Many Shiny Things

13 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, family, management, politics, Uncategorized

Tags

leadership, legends, myths, peace, stories, tales, truth, war, weapons

The days continued to grow longer. The herbs and dyes had been collected and prepared. Masks had been constructed for everyone in the tribe old enough to talk and walk. Many Paths, after consulting with everyone, had decided that all of the Veritas, and not just the young adults would be initiated into the ways of the warrior. Although kids had sometimes imitated the actions of their older brothers and sisters and engaged in mock combat, now the Veritas faced an enemy who stole children. If such children were snatched, it was important that they be able to fight, in order to delay capture, and to maim or injure the attackers. They must also be able to lie in wait patiently and be able to strike after capture; to see when the opportunity arose; and then to strike in such a way that they had little chance of being blamed.

Jaccim had confirmed that the Z-Lotz greatly preferred to steal children. Kids could be trained early to be docile slaves. Occasionally, attractive full-grown women would be stolen as well but they tended to be less docile and therefore less desirable to the Z-Lotz. Many Paths had already performed the molting ritual on Tu-Swift and he had worked with Sooz and Cat Eyes to teach the youngsters of the tribe to fight. This training had been mostly about perception and reaction. Now, the training would turn more serious and young children were about to be taught about weapons, hand combat, and about poisons and imagination.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Many Paths wanted the children to be initiated and wear make up and masks so that when and if the Veritas found themselves once more at peace, they could remove these masks and make up and that removal of the outward trappings of war would hopefully help also remove the killing mindset that she meant to inculcate into everyone in the tribe.

A great feast of wild boar, honeyed grain-cakes, roasted nuts, and boiled cattail had been laid out in the late afternoon. After the feast, the Veritas came to Many Paths one by one, oldest to youngest and stood before her. She handed each one a mask and anointed each with two dark marks of charcoal on their cheeks. The masks resembled various animals and were worn on the back of the head or, more rarely, on the side of the head. They were not meant to disguise the person’s face. Instead, the masks were intended to confuse the enemy about the orientation of the Veritas warrior so that killing blows would tend to arise from unsuspected places.

The Veritas came to her in order from oldest to youngest. Though Many Paths followed tradition in this, she could see the wisdom of that tradition. The youngest would have seen many models of how to behave from the elders and then the adults and then their older brothers and sisters. She felt and displayed a fittingly somber mood for the business at hand weighed heavily upon her. And though she intoned the ritual words with feeling, at the same time, half of her mind began to mull on the situation that required turning the people to killing. She heartily wished that the world had not turned so ugly and warlike. Yet, those wishes had no impact on reality. Many Paths did promise herself that she would continue to remind people of the lessons learned from The Battle of the Three Paths.

77A3526C-DBFC-4FC8-8767-E9D9E95ACF98

In that battle, NUT-PI had arranged three armies to fight against the Veritas. Two of those armies had instead become friends. Peace proved to be a very strong weapon. Many Paths would come to caution the Veritas not to become so enamored of weapons that they overlooked the possible paths to peace. Though she believed this, Many Paths also recognized that the alliances between the Cupiditas and the Nomads of the South and between the Cupiditas and the Fierce and Formidable Warriors of the North were both tenuous and temporary. They did not have a preponderance of true common interests. This had made rational dialogue possible. The “loyalty” of these tribes to NUT-PI was nothing more than a temporary convenience, fairly easily overcome by showing them the lies of NUT-PI and a path to a more permanent self-interest. Also, no blood had yet been spilled. Once blood had been spilled on both sides, talk of peace could easily be shouted out by the drums of war that banged in the heart of every warrior amplified by sorrow, fear, and anger. Many Paths reminded herself that she needed to have a frank talk with Lion Slayer about whether any from among the Nomads of the South would choose to fight with the Veritas.

She decided to wait a few more days for such a conversation and to include his mate, Hudah Salah, as well. When they had first arrived to spend a year with the Veritas, she had seemed unwilling to say much and agreed with her husband on every point. Something had changed however. Many Paths thought there were three reasons. First, she had become much more familiar with the Veritas language. Second, she had many actual friends now among the Veritas. When she arrived, she only knew her husband, Fleet of Foot and Eagle Eyes. Now, she knew everyone in the tribe and everyone knew her. Third, the great fire had separated her for a time from her husband and she had to survive without him, without knowing whether he was alive or dead. Many Paths judged that his deepened their love but also grew her independence. Many Paths also thought that Lion Slayer would be more likely to imagine everyone among the Nomads of the South would feel however he felt. Hudah Salah, would be more in tune with the heart of the entire tribe. She would not unthinkingly imagine that all of them would be as eager or reluctant to join in a lethal fight as she herself was.

Photo by Chait Goli on Pexels.com

The “coming to war” ritual ended with a long, energetic dance. This served to burn off some of the nervous energy that naturally arose from everyone in the tribe preparing for war. It also served to remind each person among the Veritas that they were part of a larger whole. Everyone participated including Many Paths and She Who Saves Many Lives. Though the latter was not so quick as she had once been, she moved with a grace and beauty that caused many in the tribe to smile. Long energetic dances also served as a training for long marches or fierce battles. Everyone took note of everyone else so they came to expect the tempo and style of everyone else in the tribe. This, Many Paths realized, could be quite helpful in coordinated group action. Everyone could see, for example, that Shadow Walker’s ankle was completely healed while Tu-Swift had still not recovered his former speed. A lot of information was exchanged about individuals at the same time that each individual felt more integrated into the whole. It occurred to Many Paths that some such a dance should be repeated with whomever joined in the Veritas endeavor, whether the Veritas who lived beyond the Twin Mountains or the Nomads of the South. The dance also tended to physically exhaust everyone and, as a steady wind bends the long grass, it would bend everyone toward much needed sleep rather than useless worry.

The next day began bright and clear. She met early with Tu-Swift, Eagle Eyes, Cat Eyes, Sooz, and Shadow Walker. She began by describing her experiment with reflections that had caused a twig to burst into flames. Using the Rings of Empathy and many pieces of mica, she arranged the reflections so that they all focused on a small dried twig. Again, it seemed as though nothing was happening when suddenly the twig burst into flames. Salah Hudah had been weaving nearby, not participating in the conversation. But when she saw the twig burst into flames, she exclaimed something aloud in her native tongue. She walked over to the group and spoke in Veritas nearly as well as those who were born Veritas might.

“These things,” she gestured around at the rings and mica, “are all shiny. Very shiny. We have in our land some shiny things as well. There is a shiny black stone which can be polished so much that you can see yourself as if looking in a clear, calm, lake. We call it ‘OB-ESS-DIAN.” And, there is another thing on the edge of the deep desert lands where no-one goes. It is also shiny. Very shiny. We polish it. We shape it. But it is evil. We call it GLAZ. Those who touch it get burned. We only discovered a few winters ago. We thought to make jewelry or … a kind of pond to look at yourself. I think it could be useful weapon this way too. But dangerous. It burns the hands as though you were too long in the sun. But it is not hot.”

Photo by Tim Erben on Pexels.com

Many Paths thanked Salah Hudah and contemplated once again how much better it was to have made friends with the Nomads of the South rather than fighting them. She vowed to try to find such a way even with the People Who Steal Children. But such people killed with no honor. With Killing Sticks. How could peace come about? It was a puzzle: an important one, but seemingly unsolvable.

Tu-Swift brought out his sword and moved it about. “This is very shiny too. As is Shadow Walker’s. I think…here’s let’s try making both of them shine onto a twig.” Shadow Walker worked with Tu-Swift and they reflected the sunbeams from their sword onto another dry twig. It did not burst into flames. They waited. At last, Cat Eyes stretched forth her hand and gingerly touched the twig.

“It’s warmer than just the sun would do, but not warm enough to burst into flame. But something else might work very well. In the village of the Z-Lotz, many of the richest families have such a portable pond looker as Salah Hudah described. But no-one I heard of got burned from it. So, perhaps it is made of something different. I don’t know.”

“Thank you, Cat Eyes. How many of these portable lookers are there in the whole of the Z-Lotz village?”

Cat Eyes sighed. “I was there as a slave. So, I was unable to go wherever I liked. There are many people. Sometimes, I visited other houses. All of them had such things. But I seldom went to small houses. I would say, these many. But I really don’t know.” Cat Eyes held up both hands ten times; each time, all fingers were splayed out. “One hundred.”

Many Paths nodded. “One hundred. Yet, so few as ten pieces of mica, and seven shiny stones can make a dry piece of wood burst into flame. Imagine what one hundred shiny things might do if all the many paths of light come together at one time and place.”

Shadow Walker said, “That, I think, would be very hot indeed. However, we don’t own those possible weapons. I don’t see how we can get them. But what of the shiny things of the Nomads of the South? How many of those are there, Salah?”

“Of the black OB-ESS-DIAN, there are many. Ten times ten. Of the clear ones… there may be one or two, but to my knowledge, once people realized they caused burns, no-one wanted them. People gave them back to the deep desert.”

The group thought about that for a time. Presently, Tu-Swift said, “I don’t understand. Why don’t they just use a long handle or many layers of cloth to protect their hands? Surely, you tried this, Salah?”

“Tu-Swift, you speak true. People did try this. We sometimes make even stones by hardening mud in fire. They become quite hard. But when they are first made by such hot fire, the stones themselves are too hot to touch. However, we take them out of the oven with large mittens made of many layers. People’s hands do not get burned. But there is something different about GLAZ. Many layers of cloth do not prevent burns though the GLAZ is not itself hot! It seems magic but evil. That’s why we returned it to the deep desert where no-one goes.”

Cat Eyes began to speak. “Fire ants feel like burning when they bite you. But they are not themselves hot. Their tiny side teeth pierce your skin. Perhaps such ants are made of the same stuff as the GLAZ at the edge of the desert.”

Photo by Egor Kamelev on Pexels.com

Salah Hudah nodded. “Perhaps. We know also of these fire ants. They sting. They feel hot. But people recover. The burns of GLAZ do not get better. More moons, more pain. They are something from a world of evil. I think the people, my people,…maybe they lend you or trade you for OB-ESS-DIAN. But all this to set a fire? Isn’t it easier to use fire arrows?”

Shadow Walker spoke next. “We should not forget what happened to the ROI. They used fire arrows against us twice. The first time, they surprised us. It helped them steal Tu-Swift. But the second time, they tried to destroy us, and they succeeded in destroying their own village and many of their people. According to Jaccim, the ROI were led by a cruel lying leader, and then, so far as we can tell, he was killed himself. I don’t much like fire arrows. But it’s better to use them than to become enslaved.”

Tu-swift added thoughtfully, “Perhaps we can get the Z-Lotz themselves to destroy their leader. He seems very cruel.”

Cat Eyes scrunched her face up and chewed her lips. “Perhaps. The people I stayed with, the richest among the Z-Lotz privately scoffed at NUT-PI — just as they did about their beliefs — but, because they are rich, they like having NUT-PI as a leader, if you can call him that. No doubt, there are man people in the village of the Z-Lotz who would like to have NUT-PI gone, but I’m not sure they are prosperous enough to have — I think they are called ‘looking glasses.’ Does that make sense? I think only the rich people like them.”

Many Paths nodded. “I’m not sure. If it is as you say, then the rich would have to have very good reason to use this weapon of many looking glasses against NUT-PI. But there could be other ways to bring many weapons to bear through many paths. For instance, arrows, even if not fire arrows, could be fired from many directions at once. Rocks could be thrown from many directions. Small amounts of many poisons might be given. And, maybe we could use mica and jewels to make many reflections to heat up … to heat up a Killing Stick until it catches fire. Or, perhaps, we could even use the killing GLAZ. If NUT-PI thought it was very rare, and very precious, he might desire much of it. If he surrounds himself with such GLAZ, he might get quite sick and not know why.”

