Crossroads Dispatches

Confessions of a Marketer's Existential Crisis: Greek Art

Oh, I am tempted to add a lot of my own spin to this poem. And it's obviously not about something as mundane as marketing so I hope you'll see the real message beyond my use of it for a marketing post.

I'll leave the interpretation as an exercise for the reader. Food for thought: What if branding and marketing ceased to be Chinese art and resembled Greek art more in the (hopefully near) future?

Chinese Art and Greek Art, by Rumi

The Prophet said, “There are some who see Me
by the same Light in which I am seeing them.
Our natures are ONE.
              Without reference to any strands
of lineage, without reference to texts or traditions,
we drink the Life-Water together.”
              Here's a story
about that hidden mystery:
              The Chinese and the Greeks
were arguing as to who were the better artists.
The King said,
              “We'll settle this matter with a debate.”
The Chinese began talking,
but the Greeks wouldn't say anything.
They left.
    The Chinese suggested then
that they each be given a room to work on
with their artistry, two rooms facing each other
and divided by a curtain.
               The Chinese asked the King
for a hundred colors, all the variations,
and each morning they came to where
the dyes were kept and took them all.
The Greeks took no colors.
“They're not part of our work,”
               They went to their room
and began cleaning and polishing the walls. All day
every day they made those walls as pure and clear
as an open sky.
    There is a way that leads from all-colors
to colorlessness. Know that the magnificent variety
of the clouds and the weather comes from
the total simplicity of the sun and the moon.

The Chinese finished, and they were so happy.
They beat the drums in the joy of completion.

The King entered their room,
astonished by the gorgeous color and detail.

The Greeks then pulled the curtain dividing the rooms.
The Chinese figures and images shimmeringly reflected
on the clear Greek walls. They lived there,
even more beautifully, and always
changing in the light.

The Greek art is the Sufi way.
They don't study books of philosophical thought.

They make their loving clearer and clearer.
No wantings, no anger. In that purity
they receive and reflect the images of every moment,
from here, from the stars, from the void.

They take them in
as though they were seeing
with the Lighted Clarity
that sees them.

Mathnawi, I, 3462-3485, 3499
Coleman Barks
Delicious Laughter

Bootstrapper's Mindset

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.  It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. - E.F. Schumacker

Yikes, you only have one more day to download Seth Godin's great ebook, The Bootstrapper's Bible. This is highly recommended - especially for entrepreneurs - but not only entrepreneurs. Even VC's say bootstrap as long as you can. If perchance you miss the deadline, email me at crossroadsdispatches -at- gmail [dot] com and I'll send you a copy.

Bootstrapping will teach you (ok, force you) to be creatively resourceful which is good creative practice. During the dot-com heyday, I worked for an Internet software company where I was doing a bunch of partner programs stuff. Basically means I had the chance to visit a lot of start-ups that wanted to partner with us (we had paying customers and were already public). It's no surprise the ones with the skycraper incredible boardroom views and top-of-the-line cubicle furniture complete with Aeron chairs are no longer with us.

Following a path that would become a key tenet of the Google way, they bought a terabyte of disks at bargain prices and built their own computer housings in Larry's dorm room, which became Google's first data center. - Google history

Converting the garage of their rented Bellevue suburb home into a workspace, hammering together wooden doors for desks — Amazon.com was born. [Those original door-desks later were auctioned off to charity for a tidy sum.] - Amazon history

After the last venture-backed startup I was involved with collapsed in January 2001, I worked with and advised a lot of start-ups in the pre-financing stages. One was an idea that I was really excited about (involved education at all levels) with an acquaintence I really respected. It all was looking good until he said he needed a minimum of $100,000 a year to live in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. He had a wife that worked part-time and no kids. It was mostly to support his habit of buying computer toys. He was just not cut out of the entrepreneurial cloth. I can live on a 1/4 of that in the Bay Area.

I'm not talking about sacrifice and delayed gratification. For entrepreneurs, the journey itself is just as sweet as the destination. Setting the goal of running the Boston Marathon knowing that I'd have to shave almost a full hour off my best marathon time to enter and the hours spent training for it on my favorite paths with my running club teammates and the St. George Marathon qualifying race were by far more memorable; running Boston itself was anti-climatic by comparison.

