On Twitter, I do talk a lot. About anything. My monthly tweets have exponentially grown to currently over 1,200 a month, and that now is my baseline it seems.
I talk a bit with fundamental Christians at times, but that's at night time usually, somehow.
I talk mostly with IT people during the day, as I work in IT and usually operate as an Enterprise Architect who started off writing BASIC at age 11 and COBOL at career start - been there, done that.
And every now and then I do read and / or say something about Global Warming as that has become part of our everyday life
When having conversation with Christians, I usually run into strict believers who have a good share of quotes and take the Bible literally or at least believe it contains absolute Truth. I challenge them on the crucifixion and say that the Bible should be taken figuratively, not literally, that Jesus' death is just a spiritual death (I believe Jesus' true words, meanings and life are according to the Gospel of Thomas) which is met with fierce resistance that it is all the Word of God, and True, and that it should be taken literally. The Bible is infallible, they say.
Then I ask them what they think of Luke 17:21, where Jesus tells the Pharisees that "the Kingdom of God is inside you". The answers always are alike "Jesus didn't mean that when he said such", "You have to place it into the context", "No that needs to be translated among, not inside or within" - much like this lengthy commentary
And before you know it, the True Word of God is being bent and interpreted right in front of you - by Christians themselves
On Global Warming I read this post on Shlashdot.org titled A Warming Planet Can Mean More Snow.
Sometimes life is just too easy: I can suffice with quoting this excellent comment from J Morris (emphasis all mine, left the typo in place too)
(...)One question for the warmers reading. Can the theory of AGW be falsified?
If it gets hotter it is because of Global Warming.
If a hurricane hits it is because of Global Warming.
If there is a drought anywhere it is because of Global Warming.
But if we get a blizzard it is because of Global Climate Change.
If it floods it is bacause of Global Warming/Climate Change.
If the North polar ice shrinks it is Global Warming.
Yet when the Antarctic ice grows it is Climate Change.
So my question is this: For a theory to be Science it must be falsifiable; so what would it take for one of you True Believers to reconsider your theory?Yes, Global Warming has become a religion - which is awkward as it is 100% pure science that led to it... and above all Global Warming seems to have become infallible indeed
In IT, we have our prophets from all sides as well. Doomsday preachers telling us we should all get ERP, CRM, SOA, Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business Design or die.Yes, again, it's Yin and Yang misunderstood: Black and White are the colours, but there's a whole area of greyscale in between.
People are now saying that SOA was good, but the implementation was bad - and are having a go at SOA 2.0. CRM is now getting a second chance as SocialCRM, ERP as ERP+. Social media? Forrester has forbidden private blogs for their employees, Rupert Murdoch wants to hide his sites from Google, IBM has such a long Social Computing Guidelines that it's no wonder that IBM on Twitter doesn't exist.
It seems like the status quo's protecting their assets in an attempt to not put their presumed infallibility to the test
Infallibility? It's everywhere, or ubiquitous as people prefer to say nowadays. It's everywhere, and nowhere to be put to the test. 3-4 years from now people will agree that Enterprise 2.0 and Social Media were great ideas, but wrongly implemented. And to a certain extent they won't be wrong. But to the biggest extent they'll just be covering their own or their company's behinds. And they'll invent Social Media 2.0 or 3.0 which is exactly the same as Social Media now, but just adapted to the time's spirit - leaving the old definition untouched and infallible.
I witness that in enterprises a lot. When the point-of-no-return has been surpassed (architecture helping here to move that forward) there is no discussion possible: there's no stopping the roadtrain. Pretty much anything on the enterprise level is deemed infallible, and because it's on such a huge money- and time-scale, enough tweaking and tuning can be done on the way to keep up the myth of infallibility
Listen. When we take humans out of the equation, this planet is in peace. There would be no right or wrong, no good or bad. No Utopia nor infallibility. All that stuff is made up by us. Your name, your immediate future, your belief system, your family, it was all there before you were even born, and you didn't get to decide about it. You might think you're on top of it, but all you're doing is within the preset bandwidths other people decided about for you.
It's okay to be wrong. It's human to be wrong. It's social too now. Be wrong, please. Admit that you're wrong, you don't even have to apologise for that. We're all wrong, almost all of the time. Yes that might mean that you've been wrong half a lifetime or more, but it's better to admit that and start anew than try to lie and hide the obvious facts into invisibility.
