Getting _2_thorns_out_after_30K_training

Haarlem, 20 December 2012

"I" am as good as my team

My Moroccan crew in the Sahara-desert. Picking the right people is essential. It may be "you" or "me" or "I" who got the call; without a unified team behind that to clear it, the results will turn out flat, pale, uninteresting and disappointing. A symptom of  the "look what a clever filmmaker I am" syndrome. This probably counts for other professions as well; even leading to endangering other people's health and other people's lives.

Conclusion: Like a brand, which may be the vision of one person -- "I" --, its strength is determined by the team behind it. "I" is "I Care" ; characterized by the ability to switch and unite, flexibilty. From the inside to the outside, on the battlefield of the (not so) free market, doing the job that needs to be done; for the sake of the team really... Outside the team, there is nothing.

Left, right, appetite

Kennemer Dunes, today. Fast in [ fast out ]

Min/max temperature: 0°C/5 °C; humidity: 87%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1016.14 hPa;  wind from N/NW 9.7 km/h; visibility: 8 kilometers.

"It’s widely acknowledged that postmodernism as a philosophy is now dead; and books are everywhere starting to appear that are written about “What comes next?” [I]n academia and the universities, it is a long, slow death, and most teachers still teach some version of postmodernism and its aperspectival madness even if they have many deep doubts themselves. [W]hen there are no binding guidelines for individual behavior, the individual has only his or her own self-promoting wants and desires to answer to—in short, narcissism. And that is why the most influential postmodern elites ended up embracing, explicitly or implicitly, that tag-team from postmodern hell: nihilism and narcissism—in short, aperspectival madness. The culture of post-truth. […] Nihilism and narcissism are not traits that any leading-edge can actually operate with. [A] well-known pollster [...] said, “This [Trump win] is a wake-up call for everyone at every level of government. Governors, Senators, mayors—all of them need to have a retreat where they can work together to bring about peace in the populace. Importantly, this isn’t about government officials reconciling with one another—which in itself is needed. Rather, it is about their facilitating their constituencies to reconcile with one another. It’s about bringing people together, bridging our divides, and binding our wounds. That’s what real leadership is about.” […] Conversely, feeling nothing but despair at Trump’s victory is to fail to see the larger currents at work in this situation. Understanding this election—as well as similar events now occurring all over the world—as a manifestation of a self-correcting drive of evolution itself, as it routes around a broken leading-edge [...] and attempts to restore the capacity of its leading-edge to actually lead (while also seriously starting to give birth to the next higher leading-edge of integral itself)—this gives us a glimmer of real hope in an otherwise desperately gloomy situation. In the deepest parts of our own being, each of us is directly one with this evolutionary current, this Eros, this Spirit-in-action, radiant to infinity and luminous to eternity, radically full in its overflowing overabundance and excessive in its good graces, wildly crashing off the heavens and irrupting from the underworlds, and embracing each and all in its limitless love and care. And the only ones who should be allowed to work politically for a greater tomorrow—and who should thus work—and those who truly understand that it is not necessary to do so; who see the utter fullness of the Great Perfection in each and every moment of existence, and who nonetheless work to trim-tab (or adjust through leadership) the manifestation of more and more and more of the Good and the True and the Beautiful, right here and right now in this gloriously manifest universe, moment to moment to ever-present moment, knowing full well that this entire world is nothing but the dream of an infinite Spirit, yet each and every one of us is directly this very Spirit itself, dreaming the world of our own amazement. And we can try endlessly and tirelessly to fix this dream…. or we can simply wake up."

