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"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane
by those who could not hear the music." - Frederick Nietzsche
Richard Thieme has been hearing the music for a long time.
His
track record includes hundreds of published articles, dozens
of published short stories, one published book with more coming,
several thousand speeches, and – in a
former incarnation - hundreds of sermons, all original, all unique.
In the nineteen eighties, Thieme began writing about the impact
of new technologies on religious systems and images, on spirituality,
on identity. He was an Episcopal priest, and it made sense to begin
where he was.
What
he wrote sounds obvious now. But it didn’t,
then.
He realized that his insights applied to other aspects of society
and culture too. What was happening to religions was happening
to everything else, a sea change of global transformation driven
by new technologies of information and communication. He left the
professional ministry to write and speak full time in 1993.
Of course other drivers are behind these radical changes, too.
Biotechnology, nanotechnology, materials science, space travel
... and above all, the choices we make about how to use these discoveries
to reinvent ourselves.
Our
choices must be informed. For the word “ethical” to
mean anything, the changes in the systems that give rise to ethical
thinking must also be understood. Everything is connected to everything
else, and nothing is simply what it seems. Changes to context must
be made as visible as changes to content.
That’s
what Richard does. He makes the invisible visible, he amplifies
the unheard music playing at the edges of our lives, he turns
the context into content. Security and intelligence professionals
value his insights because he sees into the heart of complex
issues. He takes nothing at face value and links insights to
the mixed motives of the human heart.
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