Brandon's Blog

Huston Smith

We are very excited to join Epworth UMC in hosting Dr. Smith for two community conversations in July.

Please click here for more.

 

No one would care if (s)he weren't so beautiful, sexy, rich, funny, etc.

To what degree is influence based on perceived superlativity?

Check out http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/in...-of-the-christ

 

Process Arts are not a method but propose a community of understanding

On Facebook, DeAnna Martin, of Dynamic Facilitation fame (see below for links), asked

how is promulgating a term like "process arts" different than promulgating an approach or method? it sounds like you are experiencing what a lot of method founders experience when they try and articulate their method to others who want to ignore the truth behind it, or want to wrap it into their box of knowing so they can feel comfortable with it's...  Read More "place" in their world... just wondering how you'd respond to that? i love the term, by the way...

there are so many ways to organize "processes" and so many layers/lenses through which we apply them... have you been involved with Tree's pattern language work? She's still working on a name for it...

    http://www.wisedemocracy.org
    http://www.dynamicfacilitation.com
    http://blog.tobe.net

I replied:

The best response I have at this point is to suggest levels of practice and a few tentative (personal and limited) definitions:

In my mind, someone in a difficult situation might want a specific and applicable response - a practice that seems likely to work, perhaps based in a larger method. If they learn that specific practice and others to it, they become a practitioner of a method. If they notice there are others working to facilitate the same method, they have colleagues.

Any of these individuals may notice that there are others working with other practices and other methods with different strengths and applications, which also facilitate behavior based on an increased consciousness of how we do what we do, and develop and deploy tools for changing systems.

When a practitioner discovers these core principles in the hands of other practitioners various best practices suggest themselves. This community awareness suggests the need for a co-created ethics (applicable in noticing what kind of culture is being created by a given advertising campaign, for example), which can apply to the entire field of approaches and practices and open a conversation about responsibility, innovation, and behavior. This is where the process arts apply.

The Process Arts idea is methodical, in that it suggests a way, i.e. creating a community of practice. It is a method of organizing by way of a non-proprietary name that aligns this work with the liberal arts and puts the the process arts naturally into education. It is a method of organizing a specific group of facilitators and not an approach to group facilitation, as such, and is thereby able to exist without increasing competition between practitioners. I am a method founder, but not in the case of the process arts, which have a much longer history than can be measured by my lifetime. I just conceived and prosposed the name for the field based on my practice in it with many others.

When I articulate the parts of my particular methods to others, and sometimes feel they may be missing a truth behind it, I usually find, in retrospect, that I have listened insufficiently to their needs or am feeling especially vulnerable on a given day. As far as tidily boxing my methods for consumption, I find that those situations and clients well suited to work in the way I suggest find my basic assumptions credible very quickly. That is how I learned that no method I have ever seen can meet all group and situational needs, and then committed to our field as a whole. My most arduous sales jobs have resulted in the funkiest mismatches in my history.

I'm glad you love the term. I got a bit of that during our conversation at the first Nexus conference. Want to help me/us grow the field beyond the method you know and practice with such expertise?

I have been in Tree Bressen's (http://delicious.com/tag/treebressen) pattern language loop since it began but unable to appear yet in the group as a whole. I'd love that project to consider the pattern language a part of the process arts field, but hope I have learned when to simply make a clear request and not push too hard.

 

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 2:29 PM, I wrote:

Brandon here, requesting an assist.

My Dad has been working from Dallas as my dissertation editor, using online tech, and we have been having marvelous success working toward my Fall 2009 drop-deadline. He has volunteered to fly to Berkeley for much of April in order that we might create a writing retreat to complete as much as is possible in a month. Even though he is an amazing jazz musician with psychological savvy and good social skills, this will be even more spiffy if he doesn't have to sleep on the couch in our tiny apartment all month.

He will be arriving April 7th and leaving the 29th. Being able to put him up somewhere in the East Bay for any portion of that time would be a huge help, even if only for one or two nights. Please don't hesitate to let me know, even if the possibility of a spot is uncertain.
Come hell or high water, this dissertation will be done this year.
Many people receiving this email have been wonderfully helpful and for that I am profoundly grateful.

