2013

Dec 2013 People keep complaining about “loss of community” and feeling isolated from one another. Having witnessed people complaining about the systems to which they belong while simultaneously adding legitimacy to them, I had to wonder how we might be complicit in cutting ourselves off from the quality of relationships we claim to want. Here’s […]

Nov 2013 [This is a continuation of last month‘s Mini Keynote (see link here), in which I wrote about impossible dreams and how some people live their fantasies] Allow me to clarify what kind of martyr I am talking about here. I am not talking about people who have suffered or been persecuted because of […]

Oct 2013 Some people may think of fantasies as really fantastic dreams, perhaps dreams that are less likely to come true than the ordinary ones. We can dream about making the varsity football team, or getting asked to the prom by a really popular student, or receiving the promotion at work, or finding that “dream […]

September 2013 During a recent conversation with some friends, a T.S. Eliot quote was paraphrased by a woman who has memorized many poems. I liked it so much I decided to look up the exact words. Here is what Eliot wrote as part of a larger poem, “Little Gidding”: At the source of the longest […]

July 2013 Probably as a result of writing last month’s Mini Keynote editorial about my new stand – participating only in “we conversations” – I have been sitting with this question: What are my payoffs in having people and ideals that I can be opposed to? Essentially, as soon as I engage in a “they […]

June 2013 The other day I received an announcement from one of the professional futurists associations to which I belong about a forthcoming event with a theme of “The Future of Europe.” I was struck immediately with the thought that titles such as this are outmoded. Einstein warned us that nationalism was an “infantile disease” […]

May 2013 Thomas Paine*, the father of modern democracy, told us “we have the power to start the world over again.” Indigenous shamans teach that “the world is as you dream it.” What thoughts do you have when you read these words? Do they evoke an exciting possibility or are they simply nice ideas, nice […]

April 2013 Most great revelations and paradigm shifters come from ideas, technologies and people from outside the set or system in which we operate. Since the system in which we work – the one in which we feel most familiar – generally consists of people who think like we do, large scale shifts in consciousness […]

March 2013 When we humans come together and organize ourselves for some purpose, we tend to agree about the context or mental framework containing that purpose. While in the best cases this agreement is explicit and conscious, agreement is often implicit and less than fully conscious. In the latter cases, people may start protecting the […]