1) What do I really want to do and to be in the short term and the long term?
I want to be a truth engager. I want to make all truth available.
2) What do I really care about?
I care about "loving". I want to love directly.
3) What choices will I make? What things will I let go, and what things will I take up?
I will organize my life so that I am productive from God's perspective.
I will work on the infrastructure of the laboratory.
I will make our workspace attractive
I can spend time every day on life that goes beyond the laboratory. Within the laboratory, I will pursue endeavors that encourage me to do this.
7) Do I agree to place my answers in the public domain, so that all may copy and share them without asking for my permission? (If you do, we'll share them.)
Yes
8) Would I like to give my name? And a way to contact me, such as an email address? (If you do, we'll credit you as the author.)
Andrius Kulikauskas, ms@ms.lt
Please send to The Minciu Sodas laboratory:
ms@ms.lt or Grudu g 6, LT-2020 Vilnius,
Lithuania.
Thank You for Caring about Thinking
I want to love individuals, but I do not want to care about individual relationships. I only want to invest myself in relationships that I can share with others. I want my relationships with others to be based on endeavors that we can share. I want to structure myself so that I stay open to every sort of endeavor that anybody might bring.
I want the Minciu Sodas laboratory to be open to every sort of endeavor that we might ever have. I want us to focus on the synergy amongst our endeavors so that we may bring our energy to every single one. Not every endeavor fosters caring directly, some just foster thinking. I think, however, that the synergy always fosters caring.
We will have this synergy if we focus on why the truth of every day life is relevant to each of our endeavors. I want our work to be public, so that I may focus on the truth of every day life. I want the structure of our laboratory to have us focus on this, and make this tangible for others, so that we might all be open.
I want the Minciu Sodas laboratory to place our endeavors in the proper perspective. Some we should pursue through material gain, and some through material loss. We pursue through material gain endeavors that foster thinking, and through material loss those that foster caring. We are devoted to "caring about thinking", so we should mind both perspectives.
I think material gain can foster thinking by:
- acknowledging our every day needs.
- bringing together people who might not otherwise be able to participate,
such as the poor.
- constraining us in ways that stimulate creativity and enrichen solutions.
- clarifying the workings of the economy that it depends on.
- propagating a solution so that many others may adopt it.
- showing the relevance to those who might not otherwise appreciate.
I value such endeavors indirectly. I therefore want to be careful
not to pursue them without getting paid! So I choose not to work
on them for free unless they serve our own needs. Furthermore, in
working on them, whether for pay or not, I will insist that they help us
to grow as people, and they allow us to reach out to others.
Money can bring us together. It can get us to think about the same things, but it can't get us to care about each other. I suppose that's because you can show that you're thinking, but you can't show that you're caring. They can't pay for what you can't show.
I think material loss can foster caring by:
- having us focus on individuals, rather than relationships
- having us focus on relationships in general, rather than particular
relationships
The Minciu Sodas laboratory is based on relationships. I want
the relationships that I build to grow from endeavors through material
loss. I choose to invest effort in any person, whether inside or
outside of our laboratory, if it's for efforts through material loss.
Even when I work for pay, I will look for how our work fosters caring,
and I will invest in others only to the extent that together we do foster
caring. I will not, however, foster caring through material gain.
8-9 hours: sleep
1 hour: prayer with my best energy.
1 hour: breakast, etc., and priming my mind for the day with my "anti-list"
1-2 hours: work on my system of thoughts, the most important
ideas about life that I can think of.
1 hour: lunch
1-2 hours: break for sports outside, like ride my bike
1 hour: chores or errands
4 hours: work I bill for
1 hour: dinner
1 hour: work on laboratory infrastructure and relationships
1 hour: work on laboratory endeavors
1-2 hours: time for friends or unexpected adventures
1 hour: read a book and the Bible before I sleep
That's 23-27 hours. There aren't any set times for anything, just general patterns. (I'm interested what kind of building might support those patterns). So every day works out a bit differently, I get to be very flexible and available. My "anti-list" helps keep me balanced. I think to-do lists and schedules are counter-productive, they reduce productivity because they are restricting life and creating dead time. Instead, every morning I think of concrete examples how during the day I might:
1) spend time with God (maybe we work on some ideas together)
2) foster my conscience (do my taxes!)
3) foster my discipline (sports, go to bed early, be chaste, etc.)
4) foster my stewardship (clean or maintain something)
5) foster my curiosity (this helps me be more interested in what others
are doing and are good at, humbles me)
6) foster my servantship (how might I make myself available for somebody
else as they wish)
7) foster my comradeship (how might I wholeheartedly support somebody
else's project that has nothing to do with my own)
8) be successful (God wants me to succeed)
All I do is "prime my mind", think of examples that I c o u l d do. I don't specifically have to do them, I'm happy if something much more relevant comes up. If I don't get around to something one day, I can do it another day. It just makes me sensitive to that area of life, and balanced with regard to all of them. So the only accountability is that I know if I've neglected a particular area, because I can't think of good examples or I keep thinking of the same ones again. I put together this "anti-list" about five years ago when I was unhappy with various aspects of my life, my half-heartedness towards various things. So I did an inventory, and out of that created these eight groups of what I could work on. I've done this for about five years, and it works wonderfully. It keeps me alive to everything, and I don't every have any more concerns. It can easily take half an hour to go through the list, and I might not have time that day to hardly do anything, but I've conlcuded that it's much less important that I actually do something than I be ready to respond.
I like my schedule because I'm forced to be very focused on the things that really matter, use my hour or two to feel that I was able to take a concrete step forward in getting things done. I know that when I have more time it gets wasted and sidetracked. So I actually like having a part-time job, it keeps me productive and also helps me go beyond myself, contribute to the chores of society and learn what other people need and like. I think, if it's only for twenty hours a week, just about any job can be pleasant enough and I can put energy into doing it well.
I want to take practical steps so that I can live this way as much as possible. I have to deal with my financial obligations. I'm willing to travel, but ultimately I'd like to have freedom to live wherever, such as Lithuania.
For the last three years I've
If I have to work more than 20 hours, then I start to lose what's important
to me, and I think it's a loss for myself and others.
I don't want to go deeper in debt, in fact, I need to start paying it back. I need about $2,000 a month to live and grow, and another $1,000 a month in payments. In order to pay my debt back, I need to make an additional $1,000 a month for the next four years. I would like to be able to assume that most of this will be unrelated to the laboratory, I want to be able to do this working part-time, ideally 20 hours a week. I would like this job to help me to grow, to develop my practical skills. So I should find a way to earn $50 an hour. I would like to be able to do such work anywhere, first of all Lithuania, but also other developing regions. I'm willing to travel, though, to build the relationships to make this possible. For example, I want to develop my practical skills organizing programming systems, and build up my resume as an analyst and consultant for systems development. I'd like to be able to lead work on endeavors involving some "nitty gritty" architectural solutions to sweeping social problems. I would like to be able to help bring in work for other people.
I want to gradually shift over to making income from the laboratory. I want this income to come from our core services - attracting innovators and leading investigations that integrate people around truth. I want this income to strengthen the values and principles that structure our laboratory. In particular, that for our participants and sponsors, public research has greater value than private research. For this reason I reject private research, which is completely counter to the social values and business principles of our laboratory. Instead, I think it's logical that we charge more for making our research even that much more public.
I want to integrate that as part of the truth, this fact that I and others need to earn a living.
I'd like to consider doing this for two years, and then reflect on whether to make another radical shift.
I want to engage people with as many different kinds of concerns, and interests, as possible. So I want to live and travel accordingly.
I want to have a market where we can pursue even the most modest ways of working through the public domain, but simply as a proof of concept, and a way of involving others.
I want to focus the business of the laboratory on getting major sponsorship for an endeavor.
When I work on the laboratory without income, I want my work to be comprehensive, and I want to focus on serving our own needs, and reaching out to those who might not otherwise be able to participate. For income, I want to develop proposals in different directions, and then see which one merits sponsorship, rather than do work for free.
I want to steadily pay back my debts, but also be able to work from
Lithuania, or travel. So I want to be able to find employment that
I can work from a distance. I want to develop my practical skills
for organizing "heterogeneous systems" that make available diverse roles
for people using a wide range of norms and technologies.
I want to understand, what we must do so that sponsors feel comfortable participating in our laboratory. This includes participants feeling comfortable working with or for sponsors, that there be avenues where sponsors and participants can develop private business arrangements, there be ways for sponsorships to grow, that we have many proposals that make our own interests concrete, that we are effective in sharing our proposals, we are open to new proposals, that we make the value of our laboratory understandable and familiar (for example, http://www.cluetrain.org or The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell). In particular, we should be open and supportive to those bringing new initiatives, regardless of sponsorship.
We should show that sponsors benefit first and foremost from supporting our infrastructure so that we our their workspace where they attract innovators, rethink their own beliefs and integrate others around them.
The proposals that make our own interests concrete should arise from our own needs, and we should work to satisfy them, regardless.
Pursue the collection of subjective answers as a "ground floor" for
engaging truth. Encourage the wonderful work of all who wish for
such a ground floor.
I want to love more than I can think, so I should love through being and doing. I should be with God, and do with God, not just think with God.
I want to engage truth, so I should do that everywhere, not just through the Internet. The Internet favors people who are good and fast writers, who have access to technology, are comfortable with computers, communicate in English, and have free time. We can help make such access more available, but I think, more importantly, we need to find ways how people might participate and contribute without such direct access. Our work through the Internet helps us to model the laboratory, but the laboratory should be able to function without the Internet.
