Replying to LO27858 --
Dear Andrew,
So, let me put my linear thinking/feeling bookend on your wonderful post.
Mostly I loved your post, and mostly I do not share your perspective. It
is a wonderful perspective, just not mine. Let me see if I can put words
to it that can clarify.
Unavoidably I have to single out a few of your images because there are
too many to respond to all, and besides I cannot even begin to understand
them all. Nevertheless I am inspired by them.
You have an image of a mosaic, and you "see" a tension between a need for
a unified harmonious space -- you can envision a different reality from
the one I describe, but no one knows how to get there. Perhaps it is
because as a business person I have a poor aesthetic, but I have an inner
peace with the world as it is. That does not mean that I love it or
condone all that is wrong. On the other hand, I am capable of finding
thousands of small ways to slightly improve the lot of thousands of small
people, and that is enough. I am at peace with that, even though my
methods are capitalist methods. It is interesting, but I have been an
activist of the sixties, no less. Ironically, as a capitalist I make more
lives slightly more comfortable than anyone ever did in those other roles.
You get the sense of "temporary impotence" in the face of creationing, but
I do not get that sense. I have no confidence that you, I, and AT could
agree on WHAT THE PROBLEM IS, even though I observe that we are all
well-intentioned. How can we create something new and better if there is
no clear, shared perspective on what is wrong?
One of the things I have learned -- as Michelango already knew when the
Pope drafted him -- is to change what I can, to influence what I cannot
change, and to appreciate what I cannot influence. This issue of making
the world a better place -- or of even defining what that means -- is one
of appreciation. Like Michelangelo, I am painting the ceiling, because
that is what I have to do.
You were on the Complexity List for awhile, and there is expressed in
complexity theory the notion that small changes can have big impacts. I
believe in that. I was a mathematician in my earlier days, and studied
complexity-related issues. However, I was never smart enough to discover
anything. So I believe in that notion, and perhaps that is what you are
sponsoring in your post. But there is another less well-understood truism
of complexity theory, and that is that no one can predict with any
certainty whatsoever, the long-term consequences of these "state-changing"
events. So even if you believe in the idea that you and I together could
agree on what was wrong with the world, and that we could agree on what
micromicromicro "thing" we could do to get the world moving in the right
direction, complexity theory says that we cannot really know that what we
have chosen to do will have the desired impact. Actually, complexity
theory says that our action, whatever it is, almost certainly will NOT
have the desired impact.
And if you think about the history of the world in all of its big and
small currents, you will find lots of examples of "things" occurring that
did not have the expected effect. We have seen several in the last 6-12
months. Remember the airplane that landed illegally in China? Have you
noticed that GWB has now landed legally in China? Hard to imagine a year
ago. 9-11 was a huge state-changing event. No one could have predicted
the short term consequences, let alone the long-term ones that we have not
seen yet.
So, Andrew, to leave you with a final thought -- you may think you want to
be a great sculptor, but if you have to paint the ceiling...do the best
job you can. Who knows what you will be remembered for?
Rol
>I got an image in my head about this Rol...I am not sure I can match the
>clear eloquence and I am quite sure I cannot match the depth of first
>hand experience both At and you can call on and use to take the dialogue
>onward and outward.
>So, let's say for the moment Andrew is 'working blind'. I am 'becoming'
>like the wonderful 'star faced mole' who spends all his life underground
>and burrowing 'effectively seeing' through his nose which has an array of
>finger like sensors that inform him, via some internal apparatus, what it
>is that is around him...so for example he can feel/see/smell/sense his
>lunch at some distance despite his literal blindness.
>In a later part of the message you created the image for me of a mosaic,
>or a pointillist painting by Seurat, or maybe even a kaleidoscopic image,
>like those that kids have in tubes.
--"Rol Fessenden" <rol@fessenden.net>
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