“I'm not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except dare to think. And to dare to go with the truth. And to dare to really love completely.”
R. Buckminster Fuller

New visual inspiration, see SNAH-productions
New BraveNewBooks Boekwinkels © Hans Kokhuis
*** Creativity Explored, the series
* Creativiteit van A tot Zen (e-pub)
** CreaZennig Kijken

‘The two most important days in your life are
the day you were born
and the day you find out why.’
Mark Twain
-------
-----“Gentlemen, [Chicolini here -or- nr 45 (fill in your preference]
may talk like an idiot and look like an idiot,
but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”
Groucho Marx
----
“I never said the path is easy, but it is simple.”
Malcolm X
---------
“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker,
than a germ.”
John Steinbeck [from: Travels with Charlie]
--------
“Wherever there is another human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.”
Seneca
------
“The lyrics are the real thing, they’re not metaphors.
The songs seem to know themselves and
they know that I can sing them,
vocally and rhythmically.
They kind of write themselves and count on me to sing them.”
Bob Dylan (interview New York times)
-----
In 1931, when Brave New world was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time,”
wrote Aldous Huxley in 1958.
He’d thought that “the completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodological conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness“
were all far off,
but now he had come to feel “a good deal less optimistic.”
It seemed his prophecies were
“coming true much sooner than I thought they would.”
Aldous Huxley
--
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history,
is the most important of all the lessons of history.”
Aldous Huxley
--------
"Creatief denken en het nemen van risico's horen bij het leven.
Een persoon zal niet de hele tijd op veilig spelen.
Ieder mens heeft de mogelijkheid om zich aan te passen en te
veranderen en op zoek te gaan naar nieuwe ervaringen.
Een mens is een vloeibaar proces en geen vast, statisch geheel; een stromende rivier van verandering en
geen blok massief materiaal;
een voortdurend veranderende constellatie van mogelijkheden, niet een vast onveranderlijk aantal eigenschappen."

Carl R. Rogers
------
,,En weet vooral dat verveling geen kwaad kan,
behalve wanneer ze cynisch wordt.”
de wereld van Dirk de Wachter
------
,,Hoewel iedereen een andere beleving heeft van wat bezielend is, hebben die ervaringen een gelijksoortig begin.
We beginnen door onszelf toestemming te geven
onze ziel en onze diepste behoeften serieus te nemen.”
Jean Shinoda Bolen
--------
* If the sum of all significant knowledge
is finite,
what proportion of it can humans aided by
intelligent machines,
eventually attain?
Ian McEwan (in: the last Unknowns. Edge.org)
---------
“ Is love really all you need?”
Analena McAfee
-------
“Creative thinking and risk-taking are
features of a person's life. A person does
not play safe all the time. This involves the ability to adjust and
change and seek new experiences.
A person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing
river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing
constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.”
Carl R. Rogers
------
“Never trust anyone who doesn’t have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them.”
N.N. Taleb (from: Skin in the game)
When I say he has no desire I mean that he does not disturb his inner well-being with likes and dislikes.
He accepts things as they are and
does not try to improve upon them.”
Chuang Tsu
---------
“The root of our present evil may be that we buy and sell.
Ultimately we are busy buying and selling one another.”
D.H. Lawrence
----
Truth is all around us.
What matters is where you put your focus.
Roger van Oech
----------
“Unfinished poem ....
I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surpirse of its own unfolding.”
John O’Donohue [in: Anam cara]
-----
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again. Then quit.
There’s no use in being a damn fool about it”
W.C. Fields (aka Lavatory Meadows)

-----
“When one is changing, how does one know that a change is taking place?
When one is not changing, how does one know that a change hasn’t already occurred?’....

.....‘Be content with what is happening, and forget about change;
then you can enter into the oneness of the mystery of heaven.”

Chuang Tsu [Inner Chapters]
-------
“Never trust anyone who doesn’t have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them.”
N.N. Taleb (from: Skin in the game)
-------
If you want to make the gods laugh;
Make tight plans and take them seriously.
Ian Clemens
---------
Truth is all around us. What matters is where you put your focus.
Roger van Oech
--------
Mind is the maker
For no reason at all
of all this creation
Created to fall
Jack Kerouack
-----

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin -real life.
But there was always some obstacle in the way.
Something to be got through first, some unfinished business,
time still to be served, a debt to be paid.

At last it dawned on me that these obstacles WERE MY LIFE.

