Conversations For Transformation:
Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
Conversations For Transformation
Essays By Laurence Platt
Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
And More
I Speak Therefore I Am
Los Altos, California, USA
March 5, 2003
This essay,
I Speak Therefore I Am,
is the prequel to
Trimtab.
Why speak transformation? Why share transformation at all? Because who
we are is constituted in language. I speak therefore I am.
Built into transformation is that it can't be kept - it can only be
shared. That's its nature.
You could say transformation is being in a conversation about
transformation. And when you are no longer in a conversation about
transformation, then you are no longer transformed.
Werner
Erhard
uses the analogy of a fully laden oil tanker traveling at full steam
with great effect.
If you attempt to turn the rudder of a fully laden oil tanker traveling
at full steam, it will actually make very little difference. The sheer
weight and momentum of the oil tanker renders the rudder almost
impossible to turn. The rudder is inefficient in pulling the oil tanker
around.
To overcome this inefficiency, the rudder itself has a rudder. The
rudder's rudder is called the trimtab. In order to turn the
rudder, first the trimtab is turned. When the trimtab is turned, it
pulls the rudder. And when the rudder is pulled, it in turn pulls the
oil tanker which starts to turn around.
I don't know what your destiny will be, but I do know if you don't seek
out, discover, and deploy the trimtab of your life, all you'll be
seeing in your future is more of your past, powerless to turn.
Seek out, discover, and deploy the trimtab of your life, thereby
ensuring your past stays in the past, leaving you free to create new
possibilities for the future, drawing discrimination from your past but
not entangled in your past.