Are we Asking the Right Questions?

Are we asking the right questions? Are we? As we throw insults and “insight”; data, contradicting data, and party-line rhetoric around, with, toward, and against one another, are we even asking the right questions? I don’t think so. I’ve been booed down, attacked, or whatever else for trying to explain why I advocate that Heidegger – for each and every one of us - is more relevant to our lives today than 99.+% believe possible. Not only are his ideas relevant and timely, but they are pathways along which we can move; they un-conceal a thought-process and present ideas by which we can live, ideas that can help us approach this election, the national one, the issues regarding sustainability, women’s rights, quite simply – how to live. I confess that I am a believer in his approach to the creative power of “the word” – just imagine: “Language is the house of Being. In this house man dwells.” A number of you can hear the echoes of St. John, in his Gnostic hymn: “The Word was made Flesh.” Heidegger’s renewal of St. John’s statement affirms that “Language creates world.” The phrase is not metaphoric; it is literal; and, as such, it IS. These gnomic statements quickly alert us, bring into focus the everyday Language in which we are immersed, in which we now abide. Yet we walk away from that-which-is-clear. How many of us consciously create the world we desire with the language of the day? Have we not the same again with the insistent question: “Was Heisst Denken?” what does it mean to think? Let alone what does H mean, what are his 4 levels of looking at the question? Or, is it any easier to wrestle with his straight-forward, allegational assertion: “what is most thought-provoking in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” Heidegger was able to see that language has been deadened metaphorically. As speakers we hear but no longer comprehend. Language no longer brings the thing into presence; today, language is code, simplified, nullified of its essence and insight. Instead it is a short-hand, especially in the world of politics and governing/power. We fail ourselves unless the code is deconstructed, unpacked, and revivified. Lewis Carol played with language to the amusement and edification of millions. We need a poet. For us language is being tending ineffectually and moving towards its own demise - at which point anything could mean everything and everything will mean anything; and, it all will mean nothing. Why am I trying to bring Heidegger or a poet or Lewis Carol into a patch conversation? It isn’t because I think I’m better or that I’m any smarter than anyone here; I don’t have THE answer to any one question. But I do think we are on a collision course with Freedom – with a capital ‘F’; and, that is why I am trying to answer a question recently asked in the writing of this piece. Now the question came from another patch contributor, one whom I believe holds rational and balanced attitudes as evidenced by his thoughtful (usually) posts. He asked me why I find myself so invested in how we look at this election. It’s easy, Jay. I don’t think we see what remains concealed, what is hidden and not brought into the clearing. In other words, something strikes me as just not right, certainly not kosher, cricket, nor allowable if we just pay closer attention. I admit: There certainly are those among this intended audience who don’t think so or don’t care seemingly because they believe that this doesn’t affect them - they stand above the rest, above you and me. Now me, I’m “kinda” typical in Patch-ville, USA: I’m a lifelong Republican. Grew up in the Bay. Believe in God. Received a good education. Done ok at times, other times not. Been a sinner and a saint. But this election really disturbs me at my core: something is rotten in Denmark! I think the spotlight has been shone on the wrong openings, the wrong clearings. In fact, I think we are looking at the wrong clearings altogether; and, I think we are not asking the right questions. Moreover, I think we’re selling ourselves short. One thing that worried Heidegger, one of his pet peeves with the whole of western European man, the educated masses in particular, is the placid, unthinking existence of those of us just carried along by the flow: “…we are still not thinking.” Why are we not asking the deeper questions, the ones that do need to be asked and answered; and, if we are, are we unreservedly attending to the answers; are we then listening authentically, openly to what is in front of us; or, are we already on to the next fleeting thought? Moving away from that which needs to be thought, a movement natural to all humans. Personally, I believe that we are not asking the right question(s). And, in not asking the right one, or set of questions, we are failing ourselves; and, and we are failing the generations to follow. I think the most “thought-provoking” elements of the current political situation are being shifted from view, sometimes hidden behind a veil that is embroidered using the vocabulary threads of the “words that work” weavers, who today embroider with the same thread sold by those hucksters, or ones identical to, those who brought ridicule to a certain hapless ruler, in the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” In this case the puppeteer brushing and dyeing the wool is a Republican and Tea Party adviser, the social researcher, Dr. Frank I. Luntz. He’s their “words-smith,” the guy distorting the facts and tricking us with clever phrases. This election, the one here in Wisconsin as well as the National one, is not about “job creation.” It is about the nature of government. It is about ‘the Good’, about ‘Justice’ about ‘Truth’: the stuff that really matters: society, providing for one another. For me, this election - and, well, it really is the most important election of my life - it proposes to destroy our beloved democratic republic and the ideals upon which our country, our nation, was founded with a verbal misprision of ideas. Concept distortion is all around us and no one is seeing it. One party has become the party of only a few, only some of the people. That is not the American way. If we choose the side pretending to follow this Nation’s founding principles, we will like lemmings following a disembodied the Voice, fall off the cliff and drop into a world ruled by a plutocratic oligarchy, which will have won control of everyone’s life. For me today, I am trying to detoxify myself from the bitter ads being shot across our bows. But I did hear one statement that I believe should apply more liberally to both sides. Yes, it was made by the President. Mr Obama was quoted while speaking from the G-8 Summit: “My job is to take into account everyone not just some” – not just the elite few. Why would any one of us follow a path that excludes and only looks out for the few, for some? And why would, or are, we only looking out for the few, for some? By the way: are YOU one of “the some”? Are you comfortable with the underlying belief system that both parties have in fact? (Not what the patcher crowd pretends, by the way). Have you asked all the questions that need to be answered? What questions don’t you want answered for fear of what has been concealed? Sorry if this got a little too ethereal. I hope that it “touches ground” for more than a few careful readers. For me, though, I suppose my conclusion is simple: ask the next question and the one after that and… In other words, whether you like Heidegger’s phrase “Questioning is the piety of thought” or prefer the words of John Fowles’ Magus, “A Question is a form of life; every answer a form of death.” Let’s make sure we are asking the right questions before we sink the ship of state.