Tyr to spend some time each day to identify what comes up that doesn't fit my picture of the world, and be extra engaging with regard to that. Reflect on it, but try to see what aspects are familiar, but also, what aspects are novel, and focus on those.
Be open and supportive of all new initiatives. Reserve energy and time each day for life that goes beyond the laboratory. Keep working with regard to what the laboratory should be, needs to be, rather than what it may seem to be, or suggest itself to be.
************************************************************************************
Structure the Laboratory so that we can focus on the impossible. To focus on the impossible is to be comprehensive, to draw in all the many kinds of the impossible.
The impossibly large and the impossibly small can combine to form something
very possible, even certain.
The working group
OtherStands supports people who want to think about other stands, not
just their own. In particular, this is to support people who
are
willing to publicly explore their own beliefs or hunches,
discover unexpected truths, and thereby build bridges that relate
different beliefs. This service is, I think, very useful for
making
discussion groups more productve. In particular, as an endeavor,
I
want to popularize the collaborative accumulation, in the public domain,
of subjective answers to interesting questions. I intend sponsorship
of
this endeavor to be the main source of income for the Minciu Sodas
laboratory for this year.
I think the lab should focus on the impossible.
It involves behavior.
All religions and philoposphies ultimately center on doing, not being.
That
is, "do onto others", "do good, do no harm", "equality for all". The
impossible brings in very interesting behaviors as it involves the
added
gifts of doing new things and thinking new thoughts. The impossible
insists
on small segments of behavior leading to the ultimate impossible.
It relates
to faith these fragments will add up to something. It's impossible
to to
build a house with little money and no help. One board at a time,
one wire
at a time, and in a few years it's done. The value of the impossible
is that
since the efforts are so slow, modification can be made as work
progresses.
Slow progress takes a lot of thought and that is the reward, a lot
of
interesting thinking.
If we can't effectively work incrementally, we're stuck doing only possible things. [ ...and what fun is that? : ) ]
The impossible means
Structuring the Laboratory
How can we work on so many? I intend them to generate synergy.
So, you can see, that we really are a laboratory for "caring about
thinking", not just in any particular sense.
Our guide to developing the synergy, being comprehensive:
- We're open to I'm certainly open and responsive to starting
new endeavors,:
A) Which may come from sponsors. (and then must be from material gain).
B) Come from leaders who bring endeavors that foster "caring
about thinking".
The workspace that I want it to be, both
culturally and technologically.
Would like to find a leader
who could take over, say, in half a year. We develop an economy
where our members, especially in
Lithuania, could earn some money, and our members - TheBrain, Mindjet,
and individuals, could clearly benefit from services, up to $5,000,
say. Also, that we could use www.paypal.com or something like
that to
develop small income streams for small projects, which might support
members such as Thoughtstream, Lucid, and goodies for us - phonecards,
books, etc. That's part of what I mean by structuring the lab.
Also,
distributing the various components of the lab across our membership.
- Our Own Stands, "Make Work Fun!" lead by Steve Raiff. I want
to help,
so that in the following year Steve could have a solid working group,
at
least as active as the one we have for Our Own Thoughts. I'd
like to
make it comfortable for him to work within our laboratory, experimenting
through his leadership, but looking for how his approaches to work,
and
the rest of the lab, might fit together.
For
example, I will come to the OurOwnThoughts group to help organize
technology for "accumulating subjective experiences", and for any other
of our projects, such as Steve's. I will ask the OtherStands
group to
use the other groups as test cases, for how we can organize ourselves
more productively, and in particular, how we can use the "accumulation
of subjective experiences". I will ask Steve Raiff and the OurOwnStands
to help us make our work more fun.
- Caring About Relationships with Others, "Heart-to-heart Support
Network", which I'm working on with David Ellison-Bey in Chicago.
How
can we support each other so that we have the energy to speak
heart-to-heart with each other, and even with those who don't want
to
speak that way.
- Caring About God, "Prayer in Twos or Threes", I'm personally
interested in learning how to pray together with one or two other
people, what is that about? It's almost scary! For me,
I think this is
a way of learning how to love God.
The creative tension has spurred my personal growth. More importantly
(!) I know that the creative tension has greatly advanced the system
of
thought that I have worked on all my life. This is because the
laboratory somehow connects for me the gears of my own life, and my
God,
and all of you. So there is feedback upon feedback. I love
that very
much, so I want to keep working on the laboratory, and learn how to
stay
fixed on that.
I don't wish Minciu Sodas
to be a "central" laboratory, but rather, that Minciu Sodas be one
of
many workspaces, connected in a web.
I do want to be open to radical change. I hope you will help.
I
think that we will have truly reflected if we end up with observations
that none of us expected.
Minciu Sodas has focused on work, on getting
things done, on endeavors.
I hope to find ways to work better as a team. Within
OurOwnThoughts, I will focus on clarifying with you
how and why we might work together.
I haven't yet learned how we might all
work well together as a
team. I am happy, though, that there are definite successes.
Mostly
encouraging each other: I think of Steve Raiff devoting more
time to
BrainFarming. Or meeting wonderful people: I think of Marjorie
and
Annette going out to lunch.
I also plan to make heavy use of
tools for thinking in the reflection that I will be doing, and will
invite others to join me. So I will mostly come to OurOwnThoughts
with
concrete wishes for using tools for thinking.
The impossible goal.
So it's good to have something concrete.
The goal that I've chosen is helpful because it lets me focus, gives me something concrete that I can work on, and take to sponsors.
I'm willing to let go of any particular problem. Usually I work on the thing that I can add the most to my knowledge overall, what helps me formulate new questions.
I myself need to have income.
But, perhaps more importantly, need to engage the real world, what
others care about, what presses on them, and that is also reflected in
their need for income.
These are things that we would completely ignore, if we didn't have
any pressure. So that's helpful to have some of that pressure.
So I think I should look to our sponsors for direction, what interests them.
But in order to approach sponsors, I need to market myself. In
order to market myself, I have to have something concrete to show them.
Especially because we want to pursue the new, unexplored, not just repeat
the old. So I have to do work, that I might show them. But
if I'm going to do work, and sustain that for quite some time, then I need
to feel the work satisfies my need. So I need to do work that would
address our own needs.
Review my opinions on making a living.
I've worked for three years to start
up Minciu Sodas. I've run
out of funds, and I don't want to borrow any more until I have
reflected. Reflect, then take a stand, then follow through!
I think if we can carve out
an hour a day for working extremely hard on what we truly want to do,
then that's certainly enough to accomplish wonderful things.
Our society encourages us to believe that we can find the perfect
compromise, a job that pays well and that we love to do. My experience
is that people who believe that end up with jobs that they kind of
like
and that pay just OK.
If you really want to pursue something with the best of your life's
energy, and if it's truly dear or holy to you, then money will
compromise it. The more holy it is, the more evil that will be.
So first consider what you really want to pursue with your life, and
set
aside the making money part. Make sure you get the education
that will
let you do want you want to pursue, and especially study the foundations
that keep your options open, because your vision is going to evolve.
Also, realize that you're not going to get very far unless you're
self-educated. And if your priority is to be self-educated, you're
going to have problems with the educational system, it will not be
friendly. So brace yourself. You have to let everybody
know what you
really want to do, and intend to do. They will not be encouraging,
but
it's much better to start walking the path in the face of the world,
then to always pretend in your mind, hide your dreams, never actually
pursue them, and be a sick and miserable person.
Also, the best people who will help you are the ones who wrote the
classics, and your peers with whom you can discuss your ideas, not
your
teachers. A university is, by design, a sheltered life, so if
your
dream has anything to do with engaging life, realize that and keep
one
foot in the real world.
When you're done with your schooling, you'll have to make a living.
If
your education has given you general skills, you'll be OK. Some
of my
friends have just stumbled into work that fits them very well.
The only
problem with that is that your not being very active in shaping your
life. But certainly it's good to play off of what fate - or God
-
offers us.
If you do have a life pursuit, then you'll have to make a living.
Many
people think that you can work hard and save money and then be free
to
do whatever you want to do. Those people are still working.
Unfortunately, we are naturally bad at saving money, the more money
we
make, the more we spend. Even more important, our mind has to
be
continuously engaged in a pursuit in order for us to make progress
on
it. You can't just show up ten or twenty years later and think
you'll
be up and running. It takes time to develop the rhythms and be
able to
pour yourself into what you want to do. Finally, if you're Christian,
you're supposed to give everything away. Start doing that so
you know
what it's about. You're not allowed to save it, if it can be
put to
better use by somebody else. We're all debtors, if you look at
the
stories in the Gospel. Don't be afraid to borrow money if it's
for what
you value most.
As I started, we don't want to compromise what we're doing. Of
course,
it's always good to consider how our jobs can give us skills for what
we
want to do. We should always look at the assets, not the profits
- how
does this job develop my assets.
A nice solution is to work part-time, and pursue your own dreams
part-time. That's what St.Paul did, he was a tent-maker.
In America,
there's little excuse not to do this. You'll be rather poor,
but you
will grow tremendously. I believe if your spouse lives this way,
too,
then the two of you can support a family, also. As an aside,
if we only
had sex with people we married, and only married people we were in
love
with, then I think there would never be a population problem.
More
importantly, if you live this way then, in theory, you'll more likely
to
find your true love who also wants to live this way. In practice,
I
haven't such fortune, but I still believe this.
Another problem, though, is that the jobs that pay well typically offer
no clear benefit to society. Whereas the jobs that generate clear
benefit - such as raising food, or raising children - these jobs are
always underpaid. If you have any real talent, it's a crime to
waste it
on a job that simply exists because of some government regulation,
etc.
