Monthly Archives: September 2018

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (Pgs.1-27)Seth Godin (2010)

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Chapter 1

I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about Linchpin, but that’s partially because neither does Seth Godin. The central conceit of the first chapter is that the mode of the economy is changing and to be successful, one must change with it.

There was once a time when the better paid and most secure individuals among the working classes were artisans and craftspeople, these individuals had mastery over some necessary part of life, such as horseshoe making, or wool weaving. Then a tremendous shift took place and factories became commonplace. While machines were meant to become an extension of the individual working them, the opposite took place; human beings became the non-automated portions of machines.

This economic model gave rise to what Godin might call the recently deceased economic mode. If one were to show up and work as part of the machine for wages that were just barely acceptable, they would survive. If they were particularly polite or some small percentage more efficient, they might become a supervisor. Even white collar work is to be considered factory work because the person whose job it is to transcribe interviews is nothing more than a non-automated machine that takes sound waves and makes them into word documents. Where there is no creativity, there is no humanity in work. This mode of economy led to a race to the bottom regarding wages. If the skill was easy to teach, then the labor was easy to replace. If the labor was easy to replace, workers couldn’t go on strike if you didn’t pay them well.

The issue arose because everyone followed that model and now none of the products on the market have any heart or personality. Without some humanity to inspire loyalty in the consumer, they’re just as likely to buy your product as the next cheap option. A new force is required to inspire continued growth, and that power is linchpins.

Godin says formerly there were two types of people involved in labor, managers and laborers. Managers tell laborers what to do, laborers are non-automated machines. Linchpins are going to be the third piece in that puzzle. Situated between the manager and the laborer, the linchpin brings their creativity, their ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems, their ability to create meaningful relationships to a business. In other words, they’re going to be Good Managers.

That’s it. Godin thinks people smart enough to read this book should be the ones who are successful in the future. Those people need to be creative and dynamic to be successful. Automation is going to grow in the future so before your job gets automated or outsourced, dazzle your boss or become your own boss and start using those skills, probably in a managerial position.

I cannot overstate my frustration with this reading. I believe that Seth Godin wants to help people, but I also believe that most of all he wants to help himself. Some of his pearls of wisdom are that the dying economic model grew because it promised people they wouldn’t have to think (rather than that if they didn’t sacrifice their humanity for wages they would starve), Karl Marx and Adam Smith agreed but neither ideology is prepared for the rise of a third piece of the manager vs. worker dichotomy, that each person with a laptop and an internet connection today has the same earning potential as a factory owner in the past, and many more.

I’ve only completed one chapter (as assigned in class) but rest assured, I’ll write more here about this gem as time goes on.

Nature and Structure of the Climax. Fredric Clements (1936)

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Clements’ Nature and Structure of the Climax was concerned, as one might expect, with the state of climax of vegetation. Clements initially explains what a climax is, followed by issuing a series of questions one would ask when determining whether or not a region constitutes a climax. He goes on to argue in favor of the theory that there is only one real climax and multiple proclimaxes leading up to it. Finally explaining the structure of a climax and the roles of those species involved play.

Having not read a great deal of ecological literature previous to this, I have always imagined climax as a flash in the pan, however, in the case of ecological studies, a climax is when vegetation (over a vast area, in this reading at least) reaches a state of equilibrium. For example, a climax may be the entirety of the Great Plains in North America; every year the same plant life is dominant throughout the entirety of that area. The term biome is used instead when one is referring not only to vegetation but also animal life in a region.

Clements lays out at least four “tests” of a climax. To qualify as a climax a region must be characterized by the same form in the dominants i.e. to be considered part of a grassland climax, the dominant type of vegetation must be grass throughout. No region in which trees are dominant can be considered a portion of the grassland dominant. A region also must have the presence of the same dominant species in all or nearly all of the associations (a subdivision of a climax). Subdominants are used to link associations together, and some animals may be used as indicators too, particularly smaller, less mobile animals.

