evaluation and reflection

"assessing and incorporating the lessons we learn through action"

So I figured I would have to write a blog about this since I have been writing all of the arts of democracy in sequential order and I would eventually get to this. And I figured that for this blog I would assess how I as an individual have been implementing the arts of democracy in my daily life. So, as I thought about the different arts of democracy which I use everyday, like negotiation and active listening, I found that since the beginning of this class I have not effectively began using the skills I've learned in a way that has actually made a difference in my democratic encounters.

So, I decided that for the next disagreement I got into, no matter who it was with or what it was about, I would at least try to incorporate the arts of negotiation and active listening since they seemed like the easiest both to do and to implement. Unfortunately, the other individual who I was arguing hadn't taken arts of democracy and had no intention of implementing any of its arts when it came to our disagreement. And I finally broke down and just went back to my usual way of ending a disagreement with this person, which would be to use some poor words and then we wouldn't speak for awhile until we had both forgotten about the disagreement. (which should show that most of what we argue about is very petty, since we forget about it so quickly, which should be a lesson to me just to bite my tongue and not get into the disagreement in the first place.)

Which, is exactly what I've been trying to do when it comes to most of my disagreements: bite my tongue and try not to get into one. Maybe that's not the art of democracy that we were supposed to learn when it came to this class, but it's one I've learned over the past while. While I have difficulty sticking to the biting the tongue policy since I have such a quick and sharp one, I'm trying my best. And in any case, prevention is supposed to be the best policy, isn't it?