“The self… is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.”

— Erving Goffman, book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

p 252; Cited in: Javier Trevino, Goffman's Legacy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003, p. 55.
1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959

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Erving Goffman29

Sociologist, writer, academic 1922–1982

Ken McLeod (1948) Canadian lama

Six Ways Not to Approach Meditation http://www.unfetteredmind.org/meditation-six-realm/0. Unfettered Mind http://www.unfetteredmind.org. (Topic: Practice)

“In general, growth is an intrinsic source of change with potentially unintended effects and some subunits are better positioned than others to protect themselves against such effects. Oligarchical tendencies are present in almost all membership-based organizations, such as unions and voluntary associations, and if unchecked, can lead to transformations. Organizations with diffuse goals or innovative leadership are sometimes able to survive the crisis of complementing their original mission by moving onto other goals.”

Howard E. Aldrich (1943) American sociologist

Source: Organizations and Environments, 1979, p. 204

“With the changes in technological complexity, especially in information technology, the leadership task has changed. Leadership in a networked organization is a fundamentally different thing from leadership in a traditional hierarchy.”

Edgar H. Schein (1928) Psychologist

Source: Organizational Culture and Leadership, 1985, p. 12-13

“There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 7
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements
Context: There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest. On the other hand, a mass movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.”

Erich Fromm The Sane Society

Source: The Sane Society

“Institutional theories of organization provide a rich, complex view of organizations. In these theories, organizations are influenced by normative pressures, sometimes arising from external sources such as the state, other times arising from within the organization itself. Under some conditions, these pressures lead the organization to be guided by legitimated elements, from standard operating procedures to professional certification and state requirement, which often have the effect of directing attention away from task performance… Institutional theories of organization have spread rapidly, a testimony to the power of the imaginative ideas developed in theoretical and empirical work.”

Lynne G. Zucker American sociologist

Lynne G. Zucker (‎1987). "Institutional Theories of Organization," In: Annual Review of Sociology Vol. 13: 443-464

“And third, medical space research may lead to new safeguards against hazards common to many environments. Specifically, our astronauts will need fundamentally new devices to protect them from the ill effects of radiation which can have a profound influence upon medicine and man's relations to our present environment.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, President John F. Kennedy's last formal speech and public words

“What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Source: Adam Bede

“Subject.... no specific scene but many incidents.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

The first word I spoke was Argula – it has no meaning. I was then five years old. Thus I called this painting 'Argula' as I was entering a new period closer to my instincts.
(Technique..:) Hundreds and hundreds of layers of paint to obtain the weight of reality – Art this period I measured by weight. [mid 1930's]
in his reply to Questionnaires of the MOMA museum, 1941
Gorky's quote refers on his multi-layered painting technique Gorky applied those days
1930 - 1941

“Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die…”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

Source: Sense and Sensibility

“The self… is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.”

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