Cause and Effect

It’s amazing how little attention people pay to the simple process of cause and effect. There’s a common saying that the best definition of insanity is, “Doing the same thing again and again, while expecting the outcome to change.” By that definition, maybe the majority of working people—and nearly all their managers —today are insane.

OK, so that's the piece I came across. Now I'd like to try & put down a few thoughts that arise out of that.

Choosing a game plan for life based on short-term gratification

What has all this to do with life, work, and slowing down? The answer can be expressed in a simple equation:

Old Habits + Old Thinking + Short-term Viewpoint = Predictable Consequences

This seems to be the game plan for life that many people follow.

But if you want to build a less stressful, better, more enjoyable and more satisfying and happier life, you won’t do it by sticking with the way the majority think and act today: following current fashion while looking only to the immediate future.

A short-term, conservative mindset is not your friend if you want your life to change for the better. Nor is clinging to security. If you stick with habits and thoughts that are comfortable and undemanding, and don’t look much further ahead than next week or next month, expecting any different outcome from what you’ve experienced up till now is so illogical it must be described as form of insanity(?)

A game plan for positive change

To produce slow, measured change you should try changing one, or perhaps two, of the terms in front of the equals sign in the equation above. For example:

Old Habits + Old Thinking + Longer-term Viewpoint = Potential for Different Consequences

I say “potential” because those old habits and thinking will still hold much of your life in place until the longer-term viewpoint starts (fairly slowly) to change them.

The same would be true if you changed your habits, but kept your current ways of thinking and short-term outlook. There would be some change, but your old-style, short-term thinking would keep pulling you back towards the way you’ve always reacted to events until now—and thus to very similar consequences.

To make major changes, you must change habits and thinking and viewpoint at the same time:

New Habits + New Thinking + Longer-term Viewpoint = All New Consequences

If you do that, the “law” of cause and effect will ensure different outcomes and paths through life. When people have some life-changing experience, they often describe it as having turned their lives upside down. They can’t think as they did before, nor can they bring themselves to fall back on their old habits or see the world in the old way. They have new thinking, new habits, a new outlook, and therefore their life is totally changed.

Life-changing experiences . . . on demand

Armed with this insight, you can create your own life-changing experiences. Open your mind to new thoughts, lengthen and broaden your outlook, and try new ways of behaving. You can definitely expect different results to come about if you do that. The major drawback to a short-term, conservative, risk-averse mindset is not that it’s always wrong (though often it is), but that it’s static.

When you choose to alter your life in a controlled manner, inner change precedes outer change. You change yourself and how you choose and new consequences arise as a result. When outer change forces inner change on you, it’s nearly always due to some traumatic life event. That’s what happens when you stay dumb and happy until the universe forces you to make a major course correction.

If you wait until that happens, it’s likely to be painful. Wouldn’t it be far better to choose change than be compelled to experience it through a life-altering trauma?

The practice of Tolerance

The more strongly you cling to what matters most to you, the more fiercely you will respond to any threat, real or imagined, against it. People find it hard to cope calmly with such a slight danger as disagreement with the values they hold. How can someone pose a threat to your beliefs simply by holding different ones? Yet friendships are ended, families disrupted, work teams destroyed, careers derailed, and marriages wrecked by nothing more tangible than a disagreement about what is valued or believed by one of the parties. It makes no sense.

Of course, it does once you understand the fear. By refusing to accept your beliefs and values as mine too, I undermine, just a little, your confidence in what you believe. If I go further and openly oppose or denigrate your point of view, the threat is greater and the emotional response will increase in proportion. This is the paradox. The more strongly people believe in something, the less easy it is for them to cope with others who don’t. That’s why clubs become exclusive. That’s why we’ve had centuries of religious and political persecution.

Every day, we must all must face people whose view of the world does not match ours. You may have to work with them, serve them as customers, or answer to them as your boss. If you cannot learn to tolerate different—even uncomfortable—beliefs and viewpoints cheerfully, you’ll cause yourself and others continual pain. The dark side of your passions is always there, waiting to disrupt your life.