Alfred D’Souza

In creativity certainty in how things should be done is deceptive.
'I don't know how it's done, you don't know how it's done, nobody knows how it's done!
You create chaos as a way of destabilizing the surroundings so that could bring you [& us] to make something that would otherwise be unthinkable.'
Ian Clemens

-----
Zero-sum and power play:
'the strong do what they will and the weak do what they must.'
Ian Clemens
------
Knowing enough to stop
when one does not know
is perfection.
Chuang Tsu
------
‘The only person that likes change
is a wet baby.’
Mark Twain (?)
--------

T H E T H I R D T H I N G

Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one,
But there is also a third thing, that makes it water
And nobody knows what that is.
The atom locks up two energies
But it is a third thing present which makes it an atom.

D.H. Lawrence

----------
‘Don’t count the days.
Make the days count.’
Muhammad Ali
------
‘There must be [some] truth in everything, because
nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.
Ken Wilber
------
“I'm not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except dare to think. And to dare to go with the truth. And to dare to really love completely.”

R. Buckminster Fuller
-----------


The best things in life are by-products. They are almost never intentional first-order effects, but unintentional second-order effects. They emerge as a consequence of just doing what you ought to do in a way that is valuable and meaningful over a sustained period of time.

……
Not only do we live in a made-up world, but we use that made-up world to guide us in reality, centering it on made-up definitions of words that don't have concrete definitions.
..
We can't deal with the fact that the future is unknown and disorienting, so we create all this in our mind as a reference point. For the most part, it does fine, but at its core, it's a thinking pattern that can only lead to dissatisfaction because the predictions we make are often poor.
…
To make optimal decisions, an agent has to force her/his attention onto what they can control, which usually has nothing to do with happiness or success or any other worldly desire.
…
This means that much of the imagined future we construct is a waste of mental energy and resources, because the only place where you can control something is right now, in reality.

Zar Rana. (Medium) www.designluck.com


Do not think that the firewood is before and the ash is after. firewood is a stage unto itself and ash is a stage unto itself.
Dogen

Renunciation is “Just this is enough.” I really like that as a description of renunciation. Can you meet your life as it is and say, “Just this is enough”? Or are you always looking for something more? That's where suffering comes in: “This isn't enough; I need something more.” Then it always feels as if something were lacking. How can we meet our life as it is wholeheartedly, just like this? This is what our practice is; that is finding your home in the midst of homelessness, right here.

Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart
by Zenkei Blanche Hartman,
-------
“Nothing ever seems cut and dry.
Some birds fish
and some fish fly.”
‘Lovin’ never came that easy.’ Greg Trooper
--------
“Inside outside, where have I been?
Out of my brain on the 5.15.”
the WHO
------
”When you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change.”
Dr. Wayne Dyer
--------
..”We are of the earth
To her we do return
The future is inside us
It’s not somewhere else” ..
Radiohead; the numbers
-----
Sorrow happens, hardship happens,
the hell with it, who never knew
the price of happiness, will not be happy

Yevgeny Yevtushenko [Transl. Peter Levi]
------

“Self-Reliance”
“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist…. What I must do, is all that
concerns me, not what the people think…. The great man is he who in the midst
of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude….
Do your thing, and I shall know you…. A man must consider what blindman's-Buff
is this game of conformity.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

-----------

There are seven kinds of offering which can be practised by even those who are not wealthy.

The first is the physical offering. This is to offer service by one’s own labor.
The second is the spiritual offering. This is to offer a compassionate heart to others.
The third is the offering of the eyes. This is to offer a warm glance to others which will give them tranquility.
The fourth is the offering of countenance. This is to offer a soft countenance with smile to others.
The fifth is the oral offering. This is to offer kind and warm words to others.
The sixth is the seat offering. This is to offer one’s seat to others.
The seventh is the offering of shelter. This is to let others spend the night at one’s home.
These kinds of offering can be practised by anyone in everyday life.

The teaching of Buddha. BUKKYO DENDO KYOKAI

-------
"There is always something happening, but
nothing going on."

-----------

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. C.G. Jung

-----------
“We don’t solve our problems, we outgrow them."
Carl Jung
-----

in 1988 Kurt Vonnegut issues in “2088” 7 commandments intended to help humanity avert what he sees as the utter catastrophe looming ahead:
(check in 2016 ?!)
1. Reduce and stabilize your population.
2. Stop poisoning the air, the water, and the topsoil.
3. Stop preparing for war and start dealing with your real problems.
4. Teach your kids, and yourselves, too, while you're at it, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
5. Stop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
6. Stop thinking your grandchildren will be OK no matter how wasteful or destructive you may be, since they can go to a nice new planet on a spaceship. That is really mean, and stupid.
7. And so on. Or else.”

