Tag: books
Hope
“Hope of consciousness is strength; hope of feelings is slavery; hope of body is disease.” — Gurdjieff “This is a fearful, hopeless and even nihilistic time.” — Michelle Goldberg “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” — Nietzsche Whew!! Other than placing your hope in consciousness, those are some pretty bleak quotes! Is hope hopeless? That’s the question I want to take on in this post. Read More
Pretending Part II
“Everything hurts,Our hearts shadowed and strange,Minds made muddied and mute.We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.And yet none of it is new” —Amanda Gorman In February, 2021, I wrote a post on pretending. In the last year, there have been so many terrifying tragedies and “none of it is new.” We are still pretending no changes are needed. So, here is Part II. As is my custom, I have been reading lots of books trying to Read More
Requirements for Redemption and Renewal: The 5Rs
“I teach that when it rains the pavement gets wet.” —George Gurdjieff Oh the blessings of ignorance and fantasy. Life is so much easier when we don’t make the effort to dig for truth, or when we delight in the delusions of who we are. Ignorance enables us to avoid work. Fantasy enables us to avoid reality. Some people are able to live their lives without suffering the consequences of ignorance or shattering the illusions Read More
Meaning and Motivation
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” —Thomas Merton “For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.” —Victor Frankl “We die. That may be the Read More
Demonize Digitize or Democratize
In this post, I’m going to discuss how demonization and digitization can undermine democracy and what we need to do to restore democracy in the world. I know…two pretty big challenges for a short post, but here’s my best shot. When I went through Army Basic Training during the Vietnam War, many of the exercises were designed to demonize the Vietnamese people. When we stabbed our bayonets into dummies, we were instructed to yell, “Kill Read More
We the Trees and Water
I recently read We the Corporations, a new book by Adam Winkler on how American businesses won their civil rights. In this meticulously well-documented history, Winkler puts corporate power on center stage. He charts how corporations systematically and incrementally gained political advantages over a 200 year period culminating in Citizens United which was funded by corporate elites to bend the law in their favor. Winkler methodically points out that America has been pro-corporate and elitist Read More
Dignity and Dollars
I have been thinking a lot about dignity these days.
In simple terms, dignity is defined as the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.
We are born grasping for it. We end our days gasping for it. Read More
Desires and Delusions
“When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‘Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.'”
―Dalai Lama
The critical difference between healthy and unhealthy desires and delusions rests in our ability to distinguish between noticing and needing. Read more
Sanity 101
A 21-year-old white nationalist drives 600 miles to El Paso, Texas and kills 22 men, women and children with his assault weapon because he hates immigrants―particularly Hispanics. If this isn’t insanity, I don’t know what is. Let’s face it. We now find ourselves in the ranks of the insane.
Marianne Williamson cites a “dark psychic force” happening in America. Russ Douthat describes a “black spiritual hole” as the source of the hatred and violence ripping apart our hearts and our heartland. Read More
Borders and Boundaries
“Vulnerability is based on mutuality and requires boundaries and trust. It’s not oversharing, it’s not purging, it’s not indiscriminate disclosure, and it’s not celebrity-style social media information dumps. Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them.” —Brene Brown “Beauty has no boundaries, no rules, no colors. Beauty is like a religion. You can include everything inside it.” —Alessandro Michele “We must broaden the definition Read More
The Roots of Madness
When she was in middle school, my younger daughter attended a private, girls academy. She encountered a culture there that was ruled by tall, skinny blonde girls. These privileged and pampered young women believed that their appearance gave them inordinate power and status. And they were right. As a small, Korean child my daughter didn’t have a “get in free” ticket to the elite club. I don’t believe these girls were born to be mean, Read More
Seven Essential Qualities of Leadership
“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” —Laurel Thatcher Ulrich In 1982, my dear friend Dr. Mark Edwards introduced a fair, impartial and objective tool to measure leadership effectiveness. He called it 360 feedback, which is now ubiquitous in organizations throughout the world. The idea is to give leaders the gift of multi-source feedback on critical leadership competencies so that they can understand more clearly how they are perceived by direct reports, peers, and more senior executives. Read More
Freeing Genius and Healing Madness
“There is no great genius without some touch of madness.” —Aristotle “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” —Nietzsche “A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.” —Nikos Kazantzakis I have always been willing to tolerate idiosyncrasies in people whom I believe have deep substance or a higher perspective. This willingness has sometimes created conflicts in Read More
The Flame
Oh Leonard, how we miss you!! You lightened our days and emboldened our hearts. When I’m feeling dark and depressed after plowing through the New York Times every morning, I often call out to Alexa, “Please play Leonard Cohen.” Last week, when I made my repetitive request, Alexa started the shuffle with “You Want It Darker.” Here are the opening lyrics: If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game If you are the Read More
Power
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” —Abraham Lincoln
In the face of tremendous adversity throughout the world, many communities have responded with incredible resilience. The real test of our humanity is what happens when we are given power.
