Coming Home

“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”

-George Moore

Dear Readers,

Earlier tonight, a close friend of mine sent me a text message with this quote. So, I texted him back and asked if he wanted me to take a closer look at the quote for our Christmas Eve blog. At the time, I was walking around Diamond Head with my wife and beautiful daughters while watching the sunset. The quote hit just right with the sunset and the feeling of my daughters hand grasping onto mine and the funny sqeaks of my infant daughter enjoying the ride on my shoulders.

George Moore sure understands that the fulfillment we so deeply search for is never out there; rather, it’s always right here in the quiet moments of togetherness, the tender seconds during which we simply are with those that love us and those whom we love.

So, Jon, I hope this blog makes you smile. It’s my Christmas present to you on your final pre-parenthood Christmas. Some of your friends may be filling you with stories told in gloomy tone about how children empty bank accounts or keep you from playing at all of the time wasters that used to fill your life (video games anyone?), but let this blog put a stop to that silliness. I gladly empty out my continually slim wallet to share the best possible life with these lovely ladies, my beautiful daughters.

I’ve been all over the world. I’ve travelled and lived in all kinds of interesting places. I wouldn’t trade my travels to have rushed this life, but now that it is here…I can smile, look anyone in the eye, and say that all of this is absolutely worthwhile.

I have no doubt this will be your experience as well. You’re an awesome human being; fatherhood will come to you very naturally. I look forward to hearing trading stories with you along the way.

Jon, thank you for the perfect Christmas quote…

So, my dear readers, merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of you out there in this fascinating hyper reality which we call the Internet. I will take the next couple of days off and enjoy them at home with my family. If anyone needs anything, then don’t hesitate to call, shoot me an email, and/or post a response to the blog.

I wish you all peace!

Z

Shameless Self-Promotion

“With the advent of cognitive psychology and the extremely dynamic disciplines collectively called neuroscience, conceptions of intelligence have drastically evolved. These disciplines no longer view the brain simply as a giant computational organ. Logic, while important, is not the sole summation of the myriad parts of the brain. The mind is no longer a spiritual abstraction. The mind is now considered, from empirical evidence, to be the self conscious by-product of multiple parts of the brain working collectively and often layering on, interconnecting with, and redundantly supporting the other areas of the brain.”

-Zachary Oliver, EdD.

Dear Readers,

I know that this kind of reading typically falls outside of the norm for blogs on the Internet. Thank you for bearing with me during the course of the last month. It has been my hope to use this blog to help my book develop a market.

“Falling but Fulfilled” is a gentle book. It is filled with stories designed to give voice to the learner still hiding inside of each of us, like we did in the back of a closet during an especially fierce game of hide and seek.

While it isn’t filled with complex sentences and challenging ideas like the quick excerpt I included above as the quote for the day. You may be thinking: Then, why would you use a quote like this to communicate your book?”

This is a fair question.

In this quote, I feel the intellectual message of the book is clearly articulated. Truly, there is so much more to being smart than formalized analytical skills, such as those inherent in structured logic. People exhibit intelligence in the creative ways in which we solve problems, in the domains with which we feel a connection, and in the fast fluid world of social interractions with the speed of perception and the power of a quick wit.

My book, “Falling but Fulfilled”, speaks to the stories which I’ve lived that have brought this learning into my consciousness. Throughout its pages, readers are challenged through my storytelling to sift back through their own memories looking for analagous experiences.

So, excuse me for my shameless self-promotion. The thing is: I believe in my sweet little book. I believe that it deserves a chance in this big wide world. I believe that it offers a fresh perspective for a world full of burned-out people.

I hope that it brings you as much joy to read it as it did for me to write it.

I look forward to reading your reviews here and on Amazon!

Z

Nightmares and Daydreams

Dear Readers,

I came across an excellent Japanese proverb a few years ago which has been rumbling around my brain and in several of my classrooms. I don’t typically like proverbs as a root of examination. I think that it’s because I want to velcro the words and perspectives in a quote to a person and to the time in which they lived. In this case, though, I think the proverb really reminds me of the two-sidedness needed to really see a project through to its successful completion. I leave all of you tonight with a very short and touching group of words that I feel are timely during this most dreamy season.

“Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.”

I wish all of you the best of days leading up to our New Year’s celebration complete with all of those fresh challenges and resolutions with which we feel ready to challenge ourselves.

With respect,

Z

Redefining Business

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

-Antoine De St. Exupery

Earlier tonight, I was working with my colleague, David. David is a fantastically bright and ambitious up and comer in the business world. We were examining a business opportunity that is near and dear to our hearts, deciding whether we want this chance and whether the time is right.

As we were talking over what we have to bring to the table, I felt a bubble fighting its way to the surface of my conscious mind. Besides exhaling in relief that I knew what would be my topic for the daily blog, I felt that I had an opportunity to articulate my philosophical position about business.

You see, business, in many people’s minds, is something dirty. I hear people make comments about the scum sucking corporate world which sadden me, especially when considering my role as the Department Chair for the College of Business. I work hard, everyday, to train the future business leaders to be thoughtful and ethical individuals.

Truly, I understand that this negative reputation has come to be well-deserved in many areas; however, my contention is that this reputation is less the result of what we call the business world and more a result of unethical and antisocial behavior from individuals participating in it. In fact, I would venture a guess that this kind of behavior is among the worst common to all human beings. It would be silly to assume that this kind of behavior only exists in the for-profit business world.

So, I went casting around for a quote that would allow for me to have an opportunity to share my philosophy on why I work so hard and how I stay positive. I think this quote works nicely.

