 By Jim Selman | Bio
There is an inspiring 30-minute speech by Al Gore
challenging all of us and our nation to commit to a 10-year program to
move away completely from a carbon-based economy. The challenge echoes
what a lot of us have been saying for years, but he has developed
sufficient moral authority in some sectors that maybe more people will
listen. Redesigning our energy infrastructure isn’t exactly the same as
going to the moon as he suggests, but there are some powerful parallels. [ Read More]
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In the late 80s, Anne Wilson Schaef and Diane Fassel wrote a book called The Addictive Organization.
While I have a very different experience and theory than what they were
proposing, I think their metaphor was perfect. For me, the idea that an
organization or society can become ‘addicted’ is not a metaphor. I
believe, like Charles Horton Cooley, that “Individuals and
organizations are not separate phenomenon; they are the collective and
distributive aspects of the same thing”. The way I express this idea is
that “the ego is to the individual what the culture is to the
organization (or society”). What I am saying is that, from a phenomenological perspective, the ego
and culture are both self-referential structures of interpretation. [ Read More]
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By Charles E. Smith | Bio
Explainers Anonymous™ is for people who can’t help explaining they are dedicated victims of circumstance. Explaining,
like taking a drink, need not be not a problem. Telling a story to
entertain or teach is wonderful. Sometimes explanations are really
useful (such as in telling the doctor why your hand is bleeding) or
when they warn you of something (such as in looking both ways before
crossing the street because you might get killed). Sometimes they are
useful as long as everyone understands it’s an explanation—and only one
out of a hundred thousand possibilities.[ Read More]
Written by admin at Retirement
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By Charles E. Smith
Bio
Explainers Anonymous™
is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to help people addicted
to explaining everything. My name is Charlie. I started it.
It began in 1997 a few months after I retired. I woke one morning and said to myself:
"I
now have no work, no place to go, no future source of earned income,
no people telling other people about me. The phone doesn't ring and too
many of my e-mails are ads. I diet until 6 o'clock and then eat like a
pig. I go to the health club, work out and lose no weight. I have lists
full of grand schemes swarming over my desk, but the truth is that
almost nothing is actually going on. My big accomplishment of the day
so far was to take a shower...." [ Read More]
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I like this word. I don't know why…perhaps because it is one of those
words that seems to express itself in speaking of it. The word means
'anxiety'—a kind of generalized anxiety with being alive. The existential philosophers talked a lot about angst. In fact, we
normally associate angst with existentialism—existential angst. The
word is usually associated with a negative mood such as depression or
what Thomas Merton characterized as "the dark night of the soul". I
think that Heidegger talked about it as the inherent tension between
'being' and 'non-being'. I think that angst underlies the 'suffering'
that Buddha associated with human existence and probably is behind the
concept of 'original sin'. Whatever its origins or deeper meanings, it
is a day-to-day practical reality for most of us in our unending quest
to 'get it right' and 'be happy'. There are lots of strategies for dealing with angst.[ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Personal Empowerment
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