----------

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle won't be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Buddha

-------
“Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee.
Not on a team.”

Steve Wozniak. (co-founder Apple)

-----------
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing...

William Shakespeare, Macbeth,
-------


“What the caterpillar calls the end,
the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”
Chuangtse

--------

One day Soshi (Chuangtse) was walking on the bank of a river with a friend.
“How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water!” exclaimed Soshi.
His friend spake to him thus: “You are not a fish; how do you know that the fishes are enjoying themselves!”
“You are not myself,” returned Soshi; “How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?”
op cit. Kakuzo Okakura, THE BOOK OF TEA.

--------

If and when: “The means have become independent of the aim; they have usurped the role of the end, and the alleged aim exists only in the imagination.”

------------

“The work is the means, the enjoyment, the end. But what happens actually?
People work in order to make more money; they use this money in order to make more money; they make money in order to make still more money, and in the end -the enjoyment of life- is lost sight of. ---
People are in a hurry and invent things in order to have more time. Then they use the time saved to rush about again to save more time until they are so exhausted that they can not use the time they saved.”

Erich Fromm, Man for Himself

(Herbert Spencer originally thought up the term 'survival of the fittest '. He published the idea for the first time in Principles of Biology in 1864.)

----------

“Our standards of morality are begotten of the past needs of society, but is society always to remain the same? The observance of communal traditions involves a constant sacrifice of the individual to the state. Education, in order to keep up the mighty delusion, encourages a species of ignorance. People are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly.
We are wicked because we are frightfully self-conscious. We never forgive others because we know we ourselves are in the wrong. We nurse a conscience because we are afraid to tell the truth to others; we take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves.”...

Kakuzo Okakura, THE BOOK OF TEA.

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story.”

Gertrude Stein. posthumously published in 1947 (!)
What has changed?

--------
“To be aware of individuality is to realize that one has all that one needs.
It also means that one needs all that one has, namely,
that every psychic content and happening is meaningful.”
Edward F. Edinger (in EGO AND ARCHETYPE)
---------------
The child is the first artist. Out of the material around him he creates a world of his own.

- Carleton Noyes ( The Gate of Appreciation, 1907 )
op cit Austin Kleon
-----
 "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars but where the rich use public transport."
Gustavo Petro (mayor Bogota)
----------
 "The best way to improve your Brand is to improve your Reality".
Greg Richards
--------------
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking
we used when we created them.”
Albert Einstein
-----------
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking
we used when we created them.”
Albert Einstein
-----------

”The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is its faithful servant. 
We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.” 
Albert Einstein 
----------

“Happiness in inversely proportionate to
the quantity of our expectations.”
Thomas Carlyle
---------
“The world has enought for everyone’s need. but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

Mahatma Ghandhi
------------
“When I have pointed out one corner of a square to anyone and he does not come back with the other three, I will not point it out to him a second time.”
Confucius, the analects
--------
"Because in the end, life is not about finding yourself.
It's about creating yourself.
Ken Wilber
-----
“if you never change your mind, why have one?”
--E. de Bono

-----
‘never mind the quantity - think for yourself’
-------

May you dream your new myth,
May your dance awake your sacred dream,
May you become all you were created to be.
Mary E.Loomis (Dancing the wheel of psychological dreams)
------

What motivates human beings? What makes you get out of bed?
You want to fulfill your survival need?
No, it is much deeper.
The core of humans is to move from alienation and separation to integration.
From loneliness to loving.
The only way that a person can be liberated from loneliness, is to be fully recognized and received.
Dr. Marc Gafni
-------

“The Somebody Else’s Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what is more can be run for over a hundred years on a single flashlight battery. This is because it relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting or can’t explain.”..

Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and everything.

“We become what we behold.
We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”
Marshall McLuhan
--------
"Once we know something,we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it.
That´s the curse of knowledge".
"We speak expertise, students talk sticky".

Chip&Dan Heath: teaching that sticks
for mindmap click here

"Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams."

Haruki Murakami (Hard-boiled wonderland and THE END OF THE WORLD)

----------
“Is a dream a lie,
if it don’t come true ?”

