Grit and worry

"Perhaps a teacher should be like the grit that gets into the shell of an oyster, How does it fell for the oyster? An irritation? A pain? Whatever effect, the result may be a pearl, beautiful or misshapen, but a precious object nevertheless. A learner has to worry at the thing. Many teachers provide the pearls ready-made. Students are asked to value them highly for what they are, to store them in their bags. But they are borrowed, put into a bank. It is the pearls the students make themselves that they really value, that matter tor them, and that will have a significant effect on their thinking, behaviour and self-esteem." David Minton in Teaching Skills in Further and Adult Education, 2005 (p 46)

Creation

Our God and Father, you have revealed to us the secrets of the earth, the sea and the sky.
You have enabled us to discover the animal, vegetable and mineral resources of this planet.
Teach us now to use them wisely, effectively and to the benefit of us all, so that we may in unity enjoy the riches which you have provided, in justice, peace and prosperity; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Gordon McPhate, Dean of Chester Cathedral.

enabling organisation

The core [of VISA] was an enabling organization that existed for the sole purpose of assisting owner-members to do what they wished with greater capacity, more effectively, and at less cost.

Dee Hock, 1999, Birth of the chaordic age, p.190

Time for new stories

We have lost our local, communal stories and destroyed the places for their telling. Nor do we have a new compelling global story or communal places for its telling. The stories now endlessly drummed into us are not our stories. The are the stories those with escalating power and wealth tell to one another. Stories that incessantly pour into us through commercialisation of media and every other aspect of life. They are stories designed to arouse greed in the many to satisfy it in the few. They are stories that appeal to the worst, not the best in us. They are false stories. Deep inside, we no longer believe them. Neither do those who tell them, if the truth be known.

Dee Hock, 1999, Birth of the chaordic age, p.298f

Nothing but an idea

Any organisation ... is nothing but an idea. All institutions are no more than a mental construct to which people are drawn in pursuit of common purpose; a conceptual embodiment of a very old, very powerful idea called community. All organisations can be no more than the moving force of the mind, heart and spirit of people, without which all assets are just so much inert mineral, chemical, or vegetable matter, by the law of entropy steadily decaying to a stable state.

Dee Hock, 1999. Birth of the chaordic age, p.119

hoist with our own petard

The essential thing to remember is not that we became a world of expert managers and specialists, but that the nature of our expertise became the creation and management of constants, uniformity, and efficiency, while the need has become the understanding and coordination of variability, complexity, and effectiveness, the very process of change itself. It is not complicated. The nature of our organisation, management, and scientific expertise is not only increasingly irrelevant to presssing societal and environmental needs, it is a primary cause of them.

Dee Hock. 1999. Birth of the chaordic age, p.57

Community and proximity

Community is not about profit. It is about benefit ... When we attempt to monetize all value, we methodically disconnect people and destroy community.
The nonmonetary exchange of value is the most effective, constructive system ever devised. Evolution and nature have been perfecting it for thousands of millennia. It requires no currency, contracts, government, laws, courts, police, economists, lawyers, accountants. It does not require anointed or certified experts at all. It requires only ordinary, caring people.
True community requires proximity; continual, direct contact and interaction between the people, place, and things of which it is composed.

Dee Hock, 1999, Birth of the chaordic age, p.43