Conference on World Affairs

Overall Impression: I may have learned a lot about how liberals speak during the week and this was the key talk that started the process. This panel featured more than the usual dose of "words full of sound and fury and signifying nothing." That is the key to understanding liberals. Don't pay too much attention to the actual words. Just listen carefully with your heart to see if you can get the message. I would probably aim for the nouns and the common verbs. Someone worried about the world today will not actually say that. Instead that message is wrapped in an abundance of superfluous metaphysical storytelling and spiritual analogies. The problem you will find is that it is hard to distinguish a liberal with a good message from a complete idiot. It takes too much time and effort.

John Grim

John started off with something about matter and spirit and I stayed lost for the rest of his talk. I saw him on a couple of other panels and I think by the end of the week he finally said something that made sense to me. However he started the wake up process. He talks. Lots of people nod in agreement. I think about what he said. It made no sense. But something must be going across the airwaves. After hearing the third speaker, Patricia Elliott, I decided it was probably the feeling. The way he spoke, and gestured must be conveying something. That something reaches the audience. If the audience thinks they have a feeling that he might be having they nod. The thinkers are all scratching their heads trying to figure out what he meant. (Silly people. Just feel. Don't think.)

Towards the end he did mention something I wrote down. On the theory that "it's all been done before" I figure whatever wisdom Indians have might actually have applications in our world today. John mentioned the Four Inner Realities of the Lakota. They are something like:

• The presence of mystery. A god reference I think.
• Rock. Which is our strength.
• Breath. The winds and life.
• Something we got from our ancestors. (For modern people I think that means all the bad habits you got from Uncle Wilbur that tend to show up only on very public occasions.)

Dorothy Marcic

Dorothy Marcic is a management consultant, among other things. She gets paid to make sense and so I understood some of the things she was saying. She spoke about the "soul of the corporate environment." I found a couple of the items interesting.

• The phrase "It's just business" is often an excuse to be unethical. [Has to rank up there with "boys will be boys" to explain violence.]
• She has done spiritual studies of lots of religions. A common theme is "What goes around comes around."
• Top 40 songs tend to mirror society. In the last 20 months Rap music sales are down 39% and Gospel and Religious Music sales are up 40%.

Patricia is an actress and she gets paid to deliver other people's words. She has a very forceful delivery. You can pick out the confidence of the message. Unfortunately the words lacked logic or contradicted themselves so often I got lost trying to follow any message and found myself picking on the content. I was able to step back from this and think about the "message" or feeling being conveyed. She is very worried about the state of the world today. I think she would benefit greatly from an idea I had. Apply modern media delivery patterns to historical tragedies. Imagine what kind of scares they could whip up covering World War Two where 50 million people died, or the plague that wiped out 25% of the world's population. Patricia might find this world today a pretty good place. But I digress.

I also learned the power of vocabulary to communicate feelings. Alas it also obfuscates the idea as well. Words like cruel, dark, and gloomy all convey a tone. That tone stirs emotions. If you want to stir someone you can. The downside is that the process of stirring emotions limits the ability of the intellect to process meaning in the words. (Launch speculation.) So a listener to this delivery will also be inspired. They may carry the message to others. However having not studied the intellectual content of the message they will not have a good basis for expressing it again, at least not clearly. However they will have a strong emotional basis for communicating it and this will be forced to revert to use of emotional vocabulary. This will result in a message with less logical content and more emotional content. After about four or five tries you ought to have people talking about "gloom, despair, and misery" without remember the original subject domain.

Anyhow I do not remember anything that Ms. Elliot actually said, however I do thank her for inspiring this initial understanding of another communication style. I'll link here if I ever come up with further insights.

MISCELLANEOUS IDEAS

• "What we hate is the teacher" - I forget who said this, but it is a cool idea. If you find yourself ranting against something then look at what that something is trying to teach you. I notice this when I find myself not liking something in others. I look for what is like it inside me that I do not like. This is similar to, "If you are pointing a finger at someone else, look where the other three fingers are pointing."