So that gives you an extra challenge.
Several years ago, I moved to Lithuania, where I want to have a job
that's integrated with the local economy. I realized that I can't
just
work part-time, because we're too poor. So I started a business.
The
problem with a business is that you can't do it just part-time, at
least
I can't. It's all-consuming. So if you have some life pursuit,
you
have to work it out with God, how you'll put that aside, or even more
tricky, how your business will help keep moving that along. Cut
a deal
with God, let him know how he'll benefit, do that with all your heart.
Understand that he'll nudge you every so often, as things progress,
so
you keep him in mind. Something to consider, too, is that a business
is
successful when you can walk away from it, when it runs without you.
Wealth is relationships. So if you can generate quality relationships,
you're generating wealth, and you'll get a share some how. So
consider
how you can help the poor "get in the loop". Also, by having
a business
that relates somehow to your life pursuit, you're forced to make things
concrete, and find ways of integrating people. So there's advantages,
but you should Also, business can be good for the soul, in that
if your
doing it right, you can't encompass it all at once, you have to be
hyperflexible, willing to respond in all directions, while focusing
on
your values and mission. I think this is how Christ lives, doing
what
any good person would do.
Christ was a mooch. If you can live as a mooch, that's really
rough,
you have to know what the lines are with regard to your friends, be
very
sensitive to the extent to which they want to help. Also, you
always
have to remember we're all equal, regardless of our little missions
in
life. If your friendships keep getting stronger, you know your
doing
OK. He was good at that. Strive to live as a mooch.
You really have
to know your values, spend a lot of energy developing them.
I don't know much about you, except that you're probably going to end
up
somewhere in the financial system. You should open your eyes
and
realize that the financial system of our world doesn't hang together,
regardless of what they tell you. Pull out a globe and realize
that in
your lifetime, if you take responsibility to help keep this system
going, there's good reason why you should be lined up and shot.
There's
also good reason why you should be screwed over by your colleagues
and
lose everything you thought was yours.
You don't own anything. We are all equal. Everything is
there for the
ones who can make best use of it. Certainly some people are better
stewards than others. And frankly, who is so poor as to want
the shirt
that fits your back? Or who wants to share your home? But
you may
never say, this is mine, I can do what I want with it. More
importantly, any gifts and talents that you have are not so that you
would be happy, but so that we all would be happy. What would
you do if
you were born in Cambodia? So please keep us on your mind.
There's certainly a lot of beautiful work you can do to figure out how
to make this financial system work. Money is an indicator.
Christ said
it was a little thing, and the way we value little things is the way
we
value the big ones.
Always show good will. You can show good will even to somebody
you
don't love. And you can show as little as you want, that may
in fact
give you better feedback. But always show that little bit.
Look for
the slack. Good is slack.
Do be successful. Have you ever been very happy? Wasn't
that
exhausting? If you're happy, share it with others, it will be
easier
for you. Unfortunately, we're afraid to be happy, and we actually
spend
a lot of energy wanting to fail. Did you ever wish to be less
alive?
God wants us to succeed, but we choose to fail. God loves us
- wants us
to be alive - more than we want to. We're alive - sensitive and
responsive - when we're at peace. Happiness is fine, but not
the real
goal, because when we're happy we're focused on that, and dead to
everything else. But when we're at peace, we're sensitive, like
water
that responds with ripples to a pebble. Also, fun is a great
indicator
of directions. But when we something truly matters to us, we
don't need
it to be fun any more, that's just a distraction from what we truly
want
to do. So peace be with you!
I'd like to find and identify resources that I think that are valuable
and/or in the spirit of this.
I'd like to focus on the collection of answers that I and others I
know are directly interested in.
Time for Reflection 12/31/00 Andrius
I've started up a Mind Map, on the theme "thriving on impossibility",
regarding what we wish for the future, working both separately and
together, and how what we learn from life spurs us on, and how we can
intensify this feedback, especially as we head straight for the
impossible.
1/2/2001
Yesterday I had a great conversation over the phone with my friend Joe
Sochor. He said that it's easy to consider the reasons why we
don't
care about something:
- Annoyed me.
- Trivial or irrelevant.
- Not enough time.
- I can't make a difference.
- I don't have enough mental energy.
- I'm not sure I have sufficient desire to make it worth the effort.
- Marginal or fringe.
- Everybody cares about it, we are over involved.
Here are some of my notes from our conversation:
Joe: "Some things I do care about are very closely related to things
I
don't. We talked earlier about 'living the faith', or 'spiritual
paths'
or however you might call it. There are whole realms within that
which
I don't care about because people attach too much importance, though
I
do see they merit some importance."
Joe: "I don't care about watching spectator sports, but I do care about
playing them."
Joe: "I don't care about rocket science, but I do care about calculus,
which is a part of that."
Joe: "I don't care about foo-foo fancy cooking equipment, but I do
care
about cooking something to see what the result will be."
Andrius: "That reminds me of setting up the good will exercises.
We
would get to the real issue by looking for what made us feel positive,
and what made us feel negative. Those two feelings were very
closely
related, and brought out the real issue."
Andrius: "I like your distinction very much. So my investigation
could
have us heighten the distinction between what we care about and what
we
don't care about."
Andrius: "But also, I'd like to consider, should we care? What
do we
gain by caring, or not caring?"
Joe: "A sense of self. Our conscious involvement."
Joe: "Hey, what are signposts where you know you care or don't?"
Andrius: "If I raise my guard, or lower my guard, then I know that I
must care. Sometimes my guard drops, instinctively I feel why
I care,
unconsciously I know why I care. Sometimes I raise my guard,
for
example, when somebody challenges my faith. I remember when the
Jehovah's witnesses would knock on our door. I think I raise
my guard
when I feel lost as to what I care about, when I feel it may get twisted
or misrepresented, when I consciously don't know
why I care. If I
don't raise or lower my guard, it's neutral, then I don't care, it's
not
touching me."
Joe: "What is something that you didn't care about, but now you care
about?"
Andrius: "Having friends. I didn't feel any need for friends,
but now I
enjoy that very much. I still don't feel friends are a necessity,
but I
am glad to devote a lot of energy to friendships."
Joe: "That reminds me of c a r i n g j u s t
e n o u g h, which is
what I find is most productive. Some things I may care about,
like
spiritual things, but there is not much way of getting a handle on
that. But other things are quick to pick up, accessible, easy
to
engage."
Andrius: "That's a beautiful concept! It suggests that often
we may
undercare or overcare, and that makes for problems. For example,
maybe
it's not good that you don't care about spectator sports at all.
Maybe
it would be much simpler if you cared a little bit, just for the sake
of
caring. Otherwise, you're spending energy not to care!
It's good to
know that you care about playing them, rather than watching them.
But
maybe that can help you care about watching them."
Joe: "Yes, in fact, I do appreciate watching sports, after I have found
out how hard they are to play."
Andrius: "With that perspective you could even appreciate watching them,
considering what it might be like some day to play them."
In conclusion, here is an investigation that I will be pursuing, for
my
own sake, over the next several months.
My reason for doing this: "I would like to know everything about life,
and apply that usefully. I want to do this because I think I
can, and I
don't think I have anything better to do with myself." (Maybe
we'll
find a better reason!)
My hypothesis: "The ways that we care about everything and anything
will
show the ways of loving God and loving our neighbors, and in particular,
make sense of the ten commandments."
My question: "What are the ways of caring about anything and
everything?"
My investigation:
1) Invite others to help.
2) Each of us makes a list of what we care about, and what we don't
care
about.
3) Each of us orders their list, starting with what we care about the
most, and ending with what we care about the least.
4) Each of us notes what we care too much about, not enough about,
and
just enough.
5) In each list, we look for pairs of what we care about, and don't
care
about, that are closely related
6) We phrase each pair so as to heighten our feelings about them.
7) We identify factors, in each pair, that account for why we care
or
not.
8) We consider reasons why we should care less or more about these
things, and how they affect us.
9) We relate these reasons to the ten commandments, or other structures,
how they have us care.
If you would like to help, please let me know. You can write to
me at
ms@ms.lt, or through this group. Our work will be in the public
domain,
and we will credit you as the author. So please use your judgement
as
to what you feel comfortable sharing. You are free to choose
what you
think best illustrates your feelings.
Natalie, Thank you for your letter, which I've read several times, and
find very helpful. For me, it's always a bit of a shock to feel
that
I'm making progress in one direction, and then I have to address ideas
coming from another direction. In general, ideas tend to branch
out
very rapidly, so it's very difficult to focus them so that they go
somewhere. Actually, I have a better chance of doing this when
I do get
genuine questions and remarks like yours because then I can point to
them. I can show that what I look for, or what I claim, or what
is
truly in the back of my mind, is already in your very questions and
ideas. In other words, I can rely on your mind as half of my
own, so
when you get engaged, I can stand back and observe. Of course,
I have
to accept your freedom, that there are different angles, any of which
might engage you. Even so, I can think how the ideas I am looking
for,
and the ideas you are generating, are naturally connected. Then
I can
capture that connection with some kind of structure. That structure
allows me to come back to that connection later. If the structure
is
true, then I can turn things around, and engage myself in the ideas
that
the structure captures. I can feel for myself that they are true,
they
do feel right. I can then talk with that structure, with the
Truth. I
can learn from it, and draw conclusions, so long as I engage myself
truly, rely on what my feelings tell me.
