More on the Mythquake book-project – an unfinished book-project that I accept I now need to hand over to someone else, or at least make the ideas more generally available in some form.

In the previous chapter, ‘MQ-5: Money makes the world go round?‘, we moved up to the level of mythquakes that can often cause serious damage beyond the immediate locality of the collapse of that specific belief. Here we start to explore deeper beliefs and deeper assumptions that in reality are no more stable than those myths about money – and hence have even greater potential for destruction when they break. The example here is around core cultural-worldviews such as belief in the validity of the purported ‘truths’ of science or religion  - in other words, the generic structures that underpin shared assumptions about how the world ‘really works’.

This chapter contains the following sections [all notes-only]:

• Science and religion
• The religion of science
• Religious wars

Book-development notes are shown in italics inside square-brackets, [like this]. Further commentary on the development-notes is in ordinary type inside curly-braces, {like this}.

MQ-6: The meaning of life

Richter 6: Strong earthquake. Can be destructive in areas up to a hundred or more kilometres across. Equivalent to around one megaton of TNT. Around one every three days on average.

Mercalli VII: People have difficulty standing; drivers feel their cars shake; loose bricks and tiles fall from buildings; furniture may break; slight to moderate damage to well-constructed buildings, significant damage to poorly-constructed buildings.

Mercalli VIII: Drivers have difficulty steering; chimneys fall; branches break; foundations may fail; cracks may appear in wet ground or on hillsides; water-levels in wells may change; poorly-constructed buildings suffer severe damage.

Read more…

More on the Mythquake book-project – a book I’ll probably never have time to finish, so here I’m handing it over to whoever might like to take it up.

In the previous chapter, ‘MQ-4: Whoever you voted for…‘, we moved into the level of mythquakes that most people would probably notice within their everyday lives, with politics as the given example. Note, though, that most politics is only a level-4 or thereabouts: despite all of the pretensions of importance, most of it is really little more than arguing about the position of a single deckchair on the Titanic, and for most people, not much – if anything – of real significance will change with each change of government. But here at MQ-5 we do start to get into realms of significant damage, and that do start to affect most people whenever there’s some kind of breakdown – a catastrophic collapse of over-extended assumptions. The example I’ve used here is the comfortably-complacent ‘certainties’ of current economics – and particularly the notion that ‘economics’ is solely synonymous with money.

(Another general aside: yes, we’re currently in the midst of yet another ‘Global Financial Crisis’, and for some countries – and certainly for many individuals – the impacts are occasionally rippling upward in impacts to what might seem like MQ-6 or even MQ-7 levels. But in practice, much of the talk of ‘crisis’ is little more than arguing about what to do about a single broken deckchair on the Titanic: it still doesn’t address any of the deeper issues, and history makes it plain that this is merely the current expression of a regular boom/bust cycle – a repeated pattern of mythquakes that point to much deeper and much more serious fault-lines in the structure of our everyday reality.)

This chapter contains the following sections [all notes-only]:

• Managing the household
• A monetary mismatch
• Back to barter?

Book-development notes are shown in italics inside square-brackets, [like this]. Further commentary on the development-notes is in ordinary type inside curly-braces, {like this}.

MQ-5: Money makes the world go round?

Richter 5: Moderate earthquake. May cause slight damage to well-constructed buildings, but can cause major damage to poorly-constructed buildings. Equivalent to around thirty kilotons of TNT (Nagasaki atomic bomb). Around two to three per day.

Mercalli V: Doors swing open or closed; small objects move; liquid may spill from open containers; almost everyone feels movement; sleepers awake.

Mercalli VI: People have trouble walking; everyone feels movement; objects fall from shelves; furniture moves; trees and bushes shake; windows break, plaster walls may crack, other non-structural damage in poorly-constructed buildings.

Read more…

More on the Mythquake book-project. As mentioned in previous posts, this is a book that I’ve been trying to write for more than ten years, but it’s time to accept it ain’t gonna happen – not from me, anyway. So I’m placing these ideas up in the blogosphere in the hope that someone else can use them: attribution would be nice, but it’s not essential.

In the previous chapter, ‘MQ-3: I am what I do‘, we’ve started to move beyond mythquakes that have only a small localised impacts, and into contexts where the mythic breakdown hits a lot more people – and hurts a lot more, too. So when we get to the next level, MQ-4, people in general will definitely begin to notice when this kind of mythquake comes to town – and will often complain about it as a group rather than solely as individuals. Which brings us into the realm of politics – or rather, what is most commonly described as ‘politics’, because in a sense everything is political.

(Note for Brits at this time: yes, this happens to be posted in the midst of the aftermath of a particularly mythquake-full general election – a ‘hung parliament’ and all that. [There are some who would say that all parliaments should be hung, in one sense or another, but given the inanity of the times, the detail of that is perhaps best left unsaid. ] Consider this juxtaposition to be no more than an amusing coincidence: there’s always somewhere in the world that’s dealing with this specific type of mythquake at any given time.)