Strong values are usually seen as something to be applauded. Maybe. They also increase the danger of bigotry, self-righteousness, discrimination, persecution, and obsession. I’ve met many cases of good, principled people unaware of how they allow the dark side of their passions and fears to turn them into narrow-minded, cruel tormentors of anyone who disagrees sufficiently with them.

St. Paul wrote (in one version of the Bible) that without charity we are nothing. He’s not an authority much given to quoting, but in this case I believe he was pointing to something essential. One of the meanings of charity in Webster’s dictionary is “leniency in judging others, forbearance.” In other words, tolerance. If your values are strong but you do not practice charity and tolerance, the steep slope into bigotry, discrimination, and persecution is already under your feet.

A "Janet" writes about "inspirational" versus "institutional" leadership

I’d be cautious about getting simplistic here with “inspirational leadership = good, institutional leadership = bad”. The other great leader of the 20th century would have to be Nelson Mandela. His moral influence reverberated around the world when “institutionally helpless” in prison. However… he also continued to exercise moral leadership AND institutional leadership as President of South Africa. In that capacity, the Truth and Reconcillation process he instituted is one of the utterly remarkable stories of civil (indeed Christ-like) use of institutional power.

We actually live in a world of institutions… schools, governments, businesses… this is our current reality. I would rather leadership of these organisations be exercised by people who also have moral authority, than by those who are narcisists or worse.

Organisational leadership puts good people occasionally into moral grey zones… but isn’t it better to have bosses who agonise over whether there is any alternative to making good people redundant, than bosses who are only interested in maximizing short term profits to maximise their short term bonuses? Isn’t it better to have presidents / prime ministers / governors etc. who prayerfully agonise over whether tax increases to fund initiatives to benefit the poor might in fact increase unemployment and increase the numbers of poor people (for example)… rather than leaders whose only consideration in decisions is shoring up votes for the next election?

I do not believe aspiring power for power’s sake is ever Jesus’ way. But I do believe some Christians are called to institutional leadership. At least… I hope some are. I don’t want all institutional leadership to be exercised by those whose moral character is weak.

Ghandi exercised inspirational leadership only… and changed a nation. Mandela exercised inspirational leadership and (for a time) institutional leadership… and changed a nation. I think both types of leadership MAY be an expression of God-given vocation.

But of course… temporal power corrupts so often we take it up with fear and trembling.

"That Sunday morning feeling!?"

Prefering sign to thing signified

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.
Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity

Always Leunig challenges

"What shall it profit a man ..?"

“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world yet lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)

That question is just as relevant today as then. Is it a fair calculation of your personal “bottom line” to look only at getting and spending? Is it enough to make as much personal profit as possible, if the cost includes wrecking relationships, threatening your own health, and reaching the end of your life rich, alone, and despised? What if your personal profit comes mostly by exploiting others or pillaging the environment? Is that acceptable, merely because it makes sense in financial terms? What value do you put on a clear conscience and a civilized world?

"We have accepted the unthinkable with resignation"

I need to confess that as I read the newspapers both online from around the world & the occasional in the hand version; as I see various TV documentaries; as I listen to various world leaders and the leader & aspiring leader of Australia - in short as I contemplate the state of this earth & the reality of the poor, marginalized, dispossessed assails my mind & heart I think of the comment by the English writer H. V. Morton in his book I Saw Two Englands: "We have accepted the unthinkable with resignation. That is the distinctive quality of this age …"
What more can I say?

Any further comment?

Letting go ..?

Freedom's paradoxicality.

Freedom's paradoxicality.
Originally uploaded by Domen Colja

"go in pieces .."

The task is ended
go in pieces

†

Our concluding faith
is being rear-ended
certainty's being amended
and something's getting mended
that we didn’t know
was torn

†

We're unravelling
and are traveling to a place
of
new-formed-patterns,
with delusion as a fusion of
loss, and hope, and pain and beauty.