Ken Wilber in 'Trump and a Post-Truth World, An Evolutionary Self-Correction', first published last Sunday by Integral Life as an Ebook, available as Pdf at the Intergral Iife website

Code of conduct

Kennemer Dunes national park, today. Reflection [ unity of form and content

Min/max temperature: -1°C/1.4°C; humidity: 100%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1026 hPa; wind from SSE 29.0 km/h; visibility: 6.0  kilometres; mostly cloudy 1402 m.; snow depth: 30 mm

"To follow a moral code would amount to the same as an intellectual judgment about an individual, viewed from the standpoint of anthropological statistics. Moreover, making a moral code the supreme arbiter of your ethical conduct would be a substitute for the will of a living God, since the moral code is made by man and declared to be a law given by God himself. The great difficulty of course is the "Will of God." Psychologically the "Will of God" appears in your inner experience in the form of a superior deciding power, to which you may give various names like instinct, fate, unconscious, faith, etc. The psychological criterion of the "Will of God" is forever the dynamic superiority. It is the factor that finally decides when all is said and done. It is essentially something you cannot know beforehand. You only know it after the fact. […] In applying a moral code (which in itself is a commendable thing), you can prevent even the divine decision, and then you go astray. So try to live as consciously, as conscientiously, and as completely as possible and learn who you are and who or what it is that ultimately decides."

C.G. Jung, 'Collective Work, Letters 1951 - 1961', page 300, 301, first published in 1973 as 'Briefe III 1956 - 1961', 'To William Kinney, 26.V.1956', page 27, Walter Verlag, Olten, Switzerland

"I do not try to bent the plot to fit technique; I adapt technique to the plot. […] A particular angle may give a cameraman -- or even a director -- a particular sattisfying effect. The question is, dramatically, is it the best way of telling whatever part of the story it's trying to tell? If not, out it goes. […] The mark of good technique is that it is unnoticed. […] The important thing is that the director makes his decisions when the need for them arises, and operates with as few rules as possible. The fewer rules you have, the fewer times you'll have to experience the unhappiness of breaking them."

Alfred Hitchcock in  'Hitchcock on Hitchcock, Production Methods Compared', page 208, 209, originally published in Cine-Technician 14, no. 75, November - December 1948, reprinted in American Cinematographer 30, no. 5, May 1949. (Book) first published in the USA in 1995 by University of California Press

Interval

Kennemerduinen, today. Interval training [go hard, go easy; united in a balanced training]

"A good walker must connect grace with quickness and perseverance, whatever be the nature of the ground, whether hilly, sandy, or slippery. To walk well, is a great art, and deserves to be attented to by parents from the earliest years of their children; their habit here, as in most cases, is all powerful. It is an exercise which may be practised in any place, though no so well in a common excerise-ground as elsewhere. [...] I. Grace [...] A straight natural carriage of the whole body, particularly of the head, without anything artificial, or affected; a light, yet firm step with the whole sole of the foot at once; the knees straightened, whenever the foot touched the ground. The feet should be turned a little outwards. […], so that the body may not lose its balance. II. Duration, cannot be acquired except by much practice. Walks [regularly] taken, and gradually increased, and then longer excursions and journeys on foot, are requisite. Perseverance in walking and strength to carry some weight, is an important accomplishment. […] IV. Indifference as to locality. Walking over unlevelled ground is much more difficult, but at the same time a greater exercise. The same is the case in walking trough deep sand. If a hill is so steeped, that every step requires considerable exertion, then the motion is called ascending, which may be practiced with and without a load. [...]  Running, if practiced with precautions, is an exercise extremely salutary to the chest and lungs. […] Posture and body: Breast out, shoulders back, upper part of the body forwards; upper arms close to the body, elbows bent, and kept backwards. The steps light, and with the ball of the foot, not with the whole sole. The mouth shut; breathing long, uniform, and more trough the nose, than trough the mouth. […] Cool and calm days are best for this exercise. In the beginning run with, not against, the wind. When very much heated, or out of breath, stop. [...] After running, cool yourself by walking about, not by standing still, nor lying down."

From: 'Treatise on Gymnasticks, taken chiefly from the German of F.L. Jahn'  [ translated ] by Charles Beck in 1828 ("It is a well known fact that a subject, whether it be entirely new, or only more attended to, will exercise an influence upon language, in proportions to its importance; it will either coin new words, or transplant them from other languages, or impart a new shade or greater distinctness of meaning to some already existing [...] If the present work facilitates the introduction and management of gymnastic exercises, my wish is fulfilled, and I shall consider myself richly awarded for the trouble which the execution of it occasioned.") 

See also: Friedrich Ludwig Jahn  a.k.a. 'Turnvater Jahn' (1778 - 1852)  at Wikipedia (English)