Public
- Public
- Network
- Groups
- Featured
- Popular
- People

“We need experts, we need accurate information, but the object is not to do away with difference but to do away with muddle. When for lack of facts you and 1 are responding to a different situation—you to the situation as you imagine it, I to the situation as I imagine, it—we cannot of course come to agreement. What accurate information does is to clear the ground for genuine difference and therefore make possible, I do not say make sure, agreement. The object of accurate information is not to overcome difference but to give legitimate play to difference. If I think I am looking at a black snake and you think it is a fallen branch, our talk will be merely chaotic. But after we have decided that it is a snake, we do not then automatically agree what to do with it. You and I may respond quite differently to “black snake”: shall we run away, or kill it, or take it home and make a pet of it to kill the mice? There is now some basis for significant difference. Difference based on inaccuracy is meaningless. We have not done away with difference, but we have provided the possibility for fruitful difference. “

Download link

“We need experts, we need accurate information, but the object is not to do away with difference but to do away with muddle. When for lack of facts you and 1 are responding to a different situation—you to the situation as you imagine it, I to the situation as I imagine, it—we cannot of course come to agreement. What accurate information does is to clear the ground for genuine difference and therefore make possible, I do not say make sure, agreement. The object of accurate information is not to overcome difference but to give legitimate play to difference. If I think I am looking at a black snake and you think it is a fallen branch, our talk will be merely chaotic. But after we have decided that it is a snake, we do not then automatically agree what to do with it. You and I may respond quite differently to “black snake”: shall we run away, or kill it, or take it home and make a pet of it to kill the mice? There is now some basis for significant difference. Difference based on inaccuracy is meaningless. We have not done away with difference, but we have provided the possibility for fruitful difference. “
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/344/013/838/973/579/original/d245eaaf2d296094.jpeg

Notices where this attachment appears

Embed this notice
Ruth Malan — Systems (ruthmalan@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 03-May-2024 01:39:11 JST Ruth Malan — Systems

“We need experts, we need accurate information, but the object is not to do away with difference but to do away with *muddle*. When for lack of facts you and I are responding to a different situation—you to the situation as you imagine it, I to the situation as I imagine, it—we cannot of course come to agreement. What accurate information does is to clear the ground for genuine difference and therefore make possible, I do not say make sure, agreement”
-- Mary Parker Follett, Creative Experience

In conversation about a year ago from mastodon.social permalink