You might not lose face towards the customer or lose sleep overnight, but you will lose credibility and honesty towards yourself. And you yourself are your most precious possession in this life, so cherish it
Break the Law of Infallibility. It's among the biggest Lies in our lives and preventing dialogue, honesty, happiness and harmony. It causes us to focus on the differences rather than the similarities or commonalities
We learn by failing. Walking, talking, we couldn't have achieved it without utterly failing big time over and over again. Taking exams, tests, graduating, getting a driver's license, passing a mortgage check: if no one would fail, no one else could succeed
PLEASE #FAIL!
[The picture is showing the 'Christian percentage by country' - although that just is counting quantity of course, not measuring quality]
5 reacties:
YES! You understand contrast! I am almost screamed: 'Thank you Lord!'.
The only thing I would write a bit different is:
"When we take humans out of the equation, this planet is in peace."
It is not humans, it is the false premises we live by. We choose to experience contrast (fail in our current terms) because it leads to expansion. Expansion in the meaning of that if we experience contrast, we know more clearly what we DO want (and also what we DON'T want), and we desire that what we DO want. Energetically speaking, this leads to expansion. We just have to keep up with the expansion so we can experience it...
But don't worry. We live in a time of awakening. And actually I believe Social Media is part of it. I can safely use my quote now: The more individual we become, the more we become one.
:-)
Nice entry. Sharing some of your thoughts. But its all in the mind. We tend to make our own truth and we tend to think it is THE truth. Sometimes we rely on others, our peers or 'pack', to tell us what this truth is because it is easier and we fit in. This is true (...) for religion and IT and global warming and the big Pepsi or Coke debate. Personally, I believe we're in the warming up because this is quite normal. Man may contribute in speeding it up, but what we are actually saying is: we want to stop the normal cycle of the world. We want to stop the continents from moving anymore because it will upset the climate. We want to protect animals and keep them as they are. Evolution? Until now! Now it needs to stop. Because Man, no MAN is here. But we are fallible and we will fail no matter how hard we try to succeed. And in that failing, the next generation will emerge. Stronger and better adapted to the new cycle and the new world. Man 2.0 will emerge. and then fail. Man 3.0 will be next. Interpretation of the book (which, by the way has page 1 missing, which said: to my darling wife, hope you like these tales) can be anything we want it to read and what we need to justify our existense. Its a mental support. A safety blanket. But the same holds true for any scientific book: its the truth we want to believe. It is based on what we know and what we can perceive now, but we cannot perceive everthing yet. Atoms used to be the smallest entities, but nowadays they turn out to be made up of even smaller things. So science was wrong and probably is wrong still. Yeah, yeah, I hear you: more detail not fundamentally different. Still: not complete and therefore in need of fair distrust. In IT, yes, we hype. Gartner even has its nice hype cycle which seems to hold true. Everybody jumps on the bandwagon and anyone being sceptical or asking questions is immediately silenced: you dinosaur or you do not understand.
Well, I seem to be starting to rant on, so I better try to end this before it ends me.
what was my point?
Fail? Oh yeah, fail. Evolution is succesfull because of failure, which leaves room for the odd-ball; the one slightly different or slightly better adapted; the Apple in Windows land; The smart car amongst SUVs and the microbe in nature: nothing to look forward to and around long before man arrived and still around long after man has passed. A tremendeously simple design which lasts on and on and on.
I leave you with another quote from Monty Python about how to fail and fail again and one day succeed:
Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.
Live long and fail!
@Henk: I very much like your comment, and I don't say that because I love Monty Python. ;-).
I would use the word 'contrast' instead of fail, as 'failure' is loaded with negative emotions for most of us. Contrast is a bit more 'neutral', but in the end leads to expansion. Evolution is the result of this expansion which happens due to our 'failure' or contrast as I like to call it. I would even say that expansion is the result of contrast and in that sense the driving force of evolution.
Patrick & Henk,
thank you very much for your great comments!
"The more individual we become, the more we become one" - yes Patrick I do believe that so much. When we really look at our true selves we'll see the similarities, not the differences, between ourselves and others - we all start off as an egg with a sperm in it (that is as far as we can perceive)
Which brings me to Henk: "it's the truth we want to believe. It is based on what we know and what we can perceive now".
The dumbest comment of the day ;-) I'd say, one of these dead-simple and undebatable truths that we all agree on, yet somehow forget to see / know / feel whenever we get excited. Thanks Henk, lengthy and profound comment
Patrick also hooked me with that line "The more individual we become, the more we become one."
That's why a focus on design is so relevant (the rising attention/focus on design thinking -- entire issue of related articles http://interactions.acm.org/content/XVII/2.php). Because design, good design, embraces this dichotomy.
Start with Charles Handy's "The Age of Paradox" -- then lets talk some more.
Post a Comment
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Copy your comment before signing in...