In the end, behaving "like a business" is a matter of semantics. Arts organizations are businesses, so their behavior is businesslike -- just as good or just as bad. The deeper question is what kind of business do you want to be? And what skills and perspective do you need to get there? It's not about mimicry. It's about clarity, curiosity and courage. Well, Hezbollah’s army is similarly illegitimate, but not similarly motivated. A bizarre, fascist ideology animates its minions. Casting about in Shakespeare for a parallel to Islamic Fascist Extremism might take us to the France described in Henry VI part X, under Joan of Arc, or to the absurd imposition of religious law described in Measure for Measure. We can even find women and children individually targeted for murder in Macbeth, Richard III, and of course Titus Andronicus. For more on current events from the Bard's perspective, read the full posting here. For me, Nettie’s wise words rang true as they helped me to understand how I was using the excuse of needing to read business books as a form of resistance to writing my business book. And the understanding of my need to overcome the self-sabotaging power of “resistance” came from Dan Pink recommending I read Steven Pressfield’s THE WAR OF ART. But I should warn ya … reading THE WAR OF ART has the potential to change your life. Trust me. It is way powerful stuff not to be taken lightly. Read the full posting here. From Malcom Gladwell writing on his blog at at gladwell.com: I must say that my own experience with this blog has only hardened my belief in the intrinsically derivative nature of blogging. As those of you who read the New Yorker know, I wrote a review of the book Wages of Wins this spring, and then blogged about it. The review and my posts prompted a good deal of comments, both on this site and on other blogs. But when I did a search, I was unable to find anyone, among the many who commented on my comments on Wages of Wins, who had actually read the book itself. That’s weird, I mean, it’s a short book. And it's really not that expensive. But nobody—even those who were in highest dudgeon about the book’s conclusions—seemed to want to do more than comment on those who had already commented. Isn’t that the very definition of derivative? Read the full posting here. |
