Stories reading room: 2024

the map is NOT the territory

the map (information) is NOT the territory [reality on the ground]

When we are making a [map], the [map] doesn't exist yet. We are not uncovering it or discovering it; it's not as if it resides somewhere and is just waiting to be found. There is no [map]. We are making decisions, one by one, to create it. In a fundamental way, the [map] is hidden from us., p.183, Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace, creativity, inc., 2014

16th century, Dutch, Netherlands, “God created the Earth but the Dutch created the Netherlands”; the Dutch model, 18th century Dutch republic; Het Loo, water or drainage board (heemraadschappen).

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C. West Churchman, The System Approach, 1968, 1979 [ ]

p.139

... The “present” for him is not what he sees directly but what he constructs in his models and his imagination.

( THE SYSTEMS APPROACH, by C. West Churchman, 1968, A Delta Book, (paperback), Eighth Printing, SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY, DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC./PRINTED IN U.S.A., HD 20. 5 C47, pp.151-152)

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Per Bak, How nature works : the science of self-organized criticality, 1996

p.41

We make pictures of the world. Some pictures are more realistic than others. Sometimes we feel that our modeling of the world is so good that we are seduced into believing that our computer contains a copy of the real world, so that real experiments or observations are unnecessary. I have fallen into that trap when sitting too long in front of the computer screen.

pp.41-42

Why don't we do calculations on the real thing?

The answer is simple: there is no such thing as doing calculation on the real thing. One cannot put a frog into the computer and simulate it in order to study biology. Whether we are calculating the orbit of Mercury circling the sun, the quantum mechanics of some molecules, the weather, or whatever, the computer is only making calculation on some mathematical abstraction originating in the head of the scientist. We make pictures of the world. Some pictures are more realistic than others. Sometimes we feed that our modeling of the world is so good that we are seduced into believing that our computer contain a copy of the real world, so that real experiments or observations are unnecessary. Obviously, if we want our calculation to produce accurate quantitative results, such as on the weather, or accurate predictions, such as of the rate of global warming, the demands are much more stringent than when only qualitative behavior is asked for. This is true not only for the computer modeling but also for pen-and-paper analytical calculation like those performed by the geneticists in the 1930s. The absence of computers put even more severe limitations on the type of calculations that could be done. When scientists in the past made theories of evolution, for example, they made theories of simple models of evolution. Instead of calculating the probabilities of reproduction and survival in the real world, all of this information might be condensed into a single abstract number called fitness, which would enter the calculation. We are always dealing with a model of the system, although some scientists would like us to believe that they are doing calculation on the real system when they ask us to believe their results, whether it be on global warming or the world economy.

p.42

The physicist's approach is complementary to that of an engineer, who would try to add as many features to the model as are necessary to provide a reliable calculation for some specific phenomenon. They physicist's agenda is to understand the fundamental principles of the phenomenon under investigation. He tries to avoid the specific details, such as the next earthquake in California. Before asking how much we have to add to our description in order to make it reproduce known facts accurately, we ask how much we can throw out without losing the essential qualitative features. The engineer does not have that luxury! Our strategy is to strip the problem of all the flesh until we are left with the naked backbone and no further reduction is possible. We try to discard variables that we deem irrelevant. In this process, we are guided by intuition. In the final analysis, the quality of the model relies on its ability to reproduce the behavior of what it is modeling!

( Bak, P. (Per), 1947-, How nature works : the science of self-organized criticality / Per Bak., 1. critical phenomena (physics), 2. complexity (philosophy), 3. physics--philosophy., QC173.4.C74B34 1996, 003'.7--dc20, 1996, )

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15. Donella Meadows

pp.130-131

The Purpose and Structure of World3

... Seldon, and his emperor.

"I am given to understand you believe it possible

to predict the future."

Seldon suddenly felt weary. It seemed as though

this misinterpretation of his theory was constantly

going to occur. Perhaps he should not have presented

his paper.

He said, "Not quite, actually. What I have done is

much more limited than that.... What I have done ...

is to show that ... it is possible to choose a starting

point and to make appropriate assumptions that will

suppress the chaos. That will make it possible to predict

the future, not in full detail, of course, but in broad

sweeps; not with certainty ..."

The Emperor, who had listened carefully said, "But

doesn't that mean that you have shown how to predict

the future?" 1

In the remainder of this book we will often use World3 to generate scenarios that help us talk about the "broad sweeps" of the future. To minimize confusion about our goals, we start with several definitions and cautionary notes about models.

A model is a simplified representation of reality. If it were a perfect replica, it would not be useful. For example, a road map would be of no use to drivers if it contained every feature of the landscape it represents--it focuses on roads and omits, for example, most features of buildings and plants along the way. A small physical airplane model can be useful for exploring the dynamics of a particular airfoil in a wind tunnel, but it gives no information about the comfort of passengers in the eventual operational plane. A painting is a graphic model that may convey a mood or the physical placement of features on a landscape. But it does not answer any questions about the cost or the insulation of the buildings it portrays. To deal with those issues a different graphic model would be required--an architect's construction blue print. Because models are always simplifications, they are never perfectly valid; no models is completely true.

Instead the goal is to create a model that is useful for some specific purpose, for answering a specific set of interrelated questions. Then one must keep in mind the limitations of the model and be aware of all the questions it does not answer. We have focused our efforts on making World3 useful--for a carefully bounded set of questions about long-term physical growth on the planet. Unfortunately, that means World3 will not provide useful answers to most of the questions that concern you.

Models take many forms--common forms are mental, verbal, graphical, mathematical, or physical. For example, many words in this book are verbal models. GROWTH, POPULATION, FOREST, and WATER are just symbols, simple verbal representations that stand for very complex realities. Every graph, chart, map, and photograph is a graphical model. Its relationships are expressed through the appearance and location of objects on the paper. World3 is a mathematical model. The relationships it contains are represented through a set of mathematical model. The relationships it contains are represented through a set of mathematical equations. We have not used physical models in our effort to understand growth and limits, though they are useful for many other purposes, such as in designing communities or industrial products.

Mental models are the abstractions carried in minds. They are not directly accessible by others; they are informal. Formal models exist in a form that can be directly viewed, and sometimes manipulated, by others. The two should ideally interact. Using formal models, we can learn more about reality and about others' mental models. And that enriches our own mental models. As we learn, we are able to create more useful formal models. That process of iteration has engaged us for more than 30 years. And this book is one result.

To create this book, we have assembled words, data, graphs, and computer scenarios. The book is a model of what is in our minds, and creating it has altered what we know. This text is our best attempt to symbolize our current thoughts and understanding about physical growth on this planet over the coming century. But this book is only a model of those thoughts, which are themselves, like every person's thoughts, only a models of the "real world."

1 Isaac Asimov, Prelude to Foundation (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 10.

(Limits to growth : the 30-year update / Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows, (hardcover : alk. paper), (pbk. : alk. paper), 1. economic development--environmental aspects, 2. population--economic aspects, 3. pollution--economic aspects, 4. sustainable development, pp.130-131 )

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Bernie Clark., From the Gita to the Grail : exploring yoga stories & western myths, 2014

pp.xi-xiii

The original working title of this book was Map Making 101. The intention was to show how stories and myths are simply maps that are used to guide people's lives. A map is never truth: It is symbolic representation of reality, but it cannot be reality itself. What is important about a map or a myth is not whether it is true or not, but whether it is useful. Joseph Campbell's presentation of mythology to the modern reader has proven to be useful: If it weren't, it would not be popular. I will leave it to the scholars to argue about the validity and accuracy of his work, but the utility of his work cannot be denied.

While his book contains novel ideas and associations, I have made no attempt to prove any of the particular points of view, and I am not qualified to do so. The book is meant to educate and provoke thought, not to cite sources and dates. For those who like sources and dates, endnotes are available. What I hope to do is to share some of the stories I have come across that have proven interesting and useful, especially to the yoga students and teachers I have taught.

Occasionally, the way the stories are explained may cause some distress for readers who happen to believe that the story is factually or historically true and is not a myth. This never happens when describing a myth found in someone else's religion but often happens when one's own religious stories are said to be mythical. For many people their maps provide great comfort and a sense of direction to their lives. If we take away the belief that their stories are true, they may feel left adrift and without purpose. However, virtually all religions have a deeper teaching available: When the stories are no longer taken as literally true, the student is able to delve much more deeply inside a more profound mystery. The Christian mystic experiences a "cloud of unknowing," and the Sufi mystic experiences dance with the beloved, while the Jewish mystic finds deeper understanding of the mind of God through the teachings of the Kabbalah.

