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The self-cannibalisation of ideas and experience

Posted on by Doug Belshaw
An etching of a wyvern (a dragon-like creature) eating its own tail, by Lucas Jennis (1590–1630)

When something dies and is reborn, the usual symbol for this in Western literature is the phoenix. As a result, everything from football teams to companies are named after this mythical bird rising from the flames.

My favourite example of death and rebirth, though, is the Ouroboros:

The ouroboros… is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. Originating in ancient Egyptian iconography, the ouroboros entered western tradition via Greek magical tradition and was adopted as a symbol in Gnosticism and Hermeticism and most notably in alchemy…. The ouroboros is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The skin-sloughing process of snakes symbolizes the transmigration of souls, the snake biting its own tail is a fertility symbol.

Wikipedia

What I like about using the ouroboros as a metaphor is that it explicitly recognises individual or organisational self-cannibalisation as a positive thing. Just as the snake needs to shed its skin to remain agile, so we need to renew ourselves, often through ‘digesting’ our ideas and experience and then taking them in new directions.

This post is Day 68 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Want to get involved? Find out more at 100daystooffload.com

Rejecting the ideas hamster

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

Before I deleted my LinkedIn account and then created a new one from scratch, I had a bunch of recommendations from people with whom I am no longer in contact.

I vividly remember one such recommendation, however, which described me as an ‘ideas hamster’. This was unexpected, but I saw it as a good thing. I shared that description of myself with a kind of pride. I owned it.

More recently, and particularly in the self-excavation I’ve been doing via therapy, I’ve come to see my constant need to move onto the next thing and work as fast as I can as a form of avoidance. After all, hamsters take exercise in wheels that, ultimately, go nowhere.

But if I’m not an ‘ideas hamster’, then… what am I? If the ability to rapidly generate new ideas is not my USP, then what value do I bring to the world?

Thankfully, the answer has been sitting in front of my the whole time. People regularly allude to my ability to connect together things in new and novel ways.

I’m happy with that. There is nothing, after all, new under the sun, meaning ‘my ideas’ have never been more than connecting together things differently. So it’s in this that I add value to the world, in my ability to synthesise and make sense of the world around me.

This post is Day 45 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. Want to get involved? Find out more at 100daystooffload.com

The Silent Writing Collective

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

TL;DR version: I want you to come and write for an hour with me every Sunday night. Go hereat 8pm UK time (currently 12pm PT / 3pm ET / 9pm CET) on Sunday:http://piratepad.net/silentwritingcollective

Introduction

Recently, I joined the Mentor Team at Mozilla. Each team has their own, slightly different way of working – even if we all tend to use the same tools. Something I really enjoyed during my inaugural Mentor Team call was the period of ‘silent etherpadding’ that it began with.

For the uninitiated:

Etherpad… is a web-based collaborative real-time editor, allowing authors to simultaneously edit a text document, and see all of the participants’ edits in real-time, with the ability to display each author’s text in their own color. There is also a chat box in the sidebar to allow meta communication. (Wikipedia)

At Mozilla we usually use an etherpad as an agenda for our calls. We use one for the Web Literacy Standard community calls, for example. I’ve found using etherpads usually makes for collaborative, democratic experiences.

The idea

I like writing. I like writing and commenting in real time even more. But I only ever do it for work-related things. So I had this idea last night:

How it works:

  • Every week there’s a new main etherpad where people sign in (being anonymous/pseudoanonymous is fine)
  • Each person creates a new etherpad and adds the link next to their name on the main weekly etherpad.
  • Everyone writes for an hour. Or more. Or less.
  • During that hour people can stop by other people’s pads and comment, chat, etc.(anonymously/pseudoanonymously if you want)
  • Only one rule: NO DELETING (of your own or other people’s stuff)

This is what it looks like:

While Stephen Lockyer kindly pointed me towards #SundayPost at attending.io (which looksamazing) it’s not quite what I had in mind for the Silent Writing Collective.

Conclusion

Perhaps you need to start blogging again. Maybe you want to be inspired by what other people are writing. It might be that you just need an excuse to write about something that’s on your mind.

Whatever it is, I hope you’ll join us this Sunday. If it works, then it’ll continue. If it doesn’t I’ll just have to go back to 750words!

Join us here: http://piratepad.net/silentwritingcollective at 8pm UK time on Sunday(currently 12pm PT / 3pm ET / 9pm CET)

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