elainegrey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elainegrey) wrote2014-06-05 07:21 am
elainegrey) wrote2014-06-05 07:21 am
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Had energy enough to get to 4 pm on Tuesday, then, despite coffee, felt all the wind leave my sails. Wednesday i put in a day and a half.
--==∞==--
In meeting on Sunday i meditated on a number of things, one of which is a certain type of certainty i am feeling right now. It's a certainty that i don't always have, and missed for years. I have no idea where focussing on botany and photography will take me. It's possible it will simply soothe my heart and mind through the end of my career in software development management.
But i have it.
The other was about diversity: people, practices, plants, critters. There is a diversity of reasons for valuing diversity, but i also was thinking about the reaction i had to a biologists talking about the high amount of order in life. Diversity doesn't immediately come to my mind as order -- and i realize that there's probably a Western/scientific bias to that view. We have a flawed premise, i think, about efficiency and a type of order that's like the lattice in a crystal. Diversity is efficient in the holistic view, but the holistic view is something that is so hard (it seems to me) for our culture.
We tend to optimize on one dimension, think of a field of corn planted in Idaho or a group of Quakers all with the same theological understanding and practice (just shy of a creed). There may be efficiency in one output (bushels of grain, coming to decisions and communication), but both are expensive to maintain and fraught with long term instabilities.
In a holistic view, i think we are (re)learning that a diversity of corn genetics and a diversity of land uses may have lower yield, but is sustainable and resistant to a variety of challenges. Similarly, groups of people who have only practiced all being in accord are likely to schism when a truly challenging decision must be made.
Will global warming teach us to think more holistically, include more factors, more time, more change in our decision making?
--==∞==--
I need to be more active in the evenings. I had picked up for a while.
Much pondering this morning, little writing.
--==∞==--
In meeting on Sunday i meditated on a number of things, one of which is a certain type of certainty i am feeling right now. It's a certainty that i don't always have, and missed for years. I have no idea where focussing on botany and photography will take me. It's possible it will simply soothe my heart and mind through the end of my career in software development management.
But i have it.
The other was about diversity: people, practices, plants, critters. There is a diversity of reasons for valuing diversity, but i also was thinking about the reaction i had to a biologists talking about the high amount of order in life. Diversity doesn't immediately come to my mind as order -- and i realize that there's probably a Western/scientific bias to that view. We have a flawed premise, i think, about efficiency and a type of order that's like the lattice in a crystal. Diversity is efficient in the holistic view, but the holistic view is something that is so hard (it seems to me) for our culture.
We tend to optimize on one dimension, think of a field of corn planted in Idaho or a group of Quakers all with the same theological understanding and practice (just shy of a creed). There may be efficiency in one output (bushels of grain, coming to decisions and communication), but both are expensive to maintain and fraught with long term instabilities.
In a holistic view, i think we are (re)learning that a diversity of corn genetics and a diversity of land uses may have lower yield, but is sustainable and resistant to a variety of challenges. Similarly, groups of people who have only practiced all being in accord are likely to schism when a truly challenging decision must be made.
Will global warming teach us to think more holistically, include more factors, more time, more change in our decision making?
--==∞==--
I need to be more active in the evenings. I had picked up for a while.
Much pondering this morning, little writing.