†

So,

†

The task is ended
go in pieces
to see and feel
your world.

(Written by Padraig Twomney and performed by Jayne McConkey)

Precious Moments being wasted?

Change is more about letting go of old ideas than finding new ones. Most of the time, people are sufficiently happy with the way things are, so they see no need to change. Life may not be perfect, but it’s good enough; the effort and uncertainty change brings look too great to be worth it. That’s why the moments when you’re open to change are precious. Miss them and your life and growth goes back on indefinite hold. Seize them and you have moments of infinite preciousness, when your mind is open to new ideas and fresh perspectives.

Here are some ways to take full advantage of these precious moments:

• Let yourself consider the opposite to your normal way of thinking. Even if it’s not the answer, it will allow you to see past your habitual mind-sets. For example, if you usually like to plan carefully before acting, imagine what might happen if you just took the first, most obvious decision and allowed things to develop from there.
• Let your imagination to run wild. Create mental pictures. Play with analogies and metaphors for the situation. Challenge your mind with thoughts like: “Suppose I was 20 years younger (or 20 years older, or the opposite gender, or had unlimited money, or decided to re-locate to Mexico), what might I do then?”
• Combine and recombine options into all sorts of novel combinations. Don’t worry whether they’re feasible or practical. Just allow your mind to play. Then pick a few options and see how you might make them work.
• Don’t allow the idea of failure to enter your mind. There are no failures; only actions that didn’t turn out as you anticipated. Take them and track exactly what happened, using that knowledge to produce still more alternatives; this time, backed up by actual experience.
• Above all, do something. Anything is better than nothing. Any action will lead to a result you can learn from, even if it doesn’t work out exactly as you wanted.

Precious moments of open-mindedness are worth more than gold or diamonds. Never waste them. Use every one to learn something to help you develop.

Breaking me ...

take a second
to unravel
the complicated things
that you’re thinking
take to a moment
to unscrabble
the words that you never
could spell
take a minute
take an hour
take a week
or dammit a lifetime
give some space
for some meaning
give intelligence
a tanglible lifeline
let your heart
let your breathing
let your skin
and let your heartbeating
find a rhythm
rich with meaning
that isn’t just mindless
repeating

†

take a second
to imagine
what you’d be like if it
weren’t for rules
rules for living
rules for crying
rules for rebels
and rules for prudes
rules for shagging
rules for bragging
rules for morals
and rules for rules
rules for criminals
rules for liberals
rules you’re given
and rules you choose
would there be no
ground for standing
would you float
as free as a feather?
would you put your
guilty feelings
liturgically into a shredder?
COULD you put your
guilty feelings
sacramentally into a shredder?
and could you find a
code of meaning
not based on rules
but based on a story?
could you unravel
bad religion
and knit
a story to hold me?

†

alleluia, alleluia

†

D-O-C-T-R-I-N-E-
is
s-u-f-f-o-c-a-t-i-n-g- me
R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N-
is
b-r-e-a-k-i-n-g- me
and
B-R-E-A-T-H-I-N-G-
is
R-E-C-R-E-A-T-I-N-G- me
and M-Y-T-H- is
liberating me

†

I don’t need
to be
born again
(no), I
don’t need
to be
born again
I don’t need
to be born again
I was born once
and that was enough
what I need
is I need a good friend,
cos I’m lonely
and I’m gifted
I don’t need another damn
puberty
I need to grow-up
stop waiting for certainty
to be proved to me

†

alleluia, alleluia

†

A-L-L-E-L-U-I-A-

†

and could you find a
code of meaning
not based on rules
but based on a story?
could you unravel
bad religion and knit
a story to hold me?

†

I am Mary, in the Garden
Seeing God in the face of a gardener
I’m leaving conclusion, embracing delusion
it’s better, but jesus it’s harder.

†

(Written and performed by Padraig Twomey, with Jon Hatch, Sarah Williamson and Stephen Caswell)

Silent & Obedient Consent?