Factivists
I recently saw a simple and profound bumper sticker with just one word describing the driver’s orientation to life: FACTIVIST. I thought, now there’s a person I’d like to meet—an activist with command of the facts. In the last couple of weeks, I also read Stephen Pinker’s wonderful new book, Enlightenment Now and Jeremy Lent’s inspiring new book, The Patterning Instinct. Both of these books arm us with the facts we need to become more Read More
Measuring Meaning in the New Year
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” —Thomas Merton OK, here’s the problem. When I searched the internet for “how to measure meaning,” the first item that popped up (the most popular Yahoo answer) was how to measure your penis. Apparently, a lot of men are still finding the greatest source of meaning in their life to be the size Read More
Tribes and Teams
“Before the rise of the nation-state, the world was mostly tribal. Tribes were united by language, religion, blood, and belief. They feared other tribes and often warred against them.” —Robert Reich When I conduct teambuilding sessions, I often start by administering a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) so that I can understand the different personality styles on the team. The idea is to identify and leverage differences to achieve optimal performance. The MBTI has a continuum Read More
Different Differences
“We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.” —Thich-Nhat-Hahn I recently attended a Buddhist family sangha in which the discussion revolved around child raising practices. It was a lovely service consisting of young parents who were seeking ways to develop more peace in their families and in the world. After a 15-minute Read More
Missions and Missionaries
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” —Maya Angelou On a recent biking trip on the Creeper Trail in Abington, VA with the Road Scholars, I learned that Barbara Kingsolver lived in the area and owned a restaurant there. Serendipitously, our group had dinner in her restaurant, and I was delighted to see all of her Read More
Care, Connect, Contribute
In 1938, Sir Nicholas Winton started rescuing children from certain death in the Nazi concentration camps. He singlehandedly brought 669 children from Czechoslovakia to Britain and connected them with families there. Most of their families perished in Auschwitz. He never told a soul about his efforts and kept it a secret for 50 years until his wife found a notebook with the names and pictures of all the children he had saved. Sir Winton cared Read More
Ignorance and Inquiry
It seems to me that in our culture, the scarcity of inquiry has led to an abundance of ignorance. Some facts:
About 64% of Americans can’t name the three branches of government.
29% of Americans can’t name the vice president.
26% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth.
The Sacred and the Significant
“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.” —Joseph Campbell
In her role as a Pretend Princess dressed in her frilly yellow gown complete with a crown on her head, my 5 year old granddaughter imperiously issued a solemn proclamation to her constituency: “Be kind, be truthful, and stay alive.”
The Rudder and the Soul
The executive function represents the highest level of mental competence. It is the ability to plan ahead, anticipate consequences, derive abstract meaning, and arrive at appropriate judgments.
Read my assessment of the various competencies necessary for strong leadership and find out how Donald Trump’s skills stack up against my criteria.