Reflections on Combs and Krippner’s Structures of consciousness and creativity: Opening the doors of perception and Krippner’s Altered and transitional states I propose, as I have in many of my academic writings and conversations that within all of us is a vital need to create, even within the most anti-creative of us. My father may be a perfect example of this when he eschews all creative activity because it distracts from “more important things” in life,… Read More
Reflections on Charet’s Consciousness, Earley’s The Social Evolution of Consciousness and Grof’s Revision and Re-enchantment of Psychology Charet’s encyclopedia entry serves as an entry point, a definition, of consciousness. As such, it is aa general introduction, but given the work done by others in this area, including the Buddhists, Jung, and others, this definition barely cover the territory. I concentrated the majority of my analysis on the other two articles. While Early’s… Read More
Reflections on Jackson & Volckens’ Community stressors and racism and Minkler’s Introduction to community organizing and community building I appreciate the idea that we are studying a practical, on-the-ground-activist-map and an academic and analytical one. The readings of Minkler’s (2006) case studies and Jackson & Volckens (1998) illustrate this very well. While Jackson’s “reverberation theory of stress and racism” as it occurs in both the dominant political majority group and throughout the subgroup… Read More
Reflections on Locke, Silverman, Spirduso’s Reading and understanding research Quantitative Methods and MacDonald, Friedman, and Kuentzel’s A survey of measures of spiritual and transpersonal constructs: Part one The process of constantly contemplating a research topic from one class to another serves an interesting purpose in my mind. It causes me to constantly rethink this topic and others that I have dwelled on for the last few years. I see this as a powerful engagement with the topic of gender and racism propaganda,… Read More
Reflections on Donaldson, Gooler & Weiss’ Promoting health and well-being through work: Science and practice The subject of work has surfaced in several other personal and academic discussions within institutional ethnography (that is extremely difficult for me to understand) and, especially, in feminist discourse (Silvia Federici, among others) as it relates to the subject of women’s work in and out of the home. What the authors add is something additional… Read More
Reflections on Qualitative Research and Bailey, Steeves, Regan’s Negotiating With Gender Stereotypes on Social Networking Sites; McFerran, Dahl, Fitzsimons, Morales’ I’ll Have What She’s Having: Effects of Social Influence and Body Type on the Food Choices of Others, and ter Bogt, Engels, and Kloosterman’s “Shake It Baby, Shake It”: Media Preferences, Sexual Attitudes and Gender Stereotypes Among Adolescents I’ve contemplated a research topic for a few years, and even mentioned it to new friends at Saybrook as well as family and friends outside of academia because the subject of gender and racism propaganda is a subject that is at once fascinating and deeply disturbing to me, though I don’t think I can combine… Read More
Assumptions, Critical Curiosity, and Propaganda, Oh My Being born the curious type, from the beginning, I have questioned everything much to the chagrin of many around me. At this point, nothing has changed but an increased ability to apply critical thinking, though “Why” has been a key and hard question from the beginning. Analyzing assumptions are both critical to understanding biases and… Read More
Reflections on Pilisuk & Parks’ The healing web, Flower’s Building healthy cities, and Flower’s Healthy cities – healthy communities Opening up Pilisuk and Parks (1986), the first thought that came to mind is that laughter is the best medicine. Given that healthy and supportive community is necessary for our physical and emotional health and well-being, this should be obvious to most. Even though Pilisuk and Parks temper their remarks, cautioning us “not to generalize… Read More
Reflections on Locke, Silverman, and Spirduso’s Reading and Understanding Research and the Institutional Review Board The research process is something that feels very familiar to me. While I am always learning, always searching and seeking, and perpetually digging deeper, not for passages to prove q point, though that is not unfamiliar to me, but to learn, always to learn more. Locke, Silverman, and Spirduso (2010), introduce the idea of researching… Read More
Three Responses to #BlackLivesMatter, Individual Evolution, and Institutionalized Racism (A Tribute to Sandra Bland) and My Replies (Below are three responses to my previous essay. My responses are in italics.) N.’s Response: Michael, I just read your paper with great interest. You make a number of important points. However, you say repeatedly that not every group needs to follow all of the 10 steps [required according to IndividualEvolution.org] to be successful. However,… Read More