Week 8 - Oct 30 - Love, Connection and Possibility
Readings and videos
- How to Get Over Yourself - Mindfulness, Compassion, and Meaningfulness, Utne
- Compassion in the Brain - (YouTube - 21:54) Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Greater Good Science Center
- Teachings from Tibetan Buddhism - Utne, Buddhist Scholar Thupten Jinpa
- Early Confucianism, excerpt from Intellectual Foundations of China, by Frederick W. Mote
- Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, by Barbara Fredrickson excerpt (by email)
- The Art of Possibility, by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander excerpt (by email)
- The Psychology of Self-Righteousness, On Being - Krista Tippett and Jonathan Haidt
- My Stroke of Insight, TED Talk by Jill Bolte Taylor
- Please review J. Haidt and Craig Joseph's article on Intuitive Ethics
Agenda and Questions for October 30th class discussion:
- What do you think of Barbara Fredrickson’s statement that humans are made to love?
- “What does love [2.0] have to do with it?”
- Let’s talk about visions that invite into the framework of possibility. (The Art of Possibility, p. 169)
- A vision articulates a possibility
- A vision fulfills a desire fundamental to humankind, a desire with which any human being can resonate. It is an idea to which no one could logically respond, “What about me?”
- A vision makes no reference to morality or ethics, it is not about a right way of doing things. It cannot imply that anyone is wrong.
- A vision is stated as a picture for all time, using no numbers, measures, or comparatives. It contains no specifics of time, place, audience, or product
- A vision is free-standing – it points neither to rosier future, nor to a past in need of improvement. It gives over its bounty now. If the vision is “peace on earth,” peace comes with its utterance. When “the possibility of ideas making a difference” is spoken, at that moment ideas do make a difference.
- A vision is a long line of possibility radiating outward. It invites infinite expression, development, and proliferation within its definitional framework.
- Speaking a vision transforms the speaker. For that moment the “real world” becomes a universe of possibility and the barriers to the realization of the vision disappear.
- From inside the framework of a vision, the goals and objectives spring from an outlook of abundance. The goals are invented as games to play. The challenge is the joy.
- A vision is an invitation to a party with music, laughter, friendship, and satisfying refreshment.
Photos from Class