It is not my intent to take away anyone's cherished beliefs but rather to open a door that may help them go deeper in whatever direction their beliefs point them. The start is knowing that there is more to mythic or spiritual stories, and that we can shine a light on what is hidden.

One last point worth making is that I have made no attempt to reproduce the original mythic stories. Written myths are frozen slices of something that was once alive and changing. It is very difficult to understand the impact of a myth on its original audience because we are NOT they. We do not live in their time and culture, and we do not understand what their lives were like. All we can know is that these stories meant something to them; exactly what, we can only surmise. For this reason, I have tried to tell most of these old stories in a modern, folksy vernacular, not in the original, archaic verse. Through this I hope the stories will resonate with today's reader. I am hoping these stories will prove useful to you.

(From the Gita to the Grail : exploring yoga stories & western myths,

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── I truly believe Father Bain would have preferred that boy die than me save him.

── Aye. I don't doubt that. A man's beliefs are how he makes sense of life, and if you take that away, what do you have left? Is it so different where you come from?

── in that regard, I supposed not.

source:

Outlander, 1 season, 2017

based on a series of books by Diana Gabaldon

── I truly believe Father Bain would have preferred that boy die than me save him.

── Aye. I don't doubt that. A man's beliefs are how he makes sense of life, and if you take that away, what do you have left? Is it so different where you come from?

── in that regard, I supposed not.

“”─“”‘’„“•─“”

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Bernie Clark., From the Gita to the Grail : exploring yoga stories & western myths, 2014

pp.xxxix-xL

Remember, we all follow maps, which are the mental models or patterns in our mind. These maps are not normally known to consciousness, but they are there and they are powerful. If we are not happy with the way our life is unfolding, perhaps we are following a map that is not very useful. If we are doing OK in life but wonder how we could do even better, then we can shine a light on the map we are using and see if there are better ones available. And there may be times when our map is perfectly fine, although our path through that map is not well chosen: A better path may be necessary even though we keep using the same map. In any case, we need to know our map!

Once we can see the map in the full light of day, once we can bring it fully into conscious awareness, then we can start to determine whether the map is useful or not. If not, we may decide whether to get a new map or plot a new course within the existing map. Here is some good news: We can always get a new map or take a new path! It is not easy, but it is possible.

Notice, we are not asking whether the map is RIGHT! And here again is the big point: None of our map is right! Every map we follow, every story we believe in, whether consciously or unconsciously, is a REPRESENTATION of the way things actually are; it is not reality. Our maps are not real in this sense. They are real maps, but the maps aren't reality--no matter how attractive and compelling they feel. The game we play is to act "as if" the maps were real--that is where belief is required.

We do not use just one map, and even one map can lead us to many places. We have a multitude of maps in the bureau drawers in our mind. Throughout our life, from childhood to old age, we are told stories that become our maps. Before we can choose a new map or a new way to live, we need to know what stories we believe now.

The journey in this book is one of shining the light of conscious awareness on some of the maps we are using by sharing many of the stories that created the maps. Knowing this, we can decide whether these maps are useful or not. If not, we can gain some idea of where we might find better maps to follow. We can tell ourselves new stories. Perhaps we can incorporate some stories from the East, but this is only stories. To do that we have to understand what these stories mean. Understanding the meaning of these foreign myths makes it possible to select or reject them as candidates for updating our current maps.

Knowing that a myth is a map to our deep psychic landscape, we come to the intention of this book: to shine the light of consciousness inwardly and answer these questions.

What myths do I live by?

Are these myths useful?

Do I need to find better myths?

Which new myths would serve me better?

(From the Gita to the Grail : exploring yoga stories & western myths,

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Robert Greene, Mastery, 2012

pp.270─272

Among the many feats of human navigation of the sea, perhaps none are more remarkable and mysterious than the voyages of the indigenous peoples in the area known as Oceania ─ comprising the islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Poly nesia. In an area that is 99.8 percent water, the inhabitants of this region were able for many centuries to deftly navigate the vast spaces between the islands. Some 1,500 years ago they managed to travel the several thousand miles to Hawaii, and perhaps at one point even voyaged as far as parts of North and South America, all in canoes with the same design and technology as those of the Stone Age. During the 19th century, mostly because of Western interference and the introduction of charts and compasses, these ancient navigating skills died out, and the source of their uncanny skill remained mostly a mystery. But in the area of Micronesia known as the Caroline islands, certain islanders maintained the ancient traditions well into the 20th century. And the first Westerners who traveled with them were astonished at what they witnessed.

The Islanders would travel in outrigger canoes fitted with a sail with three or four men aboard, one serving as the chief nagivator. They had no charts or instruments of any kind, and for the Westerners who accompanied them this could be a disconcerting experience. Taking off at night or day (it didn't matter to them), there would be apparently nothing to guide them along the way. The islands were so far apart that one could travel for days without spotting land. To go off course only slightly (and storms or weather changes could certainly cause that) would mean never spotting their destination, and probably death─it would take too long to find the next island in the chain, and supplies would run out. And yet they would embark on their sea voyages with a remarkably relaxed spirit.

The chief navigator would occasionally glance at the night sky or the position of the sun, but mostly he talked with the others or stared straight ahead. Sometimes one of them would lie belly down in the middle of the outrigger canoe and report some information he had gleaned. In general they gave the impression of being passengers on a train, serenely taking in the passing scenery. They seemed even calmer at night. WHen they were supposedly getting closer to their destination, they would become slightly more alert. They would follow the paths of birds in the sky; they would look deeply into the water, which they would sometimes cup in their hands and smell. WHen they arrived at their destination, it was all with the air of pulling into the train station on time. They seemed to know exactly how long it would take and how many supplies were required for the voyage. Along the way, they would make perfect adjustments to any changes in weather or currents.

Curious as to how this was possible, some Westerners asked to be initiated into their secrets, and over the decades such travelers managed to piece together the system the Islanders used. As these Westerners discovered, one of their principal means of navigation was following the paths of stars in the night sky. Over the course of centuries, they had devised a chart comprising of the path of 14 different constellations. These constallations, along with the sun and the moon, described arcs in the sky that could translate into 32 different directions around the circle of the horizon. These arcs remained the same, no matter the season. From their own island, they could map out the location of all of the islands in their area by locating what stars they should be under at particular moments at night, and they knew how this position would change to another star as they traveled toward their destination. The Islanders had no writing system. Apprentice navigators simply had to memorize this elaborate map, which was in continual motion.

During the day, they would chart a course by the sun. Toward the middle of the day they could read the exact direction they were headed in by the shadows that were cast on the mast. At dawn or at sunset they could use the moon, or the stars sinking below the horizon or starting to rise. To help them measure the distance they had covered, they would choose an island somewhere off to the side as a reference point. By following the stars in the sky they could calculate when would be passing by this reference island, and how much time remained to reach their destination.

As part of this system, they envisioned that their canoe was completely still─the stars moved above them, and the islands in the ocean were moving toward and then away from them as they passed them. Acting as if the canoe were stationary made it easier to calculate their position within their reference system. Although they knew that islands did not move, after many years of traveling this way, they would literally experience the trip as if they were sitting still. This would account for the impression they gave of looking like passengers in a train viewing the passing landscape.

Their sky chart was complemented by dozens of other signs they had learned to read. In their apprenticeship system, young navigators would be taken to sea and made to float in the ocean for several hours. In this way, they could learn to distinguish the various currents by how they felt on their skin. After much practice, they could read these currents by lying down on the floor of the canoe. They had developed a similar sensitivity to winds, and could identify various wind currents by how they moved the hairs on their head, or the sail on the outrigger.

Once they approached an island, they knew how to interpret the paths of land birds, which left in the morning to fish or returned at dusk to their homes. They could read the changes in the phosphorescence of the water that indicated closeness to land, and they could gauge whether the clouds in the distance were reflecting land beneath them, or simply ocean. They could touch the water to their lips, sensing any changes in temperature that indicated they were approaching an island. There were many more such indicators; the Islanders had learned to see everything in this environment as a potential sign.

What was most remarkable was that the chief navigator hardly seemed to be paying attention to this complex network of signs. Only an occasional glance upward or downward would indicate any kind of reading that was going on. Apparently, Master navigators knew the sky chart so well that with the sight of one star in the sky they could immediately sense where all of the others were located. They had learned how to read the other navigational signs so well that it all had become second nature. They had a complete feel for this environment, including all the variables that seemed to make it so chaotic and dangerous. As one Westerner put it, such Masters could travel hundreds of miles from island to island as easily as an experienced cab driver could negotiate the labyrinthine streets of London.

