Blake was a Blogger

Almost finished reading Bronowski’s “Man Without a Mask”, about the life and works of William Blake, and was struck, by this summary …

“We find [Blake’s life] eccentric, only if we miss it’s context, which is made by his writings and his times together [American and French and Industrial revolutions] … the context of a man who gave his mind to speaking in a public world.”

Also this succinct summary of the significance of freedom and empowerment, and that social (industrial, political) institutions should be means to that end, not means of control and restriction.

“Blake believed society had no ends. Like his [Satanic Mills] it is a means become master …. The good remains an end to which society gives means, but which man must know and make.”

This last phrase is in fact exactly Pirsig’s MoQ view of the social and intellectual levels of Quality [Good]. Lower layers support (act as hygiene) to those above, but do not direct or control [Maslow] Individual man must know and make.

Interesting given yesterday’s BlogWalk in London [walking around Bloomsbury], that a striking conclusion by David Wilcox, was that discussing blogging as social software within organisations seemed simply to raise all the issues of society and organisation, independent of blogging as the technological means, and that in itself was a valid reason for blogging as a subject and a tool. Linked posts as index cards again. How true. Nothing new under the sun again.

Those issues of society and organisation I’ve seen previously summarised by Quinn & Cameron as the classic paradoxical aspects of management – empowerment vs control, centralisation vs decentralisation, discretion vs direction, open-communication vs secrecy, and so on. Johnnie Moore mentioned a company whose elightened operational guidelines was simply a single statement that “Each member of staff should exercise their best judgement”.