Revolving Themes

My wife got back the other day from visiting the public school our 4-year-old Liam may be attending next year, and was reminded how public school can in many ways be suggestive of prison. Many parallels range in areas from aesthetics (construction and decor of the buildings) to the way time and behaviors are structured. I thought back to my reading of Jean Genet's The Miracle of the Rose, and sure enough, the correspondences were many, everything from the minutiae of gestural communication among inmates, to the rituals of inclusion and exclusion. This made me wonder whether certain structural settings implicated particular types of interpersonal behavior, social patterns, and how, for the most part, the torture of these settings were manufactured by a group effort on the part of the participants.

I was also reminded how these same patterns are later dragged into work, since the time and space orientations are somewhat similar as well. We therefore repeat the habits we were supposed to have grown out of, though anyone belonging to a working organization -- whether a corporation, non-profit, or even educational or arts institution -- for more than a few months, will notice the same kinds of social cliques forming, and will note how very often it is NOT hard and intelligent efforts that determine how one fares, but the maneuvering of these groups like small clans staking out territory.

Hence, the greater part of what makes work what it is, as an experience to be had, to relish or disdain, is one's relationships. Let's face it, relationships are what set expectation, so much of what one actually needs to do -- those work curves, or confluences of curves -- is directly dependent on the same. Therefore, communication is a major part of everyone's toolkit.

Going back to a recent post, those of you (supposing there are people reading this blog) who may think I was kidding when I mentioned that curves are actually NECCCs (well I was sort of), could use an explanation of what I might have meant at the time.

• Neuro-subjective: since on one level all of our cognitive behavior takes place in neurology, that is the brain, the nervous system in general, and its relationship to the rest of the body, particularly sensory organs and nodes, and on another level we experience this phenomenon only in their results, rather than operations, we use the term to highlight and clarify experience.
• Environmental: the context within which the subject exists.
• Co-Extensive: the subject and environment are not separate, but inter-penetrable.
• Confluence: many factors coming together to shape behavior.
• Curve: you already know.

A good source of work-enhancing curves therefore might just be found in the writings of Jean Genet or Nelson Mandela, for that matter. Genet because of the reach of his imagination in painting over the obvious with something much more personally delightful, and Mandela for his ability to use the situation to his best advantage.

Another great source, of course, might be Joseph Beuys.