Retrospective 2021-03–13

This is a summary of my reading during the first quarter 2021 (weeks 3–13). There are two list below:

• The first list consists of books, articles, and letters that I have read (more or less in the order read).
• The second list are notes I made while reading (in chronological order).

A collection of robert wolff’s unpublished writings are available in the robert wolff Library. I warmly recommend robert wolff’s published book Original Wisdom. I also want to express my gratitude to Skye Hirst for so generously sharing Norm Hirst’s interesting articles. Here is, by the way, an imagined conversation between Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, and Norm Hirst on whether people are machines, which is based on my reading.

Books, Articles, and Letters

• Keith Sawyer, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
• Thomas Hübl, Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds
• Ervin Laszlo, How We Can Build a Better World: The Worldshift Manual
• Carol Sanford, The Regenerative Business: Redesign Work, Cultivate Human Potential, Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes
• Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
• Argyris Arnellos, From Organizations of Processes to Organisms and Other Biological Individuals in Daniel J. Nicholson (Editor), John Dupré (Editor), Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology
• Ursula Versteegen and Jill Jakimetz, Gestures of the Mind as an Invisible Force for Social Change: A Phenomenological Exploration of what it is to Listen in Olen Gunnlaugson (Editor), William Brendel (Editor), Advances in Presencing Volume 2: Individual Approaches in Theory U
• Kelvy Bird, Visual Presencing in Olen Gunnlaugson (Editor), William Brendel (Editor), Advances in Presencing: Volume 1
• Claus Otto Scharmer, The Heart is the Key to All of This: Conversation with Joseph Jaworski, October 29, 1999
• Joseph Jaworski, Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership
• James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds
• Anthony Blake, The Intelligent Enneagram
• P.D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way: A Record of Talks and Answers to Questions Based on the Teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff
• J.G. Bennett, Deeper Man
• Chuck Pezeshki, The Power of Empathetic Leadership in an Evolving World
• Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff
• P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching
• J.G. Bennett, Witness: The Story of a Search
• Anthony Blake, A Gymnasium Of Beliefs In Higher Intelligence
• Anthony Blake, The Intelligent Enneagram
• Mae-Wan Ho, Meaning of Life and the Universe: Transforming
• Alan W. Watts, Al Chung-liang Huang (Collaborator), Lee Chih-chang (Illustrator), Tao: The Watercourse Way
• Mae-Wan Ho, The Biology of Free Will
• Alexander Lowen, Joy: The Surrender to the Body and to Life
• Eugene Gendlin, A Process Model
• J.G. Bennett, What Are We Living For?
• Mary C. Richards, Centering in pottery, poetry, and the person
• Mary C. Richards, The Crossing Point: Selected Talks and Writings
• Mary C. Richards, Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America
• Sky Nelson-Isaacs, Living in Flow: The Science of Synchronicity and How Your Choices Shape Your World
• Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management
• George Leonard, The Silent Pulse: A Search for the Perfect Rhythm that Exists in Each of Us
• Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos
• Mitsugi Saotome, Aikido and the Harmony of Nature
• Calvin Schermerhorn, Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery
• William Gleason, Aikido and Words of Power: The Sacred Sounds of Kototama
• Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development
• Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
• David Bohm, Quantum Theory Erwin Schrödinger, My View of the World
• Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
• Cathryn Barnard, Moments in Love: How to Build Authentic Engagement with Anyone
• John Holt, How Children Learn Michael Jones, The Soul of Place: Re-imagining Leadership Through Nature, Art and Community
• Sabine Hossenfelder, Lost in Math
• Frank Wilczek, A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design
• Bernard F. Schutz, Geometrical Methods of Mathematical Physics
• Robert S. Hartman, The Individual in Management
• Norm Hirst, My Thoughts on my 80th Birthday
• Norm Hirst, Foundations For An Axiological Science: Hartman’s Science Realized
• Michael Jones, The Soul of Place: Re-imagining Leadership Through Nature, Art and Community
• robert wolff, Have We Lost Our Humanity? (2013)
• robert wolff, War on Terra (2006)
• robert wolff, Conundrum: Climate Change, world culture and “democracy”
• robert wolff, Politics Is Not Enough
• robert wolff, Locks & Keys
• robert wolff, Sailing to the Moon
• robert wolff, Questions, questions
• robert wolff, These Times
• robert wolff, What There Is – Is All There Is
• robert wolff, A Modest Proposal
• robert wolff, for your entertainment a wider perspective
• robert wolff, Interregnum means between reigns
• robert wolff, Eight Months Into a new Administration What’s Next? (2009)
• robert wolff, Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing
• robert wolff, Smile
• robert wolff, The Rights of Mother Earth
• robert wolff, War on the World
• robert wolff, Realities
• robert wolff, Evolution Devolution
• robert wolff, Adapt (2010)
• robert wolff, What I Look At Looks At Me
• robert wolff, Is there an alternative to constant economic growth?
• robert wolff, The Rights of Mother Earth
• Eleanor Rosch, Primary Knowing: When Perception Happens from the Whole Field [pdf]
• robert wolff, Now What?
• robert wolff, one one eleven (1/1/2011)
• robert wolff, ”Let them it cake”
• robert wolff, Be Prepared
• robert wolff, Money, money
• robert wolff, The Last War, Having vs Being
• robert wolff, Fiddling While the Planet Burns
• robert wolff, Worth
• robert wolff, Search for Simple
• robert wolff, What do you mean, “ecology?”
• robert wolff, Titanic World
• robert wolff, What domesticating does to us and how to get our from under
• robert wolff, Last night’s dream; inhuman humans
• robert wolff, Remember Hiroshima?
• robert wolff, Strange, very strange, dangerously strange
• robert wolff, What it means to be conservative
• robert wolff, How we see others, how they see us
• robert wolff, Money – and why we must learn to do without
• David Bohm, The Limitations of Thought: A conversation with Michael Mendizza
• David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order
• Eleanor Rosch, What Buddhist Meditation has to Tell Psychology About the Mind
• Rupert Sheldrake, Morphic Fields and the Implicate Order: A Dialogue with David Bohm
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
• robert wolff, “Yes, corporations are persons, my friend” robert wolff, What does it cost?
• robert wolff, Interregnum (again)
• robert wolff, A very immodest proposal (2012)
• robert wolff, Tamed (2012)
• robert wolff, Hello! Anybody home?
• robert wolff, Why we cannot lead humankind to a sustainable world (2012)
• robert wolff, From the end of 2012 looking at 2013
• robert wolff, SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES and changes the planet
• robert wolff, A Wider View robert wolff, Wars Come In Many Flavors (2013)
• robert wolff, Immodest Proposals
• robert wolff, Memes, Genes and Us
• Elisabet Sahtouris, EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution

