose, i think cú chulainn’s loyalty is to láeg. láeg’s loyalty is certainly to cú chulainn, despite knowing fer diad and understanding what he means to cú chulainn. they are… incredibly close, in a way that seems unusual for a warrior-charioteer pairing given what we see with others, but makes perfect sense if you read it that they grew up together from infancy, and i don’t think we ever see that bond being broken between them.

also, like, he never brutally murdered láeg, which is for sure a point in his favour, given that he… very much did eviscerate fer diad. that cannot be overlooked. that’s kind of an important point.

having said that, as a general rule, i don’t think he wants to make out with láeg. i can occasionally be persuaded to think otherwise, but i generally don’t read their relationship that way, whereas he canonically kisses fer diad.

(kissing in medieval irish lit is actually pretty rare? at some point i really want to do more research into any other scenarios in which there is kissing of any kind, because it doesn’t come up that much, and i feel like exploring those would allow for a more solid interpretation of comrac fir diad as either ‘nothing to see here, just regular homosocial intimacy in a warrior society’ or ‘huh, this is unusual. guess it must be gay’. reading it in conjunction with, say, medieval french lit would suggest the former, but in the context of medieval irish lit specifically… idk, i’m leaning towards the latter, but i need to do more research before i can state that categorically.)

tl;dr i think he has a very different relationship with them both that can’t directly be compared, but if forced to choose, would probably pick láeg.

did i need 1800 words to say that? probably not but here they are anyway

#laeg mac riangabra #cu chulainn #cu chulainn/laeg #fer diad #tain bo cuailnge #medieval irish #tc does academia #answered #rionaofblue #cu chulainn/fer diad #irish mythology

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bluewatsons · 6 years

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Gordon Gates, Politics of Autism: Social Intuition, Stigma, and Diversity, 1 Autonomy (2017)

Abstract

While controversy lingers over the assimilation of Aspergers into autism spectrum disorder, this paper looks at diagnosis from the perspective of ASHFA (individuals previously diagnosed with Aspergers ASand identifying with high functioning autism HFS). Based on a qualitative insider study exploring diagnosis and autistic stigma, this paper explores the phenomenology of autistic stigma, how it relates to diversity of human social intuition, and addresses a paradox between the powerful validating discourse provided by diagnosis and the inherently disempowering effects of medicalization. Sociophenomenal diversity resulting from fundamental differences in social intuition fills the resulting gap as a validating discourse that provides an alternate framework for autistic identity construction consistent with the integrity of ASHFA as described by participants. This framework avoids the pathologization of diagnosis as a validating discourse and addresses the fundamental human difference that leads to much of the stigma experienced by this marginalized population

The negatively perceived differences of social intuition associated with autism are seldom studied. This is largely because the very idea of intuition is often seen as vague, flawed, and unscientific in our objectivistic evidence-based culture (Lieberman, 2000). Various attempts have been made to name and describe the ability of humans to experience each other as unique beings. For example, Peter Fonagy defines mentalization as the capacity to conceive of conscious and unconscious mental states in oneself and others (1991, p. 639). Metacognition is sometimes used synonymously with mentalization, but as thinking about thinking (Middlebrooks, Abzub, & Sommer, 2014, p.225) this concept, like mentalization, tends to focus on the cognitive aspect of social behaviour and does not capture the living process of relationality. Although the ability to encounter and relate to others has been said to lie at the very core of our humanity (Bateman & Fonagy, 2011, p.xv), most of the terms used to operationalize this idea tend to over-emphasize the role of cognition. Although Gumley (2011) expands the definition of mentalization to include understanding emotional states, the characteristic priority given to cognition in the study of autism and sociality is problematic. Perhaps a reflection of this cultures typically despiritualized materialistic sensibilities, a narrow focus on cognition in relationship prioritizes the politicized manipulative aspect of interaction that is often deliberately concocted to present the self in a desired manner or achieve certain ends. Social justice is undermined because intellectually challenged individuals may have their moral status questioned or be seen as somehow less human in their ability to experience others (Carlson & Kittay, 2010). The way peoples ability to connect with each other is regarded also has important implications for our evolving understanding of autism, which is often seen to involve cognitive mechanisms of impairment that fundamentally undermine social connection.

The visceral experience of encounter goes far beyond having an intellectual theory of mind, if by this is meant the ability to represent mental states (Frith, Happe, & Siddons, 1994, p. 110) and the ability to predict other peoples behaviour on the basis of mental states (Frith and Frith, 2012, p. 334). Dant (2015) argues that theory of mind (and similar terms used in autism research) reduce human sociality to a cognitive function in an impoverished framework of persistent biological determinism (p.57). He suggests we build our understanding of human relationship on the philosophical concept of intersubjectivity, which in the tradition of phenomenological research seeks to explore the lived flow of felt encounter in the shared context of everyday life. Even the term intersubjectivity, however, seems like a dry academic term to describe such a dynamic, poignantly human process.

Krugman proposes the concept of mentalization be broadened to mean the minds innate capacity to make sense of social experiences and implicitly know how to respond to them (2013, para 1). In this paper, we will refer to social intuition as the pre-cognitive experience at the core of interaction between people and the irreducible experience of bodily felt encounter underlying interpersonal relationship. This experience, when we attend to it, always solicits a reaction even if it is only felt and not spontaneously enacted. The call and response of social intuition is a characteristically human flow of events that are just as intrinsically part of personhood for those of us with autism who struggle to function in a culture dominated by differently oriented others who have come to expect a certain range of social responses. The current paper is intended to contribute to dialogue about social intuition partly based on some of the results from a phenomenological study on autism and stigma conducted by the author (Gates, 2014). This qualitative research involved in-depth interviews with 5 autistic individuals and included the online thoughts of autistic people as well as my own experiences both as a clinician and an individual with autism.

As early as 1929 Wolfgang Khler noted how people seem to respond in an immediate way to each others feelings, thoughts, and intentions (Hacking, 2009a; 2009b). Building an early case for what this paper refers to as social intuition, Khler described the sense in which peoples inner states are directly obvious to each other (1947, p.137). It is interesting that Khler published a book on the behaviour of apes early in his career, especially in light of autistic author Dawn EddingsPrinces powerful description of how she began her journey from being homeless and profoundly marginalized to being a professor of anthropology and critical autism writer by quietly observing apes and experiencing belonging in their presence (Prince, 2013). The organic agency of social responsiveness may be better described in terms of Gendlins felt sense (1981, p.11) or subliminal knowing (p.xv) than any necessarily inferential process (Dimaggio & Lysaker, 2010, p.22). Philosophical exploration about how people apprehend each others intentionality through the flesh of encounter can be found in various philosophers including Merleau-Ponty (1945/2006) and Wittgenstein (1980). Smith (2010) provides a good overview of this issue and articulates the sense in which he feels he can know my baby daughter is miserable simply by looking (p.748).

As the telegraphic sense behind human social plasticity, social intuition cannot be sufficiently operationalized with proverbial checkboxes that screen for quantified approximations of dominantly shared social understanding. As is the case with most things human, social intuition can be seen to manifest itself through a range of intentionality and expression depending on social context, linguistic ability, perceptual acuity, insight, stress, trauma, and genotype as well as mental and physical health. Addressing structural failures in which mentalization and the effort to appreciate other points of view can be acutely compromised by emotional dysregulation and other psychological factors (Brent, Holt, Keshavan, Seidman, & Fonagy, 2014, p.21) has been found to provide a mechanism of therapeutic change in borderline personality disorder (Bateman & Fonagy, 2004), psychosis (Brent, et.al., 2014), and disordered attachment (Morken, Karterud, & Arefjord, 2014; Sacco, Pike, & Bourke, 2014). Such breakdowns happen in autism as well, for example due to anxiety, flustering, melt-downs, mismatched orientations of language use, and social confusion. Fundamental issues of diversity in the area of social intuition, however, and the resulting stigma that may occur in relation to the mainstream, have not been explored. The research on which this paper is partly based addresses this gap in knowledge by looking at the experience of adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The project specifically targets the range of autism in which individuals were previously labeled with Aspergers (AS) or the never officially adopted term high functioning autism (HFA). This was before the DSM 5 collapsed the condition into a single diagnostic entity called autism spectrum disorder. In an attempt to retain what one participant called the flavor of the condition, such persons will be referred to in this paper as ASHFA. Autistic rights activist Amelia Baggs refers to us as autistic individuals who are stable in language or concepts (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, 2012, p.327).

