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Lessons for life

There is something quite spectacular here…and I am uncertain how much to add to what you might see…but ya know what…just gonna lay down a cupla things I heard this fella say coz I know some of you have not got access to the internet. His name is Dan Phillips and he makes creative, amazing stuff out of what is basically throw-away material. Who the heck thought up that idea? So first up here is a TED video.




If you can’t view this, then the following is a rough, thought hopefully reasonably accurate, paraphrasing of what he has to say:

Repetition creates a pattern. In terms of saving stuff, instead of changing all the tiles coz one is chipped, chip them all!

Some kind of continuum or perhaps dichotomy between: ‘The perfect’ and ‘The passionate.’ Dan says when we seek the ‘perfect’ we waste stuff…he says ‘feature blemish.’

Standardisaion creates waste: If it all has to be 2m x 3m and the tree hasn’t grown like that then we chop it up and throw away the ‘waste.’ So: embrace the non-standard.

Labour is expensive? A myth says Dan. Spend a bit of time and look for ‘stuff’…and we shall find heaps of what is useable…and beautiful.

We impose our ideas on what is around us. We have a perfect idea in our mind and we try to impose it on a world which is not perfect and we end up with something which is much less than we desired…and that imperfection starts to create waste and pollution, because it is much less perfect than it can possibly be.

Gregariousness: We do what our group does because THIS is MY group. Can we live according to what we think is the best way or even my way, if it clashes with what MY GROUP EXPECTS?

Some interesting stuff here…and Dan says that he is not a gun-toting revolutionary but that maybe, just maybe, we could benefit from trying to ‘reconnect with who we really are.’

And Dan says this: ‘Once in a while you get access to the control room and then you can kinda mess with the dials…’

Worth while thinking about if, at some point, you find yourself suddenly and unexpectedly within reach of the dials.

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