In Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace, Pierre returns a changed man, after nearly being executed by the French. “There was a new feature in Pierre’s relations with Willarski, with the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, which gained for him the general goodwill. This was his acknowledgement of the impossibility of changing a man’s convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view… The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men’s opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and evoked from him an amused and gentle smile.”
A quote from James Wood’s brilliant book “How Fiction Works”. Wood’s argues that novels give the best account of our moral complexity. Read the chapter on character. It will change how you read novels. Another excerpt from Wood’s:
“For Williams, moral philosophy needed to attend to the actual fabric of emotional life, instead of talking about the self, in Kantian terms, as consistent, principled and universal. No, said Williams, people are inconsistent; they make up their principles as they go along; and they are determined by all kinds of things – genetics, upbringing, society, and so on.”
What has this got to do with facilitation and dialogue? Indeed with Making Stuff Happen. Well…just to start…
1. What kind of assumptions do we make about the people we work with – their values, motivations, passions, melancholies and momentary enthusiasms?
2. Perhaps on Australia Day, 2016 its time to consider a bit more crazy, open and creative ways to think about identity and being human.
3. etc, etc, etc. Feel free to add your own conclusions.