personal blog
From time to time I will be sharing discoveries that made me say “wow“. Yesterday I googled “Cultural Creatives“ which led me to the following two sites.
a) Provocative figures expanding our consciousness by Blake Ward, via his news post about Cultural Creatives.
b) Zen Alarm Clocks and Zen Timers by Now & Zen. Here is an interview with the founder, Steve McIntosh.
For a while now, we as a human race are undergoing a huge societal shift, it is happening in many places and inside of many minds all around the world. This kind of change is not intentionally created, it is a change where a new kind of world is slowly emerging.
We are shifting from an industrial, modern world to a post-industrialist, transmodern world; transmodernity means Knowledge Society. These two worlds believe in opposing values.
| In the Industrial Society we.... | In the Knowledge Society we.... |
|---|---|
| strive for output (quantity, tangibles) | strive for knowledge (quality, intangibles) |
| play «survival of the fittest» | play «love» |
| foster exclusion and suspicion | foster openness and sharing |
| see humans as a problem | put people first |
| sell objects without ethical value | cherish the ethical value of knowledge |
| conquer and dominate | cooperate and sustain |
| focus on capital | nurture the brain (creativity, reflection) |
How does this change impact your life?
If you grab a dictionary and look up “expert“ it will reveal something like “a person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area.“
There are many experts out there. Their knowledge, particularly if it stems from actual experience, is a gift to the world and other people can learn from them. When it comes to mindset, though, it can lead to a dead-end. The more you convince yourself you know all there is to know in a particular field, the more you get stuck in being right.
If you are the kind of person open to learn and develop, you might want to cultivate a beginner’s mind instead: wonder, ask questions, explore, test things out and hopefully delight in the journey of discovery.
Maybe Charles Barkley, the former NBA player, is right when he says: “Only God is an expert.“
When I was a small boy I started to develop a love for stories about mythology, particularly Greek mythology. To this day one of my all time favourite books is Die schönsten Sagen des klassichen Altertums from Gustav Schwab.
I went on to take classes of Latin during seven out of my nine high school years. During this time I enjoyed reading so many remarkable mythological stories.
One of the great teachers within this realm is Joseph Campbell. To him mythology was “the song of the universe, the music of the spheres”. There exists a fabulous TV series, created by PBS, where he is interviewed by Bill Moyers. Here is a short intro video about it which lasts 0:31.
I wish I would have met him in person and listened to one of his lectures. What I can do, though, is to write about him and express my gratitude for all of his work. His book, The Power of Myth, is another of my all time favourites. It is a book that contains excerpts of his conversation with Bill Moyers.
Below is a great video, it lasts 11:28, by Tom Bilyeu, in which he is sharing his thoughts about how this book impacted his life.
Thank you Joseph, thank you Tom!
“A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.” Lao Tzu
I have bought the domain, I chose WordPress, I got some technical help, a shout-out to Spajk, and voilà, this is the beginning of a new adventure.
