quotes – the next wave

Gandhi and the conditions which create violence

thenextwavefutures — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 09:00:46 +0000

The magazine Resurgence has a special edition to mark the 60th anniversay of Gandhi’s death in 1948. On the inside front page it includes a note written by Gandhi to his grandson, Arun, a few weeks before his assination, on the ‘seven blunders’ which promote violence. It seems as a good a way as any to mark the season of goodwill.

The ‘seven blunders’

Wealth without work

Pleasure without conscience

Knowledge without character

Commerce without morality

Science without humanity

Worship without sacrifice

Politics without principles

Worldviews from the volksmusic

thenextwavefutures — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:37:45 +0000

Obviously, one takes interesting ideas wherever one finds them, but at the same time you don’t expect to see an intriguing distinction about worldviews in an article on the German love of volksmusic – which, to an outsider, seems to be all lederhosen and accordions, which maybe is why it doesn’t travel well.

Nonetheless, in trying to explain its popularity, Hans Beierlein, who has grown rich from his work in popularising volksmusic in Germany, came up with a fascinating distinction:

“It’s music that sings not of a heile Welt [an ideal world – a central concept of Nazi thinking], but of a heilbare Welt – a curable world, in which there is hope that order can be restored.”

Not to make too much of it, but it had resonances for me of the underlying philosophy which the Austrian activist Robert Jungk brought to the development of his futures workshops; of giving people the opportunity of repairing the damaged world they found themselves in.

William Faulkner on ‘the past’

thenextwavefutures — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:27:08 +0000

Good futurists need to be good historians, as Wendy Schultz reminded me the other day. On which note I found a fine quote from the American novelist Wiliiam Faulkner:

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past”

(Requiem for a Nun, 1951)

Enabling the future

thenextwavefutures — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:22:49 +0000

And while I’m on good quotations (see immediately below) I also notice the following, from the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

“As for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it.”

Thanks to Madhav Badami at McGill University, whose sig file it is.

Buffett on insight versus data

thenextwavefutures — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:06:15 +0000

A side bar on the Warren Buffett story blogged in the post below has a quote from Buffett on the limits to data:

“If you see someone walking through the door and you don’t know whether they’re 300 or 325 pounds, you still know they’re fat.”

Past, present, future

thenextwavefutures — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 15:40:05 +0000

I found an intriguing quote by the Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto at an exhibition of his work at the Barbican in London:

“Nothing old can be reborn, but it will never completely vanish either; it will always re-emerge in a new form”.

Shades, maybe, of the famous Harry Truman quote: “There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.”