philosophy as meditation

Some days enlightenment comes in profound realisations, some days it trickles in.
I know i had read it before, and heard it before, but it was not until hearing this in different combinations in the thinking of others (transported and translated by others) that it seems to have impacted on me, today, in a more fundamental way.

There is no transportation without translation.

In every shift something is altered.
For every thing being transported there is translation.
A thought goes from here to there, in the transportation there are shifts.
The actor carrying the message alters the message, the words, the inflections, the import....the medium itself becomes part of the message... the medium is the message

So the thing that moved from here to there is altered, but is it just the thing, or object and actor.
Contact is a two way force.

The thing is altered, when it goes from a to b there are new relations, the network alters.
The actor transporting the thing...is t too altered.

Seems reminiscent of a law of physics.
Metaphysics, ahah.
Change begets change; there is no difference that does not make a difference.
An ontological meditation.

And what lies beneath and beyond?
Graham Harman suggests "no two things ever really come in contact"
Object one and object two, barely collide and there are alterations. Like billiards colliding they touched, energies shift, the impact alters each object's trajectories, and at an infinitesimally small level even such objects are altered, and so is the surface that supports them... and so is the game...and the watchers...and so it goes on ad infinitum. For Harman it means that the two objects were simulacrums of themselves, different before, different after, only seen from one's own position? A multiplicity of realities that don't quite touch?

Talking this down to earth: getting grounded in some reality.
With txt counselling there is a message, if i say it or write it, the message differs. Just as a map is not the territory, a message conveying feelings and thoughts is still a symbolic representation of what can be expressed. In pushing a message out there is a construction what can be told. What can be told then moves from the person to a cellphone, whats written is not what is, but a rendition, a translation as it were.
This passes into the cell phone, the message shaped by what can be 'said' as well as shaped by button taps and eyes attentive (or not) to what is represented (altered by use of T9 or predictive text, or not) and combined with idiosyncratic variations of a language evolved by constraints on the size of sms (160 characters) and a playfulness used at the discretion of the 'speaker'. Then whether the message gets transported or not depends on the contract being paid, the cell phone coverage, the state of the battery , the size of the memory....

Similarly receipt depends on the receiver's contract, the bandwidth availability and frequency not overlapping, reception, and having a counselling centre staffed, and willing to use the sms medium. The capacity to make sense of the message as a literal translation and as an emotionally charged one, and to respond in a caring way reshaping whats known of counselling to be supportive, strengths based, affirming, acknowledging...

And of the message, how does it alter the intermediaries involved?
The cell phone may become a little more used, the memory a little more full, the bandwidth a little more congested, the account a little less full...the voluntary organisation as well as the sender become a little poorer, as txting costs...

But are there other layers as well?
In narrative therapies the telling of the story has its own healing potential. In other counselling traditions, including the client centred Rogerian method taught to this organisation's counsellors, catharsis is facilitated. Reflecting back the emotional content being synonymous with being heard and accepted. Then in psychoanalytic traditions there is the occurrence of transference and countertransference occurring as relationships have their own life.

People are changed in the act of communicating, and not just because their brain cells went through some chemistry in the process. The act of counselling occurs with the intent of a subjective and sometimes objective change of state. Beliefs get reshaped. Some of this might be anticipated, much is not.

In undertaking this task, whether considered as philosophy, meditation or research, the thoughts did not spontaneously combust. There was a transportation of ideas. The anthem site provided me with an audio recording of a reading group's discussion of Latour's reassembling the social. In following this discussion of intermediaries and actors, I found myself googling Latour intermediaries and translations since it appeared crucial to any shared understanding of Latour's basic terms. While there i noticed a reference again to Graham Harman and the new book on Latour being treated as/by a philosopher: Prince of networks, and in the absence of that book, which i had heard reference to and not seen, i found myself down yet another google rabbit hole chasing references to book reviews and discussions. The resultant journey around th, flattening the terrain as i seek to trace the connections through a blog by Harman and also Larval subjects.
As always in research, the ideas always evolve, I think my thinking is my own but its also coloured by where I've been. All errors of understanding I cannot say are my own any more than i say that what i learned can be attributed elsewhere.
All is transported and therefore, translated.