You see, I believe that the purpose of for-profit business is not to simply make money. Money is not purpose. We have to remember that money is only a measurement of value, not value itself. It is in this confusion that we begin to see convoluted ethics which often breed excessive behaviors.  

The purpose of a business is to build value. Therefore, the goal of the true business professional is to build an organization with a focused and incisive purpose in which people are motivated to work well with one another to build something in which they can believe. The profits such an organization produce are the measurement by which the owners can recognize the effectiveness of the business.

Thinking of this in the vocalublary of today’s quote, the dream of a vast ocean of possibilities is the environment which the leader tries to fashion throughout the entire organization. The profits of this are fine ships, designed to move smoothly and derive maximum efficiency, safety, and joy when sliding across the waters. Of course, the better the boats are cafted, the more value a potential consumer can recognize in the craft’s design, materials, and solid construction.

Luckily, David is patient with my long-winded protestations. We agree that the only way to progress in the way of wealth in this capitalistic world in which we live is through conscious participation in markets through entrepreneurship. More importantly, no one has to lose his or her sould in an effort to find financial success. The important thing here is that there is a clear way forward for commerce to exist without it becoming so filled with avarice that no scrupulous, talented, and creative individual would pursue business as an exciting and rewarding way to spend a life.

Let’s light the way together!

Z

If you enjoy this blog, then please subscribe. Also check out my book "Falling but Fulfilled" right here

The Fallacy of Experience

Aloha Dear Readers,

Today, I spent all day editing a new book on the development and role of China taken as a collection of newspaper articles written over the course of the last decade. It's a fascinating and deeply involved perspective into a country that remains very much an enigma in the West.

So, today, I am going to post a Mao Zedong quote. Please don't misunderstand: I am not posting this as someone with an ideology. Instead, please recognize that this is my earnest attempt to put into conversation some words from a deeply challenging figure who did much to create the New China which is so often featured in our daily newspapers and new reports.

Just like the pear that Mao speaks of, we need to dig more deeply in an attempt to digest that thing which we strive to understand.

"All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience."

-Mao Zedong

I can't begin to explain my profound disagreement with his assertion that knowledge originates from experience in a single blog. But, as you who have read my tossed-off thoughts each morning have probably surmised, knowledge, for me, only begins in experience. Experience provides an inspiration, not knowledge. Knowledge is gained by pursuing an inspiration down the proverbial rabbit hole.

All kidding aside, knowledge is the product of the kind of disciplined thought that takes serious contemplation, rigor in self analysis, and absolute humility in presentation.

Hopefully, today, when I wake up, I can stay true to this and remember that the experience of anything is just that: a surface.

I want more than the surface; how about you?

Z

Deconstructing Love

“Human beings do not and cannot communicate – only communication can.”

-Hans-George Moeller (explaining Niklas Luhmann’s ideas about System’s Theory)

Bizarre, no?

Dear Readers,

Let’s examine this quote in the context of that most beautful of human utterances “I love you!”

According to Luhmann, when someone proclaims his or her love for us, we actually hear words, not love, for example. Our ears vibrate with a sound that our brain interprets. The words are not love or even the behaviors which might signify love. Words are just words: nothing more/nothing less.

Sure, words are words. However, I truly believe that our brains have to make a really interesting set of decisions when unwrapping the comments which enter into it, especially in this case.

The big questions are: Is love a real and true concept that exists outside of human cognition? Or, is love an expression that grows out of the personal narrative of a person’s life? Or, is Luhmann correct when he says that, our personal expression so tweaked and distorted by words that our internal state cannot be conveyed? 

Words are agreed-upon sounds that are supposed to stand for a feeling. This feeling, which everyone describes differently, may or may not have a basis in an objective reality. The belief that we hold clearly in our minds, as the listener, concerning whether or not there is an objective reality, though, has a huge effect on how we hear this proclamation of profound affection. From the post-positivist framework, if someone is saying that they love us, and we believe that there is an objective reality, then the words a true and authentic external meaning beyond the syllables and grammar which sent the message through the air from our lover’s mouth. Many of us want to believe that there is something profoundly eternal and constant about the love which we feel deeply within our hearts.

If we don’t believe that there is an objective reality, then we have to dig deeply to appreciate that this love, the words of which are formed on our lover’s lips, comes out of a deep analysis of one’s own story. This is the postmodern edge. In this perspective, there is no eternally permanent love; love is a deeply-felt personal emotion which no two people will ever experience in the same way twice, even from moment to moment. If we hear the message of love from our lover and we accept this narrated world view, then we understand that our lover is trying to box up something more profound than words which we cannot ever and will not ever directly experience. The words “I love you” are an artifact of our lover’s consciousness, which we, like careful archeologists, will examine, turning over for clues as to exactly what is meant.

Either way, we don’t know for sure what exactly this statement means and how it should reverberate through our own consciousness. Ambiguity abounds. Luhmann goes to great length to point out that there are certain processes which dominate us, even though these processes are developed through our own behavior. Communication, he says, dominates our ability to interact with other human beings. He says that the meaning gets twisted, not because of differing perspectives from the listener and the speaker, but because the communication has staked some kind of claim on another layer of which we may not be aware. Communication communicates directly; everything else has to cut around the edges of ideas and go through a vocabulary selection process which defeats the original message and leaves only communication I, but no meaning.

Whichever speaks to you, dear reader, I offer this silly analysis only in the spirit of trying to understand some very challenging frameworks which provide much of the framework of our world views, whether we think about them or ignore them.

For all of you out there interested in this blog, I’m sorry about yesterday morning. I seem to have had some odd computer challenges. I wrote this blog, but it never posted…

Z

Shakespeare Again

“The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”

-Shakespeare

Today was a challenging day for me; I will keep this post short, focused. This quote caught my attention through the refreshing perspective on the nature of mercy. Aren’t we usually taught that mercy is for the weak, those with no resolve? How sad and misguided!