(Mastery / Robert Greene., 1. successful people., 2. success., 3. self-actualization (psychology), includes bibliographical references, BF637.S8G695 2012, 158─dc23, 2012027195, )

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• not a rigid road map but principles of navigation

p.33 (pdf 38)

This work is principally social and organizational.

p.33 (pdf 38)

Navigating. Michel Serres' wonderful metaphors of the Northwest Passage is evocative (Serres 1980).

p.33 (pdf 38)

The point, he says, is that the Northwest Passage is ever changing: shifting ice floes mean that last year's route will never be the same as the current one. What we need to teach, then, is not a rigid road map but principles of navigation. There is no one way to design cyber infrastructure, but there are tools we can teach the designers to help them appreciate the true size of the solution space ─ which is often much larger than they may think, if they are tied into technical fixes for all problems.

pp.7-9 (pdf 12-15)

II Dynamics

“Wizard,” “maestro,” and “leader” label roles, not people; they may be held by individuals, groups, or organizations, as well as in various combinations. Our emphasis here is not on heroic individuals — whose powers and importance are almost always exaggerated — but on the social features of this pattern. First, system building typically begins as a social act (even a dyad is a social system). Second, the wizard-maestro leader combination reflects the spectrum of crucial capabilities: technical, organizational, and social.

Government agencies have sometimes played key roles in the system-building phase of major infrastructures. During and after World War II, for example, the principal sources of support for US digital computing research were military agencies, especially the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force. Very large contracts for the SAGE air defense system helped IBM take the lead in the American computer industry (Edwards, 1996). The government has the ability to plan for the long term; the Dutch government in the sixteenth century, for example, planned forestry growth over the subsequent two hundred years as part of its naval construction infrastructure. Similarly, government has the ability to shepherd research projects over long periods of time – as witness the successful creation of the Internet.

source:

Paul N. Edwards, Steven J. Jackson, Geoffrey C. Bowker, and Cory P. Knobel, Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design. (Ann Arbor: DeepBlue, 2007),

NSF Grant 0630263

Understanding Infrastructure

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/49353/UnderstandingInfrastructure2007.pdf

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/49353/UnderstandingInfrastructure2007.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

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• How do we actually learn? By making mistakes.

p.40 (pdf 45)

“ tend to over-report experiences of success and under-report those of difficulty or failure.

disciplined and even-handed study of failure

must learn to stop hiding the bodies. ”

([ why? because it becomes a real and tragic failure only if we, you, me, and my dog (Sam) did not learn from the failure (mistakes); because a well documented failure can be a goldmine for lessons (the past should be our teacher, not our master), and a great opportunity to relearn many lost lessons. ])

― Paul N. Edwards,

Steven J. Jackson,

Geoffrey C. Bowker, and

Cory P. Knobel,

Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design.

(Ann Arbor: DeepBlue, 2007)

NSF Grant 0630263,

January 2007,

p.40 (pdf 45).

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Colin Powell with Tony Koltz., It worked for me : in life and leadership, 2012

p.12

As the saying goes, “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”

(It worked for me : in life and leadership / Colin Powell with Tony Koltz. ── 1st ed., 1. Powell, Colin L., 2. African American generals ── biography., 3. united states ── politics and government ── 1993-2001 ── quotations, maxims, etc., 4. leadership ── united states., E840.5.P68A3 2012, 973.931092──dc23, 2012, )

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Bernie Clark., From the Gita to the Grail : exploring yoga stories & western myths, 2014

yana

pp.400-403

YANA means "vehicle"

The Sanskrit word YANA means "vehicle" and is often translated as "ferryboat." The metaphor worked well in ancient India, with its large river systems, seasonal floods and few bridges. Most journeys required traversing water at some point. The Buddha's teaching was the boat that carried you. The Jains also employed the imagery of their great teachers providing a ford, a way to cross the water. But, as we have found with Sanskrit words, there are many possible definitions we would choose. Yana can also mean "a course, a device, a machine, an instrument, a technique, a method, or a means."3 Skillful means [tactic], also known in Sanskritas UPAYA, is the technique that helps the student achieve the goal. In Buddhism we are offered the choice of two kinds of yana or means: the small ferryboat, known as Hinayana, and the larger boat known as Mahayana.

The Hinayana is the small raft that can ferry only one person across to the yonder shore, but the Mahayana (maha means "great") can take a vast number of people and comes with a captain of the ship to guide you, the captain being the bodhisattav. In a one-person raft, you are on your own. Hinayana is a derogatory term; it was coined by the followers of the Mahayana schools. Hinayana literally means "the defective or inferior way." You can see a superior attitude being displayed here, a looking down the nose at the earliest practices. Followers of the earliest Buddhist doctrine called their practice Theravada: the way of the elders, and they feel that they know and follow the original teaching. Followers of Mahayana feel that the Buddha held back his true teaching and offered only the inferior teaching to the early monks, because they would not understand the true doctrine, which was not widely available until long after his departure.

The differences in the two yanas are worthy of investigation: With the rise of Mahayana, a philosophy of ... . <skip the rest of the paragraph>

There are two approaches being offered here: You can work on your own to cross the water to the shore of nirvana, or you can trust someone else to carry you across. In India these are known as the way of the monkey and the way of the kitten: A baby monkey has to cling tightly to his mother as she moves through the trees, or it will fall; a kitten is picked up by the mother and carried by the scruff of the neck and has no choice in the matter. In Japan these two ways are known as JIRIKI, which means "one's own power" and TARIKI or "other power." To rely upon bodhisattva to save you is tariki; however, to save yourself through your own effort is jiriki. Theravada Buddhism is jiriki, the way of the monkey. Mahayana Buddhism is tariki, the way of the kitten.5 (Buddhism; The Religion of of No-Religion by Alan Watts, (Tuttle Publishing), 1999, pages 68-69.)

baby monkey => A baby monkey has to cling tightly to his mother as she moves through the trees, or it will fall;

=> Japan JIRIKI "one's own power"

=> to save yourself through your own effort

=> Theravada Buddhism

=> the way of the monkey.

baby cat (kitten) => a kitten is picked up by the mother and carried by the scruff of the neck and has no choice in the matter.

=> Japan TARIKI or "other power."

=> To rely upon bodhisattva to save you

=> Mahayana Buddhism

=> the way of the kitten.

This divide is also found in Western thought. A British (or perhaps Celtic) monk named Pelagius in the 4th century C.E. taught that man could achieve heaven without divine intervention, through his own efforts. Saint Augustine disagreed and taught that only through divine grace could one be saved. Augustine's view prevailed, and Pelagius' doctrine was declared a heresy. We in the West still have not worked this out: In politics we have extreme conservatives that believe every man should fend for himself and not rely upon the state for assistance (the way of the monkey or jiriki), while liberals believe that state intervention is necessary to help those who cannot help themselves (the way of the kitten or tariki). Strangely, when the field of debate is switched from politics and economics to religion, the positions are reversed: Conservatives believe that only through God's grace can we be saved and individual effort is not enough, which is the view of Saint Augustine; and of Saint Paul, who taught that God gave us the 10 Commandments knowing we couldn't possibly live up to them, and only by His grace can we be freed from sin.6 Liberals in the spiritual traditions, on the other hand, believe that following or trusting in someone else to set you free is not the way to go; it is your journey, and you succeed or fail through your own efforts.

Which is the map that you follow? Is it by your own power that you achieve your desired goals or is it only, at the end of the day, by the grace of a greater power that you are successful? Do you follow this model consistently, or like the conservative and liberals above, do you change your view depending upon circumstance?

(From the Gita to the Grail : exploring yoga stories & western myths,

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Thich Nhat Hanh, The miracle of mindfulness : an introduction to the practice of meditation., translated by Mobi Ho, [1975, 1976]

pp.22─23

Suppose there is a towering wall from the top of which one can see vast distances ── but there is no apparent means to climb it, only a thin piece of thread hanging over the top and coming down both sides. A clever person will tie a thicker string onto one end of the thread, walk over to the other side of the wall, then pull on the thread bringing the string to the other side. Then he [or she or it or they] will tie the end of the string to a strong rope and pull the rope over. When the rope has reached the bottom of one side and is secured on the other side, the wall can be easily scaled.

Our breath is such a fragile piece of thread. But once we know how to use it, it can become a wondrous tool to help us surmount situations which would otherwise seem hopeless.

‘’•─“”

p.46

five aggregates

1. bodily and physical forms

2. feelings

3. perceptions

4. mental functionings

5. consciousness

p.47

You are conscious of the presence of bodily form, feeling, perception, mental functionings, and consciousness. You observe these “objects” until you see that each of them has intimate connection with the world outside yourself: if the world did not exist then the assembly of the five aggregates could not exist either.