Set in a futuristic, totalitarian Britain, the movie V for Vendetta tells the story of V, who urges his fellow citizens to rise up and bring freedom and justice back to a society plagued by cruelty and corruption. In one of his speeches to the people, V says:

The truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and depression. And where once you had the freedom to object, think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame?

Well, certainly, there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now High Chancellor ... He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

When you look at the footage in the lead up to the APEC Summit — the guns, the water cannon, the police; the appallingly infantile ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet’ threats from Ministers of the Crown; the authorisation of the pro-American group ‘Aussies 4 ANZUS Alliance’ to hold rallies during APEC, while others are excluded — you can’t help but see parallels between our country and the nation depicted in V for Vendetta.

The Turtle Principle

The Turtle Principle comes from the Tortoise and the Hare. It states that expert leaders are interested in the benefits of the long-range approach and behave accordingly.

The Personal Leadership Insight Definition of Vision is: “To passionately pursue valuable opportunities.”

• Clearly identify a personal definition of success. Know what makes you happy, content, challenged and strong. Just as important, identify the characteristics and traits you connect with failure. Knowing what to avoid is just as critical as knowing what to include in your life.
• When you are setting goals for the future, cross reference them with your success definition. Make certain they are moving you closer to what is important to you. You can’t be too formulaic with goals because of the uncertainty of life. However, leaders always have more things to do than they have time to do it. Leverage this scarcity and invest in highly fruitful activities.
• Become an expert at something by investing a large portion of time in a small range of activities. This prioritization is critical if your vision is to have relevance and meaning. That is why it is called “vision” and not “visions.”
• Talk with other people in a long-term context. When you invest in conversations about tomorrow, you invest in tomorrow. Having a vision of where you are heading and where you see your organization heading is important, but that doesn’t make it real to others. Your language needs to reflect the power you feel for your vision. Only then will it inspire others to jump on board.
• Use positive, optimistic language. It is amazing how many “visionaries” are simply great at talking up the future. This is not a rose-colored glasses approach. You must consider the up and down sides of your vision. However, expert leaders understand the power of their language and how it directs the opinions and behavior of others.
• Get as clear a picture of your future as you can. Talk with others, listen to people who have been there, and visualize as many aspects as possible. As your vision gets clearer, your passion grows stronger. This visualization also helps you to make it through the extreme challenges you will face while making your vision come alive. I am a huge believer in faith. But I also understand that seeing is believing— even if it’s just in your mind.
• Leaders with great vision don’t let short-term failures or set-backs break their spirit. You can’t just talk about the future; you have to believe it will come to fruition, no matter what happens today. There are thousands of leaders who have a vision for the future. Expert leaders fight the fights worth fighting and make it through the tough times.

Obedience as worship..

More from the Paul Minear readings of a couple of blog postings ago

"When one looks at the Gospel records themselves it is clear that “…Jesus did not ask for homage but obedience. He always had much more to lose from his friends than from his enemies. Admiration has always blunted his sword. It serves to dull the original outrage of his mission. Veneration assumes that we know what kind of man he really was and that we approve of his demands. It blinds us to their radicalism and inoculates us against being wounded by them. In fact, our well-speaking makes him vulnerable to his own curse: ‘Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is what their fathers did to the false prophets.’” (Paul Minear, Commands of Christ: Authority and Implications.) I think what he is pointing to here is true. Nowhere does Jesus call us to worship him in the Gospels…what is clear is that he does demand obedience. Obedience is the worship we should render him. And when we merely approve of him, as Minear suggests, the can easily domesticate his demands, making them into sayings and aphorisms."

Juggling Finale

HeQiarts - supper at Emmaus

We try to escape God by ...

Alan Hirsch using Paul Minear's "Eyes of Faith" says in his blog
"According to Minear, we try escape God by….

1. Idolatry
Making our own gods according to our own image and likeness. One of the basic urges of idolatry is man’s desire to initiate his own relationship to God and thereby control God. “Man worships idols precisely because of his ability to see them, to know them, to have power over them. But he can never observe God in the same way in which he can reflect on the beauty and power of his idol.” In becoming idolaters, we try diminish the power and presence of God in our lives, minimize his impact on us. It’s an ancient dodge.