This chapter contains the following sections [all notes-only]:

• …the government got in
• Tweedledum and Tweedledee
• The structure of power

Book-development notes are shown in italics inside square-brackets, [like this]. Further commentary on the development-notes is in ordinary type inside curly-braces, {like this}.

MQ-4: Whoever you voted for…

Richter 4: Light earthquake. Noticeable shaking of indoor items; rattling noises; significant damage unlikely. Equivalent to one kiloton of TNT (smallest nuclear bombs). Around fifteen to twenty per day.

Mercalli IV: Dishes, windows and doors rattle; parked cars rock; trees may shake; most people indoors feel movement, as do some outdoors.

Read more…

More on the Mythquake book-project. This is a book that I’ve been brewing for perhaps a decade, but accept that I will probably never have time to write, so I’m placing these ideas up in the blogosphere in the hope that someone else will pick ‘em up and run with them.

The previous chapter, ‘MQ-2: The Centre of the Universe‘, we looked at some relatively-minor everyday mythquakes whose impact is usually localised and transitory – such as a two-year-old’s temper-tantrum at broken expectations, and the perhaps even more bizarre emotion associated with expectations around competitive sports. But here we move up into territory where the mythquakes are rather more noticeable, becoming less localised, with impacts that are less transitory and often quite a bit more severe. This levels seems typified by a whole class of mythquakes that can arise whenever we confuse “who I am” with “what I do”.

This chapter contains the following sections [all notes-only]:

• Doing life
• The end of the world

Book-development notes are shown in italics inside square-brackets, [like this]. Further commentary on the development-notes is in ordinary type inside curly-braces, {like this}.

MQ-3: I am what I do

Richter 3: Minor earthquake. Often felt but rarely causes damage. Equivalent to around thirty tonnes of TNT (largest conventional bombs). Around one to two hundred per day.

Mercalli III: Shaking felt indoors, though often not outdoors; hanging objects swing back and forth.

Read more…

More on the Mythquake book-project.

The previous chapter, ‘MQ-1: Everyday Upsets‘, introduced the basic idea of mythquakes as a mismatch between our expectations and the actual reality. Here we start to explore what happens when we say that it’s reality, and not our expectations, that are ‘wrong’. The first place (or perhaps most obvious place) where this begins to happen is in early childhood – the dreaded stage of the ‘terrible twos’. But that’s only the beginning… and some dangerous habits can also be instilled at this stage, which cause much more serious problems later in life, for everyone.

This chapter contains the following sections:

• The terrible twos [mostly complete]
• Winners and losers [notes only]
• Sibling rivalry [notes only]

Book-development notes are shown in italics inside square-brackets, [like this]. Further commentary on the development-notes is in ordinary type inside curly-braces, {like this}.

MQ-2: The centre of the universe

Richter 2: Very minor earthquake. Recorded but rarely felt. Equivalent to around one tonne of TNT. Around one thousand per day.

Mercalli II: A few people notice movement, if they are at rest or in the upper floors of tall buildings.

Read more…

More on the Mythquake book-project. This and the next few posts in this series will work their way up the scale of mythquake severity, from MQ-1 (trivial everyday stuff) to MQ-9 (total destruction).

My last attempt to get restarted on Mythquake was way back in January 2007. This chapter was complete back then, so I’ll post it here in its entirety. This version of the book was aimed at the self-development market, so again it’s deliberately personalised (in fictional form, I ought to add), and with questions to invite self-reflection and self-challenge. If someone else wants to take over the project, a more formal/conventional approach might work better these days.

There’s only one section in this chapter:

• The litany of complaint

The term ‘litany’ is adapted from Sohail Inayatullah’s futures/foresight tool Causal Layered Analysis (“poststructuralism as method”): ‘the litany’ is the topmost of the four layers in scope for futures-assessment.

As you’d expect, this chapter is several pages long, so I’ll start with the intro here, and then put in a ‘Read more…’ link before the rest of the text.

MQ-1: Everyday upsets

Richter 1: Microearthquake. Background ‘noise’; barely identifiable. Equivalent to around ten to thirty kilograms of TNT (typical quarry explosives). Tens of thousands per day.

Mercalli I: Vibrations are recorded by instruments; people do not feel any earth-movement.

Read more…

Mythquake is a book I’ve been trying to write for well over a decade, and I guess it’s time I accepted that I probably never will: I’ve kinda moved on from there onto other things, and my heart just isn’t in it any more.

Yet the underlying ideas seem, if anything, to be even more urgent today than they were back then. So it seems worthwhile to summarise those ideas in a short blog-series – will be either 11 or 12 posts in all, including this one. (I’ll add cross-references between the posts when they’re all up on this site.)

A quick bit of history first, then back to the core theme.

Way back in the late-1980s, I was asked by one of my publishers to write a book for the then very-active self-development field: the exact brief was “we want a book for the self-help market that doesn’t insult the intelligence”. The end-result was Positively Wyrd, which used the old Nordic concept of wyrd to explore the core theme of “there’s always a choice, but there’s always a twist”. It even sold quite well, for a while, and still has a fair spread of fans – all of them happily wyrd, of course.

