It’s not moral, it’s not “sustainable.” We really do need to talk about how we “recruit,” sure (and lots of DT posts are about not boring or patronising potential recruits to death.

We really REALLY do need to talk about how we retain people (including ourselves).

Plan to Thrive is an important part of that conversation…

My problem with the cult of authenticity – other than its tedious pedantry – is that it conflates eating ‘authentically’ with some ability to make a meaningful difference in the world. More often that not, peasant food is labelled authentic food. Even the most passing familiarity with what most poor people eat will demonstrate that people’s diets improve as their disposable income increases. Peasant food in Italy before the mid-twentieth century was nutritionally inadequate: it consisted of bread and polenta with onions oil and, occasionally, cheap fish and vegetables.

There is nothing wrong with eating peasant food, but it is deeply problematic to believe that eating ‘real’ peasant food represents a solidarity with the struggles of the poor. In fact, it’s a distraction from the ways in which food and big agricultural companies exploit labourers and put small and peasant farmers out of business.

And the sled has been out on the ice for a bit, and has sunk down into grooves. And the dog understands this and wrenches first one way and then the other to break that tension, and then starts pulling the sled forward. London, not always a pleasant human being, tells the story well.

And it’s one of those little brain bits that I know/forget/know/forget. I was not nearly as productive over the weekend as I could have been, as I wanted to be. Yes, I did get some stuff done, but not as much as I desired (not, I haven’t used the word “should” here!).

And all I needed to do, I think, is wrench a little one way, and then the other.

I shall schedule this post to pop up again when I am next procrastinating…

When I tried to suggest that meetings didn’t need to be sage-on-the-stage leninist atrocities, I was told that icebreakers are “naff” and “corporate.”

Mr Defensive and Dismissive (DaD) has a point. “Ice-breakers” are. Tokenistic, patronising and meaningless, they are a facipulative (1) “activation phenomena.”

When done for corporate aims, they are a way of turning a massed audience into little snooker balls. The guy (or, more rarely, woman) with the cue can then collide balls into each other and put them in safe little pockets. It’s the games they play, and if has happened to you I am sure that you felt green with nausea.

That is not what I meant at all, at all. Obviously.

I want that massed audience … to turn into little seeds with burrs.

http://www.cottoncrc.org.au/industry/Publications/Weeds/Weed_IdentificationTools/Weeds_by_common_names/Noogoora_burr

Not hard shiny spheres that bounce off each other with a clink, and then careen into another and another. No, I want them to be “hooking” onto each other, leaving traces and building links. So instead of the questions being pointless gimmicks “how far have you come?” “what’s your favourite colour?” or whatever is being used in snookerville these days, I was suggesting “what skills I have/lack” or “what is the most pressing need for the group I am part of” or  “what does [the word representing cause x] mean to you...” that could then feed into discussions through the course of the day(s).

You’d hope that the difference between the two was a self-evident thing, especially when pretty clearly spelt out. It’s not.(2)

Axonal sprouting for the social brain, perhaps?

Possible names for this process

burr-ito
burr-sitis
vel-grow
connect 40
everybody node
burr baby burr
synapsis

Footnotes
(1) Facipulation – manipulative facilitation.

(2) I am slowly learning that – to my immense disappointment and their enormous dishonour – people who proclaim themselves for the liberation of women/the masses/etc are often the most snide, defensive and doctrinaire people you’d ever have the misfortune to meet. And their less snide and doctrinaire “comrades” seem happy for them to continue in that way. (There never seems to be any disavowal of gender-baiting, name-calling, anyhows.)

“No event can keep everyone happy or engaged but we’ll try our hardest to do so without getting in the way of politics.”

If the personal is political, how come the way we “organise”* shitty meetings is not political?  Isn’t this enervating top-down model INTENSELY political? Or rather, anti-political.  Isn’t it just dreary Trotskyism or Leninism or whatever they are calling themselves these days?**

Ya basta!

* “Organise” actually implies some thought and consideration went into putting on an event.  It’s not always clear any did.   We perhaps need a word for sheer “doing-what-we’ve-always-done”  Rut-anise? Routin-ise?  Complacent-ise?

** Rhetorical question

Then get involved in something that is going to fight back against the absurd powers of the State.

Anyone got better suggestions than Liberty?

(Obviously, on death penalty etc, you can’t go past Reprieve.)

“They are good when they get gritty and hard, with pounding bass lines, but too much of it is froth rock, laced with superficialities like ‘living my life’ and ‘dying for you.’ And JBJ is a rock front man you could take home to meet your parents, all Colgate smile and hair by Vidal Sassoon – the man Cliff Richard would have become had he taken a left turn into rock.” (emphasis added)

Written by Stuart Brennan, who is clearly one to watch.

PS Reminds me of Jon Harris describing U2′s “Vertigo” as “pompous rock esperanto.”

It comes to mind in this telling anecdote, from a blog I’ve just stumbled on called “stop me before I vote again.”

Here’s most of it -

… I was in a room with a couple of other echt West Siders, one of them a local liberal Democratic politician in a small way — let’s call him Aurelius — the other, Manutius, a guy in the publishing business.

Manutius and I were getting acquainted and I happened to mention the name of Noam Chomsky, entirely in passing, while telling some anecdote of my schooldays, a time when Chomsky bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus.

Aurelius, who had not thitherto been much involved in the conversation, snapped instantly to attention. “Chomsky? The guy who said we deserved Nineleven?!”

It was a context where contentiousness would have been out of place, so I contented myself with the mild reply, “He said that? Really?”(*)

I had the feeling Aurelius was ready to come right back at me, but Manutius saved the day. It turned out that he had been Chomsy’s editor, at some point and on some project, and he thought the world of old Noam. Since Manutius works for a large corporation, his imprimatur was sufficient to stifle Aurelius’ objections, and the awkward moment quickly passed.

Now you have to understand that Aurelius is not some mouth-breathing Fox News ignoramus; in spite of his unfortunate involvement in New York City politics, he’s a clever fella, well-schooled, well-read, and a liberal to the marrow of his bones. And he’s funny and amiable, with a very engaging fund of self-mocking humor.

So this was an odd moment. It was as if the restless ghost of Christopher Hitchens had suddenly taken over his vocal apparatus.

Of late I’ve started to reflect that the ancients’ belief in demonic possession wasn’t so dumb. We’re really very far from being unitary executives in our own heads. It’s a chaotic parliament in there, with no rules of order to speak of, and from time to time some particularly brazen-throated monomanic will take the floor and refuse to yield.

Ever known anybody suffering from anorexia? They’re like that: sensible, perceptive, subtle, humorous — on every subject but food. Once that topic comes up, they stop making sense, and contradict themselves three times in every sentence. The voice timbre changes, the body language changes. The impression is hard to resist that another personality has taken charge.

It was a little like that, just for a moment, with Aurelius the other day. One had the sense that Aurelius’ Community Board comperes had taken him over. They’re all staunch old Zionists and Cold War liberals, if not outright neocons — though Aurelius himself is none of these things.

This is one of the reasons why I hate the Democratic Party. Affiliating with it, identifying with it, even to the extent of rooting for its candidates, or even just voting for them, is to invite an incubus into your brain.

———-
(*) Of course as we all know he’s never said anything of the kind.