The bootstrapper doesn't just give up when money and resources don't magically appear sighing, Well, I guess I just can't afford that. But the bootstrapper leaves the questions open ended for the creative process to work on as a background task until the answers appear to: How could I afford that? Is there another way to achieve that same result?

The bootstrapping mindset isn't just for entrepreneurs. You'll come up with more innovative and effective ideas even if you have P&G's marketing budget behind you if you adapt a bootstrapper's mentality. Throwing money and bodies at challenges usually results in poor systems and bloated mediocrity.

And on a personal note, learning the bootstrapping mentality may just make you lighter and freer at work. In The Naked Truth, Margaret Heffernan shares that many women (uh, not just women) feel trapped and stuck in their jobs because they are living paycheck to paycheck. Saying and doing what you really think in the workplace may be tempered when you know you are slavishly dependent on that job to pay this month's mortgage. One of her interviewees says she's learned to save up a stash of money that she calls (well, uh-hum, there are students reading this blog so I won't spell it out) her F.U. money. It gives her the freedom and autonomy in her job knowing that she doesn't need to hold back and she can always quit if things get out of line with her integrity or her inner voice. Even if you never have to quit, I think that strategy will make you a valuable (and happier) employee who's not too meek to speak out on behalf of the company even if everyone else is looking out for their own necks. I take that one step further, and as a "low-maintenance" individual and entrepreneur, I'm living the F.U. lifestyle meaning that my lifestyle doesn't own me.

Bonus: Worth reading the Do Less manifesto alongside.

The Industrial Age was About Control, the Creative Age is About...

Aging in companies is caused by a decrease in flexibility and an increase in control. - Adizes Graduate School seminars 

The industrial age was about control, and the information age, or the knowledge-worker age, is about release. - Stephen Covey

Pause there for a moment. Release...hmmm, what could Covey mean? What does release conjure up for you?

And release means helping people find their voice, so they can do what they love doing and what they do well.

Have you ever had that kind of job or role? What kind of supervision did it require? Right. You supervised yourself. You didn't need anyone to motivate you. When people find their voice, you don't need to worry about supervision, bureaucracy, rules and regulations, and what I call "the great jackass theory of human motivation" - carrot-and -sticking people...

Today, if people do not move gradually into this release model that I'm talking about, then they are going to be history. They won't be as productive, they won't be as innovative, and they won't be as quick. - Stephen Covey, author of The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, in Business 2.0, December 2004

I don't really buy that people need help finding their voice. It's there. They might need some encouragement to stop muffling and squelching it however. But Covey isn't speaking to your management. Release, letting go, being open is an intensely personal endeavor.

The most significant release is release from the past.

Colleen at Communicatrix whom I had the pleasure of meeting last Friday in L.A. shares an interview on musician Cy Coleman's creative process:

In a recent blog entry devoted to Coleman, he [friend Rob Kendt] recaps highlights of that interview, coming up with a few great quotes, the first of which is about the importance of looking forward—or at least, not looking back:

I asked him whether he'd been approached about doing a major Broadway revue of his hits, and he said he wasn't very interested: "A lot of these things happen because the composer goes after it. I'm just one of those people who don't want to go back and look at all that; it's over. I just keep moving and looking forward; it's my nature. People ask, 'What's your favorite song?' I say, 'The one I'm writing.' They get very disgusted with me."

For me, anyway, release means letting go of the past in every moment. And letting go of my illusion of control. Release means meeting people that you're not quite sure of why at the time. Release means allowing yourself to be guided. Release means trusting your creative process. Release means knowing that whatever you might have planned you are open to incredible unforeseen alternatives shifting everything around at the eleventh hour. And release means following your heart even if your head is a doubting Thomas.

Accidental Entrepreneurs

I'm going to be talking more about the entrepreneurial and business owners' mindset, precisely because it's not just relevant to entrepreneurs. In this age, most public education (to be differentiated from self-education) is geared toward the job mindset which doesn't adequately prepare one for the present or future, including within a job. The snippets below steer a bit more towards self-employment than entrepreneurship, but illustrate it's not your father's world.

In the New Normal, the distinctions between corporate employment and self-employment are diminishing rapidly. The survivors have been forced to be strategic about their time, more thoughtful about their decisions, and even more committed to work. They've learned to survive in a risky environment. In a nutshell, those are characteristics of entrepreneurs...

