The Effect of Enormity

by Antonio Dias

Enormity. It’s the realization of the weight and power of the forces arrayed against us. I hesitate to call it evil. I’m poking around whether the concept of evil is worth its weight. Let’s leave it as destructive forces….

What strikes me is that we tend to find it quite reasonable to respond to the Enormity of the destructive forces we face today and focus on the effect this has on our mood. I find this to be entangled with the series of assumptions and habitual accommodations we make through all the ways we make judgements in this culture. It appears to reflect the primacy we give to maintaining our attitudes over engaging with what is.

Does this come from our sense that we are at the mercy of our emotions? Is it because we form our identity around how we feel? Is it an ultimate sign of our sense of entitlement? “How I feel is more important than the consequences of how I act.”

A Conversation around Questions of Sincerity, Stone Soup

by Antonio Dias

Andrew Taggart has become the first contributing author on Stone Soup. In his first post he looks at the story and responds to the skeptic’s view.

In the end he asks, “How can someone … avoid the fate of the con man?”

I’d like to take a stab at that. I’d like to say the answer is simple, though it’s not likely to please “the skeptic.”

Sincerity.

We Are Dissatisfied.

by Antonio Dias

We are dissatisfied. And then we expect the other, the world, to change to accommodate to our dissatisfaction.

Our dissatisfaction stems from our confusion. Our expectations compound our confusion. The sheer wrongness of this position holds us as if hypnotized, paralyzed, and unable to take in what the other, what the world, is showing us.

We value our confusion, or at least we prefer to hide it from ourselves – it is certainly clearly visible to others! – over finding our own way to clarity.

In our discomfort we press on with impatience and shut ourselves off from any avenue for change. Any avenue for true change which can only occur as we open ourselves to the world and put ourselves in a position of relation, awareness, accommodation to what is.

Algorithms and Intention

by Antonio Dias

Algorithms. While teaching a week-long course in half-model making and marine drafting I came across a tangible definition of an algorithm. In drafting we use splines, long, thin wooden battens that we bend around control points held by lead weights called ducks or whales. The shape, density and grain of the wood influences how it bends and the character of the curve it produces in each case. So not only the points we chose, but the batten’s character affect the result.

In Computer Aided Design, we also use “splines.” These are virtual battens that are algorithms in the sense we’ve come to know them through computer science. They are a complex equation that programs a certain influence into their operation so that they inflect a curve between a series of points in a certain way.

Missed Opportunity, the Failed Legacy of John Boyd

by Antonio Dias

I’ve recently had reason to look back at John Boyd‘s work. This has led me to review his “legacy.” Even today his writings are only available through a network of self-styled acolytes and has been enshrined as the rationale behind a lot of very dangerous and very silly thinking that’s “informed” U. S. military adventures over the last few decades. While the Manifest Destiny boys at the turn of the Twentieth Century found their theoretical framework in the writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the Cheney gang has looked for legitimacy for their schemes in Boyd’s thinking. I’m afraid they are confused. They have fallen into the same errors that befall so much of what passes for Systems Thinking of all stripes. They want to grab at the tricks without absorbing the underlying lessons.

Mahan was a rather astute strategic analyst of his day. John Boyd was a towering figure who’s work has yet to be fully digested by anyone. This makes it doubly tragic that we end up seeing him solely as “the man behind” the Rumsfeld/Cheney putsch.