Monday, August 14, 2006

NLp and the Landmark Forum

This is something i posted to a yahoo group a while back. It's been on my mind so i cut and pasted it here for all to see. The one change i remember that i wanted to make was the use of the word "metaphysics", i wanted to substitute it with the word "ontology". There apparently is a big difference between what these two words refer to. Metaphysics is well, metaphysicx. Ontology is a sub-set of metaphysics that deals with the 'beingness' of humans.

I'm actually currently participating in "Landmard Education". I took
the Landmark Forum in Aug 2004, and I am currently a coach in one of
its programs. So take my information as pertaining to the Landmark
Forum in its current form, not the Est training, which by the accounts
of many people is vastly different from the current Landmark Forum.

I've also been wondering about the commonalities between LE/Est and
NLP. Apparently both had some involvement with the Esalen institute
(where Gregory Bateson resided in his later years). I was actually
going to email Steve A to inquire as to whether he knew/knows about
any associations bewteen the two. I figured that this was somewhat
plausible as Grinder and Bandler were reportedly voracious about who
and how many people they modeled. An aside: I was talking to one of
the professors or whatever from the Gestalt institute in cleveland and
he said that B&G modeled one of the heads of their Gestalt center, but
couldn't grasp the complexity of what she did (i say that tongue in
cheek, but he didn't), and that conversation had me think it plausible
that B&G were more voracious in their modeling than i had previously
thought.

Back on topic. . . from a philosophical stanpoint, the Landmark Forum
is a metaphysical conversation while NLP is an epistemological
conversation. I've found that realizing this difference pretty much
gives rise to cognitively similar systems, but vastly different
applications.

Both systems subscribe to something like the Korzybsian distinction
between map and territory (in Landmark parlance that's 'your story'
and 'what happens/ed'). Both systems understand that language creates
reality (through sorting, filtering and pointing). Both utilize the
difference between descriptive and evaluative language. Landmark also
emphasizes the category and use of 'declarative' language (i
will/shall make this happen). Both systems have significantly
atemporal patterns: in NLP we have timeline therapy and in LE we
have 'distinguishing the past as the past' and both of these can be
seen as variants of Korzybski's 'time-indexing' [not time-binding i
think].

A few more broad categorical generalizations: Landmark's interactions
deal mostly with philosophical stances (eudaemonia) while NLP
demonstrates and teaches people how to manipulate your own brain to do
things. Landmark's focus is on a person's "way of being" while NLP
focuses on a "how a person functions". Both systems have their
strengths, and i think they dovetail wonderfully.

For me, Landmark encourages one to create their own goals, purpose and
individual teleology, while NLP teaches you how to solidify,
communicate and enact those goals. I found NLP lacking in helping me
clarify and push me to think what i wanted to create in my life,
whereas i find Landmark lacking in telling me the details of how to
make it happen on a minute-by-minute basis. Metaphorically speaking,
it's the difference between being a leader (LE/compass) and a manager
(NLP/map). Leaders select directions, managers show you how to get
there.

I think another 'one-up' Landmark has on NLP is that its trainings are
relatively cheaper and 'closer to home'. What i mean by that is i
don't have to shell out five grand for a one-time seminar which by
many reports may or may not be worth it and then be relatively
divorced from 'the work' and 'the practitioners' until i proceed to
the next level (master prac). Whereas with Landmark, i have a 'center'
in that i can go to for various seminars (applications), as well as a
community of like-minded people. Also with Landmark, all of the senior
leaders i've come across are acroos-the-board high-quality and i'm
aware of the intensity of their leadership track(ing) to insure high-
quality trainings. And at Landmark i experience an almost ferverent
interest for people to heal and develop their relationships with their
families, friends and communities.

Co-incidentally, if you believe in co-incidences, the NLP book that
most closely relates to Landmark Education is Steve's Transforming
Your Self. I found it to be a relatively literal description on how to
do what Landmark's programs encourages you to do. That being said, i
would still suggest/endorse anyone taking the Landmark Forum, there's
a vast difference between the words on a book and the territory of
live training.