This range of autistic presence is targeted not to devalue or dismiss those individuals located elsewhere on the autism spectrum, but because I was diagnosed with Aspergers as an adult and want to take advantage of the life experience and insider perspective this puts at my disposal. In agreement with the research participants, I do not consider my condition a disability but, as I have articulated elsewhere (Gates, 2016), largely an expression of sociophenomenal diversity that reflects a different quality of social intuition and relational style. Of course, there is more to it. I am easily flustered, have difficulty with emotional regulation, am ultra-sensitive to sensory experiences I find aversive, experience difficulty with organization and impulse control, am frequently self-absorbed, cling to routine, and have trouble with change. These have become manageable facts of life, more than routine challenges but characteristics I have insight into and can find ways to compensate for when I make the effort. People with autism, like everyone else, have different levels of insight, motivation to change, ambition, tolerance for others, and self-esteem. As human beings, however, were all in the same boat. We find our way in life the best we can with what weve got and the burdens were given. The capacity to work with our limitations can be seen to unify us more than our different challenges and abilities separate us.

Stigma, Shame, and the Politics of Interaction

In the study on which this discussion is partially based, participants gave poignant descriptions of bodily felt shame and rejection resulting from the stigma associated with their autism. One participant said he had heard himself being called retard on a number of occasions. Another graduated from college on the deans list but never got a call back from a job interview. Another reported that he had responded to more than 200 profiles on a dating website yet only went on 3 dates. Participants reported extreme difficulty making friends, not being heard, and not being included. Most people just dont bother talking to me, said one participant. Another complained he got the cold shoulder from people regularly and voiced a common theme when he said I just dont seem to fit in. Another said people dont want to include me; they make false and misleading assumptions about me. Another said people show utter contempt towards me for no reason. One participant said he was worried about his long-term health because of all the rejection he had experienced. The overwhelming source of pain and stigma was reported by participants to be associated with social interaction and the deployment of social intuition.

An interesting example of this came up just the other morning while I was waiting for my car to get fixed. To pass the time I picked up a Toronto newspaper that was lying on the courtesy counter. Flipping randomly through the pages, I found myself reading an etiquette column about the interpersonal complexities of gift giving. A woman had written in wondering if it was appropriate to give an expensive, thoughtful gift to a man she had just started dating. The columnist told her it was a risky gesture that could lead to awkwardness if her effort wasnt reciprocated, advising her to drop hints about her gift giving intentions. That way if he did not reciprocate the woman would supposedly know the guy was either a cheapskate, an emotional trifler, or a clueless clod who cant take a hint (Vanstone, 2005, p.11). The implication is that such a boyfriend is to be avoided. The columnist acknowledged this strategy might make the woman seem manipulative, but still advised her in this direction perhaps because such behaviour is considered routine and normal in sociodominant circles as a way of negotiating social interaction. However, the idea that a person is a clueless clod if they dont recognize hint dropping (and other sometimes unspoken political strategies in relationship) reveals unintentional prejudice towards those who do not operate this way, particularly those with autism. It is not so much that it stigmatizes a medical condition related to impairment, but radiates negative stigma on those who do not play along with the assumptions behind the persons social strategy. People who dont pick up on such politicized communication are painted at best as spoilsports to be avoided, at worst as less sophisticated, less worthy, slow, or kind of dumb. There are less judgmental explanations for their different social radar, however. For example, the person may not be in a financial position for such gift giving. More fundamentally, the person may not value the giving of gifts. As a group, people with autism do not typically engage in or appreciate this politicized kind of social behaviour and prefer direct, explicit communication. The kind of negative judgments demonstrated in the article, especially when they stigmatize the sociophenomenal difference of autism, can sting deeply.

Oh come, you may say, its only a silly newspaper article! Still, this seemingly harmless piece of trivial journalism activated a kind of post-traumatic stigma response in me. I have had so many experiences in which I have felt stupid, judged, and unworthy because I did not understand peoples social agenda that the little article awakened dormant feelings of pain, rejection, and defensiveness. Like the participants in my study, I have had people act arrogantly towards me, dismiss me, not take my participation seriously, and look down on me because my social awareness did not match their dominantly accepted one. There are times when stigma is evoked deliberately in terms of bullying, but more often such emotional suffering is not activated intentionally. The author of the gift-giving advice surely did not set out to harm anyone. Still, there is an element of conscious collusion with stigma when people make such judgments, when the patience, curiosity, and respect to appreciate how a differently oriented person may perceive things is reduced to stigmatizing assumptions. I know all too well what its like to be considered a clueless clod because of sociophenomenal difference.

Invisibility, Stigma, and Social Construction

There are continuously variable levels of what Goffman calls the visibility of a stigmatizing condition (1963, p.48). For ASHFA, their stigmatizing condition is often invisible and may be felt rather than explicitly seen. Not as apparent, for example, as seizures or the use of a wheelchair, there may be perceptible signs of difference such as lack of eye contact, inappropriate eye contact, overly pedantic and other unfamiliar speech patterns that range from inventive to concrete, or cognitive rigidity and self-absorption.[1] These characteristics exist along a continuum and can blend indistinguishably with mainstream expectations, but when they become clear markers of difference some dominant others may seize on these visible signs of diversity and take them as an excuse for enacted stigma such as bullying and discrimination. There are more subtle qualities possessed by ASHFA, especially those related to social intuition, that can mark them as different. The participants in my study reported that it is these subtle differences and the social behaviour associated with them that result in the most painful stigma. This has been my experience as the organizing participant of the study. It is also consistent with previous research that shows the stigma of Aspergers to be related to behaviour rather than the visibility of the condition or the medical label (Butler & Gillis, 2011; Shtayermman, 2009). It is such differences of sociophenomenal orientation, for example, that can make ASHFA seem like perfect victims (Klin,Volmar, and Sparrow, 2000, p.56). Despite the conventional belief that people with autism prefer social isolation, this vulnerability can be exacerbated by an overwhelming and frustrated desire to fit in that can lead to indiscriminate people pleasing and sometimes nave helping. Not immediately discerning the underlying social intentionality beneath dissembling others is a related issue. One participant spoke of the nave trust for others he experienced when he was younger. Others revealed difficulty sharing the same social wavelength as mainstream others at the best of times, not knowing what an appropriate social response is supposed to be. Another factor moderating the flow of autistic social intuition is obsessive interests that are sometimes difficult to put aside when interacting with others. One participant said he tries to find common ground in conversation, but admitted its difficult to do unless its about topics that interest me. Depending on the person and the situation, some people may see these qualities as positive traits or signs of eccentric independence. Others may feel they call for compassion (or rescuing). Some may dismiss the person exhibiting these qualities as lesser than themselves, walk away in frustration, or perhaps take advantage. Between the participants and me, the individuals in the study experienced all these reactions.

All participants in the study spoke about how they often find themselves at a loss in social situations. One participant said she often felt stupid and found herself in tears a lot of the time trying to understand what I was supposed to do in social situations. Another participant talked about the challenge of trying to logically construct how he was supposed to act in social situations. I just find myself telling myself in my head things like OK, now listen for a bit, add something now, dont rebuttal here, he said. Interestingly, Frith, Happ, & Siddons (1994) distinguished appropriate social responses rooted in in true theory of mind from behaviour the authors refer to as hacking, or constructing responses using rational deduction geared towards desired outcomes (p.110). The authors felt such hacking distorted their research results and theorized that such compensatorybehaviour would not generalize from controlled research contexts to complex life situations. In reality, ASHFA often resort to deductive processes in order to engage with others when spontaneous social intuition fails. The fallback strategy of constituting social behaviour became most apparent in the complex area of dating. One participant described how there are a lot of non-verbal cues and expectations going into dating. Do we kiss? Do we hold hands? I never quite know what do. ASHFA often stumble along socially making things up as they go in order to fit in as seamlessly as possible. The fact they make such efforts at all and know when they dont fit in can be taken as evidence of theory of mind, but the problem may be more of a failure to cross-connect differing social aptitudes than one-sided impairments in the ability to ascribe mental states.