Bruce Springsteen
------
'There are only two tools available to the educator. The easy one is fear. Fear is easy to awake, easy to maintain, but ultimately toxic. Other tool is passion.'
- Seth Godin -

---------
No matter how far we travel, there’s always a horizon.
----------

---------
Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.

Eleanor Roosevelt
----------
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
George Bernard Shaw
---------

...“I propose that if you want a simple step to a higher form of life, as distant from the animal as you can get, then you have to denarrate, that is, shut down the television set, minimize time spent reading newspapers, ignore the blogs. Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions; nudge System 1 (the heuristic or experiential system) out of the important ones. Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical.
This insulation from the toxicity of the world will have an additional benefit: it will improve your well-being. Also bear in mind how shallow we are with probability, the mother of all abstract notions. You do not have to do much in order to gain a deeper understanding of things around you. Above all, learn to avoid “tunneling”. “....
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The BLACK SWAN, the impact of the highly improbable.
for more information, click here

-------------

CORPORATE LESSONS

Iesson 1
A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbil saw the crow, and asked him: "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day"
The crow answered: "Sure, why not" So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the ground and rested.
All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Moral to the story is:
To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

Lesson 2
A turkey was chatting with a bull. "I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree", sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy"
"Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings" replied the bull. "They're packed with nutrients"
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the fIrst branch of the tree. The next day, after eating somemore dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fortnight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.
Moral of the story:
horseshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

Lesson 3
A little bird was flying south for the winter. lt was so cold, the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it.
As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, it began to realize how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out!
He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy.
A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly helped him out and ate him.
The morals of the story are:
1. not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy
2. not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend
3. and when you're in deep shit, keep your mouth shut

In summary:

An organization is like a tree full of monkeys, all on different limbs at different levels, some climbing up, some fooling around and some simply just idling.
The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces and the
monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but assholes.

-----------

A big corporation hired several cannibals. "You are all part of our team now," said the HR manager during the welcome briefing. "You get all the usual benefits and you can go to the cafeteria for something to eat, but please don't eat any of the other employees." The cannibals promised they would not.
A few weeks later the cannibals' boss remarked, "You're all working very hard, and I'm satisfied with you. However, one of our secretaries has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to her?" The cannibals all shook their heads, "No," they said.
After the boss left, the leader of the cannibals said to the others angrily, "Right, which one of you idiots ate the secretary?"
A hand rose hesitantly in admission. "You fool!" said the leader, "For weeks we've been eating managers and no one noticed anything, but nooo, you had to go and eat someone important!..."
- A. Fiorello

---------
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
Theodore Rubin (op cit. M.A. Roberto, Know what you don’t know)
--------
Most words evolved as a description of the separated realities of the external world,
hence their inadequacy to describe the one gentle reality within us all. 
Notes to myself, Hugh Prater
----------
A plan eliminates discontent by promising change.
But, ironically, a plan is only my decision to imagine a different future,
and if followed too rigidly it blocks my sensitivity
to the people around me.

Notes to myself, Hugh Prater
------------

If you kick a stone you can work out with Newtonian mechanics what will happen, but if you kick a dog, there's no telling what the reaction will be.
Too often managers think that dog-kicking processes are stone-kicking processes!

anonymous physicist

--------
Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself,
do not you go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it
                                                Bruce Lee
--------  
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice,
there is little we can do to change;
until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.
R. D. Laing

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin
to see the present only when it is already disappearing
R. D. Laing
 -----------

--------
“Creative life is characterized by spontaneous mutability:
it brings forth unknown issues,
impossible to preconceive.”
DHL (David Herbert Lawrence)
----------
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back,
may the sun shine warm upon your face,
the rain fall soft upon your fields,
and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.
Irish blessing
--------
"Work like you don't need money,
Love like you've never been hurt,
Sing as if no one can hear you,
Dance like no one's watching.
And your true self will shine"
-------
...”Wisdom knows that all things will pass;
that suffering is a part of life;
that life is a meaningful spiritual journey;
that renouncing love for power, wealth and fame is a destructive choice based on fear;
that love is the mystery we learn a little more about each time we risk pain by opening our heart to something or someone;
and that change is inevitable.”....