The essay goes on to argue that contrary to what Tansley said in my previous reading, there is only one kind of climax. Climax can only be used to define an area if it is one in which a community is “capable of maintaining itself under a particular climate, except where a disturbance enters.” Meaning that except in the case of the addition of a variable such as human interference, forest fire, or mass migration, a region is in a state of dynamic equilibrium. Anything appearing to be a climax that does not fit this criteria should be considered a “proclimax” defined as resembling the climax in one or more respects but gradually replaced by the latter. Of proclimaxes there are four types; subclimax, dis-, pre-, and post-. The definitions of disclimax and subclimax are clearest and best address arguments made by Tansley in 1935. Tansley referred to a “mowing” or “grazing” climax, one in which the interaction of an outside force such as a human cutting down grass or a herd eating it, reaches a sort of equilibrium with the plant life. Clements would refer to this as a disclimax, a subversion of the typical climax or succession to the climax. A preclimax is an apparent climax before the climatic climax, perhaps the climax of a particular phase of succession, or the climax of vegetation shortly after a fire, before the typical dominant again matures in the area.

Having thoroughly argued for how a climax should be described, Clements goes on to explain the structure and rolls within a climax. A dominant is the most abundant and controlling species in a climax, by which, it seems, a climax is defined. A subdominant is any species that is not the dominant. The influents are the animal species of a biome, so called because of their influence on vegetational life. The units of a climax, in descending order of importance, are, association, consociation, faciation, lociation, society, and clan. I won’t here define each, but suffice it to say that each is smaller in size than the one before and with each grade the degree of diversity allowed is greater. A more full explanation is in my notes from this reading and the most complete explanation is the text itself.

I am glad to have read this and to have more of the terms I expect to find useful defined. I agree with Gleason’s (1926) arguments as to the difficulty in defining an association or climax, though, as I mentioned in my writing about that essay I understand the utility of these definitions. If these terms are the ones we are going to be using in class, I will need to take place in a discussion about them before I feel confident enough in their meanings to use them. Regarding Clements specific argument as to the only type of climax being that of climatic climax, I disagree somewhat, as it seems to entirely ignore human interaction with the environment. I would argue that when it comes to growing crops or grazing a herd, there is an equilibrium, though a more curated one than exists in nature.

Regarding the writing in this essay, it was far more confusing than Tansley (1935) and Gleason(1926). The multitude times Clements gave examples of his theories in nature including species names may have been very helpful to someone with more information regarding those species and regions, but to me they were only confusing. Having enjoyed reading the essays by Tansley and Gleason which both refuted some of the ideas Clements had previously written, I had hoped this essay would have addressed them somewhat. Instead, Clements references The Use and Abuse Vegetational Concepts and Terms only one time, and not in any too meaningful capacity, and Gleason not at all. Of the 36 works referenced in this essay a full 11 of them are works that Clements himself is author or coauthor of. Not being well versed in ecological thought of the time I may be mistaken, but I find this absence of debate somewhat disappointing.

The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association. Henry Gleason (1926)

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Throughout The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association, Gleason makes several arguments as to what the particular issues are with a term as broad as “association”. The essay states that previous descriptions of plant associations are mistaken due to their attempts to fit within existing frameworks which were developed when less information was available, and that, instead, as new information becomes available, new frameworks should be developed. Due to the use of what Gleason might have called antiquated frameworks ecologists were making undue reaches as to the conclusions implied by their research. Gleason suggests a new model based upon the individual plant.

A plant association is defined by Gleason as “an area of vegetation, having a measurable extent, in which each of which there is a high degree of uniformity throughout, so that any two small portions of one of them look reasonably alike.” One of the main issues with this definition is that there may be a continuous stretch of grassland from Illinois to Nebraska, but the easternmost and westernmost portions have vast differences. Is it to be considered one association due to the continuous stretch of grassland, or two associations due to the multitude of smaller differences in species? If it is to be considered two associations, where should that “measurable extent” extend to if each square mile is almost indistinguishable from the next and it is only at great distances that a difference can be quantified? For another example, Gleason speaks of woodlands. Without human interaction, a woodland’s advance or retreat into or from a particular grassland would be so slow as to make it impossible to define clearly a time-boundary on when the association began or ended in a particular locale. Additionally, Gleason states, that, particularly in growth after a fire, an association may be so brief that there is never a period of equilibrium. Gleason then calls an association effectively a coincidence.

To back up this claim, Gleason explains, in simple terms, how plant life comes to be in an area; “if I viable seed migrates to a suitable environment, it germinates.” No matter how far it has traveled, whether on the wind, in an animal’s digestive system or on its fur, by stream, or any other manner, if a seed comes to rest someplace that can provide the right amount of sun, nutrients, and water, it will grow. The majority of seeds land relatively nearby the parent plant, and fewer and fewer do in concentric rings traveling outward from that plant. Thereby, Gleason contends, every plant germinates wherever it is able and grows in proximity to other vegetation with similar environmental needs. Plant associations as popularly defined by ecologists of the time were an attempt at ascribing monolithic order to a system containing billions and billions of free agents in the form of each individual plant attempting to grow and spread.