In a way, the New Normal is training us all to be entrepreneurs. Whether you work for a big company or for yourself, the success formula is pretty much the same. The big question is whether or not you are willing to be your own boss, deal with your own benefits, and find your own business opportunities. - The New Normal: Great Opportunities In A Time Of Great Risks, by Roger McNamee, former Silicon Valley venture capitalist

[Permanent employees] think they have job security. They don't. In fact, they have practically no job security, especially in California, where you can be fired whenever the company likes. Job security is the ability to get a job. [Permanent employees] don't have job security because they don't have the networks. They can't call someone and get a job tomorrow morning. They think they have job security, but it's on paper. Real job security is when you have a network of managers and recruiters where you simply call them and say, "Okay, my contract finished," and they say, "Great, I can place you somewhere tomorrow morning." - interview with contractor Jose Martinez in Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy by Stephen Barley and Gideon Kunda

Celebrating Gratefulness

On a day celebrating gratefulness and to celebrate the synchronicity of finding out more about Brother David Steindl-Rast (I stumbled onto his bio at Gratefulness.org as it turns out one of his most popular books is Gratefulness) in yesterday's post, I offer a few selections from his books:

Our eyes see, but only our heart looks through things to their meaning. Our nose registers scents, but only our heart will track like a hound its ethereal quarry. Our tongue tastes, but only a heart can feast. Skin touches skin, but being in touch is a matter of heart. Our ears hear, but only a listening heart understands. — A Listening Heart

Another site has high praise for Brother David: "Long before Oprah started millions of women keeping gratitude journals, Brother David Steindl-Rast was writing about gratefulness as the heart of prayer and the most liberating way to live in joy and grace."

I'd like this post to be solely about gratefulness, but reading about Brother David makes it clear he belongs on my The Real Persuaders list: "He co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies in 1968 and received the 1975 Martin Buber Award for his achievements in building bridges between religious traditions."

I think the first Thanksgiving feast wasn't only a time of gratefulness for the bounty of the harvest, but also a time of bridging between two peoples who in the act of breaking bread seated face to face at the same table witnessed each other wholeheartedly as people. People just like themselves with the same capacity to laugh, cry, scream, touch, create, jump, sing, run, hide, hesitate, doubt and love.

In his foreward to a book on Meister Eckhart, Brother David writes:

All the different religious traditions can be traced back to an experience of communion with the Ultimate by their founders or reformers. Historic circumstances lead then to the great diversity of religious traditions. Yet all those diversities are only so many expressions of one and the same mystical core — expressions of the sense of ultimate belonging. This mystical core needs to bring forth so many different myths and teachings, needs to be celebrated in so many different rituals, because it is inexhaustible.

..and needs to be celebrated in the essence of so many different people in so many expressions because it is inexhaustible.

It is only fitting to close with a quote from Meister Eckhart:

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.

[All quotes except Eckhart's from Spirituality Health's Living Spiritual Teachers series.]

Our Presence Spills Onto Our Voice

The day I met Cindy, a women's network was milling about her artistic loft in the newly gentrified part of Salt Lake City doing what women's network groups do. Cindy quietly and powerfully stood out from the rest of the frenzied chatter and buzzing. I hadn't known I was seeking an executive coach - that is, until the minute I met her. That's presence.

I've been thinking about presence lately. So many of us think that ideas, memes, concepts, speeches, posts, corporate objectives and mandates, venture capital pitches, and any form of communication can be stripped of the person delivering the message or perhaps if people come into play are strictly influential as a function of one's title and given authority. 

I am a fan of the Socratic method and believe we can only guide others to what is always there within themselves. Thus, there are really no experts, gurus or authority figures with all the answers but simply people because of their own centeredness point the way back to our own center.

At the center of your being you know the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. - Lao Tzu

Perhaps You Are The Message more than you know. Of late, I feel the sense of losing my presence as my oversaturated melting mind begs to stare into space and a chance to re-connect again with a greater Presence. We speak of voice being stripped from today's media. But how many of us are stripped away from ourselves, period. Voice is just one of many of the casualties. Voice, an important component of any written media, is intimately an expression of our presence.

