MY World

The value survey I went through showed some interesting things. First of all, it seems that my grouping would not coincide with the factorial analysis so far, as my evaluations for God/heaven related questions do not go in the same directions as the family/relationship questions. While the second group is very important to me, I could not but give 0s for the first group as I'm not convinced in the reality of the afterlife and salvation, not to mention the concepts behind them. Second, I found myself to be lower than the lowest average point on all variables. May be, it's because I was very cautious in giving 4s and 5s? If I look at the values I deemed most important, I would see a continuum between person- oriented values (marriage, for example) and humanity-oriented values (e.g., spreading philosophical knowledge). They all seem to be related, though: 1 - Enjoying a good marriage or lifetime partnership 28 - Working to educate children 32 - Providing a good life for your ch

A. What are the last four things you have written (excluding short notes), and who read them? 1. Corporate review of my company – my lawyer 2. A self-made myth on the origins of death – my wife, kids, and the INO 501 professor 3. Learning autobiography for INO 501 – INO 501 class 4. Learning experience post on my blog for INO 501 – INO 501 professor B. In general, how do you feel about writing? I love writing and feel that I do it well. C. Do you find it easy to write papers that say what you wanted them to say ? In practical terms, is writing a relatively efficient process for you in which your time is in proportion to your intentions? I do find it relatively easy to express myself in writing. Writing is a relatively efficient process for me, more efficient than speaking most of the time. D. How many hours did you spend writing (including drafting, writing, revising) the last three papers you did? Give the number of hours and number of pages written. Is this "normal" for you

When I saw the Viewpoins quesiton in Your Mythic Journey that asked to write a myth about dying, I couldn't ignore it. For one, our family likes myths and folk tales - I'm trying to read one to my wife and kids every night. So I sat down and came up with a piece. Then I decided to present it to my family as a Malagasy myth - and they actually believed me after listening to it. I was honest and did disclose the scam, though. There were times when men were gods and women were goddesses. They cruised between the sun and the moon and the stars, they could see the past and the future, they knew everything there was ever to be known. They did not have body and they never died. Men and women with no body circled the earth and watched the oceans roar in anger and calm in relief, the mighty volcanoes breathing fire and dying in exhaustion, the mighty trees growing and the doe leading her fawns to a spring. But they could not touch a trunk of a tree, smell a flower or taste a fruit. Th

A recent task in INO 501 was to write a dialogue. Usually I don't have much of a problem to write things. However, I've never written a dialogue before, and it proved to be quite hard. After staring for a while at the words "Characters" and "Setting" typed on a fresh white Word document and trying Elbow's method of writing whatever I think (in vain), I decided to look for help on the web. I found plenty of it - yet none helped much. Mostly it was about the style. Since Socrates was not around, I decided to engage my 12 year old daughter's help. I started a dialogue with her, and lo and behold: it worked so well that after fifteen minutes I was enthusiastically typing the actual piece. This learning style would probably best classified as Diverging, that combines concrete experience and reflective observation.

The Kolb learning inventory shows that I learn better from Abstract Conceptualization (sounds rather abstract to me...) than from Experience, while the Reflecting and Doing are balanced in their minimal contribution to my learning. I would say that this analysis coincides with my own self-assessment, but that's only part of the story. I believe that my learning style depends on the subject matter and on the purpose of learning. When I'm trying to acquire expertise in certain area, be it software quality assurance, HTML or philosophy, I conscientiously would follow a process which starts with the conceptual learning: Step 1. Understanding the concepts In any field I can imagine it's possible to rush into action and even achieve something. Yet from my past experiences I learned that if you don't invest in getting to the roots of things, in getting to know the methods that govern the fields, it will harm you badly when you will try to do some advanced stuff. So I will wor

I was thinking to write a dialogue of a chronological type, yet then I thought that presenting the logic behind my values would be more interesting. ============================================ Characters: - An Inquisitive Yet Polite Fellow Traveler (FT) - Michael Yudanin (MY) Setting: - NAX , a fictional airport where both FT and MY are stuck for the next N hours due to bad weather FT: So where are you from? A standard beginning. Differently from the English, Americans usually don’t take chances with weather. This question is quite hard for me to answer: I was born and lived seventeen years in Russia, the twelve years in Israel, and then moved to the US. MY: Russia; but I lived quite a few years in Israel. FT: Russia! What part of Russia? Here we go – another standard piece. Now the exciting part. MY: Siberia. FT: Siberia?! Images of polar bears behind bars of a giant labor camp in the midst of a blizzard are crossing his mind. I’m omitting a 5-10 minutes