Jean Shinoda Bolen
---------

CHANGE
Do you think it is easy to change?
Ah, it is very hard to change and be different.
It means passing through the waters of oblivion
D.H. Lawrence

----------
“The secret to happiness is happiness itself.
Whereever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other,
the wonder of our breathing.
We don’t have to travel anywhere else to do so.
We can be in touch with these things right now.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is every step;
The Path of Mindfulness in everyday life
--------

We're not in art, we're in business, and there are deadlines. One
of the reasons why creative people are paid large amounts of money
is because they are supposed to understand commercial disciplines.
That means, "''Have an idea by Thursday.'"

TIM BELL

'It would be awfully nice if you could run a creative business like
an iron foundry or a production line, but if you try the baby goes
out with the bathwater. You can't do it'

Christopher Bland

'There's only one way to handle rejection, and that's to be absolutely
blunt and honest and clean. You can't let people down lightly.'

MICHAEL GRADE

'To enable the free flow of Creative thought it is essential that the
manager provide a working environment that is not restrictive or
stifling and allows creatives to discuss their ideas freely without
fear of being ridiculed.'

SIR RALPH HALPERN

'Creative people are certainly more difficult. sometimes difficult in
unpleasant ways. Some of the big, best-selling authors are pretty
obnoxious. As people. But you put up with them.'

PAUI. HAMLYN

'Never allow the down -side, the risk of any potential decision going
wrong, to be so all pervasive as to destroy what you are trying to
do.'

JEREMY 1SAACS

'I try and explain to creative people the enormous significance of
what they are doing, the enormous power they have in the world
... I try to make them feel a sense of responsibility.'

WALLY OLINS

'When you start out you are describing something amorphous,
which you are asking them to create. That is a very specific
management problem.'

DAVID PUTTNAM

From Winston Fletcher's revealing interviews with Britain's leading
managers of creativity, undertaken exclusively for CREATIVE PEOPLE.

---------
The past is history,
the future is a mystery and the present is a gift!
(That's why they call it a present ...)
Yiri Kilian
(seen in Van ABBE museum Eindhoven)
----------

" Duct tape is like the force.
It has a light side, a dark side, and
it holds the universe together... "

- Carl Zwanzig -

------
Reality check:
Anytime you hear someone say it's a win-win situation, they either don't know all the facts or they have a stuttering problem.
(Aim low, Dave Dunseath)
-------
Sanity: To see the world as it really seems.
anonymous
-------

-------

CREATIVITY AND SURVIVAL

There is no question that the human species could not survive, either now or in the years to come, if creativity were to run dry. Scientists will have to come up with new solutions to overpopulation, the depletion of nonrenewable resources, and the polution of the environment - or the future will indeed be brutish annd short. Unless humanist find new values, new ideals to direct our energies, a sense of hopelessness mioght well keep us from going on with the enthusiasm necessary to overcome the obstacles along the way.
WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT, OUR SPECIES HAS BECOME DEPENDENT ON CREATIVITY.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (in Creativity -Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention)

--------
Knowing is doing, doing is knowing.
Umberto Maturana
--------
FISH DON’T FLY
When a fish swims in the ocean, there is no limit to the water, no matter how far it swims.
When a bird flies in the sky there is no limit to the air,
no matter how far it flies.
However, no fish or bird has ever left its element since the beginning.
Zen saying, op cit. Sacred Hoops, P. Jackson & H. Delaney

-------
She is an artist:
she can take the dark out of the night time
and paint the daytime black.

Bob Dylan
---------

[The Coyote to the Young Indian Hunter:] Whenever you take a beast's body, give something in return. How can a man expect much without paying something? If you do not give creatures the wherewithal of changing being, how can you expect them to relish your arrows? So, whenever you slay a game creature, offer him and his like prayer-plumes - then they will feed you with their own flesh and clothe you with their own skins.

-F.H. Cushing, Zuni Breadstuff (1920) op cit. William Least Heat-Moon

-------
‘.... some people do not listen to a speaker unless he speaks mathematically, others unless he gives instances, while others expect him to cite a poet as witness. And some want to have everything done accurately, while others are annnoyed by accuracty .... Hence one must be already trained to know how to take each sort of argument ....”
---Aristotle, Metaphys.995a
--------
“to nature and yourself appeal,
nor learn of others what to feel”

W. Hogarth (anon)
----------
“No one has the right to be offended.”
Frank Zappa

Minds are like parachutes;
they only function when open.
Frank Zappa
--------

‘ ... men give different names, to one and the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: as they that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: ...’
-Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 11.
---------
In dreams begin responsibilities....
W.B. Yeats

