Leadership & New Science LO10696

Durval Muniz de Castro (durval@ia.cti.br)
Fri, 25 Oct 1996 09:58:39 -0700

Replying to LO10665 --

Sherri Malouf wrote:

> I have a question about vision and goals...
>
> Do they focus us on what we haven't achieved? On what is missing?
>
> I know that is not the intent but don't we create these from a place of
> lacking?

Dear Sherri

Your question reminds me Plato's Symposium, where he tells a mith about
love, who is the son of Poverty and Plenty. Allow me to quote a paragraph
from that beautiful dialogue:

"And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he
is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him;
and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on
the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or
at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always
in distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is
always plotting against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising,
strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in
the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times,
terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither
mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in
plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his
father's nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing
out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he is
in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is
this: No god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise
already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the
ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he
who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he
has no desire for that of which he feels no want."

The full version of the dialogue may be found at:
http://daemon.ilt.columbia.edu/academic/digitexts/plato/symposium/symposium.html.

-- 
Durval Muniz de Castro
durval@ia.cti.br
Fundacao Centro Tecnologico para Informatica
http://www.ia.cti.br/
Campinas - Brasil
 

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>