#RelationalBeing Initiative(RBI) 6th was held last week. RBI had been started last summer with its concern with SocialConstructionist view of values and reality, with which facts are viewed as sets of discourse, in other words, #SocialConstruction. In RBI, we have tried to redefine many things which can be seen as social construction, especially things which we usually see as Bounded Beings (in Kenneth J. Gergen‘s terminology. See Gergen(2009)”Relational Being”). But, I think now is the time to revise the original plan of RBI. For 6th was my turn to set a theme for dialogue, I gave a brief talk about “names and nouns”. Introducing the previous researches on Proper Nouns, Metaphors, Metonymies, and Ethnology, I discussed the limitation to discriminability of proper nouns from the Relational Being view point. Among previous researches above, I picked up a study on boundary by Japanese ethnologist, Shinobu Orikuchi. He doesn’t view boundary as just a “line”, but a “point”. This “point” is where people from different communities meet, as well as a vacant place because it doesn’t belong to any communities. With this “vacant” view, boundary is not a fixed delineation of being but a potential for communication or meaning construction. Hence, from the “genuinely relational” view point – to admonish myself – , whether the things are bounded or not is not a serious matter, while the way we see the boundaries is a complicated and extremely important matter. When boundaries are literally social construction, even if we are all bounded, what about of it? We only have to update the view on Boundary. Of course it is not an easy way, but now we’ve exactly found a route beyond social construction.

How do you spend your time these days? I’ve been busy delivering lectures at companies. So, there is not enough time for me to spare for bloging… As you see above, we usually describe “time” with the terms such as “spend”, “there is enough”, and “spare” to conceptualize “time”. In their memorable works “Metaphors We Live By”(1980), George Lakoff and Mark Johnson presented more examples – “That flat tire cost me an hour”, “You need budget your time”, “Is that worth your while?” – and argued that these descriptions show that we see “time” as money, limited resources, and valuable commodities. These ways of conceptualizing time are called “Conceptual Metaphors“. We don’t know much about time, and also we can neither see, hear, taste, smell, nor touch time. Therefore, we try to understand time with conceptual metaphors like above. These metaphors are so deeply entrenched in our daily life that until we reflect on the way we think about time critically, we cannot aware we use these metaphors. Last week, I got a chance to reflect. I read a story of “Momo” (Michael Ende, published in 1973). It is a second time since my childhood. The story goes along the battles between little Momo and “The men in grey” who steal and hide “time” from people. Even though these guys play a villain’s role, I want to express my appreciation to them. Because they show us the way we think about time with their identity which symbolize our values on time, that is, they give us a chance to reflect on our values. What if time do not move forward at uniform speed? What if time comes from any places other than past or future? What if the facts we know about time are just a kind of #SocialConstruction? Thank you, the men in grey.

What drives and makes it possible to use Wordplay? This question is still the crux of my research in grad school. In other words, I’ve been trying to find out what the Affordance of Anagrams, Phonetic Mix-Ups, Puns, and Metaphors is. Incidentally, last Friday, it was my 33rd birthday, I went to see the live performance of Mice Parade on their Japan tour, featuring Gregory and the Hawk as the opening act. Their name “Mice Parade” is an anagram of their leader’s name, Adam Pierce, known as the owner of Bubble Core Label in Brooklyn, NY. Their spectrum of sounds seemed like an anagram of the contexts of existing musics. Anyway, they’re still my favourite.

A special lecture “An Introduction to Career Education and Vocational/Career & Technical Education” by Chris Zirkle (Associate Professor, College of Education, The Ohio. State University) was held last month. Many topics around career and technical education, such as curriculum, employment opportunities, and funding, were discussed in his lecture. Among those topics, what concerned me most was that career and technical education in 2 year schools is receiving more attention in the U.S. and Associate degrees are in demand. Since then, I’ve been very interested in whether the trend in Associate degrees in Japan toward.

I love the film “Shooting Fish” (1997, directed by Stefan Schwartz, starring Dan Futterman, Stuart Townsend and Kate Beckinsale). In 1998, right after the release in Japan, I went to see that film, because that was the time of “Brit Pop”, and brilliant hopes in UK indie chart were featured in the soundtracks, such as Silver Sun, Space, Symposium, and The Bluetones. But actually, the numbers which had impressed me most were, while much impressed with Kate Beckinsale, “What the World Needs Now Is Love” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose”, both written by Burt Bacharach. Last night, I drank a glass of cocktail named “What the World Needs Now Is Love”, which reminded me of good days in late 90′s.

When facilitating a workshop or a training program, we usually set a goal beforehand and build scenarios to get there, and then facilitate along these scenarios. In other words, we prepare “the right ways to do” and actually carry out some of them. But this strategy is not always effective one. “Appreciative Inquiry with Teams” (Bushe, G.R. ,1998, The Organization Development Journal, 16:3, pp.41-50.) presented this point clearly, describing the role of facilitators as “wordsmith”. Even though it won’t work with wordsmith way alone in practice – I know from my experiences that “the right ways in AI” do exist -, we are needed to be a wordsmith sometimes.