[Ailist] Ai and feelings

[SueHammond@aol.com]

I had to think about Peggy's wonderful post. This is a very important issue 
in AI and I look forward to people's thoughts. I hesitate to share mine 
because I feel so inadequate in my understanding of social construction...but 
this is how we learn...
I beleive that AI allows for a full range of human emotions and that a broad 
mis-understanding exists that we have to be "positive" to do AI. Someone with 
such deep anger may need to express that anger in a public setting. In many 
ways that honors the whole person. 
What keeps coming to mind is Cathy Royal's exhortation that if you hold in 
your mind what isn't right, you hold in your mind what it would look like if 
it was right.  Besides being a scholar and practitioner, Cathy is a woman of 
color. The more I am around her, the more I see the incredible treatment of 
her. The indignities forced on her as a woman of color have stopped me dead 
and made me angry. But her voice is right there each time, "hold in your head 
what it could look like."  She is also the first to say "This isn't going to 
be an AI Day".
The Lesson to me: The more we give voice to all the people in the system, the 
more we may learn to make us angry, but to also move to change the world, one 
person at a time. The underlying assumption is to treat the whole person with 
dignity and respect and that includes listening and honoring their anger.
Others???
suehammond