Consider the example of a table. The table's existence is possible due to the existence of things which might call “the non-table world”: the forest where the wood grew and was cut, the carpenter, the iron ore which became the nails and screws, and countless other things which have relation to the table, the parents and ancestors of the carpenters, the sun and rain which made it possible for the trees to grow.

If you grasp the table's reality then you see that in the table itself are present all those things which we normally think of as the non-table world. If you took away any of those non-table elements and returned them to their sources ── the nails back to the iron ore, the wood to the forest, the carpenter to his parents ── the table would no longer exist.

‘’•─“”

(The miracle of mindfulness./ Thích Nhāt Hanh., translation of Phép la cua su tinh thuc., isbn 978-0-8070-1239-0 (pbk.), 1. meditation (buddhism)

2. buddhist meditations., BQ5618.V5N4813 1987, 294.3'433, 87-42582,

artwork copyright by Vo-Dinh Mai, beacon press, boston, )

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Sebastian Mallaby., The Man Who Knew: the life and times of Alan Greenspan,

2016

p.666

“Where did you make a mistake?” he insisted.

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and otheir equity in the firms”, Greenspan offered.

p.666

“So the problem here is something which looked to be a very solid edifice ... did break down. And I think that, as I said, shocked me.”

“Do you have any personal responsibility for the financial crisis?” Waxman asked.

pp.666-667

Greenspan set off on a new tack, seeking to put the record straight about his dealing with Edward Gramlich. He still spoke in the same mesmerizing way: he was dense, circuitous, and difficult to follow; yet somehow his listeners were encouraged to believe that the difficulty was their fault.

p.667

Five, ten, or fifteen years earlier, the magic of his manner might have worked ── Waxman himself had fallen under Greenspan's spell occasionally.

pp.667-668

p.667

“Dr. Greenspan, I am going to interrupt you”, the congressman broke in. “You had an ideology. You had a belief.” Then he quoted Greenspan's own admission on this score. “I do have an ideology”, Greenspan had once said. “My judgment is that free, competitive markets are by far the unrivaled way to organize economies. We have tried regulation, none meaningfully worked.”

“That was your quote”, Waxman delared fiercely. “You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others. And now our whole economy is paying the price. Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?”

p.667

an exaggeration of the Fed's power to enforce lending standards at nonbanks;

an exaggeration of the force with which Edward Gramlich had spoken; and

an exaggeration of the link between reckless mortgage lending and the collapse of leveraged finance. But his question was a master stroke.

p.667

Ideology, Greenspan explained earnestly, was “a conceptual framework ... [governing] ... the way people deal with reality

“Everyone has one”, Greenspan continued. “You have to. To exist, you need an ideology.

“The question is, whether is it accurate or not. What I am saying to you is, yes, I found a flaw, I don't know how significant or permanent it is, but I have been very distressed by that fact.”

p.668

It was an unremarkable observation. Of course, all ideologies had flaws; the fact that Greenspan had acknowledged his went only to show his pragmatism. By the same token, the opposite ideology had flaws.

p.668

How often had regulation failed?

Would proreguation ideologues match Greenspan's honesty in acknowledging the fissures in their framework?

In Greenspan's understanding, the statement that his ideology was flawed was almost a statement of the obvious.

Having offered his token philosophic concession, Greenspan wanted to return to the matter of Edward Gramlich.

p.668

“But if I may, may I just finish an answer to the question ──” Greenspan began.

“You found a flaw?” Waxman interrupted.

“A flaw, a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak”, Greenspan confirmed. He was impatient to move on to his next argument.

“In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working?” Waxman said.

p.668

“Precisely”, Greenspan acknowledged. “That's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I had been going for forty years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptional well.”44

p.754 notes

28. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, “The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report: The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States” (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, January 2011), 150-53, http://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-reports/fcic_final_report_full.pdf.

(The Man Who Knew: the life and times of Alan Greenspan / Sebastian Mallaby. New York: Penguin Press, 2016., “A council on foreign relations book.”, subjects: Greenspan, Alan, 1926─ | Economists──united states──biography. | government economists──united states──biography.| monetary policy ── united states. | board of governors of the federal resere system (u.s.), HB119.G74 M35 2016 (print), HB119.G74 (ebook), 332.1/1092 [B]──dc23, https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017300, 2016, )

____________________________________

Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace, creativity, inc., 2014 [ ]

p.183

When we are making a movie, the movie doesn't exist yet. We are not uncovering it or discovering it; it's not as if it resides somewhere and is just waiting to be found. There is no movie. We are making decisions, one by one, to create it. In a fundamental way, the movie is hidden from us. (I refer to this concept the “Unmade Future,” and I will devote a subsequent chapter to the central role it plays in creativity.)

(creativity, inc. : overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration / Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace., 1. creativity ability in business2. corporate culture, 3. organizational effectiveness, 4. pixar (firm), © 2014 by Edwin Catmull, 658.4071 Catmull, )

____________________________________

In Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider (1915-1990)

August 7, 1990

The Computer as a Communication Device

J. C. R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor

pp.22-23

Communication: a comparison of models

To understand how and why the computer can have such an effect on communication, we must examine the idea of modeling-in a computer with the aid of a computer. For modeling, we believe, is basic and central to communication. Any communication between people about the same thing is a common revelatory experience about informational models of that thing. Each model is a conceptual structure of abstractions formulated initially in the mind of one of the persons who would communicate, and if the concepts in the mind of one would-be communicator are very different from those in the mind of another, there is no common model and no communication.

By far the most numerous, most sophisticated, and most important models are those that reside in men's minds. In richness, plasticity, facility, and economy, the mental model has no peer, but in other respects, it has shortcomings. It will not stand still for careful study. It cannot be made to repeat a run. No one knows just how it works. It serves its owner's hopes more faithfully than it serves reason. It has access only to the information stored in one man's head. It can be observed and manipulated only by one person.

Society rightly distrusts the modeling done by a single mind. Society demands consensus, agreement, at least majority. Fundamentally, this amounts to the requirement that individuals models be compared and brought into some degree of accord. The requirement is for communication, which we now define concisely as “cooperative modeling” ── cooperation in the construction, maintenance, and the use of a model.

How can we be sure that we are modeling cooperatively, that we are communicating, unless we can compare models?

When people communicate face to face, they externalize their models so they can be sure they are talking about the same thing. Even such a simple externalized model as a flow diagram or an outline-because it can be seen by all the communicators ── serves as a focus for discussion. It changes the nature of communication: When communicators have no such common framework, they merely make speeches at each other; but when they have a manipulable model before them, they utter a few words, point, sketch, nod, or object.

Acknowledgements

Evan Herbert edited the article and acted as intermediary during its writing between Licklider in Boston and Taylor in Washington.

Roland B. Wilson drew the cartoons to accompany the original article.

____________________________________

M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine, 2001 [ ]

p.181

Lick

Now, Lick's eyes had always taken on a particular shine when he talked about models. He was a great one for sketching things on the back of an envelope, for example, and a sketch was a kind of model.

p.181

dynamic modeling

...

(Newton's law of gravity, to take a famous instance, can be used to model the fall of an apple, the orbit of the moon, or even the ebb and flow of the tides.)

...

in love with scale models all his life.

p.182

However, as Lick noted in another paper29 from the 1960s, there are models, and then there are models: “Ordinary mathematical models are static models. They are representations in symbols, usually written in pencil or ink on paper. They do not behave in any way. They do not ‘solve themselves’. For any transformation to be made, for any solution to be achieved, information contained in the model must be read out of the static form and processed in some active processor, such as a mathematician's brain or a computering machine. A dynamic model, one the other hand, exists in its static form only while it is inactive. The dynamic model can be set into action, by one means or another, and when it is active, it does exhibit behavior and does ‘solve itself’.”

p.183

Just as in music, drama, dance, or any other performing art, Lick declared, “information is a dynamic, living things, no properly to be confined (though we have long been forced to confine it thus) within the passive pages of a printed document. As soon as information is freed from documental bounds and allowed to take on the form of process, the complexity (as distinguished from the mere amount) of knowledge makes itself evident.”32

p.183

After all, as Lick and his co-author Robert W. Taylor would write in a 1968 article,31 “By far the most numerous, most sophisticated, and most important models are those that reside in men's minds. In richness, plasticity, facility, and economy, the mental model has no peer.”

p.183

Included among those mental models are images recalled from memory, expectations about the probable course of events, fantasies of what might be, perceptions of other people's motives, unspoken assumptions about human nature, hopes, dreams, fears, paradigms--essentially all conscious thought.

