Day 4

Coming to class today, I thought about my deliberate peace action for the day, trying not to get worked up if I don't finish all my planned activities for the day. The problem was that I could not recollect what I had dreamt up the previous night. Upon opening my laptop in class, I realised that yes, I didn't finish all the lessons I had planned. It was yet another day with a setback that was not planned. But, recounting the morning, I realised that I had achieved the goal I set out for and I was not annoyed by it in the least. 

We started with a discussion of Technical vs Adaptive problem-solving. It came up as part of what power grants to you. Thinking about this in class, I was puzzled by the two distinctions. Every possible problem I could think of was adaptive. Every possible solution was technical. There was a direct address to a problem that arose. Fixing a toilet is a problem, yes, but it also has to be adaptive. Unclogging it might be short-term (technical), but it will just get clogged again by the toddler who loves flushing his toys away (adaptive). Now we might tell the toddler to stop doing that (technical), and then he simply moves on to pressing soap down the shower drain (adaptive). You can treat every problem as technical or adaptive, why distinguish the problem? Why not address it as a mindset. Why not say there are technical leaders and adaptive leaders? The problems will always be problems and how you treat them changes their nature. Knowing how to treat the problem makes you adaptive or technical. 

Now for the conundrum part and prelude to my peace action. On day one, we were informed about the policy regarding the presenter not sharing his slides because of what had happened to him and his work. Someone had stolen his work and held a presentation passing his work as their own. Upon confrontation, the person who stole his intellectual property refused to admit their wrongdoing and held firm that they were the said owner of the content. Being a pacifist, he held true to his beliefs and made peace with the situation.

Fast forward to class. I got distracted by the notion of technical and adaptive problems and missed a great deal of the second half of the lecture. I'm used to not taking notes in class and have come to rely on resources being shared after a lecture. I was warned by both the presenter and my colleague that there will be no slides shared and still, I mistakingly didn't change my habits and didn't take any notes. 

I now sit at the crossroads of what is a "just war". My lecturer has been done an injustice and refuses to be hurt again in the same fashion. Very defensive. I need the resources that were presented in class to aid me in my studies, but can't have access to them because of the pain that has been caused by others. In all other cases, I would have access to the information that was presented in class. 

Now my Daily Peace Action (challenge):

Do I make peace with the fact that me and my fellow classmates now have limited access to information due to someone else's wrongdoing or do I stand up for what is right and continue to argue for the right to access information after it was discussed?  

PS. I still don't know what the 6 principles are principles of. A picture taken out of context means very little. These 6 principles could just as easily be related to football team dynamics. 




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