Overcoming scarcity
How could the qualities of the local life and the sensibility of culture become an activated sense instead of a mirror to the past, or mere custom?
Naturally the option to scrape by and hope for a better future to come from some expectation, that the conjured powers may work their magic again somehow, without having to change anything substantial, without risk and moral choice, remains the future by default. But…
What would retraining culture as a organ of sensuousness entail?
How could the inner truth counter-weigh and be brought into play with the airy policy and business rules, to give substance to the fiat vote, and replace empty taste for meaningful experience?
Isn’t this what real brands are about? What true social curation could bring?
Has your education given you a firm foundation, are you Clever enough to distinguish realities from appearances, So that gold overlaid on copper will never ring true to you? That which should be pursued, or what you should avoid, Have you chalked the one in white, and charcoaled the other? Are you humble in your wishes, frugal at home, kind to your Friends? Can you open, or close, your stores of grain at will; Or step over a coin that’s fallen in the dirt, without filling Your throat with the taste of Mercury’s saliva, impure gain?
If you can truly say ‘These rules are mine, I hold to them,’ Be free, and wise, with the blessing of the praetor, and Jove. But if, having been, not long ago, baked of the same dough As us, you keep your old exterior; if masked by a cultured Brow you conceal a cunning fox in your corrupted breast, I take back what I said above, and reign in the rope I gave.— Persius, Satire V
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries—
So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries,
She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self..
The Entrepreneur as sense-maker, troubadour or minstrel
What will we ask of them? What is the real solution box where they are choosing or asked to play?
How is she or he not the real cultural hero of antiquity bringing to life the quintessence of our cultural organ? And finding —through her or his deed, the bounty in a landscape of scarcity? Wake up and smell the roses !
This is less than a trivial question, for we are baffled by the Vital 6%. That small portion of so called business that is really about Transition Management, defining the spaces for entirely new ways of conceptualizing work, play and wellbeing.
Clearly it is not mere money making entrepreneurship dealing with opportunities to make rents from the system and its carrots and sticks:
At dawn, you’re snoring deeply. ‘Arise!’ cries Avarice, ‘Arise, now!’ You won’t. She’s firm. ‘Arise!’ she cries. ‘I can’t.’ ‘Arise!’ ‘But why?’ ‘You ask! Go, trade in Black Sea sprats, beavers’ castor extract, hemp, ebony, Incense, slippery Coan silks. Be the first to unload fresh Peppercorns from some thirsty camel. Barter something; Swear a deal.’ ‘But Jupiter might hear.’ ‘Oh, you dunce, If you aim to live by Jupiter’s rules, you’ll have to remain Content with scraping a nail round the crusted saltcellar.’ — Persius, Satire V
Magical Circles and What can you Restore with a Mythological Script?
Related Story
It is not the entrepreneur of scarcity and avarice what is required. Not that figure of power and envy driven individuals seeking a mere profit of which there is plenty. Tennyson tells the story (Come into the Garden) of the restrained expression of desire.
But if you didn't have any other point of view except your own experience of the world, where would you begin? Where do you begin to fill the emptiness left by the mindless pursuit of ideals and tastes?
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, “She is near, she is near;”
And the white rose weeps, “She is late;”
The larkspur listens, “I hear, I hear;”
And the lily whispers, “I wait.” he is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.
Co-evolution , co-working and the sharing economy
Entrepreneurship capable to piece together anew the dis-articulated reality, may describe another form of savoir vivre. One that we expect to find in all sorts of cooperative activities throughout the world.
This has always taken place when the going got too tough, to overcome scarcity. The last time around in the 1970´s the little IT clubs gave rise to a tide that would lift the boats of everyone around the globe. The first few million new `experts´ came from all walks of life, doctors, lawyers, dropouts, it made no difference, they simply were fascinated by it, way before dollar signs would twist the picture once again. They didn't come from schools because nowhere was it known what it was. They didn't come from large companies either. It co-evolved creating capabilities and markets at the same time.
Europa stands for a wish to be able to work together because ‘development’ today more than ever requires the co-evolution of products and capabilities. Capabilities exist not only at the individual level but include emergent social properties.
Perhaps we will see the Dove bearing the Olive branch in the exploration of co-working places, open-idea processes and new forms of pre-incubation springing up across the world.
“Co-evolution implies that there is great potential for coordination failures, as it is hard to synchronize the development of a capability with the demand for it. Moreover, because capabilities are many and co-evolve locally, finding out how to do things in a given context involves a process that we have elsewhere called self-discovery” —Hausmann and Rodrik, 2003.
Co-evolution, entrepreneurial discovery, are the potential remedy to the dissection by Libertas. The overcoming of the scarcity mentality requires breaking through, dis-solving the restricted solution-space, where we are simply not capable of defining the right problem.
Sensuousness —slow thinking, feeling, using all senses, but above all, connecting to the emergent qualities, alone can offer the indispensable counterweight to the whirling magic of imitation, copying, scaling, fiat enterprise, fiat money and peoples enslaved by their tastes, which prevent the creative potential to emerge.
Why? Just so the money you’ve nurtured here at a modest Five per cent can proceed to sweat you a usurious eleven?
Give your spirit free play; let’s snatch at pleasure; life is Ours alone; you’ll soon be mere ashes, a ghost, a tale ended;
Live mindful of death; the hour flees; as I speak it passes.’
What to do? You’re on the horns of a dilemma. To pursue This, or that?
By turns, you must submit, enslaved by your Two masters;
by turns, desert them. Even though you resist, Refusing to obey their imperious orders, you can’t claim: ‘Now my chain is broken!’
For, though the struggling bitch Slips the leash, and runs, a length of rope trails from her neck.—Persius, Satire V
It is quite unavoidable, considering the recurrence of the myth, that what was once lived out symbolically as a psychological reality, is quite conceivable a pattern for modern man. It may be ascribed to coincidence that we fear most the rising seas, but clearly this is not the first time.
We can believe what we like about the human factor´s influence on climate change, but the manifestations are altogether the same. And the demands of the time call for a new type of freedom, which breeds in the restraint of the outpouring of passion. In favor of listening to what is truer of each one, and every local group. And this is what we rediscover every day in working with teams and groups learning about the subtle forces at work in co-creative activity.
Myth organizes our understanding of reality at deeper levels than we recognize.