Eagle Eyes had been fairly silent and now began to draw a map of sorts in the dirt. “All of these weapons we are discussing converge from many paths on to one place; for example, NUT-PI. But if we were to kill the Z-Lotz leader, wouldn’t they simply pick a new leader?”

Many Paths said, “It might take them some time. As I best understand it, if one of the Cupiditas kills the leader, then that person becomes the new leader. I don’t know about the Z-Lotz though. If they do the same, it might be confusing if many people at once killed the old leader. Who would get to be the new leader?”

Cat Eyes said, “I am not sure, but I think the Z-Lotz might do something similar. It might be confusing for them if many people together killed their leader. He is a very loud screamer, but I don’t think he’s very brave. I’m not sure why I think that. Anyway, he’s not very athletic. He looks nothing like Shadow Walker or Trunk of Tree, for instance.” She smiled at Tu-Swift. “Honestly, Tu-Swift, in a fair fight, I think you could take him. But I don’t think a fair fight is of any interest to him.”

Tu-Swift blushed. “I would love to do that if he’s behind the stealing of children.”

Photo by mohamed Abdelgaffar on Pexels.com

Many Paths spoke again. “We have many ideas. Which path proves most fruitful though will remain a mystery until we find out more. I think that the construction of a good weapon that will be effective depends on knowing more. We need to find out more. How are their walls constructed? Can we tunnel under them to sneak in? Can we dig under them to cause collapse? Are the walls too high to fire arrows over? Rocks? Should we attack with many? Or, should we sneak in a few? Can we steal enough of these looking glasses to make a weapon? Can we steal their killing sticks? More swords? Can we sabotage their bows and arrows as Tu-Swift did to the ROI? And, how can we use our horses? Will they join us in this fight?”

Shadow Walker took a deep breath, “Many, I think I should go visit these Z-Lotz. Maybe I could trade with them and get some Killing Sticks in this way. We have many fine and beautiful baskets. And, Salah Hudah, do you think these shiny things that cause burns can be recovered or — ?”

Salah Hudah shook her head violently. “I don’t think you should touch them. I don’t think you’ll find them — at least not easily. Our people just wanted to get rid of them. They are covered up now with shifting of many sands. But they burn without warning. And worse. One woman who especially liked these. She was very beautiful. She had many suitors who brought her such as treasures. She paid much. She became something else. Her body began to grow like mushrooms. No longer beautiful. And, she was sick in every way. And died. That is what triggered everyone to throw them out.”

“I should go with you,” volunteered Eagle Eyes. I can see danger before danger sees us. And I have been there before. “What of you, Cat Eyes? You know this place better than anyone else? Will you come too?”

Cat Eyes nodded. “I will go. I like this place much better! Much better! But perhaps it would be well for me to go first to my people. Some may recognize me. I may recognize them. I can be…I can be like a pair of logs over the brook and allow others to cross. Perhaps the Veritas over the Twin Mountains will have other weapons or other knowledge. Then, we can decide what to do about the Z-Lotz. It is also possible they might leave us alone?”

“I hope that,” said Many Paths. “Why must people steal children? But I don’t think they will leave us alone. I do not think they will leave the Nomads of the South alone either. Nor, the Fierce and Formidable Warriors of the North. Nor anyone who simply wants to live in peace. If I thought otherwise, we would not have all sworn to the way of the warrior. But that does not mean we must attack at once. More knowledge would be good. Let us first try to reach the Veritas beyond the Twin Peaks. Jaccim knows how to find a path there, so he thinks.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

“Meanwhile, we will grow stronger and faster and learn the skills of killing in case we need such skills. We will continue to train even the smallest among us so that if any such are captured, they will be weapons; unsuspected weapons like Cat Eyes.”

Now, Eagle Eyes spoke, “You are wise, Many Paths. I have a thought though about yet another weapon.”

“We have trained a few from among the Wolf Pups. And, we have trained few from among the Eagles. What if … you know that I can draw a likeness of any of you and that you will know who that likeness is. Eagles have eyes even better than ours. I am wondering whether it is not possible … perhaps if I can see the Z-Lotz leader, I can teach my eagles, and more eagles besides, to attack this hateful man and pluck his eyes out. Could it be possible? I don’t know. And for Wolves the same. Except they do not see as well as do we ourselves. But each person smells different. If someone can steal some of his clothing, perhaps such pups could be trained to attack and kill something that smells of him.”

white and yellow bird shallow focus photography

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Many Paths smiled at her friend. For the first time since she found out about the Killing Sticks, she felt confident that there was a way to prevail against such a weapon and that they would find it. And use it. “Those are excellent ideas, Eagle Eyes.”

Everyone in the group nodded.

Many Paths spoke again, and her voice sounded clear and confident, “I promise you, we will not rest until we find a lasting and believable peace with these Z-Lotz. Or, we will destroy their leader. If that doesn’t stop them from stealing children, we will destroy the next leader. And the next. At last, everyone shall also be destroyed and all of their Killing Sticks — until they stop stealing children.”

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

———————————————-

Author Page on Amazon

Start of the First Book of The Myths of the Veritas

Start of the Second Book of the Myths of the Veritas

Table of Contents for the Second Book of the Veritas

Table of Contents for Essays on America

Index for a Pattern Language for Teamwork and Collaboration

Corn on the Cob

06 Monday May 2019

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, management, psychology, Uncategorized, Veritas

≈ 42 Comments

Tags

altrusim, cats, fascism, gratitude, politics, science, selfishness, truth

{This is not part of the “Myths of the Veritas” series. But writing about these ancient, if mythical, people has caused me to reflect on how much we owe today to the millennia of humans who preceded us.}

Corn on the Cob.

Photo by Kaboompics .com on Pexels.com

I made corn on the cob tonight for dinner. I cooked it in the micro-wave the perfect amount of time and put just the right amount of butter and seasoning. I loved it. And, I have loved corn on the cob ever since I can remember.

Now, I am guessing that most of you saw no problem with my first statement. Indeed, this is how most people speak about “making dinner” and generally the way I think about it as well.

But think for another moment. Did I really make the dinner? I might have grown the corn in my garden (in this case, I did not), but I certainly didn’t build the microwave from scratch! And, I did not milk the cow nor churn the butter. And similarly, the seasonings were not something I went out and found.

Corn? Corn was first domesticated in Mexico about 10,000 years ago. It did not look or taste like it does today. Consider: the first corn was not something that these early Mexicans discovered in a seed catalog or happened across on an afternoon stroll through the supermarket.

Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

There were people among these tribes who learned from people who learned from people who learned…from many generations how to grow food, how to choose the very best from among those foods and then not eat them but instead use them to seed the next generations.

I am quite sure that most of you have worked hard in your careers. Maybe your career lasted 50 years, like mine. A half century is not an inconsiderable time. But the corn that we eat today is the result of the labor of many people: ancient Mexicans; early settlers to the American continent; scientists from across the globe. The overall effort it took to create the corn that I cooked today is undoubtedly thousands of times greater than the effort I spent preparing it.

Not to mention the microwave! How did that come about? How many scientists and engineers over how many years? Of course, they could not even have begun to work on such a thing without other scientists and mathematicians from around the world advancing basic physics, equations, zero, numbers, counting — going back again — thousands of years!

Statue of Archimedes who brought value to many, and who was killed by a Roman soldier.

A similar timeline exists for salt, pepper, and butter. Have you ever actually seen a cow? They’re big! They’re strong! Who knows how many ancient peoples died in the process of trying to domesticate cows.

1E12DBD6-3F3D-465E-890C-D78AC3EF5CE9

And, let us not forget the leisure that comes from living in a house and not fighting off Saber-Tooth tigers while I’m trying to cook. (Although our youngest kitten Luna, did persistently try to lick the butter and nibble the tuna salad. She’s still young and has much to learn.)

Everything in the way of goods and services and security that we enjoy in a so-called “civilized” society is something we might think is something we “deserve” because, after all, we worked hard all our lives. But let’s not forget that if you were born in the stone age, you could work hard all your life and not get anything like the luxuries we have today. Those products and services are the result of countless numbers of other people who tried to leave the earth better for their fellow humans than the way they found it.

The next time a thought crosses your mind that you ought to be able to keep every cent of the income that “you” earned, hopefully you will chew awhile on the fact that everything you enjoy today is the result of other living beings doing things for themselves and doing things for future generations. Some of them were your direct ancestors but the vast majority were not. They were people of all colors, countries and religious persuasions.

945E0487-AC0F-45E9-90A8-4F518F0EEDE8

And, every time you look at your computer screen, or watch a movie, or put on a pair of shoes, or use your indoor plumbing, or sleep in a vermin free house, or listen to a song, or pet your dog without it biting off your hand — all these things we take for granted were vast gifts from earlier and current generations.

Yes, you should we rewarded for your hard work, but let’s not delude ourselves. The fraction of all that we have that we could have achieved on our own is miniscule.

Author Page on Amazon

The No-Rock Rock & the No-Door Door.

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by petersironwood in family, psychology, story, Uncategorized, Veritas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

innovation, myths, ROI, story, tracking, truth, Veritas

Shadow Walker took the first watch along with Easy Tears. After their long day’s march, it would be too easy for a single sentry to fall asleep. Shadow Walker felt as though, for him, it was an unnecessary precaution but he realized that could be a delusion. He might be more prone to sleep than he realized. Easy Tears and Shadow Walker had known each other since childhood and they were comfortable with each other. The wolf pups lay beside them and helped stave off the chill of the night air. Though the pups appeared to be in a deep sleep, he suspected they would be awake in a flash if more ambushers tried to sneak up on their search party.

Photo by Vlad Bagacian on Pexels.com

Quietly, Shadow Walker began to chat with Easy Tears, the better to keep them both awake. “We should watch out for snakes as well. They are drawn to body heat as well as the fire. I suspect this is the sort of place that many rattlesnakes may make their home.”

Easy Tears responded, “I am not so much a friend to the snakes as you are. They aren’t always so easy to see either. I recall once almost stepping on a large snake who had a rattle-tail of ten rattles.”

Shadow Walker considered this, allowing the silence to flow between them. “Those snakes can fool the eyes. That is true. A walking stick, a butterfly with the eyes of an owl. Many animals make themselves look or sound like something else…or just fade into the background.”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A shooting star streaked across the sky. Shadow Walker had jerked his finger to share with Easy Tears and though she turned quickly, she only caught a brief glance. “Like those whom we pursue. They don’t hide their trail well at all. But then they simply disappear!”

Shadow Walker considered this. “You’re right. I suspect that once we search in daylight we will find some sign of continuing trail. I’m impatient to continue but we need the rest and … the sunlight will show us the way.” Shadow Walker noticed that the soft glow of the firelight flickered on the eyes and hair of Easy Tears in a most pleasing way. Shadow Walker thought of Many Paths and the serious conversation that they had postponed.

Easy Tears shivered slightly. Shadow Walker considered sidling up to her and putting his arm around her so that they would both enjoy the warmth of the other. It would be all right. Pleasurable even. But sometimes, it is difficult to know what is around the next bend and the one after that. Instead, he stood and got another blanket and draped it around her shoulders, then added another log onto the fire. He sat back down and reflected on his discovery that snakes could sense the heat of their prey. If only they could train a snake to be a helper. That could prove useful. He wondered aloud, “Easy Tears, if people can train horses and wolves and eagles, do you think it is possible to train snakes?”

Easy Tears chuckled slightly. “I wouldn’t think so, but you are the expert. I don’t really care for them, though I do appreciate their eating the rats and mice that try to steal our grain.” She considered for a time. “I suppose you could train them. Yes. I suspect you could train anything with enough love and patience. But you see how it is. Despite your love and patience, there is always a chance they would bite you or misunderstand your intention. I suppose it might be something that would take a long time. What would you train a snake to do?”