We can speak of presence as related to mindfulness, but that term has many interpretations. I like how Brother David Steindl-Rast phrases it:

I think "wholeheartedness" is the English word that expresses better what mindfulness as a technical term means; that you respond to every situation from your center, from your heart -- that you listen with your heart to every situation, and your heart elicits the response.

I think presence and wholeheartedness are clearly expressed in a writer's voice. You know when you witness it in your reading. And you know when you witness it in yourself.

I asked my friend Cindy Martenay of Insight Shift for her definition. Luckily she was out-of-town and couldn't grab any nifty quotes from her books, so what you read is her raw thoughts jotted down in a quick email (sometimes the best posts, btw). Cindy speaks nows:

In a short definition, I would talk about presence as "our deepest capacity to sense into the world and respond appropriately."

When we talk about presence, we're talking about whether a person is really here, with us, fully experiencing and aware of the richness of what is happening in the moment. 

We're talking about permeability -- an openness to let new constructs and possibilities in, thus enabling us to respond appropriately versus reacting or even acting based on set principles.  We may have a principle to "stay the course" or "stand firm" but there are times when we can sense that it's appropriate to veer off course or yield. 

We're talking about allowing ourselves to be impressionable -- at New Ventures West, they like to talk about being like "soft clay," allowing your client's world to impress upon you, so you can more fully feel your client's world and take another world into your own experience. 

Many call this "mindfulness," but it goes beyond being "mind"-ful (mentally aware of what is present) to include a sense of interconnectedness with whomever and whatever is around us.  One can be quite mindful and still remote (although some folks do make distinctions between being "present" and being "connected," I tend to link them).   

My definition would include a sense of being present to mind (thoughts), heart (emotions), body (sensations), and spirit (interconnectedness with others and to what is invisible as well as visible in the universe) -- I know, a tall order! 

I would also include the concepts of permeability and impressionability, since no matter how hard we try, we are conditioned by our history to pay attention to some things and not to others, to make meaning from certain parts of experience and not others -- in short, no matter how well-intentioned and evolved and educated we are, we all have a particular "structure of interpretation" that shapes how we let parts of experience in and not others. 

If we cultivate -- in our bodies and nervous systems -- an ability to open up our lenses on the world, to become less sure of ourselves and more curious, we become more present to more of our experience as well as others' experiences with us. 

You can tell when someone escapes to their thoughts and loses presence by that faraway look in their eyes or that disconnected sound in their voices.  They don't notice the sounds in the room or the temperature or the lighting or the emotions. Some get "lost" in their thoughts, disconnected to their own emotions, sensations, body, and spirit in the endless world of thoughts.  Others get similarly lost in their emotions, while others lose themselves in sensations and physical experience. Regardless, there is a loss of presence when we are overly tuned into a single part of experience, at the expense of the whole. 

When it comes to helping writers access their unique "voice," being (becoming) present to one's unique experience in its fullness allows "voice" to come through. 

No matter how "present" we become, we still have unique histories and opportunities to notice cause and effect in the world, thus our "voice" will always be different if we allow the fullness of our experience (head/heart/gut/soul/community/environment) to come through in our writing!

If we are deeply present, then we have access to depth in our voice and we can respond appropriately (to write and not to be "lost" in perfectionistic, critical thoughts), bringing our voice into the world.

Thanks, Cindy. And may the presence of gratefulness and love be with all my readers this Thanksgiving holiday.

Nurture Relationships With the Trend Translators, Online and Offline

When I owned Women’s Sports & Fitness, one of the things that we noticed in some conversations with our readers was that they often found themselves being asked about products by their peers. On average, each of our readers was asked for help buying a product by 12 of their peers per year. This finding became core to our advertising sales strategy. At the time, our competitors had circulations of five or six times that of Women’s Sport & Fitness. We grew our advertising substantially by helping our advertisers recognize that our readers were more important to reach than our competitors’ readers, because they influenced so many others.

The reality was that our competitors’ readers were seeking out our readers to help them make purchasing decisions. These readers, who were not as passionate about sports, were listening to their more experienced peers. Our advertisers found that it was more important – and a lot cheaper – to engage in a dialogue with the readers of Women’s Sport & Fitness than to advertise with our competitors. It seems so logical to skip the [trend] translators [they're only 13.5% of any market population] and focus on the middle of the [innovation] diffusion curve, where the biggest number of customers resides, but a successful dialogue doesn’t happen that way.

