The Intersection of Nature and Technology Through the many decades that I’ve been photographing landscapes, utility poles of all kinds, sizes and wires have been a nuisance. Their placement often interfered with rural settings, and in cities the lines tended to be a mess. I don’t like being critical, but when I see these, the […]
Energy is vibration. It’s largely invisible, but when energy takes a form it’s always geometrical, prescribed by the fundamental laws of physics including gravity and the three Laws of Thermodynamics: 1. Conservation of Energy: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, just changed. 2. Entropy: Matter dissipates; disintegrates. Entropy either stays the same or gets bigger. […]
The consequence of collective, enduring and respectful attention and collaboration Dictionaries tend to define a “city” as an inhabited place of greater size, population or importance than a town or village. While size is a factor, social scientists emphasize that a city represents the collective consciousness—beliefs, values, aspirations and visions—of the people who live and […]
Introduction This begins a series of posts on the subject of whole systems thinking. After the topic is introduced, I’ll offer a contemplation that relates to the headline photograph and text. Historically, patterns observed in nature were discussed and documented in China five thousand years ago, before they were articulated by Lao Tzu (Gia-fu Feng, […]
Being in the “Now” evokes an appreciation of “Being” itself In this image I observe and celebrate impermanence and the aesthetic of the present moment, happenings that are will never be seen again. Capturing them is one of the unique features of photography. In this instance, the patterns and textures lasted perhaps a day at […]
The safety of system’s syntropy against the forces of entropy Obviously, guard rails are intended to keep vehicles from running off the road and to reduce the severity of injuries when they do. Not so obvious is the observation that their presence indicates a lack of trust. Appropriately so. Bad accidents, even death, may have […]
The Japanese way of seeing beauty in entropy We tend to think of entropy as something “bad,” the inevitable tendency for matter to dissipate, for all living things to die. As embodied creatures, we naturally would prefer to avoid this downward spiral—for ourselves, loved ones, pets, creations, cherished objects and the systems we use in […]
Qualities and behaviors that inhibit entropy These retired coin-operated newspaper boxes call to mind two fundamental principals in the science of whole systems. The first is “entropy,” a term borrowed from the second law of thermodynamics in physics. It describes the process whereby matter gradually dissipates or declines into a state of disorder. Throughout the […]
Social values are right only if the individual values are right Notice the cloth is fraying in places, threads are broken, and holes are appearing. Is it beyond repair? Or is there something we can do to keep it from unraveling further? One of the lessons I learned from Robert Pirsig’s Zen And The Art […]
What matters is how we use them What is the relationship between data, information, knowledge and wisdom? And what part does this play in human development and the expansion of consciousness? In his 1950 groundbreaking book, The Human Use Of Human Beings, mathematician Norbert Weiner defined “message” as “A sequence of events in time which… […]
Contemplative Photography 