“I wish we could have their sense of heat. Perhaps we could use them to follow trails or find hidden enemies. Maybe we could even train them as guards. Ours did not work so well for some reason. That bothers me. How could such as these who do not cover their tracks elude our guards?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps they did not try to elude our guards at all, but simply overpowered them too quickly for them to sound the alarm. Or perhaps, they feigned being peaceful? Trunk of Tree will figure it out. I like him.” She smiled and glanced at Shadow Walker. “Do you think he likes me?”

Shadow Walker considered this. Trunk of Tree had never said anything, but judging from the actions and looks of Trunk of Tree, probably so. “Yes, I think so. He looks at you…with longing. You are a beautiful woman, after all.”

fullsizeoutput_120e

Easy Tears smiled and Shadow Walker realized that he really found her attractive, but not in the deep way that he loved Many Paths. The half moon set and it grew darker. “It’s time to wake the next guards. He calmed his mind and thought of their serious quest in order to cool his blood. Then, he stood and walked over to Lion Slayer. He stood almost on top of Lion Slayer but Lion Slayer appeared to be a sound sleeper. He snored loudly and Shadow Walker joked, “I wonder whether he actually slew the lion with a spear…or with that snore.”

Easy Tears laughed aloud but all the others remained asleep. Shadow Walker squatted down on his haunches and shook Lion Slayer. The snoring continued. For a moment, he considered shaking Hudah Salah but decided against it. He shook Lion Slayer again and whispered his name. Hudah Salah suddenly sprang to his feet and pressed his thumbs against Shadow Walker’s windpipe. Shadow Walker smacked the hands away and jumped back, “Lion Slayer! It’s all right. It’s me. Time for your watch, as agreed.”

Lion Slayer shook his head. He looked hard at Shadow Walker and mumbled something unintelligible. At last, he seemed to come to his senses. “Yes,” he said and awakened his wife.

Easy Tears lay down and smiled at Shadow Walker. She moved her body so that sufficient space appeared next to her for the body of Shadow Walker to fit snugly. Shadow Walker sighed and lay down instead by himself and dreamt of Many Paths.

aerial photo of mountain surrounded by fog

Photo by icon0.com on Pexels.com

The next thing Shadow Walker sensed was light. It was not yet dawn. The troop all awoke and had a small breakfast and then began exploring the cliffs for a sign or a path. As they explored, they continued to chew pemmican and some dried fruit. Shadow Walker had asked Fleet of Foot to explore with Easy Tears, who took the wolf pups with her. Shadow Walker walked with Eagle Eyes. It was understood now by the group that Lion Slayer and Hudah Salah were fairly inseparable.

Although Eagle Eyes had the best vision, Shadow Walker’s eyes were also sharp but he found nothing but sheer cliffs. Eagle Eyes said, “Wait.”

“What do you see?” asked Shadow Walker.

“Nothing really. But something’s not right. It does not look right here. I’m not sure why.” Eagle Eyes stood with her hands on her hips staring at the sheer cliff face. She looked up the cliff face and noted various hand holds. “This wall might be scalable to a good climber.”

“Yes, I can see that as well though it would be dangerous. But horses? They are horses, not mountain goats” Shadow Walker said without blame or sarcasm.

“I know, but still, something is not right.” Eyes of Eagle shook her head and asked herself what she was missing.

Because the pair had stopped their systematic exploring, the rest of the search party converged on them. Fleet of Foot was the first to arrive. “Did you find something?”

Eagle Eyes smiled at him. “Not really. But his does not look right.”

Photo by Renata Cholpankulova on Pexels.com

Easy Tears arrived next with the wolf pups who immediately began jumping and whining. They sniffed around the base of the rocks and ran back and forth between the rocks and Easy Tears. They had clearly caught a scent of something. “Perhaps Tu-Swift?” suggested Shadow Walker.

The pups took turns trying to stick their nose into a small cleft in the rock. On impulse, Shadow Walker, put his fingers in the cleft and tried pulling. He could not budge the rock, which did not surprise him. But the feel of the rock did surprise him. It was much like flint but harder and colder. Beyond that, there was no texture to the rock. It felt, somehow, dead, even more dead than the bleached bones of a long dead buffalo. Shadow Walker lay on his back and tried to push on the cleft with his feet. Soon, all six of them pushed and pulled on the rock face though they had no hope of moving it.

And then, it did move, though very slightly. The group positioned themselves and pushed even harder. The rock slid more easily now like a smooth stick along the winter lake ice. Instead of the grinding sound of rock on rock, however, they heard an unearthly screeching sound like a very large eagle.

At last, a huge slab of the cold rock had been moved aside and behind it, all could see a large, short passageway into a sunlit path beyond. The wolf pups bounded through and out into the sunlight. The people followed. Eagle Eyes looked back at the strange rock and noticed something stranger yet. The back of the rock had many handles. She supposed they were to replace the rock. But at the bottom of the rock, she saw something that made her gasp aloud.

“What is this?” she asked. All of them turned and looked at the base of the weird rock. There were circles of rock on the bottom! What strange magic was this? Despite their hurry to find Tu-Swift and their excitement at finding the way out of the box canyon, each knelt down to marvel at the smooth circles of rock.

After some time, Shadow Walker said. “We cannot solve the mystery of this rock. We must follow the trail. Should we close this … door? If we do not, it may be apparent to any of the Stands on Horses people that we are coming for Tu-Swift. But when we return, we may be in a hurry to go through this way.”

Eagle Eyes spoke next. “We could leave it just slightly open so that we could squeeze through but no horses could. I think we could make this door, as you call it, harder yet to open or close.”

Fleet of Foot spoke. “We should hurry up and get to Tu-Swift as quickly as possible. We have no idea how badly hurt he may be.”

Shadow Walker: “We cannot know for certain the best course of action. I think it best to put it back the way it was. We are not going to be able to overwhelm our enemy with force. We must rely on secrecy. We may or may not be able to save Tu-Swift. But others of those who stand on horses find out we are on the way to their camp, they may go more swiftly and warn their people. That will make rescue impossible and even reconnaissance riskier. Let us move this back and follow the trail. We may also find another way back that is less familiar to those who ride on horses.”

I proved difficult to move the rock back, but they succeeded and they then resumed their tracking, which was again an easy task. Perhaps, thought Shadow Walker, those who stood on horses felt they were so fast they would not be pursued. Or, perhaps, they had not learned to hide their trail. Or, perhaps they thought that odd rock door would cut short any pursuit. Eagle Eyes with Easy Tears led the team with the pups trotting along side them. Next came the pair from the Nomads of the South. Shadow Walker and Fleet of Foot carried the heaviest loads and kept looking for and erasing signs of their trail. They stayed within the confines of the large swaths of changed lands that the galloping horses provided. This made “covering” their trail fairly easy. Trackers of the Veritas might wonder at the paw prints of two wolf cubs traveling without a pack, but Shadow Walker felt it likely that these would not raise suspicions among those he was tracking since they seemed so unconcerned about their own trail.

Shadow Walker was happy to concentrate on the trail ahead and to check to make sure there were no more of those who stand on horses behind them. In this way, he could avoid wondering about things that he could neither control nor prepare for. Many Paths was or was not okay with the rest of the Veritas. Tu-Swift was or was not okay. The only distraction that he really couldn’t block out was the smooth cold feel of the rock that was not rock and the circles of rock. There was also a very odd smell about that rock – something he had never smelled before, but it reminded him of death.

———————————————————

Books by the Author:

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on strategy, tactics, & the mental game for all sports including golf, tennis, softball, basketball, etc., as well as business.

Turing’s Nightmares consists of 23 fictional scenarios of humans interacting with technology for good or evil.

Fit in Bits suggests numerous ways to work more fun and exercise into daily activities such as watching TV, sitting in meetings, shopping, playing with kids, traveling, etc.

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences and then relates them to contemporary issues and events.

The Bonds of Horses and Humans

08 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by petersironwood in family, psychology, Uncategorized, Veritas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

ethics, family, innovation, myth, politics, story, truth

The Bonds of Horses and Humans

Tu-Swift awoke in pain. He began to panic. At first he wondered and quickly then became sure that they must have beaten him again. Inventory. “Don’t jump to conclusions.” That’s what Many Paths would have said. Inventory. He quickly realized nothing was broken. No, it was just that his muscles were sore. Although he spent a lot of time running, playing, and working among the Veritas, his ride on the back of a horse and then spending a day shoveling manure used his muscles in new ways. His body was okay. As he thought of the Veritas, however, his heart sank. Up to now, he had secretly thought that he would soon be rescued. Now a new and uglier thought crept into his soul. He took deep slow breaths and tried to calm himself. Day-Nah was beginning to stir and Tu-Swift didn’t want to alarm him by appearing scared. But the truth was, all the Veritas may be killed or enslaved. He might even be the only one to transmit their long collective years of wisdom accumulated.

Painting by Jeremy Colier

That was the cold, bitter spider of doubt that clutched his heart. Though he had no idea whether or not the Veritas had survived the attack, he had been assuming that they had been alive. But there were many other possibilities. Tu-Swift set his jaw. He had always been one to leap before looking while Many Paths kept reminding him to consider other alternatives. But now — Many Paths was not here. He would have to rely on the Many Paths in his head. And, others. There were other voices Among the Veritas who he could use to help him find a means for escape. Meanwhile, he must keep his spirits up by reminding himself of what he liked; what he was grateful for. Tu-Swift realized that, among other things, he was actually grateful to have this small boy as a companion. Worrying about his small jail mate distracted Tu-Swift from his own predicament and uncertainty.

Just then, Day-Nah stirred and whimpered. He suddenly sat up and yelled. Day-Nah’s eyes returned to that wild-eyed stare that Tu-Swift had first observed. Tu-Swift patted his own chest forcefully and said, “Tu-Swift! Tu-Swift!” Then, he gestured toward Day-Nah by opening his arms and hands outward toward the youngster and said, “Day-Nah. Day-Nah!” The young boy blinked several times and seemed to recall his present circumstances. His breathing slowed, but he pulled his legs up, wrapped his arms around his knees and began rocking and silently crying.

Like all of the youth of the Veritas, Tu-Swift knew how to comfort the young of his own tribe, but he felt uncertain about approaching the boy in this state. Though tempted to hug him, he decided distraction might be a wiser course and he reviewed the language lessons they had already gone through, being a little more particular about pronunciation, both in his attempts to mimic the sounds of Day-Nah and in Day-Nah’s repetition of of Veritas. This seemed to calm the boy and his silent tears abated. Once more Tu-Swift grew both angry and troubled that anyone would steal such a young boy from his family.

The horses were stirring as well, though it was early morning, judging from the gray light that crept into the horse enclosure. In the distance, Tu-Swift could hear many people stirring and getting ready for the day. Again, he had the distinct feeling that it was like and yet very unlike mornings among the Veritas. There were footsteps, and there were voices. The accent and cadence of the voices was different, but something more profound was different. He heard birds chirping, squawking, crowing, cooing and so on, but some note was missing. Tu-Swift thought of a rainbow and imagined what it would be like to see a rainbow that was missing the blue or the red. But no! This rainbow was missing all color. Why did it sound like a colorless rainbow? That made no sense. Tu-Swift shook his head. He wished he could have a real conversation with Day-Nah, but he knew of no way to try to communicate such subtlety.

Three large, burly men came into the large horse room. One of them put down two dishes of food and a flask of water. He grumbled something at them. Tu-Swift noted that none of these people seemed very interested in trying to teach them their language. The other two stood nearby and all three watched as the boys ate whereupon they were led out to an open pit toilet and from there to a large field fenced in with logs. There were a large number of free running horses in this particular field and among them, Tu-Swift could see five foals. Working together, the three large men managed to separate one of the foals from its mother. Tu-Swift could see that the mare stomped around dangerously, whinnied, and that the whole herd seemed agitated. Every horse in the herd, however, shrunk back, terrified of the men and eventually one man managed to tie a rope around the foal’s two back legs and another around the forelegs. Tu-Swift looked to his own legs and those of Day-Nah and saw that they were in much the same predicament. They, like the foal, could walk, but not run or jump.