The reality is that, if you don’t connect with the trend translators, the rest of the market won’t take you seriously. They will look first to their respected peers to validate your product. Why is this? Well, most people further to the right [i.e. early majority, etc.] of the translators don't think about your product and the problems it solves very often. They have bigger things to think about. They probably won't even take the time to listen to you. However, they will listen to their peers. Recently, my wife and I adopted our sons from Russia. Waking up one morning with two eight-month-old boys was an overwhelming experience. Neither Bridget nor I had the luxury of taking the time to read parenting magazines and seek out information. It was much easier - and faster - to ask trusted friends and family members for advice. [...]

Despite the attention that popular books [i.e. Crossing the Chasm, The Tipping Point] have brought to [Everett] Roger's ideas, many companies have shied away from engaging translators in a conversation due to their relatively small numbers. Springing from the general corporate belief in the illusion of control, the idea of statistically verifiable sample sizes is seen as a cornerstone of any conversation with customers. The anthropologist Dr. A. K. Romney built a mathematical model, the Cultural Consensus Theory, which supports the notion that, chosen well, small sample sizes of opinion leaders – as few as eight people – can be scientifically valid for conveying what the rest of the community thinks. Typically, these opinion leaders in the social network can see further ahead, helping you become more predictive in your strategic thinking. - Beyond the Brand, by John Winsor (highly recommended)

Trendsetters (2.5% of any market population) are willing to be first on the block with each and every new idea whereas trend translators (13.5%) adopt new ideas early but carefully. Again, they "aren’t the first to jump on a trend, but they are inquisitive about ways to improve what they do. They are usually good communicators, and others in the market tend to solicit advice from them. Translators achieve the capability of sharing common language within a large group of peers… They also seem to focus more on enhancing their experience than on being the first to accomplish something..."

As translators, they are opinion leaders and are always a little slower actually to decide about the acceptance of an idea or product than trendsetters, because they want to make a decision that is good - good meaning right, efficient, etc. The diligence expressed by these individuals in their decision-making process is an important part of their psychological makeup. It is important to them that their peers see them as trustworthy and thoughtful, yet also progressive and forward thinking. - Beyond the Brand, by John Winsor

All this information fits quite nicely into my Blogs as Truth-Telling Networks post, and lest you think blogs are the sole means to reach these trend translators, I share this information in the context of listening to the trend translators no matter where they may hang out - be it online on the blogosphere, or the streets, the football games, the mall, the church, the PTA meetings, the boardrooms, the climbing gym, the bus stop, the cafe and the country club. Sometimes you really have to log off and go meet them in the context of their world.

And I share this in spirit of reminding ourselves that perhaps sheer raw numbers and A-List mass popularity is not necessarily the end-all-and-be-all of any business blogging initiative.

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something. - Wilson Mizner

Honoring Everett Rogers, The Father of The Tipping Point Meme

As I'm writing this post and just about to hit publish, I find via Google News that Everett Rogers, author of The Diffusion of Innovation (1962) and communications professor at the University of New Mexico, died last month (also [1] [2]). Rogers important theory of how new ideas are disseminated and accepted both interpersonally and through a culture, have been the impetus and catalyst for popular books from The Tipping Point, The Influentials, Crossing the Chasm, The Anatomy of Buzz and the advent of word of mouth marketing.  You've all seen the innovation adoption curve charting innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards (and variations thereof). That's Rogers handiwork, not Geoffrey Moore's as many technology marketers wrongly assume.

In reading the story in the college newspaper where he taught, I found it touching to learn that in his classroom this communications professor was an avid storyteller. Ah, storytelling, the oldest form of sharing ideas. How easy it is to forget. I hadn't realized his background was in the larger arena of communication which by definition can never be a unilateral spreading of ideas, but is in essence a mutual communal learning.

And I learned he joined the UMN faculty because he wanted to establish an international intercultural communications Ph.D. program. His deep interest of late had veered into multicultural communications. It's fascinating because of the trajectory of his interests in communication nearly track my own. I too am much more interested in a multicultural, worldcentric dialogue than the diffusion and adoption of innovation within a culture.