Gladwell an unwitting proponent of actor-network theory?

Outliers: The Story of Success by Gladwell could have been the story of actor network theory.
Rather than attributing individual accomplishment to accomplishing individuals, the network is identified as important (a not new phenomenon, but new in what seems to be a self help book).
He argues people with social advantages do better than people without social advantages, and so a wise thing for society to do would be to arrange for more advantages for more people. Focus on the network, again, seems to me an obvious solution given that's where the resources lie, however this has not been obvious to many.
Its the network and the interactions therein that creates the conditions for success, or its absence.

In a story where he does not, but could have looked at an actor network effect, he talks of the "Matthew Effect"(from a passage in the Gospel of Matthew: "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."
Gladwell reports the findings of Roger Barnsley, a Canadian psychologist, who noticed the birthdays of Canadian hockey players. Whether he looked at professional players or elite junior-leaguers: 40 percent were born in the first trimester of the year, and 30 percent were born between April and June.
An amazing coincidence or an underacknowledged actor in the form of policy and protocols?
The admission date for Canada's youth hockey league is January 1.
Pre-teen hockey players born January/February play hockey with kids as much as eleven months their juniors. The older players, generally more physically developed and skilled, get selected for all-star teams. "And what happens when a player gets chosen [for all-star teams]?" Gladwell asks. "He gets better coaching, and his teammates are better, and he plays fifty or seventy-five games a season instead of twenty games a season like those left behind."
Local context and networks matter.
Gladwell is pointing to the web of elements outside of people's individual control.
What Latour would have called the actor net work.

how to write a thesis

Havent even got there yet, but even the steps of writing between where i am now and where i want to be continues to be in very small steps.
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

In simplifying a plain language statement for a young audience, i began with may, I changed it to will, put it in, took it out...
I learnt how to use track changes, but halfway through learnt how to make it say it was me rather than my workplace that was doing the editing....then started again so I would look like a competent being.
I now need to proofread; and if not careful could find myself editing down to the blank page...
It might never be as good as i want it, but as Latour advises, "a good thesis is a finished one".

Reassembling the social

A structure for anting!
Some upfront advice to follow:
Notebooks x 4,
1. for keeping track on progress (this blog is notebook 1!)
2. data collect with attention to chronology
3. for writing, the clever ideas when they come!
4. for the response the actors have to being written

BTW: If any ants are reading this, I'd like to hear of your experience in doing ant research, I am not inclined to following steps such as these, is amassing the data while blogging the process not enough? I concede, a spot for clever ideas, quips, directions for the writing is probably not a bad idea, and there is potentially useful info to be had in monitoring the effects or responses to being written...
Have you followed this advice?
What suggestions would you make?

I am reassured that the type of question i am wanting to study sit well with Latour's ideas on ways to go about reassembling the social.
How to make sense of reality- what is the social made of?
and what is acting when we are acting?
And with regard to the sociological endeavour, or what matters in a sociology of the social: localize the global, redistribute the local, and connect the sites.

So, in the use of txting and e-counselling and message board postings for counselling:
What occurs that make this work possible?
And in as much as we think we shape the service/s, how does the form of such services, shape us- the actors involved.

And I am reassured that Latour is not anti a critical edge, that striving for political relevance to gain a critical edge is important. However the means of attaining this edge shouldn't be collapsed too soon, the connections need be paid in full, not presumed.

I want to make a difference!
The years of study 'should' do more than be time or space occupying.
I struggle with humility :(
I live in hope that my description should be rich enough that the story/s told and the reading/s made are more than modest witnessing. That 'something' that I have done/ will be doing "matters".

Back to this weeks processes:
1. ethics needs tidying and tightening up,
2. an appointment at Youthline on Friday, to progress a funding opportunity
3. a funding application to 'make a world of difference'.