Pluriversal

New year, new possibilities. Pluriversal, visual thinking and continuous learning.

Pluriversal: Being at the Heart of Asia

New year, new possibilities. Pluriversal ones. In a few weeks, on February 1^st 2022, there will be another celebration of the Chinese Lunar Year, the Year of the Tiger. Since last year, I have gained more interest in learning more about China as it is one of my roots, and I am interested in the future of Asia. Especially the Belt Road Initiative and its expansion in Africa, how China is going green, working on setting Chinese Standards 2035, and how citizens work on local green initiatives.

Cambodia is also a lot in my quest to better understand my roots and the country’s evolution with the river Mekong; its history. Watching the movie by Angelina Jolie, ‘First They Killed My Father’ is one of my action items.

In France, some instigators help us better understand how Asian arts, cinema, sports and crafts are spotlighted and shared. Another third celebration of the Khmer New Year is upcoming, too. On April 13th 2022, it will be the Year of the Tiger as well.

Japan is the third country I pay attention to weekly. Yet, I have always been in love with Japanese sub-culture, from fashion to food, martial arts, music and cinema, the evolution of social norms and usages of technology.

India is the fourth country under my radar as I met the past few Indians and got a few folks from this part of the world on my social network. The country is another game-changer in the Asia Pacific.

Born and living in France, I am keen to balance my viewpoints from the Occidental and Oriental worlds. I am nurtured and shaped by different worlds, perhaps a pluriversal world as Sahana wrote in her excellent piece:

“The new narratives are the voices of many—connected across countries and nations, forests and islands, villages and cities—by values, beliefs, and wisdom sourced from the deepest of humanity. A wisdom that arises from living an entangled life with the living planet that is their home and provider of livelihood. They have long been stewards of their ecosystems—long before colonization, imperialism, industrialization, and then globalization displaced them.

They are once again becoming the harbingers of a new civilizational order—unencumbered by the one-size-fits-all Eurocentric narrative of development and progress.

A world that operates beyond the narrowness of ‘isms’ and dogmas.So new narratives are being woven. Strand by strand. Diverse contexts, cultures, communities are being woven together.

Yet not striving for homogeneity. Heterogeneity is the foundational value—a pluriversal world where many worlds fit. This is no longer about ‘scaling up’ but ‘scaling sideways’, and when needed, ‘scaling down’.

It is about entanglement, learning from each other, modifying, trying, failing, and then trying again.” 

With this extensive and endless focus on some parts of the Asian world, I am still figuring out ways to self-care, know myself and go deep into a fragmented world.

Pluriversal: Defragmenting Written & Visual Thinking

For the past Winter festive season, I grabbed the Greenlights Journal by Matthew McConaughey. As he introduces:

“Greenlights: Your Journal, Your Journey is a guided companion to the memoir Greenlights, filled with prompts, pithy quotes, adages, outlaw wisdom, and advice on how to live with greater satisfaction.”

It is sometimes not so easy to map our thoughts when we encounter challenges of fragmented writing. From this oldie on personal knowledge mastery’s activities and tools I use, I noticed that I often wrote on not an agnostic platform but on many ones: from Twitter and Slack to IM messaging tools and email, WordPress for my blog, a book, Google Keep and Google Apps, Office documents and Clickup documents.

So how can I unify and streamline those flows of writing into one river of write-ups?

My writing is still a weekly or bi-weekly activity, though. Even if it is planned, I’m not consistently doing it while being aware of this:

“I thought of myself as like the jazz musician: someone who practices and practices and practices in order to be able to invent and to make his art look effortless and graceful. I was always conscious of the constructed aspect of the writing process, and that art appears natural and elegant only as a result of constant practice and awareness of its formal structures.” – Toni Morrison

Perhaps, it is also worthwhile to consider these thoughts below as I have started from scratch and will carry on doing so with the Chinese and Cambodian New Year:

“This week, look for opportunities to bring self-compassion to your self-talk. How might you balance ownership and responsibility with kindness and maybe even a little levity?” – Andrea Howe

Pondering.

Pluriversal: Breaking Free Continuous Learning

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” – Confucius

I am learning about our learning communities, learning organisations and teams, the lifetime learner, the learning strategies and active learning. The focus on learning about culture and organisms is still one of my focuses.

Below are my latest thoughts in beta on distributed learning through a McLuhan tetrad.

In the context of the pandemic and beyond, how can continuous learning in network experience be designed, generated and hosted?

“In short, generative learning isn’t just ‘being actively involved with the subject matter’, but rather doing something with what you have to or want to learn. It’s generative when you produce new things like making a concept map or a drawing about the subject matter.” – Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

Perhaps this idea from the latest post by Helen Blunden is worth exploring:

“I find some things’ missing’ from the current rhetoric about modern work. What’s missing is creativity, empathy, human connections, social gatherings, personal learning, communication and community ).

In future, I’d like my new back yard to be a space where I can entertain people or bring people into this space and make it as some kind of social learning space where I can teach others to knit, or have French meetups or a neighbourhood book club – but these are just ideas at the moment.”

On the same wavelength for businesses?

“Set up a system to support learning. As business rapidly evolves, it’s clear there is a growing gap between those who learn well and quickly and those who do not. How are you increasing your capacity to synthesize new information? Developing the skill of mastering yourself will only compound and continue to pay dividends as the year’s march forward.” – Shannon Tipton, in one of her newsletters, January 2022

 

“Learning isn’t about the delivery of content. It’s the experience of content rich ideas, activities, processing time and reflection” – Kim Cofino

What if workplace learning experiences are designed with the resources from the Communities of Practice Playbook published by the European Commission?

The learning organisation, team, and society become a learning community building and hosting project with the members to unleash and enhance its learning and engagement potentials. Back to what I’ve reflected on through a community series I started last year.

I explore behind-the-scenes with approaches, canvas, and templates from experienced community professionals and newbies.

“A community is a group of people who agree to grow together.” – Simon Sinek

Pluriversal: Continuous Learning & the Tapestry Book

Did you enjoy this post? Discover the Tapestry book.