In Japan, the phenomenon of total self-isolation has become so common that it now has a name: hikikomori. The international media report of an ‘epidemic’ and estimate the number of sufferers - typically men in their twenties - at 1.2 million. That’s 1 per cent of the population! Hikikomori refuse to leave their room, completely disconnect themselves from their environment and usually flee into the digital world, where they are masters of the universe. It seems that in the twenty-first century information overload has become physical reality for some.

Hikikomori could also be described as an extreme variant of what is known in the West as a ‘quarter-life crisis’, where individuals refuse to commit themselves to a specific goal amidst all the possibilities that a globalized world has to offer. We smoke pot and play videogames, Hikikomori play videogames. Quite often, they do so professionally, looking after our avatars while we -Westerners- reluctantly go to work. Japanese possess an honest and enviable attitude to work. They either do the work or they don’t. They either connect with each other by committing themselves to a common goal or they don’t.   Read more...

I've just sent out an email recommending Ode to all of the members of an international group known as Positive Change Corps (www.positivechangecorps.com). Most of the members are organizational development consultants who have additionally made a commitment to bringing Appreciative Inquiry to schools.

As as retired educator and consultant, my mission is to write, blog, and post resources to help people transform our schools into democratic organizations that work for everyone. I'm doing something similar to what Charlie Leadbeater is doing. I'm writing a book on line -- CRISIS IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT: MAKING OUR SCHOOLS WORK FOR EVERYONE (www.squidoo.com/makingourschoolswork) -- where people can critique, contribute, and freely copy. Would welcome reactions/review from you folks at Ode.   Read more...

“21 Solutions to Save the World” in this month’s Foreign Policy intrigued me so much that I bought the issue. Twenty-one of the world’s thinkers were asked what ONE thing they would recommend to change our world for the better.

The first, Garry Kasparov, was a shadowy genius figure in my younger days. He was the world chess champion for twenty years. His suggestion is for a global Magna Carta. He says, “When democracies make nice with dictators, the world’s worst regimes get away with murder.”   Read more...

After 6 weeks, I have restarted my self-coaching process that I had started in the Netherlands. Today, I was looking at persistence in achieving your personal goals. A study once found out that successful people are neither very intelligent nor very creative but very, very, very persistent in putting their goals into action.

Starting off with a self-evaluation (How persistent on a scale between 10 and 1 are you?), I gave myself a 6-7 in persistence. One advice given in the self-coaching document that I know works very well for me is: know and recall the ‘why’ behind your action steps.   Read more...

One of my job's perks is the wisdom and creativity of those who care about the education of children. When I share with others that I am the Headmaster of a 7-12 preparatory school, their interest boils up to the surface and they offer comments, insights and ideas for educating the young in a complex world. Over dinner last week, my radiologist friend spoke with great energy about leadership and how desperately we need to teach it in our schools. My first reaction was to think how overly saturated society has become with that concept until he defined it as "character building." Leadership, he claimed, is helping others become comfortable with themselves. That idea struck me as a possible missing link in the way we teach and nurture our children. Too much of what we do is aimed at information accumulation and honing of skills be they useful or personal. To consider leadership as helping others get comfortable with themselves makes the task of educators a bit more challenging. Suddenly, we need to use intellect and soul. To develop true leaders, we need to look beyond a student's performance. And how interesting it is to me that this definition of leadership has nothing to do with power, authority or "getting to the top." Before one is ready to meet others in any capacity, he or she needs to be at home with the sum total of who they are. It all seems elementary and yet not at all characteristic of our more common, mercenary understanding of leadership.   Read more...

Jackie is quite a remarkable woman. Her life has been one of determination and accomplishments, always in service to others.

Jackie could read at the age of three, so started school at four. (No kindergarten when she was a gifted child.) She excelled in school thanks to her quick mind and her love of reading. She began university at age sixteen, but soon dropped out due to boredom. Life in the “real” world held more challenges, which she craved.   Read more...

I realized I was facing a classic dilemma today …

Should I strive to do great things? Think of things like founding a company that will have an IPO in 5 years, creating a solution for world poverty/world peace/global warming, doing everything to become as attractive as possible for the opposite sex (work out, learn to dance well and how to make intelligent jokes, get a penis enlargement, break my nose and pray that it will grow straight this time, learn how to look really confident, etc),   Read more...

“They’re not saying the iPhone will . . . bring world peace, but that it will do everything else,” Roger Entner, of market-research firm IAG. Apple’s new cell phone debuts June 29. The quote above is from this week’s American edition of Newsweek.

I’ll need to apologize to the technowizards right away—this entry is not at all about the iPhone which did indeed debut this Friday. What intrigues me more is Mr. Entner’s pithy quote which, to my ear, pits “world peace” against “everything else.” This is a big part of the problem of creating world peace. Mr. Entner is not alone in holding world peace away from himself; lots of us do it. I’d venture to say that world peace sometimes feels as far away as the demi-planet Pluto.   Read more...

How do we support communities and organizations to become enablers of ongoing Open Space (OS)?

This question was part of the invitation to Open Space facilitators, practitioners and sponsors who are interested in sharing thoughts, ideas and resources about Open Space Technology (www.openspaceworld.org).   Read more...

I remember when I first came to Japan how struck I was by traditional paintings and poetry. I was intrigued when I observed an art piece and saw more space than images; or when I read haiku with its sprinkling of words to convey profound and hidden meanings. I felt the sensitivity to be very fragile, so I was fearful of crushing it with my powerful, intense Western energies.

Over the years I have, in my haltering way, developed a deeper understanding of the Japanese mind. I now am accustomed to delicate, subdued colors and minimal, harmonious designs. There are bright colors here, too, of course. Kabuki is a famous example. But in today's modern life excessive and abundantly bright colors are found most glaringly in advertising and young people's fashion. They shock precisely because they are in vivid contrast to the subtlety that by tradition is innate and revered.   Read more...