A hint concerning a relationship with power

What if the trouble with power is in our insistence that it can be accumulated, stored, and then controlled by will? If this were the case, the trouble with power dissolves when we accept that it exists. It moves through and around us, and we have access to it, and can influence its direction and

Measure

Confronted with a recalcitrant reality we all want to measure. In measuring we seek control. In the evidence of the failed metrics of others who came before us we see a challenge to do better. Our method will work! How? The issue is in scaling, a matter we are confronting on all sides as we

Deep Denial

I’ve been waiting for something worth writing down to come to me after reading Ishmael. Perhaps I should still be waiting…. In the meantime, this came to me this morning. Deep denial is not the denial of bad outcomes, like “global warming” or “injustice.” It’s the denial that we get what we are after. That

Cost/Benefit

Central to the way we function in the world is the idea of cost/benefit. We turn this measure on everything. There was a story my uncle Lionel used to tell. He was a dapper European Bourgeois of the mid-twentieth century. He had all the accoutrements: A position, he was a “Head of Department” in the

Coherence

I’ve recently come upon Peter Kajtar‘s work and then I had a wonderful opportunity to talk to him over Skype. His site, The Order of Thought, covers his work in progress, a book by that same name on the work of David Bohm and J. Krishnamurti. It cannot be a surprise to anyone who’s read

Creative Destruction

We’ve heard this term spouted by those who want a gloss of legitimacy to pour over the violence of their actions, the hollow emptiness of their motivations. Everything from firing workers to starting wars has been done behind the rationalization that it is creative to wield destruction, after all, without that Asteroid killing those big,

From Efficient to Effective

Efficiency, at best, in my most charitable moments, I would recognize as an accumulation of tips and attitudes that make things work well during times when expected practices are useful. At such times to be effective is at least in some degree to be efficient. The key here is in recognizing what it means to

Vital Vulnerability

I kid you not! I don’t “make this stuff up!” It occurs to me. That means, as I write, something comes to mind. This is a participation in an act of creation. It is not a commanding or an ownership of creativity. So, as words come into awareness, by writing them down, I can capture

The Currency of Trust

The last post has brought us to the point of examining trust. This phrase, the currency of trust, appears to hold some promise. Let’s begin with another word, seriousness. Serious, trust, compassion; these are among a suite of terms we fear today, or hide our fear behind disdain at their current condition and denatured meanings.

An extended reply…

John Cline commented on the last post, Coherence is Provisional: I really like what you are saying. I wonder, though, what would happen to human personality if this model of thinking was the norm. We are mostly tribal in our actions. We gravitate too easily toward charismatics, and like lemmings will follow a bad idea

Coherence is Provisional

Ideology works through the process of consensus. Someone’s ideas gain followers and a movement is born to support these ideals and find ways to garner wider support; either through negotiated agreement or through some form of overt or covert coercion. Some movements gain broad support. Others limp along, held in high regard by a few

Resistance

Nothing exists solely to fulfill a single purpose or to take a singular role in a single process. How can I realize that the “answer” is not to remake the world in my image, that no singular image of what the world “should” be is either possible or beneficial? If these are true, then what