This is like a game, except it's very serious. I call it "step
in, step
out". In a conversation, which may have several people, you "step
in"
when you engage an idea, rely on your subjective experience, your
intuition, your feelings. You "step out" when you watch, you
observe,
the dynamics of the conversation, how are the ideas unfolding, how
are
they related? You can't do both at the same time, so you need
some kind
of extension of your mind, which might be other people, or God.
Or it
might be something like writing, or even a system of truths, but if
there aren't other people, if it's just you, then I think you have
to
have God. Somebody by whom you can step out of the shadow of
your own
experience, be flexible, like a person in general.
Does it make sense what I'm saying? These are the conversations
where
there is a spiritual flutter, which I think is most heightened when
there is a rapid change of who is stepping in, who is stepping out.
You
can't orchestrate it very much, because when you're stepped in, you're
so swept up in what you're saying and feeling that you can't control
yourself all that much. Then we let go of that, and we can look
around
at where the conversation is moving. You can help a conversation
by
switching back and forth between the two. And when people do
this, then
this spiritual flutter kicks in. It's very real, and I think,
from a
Christian point of view, I think it's fair to call that the Holy Spirit.
I've felt this in small "charismatic" churches that I've visited, when
people simply pray together. I think the above description works,
people are switching back and forth between stepping in, immersing
themselves in prayer, and stepping out, sensing the atmosphere of
prayer. The prayer might be silent, or they might be speaking
in
tongues. It's disturbing, in a positive way. I also sense
this in my
friend Shuhong's, and his brother Tong's little Chinese church in San
Diego, at their bible study. They read a section, and then mostly
they
just talk what they feel inspired to "share", which may or may not
play
off of the text. In Chicago, I'm in the choir at my parish, St.Benedict
the African's, and some times we'll hit a song where that happens,
where
there is a feedback in the atmosphere, and many times we don't.
You're
singing away, but then you step out, and help the song move, and you
then you find yourself back in, and it's flickering through the whole
church. Dee - Davretta! - is our choir director, tremendously
great
leader, and she improvises what we'll do, so we have to follow her,
and
be mindful.
I think it also happens here, in our discussion group. You write:
"I read your current message and my immediate language-response, my
computer-brain response is: impatience. Must I hack my way through
a
forest of concepts? Then I step back from the computer-brain reaction
and go into intuitive-mode, and my impatience disappears. I start to
sense rather than to think about what you are communicating. And it's
intuition, rather than thought, which gives me a translation of your
language so that I can assimilate it. So now I can interpret,
in my own
words, what I sense that you are saying (tell me if I'm wrong?)"
Something happened there, I don't know what, and maybe we can't know.
I
think it involves switches from stepping in to stepping out, or the
other way around. You read my letter again, you think, it's not so
hard
to just look for the flow, where is Andrius going? You understand,
that
a lot of the words that I or Steve or others use are just markers for
concepts, reference points that we want to be able to come back to.
We
want to capture the structure that we're mapping, as it unfolds.
So the
writing can sound awkward and mechanical. I may find that my
own
structures are very helpful and potent, and then for me it all crashes
down, it loses touch with reality, it just becomes a bunch of
squiggles. Then I realize that I have to go back to real life,
get back
in touch with real issues, tap into life. Everyday life is the
best.
You translated my letter back into everyday life. This is very helpful
for me, because it let's me check whether I've gone too far adrift.
There's also all kinds of questions that spring up, trying to explain
my
feelings why I wouldn't choose the words you do, I might not mark them
the way you do. You give me new feelings to explore.
For me, that's very productive, if we can, through our letters, both
step in, and step out. That's a reason to have a laboratory like
Minciu
Sodas, and discussion groups like this one. It's also a reason
for
worrying, how do we structure such a laboratory, and such groups, so
that this happens? It does seem helpful to have people who care
to read
our letters, and writers who support each other, and leaders who worry
that we move forward. We have people who are open to each other.
I want to add something that I think is more important than this
spiritual flutter, Holy Spirit, Truth. Did you ever go to church,
or
temple, or synagogue, or other place, and spiritually feel alone?
I'm
Roman Catholic, and I always feel that way at church, in the end.
I
feel that people are closed to me. But I also feel God is open
to me,
and I can be with God, as much as I can, and the rest doesn't matter
one
bit. And that's much more important than any of that flutter,
because
that is the one God. So, from this point of view, most important
is to
be open to God.
But, second, it's important to be open to each other, because that way
we can step out from what makes us particular. I think that's
what
Jesus taught, and I think what he meant when he said, "If you hold
to my
teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth,
and
the truth will set you free." If we are open to each other, then
we are
open to this spiritual flutter, and we will know the truth, and we
are
open to all truth. Something like that, I'm just "marking" this.
Furthermore, I feel that, if there is somebody honest, they have the
right to dismiss that spiritual flutter. But then, how can they
be
touched by truth? Only if the truth is tangible, something that
they
can touch. I have the right to bring to them tangible truth,
that they
may have it. I care that I myself be honest, so I might be able
to
bring it, and they certainly should check me regarding that.
But if
they are honest, then I want to have tangible truth to bring them.
My
expectation of God is that this tangible truth be available.
If that's
right, then we don't have to obey - be open to God, we don't have to
believe - be open to each other, we just have to be honest - be open
to
the truth, and the rest will follow. If we're not honest, what
more can
be done? If we're not honest, then who are we?
I don't know how this makes sense within your own faith. But in
my
faith, I know the Bible has a lot of "loose cannons", and the one that
strikes me, that gives authority, is at the Last Supper, in the Gospel
of John, where Jesus says: "I have much more to say, but you
cannot
bear it now. But when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide
you into
all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will only speak
what he
hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring
glory to
me by taking what is mine and making it known to you. All that
belongs
to the Father is mine. That's why I said that the Spirit will take
from
what's mine and make it known to you."
The funny thing about that passage is that we never find out, to my
knowledge, what we couldn't bear that he had to say? I've never
met
anybody who wondered what that was!
Just an aside, I try to decode what Jesus says, what are the "markers"
that he thinks in terms of. For example, when he says that X
is a child
of Y, then he'll say that he means that X does just like Y does.
If you
were a child of Abraham, then you'd do what Abraham did, etc.!
But if
he says that X is a Son of Y, then he'll say that he means that Y has
shown X how to do it. I think that's the difference when he says
he's
the Son of God, that God showed him how to do it, and the Son of Man,
that Man showed him how to do it; in other words, he knew of the plight
of and the ways of man, because man showed him. So up above,
by that
logic, we'd be the Sons of Truth, if Truth showed us how to do it.
So I'm glad I could share so much of my outlook, because it's so hard,
without any context. Annette and Marjorie wrote several months
ago
about the dangers of extreme honesty. I do think that honesty
is
apocalyptic, because it doesn't leave any room for options. Another
thing Christ said, as to why he spoke in parables to the crowd, to
those
who did not yet believe, is so that they CAN not-believe. In
other
words, they can choose to understand it, or they can choose to not
understand, to the degree they wish. The churches, I think, all
read it
differently, so that they CAN-NOT believe! That doesn't make
any sense!
and I'd be bold enough to challenge God on that, as Job did.
There's
things worth challenging God over, even though it just means that he
sets us straight. I myself do believe in extreme honesty, because
it
forces me to be open to others, and to God, by showing all my
weaknesses. It doesn't make sense to me that God could put us
in a
situation where we'd have to be dishonest.
I want to relate this back to "caring about thinking", and "caring about
God", and "caring about others". These are all markers, concepts
that
make sense within a system.
First: "caring about thinking". If you divide Everything into
three
parts, then I think you'll always come up with, in one form or another:
1) taking a stand 2) following through 3) reflecting You can
picture
this in, I think, four different ways: A) being, doing, thinking, B)
as
many, as one, as all, C) on object, on process, on subject D)
necessarily, actually, possibly. We also have terms that go beyond
the
pictures, back to the underlying unity of the pictures, such as: 1)
God
the Father, 2) the Son, 3) the Holy Spirit. Here's it's important
that
some things in our minds we do picture, and some things we don't.
This
kind of stuff is extremely slippery because we have to be on our toes,
because there's a tremendous difference between the underlying idea
and
the expression = picture = representation of that idea. The trick
is to
slow our minds down to a creep, and then walk through our thinking.
This kind of technique is called introspection, looking within yourself,
and it's very error-prone, as soon as we let sneak in a layer of
reflection. But in every day words, walking through a system
of ideas,
and making sure they feel right, is a powerful thing to do.
Introspection of the kind I describe is where you keep trying to guess
what the system must be like, and then check by trying to walk through,
to see if it's true. It's probably another form of this "step
in",
"step out" thing.
Anyways, "caring about being", "caring about doing", "caring about
thinking" are three different angles. I think they are related
to,
obedience, belief, honesty, in some complex way. What I've written
above makes me think that obedience is being open to God, belief is
being open to each other, and honesty is being open to ourselves, the
connection between God and others. Also, "caring" is tightly
related to
love, to supporting something so that it is alive.
If we cared about being, then we'd be obedient. And if we cared
about
doing, then we'd be believers. So maybe if we care about thinking,
at
least we'll be honest. And if we're truly honest, then we'll
believe
and obey.
If we care about God, then I imagine that we want to make an opening
for
God, maybe by stepping back. I wrote about this in my last letter.
If
I care about others, then I imagine that as a big chimney, an upsidedown
funnel, that goes through me from the narrow end, up above that ends
with God, who I can't actually see, but I can talk with, down wide
to
earth, where we are surrounded by the world. So we want to keep
this
clear, and open. Maybe we do this by stepping in. I don't
know, this
is where I wanted to go next, in my thoughts. But I think, here
too, we
care for others by being open to them. We are open to them perhaps
by
offering ourselves as an open channel. So with others, we let
them go
through us, but with God we step aside, so he can be there, directly.