Tu-Swift realized how much he loved to run free. He reveled in the feeling and he felt both sadness and anger at being prevented from running. He wondered whether he would ever be able to run free again. He begin to wonder whether he — or the foal — could ever be truly happy if they could not run free. Then, Tu-Swift thought of the snails that he had so often collected from the Veritas gardens. He had looked fairly closely at the creatures. They were fairly cute actually. Of course, as Many Paths would point out, he had no way to tell how a snail felt. But there was no reason to think they wouldn’t be happy. Finding something nice to chew on would probably make the snail happy just as it made him happy. But it was not in the nature of a snail to run. At imagining this, Tu-Swift laughed.

Photo by Chris Peeters on Pexels.com

Day-Nah tilted his head with his brows pinched together as he regarded the older boy. Tu-Swift smiled at the boy and at his situation. How could he explain that he had been imagining a snail trying to run? Then, it suddenly hit Tu-Swift that the “color” that was missing from all the morning sound of these captor-people was laughter — not just laughter itself, but any kind of fun, or enjoyment. So far as he could tell, they did the same things that the Veritas did (except for tying up other creatures), but they didn’t seem to enjoy any of it! What a strange, gray life that must be, thought Tu-Swift. And he suddenly realized that he actually felt sorry for his captors! He imagined telling Many Paths.

Just then, all three men came over to them and shouted at the same time. Neither of the boys had even the slightest idea what they said and this must have been obvious to the three because they all switched to miming what the boys were to do. They were to do what the three grown men had just done! Somehow, they were to cull four more foals and tie their legs with rope! The Veritas had ropes, but Tu-Swift decided that it was a fair bet that Capture-People didn’t know that. The Veritas were all taught at an early age that those with more power seldom bother to learn even what would be of immense value to them if that knowledge lies with those out of power. The Capture-People had horses — and they had captured one, at least, of the Veritas. So, they would think themselves superior and be willing to believe any lack of intelligence or knowledge on the part of Tu-Swift.

iPhoneDownloadJan152013 697

He acted quite incapable with the ropes at first, only slowly catching on. Tu-Swift had no idea how the two of them were supposed to accomplish what looked very difficult even for three large men, three who did not have their legs tethered. Cautiously, they sidled into the pen staying near the exit that only they could squeeze through. Oh, thought Tu-Swift, Eagle Eyes will love to hear about that! Although tinged with sadness, he realized that he wasn’t really away from his own village at all! They all lived in his own head! As long as he lived, the Veritas lived!

Most of the herd headed to the far end as the boys entered, but one mare and her foal chanced nearing. The mare seemed to like their company! Perhaps she could see that they were tethered as they were. Tu-Swift gently tugged at Day-Nah by the arm and positioned him so that the men could not get a clear view of the mare. The mare smelled something nice on the rope between Tu-Swift’s legs. It began chewing on the rope. Tu-Swift admired the teeth and jaws of the horse before him. He spoke to the horse in Veritas though he was under no illusion that the horse would understand him, at least in any detail or words. “I am Tu-Swift. You are?”

At this point, the horse made a sound like “Kneeeeee -Kwah”

Tu-Swift continued, “‘eee-qua’ it is then.”

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Pexels.com

“Tu-Swift likes to run. Ee-qua like to run. We don’t like ropes. (Here he made a show of waving the ropes in the air so the three men would think they were making progress.) “We want to run free. Tu-Swift and Ee-qua run free one day. Yes, we will.”

Tu-Swift hobbled over to the foal and sat on the ground. “Hello little one. We have a predicament. I have these ropes on my legs. I don’t like them, but if we don’t wear them, they will beat us until we do. Your mother, Ee-qua chewed my ropes nearly through. So, I am going to put these ropes on you. But you will be able to run free in a few hours. I know you don’t understand a word I’m saying but maybe the sound of my voice will help you know that I am your friend regardless of how it seems.” Tu-Swift meanwhile, had succeeded in tying a rope around one of the young colt’s legs and “secured” it with a granny knot rather than the square not that the men had shown him. It was chancy to make life difficult for those that seemed to have power over him, but it had to be done; carefully, and never in the same way twice, but each day, Tu-Swift knew that he could find some way to make the lives of the Capture-People less pleasant, just as they were making his less pleasant.

931D1948-69AF-4F80-94CC-8064833AEFB5

Hiding tools, wrecking tools, backing up sewage, polluting water, passing on disease, poisoning — these were just a few of the ways he might or might not be able to fight back. Meanwhile though, he also had to be careful not to be caught and to have a well-worked out and plausible excuse. As Tu-Swift tied more legs with granny knots, he planned that he would feign astonishment and excitedly show his captors how he had tied the knots. He would tie granny knots. They would smack him about a bit of course. But then they would show him the correct way. He would again copy but make a granny knot. The Capture-People would smack him around a bit, so he imagined, and then show him again. He would feign insight and make a true square knot the next time. This would serve two purposes. It would cause them grief, but it would also, he hoped, endear him to them in some perverse way. It would be as though he could learn their tricks — eventually — but being more stupid than they are — it would take him longer naturally to learn to do things correctly. And, then again, he thought, fastening the fourth leg with a granny know, I may never even be accused.

Just then it occurred to Tu-Swift that the horses could chew threw their own tethers! Why hadn’t they thought of that. Maybe that’s not the sort of thing horses “think of.” Maybe they need to be shown. If they will eat through my ropes — and she could have easily gone all the way through — they could eat through their own, but how can I get food to put on those ropes?

Author Page on Amazon

Start of the Myths of the Veritas

Metaphors We Live By and Die By

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Democracy, elections, Feedback, government, life, metaphor, politics, programming, thinking

Metaphors We Live By and Die By

PicturesfromiPhone2 087

I love metaphors.I always have. I admit it. I think every youngster does, at least until they are exposed to poetry in English class. I was lucky to have an awesome English teacher who deepened rather than destroyed my natural love of metaphors. There are plenty in my own poems. but in this post, I am not focusing on metaphors for poetry so much as metaphors that we use in our thinking. Metaphors impact the way we approach situations at work and at home. I was influenced to see this by two main sources. First, Lakoff & Johnson’s book, Metaphors we Live By was first published in 1980. This book greatly influenced, among other things, our IBM Research team’s study of human-computer interaction. At this point in the history of human-computer interaction and user experience, researchers and practitioners began to explore how various metaphors (e.g.,desktop, trash can, windows, drag and drop) could be used to help users understand the capabilities of computers and how to invoke them. (See, e.g., Carroll, J. and Thomas, J.C. (1982). Metaphor and the cognitive representation of computer systems. IEEE Transactions on Man, Systems, and Cybernetics., SMC-12 (2), pp. 107-116).

Consider the error messages “Illegal Syntax” and “User Error.” They both put the responsibility for an undesirable state of affairs squarely on the shoulders of the user. “Hey you! User! You did something dastardly! You used illegal syntax.”

man wearing jacket and peaked cap grayscale photo

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

Generally, the term “illegal” implies that you did something that was against the law. It usually implies you did something unethical too. Gerry Weinberg, one of the pioneers of UX/HCI (a keynote speaker at the Gaithersburg Conference), pointed out that the “legal” syntax of languages often has arbitrary restrictions. It might be more accurate to have an error message that says, “Our programmers were unable to take the time to allow dates to be entered in European or Chinese format. Please enter dates as MM/DD/YYYY as in 08/04/1961 for August 4th, 1961.” This longer message tells the user what was “wrong” with their input and how to correct it as well as conveying the very real truth that the limitation is with the software, not with the user. Similarly, what is called “User Error” actually comes up as a message when the user does something that seemed reasonable to the user and would most likely be interpretable by another human being but was not anticipated or could not be dealt with by the programming team. Suppose it said instead, “Software error. We did not anticipate this kind of input so we can’t deal with it.” Or, in many cases, a more honest message might be: “Software error. We knew people would want to do this, but we didn’t have budget to program properly.”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

At the same time I was thinking about metaphors and Human Factors in Computing Systems, I was also conducting therapy as a Fellow at the Institute for Rational Living. I was learning and supervising cognitive behavioral therapy under the direction of Albert Ellis. Here I observed how people used metaphors to help make sense of their lives and make decisions about their lives. For example, as pointed out by Lakoff & Johnson, people often viewed romantic love as a sickness! It is also common to view romantic love as a journey over which you have little or no control. It is understandable why it sometimes feels that way, but such a metaphor is not empowering. It does little to lead you to make reasonable decisions about love or about those whom you love. Think instead of love as a collaborative work of art.

man standing beside his wife teaching their child how to ride bicycle

Photo by Agung Pandit Wiguna on Pexels.com

The “Love is a collaborative work of art” metaphor encourages you to realize that you must collaborate with your partner to make a relationship work over time. You can’t really collaborate very well unless you communicate. It also encourages you to realize that work is involved. It encourages you to realize that it is a creative endeavor. While you can certainly learn from the successes and mistakes of others, in the end, your relationship is unique. It will take creativity to make your relationship work. It puts the responsibility for the relationship on you and your partner, not on forces beyond your control.

It isn’t only love about which people often use inappropriate metaphors. For example, when it comes to overcoming addiction, overeating, under-exercising, people often use sin as their over-arching metaphor. “I was bad last night. I had two pieces of pumpkin pie.” “I was horrible all week. I had those evil donuts every morning.” The metaphor that “eating is evil” is inaccurate. After all, you have to eat to live. Furthermore, that metaphor doesn’t lead to any solutions except to try harder to be “good.” Worse than that, if often subverts a person’s efforts. “I didn’t want to have any ice cream but I did. Oh, well, the night is blown. I may as well eat the whole quart.” (Now that I’ve sinned, I may as well enjoy it). Weight is best thought of in purely physical terms. If you ingest more calories than you burn you will gain weight. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. That’s it! That’s all there is. Making it about good and evil does not help and, in my experience, is completely counter-productive.

Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Pexels.com

Speaking of counter-productive metaphors, I have been annoyed and concerned for decades that the media have largely (though not wholly) reported on political matters as they report on sporting events. During election season, you will hear relatively little about the candidates, their positions, their backgrounds or their ethics. You will hear a lot about strategy and where they stand in the polls. Often you will literally hear nothing more than a sound bite per day about major candidates. Then, pundits will unendingly discuss and debate how this or that sound bite will work or not work with various voter groups. No matter how outrageous, unethical, or disgusting a candidate’s behavior is, the media will spend most of their coverage on how it will affect the “score.”

Metaphors have consequences.

We now find ourselves in an extremely weird position, at least in America. One candidate has “won” the “World Series” of elections (American Presidency). Many of the people who voted for him think of themselves as his “fans” and “supporters.” They believe their guy “won” so they want to continue to support “their team.” After all, imagine that you are a Yankees fan and the Yankees won the World Series. You get to have bragging rights until the next World Series. If one of the Yankees turns out to be a tax evader, you’re still going to be a Yankees fan. If one of the Yankee pitchers turns out to have cheated during the games, say, by putting illegal substances on the baseball, you’ll still be a Yankees fan. Another Yankee might be a wife beater. But, hey, they won the World Series! So you’re still a loyal Yankees fan.

Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi on Pexels.com

Here’s the thing. It doesn’t make a whole lot of real difference in your life who won the World Series. It doesn’t matter materially to your kids. It doesn’t matter materially to your grandkids. Don’t get me wrong. It will make some difference in how you feel. You and your whole family might be happy they won. But it won’t make the air you breathe cleaner or dirtier. It won’t make the water you and your family drink pure or contaminated with carcinogenic toxins. It won’t make or break the economy. Having the Yankees or Boston Red Sox win the World Series will have zero impact on global climate change. Even if Chicago wins the World Series, it won’t start an atomic war. If the Phillies win, it won’t mean you will lose your health care. Stay loyal to those Yankees! Or to the Green Bay Packers. Or to Manchester United. Or to the India National Cricket Team. Or whoever your favorite team is. Why not?

Politics though, regardless of how it is reported by the news media, is vastly and vitally different from a sporting event! Who is in office can have a huge influence on what happens in the lives of people. In the case of an American President, who is in office can have a huge influence on the lives of people around the globe, not only today and tomorrow, but also for decades to come.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com

Collectively, those Americans who voted (about 137.5 million) in the last Presidential election hired someone for a job. (Actually, nearly 63 million voted to hire him while nearly 66 million voted to hire Hilary Clinton). POTUS is an important job and how that person does that job impacts your life in a very real way. It impacts the lives of your friends and your family. It impacts the lives of people around the world. Every action that person takes, every speech they give, every statement they tweet has an impact. You or I might send out a nasty tweet about people. But our nasty tweets are very unlikely to cause someone to construct and send pipe bombs to the people we tweeted about. We have hired someone to do a very important job. It isn’t a sporting event.

Imagine instead of rooting for your favorite sports team that you hired a guy to take care of your kids. To you, that is certainly an important job. After you hire him, you discover that the person you hired lied to get the job. He lies to you every single day. He steals from you! Not only that. Every day, he trashes your house a little more. He has parties at your house and the people he invites include known criminals. Worst of all, this guy you hired is a child molester! That’s obviously a nightmare scenario. What makes it worse is that many people knew that the person you hired was a crook and a child molester.

What do you do when there is a mountain of evidence that he is lying to you; stealing from you; trashing your house; consorting with known criminals; and is a child molester?

Do you keep him on to watch your kids anyway out of a sense of loyalty?

Do you feel so guilty about hiring him that you insist to all your friends and relatives that this guy is doing a great job? (Because, after all, that’s what he keeps saying).

Do you keep him on until he is convicted in a court of law?

Of course you don’t! You fire him immediately.

You have the power to choose the metaphors you use. You don’t have to stick with a metaphor just because it was the first one to occur to you.

Metaphors have consequences. Whether in your personal life, work life, or political life, choose your metaphors with care. Don’t latch on to one simply because it’s the one the mainstream media discovered rakes in the most ad revenue.

Author Page on Amazon

Myths of the Veritas: The Prophesy Dream of She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives

27 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by petersironwood in apocalypse, family, health, Uncategorized, Veritas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

celerity, dream, ecology, haste, myth, prophesy, speed, story

The Prophesy Dream of She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives

She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives wondered how effective the promised dream-catcher of She-of-Many-Paths would prove. Lately, the Shaman’s dreams had been more troubled than usual. In the distance, she could hear the skies rumbling and grumbling in the distance. She could smell the approaching storm; as yet though, no raindrops drummed and not a whisper of wind swayed the nearby oaks. She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives drifted into a fitful dream.

{Translator’s Note}: Needless (?) to say, the Veritas, like many so-called primitive people took great store in dreams and dream interpretation. Nonetheless, they also realized that the outside conditions influence dreams as the reader is also no doubt aware from their own experience. Therefore, before recounting the contents of a prophetic dream itself, they recorded the physical circumstances and physiological state of the dreamer.

She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives began her journey in the spirit world walking along one of the broad paths that the many branches of the Veritas used for commerce among themselves. She walked soundlessly along the path, whose dirt had been pounded into hard-baked clay by the elements and the numerous feet, large and small, who had trod, run, shuffled, and plodded along this path. Presently, the Shaman came across a blueberry bush and snatched off a handful, anticipating the rich, sweet, aromatic taste. But there was no taste. She coughed and noticed that her eyes watered. Breath came with difficulty, and the air itself seemed to filled with dust or ash — the worst tasting ash ever. She looked toward distant peaks but they were dim as though the air was no longer air but a thin gray smoke, tinged with yellow. Smoke seemed to grow from leafless, limbless trees.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives looked down at her feet and was surprised to see that the baked dirt was not yellow-brown dirt. Instead, the path was a dirty silvery gray flecked with tiny pieces of mica. The road was hard under her feet – much harder than usual. She stopped in her tracks. Something was making an odd noise. No, not a noise. It was silence.

No crow scolded. No robin tweeted and twittered. No unseen tiny feet scurried through the brush. No squirrels chattered in the trees. She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives saw the rock-hard road beneath her feet spread out like a cancer growing ever larger. As the strange and ugly whitish rock spread out in all directions, She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives could see it destroying all in its path: blueberry bushes, oak trees, deer, squirrels. Everything flying fell from the sky. Everything crawling or running found themselves mired in the ever-expanding death rock. Initial silence was replaced by deafening screeching and rumbling.

She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives still found herself wanting to run from this terrible thing that ate her world but found herself instead lashed to the spot, unable to move. She called for her tribe but no-one came. Perhaps they could not even hear her over the din. In the distance, at last, she saw other people coming toward her. Like every other adult in the tribe, she knew everyone and could recognize each such person at a distance. But here she saw none that she recognized. As the throng grew closer, she saw that their faces were also white and flecked like the rock itself and their eyes had no light. Each marched as though to a drumbeat that only they could hear. Their faces showed nothing and their mouths all moved constantly but nothing meaningful issued forth.

As people in such close proximity inevitably do, some few tripped upon each other. A few such blank people fell. Rather than laughing and spreading out more to avoid further tripping, they began fighting and screaming at each other. Each such person blamed other such people and everyone pointed fingers at someone else and screamed. Some such persons now drew forth magic black rocks and pointed not fingers only but also these magic black rocks at each other. Such pointing came with a loud noise such as a moist shale makes in exploding when placed too close to the fire. Such magic pointing caused blood to appear in the person pointed to. Many such people pointed and many such people of white death in so pointing caused others to fall bleeding and screaming.

She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives tried to minister to some who were bleeding and screaming. She began to tear off some of the clothing of these people of white death to make tourniquets. The touch of such clothing repulsed her; nonetheless, she persisted. She saw that no-one else helped her with her ministrations. She began to wonder whether these magic black fire rocks would also cause blood to appear if pointed at her. She stood to look about for anyone from among the Veritas who might help her, but all she saw was an endless sea of the people of the white death coming down the broad white road. Now, each had a magic black rock of fire and all pointed at someone else and made blood appear. They no longer waited for someone to trip. They simply seemed to want to cause harm and kill another living human being.

The Shaman became concerned for her own people and ran to hide in the Lake of Reeds until such time as she could conceive of appropriate action for no such plan could she yet devise. When, she came to the Lake of Reeds, however, there were no reeds at all. The beautiful blue lake had been replaced with one of brown and it was covered with scum. She walked to the edge and touched some of the scum. It was not a plant however as she had sometimes seen. This scum was not of life but of death. It was mainly white or clear. And, when she touched it, it seemed not of this earth but appeared instead to be of the land of death. When she touched it, she felt no connection whatever to life.

She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives decided to head back to her own cabin and call a council meeting. She knew a path over the ridge and hoped that the white road of death had not yet killed such path. Suddenly, she was at her cabin door. Sitting in front of the cabin door, laughing, was Fleet-of-Foot wearing a white death-mask. She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives spoke urgently. “Fleet-of-Foot, be true to your name and run quickly to summon the tribe. There is a great plague upon the land and I fear it will kill all things unless we act quickly.”

Fleet-of-Foot just grinned at her, and replied, “Do your own errands, old lady. I am from the future where I am king.”

“King? What is a ‘king’ and do you not hear me? It is urgent that we summon all the people now. There is a giant white rock of death covering all things. I cannot stop it alone.”

Fleet-of-Foot shook his head. “No, old woman, that is just a better kind of path. It is faster and allows more people to travel. It kills nothing but useless trees, bushes, and animals.”

“Useless? How can you say trees, bushes and animals are useless? We depend on them for our survival.” She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives now saw that Fleet-of-Foot seemed enclosed in a giant shiny bubble. His voice seemed to have lost its rhythm and music. Indeed, he spoke quickly but without any connection to his own heart.

“Listen, Old One,” continued Fleet-of-Foot, “we have better ways to find food now and everything else. We have no more need for animals, bushes, and trees. Everything is done more quickly and efficiently now. Perhaps you do not yet see the wisdom of this new way, but you will. Everyone does eventually. Well, everyone who survives. You see, One-Too-Old-To-Save-Many-Lives, now everyone has only one way of how-to. My way. The way of As-Fast-As-Possible.”

“Fleet-of-Foot, there is some good to that way of how-to, but it must be balanced with other ways. Where are the other candidates?”

“Not really, One-Too-Old, speed is really all that counts. I killed all the other candidates. Too much trouble. They didn’t seem to realize that my way is the only way. My way of how to has made many weapons as well for fast killing. Such weapons as these end arguments very quickly indeed. And, I have wasted too much time already talking with you.”

At this, Fleet-of-Foot pulled out a magic black killing rock and pointed it at her.

Before he could use his weapon, a hundred eagles dove from the sky onto every part of Fleet-of-Foot, and tore him apart with their talons. Fleet-of-Foot screamed.

At this, She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives awoke and realized it was she herself who was screaming. Outside, she could now hear the storm outside bringing life-giving rain and the crack of nearby lighting and the ripping of trees struck by such. The Shaman decided this was a dream that she needed to share. She decided that when the storm had passed, she would call together first the Six-Who-See-With-Animal-Eyes, including Fleet-of-Foot, to see what possible meanings could be gathered and whether such a dark dream should be shared with all of the Veritas. Beyond meanings, however, she wished to amplify her own wisdom about whether such an imbalanced world as the one she had seen could ever truly come to pass.

fullsizeoutput_2514

Further sleep that night proved impossible, even for one so disciplined as She-Who-Saves-Many-Lives. She turned the problem this way and that in her mind, trying to see if such path of inharmonious blindness could ever be. Could the Veritas, or indeed, any people, come to view speed as so important that they put no value whatever on any other way of how-to? Being in harmony counted for nothing? Making something that lasted for many winters counted for nothing? The pleasure of the making itself counted for nothing? It seemed unlikely. It was also unlikely that one tree could grow through another. Yet, she had seen such herself and not far from here. But to see trees, bushes, and animals as being without value? To replace such with a huge block of ugly white flat stone? To make a gray white pond scum to cover lakes? To laugh at and mock other ways of knowing? These seemed impossible, not just unlikely. Still it would be good to see whether fresher eyes on the world could see a path to this not-life way of life. Often, she well knew, a perfectly good fruit with a slight crack may become first a home for a few tiny mold plants and soon the entire plant is encrusted with foul-tasting mold. Some few ants could begin chewing on logs and eventually destroy an entire lodging as she herself had pointed out to Pond Mud. Could something like that happen to an entire world? Wouldn’t the people stop such an infestation long before it was too late?

Enlight1

——————-

“Magic Portal” to Other Worlds!

Madison Keys, Francis Scott Key, the “Prevent Defense” and giving away the Keys to the Kingdom.

07 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, management, psychology, sports, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Business, career, HCI, human factors, IBM, life, school, sports, UX

Madison Keys, Francis Scott Key, the “Prevent Defense” and giving away the Keys to the Kingdom.

Madison Keys, for those who don’t know, is an up-and-coming American tennis player. In this Friday’s Wimbledon match, Madison sprinted to an early 4-1 lead. She accomplished this through a combination of ace serves and torrid ground strokes. Then, in an attempt to consolidate, or protect her lead, or play the (in)famous “prevent defense” imported from losing football coaches, she managed to stop hitting through the ball – guiding it carefully instead — into the net or well long or just inches wide.