One other difference i see between is NLP trainings seem geared toward
creating practitioners 'only'. So there's a bit of purity of the work,
but personally, my own 'do this for what' isn't answered by the broad
promises of 'communicate better' and 'run your own brain' and etc.
Some/most people don't want the level/intensity of practitioner
training. I mean, really, it's real inconvenient to become a
practitioner. What's up with a small application workshop in 3 or so
days that gets my whole life clicking? This is coming from some one
who did a 14 day training with Meta-States people. I really didn't get
the passion to deal with life powerfully from that training, whereas
after taking the LF i saw where i wasn't being passionate about
different areas of my life. Landmark presents seminars geared
specifically to different ares of your life, with the possiblity of
further development and education in being a practitioner/leader in
the field.

Well, there's the kitchen sink!

Boot
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Thursday, July 27, 2006

why

how come everytime you install something you have to reboot your computer. . . is it me or does that frustrate you too?
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things i hate about bloggin

well, for starters when i have a really good idea for a blog i'm never near a computer, and if i am i don't have enough time. Then i forget to write down the topic in my trusty notepad on google's homepage. if that wasn't enough, i forget the rest.
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Friday, July 21, 2006

Black America?

so i just wrote about reading Clash of Civilizations. And of course that has me think, well who am i. As an 'african america' i was thinking about what 'civilization' should i be aligning with. Of course i was born and raised in America, as were at least 7 generations of my family (what many af-ams don't realize and relish in), but i'm distinctively not american by the normal conception of who an 'american' is.

In the book Clash of Civilizations the author,i guess i should remember his name, harrington or something. . . no huntington is closer. . . anyhoo the author talks about the conflict between christian "Eurpoe" (which is really west asia) and Muslim Middle-East Asia. So that had me thinking about the religious and linguistic situation of Black Americans, and Blacks in the Americas.
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The Clash of Civilizations

i really wish i could be paid for being smart.So i'm reading "the clash of Civilzations" by som guy. It was written in 1996, so you'd think the stuff would be out of date. Actually, i heard about it before and i'm now mad i didn't read it before. In the past year or two i've read Thomas somone or other''s book The Pentagon's New Map and the more recent the Lexus and the Olive Tree. All three of them are good books in their own right. All three of them suffer from wanting to describe the 'one big ting' in international politics. But only clash of Civilizations comes close to identifying something meaningful.

The Lexus and Olive Tree seems to want everyone to think that with the world-wide communication systems being built that the world is going to be one big happy family. The Pentagon's new Map seems to think that the US should really become not only the world's police, but also its social worker, tyring to get everyone hooked up into the information age and employable. But both of these authors i think have read "Clash" (i remember Olive tree man saying so but i'm not so sure about Pentagon man) and try to put out their own point.

The thing i love about Clash is that it not only has great analyses of civilizational disputes, these disputes go back thousands of years, if not millenia. So the cultural analysis of conflict goes when core values of civilizations conflict. As a bachelored historian and a love of world history besides, i love this book. It does get a little redundant and you feel pressured into the abstract framework until he actually starts analyzing teh balkans, Turkey and other countries.

I guess i should finish the book before i go on. If i never mention it again, please read it anyway.
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Al Gore is a whimp, James Lovelock says Gaia is Dying,

While sailing on the Chesapeake (or however you spell it . . .and Kareem peep the 'metis' reference) i was listening to a radio program from canada, my gramps loves short-wave. There was an interview with James Lovelock, the person who came out with the "gaia" theory that the earth was an organism and it was getting sick.

If you remember back to the mid 90's there was a theory that if humanity stopped polluting, then the earth could reset its metabolism and heal itself in 75-100 years. In the interview he said that it's too late. He said the problem was that politicians are listening to green lobbies who advocate sustainable development, but neither of them are knowledgeable about the science that says the earth isn't healthy and is in fact dying.