p.183

Of course, Lick and Taylor would continue, “[the mental model] has shortcomings. It will not stand still for careful study. It cannot be made to repeat a run. No one knows just how it works. It serves its owner's hopes more faithfully than it serves reason. It has access only to the information stored in one man's head. It can be observed and manipulated only by one person.” But if you could join mental models to computer models, Lick reasoned, and if you could get the two of them into just the right kind of symbiotic relationship, then you could overcome every one of those limitations.

p.183

First and most obviously, he said, the computer would greatly enhance our ability to handle complexity.

p.183

Partly this is because computers are so good at processing vast quantities of data, but much more important, according to Lick, is their potential to give us a fundamentally new way of representing knowledge.

p.184

... a model would no longer be confined to what was in a single head, but could be displayed on many screens at once, where it could be observed and manipulated by many people.

p.184

As Lick wrote in the article with Taylor, “Modeling, we believe, is basic and central to communication .... If the concepts in the mind of one would-be communicator are very different from those in the mind of another, there is no common model and no communication.”

p.184

Conversely, he and Taylor continued, “[a successful communication] we now define concisely as ‘cooperative modeling’--cooperation in the construction, maintenance, and use of a model. [Indeed], when people communicate face to face, they externalize their models so they can be sure they are talking about the same thing. Even such a simple externalized model as a flow diagram or an outline--because it can be seen by all the communicators--serves as a focus for discussion. It changes th nature of communication: When communicators have no such common framework, they merely make speeches AT each other; but when they have a manipulable model before them, they utter a few words, point, sketch, nod, or object.”

p.185

MIT Press

... 1965 as Libraries of the Future, Lick's only book.

p.186

The same could be said of the final two phases of the search. The “assimilation” phase is when you need but still have to get past “the brain-desk barrier”. That is, you have to recognize the significance of what you're reading and seeing. You have to extract key ideas--the real knowledge--from the welter of details. And you have to fit the pieces into a larger whole: your emerging mental model of the new knowledge. Once you've done that, of course, you still have to face the “application” phase, where you try to figure out how you can make use of what you've learned in order to address the task at hand. Only then can you say that your search is truly complete, said Lick. Both of these last two phases are highly nontrivial, obviously, and both could presumably be greatly enhanced by computers. But that, in turn, would require sophisticated symbiosis between computer models and the mental models we build in our heads--which leads right back to the critical need for good modeling languages.

(Waldrop, M. Mitchell.; The dream machine : J. C. R. Licklider and the revolution that made computing personal / M. Mitchell Waldrop., 1. Licklider, J. C. R., 2. microcomputers--history, 2001, )

____________________________________

W. Edwards Deming., The essential Deming : leadership principles from the father of quality, 2013

Morris H. Hansen, died on 9th October 1990, at the age of 79.

pp.181─184

As an example of a leader, I will take Morris H. Hansen, he was eleven years younger than I. He died on the 9th of October, 1990, at the age of 79. He was a leader. A leader in the sense of the word. Out in front. How did it happen. The country in the 1930s was in a deep depression. Set off by the crash of the stock market, 1929, the country was in a deep depression. I mean it was a humdinger. Unemployment in the 1930s was pitiful. Though no definition of unemployment and employment had yet been formulated, the term used was gainful worker. One was a gainful worker if he earned money. Meanwhile, each of a number of experts made his own estimate of the number of people in the country not gainfully employed. These estimates were so wild, so far apart, that they were all discarded. Congress, frustrated with these wild estimates, ordered a census of people not gainfully employed. It sounded very simple, nothing to it. The Post Office department had a complete list of postal routes. And the post office boxes where there is no route. It will all be very simple, so they thought. Simply have the postal carriers and post masters make estimates, get figures for the number of people of their routes, and the number not gainfully employed. Total number of people on the route, and the number not gainfully employed. All very simple. It was a very difficult thing to do. The FERA, Federal emergency relief Administration, you've forgotten about it, let us hope, was charged with the responsibility to carry this out, carry out this census. They recruited Mr. John B. Biggers, then President of Libby-owens-ford glass company, a great man he was. He took charge, and the study became the Biggers study. Amnd it was a complete flop. Complete flop. Was too big a job, could not be done, not that way.

It so happened that Morris Hansen, then at age twenty-four (24), in the year 1924. He had just gotten out of college, the University of Wyoming, he studied under Professor Forrest Hall. He was a student, getting his master's degree at American university in Washington. He had some knowledge of the theory of probability and how to make it work and knowledge of errors in surveys. He continued a plan for selection of 52 postal routes. Those 52 postal routes were selected by random numbers, and they list of thousands of postal routes. And those 52 postal routes would be worked very thoroughly, very carefully. The Biggers study was afflicted with too many errors, omissions and wrong responses. The mail carrier's job was mail, not collection of information. Whereas Morris Hansen could explain his plan. Fifty-two postal routes selected by random numbers. Why not 53? Fifty-three would be too big a number. The workload would be too great. Fifty-one would not provide the precision required. I make it sound very critical, it's actually so critical. But 52 was the right number. It would provide the precision required.

<skip the first sentence of the paragraph> He had in his head some theory of probability along with the practical sense for design of a sample of postal routes to acquire the necessary information. Further, he could explain his plan.

He could not by himself make it happen. He convinced enough men in power that were willing and able to understand his theory. Those men in power were Dr. Samuel Stouffer, who was Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, a great man. Philip M. Hauser, his student. And Frederick F. Stephan, his student. Dr. Stouffer and those two students, Philip Hauser and Frederick Stephan, could under stand Morris Hansen. They had knowledge and could understand his theory. Morris came through with a practical plan ── simple, small enough ── and he reached the ears of these men in power. They were willing to listen, eager to listen. He made it happen. His study was carried out and those figures were regarded as useful and sufficiently reliable. And that was the beginning of probability sampling in this country.

<skip the first sentence of the paragraph> And now again, what did it take? Knowledge, a practical plan, simple, one he could explain to other people. And he reached the ears of men in power ── he made it happen. I receive several letters every week from people that are frustrated. Some from General Motors, some from your competitors. Some from other kinds of industries, not automotive at all. From people that have wonderful plans. Just wonderful plans. Only there's one little trouble ── it's so wonderful I cannot understand it. Too complicated. I mean, not explained so that I cannot understand it. And the people are frustrated because nobody will listen. But the trouble is their plan is not simple enough, or they don't explain it in the words that other people can understand. You may have a brilliant idea in your head but if you can't tell somebody about it, it just lodges there ── it never gets out of your head. The ability to construct a practical plan and explain it is pretty necessary. The frustration in this country is touching, appalling. The people that mean well have brilliant ideas, yet they can get no action. I'm afraid the main trouble is that they don't explain their plans in a way that other people can understand.

Statistical methods took hold. The Works progress Administration commenced a quarterly survey of unemployment, later became a monthly survey of unemployment. We still have it. You see the figures on unemployment announced every month.

From a presentation at Ford motor corporation, 1992.

p.184

Had uncanny ability to recognize ability in other people, and to put them to work at it.

Again, what's the requirement? Knowledge. And a plan that will work, a practical plan. Ability to explain the plan in terms other people can understand and somehow reach the earsof people in power. You may say, well I cannot reach the ears of people in power. Well you can, if you can write, if you can write a memorandum, a plan on half a page of paper. Simple enough so your boss can understand it. Ask him to give it to his boss and so on. There are ways. But if you describe a plan in complicated terms that nobody can understand, it dies right there. I'm afraid that's the trouble with a lot of plans that I see.

From a presentation at Ford motor corporation, 1992.

Joyce Nilsson Orsini, PhD, is an associate professor of management systems at Fordham university, the director of Fordham's Deming scholars MBA program, and president of the W. Edwards Deming institute.

(The essential Deming : leadership principles from the father of quality / by W. Edwards Deming., 1. total quality management., 2. leadership.,

3. industrial management., HD62.15.D459 2013, 658.4'092--dc23, edited by Joyce Nilsson Orsini, Ph.D., [2013])

____________________________________

to change the world, change the metaphor.

Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell

“If you want to change the world, change the metaphor. Change the story.”

—— Joseph Campbell

53:22

A Conversation with Bill Moyers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ8tlnrHVFw

https://youtu.be/MJ8tlnrHVFw?t=3069

Twin Cities PBS

Published on Aug 31, 2017

... ... ...

51:09 I called him at his home in Hawaii and I

51:11 said, “Joe, I didn't ask you about God.