Notes

• There is a profound loss of something deep inside that I don’t have words for. (Reference: Ursula Versteegen)
• We need to relate the invisible dynamic of our own inner experience to the visible effects evolving in the current moment. (Reference: Ursula Versteegen and Jill Jakimetz)
• Listening is at the cross-section of awareness and action.
• People are effective despite and not because of the management system.
• People self-organize along real needs.
• There is a dissonance between my intellectual understanding and a felt understanding.
• Life emerges bit by bit.
• Children know how to improvise. Adults may need to relearn improvisation. (Reference: Keith Sawyer)
• There is no correspondence between the size of your wallet and your personal worth. (Reference: Ervin Laszlo)
• What are the principles that inform the world of the living?
• Content informs drawing, spirit informs listening, and the hand unites the two. (Reference: Kelvy Bird)
• The process of drawing carries the meaning. (Reference: Kelvy Bird)
• Something has broken in how we treat each other. It’s about empathy, kindness, and respect. (Reference: Sarah Kendzior)
• The insights, and the process by which I came to those insights, are inseparable. (Reference: Peter Senge)
• Life has to be experienced, directly. (Reference: Anthony Blake)
• Design is artifice. (Reference: Anthony Blake)
• What is the burning question which is necessary to have if you are to go forward in your quest for reality? (Reference: Anthony Blake)
• No good work comes out of rigid adherence to a formula. (Reference: Anthony Blake)
• Felt sense is ’subtle thought’.
• The subtle is ’finely woven’. (Reference: David Bohm via Anthony Blake)
• The implicate order is deep structure?
• What if there is an order which is not the result of laws which people are compelled to obey by external violence?
• The seven-year period 2013-2020 represents a cycle in my life. (Reference: Mary C. Richards)
• Attending carefully to the choices available in the moment. (Reference: Sky Nelson-Isaacs)
• Flow is acting out of the unfolding generative order. (Reference: Joseph Jaworski)
• My eyes are tired from reading. I need to let my hands carry forward the learning.
• If there ever is a place where the unexpected can arise, it is in relationships.
• An appropriate intention ls an anticipated qualitative experience.
• Breath is both form and feeling. (Reference: William Gleason)
• Markets constrain and commodify human freedom.
• Capitalism’s defining characteristic is general commodification of labor.
• There are times when logic only get between us and reality.
• Treating people as humans worthy of respect actually works.
• It is through immersing ourselves in the depths of life that life itself is transformed into aliveness
• In order to let generative order inform the work we need to stay in alignment with what is unfolding, to distinguish between what wants to happen and what we believe ought to happen.
• Generative order is in the flow of felt sense. The desire for success and positive outcomes impedes this flow.
• The unity of mind, heart and hand is always being tested.
• By following the lead of the hand, the artist learns dropping into the moment while letting go into the next.
• Exploring the space in-between.
• The destination is not a place, but a new way of seeing things.
• What if schools are an expression of colonialism?
• Engaging in true dialogue is a learning experience.
• The deep song is a generative order.
• We grab more of what we want by stepping on the backs of others.
• We are so busy doing that we forget who we are.
• Life is not a logical problem to be solved. We need to move beyond science (and religion). We don’t need new ways of thinking, we need a new heart. We don’t need a new understanding, we need a new way of sering.
• Logic (although useful) is a construction.
• What can not be said in mathematics can not be said in poetry.
• What if there are truths that can not be reached by any formalism?
• What if the foundations of any science will be incomplete?
• What if explicate order is not law bound?
• The word law is problematic in living context. It indicates something imposed from without.
• Thought is ephemeral.
• What we find out is already a foregone conclusion because of what we have already built in with our formalism.
• The consequences of exceptionalism are dire.
• Many of us know but it is unthinkable.
• It is easy to see the end. Difficult to see a beginning.
• We still don’t want to know. Civil servants promise that there is nothing to worry about. Media make it easy to ignore reality.
• It’s a deep challenge to bring about deep change.
• The basic trouble with thought is that it does not distinguish between the part of reality which is created by thought and the part of which is independent of thought.
• Thought can be too powerful.
• Surface order unfolds from a deeper order.
• You’re not able to learn when you can’t keep straight what is independent reality and what is not. (David Bohm)
• A healthy structure gives plenty of room for freedom and creativity.
• The organization is a living system which has a deep structure. The health of this structure is dependent on the integration within the organization.
• It’s not possible to control a living system in the way a machine can be controlled.
• Cultural development influences how people talk, think, and act together.
• An organizations is a living system that lives its own life with its own inner dynamics.
• A mechanical system is designed to work in a relatively simple way. The networks of cause and effect can be understood.
• Changes ripple causing unforeseen consequences in a living system.
