Here are student summaries of fall 2024 MCJD dialogical surveys with the Street Roots community. Click on any title for details, then return to see all titles.
Lessons from Flash Philosophy
Event: Street RootsInterviewer: Lucy
Whom did you interview?
I talked with a man named Flash, who grew up in Virginia. Flash is passionate about learning, recently obtaining certificates from Johns Hopkins and Columbia University. From our conversation, I could easily tell that Flash is a very kind, funny, and intelligent person who’s great at talking philosophy. I was continually impressed with his ability to see & appreciate the other side of each survey question, always giving well-rounded answers that had me questioning how much I actually knew about the world around me.
How did your EcoTypes and SDG priorities compare?We didn’t end up getting to end part of discovering EcoTypes or deciding top SDGs, but I left the discussion feeling so fulfilled by taking time to go deep into each scale, questioning the root of where they come from and how that measures up in today’s society. It ended up being more of a philosophy discussion with guided talking points than a survey, and I had many of the same priorities and understandings of the world that Flash did. If we seemed to have a disagreement, it was usually only due to a lack in my knowledge, however as soon as Flash explained his takes on the matter I quickly realized his priorities and underlying messages lined up with my own. For example, I thought of myself as more drawn to the left side of the Time spectrum within the Knowledge catagory, in that I thought we should prioritize looking back into the past to find solutions. While Flash agreed that we should ideally try to learn from past mistakes, he pointed out how it’s impossible to see the future, (which is really the same as trying to replicate the past), so oftentimes solutions that have worked in the past may not work for the future. His take, summed up, was how we should ideally live in the moment according to what tools we have now.
What larger MCJD lessons did you learn?This conversation tied perfectly into MCJD. Although Flash and I agreed on almost everything, he helped me see perspectives in a deeper and more well-rounded way than I had ever thought about them previously. Certain topics, such as Social Scale in the Action theme, I thought previously that I didn’t have much opinion on. However, after Flash asked me guiding questions, and explained his ideas on the matter, I realized that I had more of an opinion than I had previously thought. I couldn’t articulate my thoughts on the impact of individual action vs collective action as well as he could, but I did care about the issue in my own way. My discussion with Flash drove home the value of approaching every interaction with the mindset of seeking new knowledge and taking every chance to learn.