Most of us are fans of the idea of ‘dialogue’. Dialogue is generally touted as the answer for resolving conflicts, building trust and crossing cultural divides of all kinds—be they national, organizational, ethnic, racial, gender-based or generational. I was having a conversation recently with a very bright young woman in the same business as me and we were swapping stories and ideas and experiences.
Although we are both professional communicators and teach others how to communicate more
By Don Arnoudse
Bio
We
live in a country that deifies the hardy, self-sufficient
individual—the person who asks for nothing, owes nobody anything, and
“does it their own way” without compromising to others. We have
extended our legal definition of individual rights to an overall
definition of what it means to be human. Bad mistake.
My friend Mark introduced me to the traditional African concept of ubuntu, a very different philosophy that focuses on people’s
I had a great conversation this past weekend with my son Clarke. We were talking about the differences between ‘his generation’ and ‘my generation’ (the Boomers), and he shared a perspective I thought was extraordinary and which made me realize our two age groups advocate two very different interpretations of reality.
He believes that one of the biggest problems his generation faces is themselves—because they have grown up in a time in which they have been constantly bombarded with the
By Stu Whitley
Bio
This is the second post in a four-part series.
Poetry is sometimes the casualty of an age where rational clarity is considered supreme. If the message of the poet is not apparent at the first go, chuck the damn thing. This, of course, ignores the obvious reality that to try and capture all that reposes within our innermost thoughts on a particular matter may not be easily condensed and dispensed as received wisdom. I think our ability to speak clearly on important things is seriously exaggerated. Kant observed that there’s no great art in being generally comprehensible if one renounces insight. He thought that the result was a bunch of patched up observations and half-reasoned principles, which he considered to be the enjoyment of “shallowpates” in “everyday chitchat”. Jacques Maritain wrote in Creative Intuition in Art & Poetry: The law of intelligible clarity imposed by the classical tradition has…been an occasion for innumerable mediocre poems…If this is true of poetry, which is the most economical form of condensing expressed thought, it is even truer of memory.
We
don’t know much about the magic of memory. We know even less about its
physiology. Our brains endlessly trawl our experiences and randomly
snatch up words and images by some sort of neurological sleight of
hand, tucking them in the sleeve for future reference. How those
memories
Recently I saw a CBS story about the strange mystery of the bees. It seems that we have another ‘horrible’ to add to the growing list of threats to life as we know it. The facts are that a lot of honeybees are disappearing in what is being called the “Colony Collapse Syndrome”. I have no idea what this means from a biological point of view, and I gather the phenomenon of billions of bees disappearing has the scientists stumped as well. But whatever the cause, a lot of folks are getting
People sometimes ask me what I mean by ‘the culture of aging’. I can start by explaining what I mean by ‘culture’.
Culture is, first of all, a word. And, like all words, it is a label for some phenomenon, some observable thing or idea. Culture is a concept and a very basic aspect of who we are. It contributes to how we relate to the world and, most of the time, constitutes an opening for our actions. It is a context for our human experience and occurs as a kind of non-stop conversation
This post was contributed by Shae Hadden.
I find myself wondering why we let a difference in our ages limit how we relate to each other in our personal relationships. I’m not speaking of the obvious social taboos like pedophilia and infantophilia. It’s the relationships between consenting adults that have me pondering. Why are different arrangements acceptable in different cultures and societies? Why is what is considered perverse in one accepted in another? Why is the most common pattern of heterosexual relationships still a slightly older man with a younger woman? Why is it that age disparity is less of an issue the older the partners involved are?Psychologists have developed a host of terms to describe age-disparate relationships such as gerontophilia (attraction of non-elderly people to the elderly), teleiophilia (attraction of young people to the elderly) and the more general chronophilia (for any age-related preference). These terms make intergenerational relationships sound like a disease. They even assign ‘causes’ in the form of reasons for the attraction—usually from financial and social
I just spent an interesting week at a country house outside of Barcelona—read that as a 400-year-old remodeled hacienda retreat with world-class chef included. The week was wonderful, fun and very productive. Let me explain.
I was invited to facilitate a meeting of the top team of a major multinational corporation who were working to create their vision and plans for the next few years. These six executives are from four different countries and are tops in their industry. Collectively their
By Stu Whitley
Bio
I’ve been thinking lately about the poetry I write; the poetry I write for you
while joyful, is more than chirrup (I hope), with only a touch of elegy
more, it tries to plumb the mystery of apperception, and
the discernment of the uncommon qualities in the common things
that mark our quotidian ways: an arm-linked walk
a mug of hot tea at day’s end—these are the liturgies that shore
what always needs reinforcing; love cannot survive unilaterally
what stays in the mind’s
Aging brings with it a host of changes: physiological, mental and social. If we advocate the popular belief that our minds are separate from our bodies, this process of change can be objectively assessed as a story of decline originating in either sphere. Seen this way, the health of our body limits what we can accomplish in later life by dictating what we are physically able to do; similarly, declining mental health, as a symptom of aging, can bar us from making a meaningful contribution.
Many