Ian Coxon
After leaving Denmark our small band established a network from London to New York designed to contribute towards an Ecology of Care (EoC). The EoC project was about building networks of individuals and organisations promoting human and ecological priority (Putting people before profit, productivity and efficiency). Our principle goal was to promote the things that matter to human beings and making each human being matter. That is, promoting equality, quality of life, meaning and the realization of full potential for self and community while being mindful of our responsibility to the worlds ecology. It failed to get sufficient traction and was abandoned. What a shame.
Address: Brisbane, Australia
Address: Brisbane, Australia
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I refuse to accept the inevitability of a world ruled by machines. This talk is all about the importance of being human and how Care and Caring is a definition of that.
It’s the same situation every time. I’m in a bar or at a dinner party. I meet someone new and the inevitable question is posed, ‘So what is it that you do?’ I cringe, knowing from experience that this can go one of two ways, and neither is usually very much fun for anyone. And so I begin the now familiar dance of the Experience Design explanation.
Stage one, “I am a researcher and teacher in an engineering faculty.” ”Oh yes,” they reply (the initial naïve interest which leads to the next dangerous question). “So what is it you teach?” (A fatal question, because now I have to explain it.) “I teach engineers about human experience,” (they usually look at me with total bewilderment or the intelligent ones nod as if they understand and kill the conversation there; the novices tend to plough on).
“What do you mean by experience?” they usually ask. I fire back, “You know what experience is right?” “Yeah sure.” “So what is it?” I hit them with, a little aggressively. (Now is when they look like a deer caught in a car’s headlights and the beginnings of that, “I wish I hadn’t asked” look). I usually feel sorry for them by this stage and soften off the conversation by beginning to explain. “OK, so we are sitting here in this room right, talking and drinking, eating food, etc. We are in this place having an experience together, but what is that thing we call experience? And how would you explain that something to someone else? How would you begin to understand it in any kind of structured or organized way?” This is when the foolhardy push on and want to know more, and the less foolhardy say “thank you,” and suddenly need more wine or to be somewhere else, where the “normal” people are.
shaping Care. The interpretation of Care that I use here, draws on
Martin Heidegger's seminal text Being and Time (1962) describing
Care as those processes of human existence and living, the
everyday experiences and activities of life, that help to constitute a
person's mode of Being. In other words, I take as a central theme
that the term Care describes a human-in-the-process-of-Being.
Furthermore, this text presents an exploration of the role that
trans-subjectivity plays in shaping Care as described through a
Model of Care. The modelling of Care used here, describes four
key elements of each person's life (namely, Experience, Living, Projection and Time) that shape their mode of Being. A person's mode of being is what makes them uniquely individual, something that develops and evolves as their life unfolds. It is the intention of this chapter to
demonstrate how Care is a central theme in any
understanding of who human beings are and how trans-subjectivity
is vital to the processes of shaping a mode of Care that characterises
each and every human being. Understanding the dynamic
interplay between trans-subjectivity and Care will help researchers
better understand the way that human beings encounter, interact
with and impact upon the world in which they live. In other
words, each person's mode of Being (Care) while immediately as
well as historically affected by trans-subjectivity, is ultimately
determined by them (consciously or not) and thus, each person is
responsible for the end results of their actions (intended or not).