My Lineage
lin·e·age (n): A descent in a line from a common progenitor (Merriam-Webster)
I find it helpful to understand the intellectual ancestry of a person: what books, mentors, and experiences shaped them? Where do they “come from,” so to speak, and on what do they draw? In what context do they situate themself? This sort of personal history can be an important way to know each other, and a useful shorthand to find common topics or language. For me, it blurs the focus on the individual (my ideas, my views, my writing, etc.) and reorients towards the collective that necessarily shaped the views I express here.
Ironically, I don’t see lineage as linear. It’s more of a spiral of interconnected influences. Just as I see curriculum development as a spiral of neighboring (and sometimes overlapping) topics and evolutions, so I see my own development that way as well—my own personal life curriculum, I suppose.
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