Shakespeare, in this quote, makes an interesting observation: Not only is mercy something which cannot be measured; but also, mercy nourishes our lives. It is “a gentle rain” which provides water, an essential part of our lives.

I need life. Life is the thing that allows me to take care of my family, serve my community, and make discoveries everyday. It seems that, while all of my effort is great, mercy needs to be allowed to drizzle its magic all over me.

Z

Star Dance

“There was a star danced, and under that was I born.”

- William Shakespeare

Today is my birthday. On December 16, _____, I came into this world naked and quietly in awe of the bright and noisy world which would offer me so much.

My mother, a university professor at the time, had to send my father to her class to give finals that morning. My father, a doctoral psychology student at the time, was dreaming of all of the lessons about our shared humanity we might be able to learn together. I grew up thinking that they had two of the strangest careers in the world: being a psychologist and a professor. I think one of my father’s friends called them both “high priests of the status quo”. I’m sure none of us ever settled on whether this was an insult or a compliment. Somehow, I think he purposefully made his comment carry both.

We were a busy family, like so many with two working parents. We did, however, always find some time together.

Early in life, I remember taking various psychological assessments, which I thought were games. My father would sit me down at the dining room table, open a big strange briefcase, and bring forth some new and strange puzzle or test for me to successfully navigate. We bonded together in those few hours as the sun streamed in from the skylights. Without realizing it, dad was asking me to participate in activities that would allow me, at a very early age, to understand aspects of my character. Every insight which I shared with him offered him the opportunity to tweek my understanding to shed new light and offer me more lessons.

 Once the evening began to fade the day, my mother would take me for a walk on the beach. I remember the shimmering light reflecting off the wet sand at low tide. Swirls of light reflected around the grooves of sand made by the escaping sand. Mom would walk beside me and tell me stories. Most often, these were made up stories populated with animal characters. They caught my 6 year old attention. And she always turned the stories into a game; she would tell me a little bit and then ask some questions. Upon answering each question, I became more and more a participant in shaping the direction of the story, as well as an active participant in the shaping of my thinking.

I was extremely lucky to be born under two stars dancing.

This luck isn’t summed up from only my memories at the dining table or the great pools of light at low tide. The pursuit of consciousness is perpetual. The exuberant light of the lives they live, however, has filled me with the knowledge, experience, and critical thinking abilities which have shaped my approach to life. Here I am, on my __^th birthday, again simply naked and silent and again filled with wonder for this life which wraps itself around me in swaddling sensation.

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for bringing me into this magical place, giving me some tools and shaping some that I came with, and for always being a loving presence.

I love you.

Your son,

Z

Injuring Eternity

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

-Thoreau, Walden

What a wonderful slap upside the head for a midweek post!

There is not much to add to this wonderful quote from Thoreau. It’s amazing to think that he wrote this in a time before cell phones with unlimited texting and data, before the Internet, and before iPods. Whatever we think about the man’s choice to go live like a loner out by a lake, we have to appreciate the clarity of insight which a quote like this conjures.

Every moment we spend fiddling with the unimportant stuff of our lives, we lose the opportunity to contribute something truly valuable to our human consciousness, that part of us which trails off into the distant, twisted, and winding future.

Stay focused, my friends! We only have 3 more days this week honoring us with the opportunity to do what we do best:

Live!

Dr. Z

Public Education

“It seems ironic to me that we send our children to school in the hopes that a quality education will help them get ahead in life, when that very education so often smoothers individual talent in the name of serving the many.”

- Brent Cameron as quoted from his thought-provoking book on alternative education called “Self Design” which can be found here.

My Dear Readers,

We forget that our public education system was built to solve a set of constraints which American society faced early in the 20^th century. At that time, American society was in the midst of a profound shift from farming to manufacturing. The bulk of the population was shifting from the countryside to the cities.

Our borders were in the midst of allowing many new Americans to come in search of a better life than the one they’d left behind. America was percolating with energy. Many would argue, and I’d agree, that this was the time which laid the foundation for the dizzying heights of success which America has achieved.

Diversity is a beautiful thing. It does, however, produce a unique problem for a society built on democratic ideals. Democracy needs a citizen-group which understands the importance of the Constitution, of voting, and which shares a basic awareness of the issues topical to the society. Most importantly, though, democracy flourishes in a society which has bonded through a set of shared experiences. It was in this spirit that a public school system was developed.

John Dewey, often considered to be the father of the American education system, discusses this at great length. He pointed to the importance of bringing the youth together in a forum which builds awareness of citizenship. Through the development of shared experience, it was his hope that all of the children of these disparate groups might find a common sense of what it is to be American. Time magazine, this week, discusses a story in the same vein: namely, about what seems to happen in a world that becomes increasingly separated. The article investigates the social realities emerging because of the wall which splits Palestine with the rest of Israel.

The public school system is about finding a common body of experiences on which a sense of society might be constructed. This system continues to serve an important function for our society. However, it is challenged to serve this function and to develop the high level cognitive abilities which we’d like for every member of our society.

Taking into account what we know about the brain and the individuality in processing which seems to be built into its very biology, we now seem to be more and more ready to accept that there is no single characteristic exhibited across our species which can be labelled as intelligence. Each brain manifests learning differently. The storing, accessing, and application of information, the biological acts which we can simplify in the term wisdom, are different from individual to individual.

Knowing this, can we put all children in a single room, teach them the same way, and expect for each to reach his or her potential? My head, my heart, and my guts all say no.

