Footprints of Chaos and Order

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Footprints of Chaos (and Order)

• Adult Narratives of Growth Development
• CSER 2005
• Irene Karpiak, PhD
• Adult Higher Education
• University of Oklahoma

2
Introduction

• It is said that life has two stories a person
  sets out on a journey, and a stranger comes
  knocking on the door.

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Chaos in Literature Film

• Film Butterfly Effect
• Film Changing Lanes
• Novel Elective Affinities
• Similarly autobiographies could be analyzed
  through the lens of chaos and complexity
• The idea of turn of events, bifurcations, choices
  

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Outline of the Presentation

• To explore chaos complexity
• To consider its relationship to adult development
• To analyze student autobiographies
• Consider dimensions of bifurcation as singular
  moments in these students development

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Prigogine Order Out of Chaos

• A metaphor and a promising model for exploring
  how being in flux and far-from-equilibrium, can
  hold the potential for development
• . once you see that the world is sufficiently
  complex, then the problem of value becomes
  different. ..What we are doing leads to one of
  the branches of the bifurcation. Our action is
  constructing the future. Prigogine

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Highlighting Prigogine

• "the poet of thermodynamics"
• Being and Becoming toward increased complexity
  and order
• Self-transcendence vs. conservative
  self-organization (or generation vs.
  preservation)
• Bifurcation
• Order through Fluctuation
• Non-equilibrium properties

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Psychological Perspectives

• Ken Wilber (1995)
• Translation--horizontal development
• Transformation--vertical development
• Schroots (2000) Bifurcation as Branching
• Csikszentmihalyi (1993)
• Differentiation and Integration
• Schachtel (1984)
• Embeddedness vs.. Activity Affect
• Kegan (1982) Development a process of emergence
  from embeddedness

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Autobiography

• Every person has a story to be told
• Autobiography transforms story into written text
• Being Unique--Autobiography it focuses on the
  whole of ones life
• Provides opportunity for authors to
• Reflect on patterns of life
• Discover deeper meanings
• Consider the larger story revealed

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Function of Autobiography (for the author)

• See inside and to understand more about events
• Determine relevance of events and experiences
• Learn how I came to be who I am
• Bring the elements of his/her life to
  consciousness--into the light

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Autobiography Reveals (for the Researcher)

• Lifes turning points
• How these redirect lives down one path or another
• Moments and Efforts to deal deal with life events
• Choices
• Decisions
• Unique and shared aspects of human aging over the
  life span
• How society, culture or family patterns are
  reflected in individual lives

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The Practice of Autobiography

• Guidelines
• Imagine that a publisher has asked you to write
  five chapters of your life story. Consider a
  title for each of the chapters and write two to
  three pages for each chapter.

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Autobiography as Footprints of Chaos

• Autobiographies reveal the characteristics of
  self-renewal, disorder, and transformation
• Antonina
• Bifurcation/Choice to Self-renewal
• Juan
• Bifurcation/Choice to Disorder
• Gerard
• Bifurcation/Choice to Transformation

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Antoninas Autobiography Looking Back

• Chapter Titles
• Expectation
• Meeting Mother
• Troubled World
• In the Army Now
• Going Back

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Antonina Bifurcation/Choice to Self-Renewal

• I have come to the conclusion that my mother is
  not the person I wanted her to be and I have to
  accept that. I am incapable of molding another
  persons character. I came back a changed
  person.

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Juans Autobiography Mi Vida Loca

• Juans Chapter Titles
• Baby Steps
• Songs of Innocence
• Vulture Culture
• Peace, Pot, P, and Pink Floyd
• Songs of Experience

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Juan Bifurcation/Choice to Disorder

• I learned quickly that I was different from the
  white kids. I learned that I was always placed
  in the back of the room and that I mostly sat by
  myself at lunch and never got picked to play on
  the teams that were participating in recess.
• . My mother worked late hours at a factory so it
  was no problem for me to get home late. It was
  during this time that I got introduced to the
  four ps peace, pot, p., and Pink Floyd.

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Gerards Autobiography Through My Goggles

• Gerards Chapter Titles
• 1965
• The Shaping of a Mind
• Critical Exploration
• Resolution
• Where To?

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Gerard Bifurcation/Choice to Transformation

• Then it happened. .The class was an Introduction
  to Western Civilization, and at some point during
  that semester it dawned on me every civilization
  that we had studied had created some sort of
  religion to explain away the inexplicable. Some
  of these religions were very close, in concept,
  to my own and some were nowhere near. Who was
  right? Were we the right religion? Why?
  Because we thought of it? I could find no
  evidence to suggest that the tradition in which I
  was raised had any more credibility than any
  other tradition. I didnt have any (logical)
  business thinking that my myth was any more
  correct than any other societys myth. ..My new
  beliefs began to take shape.

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Relevant Concepts of Chaos

• We are always ready to evolve
• The important changes in life begin internally
• Fluctuation and Being Far from Equilibrium
• Bifurcation A Singular Moment A Moment of
  Truth
• Differentiation (novelty) Complexification
  (confirmation)
• Deep Structures vs. Surface Structures

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Concepts Contd

• Sanford (l981) two interacting elements to be
  essential to continuing personality development
  throughout life challenge and self-reflection.
  The challenge must be experienced with strength
  sufficient to upset the individual's equilibrium,
  while self-reflection and self-insight promote
  the integration of these changes within the
  personality.

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Alternative Paths of Development The Journey or
the Stranger

• Trigger event, internally or externally
  originating result in transformation (or chaos)
• The fluctuations increase to crisis
  (transformation or chaos)
• Embracing a fluctuation that initiates a
  transformation
• Embracing a Fluctuation abandonment and return
  to an earlier stable state

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Summary

• Given a challenge
• To recognize a challenge, one has to know how to
  let go of the tried and true, be open to
  possibilities, seek out novelty, be curious, be
  willing to take risks, and be experimental.

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Next Steps

• Summarize any actions required of your audience
• Summarize any follow up action items required of
  you

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References

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1993). The evolving self
  A psychology for the third millennium. New York
  HarperCollins Publishers.
• Kegan, R. (l982). The evolving self Problem and
  process in human development. Cambridge Harvard
  University Press.
• Prigogine, I. Stengers, I. (l984). Order out
  of chaos Man's new dialogue with nature. New
  York Bantam Books.
• Sanford, N. (l981). Notes toward a theory of
  personality development at eighty or any old age.
  In John-Raphael Staude (Ed.), Wisdom and Age.
  Berkeley Ross Books.
• Schroots, J. (1996). The fractal structure of
  lives Continuing and discontinuity in
  autobiography. In James Birren, Gary Kenyon,
  Jan-Erik Ruth, Johannes J. F. Schroots, and
  Torbjorn Svensson (Eds.). Aging and biography
  Explorations in adult development. New York
  Springer Publishing, pp. 117-130.
• Ernest G. Schachtel, Metamorphosis On the
  development of affect, perception, attention, and
  memory, New York De Capo Press, 1984.
• von Goethe, J. W. (1971). Elective Affinities,
  Trans. R. J. Hollingdate. London Penguin.
• Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, ecology, and
  spirituality The spirit of evolution. Boston
  Shambhala