Please understand that Madison Keys is a wonderful tennis player. And, her “retreat” to being “careful” and playing the “prevent defense” is a common error that many professional and amateur players fall prey to. It should also be pointed out that what appears to be overly conservative play to me, as an outside observer, could easily be due to some other cause such as a slight injury or, even more likely, because her opponent adjusted to Madison’s game. Whether or not she lost because of using the “prevent defense” no-one can say for sure. But I can say with certainty that many people in many sports have lost precisely because they stopped trying to “win” and instead tried to protect their lead by being overly conservative; changing the approach that got them ahead.

Francis Scott Key, of course, wrote the words to the American National Anthem which ends on the phrase, “…the home of the brave.” Of course, every nation has stories of people behaving bravely and the United States of America is no exception. For the American colonies to rebel against the far superior naval and land forces (to say nothing of sheer wealth) of the British Empire certainly qualifies as “brave.”

In my reading of American history, one of our strengths has always been taking risks in doing things in new and different ways. In other words, one of our strengths has been being brave. Until now. Now, we seem in full retreat. We are plunging headlong into the losing “prevent defense” borrowed from American football.

American football can hardly be called a “gentle sport” – the risk of injury is ever present and now we know that even those who manage to escape broken legs and torn ligaments may suffer internal brain damage. But there is still the tendency of many coaches to play the “prevent defense.” In case you’re unfamiliar with American football, here is an illustration of the effect of the “prevent defense” on the score. A team plays a particular way for 3 quarters of the game and is ahead 42-21. If you’re a fan of linear extrapolation, you might expect that the final score might be something like 56-28. But coaches sometimes want to “make sure” they win so they play the “prevent defense” which basically means you let the other team make first down after first down and therefore keep possession of the ball and score, though somewhat slowly. The coach suddenly loses confidence in the method which has worked for 3/4 of the game. It is not at all unusual for the team who employs this “prevent defense” to lose; in this example, perhaps, 42-48. They “let” the other team get one first down after another.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

America has apparently decided, now, to play a “prevent defense.” Rather than being innovative and bold and embrace the challenges of new inventions and international competition, we instead want to “hold on to our lead” and introduce protective tariffs just as we did right before the Great Depression. Rather than accepting immigrants with different foods, customs, dress, languages, and religions — we are now going to “hold on to what we have” and try to prevent any further evolution. In the case of American football, the prevent defense sometimes works. In the case of past civilizations that tried to isolate themselves, it hasn’t and it won’t.

landscape photography of gray rock formation

Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com

This is not to say that America (or any other country) should right now have “open borders” and let everyone in for every purpose. Nor should a tennis player hit every shot with all their might. Nor should a football team try the riskiest possible plays at every turn. All systems need to strike a balance among replication of what works, providing defense of what one has and exploring what is new and different. That is what nature does. Every generation “replicates” aspects of the previous generation but every generation must also explore new directions. Life does this through sexual selection, mutation, and cross over.

This balance plays out in career as well. You need to decide for yourself how much and what kinds of risks to take. When I obtained my doctorate in experimental psychology, for example, it would have been relatively un-risky in many ways to get a tenure-track faculty position. Instead, I chose managing a research project on the psychology of aging at Harvard Med School. To be sure, this is far less than the risk that some people take when; e.g., joining “Doctors without borders” or sinking all their life savings (along with all the life savings of their friends and relatives) into a start-up.

At the time, I was married and had three small children. Under these circumstances, I would not have felt comfortable having no guaranteed income. On the other hand, I was quite confident that I could write a grant proposal to continue to get funded by “soft money.” Indeed, I did write such a proposal along with James Fozard and Nancy Waugh who were at once my colleagues, my bosses, and my mentors. Our grant proposal was not funded or rejected but “deferred” and then it was deferred again. At that point, only one month of funding remained before I would be out of a job. I began to look elsewhere. In retrospect, we all realized it would have been much wiser to have a series of overlapping grants so that all of our “funding eggs” were never in one “funding agency’s basket.”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I began looking for other jobs and had a variety of offers from colleges, universities, and large companies. I chose IBM Research. As it turned out, by the way, our grant proposal was ultimately funded for three years, but we only found out after I had already committed to go to IBM. During this job search, I was struck by something else. My dissertation had been on problem solving but my “post-doc” was in the psychology of aging. So far as I could tell, this didn’t bother any of the interviewers in industry in the slightest. But it really freaked out some people in academia. It became clear that one was “expected” in academia, at least by many, that you would choose a specialty and stick with it. Perhaps, you need not do that during your entire academic career, but anything less than a decade smacked of dilettantism. At least, that was how it felt to me as an interviewee. By contrast, it didn’t bother the people who interviewed me at Ford or GM that I knew nothing more than the average person about cars and had never really thought about the human factors of automobiles.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The industrial jobs paid more than the academic jobs and that played some part in my decision. The job at GM sounded particularly interesting. I would be “the” experimental psychologist in a small inter-disciplinary group of about ten people who were essentially tasked with trying to predict the future. The “team” included an economist, a mathematician, a social psychologist, and someone who looked for trends in word frequencies in newspapers. The year was 1973 and US auto companies were shocked and surprised to learn that their customers suddenly cared about gas mileage! These companies didn’t want to be shocked and surprised like that again. The assignment reminded me of Isaac Asimov’s fictional character in the Foundation Trilogy — Harry Seldon — who founded “psychohistory.” We had the chance to do it in “real life.” It sounded pretty exciting!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

On the other hand, cars seemed to me to be fundamentally an “old” technology while computers were the wave of the future. It also occurred to me that a group of ten people from quite different disciplines trying to predict the future might sound very cool to me and apparently to the current head of research at GM, but it might seem far more dispensable to the next head of research. The IBM problem that I was to solve was much more fundamental. IBM saw that the difficulty of using computers could be a limiting factor in their future growth. I had had enough experience with people — and with computers — to see this as a genuine and enduring problem for IBM (and other computer companies); not as a problem that was temporary (such as the “oil crisis” appeared to be in the early 70’s).

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

There were a number of additional reasons I chose IBM. IBM Research’s population at the time showed far more diverse than that of the auto companies. None of them were very diverse when it came to male/female ratios. At least IBM Research did have people from many different countries working there and it probably helped their case that an IBM Researcher had just been awarded a Nobel Prize. Furthermore, the car company research buildings bored me; they were the typical rectangular prisms that characterize most of corporate America. In other words, they were nothing special. Aero Saarinen however, had designed the IBM Watson Research Lab. It sat like an alien black spaceship ready to launch humanity into a conceptual future. It was set like an onyx jewel atop the jade hills of Westchester.

I had mistakenly thought that because New York City was such a giant metropolis, everything north of “The City” (as locals call it) would be concrete and steel for a hundred miles. But no! Westchester was full of cut granite, rolling hills, public parks of forests marbled with stone walls and cooled by clear blue lakes. My commute turned out to be a twenty minute, trafficless drive through a magical countryside. By contrast, since Detroit car companies at that time held a lot of political power, there was no public transportation to speak of in the area. Everyone who worked at the car company headquarters spent at least an hour in bumper to bumper traffic going to work and another hour in bumper to bumper traffic heading back home. In terms of natural beauty, Warren Michigan just doesn’t compare with Yorktown Heights, NY. Yorktown Heights even smelled better. I came for my interview just as the leaves began painting their autumn rainbow palette. Westchester roads even seemed more creative. They wandered through the land as though illustrative of Brownian motion, while Detroit area roads were as imaginative as graph paper. Northern Westchester county sports many more houses now than it did when I moved there in late 1973, but you can still see the essential difference from these aerial photos.

YorktownHts-map

Warren-map

The IBM company itself struck me as classy. It wasn’t only the Research Center. Everything about the company stated “first class.” Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a trivial decision. After grad school in Ann Arbor, a job in Warren kept me in the neighborhood I was familiar with. A job at Ford or GM meant I could visit my family and friends in northern Ohio much more easily as well as my colleagues, friends and professors at the U of M. The offer from IBM felt to me like an offer from the New York Yankees. Of course, going to a top-notch team also meant more difficult competition from my peers. I was, in effect, setting myself up to go head to head with extremely well-educated and smart people from around the world.

You also need to understand that in 1973, I would be only the fourth Ph.D. psychologist in a building filled with physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers, and materials scientists. In other words, nearly all the researchers considered themselves to be “hard scientists” who delved in quantitative realms. This did not particularly bother me. At the time, I wanted very much to help evolve psychology to be more quantitative in its approach. And yet, there were some nagging doubts that perhaps I should have picked a less risky job in a psychology department.

The first week at IBM, my manager, John Gould introduced me yet another guy named “John” — a physicist whose office was near mine on aisle 19. This guy had something like 100 patents. A few days later, I overheard one of John’s younger colleagues in the hallway excitedly describing some new findings. Something like the following transpired:

“John! John! You can’t believe it! I just got these results! We’re at 6.2 x 10 ** 15th!”

His older colleague replied, “Really? Are you sure? 6.2 x 10 ** 15th?”

John’s younger colleague, still bubbling with enthusiasm: “Yes! Yes! That’s right. You know. Within three orders of magnitude one way or the other!”

I thought to myself, “three orders of magnitude one way or the other? I can manage that! Even in psychology!” I no longer suffered from “physics envy.” I felt a bit more confident in the correctness of my decision to jump into these waters which were awash with sharp-witted experts in the ‘hard’ sciences. It might be risky, but not absurdly risky.

person riding bike making trek on thin air

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Of course, your mileage may differ. You might be quite willing to take a much riskier path or a less risky one. Or, maybe the physical location or how much of a commute is of less interest to you than picking the job that most advances your career or pays the most salary. There’s nothing wrong with those choices. But note what you actually feel. Don’t optimize in a sequence of boxes. That is, you might decide that your career is more important than how long your commute is. Fair enough. But there are limits. Imagine two jobs that are extremely similar and one is most likely a little better for your career but you have to commute two hours each way versus 5 minutes for the one that’s not quite so good for your career. Which one would you pick?

In life beyond tennis and beyond football, one also has to realize that your assessment of risk is not necessarily your actual risk. Many people have chosen “sure” careers or “sure” work at an “old, reliable” company only to discover that the “sure thing” actually turned out to be a big risk. I recall, for example, reading an article in INC., magazine that two “sure fire” small businesses were videotape rental stores and video game arcades. Within a few years of that article, they were almost sure-fire losers. Remember Woolworths? Montgomery Ward?

At the time I joined IBM it was a dominant force in the computer industry. But there are no guarantees — not in career choices, not in tennis strategy, not in football strategy, not in playing the “prevent defense” when it comes to America. The irony of trying too hard to “play it safe” is illustrated this short story about my neighbor from Akron:

Photo by Somchai Kongkamsri on Pexels.com

Wilbur’s Story

Wilbur’s dead. Died in Nam. And, the question I keep wanting to ask him is: “Did it help you face the real dangers? All those hours together we played soldier?”

Wilbur’s family moved next door from West Virginia when I was eleven. They were stupendously uneducated. Wilbur was my buddy though. We were rock-fighting the oaks of the forest when he tried to heave a huge toaster-oven sized rock over my head. Endless waiting in the Emergency Room. Stitches. My hair still doesn’t grow straight there. “Friendly fire.”

More often, we used wooden swords to slash our way through the blackberry and wild rose jungle of The Enemy; parry the blows of the wildly swinging grapevines; hide out in the hollow tree; launch the sudden ambush.

We matched strategy wits on the RISK board, on the chess board, plastic soldier set-ups. I always won. Still, Wilbur made me think — more than school ever did.

