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It was a new century.
The twentieth.
Since Christ.
New ideas percolated everywhere.
Society, so often behind it’s own time,
Strained, and buckled, and fractured.
Voices were heard,
Louder and louder.
People joined together
To push for change.
Individuals became groups became
Crowds became mobs became
Masses became movements.
Movements toward change.
A new focus of study was emerging.
A fledgling arm of philosophy had grown toward the end of the
Nineteenth century:
The study of the Human animal,
And its ever-loving mind.
Psychology was bursting with new ideas and methodologies.
Breaking free from quackery,
Like Phrenology, it wanted to be a Science.
To step out of the armchair and into scientific method.
This was the new way to focus,
And earn some respect at the same time.
But what to focus on,
And to what end?
Observe, Understand, Predict, Control.
That’s what I was told.
But I digress.
Born into this new century were
A few creative, prescient thinkers
Ready to take on this new frontier
Called psychology.
Lev Vygotsky was one (1896-1934).
So were Sigmund Freud (1856-1939),
Jean Piaget (1896- 1980),
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970),
Kurt Lewin (1890-1947),
Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974),
Egon Brunswik (1903 – 1965),
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936).
Each had a unique perspective on the subject.
Each had their own lens to view the individual.
The subject is not simple,
And resists simplification.
How do you study something that is constantly changing,
And behaves differently in each different context?
Each thinker grabbed a tool
And started to dig in with their questions.
Freud grabbed Libido to explain development and pathology.
Piaget grabbed maturation to explain it.
Pavlov stripped the individual of consciousness in the learning process.             Assagioli dug to the core essence of our being, Will.
Maslow set us lofty goals as we work through our neediness.
Lewin saw our inner landscape as full of forces that draw and repel us.
Brunswik thought the individual would best be studied in all of its contects.
Taking in all proximal factors.
Vygotsky saw those proximal factors as the main focus of study.
From individual to development takes interaction
With other individuals.
Growing together
Toward something.
The thinkers shared their thoughts.
With each other.
And with all those who followed.
To study Psychology.
To observe
To understand
To develop
To change.

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The Impossible Dream - The Temptations ft. David Ruffin

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Responding to "Lev Vygotsky, The Loving Revolutionary" in "The Over weight Brain by Lois Holzman.

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Responding to "Lev Vygotsky, The Loving Revolutionary" in "The Over weight Brain by Lois Holzman.

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While reading, I had a few images come to my mind and I started painting them.  Watercolors have a beautiful quality of softly moving and mixing through water and it gives a great opportunity for improvisation and play. So here is a little gif video of the result.  At first circles represented individuals and the other colors represented the environment/society. Society and individuals, making and informing each other. Both permeating each other. As I kept painting the forms started to exchange and new circles started to emerge. At the end the whole thing started to look like a collective, and also reminded me of the universe as well. Transformation and development as movement and water as a vehicle. I then took a few pictures of different stages of it drying out, transforming, and made a gif in the phone.

I really enjoyed the process of responding creatively. Thank you for the provocations...,
Janelle Sibauste

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A world that Levs and let’s Lev… by Maureen Kelly

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A world that Levs and let’s Lev… by Maureen Kelly

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Everyday, ordinary collective creativity

it's everywhere

searching for and continuously creating

new

methods

continuously

teachers leading students in slow mirroring,

followed by the question, how are we?

families engaging in slow conversations

with 10 seconds of silence between utterances

nurses and doctors play yes, and

and hold one another in times of grief and joy

we keep creating new plays

everyday

emotions, intellect, creativity

we see and build with all of who we are

and who we are not

yet

we play and play and play

and play, and play

and we begin to see

more of who we are

poor

marginalized

abused

rich

alone

hopeful

brutalized

with new ways of seeing

we see we are

we

we see we are

builders

and in the building, we grow

we grow the we

continuously

we lev and let lev

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How do Americans see ourselves in a collective? (two political parties now, seems like) How does our group mixed with people in different countries form a collective?  Just on the basis of being human? But we have to consider our culture - so our collective makes up a new culture? How do we develop together and get into our zones of proximal development? Are we behaving a head taller than ourselves? I'm not even sure anymore how to do that except on the stage in a theater, LOL!

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How? There is no just one "how", but there are "hows" created according to the situation experienced, there are "hows" that don't yet exist, and "hows" that will still be created ... There are “hows” to be created by people in the community!
How to reperform Vygotsky in the 21st century? For me, one example is what you did here with poems, songs, references of everyday life, in the ideas to become an activist ...

The ways to reperform Vygotsky are endless!

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But I started philosophizing... (Vygotsky in a letter to Levina, dated July 16, 1931).

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But I started philosophizing... (Vygotsky in a letter to Levina, dated July 16, 1931).

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Crises are no temporary phenomena, but inner life's road. When we pass from systems to fates, to the birth and downfall of systems, we see it with our own eyes. I am convinced of it. In particular, all of us, looking at our past, see that we dry up. That is correct. That is true. To develop is to die. It is really "a small death" inside ourselves. And that is the way we have to accept it. But behind all this is life, that is, movement, travel, your own fate (Nietzsche taught the amor fati - the love of your fate).

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the translation of the video song (by myself) ➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡

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the translation of the video song (by myself) ➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡➡

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If the world gets heavy
I'll borrow
The word poetry
If the world dulls
I will pray for rain
Wisdom word
If the world goes backwards
I will write on a poster
The word rebellion
If we get discouraged
I'll harvest in the orchard
The word stubbornness
If it happens after all
From entering our backyard
The word tyranny
Take the drum and the ganzá
Let's go to the street scream
The word Utopia

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Vygotsky's ideas can inspire us to de-traditionalize and decolonize historical ideals! How? There is no just one "how", but there are "hows" created according to the situation experienced, there are "hows" that don't yet exist, and "hows" that will still be created ... There are “hows” to be created by people in the community! The song in the video reminds me of creating in times of crisis

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"If human activity were limited to reproduction of the old, then the human being would be a creature oriented only to the past and would only be able to adapt to the future to the extent that it reproduced the past”. Lev Vygotsky, Imagination and Creativity in Childhood.

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“The relationship of thought to word is not a thing but a process, a movement from thought to word and from word to thought … Thought is not expressed but completed in the word”. Lev Vygotsky, Thinking and Speech.

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“In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself". Lev Vygotsky, The Role of Play in Development

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“The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool and the result of study”. Lev Vygotsky, Problems of Method