I
don't know, but I think this will be a fruitful thing to think through.
Of course, it's been very helpful to have taken these unexpected turns.
If you have thoughts on any of this, you are very welcome to write,
or
to launch off in other directions. If you feel the wish to express
yourself in terms of your faith, or sources for your faith, please
do
so. I have found that I have trouble reading spiritual texts
of other
traditions, important books like the Koran, or Buddhist or Hindu texts,
without the insight from a believer. I tell myself that books
of faith
wish to be read with belief, with investment, and at that point I feel
that I should invest myself in the books of my own faith. I do
wish to
be more open, but it certainly would be so much simpler if you shared
your faith, and then we can look for our "markers" and what they mean,
and why they are there, and what is the reality behind them.
When I started up the laboratory almost three years ago, I didn't have
any of this in mind. But certainly most of what I myself have
gotten
has been from progress made on these issues. It's great to write
to
you, and also to continuously work on the overall structure of the
laboratory, which is a mirror for all of life, at least everything
worth
thinking about. In any event, these matters are of practical
importance, because this is one way that I figure out what's the right
structure for the Minciu Sodas laboratory, and the system of endeavors
that we might pursue. Another way is simply if you or I suggest
endeavors, which I think should yield the same results. So I
hope to
work on both at the same time.
Andrius 1/14/2001
Andrius 1/15/2001
Now I want to tackle part of that. I want to describe "caring
about
others", specifically, the ways of loving our neighbors. I wrote
of
caring about God by way of introduction, to keep this in perspective,
and watch out for how the two might fit together.
I will be looking at many different structures that I think shed light
on the ways of loving our neighbors. Back in August I wrote a
series of
letters "Who is my neighbor?" that discussed several of these
structures. I will be returning to them and adding more.
Structurally,
the basic one is the "qualities of signs", which says that there are
four levels of knowledge by which we can approach a sign (symbol, index,
icon, thing). There are six qualities that a sign should have:
malleable, modifiable, mobile, memorable, meaningful, motivated.
We can
describe these qualities using pairs of those levels of knowledge.
That
is why there are six of them, there are six ways of making such pairs.
Furthermore, these pairs of levels have a very interesting property,
that one level stays the same, but the other level changes. For
example, if the thing stays the same - which it always does - but the
icon=picture for it can change, then we have a "malleable" sign.
This
is a key property, and so with every structure below I will be asking,
what stays the same, and what changes?
That this is a key property is apparent from the basic idea "Love your
neighbor as yourself". What stays the same, and what changes?
Well,
your love should be the same, even though the person loved changes
-
whether it's you or your neighbor. That gets to the heart of
"love your
neighbor as yourself", makes it even deeper than simply "love others",
because it says that your love should be the same, even though the
person you love is different.
Here is a list of the structures that I will be looking at:
Negative commandments
Interpretations by Jesus
Reasons for caring
Logics of the heart
Representations of anything
Visualizations
Qualities of signs
Spaces for work
Pretexts for outreach
Objectives through gain
I will start by describing them, then I will ask: what stays the same,
and what changes? I will try to draw some conclusions.
When I get
stuck, I think I'll start asking What do I care about? What do
you care
about?
It's helpful that I can write these letters here. But feel free
to
delete them, or skim over them. Certainly it might be helpful
to just
read through to get the flow, as Natalie noted, and you can always
reread portions. Don't feel that you have to understand anything
in
order to respond. Anything that this might trigger is certainly
interesting.
Yours,
Andrius
Some of our groups are open to all, and some are closed, that is, only
for members of the Minciu Sodas laboratory. Members can subscribe
to as
many of our groups as they like.
minciu_sodas_en@egroups.com is open to all, and in English (at least
if
you want to be understood!) This is a gateway for people who
might like
to help with our laboratory, and possibly become members. So
we'll
discuss anything that could have to do with our mission, which is to
foster "caring about thinking". This is also the headquarters
where I
come to discuss the overall structure and strategy for our laboratory.
We also support endeavors that are building critical mass, such as
Steve
Raiff's Make Work Fun! at http://www.brainfarming.com (assuming he's
not
rebuilding his website). Or the Heart-to-Heart Support Network
with
David Ellison-Bey. Finally, I come here with my own personal
explorations, which may touch upon "caring about thinking", or the
structure of the laboratory, in only some "higly underspecified" way
(the latter term is an inside joke with Cass ;) You're welcome
to do
this, also. I keep this group open, partly as advertising, partly
as
fun, and mostly because for the most crucial things in the laboratory
I'm happy to suffer the most vigorous criticism. (Of course,
as
critics, we're underachievers, or I'm clueless. I love your support,
all
the same.) We also have an analogous open group in Lithuanian,
minciu_sodas_lt@egroups.com
ourownthoughts@egroups.com is our first working group, and it's closed
to members. We discuss the work of this particular working group,
which
is fostering "thinking about our own thoughts". The plan is to
have 10
working groups in all, reflecting the structure of the objectives of
the
laboratory. This particular working group is developing a standard,
called Mindset, for software tools for organizing thoughts, such as
http://www.thebrain.com , http://www.mindmanager.com ,
http://thoughtstream.org , http://www.memes.net ,
http://www.openideaproject.org , http://freemind.sourceforge.net
and
others. We want to develop a community, a society of tools
for
amplifying our thinking. It's an "illustrious" group, people
who have
demonstrated passion for making or using such tools. If you're
not into
that, then you may find our letters quite dull, mostly because they
can
be obscurely technical. Everybody is welcome to read our letters
at
http://www.egroups.com/messages/ourownthoughts/ but only members
can
contribute letters. We function as a networking club, getting
to know
each other as we work together.
You're a member if you're listed at http://www.ms.lt/ms/members.html
John is a member, and so is Cass, Natalie, Marjorie, Caspar.
They all
became members for free, by contributing something to our laboratory
that we could use for our compilations, in the public domain.
For
example, Cass and Marjorie and John all answered Raimundas Vaitkevicius'
survey "Do you organize your thoughts?" Caspar contributed some
software that he created to the public domain. You can also become
a
member by paying a membership fee, $300 for twelve months. Then
you're
welcome to join all of our groups, which is the main perk. Supposedly,
this helps our working groups get more done, because it let's people
show that they are willing to contribute work to the public domain,
or
money to the laboratory, to get things done. This threshhold
has kept
away a few "trolls", nonconstructive people. We end up with people
who
are generous of themselves. Also, it helps me remember that we're
not a
charity, so if we're a business, doesn't there have to be a threshhold
somewhere? So this is one of them, who should I devote my time
to? Our
members.
Some of our greatest supporters, and most active people at
minciu_sodas_en@egroups.com are not members. For example,
I love
Annette's letters, and David Ellison-Bey's, and they both have helped
me
very much, but neither is a member, at least not yet. Martin
Luther
King Jr. pointed out, I think, that a healthy organization always has
a
wider movement around it. I'm overhauling the laboratory, so
there's a
lot to rethink. I do want to find more ways that people can help
with
our work, become members, and participate in our working groups.
1/17/2001
I'm going through various structures that can shed light on the ways
of
caring about others.
-------------------------
Negative commandments
-------------------------
Interpretations by Jesus
Pretexts for outreach
Reasons for caring
Logics of the heart
------------------------
Objectives through gain
Spaces for work
------------------------
Representations of anything
Properties of complex adaptive systems
Visualizations
Qualities of signs
------------------------
Negative commandments
The Jewish Torah, and the Christian
Bible, start with the Five
Books of Moses. One of these is Exodus, and another is Deuteronomy,
and
they both contain the Ten Commandments. Deuteronomy is like a "second
edition", a retelling of the key points of the law of Moses.
There's a
lot of evidence in Scriptures that God is redundant! Perhaps
partly for
our sake. Also, I think redundancy makes for slack, and good
is slack.
I think four of the commandments have
to do with our relationship
with God: Have no gods before him, not take the name of God in vain,
keep the sabbath, honor father and mother. And six have to do
with our
relationship with others: Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not
steal, do not bear false witness, do not desire your neighbor's wife,
do
not desire your neighbor's property. There is a lot of room for
quibbling. But I think that the first four are positive commandments,
they command what we should do, with regard to God. And I think
that
the last six are negative commandments, they command what we should
not
do, with regard to others. And there is redundancy here, which
shows
the greatness of God, that even if we simply heed the negative
commandments, then the postive commandments will also fall into place.
And if we heed the positive commandments, then we will surely never
need
the negative commandments. So there's no excuses!
I've never known much what to do with
this structure, but now that
so many things are coming together of the form 6+4, it seems that this
must be a central organizing framework. Where I can, I try to
guess
God' point of view, it can make for rapid advances, just as in solving
hard math programs it helps to guess what will be the right answer,
and
then work backwards from your guess. I think God likes to say,
"this
was so obvious, the most obvious thing, and you refused to look!"
I
seriously doubt that the answers to deep questions are most readily
found in quantum physics, or relativity, or from extraterrestrials.
My
bet is that they are all in the simplest stuff, so it's worth looking
very honestly at the simplest stuff. It would make complete sense
if
God said, "structure is My Law, everything is organized according to
My
Law, why didn't you look at My Law?"
As I write, I'm looking at Exodus and Deutoronomy, at the long
explanations of the Law. Some of it has to do with specific instances
of the Ten Commandments, and it's very interesting. For example,
if
there is a false witness, then "you shall do to him what he thought
to
have done to his brother", which resonates quite strongly with "love
your neighbor as yourself"! Or if you poke out the eye of your
servant,
then you must set them free, which resonates with Christ's "if your
eye
causes you to sin, pluck it out". For me, it will be time well
spent if
I go through everything I can find in the Law that can be organized
in
terms of the ten commandments, and try to make sense of it. If
you can
draw on books of your faith, that will be very interesting.