Phenomenologically, ASHFA seem to experience a kind of social blindness regarding social conventions and expectations others take for granted. This may be due to differences in social intuition that keep them from responding in normal ways. Participants reported experiences consistent with difficulties in the spontaneous processing of social information (Channon, et al., 2014, p.161) and an inability to grasp the silent expectations others with typical social intuition take for granted. Again, dating provides a poignant example. One participant described being in an intimate situation with a member of the opposite sex. He says he was just starting to like her, but got confused at one point because she was standing before him with her eyes closed as if expecting a surprise. He had no idea what was happening, but closed his eyes in order to play along. The moment passed and he could not figure out why she never acted the same towards him again. It wasnt until years later he realized he had rejected a woman expecting to be kissed.Another participant told about an experience in high school in which he bought tickets to a special event long in advance hoping to get a date. Strategically, he asked one of the plainest girls he could think of hoping that she, at least, would go out with him. He did not interact with girls and had not engaged with this girl at all in the past. Understandably, she declined. The participant said he was sad when he went to his next class, where one of the most popular girls in the school sat next to him. He asked her if she would like to go to the upcoming dance and remembers how she said yes enthusiastically. Did he smile happily? Did he feel lucky? No, he handed her his tickets and told her to have fun. The participant said he thought about this incident for years and could never understand why the girl seemed to want nothing to do with him after that. He said he did not realize until years later that he had unwittingly asked her on a date only to reject her. After getting it, he said he mourned the lost opportunity and felt colossally stupid, although he never mentioned being sorry for hurting her.

Social failures based on misunderstanding and misalignments of social expectation are rampant for ASHFA and consistent with research demonstrating that individuals diagnosed with autism score consistently lower on tests eliciting explanations for what makes social situations awkward, identifying inappropriate social conduct, and working out the significance of human behaviour(Channon, et al., 2014). The authors believe this is evidence that ASHFA have key impairments of mentalization (p.149). They go on to speculate that such findings may be associated with inappropriate responses in everyday social situations, though they note that little experimental work has explored this directly (p.152). My study, acquaintance with others with the condition, and lived experience all confirm the pragmatic connection between differences of social intuition and challenges in daily life. Difficulty processing commonly used linguistic constructions such as double entendres, irony, and sarcasm are characteristic, although the challenge is often appreciating the silent message being conveyed in the lived social context rather than the basic ability to understand these literary devices. Still, the difficulty extends far beyond the use of language. ASFHA are frequently blindsided in social situations because of their inability to read others, although whether this difficulty interfacing with sociophenomenally dominant others should be attributed to the local impairment of some inner mechanism or is more of an issue of systemic diversity remains to be worked out. Douglas Biklen (2005) theorized that such proposed mechanisms of impairment are not mechanisms at all, but metaphors that describe various challenges typical of autism.

Pragmatic challenges with lived interaction may show up as low scores analyzing social vignettes not because of specific impairments but because the experience on which to base the required analysis has not been accumulated. Such difficulties may not be best thought of as the impairment of an underlying mechanism but lack of acquired social experience due to exclusion and isolation. As developmental neuropsychologist Ulf Liszkowski (2013) maintains, low scores on social vignette tests may be because the interactive use of action predictions leads to a gradually abstracted inventory of action-context relations that is impoverished in ASHFA as a marginalized population with patterns of social cognition not shared by dominant others. In the same way there is nothing biologically wrong with the fusiform gyrus in autistic individuals who experience difficulties with facial recognition (Schultz, 2005; Tanaka, 2014), social intuition in ASHFA may be biologically unimpaired but differently activated. Chown (2013), based largely on the work of Klin, Jones, Shultz, and Volmar (2003), points out that the social is simply not as salient for autistic people (p.6), leading to diverse socio-active priorities and different patterns in the call and response of social intuition.

Organic Sense Emerging from Active Encounter

Klin et al. (2000) has noted that long-term relationships with peers can be a source of stigma resilience. Although the authors acknowledge they are only drawing on anecdotal evidence, they suggest that peers do not make explicit demands, but they also make few allowances (p.397). I interviewed the two roommates in my study that not only made allowances for each other but actively encouraged each others uniqueness out of familiarity and mutual understanding. Terms like theory of mind and metacognition do not do justice to the phenomenon of caring, bodily felt social intuition and need anticipation demonstrated by these individuals in regard to each other. Beyond the academic calculation of each others inner mental states, they appeared to engage in the same kind of organic, pre-analytical living responsiveness through which human beings naturally interact with each other. It is the kind of encounter between people that involves a familiarity presupposing appreciation of each other as thinking and feeling beings with unique inner realities. The kind of bodily felt encounter so touchingly demonstrated by these roommates underlies the complex social behaviour that allows a performer to feel the room and sense how long to hold a silence or allow a laugh; how a counselor senses when to introduce an appropriately challenging new perspective in line with the clients tolerance for change and worldview; how acquaintances, friends, and lovers seem to know when to release a hug; how a job applicant senses how long to hold a handshake with potential new employers to make a good impression; how individuals sharing guilty knowledge sense how long to hold a knowing look without drawing attention to themselves. Conventional knowledge has it that people with autism are devoid of or insusceptible to social intuition (McGeer, 2010). Yet the individuals in my study all described experiencing such situations, sometimes awkwardly and sometimes gracefully. That is how ASHFA are able to become actors, counsellors, and police officers who must sense the intentionality of others in complex specialized ways. The participants also described how the organic sense emerging from active encounter is often supplemented with various degrees of explicit cognitive calculation, although this diminishes spontaneity and makes social interaction more dependent on executive functioning. It is possible to exert deliberate cognitive control to override social intuition, for example when lying, manipulating, or practicing diplomacy, although conventional knowledge has it that having autism decreases the likelihood of this happening (Attwood, 2007). Did you ever hear the one about autistic individuals not being capable of deception? Autism does involve challenges with impulse control (which, along with working memory, organization, and time

management are part of executive functioning) that could make it harder to engage in subterfuge. However, the efforts people with autism sometimes make to avoid stigma, appear normal, and fit in despite feeling socially lost clearly indicate a degree of cognitive control as well as an ability to politicize and manipulate. Future research may better separate these factors out, but in terms of unfettered social intuition it is not theoretically determined mental states we respond to in others (Frith & Frith, 2012; Frith, Happe, & Siddons, 1994). We respond, rather, to bodily felt social encounter itself. This, at least, is when we experience the kind of interpersonal flow and belongingthese ASHFA roommates demonstrated, as opposed to the strain of constituted performance. This may be part of the reason people with autism, even more than mainstream others, flourish when they live in supportive, non-judgmental communities that offer an embracing web of relationships (Donvan & Zucker, 2016).

When asked the advantages of having an ASHFA roommate, both participants immediately agreed that finding a roommate that wont lie, cheat, or steal from you is worth more than their weight in gold. They each described instances of being taken advantage of and outright robbed by sociophenomenally mainstream roommates. Perhaps their more politically mediated processes of social intuition lead sociodominant individuals to become manipulative and opportunistic with differently equipped marginalized others. I suspect an ethnographic study of roommates on the spectrum would be an insightful source of knowledge, possibly helping us better understand how exclusion, marginalization and victimization can be associated with differences of social intuition at the heart of autistic personhood.

Endnote

Self-absorption has also been referred to as an overwhelming sense of local cohesion (OConnell, 2010, p.20) that can lead ASHFA individuals to be overly focused on the linear details of insulated personal experience. This can result in an apparently misanthropic disregard for the engaged holism of lived situations. Such behaviour can be framed at least partly as a defensive strategy to manage stigma and anxiety, although it is more often articulated in terms of a cognitive impairment known as weak central coherence. This impairment has been theorized to be characteristic of autism (Happe & Frith, 2006) and has also been noted in brain injury and schizophrenia (Martin & McDonald, 2003) as well as personality and eating disorders (Lopez, Tchanturia, Stahl, & Treasure, 2009). These conditions all involve stigma, the role of which needs to be further researched.

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#autism #identity #autism spectrum disorder #developmental disability #psychology #invisibility #politics #socialization #stigma #discrimination #nonconformity #behavior #diversity

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Trauma, Mental Health, Coping, Resilience, and Post Traumatic Growth (PG)-Palestinian Experience-Juniper Publishers

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Introduction

Coping

Based on Lazarus and Folkman's [1] model, coping refers to the behavioral and cognitive efforts one uses to manage the internal and external demands of a stressful situation. Coping can be classified as being either problem-focused or emotion- focused in nature. Lazarus & Folkman's [1] stress-coping theory, in which the individual assesses both the relevance of the environmental stressor (i.e. what he or she has at stake in the encounter) and his or her coping options before deciding on coping strategies to deal with the stressor. This theory's general emphasis on “coping,” however, could be expanded to encompass “development” or “growth.” There are three dimensions are most commonly used to categorize coping strategies:

Problem-focused and emotion-focused coping.

Primary and secondary control coping.

Engagement and disengagement coping (also referred to as approach versus avoidance coping) [2].

Problem-focused coping involves activities that focus on directly changing elements of the stressful situation.

Emotion-focused coping involves activities that focus more on modifying one's internal reactions resulting from the stressful situation.

Coping strategies includes a broad diversity of thoughts and behaviors used to manage the demands of a taxing situation [1]. Multiple research groups have attempted to organize coping strategies (and styles) into different categories.