51:13 Would you come to New York? Let's do one

51:15 more show”, so he did, but when I was

51:17 leaving, when I was leaving Skywalker

51:21 Ranch for the last time, he walked with

51:23 me out to our car, and he said, “Are you going

51:26 stay in this?”, meaning you know, I not

51:28 been certain about journalism, not been

51:31 fixed in my trajectory, “Are you going to

51:35 stay in this work?” and I said, “Yes, I think so”

51:39 and he said, “Well, good!”, he said, “If you

51:41 want to change the world, change the

51:45 metaphor. Change the story.”

https://www.artsmedicineforhopeandhealing.com/poetry-baby-blog/the-power-of-myth-by-joseph-campbell-with-bill-moyers

____________________________________

Matthew Kelly, Rediscover catholictism, [2010]

Rediscover catholictism: a spiritual guide to living with passion & purpose, 2010

pp.130─131

To whom does the future belong? What will our society be like 20, 50, or 100 years from today?

The most powerful and influential position in any society is that of the story teller. Story tellers are not just the mythical cultural icon who dress up on Thursday afternoons and read stories to your children in local libraries and bookstores. Musicians are story tellers. Teachers, preachers, nurses, lawyers, priests, scientists, salespeople, artists, mothers, fathers, poets, philosophers, brothers, sisters, babysitters, grandparents ... we are all storytellers.

The future belongs to the storytellers and it belongs to us. What will it be like? Well, that depends very much on the stories we tell, the stories we listen to, and the stories we live.

Stories have a remarkable ability to cut through the clutter and confusion and bring clarity to our hearts and minds. Stories remind us of our hopes, values, and dreams. They sneak beyond the barriers of our prejudices to soften our hearts to receive the truth. Great periods in history emerge when great stories are told and lived. Stories are history that form the future; they are prophecies set in the past.

Never underestimate the importance of stories. They play a crucial role in the life of a person and in the life of a society. They are as essential as the air we breathe and the water we drink. Stories captivate our imaginations, enchant our minds, and empower our spirits. They introduce us to whom we are and who are capable of beings. Stories change our lives.

If you wish to poison a nation, poison the stories that nation listens to. If you wish to win people over to your team or to your point of view, do not go to war or argue with them ── tell them a story.

All great leaders understand the persuasive and inspirational power of stories. When did you last hear a great speech that didn't contain a story?

A story can do anything: win a war, lose a war, heal the sick, encourage the discouraged, comfort the oppressed, inspire a revolution, transform an enemy into a friend, elevate the consciousness of the people, build empires, inspire love, even reshape the spiritual temperament of a whole age.

65 per cent of the Gospels are stories, or parables. 100 per cent of the Gospels is the story of Jesus Christ ── and it is the most influenctial story over told.

The future belongs to the story tellers, and we are the story tellers. What type of stories are we telling? Because I can promise you with absolute certitude that the stories we tell today are forming the future.

‘’•─“”

____________________________________

Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace, creativity, inc., 2014 [ ]

p.177

The problem is, the phrase is dead wrong. Hindsight is not 20-20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future. While we know more about a past event than a future one, our understanding of the factors that shaped it is severely limited. Not only that, because we THINK we see what happened clearly--hindsight being 20-20 and all--we often aren't open to knowing more. ...[...]... The past should be our teacher, not our master.

p.178

We build our story--our model of the past--as best we can. We may seek our other people's memories and examine our own limited records to come up with a better model. Even then, it is still only a model--not reality.

____________________________________

write, build, grow (mmm)

pp.200-201

Incremental development--grow, not build, software.

I still remember the jolt I felt in 1958 when I first heard a friend talk about BUILDING a program, as opposed to WRITING one. In a flash he broadened my whole view of the software process. The metaphor shift was powerful, and accurate. Today we understand how like other building processes the construction of software is, and we freely use other elements of the metaphor, such as specification, assembly of components, and scaffolding.

The building metaphor has outlived its usefulness. It is time to change again. If, as I believe, the conceptual structures we construct today are too complicated to be accurately specified in advance, and too complex to be built faultlessly, then we must take a radically different approach.

Let us turn to nature and study complexity in living things, instead of just the dead work of man. Here we find constructs whose complexities thrill us with awe. The brain alone is intricate beyond mapping, powerful beyond imitation, rich in diversity, self-protecting, and self-renewing. The secret is that it is grown, not built.

[[ built it twice; built it five to six times; grow it twice; grow it five to six times; for things (product and or services) that has not been done before, and that has been done before, but different enough in magnitude from the previous product iteration that it is new; differences and novelty arouse curiosity; from numerous case studies, examples, and stories, there is no substitute for prototyping. ]]

[[ what is product iteration? ]]

____________________________________

• development is the process whereby this information comes to exist

Richard C. Francis., Epigenetics : the ultimate mystery of inheritance, 2011

p.126

These recipe/program metaphors are attractive because they connect the basic intuitions common to all versions of preformationism to human artifacts with which we are all familiar, from cakes to graduation ceremonies.11 Whatever their intuitive appeal, these metaphors cannot withstand even the most cursory scrutiny. You couldn't cook up a single cell, much less a human being, given the instructions in the genetic recipe. Much of what you need to know lies elsewhere.

p.126

More to the epigenesist point, most of the information in the recipe that goes into making you is not there from the outset. Rather, development is the process whereby this information comes to exist.12 The recipe is written during development, not prior to development.

(Epigenetics : the ultimate mystery of inheritance / Richard C. Francis. ── 1st ed., 1. genetic regulation., 2. epigenesis., 3. adaptation (biology), QH450.F73 2011, 572.8'65──dc22, 2011, )

____________________________________

• it is not necessary for the genes to carry all the information regarding the adult structure, but it suffices for the genes to carry a set of rules to generate the information (Magoroh Maruyama, p.308)

• what are the set of rules needed to generate the information and other set of rules?

George P. Richardson, Feedback thought in social science and systems theory, 1991 [ ]

p.202

Biologists have been puzzled by the fact that the amount of information stored in the genes is much smaller than the amount of information needed to describe the structure of the adult individual. The puzzle is now solved by noticing that it is not necessary for the genes to carry all the information regarding the adult structure, but it suffices for the genes to carry a set of rules to generate the information (Magoroh Maruyama, p.308)

(Feedback thought in social science and systems theory / George P. Richardson (1991), 1. social science--methodology., 2. feedback control systems., p.202)

Maruyama, Magoroth (1963). The Second Cybernetics: Deviation-Amplifying Mutual Causal Processes. American Scientist 51: 164-179. Reprinted in Buckley (1968), pp. 304-316.

-- (1974). Paradigms and Communication. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 6: 3-32.

____________________________________

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness, 2nd edition, paperback, 2004[ ]

[p.262]

This brings to mind Rabbi Hillel's story, when he was asked by someone particularly lazy if Hillel could teach him the Torah while the student was standing on one leg. Rabbi Hillel's genius is that he did not SUMMARIZE; instead, he provided the core generator of the idea, the axiomatic framework, which I paraphase as follows: DON'T DO TO OTHERS WHAT YOU DON'T WANT THEM TO DO TO YOU; THE REST IS JUST COMMENTARY.

It took me an entire lifetime to find out what my generator is. It is: WE FAVOR THE VISIBLE, THE EMBEDDED, THE PERSONAL, THE NARRATED, AND THE TANGIBLE; WE SCORN THE ABSTRACT. Everything good (aesthetics, ethics) and wrong (Fooled by Randomness) with us seems to flow from it.

(Taleb, Nassim (2004)., Fooled by Randomness, 2nd edition, paperback)

(Fooled by Randomness: the hidden role of chance in life and in the markets / Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 1. investments, 2. chance, 3. random variables, 123.3 Taleb, p.262)

____________________________________

“the never-ending challenge” by H. G. Rickover

metals engineering quarterly

february, 1963

pp.1-6

Progress ── like freedom ── is desired by nearly all men, but not all understand that both come at a cost. Whenever society advanced ─ be it in culture and education or science and technology ─ there is a rise in the requirements man must meet to function successfully. The price of progress is acceptance of these more exacting standards of performance and relinquishment of familiar habits and conventions rendered obsolete because they no longer meet the new standards.

To move but one rung up the ladder of civilization man must surpass himself.

The simple life comes “”naturally“”. The civilized life compels effort.

In any advancing society some elements will accept the advantages of life at a higher plateau yet ignore its obligations. This is readily seen when backward people seek to modernize their society. Sociologists call it a “culture lag”. something akin to culture lag exists even in highly developed countries such as the united states. And, because all parts of a modern society are interdependent, failure to meet rising standards in any sector becomes a brake on general progress and harms society as a whole.

... ... ...

... ... ...

