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Information, attention and TaKeTiNa

August 12, 2009 By Being, Design, Facilitation, Flow, Music, Practice One Comment

Check this quote:

Social scientist Herbert Simon wrote in 1971

IN an information rich world, the wealth of information means the death of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence the wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

via Green sandbox: Since 1971.

It’s just plain obvious that information consumes attention, but it is not always apparent how it is working on us.

Last night, I was at my weekly TaKeTiNa session with friends Brian Hoover and Shasta Martinuk, exploring what happens when we induce groove and confusion using rhythm, stepping and voice, and I was really struck with an exploration of the polarity between planning and doing.

One of the questions we were playing with was “What do you do with space?”  The rhythmic pattern we were working with had moments of lots of space, and moments where several movements happened all at once.  It was a kind of sprung rhthym, all carried over a steady beat.  What I noticed was that in the spacious moments, I took time to get myself ready for the next burst of activity instead of resting in that spaciousness.  The result was that, to the extent that my mind was living in the future, my body went there as well and I ended up often doing things AHEAD of the beat.

In other words there was so much information I was taking in, including information about what to do next, what to sing, how the polyrhythms worked, what else was going on in the room, that my attention to the present moment was erased and I had a hard time just DOING.

This polarity between planning and doing is familiar to me.  When I meditate, and when my thoughts drift, they almost always drift to the future, to things I need to do or should be doing.  I notice that this keeps me away from being in the present and actually paying attention to what is happening all around me.

In group settings, this imbalance can lead to me missing a whole bunch of information about where a group is at, if my mind is fixed on where we are going, or where we need to go.

By contrast, when I focus on the present, and on doing rather than planning, I am in balance.  Balance in this case means that every part of my mind and body is HERE.  Imbalance is when some part of your mind or body shifts elsewhere, and you very often topple in that case – physically or otherwise.  Being present opens up the spaciousness of the present moment (what Harrison Owen calls “Expanding our Now“) and ironically opens many more possibilities and pathways for action.

So my learning from all of this is that information overload obscures attention, fills space and limits possibilities.

Think about that the next time you need to do a comprehensive environmental scan!

What we can learn from disrupted meetings?

August 11, 2009 By BC, Collaboration, Conversation, Design, Facilitation One Comment

In the US right now, the health care “debate” is raging and town hall meetings being held across the country are being deliberately hijacked by those who don’t want to see reform go ahead.  This tactic is discouraging but predictable.  “Town Hall” meetings are not usually conducive to democratic deliberation, and they are never about dialogue.

Over the past few days an amazing conversation has unfolded on the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation listserv about what these events mean for deliberative democracy.  Tom Atlee has summarized a lot of the learning from these in a long blog post which is a keeper:

I want to take a look at the dysfunctional health care debate as an opportunity for evolutionary action. Not because health care is more important than other issues, but because its current dynamics exemplify the kind of transformational potentials we will face over and over in coming years, as the multifaceted crises of our time unfold. Understanding the dynamics of this currently disturbing event may help us prepare better for each new wave of opportunity.

Go have  a read:  Are Disrupted Town Hall Meetings an Evolutionary Opportunity?

Being found

August 11, 2009 By Being 7 Comments

“We do not find our own center. It finds us. We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”

— Richard Rohr

via whiskey river

Updated music pages

August 7, 2009 By Uncategorized

I have updated my music pages and finally migrated them here.  Go visit if you want to learn about my musical history, watch some videos  and listen to a few tracks and sound samples from my musical career.

Let’s help Americans get their health care

August 7, 2009 By Collaboration 14 Comments

One of the people in this video, Kathryn, is a friend of mine.  Have a gander at what she is saying, which is that due to a preexisting medical condition in her young son, there is no way she ever return to live in the US, because his condition would bankrupt her.

I travel and work a lot in the US and two things always stand out to me about the lack of public health care in the US.  First, many people I know have been kept from doing truly interesting work because they have had to remain slaves to a job they hate only for the benefits.  To be able to go out on your own and make creative contributions to the world often means leaving behind a health care package.  It is a life decision and one which is tantamount to playing dice with your life.  When I left my government job in 1999 to start my company, I had nothing to worry about.  With the exception of things like glasses and dentistry, I didn’t miss my health benefits at all, and this was a package from a unionized federal government job.

Second, I have never understood the argument that somehow single payer health care is unAmerican or that it restricts your choice of doctors.  Listen to Kat’s story above.  I have never been restricted by anyone in receiving medical advice.  I can switch doctors at will, limited only by how many patients each has in his or her practice.  In my own case, I have been hospitalized twice for surgery and seizures as a kid.  Two members of my family have been to the emergency room on multiple occaisions for accidents, and several extended family members have had cancer, heart disease and other serious life threatening illnesses.  Several of my friends have had rare and dangerous health conditions and only one of them chose to go to the US for his treatment to see the world’s only specialist in a very particular type of brain surgery.  In every case, the only plastic card that was ever produced was a CareCard.

In short, although our health care system has many flaws, and we could all find stories to show how it fails people from time to time, it works.  We are free here to see any doctor we wish, no one lacks health care, you are never asked to pay FOR CARE before receiving it, and no one sends you a bill.  We pay a little more than $100 a month for our family of four for premiums, but if I couldn’t afford that, it would be free.  We pay higher taxes, but most Canadians would say that of all the things we are taxed on, health care is the one we most appreciate.  Most politicians run on a health and education platform.  These things are sacred cows.

So here is my suggestion.  There is so much good about public health care, and so many lies distributed in the US about our system here, that I propose that we Canadians help out our American friends by making ourselves available to answer questions.  If you want to find out what it is REALLY like living with a publicly funded health care system, drop me an email (chris at chriscorrigan.com) and I will answer you questions.  If you are a Canadian who would like to share your story, leave your contact info in the comments.  If you are an American with a question, leave it in the comments.  I promise to tell you exactly what my experience is.

Instead of getting the story from pundits and PR firms, just send me an email.  Let’s talk instead.