The approach/avoidance construct, as the label implies, indicates whether the individual makes attempts to change the situation or distance him- or herself from the stressor as a way to reduce negative outcomes.

Coping strategies implemented immediately following trauma exposure, and in response to post traumatic stress. Avoidance as a sort of coping, such as behavioral or emotional avoidance, have been associated with increased psychological distress among interpersonal violence PTSD populations [3]. Avoidance behaviors could lead to withdrawal from support networks and reduced opportunities for positive experience, thereby compounding negative affect and reduced emotional experiencing. Approach-oriented coping strategies, such as active coping, planning, and support seeking, have been generally deemed adaptive following exposure to stress [4].

Social support is a variable that has been considered as both a means of coping and a resource contributing to the availability of other forms of coping [5]. The different ways of conceptualizing the role of social support in coping, and the relative lack of studies that examine reciprocal relationships between coping factors, has created some confusion about what roles social support may play in helping women deal with domestic violence.

Resilience

Over the decades, definitions of resilience in sciences concerned with child and family systems have become more dynamic, multilevel, and process oriented in focus, reflecting a broad theoretical shift toward a relational developmental systems framework in life course human developmental science and related fields [6].

Resilience and post traumatic growth (PG) theory and research are rooted in the philosophical stance that emphasizes the consideration of positive (salutogenic), rather than pathological or negative factors in trauma research [7]. Distinctions should also be made between posttraumatic growth and the concepts of resilience, hardiness, optimism, and sense of coherence. All these concepts describe certain personal characteristics that allow people to manage adversity well.

Resilience is usually considered to be an ability to go on with life after hardship and adversity, or to continue living a purposeful life after experiencing hardship and adversity. Smith defined resilience as a process that leads to "strength awareness", but psychological resilience may be operationally defined as strength awareness itself-that is, the belief that one can persevere or accomplish goal-relevant tasks across varied challenges and adverse situations.

Given this growing interest in scalable definitions, resilience can be defined broadly as "the capacity of a dynamic system to adapt successfully to disturbances that threaten its function, viability, or development" [8]. This definition of resilience could apply to an individual, family, computer system, economy, or ecosystem, among other systems. The capacity of any given system to adapt to challenges depends on the function of many interacting, changing systems. The resilience of children and their families are intertwined and also linked to supports and systems beyond the family in community, culture, and the physical environment.

Child resilience investigators have long recognized that resilience is inferred from judgments about risk (discussed further below) and adaptive function or development [9]; What are the criteria or standards by which we identify whether a person, a family, or any other system is adapting well? Issues in defining positive child development, adaptation, competence, or success have received considerable attention in child resilience science. What are the criteria or standards by which we identify whether a person, a family, or any other system is adapting well? One major approach to the criteria for judging adaptation is positive, focused on age-related expectations for behavior and achievement defined by communities and societies, often termed "developmental tasks" [10]. A second approach for judging adaptation, defined by low levels or absence of symptoms or disorder, stems from the initial focus on children at risk for psychopathology in the history of child resilience science. This negative approach has been criticized theoretically [11] and also from a common-sense perspective.

Family Resilience

What does it mean for a family system to be doing well or fulflling its functions effectively? Walsh [12], the concept of family resilience shifted attention from family as a resource or protective system for the individual members of a family to the function of the family unit as a whole, studied in terms of family adaptation or maladaptation in the context of adversity and the family processes that sustain family resilience. McCubbin [13] described the desired outcomes of family resilience in terms of success in fulfilling important expected functions of the family. These tasks included functions such as providing a sense of belonging and meaning, affording economic support, educating and socializing family members, and protecting vulnerable members of the family [14]. The effectiveness or success of a family would then be judged according to these expectations. Again, the criteria were multidimensional.

Post Traumatic Growth

In contrast, post traumatic growth refers to a change in people that goes beyond an ability to resist and not be damaged by highly stressful circumstances. Calhoun defined post traumatic growth as "positive change that an individual experiences as a result of the struggle with a traumatic event". In contrast to the construct of resilience, in which the individual returns to baseline functioning following highly stressful or traumatic experience, post traumatic growth is characterized by post-event adaptation that exceeds pre-event levels. Despite this interesting body of literature, there is still limited evidence on how living in areas of war and political conflict impact on university students, and which types of personal growth they may develop in response in relation to resilience. The aim of this paper to review papers conducted in Gaza Strip targeting children and adults using coping, resilience, and PTG.

Method

The author reviewed all his previous work in the area using the available data.

Results

As shown in the Table 1, 2 & 3 [26].

For more Journals in Juniper Publishers please click on https://juniperpublishers.com/journals.php

For more articles in Journal of Nursing & Health Care please click on https://juniperpublishers.com/jojnhc/index.php

#juniper Publishers #Open Access Journals #Juniper Publishers Publishing Group #Journal of Nursing & Health Care #Mental Health

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angstoveranxiety · 7 years

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Rivalry More Like Sexual Tension, or The Jalph Essay

I wrote this mess for my English class and turned it in enjoy

The concept of human relationships has existed for thousands of years, yet still continues to fascinate people in real life and in literature. There are several types of relationships but all vary in form and habitually appear in unexpected places. In William Golding’s 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies, a group of boys crash land on a remote island and are forced to form their own society while waiting for rescue. Throughout the book, two of the main characters, Jack and Ralph, share an unusual connection constantly ranging from more than friendly liking to sexual tension to unrequited feelings. Their relationship culminates in a bitter power struggle ultimately causing the downfall of an attachment which could have evolved far beyond its final destination. Jack and Ralph are an ill-fated young couple who illustrate the effects of a certain aspect of human nature- the survival instinct- on interpersonal relationships.

Jack and Ralph originally have an amount of chemistry going beyond what is considered “friendly.” When they first meet, they look at each other with “a shy liking” (23). Both boys, specifically Ralph, prove themselves completely comfortable around others, yet once they interact with each other, they suddenly become shy. Although most of their association bases on emotional rather than physical attraction, Ralph briefly demonstrates how impressed he is by Jack during their first meeting; “[Jack’s] grey shorts were sticking to him with sweat. Ralph glanced at them admiringly,” (23). Jack and Ralph have outgoing, commanding personalities, and from the beginning they seem evenly matched, with plenty of potential for evolution. For the first few weeks, they tend to fumble, blush, and stutter their way through conversations with each other. Eventually, they establish a cooperative bond which consists of Jack leading the hunters and serving as a confidence booster for Ralph, while Ralph leads the government and keeps Jack in check to the best of his ability. The connection between the boys continues to develop as they spend more time together. Although their ideologies differ, the situation has not yet become dire. They mostly have the same goal of keeping the rules intact, and Jack still respects Ralph, as stated by Piggy. “You’re all right- he respects you” (93). For his part, Ralph holds Jack in high esteem, even thinking Jack Merridew the person is equal to the high status of chief (93). Part of Ralph’s character includes valuing people over power, which leaves him confused and shattered after Jack, motivated by a thirst for power, finally breaks off to start his own tribe.

The departure of Jack from the main tribe and the formation of a new dictatorship drastically alters the bond between Jack and Ralph and stretches their relationship past the breaking point. Immediately following Jack’s split from the group, Ralph is devastated. He sits in the same spot the rest of the day, ignores people when they talk to him, and repeats “He’ll come back. When the sun goes down, he’ll come,” (128). Ralph, always the optimistic one on the topic of rescue, says to Piggy, “There’s no help, Piggy. Nothing to be done” (128). Only when offered food and comforted by his friends does he perk up, and eventually Ralph becomes more reliant on Piggy the way he was on Jack. Although the closer friendship with Piggy helps Ralph, the dynamic has shifted. Piggy never becomes a true replacement for Jack, and Ralph’s feelings for Piggy remain platonic. More interesting still is Ralph’s excusing of Simon’s murder and Piggy’s stolen glasses.When the four boys go to Castle Rock in an attempt to recover the glasses, Ralph’s priority is on possibly talking it out rather than going by force. While fighting, he holds back for a time, and after Samneric’s capture, he still tries to appeal to Jack’s “better side,” despite its uselessness. “Ralph cried out hopelessly against the black and green mask, ‘Jack!’” (179) It takes Piggy’s death and Jack stabbing Ralph with a spear for Ralph to finally realize there is no hope of bringing Jack back to the rational side. Though a logical person, Ralph is not immune to the effects of emotion blindsiding him, and his continued feelings toward Jack allow him to hold on to the idea Jack might be above killing him, even after the events of Castle Rock. Ralph never quite abandons his side of the “indefinable connection between himself and Jack” (184). Like before, Ralph mostly appears confused over what he did to agitate Jack so greatly. He says to Samneric: “What have I done? I liked him-and I wanted us to be rescued” (188) after they tell him of Jack’s plan to hunt and kill. Jack and Ralph had a connection deeper than a mere power struggle or usual friendship, but their relationship follows the same downwards path as human nature throughout the novel.

