::: ideas

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A Little Bit of Background

This concept was presented to me by John Bennion, a professor of English at BYU. We discussed this in my Wilderness Writing class as well as in an earlier class connected to the INHUT program I was involved with over the summer.

The Concept

Basically, the proposed paradigm shift is basically interested in adding a third element, that of the medium, or mode of communication along with the idea of reality in the center. This addition changes the focus from the one-way “arrow” of sender-receiver to a triangle of interpretation all surrounding reality.

Application

The applications of this are perhaps most prevalent in regards to writing, where the individual is confronted with the question of communication and relationships with ideas, reality, and others.

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For more information on the one who developed this idea, visit the link below to a brief biographical sketch of James Kinneavy.

http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/1999-2000/memorials/Kinneavy/kinneavy.html

A Little Bit of Background

I first considered the nature of a spiral staircase as a means for understanding cycles and patterns in life when a teacher (Ms. Gardner) taught it to me in 12th grade. The idea was presented, if my memory serves me correctly, in the context of Mark Twain’s “The Innocents Abroad” and the overall idea of a RETURN TO INNOCENCE that was so prevelant in the Romantic Literature we were studying at the time.

The Concept

Life is inherantly cyclical. Often we continually return to the same ideas, concepts, experiencess, or actions. As we return to them, however, there is something different in us (for better or for worse). We are no longer the same individual. This fact enables us to gain greater depth of understanding or highth of vantage point. It enables us to ever be learning even when the words don’t change, and what makes both a experienced individual and a novice able to learn from the same lecture.

Application

The most powerful application of this principle for me personally is in its relationship to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The baisc principles of faith, repentance, baptism (or the renewal of the baptismal covenant through the sacrament), and the Gift of the Holy Ghost are continually repeated over and over throughout a lifetime. There is, however, a constant flow of new understandings as one progresses (not in a linear sense, but in a circular or spiral sense). Just as someone walks up the spiral staircase and even though they are continually passing through the same quadrants (if viewed two dimensionally), they are an ever-higher level. In other words, the spiral staircase is a much better image of the “staircase to heaven” than a flight of stairs.

Another applicaiotn of this idea is found in the original context in which I learned about it. In life we often find ourelves wandered from innocence to experience and then returning to innocence. This return is not, however, a complete reversial or undoing of what was done. Instead it is a return that takes us one level higher (or lower) as the case may be.