The Evolved Self-management System | Conversation | Edge - Nicholas Humphrey

I'm now thinking about a larger issue still. If placebo medicine can induce people to release hidden healing resources, are there other ways in which the cultural environment can "give permission" to people to come out of their shells and to do things they wouldn't have done in the past? Can cultural signals encourage people to reveal sides of their personality or faculties that they wouldn't have dared to reveal in the past? Or for that matter can culture block them? There's good reason to think this is in fact our history.

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Mindful Leadership: When East Meets West — HBS Working Knowledge

Asian beliefs, philosophies, and practices are influencing everything from the way we treat the ill to how we make cars. Now, a Harvard Business School professor is looking to the East as a model for developing strong business leaders. William George, an expert on leadership development, recently teamed with Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche to present a conference on "mindful leadership," a secular process to explore the roles of self-awareness and self-compassion in developing strong and effective leaders. "To our knowledge, this is the first time that a Buddhist Rinpoche and a leadership professor have joined forces to explore this subject and see how Eastern teaching can inform our Western thinking about leadership and vice versa," George says. You can read George's summary of the Mindful Leadership conference on his Web site.

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What IS Creativity Anyway? - Jan Phillips: The Huffington Post

Have you ever had the thought, "I'm not creative. I can't even draw a straight line"? If so, you're not alone. Many people think that there is some essential relationship between creativity and the ability to make art. If they can't paint like Picasso, sing like Josh Groban, or sculpt like Henry Moore, they don't dare claim to be creative. It feels like an arrogant thing to say about yourself, if you're not an expert, not making a living from your creations, not well-known and publicly acclaimed for your imaginative gifts.

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Why Dirt and Risk Are Good

Within a single generation, our attitude towards children has gone from “go out and don’t come back until it’s dark” to gated children’s playgrounds, chauffeur driven play-dates and a list of officially decreed ‘dangers’ facing children. We have shifted from slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails to iPods, mobile phones and playstations in less than fifty years. You think I’m kidding? There is a DVD compilation of the best of Sesame Street (1969-1974) featuring a warning stating that the DVD is “For adult viewing only”. Why? Because it contains scenes now considered inappropriate for children. We are living in what is undoubtedly the safest time for children in recorded history, yet we protect our kids from germs, grazed knees and broken bones like never before. But what about ‘stranger danger’? Warwick Cairns, a researcher in the UK has calculated that one would have to leave a young child on a pavement for 600,000 years before it became statistically probable that the child would be abducted by a stranger.

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The Professional Practising Philosopher at a Business School

This transcript of an interview with John Armstrong, Philosopher in Residence, at Melbourne Business School conducted by Alan Saunders's Philosophers Zone programme on the ABC suggests the possibility of a business school syllabus that deals in the history and philosophy of ideas. Armstrong says a business school can offer an environment in which questions such as What makes a good business? What makes a business career successful in a broader sense rather than just economics; What are the bigger images of success in life? can be geuninely explored and the reaction from the participants in his programmes has offered rcih learnings from both sides!!

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