Interpretations by Jesus
Pretexts for outreach
Reasons for caring
Logics of the heart
Even more obvious then the written Law
is our own intuition of the
way we relate to God, and especially, to our neighbors. In the
summer I
looked closely at how Jesus interprets the commandments, which I suppose
he did in terms of the same basic human intuition that we have, but
avoid. You can find it in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew,
where he
says "you have heard it said... Thou shall not kill ... but I
say to
you..." And also, very closely related, in Jerusalem he lambasts
the
scribes and Pharisees, "woe to you, hypocrites..." I'll want
to revisit
this, but the conclusions that I drew were that he challenges us not
to
focus on the sign, but on the signified: "Be Open rather than
Comfortable", "Take a Stand rather than Convince", "Come to Our Senses
rather than Measure", "Get Along rather than Judge", "Save rather than
Blame", "Be Unconditional rather than Be Consistent". He goes
real
deep, so I'll want to keep trying to better capture his logic.
Also in the summer, I asked, what are
the ways that I get myself
to reach out to my neighbor. Again, I found six lines of thinking
that
help me do this. For example, "I am happy, and have gifts which
may
keep me happy. But I received them not for anything I did.
I could
have been born in awful circumstances, I sometimes imagine Cambodia,
where even these gifts might be useless, and life might be very
miserable and short. If I think these are useful gifts, then
I have a
responsibility to use them to serve those who do not have my good
fortune, and to reach out to them. This is what they would want
me to
do." So I think such lines of thinking are very closely related,
and
they help me climb out of myself, which makes them great structures.
Another promising direction is to consider,
"Why would I care
about a living system?" This came up in trying to understand
our
relationship to complex adaptive systems, which might be an ecosystem,
organism, organ, society, community, economy, the weather, anything
that
might behave like a living system. Asking the question taps into
our
relationship with such a system, why might we care? This can
help
relate to the six representations of anything, discussed further below.
Also, the idea of focusing on the signified
rather than the sign
reminds me of the good will exercises. I worked on those for
a couple
of years, and I'll have to write that up. They were in response
to
situations where our heart says one thing, the world says another,
and
we want to follow our heart. Actually, it turns out to be quite
tricky
to figure out what the heart says, and what the worlds says, but there
are some very amazing rules for sorting them out. One is that
on any
issue you can address four questions: whether? what? how? why? If we
think of why as the broadest question, and whether as the narrowest,
then the heart always asks a broader question than the world.
There's
also a lot more that we can tap into as far as how the truth of the
heart, and the truth of the world relate.
Objectives through gain
Spaces for work
These questions are actually quite closely
related to the activity
of the laboratory. That's because I think the success of our
laboratory
in fostering "caring about thinking" comes from our being completely
comprehensive. We do all things, and therefore we can capture
all of
the resulting synergy. We therefore gain many insights simply
by
dealing with the challenge of being comprehensive.
One of these challenges is organizing
ourselves for the many
endeavors that we might possibly have. Based on the ones that
we have,
and could imagine, I ended up with a system of ten objectives, which
has
served quite well. Four we pursue through material loss: caring
about
God, relationship with God, relationship with others, others.
Six we
pursue through material gain: thinking about our own thoughts, actions,
stands, and other thoughts, actions, stands. So this is where
that 4+6
structure popped up, and you can see why I'm most happy about how
working on the laboratory so comprehensively has helped me make progress
on basic questions of life.
Now I'm spending a lot of energy, especially
in
ourownthoughts@egroups.com to figure out how to structure the laboratory
as a workspace, for example, how to structure the website? Here
there
is a lot of evidence for a structure of the form 1+1+6. For example,
we
moderate a very active group for Knowledge Management, kmci@egroups.com
The kinds of issues that interest people suggest that there should
be
six working groups, for working on Knowledge Networks, Concepts,
Formats, Discourses, Experiences, Cultures. And there should
be two
gateways, one based on issues, kmci@egroups.com and one based on meeting
people kmci-virtual-chapter@egroups.com moderated by our member Denham
Grey.
Representations of anything
Properties of complex adaptive systems
Visualizations
Qualities of signs
Finally, there are the purely structural
facts. These last few
years I have been taking a fresh look at all of the structures that
I've
observed and work with. I think they fall into ten families.
Four of
them have immediate practical value, and they relate to our needs,
doubts, expectations, trials. I wrote last week that there are
four
representations of Everything, and they are intimately related to these,
and to the ways of caring about God, with all our strength, our mind,
our soul, our heart.
Another six families of structure don't
seem to have any real
practical value for everyday life, at least not yet, and maybe never.
But they are the machinery for explaining everything about life.
I
don't know all the details, but I'm getting close, it seems.
There are
three tables of structure: eight divisions, six criteria, twelve
topologies. There are also three languages: narration (how things
come
to happen), argumentation (how things come to matter), verbalization
(how things come to mean). Some big holes are nailing down some
of the
larger divisions: fivesome (for space & time), the sixsome (what
makes
us human), and the sevensome (for slack). I need to get a better
handle
on how to define the criteria, and how the topologies relate with the
other structures. I don't know anything specific about argumentation
or
verbalization. But right now the big progress to be made is
understanding the overview for all of these structures.
I think these six families are intimately
related to the
representations of anything, of which there should be six. The
difference between anything and everything is that you can think of
anything in ways that you can't think of everything. I imagine
it this
way: Anything can always be thought of as Everything, a kind of "local
version of everything". But furthermore, anything can be part
of a
system, in which case we think about it by separating it from the
system, which we have to do by approximating. The approximation
requires slack, and the slack can be increasing or decreasing.
So
Everything+Slack = Anything, and if we put flesh on those bones, we
get
God+Good = Life. (Aside: I'm curious how Anything and Anybody
relate,
if Anything+Slack=Anybody, and what does that mean? and the
consequences? but structural thinking is a slippery goose, so it's
good
to note doubts). More notes are at
http://www.ms.lt/ms/projects/reasonfeatures/index.html
I'm very interested in trying to pull
together this system, which
is a major reason why I'm so interested now in making sense of "caring
about others". That is one of the big keys. Of course,
it's also good
to keep my mind on that because it really is such an important part
of
life, and also I don't end up in a bad place. So I have multiple
motives, but I think this is a way for me to do something useful with
my
"having nothing better to do" by intertwining it with "the wonderfulness
of caring about others".
Anything is a place holder for Life,
so the representations of
Anything should be intimately related to the properties of living
systems, complex adaptive systems, and I've been able to use some great
work from Hidden Order by John Holland regarding those properties.
I've
also been able to relate those properties to the visualizations that
are
an important part of my draft of the Mindset standard.
Finally, there are the six qualities
of signs, of which I wrote,
and which involve those pairs of levels. Structurally they should
be
very relevant here. But it's also noteworthy to me how much Jesus
talks
about signs. I think it would be fair to say that Life is the
sign of
God, that Life is the sign, and God is the signified. A question
being,
what are the answers that we can live with? This might be such
an
answer. If so, then the qualities of signs are indeed key.
It's been helpful considering all of
these different structures.
Now I'll start looking for themes that run across all of them.
I think
I'll start with the question what stays the same, and what changes?
This will help identify pairs of levels, as in the case of each of
the
qualities of signs.
1/18/2001
It was helpful writing my letter about all the different structures
I
can draw on, as I search for the ways of caring about others.
I'm
starting to look over that letter, making a list of key themes that
these structures may share.
Something that strikes me is the notion of "self". The idea "love
your
neighbor as yourself" says, so simply, that the people I love are
different, but my love should be the same. The most basic difference
between all of these people is that most of them are not ME!
"Self" is
the idea that separates me from all those other people.
So there's two points of view, one where there is no concept of self,
and that's how we should love. And the other point of view is
that
there is a concept of self, our own self, and that is, in some sense,
different from the others. If "self" is a fence, then what difference
is there, which side of the fence somebody is on? Why have this concept
at all? There must be some reason?
Then I thought about the four kinds of structure that are related to
how
we care about God, how we make room for God, with regard to our needs,
doubts, expectations, trials. In each one of these structures,
the role
of "self" is very important, in different ways. Here "self" is
a
distinction between us and God. I am bounded, but he is not bounded.
So the concept of "self" helps define our relationship, which is
probably the whole reason for the concept.
I also noticed that, for these four kinds of structures, regarding our
needs - doubts - expectations - trials, it seems plausible that they
each allow for a different kind of outlook.
A) We have needs, and God does not. He is the one who lacks nothing.
Here I think the concept of "self" has to do with the fact that we
have
operating principles, and we can apply them either with respect to
our
needs, or with respect to God. For example, the operating principle
"be
normal - avoid extremes", we can apply this with regard to our self,
to
satisfy our social need, or we can apply this with regard to God, and
follow his way, the example he sets.
B) We have doubts, and God does not. He is the one for whom all
things
are just as he wishes. Here I think the concept of "self" has
to do
with the shadow of our experience. There are counterquestions
that
allow us to go outside that shadow, or shrink back within it.
For
example, Doubt: "Is this truly real?" Counterquestion: "Would
it make a
difference?" Going outside the shadow of experience: "It's
real, in
that it doesn't make any difference - it's always there." Shrinking
into the shadow of experience: "It's real, in that it makes a
difference."