He went on to say that the politicians should stop worrying about green development and start thinking about the massive migrations that are going to happen around the world due to the change in climate. For instance he said about 100 million Indians will need a place to stay when Bangladesh goes under when the ice caps melt. Got an extra room for Sandip?

So there you have it. Gaia is dying, from the horses mouth.

But the good news is that i'm going to save a lot of money on car insurance by switching to Geico.
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Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Thinking in dimensions

I was reading The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thom Friedman, it's a pretty good book, but could be half the distance. Anyhoo, i was thinking that one of the things i really liked about the book is that he talked about 'thinking in dimensions'. What he meant by that was thinking along differen 'filters' for international events. Of course, especially before the end of the cold war, lots of people thought that the political dimension reigned supreme. Nowadays it's the economic and technological views that predominate analysis. With the war in Iraq the supreme dimension we think about is cultural (religious) with a heavy dose of economics (oil) and those countries lack of technological sophistication.

So i forget the other dimensions, i'll put them in later, but for now let me list them:
1. political (democracy/dictatorship)
2. cultural (religion/philosophy)
3. economic (capitalist/socialist)
4.
and a few others, he names six. Unfortunately i lent this book to a friend going to india so i won't be able to figure out the other dimensions.

In a related note, my dad is thinking about writing another book about my family's history. And since he's intelligent he first flushed out the main arguments he wanted to convey in this book. He said that he wanted to analyze economics, religion, family and sex (of course race), and he's also going to talk about these topics through the lenses of the 'moral elevation' happening after the Great Awakening (one of the feverish Christianization periods that the US went through) on the topics of race, class, gender and something else.

Don't you hate when you remember most of something? I did it twice in this one post. You can be mad at me, and blame me for your next four mistakes because i threw your 'energy' off. til nex time
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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

The future history of google

I was talking to a fellow "futurist" and was telling him that the future of information really is Google, and the applications people develop for it really. I was telling him that someone is going to write a program that indexes historical information to google's map program. So when you research Thomas Jefferson, google will have a site that tracks thomas jefferson's travels through Europe, across America and so forth. This wouldn't just be any map, it'll be a historical map that accurately reflected the size and shape of cities back then. This'll be even cooler because some geek would create a program that made 3D models of the buildings, so you could do a virtual walk-through.

Then there's the question of historical debates, for instance, what ethnicity were the Harappans (Indus valley) or even the Ancient Egyptians (Kemet) for that matter. I guess fury would arise if anyone modeled Muhummad as Islam allows no images of their Prophet. And what would happen if someone created a Jesus with lambs wool hair and black feet!

I think for this we would need to create choice-points and explanatory tangents to educate the explorers of the past. This would be in the form of some floating symbol that is clickable or something like that.
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Thursday, May 25, 2006

New book i want to write

I want to write another book (again). It'll be called "Distinctions of a Black Man". It's a pun. It isn't anything like the movied 'distinguished gentleman' with eddie murphy. It isn't even a book about black men. Rather it is about how black men think. It lists a couple polarities/categories along which black men (in my opinion) parse and judge the world. let me clue you in to a few topics:

Adult vs Children (responsibility)
Black people vs Niggaz (morality & ambition)
Power vs Force (sovereignty)
Man/Woman vs Masculine/Feminine
Success vs Failure (winning with the hand you were dealt)
War vs Violence (read the book! or the next paragraph)

There may be up to 50, i just gotta think them up. The thought for this book came about when i was thinking about how i literally love warriorship literature, but hate the violence in my community. So i got to thinking about the difference between a warrior and a thug. What differentiates them are the ultimate aims for which they apply force.
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Ipod, Mac and Dell

I got another ipod, the 30gig video. It's amazing. Problem . . . i'm mostly using my Girl's laptop for music. We have separate user names, so we have duplicate music, that sucks. . . especially on the 40gig harddrive, (really two drives, the one of which is getting full!). If you have an Ipod, you know the trials and tribulations of figuring out what to do with it, how to organize this and so forth. I think the greatest feature of the ipod is the smart playlists.

