Retrospective 2020-03

This is a summary of last week’s reading.

I have read Stanislav Grof’s When the Impossible Happens. Grof mentions how various destructive and self-destructive patterns are being passed from one generation to another. A similar pattern operates on the collective level. Unbridled violence and insatiable greed keep breading new violence and immense suffering.

I have read an article on Africa, in its fullness by Toby Green (edited by Sam Haselby). One of the most insidious consequences of European colonialism was the devaluing of precolonial history and cultures.

I have continued reading Sidney Dekker’s excellent book The Safety Anarchist, which is as much about quality, and work in general, as about safety. Assumptions are usually valid within limits. Dekker clarifies what those limits are. There is, for example, a belief that an organization can be put under control by writing rules and procedures, demanding internal reporting and compliance. Some organizations embrace a regulatory zeal that trumps anything that might ever be imposed from the outside. A recent analysis of safety interventions in the construction industry showed that writing safety plans and policies are deemed least worthwhile. They are not always suited to the complexity and dynamics of organizations. It might assume, for example, that there is one best method to achieve a particular safety goal. This pretty much guarantees that there will be a gap between policy and practice.

I have also continued reading Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order. I’m now in Book One.

Finally, I want to mention Gregory Shaw’s article on The Cry of Merlin: Carl Jung and the Insanity of Reason, which is a review of Peter Kingsley’s Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity. To get out of the darkness we, paradoxically, need to go even darker. It is the unconscious itself, the darkeness, that does its work through us. When we experience something outside of our habitual thinking, we find ways to protect ourselves. The habit of shaping our experiences into abstractions blinds us. We don’t see what we don’t see!