D.H. Lawrence
(the complete poems, part of.. )
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The real creative ideas originate hither and yon in the individual members of the staff and no one can tell in advance what they will be or where they will crop up.
Frank B. Jewett (organizer and first head of Bell Labs)
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“From the day we were born until the day we die, our life experience is an ever-changing relative truth that we hold to be very real. It is not, however, absolutely real or permanent. This is very important to understand. When you wake up from your dream of life, all of your experiences, which seemed true, were not really true in the absolute sense.”
Chagdud Tuylku Rinpoche, Djogchen teacher

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" Freedom means nothing,
 if it doesn’t include the freedom to make mistakes "

                                        - M. Ghandi - 

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Dr. Don Beck:
"It's not that we need to form new organizations. It's simply that we have to awaken to new ways of thinking. I believe it makes no sense to spend a lot of time attacking the current realities. It is time to create the new models that have in them the complexity that makes the older systems obsolete. And to the extent that we can do that, and do that quickly, I think we can provide what will be necessary for a major breakthrough for the future."

"While Graves supplied the original blueprint, he cautioned me on numerous occasions to continue the research, to branch out far beyond what he could imagine, and pursue 'the never-ending quest'," says Beck. "SDi is based on a belief in the Invisible Spiral, the Prime Directive that works in human nature to continue our quest toward greater complexity. The Graves Technology is simply one wrap around the Invisible Spiral but there are many others. I believe it is the best single wraparound available. Yet many of the empty spaces and incomplete zones can be filled in with other theories, other wraparounds. SDi continues the search for these paradigms to provide yet a fuller understanding of the working of the Spiral within our lives."

In 1999 Beck formed a deep and rich MeshWorks with author/philosopher Ken Wilber.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

FURTHER UP THE ORGANIZATION
“If you're not here for the fun and the profit,
what the hell are you doing?”

This is dedicated to the outside directors and trustees of all U.S. organizations, public and private.
Here's the perspective: America is at a watershed. If we continue with poor leadership and the old them-and-us approach to management and labor, we've probably had our glory days as a nation.
Great civilizations, history tells US have limited lives Assyria rose and fell within 250 years; Persia, 200; the Arab Empire, about 240; Spain, 250; and Britain, roughly 230 years. America has had 211 at this writing and a lot of clever people think we're on the way out. I don't think we should go quietly.
One solution is to find good leadership for our organizations. And who is charged with that job if not the outside directors and trustees?
To help you decide whether you have a leader or not, I'm giving you a short course in leadership.
Mind you, a leader doesn't have to have all the following characteristics, but he/she better have a lot, and the more the better. I've also given you a parallel list of typical characteristics of the non-leader:

more? see ‘3rd degree in leadership’, part 1 & part 2
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Traditional Wisdom (from: Tao of leadership, John Heider)

Our job is to facilitate process and clarify conflicts.This ability depends less on formal education than on common sense and traditional wisdom.
The highly educated leader tends to respond in terms of one theoretical model or another. It is better simply to respond directly to what is happening here and now.
Make sure that any model you do have is compatible with traditional wisdom: admire the wise of all religions.
For example, most people act in order to fulfill their desires. They believe that the world serves them. But the wise leader serves others and is relatively desireless, even defenseless.
Most people are plagued by endless needs, but the wise leader is content with relatively little. Most people lead busy lives, but the wise leader is quiet and reflective. Most people seek stimulation and novelty, but the wise leader prefers what is common and natural.
Being content permits simplicity in life. What is common is universal. What is natural is close to the source of creation.
This is traditional wisdom.

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Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams (1957 - ), 'The Dilbert Principle'
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This place requires no physical fitness program:
Everyone gets enough exercise jumping to conclusions, flying off the handle,
running down the boss, knifing friends in the back, offloading decisions,
dodging responsibility and
pushing their luck!

anonymous
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"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road.
They get run over." ...
Aneurin Bevan
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Never seem more learned than the people you are with.
Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked."
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)
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Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
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The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
--
The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
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Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
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Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
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The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
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Where love rules, there is no will to power;
and where power predominates,
there love is lacking.
The one is the shadow of the other.
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“Knowing our own darkness is the best method
for dealing with the darkness of other people.”
--
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
C.G. Jung (1875 - 1961)
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“To develop a more or less accurate self-image...
is simply to gain a comprehensive awareness of those facts of yourself which you didn’t know existed.
And these facets are easily spotted
because they show up as your symptoms.”
Ken Wilber
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‘We are effectively destroying ourselves by
violence masquerading as love.
There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.
R.D. Laing
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They are playing a game. They are playing at not
   playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I
  shall break the rules and they will punish me.
  I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.
  R.D.Laing (Knots)
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The ego focuses on error and overlooks truth.
It makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning concludes that because of the mistake consistent truth must be meaningless.
The next step, then, is obvious.
If consistent truth is meaningless, inconsistency must be true.
Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real,
the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system:
Error is real and truth is error.

