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

Watch This Space

Amizetta Estate, Howell Mountain, St Helena, California, USA

August 1, 2013

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." ... Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

This essay, Watch This Space, is the companion piece to One Thousand Essays And A Million Views: A Future.

It is also the sequel to Powerfully Repeating Myself.

Burj Khalifa
World's Tallest Skyscraper
(shown under construction)

In many respects, writing this internet series of Conversations For Transformation is like building a skyscraper - except writing takes longer. Another difference is when you break ground and start building a skyscraper, you know exactly how many floors you'll be building. As I'm generating this Conversations For Transformation project ongoingly, what's different than building a skyscraper is I don't yet know how many floors it will have - which is to say I don't yet know how many essays the completed project will comprise. So I'll keep on adding floors ie I'll continue writing essays until I reach that as yet unknown final count.

I could even choose to keep adding floors / writing essays in perpetuity, exceeding what's possible with building skyscrapers.

Having recently completed writing the eight hundred and fiftieth essay in this Conversations For Transformation internet series essays, my current thoughts are to continue writing two new essays a week until I've written one thousand and one essays. This calls for writing another one hundred and fifty essays which, at the current rate of writing two new essays each week, I'll complete seventy five weeks from today ie in or before January 2015. When I reach that milestone I'll change the title of this website from "Conversations For Transformation" to the bolder and more definitive "1,001 Conversations For Transformation".

Read that again - out loud. It's more than just a simple title change. Clearly it'll have an entirely different impact when you're speaking and directing people to "1,001 Conversations For Transformation" rather than to "Conversations For Transformation", its erstwhile title, for resources which are freely available on the internet sharing light from Werner's work with transformation.

<aside>

There's another personal reason I like the title "1,001 Conversations For Transformation" a lot: its name harkens to the classic collection of stories which are known as the "1,001 Arabian Nights", bedtime stories my parents read to me when I was very young, and is a favorite of mine.

Its title, by the way, is often mistaken as "1,001 Arabian Knights", given its stories conjure up many swashbuckling images of 1,001 knights galloping across the Arabian desert on horseback. But no, it's "1,001 Arabian Nights" because that's how long it took the storyteller, the Persian queen Sheherezade, to tell all the stories.

<un-aside>

I also intend for this website (whichever its title) to receive more than a million views. As of today its view count is exceeding three quarters of a million. At the current rate of one thousand website views per each new essay on average with yet another quarter million views to go, receiving one million views calls for writing another two hundred and fifty essays for a total of one thousand one hundred and one essays, a hundred more than I'm currently considering writing.

Having said that, and say I do write two new essays a week until I've written one thousand one hundred and one essays and each essay attracts the current average of one thousand website views, this website will receive its millionth view one hundred and twenty five weeks from today ie on or before January 2016 - in which case I'll change its title from the original "Conversations For Transformation" and its successor "1,001 Conversations For Transformation" to "1,101 Conversations For Transformation".

But even if I write no new essays after writing the one thousand and first essay and then declare this project, this body of work which is my expression of acknowledgement of Werner Erhard who introduced me to transformation, complete as "1,001 Conversations For Transformation", it will eventually receive then exceed its one millionth view in any case anyway all by itself with nothing else added.

Yet another possible future is I stop adding any new essays when I've written the one thousand and first, and from then on only build Werner's new videos, photos, quotes, papers, and interviews as and when they become available, into the website. The views these extraordinary pieces garner will easily give the website its millionth view and more, even if I stop adding other new essays - that is, if it hasn't already received its millionth view by then. And still another possible future is I do add more new essays to the website but only to the Conversations With A Friend, Encounters With A Friend, Experiences Of A Friend, Experiences Of A Friend II, Questions For A Friend, and the Visits With A Friend groups as soon as and when they're invariably, inevitably, and inexorably made available to be shared.

So this entire enterprise and its future is still very much a work in progress. It'll turn out the way it turns out - regardless of what my thoughts of today are as to what that might look like. The truth is I don't know what this future will be - only because I haven't created it yet, so I don't know how this will finally play out. I will, however, find out as soon as it presents itself to me to write it down. And whenever it does (and it will) I promise to announce it by e‑mail.

Watch this space.

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