Despite their potential, Jack and Ralph’s relationship falls apart due to a key part of human nature and the survival instinct. The factors composing the instinct include brutal selfishness which allows the person to eliminate any obstacle to survival. These obstacles include, but not limited to, pain, moral values, or even people and objects the survivor once considered valuable. The survival instinct served a critical role in destroying Jack and Ralph’s conceivable relationship. As displayed through his behavior and attitude, Jack’s instinct kicked in much earlier than Ralph’s. While Ralph manages to stay rational and calm for the majority of the time on the island, Jack falls prey to inner brutality and greed. Their ideas of what defines survival differ as well. Jack’s definition is being chief, ruling with complete power, and staying on the island. As a result of his power desire, Jack stops seeing Ralph as a person; instead, he views him as an opponent on his course to survival. From the point on, the survival instinct takes control and negates most attraction he has toward Ralph in favor of overthrowing the latter’s chiefship. Not all feeling vanishes immediately, as Jack doesn’t try to eliminate Ralph despite given opportunities, such as the late night raid on Ralph’s camp and the fight at Castle Rock. But once Ralph’s resources are completely nullified, Jack sees his chance and goes in for the final kill, effectively ending any remaining sentiment he had for Ralph. Ralph’s definition of survival, on the other hand, is a cooperative relationship and rescue. His more rational outlook keep the more primal part of the survival instinct from factoring into his decision making, therefore harboring affection toward Jack for longer. He continues to see Jack as a reasonable person for the majority of the novel; however, the instinct finally takes effect in the last chapter and shreds most feelings to ribbons. After Ralph, on the run from the tribe, has lost everything, he stops seeing “the savages,” as he calls his former tribe mates, as humans and does not hesitate to hurt them as they become his greatest survival obstacles (195). Interestingly enough, he continues to refer to Jack by name, and does not address him as “the chief” as everyone else does, as if making one last effort to convince himself Jack is somehow still human. Only once the arrival of the naval ship guarantees Ralph safety does he stop calling him by name, instead identifying him as “a little boy” (201). While it could be argued the rescue officially ends whatever last shreds of connection remain between Jack and Ralph, “boy” is a distinctly human classification, signifying Ralph still sees Jack as human to some extent; therefore, the bond may not have completely died. Even so, distancing himself from Jack and never seeing him again once they return home would be the rational choice. Ralph has proved a logical thinker, and human and good are not synonymous. However, an experience such as the one they have both gone through leaves lasting scars, and it proves nearly impossible to imagine Ralph ever fully leaving behind Jack Merridew.

While the survival instinct is not inherently dark or light, it can tear apart or neutralize any potential compatibility, as previously discussed. From their initial meeting, Jack and Ralph created a connection plausibly crossing from friendship into a romantic relationship. Yet, once the survival instinct takes hold, the relationship swiftly deteriorates to a one-sided attachment and ends with next to nothing. The descending spiral between Jack and Ralph depicts the ramifications of a part of human nature and the disastrous result on personal relationships.

#lord of the flies #jalph

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transstudent · 7 years

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In Conversation With Sarah Schulman: “They’re Being Taught That Control Is Freedom”

Riese, Autostraddle

Sarah Schulman’s Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair landed in my mailbox last winter, sent by the publisher, and I promptly shelved it, asserting that the last thing I needed in my life was somebody telling me that any abuse I’d personally experienced in my relationships or community was merely conflict. But Autostraddle readers kept recommending it, so in March, I picked it up. And couldn’t put it down.

Conflict Is Not Abuse is the 18th book published by lesbian activist Sarah Schulman — a novelist, playwright, AIDS historian and, currently, a distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the College of Staten Island. She is the co-founder of MIX: NY LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, the US Coordinator of the first LGBT Delegation to Palestine, and the Co-Director of the ACT UP Oral History Project, having joined the organization in 1987 and been one of many lesbians who took on political, activist and care-taking work at the height of the AIDS crisis. In 1992, she was one of five co-founders of the legendary direct action organization Lesbian Avengers, responsible for planning the US’s first Dyke March, which took place in Washington DC in April 1993. Her published books include the novels After Delores (1989), Rat Bohemia (1993) and The Cosmopolitans(2016); non-fiction works Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences (2009), The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012) and Israel/Palestine and the Queer International (2012). Her novel People in Trouble(1990) was the uncredited inspiration for the musical RENT, a situation she chronicles in Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (1998). Awards under her belt include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Kessler Prize for Sustained Contribution to LGBT Studies, a Stonewall Book Award and multiple Lambda nominations.

Conflict Is Not Abuse is a discussion of how inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability, and she traces this phenomenon as it applies from interpersonal relationships to global politics. For the latter, she looks specifically at HIV criminalization in Canada and the occupation of Palestine. The book opens with the example of the police officers who saw Michael Brown and Eric Garner as “threatening” when they were doing literally nothing, and how any kind of difference, resistance or anxiety can be seen as an attack when it’s not. The book has generated heaps of conversation online and off, is blurbed by bell hooks and Claudia Rankine, is the winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Non-Fiction and a nominee for a Lambda Literary Award.

Of course, it was the interpersonal and local community focused sections at the front that really drew me in, because I am basic like that. Her investigation of shunning and group dynamics, especially within groups heavily populated by those who’ve experienced personal trauma or inherited generational trauma, is particularly interesting from the perspective of a queer community organizer.

I became, quite quickly, obsessed. I sent copies to ten of my friends, and we eagerly texted each other snapshots of our favorite passages. Everybody connected to it (or didn’t) in their own way, based on our relative experiences with shunning, with re-examining the degrees to which we allow past trauma to impair present relationships and interrogating how the overstatement of harm has squashed so much potentially enlightening online discourse and torn so many queer communities apart.

See, since approximately early November, I’ve been questioning everything. How my friends and I treat each other, how my workplace operates, and most of all, how us queer feminist progressives handle ourselves. How do we communicate with each other, with our enemies, and with our potential allies? This has meant confronting material that used to scare me — because it seemed like too much, ’cause I was scared of what it’d make me have to confront within myself and what it would bring into focus about my work. It feels like we’ve hit a wall with callout culture and language policing and problematic-fave-destroying where we’re forced to acknowledge that a lot of how we do things just isn’t working. We’re not achieving consensus or winning politically, either.

Critical response to the book has been overwhelmingly positive or at least invigorated. The main line of criticism that’s come out against this book speaks to my initial reservation: my fear that Schulman would re-frame legitimate abuse as conflict. My read accounted for this discrepancy — I simply assumed experiences that I knew were straightforward abuse were not the types of experiences Schulman was asking us to re-name. But perhaps my own specific background enables this type of comfortable disassociation because the only people who’ve ever denied abuse I’ve experienced have been the me and the abuser — my friends, family and psychiatric professionals have generally been the ones to name it, not the ones to discredit it. (The police didn’t believe me either, but unfortunately that’s exactly what I expected from them, so.) That also has given me room to interrogate my own role in abusive situations without feeling like I have to accept shame or blame, too. Furthermore, the book itself does not seem to speak to abuse within families or parent-child relationships, which I believe exist on a different paradigm altogether.

Engaging with Conflict Is Not Abuse jump-started a kind of re-entry, for me, into the world of ideas and theory, and to remembering the importance of engaging intellectually with broad-level interrogations of how we talk and operate. Even the process of considering and ultimately landing on disagreeing with an idea of Schulman’s strengthened my own understanding of my own convictions. On the internet, there’s not much room for nuance. Within social justice communities, there’s this sense that there are bad guys and good guys, and we’re the good guys, and it’s our job to inform the entirety of “good guys” the Right Way To Think and Act. Reading Schulman and other authors since has been enlightening ’cause there are, even within the queer feminist left, so many different approaches to things, and we should be able to engage with them and consider them and even disagree vehemently about them without resorting to shunning, lashing-out, taking material out of context and wielding it like a weapon, name-calling, massive overstatements of harm and projecting our anger at the world onto each other because well, underneath all that is a lot of love.

If you’ve not read Conflict Is Not Abuse but want some sense of it before reading this interview, I highly recommend reading this transcript of Schulman’s recent conversation with trans writer Morgan M Page on “Queer Suicidality, Conflict and Repair,” in which book-related concepts enter the conversation midway. But do read the book, it changed my life. Also, reading People in Trouble and then Stagestruck and thus finding out the real story behind RENT totally ruined my life, but that’s another article for another day, so.

