As difficult as it is to be unseen and unheard because of your difference, there is a greater danger, a greater difficulty. You may begin to question your own worth, to believe that you are somehow deficient. This is an easy conclusion to come to. “If I am repeatedly disrespected, then maybe I am not worthy of respect.”

A heartfelt and reaffirming message.

What if the thin veneer of civilisation is an unnecessary fiction? What if it is actually an artificial constraint on our better natures, a means of maintaining power and status through fear and perceived dependency? What if underneath it we are actually less afraid, less divided, less cruel and more kind than we have been conditioned to think we are?

I really enjoy Euan’s inquisitive musings like this one. More of us should be challenging the status quo and ask these sorts of questions.

As workplaces become less hierarchical and more reliant on interpersonal problem-solving, rather than just tactical execution, facilitation is becoming a job skill you’ll need to rely on more and more.

It’s great to see the importance of good facilitation being talked about in the mainstream media. No arguments from me.

Can we see a bigger picture? Can we think about the way that we think? Can we see the problem of linear thinking in a world made up of circles?

Great questions posed by Nora Bateson in An Ecology of Mind — a daughter’s loving film portrait of anthropologist, biologist, and psychotherapist Gregory Bateson.

The world does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds.

— Dalai Lama

Ben Franklin Circles are a fun, innovative way to build and strengthen community in an increasingly disconnected and digital world. They are about asking two simple questions: How can I improve myself? And, how can I improve the world?

Interesting idea.

Via David Gurteen.

For us as a society, less contact and interaction—real interaction—would seem to lead to less tolerance and understanding of difference, as well as more envy and antagonism. As has been in evidence recently, social media actually increases divisions by amplifying echo effects and allowing us to live in cognitive bubbles. We are fed what we already like or what our similarly inclined friends like (or, more likely now, what someone has paid for us to see in an ad that mimics content). In this way, we actually become less connected—except to those in our group.

In a similar vein to yesterday’s post, David Byrne also has some thoughts on a world shaped by technology. The possibility of a world with even less human interaction is a scary thought.

I aim to acknowledge the unhappiness created by technology and propose humanism to ward off technocratic tyranny and to discover what technological happiness might be.

Leigh’s inquiry into technology and humanity, and his personal reflections on his role in this “technocratic tyranny” is compelling. It’s well researched and written, and I agree – we need to re-orientate ourselves to humanist perspectives.

Robert Pirsig, author of the influential 1970s philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, has died at the age of 88.

I’m late to post this, partly because I jumped right back in and re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the third of fourth time. And after doing so, I still wanted to acknowledge his passing.

I love Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a number of reasons. The autobiographical story about a man who takes a motorcycle trip with his boy is a great story by itself. I’m also fascinated by his intellectual ideas around the unification of spiritual feeling and technological thought. And, the use of a first-person narrative, which is used to unfold the meanings of the book, is brilliant.

I’m sure that after a period of failing health that … “things are better now. You can sort of tell these things.”

Gapingvoid:

We share. We copy. That is how we learn, love and get things done. Not as one, but as part of a big dance.