(Course of Miracles)
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God we trust,
everybody else we audit.
anonymous
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This uplifting experience, which is common to saints and mystics, is the record of a quantum journey. There are no known physical mechanisms that trigger it, yet feeling close to God occurs in every age, among all peoples. We're all capable of going beyond our material bonds, yet we often fail to value this ability. Although we hear in church or temple or mosque that God is love, he does not seem to exert much passionate attraction anymore.
I don't believe saints and mystics are really so different from other human beings. If we look at our reality sandwich, the transition zone turns out to be subjective: This is where God's presence is felt or seen. Anything subjective must involve the brain, since it takes millions of neurons firing together before you can have any experience
.
Material domain: (the world of objects and events)
Any God who protects us like a father or mother stems from fight or flight.
Any God who makes laws and rules over society stems from the reactive response.
Quantum domain: (a transition zone where energy turns into matter)
Any God who brings inner peace stems from the restful awareness response.
Any God who encourages human beings to reach their full potential stems from the intuitive response.
Any God who inspires us to explore and discover stems from the creative response.
Virtual domain: (the place beyond time and space, the origin of the universe)
Any God who makes miracles stems from the visionary response.
Any God who brings us back into unity with him stems from the sacred response

Deepak Choprah (in How To Know God)

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When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.
John W. Gardner (1912 - )

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" It is a pleasure to give advice, humiliating to need it, and normal to ignore it. "
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

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MAKE YOUR LUCK

Prototyping doesn’t just solve straightforward problems. Call it serendipity or even luck, but once you start drawing or making things, you open up new possibilities of discovery. It’s the same method that’s helped scientists unlock some of the greatest secrets of nature.

Tom Kelley
The art of innovation, Lessons in creativity from IDEO, America’s leading design Firm.

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Nobody ever made a grammatical error in a non-literate society.
Marshall McLuhan

Typography is not only a technology but is
in itself a natural resource or staple, like
cotton or timber or radio; and, like any
staple, it shapes not only private sense
ratios but also patterns of communal
interdependence.
Marshall McLuhan
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"The creative process must be explored not as the product of sickness, but as representing the highest degree of emotional health, as the expression of the normal people in the act of actualizing themselves."
Rollo May, the courage to create
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‘Do not ask how smart you are:
Ask how you are smart.’

‘Do not ask how motivated you are:
Ask how you are motivated.'

(Howard Gardner, multiple intelligencies)
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“ I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that is invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty five is against the natural order of things.”

Douglas Adams (in THE SALMON OF DOUBT - Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)

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Even if all ( these ) needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we call selfactualisation.

"People possess the inner resources for growth, they seek the frontiers of creativity, the highest reaches of consciousness and wisdom. The point is to help remove obstacles to the individuals reaching this. If the environment is right, people grow straight and beautiful, actualising the potentials they have inherited."

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

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"Why must the person who lives largely in terms of the creative instinct be damned out of common humanity? And the reverse: why can't the common man change his heroically nineteenth-century concept of genius, so charged with ambition and envy, and can be done with this fantasy of the extraordinary personality? Has not each of us a genius; has not each genius a human soul? Could we not find a similar extraordinariness within ourselves in our relation to the creative instinct as we experience it? Even without artistic talent, even without the ego strength of great will, even without good fortune, at least one form of the creative is continuously open for each of us: psychological creativity. Soul-making: we can engender soul.
Or, as Jung puts it: "But what can a man 'create' if he doesn't happen to be a poet ?.... If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself."
James Hilllman, The MYTH of ANALYSIS

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Alan Watts in The way of liberation
...”A separate self is merely conventional reality, in the same sense as lines of latitude and longitude and the measurements of the clock; which is why one of the means of maya, illusion, is measurement. Things are measurements; they are units of thought, like inches are measurements. There are no things in physical nature. How many things is a thing? However many you want. A “thing” is a “think”, a unit of thought; it is as much reality as you can catch hold of in one idea.”..