Read the full interview here.

#restorative justice #lgbtq #queer #trans #transgender #autostraddle #news

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alvinthinksmotion-blog · 7 years

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Embracing First Person Perspectives in Soma-based Design

• “[...] to consider the multiple facets when designing for the aesthetics of movement. The applications span a large field of designs, including slow introspective, contemplative interactions, arts, dance, health applications, games, work applications and many others.”

A multidisciplinary is more than ever necessary to tackle Soma-based approach in Design.

• “Some predict that the domain of body-, movement- and biosensor-based [63] interactions could be as big as or even bigger than desktop and mobile. They will be reaching beyond application areas in HCI where physical coordination and learning-by-doing are naturally important (such as movement rehabilitation, dance movement therapy, movement education including dance and sports training, self-cultivation, yoga, emotion regulation for management of stress and anxiety related health problems, and similar) into areas that do not yet see aesthetics of movement as a fundamental cornerstone in their design processes (such as communication within multi-stakeholder design processes, interaction with everyday IoT applications, quantified self and health apps, elderly home care).

Bio-sensor based environments seems to give a promising answer to a screenless society desire. My works is involved in this field.

• “As designers, we must be able to distinguish between all the fine nuances of different movements, tactile experiences or mirrorings of our bodily processes in interactive design.”

This is an ability I’m currently developing and am willing to pursue. For me it brings an important sensitivity.

• First Person Perspective: Theoretical Underpinnings: “A number of research projects on soma-based interaction have used Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body [58] as a theoretical backdrop.

“[...] German there are two terms for the body, Leib and Körper [...]”

“[...] there is also the interpersonal second person perspective of empathically experiencing the body of the other through our own bodies.”

“Different perspectives on the body, third person (I-It), second person (I-You) or first person (I-Me), inspire different approaches to design.”

Experiencing the body happens on different levels, I need to figure out how to spot and use these levels.

“In contrast, the first person approach [...] uses the designer’s lived body as a resource in the design process. Doing this requires a certain practiced sensitivity to the kinesthetic “feel” dimension of interaction design [45,79] [...]”

“The 1st person perspective does however create a blindness about the ways in which our lived bodies are different, and how these differences color our user experiences. One can imagine having a different body, e.g. being short or tall, skinny or obese, but one cannot experience being another body. The closest we get is through a second person perspective on the body, where the designer uses his or her body as an instrument for feeling the bodily aspects of the user experience of the other in co-design practices.”

• Aesthetics – building on the pragmatics movement: “Aesthetics is a way to examine connections between sensation, feeling, emotion and subjective understanding and values.”

It is an extremely complex and subjective field that requires confidence and highly flexible framework in the process.

• Somatics & Somaesthetics: Bringing in a Stronger Emphasis on the Soma:

[72] Richard Shusterman, Somaesthetics=> 2008, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics.

[29]: Thomas Hannah, 1995, What is Somatics? In Bone Breath & Gesture: Practices of embodiment.

“[...] to engage us all in actively, creatively changing and improving our experiences. By educating ourselves somatically [...]”

“Shusterman’s somaesthetics has been informed through a range of bodywork traditions and methodologies, from yoga and tai chi to more contemporary somatic movement education methods such as those developed by FM Alexander(Alexander Technique) [1] and Moshe Feldenkrais (Feldenkrais Method) [13] – both of which focus on the use of touch and movement as information for learning more effective coordination of body movement.”

“The concept of self-agency in somatics practice is key. Self-agency is the result of the reflective practice of self-observation coupled with intention. [...] A limited repertoire of movement becomes a limited repertory of experiences.”

The analytical step towards the process is to never under-estimate.

• METHOD | Move to be Moved Workshop: “[...] Collaborative Walking exercise devised by one of the authors (drawn from the Bodyweather performance training methodology). All workshop participants stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder, very close to one another, with a red thread joining the whole line, from the first participant to the last, through their mouths. We were asked to close our eyes and then walk together, very slowly,without losing contact with our neighbors. After the exercise, we were asked to articulate our experience, sharing any insights or discoveries on walking. This transported us to the space of felt experiences – reminding us not only intellectually of why we were there, but somatically.”

“One of the key aspects that we explored was to notice how the exploratory exercises and interactions affected our physical state, and to bring that state into our dialogues and discussions. This deepened our sense of what it means to engage end-users in aesthetic, movement-based interactions – and made us more honest.”

It is essential to immerse the workshop collaborators into the soma mindset which is keeping them closer to their body awareness.

• RtD | Research through Design Analysis: “[...] a design cannot be understood solely by inspecting it as a static object. It comes to life as we start making it part of our practice.”

“[...] that bodily engagement seems to drive participants towards concrete ideas and away from the abstract, and to stimulate interaction based on personal experiences.”

That awareness state makes things more and more concrete.

• First- Person Methods & Material Encounters: “[...] Our movements are dynamically changing in response to kinetically dynamic possibilities in our environment. Those possibilities of course include any tools and artifacts we create, cultural practices and so on. There is infinite variation in the world – both in our felt experience but also in the variations of the social and cultural landscape we are shaped by and actively take part in shaping, reinforced and reinstated through all our everyday acts. There is luckily a path out of the dilemma of the infinite space of possibilities design may shape the world, and that is to engage with your own body, your own movement, your own felt emotional experience and sense of aesthetics, and let the design process feed off of your own felt understanding and experience.”

• Change and Interest. “ “To reach precise bodily introspection the key is to direct our focused attention first to one part then another, a clearer sense of relations of parts to whole can be obtained. This transition of focus, provides sense of change, it also renews our interest in each new body part”. [72]”

• Disrupting the Habitual. “Defamiliarizing habitual movement patterns is a core principle in many somatic practices [...]”

• Somatic Connoisseurship. “The practice of somatic connoisseurship highlights the significance of somatic facilitation as a role within the technological design processes. The role of somatic connoisseurship characterizes expertise that is developed, expressed, and passed on through the constantly refining process of soma-based aesthetic practice. [...] guiding collaborators in what to attend to, how to move and feel.”

“The experts in the workshop reported bringing on somatic connoisseurs such as choreographers, sourdough bakers, chefs, or Feldenkrais practitioners.”

• Laban-Movement-Analysis.

• Embodied Sketching. “[...] bodystorming, physical movement sketching, choreography of interaction, co-creation ideation activities.”

• Data and Program Code. “Applying a first person perspective to machine learning allows for shifting the focus from technical computations to designer intentions.”

These will be methods to use during the workshop I will be conducting.

• Conceptualizations Arising through Design Research: “[...] choice of language will not be an innocent choice here, but may shape what we are able to see and feel.”

“These strong concepts, experiential qualities and methods should not be seen as given, rigidly formed rules or patterns for interaction. They are conceptual lenses that help us ‘see’ potential design opportunities.”

DISCUSSION: FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE PROVIDING RIGOR IN SOMA-BASED DESIGN : “Through our engagement with one-another’s design exemplars, design practice and in our analysis, we note how successful soma-based designs all seem to share a structured,careful, thoughtful first person engagement. While the experts may employ different strategies to become more somatically and aesthetically aware, there is a shared understanding that you need to employ structured tactics to access your own movements, somatics and aesthetic sensibilities. We slow down our movements; disrupt the habitual to help us grasp and articulate what is there; we direct our attention to specific areas (change) and put our sustained attention to it (interest); we playfully engage in movement. Even though a first person perspective in design puts an emphasis on the individual designers (or researchers) subjective aesthetic experiences, taking seriously your own sensations and experiences is also a prerequisite for communication and collaboration, for example within a design team. Given the “tacit” nature of bodily experiences, in that these kinds of sensations may be hard to articulate or verbalize, it becomes especially important to create common grounds for sharing such experiences. By engaging, as a group, in bodily and somatic experiences, these shared experiences can work as a common ground from which intersubjectively constructed meanings [70] or kinesthetic empathy [18] can be created. In this process, we bring the (digital and other) design materials early on, touching, feeling, interacting with them, thereby letting them ‘speak’ back to us[69], letting our design concepts thrive off their affordances. Rigor also comes from testing and exhibiting our designs as well as letting others experience and create meaning with them. As mentioned above, it is hard to get well-articulated feedback from end-users, unless they are trained in someaesthetic bodywork practice on the specifics of some designs. But we can still observe the effects of use. Often, our designs are open to interpretation and the meaning and practice develops in dialogue with use, and we need to document and analyze those to provide depth in understanding.

