“How should we govern ourselves?”
Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. The question posed above is the driving question for the project we as a PLP 11/12 class just finished. You the reader and I the author are going to be revisiting this driving question and the entire project built of the foundation that this question created. Step by step we will be looking back through the driving question, the curricular competencies and scrutinizing my evidence of learning.
How should we govern ourselves is an extremely expansive question with the option for an equally expansive answer. Keeping this in mind I want to keep my answer short and sweet. With everything I’ve learned over the project in mind I believe one answer to this question is, Governing a population is a task as old as civilization itself. With the inevitable trial and error that has occurred it is reasonable for one to say that it is a task best done when everyone in said population has a voice and freedom to use their voice. With such an answer as vague as the question itself I believe that it is prudent for us to dive deeper into this learning and look at the learning that will back my answer up.
“Humans cannot communicate; not even their brains can communicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate” – Niklas Luhmann
This quote is from Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist and pioneer of the note taking system “zettlekasten”. When I saw this quote my mind immediately went to the project at hand. I realized the key to understanding is effective communication and without effective communication understanding will not be found. Looking at our competency I also saw that it was based on communication through text and backed up through evidence. Through the lens of this quote I collaborated with my peers in creating a political party with a release blog and video that aligned with our competency. Partly due to this quote I helped create the video and party with the idea of understanding and thought through effective communication of our political ideas and systems. The idea of successful communication ties back to my answer of the driving question. In an assignment like this one communication and understanding is key to success and this success could not be realized without the ability to voice concerns and questions. Freedom of voice is an essential element for our Canadian government to work and that applies to every party in it including our recently created one.
When there is a lack of communication ideas and understanding fall through. Before I found this quote I was assigned in creating an interesting argument about something related to the recent Canadian election. This argument In the form of a blog post was also following the competency. Constructing of text and using evidence to show what you know. Through sheer lack of evidence my written argument couldn’t communicate the correct points. With insufficient communication understanding couldn’t be reached. Looking back it all fell in a domino sort of fashion from incomplete construction of text and evidence to lack of understanding. With little understanding of the competency shown I ended up with a disappointing product. Even through revision I showed lack of understanding leading to yet another disappointing final result. A real democratic government will not work without freedom of voice and communication. Being unable to voice concerns or effectively communicate understanding is where this post fell through just as real democracy crumbles without freedom of communication.
“Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.” – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The quote above was penned by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (a primitive zettlekasten user) and found by me in early zettlekasten research. I wanted to include it because it really resonated with my experience in this project. Identifying weaknesses was a huge part of my first project coming back from summer. Reflecting through my work I noticed a pattern of me being able to identify a weakness and then taking steps to strengthen that weakness. The quote also connects to the learning we did. An example of this is examining the current flaws in the current way we govern ourselves and creating our own political parties in efforts to strengthen these flaws. This quote even connects to the PLP ideology of F.A.I.L or first attempt in learning.
Looking back at the learning I did in this project I see an evolution of my understanding. This project gave me a new understanding of the Government of Canada, Government structure and political ideologies. Reflecting on the new things I learned I can identify a pattern that I should have recognized a long time ago. This pattern being the evolution of remedying inevitable weakness. I think the idea of creating a political party to fix current problems or weaknesses showed me that I do the same thing in my learning. Understanding my current weaknesses and then evolving to fix them by communicating successfully is something I plan to do in all future projects.
Thank you very much for reading my blog post. I hope you enjoyed witnessing the learning I did throughout the project and seeing how I evolved. See you later.