“You cannot solve today’s problems with the same thinking that created them.
In other words: If you do what you always did, you always get what you always got.”

Albert Einstein

W.B. Yeats (1864 - 1939)
‘At Stratford-on-Avon: Ideas of Good and Evil’

The Greeks, a certain scholar has told me, considered that myths are the activities of the Daimons, and that the Daimons shape our characters and our lives. I have often had the fancy that there is some one myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.

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"You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?" "He picked up a piece of truth," said the devil. "That is very bad business for you, then," said his friend.
“Oh, not at all,"the devil replied, "I am going to let him organize it."
J. Krishnamurti

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“The desire of uniformity is a major problem with IT. But it is a subproduct of the same problems that plague management, which is the need to feel in control, that we’re all on the same page, and everyone is being treated equally. But what I want to ask is, <Why do we all need to be on the same page?> And you realize, of course, that no two people are equal in any respect.”

Ricardo Semler
(CEO of Semco; Charles Handy on Remler: klik hier

Many managers try to reshape the person to fit the environment. In fact, it's easier to reshape the environment to fit the person. And it's rare that you have to fire someone because his or her profile isn't right for a job.

David Beardsley ( david-beardsley@msn.com ) is a writer living in Swampscott, Massachusetts.

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"We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order."    
Margaret J. Wheatley

"The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity."
   
 Margaret J. Wheatley

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A good patriot is always ready to defend his country against his government
( Thomas Payne, 1737-1809 )

In 1776, he published Common Sense, a strong defense of American Independence from England.
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He who wants shall not walk in the shining circle of make-believe.
Therefore, do not seek the shine because
it will catch you faster than the edge is sharp.
anonymous
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"To understand himself, man needs to be understood by another.
To be understood by another, he needs to understand the other ."
Thomas Hora
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We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
-Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
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For most people life is mildly depressive, except for the holidays.
D.W. Winnicot
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...”Wisdom knows that all things will pass;
that suffering is a part of life;
that life is a meaningful spiritual journey;
that renouncing love for power, wealth and fame is a destructive choice based on fear;
that love is the mystery we learn a little more about each time we risk pain by opening our heart to something or someone;
and that change is inevitable.”....

Jean Shinoda Bolen

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P H O E N I X

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,
made nothing ?
Are you willing to be made nothing ?
dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.

The phoenix renews her youth
only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down
to hot and flocculent ash.
Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest
with strands of down like floating ash
shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,
immortal bird.

D.H.Lawrence, The complete Poems, LAST POEMS, Penguin

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The Mayonnaise Jar and the 2 Cups of Coffee by Mary Lynn Plaisance
When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes."
The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.
The golf balls are the important things--God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions--and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.
The sand is everything else--the small stuff."
"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

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Quotes from:Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, film by Jim Jarmusch (1999)

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. This is the substance of the way of the samurai.

Ghost Dog: It is bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai. It is the same for anything that is called a Way. If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all ways and be more and more in accord with his own.

Ghost Dog: If one were to say in a word what the condition of being a samurai is, its basis lies first in seriously devoting one's body and soul to his master.

Ghost Dog: It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, you will wake up and tell yourself that it was only a dream. It is said that the world we live in is not a bit different from this.

Ghost Dog: Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall, there was this one: "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly." Master Ittei commented, "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."

Ghost Dog: Even if one's head were to be suddenly cut off, he should be able to do one more action with certainty. With martial valor, if one becomes like a revengeful ghost and shows great determination, though his head is cut off, he should not die.

Ghost Dog: In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.

Ghost Dog: There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.

Ghost Dog: Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase, "form is emptiness." That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase, "Emptiness is form." One should not think that these are two separate things.

Ghost Dog: When one has made a decision to kill a person, even if it will be very difficult to succeed by advancing straight ahead, it will not do to think about doing it in a long, roundabout way. One's heart may slacken, he may miss his chance, and by and large there will be no success. The Way of the Samurai is one of immediacy, and it is best to dash in headlong.

Ghost Dog: It is said that what is called "the spirit of an age" is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. In the same way, a single year does not have just spring or summer. A single day, too, is the same. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.

Pearline: In the Kamigata area they have a sort of tiered lunchbox they use for a single day when flower viewing. Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot. The end is important in all things.

quotes from : the GOD part of the brain, A scientificv Interpretation of human spirituality and God.

"It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions."

-DAVID HUME

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