Poor workmanship shows up glaringly in new technology such as nuclear power, missiles, satellites, but it is to be found everywhere, and everywhere it raises cost and causes delay.

In all the cases I have cited the chief responsibility for unsatisfactory delivery and performance rests with industry management. It is the management's business to establish proper quality control and to hire and train inspection and quality control personnel. Until recently many companies in our program had neither a formal quality control procedure nor a quality control organization. companies that did have such an organization often had it set up in such a way that the man in charge reported to the production manager. The production manager was thus

p.6

placed in a position of checking and reporting on his own work ── a completely unacceptable state of affairs, on the face of it. Through the efforts of the naval reactors program, especially through our quality control audit teams, significant advances have been made. But we have only scratched the surface.

I assure you i am not exaggerating the situation; in fact, i have understated it. For every case i have given, i could cite a dozen more. The cost in time and money because of industry's failure to meet contractual specifications is staggering. Worse, with this time and with this money we could have developed improved nuclear power plants and produced many more of them. It is difficult for me to understand why management does not face up to its failure and its responsibility in this respect. Since contracts are sought for, they must be profitable. Despite talk of “the dead hand of government”, it is public money that has paid for all major technological advances made in the past two decades; and public agencies and officials have taken the lead in getting most developments started. Surely industry has as great a stake as every citizen in helping our nation move forward technologically. Industry can best do this by meeting the rising standards of new technologies when it supplies material and equipment.

I only wish i could tell you that the somber situation i have described no longer exists; that our efforts over the past 15 years have been successful in eliminating these problems. But i can't. As the naval reactor program grows in scope and more companies engage in manufacturing components for it, our difficulties with conventional components multiply; they get worse rather than better. I have no sweeping solution for this never-ending problem, but several things can be done:

1. More effective management and engineering attention should be given to the routine and conventional aspects of our technology. Nothing must ever be taken for granted. Management must get into the details of problems, look at hardware first hand, analyze the cause of trouble by personal investigation, and take prompt action to prevent recurrence. Management must also remember that things once corrected do not stay corrected. A credo of management ought to be that every human endeavor has a “half-life”.

2. Management and engineers must not conclude that their job is over once drawings have been completed and the first component successfully built and tested to these drawings. This is far from the whole sotry. To be satisfactory a component not only must perform its function, it must do so reliably and consistently. This requires that it be easy to manufacture, inspect and maintain in the field ── by personnel of average skills. This invariably demands simplicity of design, and usually requires redesign of the first model. I don't believe this concept of what makes a good design is well understood.

3. Industry must take responsibility for developing better understanding of many basic processes in use today. Technical societies such as yours can play an important part here. One way of reaching better understanding is by methodically investigating every problem so as to determine its cause. Customers must inform manufacturers of all deficiencies they discover in equipment. This will help manufacturers improve production performance. In the naval reactors program we make every defect or failure to meet specifications, no matter how small, the subject of a special report from the ship or shipyard. This is followed in detail until corrective action has been taken and all concerned are advised of the problem and also of its remedy.

4. Specifications and standards must be thoroughly understood, respected, and enforced by manufacturers as well as by customers. It should be of concern to us that specifications are normally written by the manufacturers and therefore usually represent the lowest standard of engineering to which all manufacturers are willing to agree. This should be changed. Specifications and standards should be set by the customer with manufacturers acting only in a consulting capacity. This is another area in which technical societies could play an important part. They ought to see to it that industry develops comprehensive specification requirements are consistently and rigorously enforced. Technical societies must carefully guard against becoming “kept” organizations.

5. Quality control must be recognized as an essential tool to enable management to meet today's technological imperatives. Customers must reject deficient equipment and insist that manufacturers meet their commitments. As long as manufacturers find that defective equipment is accepted it is difficult, if not impossible, to get them to improve ── to raise theirs plateau of engineering. One of the best ways you can help raise the level of technical excellence of american industry is by insisting, as I have, on high standards of design, workmanship and quality control.

I hope what I have said will not be dismissed as “unconstructive criticism” or petulant grumbling about difficulties that “ought to be expected”. Robert Hutchins has warned that “an uncriticized society will not endure.” The point I want to make is that, at the levels of technology to which we must rise, the kind of problems we in the naval reactors group have had with conventional components of nuclear plants ought not to be “expected”. They reveal human inadequacies that must be overcome if this nation is to be competitive with its Russian challenger and with the growing power of the European common market.

For the first time in our history we face competition without benefit of the special advantages we enjoyed in the past; geographic isolation; enormously greater per capita wealth in land and mineral resources; the largest internal market. From now on we must excel without these advantages.

What I have tried today is to give you an inkling of the factors that hinder progress in reactor technology and in other new engineering development projects as well. During the remainder of this 44th annual national metals congress you will be hearing about new advances in many fields, particularly in metallury. But much of the effort of the huge sums we are spending to achieve these advances will be wasted if problems in conventional and routine areas prevent us from making full use of these advances. It is a common place of history that great undertakings often founder [sp? flounder] because of negligence in some small detail, or because of some minor, obvious and easily corrected mistake.

I submit we must progress, and we must pay the price of progress. We must accept the inexorably rising standards of technology and we must relinquish comfortable routines and practices rendered obsolete because they no longer meet the new standards.

This is our never-ending challenge.

metals engineering quarterly

february, 1963

Rickover's speech at the National Metal Congress

new york, 1962, “the never-ending challenge”

source:

https://www.slideshare.net/hammankd/neverendingchallengeasm

(access 2022-09-01, website up)

Theodore Rockwell., The rickover efffect : how one man made a difference / 1992,

(The rickover efffect : how one man made a difference / Theodore Rockwell., 1. rickover, hyman george., 2. nuclear submarines ── united states ── history.

3. admirals ── united states ── biography., 4. united states., navy──biography, V63.R54R63 1992, 359.3'2574'092--dc20, united states naval institute, Annapolis, Maryland, 1992 )

____________________________________

Frankor Minirth, Paul Meier, Stephen Arterburn, The complete life encyclopedia : a Minirth Meier new life family resource, 1995

pp.389-390

p.389

Deal with your parents' incomplete passages.

Deal with your parents' incomplete passages. As we were growing up in our parents' home, we absorbed attitudes and impressions about marriage and husband-wife roles from their example. We assume that our attitudes about marriage (which largely reflect the attitudes of our parents) are “normal” because those attitudes are the only ones we've ever known. Suddenly, we are thrown into a sink-or-swim situation with another person from another family background with a whole different set of attitudes that he or she thinks are “normal” but that we regard as “weird”.

p.389-390

It's time to reconsider, and to take a hard look at the attitudes and impressions we have absorbed by osmosis from our families of origin.

p.390

What passages or task did our parents fail to complete? Did they fail to overcome the tendency to jockey for control? Did they fail to learn how to make responsible choices? Did they fail to maintain individual identities? Fail to practice forgiveness? Unless you become consciously aware of these passages in your parents' life where they got stuck or derailed, you are likely to repeat their pattern.

p.390

What self-defeating attitudes did you absorb your parents? “Men don't show emotion or say ‘I love you.’” “Women can't be trusted with money.” “Sex is a weapon in the battle of the sexes.” “Keep your man on a short leash; men can't be trusted.” Your parents' attitudes were probably never verbalized when you were growing up, but they were modeled, and you absorbed them unconsciously and uncritically. Now they have to be dug up like land mines, one by one, so that they can be defused. If you don't, they will continue to explode unexpectedly throughout your marriage, wounding both you and your spouse.

p.390

What's more, some of those land mines will still be lying around for your children to discover.

p.390

A key principle of this passage of marriage is [‘]All incomplete passages become unfinished business for the next generation.[’] If your parents left any unfinished business for you to deal with, then finish it now. Resolve these old issues in your present-day marriage, and make a commitment not to pass them on to your own children.

(The complete life encyclopedia : a Minirth Meier new life family resource / Frank Minirth, Paul Meier, Stephen Arterburn, 1. mental health ── religious aspects ── christianity ── encyclopedias., BT732.4.M55 1995, 613──dc20, )

____________________________________

How to stop worrying and start living

by Dale Carnegie

sixty first printing

pp.42─44

Nine suggestions on How to get the most out of this book

1. If you wish to get the most out of this book, there is one indispensable requirement, one essential infinitely more important than any rules or technique. Unless you have this one fundamental requisite a thousand rules on how to study will avail little. And if you do have this cardinal endowment, then you can achieve wonders without reading any suggestions for getting the most out of a book.

What is this magic requirement? Just this: a deep, driving desire to learn, a vigorous determination to stop worrying and start living.