Thinking is not a highbrow sport. Change Managers know all about thinking

Thinking is not a highbrow sport; not an activity for the intellectuals or the intelligentsia to practice and thus to lord over others, demonstrating some supposed sense of superiority. That is neither what thinking intends nor what I propose nor who I am. Thinking is, however, a vital part of being alive, a privilege that, for some reason, a seemingly, ever-increasing group of fellow-citizens have abdicated: to the Tube, or to “the crowd” or to anyone else except themselves. Again: or, so it seems. Thinking, rather, is a gift, is our Divine right as human beings: “cogito ergo sum”. We all, each of us, has learned that such is the essence of being human. We do not think well any longer. Is it that we have grown so unconscious of what we do daily? Do we not simply plug in and surrender to some force other than ourselves and find superiority in that commonality of approach to life and its issues?

Thinking is not a highbrow sport. Not an activity restricted to lawyers and doctors and politicos or to . Yet as a nation, we, without a second thought, without the uproar the decision deserves, have done nothing to overturn the worst decision our nation’s Supreme Court has ever made: unrestricted control of the airwaves and media channels to the monied. And so people have become lemmings, led by a talking-head who is already brainwashed of the truth. These talking heads and pundits no longer think themselves. They spout that which is approved and is PAID FOR; nor the truth that has been concealed, hidden, unquestioned, forgotten, displaced.

Thinking is not a highbrow sport. I am not talking from an ivory tower. I am talking from the trenches of 2011. While admittedly, I come from a Patrician background, I am not a Plute in thought or reality: unless They now be among the poorest and those beleaguered by life (and, we know that the Plutes are THAT oligarchy – that tiny ! group of the richest ½ of 1% at most, who want to tell all of us that because they are rich that they know best and that they are right). Yes, I am a Republican by birth. I was not, however, brought up to believe the lies that the Tea Party is foisting upon the unwitting: my contention is that “the unwitting have become all of us.” Stop drinking “the Kool Aid”. Please! That is all I ask. We need to think; and, thinking is not applying group common sense. We no longer ask authentic questions; we no longer seek the complete truth; we accept the good enough instead of the best; we accept lies from Tea Party “pledge”-takers and certain Republicans who care only for themselves and the very wealthy who now own America.

Do you remember reading Plato’s Republic and the Allegory of the Cave? Thinking, the role of teaching, the challenge of taking on a responsible role in the world is the touchstone for life that is presented to us during our encounter with the text of the Allegory of the Cave. We all know that text. Many of us have re-read Plato. As readers of the text of during this present-now, this-today, the challenge, now, is how do we become unfettered; and, how do we go back up into the world, aware that most has been hidden; aware, and struggling to change the fact, that we are 3 removes from the truth. More importantly, how can we demonstrate convincingly and straightforwardly, and with simplicity that we have and continue to be misled, lied to by these Plutes? The Allegory of the Cave is much about what lies concealed, what has been hidden, what is several removes from the truth. My “allegation” or charge against myself and you is that all too often we kick pebbles. Try this test for yourselves: Pick up one of those pebbles. Hold that rock in your hands in a dark room. Then, take your narrow beam flashlight and direct its beam towards that rock. How much is revealed? 7%? 1% ? Certainly not much more. The challenge that we face, then, is to learn how to shine the light upon the 99% (or 93%) that remains concealed by when that partial particularity of a mere 1% is revealed; it is to learn how to discover the greater proportion, and then all of, that 99%. From that point on our responsibility under a new civil and social contract would be to share it responsibly, authentically with one another.

