Sorry for the lack of updates. I have been very busy, including a whole weekend at a monastery - fantastic. Reading will keep me away for another week as well. Expect more then!
I was struck dumbfounded by the newest acronym: CAO - Chief Answers Officer. It is more a de facto role, than a de jure role. The Company Culture enforces that this position exist. It exists because someone doesn’t want to do their job - so a mangler needs to make the decision for them. Traditionally CAO is a shared title. A mischievous Vision, like parents played off one another by their children, one can behold the twisted situations the title creates.
Another joyous office activity I now have a word for is Bikeshedding. It makes for a very fun and long meeting. It results in “thinking real hard” about how things ought to be. All the while everyone is in full admission we do not know - nor do we posses data that makes such knowing possible. The scapegoat phrase “It will take too long to find out” is quick to the altar! So we’ll just sit down, stroke our beards, and think harder. Wait, what exactly is the problem again?
I want to create a Subversive Meeting BingoTM game. It is an active game rather than the passive buzzword bingo you will find at the water cooler. You must verbally slide “Bikeshed”, “CAO”, “non-sequitur”, “ad infinitum”, or “Contradiction!” into the meeting. Only then can all the players mark the tile off.
Parkinson, I salute you! You are a real man of genius.
James McGrath shows his displeasure with the Documentary Hypothesis. I wonder how many will come out of the woodwork with an agreement. Here is what I said:
I agree that the Documentary Hypothesis seems far too “ideal” to be true. The degree of reliance on the written word in the 19th century just doesn’t exist the ancient world. The pesky evidence needs to be accounted for: if they weren’t copying, are you positing that the memory of the words/construction was *that* widespread and in agreement? Is that consistent with ancient writing and storytelling? Furthermore, if the early memories were retold in such precise forms how then did we get four different gospels and what implications does that have for their relationship?
“Myth is never plausible narrative. It asks for another kind of assent. To anyone for whom it does not strike an important equipose, it seems absurd. The myth of the Fall makes it possible to think of humankind and the world as at the same time intrinsically good and intrinsically evil. Those to whom this vision is not compelling grumble about the apple and the snake.”
[HT: McGrath]
As companies expand, the people within them start to specialize. At such a point, some managers will conclude that they have a “keep everyone on the same page” problem. But often what they actually have is a “stop people from meddling when there are already enough smart people working on something” problem.
And on every project, assign one person to make sure that communication happens — but only the right communication. Otherwise the team will just start having long meetings with everyone there and, frankly, people will socialize, and bloviate, and speechify, and argue about things they don’t really care about just to hear their own voices.
Joel
I always felt that Theology, as a discipline, was very ungrounded. Turns out I just did not know what the ground was. To give us a ground for it, our History of Theology and Philosophy course is approaching the entire topic from an epistemological angle. “How can we know ourselves?”, and “How can we know God?” are the two primary questions through which we will look at the history of Christian theology.
One such starting place is Plotinus, the major influence behind Augustine. Understanding Plotinus’ neo-Platonism is the first task of the day. I have honestly heard the term of Ideal-Form before this class, though I could in know way describe it nor percieve its referent.
Already with just the most basic of sketches I have Tetris blocks falling into place within what I have read and misunderstood in Theology thus far. I actually find Plotinus’ Ideal-Form of the first order logos contemplating in action thus creating a second order logos to be a natural thought (though his language is not read naturally at all). Researchers into linguistics know that without the idea behind a word that word cannot exist in the language. Without the Form the Matter, or expression in linguistic terms, cannot exist. And so it is with the mind or intellect. Without the essence of a thing known its matter will go entirely unrecognized.
I think this is why Design, of all sorts, interests me so much. It is the search for the essence of a thing manifested in its matter. We often confuse the matter of a thing with its essence. It requires a trained designer to break free of the conventional material form given to a thing. They can break free, find the true Form and re-design matter around the Form - thus changing our own perceptions based on the old material form.
This is why I find the very idea of Ideal-Form understandably natural. However, once we come to defining the actual existence (metaphysical, ontological, woohoo) of such Forms, and their active Contemplation (even among inanimate objects) I feel I will be back in the mire.
I thought this Jesus creed postasked a good question. Do you see anyone’s behavior changing because of our recent financial woes? I have to admit that I have not witnessed any change. Those who I know without a job, they have changed, but that would be true of any time of unemployement. Then again, the crash of ‘21 had a huge affect on the availability of goods. That is just not as true for the recent crash. Of course, some stores have closed, but we don’t see unfilled demand for simple prevalent goods.
While this idea of changing consumption has not been economically forced - I do think there are signs showing change on the horizon. The lack of trust in our economical system has broken with the last straw added. This lack of trust has created alternative ways of thinking about what we buy and why we buy it. Consumerism, as a way of looking at goods, seems to be dropping off. More and more people are concerned with sustainability and the ratio of money to value. Even value is being computed differently. Some status markers remain, but it seems that people are being more stringent on the areas they care about. For example, they don’t need a luxury car for a status symbol, but they do need the brand status symbol for their clothing. It all comes down to what they care about. However, it seems what they care about is shrinking. At least, in my own case it is.
As the care and desire for material things are shrinking, the care for non-material, the relational, dare I say the spiritual, are increasing. In a time where the markets cannot sustain a material economy up to the previous levels we are accustomed to, this is a natural development. And a healthy one.
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