My personal thoughts on this writing are that it was an interesting idea and helped me to understand not only Gleason’s ideas but also other ecologists’ definition of a plant association. I largely agree with Gleason’s concept, however understand the utility of grouping vegetation into associations for the sake of study. Aside from all that, I thought Gleason’s clarity of voice made reading this essay easy and enjoyable.

If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is. Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden (2016)

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In this very brief opinion piece submitted to the New York Times Opinions page in 2016, the authors argue that one of two changes ought to come to the exceedingly high number of philosophy departments around the United States and Canada that have no specialists in any field of philosophy outside of those written by European and American men.

In the first paragraph, the authors go into statistical detail about the lack of departments offering classes in more diverse fields of philosophy than the standard European and American classes. They draw particular attention to the lack of representation of philosophers who are Chinese, African, Indian, Islamic, Latin American, or Native American. Having pointed out these glaring deficiencies, the authors go on to say “the present situation is hard to justify morally, politically, epistemically or as a good educational and research training practice.”

In the following paragraphs the authors go on to argue what I have to imagine they know to be a losing point; that departments who fail to diversify their curricula ought to specify their name. Rather than being the Philosophy Department, the authors suggest they be called the Anglo-European Philosophy Department.

The next few paragraphs are the authors effectively exchanging justifications and refutations with an imagined opponent of such a change, but the end result, as is the case when anyone debates someone who isn’t there, is that the authors win out.

I don’t imagine Garfield and Van Norden thought any department would undergo such a name change as they suggested, but their rhetoric did effectively expose a critical contradiction in the logic of those philosophy departments, something I’m sure philosophers can’t stand.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Pgs 72-86) Paulo Freire (1968)

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It’s easy to understand why this is the first piece of reading a teacher might assign. The topic discussed is the failings of the educational system with regards to the freedom of thought left to students after they’ve completed their studies. The text begins by addressing the dichotomy of teacher and student, then spends quite a deal of time describing the current common mode of teaching, what the author calls the “banking concept of education”, followed by what the author suggests as a replacement to that method.

The relationship among teacher and student, Freire argues, is a strict vertical hierarchy. The teacher is in a roll that grants them authority and value, and their responsibility is to recite information to the students. The student is valueless without the teacher, because the teacher is the one who gives them information. The transaction is such that at the cessation of the relationship, the student should have memorized the same things the teacher has with regards to the subject of the class. Freire poses an alternative relationship where in there is not a teacher and many students, but rather a teacher-student and many student-teachers. In this new mode of organization value can be shared and moves in all directions rather than in a strictly vertical teacher-to-student direction. The teacher-student then becomes the person who has the most information or experience on the topic at hand, but always leaves room for more depth of understanding to come out of interactions with the student-teachers.

Freire criticizes the current mode of education as too impersonal, prescriptive, rigid, and transactional. Using the banking analogy, the teacher deposits information into the student, who is otherwise an empty vessel. Freire describes the banking concept of education by ten rules, including; the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing, the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it, and, the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students. The result of this style of education is the stripping away of the creativity, kindness, and free-thought innate in humankind, and, by extension, the mechanization of the people. Freire then states that a person’s natural vocation is to become human through the exercise of their own will.

As an alternative to this style of education, Freire suggests the “problem-posing” method. In the problem-posing method of education, each lesson becomes a discussion among peers. The teacher-student may decide the topic of discussion and guide the discussion from going too far astray, but should not set strict limitations. Through this method there will naturally be a great deal of exchange and evolution of thought. Not only does each student-teacher instruct the teacher and their peers, but they must also examine more closely their own opinions before giving them voice in a room of other free thinkers. This is what Freire calls “libertarian education”; education that sets one free.

Freire’s theories on education suggest that the mode in which one is educated is responsible for the way one lives their life. An education wherein one is taught to memorize and repeat information leads to a rigid, docile, easily-controllable population. A libertarian education is one that demonstrates a dynamic, changeable world in which the “students” are actors and who may affect its course. As Freire was a Marxist, he argues that any revolutionary society must adopt a liberatory educational system or risk becoming reactionary themselves. The influence of Marx is also clearly visible in the idea of a discussion based class, the focus on dialectics being the path to true knowledge.

I was excited as I read this piece and if it is an indication of what this class has to offer then I look forward to starting class in a few days.