Thinking is not a highbrow sport. I am no intellectual; just a guy who believes that we have become deceived and led far astray by the oligarchy - the few. Their message has become only and exclusively a message that says “no”; it is a message of fear, exclusiveness, deception, lies, and betrayal. Thinking is not a highbrow sport, but it does require one to unplug from Tubeville, from the talking heads, from the summarizations that only provide a distortion of truth, from the cave; and to emerge into the light so as to ask questions and to listen authentically. It does demand a great deal of constructive questioning, informed paranoia, and a willingness to uncover what has been concealed and hidden away from us. That is what I would offer, if I could, to those who want again to find a path to a sustainable future. Instead of kicking pebbles; pick them up: shine a light upon the 99% that the Plutes want to hide. Make thinking truly a participative sport at last.

Common Sense is not what is needed, Mr. President.

Common Sense isn’t what’s needed, Mr. President

If you listened to Mr. Obama’s interview on 60 Minutes, did you hear the phrase? Yes, that phrase. Personally, I listened until I heard the phrase “common sense”, after which I turned the Tube off. What calls for thinking in this present-Time, Mr. President, is not common sense. At one time, I had a Chinese employee who loved to repeat “common sense isn’t so common is it?” when client discussions became mired in details that clouded the bigger picture. Clients loved it; it simplified life for them. That is not what we need from our leaders, our friends, family members, or ourselves! Mr. President, I want to share this little paragraph with you, because I was disappointed when you called for “common sense” in a time that calls for thinking.

“That sound common sense which is so often ‘cited’ in such attempts” ascertain facts, by appealing to particulars> “is not as sound and natural as it pretends. It is above all not as absolute as it acts, but rather the shallow product of that manner of forming ideas which is the final fruit of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century (emphasis mine). Sound common sense is always trimmed to fit a certain conception of what is and ought to be and may be. The power of this curious understanding extends into our own age; but it is no longer adequate.
The organizations of social life, rearmament in moral matters, the grease paint of the culture enterprise – none of them any longer reach what is. With all the good intentions and all the ceaseless effort, these attempts are no more than makeshift patchwork, expedients for the moment. And why? Because the ideas of aims, purposes, and means, of effects and causes, from which all those attempts arise – because these ideas are from the start incapable of holding themselves open to what is.”


Instead of common sense, Mr. President, we need to think and to think differently from those ways we have allowed ourselves, or been allowed, to think. Certainly - if we are honest with ourselves - each of us already has some sense that we no longer truly engage with life and think. Television, cable news, the internet, Facebook, Twitter, radio pundits pushing a message supportive of one platform or another: each of these “channels” through which we are bombarded daily, deliver messaging that merely distract us from, allowing us to avoid, thinking. There are, in all likelihood for most of you, actual human beings sitting next to or across from you right now from you; and yet, in many instances, you are not connected, you have not come together, no thought is taking place.

Several avenues of help are available. Psychiatry, Religion, gatherings, engaging with thought, engaging and building with Others: these all seem to be better for us and for our times than staying plugged in and not thinking. In other words, there are multiple “Tubal-detox programs” available to any one willing to unplug, to engage, to recognize, as well as to accept the fact of their own Being-in-the-world and the Being of others. Such engagement brings with it awesome responsibilities, responsibilities which if accepted can negate both “common sense” and the failure to think so prevalent at present. It is hoped that we thus could find a path along which we could co-create a sustainable future, inclusive in nature, characterized by it ability to allow all to flourish. We need to repair and to re-weave the world and local tapestries. Common sense will never achieve either of those two goals.

Was heist Denken? was written by Heidegger nearly 50 years ago; and yet, its message is more relevant to our present-Now than any earlier time. Thinking is not “common sense”! At our most Sacred time of the Year, what greater gift could we give our friends, families, partners, lovers, employees and employers than to engage as humans, as thinking humans? Thinking requires that we unconceal that which has been hidden; it requires, in Heideggerian-speak that we come together to gather; that we no longer accept the concealed as truth.