How can you develop such an urge? By constantly reminding yourself of how important these principles are to you. Picture to yourself how their mastery will aid you in living a richer, happier life. Say to yourself over and over: “My peace of mind, my happiness, my health, and perhaps even my income will, in the long run, depend largely on applying the old, obvious, and eternal truths taught in this book.”

2. Read each chapter rapidly at first to get a bird's-eye view of it. You will probably be tempted then to rush on to the next one. But don't Unless you are reading merely for entertainment. But if you are reading because you want to stop worrying and start living, then go back and reread each chapter thoroughly. In the long run, this will mean saving time and getting results.

3. Stop frequently in your reading to think over what you are reading. Ask yourself just how and when you can apply each suggestion. That kind of reading will aid you far more than racing ahead like a whippet chasing a rabbit.

4. Read with a red crayon, pencil, or fountain pen in your hand; and when you come across a suggestion that you feel you can use, draw a line beside it. If it is a four-star suggestion, then underscore every sentence, or mark it with “XXXX”. Marking and underscoring a book make it more interesting, and far easier to review rapidly.

5. I know a man who had been office manager for a large insurance concern for fifteen years. He reads every month all the insurance contracts his company issues. Yes, he reads same contracts over month after month, year after year. Why? Because experience has taught him that is the only way he can keep their provisions clearly in mind.

I once spend almost two years writing a book on public speaking; and yet I find I have to keep going back over it from time to time in oder to remember what I wrote in my own book. The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing.

So, if you want to get a real, lasting benefit out of this book, don't imagine that skimming through it once will suffice. After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend a few hours reviewing it every month. Keep it on your desk in front of you every day. Glance through it often. Keep constantly impressing yourself with the rich possibilities for improvement that still lie in the offing. Remember that the use of these principles can be made habitual and unconscious only by a constant and vigorous campaign of review and application. There is no other way.

6. Berhard Shaw once remarked: “If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.” Shaw was right. Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. So, if you desire to master the principles you are studying in this book, do something about them. Apply these rules at every opportunity. If you don't, you will forget them quickly. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

You will probably find it difficult to apply these suggestions all the time. I know, because I wrote this book, and yet frequently I find it difficult to apply everything I have advocated here. So, as you read this book, remember that you are not merely trying to acquire information. You are attempting to form new habits. Ah yes, you are attempting a new way of life. That will require time and persistence and daily application.

So refer to these pages often. Regard this as a working handbook on conquering worry; and when you are confronted with some trying problem ─ don't get all stirred up. Don't do the natural thing, the impulsive thing. That is usually wrong. Instead, turn to these pages and review the paragraphs you have underscored. Then try these new ways and watch them achieve magic for you.

7. Offer your wife a quarter every time she catches you violating one of the principles advocated in this book. She will break you!

8. Please turn to pages 174 and 175 of this book and read how the Wall Street banker, H. P. Howell, and old Ben Franklin corrected their mistakes. Why don't you use the Howell and Franklin techniques to check up on your application of the principles discussed in this book? If you do, two things will result.

First, you will find yourself engaged in an educational process that is both intriguing and priceless.

Second, you will find that your ability to stop worrying and start living will grow and spread like a green bay tree.

9. Keep a diary ─ a diary in which you ought to record your triumphs in the application of these principles. Be specific. Give names, dates, results. Keeping such a record will inspire you to greater efforts; and how fascinating these entries will be when you chance upon them some evening, years from now!

‘’•─“”

In a Nutshell

Nine suggestions on how to get the most out of this book

1. Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of conquering worry.

2. Read each chapter twice before going on to the next one.

3. As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can apply each suggestion.

4. Underscore each important idea.

5. Review this book each month.

6. Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use this volume as a working handbook to help you solve your daily problems.

7. Make a lively game out of your learning by offering some friend a quarter every time he catches you violating one of these principles.

8. Check up each week on the progress you are making. Ask yourself what mistakes you have made, what improvement, what lessons you have learned for the future.

9. Keep a diary in the back of this book showing how and when you have applied these principles.

____________________________________

the bible, new American standard

from the American Standard Version (ASV) bible (1901)

new testament

Book of Matthew

Matthew 13, chapter 13

On that day Jesus went out of the house, and was sitting by the sea.

2 And great multitudes gathered to Him, so that He got inot a boat and sat down, and the whole multitude was standing on the beach.

3 And He spoke many things in them in parables, saying “Behold, the sower went out to sow;

4 and as the sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up.

5 “And others fell upon the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil.

6 “But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

7 “And others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out.

8 “And others fell on the good soil, and *yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.

9 “He who has ears, let him hear.”

10 And the disciplines came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”

11 And He answered and said to them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.

12 “For whoever has, to him shall more be given, and he shall have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.

13 “Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

14 “And in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says,

‘YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING,

BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND;

AND YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING,

BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVED;

15 FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE

HAS BECOME DULL,

AND WITH THEIR EARS THEY

SCARCELY HEAR,

AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR

EYES

LEST THEY SHOULD SEE WITH

THERE EYES,

AND HEAR WITH THEIR EARS,

AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR

HEART AND RETURN,

AND I SHOULD HEAR THEM.’

16 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.

17 “For truly I say to you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it; and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

18 “Hear then the parable of the sower.

19 “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road.

20 “And the one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word, and immediately receives it with joy;

21 yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away.

22 “And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

23 “And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who ineed bears fruit, and brings forth, some a hundredfold (100fold), some sixty (60), and some thirty (30).”

‘’•─“”

____________________________________

*******************

* Lord_of_Light *

*******************

LoL

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light#ONE

by Roger Zelazny

I have many names, and none of them matter.

Sam in a sermon to his followers.

Names are not important... To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?' So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, 'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.' Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it 'fire.'

"If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. 'As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality — the Nameless.

Sam to his followers.

I charge you — forget the names you hear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream. "Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless. They are fire, if you like.

Sam to his followers.

Occasionally, there may come a dreamer who is aware that he is dreaming. He may control something of the dream-stuff, bending it to his will, or he may awaken into greater self-knowledge. If he chooses the path of self-knowledge, his glory is great and he shall be for all ages like unto a star. If he chooses instead the way of the Tantras, combining Samsara and Nirvana, comprehending the world and continuing to live in it, this one is mighty among dreamers.

Sam to his followers.

To dwell within Samsara, however, is to be subject to the works of those who are mighty among dreamers. If they be mighty for good, it is a golden time. If they be mighty for ill, it is a time of darkness. The dream may turn to nightmare.

Sam to his followers.

This night the Lord of Illusion passed among you — Mara, mighty among dreamers — mighty for ill. He did come upon another who may work with the stuff of dreams in a different way. He did meet with Dharma, who may expel a dreamer from his dream. They did struggle, and the Lord Mara is no more.

Sam to his followers, regarding the battle they had witnessed between Mara and Yama.

To struggle against the dreamers who dream ugliness, be they men or gods, cannot but be the will of the Nameless. This struggle will also bear suffering, and so one's karmic burden will be lightened thereby, just as it would be by enduring the ugliness; but this suffering is productive of a higher end in the light of the eternal values of which the sages so often speak.

Sam to his followers.

"For a spur of the moment thing, you came up with a fairly engaging sermon."

"Thanks."

"Do you really believe what you preached?"

Sam laughed. "I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I'm a liar."

Yama and Sam

I just wanted to try another line on the audience. It is difficult to stir rebellion among those to whom all things are good. There is no room for evil in their minds, despite the fact that they suffer it constantly. The slave upon the rack who knows that he will be born again — perhaps as a fat merchant — if he suffers willingly — his outlook is not the same as that of a man with but one life to live. He can bear anything, knowing that great as his present pain may be, his future pleasure will rise higher. If such a one does not choose to believe in good or evil, perhaps then beauty and ugliness can be made to serve him as well. Only the names have been changed.

____________________________________

<------------------------------------------------------------------------>

____________________________________

*2 “This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.”

──From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

“This [copy & paste reference note] is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is [archive] with the understanding that the [researcher, investigator] is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.”

──From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher.

The W. Edwards Deming Institute. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C., section 107, some material is provided without permission from the copyright owner, only for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of federal copyright laws. These materials may not be distributed further, except for "fair use," without permission of the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

notice: Do not purchase this book with the hopes of curing cancer or any other chronic disease

We offer it for informative purposes to help cope with health situations and do not claim this book furnishes information as to an effective treatment or cure of the disease discussed ─ according to currently accepted medical opinion.

Although it is your right to adopt your own dietary and treating pattern, never the less suggestions offered in this book should not be applied to a specific individual except by his or her doctor who would be familiar with individual requirements and any possible complication. Never attempt a lengthy fast without competent professional supervision.

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