I guess it goes well back into human evolutionary psychology to
celebrate talent to the point of tolerating a lot on the part of those
who through no accomplishment of their own were by nature and
circumstance endowed with it. (01)
But that behavior of Gell-Mann to reduce a waitress to tears by showing
off his superiority deserves no accolades. An anal orifice would be a
better characterization. (02)
Henry (03)
On Wed, 2003-11-12 at 10:46, Tom Munnecke wrote:
> And great minds run in circles...
>
> Akin to your questioning of the AAA surveyor and her lack of advanced
> knowledge of molecular biochemistry, it reminds me of a lunch I had with
> Murray Gell-Mann in Santa Fe.
> http://www.munnecke.com/blog/archives/2002_10.html#000066
>
> He is quite an imposing figure; people came up to him after our dinner
> to meekly say hello, not knowing who he was. A sweet young waitress
> came to take our order, Murray wanted to know what kind of mushrooms
> they were serving. Her first response was rather generic, to which he
> firmly asked her to ask the chef. She returned, a little flustered,
> with more specific names for the mushrooms. That still didn't satisfy
> him, and he nearly reduced her to tears grilling her on a list of
> species which might be candidates. After that, we turned our attention
> to philanthropy and complexity theory, and he suggested that we hold a
> workshop at the Santa Fe Institute on the topic. I jumped at the
> chance, hearing repeatedly that he did not suffer fools gladly. I
> opened the meeting with an Appreciative Inquiry question, "Introduce
> yourself in terms of your most meaningful act of generosity." When we
> finally got around to Murray, he looked at me and said, "That damned
> question!" I was preparing to slide under the table when he launched
> into a touching story about his scholarship to Yale as the son of Jewish
> immigrants. Choking up with emotion, he had trouble getting his words
> out, and there weren't many dry eyes in the audience, either. I was
> stunned that such a simple question could have such a deep emotional
> response. http://givingspace.org/May2002/overview.htm The whole theory
> behind Appreciative Inquiry is to ask questions which touch people's
> positive core values, using this as the starting point for further
> discourse.
>
> I think that there is a lesson learned from this for us: how do we
> collaborate, based on our positive core values? Predefining these
> values according to charts of accounts, metrics, or accountability
> standards locks in certain ontologies (excuse the word), but do they
> reflect that which gives life and energy to the group? How do we
> systematically discover and work from the positive, life-affirming,
> generative aspects of human interaction, instead of narrowing our
> perspective to only that which has been "approved" by the category
> deities?
>
> Another lesson to be drawn is that even under gruff exteriors, a gentler
> inner person thrives... Jacks's comments are just his way of
> volunteering to revise the survey...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jack Park [mailto:jackpark@thinkalong.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 4:57 AM
> To: yak@collab.blueoxen.net
> Subject: [yak@collab] Re: Survey of yak and tools-yak on the way
>
> Tom Munnecke wrote:
>
> >Jack, you probably didn't color inside of the lines when you were a
> kid,
> >either.
> >
> >
> >
> Yes. I'm pretty impressed with myselves ;-)
>
>
> --
> This message is archived at:
>
> http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=3FB22E18.7090
307@thinkalong.com
--
Henry K van Eyken <vaneyken@sympatico.ca> (04)
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http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=1068724284.1609.5.camel@localhost.localdomain (06)
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