If I can hear the owl, so can every rabbit within half a mile, so why does it hoot?

“Watch out, bunnies! There’s an owl on the prowl!” What kind of owl wants to send that message?

But then it occurred to me that maybe no bunny ever born associates that sound with owls, and in and of itself it’s an extraordinarily pleasant sound, almost like a lullaby.

Owls singing their prey into a false sense of security! That’s a thought with “Harvey Sarles” all over it!

http://fsc.fernbank.edu/birding/bird_sounds/great_horned%20_owl.mp3 

J.F.

My teacher, Ray Birdwhistell, remains in my thinking – fairly full-time. He studied the physical-interaction of persons communicating – and called that study, “Kinesics.” I was trained, inspired by him, and worked with him for  a few years – he “got” me a job at Western Psychiatric Clinic in Pittsburgh, while he was working mostly at Eastern Psychiatric Clinic in Philadelphia.

He worked at observing the interactions between persons – especially between Psychiatrist-Physicians and their patients, in the many contexts of patient-doctor interactions. He wrote, spoke, lectured, taught this many persons – and had several colleagues with whom he communicated regularly (google Margaret Mead, Albert Sheflen, Gregory Bateson – he first student was Erving Goffman, I was this next one.)

His work went very well – for several years – then…there occurred two “revolutions” in the academic and psychiatric world – and Birdwhistell and friends (and students) were no longer “taken seriously” in the contexts of linguistics nor psychiatry.

In psychiatry, there occurred a “grand change” – from doctor-patient interactions – to the “treatment” primarily by drugs. Continuing still.

In (anthropological) linguistics, famous scholar, public intellectual, Noam Chomsky, “invoked” a long-dead scholar whose ideas “sold immensely” and altered the study of human-interaction – to the study of language-as-syntax. Rene Descartes said (still does, somehow) that “I think, therefore I am” – and bypassed the study of the human-in-interaction, including “kinesics.” Gone, gone, still affecting and shaping my life and career.

Birdwhistell – who mainly followed the ideas of Social Interactionism of George Herbert Mead (“Mind, Self, and Society,”  especially – also see my book: “Language and Human Nature” – are growing in popularity in the field of Child Development, where it is being pursued as “Attachment Theory” – especially the study of infants and their m/others.

This is to say, that we continue to have “arguments” about what is “human nature” (even about what is “real”)

And Kinesics is just re-emerging as we are more critical students of the history of philosophy (especially Western Philosophy from Plato to today) – rather than observing interactions-behavior-kinesics. 

Thank you for being interested in Birdwhistell and his Kinesics, and in helping to re-open the study of the human (perhaps, especially, the study of one’s observations of others, and of the world.)

A recent creation of three of us: myself, Karl Rogers, and Jerry Timian – in the contexts of “The John Dewey Study of Democracy and Education” – will explore these ideas in the various contexts where they occur…in these most interesting and “changing” times.”

Thank you Julia.

Harvey Sarles

I am a mass communication and currently conducting a study in Nonverbal Communication. 

I just wanted to say I really look up to Birdwhistell. He did a very hard study about kinesics. In this present time, people nowadays don’t give importance to this kind of field and I guess not even aware. 

I chose this as my subject for research because I wanted to let the people be aware that there’s such thing as kinesics. It’s not only about Physical Education rather also communicating with others.

Although I am having a very hard time with the finding sources to support my study. And I don’t even have the enough money to buy the books. And I doubt, books related to kinesics or body language are not even available in my country or they are pretty expensive. 

I hope I can get a respond from you!

Julia

Taking a class with Harvey Sarles is a memorable experience.  For me it was a mere two years ago now, the fall semester 2009, in second-story classroom of Nicholson Hall.  At 11 am, the room was always well-lit, and we would usually draw the desks out into a circle, our illustrious professor occupying one among us, and his books the desk beside him.

On the first day of class, Harvey encouraged us to view anthropology as the fundamental discipline.  The study of the human as the core of all human studies.  The class was “On Human Nature.”