#soma #design #somaesthethics #body #interaction #choreography #experience #laban #research

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theoveldsman · 7 years

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MASTER OF THE LEADERSHIP UNIVERSE

Travel Guide for Leadership Excellence in the newly emerging order

STOP-OVER 13: LIVEABILITY OF A LEADERSHIP GALAXY

In previous Stop-Overs the make-up and dynamics of the Leadership Universe were mapped. However, the Leadership Universe is not a static, given.

Leadership constitute within the vast expanse of the Leadership Universe their own unique ‘Galaxy’ that equates to their Operating Arena with its commensurate complexity. The Operating Arena as uniquely constituted Galaxy represents leadership’s sphere of influence and action.

The manner in which leadership create, engages with, and sustain their Galaxy - using the building blocks of the Leadership Universe - infuse the constituted Galaxy with a certain degree of liveability for all stakeholders, in particular Followers.

The degree of livability determines the nature, features and magnitude of the shared dream and lasting, worthy legacy to be pursued, and likelihood of making a successful the journey towards its successful achievement, given the dynamics whilst journeying.

A Galaxy’s liveability is first and foremost established by leadership who act as a type of ‘chemical reagent’ through their manner of constituting and being engaged with their Galaxy, infusing it with a certain quality of life. The liveability can vary from flourishing/ thriving to toxic/ impoverished.

Since the Leadership Universe, and the Galaxies within it, form a holistic ecosystem, the liveability of different Galaxies affect the overall livability of the total Leadership Universe.

LIVEABILITY OF A LEADERSHIP GALAXY

The liveability of a Galaxy within the Leadership Universe can be depicted as a three dimensional ‘Periodic Table’ expressed by the equation:

Liveability = f (Quality x Intelligence x Energy).

In short hand: Liveability = f (Q x I x E).

Important to note the multiplicative, not additive, relationship between the ‘chemical’ elements of the Periodic Table – Q, I and E - making up the Liveability Index. When one or more elements is high (or low), it has a significant knock-on effect on the other elements.

Each element of the Liveability Equation with its respective ingredients is discussed next.

QUALITY

Quality (Q) refers to the level of excellence with which leadership are involved in the Leadership Universe, manifested in the personal attributes leadership use to constitute, engage and maintain their Leadership Galaxy.

Five Qualities can be distinguished, the 5 C’s of liveability within the Galaxy: Character, Connected, Caring, Commitment and Competence (adapted and expanded from A. Wort).

Character relates to leadership in relationship to Self (Leadership Universe Sphere 1); Connected and Caring to leadership in relationship to Others (Sphere 2); and Commitment and Competence to leadership in relationship to World (Sphere 3).

Character: Integrity

This Quality of Liveability pertains to the personal leadership attribute of integrity as manifested in ethical leadership. Ethical leadership embraces being good, doing good, and ensuring good. This provides the basis for the credibility and legitimacy of leadership in their Leadership Galaxy.

Through this Quality of Livability, leadership infuse the Galaxy with what morally acceptable as the ‘Should do’; the ‘Ought to’, the ‘Right’ as opposed to the ‘Bad’ or ‘Wrong’.

It encompasses doing the right thing for the right reasons in the right way at the right time and place with the right person(s). If any if these ‘rights’ are out of place, then the Galaxy turns unethical. The ultimate in unethical livability is when none of the ‘Rights’ or ‘Ought To’s’ are in place (See Stop-over 7 further in this regard)

Connected: Genuine, Deep Relationships

This Quality of Liveability encompasses the personal leadership attribute of forming genuine, deep, lasting trust-based relationships, embedded in a culture and climate of closeness, with Others making up the Leadership Galaxy. This implies a healthy, constructive Leadership Process, consisting of seven critical actions, making up the leadership value chain.

These seven actions are: Leaving a worthy legacy; Inspiring a shared vision; Embedding common values; Challenging the status quo; Enabling and empowering Others to act; Encouraging the heart; and Modeling the way.

The actions making up the Leadership Process is the means through which leadership create and grow interpersonal value and social capital in their relationships with Followers, bringing about a certain degree of Connected Livability in the Leadership Galaxy.

Leadership’s influencing acts throughout the Leadership Process require the twofold choice of an appropriate power base and key influencing levers (e.g., like leadership roles and style) in performing the critical actions making up the Leadership Process. To the extent that an appropriate power base have been chosen, and the right influencing levers are used and applied, the Connected Liveability of the Galaxy will be enhanced (see Stop-over 10 further in this regard).

Caring: A Servant Spirit and Attitude

This Quality of Liveability refers to the personal leadership attribute of putting the interests, needs, aspirations, ideals, and welfare of Followers first and foremost in leading. They are put above the personal, egocentric interests, needs, aspirations, and ideals, and welfare of leadership themselves. Leadership emphasise the ‘We’ instead of the ‘Me’. The Leadership Galaxy is imbued by a servant spirit and attitude.

Genuine caring necessitates visibly reaching out and meeting Followers not only physically (= their place), but especially psychologically (= their perceptions, interpretations thinking, feelings); socio-culturally (= their deeply wired cultural ways of thinking and doing); and spiritually (= their life meanings and purposes, worldviews). All of these facets of meeting in spacetime must converge synergistically in order to bring about genuine, deep caring.

Within a multiple stakeholder setting, liveability further requires that leadership as a power broker must harmonise the wide-ranging, divergent interests and needs of a wide, diverse range of stakeholders - also their own - in a fair, equitable and even-handed manner. In this way, they bring about shared, win-win solutions, permeated by a spirit of give-and-take whilst crafting them.

Commitment: Leadership as Calling

This Quality of Liveability entails the personal leadership attribute of leadership unconditionally taking their leadership role up as a true calling with passion and dedication. They demonstrate the unquestioned will to and accountability in wanting to make a value-adding, lasting difference, in the present and future. This calling is accompanied by a humble attitude of service flowing from the trust placed in them by Followers.

This is in stark contrast to being a leader who is merely mechanistically fulfilling a leadership role, and being at best a bureaucratic functionary. The role he occupies is only a means to an end, and not an end in itself. The end could be career progression, a need for power and status, and/ or greater access to desirable resources. Without this upfront commitment to the calling of leadership, no genuine leadership will infuse the thinking, decisions and actions of leadership in the Leadership Galaxy, in turn affecting the Galaxy’s liveability.

If the baseline commitment of the leader is: ‘I commit to lead’, the second commitment is to be the best possible leader whatever it takes. This requires re-inventing oneself as a leader on an ongoing basis through continuous learning in order to remain future-fit. The Galaxy is a place of ongoing learning

Competence: Leadership Excellence

This Quality of Liveability entails the personal leadership attribute of being able to deal competently with the leadership challenges, demands and requirements of her Leadership Galaxy as Operating Arena, now and going into the future, and achieving outstanding results.

This requires the competence to deal with the (i) visible part of his Operating Arena (the features of, and hence dynamics and trends within the Regions/ Countries in which he and his organisation are operating); as well as (ii) deep Global Cultural Orientation(s) that frame and inform the actions and conduct of persons in those Regions/ Countries, and the (iii) (consequential) Expected (=Desired) Leadership Attributes related to a Region/ Country (see Stop-over 11) .

In summary: A Flourishing/ Thriving Leadership Galaxy with a high Quality Livability is infused into its very molecules by committed, competent, ethical leadership of integrity, embedded in genuine, caring relationships with Followers.

In contrast, a Toxic/ Impoverished Leadership Galaxy with a low Liveability Quality is saturated by uncommitted, incompetent, unethical leadership, having superficial, exploitative, uncaring relationship with Followers.

INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence (I) refers to leadership who can observe, think, judge, act, learn and reflect with a growing understanding and insight as they engage – conceptually, emotionally and practically - with their Leadership Galaxy.

This Intelligence enables leadership to transform Experiences into Information; Information into Knowledge; and Knowledge into Wisdom, and vice versa, at increasing deeper levels in his Leadership Galaxy. This is leadership who are becoming increasingly more intelligent all of the time because they act with deepening understanding and insight.

The total Intelligence (or meta-intelligence) of an excellent leader is made up of five, interdependent Intelligences Modes: Intra- and Interpersonal; Systemic; Ideation; Action; and Contextual Intelligence. The higher these Intelligences, the more liveable the Leadership Galaxy.

Intra-personal and Interpersonal Intelligence: True Me

Self-insight is the crux of this leadership Intelligence. Intra-and interpersonal Intelligence (including emotional intelligence) centres around the degree to which my identity as a leader has crystalised, and I have become a person in my own right. I know who and what I am as a leader with my strengths and weaknesses. I know what I stand for. I understand my impact on others, and their impact on me.

