CHRON JOBS
I started at 7:00am addressing my Wordpress website needs. It had 147,000 hits in seven days and it is dormant. Apparently I need to double my payments to address this as I get spikes in activity. I have a list of things to do to sort this. So I spent three hours in tech - new plug in - adding code ( I have no idea how it works) and speaking on chat with tech support. It eats my time and energy. And I like the framework of the site. lidoffthebox.com I've done a huge amount of work to get it thus far. Seems mad to let it go...
I don't want to be reliant on others to do it for me but - for not a huge amount on an ongong basis for the rest of my life payments - the pain would go away. So - do I step there? I'm in process. Just seems a lot per year. But maybe it's not? Anyway the BREAKTHROUGH is that I'm under the hood and FTPing and PHPing which is scary because the whole thing can fall over and I did not want to address it - so it takes some courage to dare to dig in there. And I sorted the chron jobs section. No idea what it does but did it! Rock n Roll. Two out of eight tasks assigned by my Product Rep completed. Is this a good use of my life?
LARRY SHARPE
My distraction of the day is caused by my wife. It is her fault... Everyone is on a holiday in Canada and I'm on just another Friday. I never understood Bank Holidays in England, the Bank never stopped charging me? Anyway she forwarded me a post by Larry Sharpe a while back and I opened it this morning. I had heard of #writeinlarrysharpe before. He's a Libertarian Politician amongst many other things. The post contained a Booker T Washington quote and image;
A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right and evil does not become good just because it's accepted by the majority. Booker T Washington
I have a Bee in my Bonnet about Freedom. Freedom of Speech being a part of that. Presently I interpret society as developing a 'You Can't Say that' culture. It's called CONTROL and I don't do well with the C word. Yet I don't want to be a shouting match, a conflict. So the bully wins? Discuss.
So I end up on Larry Sharpe's Instagram feed and it's an interesting rabbit hole to traverse. Thoughts and quotes on freedom from different Americans.
Then I look up conflict online and find a paper with a snappy title: Leading through agonistic conflict: Contested sense-making in national political arenas. You know it interests me. Yes really. The bottom line is two Select Committees in the House of Commons in the UK chaired by the same person, at the same time were looking at Government initiatives. The paper addresses their leadership styles.
I find it fascinating to learn a new word - AGONISM. Not ANT- AGONISM. I will read the rest and ponder it. It means "not constructing the opponent as an enemy, but as an adversary."
s:
Mouffe (2005) a‘Antagonism is struggle between enemies, while agonism is struggle between adversaries.
We can therefore reformulate our problem by saying that, envisaged from the perspective of “agonistic pluralism”, the aim of democratic politics is to transform antagonism into agonism.
This requires providing channels through which collective passions will be given ways to express themselves over issues, which, while allowing enough possibility for identification, will not construct the opponent as an enemy but as an adversary’ (Mouffe, 2000a: 16).
AGONISM
Sounds painful.
So you passionately think differently from me, or do you? If we stop shouting and listen to each other, face to face, can we gain a better understanding of each other? Instead of shooting at each other from a distance, from behind our walls, can we explore our points of view? Perhaps we will still disagree, and perhaps we will be able to disagree and not kill each other and those around us. And perhap we will be able to reach a solution that - as Stephen Covey would advise - is a WIN WIN. For:
The word COMPROMISE is defined as both sides loosing.
and...
If I understand you more, perhaps I will fear you less.
FIRST WORLD WAR CHRISTMAS FOOTBALL
It's documented how in the First World War allied and German troops faced each other from their trenches. But a crazy thing happened on Christmas Eve. They started to come out of their trenches and then shared food, played football together and hung out in No Man's Land between their barbed wire protected trenches.
I read that the next day soldiers on both sides were moved to other positions and the fraternisation was banned for the future. The Generals worried that the men who now faced their friends would not obey orders to shoot them and kill them.
On the British side if you disobeyed an order to go over the top you were shot. Some men, knowing they would die, simply took off their guns and ran towards the bullets that would claim them.
INSTAGRAM SELECTION FROM LARRY SHARPE
No Copyright Claimed nor Infringement Intended - Not for Commercial Use.
These pictures provoke thought. I sat next to an American in England at lunch. In England we have very few guns so very few shootings. Lots of knife crime. And he explained, if there had been a hurricane, the place was in anarchy, and a group of thugs were walking towards his house with guns why would he want a smaller gun? Or no gun? His opinion was that the Police would show up late anyway - so as not to be shot!
It was quite an argument that left this Englishman thinking I would be just like my new friend wanting to defend my family. And yet it's ongoing carnage as a result. In England gun crime is tiny by comparison to the US. Because it is illegal to carry guns. It's a different society.
And as I read quotes and words from Barack Obama (in a book he created with Bruce Springstein) he had to go to a major shooting every three months. How can you stop that occurring? There is always a way...
PETER MARSHALL
And I came across PETER MARSHALL featured here. Wisdom in his words. I'm going to study him.
It seems every generation faces the same angst and challenges as the one before it. But it's always new to us. You would think we could learn from the past.
God hasn't given up on you. He can still do great things for you, in you, and through you. God is ready and waiting and able. Peter Marshall
So I love how this enquiry into addressing fear is progressing. But I wish I'd taken the day off and gone to Peachland with my wife. She had taken our boy there. I've been on this all day and... I need to get better at stopping!