dispatches from the new world of work

Peace On Earth ...

It's a little difficult to square the Christmas message of "peace on earth ..." and the body bags arriving from Mosul. Or is it? The rise of Christianity was, as is true with all innovations, spiritual or material, a reaction to a bankrupt & intolerable status quo. And then, a thousand or so years after the First Christmas, Martin Luther had had enough with what he saw as the corruption of the dominant church, posted his theses ... and launched the Protestant Reformation.

The masterwork of the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, was titled Conjectures and Refutations. We create a hypothesis, test it, and if it stands up to scrutiny it supplants what came before. For a while! There is no definitive "last word," but merely today's best effort. In short, to paraphrase the political scientist Charles Lindbloom, whose work I assiduously studied three decades ago, man "muddles through"—in war, peace, religion, economics, management, a career.

Iraq may eventually be judged a disaster. Or it may in fact have begun a Middle Eastern march to democracy and modernity. We don't know. For heaven's sake, I spent Christmas 1966 and Christmas 1967 in Vietnam; nearly 40 years later, I'm still not sure whether or not that war was necessary!

Yes, we muddle through. But that's not as bad as it sounds. The idea: We do indeed try our damnedest ... to create a safer and more liberated world, a less corrupt version of the spiritual life (the Reformation). And at Christmas and during this "holiday season," and despite grotesque commercialization, most of us pause and spend more than the usual amount of time appreciating friends and relatives. Take the company Christmas lunch. Sure, it is often a boozy affair, a little short on conventional "spirituality," but it is also a rare opportunity to relax and joke with colleagues, to swap stories about what your kids and their kids are up to ... that is, to pause and for a moment be quintessentially human.

Consider me. I had a lovely day yesterday amidst the hustle and bustle (and honking horns) of little Manchester, VT. Sure, the lines in various stores were "annoyingly long" ... or were they? In the course of a 4-hour shop, and many a line wait, the highlights were clearly not the gifts I was purchasing. The highlights, the true gifts, were the dozen or more conversations with pals and acquaintances I rarely see. In fact, I'm going on a mostly unnecessary shop today ... mostly on the off chance of a few more conversations. That's perhaps the deepest meaning of the Season.

Speaking of Conversations ...

Tom Peters posted this on 12/24/04.

Comments

Absolutely, despite the materialistic consumerized focus of the "holidays", the very process of the shop, and the people interaction - albeit crowded, draws many in a small way into a 'togetherness' missing from daily suburbanized isolation.

Posted by Eric Lapp at December 25, 2004 10:39 AM

And, Eric, mostly there is a remarkable air of good cheer and camraderie amidst even the long line waits--though perhaps not at Reagan National airport yesterday.

Posted by tom peters at December 26, 2004 3:40 PM

I would like to recommend some beautiful books to reflect and make introspection.

Raimon PanikkarÂ´s "The plentiness of man, a christophany".

Gershom ScholemÂ´s "Zohar, the book of splendor".

Henry CorbinÂ´s "The man of light in iranian sufism".

A good way to start the new year.

Posted by felix gerena at December 27, 2004 10:48 AM

The holidays are the USA at its best - goodwill, free enterprise run rampant, marketing culture, service-products worldwide - love it.

Posted by John at December 28, 2004 7:38 AM