In addition, my identity must be authentic. Having an authentic identity is the highest form of this intelligence. It relates to having a sense of being true to myself as a leader, and being genuine in terms of my understanding and acceptance of who I am and wish to be as a person, the ‘real’ me.

This gives my life as a leader meaning, and makes it meaningful. True authenticity permeates my crystalised identity with confidence, humility, integrity and empathy that in turn enhances the liveability of the Leadership Galaxy.

This Intelligence is the anchor and starting point for all of the other Intelligences.

Systemic Intelligence: ‘Big picture’ Patterns

Systemic (including cognitive) Intelligence entails leadership mastery at crafting real time, integrated and dynamic understanding of how the world works within the leadership’s Operating Arena, at both the rational and intuitive levels.

It is having as leadership a 'working theory' of Operating Arena: which variables are critical; how are they interrelated; how do they influence each other; and in which likely direction are they moving with what probable consequences?

This theory is used by leadership as a 'Google map' to chart and travel in their Operating Arena. This understanding is constructed as a dynamic pattern of how the world functions, whether as a vicious or virtuous cycle(s). A limited set of underlying governance rules also have been uncovered that govern the pattern in force.

High Systemic Intelligence implies that the leadership are able to generate new insights that enable them to change existing patterns or to bring new patterns into being. Liveability with respect to this Intelligence means a navigable Galaxy because its make-up, dynamics and evolution are deeply understood.

Ideation Intelligence: Imagining

The crux of this Intelligence is imagining. Ideation (including spiritual) Intelligence encompasses the leadership mastery of having limitless and boundariless dreams about what the world can be, may be and should be, and to what end and purpose. It is about idealising a better future, and an enriched sense of ultimate purpose for all people by critically questioning the status quo.

This Intelligence entails leadership becoming masterful at dreaming in their search to make the world a better place for current and upcoming generations. This can range from how to make the existing better; to how to add something new; through to how to change what exists into something different and better; and, ultimately, how to bring the completely new into being.

Liveability with respect to this Intelligence entails a Galaxy filled by a purposeful, meaningful, inspiring and shared dream and legacy.

Action Intelligence: Real, Lasting Change

The crux of this Intelligence is effective navigation into the future to make desired dreams and legacies a lasting reality. Action intelligence of high liveability encompasses the leadership mastery of bringing about lasting, meaningful change on a large scale. Desired futures resulting from imaging inspiring dreams is turned into action through affecting real, genuine change.

In the emerging world order change takes on pervasive, radical, fundamental and chaotic features; is non-linear in nature; and is highly unpredictable in its outcomes, intended and unintended. Under these conditions the Action Intelligent leadership need to adopt is a reflective, real time action learning process to effect lasting, meaningful change. This process is made up of the successive cycles of: exploration, discovery; application, and learning/ reflection.

Action Intelligent leadership furthermore leverages the navigation process from real time, in-time organisational intelligence to navigate successfully towards the desired end state. Simultaneously, they are guided by action relevant expertise by applying their Systemic Intelligence masterfully during the unfolding change journey.

Contextual Intelligence: Right Set of Glasses

The crux of this Intelligence is contextual fit. Contextual (including cultural) Intelligence pertains to ensuring on an ongoing basis of a dynamic, optimal match between leadership and their context as delineated by her Operating Arena.

On the one hand, this requires in depth insight into the leadership challenges and demands of their Operating Arena, currently and going into the future. On the other hand, the necessity of matching leadership contextual requirements and leadership profiles.

Critical to this fit is the adoption of an appropriate interpretive framework by leadership – the way of seeing and dealing with the world – in order to have a constructive contextual engagement with the world.

Leadership with high Contextual Intelligence understand that they need the 'right set of glasses' to look at the context. This set of glasses is made up of:

an explicitly adopted worldview: the right understanding of the nature and working of the world they are engaging with;

the decision-making framework used: how to recognise situations for what they are, and then to make the right decisions; and

the value orientation adopted: what is important, rightful and desirable.

In summary: A Flourishing/ Thriving Leadership Galaxy with a high Intelligence Liveability is infused into its very essence by leadership who have deep personal and interpersonal insight; see the big picture in the form of patterns; discover through creative destruction, new dreams and legacies with deeper meaning and purpose; bring about lasting, meaningful change on a large scale; and ensure continuously a good leadership-context fit.

In contrast, a Toxic/ Impoverished Galaxy is imbued by low intelligence manifested in little personal and interpersonal insight; limited, fragmented, silo-ed pictures; status quo, more of the same, uninspiring dreams and legacies with little/ shallow meaning and purpose; change that does not stick or is only superficial with little, lasting effect; and ongoing leadership-context misfits.

ENERGY

Energy (E) entails the manner in which leadership gets Followers to move and act positively in his Leadership Galaxy.

Five Energies can be distinguished metaphorically related to the Spirit, Heart, Head, Hands and Feet, and Backbone of Followers. Liveability necessitates Positive Energy, and not negative Energy.

Positive Energies are all about building psychosocial capital in Followers (after Luthans, Youssef & Avolio).

Spiritual Energy: Hope and Faith

Spiritual Energy is about generating Hope and Faith in Followers(in contrast to Despair and Disbelief): ‘We have a meaningful future we can believe in and aspire to.’

Heart: Passion and Dedication

Heart Energy entails unlocking Passion for and a Dedication to (in contrast to Alienation and Disinterestedness) the shared dream, intended legacy and the journey to realise them in Followers: ‘We are excited and inspired by what we want to achieve. Let us get going.’

Head Energy: Security and Clarity

Head Energy embraces Security and Clarity (in contrast to Insecurity and Uncertainty): ‘We understand the how, where, when and who of what we want to achieve. Roles, contributions, resources, timings and priorities are clear.‘

Hands and Feet Energy: Confidence and Resilience

Hands and Feet Energy is about triggering Confidence and Resilience in Followers (in contrast to Doubt and Fatigue): ‘We can undertake and complete our journey to our dream with its legacy successfully regardless of the circumstances and odds.’

Backbone Energy: Courage and Perseverance

Backbone Energy encompasses the unlocking of Courage and Perseverance (in contrast to Cowardice and Half-heartedness) in Followers: ‘The odds against us do not frighten us. We will stick to what we are doing, regardless.’

In summary: A Flourising/ Thriving Leadership Galaxy with a high Energy Liveability triggers and sustains positive Spirit, Heart, Head, Hands and Feet, and Backbone Energies in Followers, like Hope, Passion, Security, Confidence. Its is rich in psychosocial capital.

In contrast, a Toxic/ Impoverished Galaxy is flush with negative Energies, like Despair, Alienation, Insecurity, Cowardice. This Galaxy is poor in psychosocial capital.

THE OVERALL LIVABILITY INDEX OF A LEADERSHIP GALAXY

Each of the sub-elements of Quality, Intelligence and Energy can be rated on a 5 point scale (1=Poor/ Non-existent to 5=Excellent) that also have a multiplicative relationship. Thus the minimum score for an element, like Energy, is 5 and the maximum 3 125.

The Overall Liveability Index, Q x I x E, can thus range between 125 = A highly Toxic/ Impoverished Galaxy, on the point of imploding/ disintegrating to 9 375 = A highly Flourishing, Thriving Galaxy.

The better the Quality, the higher the Intelligence, and the more the Energy, the better the Liveability of the Leadership Galaxy, and by implication its sustainability.

But it is all in the hands of leadership as the ‘chemical reagent’ in constituting, engaging with and maintain their Galaxy.

Travel Guidelines

Leadership constitute within the vast expanse of the Leadership Universe their own unique ‘Galaxy’ that equates to their Operating Arena with its commensurate complexity.

The manner in which leadership create, engage with, and sustain their Galaxy - using the building blocks of the Leadership Universe - infuse the constituted Galaxy with a certain degree of livability for all stakeholders, in particular Followers.

The degree of livability determines the nature, features and magnitude of the shared dream and lasting, worthy legacy to be pursued, and likelihood of making a successful the journey towards their successful achievement, given the dynamics whilst journeying.

The liveability of a Galaxy within the Leadership Universe can be depicted as a three dimensional ‘Periodic Table’ expressed by the equation: Liveability = f (Quality x Intelligence x Energy). In short hand: Liveability = f (Q x I x E).

The better the Quality, the higher the Intelligence, and the more the Energy, the better the Liveability of the Leadership Galaxy, and by implication its sustainability.

Next Stop-over in the Leadership Universe

Stop-over 14 – Leadership Culture and Climate

#Liveability of Leadership Universe

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