• Every living process is a structured organization of information, energy and matter. Energy is continuously consumed and must be continuously replenished. Information and matter continually flow and get changed.
• Living systems adapt to, meet, and interact with the shifting conditions that occur both within and outside of its border.
• The organization is an organic whole. Every part must be integrated in order to retain vitality, resilience, and ability to meet challenges.
• It is the deep structure which holds the organization together as a single unit.
• It is mutual understanding that keeps everyone pulling in the same direction, allowing people to keep pace with each other.
• Most managers look only at the organization’s surface structure. The surface structure is what everyone can see. Sources to problems lie in the deeper structures of the organization.
• The health of an organization’s deep structure is a function of how well the organization is integrated (connection between people).
• To repair the deep structure in the organization, everyone needs to understand what’s at stake and why it’s important.
• The deep structure needs to be repaired before you can make any headway.
• People, without exception, do care about what happens once they understand what’s at stake.
• Only when a real choice is possible can the full power and potential of an organization be mobilized.
• Individuals must be allowed the freedom to say Yes or No (consent).
• A person who is fully informed about their organization will behave differently than someone who is not.
• Visibility increases the likelihood of constructive, responsible action.
• Invite all involved.
• The individual that suffers most often has the strongest incentive to do something about it.
• It’s possible to build on what others know and really mean, when everyone has access to the thoughts and know-how of the entire group.
• Groups that can interact rise their level creativity.
• You cannot run a knowledge-based organization by direct control, pressure, high demands, and micro-management.
• You simply cannot control an organization the way a single operator might control a machine. It’s not enough to merely design functions into workflows and then run these through various control mechanisms.
• Making a commitment is an existential action. Something happens inside — and, importantly, it is an event that cannot be controlled from the outside. You can only be asked to take that step; no one can force you, or order you to do it.
• Work, where you have total control, does not exist.
• An organization must be led, but what this entails is not obvious.
• Leadership involves touching the heart of every person — something that needs to be done if you expect to influence others.
• Leadership involves building on the common interests between the organization, customers, people, and community.
• Leadership is to ensure that the conditions of life are put in place.
• Leadership is to inspire and focus the energy, to facilitate interplay and learning, and to ensure a steady outflow of results.
• Cultural patterns show up as repetitive ways of speaking and acting.
• Culture is always based on habitual ways of viewing and interpreting reality.
• Culture forms the eyes you see with.
• Cultural development lose momentum if there is no clarity concerning how people talk, think, and act.
• Long-term energy and commitment is sustained when all are involved in the organization’s future. Activate the combined intelligence in the entire organization.
• Put local knowledge and experience into play.
• If people feel it’s important they will spontaneously pitch in and assist each other.
• A well-integrated organization generates more energy and uses it to greater effect.
• Thinking together requires communication and interaction.
• Open space makes it possible for everyone to think, reflect, and learn together.
• It takes time and effort for a group to agree on what the major challenges are and what has to be done about it.
• Understanding and acting are all but obvious.
• A mechanistic order is one in which the fundamental elements are independently existent, lying outside each other, and connected only by external relationships.
• Mechanistic order is a limiting case of organismic order.
• There is a sharp break between abstract logical thought and concrete immediate experience that doesn’t have to be maintained. The movement from immediate experience to logical thought doesn’t have to be fragmented.
• Logic is constructed thought.
• Constructs are mechanical.
• Experiencing—through feeling—is immediate and direct and real? Experience—organized through thought—is a more or less logically coherent construction?
• Creative intelligence vs. intellect.
• External vs. internal relationship.
• We have an almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance. (Reference: Daniel Kahneman)
• Our language perpetuates illusions.
• Only coerced action can be increased by rules.
• Action can take palce in very different ways. There’s a huge difference between doing somthing bechase there’s a rule or becuase it’s the right thing to do.
• Rules leads to action that’s rigid and ultimately less successful.
• There are times when it is good to see everything, but other times when it is not good. It is difficult to know without the protection of a community.
• The freer and safer, the deeper the insights.
• Do you feel free and safe in the workplace?
• Act from a sense of play rather than from ego or obligation.
• Life is a particular kind of working organization.
• Information is anything that is in formation. (Reference: Elisabet Sahtouris)
• A living organism is always a holon within larger holons depending on them for its very life. (Reference: Elisabet Sahtouris)
• Organisms are experiencing, experimenting.