I think the ipod is the single greatest invention that has the potential to cause world happines. I mean, think about it. A personal soundtrack to your life! It helps you carry around all of your favorite songs, even videos and personal information. Pretty soon it'll be a pda/phone too. Imagine a 60gig phone running macware!

And that puts me to another point. I was arguing with my dad about Mac and Windows. We differ on a big point. He thinks that Mac's competitor is Windows. I say that Mac's competitors are Dell, HP and the machines. People love the mac software, but aren't sure about the computer. With all the differentiation between the ram, harddrives, processors and such, Mac remains a mystery to most people. When we can run Mac software on a PC, That's what has Paul Allen and Bill Gates worried. . . to hell with linux. Linux has a reputation for geekdom and servers and data-intensive stuff, not graphical aesthetics for the hobby-ing user (i.e. non-programmer).
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Wednesday, April 26, 2006

i'm ready

The other day i had an original thought. It was "i think i'm ready to start the revolution". Great, but what revolution? I dunno. If you do, drop me a note or something, i need help with ideas where to start. Currently i'm thinking about focusing on the Black Family.

A few weeks ago i was talking to someone and told them that there's a difference between our ideal family, and our actual family. Politicians say things like 'family values' and all kinds of abstract slogans. But if we really think about it, we wouldn't want everyone in the world to have the type of family or families that we have. All families have problems, no doubt. But the question may not be how do we eliminate the problems, but what does a healthy family look like?

In psychology, they have the DSM4, 5 or some other version. It's a mini-encyclopedia of how people are disfunctional. Of course, somewhere theres probably a version of that for families. But that's looking in the wrong direction. It's like reviewing all the statistics about Black America. They in themselves are simply descriptions of the problem, and those statistics point to what we don't want, but they don't tell us how to get there from here.

Looking in a direction that'll have hopefully a more positive impact, i'll say that we have to create a model of a healthy family. We have to research what works in existing healthy families, and teach that to dys-functional families. Simply saying 'don't do this' won't help. I do kinda like the presence of Dr. Phil and the Nanny on TV. That teaches those other losers that really should be on Jerry how to get their stuff together. But when i watch the shows, i find that some of the stuff i see there (good intentions but bad execution) are present in my own family. So i guess i need to find a healthy family and figure out what they're doing.

So far i've got a few clues. I'll just rattle them off and add to them later, or make you read up on them yourself. Suzette Elgin in the gentle art of verbal self-defense (series). Virginia Satir in her peoplemaking and new peoplemaking books. And Steven Covey with his family book- admitedly, i only read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and only skimmed through 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, but if what i read was any indication of the full book, then he's on target.

Perhaps the most important thing on a practical level is to figure out how to have couples and families discuss money in a non-confrontational way. Money may or may not be the root of ALL evil, but it does some serious damage on marriage. So part of the plan is to get people to look at their finances (and their fiances) with a fine-toothed comb.

On a more philosophical level, we also have to create a healthy portrait of an individual in the context of a family. . . how he or she could operate that assists the family in its development whether as a spouse, child or parent. That being said, i think the second most generous thing a person can do for a child is to love that child's parent(s), the first of course being to love the child.

So that's it, describing how healthy families operate on both a practial and philosophical level, and helping families get their finances right would be the backbone of any revolution i'm a part of. Game?
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Monday, March 06, 2006

organizations and culture

In case you didn’t remember, I’m a teacher. The other day we had a staff development training. In the training we referred to something we learned in a previous staff development. We learned about a way to categorize organizations along the lines of the ability for both the clients of the organization and the organization to choose the clients.

On of the extremes is an organization where they choose their clients and whose clients chose them. The other extreme is an organization where neither the organization nor the clients choose the relationship. Examples of the first case, where both choose, can be businesses and private schools. Examples of the second case are neighborhood schools and prisons.

What I started to appreciate was that the cultures in and around of these two extremes are vastly different. What I realized was that this categorization tool, could not only be only applied to the organizations themselves, but also the culture and societies of the clientele and the organization itself.

For instance, businesses are able to hire and fire at will, and people are free to choose whether to shop at a particular business or not. However, in impoverished neighborhoods this choice remains, but there are far fewer options. So there may be only one readily accessible grocery store serving a neighborhood, whereas in the suburbs a person can drive to three.

I was about to talk about the schools, but let me refer to something else. People choose to live where they do. The buildup of the suburbs since WWII has largely been a product of the choice of millions of people to live where green grass surrounds their house and thousands of other considerations. These people live where they live based on decisions that they or their parents have made in the past. However, the situation in the inner city isn’t so rosy. Many people live in the inner city simply by default. Sure there are other options available to them, if they have the money, time and drive to exercise them. However, the perception of there being a lot of options is less so than in the neighborhoods.

So what’s my point? The culture of an organization is made up of the perception of choices available to its members. A possible solution to ‘cleaning up the schools’ is by getting into a deliberate and protracted conversation about the nature of possibility, opportunity, choice, options and other things intimately related to free will. This conversation will have people uniquely related to the essential difference between reality and how they think about reality.
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Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Dubai's Ports

Hey, i live in philadelphia, city of brothers committing homicides. It's a city, and the homicide rate hovers just under one per day. Most, not all, are black-on-black crimes, and about half of the victims and shooters are under 26 years old.

What's this got to do with the Dubai company running America's Ports? Well, here's the analogy:

Saying that a company in a Muslim country cannot run our ports, is just the same as saying that Sylvester Johnson can't be Philadelphia's Top Cop because he's black.

It sounds like an oxymoron: Muslim security at American ports. But that's a foolish generalization to make.

Yeah, i do have concerns about the Dubai people running our ports. I'd have the same concerns if the British, Argentinians or Mozambiquians did it too, but that's along the lines of internal security issues, not the nationality or religion of the country supposedly protecting our ports.

I forget the city, but I read a few years back that the Nation of Islam was contracted to be the security force for a few of the housing projects in a city. During the contract, violent crime almost dissapeared. Then the ADL got upset that the NOI had this contract and had the contract terminated along the lines of separation of Church and State. I've no problem with the ADL, i think they serve a valuable function in their community. However, i'd throw that decision out simply because of the reduction in crime in those projects.

I heard Gov Rendell say that they only have the money to search 5% of the containers coming into the ports. So there's a 95% chance that someone can smuggle in contraband, drugs etc whether the ports are run by the Emirates of Dubai, or little 'ol me.
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Thursday, February 16, 2006

how to make viruses productive

I think it should be legal for people who create viruses to unleash viruses targeted and limited to people who create spam. Hackers against spammers. whaddaya think?
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Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Turino at my front door.

Turino must be the coolest name the olympics ever had.

Anyhoo. Undoubtedly (did i spel that rite?) the coolest winter sport ever is speedskating. Those guys and gals fly! Next in line is the freestyle skiing, the halfpipe is my favorite. Then comes, you guessed it . . snowball fights at home.

This weekend we in philly got thousands of pounds of snow. I think we got around 7-10 inches. It was hard to tell because the wind was kicking. It snowed on saturday and the school district still closed on Monday. That was a blessing fo sho'.

I tried to look on the web for the olympics content, no such luck. I just wanted some video of the speedskating. I think if there were more video of less popular sports, there would be more interest in it. I mean football sundays, weekdays are for hockey and basketball. And when you turn the tv off, on comes baseball and NASCAR.

