Monthly Archives: September 2014
Maria Popova from Branpickings explains very eloquently what wise storytelling conveyed by means of art or leadership is fundamentally about, and the role it plays in any organisation or ones personal life.
Storytelling might not give an definite answer to “What’s life all about?” although it might help us live with our uncertainty. Psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz, revealing the true importance of not only art/storytelling in society, but also help with crafting them.
“In my 25 years of practising psychoanalysis, I can’t recall anyone ever asking me this question [what’s the point of it all?]. Patients do ask what’s the point of doing such-and-such or being married to so-and-so. And I’ve been asked—more than once—“what’s the point of analysis?”
Typically, the people who come to see me are in pain. They may be confused, or anxious, or depressed but, more often than not, their complaints are specific. They might be suffering because their husband has died, their marriage has collapsed, or they can’t find someone to love. They don’t ask ‘what’s the point?’ They don’t want to know the meaning of life—they want the suffering to stop so they can live their lives.
Often, part of the suffering is that they can’t articulate it. Pain is resistant to language; it can reduce us to a stage before language—to the confusion and anguish, the cries we had before we had words. Karen Blixen said, ‘All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.’ But what if a person can’t tell a story about his sorrows? Experience has taught me that there are stories that we never found a way to voice, because no one helped us to find the words. When we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us—we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don’t understand. My job as a psychoanalyst is to help others find a way of telling their story.” STEPHEN GROSZ
Furthermore, Ray Bradbury provides an glimpse of the restorative and cleansing function of art, not only as a means of self-discovery of an artist, but also so for audiences. Artists providing words to our shared, untold stories regarding the predicament of being human.
It’s all up to the imagination of the unimaginative.
The problem is not that creative individuals in the US are more creative than their European counterparts. The problem is that people who aren’t creative (See financiers), are more so in the US than in Europe.
The world has stopped reading.
The world has stopped reading books, and soon it will stop listening to speech.
Books will become brochures. Movies will be silent.
Never trust a fat chef.
Never trust a fat chef – as to a fat chef, anything tastes good.
Great thinking never gets old, but execution does.
A simple, and wonderfully frank talk by Dave Trott at APG in the UK regarding the art of persuasion.
Everything from freud to Husserl, all mixed in with some football references.
Some highlights:
“Never assume an ad will be noticed”
“Behavioural economics is about moving questions upstream enough to find out how we can solve business problems with a really great idea.”
“Insight doesn’t sell, an idea does. An idea based on insight.”
For a longer version –>
CONOET - The Constitution of Everyday Things. 