Let me leave you, Mr. President, with Heidegger’s conclusion to this portion of his lecture. It applies in today’s Flat World more than in 1954.

“There is the danger that the thought of man today will fall short of the decisions that are coming, decisions of whose specific historical shape we can know nothing – that the man of today will look for these decisions where they can never be made.”

Mr. President, you have demonstrated that you understand and have internalized Michael Porter’s admonition: “strategy is choice”. We need you to choose to lead us out from tubal-land’s morass of conflicting utterances of concealment. Currently it seems as though the Sybil of Cumae is allowing leaves to blow, leaves that portend disaster, leaves inspiring fear. Mr. President, make the concealment stop. We need you to eschew common sense and to set the standard for thinking in America. Help us see that “common sense” is not the way.

Thanksgiving reflections: Principled negotiations with no absolutisms

Principled negotiations with no absolutisms

Was Heisst Denken? Thinking.

At Thanksgiving we all are wont to pause and give thanks. Turkey and Packers have, for decades, brought laughter, excitement, and joy along with calories galore to Wisconsin tables. This year, let us tie that thanks to a new thoughtfulness, a thoughtfulness that then extends outward into all that we do and are, both for this present Holiday season and into our everyday lives. What calls for thinking? What is thinking? About what are we to think? And, why might it be more essential to our future than ever in our lifetimes?

Heidegger, in addition to challenging us with this intensely profound question, is justly famous for two oft-quoted statements: “Language is the house of Being” and “Language creates world.” He often uses philology and etymology to search for ways by which to ascertain the meaning behind the meaning, that which is concealed. In honor of our Thanksgiving Day celebrations, let me offer a glimpse at his thinking about “thanks”.

“The Old English, thencan, to think, and thancian, to thank, are closely related; the Old English noun for thought is thanc or thonc – a thought, a grateful thought, and the expression of such a thought; today it survives in the plural thanks.”

Did you pause and take notice of the final words? There is truly a deep-seated connection in our native language, a connection that links thought-thanks-thinking-memory together. “Language creates world.” Can we find the time to hear what the assertion reveals? Does that simple statement mean something to us; or, are we so distracted by our always on, 24/7 whirlwind of activities, and thus prevented from reading deeply? Do we see these words in much the same way we internalize an internal memo via email? Thanksgiving Day. A day of re-remembering; a day when we can gather, and in that gathering recognize that we do have a commonality, an obligation to listen authentically to one another, an obligation to come together and create world, an obligation which must be honored in this present now, if we wish to co-create a sustainable future, inclusive of all, demanding that all might flourish.

Heidegger is asking us to re-remember the power of thought, the power of language. It is not a new, or novel, concept. Take the Gospel of John. The Gospels, in our age of inclusion and cultural diversity, remain one cultural touchstone that many of us still share. Grab your Bible; open to the Gospel according to John. Read the opening verses about creation. Holding in our thoughts the fact that when John wrote, the opening of John is a Gnostic hymn: Language is in the presence of Being [God], and Language is Being: world was made through the power of thought and naming. Heidegger’s assertions about language and its power are based upon John, our cultural “locus classicus” pertaining to the creation of world.

So too each of us can create world, construct that House of Being in which we most want to exist, through Language. We live in a passionate, divisive time. We need passions now, perhaps more than ever. Our nation is in decline; politically and culturally we seem paralyzed by our partisan divide and our several fears.
It is time to set aside our fears. It is time to participate in this new social revolution, embracing the change it portends, shaping the change through our language and openness.
Our governors, city officials, and national politicians have failed in there tasks. Now it is our turn to solve the problems of our present-, and future-, nows. Ken Chenault from AmEx offered this advice: we need principled negotiations with out any absolutism. So as you sit down to dinner this week with family and friends, please take time to give thanks, to think, and to begin the healing process of coming together.

Then, take a new look at Heidegger. Begin your day with a short thought from his work on language and thinking. Holding thought, revealing that which has been concealed and hidden, are two challenges we all face. Together, however, having gathered and listened authentically, we than will be able to move forward together. We still can co-create a world for our children and grandchildren.

“Is thinking a giving of thanks? What do thanks mean here? Or do thanks consist in thinking? What does thinking mean here? Is memory no more than a container for the thoughts of thinking, or does thinking itself reside in memory?”

What are we to do with this? For many of us, it is easy simply to either dismiss, or acknowledge, and then to “walk away” from the thinking. Let us stay in the clearing, out of the darkness of media pundits and talking heads: let us use language to create, to heal, to fabricate a new house of Being for all.