Retrospective 2019-22

This is a look back at my reading and painting during the week.

Painting

I enjoy painting trees and flowers, water and sky! It’s meditative.

Reading

I’ve read David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous this week.

I’ve also read, or rather re-read, Elisabet Sahtouris’ EarthDance during week. I was reminded that what Elisabet Sahtouris has to say is highly relevant for generative organizing! Here is a list of organizational and operational features of healthy living systems from the book, and here is a comparison between operating principles for mechanisms and organisms. Generative organizing is autopoietic.

Finally, I’ve also read Alice Miller’s The Body Never Lies. It was a quick read. Alice Miller describes how “poisonous pedagogy” impairs, if not entirely kills, the feeling for who we are, what we feel, and what we need. We may ignore or deride the messages of the body, but what it says demands to be heeded because its language is the authentic expression of our needs and of the strength of our vitality. This is also relevant for generative organizing. Allopoietic operating principles are “poisonous” for autopoietic living systems.