Is There Such A Thing As Friendly Manipulation?
It is no real surprise that when blogging on a reasonably regular basis there is a tendency for similar themes to recur. Anyone who has read through some of my posts will have seen some of these repetitive refrains and this post is yet another angle on the recurrent theme of "there is a lot of grey between black and white"!
Categories: Philosophical, Friends, Complexity, Decision Making, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
Summer of '71
This morning I got into the car and was immediately transported back in time to Castle Toward - July 1971 - Rimsky Korsakov's Scheherazade - a little treasure chest full of memories of a dozen days spent in intensive learning of a couple of orchestral works chosen to expand our musical horizons and to provide an exciting and entertaining concert for all those family members and friends who turned up in Dunoon.
More On Changing What Is Acceptable
The previous post on acceptability talked about some reasons why things become unacceptable over time and raised a point regarding the width of the "boundary of acceptability". In this follow up I want to discuss a bit more the grey areas surrounding acceptability - from a number of viewpoints including cultural and personal.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Decision Making, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
Selective Memory?
In History Is What We Make It I wrote about the vagaries of our memories - how we remember some things, forget others and make up yet more!! Yesterday I was given a rather clear example of just how 'strange' our memory can be when it comes to selecting a particular event to forget!!
Categories: Philosophical, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
The Tingle Factor Redux
Radio 3 is - on its breakfast show - focusing on building a playlist based on the theme "the Tingle Factor". Some time ago I wrote a post on that subject and it was always likely that I would return to it. Sitting here listening to the opening of Sibelius' Fifth Symphony was all I needed to trigger that return!
On Changing What is Considered Acceptable
It is interesting to see how our understanding of what is "acceptable" changes through time. Things change in both directions - some things that are "acceptable" become "unacceptable" whilst other things go from "unacceptable" to "acceptable".
Categories: Philosophical, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
A Paradox of Ignorance
We all - inevitably - view the world through a series of prejudices and biases. This is not a criticism, merely a fact. Just yesterday I clipped an article to OneNote which listed "58 Cognitive Biases That Screw Up Everything We Do"!! In addition to these inbuilt mistake inducing biases we also have our own personal list of "things we know" that colour every move we make.
Categories: Philosophical, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
Who Ties The String?
One of the recurring themes of my posts here (the most recent is Someone Is Pulling The Strings Again) is my thoughts on the applicability of the "Red Thread of Fate" - East Asian folkore that is specifically about the way in which we are "bound" to our soulmate, but which I see as a useful metaphor for the way in which we are "connected" to each other in a multitude of ways (perhaps there out to be more colours to denote the 'nature' of the connection! We could then have a rainbow world - in whatever dimension that thread resides!!!)
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Friends, Faith, Cognition, Worldview, ----------
Who Knows?
It is clear that not everything you read online is going to be correct - indeed often it is wise to consider the possibility that nothing you read online is correct. 
(and yes - I do appreciate the irony of writing that in a blog post) However, sometimes you come across something that- whilst seeming to be sensible - triggers thoughts about things that are (perhaps) wrong in the real world rather than in the online world.
Categories: Philosophical, Systems Thinking, Complexity, Decision Making, Worldview, ----------
Challenging The Status Quo
Whenever an innovation occurs there are a couple of things that the innovating authority needs to do in order to ensure adoption. First there needs to be some "market" for the innovation - i.e. a need of some sort - and secondly they need to put forward a convincing case to show that the innovation meets the need.
Categories: News, Systems Thinking, Learning, Worldview, ----------
