Action comes from a accepting offers. When an offer comes to you you can accept it or block it. Blocking it kills the action. Accepting it moves it forward. When we are working in complexity, waiting for the failsafe plan leads to inaction because there are more blocks than acceptances. In contast diving into a safe fail mindset means committing to action and refining it as you go. This is the essence of improvisation: accept, commit, develop, offer. A simple four stage cycle for action planning
I see it all the time, where cultivated and well-raised people stumble in the wild land of chaos and open space. Whether it is the tourist in the forest who complains against the mud or the leader in an organization, community or country (like Egypt) who clings to the illusion of confidence and control and who cannot make friends with the wild and the chaotic. Thoreau: I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be …
Theses on Sustainability: [18] NO, THERE IS NO PRECEDENT for what we are struggling to create. We have to make it up ourselves. A great set of theses which ends with this one. And therefore the capacities to create what is unprecedented are also unprecedented. Best practices for what will be needed in the future are not available at any scale in the precedent. The call in the world now is to move to discover new ways of being at every scale. Some of this new ways will draw on old ways, some of it will draw on contemporary ways …
I continue to learn about the effect of the feminine. Today I was walking with friends by Bridal Falls on Bowen Island where I live and we stopped at the waterfall to reflect on the nature of flow. This standing wave caught our attention and it immediately drew me into thoughts on the complementarity of the masculine and feminine. For a long time I have been a student of the Tao, understanding the relationship between yang and yin. In Taoist thought, these two conditions exist in everything and are in constant and dynamic relationship. Yang is usually thought of as …
This week I am in Kuujjuaq, Quebec, a settlement which lies about 20 miles upriver from Ungava Bay. I am working with government agencies, Inuit claims organizations and Inuit polar bear hunters on a user-to-user meeting between hunters from Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut. Nunavut is a Canadian territory, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut are sort of semi-autnomous Inuit regions of Quebce and labrador respectively. All three areas arose from the settlement of land claims with Inuit organizations. It’s an interesting meeting. All of the hunters are Inuit and they all hunt polar bears in the Davis Strait area, but they have different …