While politicians are always an easy target, I just can’t finger them for the challenges facing our education system. Their influence is only on the surface. They advocate for the policies that they believe represent their constituents. And most people, even many teachers, just don’t know much about how learning occurs.

It’s not that the teachers or the curriculum are flawed or unprofessional. Besides a few unprofessional individuals, I don’t believe that this is the case across the board. I know from first-hand experience that there are a lot of thoughtful and intelligent people working hard everyday to educate our children. Many of them enroll in programs such as the one I administer, study hard, and produce excellent work in the pursuit of a doctoral degree. The depth of their insight is always astounding.

Thinking that our children are to be blamed for the challenges facing their cognitive development is also unreasonable. Children are moving through their individual trajectories of maturation at their own pace. We cannot force their development; we can only obstruct it. I need only point to the example of feral children as proof. Children need an enriching environment and the mentorship necessary to fruitfully delve into it in order to develop talents.

I respectfully submit that our ideas about the purpose of education are the roots of the challenge which faces public education. With all due respect for Dewey’s legacy, the time has come for us to begin thinking about re-orienting the purpose, design, and objectives of our education system. And in the face of all of the developing ideas about the brain which have become more and more widespread, it is time to update a system which takes into account all of the new research about cognition.

If you enjoy this blog, then please take a look at my book available here or here.

Thank you and have a wonderful Tuesday!

Dr. Z

Dropping a Load...

Aloha Dear Readers,

Today, as we draw back into another Monday, I want to change things up a little to stay refreshed. I received an email from a close friend reflecting on the cycles we move through in life and I remember a story that I read somewhere. I think it comes from Herman Hesse’s “Siddhartha” (I added a link to the free Kindle version from Amazon). The story goes like this:

Two young men were standing in the dusty lane that ran through the center of their village arguing back and forth about the nature of Enlightenment. Their discussion was rather heated, but not unusual. Youth, after all, feels life in such a visceral manner. During an especially potent moment in their discussion, they noticed an old man walking towards them bent over by the load of tied together wood already milled for construction.

One of the young men said out loud to his friend, “Look, I bet this old man must know something about Enlightenment. Let’s go and ask him.”

So, the two young men made their way into the old man’s path and one of them asked him, “Old man, tell us: what is Enlightenment?”

The old man stopped walking and rolled his eyes up from the ground which he had been solely fixated upon. He looked at the young men, nodded his head, and moved his shoulders to the side. As the milled wood hit the dusty ground, the old man put his hands on his back, straightened his posture, and smiled, while shaking out the crick in his neck.

Upon witnessing this, one of the young men exclaimed, “I get it! Thank you, old man!”

The other young man shook his head, as well, and said, “I do too! But, old man, tell us one more thing. Tell us, what happens after Enlightenment?”

The old man looked very seriously back and forth at both of the young men, searching them for something. Finding his cue, he smiled, shook his head again, and reached down for his bundle of wood. Without a word, he hefted the wood back onto his shoulder, resumed his bent posture, looked to the ground and began walking away from the two young men.

Good story, no? I hope I haven’t ruined it from the original, which I haven’t read for quite a few years. For those of you who know the story well, I hope you will forgive my creative rewriting of a masterpiece.

I send this out to all of you waking up, as I will be, in a few hours ready to go back to work, fight the good fight, and try to bring the light of our effort into this world. We are like the old man. Each day, we have the load on our shoulders and we take a step. We try to escape our load with the many habits cultivated just for this reason, but end up the next morning with our load still present.

But, the old man was a master; he knew how to unburden himself. Without wanting to be too cryptic, Enlightenment means, in this reading, that our burden can be put down for a moment, lightened.

As with the old man, our load can be, and I contend that it is, removed from our shoulders, if just for a moment. Sure, life goes on; the burden, our load, will always be present. After recognizing the fleeting moments of Enlightenment which dance across the trajectories of our lives, though, the load will never be the same. The awareness of puttting the load down for a moment makes carrying it feel like a noble choice, something which we do, a responsibility which we carry, because we believe that our effort matters.

But, how do we recognize these moments of Enlightenment?

I think it happens in different ways at different moments of our lives. Often, Enlightenment comes to us from the mouth or email of a friend, from a random kindness witnessed or received during the day, or by looking at the staggering energy that we, with the help of our trusted colleagues, put towards leaving confusing and convoluted challenges a little bit clearer and better articulated each day. Through these quiet efforts, we, as dedicated professionals, strive to inject elegance into our own lives, the lives of those we share life with, and with our whole extended community.

After all, this is the true spirit of professionalism, is it not? This is why we spent so many years thoughtfully preparing ourselves for our careers, is it not? It is this spirit our colleagues and mentors recognized in us and took into account by awarding us with various well-deserved accolades.

And this deep-seated conviction that our effort is worthwhile keeps us moving, putting one foot before the next, regardless of the gargantuan megolithic systems which stand in our way. Mortgages and other silliness, cannot explain the essential need to dig deeply into our work.

Plus, a sense of humor sure helps…

Thank you very much for reading another blog posting. I’m honored. If there’s anything I can do for you, or if you have a quote which you’d like me to discuss, then please contact me. Again, if you haven’t already, then friend me on facebook, link me on LinkedIn, tweat me (I’m osabang), and check out my book here!

Dr. Z

On Transformation

“If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, then you are still bobbing in the sea of delusion”

-Lin-Chi

Over the course of the last week or so, I’ve been popping quotes that touch on the esoteric. I like this quote because it reminds me that, while there are so many challenging ideas orbiting our consciousness, the greatest realizations typically emerge from the day to day minutia of life.

My book, “Falling but Fulfilled” is very much a spiritual child of Lin-Chi’s perspective shared in today’s quote.

