On accepting the McCulloch award

Citation

Parenti, S. (2013), "On accepting the McCulloch award", Kybernetes, Vol. 42 No. 9/10. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-10-2013-0223

On accepting the McCulloch award

Article Type:

Announcements

From:

Kybernetes, Volume 42, Issue 9/10

The award you’re giving me, the McCulloch award, is an award for lifelong achievement. The award I’m accepting, however, is an award for life long avoidance. Avoidance. I think of avoidance as something I do that I’m proud of.

Avoidance doesn’t mean to just not do something. Avoidance happens when you do not something; when you do (but) not something.

It goes like this: someone asks, “why do I have to go to school?” (a difficult question). Answer: “in order to learn what to avoid. See what’s there – and you avoid that”. Avoidance.

I propose we shift the paradigm from achievement to avoidance. Avoidance becomes the landmark. Not to forego achievement but to de-throne it. Late at night when you sum up what you’ve done that day – add to that summation, what you’ve avoided doing.

Similarly, while we always speak positively of learning (it was said Monday night that Bateson never stopped learning) there is merit in refusing to learn. I don’t know about you, but I feel there’s a school out there operating 24/7 trying to make me – and you – its students, trying to teach me all sorts of lesson I refuse to learn. The school is trying to teach me that the systems in place are much bigger than what any group of people can do to change them – the Big It Little Me lesson. I refuse to learn that lesson. The school tries to teach that people are motivated only by fear or greed – I’m not going to learn that.

I don’t know how much I’ve learned in the past years – but the list of what I’ve refused to learn, is enormous.

This direction of thinking – avoidance, refusal to learn – is in spirit consistent with Bateson’s article Cybernetic explanation, where he proposes that rather than pursuing the question, “why did that happen?” he suggest that a more fruitful question would be, “why do the other things not happen?”

For those of us who craft questions, we know that part of a sentence’s significance comes from the alternatives we rejected while composing that sentence. Rejected alternatives form part of the significance of the chosen alternative.

I’d like to end with a brief interview with Susan Rose Parenti.

Interviewer: Hello Susan Parenti. Tell us a bit about yourself.

Susan: About myself? Oh goody. I want to tell you what I avoid, and what I refuse to learn, and –

Interviewer: “Avoid”? “Refuse to learn”? That’s so negative. Be positive! Tell us what you do, not what you don’t do. What you do, do.

Susan: Do do? Do-do? I do write music that cannot function as background; I do write skits and theater where dialogue goes the way I want (ha ha!); I do teach at the school for designing a society in Illinois where by means of paying attention to how participants speak we notice they think better; I do –

Interviewer: Thank you. Next question –

Susan: I do participate in activities that are politicizing.

Interviewer: Very nice. Next –

Susan: I do take care of people I love when they’re old. I do –

Interviewer: Stop!! Quite a list. You’re all over the place, aren’t you? Looks like you’re a jack-of-all-trades–master-of-none!

Susan: Oh thank you, That’s one of my favorite put-downs. I’m not only committed to living a certain way, I’m also committed to the insults, dismissals and put downs my way of living elicits. “Jack of all trades master of none” is one of my faves – also it’s a little sexist, makes it better. There’s some put-downs I don’t like – I put down those putdowns. There’s some I do like and I put up those putdowns. And when I –

Interviewer: Stop it. You sure talk a lot. Tangential thinking. Just like a woman.

Susan: See that’s another putdown I like: tangential thinking, just like a woman –

I: Do you have any children?

Susan: Children? No, I told you: I prefer to take care of people when they’re old and need help, not when they’re very young and need –

I: Hmm. No children. Sad. Do you have any other unfulfilled dreams?

Susan: Huh?

I: Well the babies

Susan: I told you, I –

I: Alright, alright. Let’s just say: Do you have any unfulfilled dreams you would like to tell us about?

Susan: Actually I do: I would like more people to write plays, theater, spoken dialogue. Cyberneticians, Batesonians. After all, the Metalogues are plays – they’re theater for two actors. Language generates temporary realities – we know this, we experience this at this conference. Writing skits and plays tests the capacities and limits of the available language. I’d like to a conference where people not only write their presentation, they also write the conversation they wish would happen after their presentation. Enough spontaneity! Enough “let’s see how it goes”. You saw: it went. Now, show us how you wish it would go! that way –

I: Very interesting. Have you ever received awards or prizes for any of these ideas?

Susan: Yes! On Thursday July 12, 2012 I received the McCulloch award for lifelong avoidance! Thank you!