To be completely honest, I struggle with Elbow. It rarely happens to me with a book. I was always suspicious about writing manuals. Consciously, I can see two possible reasons: a personal and a principal. On the personal level, since the days of my high school, where I had a wonderful literature teacher, Elvira Nikolaevna Gorukhina, I learned to see writing as a bit of a mystery. One can analyze a sunset in astronomical terms; another - in terms of awe and inspiration. The latter probably would perceive the former as a sort of mild sacrilege. I see writing as the second option, while the mere notion of the manual belongs to the first. The principal reason is that writing manuals, and Elbow's is no exception, are desperately trying to separate the content of writing from its form. I don't believe it's possible. Just like in sculpture or painting or music. With that said, there certainly are few interesting things in Elbow's thoughts on revising and feedback: - The idea o

Rogers doesn't give much attention to the race, class, and gender when discussing education . Rightfully so - neither of these has anything to do with people's ability to learn. Mind has no color, of wallet , or chromosomes. Interestingly enough, the ides of race, class, and gender influencing people's intelligence is one of the most researched. Sociology provides us with a plenty of reasons why we would think, or even wish for these three irrelevant characteristics, as well as a host of other inborn features of our physique, to influence people's intellects - yet all of these reasons would turn rather ugly if we apply the most common ethical standards to them. Plenty of research has been done on the subject, yet it consistently failed to yield any significant proof for the race-, gender- or class-dependency of the intellect. Interestingly enough, the research on the "intelligence gene", the influence of race and gender on the ability to learn, etc., continues

When I first read Socratic dialogues, my impression was that I'd already heard these thoughts. I heard them while on train rides in Russia with some shabby-looking fellow travelers, in arguments with reservist soldiers in the Israeli army while guarding some godforsaken road at night, from random YouTube videos, from conversatins in a grassroots Socrates Cafe in Atlanta, GA... in short, from non-academic sources. After bouncing this revelation back and forth with my wife and giving it more thought, I understood that was one of the main points of Socratic greatness. As he so brilliantly demonstrates in Meno , any free human who understands your language can be taught anything you know - since the true knowledge is discovery, not information exchange. Real gems of thought can be found anywhere. We just need to pick them up and appreciate. Recently, looking for an online course in Indian philosophy, I discovered New Acropolis - free association of private individuals who see value i

Your Mythic Journey by Keen and Valley-Fox - what a book! A real gem. Not every day one stumbles across such an exquisite basket of meaning. The idea of a personal story as a mythology seems to me so appealing, specifically after I concluded a while ago a work on the unreality of time in the Philosophy Pathways course. Opening the stage of your life for the play of its heroes - images, memories, desires, thoughts - is liberating. I hope I have enough courage to write the INO autobiography this way. The style is captivating. One journey worth more than a thousand Elbows :)

Fortunately enough, I had a goal in mind before joining the INO : to pursue a career in philosophy. Specifically, the INO is supposed to be the first step toward the PhD and teaching in a community college. The meaningful, "non-administrative" aspect of the studies is to deepen the philosophical sense and to gain specific skills. It also can be formulated as improving the ability to consider the Questions of Life, and acquiring a toolset of methods that can be used to address a variety of problems. One of the great things about the INO is the ability to add courses beyond any specific program or even extramural studies. I hope the New Acropolis course that I just started can be counted as well, as it gives the aspect of Eastern (Indian, Tibetan, etc.) philosophy that is not part of the standard UIS offering. The syllabus is quite interesting, as was the first session. As I have a lot of experience in teaching adults, I believe I will be able to handle this piece. Two oth

I read Elbow's suggestions on figuring the ideas out before you start writing. The one I liked in particular was " relinquishing your conscious grip on your material" So I decided to try it: go for a walk and let the ingredients of my particular idea about a- priori ethical principles and evolution to simmer in the pot of my head. The crucial mistake was to take my puppy with me. Sammy, as all other dogs I know, has a very different idea about taking a walk. His energy level was entirely detrimental to any "deep cooking" of ideas...