Warmly,

B

----------------------------------------------

Today I wrote:

Brandon here with an amazing report I thought you might want to hear.

At the end of March I sent out a request for help finding David Williams a place to stay through April (no small amount of time) while he is in Berkeley with us.

In case you ever wonder what kind of resources are available to people who intentionally participate in building community, like yourself, my request activated positive responses by at least (and with as few overlaps as possible) two intentional communities, including Crescent Sangha House community and Berkeley Cohousing; 14 families and 10 individuals in 7 cites from Association Building Community, Aikido of Berkeley, Epworth United Methodist Church, and a fantasy gaming group; the local Green Party; individual undergraduate and graduate students at UC; local clergy unrelated to any of the groups mentioned above; denizens of the worlds first dog park; and a veterinary office, not to mention people too far away to really count but who sent supportive suggestions (via Facebook, Twitter, Skype, freenode, text messages, blog comments, etc.) nonetheless.

My Dad now has a lovely bedroom in a friendly house less than three miles away, for his entire stay. And huge thanks to you all, including the 27 people who have continued to follow-up, requesting updates even after their original positive response.

And, to those critics who say building community on purpose will never become an adequate response to the alienation of an industrialized human imagination, I throw my arms wide and grin!

B

 

Process Arts

I just completed a webinar with Harrison Owen (of Open Space) hosted by Steve Cady and the Nexus folks at Bowling Green State Univ. There are several more coming up, each on a different process art. I'm going to attend as many as I can, as I am writing the part of my dissertation that deals directly with the process arts.

If you'd like to participate in the next one or get more info and download slides check out http://tinyurl.com/nexuswebinars

After hearing Owen equate the Open Space approach with Life and declare it The Ultimate Method Which Always Works I had a few thoughts which the moderators chose not to allow until after the recording had been stopped and the webinar had officially ended.

I began to ask the following in the aftermath and then opted instead for the discussion area at http://tinyurl.com/c82dtu

What if our edge, as a field, may be sharpened into focus by honing the following two sides as though they were part of the same tool:

1. There is no method that is Best, only one that fits here and now, but there are core principles and best practices, which suggest a co-created ethics, which apply to the entire field of approaches and practices which facilitate behavior based on an increased consciousness of how we do what we do, and develop and deploy tools for changing systems.
2. These core principles will not be recognized as describing a whole field of study until that self-organizing field has a name that is non-proprietary (like sociology or psychology) and encourages the emergence of any approach that works best here and now.

The promo for this webinar wonders "Why does this "stuff" work when it shouldn't?" Even the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation frequently refers to what we do as "stuff." Aren't we ready to step into the professional world of business and academia as a discipline with a real name, and identify with and challenge each other as colleagues?

Parallel in importance and depth with the liberal arts, more and more facilitators of this "stuff" are being specific about their methodologies but are also realizing that they practice one of many process arts.

While in conversation with Founders of Methods at the beginning of making a field of study it is difficult to make room for this kind of open space. It is difficult to self-organize and use your two feet when an approach claims to be Life and the Ultimate Method. Continuing to call our work "stuff", or insisting our method is the only method is choosing not to organize such that more organized agendas gain power-over that is not helpful.

What if our field really is at least as wide as The Change Handbook suggests on page 14 (below), crossing the development of organizations, psychology, complexity theory, and so much more? How to frame that so we may work together so deeply that individual strengths and weaknesses become clear and methods adopt a bit of epistemological humility - becoming better able to work and grow together? Even more importantly, imagine the impact process arts may have in the making of cultures of peace and collaboration, as soon as we go ahead and identify as colleagues and grow the field as a whole community of understanding.

Brandon WilliamsCraig bdwc.net

Just wondering...

 

 

Obama

The themes that will continue until the election is done

An acquaintance say my Facebook profile and asked "to know 3 real qualifications Obama has that qualifies him (above the local lawnman) to become President of the US - the highest position in the world. Just 3 things he has done...specifically done."

I responded:

The most difficult part of responding to your question is picking just three things. I'll choose the three which are indisputable and more than qualify him, especially in comparison to his opposition, to be the Chief Executive Facilitator of the most powerful nation in the world.

