Warp & Woof

v.1.3

Welcome to Warp & Woof, a blog from William Sundwick. Its purpose is to share with its readers some ways to navigate the philosophical, moral and aesthetic dimensions of life.

It is not a scholarly blog, but the author hopes that his own life experience and reading can inform his readers’ journeys through such realms.

He wants to share some things that he believes matter, not “fake news,” and he will offer frequent enough doses to motivate you to keep checking in. Comments are welcome. While Blogger requires you to identify yourself via your email address, the author will anonymize any comments before publishing them.

Warp & Woof has a structure. There are five departments of thinking (pages) -- but some entries may be cross-posted in more than one department. These five “realms of deliberation” are:

The Present

    … what matters, for sure!

 

                     The Past

                              … what used to matter       

                                                               

                                                                              

                                             The Future

                                                      … what may matter, who knows?

 

                             Totems

                                    … objects that matter (or mattered)  

                        

Beats

    … sounds that matter, since we never get tired of hearing them! 

Author’s Introduction

Switching to the first person now and translating -- readers can expect entries dealing with health and wellness for seniors (that’s me) in The Present, along with musings on bigger psychological/philosophical issues. This includes a fair dose of writing on child development (I spend some time babysitting my grandchildren).  

The Past will be filled with lots of hopefully knowledgeable meanderings around politics, sociology and history. I’m a liberal arts type, undergraduate major in history, and professional librarian for something like 30 years before imperceptibly transitioning to IT professional. I retired from the Library of Congress in 2015, after 42 years at that institution. History and politics are very big topics for me, despite their vague and uncertain impact on the present or future.

Exciting (to me) developments in science and technology will be found in The Future, along with a healthy dose of fear about things like global warming and other planetary or civilizational catastrophe! Perhaps I have an apocalyptic frame of reference -- most of my thinking about economics and anthropology belongs in The Future. Economics covers consumer behavior and marketing, both interesting fields for me. Anthropology deals with primitive roots of tribal life, which I claim will become more apparent in the future, as more complex social arrangements break down, putting sociology in The Past. The Future is not the place for invective about the status of American politics -- that belongs on the page for The Past!

On the page for Totems, you will find lots of apparently senseless, but exciting for me, information about cars, past, present, and future. I’m a “car guy”, by virtue mostly of my upbringing as a General Motors brat in Flint, Michigan during the fifties and sixties. I’m not a car guy mechanic, however. I never open the hood or crawl under my own vehicle (much less anybody else’s!), but a car guy who was raised in, and by, mid-century American “car culture.”

Finally, on the Beats page, another personal obsession gets its due: rock music, from the origins in the Great Migration, through the British Invasion, hard blues, acid rock, punk, metal, techno. If anybody thinks these genres are still alive, please let me know! I’ve “got my ear down to the ground” to paraphrase Jim Morrison, When the Music’s Over. Yes, there is audio here, via YouTube videos.

That’s been the concept. Version 1.0 of Warp & Woof launched on Ground Hog Day, 2017.  I made some changes to the layout and design recently, for v.1.2 (sounds better than v.1.1).  And, true confessions, this v.1.3 is informed by two-and-a-half years in my Arlington, VA Writers Group. These folks may be my only audience – except when I beg my Facebook friends and relatives to read my posts. I hope my mission statement remains unchanged at least through version 2.0; i.e., helping my readers see the “big picture” more clearly, making the complex simple, and having fun while we expand both our peripheral vision and depth perception!                      

         

Me, at Filene Center, Wolf Trap, 2018

                                                        

Warp & Woof

v.1.2

Welcome to Warp & Woof, a blog from William Sundwick. Its purpose is to share with its readers some ways to navigate the philosophical, moral and aesthetic dimensions of life.

It is not a scholarly blog, but the author hopes that his own life experience and reading can inform his readers’ journeys through these realms.

He wants to share some of the things that he believes matter, not “fake news,” and he will offer a frequent enough dose to motivate you to keep checking in. Comments are welcome. While Blogger requires you to identify yourself via your email address, the author will anonymize any comments before publishing them.

It has a structure. There are five departments of thinking (pages) … but, some entries may be cross-posted in more than one department. These five “realms of deliberation” are:

The Present

    … what matters, for sure! 

 The Past

       … what used to matter     

  

                                                               

                                                                            

                                                   The Future

                                                       … what may matter, who knows?

                                                    Totems

     … objects that matter (or mattered)  

                         

Beats

    … sounds that matter, since we never get tired of hearing them! 

Author’s Introduction

Switching to the first person now and translating -- readers can expect entries dealing with health and wellness for seniors (that’s me) in The Present, along with musings on bigger psychological/philosophical issues. This includes a fair dose of writing on child development (I spend much time babysitting my grandchildren).  

The Past will be filled with lots of hopefully knowledgeable meanderings around politics, sociology and history. I’m a liberal arts type, undergraduate major in history, and professional librarian for something like 30 years before imperceptibly transitioning to IT professional. I retired from the Library of Congress in 2015, after 42 years at that institution.

