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FOR SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS IN SCOTLAND |
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Bulletins
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Bulletin End Bits
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Sponsors
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18 May, 2012
If you search the Senscot website for Margaret Wheatley, it gives 46 references; I've been a fan for years - particularly of her thinking on leadership and community. Wheatley herself is in Glasgow on June 5th, at the Trades Hall - I've got my ticket. See, http://www.senscot.net/view_art.php?viewid=12306 . Her essay 'The Place Beyond Hope and Fear' made an impression on me - still does:
"When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure. Life now insists that we encounter groundlessness. Systems and ideas that seemed reliable and solid dissolve at an increasing rate. People who asked for our trust betray or abandon us. Strategies that worked suddenly don't. Groundlessness is a frightening place, at least at first, but as the old culture turns to mush, we would feel stronger if we stopped searching for ground, if we sought only to locate ourselves in the present and do work from here". See, http://www.senscot.net/view_art.php?viewid=8055
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11 May, 2012
I have long thought of 'creativity' as seeing unlikely connections between things. The entrepreneur seeing - and making - undiscovered, opportunistic connections; Picasso revisualising a toy car as a sculpture. Came across this quote from the late Steve Jobs: "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesise new things". Picasso said that all children are artists - the problem is how to remain an artist when we grow up.
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04 May, 2012
From the Alexandria Quartet (1962) by Lawrence Durrell.
"The greatest thoughts are accessible to the least of men. Why do we have to struggle so? Because understanding is a function not of ratiocination but of the psyche's stage of growth. There, Brother Ass, is the point at which we are at variance. No amount of explanation can close the gap. Only realisation! One day you are going to wake shouting with laughter. Ecco!"
'The psyche's stage of growth' Durrell says transcends class - experience - intelligence - learning - everything. There is an argument for dispensing with the political class entirely. Draw lots for our parliament - like Jury Duty.
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27 April, 2012
40 years ago some introduced me to the writings of Erich Fromm - and his remains a voice which steadies me.
"If other people do not understand our behaviour - so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being 'asocial' or 'irrational' in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to 'explain', which usually implies that the explanation be 'understood', i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself - to his reason and his conscience - and to the few who may have justified claim for explanation."
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20 April, 2012
Julian Baggini's book 'the Ego Trick' is a helpful exploration of the perplexing subject of the 'Self'.
"Perhaps the simplest analogy is with a cloud. From a distance it looks like an object with fairly clear edges, but the closer you get to it, the more indistinct it becomes. Get really close and you can see it's just a collection of water droplets. Does that mean clouds don't exist? Of course not. It just means that they are not chunks of cotton wool. The self is like a cloud that not only looks like a single object from the outside, but feels like one from the inside too. Knowing the truth doesn't change the way it either looks or feels, and nor does it conjure it out of existence. It simply makes us recognise that at root each of us is an ever-changing flux, not a never-changing core. The solidity of self is an illusion; the self itself is not. The Ego Trick is not to persuade us that we exist when we do not, but to make us believe we are more substantial and enduring that we really are. There maybe an illusion as to what we really are, but not that we really are."
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See all previous bulletin end bits here
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SENSCOT supporters
Senscot works closely with these social enterprise intermediaries: The development work of Senscot is also supported by the Scottish Government.
54 Manor Place, Edinburgh EH3 7EH
Tel: +44(0)131 220 4104 Fax:+44 (0)131 539 9999
E-mail: mail@senscot.net
Registered in Scotland. Company Registration No. 278156. Scottish Charity No. SC 029210 |
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