Social Mapping Syllabus

Description:

Social Mapping leads you through a process of exploring great issues of our time, beginning with the issue of Conceptual Imprisonment. To encourage you to rely on your own sensibilities rather than on what others prescribe, the course begins with an emphasis on the need to transcend illusions, prejudices, self-limiting ideologies, and other forms of conceptual imprisonment that diminish us as individuals, separate us into warring camps, and perpetuate the endless cycle of misadventures, destruction, and despair that humankind endures. Each week you will be asked to write your thoughts and feelings about one or two of the great issues. The sum of your opinions becomes your Social Map. To learn what others have written about each great issue, you will have access to a Database of Social Maps.

Texts & Materials:
NAVIGATING THE MAZEWAY; Fulfilling Our Best Possibilities As Individuals and As a Society by Anthony J. Parrotto.
Additional resources will be provided.

Course Schedule:
Week 1: Introduction to Social Mapping and to the issue of Conceptual Imprisonment.
READINGS:
• Access website: mazeway.com Review the first four categories: (1) Introduction, (2) Life Mapping, (3) Social Mapping, and (4) MetaVisioning.

Week 2: Education
READINGS:
• Pages 3-45 of the book, Navigating the Mazeway: Fulfilling Our Best Possibilities As Individuals and As a Society,  by Anthony J. Parrotto.

Week 3: Leadership & Followership
READINGS:
• Prologue: The Crisis of Leadership from James MacGregor Burns’ book, Leadership.

Week 4: Natural Resources & The Environment
READINGS:
• Chapter 1, A Fable for Tomorrow, and Chapter 17, The Other Road, from Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring.
• World and United States: Trends Toward Disaster? by Robert Kupp.

Week 5: Overpopulation and Healthcare
READINGS/VIEWING:
• MegaCrisis? Overpopulation Is The Problem by Gioietta Kuo.
• Control Cash Not People Asoka Bandarage.
• Money & Business — The Dobbs Report.
• On the Healthcare Question by Constantine A. Manthous.
• Access the talk on www.Ted.com: How Do We Heal Medicine by Atul Gawande.

Week 6: Governance and Corruption
READINGS:
• Chapter 4, Governance – With And Without Government from Walter Truett Anderson’s book,
All Connected: Life In The First Global Society.
• Global Public Policy Networks as Coalitions for Change by Charlotte Streck.

Week 7: Planned vs. Market Economies
READINGS:
• The Free Market and the Interventionist State by Richard M. Ebeling.
• The Free Market: The Area of Individual and Social Growth by Oscar B. Johannsen.
• Free-market Thinkers by Charles Scaliger.
• Invisible Fist by Paul Gottfried.

Week 8: Globalization and Poverty
READINGS:
• Chapter 14, Toward a Global Open Society from Walter Truett Anderson’s book, All Connected: Life In The First Global Society.
• Website: www.globalissues.org Access from the Most Popular Articles column, Causes of Poverty.

Week 9: Reason vs. Faith
READINGS:
• Religion in the Age of Disbelief from Walter Truett Anderson’s book, The Truth About The Truth.
• Chapter 30, Postmodernism and the World’s Religions.
• Chapter 31, Religio-Secular Society.
• Chapter 32, The Opening of the American Mind.
• Chapter 33: The Search for Meaning in a Global Civilization.

Week 10: Terrorism and Social Lag
READINGS:
• Behavioural Aspects of Terrorism by Samuel J. Leistedt.
• The Causes of Terrorism by Joseph F. Pilat.
• Islamic Terrorism by Moustapha Safouan.

Week 11: Reflections about Social Mapping
• Finalize your Social Map and Course Evaluation.

S U G G E S T E D  N E X T : Database of Social Maps