Exciting (to me) developments in science and technology will be found in The Future, along with a healthy dose of fear about things like global warming and other planetary or civilizational catastrophe! Perhaps that is my apocalyptic frame of reference -- and includes most of my thinking about economics and anthropology. Economics, in turn, covers consumer behavior and marketing, both interesting fields for me. But, The Future is not the place for invective about the current state of American politics -- those things belong on the page for The Past!

On the page for Totems, you will find lots of apparently senseless information about cars, past, present, and future. I’m a “car guy”, by virtue mostly of my upbringing as a General Motors brat in Flint, Michigan during the fifties and sixties. I’m not a car guy mechanic, however. I never open the hood or crawl under my own vehicle (much less anybody else’s!), but a car guy who was raised in, and by, mid-century American “car culture.”

Finally, on the Beats page, another personal obsession gets its due: rock music, from the origins in the Great Migration, through the British Invasion, hard blues, acid rock, punk, metal, techno. If anybody thinks this genre is still alive, please let me know! I’ve “got my ear down to the ground” to paraphrase Jim Morrison, When the Music’s Over. Yes, there is audio here, via YouTube videos.

That’s been the concept. Version 1.0 of Warp & Woof launched on Ground Hog Day, 2017.  I’ve made some changes to the layout and design recently, for a v.1.2 (sounds better than v.1.1).  I hope my mission statement remains unchanged at least through version 2.0; i.e., helping my readers see the “big picture” more clearly, making the complex simple, and having fun while we expand both our peripheral vision and depth perception!                     

                                                      Me, with grandson Owen (Oct. 2017) 

                       

Poetic Elegance of Erik Erikson, p.2

                                                     (continued from p.1)

5.   Tension: identity vs. role confusion (virtue = “fidelity”) … the big adolescent tension, who am I? But, don’t we all continue to be confronted throughout life with choices of roles – me vs. not me?  The literature in the sixties often spoke of gender orientation as a good example of a crisis which could cause a fall back to an earlier stage, unable to successfully resolve a “nonconforming” gender/sexual orientation due to social pressure. That’s less of an issue today, but perhaps not totally absent, yet, in certain segments of society. But, don’t we often have demands placed upon us, by some compelling authority, which simply DO NOT FIT who we feel we are. If that leads to job change, there could be a snowball effect with livelihood, family, community, etc. … all leading to a throwback to an earlier stage. I believe I had such an experience with teaching, in my youthful exuberance after college, which led to my moving to the DC area, and back to Stage 3 or 4.

6.   Tension: intimacy vs. isolation (virtue = “love”) … ahhh, the memories! The loneliness of late adolescence (i.e., the horniness!). I’m sure I don’t need to say anything more about this tension to any divorced, or widowed, adult! Loss of an intimate partner can surely propel one backwards to an earlier, more comfortable, resolved, stage of development – stage 5, at least! Fortunately, I have not had such an experience (yet), but I can imagine the devastation I would feel at the loss of my wife of 34 years.

7.    Tension: generativity vs. stagnation (virtue = “care”) … those of us who think we’ve successfully resolved this tension, know that it (and all the previous stages) must have resolution before achieving the final virtue of “wisdom”. We know about the pandemic of “career burnout”, taking away the sense of achievement in your career. That even had an impact on my own retirement decision, when I felt I had done all the damage I could to the institution! But, then I found that I had to establish new “retirement competencies” (Stage 4?), like writing a blog! And, isn’t failure to secure “caring” one of the leading causes of divorce (i.e., stagnation)?

8.   Tension: ego integrity vs. despair (virtue = “wisdom”) … yes, here we are, today. Despair is also described in some of Erikson’s writing as “disgust”: that is, self-disgust. The central question is really: have I been a good person? I Can’t help but wonder where our President is in this stage of psychosocial development, now … also, isn’t intellectual honesty part of the picture? Do I really believe what I say, or write? Readers may speculate …

I only discovered in researching Erikson’s eight stages that, shortly before her death twenty years ago, at age 93, Joan Erikson published an article which postulated a ninth stage of psychosocial development, she characterized it as something which happens mostly to people who live as long as she, and it encapsulates all previous eight stages, but inverted … unwinding, as it were! Until, ultimately, one is left with Distrust vs. Trust … when you realize that, in the end, you are clearly alone and abandoned! Perhaps religious beliefs may help to counteract this realization, at least historically: discussion, debate?

Erikson’s influence has grown since the 1960s, until now, when the “Eight Stages …” are fundamental components of any understanding of developmental psychology. Like many psychosocial theories, Erikson’s has both supporters and detractors. He acknowledged that his theory was more descriptive than predictive, certainly not prescriptive, but it still stands on its own as a beautifully balanced portrait of an idealized lifespan, truly elegant in its structure, and its language. He uses the term “epigenesis” to describe his theory, “beyond genetics”. The critics tend to focus on his lack of prescriptive therapeutic practice. But, to this student, at least, the expansion beyond Freud’s emphasis on the id is seminal. It allows us to see psychosocial development as a life-long process, not something which is completed in adolescence -- Freud’s “genital” stage of development. Although, Erikson’s entry point was adolescent psychology (hence, my early fascination?), it is the life-encompassing nature of the theory that generates its “poetic elegance.”