Daily Archives: January 5, 2005

The Process

Posted on by

Watching the West Wing, the other night..a rerun…They talked about the process. That the outcome was tragic, but at least the process was preserved.

You know, all systems are based on process. I’m huge on process. I love good processes. But when people become involved, and they don’t agree on the importance of the process, it won’t work.

Things will be done, but not according to the process. Which means the outcome will not be reliable.

It’s a matter of deciding on what it the most important. You have to have a consensus to abide by the rules. But if some of the people think that there is a different thing that is more important, it brings the whole process down to a standstill.

I think it’s kind of amazing that America is the place where we most rely on process to get things done:
Democracy

and yet it’s quite possibly the country that values indepence more than anybody else.

Narcissus and Goldmund

Posted on by

By Hermann Hesse

Heard good things about this guy, but I never read him. A friend gave me this book, and so I had to read it.

Not the most readable. It seemed to wander a lot. Not surprising, since it was about a dude wandering.

The book was one of those philosophical tales, where the author has a serious point to make. He tells a tortured story to make his point.

Camus, Voltaire, Rand, they all did this.

Narcissus was this thinker monk, a man who left the world and lived in the cerebral realm.

Goldmund was a young man who was an artist and lived in world of his senses.

Of course, Hesse had to make them friends so that the worlds could be juxtaposed.

Anyway, it was completely worth it for one part:

“That may be so,” said Narcissus. “Niether of us can ever understand the other completely in such things. But there is one realization all men of good will share: In the end our works make us feel ashamed, we have to start out again and each time the sacrifice has to be made anew”

And to understand that part, you have to read the whole book. But that bit is really really profound. I want to always remember it, which is why I am blogging about it.