C) We have expectations, and God does not. He is the one for whom
all
that happens is good. Here I think the concept of "self" has
to do with
the extent to which our outlook is with regard to everything, the
entirety. If so, then we feel sensitive, positive, calm.
Otherwise, to
the extent that our outlook is with regard to anything, not everything,
then we feel insensitive, negative, aroused
D) We have trials, and God does not. He is the one who loves us
- wants
us to be alive, sensitive and responsive - more than we love
ourselves. When we are connected with this God, then we
prefer to have
him than us be, act, think. When we are separated from him, then
we
hope that he watches over our "self" so that we can take a stand, follow
through, and reflect.
So there is a rich notion of self, and also non-self, in each of A,
B, C
and D. I'm now looking for pairs of levels, where on one level,
there
is a notion of self, and on the other there is a notion of non-self.
This will give six pairs of self and non-self from different levels,
assuming that non-self is always from a higher level. For this
to make
sense, level D should always have us look from only the point of view
of
non-self. Indeed, this seems to be the case, because when I'm
dealing
with a God who loves me more than I love myself, my outlook is always
rooting for him, including him. And level A should always have
us look
from only the point of view of self. This is also seems to be
the case,
when I am addressing my needs, then it's never part of my outlook that
one could have no needs. That's a lonesome God, the one who lacks
nothing! And even if I apply my operating principles with respect
to
him, rather than my own needs, even though I can do this, my mental
outlook always ignores this, I have to do it without any push from
my
mind. The middle levels B and C seem to let me look either way,
either
take an inclusive point of view, with respect to God, or just stick
with
my self.
The upshot of the obscure paragraph above is that I can very likely
draw
on the structures A, B, C, D as four different ways that our self is
defined with respect to God. This expresses our boundedness with
respect to God. Then pairs of self and non-self are pulled together,
yielding six different ways that our self may be defined with respect
to
others. This playing field is of crucial interest to God.
He is the
one God, so he wants the God in A, B, C, D to all be the same God.
I
think the six different pairs are ways of checking whether or not he
is
the same God. This whole question relies on whether the concept
of
"self" makes sense with regard to others, for example, maybe it is
the
channel by which the love of God is available to others.
So I'll keep looking at this big picture, and try to figure out how
the
"self" defined with respect to God, and the "self" defined with respect
to others, are related. A simple question is, what is value of
the
concept of "self"?
1/20/2001
David, It's very good to hear from you, and I hope you write more for
us
about your life because I think that there's a lot to care about, and
think about there. And that's an open invitation for all of us.
Marjorie, Thanks for your question, and it's very good to hear from
Andrew, and I hope you can write regularly, whether fiction or
non-fiction or in-between. My sister gave me "The Blind Assassin"
by
Margaret Atwood, and forgive me, Marjorie, but it reminds me of you.
Maybe because it's so literate but down-to-earth.
Also, Visalia has a Border's bookstore. About a week ago I checked
out
the philosophy section, I keep asking myself "What's worth reading?"
I
saw some of the old classics, and I thumbed through a book by Leibniz
and saw the word spirit. It dawned on me that he meant it in
a very
open way, like how do we know whether or not there are spirits?
He
lived in an age where people still believed in ghosts, and he probably
was on his toes about that himself, and had to be sharp about it with
his mind. So those questions were not a joke. And in the
recent
centuries there's not much philosophy left that has direct connection
with life. It's pretty sterile stuff.
Thanks for the topic about the ghosts and precognition, it's interesting
what that might bring out. It's certainly one that I avoid, under
the
general rule, "Is this one of the minimal requirements of life?"
Can somebody be human
without having any contact with ghosts?
or without having ESP?
or without regular vision?
Surely they are.
Can somebody be human
without any ability to picture?
without any form of causal thinking?
without any sense of potential others?
Most likely not.
Can somebody be human without having spooky episodes?
without various forms of fear or fright?
without the unknown, strange coincidences?
Probably not.
Can somebody be human without falling in love?
Maybe, maybe not.
Can somebody be human without the potential to fall in love?
Probably not.
A good example of the kind of list worth collecting. Anthropologists
have interesting things to say. But simply asking ourselves,
what about
us seems basic, necessary for us to engage another, and what seems
peripheral? That's very interesting.
There do seem to be "distracting ideas" that people run to, that aren't
central to life. You can spend a long time entertaining the idea
of
"ghosts", but be closed to the thought that there's "truth", or "good",
or "God". We can look for special powers, or special knowledge,
but
surely everything we need is right before us, but we don't look at
that. All of the powerful structures, questions and answers that
we
might need have always been inside our minds, and all of the examples
of
what is good and right surround us in people that we dismiss.
For example, it may be funky that you can think about Doug before he
reaches you. But is that useful? It's dead obvious, though,
that
people who threaten to kill you, like his girlfriend's father, they
mean
what they say. There's truth in everything we say, and certainly
a lot
of evidence, that when people talk about serious stuff, like killing
themselves or others, it's one of the last things they can do before
following through. And if they don't mean what they say, then
I think
it's because they're not accountable for what they say, which is also
dangerous because we can't figure them out, it's the basic evidence
we
have of their state of mind. My rule of thumb is that if somebody
crosses that line, and threatens like that, I want them to know - or
somebody to know - that I respond to that, they've gone too far.
That's
useful, and obvious, and alive, and human.
It's stimulating, though, to dance around the boundary of distraction.
Please, write about any topic that you feel relates, by whatever organ
of feeling that may urge you! David, Andrew, Marjorie, I like
that
there's a nice dose of real life in your letters!
1/22/01
I'm trying to figure out, what are the ways of caring about others?
I'm
pulling together a lot of evidence as to how they might be structured.
I'm trying to focus on the overall structure.
Why am I doing this? I don't know. It should, I think, help
structure
our work at the laboratory. Our research is public, and I think
the
real value, perhaps only value, of doing research publicly is that
you
get synergy. Some of the work is in one direction, some is in
another,
and they build on each other in remarkable ways. For this to
happen,
the work can't be muddled. It has to have clear focus, and also
has to
be open.
But that's just an application, that's not why I'm working on this.
This quest is maybe related to my outlook. I typically think
life, or
maybe just my mind, is a prison. I didn't choose to be here.
My mind
places incredible limitations on what I can do. So my strategy
is to
play off of those limitations. I run into them headlong, and
show to
myself that they are really there. That way I can map out the
walls of
my mind, as if I was a blind person walking through them. Furthermore,
my own efforts are shaped by my mind. So I keep finding more
of what
actually is part of my mind, and what is not. In this way I shake
loose
of my mind. Maybe I can live past the walls of my mind.
Maybe they
shape what comes to me, but they don't have to shape what comes from
me. It's always helpful to analyze motives, especially our own.
I hope
to keep rethinking my own as we move forward.
I want to find the key ideas, the key themes that are at the bottom
of
all the information I'm collecting as to how we care about others.
On
the big
questions, the unifying questions, I think they make sense from God's
point of view, so I raise the question, how does God look at that?
I'm curious what you think, how does God look at things? What
do you
believe, know, picture or wish? If you prefer, how does Everything
look
at things? I think that's just as interesting.
I'll go through some ways of raising this question, the ones that I'm
familiar with.
There's one method that we can apply without knowing anything of God.
It comes from considering, how do things have to be so that they truly
are as we wish? For example, Marjorie wrote: "Why there should
be pain
and suffering in the world is a huge problem for me." What we
(Marjorie
and I?) would like is that God is good. He may or may not be
good, he
may
or may not even exist. But we certainly wish him, or Everything
to be
good.
And we know that there is bad, there is real awful suffering.
When we
step outside of our own culture, and look at another, I think we become
alert to evil. There's one solution, that says that for there
to be
good, there must be bad, and vice versa. Basically, that solution
is
called "karma", very important in the life of India, I think.
That
explains why there is bad, but it doesn't satisfy our wish, that
Everything be good. Furthermore, it seems to diminish the entire
concept of good, if it is always complemented by bad. The two
are then
symmetrical, and therefore structurally indistinguishable. Another
solution is that Everything is actually good, but it just sometimes
look
bad. But that solution does not satisfy our wish that what we
see and
feel be important, especially that our capacity for feeling is
important, that we can suffer, and that we do. Certain people
seem to
suffer much more than ourselves, and that seems important, too.
Another
solution, that I feel very comfortable with, is that Everything is
a
"megalomaniac", that is, Everything wants it all. Everything
doesn't
want just some good, it wants ALL THE GOOD, all possible good.
Some of
this good could stand by itself, without any bad. But some of
this good
comes along with bad. Everything wants ALL OF THE GOOD.
The nice thing
about this solution is that it keeps good and bad separate, there
doesn't have to be bad for there to be good. So we don't dilute
the
concept of good. Instead we let Everything extend it. I
guess the bad
side is that we don't quite get to say that Everything is good.
Instead, we say that Everything is a megalomaniac, who happens to want
there to be good, in his megalomaniac sort of way, and for reasons
unknown. I feel comfortable because it explains why there is
bad, but
leaves the question open as to whether Everything is good. Everything
doesn't have to be good, but maybe he is, we have to learn more.
This kind of reasoning help get at the "motive" behind a concept.
For
example, is there a motive to the concept of "reincarnation"?