One day, for some stupid reason, he insisted on fighting me. I punched him once (truly lightly) on the nose. He bled. He fled crying home to mama. Wilbur couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

I guess you got your fill of that in Nam, Wilbur.

After two tours of dangerous jungle combat, he was finally to ship home, safe and sound, tour over — thank God!

He slipped on a bar of soap in the shower and smashed the back of his head on the cement floor.

Wilbur finally answers me across the years and miles: “So much for Danger, buddy,” he laughs, “Go for it!”

Thanks, Wilbur.

Thanks.

—————————————-

And, no, I will not be giving away the keys to the kingdom. Your days of fighting for freedom may be over. Mine have barely begun.

Author Page on Amazon

Fostering Community Learning via Transformed Narratives

01 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by petersironwood in family, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cooperation, innovation, learning, organizational learning, pattern language, politics, religion, stories, Storytelling

Fostering Community Learning via Transformed Narratives

Prolog/Acknowledgement:

The idea for this Pattern emerged from work done around 2000 with colleagues at IBM Research (including Cynthia Kurtz, Carl Tait, Frank Elio, Debbie Lawrence, Neil Keller, Andrew Gordon), Lotus (including Dan Gruen, Paul Moody, Michael Muller), and at the IBM Knowledge Institute(including Dave Snowden, Larry Prusak, Sharon Darwent & Fiona Incledon) on the business uses of stories and storytelling. However, the essence of the idea is not that new. The British Navy uses a cartoon of a silly Admiral doing something to be avoided. Apparently, there was a process to collect anonymous stories of “mistakes” that people had made. Rather than being ascribed to the actual person, they were “ascribed” in the cartoon to the fictional Admiral. The point was to help insure that others would not make the same mistake. Mullah Nasreddin stories predate that practice by centuries. This fictional character often was reputed to have done silly things but in a way that made a point for others to learn from.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas April, 2018.

Abstract:

Stories are memorable and motivating. One popular type of story is the “Cautionary Tale” which describes what happens when a person makes a significant kind of error. Stories of this type can be valuable ways for a community as a whole to learn from the errors of one person thus preventing others in the community from making the same mistake. However, many communities also punish people for making errors. One solution is to alter the story of what actually happened slightly so that the community learns from the mistakes of individuals without the individual suffering from an unrecoverable loss of status.

Context:

Groups across many contemporary cultures and throughout history have tended to tell, learn, and repeat stories as a way of codifying what is desirable and acceptable behavior, understanding the world, and communicating important lessons learned across generations. One such type of story is the “Cautionary Tale.” Many of Aesop’s Fables, for example, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Dog and its Reflection fall into this category. Such stories are potentially excellent ways to teach a lesson in a memorable way. For example, The Dog and its Reflection cautions that one may be so obsessed with greed that they will lose even what they already have in the attempt to grasp for more.

While Aesop’s Fables and other folk stories make very general points about values and “right action,” stories also serve an important way for a very local community to learn from the mistakes of individuals so that these same mistakes are not made over and over.

David's DreamDeeply

Problem.

In communities, families, and organizations there are often negative sanctions applied to members who make mistakes. This sets up a dilemma. For the group as a whole to learn optimally, it is best to be able to learn from the experiences of every other member. On the other hand, the member who freely shares stories of his or her mistakes may find themselves punished and the “cautionary tale” repeated in the community then becomes a lesson about how not to admit mistakes, or not to be discovered, or how to shift blame to someone else. Rather than learning as a community and having such learning experiences increase social capital, such a practice instead reinforces self-serving denials and lies. The process is unpleasant and the group loses opportunities to learn from each other. While giving appropriately structured feedback can help, it is not a complete solution. Indeed, a culture that celebrates self-serving lies may quickly devolve into a “race to the bottom” with everyone mistrusting everyone else. The group as a whole is incapable of improving actual performance and so are its members.

halloween2006007

Forces:

Life is too complex, changing, and chaotic to describe completely in empirically falsifiable scientific statements.

Learning from the stories of others who have made mistakes can prevent everyone else from making the same mistake.

Humans are social creatures who tend to reward those who do well and punish those who do not do well.

Since people avoid punishment, if the punishment for admitting and relating mistakes is more severe than the reward for knowledge sharing, people will tend not to admit mistakes.

Once it becomes known in a culture that admitting mistakes leads to punishment, then it becomes even less likely for people to admit their mistakes.

The details of a story that are most important for the group to learn are often different from the details needed to mete out punishment.

PicturesfromiPhoneChinaParisPrinceton 131

Solution:

When someone in the community makes a mistake that might teach a valuable lesson but could also result in loss of face, there are alternatives in the presentation of the story that allow for the community to learn the lesson but also protect the person involved from social ostracism. This may be done by “projecting” the story onto a fictional character such as Mullah Nasreddin. Another method is to slightly alter the story flow. For instance, instead of a story that says, “I did X and this terrible thing occurred” once could alter the story to: “I almost did X and if I had, this terrible thing would have occurred.” Or, one might say, “I did X and this really bad thing happened. Good thing we noticed right away because otherwise, this much worse thing, X! would have happened.” Another alternative: “Our team did X. This put us in a terrible position vis a vis our crucial customer Y. Luckily, we had a contingency plan in place and were able to immediately repair our relation with customer Y. Of course, next time, we will know not to do X in the first place.”

PicturesfromiPhoneChinaParisPrinceton 035

Examples:

At once point, IBM was trying to save money and suggested that employees only use sardine class airline tickets. I overheard an IBM executive relate the following story. “I was high enough in the hierarchy that IBM made an exception for me. I could have gotten the first class ticket but I decided to take the sardine class ticket anyway. As I boarded that plane, I could see a dozen people in my own organization sitting in steerage. I was really glad to be able to sit down in my teeny seat along with everyone else.” This may have actually been true. On the other hand, it’s also possible that he only wished he had done this and altered what really happened to avoid opprobrium but still get the message across.

Resulting Context:

The altered story allows the team, family, culture or other group to learn from the mistake while protecting the person who made the mistake. As a result, people are more willing to admit to mistakes.

Needless to say, these kinds of alterations are not ethically done so as to avoid punishment for criminal behavior. Even apart from criminal behavior, there are certainly cases where the public has the right to know about actions that reveal a person’s character and this may outweigh concerns for ensuring that the community focuses on learning.

References:

Pan, Y., Roedl, D., Blevis, E., & Thomas, J. (2015). Fashion Thinking: Fashion Practices and Sustainable Interaction Design. International Journal of Design, 9(1), 53-66.

Thomas, J. C. (2012). Patterns for emergent global intelligence. In Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience By Design J. Carroll (Ed.), New York: Springer.

Darwent, S., Incledon, F., Keller, N., Kurtz, C., Snowden, D., Thomas, J.(2002) YOR920000749US2 Story-based organizational assessment and effect system (granted).

Thomas, J. C., Kellogg, W.A., and Erickson, T. (2001) The Knowledge Management puzzle: Human and social factors in knowledge management. IBM Systems Journal, 40(4), 863-884.

Thomas, J. C. (1999) Narrative technology and the new millennium. Knowledge Management Journal, 2(9), 14-17.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasreddin

—————————————

Author Page on Amazon

Fostering Group Cohesion through Common Narratives

28 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by petersironwood in family, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

collaboration, cooperation, learning, life, marketing, pattern language, politics, religion, teamwork

Fostering Group Cohesion through Common Narratives

Prolog/Acknowledgement:

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas April, 2018.

fullsizeoutput_176c

Abstract:

Stories that we tell ourselves help define who we are and frame our experience, both individually and collectively. In relatively stable cultures, a number of common stories are usually shared by everyone. What makes storytelling challenging in modern life is that group boundaries are continually shifting and changing. It often happens that groups which used to be separate must learn to work together; e.g., because of a peace treaty, corporate merger or acquisition, or even a marriage involving extended families. In these cases, it helps to find within the stories of these groups, common values among the previously disparate groups and then make compelling versions of stories that express these values and tell them back to the entire newly formed team, family, group, company, or nation.

Context:

In most cultures, these stories are transmitted orally regardless of whether such “cultures” are based on geography, company, religions, or even families. It’s true that some important stories have been put into written form. For example, many company founders have their own stories of founding the company put into written form. Religions often have sacred texts. However, both corporate cultures and religious sects and even congregations transmit the “proper interpretation” of these written documents orally. The written texts are modified very slowly while the oral interpretations can possibly change much more quickly. Nonetheless, the stories often persistently encode modes of behavior over centuries and even millennia.

When groups are stable over a long period of time and have minimal interaction, the fact that diverse groups have quite different stories seldom causes difficulties. As these diverse groups began to interact more frequently, it often happened that one group (typically the one with superior weapons) used violence to impose their stories on the other group. More recently, the world has become highly interconnected through inventions and developments in communications such as telegraphy, telephony, and the internet. Physical travel is also faster via rail, cars, and airplanes. People with different stories now come in contact of one sort or another very frequently indeed. Many of the most pressing problems that the world now faces including overpopulation, pandemics, and the destruction of the ecosystem require global cooperation.

Problem:

The very different stories of different groups are not simply just a matter of preference or taste. They are much more crucial and central than that. The stories portray how people should act; they specify good and bad values. When cultures collide, the fact that their very different stories encapsulate very different preferred modes of behavior often fosters suspicion, fear, hatred and disgust. People do not simply observe that others behave differently in terms of speech, dress, food, rituals, and so on. They perceive that the others are doing things, not just differently, but wrongly. The stories of the “in-group” can be used to rationalize exploitation, enslavement, or even genocide.

fullsizeoutput_1351

Forces:

Life is too complex, changing, and chaotic to describe completely in empirically falsifiable scientific statements.

Learning from others who have relevant experience can shorten learning time.

Humans are social creatures who can feel empathy for others.

Cultures use stories as memorable and succinct ways to encapsulate lessons learned and inculcate the proper values in the young.

Because stories encapsulate much of a culture’s knowledge, members of the culture habitually do what is prescribed by stories and avoid what the stories proscribe. In this way, they can focus decision making among a much smaller set of possibilities and not be perpetually at a loss as to what to do.

Because stories are valuable guides for the individual, they are reluctant to change those stories. If learned early, contradictory evidence is then particularly ineffective at altering or discarding stories.

When people in the “in-group” perceive those in the “out-group” as behaving “badly” (not doing what the stories say they should), trust is ruined and cooperative action is nearly impossible.

Solution:

Whenever two or more groups with different stories must work cooperatively for mutual benefit, create and promulgate new stories that stress the commonalities among the groups rather than stressing differences. In more detail, one way to do this is to collect important, value-laden stories from each group; find the common values expressed; generate stories that stress these common values; and then re-introduce these common values in the form of compelling, memorable common stories.

Examples:

Two people from very different cultures fall in love. Individually, they find that their love supersedes any feelings of disrespect for the way the other eats, dresses, speaks, etc. In fact, the difference may even be part of the attraction. However, the two families each experience discomfort when confronted with someone who is so different from what they are used to. In some cases, the couple may simply convince their families to accept their choice of mate. In other cases, as in Romeo and Juliet or West Side Story, love ends in tragedy. In other cases, they would work together by each learning more of the stories of their partner’s culture and find, among those stories, common values. They may find or create stories that stress these common values and relate those back to their families. A nice illustration of this is in the movie, The Hundred-Foot Journey in which two families from very different cultures come together over their skills and love of fine cooking.

2. In a corporate reorganization, both the Marketing and the R&D Departments are put under one executive whose job is to speed to market a stream of innovative new products. Among the factors that make this a difficult task is the fact that Marketing and R&D have different values, culture, and success stories. Of course, it will help if they are rewarded only for mutual success. But even this may not be enough. It will help to find and promulgate common stories that stress common, rather than different, values. Marketing people may typically dress more sharply than R&D people and put more emphasis on flash and dazzle. But stressing that will hardly encourage better cooperation. Instead, it will work better to stress, for example, persistence, originality and being willing to change based on feedback. These are values that are important for success in R&D and for success in Marketing. The story of Thomas Edison (light bulb; lead storage battery) and Ray Kroc (McDonald’s franchise) for instance, both show that success comes with persistence in the face of repeated failure.