#1 he has built, funded, and remained engaged with community-based coalitions in which participants report they got a significant portion of what they needed. This is what I'm paying for when I religiously send in my taxes.

#2 he has had no choice but to become expert at operating diplomatically from a position of sympathy in the presence of opposition. As it is with other minority leaders of my acquaintance, this may be related to weathering comparisons to "the local lawnman" when you might more accurately have written "above the local graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School" but I am not qualified to speak to the origins of his skill in this area or to your background in diversity work.

#3 He says he will do what I want a president to do. What his opponents say they will do is the opposite of what I want a president to do. Even though this makes the choice between the two an obvious one it is not enough to get my vote because politicians, by design of our system, must tell you what they think you want to hear. Therefore I ignore them, in large part, beyond paying attention when a speech writer constructs a particularly satisfying bit of metaphor or compelling prose. Rather than listen to what they say I research their record and the people they owe. Overlooking a relatively small percentage of pork and wheeling and dealing I want more of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Lugar–Obama work expanding the Nunn–Lugar "cooperative threat reduction" approach regarding conventional weapons, and particularly the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act, as I'm very much looking forward to the long life of www.USAspending.gov. He regularly works with Democrats, Republicans, and independents and toward things like the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008 and the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (signed into law in September 2007). He also introduced S. 453, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections, and introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007. I want more of the same where he is concerned and not eight more years of deception and blatant "you couldn't stop me if you tried" criminality.

OK. I wasn't able to pick just three.

He responded:

"I asked for 3 REAL qualifications in Obama's life that qualify him for the most important job in the world. You gave me two things that Red Cross volunteers do for free here in Louisiana...but Obama did not do those things for free...he made a whopping $13,000 a year. The other thing you said was "He (Obama) says he will do what I want a president to do" and this is again the problem...he SAYS a lot but is an empty suit that changes his mind depending on the audience...not to mention he does not have a clus about Iran (a small country with no threat) or Russia (just let all sides hug and sit down and talk with the UN) or Packistan who he suggested we invade."

I closed:
With apologies, I am up to my ears in a new Executive Director position and need to withdraw from this exchange because it does not feel potentially fruitful. Red Cross volunteers at the organizational level Obama occupied often get paid ridiculously high salaries (remember the investigations?) and still don't get the specific, grounded results Obama did. But you'd know that if this exchange were actually dealing with the historical record. Every candidate ever to hop off the campaign truck gears her message to her audience, and every leader reserves the right to shift position when a change in circumstances dictates a change in strategy, with one recent and notable exception that is costing us lives and resources at an unprecedented rate. McCain does it. Obama does it. Regan did it. Likewise (fill in the blank). It is familiar, disingenuous demagoguery for a competitor to call his rival "an empty suit" because he changes his mind, which leads me to recognize some of the main anti-Obama points generated by the RNC campaign machine and not by the historical record. He never said Iran is a small country posing no threat, that Russia will hug and sit down with the UN, or that Pakistan requires an invasion. Good grief. Someday let's at least try to have a discussion based on what the candidates actually do/say and not what the campaign headquarters tells us to think.

Jesuit

Sometimes I write here about things simply because they pop up frequently, for no apparent reason, during a short span of time in my daily life.

I had several conversation about being educated by Jesuits over the past week during my work in Columbus with Paul Linden and visit with David Meredith of Broadstreet UMC. Then this video showed up in my inbox.

There is something provocative and a bit surreal about being part of a group with clear membership-based bonding  which archetypally/inevitably stretching all associations therein between the posts of karass and granfalloonery.

 

 

Being In Movement

I'm in Columbus, OH working with Paul Linden Sensei while writing (dissertation) and working (Aiki Extensions). My schedule may be found through Airset.com (if we share a group there) or through my website, by clicking on "Calendar".

As I write this I am sitting in Cup O' Joe - Clintonville [2990 N High St Columbus, OH 43202 (614) 447-7563], listening to a Thomas Moore interview (free at New Dimensions for this week), as well as some excellent music at http://www.folkalley.com/music/podcasts/. I am more than happy to recommend all three.

