"Self" is the most often forgotten prefix of righteousness.- 08-04-07

Crazy thoughts:

• The capacity to think is neither an achievement nor a higher calling. A thought is never more than self-aggrandizing fantasy - until given life or given to those who “do”, who implement, who put into action, who achieve.
• Thinking apes, mesmerized by their ability to think great thoughts, often fail to realize that navel lint is a major cause of clouded vision.
• Achievement is not the result of thinking but of doing. - 17-11-06

The greatest boon to humanity is the thinking human. The greatest danger to humanity is the thinker who, having "thought a think", considers his think a deed accomplished. . .- 06-11-06

La passion ne s'explique pas. . .  l'obsession, toujours. - 15-10-06

Jane Jacobs - (1916-2006) Her theories should be in the curriculums of all grades 7 and 8, her books a must-read in all high schools and her ideas re-discussed in all colleges and universities - if ever future generations are to recognize that, despite all evidence to the contrary, there was genius and love for humanity in the adult populations of the 20th and 21st centuries. (published in the Globe and Mail - 27-04-06)- 26-04-06

Crisis Mode Thinking Can Distort Vision - Kevin Marron; Globe and Mail, 27-10-04 - Globe Careers Section, Page: C2

Crisis mode thinking is not a corporate or bureaucratic aberration. Its existence as a "norm" gives it a much wider berth. Crisis mode thinking gone wild is at the root of degeneration or devolution of individual and collective commitments and responsibilities to social structures and value systems. It affects us from birth to death. How it is handled defines whether we live or simply exist - individually and collectively.

The petrie dish environment which nurtured the contemporary presence and over-powering sensations of crisis mode thinking belongs to a wide world of social dynamics. Nonetheless, the fact that it is even "a fact of life" is disturbing. But "the fact that it is" is not the problem. That it is not being dealt with, at its very source, is the problem.

Until the caveman realized that he was capable of protecting and nurturing and mentoring his environment, he was in constant crisis mode. He felt anxious and fearful of the jungle, the night, the beasts and the unidentifiable sounds. This created in him a fight or flight response. And the more he flew the more the crisis increased and the more he remained fearful and desperate. And his visions of the "big picture" became more and more narrow, more and more distorted.

On the other hand, fight (an ability to face anxiety and fear) instilled in the caveman a discovery of his own strengths and abilities. Stronger, he became more curious and more daring, more involved in the lives of others - beyond his own and that of his nuclear family. The heaviness of crisis mode thinking left him, allowing a clearer vision of the ever-widening big picture to take hold. And with time, that clear vision spread and societies evolved, grew and prospered - wary, but no longer fearful.

Being human, we are historically programmed to still experience fight or flight responses. But that is not a problem. It is simply a healthy throwback to a time when physical survival was everything. What is important is that the seed of crisis mode thinking also remains a part of our human make-up. In and of itself, being in a crisis mode is not a problem - but a warning. It only becomes a problem when the subsequent visions fail to focus, in a timely manner, on the existence and intensity of our crisis mode actions and reactions.

Collective crisis mode thinking is always a measure of the disequilibrium of a society. Visions become narrower as the anxiety levels of constituents (despite evidence of prosperity and comfort) continue to mount. When crisis mode thinking affects our capacity to be strong and vibrant and alive (as individuals, corporate, institutional or societal entities) the distorted pictures it creates become more and more real.

n crisis mode. But when a societal structure does so unabated, it becomes self-destructive. The effects of such runaway growth multiply and the intensity of distortion increases when collective visions become one. Eventually, as in pre-war Germany the distortion is more and more perceived as the correct one - the real vision.

Those same seeds of distorted vision are prevalent world-wide in the beginning of this 21st century.

Does our crisis mode push us to formulate local, regional, national and international rules and regulations based on the negatives we encounter rather than the positives which should and could be encouraged? Are we more and more disturbed by thinking, musings, faiths and philosophies which do not match our own verbatim? Have we separated our lives from our children so much that they no longer can describe what we do and where we are when we are physically not with them? Do our children spend more time alone, mesmerized by a monitor to which we have delegated responsibility for the diaffection our children feel? Are we oblivious to the television and newspaper images of the ravages eating away at third world countries - ten minutes after seeing them? Do we define the plight of the third world’s people as simply the plight of “third world countries”. . . ?

We are in a serious crisis mode when our visions are so distorted.

Is our anger at animal farming more intense than that felt when a child is verbally or emotionally abused? Does adolescence now stretch into the twenties, even pushing the envelope into the early thirties? Isn't maturing and parenting now being delayed until. . . later. . . after we've finished with "not wanting" to be older? Is the contemporary concept of physical beauty defined by a distorted vision of the self - self-loathed on the one hand and craving recognition and gratification on the other? Is all of this not accompanied by an obsession with physical thinness which is more easily associated with what has been abused and neglected?

We are in a serious crisis mode when our visions are so distorted.

And when we finally get down to being social rather than self-absorbed beings, aren't our offspring (having added our anxieties to their own) even more angry, stressed, pained and fearful?. . . And how can they not be in perennial crisis mode when they have been taught that it is more important to "be somebody" than to "do something" with their abilities, talents and strengths? And how can our children not be stressed when they see that what is heroic today demands becoming a victim first, even when that is self-inflicted? How many Hollywood and Rock stars promote themselves to children and adolescents - playing on their years of drug, sexual and alcoholic addictions in interviews? And, now “sober”, they play the role of heroic survivor to those who look up to them? And yet, intimate in their hearts with such victim-heroes, our children are then taught to define stranger as "strange".

And so children cling even desperately to the more and more closed unit that is family, which eventually, becomes the source itself of and the only recognized solace from fear. How narrower a distorted vision can that be? How more defined can a serious crisis mode get?

But, despite emotional reticence our crisis mode children become adolescents, afraid of growing up despite our demands that they do and aggressively forging ahead like the proverbial daring caveman. But at the same time they fear, not the beast, but the flight response from within. Feeling uninvited and unmentored they too learn to avoid for as long as possible that wondrous process that is growing up - and which now is ill-fatedly perceived as the world of "crisis mode".

So, what's to distort? What a growing adolescent sees "is" actually what he or she gets and what we daily live, despite the fears of our own flight responses.

Crisis mode, when lived as normal, is a real danger to life - but not the problem. The problem is how it is dealt with. For when crisis mode is normalized - or, "what there is the most of", it becomes part of who we are. . . No wonder then, do our visions become more and more distorted, more and more disturbing, more and more disturbed. - 27-10-04

We are where we are due in no small part to where we have been and what we have experienced. How we react to those two influences in no small measure influences how we see and deal with today and how we now face and will face tomorrow. - 17-10-04

Une personne qui se croit intelligente quand elle ne l’est pas est toujours plus dangereuse que celle qui l’est mais ne le pense pas. - 04

It is not that we are a more stupid people but rather that in fear of being discriminatory we have come to perceive and celebrate stupidity as near genius. - 01

Today’s weed may have been yesterday’s aster or herbal remedy and tommorrow’s reluctant orchid or endangered species miracle - 01