3. Two companies merge. Let’s say one (a sports-focused media company) has a corporate culture that stresses work hard/play hard while the other (a sports-focused engineering company) culture stresses work hard/family time. If it’s really important for the two cultures to merge and then work together, promoting stories about the outrageous parties and wild orgies that the first company participates in will not be helpful. Instead, it will be good to find stories from both companies that stress the “work hard” part. Since both companies are concerned with sports, the settings and characters from stories can both utilize sports. But the values that are stressed should relate to working hard and the resultant rewards.

4. Many nations in an entire region of the world; e.g., Europe, are sick of centuries of war and counter-productive bickering and the inefficiency that comes of contradictory rules and regulations on transportation, environmental protections and so on. Despite different cuisines, traditional dress, and languages, they wish to be able to cooperate more effectively. In furtherance of that goal, they form a “European Union” which promotes the freer interchange of products, ideas, and people. Together, they constitute a formidable trading block and military force. It is important in such an effort to find stories that stress commonalities and then make sure these are prominently communicated among all the members. By contrast, an agent who wants to weaken or divide such a union would promulgate stories, even false stories, that stress differences.

Resulting Context:

Once a newly merged group shares a common story or set of stories stressing common values, they are much more likely to experience a higher degree of trust. This will make interactions more pleasant in terms of the on-going experiences but will also result in more effective action in meeting common or overlapping goals.

Related Patterns:

Build from Common Ground.

References:

Thomas, J. C. (2012). Patterns for emergent global intelligence. In Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience By Design J. Carroll (Ed.), New York: Springer.

Darwent, S., Incledon, F., Keller, N., Kurtz, C., Snowden, D., Thomas, J.(2002) YOR920000749US2 Story-based organizational assessment and effect system (granted).

Thomas, J. C., Kellogg, W.A., and Erickson, T. (2001) The Knowledge Management puzzle: Human and social factors in knowledge management. IBM Systems Journal, 40(4), 863-884.

Thomas, J. C. (2001). An HCI Agenda for the Next Millennium: Emergent Global Intelligence. In R. Earnshaw, R. Guedj, A. van Dam, and J. Vince (Eds.), Frontiers of human-centered computing, online communities, and virtual environments. London: Springer-Verlag.

Thomas, J. C. (1999) Narrative technology and the new millennium. Knowledge Management Journal, 2(9), 14-17.

Author Page on Amazon:

Author Page

The Blog in Review

28 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

competition, environment, history, index, innovation, life, military, politics

Year End Summary (2017) and Index of Peter S Ironwood Blog. (Several readers mentioned that the wordpress navigation structure may leave something to be desired. Hopefully, for some readers, the following index may be helpful). Many of these blog posts are not meant as the “final word” on these subjects. I am hoping people can use them as a “jumping off place” for conversation with their neighbors, students, and colleagues.

Trumpism is a New Religion.

Astounded that more than 15 people voted for Trump, the year began with my attempts to understand my error(s). It was about this time that I saw more and more evidence that many Trump supporters were impervious to his most outrageous, incompatible, or nonsensical acts, tweets, and pronouncements. My explanation is that for some, Trumpism is really more of a religion than a political movement. This still seems correct to me. Others, have completely different reasons for voting for Trump. For some, for instance, I really think they have seen zero change in their lives regardless of who is President and they have seen promises never kept by both parties. As a result, for them, the President is seen as “Chief Entertainment Officer” and Trump provides plenty of that. In terms of a religion, Trumpism is much more compatible with the values inherent in modern day business than is Christianity. In essence, in fact, Christianity is incompatible with business values. So, it’s quite understandable that Trumpism has become popular.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/trumpism-is-a-new-religion/

The Crabs are Biting.

The next blog post returns to a retrospective look at some of my childhood experiences and thoughts about how these experiences shed light on current events. In this case, I recount various “fishing” experiences and how seriously children think about the world. Are fish the only animals that can be caught with bait?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/the-crabs-are-biting/

Parametric Recipes and American Democracy.

A parametric recipe is my term for recipes that allow for a variety of ingredients. I like to make omelets, for instance. There are many different vegetables and cheeses that can be incorporated. The exact ingredients and proportions don’t matter. But there are things you would never want in any omelet – toxins, poisons, and things that simply make you sick to your stomach. Have we forgotten what is unacceptable in a democracy?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/02/11/parametric-recipes-and-american-democracy/

Big Zig-Zag Canyon.

This post begins with a recounting of a hike on Mt. Hood, near Portland, Oregon (which coincidentally is one of my favorite cities). The post is about how one’s expectations can be wrong about just how hard things can get — over and over.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/big-zig-zag-canyon/

The Invisibility Cloak of Habit.

With experience we learn. That’s the good news. In some cases though, our previous experience leads us astray. In fact, in some cases, our previous experience just about blinds us to what is going on right before our eyes.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/02/25/the-invisibility-cloak-of-habit/

City Mouse and Country Mouse.

At least in the USA, I know that a spectrum of political opinions occurs everywhere but that one of the greatest correlates of differences is whether a person lives in a rural or urban area. I don’t believe one of these venues is, in every way, superior to the other, but it does seem that the different situations should logically lead to different values that work well in that venue.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/city-mouse-and-country-mouse/

Math Class: Who Are You?

It strikes me that part of what feeds pathological greed — and perhaps as well the greed that we all fall prey too — is partly the result of a serious misconception about who we are and our relationship to the rest of the living earth. Here are some back of the envelope calculations to put things in a more reasonable perspective.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/03/09/math-class-who-are-you/

The Great Race to the Finish!

Every human activity has both an instrumental/extrinsic value and an experiential/intrinsic value. In most cases, doing something as quickly as possible reduces its intrinsic value. It may or may not increase its extrinsic value although the financial interest behind the “Captains of Industry” always assume it does. Most of us are in something of a hurry most of the time. Why? Does it really make our lives more pleasurable? And, where are we rushing to?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/the-great-race-to-the-finish/

Ripples.

Our decisions have long-lasting, perhaps eternal, consequences. Even mechanical ripples last a long time, but another human can multiply the input given a hundred fold so that the effect of any action can increase over time. Individual decisions can actually impact the evolution of the species as well.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/ripples/

Family Matters: Parts One, Two and Three.

A three part series exploring how the happenstance of our birthplace (over which we obviously have no control) has a huge and lasting influence on our lives.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/family-matters-part-one/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/family-matters-part-two-garlic-cloves-and-puffer-fish/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/05/27/family-matters-part-3-the-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/

Claude the Radioman.

Claude refers to a toy soldier whose function was communication. As a small child, it was my least favorite because it had no weapon. As an adult, I think he has the most powerful one of all.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/05/28/claude-the-radio-man/

Citizen Soldiers: Parts 1, 2, and 3.

A three part series on the premise that, like it or not, we are all soldiers. Of course, it’s different to be in the actual military and be at a front. But, we are soldiers in the sense that we are at risk pretty much everywhere mainly from other human beings. We are soldiers as well in the sense that our actions are important determiners of the outcome. We need to be smart as well as loyal.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/06/07/citizen-soldiers-1-early-enlistment-no-retirement/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/citizen-soldiers-part-two-boot-camp/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/06/24/citizen-soldiers-3-galoshes-in-the-gutters/

Pies on Offer: Rhubarb & Mincemeat.

Are you focused on grabbing the biggest piece of pie you can? Or, are you more interested in baking more pies and inventing new kinds of pies?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/07/20/pies-on-offer-rhubarb-mincemeat/

What if … ?

A speculation that in reality, Americans have much much more in common with each other than they think they do. The politicians and the media both have a vested interest in making people think they are farther apart on more issues than they really are.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/what-if/

If Only…

This is a work of “pure fiction” however — the protagonists and their “back stories” are true. This is a story that takes place in a nearby but parallel universe.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/if-only/

Only You…

An examination of our responsibilities and the impact of our actions.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/only-you/

You Fool!

A recounting of some of the many ways in which we humans are subject to being fooled.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/you-fool/

Fool Me!

Mainly, this post focuses on the power of stories. There is an ethical difference, at least to me, between presenting a fascinating or inspiring story and presenting the same story as fact.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/08/24/fool-me/

Me Too.

This post is about the natural tendency of people to want to be part of a larger social action. Most people drive in stop-and-go traffic in a non-optimal way. This offers a better method.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/me-too/

Too Much!

Human productivity does not go up monotonically with increasing stress. Studies have been around for decades showing that people are more productive working 30 hours a week than 50. Why do so many companies then push for 50 or more hours a week?

https://petersironwood.com/2017/09/03/too-much/

Much Lost.

Why do we grieve at the loss of another? Why do we even get attached to objects?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/much-lost/

Lost Horizons.

Have we modern humans lost our ability to make decisions based on a very broad, very long-term look? Doesn’t it seem natural for every generation of every species to try to make life better for the next?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/lost-horizon/

Horizons University.

What would it be like to build a University that focused on expanding a person’s horizons in every dimension they would be interested in? What if it focused on finding, and formulating as well as solving problems using existing knowledge and procedures?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/horizons-university/

You Know.

Which wolf do you feed? The “bad” wolf or the “good” wolf. Of course, sometimes, decisions involved complex trade-offs, but sometimes we “know” what the right thing to do is and instead do the convenient or selfish thing.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/02/you-know/

Know What?

The first of a series of blogs that considers how various aspects of social media, combined with anonymity, not having face to face communication (with its abundant affordances), the concentration of much of the media control in a few very large multi-nationals, the filtering and bandwagon algorithms of social media, and other factors all conspire to further divide people.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/08/know-what/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/whats-new/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/23/new-fools/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/10/31/fools-gold/

Gold Standard.

Every age has its pluses and minuses. Some folks today seem to feel we’ve moved too far too fast and that we should “rewind” to a better time. Interesting, but there hasn’t been a better time. The world today is hugely complex and inter-dependent. That’s the way it is. If we try to obviate all that interdependence, we will not go back to 1950 or 1890 but back to 5000 BC. Instead, what can we do to encourage civility and to distinguish news versus fake news?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/gold-standard/

Standard Issue.

What are some ways that social media could be changed to encourage greater civility?

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/standard-issue/

Issue Resolution.

Perhaps the experience of others was different, but I learned very little in formal school classrooms about ways to resolve conflicts. Yet, much is known beyond simple compromise, using external authority or force of arms. This posts focuses on some of those with pointers to longer descriptions of the techniques.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/issue-resolution/

Resolution: Create!

This post encourages a more creative look at issue resolution. I believe that more progress can be made by people working together than by even a 10x increase in Facebook posts to convince everyone else that they are wrong.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/resolution-create/

Create Peace.

First of a series of blogs about the pros and cons of war and peace. Spoiler alert: war is a horrible option. We really need to get our act together to do better. People sometimes have trouble reaching agreement, but that process should be facilitate by diplomatic experts and leaders who are looking at the big picture. Some so-called “leaders” are intent on consolidating and extending their own power. Historically, that’s when power-hungry people declare war. Some might label such people SHRUGS – Super-Hyper Really Ultra Greedy Swindlers.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/create-peace/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/peace-love-part-one-casualty-count/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/peace-and-love-part-2-shrugs-shills/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/16/peace-love-3-shrugging-off-the-shrugs/

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/love-all/

All…what?

Where are we headed? Is there any hope? I would say yes though we are in dark times. The light will return, if not today or tomorrow, some day.

https://petersironwood.wordpress.com/2017/12/25/all-what/

author page on Amazon