Some things I am working on with Paul:
What is the difference between a timing lag and the timing delay of a whipping motion native to so many martial techniques? To understand this better and more consistently create the effect I want I'm paying attention to how my focus (specifically my conscious purpose and eyes) aren't always "identical"/tracking with my movement but dissociate in some way. Occasionally, behaviors which can be fine, conscious, tactical choices arise from habits based at some level in fear. The dilemma presents in the both unconscious and unhelpful part of the process rather than in simply refining by repetition the conscious applications. This is not Wrong except when movement patterns reflect something I do without being aware of it or in a way that imbalances me accidentally. Like most dilemmas of this sort the question is not simply am I doing an unhelpful thing but, always, how much does it apply in a given moment of consideration.

more on this to come...

Hopefully Unrelated: Please check out http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/15/disney.protesters.ap/index.html

Cinderella, others arrested in Disneyland labor protest

ANAHEIM, California (AP)

 

We Live Our Stories 

A reply to an associate...

I'm getting your emails. I'm just deeply buried in New Job Changeover Syndrome. Alas, I haven't communicated much with my beloved family, other than Lisa, in weeks.

Regarding our non-profit group, the participants are older activists, and one retired Director of Administration from Bayer. Each grew too weary of essential social change initiatives breaking down before their promise was realized due to lack of attention to the group's process and failure to practice conflict as an art. Our process is: to be together regularly and tend  to the way we relate. Sometimes we have felt more faithful to that than others. We seek ways to build the process arts as a field that recognizes itself as such so that it may take up its obligation to work overtly and collectively toward peace. We have engaged in projects when willing and able, and would like to support other people (with our 501c3 and existing finance tracking infrastructure) to do the same. We often struggle with identity issues because our available energy, pace, and needs vary widely, but I am most often proud of us for continuing in community (when it feels warm and close and even more when it doesn't) for as long as we have. Now it is ABC which provides my community building services to Aiki Extensions as their Executive Director.

I've also delayed my response because, especially over email, it may become difficult to really get to a place of deep exchange. I've been trying to figure out a way to explore that without either writing all day or exposing you to the vast and foggy terrain of my private online work area and dissertation writing (my "work in progress" wiki) which is afflicted with my baroque prose style and definitely not a quick read.

I suppose the dilemma (and fascination of learning from each other, should we decide to) is in what seems like it might be our primary point of departure - the kind of hope we practice. Getting at what I mean might take a minute and I hope you'll forgive me if my way of approach is a bit inaccessible. I'm working to refine that.

The legacy of the historical surge of monotheism (singular divinity and truth) is a kind of literalism that costumes itself as perfection. Perfectionism is not friendly to humanity and makes humanity unfriendly to itself and the soul of the world. This takes shape in the fantasy that absolute precision is possible and therefore absolute power in sufficient applied rationality. Absolutes of this kind have always belonged to divinity in the human experience. As a result, Science is imagined and followed religiously as revealing The Truth rather than supporting one method of inquiry, and the mechanistic metaphors of industrialism (efficiency, progress, development, etc.) comprise a new and overpowering fantasy of divinity, rather than an essential subcategory in a larger idea of meaning.

Psychology emerged alongside the global transition to industrial domination and is firmly shaped by the scientistic imagination of perfection (health) believed in by medical doctors who were its first practitioners. As psychology became ubiquitous in the 20th century its hypothetical and imaginative jargon ("obsessive-compulsive", "The Unconscious", "well-adjusted") was transformed into literalistic diagnoses as though they were proven facts and became everyday words. With these reductionistic explanations for the utterly mysterious firmly fixed as lenses in the frames of perception, contemporary people are almost entirely estranged from the making of meaning through sympathy for and understanding of story, soul, and sorrow. The mechanistic/medical fantasy of health continues to reform what began as "depth" psychology (and healing itself) such that learning how to live, suffer and celebrate the making of meaning, and then die well have fallen beneath the hooves of stampeding ego-psychology. "Progress" is now equivalent with Good and "Self Help" has become the ultimate aim.

