Corner swamp 671, originally uploaded by Jock Gill.

What do you see in the photograph above?

I suggest we primarily “act” on what we “see”. Errol Morris posits that what we “see” is largely informed by what we “believe”. If this line of reasoning is correct, then, to change how we “act”, we must change what we “see” and thus, in the end, what we “believe”. Consequently, we have to “liberate” our minds in order to “transform” our beliefs to enable us to see and thus act in new ways. One result, however, is that we also have to “reconcile” our old with our new beliefs — if we wish to retain a sense of balance and continuity. From another perspective, this sounds quite a bit like a message from Rev. Wright. Watch his speech to the NAACP in Detroit in its entirety, carefully and with a liberated mind. This also means not throwing the baby out with the wash water.

On today’s political front, if this the end of the Clinton era, then we have some hard work to do to reconcile our old political truisms with our emerging new political realities. If we do not, then the Democratic party will fracture and the Republican candidate will prevail.

Or consider our beliefs in human kind as being somehow exempted from the laws of nature? Or our economics being exempted from the laws of thermodynamics. If we are to thrive in the new era of expensive energy, expensive money, of an economics of limits and consequences, of Global Climate Disruption, and Peak Oil, we will have to dynamically liberate our minds, energetically transform our beliefs and work hard to reconcile the old with the new.

So what do you see in the picture above?

I see “life on the liquid edge of Chaos“: a world full of possibilities.

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post