 

The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms. Arthur Tansley (1935)

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Throughout this essay, Tansley argues for the standardization of the definition of several temrs commonly used in the discussion of vegetation and ecology. I will herein define in my own words what those terms are as well as discuss several of Tansleys arguments for them and some of my own thoughts on the essay.

Succession: A series of changes in the life cycle of a plant, quasi-organism, or eco-system. Each change leading to the next. The change is continuous, but can be categorized into successional phases.
Autogenic Succession: A succession primarily brought on by the actions of the plant life on their environment. E.g. A reduction in soil quality due to leeching leading to less growth.
Allogenic Succession: A succession primarily brought on by factors other than those actions of the plant life on their environment. E.g. A forest fire.
Anthrogenic Succession: A succession primarily brought on by the actions of humans on the plant life and its environment. E.g. The clearing of forest for grazing land.
Retrogressive Succession: Tansley argues that retrogressive succession is an ill-suited, though others ( use it to mean “regression” from a “higher” to “lower” form of vegetation (No clarification is given as to what higher and lower here mean) Tansley seems to say that retrogressive isn’t the correct term because the plant life is still adapting in a forward direction given the conditions of its environment at any given time.
Quasi-Organism: A mature, well-integrated plant community having enough of the characteristics of an organism. A community of plants that reaches a dynamic balance. Others use the term “complex organism”, which Tansley objects to on the grounds that an individual plant or animal is a complex organism and a network of complex organisms ought to have another name. (I initially took quasi-organism to mean the same as my understanding of an eco-system until eco-system was defined later in the text)
Climax: Permanent of apparently permanent condition reached when vegetation is in equilibrium with all Incidental factors. (There are arguably many sub-types of climax e.g. “mowing climax” a climax wherein the plant life is in a state of balance with its frequent mowing, where it doesn’t over-grow, or die off as a result of this action)
Ecosystem: The exchange among a quasi-organism and its environment. Components of which are both organic (plants, animals) and inorganic (soil, climate).
Two terms which were not defined in the text but which I found useful to look up are
Edaphic: of or relating to soil
Sere: A series of ecological communities formed in succession

My first impression of Tansley is that a contemporary reader likely would have either found him very funny or very annoying. He refers to himself twice as someone who was a heretic or who did not keep the “faith” of popular belief among ecologists of the day, instead challenging their ideas and definitions. I was intrigued by his thought on “retrogressive succession” and whether all change was necessarily “forward”, as well as the times he referred to minute and constant change in an ecosystem or quasi-organism and whether those two beliefs are related. In my notes, I likened the constant minute changes to the movement by the driver of a steering wheel on a straight road; the direction of the vehicle is always forward but the steering wheel is always being slightly turned to maintain that status. There is also the question as to whether human action can be considered part of nature, Tansley doesn’t clearly give his opinion, though through the addition of the definition of anthrogenic succession, seems to imply that humans are too great a variable to count among allogenic successions. I agree with this descision, because unlike all other animals and plants, humans don’t have to be at balance with their local environment to survive. Humans are at liberty to radically change their environment because of their ability to transport resources from afar.

Overall, I found the reading itself interesting, though, as it was my first reading of this kind, it will take me some time to be able to more fully digest its meaning and implication.

[Meta] Formatting and Intention

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This blog hasn’t got a purpose as of yet and I struggle to find one for it. In the past I’ve heard people recommend that one keeps a “Read List”, a list of all the books, excerpts,poems, essays, etc. that they read throughout college (and throughout the rest of their life too, I suppose) along with a brief summary of each. I’ve decided to dedicate this blog, until a better purpose comes along, to serve as that list for me. Today, I completed my first official writing assignment of my college carreer; to read and critique an essay by 20th century ecologist Arthur Tansley. That critique, along with the previously completed reflection of Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do” will serve as the beginnings of this endeavor.

My intention in this project is not only for my own records, but also to encourage discussion among my peers or anyone else who may have read the works I have. I recognize the possibility that someone may read my critiques and reviews, copy them, and pass them off as their own, and for that reason I will only be posting my thoughts after turning in any related assignments. If someone at that point decides to copy me, so be it, there are plenty of reviews of all sorts of literature, if they couldn’t copy from me they would copy from someone else.

The formatting of my reviews and reflections won’t always be the same. If they are related to an assignment they will be in the format prescribed by that assignment, whereas if they are simply for myself, they will take whichever form I feel is best suited, though I will make sure I include the title, pages (if applicable), author, and year of publication as the title of each post going forward.