Thank you so much, Everett Rogers. It feels a bit odd to go on with the post as I originally crafted, and so I've made it a separate post, demonstrating that his legacy lives on.

The Circular Logic of Chasing Success

This is a thought-provoking story I've heard before in some book with a title I cannot remember - perhaps the Lazy Person's Guide to Success or (um, well Lazy was definitely in the tongue-in-cheek title).The first time I read it I had just returned from idyllic Costa Rica, so it rang even truer even though place is just the backdrop. I was reminded of it again via the book, Beyond the Brand (highly recommended) by John Winsor.

An American executive had just sold his business and was taking some time to think about his next business opportunity. He decided to head south, and spend the season in a coastal Mexican village. One day, he was standing at the pier, thinking about his next business move, when a small boat with just one fisherman aboard docked at the pier. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna.

The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied it was only a little while.

The American then asked why he didn't stay out longer and catch more fish.

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, then stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos...I have a full and busy life, señor."

The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA, I've just sold my company for millions, and I can help you. You should spend more time fishing and, with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds of the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, until eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening up your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you would run your expanding enterprise."

"But señor, how long will all this take?"

"Not long. Maybe 15 to 20 years."

"But what then, señor?"

The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right, you announce an IPO, sell your company stock to the public, and become very rich. You would make millions."

"Millions, señor? Then what?"

"Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, then stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos."

Painting What's Next: Creatives are Open Systems

I wanted to share something I've found to be personally inspiring. Its seems to also hint at the struggles between dissent and establishment, change agents and preservation agents, and questioners and answerers. It's ultimately a call to strive to remain open systems ourselves. The easy sentence to overlook in the excerpt below is this: "The person who is closed desperately believes that he has truly found the way for man to be..." I also found reference to open and closed systems in my reading this weekend as well:

By definition, a closed system cannot be a learning system, and eventually it will die from its own exhaust! - Beyond the Brand, by John Winsor

I think we're all sensing we're always on the cusp of the next glimpse of our own potential and the way to allow it to burst forth is remaining continuously inquisitive. However "evolved" we may be, we are stagnant in a closed system if we're more wrapped up in winning converts to our more "evolved" viewpoint and telling others how to be than challenging ourselves and acknowleging how much we don't know we don't know ourselves.

The following excerpt is from the opening and concluding paragraphs of a paper by Dr. Clare Graves titled "It's Not a Generation Gap." In it he provides a very good summary of the notion of closed and open systems...

Dr. Graves then uses the lyrics of a number of songs popular in the 1960s to illustrate his major points... [Copyright issues prevent these from being on the site.] It reflects a hopeful view for the future and a deep respect for the creative, artistic minds who paints what's next before the theoreticians can begin to research and analyze it.

In the sixties it became fashionable to euphemistically refer to one of man's problems as the 'generation gap.' This euphemism, like all euphemisms, seems to exist more to protect man from the cold facts of reality than to communicate what really is. For nothing could be further from the truth than to infer that the problem between dissent and establishment is just a generation gap. This problem is a far more pervasive one. It is the problem of the separation in thinking between those, at any level, of any age, whose being has closed down and those at other levels who are open and growing no matter where their position be on man's existential staircase.

The person who is closed desperately believes that he has truly found the way for man to be and in his honest desperation he defends it 'til its death. He who is open genuinely sees change as the law of life. The closed lives in a completely assured and timeless world of never a question and nary a doubt. The open reaches, albeit sometimes recklessly, for a new sun to rise tomorrow. As the open man, in his unending quest for new and different meaning, moves from one level of existence to each that is to follow, more of the world and its foibles are open to his view. At each new level he has increased degrees of behavioral freedom, and from the increased freedom which is his, he looks upon the closed both above and below not hesitating to tell it, how it is.

[. . .] I cannot say, beyond the confines of my theory, where man will go from here. But of this you can rest assured. If man survives to meet the I-J state of being, the few who are the artists will be describing its mentality far beyond my capacity to do it from the theory I have drawn. And among these artists is aborning the few, for it is always the few "dissenters" who will see ahead, who will be utilizing the medium of music to present their youthful plea for change from that which has been and was good in its day, to that which is the better in man." - Dr. Clare W. Graves (via Spiral Dynamics Online)