Over the course of three-or-so months, Harvey led us in yoga, orchestrated visits from a student’s toddler (and his father) and later a few professors from Denmark, gave a reading from his book Next Places, performed Bach on his violin…and

There were no multiple choice tests, and there were no fill-in-the-blanks and turn-it-in-for-a-grade hand-outs – the type of assignment a wants to respond “You made me say something, so why does the poor quality offend you?”

Looking back on the class, I feel – I don’t want to say – sorrow, but perhaps that it the best way to describe what I mean…for missing the opportunity to ask good questions, while I griped to myself about his unusual teaching style.  I never believed his excuse that senility had made him prone to repeat himself so often.  Perhaps I was distracted wanting to learn something I already knew…already knew how to learn.

Yet over the course of three+ months, Harvey introduced us to yoga, orchestrated visits from a female student’s two-year-old boy (and his father) and later three professors from Denmark, gave a reading from his book Next Places, performed Bach on his violin…and introduced us to a very big concept, the best life…encouraging all of us to pursue this.  Over time, I have come to see that time as a sacred experience.

When considering habits, I like to think first of a monk’s garb…of how a body chosen, or shall who say “who chooses”, to follow the way of the ascetic in, here, the Roman Catholic tradition…of how this body bears as clothing, ritually, the habit.  To cover his nakedness.

I like to think that the best monk…or the monk, in his best-lived life…I like to think he has gotten beyond shame.  Even then, his habit will still go far in protecting, from cold, or the sun’s potentially destructive rays.  And his shall-we-say nondescript garb even goes so far as to decorate the monk’s life.  To lend it a certain…specific…style.

Yes…and who among us can live without habits?  If freedom permits even one of us such tremendous liberty, we still of course live among others’ habits.

Now that even a study of Huxely’s “The Art of Seeing” cannot correct my naked eyes to an adequate degree, I ponder the meaning of reading for me.  How my vision has deteriorated during times of reading in poor light…or reading for reading’s sake, after the energy I have had for it is long gone.  And I also ponder over the subject of how the presence I have given to books, to the dead letter, has made me inanimate before the persons now present to me, now gone…

Lao Tzu writes that a sign of true moderation is the ability to be free of one’s own ideas.  My idea is that reading has, for me, become a bad habit, a harmful addiction.  But my trial seems to be whether I can go on reading…to read moderately…when reading has always become unhealthy for me.  Another idea has been…and this has worked at various times…for a time…to “quit reading altogether”…another idea, hardly moderate…

That is spirituality.

To put my 10 cents worth in, briefly, the problem is that the formula knowledge=power has been reversed to power=knowledge. Through the media, narrowcasting (shaping news and information in accordance with the prejudices of the target audience,) and the fragmentation of the Internet, wherein people use the sites that reinforce their beliefs and prejudices, knowledge has become subordinate to ideology. Critique is seen as an attack, to be evaulated in terms of who says it and which ideology they subscribe to.

Epistemology (the study of the rules by which something can be considered knowledge) has quite simply become swept away by the power to control media, itself dominated by the tyranny of the bottom line. Power=knowledge.

What we are witnessing is a civil war of minds…. the battle for the construction of a totalitarian worldview.

Sorry, Harvey, I couldn’t resist.

That we live in an age where proprietors, armed with contracts and the threat of violence, have corralled knowledge, the kine of collective memory: is this just another tragedy of the commons? Who laments the privatization of ideas? Who sees this privatization as an indicator of sickness?

If someone, some group, some network, owns knowledge, then who owns the thoughts that constitute it? Who owns the fields? Who owns the tanks? Who owns the plains?

Who owns the Spring? The Stream? The River?

The Cities? The Bluffs? Who owns the Islands?

Who owns Coal? Oil? Nuclear Decay?

The Mounds? The Soil? Who owns our own Fall?

These questions are not asked in jest. People are laying claim to every nook and cranny of the planet. Every one of these people surely has a name and a face. Every one of them falls asleep at night. I’m sure they tell themselves stories before bed that explain why it’s good to own sacred things. Maybe these stories help them dream of life as plunder.

Would this world be healthier and more interconnected if we treated these “resources” as vital organs to be cared for and exercised rather than as mere instruments to be plucked and blowed whenever and however we want? Would this world be any less sick if we gave up on our beliefs in entitlement?

I think the links at the bottom of each of your post say so much. Share, tweet, share, share.