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Simultaneity: The future is an arrow that arrives at our feet

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Yesterday, I posted on my difficulty explaining the simultaneity principle in positive organizational scholarship and extrapolating the implications for organizational design.  If you can help me, please do!

Today, I followed up a review about a book on New Zealand history in The Economist.  I’ve extracted this quote wholesale:

“Christina Thompson is a New Englander from a trim town outside Boston with a white church and a green. Seven belongs to the Ngapuhi tribe and his family lives in a ramshackle settlement at the end of a dirt road. Ms Thompson is an intellectual in the tradition of the Enlightenment, an editor of the academic Harvard Review. Seven, with his belief in ghosts and aliens, is the very man that tradition hopes to enlighten. She weighs options and makes plans. He sees the future not as an arrow he shoots ahead of him, but as an arrow that arrives at his feet.”

The future is an arrow that arrives at our feet.

I intuit it.  Who can explain it further?

UPDATE:  I first thought of this as the future coming from behind me.  Now I think of myself as standing still and the future coming towards me.  How about you?

Published in POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, WELLBEING & POETRY

5 Comments

  1. Ned Ned

    I was just about to comment on how your writing has become more accessible.

    I think you could improve by removing all the jargon from your posts. Unless you would only like to discuss these ideas with people in your field, but personally I hope you don’t. I find quite a few of your ideas to be very insightful and I wish more people could appreciate them.

    For example, I looked up the word ‘simultaneity’ on Wikipedia. I noticed that a synonym is synchronicity. The word ‘synchronicity’ is more commonly used and most educated people would automatically know what you are talking about. Also, if you are aware that a word is not commonly used, you could offer a quick definition. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

    Another thought: if it is a topic you are going to discuss at length, you could create a permanent page for people to refer to that gives a simple explanation– some background so people can understand you better. I’m not sure many people even know exactly what a work psychologist does in comparison to other areas of psychology.

    Just some suggestions. I hope they help. And thanks for sticking with me, Jo.

  2. Jo Jo

    Thanks Paolo. I don’t read Italian but I am motivated now to be clear about the meaning of the two words: simultaneity and synchonicity

  3. Another thought: if it is a topic you are going to discuss at length, you could create a permanent page for people to refer to that gives a simple explanation– some background so people can understand you better. I’m not sure many people even know exactly what a work psychologist does in comparison to other areas of psychology.

    Good.

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