While on the surface, the book is shaped around one person’s take on a brilliant learning theory presented by Howard Gardner (Multiple Intelligences Theory), it shares with the reader, on a more fundamental level, the experience of growing up and how the random moments of our lives teach us wisdom. As I wrote the book, I challenged my mind to turn inwardly and look fearlessly at the occasions which bubbled to the surface as I meditated on Gardner’s learning theory.

I hope to see the book shift attention back to our quietest, meekest, and most disenfranchised stakeholders:

Students

Education too often gets caught up with politics, labor relations, and various ideologies. All of these address the various aesthetic frames of reference, but not the real issue: the development of conscious cognition, also known as metacognition. Metacognition is the ability for us to think about the way we are thinking.

And metacognition doesn’t just happen. There is a process, perhaps an individualized one peculiar to each of us, which I believe sets the stage for foundational transformation. In his discussion of his Transformative Learning Theory, Jack Mezirow talks about this process as the need for critical self analysis.

The challenge to making effective self analysis is the creeping in of bias. Lin-Chi touches on this in the quote by using the word “delusion”. After all, we tend to pay attention to those things which most powerfully catch our attention…and the “sacred” sure trumps the “ordinary”!

I took this to heart as I wrote the book. Instead of discussing the real whiz-bang stories of surfing 10ft Banzai Pipeline or cliff diving in Laguna Beach, I worked at giving the simple memories a voice. It is my hope that the gentle memories conjure up your own memories of your learning. It is in the gentle voice of the book that I advance my strategy: giving a voice to the learner. After all, we are all learners, if we consciously participate in life. If I can inspire readers to take a moment to scan across the history of their lives, then this gentle book has succeeded.

Borrowing the structure and poetry from Lin-Chi, I propose an alternate version of the quote for Saturday morning, 12/11/2010:

If you love the ordinary because it gives glimpses of the sacred, then you are bathing in the sweet glow of enlightenment.

I wish you all a happy weekend! I will take tomorrow off and celebrate my father’s and mother’s birthday. By Monday morning, I’m sure to be back on track. In the meantime, check out my publisher’s website at: www.savantbooksandpublications  

Mahalo nui loa

Slipping Through Time

“You are the bows from which your children are as flying arrows set forth.”

Khalil Gibran

Tonight is a stormy night. So, between bolts of lightning, I slip through time back to my early childhood in San Clemente. In these memories, I remember feeling scared of the electricity-charged air of our rare but powerful winter storms. Sneaking into my parent’s room, I would stand by the side of the bed hoping for them to reach down and comfort me.

Now, I have children of my own. This time, I am the big hand reaching down to comfort my daughters and wipe away tears. Now, I am the soothing voice helping the heart to beat more calmly. I love you, my dear children.

Yet, it wasn’t just in anxious and stormy moments my parent’s presence impressed me. My world was filled with wisdom all along.We talked all of the time about what was happening; we questioned everything. And, when we ran out of things to say, my family read until another idea tugged at the edges of our conscious minds.

My parent’s words still vibrate through me to the essence of my being. Even now, I can feel the wisdom each of my parents shared with me stretching my mind together, tighter and tighter. My existence is my own; I am clearly responsible for my own actions, my behavior. At the same time, I would be fooling myself to think that my nature, that thing which propels me into the world, has nothing to do with my parents.

So, I speed through this world following a trajectory set for me by the amazing confluence of events and intentions which have conspired to send me forth. And I, a lucky man graced with elegant guardians, do not need to worry about my aim during every waking moment of my life.

I bow before you, my honored father and mother. May I, when my time comes, stretch back the bow with all of my consciousness and, all at once, share the simple wisdom with my children that there is only breath and that breath is fulfilled in elegance.  

Then, in these mindful moments, the target has already come to kiss the arrow’s head.

Z.

Have a wonderful Friday as you all prepare to enjoy your families this weekend!

If you have a moment, then please check out my book at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0984555277

8 Words: Reframing Science

"The universe is made of stories, not atoms."


- Muriel Rukeyser


Wow! This is poetry at its finest.

In a single line, Ms. Rukeyser re-examines a whole framework of reality that provides the intellectual terra firma of our modern age.

These 8 words do a better job of defining what the postmodern take on the world is than all of the books sitting on library shelves gathering dust while everyone sits on the couch watching National Geographic Explorer present the scientific history of the Earth.

For those out there without a sense of irony, I'm not making fun of National Geographic. I happen to think that Explorer, for example, is often one of the most playful and engaging shows on television. I'm commenting on the interesting inversion that we watch a television show which tells us a story, thinking that we are learning fact. It's not facts which catch our attention; it's the next level of cognition which works that magic. We watch those shows enthralled by the magnitude of the story. The drama of a planet's coming of age, after all, should resonate with us on some primal level and cause us to rethink our human tendency to get carried away with our negotiation for position with the natural forces which surround us throughout the days and nights of our lives.

Throughout our education, we get really caught up trying to define the facts of our worlds. For example, those worksheets we worked through during 8th grade designed to teach us to differentiate facts from opinions really dug in deeply to the back of our minds. We spent our evenings after piano lesson, ballet, or football (take your pick) pouring over those worksheets trying to learn how to identify which was which. Stripping away the obvious programming of dialectical bias for a moment: when we unlocked the fact/opinion secret, we figured out that the only really solid way to classify each statement was to look at the way the concept was presented at a grammatical level.

Facts look like: The Earth is a planet, which revolves around the Sun.
Opinions look like: I experience the Sun as a ball of fire which rises in the morning and sets in the evening.

Right?
Wrong!

There are no facts. There are only stories. Every idea which we cherish as a fact is nothing more than a story, a summation of best guesses by our scientists. I can say this; I'm part of the club. Science doesn't try to define what things are. Instead, it uses all of its analytical energy to define what things are NOT. 

