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The Gap
Posted:
Aug 12, 2012 8:27 PM
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Many recent postings have mentioned a "gap" which people supposedly
commit to attempting to close or narrow. There's a conflation of
several meanings though, which makes it hard to wade through. There's
the gap in privileges or access, to yachts or whatever (even many rich
folk have little time to enjoy them), and there's the gap in ability
or level of comprehension, skillfulness etc.
These two meanings of "gap" are quite orthogonal. A typical pattern
and a subject of movie plots is the spoiled rich kid brat who inherits
the company yet knows nothing of operations, versus the canny / savvy
little guy like James Cagney or someone charming, all competence but
not rich. Then you have the village idiot dolt of little means
because of low acumen, but also the wiped out rich guy, down on his
luck, lost his savings and now wasting away in Bangkok or someplace, a
career gone.
So which gap are we trying to narrow? Given the division of labor and
the economy it engenders, we're by capitalist ideology supposed to
welcome the fact that we're of vastly different competencies and
capabilities. Heaven forbid that we all be clones of one another: a
grinding halt to the economy right there. We thrive on diversity and
the fact that some people would prefer exploring volcanoes and deep
sea diving, to remaining cooped up in some sky tower office writing
back stabby memos. Takes all kinds.
As an aside, lets also look at the anthropology and talk about the
role of the military, a sprawling network for schools and bases that
provides young people with a means of advancement that's supposedly
not as driven by the system of entitlements that gives aristocrats
that special handicap or head start. There's supposedly a more level
playing field. That's the press, the propaganda, not saying it's
true.
One way the military has remained a source of patriotism in a
democracy not originally designed to mount such a full time full sized
beefy group in far flung regions, is it has successfully promulgated
the myth that even a kid from the ghetto could rise to a position of
respect and command. I think it's important to remind ourselves of
such PR and not heap it all on the shoulders of civilian educators,
this duty to ignore the notion of caste or entitled ethnicity.
Sure, go ahead and yak knowledgeably about Sunnis and Shiites as a
distraction, because you know how to read TIME magazine, but if you
live in the USA, you probably have other power imbalances to be more
connected with. What's it like where you work? Does anyone get
shunned? How many Somali's on your city council? How many Sikhs?
At OPDX, our temporary campus downtown, I think we had some really
capable people. We had generators, entertainment, plenty of food.
No, I didn't stay there, having my own digs nearby, but fellow faculty
did. This may not have been the most wealthy of Global U campuses,
more like a refugee camp in some ways, but we could see a glimmer of
what high technology could do. People were twittering like crazy,
connecting around the world, comparing notes. Town-gown relations got
pretty interesting. Yet it's not like these were "rich kids" to have
access to the city center in this way. Privileged though, yes, I
would have to agree.
I accept bell curves myself. I'm at the top of the hump in some ways,
on the left tail in others, on the right tail in still others. I'm
about average in a lot of average ways, then deviate in some areas,
which define my character / personality / achievements etc., call it
my karma if you will (influences how I drive). I'm not different from
anyone else in that sense. I have no motivation or desire to make
everyone the same, so "closing the gap" in terms of making us more
uniform is not really on my agenda.
Other gaps though, I'd like to close more. People should not be going
hungry in metro areas that commit huge amount of food to compost and
landfill because they can't figure out how to wire it differently. To
me, the STEM curriculum measures its success in terms of approaching
these problems with a design science sensibility and inventing new
responses. That's why my basement is full of food at the moment,
parked there yesterday by bike trailer crews, to be retrieved Monday
and cooked and/or distributed. This is called "solving a story
problem with math" (yes, lots of math in this picture).
Kirby
from Lloyd Center Mall
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2012/08/from-gothamite.html
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