## Resilient Koan 16 - Inspiration and Perspiration ### _Koan:_ What is the balance between doing the work and just making it simple and accessible.   ### _Discussion_: Watching the trailer is not seeing the movie. Seeing the movie is not reading the book. Reading the book is not studying it as literature. Studying it as literature is not seeing the work as art, social commentary and philosophy in the history of the times. The speed of the current generational trends is to miss in the modern the distinctions of difference. Never having an experience of the former means that we do not know what we do not know. The mistake is one of perception. ### _Inquiry_: I watch [TED](http://www.ted.com/speakers/browse?event=0&tagid=0&alphabylastname=P&page=&orderedby=ALPHABET) talks. They are a life's work in science reduced to 20 minutes. The newer format is rumoured to be 10 minutes. Is this information and exploration or merely meme propagation? In my own work people talk to me about what they have read and do not ask to read what has been written. Who explores behind or do we know what we need to know. ### _Insight_: There is no problem in the simplification, as long as people know that it is a simplification. The problem only arises in the mistake. When we understand something by metaphor, it gives us a means to access that work. When we understand something **_as_** a metaphor, we are confused and overly simplistic. The field of panarchy is entering a point now of everything being resilient and in adaptive cycles. I read all of the literature and studies, conversations and papers of over 30 years work and see that the simpler ideas lead people into the field, but also lead the field into dilution.     ### _Resolution_: Be socially aware in the messages you propagate, be accurate and complete and not overly compelx, and allude to the partial view, the unknowns and the mysteries yet to be discovered. Is it better to have a mass market or 1000 true fans? The answer is both, just make sure the two are not at all confused. ### _Practice_: Undertake the perspiration so as to reach those with inspiration, but look mostly for those who stay back and help pack the chairs, as they are probably waiting for an invitation to pick up something a little more profound. ### Footnote: In the tipping point Gladwell talks about maeven traps that allow those with specialist inquiry skills or interest to select in. I wonder what a 'One of the One Thousand' portal would look like? --- This is one in a series of 25 'Resilient Koans' documenting "an apithologue into the koans of practice discovered while creating resilient sustainable communities", in 2010.