Saturday, September 22, 2007

Joy at Work

I found this to be meaningful. From Dennis Bakke's web site. These are the first six of 10 ten items. See the remainder of this list here.

1. When given the opportunity to use our ability to reason, make decisions, and take responsibility for our actions, we experience joy at work.

2. The purpose of business is not to maximize profits for shareholders but to steward our resources to serve the world in an economically sustainable way.

3. Attempt to create the most fun workplace in the history of the world.

4. Eliminate management, organization charts, job descriptions, and hourly wages.

5. Fairness means treating everybody differently.

6. Principles and values must guide all decisions.
....


Sunday, September 09, 2007

Madeline L'Engle

This is lifted from Radical Congruency. I've never read this lady but it now looks to me like I should.

Madeline L’Engle [Daniel]

Posted Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 8:39 PM by Daniel under News View recent posts with the tag News on Technorati

The ever-wonderful Madeline L’Engle passed away on Thursday. She was 88.

I grew up reading, and loving, the Wrinkle in Time books. She was a beautiful soul.

“Why does anybody tell a story? [It has] something to do with faith - faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

May her memory be eternal.

(NYT)

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Embrace Uncertainty - William James and Me

Rummaging through my desk at home on Labor Day I found the summer issue of the Wilson Quarterly. Not sure when it arrived, it must have been several weeks at least. It is the case that the last half of each issue's ~120 pages is devoted to short essays and reviews of interesting periodicals and books. As always, I read this entire section first and then worked backwards to the larger full length articles in front of the magazine. After reading for awhile and as dusk dimmed the light coming through my window, I almost tossed the magazine, thinking I'd given it its due. Then I came upon an article on William James.

The title was One Hundred Years of Pragmatism and it was by a doctoral candidate from Yale, Theo Anderson. Having recently read a bio of James as evident from recent posts, Anderson's summary provided me with added perspective on this man's meaningful life. At this juncture in time when America was becoming industrialized, bureacratized, and modernized, James was a forerunner of that post modern humility that notes our human limitations is grasping reality. Anderson gives a quote without specific attribution:

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with but where on this moonlit and dream visited planet are they found?

It seems that for most of my life I've been pulled in two opposing directions: the orthodox vs the modern Enlightenment. James, who retired 100 years ago this year, found an alternative path that resembles the postmodern. He affirms that life is worth living. His life was a testimony that truth is not a fixed, immutable, and certain thing. It is time dependent. It is a verb. It is a "provisional, evolving relationship between ideas and consequences..." "Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events."

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Today's Quote

As Boccaccio said in his “Life of Dante” (1374), “Everything that is acquired with toil has more sweetness in it.”


From this article suggested to me by George.

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