I hope we will learn to prefer to cultivate sympathy and understanding for the vast realm of experience that the self cannot help, is painful, Other, and therefore rejected as illegitimate. It is what we refuse to consider deeply and end up denying that causes "failure of imagination" that precludes honest preparation for real suffering. This also leads to ineffective action that virtually abets painfully obvious stock villains bombing other people's children to gain control "essential to our national interests and security". The remedy for this I call "martial nonviolence" - that use of shared power that insists on practicing arts of peace, defined as conflict done well such that all participants in a given system get support to secure what every human needs and have repeated chances to get some of what they want as well.

In the industrial mind it is obligatory to expect to never be sick, never suffer from pain, fulfill all your dreams, and live to an endlessly postponed (more cryo-frozen and botoxic than ripe) old age, but that is not balanced and appropriate for being human. I hope to be sick and suffer legitimately but as briefly as possible, relate to my dreams as though they are invitations to an autonomous realm wherein my capacity for wonder and understanding may become more sophisticated, and live to an age at which I may be at least a bit excited at the prospect of dying well and meeting whatever might or might not come next.

I lost my child with no reason given in December of 2006. Holding my suddenly and inexplicably dead first-born in my arms removed all doubt about the fantasy that it is possible never to suffer. The experience did not damage me so that I cannot love life and adopt a darker view to match my inner loss. Rather, it stripped away a natural privilege of childhood - the illusion which insists on enthroning simplistic Hope for an endlessly sunny future in the legitimate place of  powerlessness and sorrow. Hope, like all the other gods, is only a usurper when it insists it reigns alone.

Re-reading this it becomes clear that I have gone on too long and abstrusely, as I feared. I hope this finds you in a patient frame of mind and that you will forgive me my excesses.

Brandon

P.S. I haven't read the book you mention but would like hear what you think of it. If you'd like to read someone who says what I mean much more accessibly you might read Thomas Moore, or more precisely - James Hillman.

Process Arts> Martial Nonviolence(aiki principles) > NVC

 

Obama in Berlin 

Politics of Fear

the New Yorker Obama cover and the McCain Vanity Fair cover

  I'm fascinated. The battle has to do, again, with "the hearts and minds" of the electorate and controlling what we think is good and bad so approbation, money, and eventual votes may be directed "appropriately".

Starting point: Fear those Other People who are extremists and will do whatever it takes to control our political and then daily life.  Trust your fear.

Media-ted response: Politics of Fear = bad. Don't let those Other People cause you to vote based on your fear.

But what are the appropriate uses of your legitimate fear/concern that arises from our actual political history? The Obamas are certainly not islamist terrorists while McCain certainly is a continuation of Bush and the empire agenda. Is it as obvious as the New Yorker satire serves The Truth and Vanity Fair is in someone's pocket not interested in same? Good guys vs Those Other People simplicity? Appreciation or condemnation of political campaign maneuvering facilitated by Those Other People in partisan media outlets?

Am I (is everyone) simply attempting to increase their own power by making their tribe more influential? Am I (or They) to be dismissed because, of the two viable choices, I support Obama and you should fear my making you fear Those Other People with this critical inquiry? What does t/Truth look like?

In the end are we tired of thinking and back to calling these gambits "just satire", entertaining outlets for inner bitterness? Doesn't that burying their belief/vote changing effect on hearts and minds?

Carbon-free: Welcome to the Mainstream

The Lorax

In the context of the Berkeley Tree-sitters my sister, Meghan, just reminded me of The Lorax by Dr Seuss who speaks "for the trees, I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues..." https://bdwc.wikispaces.com/message/view/Progress/4793405 The Lorax has been connected with activism many times before but I haven't seen it connected with the UC protest yet.

E'beth

On another note, the big sister, Miriam, of an earliest friend, Elizabeth, from way back in my childhood just made contact because I attempted to connect with her Mom, Leta, through Facebook. Very psyched about that.

I'm going to read at Epworth this Sunday
Various other versions are standard but I may use the New Oxford Study Bible (below) for the "approved" first reading this Sunday and then do my own storytelling version of the same scripture for the second reading.

Matthew 13:1-9 The Parable of the Sower

Listen to this passage
View commentary related to this passage
The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV w Apocrypha)
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!

here is my version of the story... :-)
Jesus spent a lot of time walking around and talking to everyone he met about what it would be like to live in a world where people are in love with God and each other. Sometimes he argued with people who wanted to argue, and told stories people knew well but in new ways and with questions in them to make people listen and think at the same time. If you listen carefully, you can hear how this is a story...about story telling.

