Euan Semple's Blog, page 48

Holding back the tide

Well, several tides really. The passage of time has its inexorable effect. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;”.

The veneer on bathroom cupboards starts to crack, patio grouting starts to crumble, cars rattle and creak. And yes, bodies ain’t what they used to be either.

But I like things looking aged. The shiny and new looks superficial compared to something that’s been around for a bit. Especially people.

So how much of a fight should we put up? Should we constantly strive to hold back the tide of time, or is there merit in letting things grow old gracefully, including ourselves?

Butterflies and drones

On a phone call to Dave Snowden yesterday he recalled a conversation he had had with Peter Drucker about consultants in which Drucker said something along the lines of “consultants should be like butterflies. They should flit about sharing ideas and inspiring people to change. They shouldn’t end up doing things for people”.

As Dave then pointed out this is very much where we have ended up with an industrial model of consultancy where youngsters with minimal experience siphon off vast amounts of money supplying cookie cutter solutions to business that all too often do more harm than good and deliberately cultivate damaging dependency.

I faced this with my own consultancy. I wanted to be a butterfly, they wanted me to be a drone. That look of nervousness when they realised that I expected them to change their thinking and do something with the new ideas. Even if they were comfortable with this their boss invariably wasn’t. It was frustrating for both of us and over time I grew weary with that frustration.

I used to joke about having an agreement for potential clients to sign that said “Do you care? Do you really care? Do you really, really care?”

People who really, really care can still make a difference. We need more of them.

Writing

Some of you may have noticed that I have not been writing much the past few weeks. There hasn’t been any particular reason for that, it is more that after twenty years of doing this I don’t always feel that I have anything to add.

But then it has always been true that I write as much, if not more, for myself as for anyone who reads these posts. Writing helps me notice what I notice, it helps me understand what matters to me, and helps me gain perspective on things. Writing “in public” helps me to take what I am writing more seriously than just blabbing away in my journal.

Life continues to throw up situations and events that need processing. I should write more. I miss it when I don’t do it.

Expectations

It’s funny looking out at the snow falling on the roof in front of my office window and thinking “This shouldn’t be happening, it was really warm the other day”.

It was funny hearing some royal quoted on the radio as saying that Prince Phillip’s death had come as a shock. (Really??)

It was funny not feeling as distraught at my mum’s death as I should have done.

Life rarely goes as expected. Why do we not learn this?

Mind blowing

This morning we were having a conversation about communication, about how incredible it is that a thought pops up in my brain, my lungs, lips, and vocal chords kick into gear and words come out of my mouth. The vibrating air hits Mollie’s ears, her brain interprets those sounds and hey presto what I said enters her brain.

We then got onto how the written word is similarly miraculous, especially when you get into other languages and things like pictograms etc. where scribbles on a page, written sometimes centuries previously, can produce emotion and understanding in the reader.

We then went on to talk about the vastly increased speed at which the world’s words are being recorded and stored in some fashion. And how most of them don’t ever really exist, only waggling electrons being to various degrees ephemeral even if temporarily stored on some sort of device.

We then talked about how even the letters that go up to make up the words don’t really exist, especially in transit where they are chopped up by packet switched networks and squirted around the world in milliseconds only to pile up in bits on millions of devices.

Coincidentally a poem had popped up in a guided meditation I was listening to when I woke this morning and I wanted to tell the girls about it.

So I lift my wrist, say “Hey Siri, find my the poem Breathe by David Whyte” and instantly, via servers all around the world, those words hit the Siri servers in Cupertino which understood them well enough to sift through all the millions and millions of instances of the word David, the millions and millions of instances of the word white (whichever spelling), the millions and millions of instances of the word poem, and the millions and millions of instances of the word breathe to return the poem to me on my wrist.

INSTANTLY! ON A DEVICE THE SIZE OF A 50p PEICE. ON MY WRIST!

Mind blowing if you just stop to think about it

Facts

I am occasionally surprised when I encounter someone getting exercised about facts and their apparent demise. It seems faintly nostalgic, looking back to some fictitious time when the world was simpler and facts could be trusted.

It never existed. Even scientific facts are only currently useful working hypotheses (that’s the strength of the scientific method unlike religions who take their truths way too seriously).

We are making all of it up. Realising this makes it easier to relax about “the truth” and to stop beating each other up about our made up stories and our made up facts.

I was going to say that the only fact that I am ever sure of is that I exist but even that’s not true any more. Awareness is happening here but any persistent sense of self is just a series of recurring, fleeting thoughts like all the others, passing bubbles in a frothy stream. Pop!

SOTN

Another fun recording with Paolo last night, this time chatting about issues raised by Tim O’Reilly in his recent article The End of Silicon Valley as We Know It

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world...

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

Rumi

Gratitude

Every day I am reminded of how lucky we are to live where we do.

Progress?

A beautiful walk with blue skies and the sound of skylarks accompanying me – along with the steady drone of HS2 earth movers and the constant bleeping of reversing lorries.

Zoom in to the fence line in the distance in the photo above to see the sinister line of high viz clad security. They are encountering local protest as they start destroying ancient woodland to temporarily store stuff while they tear up the countryside.