POVERTY THE AMERICAN DELUSION
I've never been hungry, without a bed or roof over head. I'm now retired, and children are all grown, so I write and act to supplement my income. During all of my working life I've never been out of work long enough to exhaust compensation. I have skills that have and will always enable me to feed and house myself. But I've been close enough to poverty to know its despair, its pain, its hopelessness – to know that poverty doesn't come in colors, to discover that it has no compassion for a child or an elder person. Poverty is here in America. We may choose not to see it but it is here among us; and poverty is the insidious infection which will corrupt the health of all Americans – our enemies aren’t who will kill the American dream, it's our own poverty.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
Definition Exclusion Isolation Annihilation
A SPECULATIVE NOTION ABOUT ORGANIZATIONS:
from Definition to Exclusion to Isolation to Annihilation.
I have come to the conclusion that all organizations define themselves by exclusion. In an effort to claim a unique spot of ground on which to stake its claim, an organization continually edits its definition, further excluding itself from all others, and thereby further isolating itself.
For the purpose of this essay an organization is any formal or informal group of people who define themselves in the same way, who follow the same beliefs, and who share common objectives. By this definition a government is an organization, a religion is an organization – any group of people meeting the definition is an organization.
On face organization-definition is innocuous – not harmful. For an organization to be identifiable among many, a unique definition seems unavoidable. However, when that definition moves beyond its name and mailing address and enters the realms of beliefs and objectives, I believe that a form of isolation sets in and becomes injurious to the organization and to those not within it.
When an organization feels isolated it begins to see the world outside itself as hostile and will eventually seek to annihilate it – leading to its own annihilation.
Adolphus A. Ward
Writer/Actor
www.adolphusward.net
from Definition to Exclusion to Isolation to Annihilation.
I have come to the conclusion that all organizations define themselves by exclusion. In an effort to claim a unique spot of ground on which to stake its claim, an organization continually edits its definition, further excluding itself from all others, and thereby further isolating itself.
For the purpose of this essay an organization is any formal or informal group of people who define themselves in the same way, who follow the same beliefs, and who share common objectives. By this definition a government is an organization, a religion is an organization – any group of people meeting the definition is an organization.
On face organization-definition is innocuous – not harmful. For an organization to be identifiable among many, a unique definition seems unavoidable. However, when that definition moves beyond its name and mailing address and enters the realms of beliefs and objectives, I believe that a form of isolation sets in and becomes injurious to the organization and to those not within it.
When an organization feels isolated it begins to see the world outside itself as hostile and will eventually seek to annihilate it – leading to its own annihilation.
Adolphus A. Ward
Writer/Actor
www.adolphusward.net
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