That book focussed on the personal layer; there was a sequel – Wyrd Allies – which came out in the early 1990s and which explored the interpersonal layer; and there was supposed to be a third in the series, called Wyrd World, which should have looked at the transpersonal layer, but courtesy of the usual life-chaos I never did get round to writing it.

One very good friend, Linda Moore Gentile, continued to badger me for years about this gap in the trilogy, until I literally woke up one morning with the word mythquake ringing through my mind.

There’s a direct analogy between what happens physically when the earth moves beneath our feet, and what happens socially when the fabric of stories that underlies our society and milieu undergoes any kind of change. Hence the metaphor of a mythquake, as a personal or societal equivalent of an earthquake.

The idea worked well, but the writing didn’t, and each time I tried to make it work, I quickly found that I was writing myself into a corner. Trying to force-fit one new idea with an older one probably didn’t help, either. I’ve probably made half a dozen attempts to get restarted, but it’s time to accept that it ain’t gonna happen. I can’t write it: but perhaps someone else can. That’s my hope here, anyway.

So here it is.

(I wrote this particular version of the text to line up with the Wyrd series, so in part it’s still somewhat written for that market, with direct questions and the like – but that’s just detail. I’d much prefer you to look at the ideas behind the surface text, because I believe they’ll be very useful as we head into what are clearly going to be turbulent times.)

The current chapters are as follows:

• Mythquake [this post]
• MQ-1: Everyday upsets
• MQ-2: The centre of the universe
• MQ-3: I am what I do
• MQ-4: Whoever you voted for…
• MQ-5: Money makes the world go round?
• MQ-6: The meaning of life
• MQ-7: Sugar and spice
• MQ-8: Let freedom reign
• MQ-9: Possession
• Aftershocks

The following is the full content of the first chapter, which introduces the idea of ‘mythquakes’. The subsequent posts in the series will describe or summarise some example sources of mythquakes, each of increasing intensity; the final post will discuss the need and the options for ‘mythquake preparedness’.

More after the ‘Read more…’ link here, anyway: the text starts with the ‘Fractured stories’ heading.

Read more…

I’ve now published the annotated version of my film-script ‘Wombat & Cockie‘ in book-form – see the Tetradian Books website here for the book-info, and here for the free-download PDF e-book.

Set in the drug-gangs culture of present-day Melbourne, it’s an odd mixture of a cops-and-criminals black-comedy, merged with a Dreamtime motif in which all of the players enact the characteristics and character of the respective bird or animal Dreaming.

Of all my scripts, this is the one most likely to reach production: a colleague spent some time a couple of years ago developing it further, but I haven’t heard from her since. Not that it matters: it’s just a bit of fun, really, though there are some serious themes behind it, using fiction to explore the complexities of interlinked transactions of violence and abuse at a societal level.

My regular outing to make use of Lightning Source’s annual ‘free setup’ promotion, it’s technically vanity-publishing – but I spent at least six months writing the script, so it seems worthwhile to get something tangible out of all that work! It won’t be available in printed form, other than direct from me, but anyone is welcome to download the e-book for free.

Hope it helps, anyway: “Share and Enjoy”?

Yup, I’ve been at it again – getting more of my previous material from the past few years out into printed-book form.

This one’s Power and Response-ability: the human side of systems – click the link or the graphic for more details on the Tetradian Books website.

As usual, there’s a free download of the e-book available from the Tetradian Books site; printed copies should become available in a couple of weeks’ time from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and other retailers.

Basic idea is a really simple dichotomy: the physics definition of ‘power’ is the ability to do work, whilst most social definitions are more like the ability to avoid it. As I put it in the book, “many of the common concepts of power in business are so close to perfectly wrong that it’s amazing any work happens at all…” The resultant mess is a key concern for enterprise architecture, particularly as we start to integrate the human side of systems into the architecture at the whole of enterprise level.

This isn’t as much of a workbook as the others in my Tetradian Enterprise Architecture series: the only diagnostic checklist is right at the end, in the appendix. It’s more of a text-based exploration of the issues around personal power, shared power and ‘ability to do work’ (hence ‘response-ability’), both in the workplace and in the wider business / economic milieu (themes I’ve been researching for the past couple of decades and more, really). In that sense, it also gives the business background to SEMPER and all the other tools and techniques that I’ve packaged under the Tetradian banner.

Share and enjoy, perhaps? Comments much appreciated, anyway.

Yup, they’re back already from the printers (thank you Lightning Source for a service much quicker than your listed ’10 business days’!) – Elements of Pendulum Dowsing and The Dowser’s Workbook are now officially back in print.

Links on the Tetradian Books website also point to the (free) e-book versions:

• Elements of Pendulum Dowsing description
• The Dowser’s Workbook description

Will probably take me another week at least to get the e-commerce section of the site up and working. But judging by the speed with which Real Enterprise Architecture turned up on Amazon, they should also be orderable direct from Amazon, Borders, Barnes&Noble and the others with the next few days, too.

Please pass around to your various acquaintances, if you would? – many thanks!