From an Atlantic online P.J. O’Rourke interview: I do think there is a tendency in human beings to love the serious. Not because we actually get any pleasure from seriousness, but because serious things make us feel important.
“My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, this summer’s Indie star blockbuster, has so far earned $60 million on its $5 million budget. It’s a family-level, very funny ethnic-for-everybody film that has, more than anything, grown by word of mouth. Industry suits are calling its success “phenomenal and shocking.” But not so much for Indie fans who’ve known all along …
A land conservancy group contacted me to explore some potential work together. They’re in the process of building a better organization for what to some people appears to be their war against developers — tug-of-wars between activitists and developers over big farm and forest properties and community support.
The economic and ecological implications of land use are complex and many. From an authentic intentionality perspective, intentions based on reality are intentions based on research, not assumptions. “Who’s right” is not an authentic issue. What’s reality is.
A survey of blogs suggests that many practice “knowledge tithing” — giving learning & resources back to the community. The generosity of time people put into journaling their experiences, insights, discoveries is amazing. But not so amazing when you consider networks like Fast Company Magazine’s global reader groups, Company Of Friends, who regularly trade learning in variations of “communities of practice.”
Information is one of those things you still have after you give it away. It is what builds communities in ways that money, land, and power cannot. It is what builds relationships among people who live in countries whose governments and economies are divided.
Psychiatrist Richard Friedman at Cornell Medical Center in today’s NY Times:
The studies (UCLA, etc.) show that pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy can produce remarkably similar effects on functional brain activity … It is clear that talk therapy can alter brain function … Learning literally changes the structure and function of the brain.
If psychotherapy produces nearly the same brain changes as pharmacotherapy, then the boundary between mind and brain is purely artificial — even unnatural.
Behold the power of honest conversations …
Recently on a T-shirt: You can’t hate someone whose story you know.
In the NY Times today, William Holstein reviews “The Deviant’s Advantage”, brandishing the subtitle: “How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets.”
The stars of the story are the “devox” — those positive deviants who provoke the progession of ideas from Fringe > Edge > Realm of the Cool > Next Big Thing > Social Convention. According to the authors, “The real trick is to manage the Edge, not the center” — tha land of the “raw, messy and untamed.”
Looks promising. Best of all, it’s another piece co-authored by devox-man himself, Watts Wacker.
Nothing has given me more hope recently than to observe how simple conversations give birth to actions that can change lives and restore our faith in the future. There is no more powerful way to initiate significant social change than to start a conversation. When a group of people discover that they share a common concern, that�s when the process of change begins.
Meg Wheatley in the current Utne
Traveler, there is no path
By walking, the paths are made.
Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla
