The uniform, the disruptive, & from Colditz to Mt Kenya
It’s not that uniforms frustrate creativity, it’s that necessity procures it.
As the great Islamic poet Jalaluddin Rumi [quoted in Idries Shah, Tales of the Dervishes, p. 197.] says:
New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity.
Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.
That’s where this whole “disruptive thinking” discourse is eventually headed.
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Madhu:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:18 pm
I think Lex once reviewed “No Picnic on Mount Kenya” but I’m not sure.
Cheryl Rofer:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:38 pm
Love it, Charles! You’ve put your finger on a point that Zen and I disagree on:
New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity.
Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.
That’s my point about getting the nukes to zero! It’s not going to happen any time soon, but it increases the necessity and may yet force some disruption in the thinking.
Lexington Green:
May 3rd, 2012 at 5:16 pm
Charles, good post.
My obsessive World War II escape narrative was The Great Escape — the movie and Paul Brickhill’s excellent book (he was in the camp).
Lex on Benuzzi:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/24339.html
Charles Cameron:
May 3rd, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Thanks, Madhu, and thanks Lex for the link to your piece on Benuzzi.
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I hadn’t really thought about it until yesterday, but today it strikes me that heroism in war (my father was a naval officer who fought with distinction in WWII) was probably the carrot that lured me into these books — and there was a whole series of them — but ingenuity seems to have been remarkably intertwined with courage, and thjaty seems to be something I picked up from them.
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I’m reminded here of Scott’s most recent post “No one is really listening, they are just pretending.” – Madhu, in which he wrote:
That overlap between courage and wisdom would make a fine Venn diagram — and a fine topic for research, if we could ever get a decent measure for either courage or wisdom!
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My own personal “anthropology” — in the sense of “view of what constitutes humanity” — includes three elements, which I term radiance, duende and finesse: duende is the one that deals with courage, wisdom would be what radiance produces, especially when applied with finesse.
Charles Cameron:
May 3rd, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Hi Cheryl — and thanks!
I’m not fond of the idea of incinerating entire cities either… leaving nuclear shadows on walls or tracking momentary wind patterns by the radiation sicknesses they bestow… but this is a genie out of the bottle question, isn’t it? — and thus strikes me as having a family resemblance to both klein bottles and koans.
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I suspect the “answer” we need is orthogonal to, and somehow transcendent of, the “nukes / no nukes” question itself, and — I’m still pondering my response to Madhu and Lex above — has a great deal to do with humankind needing to grow up in terms of both courage and wisdom…
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Maddeningly vague, I know.
YT:
May 6th, 2012 at 11:40 am
RE: The Colditz Story
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Oh, I’ve left a copy collecting dust for a whole 2 years. Awful.
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Must remember to read said book. Thanks for this post, Mr. Cameron.
Charles Cameron:
May 6th, 2012 at 8:56 pm
Heh, I haven’t read it in more than half a century.
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You’re welcome (and I’m Charles).