“We humans have never been terribly good at subjecting our own beliefs to the kind of withering scrutiny that might disprove them. We do have a related skill, however; we are quite good at subjecting other people’s beliefs to such scrutiny.”

Shirky, Clay Cognitive Surplus – Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, The Penguin Press, New York, NY Copyright 2010 by Clay Shirky -  p. 136 -

“The old ideas don’t work – and they shouldn’t because they are from  the past – and the problems rushing at us are in the present and are coming from the future.” P.41

“innovate our way to new possibilities that right now seem unimaginable. The longer we wait to set out on such a strategic path though, the deeper the pail out of which we will have to climb.” (1)

Think about it…

Directions

(1) Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat & Crowded- Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, Copyright © 2008 Farrar, Straus & Giroux New York, NY p. 49.

Photography by Bill Dahl – All Rights Reserved – 2010 (Click to Enlarge)

“Intimacy with Christ begins with learning new ways to live, which means we need to unlearn some old ways of living, since the lessons of the past can block us in understanding the lessons of the future.”(1)

Campolo, Tony and Darling, Mary Albert – The GOD of Intimacy and Action – Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism and Justice – Jossey-Bass – A Wiley Imprint, San Francisco, CA Copyright © 2007 by Tony Campolo and Mary Albert Darling. P. 70.

Sometimes, language blows my brain up – blows my hair back. I am going to get to an extensive review of this book here in a few days:  Smart World – Breakthrough Creativity and the new Science of Ideas by Richard Ogle – Harvard Business School Press Boston, MA USA Copyright © 2007 by Richard Ogle.

Until I do, blow your hair back with the essence of the following excerpt:

Imagination is not the poor cousin of reason, trafficking in desire-driven fantasy, dreaming, and delusion, but rather, as Fauconnier and Turner show, the very basis on which intelligent, sense-making thought builds. Independently, the philosopher Colin McGinn has reached a similar conclusion in his recent book Mindsight, arguing that without the faculty of imagination, there could be no thought, rational or otherwise. To think intelligently is to create webs of meaning about how the world might be, and this is the work of imagination. Reason follows, creating the rational links and chains of inference that validate and extend our knowledge of reality. Fundamentally we are, as McGinn asserts, Homo imaginans. P. 72

Photography by Bill Dahl – All Rights Reserved – 2010

“To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else’s hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means that living so that “I’m only human” does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.”

Excerpt above from ——pp. 117-118 An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor HarperOne Publishers Copyright 2009

Photography by Bill Dahl – All Rights Reserved – 2010

Maybe it also means it’s OK to drop to your knees to shed a few tears when life kicks sand in your eyes…..by Bill Dahl

Photography by Bill Dahl - All Rights Reserved

Jacob Bronowski – The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination, Yale University Press Copyright © 1978 by Yale University, p. 123

Wherever you may be, you are an unborn possibility of limitless life, limitless intelligence, limitless substance — and yours is the privilege and responsibility of giving birth to it.” Eric Butterworth (c) 1983

By David Brooks – NY Times

Good Ideas Glow in the Dark