Replying to LO27603 --
A few comments on At's Part 5 of his series on creativity and leadership
(which I'm enjoying greatly):
> Both the "historic time scope" and "futuristic time scope" are measured
> from the "present" as origin.
In this regard, visit http://www.longnow.org/ -- in particular the diagram
at http://www.longnow.org/about/longnowdiagram.htm (a unique timeline that
places the "short now" in the middle, rather than the right end). It's a
good "scope-stretching" exercise to try to think in thousand-year
increments. (Old hat for geologists, of course -- right, Leo?)
> Since the cosmos change with "one-to-many-mappings", it seems reasonable
> that the future has to be imagined by a "one-to-many-mapping", but not the
> past. It is because we are used to tracing the past with a "many-to-one-
> apping". However, the art of history is to imagine from some earlier
> origin in time the "one-to-many-mapping" leading to the present. The
> closer the imagination is to the actual historical development, the better
> the mind will be prepared to future developments.
There may be other kinds of one-to-many mapping to the past. Since we
don't have direct access to past events, we have to rely on memory (our
own and each other's), and on whatever available artifacts may relate to
those events. It's well known that different witnesses to an event may
well offer very different descriptions of what happened; also, different
pictures may provide perspectives that support different interpretations
(as "instant replay" in American football games sometimes shows). Even
one's own memory of events can change over time; an event that happened in
childhood may seem very different when recalled as a teenager, and when
recalled later in one's 40s.
> Leaders lose many followers along the way by not paying attention to the
> LRC. Any follower who came up against the LRC as a closed door is
> potentially a lost follower. Should a leader pay close attention to any
> dissenting faction, the leader may discover the impaired essentialities
> which caused those followers to group themselves together. By skilful
> communication they may be helped to overcome these impairments and thus be
> drawn closer again. This bringing back of followers lost is sometimes
> articulated as the principle of missional leadership.
And occasionally, the impairment may be in the leader, with the faction
arising as a reaction to the impairment. Openness and otherness in the
leader is essential in this case to enable "bringing back" the leader.
In line with this:
> However, leaders will also have to take into account those [followers] at
> the higher steps of mental complexity. They may very soon catch up with
> the leader.
Or, in some cases, may have already passed the leader. In this case, it's
important for the leader to practice creative followership.
--Don Dwiggins "Solvitur Ambulando" d.l.dwiggins@computer.org
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