Science, once it defines what something is not, tries to weave the little points of data that don't and can't be used to define it as something we've already labelled into a fabric, a theory, an attempt to explain a Positivist or Post-Positivist reality. The challenging point, though, is that these theories are really nothing more than a bunch of stories, albeit some really interesting and often complex stories.

Speaking of stories, I imagine that the day isn't too far off (if it hasn't already arrived) on which we will see the "fact" statement that the Earth revolves around the Sun as a quaint perspective indicative of 20th century thought prevalent throughout human society, a nice narrative expressing the consciousness of human beings at this point in time.

"The universe is made of stories, not atoms."

Muriel Rukeyser is making a powerful point that, once we work through all of the data, we are left with a deeply beautiful human need to make sense of what we have perceived.

Whether we make our careers creating enlightening academic courses or crafting beautiful marble countertops for luxury kitchens, we all have moments in our lives where we are left struggling to try to glue together the fragments of our lives, our experiences, and the hopes and dreams of those who love us. And the beautiful patchwork which we piece together is the proud story of our moment on the Earth. We tell this story over and over to find the value we produce, to identify our comfort zones, to plan our next action and ensure that it fits in with the pieces already present in our puzzle. Our story provides a map we use to navigate the unexplainable data points which populate our lives. This capactiy to make stories may even be the defining capacity for our human consciousness. We can certainly say that our capacity to develop tools and our consciousness, our self-awareness, are no longer the defining traits. These are stories which have outlived their welcome.

Why would anyone think that we, as scientists, are different and don't share this need to make stories to deal with the deeply challenging data sets which we are confronted by everyday?

Sure, we analyze a lot of data pulled from random samples and weed out possible confounding variables in an effort to ensure that we are really looking at what things seem to be and how they inter-relate. Again, in the end, we end up with data which we communicate in the language of narrative, of stories.

As a final thought, I want to send a shout-out to my scientist brothers and sisters. There is  one deeply courageous quality which we all share that most of our brother man don't recognize: We are required by the tenets of our scientific discipline to be ready, at any moment, to abandon our theories, our stories, our cherished beliefs in the face of new and overwhelming evidence which provides a better, simpler, and more elegant narrative to explain the mysteries which dance around us.

This is no easy feat, even for the best of us!

However, because of this belief in a greater cause, we are collaborative storytellers. Sure, we each have our private stories. Yet, we spend the days of our lives putting the great collaborative story of human knowledge ahead of our own individual stories. Together we build a legacy that's more about showing the future of humanity how individuals can put aside differences in the spirit of working on a body of knowledge which will be a most important legacy for, rather than truth, our most noble and passionately human pursuit of elegance.

Atoms are important, but mean nothing until perceived as part of an enthralling story unfolding all around and within each and every one of us.

Again, I thank you all for taking the time to muse on a beautiful quote with me.

Inside Out: Wittgenstein

"The human body is the best picture of the human soul."

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Tonight, I am rocking a mean headache. So, I'll keep my remarks short...

When I read this quote, it pounced on me. I'm not one to drown in the religiousity of the use of the word "soul," but I like the idea that our body expresses our internal state. My beautiful mother-in-law has a saying that, when we are young, we can fake our beauty with makeup and stylish clothes; however, when we are old, we wear our character on our face.

It seems that she is in agreement with Wittgenstein.

The message is clear here. If we value our health, then we had better give thought to the development of our character during each and every day of our lives.

Here's my favorite idea emerging from this quote: While we always think that health is a mathematical function, a kind of reciprocal relationship between eating and exercising, there is another more fundamental part of the equation which is beyond the obvious quantifiables of scientific measurement: the mind.

Our mind has to be focused. With this focus, we have to craft an image of ourself. This image then has to be kept in mind as we go about our life. If we can do this, then our actions will fall into line with this mental image.

In this way, our bodies are very much the picture into our being.
Thank you, Wittgenstein, for reminding me of this simple and powerful wisdom!  

Deconstructing WikiLeak

"If their behavior is revealed to the public, they have one of two choices: one is to reform in such a way that they can be proud of their endeavors, and proud to display them to the public. Or the other is to lock down internally and to balkanize, and as a result, of course, cease to be as efficient as they were."
- Julian Assange, of WikiLeaks, on his philosophy about organizational behavior
(Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034040-1,00.html#ixzz17PqMyp4G)

Dear Readers,

We truly live in a cutting edge time! It is so important to us to think carefully about our reasons for our actions.

I chose to quote Julian Assange today, not for a deep abiding belief in what he does or stands for, but because I believe the conundrum he symbolizes needs to be addressed. Furthermore, with all of the accusations flying back and forth from those who say he is putting people at risk and those who would protect his vision  for an open future, I'd like to weigh in with a slightly cooler head.

No one's head needs to be on a plate, not Julian's, not Hillary's, and certainly not mine or yours. To think that a head should be served up cold says nothing about the maturity which should be bubbling in the backs of concerned civilized human beings everywhere.

Let's look again at what Mr. Assange posits here: He says that organizations have behavior. Furthermore, he says that organizations will reflect when a harsh reflection is placed before them.

First, he is saying that organizations can generate conscious behavior. Then, he states that this same organization has the ability to then consciously reflect on that behavior. This is certainly a very philosophical perspective as it supposes a whole set of beliefs about reality.

When I read this, I sense immediately what he's talking about. I absorb the perspective that believes that, when we unite our energy together in an organization to pursue a mandate or mission, then our individual voices submerge for the sake of the whole. In this way, the organization absorbs the individual humanity of each member participating in its endeavours and becomes a single giant consciousness. Furthermore, in what seems to be the perspective of Julian Assange, a single giant consciousness is also perhaps more prey to the temptations of power and the abuses that often trail just behind than a simple individual person.

