Corporeal cooperation
| Objective: To wake up your creative and thinking energy by getting the rebellious parts of your body to cooperate! |
Duration: 1 to 15 minutes
Material:
- Your body and mind
- Space to move
Instructions:
- Perform feats of corporeal cooperation. When you think about it for a bit, it’s quite impressive how much your body can accomplish! Our body parts coordinate in a harmonious dance of movements that allows us to act and express ourselves. But what if a rebellious body part suddenly went against the grain? Try to accomplish these different tasks without the help of a part of your body that refuses to cooperate:
- Raise your hand without using your arms
- Bite into a piece of fruit without using your jaw
- Walk without using your feet
- Wink without using your eyelids
- Clap without using your hands
- Think about your experience. After these exercises of corporeal cooperation, ask yourself: Is cooperation possible if a group member refuses to participate? Is it cooperation if the work is not fairly distributed? Can someone be forced to cooperate? Why or why not?
...
Bonus: Would you like to take on another cooperation challenge? Play hide-and-seek with family members, but without moving—that’s right, your bodies are still rebelling! Let’s call it imaginary hide-and-seek! Each person has to think about where they would hide in the house. Then, take turns trying to guess where each person would hide. Behind the bathroom door? ...in the closet? ...under the dining table? If you can't find anyone to play with at home, you can also play with friends through video chat. Just choose a place you all know well so you can imagine hiding there together! Once everyone has been found and the game is over, ask yourselves: Did you tell the truth every time? Do you have to be honest to cooperate? Is cooperation possible without trust? Why or why not? |
| Tricks for tots: Why don't you play with someone else instead! While your partner plays the rebellious body that refuses to move, try to get them to do the different missions as if you were a puppeteer moving the different parts of their body, then swap roles. When you cooperate... are you like a puppet? Can someone ask us to do anything and everything if it is to help others? Why or why not? |
Tips for teens: Cooperating or rebelling... is this a false dilemma? A false dilemma is a kind of thinking error—or fallacy—which consists in offering only two opposing alternatives and omitting any other options, even if there are other possibilities. An example would be saying: "You are either with us or against us!" Can you refuse to endorse an action or an idea, without necessarily being against it? What does it mean to be rebellious? We could say that a rebellious person opposes something and refuses to submit to it... but does that make them a bad person? Can rebelling be the right thing to do? Is cooperation always the best approach? Why or why not? |
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Include photos of your projects and notes of your thoughts, as well as your first name and your age!
