So like Tyler, I’m cheating, and using my prewriting assignment for the assignment that I have to turn in for Erik’s class next week. So the concrete phenomena I have is raising Ezra & Micah.

Of course I’m not alone in this, I expect that my wife is part of the design team, and doesn’t it “take a village” so we also have others helping with the design as well right? Last, but certainly not least are Ezra & Micah, one day very soon, they will also be co-designers of their lives until they take primary control and we become the little helper designers in the background of their lives.

By going through this assignment and really thinking of how phenomenology fits for some aspects of seeing parenting as design has been interesting. and I have the distinct feeing that this assignment will be much easier now that I have some cognitive puke out on a page, here’s a link to said puke.

Some of the interesting insights I got were that I will never know my children as “things in themselves” as Kant says, but I can come to know the horizons that make up their lifeworlds.

My experience in life has taught me that I have picked up a lot of horizons from my parents, and while I may not have direct control of the horizons of my sons, I do control my own, and therefore a most effective way of parenting it seems is to have some of the horizons that I hope to “design” into my children.

I have some forthcoming diagrams that I got from this exercise which will make their way into our presentation for the assignment, you will also find them on that page on Monday.