Also, there is an additional philosophical premise hinted at in Mr. Assange's quote: It seems that he also believes in the cold light of a truth which exposes itself when organizations are made to acknowledge their behaviors.

In college classes, such as the ones I teach everyday, this humanization is called "anthropomorphism" or the act of making something non-human display human traits.

The use of anthropomorphism in Julian Assange's perspective allows us to see that he believes in a meta-narrative, a story which glues together the many smaller stories which inform our individual lives. By turning an organization into a person, the organization receives volition, judgment, and consciousness. Using this technique, we can censure an organization by addressing the perceived lack of resourcefulness, foresight, and follow-through of its behaviors.

In literature, however, the use of anthropomorphism is discouraged.

Stories feel contrived when everything is invigorated with a false sense of meaning. Not everything in our world has meaning, except that meaning which we invest in it.

So, while everything in our existence may be vying for attention, this does not mean that everything must therefore have a conscious will which drives a behavior.

In contrast to Mr. Assange, I think that our individual voices always speak louder than an organization's. In fact, I don't think that organizations even have a voice, much less a consciousness. We will always first pursue what is right for us as individuals, regardless of the mission of the company. And this may include, sometimes, the decidedly cowardly behavior of closing our mouths in the interest of a paycheck. However, this is the expression of fear we expect to find in people who believe that organizations have a consciousness that is more powerful than their own. In fact, this is one of the saddest legacies which postmodern thinking has generated throughout our societies.

"Organization" is nothing but a convenient label used by an observer to describe a confederation of mechanisms cobbled together. It's a label of convenience, not one which in my estimation can be imbued with the power of focused intention, consciousness, and self-reflection.

Any board of directors wanting to form a successful company who can embrace this idea that individuals are the champions of consciousness will be far more successful at attracting bright and intelligent professionals and retaining them as these professionals give traction to the various projects which they themselves set as part of their own textural visions and operational goals.

It's my belief that thoughtful individuals create thoughtful products and services in a thoughtful way.

So, while everyone can define what is or isn't thoughtful in an individual manner, I will posit that, while I do believe in the truth, transparency, and openness which provided Mr. Assange the impetus for his actions, I do not believe that WikiLeaks acted in a thoughtful manner. I just don't believe that he thought out the traumatic impact of his behaviors on the thoughtful and conscious individuals who will be affected by his work.

So, while I dream of a more transparent and honest society, I just can't support purposeful and shamelessly public trauma in order to foment a movement toward higher consciousness.

We, as individuals struggling through our personal conflicts and triumphs, have always been and will always be the dominant voice of humanity. Our combined efforts will never speak with any other voice but that voice made of the individuals communicating, participating, and cooperating or competing in that paradigm.

Again, I truly believe that Mr. Assange began his effort with a powerful and positive mission that has somehow been twisted into an ethical cliffhanger. I remind the reader of the importance for us to seek out the bias in our vision and to take the wisdom our bias presents to heart. Julian Assange perspective can be deconstructed in such a manner to show that the reasoning behind WikiLeaks might not be as resonant as he would have hoped.

As always, thank you for taking the time to read through my daily blog. If you enjoyed this, then perhaps my book "Falling but Fulfilled" will be a pleasurable read for you. The book can be purchased at Amazon here.

Dr. Zachary M. Oliver, EdD O.L.

Getting Pono for Monday

"The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic -- in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea -- known to medical science is work"

- Thoma Szasz

Here we go again: Monday morning is hunting us. I worked all weekend and feel the temptation to call in, feign an affliction, and hide all day in the darkest and quietest corner of my apartment.

Instead, I'm going to bust out some clumsy business metaphors. First, I will do some research on this challenge brewing inside of me, sucking away my profit margin. Then, I'm going to invest my Sunday night on a new strategy, a blog post, which seeks to strategically position me. Finally, I'm going to plan for an ROI (return on investment) projected to enhance my market positioning tomorrow morning.

The fact is that, despite my lack of aplomb this Sunday evening, I love my work. My spirit, that energy which we identify with the gut, is fed by the thousand unconscious decisions I am asked to make each day which speak to my desire to see our university's community become brighter and tighter. My heart is fed when I look into my student's eyes and see new ideas emerging from the depths of their minds and hearts. My mind is nourished as I chew on the thousand nuanced challenges that come with successfully managing an academic program for a university. This work is deeply fulfilling, stimulating, and inspiring.

Despite my exhaustion on this Sunday evening, what need have I for any drug, any dulling of the senses?

No way; I want to be sharp. Dr. Szasz is correct. If we find our life deeply involved in something which truly challenges us at a profound level, then we each find ways to celebrate this involvement by continually finding new ideas to bring to the table, by clearly identifying new opportunities to stretch our vision, and by deeply appreciating those teammates and leaders around us who also exhibit that same spark.

So, please, friends: Take a second out this Monday morning to try to recognize the wild reality of your life, the interesting projects you have the opportunity to face today, and the colleagues with whom you stand alongside each day. Shake hands with them; tell them that their effort is appreciated. Your recognition of their effort, if truthful and resonant, will begin to transform you and each of them.

Students: Thank you for all that you do to teach me interesting wisdom which I hope will reverberate through my life.

Colleagues: Thank you for helping our community to become successful. We are spiraling upward despite all of the challenges which exist in our worlds. Your success inspires me during every moment of my waking existence.

Mentors: Thank you for believing in me. You've all challenged me to look carefully as to where I walk. Every step I take says something about the confidence which you've allowed for me to discover inside.