One sabbath, when absolutely everybody was observing the law to take a rest from work, Jesus and his friends started (what would be a really long day) in a field picking grain for their breakfast. When the people who had serious doubts about Jesus gave him a really hard time about that, he said straight out that he was more important than the law. This made them really angry because the law was almost the most important thing in the world to them.

Then he went straight to City Hall, in front of everybody, and did the "work" of curing a man's withered hand, and argued with them even more. All this made them so upset they talked privately about having him killed. Jesus made it out of there but crowds of people followed him. He cured all of them too, but then asked them to keep all this a secret, and as the day went on he kept walking, curing people who needed it, arguing with angry people, and ended up at a friend's house next to the Sea of Galilee. He even refused to speak to his mother and brothers who were trying to get a word about all this with him in private. After a while he went out of the house and down to the sea shore {point toward the altar}, where so many people swarmed around that he got into a boat and told them stories from there.

"Listen! A farmer went out to plant. And as she sowed {demonstrate casting seeds}, some seeds fell where people walk a lot so the ground was packed hard {center aisle}. Birds came and ate every seed. Other seeds fell on rocky ground {pews} where their roots couldn't reach the good soil and, though they grew quickly, when the sun came up they dried up and died. Other seeds fell into the thorny weeds which grew up and smothered them.
Other seeds fell into good soil {altar area} and yielded tons of grain, some making even a hundred more plants for every seed, some sixty, some thirty.
Anyone with ears can not only hear what I say but also can listen to what the story means!

'X-Files': Reason to 'Believe'?

Seven years after David Duchovny left the TV series and 10 since the first ''X-Files'' movie, odd couple Mulder and Scully resume their search for the truth

[[http://search.ew.com/EWSearch/ew/search/search.html?type=ew:Whitney+Pastorek;|By Whitney Pastorek]]
David Duchovny is sitting on the porch of a farmhouse about an hour north of Vancouver, squinting into the wintry afternoon sun. It's late in the process of shooting The X-Files: I Want to Believe, and he's pondering the choice Agent Mulder had to make in the series finale: perfect happiness or the truth? ''I don't think of Mulder as a happy guy,'' Duchovny says. ''He's like a quest hero. That's why I like him so much. He just doesn't give up.'' Costar Gillian Anderson passes by on her way to the set. ''It's all lies!'' she yells out with a grin.
Hey, it might be — after all, ''deceive, inveigle, obfuscate'' was one of the TV show's taglines during its nine-season run on Fox. But six years after the series ended (and a decade since the last film), the new movie promises to be a lot more straightforward than fans of the show might expect. Written by series creator Chris Carter and his right-hand man Frank Spotnitz — and stemming from an idea they'd been kicking around for years — it's a stand-alone story, set in the winter of 2008, that Carter describes as a ''suspense thriller'' akin to the monster-of-the-week episodes from the show's early days. Gone is the occasionally baffling mythology — Black oil! Ice picks! Bees! — that came to define the series. The new film is designed to satisfy the faithful while courting a new generation of fans raised on Saw and Hostel. ''Oh, it's a great relief to not have to reweave all the strands of the narrative,'' says Spotnitz. ''We just wanted to tell a really good story with characters that we love.''
Details about said story are tough to come by, but here's what we do know. Billy Connolly plays a priest of what Spotnitz calls ''dubious character,'' and Xzibit and Amanda Peet show up as two new FBI agents. Carter says we can also expect ''an appearance or appearances'' from X-Files alums (though, tragically, the Stupendous Yappi will not be involved). Other clues? They'll tackle the subject of Mulder and Scully's extraordinary son, William, who was given up for adoption. And Carter — a former skeptic who's got more ''faith that it's not all meaningless'' these days — cites influences like string theory and the work of religious scholar Huston Smith, saying a phrase from one of Smith's lectures actually ''became'' the movie. (Fans, start Googling.)

 

Remember that argument I make that psychology is so inextricably wound up in our cultural ideas that even advertising geared for the widest audience builds its particular consumer culture based in a psychological imagination ?