Well,
does it satisfy some wish? It reminds me of the wish that our
life be
meaningful, and that how we choose to live our life have important
consequences. It also addresses the observation that our lives
end, and
that it's usually not clear if there was any point to all of our
efforts. Combining the wish and the observation leads us to a
concept
of "after life" of one form or another. We also wish that our
life
choices have some relevance that we can appreciate, with regard to
the
current life we live. So there has to be some kind of "loop back"
from
the after life back to this life. I imagine that this gets crossed
up
with the wish that all creatures are equal, in some sense. So
we can
return as another person, or another creature. I think certain
forms of
vegeterianism build on that, a solution for our wish to believe in
"reincarnation", and not to eat the wrong things. I've wandered
off to
a faith I don't know much about, but it's an example of how this method
can be used without knowing, or believing, much of anything.
Another way to ask, how does God look at things? is to examine the
Scriptures of your faith. We find there thoughts that are bigger
than our own minds, so they must have come from somewhere else.
I don't
mean nonsensical things, I mean the kinds of things that we admit we
would never come up with, even though we now understand them, even
after
the fact, we simply can't think that way, or fit that much in our mind
at one time. On Saturday, I got the book Natalie sent me, it
came very
quickly! Natalie, the interesting part was seeing the different
parts
you marked. It's a short book, about 200 pages long, mostly about
the
stuff Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7, which
is about 135 sentences long. The author seems nice enough, but
my point
is that, he thinks like us people, not like God. Jesus says "Be
perfect, like your heavenly father is perfect." I've never met
anybody
else whose had the guts to tell me that! And I don't have the
guts to
tell anybody else, except second hand, and even that is very hard and
challenges my own self. People say "do your best, just try",
but Jesus
never talked that. People say, "strive for perfection", which
is how we
naturally address our need for self-fulfillment. We're striving
to get
there, which assumes that we're not already there. We're addressing
our
needs, be they our highest needs. I think Jesus was saying, "Be
perfect", "Lack nothing", "Have no needs". God's point of view!
So Scripture, read at face value, is at least good for a mental jolt.
Again, I share from those of my own faith. About what Marjorie
asked,
Jesus was shown a man blind from birth, and was asked whose fault was
this - his or his parents? And Jesus said it was for the glory
of God,
and then he cured him. But there's another place where he talks
about
why the tower fell and killed people, and he says, do you think it
was
because of their fault? But if you don't repent, you'll likewise
perish. So I suppose that means these are signs, lessons for
us, not
for the victims. It's hard to figure what's on God's mind.
He seems to
be big on glory, but I don't want to rule out love. But that's
the
interesting thing about reading Scriptures, at least in the way that
looks to apply it, looks for contradictions, looks to engage it and
try
it out. These little tidbits come up: God likes King David, but
he
doesn't like King Saul. That is, he may love us all equal, but
certain
people he likes more than others, more than me. God seems to
like good
smells, there's all these sacrifices described, and he'll add: "And
make
sure it smells good". International politics seems to be a hobby.
There's a lot of peculiar things about God. I know this helps
make him
more concrete to us, but I think there must be more to it than just
that.
Another way to ask, how does God look at things? is simply to ask him!
My experience is that he's very clear, we just don't ask. I'll
write
more about that. "Direct lines" are an important resource.
I look forward to your thoughts on how God looks at things? I'm
going
to try to look at his point of view, and our point of view, regarding
three questions:
How do things happen?
How do things come to matter?
How do things get meaning?
1/25/2001
Thank you for inspired and inspiring letters. Our conversation
is
alive, has a life of its own. It's a little bit like a blaze, like
a
forest fire.
It's even better than that. We have people who know how to feed
the
fire with sticks. I very much appreciate how so many of us have
wondered, how can we take the ideas that have developed and relate
them
back to "caring about thinking"? Our conversation is self-regulating!
Let's think of how we can harness the fire. We can cook meat,
or power
pistons, or spread it elsewhere. We can get things done.
So I'm starting up a Working group otherstands@egroups.com to foster
thinking about "other stands", not just our own. It's a chance
to "step
out", to consider how our discussion here and elsewhere moves.
What can
we learn from that, and what can we do to help get things done?
We'll
pursue endeavors that help make such groups productive.
Certainly, this is valuable. I think it's financially the most
promising thing for me to focus on this year. I want to find
sponsorships for investigations at the Minciu Sodas laboratory, so
that
we could explore how to make groups productive. We'll start by
focusing
on our own groups, such as minciu_sodas_en@egroups.com or
ourownthoughts@egroups.com, what can we do for them. You may
also
belong to other groups, and that'll be interesting to hear about.
I especially invite anybody who's a leader here, such as Natalie,
Marjorie, Annette, John, Saulius, Cass, John, Shannon. Send a
blank
message to otherstands-subscribe@egroups.com or write to me at ms@ms.lt
All members of our laboratory are welcome, and if you're not a member
yet, I encourage you to become one. A very good place to start
is
Natalie d'Arbeloff's questionnaire "What do I really care about?" which
I include below. Our letters will be available for all to view
at
http://www.egroups.com/messages/otherstands/ but only members can
participate. (We function as a networking club, that's the value
of our
service). We'll also share our most interesting thoughts back
here at
minciu_sodas_en@egroups.com , which is our gateway to the
lab.
Also I've started writing letters to embracingothers@egroups.com to
foster "caring about relationships with others". This includes stuff
I'm
working on, thinking out loud. I'm trying to figure out the ways
of
caring about others, also the structure of the laboratory, and the
Heart-to-Heart Support Network. If you'd like to join that Working
group, send a blank message to embracingothers-subscribe@egroups.com
If
you're not a member, let's figure out what's a good way for you to
show
your initiative, such as completing Natalie's questionnaire.
Again,
we'll be sharing some of our letters from there back over here, looking
to you for feedback and new ideas.
Certainly, you don't have to be a member. I think Martin Luther
King
Jr. said that a healthy organization is always engulfed in a wider
movement. Partly I'm "spreading the fire" to other groups so
as to
encourage new voices, new themes, in our dicussion here.
As concerns our gateway, minciu_sodas_en@egroups.com, I want to write
about the importance of getting things done. Certainly, that's
our
stated purpose, to "foster caring about thinking", and that's why I'm
here.
When we try to get things done, it affects how we spend our energy.
When we're not trying to get anything done, then we may debate "free
will vs. fate", taking either side, for 2500 years, as John wrote.
But
if we're trying to get things done, then we realize: "Hey! we don't
know
how things actually are. But we do know, rather quickly, the
perspectives that are available to our minds. Frankly, we'll
always
have a need for the point of view of 'fate', and we'll always have
a
need for the point of view of 'free will'.
So why explain one or the other away? Indeed,
we'll never let go of these, regardless of the arguments. Instead,
let's note what we do know: our mind is structured so that we divide
everything into two perspectives, one where opposites coexist (free
will), and one where all things are the same (fate)." So we've
noted
that there's this structure, there's something that we actually know.
We've taken a step forward. Then we can ask new questions:
Why is there such a structure,
what purpose does it serve? And we can find answers: This is
important
whenever we consider 'existence', for example, of a chair. Because
we
want to be able to raise the question, "Does the chair exist?" and
consider that it may or may not, two opposite points of view.
But we
also want to be able to answer the question, so that it has a definite
answer, whatever that may be. In other words, without such a
division
of everything into two perspectives, 'existence' would be a non-issue.
Marjorie made such an observation with respect to John Leppik and
Saulius. And I think John's idea of determinism illustrates that
the
two point of views can coexist. I just want to note the value
of
structural thinking, that what we end up knowing, of practical value,
is
that there is this structure in our minds. If I told you about
it, I
don't think you'll believe me. But if you participate for yourself
in
such a discussion, then I think you'll believe me. When we participate,
then we see, that our options are more limited than we might suppose.
This is more tangible, we feel it more strongly, then our own physical
bodies. For me, that's a principle reason why I've wanted these
discussions. Otherwise, I can't get across the things I observe,
nobody
would believe me. But here it becomes tangible, once our discussion
has
a life of its own. In fact, we can study it, return to it: why
did this
point of view feel this way? why does it lead to that point of view?
In
general, it's very hard to map these questions, because they are so
fleeting. We have to slow down the mind in order to do that.
Well, now
we have this chamber of discussion where we can speed up and slow down
our thinking as needed. We can see how an idea wants to unfold,
and we
can keep replaying that, faster or slower, until we figure it out.
It's not clear what the value of collecting such structures is.
I'm
starting to think that they don't have actual direct value. But
they'll
help us organize ourselves, not get stuck on them. They allow
us to
think without relying on language, it doesn't matter too much what
we
call them. Each of us can call these structures whatever we like,
and
draw on our own intuition, which keeps becoming clearer. We're getting
things done, making progress. But making progress towards what?
Is it
going anywhere?
That's why we have to keep connecting that, and our very selves, with
things that we do know make a difference in the world, even the smallest
things, as we go along. So I was very happy about Davretta's
letter,
and a little sad that she's signing off. I learned from talking
to
Marius Narvilas, a teacher in Lithuania who doesn't have Internet
access, is that caring about others is to want them not just to be
alive, but to grow. In other words, mentoring, like Davretta
wrote. I
think there is a sense in which we're mentoring each other, but we
also
want to help each other reach out beyond ourselves. What's worth getting
done?
It's very good that we write from our personal experiences, as Saulius
and John did. It's even more important, though, to look to the
future,
why and how and what and whether we want to get things done.
An
explanation may seem to work fine with regard to the past, but do we
want to apply it towards the future? Again, "getting things done"
orients us.
"Caring about thinking" is a great anchor for this work because it is
a
meeting point that we can relate just about anything back to.
The
more we keep in mind "getting things done", the more we can feel free
to
wander, follow our instincts and inspiration. When we remember
that we
should be "getting things done", then we'll keep coming back to our
starting point, "caring about thinking".
Thank you! This is great!
Yours,