Did you notice that there's a black speed skater? He almost qualified for both the short and long distance speed skating teams. And people are mad at him because he won't be on the team skating event. He's not phased saying that he didn't come to the games for that event, but other people did.

'sabout it.
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Wednesday, February 08, 2006

teacher of the day!

So, i'm on fire as a teacher. I blogged a while back about the revolutionary insight that lesson plans give: you actually know what to do. So this week we started a new semseter/year with about 40 new kids. I don't know what's been happening, but i've been organizing and planning like a beast! I know where stuff is, i am planning my itinerary for the year, i'm even writing up my grading and rules policy for all the kids to read. Whatarush.

I might start to like this teaching thing . . . if i didn't get the news today that i won't be a teacher past september, whatabummer. But, i'm going to juice this job while i got it for everything that its got.

sianara -or however you spell it.
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Saturday, January 21, 2006

Public intellectuals

I'm about to beat up straw men. Public intellectuals. I haven't read any of their 'works'. I'm talking about Dyson. I'm talking about Bell hooks -though i hear she isn't that bad. I'm talking about a lot of them. But really, i'm talking about Dyson.

I read, well started to read, his book on King. I couldn't get past the first chapter. It wasn't because i'm stupid. It's because he's an idiot. I have grown up with the notion that language is supposed to communicate ideas, sentiments, emotions, directions etc. When language doesn't, there could be a couple problems. the first problem could be that the thoughts to be communicated just weren't that organized in the first place. THis is a disease i suffered from a while ago. Boy did i confuse even myself. I still battle with this affliction from time-to-time.

Another problem may be that the words don't express quite what the speaker wanted to express. Hence expletives and so on. And, the listener can just not understand. Dyson, he's authored a whole 'nother category of difficulty. Obfuscation. I seriously doubt even he knows what he's talking about.

With my previous point of language supposed to communicate ideas, it seems that Dyson misses this point. It seems that Dyson uses multi-conceptual sentences to give the air of sophistication. It doesn't. It gives the air of a buffoon. He teaches about a mile and a half from where i live. Any 'self-respecting' so-called revolutionary would jump at the chance to sit in on his lectures. The problem is that i am self-respecting, but i don't respect him.

This would probably not be a whole 'lot of drivel if i actually remembered what triggered my hate. But i buried it in my subconscious. Hopefully i won't get the inkling to dig up the dead by reading the back cover of one of his book . . .

Oh yeah. Bill Cosby hasn't lost his mind. Dyson is just of the opinion that every predicament that black people are in can be blamed on whites. I dig that. I'm black, a lot of the *ish that goes on in my community, the circumstances can in fact be 'blamed' on whites. But that policy of victimhood gives me and my peoples no power. If it's the white-man's fault, is it also up to him to 'remedy' the situation? Then the focus sits on "what has whitey done for/to me lately" instead of what have i done for myself lately. I'm not for that. I'm for personal responsibility.

That's what it was. I saw an article in the Philadelphia Weekly or the City Paper about him. didn't finish it. Had to work. Oh yeah, i saw Solomon Jones speak. He's good. He and Dan Savage may be the most interesting journalists coming out of philly papers.

scream at me
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Friday, January 06, 2006

On Being a Warrior

In my youth (early twenties) i used to fantasize about what ancient warriors experienced on a day-to-day basis. I was drawn in by the god-like self-posession demanded of Japanese heroes. It always lightened my day to imagine what kind of being sharpened all of their skills daily. So i'm on a meandering path toward that as an ongoing reality.

What brought this thought on? I started working out. I mentioned before the Body-Flow http://www.rmax.tv/ paradigm that i've been wanting to fall into. So i started training at Maxercise, a Gracie Ju-Jitsu gym in philadelphia headed by Steve Maxwell. So in addition to signing up for judo next month (no ready for BJJ i'm telling myself) i started to train my mind-body there. I'm doing some clubbell exercises
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