The Red Thread
Some of my earliest blog entries dealt with some thoughts of mine about friends - closeness of friendship and the fact that there are just a few people in anyone's life who become intricately entwined in that life. As my ideas are developing in that area (and in all other areas of course) it now strikes me that fundamental to the friendships are connections - and this also sits well with my later amendment that whilst I started out talking about friends the 'closeness' attribute also applied to enemies!
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Friends, Worldview, ----------
Making Connections
Have you ever really thought about why people make connections with others? It is both natural and mysterious - why connect with Person A, but not with person B? Certainly some of this is down to 'circumstances' - we will make connections (good or bad) with people that we share a close space with - at work, at school, in church, or wherever. There is, however, more to it than that.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Friends, Worldview, ----------
An Unlikely Chain of Events
There are a lot of different things that trigger the thoughts that end up expressed here in the blog. This particular post was inspired by a post on LinkedIn - I responded and then felt that it was appropriate to elaborate just a little here.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Learning, Worldview, ----------
Trust Should Be Earned
In a return to the fine line between "good" and "evil" that I talked about a couple of posts back I have become aware of an interesting, and ever so slightly bizarre, behavioural trait that I seem to have adopted. In a few situations where I want to be 'careful' that my actions or words should not be misinterpreted I have started to imitate the precise behaviour of someone who might want to hide their true intent!
Categories: Philosophical, Worldview, ----------
Know Yourself .... Can You?
The wonders of the world wide web - not only have I made contact with lots of old friends, I have also made some very good new ones. I love the diversity of characters that you get to meet - and, in my experience, there are plenty of 'good' people - or - at least, people who give the impression of being 'good' because we all know how easy it is to create a persona that is false.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
What Good is That?
This is a 'first' in my blogs - I am starting to write this without knowing where it is going to end up! The trigger was the thought that I enjoy learning - I will 'devour' new information - I often follow trails through the world wide web and find myself at places that I didn't envisage when I started on the journey.
Categories: Philosophical, Learning, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
Exploring a Grey Area
The leap from doing good to doing evil is often no more than a tiny step. Those of us who try to be 'good' might want to think that we are almost immune from the 'dark side' unless we make a mistake - but the reality is that (at least in my eyes) in many aspects of our lives there is a continuum stretching from 'perfectly good' at one end to 'perfectly evil' at the other - and the nature of continuums is that somewhere along the line we step over from one side to the other!
Categories: Philosophical, Worldview, ----------
The Other Side Of "If Only"
When you start to think about it, it is sobering - no - downright scary just how many people and events may be affected in the future by the decisions we make, individually and collectively, today. I may believe that I have some idea of the immediate effects however, given the way that the world is now connected so much more than ever before, it is next to impossible to determine the totality of the effect of each and every decision we make.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Friends, Complexity, Decision Making, Worldview, ----------
If Only
I have had personal and harrowing experience of the "if only" thoughts - I find it hardest to deal with in respect of how my actions (or my inaction) affects other people. I don't mean directly - since that is 'usually' understood at the time - at least to a certain extent - I am talking about decisions that have long term repercussions that are far from what is envisaged.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Decision Making, Worldview, ----------
A Word That Deserves a Better Press
There are some words that fall into disuse. There are other words that people are scared of. There are words that change their meaning over time. We all use too many words without thinking. Words play a huge part in everyone's life. I'd like to talk about an adjective that we seemingly try to avoid - vulnerable.
Categories: Philosophical, Friends, Worldview, ----------
