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Discovering Directions

In several conversations lately, the metaphor of a compass has come up. The compass illustrates our trajectory, our path, and directions. It also helps us to make choices when we are feeling lost. The book, The Riddle of the Compass, is not a metaphorical book. It is a book of discovery though.

Amir D. Aczel gives us a quick history of an invention that opened up the world. It is interesting that there is a lot of mystery around the invention of such an important tool. There is no record of who invented it or when it was first used in travels.

…in the center of Amalfi, a town situated by a small harbor. Above an archway, I saw a bronze plaque with an inscription in Italian. Translated, it read:

All of Italy, and Amalfi, must give credit to the great invention of the magnetic compass, without which America and other unexplored places would not have been opened to civilization. Amalfi commemorates this pure Italian glory with special honors to its immortal son, Flavio Gioia, the fortunate inventor of the magnetic compass.–1302-1902

…In Amalfi, Flavio Gioia was at once everywhere and nowhere to be found. I was determined to find out more about the elusive inventor of the compass, but where?…

…I walked the narrow streets of the hidden part of Amalfi, climbed a set of stairs, and turned around an architecturally undistinguished building to enter the center. “Oh yes, we do have some material on Flavio Gioia,” said the archivist. “But, you know, it isn’t at all clear that the man ever existed.” (pg 5)


It is fun to think that throughout history we have been having trouble figuring out where we are going and where we are coming from–metaphorically or otherwise.

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What Would You Do If You Knew?

Often reading the news these days, we are asked to make moral judgments on the story: when is forgiveness possible–is there a time limit on injustice; is truth a matter of perception; when are we required to act when watching/reading about cruelties? Reading The Dinner by Herman Koch, these questions are in your face.

This is one of those books that could sit on your self for a long time before you have the will to read it. One of the difficulties I found with getting into the book was the fact that the narrator is mentally unstable and we are listening to him talk to himself. Like most of the reviews on Goodreads, I can’t decide if I like the book. I do like the questions it raised.

It becomes a parenting book to me. How far would you go to defend your child? Psychotic parents, not withstanding, looking at the event on which the dinner hinges–a crime by Michel & Rick, Koch asks us whether we agree with the decisions of the parents.


The dilemma I was faced with was one every parent faces sooner or later: you want to defend your child, of course; you stand up for your child, but you mustn’t do it all too vehemently, and above all not too eloquently – you mustn’t drive anyone into a corner. The educators, the teachers, will let you have your say, but afterwards, they’ll take revenge on your child. You may come up with better arguments – it’s not too hard to come up with better arguments than the educators, the teachers – but in the end, your child to going to pay for it. Their frustration at being shown up is something they’ll take out on the student. (The Dinner by Herman Koch)

When we define ourselves as a moral person, is there a line that we will not cross? Without reading into the religious dogma, I think, the 10 commandments are, at least, a good place to start. And, I would hope that I would have the moral fortitude to expect anyone close to me to take responsibility for their actions and pay restitution as appropriate.

Other layers in this book deal with privilege classes, mental illness and sibling rivalry. The opportunity that a novel such as this gives us is the chance to think about and discuss our perspectives on society and whether we are the ones to initiate a change.

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Re-invention

I work with people who want something different than they have: more money, better business, a life. In some cases, being unhappy in their current circumstances, they are looking to re-invent themselves. In M.G. Vassanji’s book, Nostalgia, the characters have a chance to do that not through hard work and dedication, but through money. If you have enough money, you can buy a new personality and a new life in the future that Vassanji has created.

I see this bringing up, at least, two moral questions: is it right that the rich can choose a different life and the poor are stuck with their lot; and what happens to the young/not re-invented who are not able to get jobs because the others don’t die or retire?

These are just two questions that are raised in this fascinating book about a possible near future where part of the world is barricaded behind a wall. Living in these times, the book does seem to be an extrapolation of a possible future give our current trajectory: nuclear accidents, a great income divide, separations of us vs them, engineered immortality.

These thoughts are woven through the novel that follows a doctor who patches re-invented clients whose past leaks through into their current life.

A very special childhood, very dear to me, and poignant, but it is fake–my fiction. There must be components of real memory in this narrative, themes that were preserved from my previous life, others that were invented exclusively for this one. My previous data of course was destroyed. There’s a thriving industry promising to connect people to their real origins. People end up unhappy with their current lives, and some even desire to go back to what they are told they were. But I loved the happy childhood of my memory. Recalling it was like reading a portion of some classic novel. From that idyllic foundation of my current GN life I have looked ahead, and achieved my successes in my own quiet way. I have served society.
Page 55, Nostalgia, M.G. Vassanji

This book has so many layers that a close reading or at least a book club discussion should be a requirement.

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Where Good Ideas Come From: Germinating Innovation

I picked this book off my bookshelf to see if it would help me with some background for an idea generation workshop I was planning. In the interest of “I don’t know enough,” I thought that if I knew “Where Good Ideas Come From,” I could design a workshop around those concepts.

Steven Johnson wrote the kind of book I love. One where I can learn some fun facts that I store in my brain and bring out as a kind of party trick, like the air conditioner was invented by a guy named Carrier who was commissioned to help a newspaper control the humidity in their printing room (pg 280) or that with only four molecules (methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water) and electricity, the building blocks for life (sugars, lipids, and nucleic acids) can be created (pg 49).

Great for a party, but how is this useful for a workshop?

This book gave me some great back story for moving innovation forward, like McGyver-ing is entertaining and can allow for an eclectic assemblage of disparate parts only when a problem is staring you in the face. As the video illustrates, in attempting to have individuals create ideas, I discovered that connecting the participants in an open environment where ideas can flourish in unregulated channels encourages dynamic patterns of innovation through liquid networks, slow hunches, serendipity and noise (pg 232). I am excited to play around in the muck of idea generation.

As an aside, I am fascinated by the Charles Darwin quote that, as Johnson states show Darwin “oscillates between two structuring metaphors that govern all his work: the complex interdependencies of the tangled bank, and the war of nature; the symbiotic connections of an ecosystem and the survival of the fittest.” (pg 238)

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us…Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life…

Pg 238, Steven Johnson,
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