Photo of Albert Einstein riding a bicycle, Santa Barbara 1933.
Courtesy of the Archives, California Institute of Technology.
The true individual.
Albert Einstein was a model of detachment yet with
deep understanding of the condition of others. He embodied the ideal of the
sovereign human being: expressing his own essential and unique self, while
radiating an authentic and creative genius. Max Born, a personal and professional
friend, explained Einstein's detachment from the tribulations of the world. "For
all his kindness, sociability and love of humanity, he was nevertheless totally
detached from his environment and the human beings in it." Einstein, himself,
understood the conflicting forces in his own soul, and he seemed to think it was
true for all people. "Man is, at once and the same time, a solitary being and a
social being," he said.
Photo of Ernest Becker.
Courtesy of the Earnest Becker Foundation
THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE STRENGTH FOR AUTONOMY--
If the meanings that one puts forth depend on what one can sustain we have
one clue to the promotion of human creativity, namely, that we can try to increase
the strength and the courage of the individual in the face of the potential rebirth
of the self. As Rousseau, Stendhal, and Nietzsche saw, the great fact about morality
is that it needs real strength to assume the responsibility for one's uniqueness.
… On the individual level then, the problem of courage is clear: man must try
to frame problems in ever-more-explicit, cognitive terms, because this alone
unlocks action. One can convert a situation in which there was no choice
to one in which there are new choices. In this way, man liberates himself....
Ernest Becker, Pulitzer Prize Winner (1974), The Structure of Evil 258-259 (1968).
Hummingbird and flower.
Digital image courtesy of
The Hummingbird Website
On Theories-of-action (Argyris and Schón, (1974)--
I keep thinking of the Cook Island Maori woman who
stood up in a meeting in Vanuato in 1991 and said that
her idea of an appropriate global order
was one
"where the voice of a hummingbird was listened to
with as much respect as the voice of an eagle."
E-mail from J.H. Wasilewski to A.N. Christakis et al.,
(2007/05/07 Mon AM 11:16 EDT).
M. C. Escher, 1948, Lithograph.
Image of Drawing Jands.
491 × 425 pixel, file size: 55 KB
Holistic reality.
We are constituted by reality and reality is constituted by us, not as a circular
cause and effect process but as an essential recursive constitutive process.
Accordingly, to understand reality we have to understand first how we
are constituted by it and how we constitute reality. Planning,
according to this view is not about setting goals and designing the
means to achieve them. Planning is about raising consciousness of our holistic nature. E-mail from H.López-Garay, to
LoD, Mon. July 16, 2007.
Head of Socrates 470-399 B.C.
Statute at the Colosseum of Rome, Italy.
300 × 395 pixel, file size: 19 KB
Love of Wisdom.
The love of wisdom on the part of a human being who knows that his love must be
imperfectly consummated is a love mixed with resignation and sustained with
fortitude. The love that draws him on cannot exceed the courage that enables
him to look into darkness without seeing defeat, as Socrates looked into death
itself without surrendering. Joseph Cropsey, PLATO'S WORLD: Man's Place in the
Cosmos 2 (1997).
(Updated Sunday, 13 July 2008)