Gurteen Knowledge Letter
Issue 253 – July 2021
Introduction
I have almost 14,000 followers on Twitter, and I have been tweeting on and off since 2007. However, I have recently started to tweet most days.
My tweets are an eclectic mix of fascinating material I find on the web during research for my blook — mainly related to Conversational Leadership or Knowledge Management.
I have also started to tweet one top post from my blook each day.
If you would like to follow me, you can find my tweet stream here.
Contents
- Has democracy outlived its usefulness?
The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter - Gurteen Knowledge Café Workshop August and September 2021
Conversation is King. Content is just something to talk about - Consilience Project website
Facilitating a cultural renaissance - Knowledge is not power
Knowledge is an expression of the shared responsibilities for the collective well-being of humanity - Do not speak lashon hara
Evil tongue - Is love the answer?
It may seem corny, but love is the answer - Help Keep My Work Alive
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Has democracy outlived its usefulness?
The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter
The United States' founding fathers understood the importance of a well-informed citizenry to vote wisely to elect good leaders, as these two quotations clearly show.
A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government.
In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important?
And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?
The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.
To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty.
The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.
The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.
Today, like so many other democratic nations, not only are citizens not educated in the "science of government," they do not have the ability to make sense of increasingly complex issues like the science of climate change.
Furthermore, they have little or no access to unbiased information to help them to make informed decisions.
These limitations undermine the democratic process.
Like the above, there are many criticisms of democracy
Winston Churchill is purported to have once said (though there is no evidence he said it) that
The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Credit: Unknown but often misattributed to Winston Churchill
I think today, in a far more complex world, we really do need to rethink democracy. Or maybe Churchill was right when he said
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe.
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.
Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Credit: This post was inspired by watching video interviews with Daniel Schmachtenberger. In particular, the problem with the lack of unbiased information and the quotations from Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
Gurteen Knowledge Café Workshop August and September 2021
Conversation is King. Content is just something to talk about
I will be running my Knowledge Café workshop where I teach how to design and host Gurteen Knowledge Cafés on 10th August 2021 for EMEA/Asia/Pacific time zones and again on 21st September 2021 for EMEA/Americas time zones.
If you are not familiar with the method, my Knowledge Café format is a simple way to bring a small group of people together to have a lightly structured conversation on a topic of mutual interest.
It can be adapted for various purposes, and you do not need to be a professional facilitator to design and host one. You can find many stories of how the Knowledge Café can be used in my blook.
Although I designed the Café initially for face-to-face gatherings, it works exceptionally well on Zoom or Microsoft teams or any other virtual meeting platform with a breakout room capability.
You can find more information and register here.
Consilience Project website
Facilitating a cultural renaissance
I blogged recently about the Consilience Project — co-founded by Daniel Schmachtenberger. The project team have now launched the Consilience Project website.
The project aims to facilitate a cultural renaissance, developing the full human capacities and orientations needed for effective, emergent governance adequate to the novelty and scope of the current problems and catastrophic risks we collectively face. You can learn more about how they seek to achieve this on their About page.
Knowledge is not power
Knowledge is an expression of the shared responsibilities for the collective well-being of humanity
I have written in my blook that knowledge alone is not power.
Knowledge alone is not power.
Self-motivation, taking responsibility, and the ability to act on knowledge and to influence and work with people, especially those in authority, is power.
But I rather like this definition of knowledge by Jeremy Rifkin in his book The Empathic Civilization.
The traditional assumption that “knowledge is power” and is used for personal gain is being subsumed by the notion that knowledge is an expression of the shared responsibilities for the collective well-being of humanity and the planet as a whole.
Do not speak lashon hara
Evil tongue
I know little about Jewish history or culture, so when I came across the concept of lashon hara recently, I was amazed.
Lashon hara, in Jewish religious law, means any form of speech or communication that may harm someone emotionally, financially, physically, or damage their reputation. It is forbidden to speak lashon hara, and it is considered to be a serious sin.
What makes the law of not speaking lashon hara so compelling is that it is forbidden to speak lashon hara even if it is true. Furthermore, it is forbidden to listen to lashon hara. If you hear lashon hara, you should reprimand the speaker or exit the conversation. Listening to lashon hara is seen as an even greater sin than speaking it. And, if you do hear lashon hara, you are forbidden to believe it.
It seems an almost impossible ideal to live up to fully. For example, it is difficult not to speak lashon hara when discussing politics.
Lashon hara represents the gold standard in showing respect - a set of rules that I feel we should all strive for if we are to create a better world though I suspect a large number of people would not agree with me.
Having read and thought deeply about the subject, I've committed myself to do my best not to speak lashon hara. I am more aware of my speech now, and in trying not to speak it, I've realized just how difficult it is. But I will continue to strive to do so and see what I learn along the way.
One final point, lashon hara should not be confused with gossip.
Is love the answer?
It may seem corny, but love is the answer
It may seem corny, but love is the answer.
I have long thought that to help cure many of the ills in the world that all we needed to do was "to care more." To care more about each other and to care more about our planet.
To say that "love is the answer" seemed a little too twee, especially in a business context.
However, since I discovered Elon Musk using the phrase in an interview with Joe Rogan, I am having second thoughts - maybe "love is the answer" conveys the message far more effectively.
Here is a clip from the interview where Elon and Joe talk about the future of humanity and "love is the answer."
How do we learn "to care more" or "love humanity more"? If "love is the answer," what do we need to do?
Help Keep My Work Alive
For almost 25 years, I’ve been sharing the Gurteen Knowledge Letter each month, and many of you have been reading it for five years or more. My Knowledge Café also reached a milestone, celebrating its 20th anniversary in September 2022.
If my work has made a difference to you, I’d be grateful if you could consider supporting it. A small monthly donation or any one-off contribution would greatly help cover some of my website hosting costs.
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David Gurteen
Gurteen Knowledge
Fleet, United Kingdom