2. Vacating the arena
Attempting to leave the arena of engagement and become a spectator, thereby trying to reverse the roles God becomes the actor and we become the critical observer. We try to become “investigators of God’s claims.” But this attempt to escape is futile because God cannot (and will not) simply be observed by us. He can only be truly known by existential involvement. Key knowledge is denied to the detached observer in precisely those questions that are the most decisive in determining his destiny. Besides, a person cannot forgive themselves of their own sins, or even keep death away. God cannot be dodged by these means. “Existential concern expels speculative detachment.”

3. Simply trying to hide
But in reality there is nowhere to hide. When God invade our lives he forces us out of our corners and into the arena. And besides we cannot hide from God anyway, for as the Psalmist writes, “Where can I flee from your presence?” (Ps.139:7). We carry the issues deep within us. No human can fully evade the issue of God.

4. Through religiosity
We try to escape God by attempting to “...preserve mementoes of God’s former visits in ritual and law, to idolize these, to substitute legal observance and cultic sacrifice for ‘knowledge of God…The religious person is also inclined to speak of God in the third person, albeit with apparent reverence, and thus to remove himself from the magnetic field of divine compulsions. Man can forget God in the very act of speaking of him.” Religion is one of the biggest cop-outs known to the human. It objectifies God and thus seeks to control him.

5. Building compartments and allowing only a partial rule by God
The dodger in this way consents to God’s authority in the area where that seems desirable, but at the same time tries to maintain his autonomy in other areas. “But God does not respect these man-made fences. Man’s total existence is known by him. When he speaks, he claims total sovereignty.”

6. Creating false dualisms
Trying to erect walls between the sacred and the secular and confining God to the sacred realm. But there is no such concept of ‘religion’ in the Scriptures “…for there is no experience which as such can be defined as religious, and no experience which lies outside of the divine radius. [But] God does not call man to endorse a religion, but to view all life religiously, i.e., in its relation to God.”

7. Trying to draw a line between flesh and spirit, between physical and spiritual reality
But the biblical God is the Creator of both body and spirit. In every personal encounter he forces us to participate as a unit. He does not draw the false line between flesh and spirit and deal with one in isolation. We are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.

8. Trying to draw false distinctions between private and public life
We try to distinguish between events of significance to the individual and those having social impact. But in a real way, “…every event is social because it takes place within the web of personal relations and involves, in however small a compass, issues of ultimate concern.”

In tacking these attempts to hide, the biblical writers “…fight against any false separation of sacred from the secular, against any reduction in the territory under divine rule.” And as disciples, we are called, not to escape from God, but to fully engage him, to actually become like him. We are the people of the way of Jesus, and as Stussen and Gushee point out, when this way “…is thinned down, marginalized or avoided, then churches and Christians lose their antibodies against infection by secular ideologies that manipulate Christians into serving some other lord. We fear precisely that kind of idolatry now.”"

Saying "thank you" somewhere and sometime

The case for freedom of expression

The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government.

No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive … to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. Those words were written by John Stuart Mill in 1859.

When in doubt, liberal democrats should opt for the widest freedom of speech as our default position – just as the medical profession opts for preservation of life. As I said earlier, the liberal democrat strives to prove and to establish that a society can survive, flourish, and be safe and orderly while still maximising freedoms of expression and those other freedoms which rest on freedom of expresion.

Maxim: Whatever the risk, whatever terrorist action transpires in Australia, the case for freedom of expression remains unchanged except for one thing: to reinforce its centrality to civilised life.
Maxim: It is the best (and worst) of us as writers and as citizens who ultimately define our freedom of expression by what we do with it.

Frank Moorhouse: the writer in a time of terror (essay Griffith Review 2006)

Beauty?

St Andrews by the Sea

Art imitates life?

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
-Oscar Wilde, (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900)

Wedding Swans