Emotions as grammar of our social life, alphabet of our social patterns.
As personal experiences emotions help us in prioritizing information. They make us pay attention to certain classes of information.Â
E.R. Hilgard’s trilogy of mind: cognition, emotion, motivation.
Beautiful words, from CEL‘s website:
“According to Fritjof Capra, systems thinking requires thinking in terms of relationships, connectedness, and context. Thinking systemically also requires several shifts in perception, which lead in turn to different ways to teach, and different ways to organize society:
From parts to the whole
Systems are integrated wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to those of smaller parts. Their “systemic” properties are properties of the whole which are possessed by none of the parts. The nature and quality of what students learn is strongly affected by the culture of the whole school, not just the individual classroom. This shift in perception can also lead to moving from curricula based on single subject matters to integrated curricula.
From objects to relationships
An ecosystem is not just a collection of species, but is a community. Communities, whether ecosystems or human systems, are made up of sets, or networks, of relationships. In the systems view, the “objects” of study are networks of relationships. Organizations, including schools, that adopt this perspective are more likely to emphasize relationship-based processes such as cooperation and decision-making by consensus.
From objective knowledge to contextual knowledge
Shifting focus from the parts to the whole implies shifting from analytical thinking to contextual thinking. Since explaining things in terms of their contexts means explaining them in terms of their environments, all systems thinking is environmental thinking. This shift sometimes results in schools’ focusing on project-based learning instead of prescriptive curricula. It also encourages teachers to serve as facilitators and fellow learners alongside students, rather than as experts dispensing knowledge.
From quantity to quality
Through much of the history of Western science, many of its practitioners have maintained that only things that can be measured and quantified can be expressed in scientific models. It has sometimes been implied that phenomena that can be measured and quantified are more important—and perhaps even that what cannot be measured and quantified doesn’t exist at all. Relationships and context, however, cannot be put on a scale or measured with a ruler. In practice, this shift can lead to seeking more comprehensive forms of assessment besides standardized testing.
From structure to process
Living systems develop and evolve. Therefore, understanding them requires understanding renewal, change, and transformation. In practice, this shift can result in shifting emphasis to how a student solves a problem rather than on whether or not he or she gets the “right” answer. In communities, it can mean that the process for making decisions is often as important as the decisions themselves.
From contents to patterns
When we draw maps of relationships, we discover that certain configurations of relationships appear again and again. We call these configurations patterns. Instead of focusing on what a living system is made of, we study its patterns. This shift leads to discovering that understanding how a pattern works in one natural or social system helps us to understand other systems that manifest the same pattern.”
A nice quotation from Klein’s No Logo. Scott Bedbury, Starbucks’ VP of marketing (and former head of marketing of Nike) says:
Nike is leveraging the deep emotional connection that people have with sports and fitness. With Starbucks, we see how coffee has woven itself intothe fabric of people’s lives, and that’s our opportunity for emotional leverage… A great brand raises the bar – it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether is the challenge to do the best in sports and fitness or the affirmation that the cup of coffee you’re drinking really matters.
It is interesting that big corporations put a lot of investments to help us understand that the cup of coffee we are drinking really matters. Actually any cup of coffee we drink (at Starbucks or not) should really matter for us. We should shift our attitudes, break our habits and put all of our attention on our cup of coffee. That will make a great experience. And Starbucks could invest its money in more meaningful activities.