On the road

Currently out and about - almost through a week of being away for work. Think academics, butchers paper, high rotation morning teas, suit cases, musty hotel rooms, strange randomly found moments of real conection and honesty in conversations with complete strangers on topics from society's percetions of the nature of science and how this ignores the essential notion of uncertainty and privilidges quantification irrespective of context, to the ego's atachment to opinions and the idea of 'philosophical maturity' which instead allows people to examine new ideas without personal investment, to the nature transdisciplinarity as it relates to those working in systems thinking / sciences, to exactly how different the $3 extra a glass shiraz is compared with the house red. And that.

Presented a paper yesteday - nothing earth shatering - just preesnting a technique for education for sustainability and drawing out some commonalities between some exsting programs. Nonetheless got 2 questions and at least 3 people afterwards keen to find out more because they want to learn from the case studies to apply it to the work they're doing. So that's cool.

Have been patronised by older male academics at least twice. The moment I especially loved was last night when as we sat around waiting for dinner to be served and musing on the afternoon's workshop, we started discussing a particular group technique that was used in the workshop:

Older male academic 1 - 'so what did you all think of that technique?'
Older male academics 2 and 3 - 'oh I'm very familiar with it, used it many times, but I suppose it was useful for those who haven't..' and 'oh yes it can be useful but you know you have to be very prepared, and experienced for it to work..'
Older male academic 2 - 'yes sometimes these things don't work. I remember once in Canberra I had a comeplete failure..'
Me (thinking, yah, this sounds interesting, rare frankess here) - 'oh, what didn't work about it? was it the people, was it because you could have prepared for it differently? What do you think made it a failure?'
Academic 2 (loking at me like I am a frog) - 'well, you know, there were many factors... (I keep looking expectantly). Well, you know the people weren't all that willing to be there. I think the instructions could have been better. The other organisers were - well, maybe I shouldn't have taken the job.'
(We all get up and start moving to diner.)
Academic 2 - (says dismissively) 'Over time you'll get to experience it, you'll have your share of failures.' (or similar)
Me gobsmacked says nothing. But I THINK 'how presumptuous of you to assume that I haven't already been running processes like that for years and don't already have a wealth of experience to draw on. In fact, I was really only asking you because I was mildly interested in some one else's experiences AND TO BE POLITE!!! You sir, seem to be a boring old self-satisfied fart - good evening.'

Or similar.

Musing that it is sometimes hard to be taken 'seriously' (if serious is the measure we aspire to) when you smile nicely, are young (relative to the bulk of folk there), are female and act friendly and interested in other people. There are still a lot of assumptions that people carry around about who has ideas worth offering and what kind of package those ideas will arrive in. If you don't have a beard, a scowl, a mouthful of jargon and a post as a dean of a school you become part of the room decorations (to some). As if you coudn't train a monkey* to chuckly self righteously and talk about epistemology. Mind you, anyone who would operate out of that framework of assumptions is not really someone who's ideas I'm as interested in engaging with as someone radical enough to approach these events with an open mind and willingness to take people as they come.

*I'm not meaning to insult monkeys here. Monkeys are far clever than us as far as I can see as they seem to be able to live to the end of their days without falling under the weight of existential angst and needing medication to get out of bed, without threatening their supply of clean water, air and soil just to make pretty plastic toys to entertain themselves, without leaving each other to die unnoticed in small concrete cells, and without needing to extinguish whole other species through ignorance and selfishness. Oops - didn't mean to sound too misanthropic there, sorry. Must be the bad conference coffee and lack of air...?