As Dr. Szasz indicated in his quote, work, especially when coupled with the right attitude, melts away the weariness of our world.

I offer you this playful quote to cheer you on your way as you get started on another Monday morning. Have a great day, everyone...

Sunday Morning: Musing on Love

"Someday, after mastering the wind, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energy of love; and for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

It must have been a strange moment when our ancestor first handled fire. This early ancestor of ours probably had no idea the impact of that moment on our species. What was that quality inside our benefactor that caused him or her to decide to tame that fire, to keep it and share it with others of his or her kind?

Fire conjures visions of passion, mystery, and discovery. Fire hypnotizes us. We can stare into it, watching it stretch its way upward, crackling and snapping with a rudimentary kind of life. Was our ancestor caught by fire's beauty?

Fire is paradoxical. It burns all that it touches, yet warms all who draw near. Fire destroys; fire creates. Did this ancestor of ours dream about the world to come, filled with warm cookies, a triple shot of espresso, and central heating?

Fire is the transformative combustion which still powers much of human endeavour. As long as we control it, fire helps us to shape our world.

But, fire doesn't give us a motivation to shape our world. Fire doesn't stir us. Fire doesn't challenge us to become something more than we already are.

Love does.

To all of you out there who are curled up in bed snuggling in for a lazy morning, I send this message of love to you. Revel in your lover's arms this morning. Enjoy a quiet moment. The cacophony of daily life awaits just outside your window, even on a Sunday morning. Stay here, if just for a few more languid and sensuous seconds, before stumbling back into the conscious life of responsibility which awaits just beyond the cold tiles of your bathroom floor.

It's not that this is a bad life; it's not. The life which awaits us is not something to be dreaded. It is something about which we should be fascinated. We find forward momentum by recognizing love flowing through our life, filling it with meaning, and lifting each little action we put into the world into another symbolic expression of the beauty of our existence.

Unlike fire, love is not merely hypnotic. Love offers us a robust life. It is not just a transformative combustion that allows us to transform energy from one form into another. Rather, love is the transformative combustion that allows each of us the opportunity to burn away all sad misconceptions about who we are so that we might finally become that beautiful being which we were always meant to be.

So, lay your head back down for a moment, touch your partner softly, and tell him or her how his or her presence has made your life more interesting, satisfying, and fulfilled.

Krishnamurti's Revolution

"But there is a revolution which is entirely different and which must take place if we are to emerge from the endless series of anxieties, conflicts, and frustrations in which we are caught. This revolution has to begin, not with theory and ideation, which eventually prove worthless, but with a radical transformation in the mind itself."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

I love this quote. I read it from time to time and it always makes me scratch my head. Every time I read it, something new floats to the surface. Here's where I am with it at this point in my life:

Krishnamurti spent his life as a teacher, sharing with anyone who would listen a most important message: We cannot accept any idea in this world at face value. Why?

I once believed that facts were true. Then, I got to thinking: Once upon a time, people believed that the World was flat; the sun rises and sets; and the Earth was the center of the Universe. These were all facts. Now, these facts seem old fashioned. Similarly, I expect that, in another thousand years, our facts about the Earth, the Milky Way, and the Universe are going to seem quite quaint, as well.

When we accept ideas, they can easily enslave us. How?

We all want to believe something. And we like to protect our beliefs. Calling a cherished idea a belief is a way of protecting the original idea from being questioned. By labelling an idea a belief, we easily lock it up and deny a chance for it to develop.

It's much easier for me to shut down and not listen to someone  than to challenge my mind to work through very different and foreign ways of looking at life. I know I'm not alone by admitting to being guilty for feeling defensive when attacked by someone with a different belief.

My personality, for example, is nothing more than the sum total of the ideas I use to identify and articulate my experiences. If these ideas I use to define my personality are locked into beliefs and I am enslaved by these beliefs, then how can I be anything other than a slave?

Therefore, freedom is not a reality that exists in the world. It certainly cannot come from the sum total of a sequence of enslaved ideas. It isn't something that can be discovered, negotiated, or defined. Freedom is not even a state of mind.

Krishnamurti says that this transformation will not occur through our acceptance of a theory or through a set of ideas. I read this to mean that freedom cannot be, in his reading, a "thing". Rather, freedom is an agility of mind that has to be cultivated. Freedom is less like the thing we hold in our hand and more like the act of using our fingers to grasp that thing. Freedom, then, is an action, rather than a concept.

Don't think, for a second, that I write this with a smug know-it-all look on my face. I only offer this to you, my esteemed readers, as an artifact of my effort to cultivate the agility which Krishnamurti calls "freedom". I look forward to and invite your discussion! 

Welcome!

Many years ago, I went to live in a monastery. Upon getting situated in my shared room featuring a small closet, bed, and desk, I started poking around in the drawers of the desk. In the top drawer, I found a yellowed and creased copy of a book of quotations. The full importance of this discovery did not hit me at the moment:

I sit here 25 years later after having completed high school, college, graduate school complete with a dissertation, and a solid teaching career over the last decade able to say without a doubt in my mind that this ugly and tattered book afforded me the best, deepest, and most rewarding educational experience of my entire life.

It is my wish to thank that individual who forgot that book in what was to become my desk, to share this experience of discovery with anyone interested in who we are and why we do what we do, and to build a community of people interested in the learning which everyday life provides.

I know that many of us subscribe to Internet sites which automatically beam a quote each day into our inbox and most of us only briefly glance at it as we rush about our day. I'd like to try something different: I'm going to post a quote each day and try to provide it some reflection, some story, some context in the hopes of inspiring us to respect the wisdom which courses through the veins of our societies, our cultures, and our many vibrant and diverse communities.