A zen perspective on how we think about the future
I still occasionally drive when I’m between air and public transportation options. The less I’m on the road behind a wheel, the more assaulted I am by the social behaviors of people whose transportation worlds have everything advertised: Big. Fast. Control. On the plus side, it is an incredibly easy venue to practice random acts of kindness. And because of the immense levels of unconsciousness I witness, these are unintended anonymous acts of kindness!
The more people I meet, the less faith I have in people’s clothes as outer reflections of inner realities. There are people whose clothes are far less interesting than they are, people whose clothes are equally interesting to who they are, and people whose clothes are far more interesting than they are. Of course, how interesting anyone is is more of a statement about our curiosity than the qualities of their narratives.
So after an unnecessary hiatus, I’ve returned to assigning students projects that focus on addressing actual issues in their world. These are graduate students in the business school at Kent State University and students like the realism of the approach. My intentions are as much political as pedagogical. One of my dreams for all levels of education is that most of not all learning happens outside the classroom. If we get to zero classrooms, I’d be fine with that because people would be learning in actual contexts...
There are generations of Catholics whose youthful angst was shaped by the rules and rulers of “the nuns.” They were an assortment like no other, deep mysteries wrapped in robes and beads. With anonymity even to the extent of taking on male saint names, it was impossible to know if they were actually born much less ever children themselves. With that much mystery, every word floating from the ethereal space of their veils was taken as truth. When there is more mystery than your imagination can handle, the line between...
After years of flying you start to see patterns in travelers. One of the more obvious typologies has to do with bags. You have the business briefcases, student nap sacks, grandparent hand and waist purses, military back packs, overnight guests with miniature roller boards, and the field workers' duffle bags. Maybe one day we can have other creative identifiers like scout badge pins that reveal a person’s favorite apps.
It’s interesting to visit places where the assessment of “bad hair pieces” is a redundancy. It’s a similar phenomenon to amazing make-up distortions. What would it take to get people to love who they are as they are? I’m not optimistic that this message will be taken on by huge companies whose profits depend on precisely the opposite messages.
When information is a function of consumption, people can develop patterns of information dysfunctions like information obesity, anorexia, and bulimia. I suspect they are treatable. One of the more important cures for information dysfunctions turns out to be disarmingly simple: cultivating better questions.
Campaign meltdowns here in the States range between amazing, pathetic, and concerning. The real show is not on stage but in the audience. The general mythology is that it’s about the analysis of candidates when in fact it’s about the citizenry. The whole process is an enormous open source anthropological study of the current state of the national ethos. What are you seeing and hearing? What excites and frightens you?
This is a blog about the future from a Zen lens. When it comes to politics, is there a Zennier politics than others? I would argue that Zen is apolitical. Zen is the practice of presence and as such, is about curiosity more than attachment to positions and loyalties to economic dogmas. That said, Zen is passion about everything political and economic, and when politics is controlled by religion, it is passionate about everything religious. What’s important to understand is that Zen passion is passion for inquiry...
10-time author and designer with a focus on change in organizations and communities. HappinessChoice.com. Contact Jack at jack(at)happinesschoice(dot)com
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