Tree Of Knowledge

Philosophy

There is no greater force than a truth whose time has come.

We have discovered through experience that our own life force renews and purifies itself with heartfelt emotion. At Entelechis we call these brief interludes sacred moments...for us, the vision, dreams and feelings of passion about the future of Entelechis, the people involved now, and the people we'll join with along the way, on this heroic quest, generate for us these self-revitalizing sacred moments, moments that set off in us the motive flames of deep tingling peace and anticipation. Entelechis is like an energy peak drawn on paper by the needle of an EKG machine...like a wave reaching critical mass as it rises from the waters of the cosmic ocean of time into the high tide of human destiny...it's like a raised border on the fabric of human enterprise. Entelechis like the keeping of a divine appointment set ages ago, and forgotten, until now. People in Entelechis sense the intrinsic value of the golden treasures of an age-old-wisdom merged into the intense excitement of an opportunity to assist in the birthing of humanity into the long awaited and sought for Age of Imagination, an Age that Einstein and all great thinkers dreamed of and dared to imagine. An age that brings to bear inside everyone involved a desire to outwardly express all that is in them, that is playful and fun and that is truly good.

We call this wrinkle in time, Entelechis experience. It impacts its tutorz, on a multitude of levels. When we are in one another's presence there is a sense of automatically being shifted up an octave to a higher level of awareness, a mental space in which we find ourselves learning without any conscious effort on our parts. Entelechis experience feels like the poise, kindness and patience of an emotionally matured extended family, a consortium of dreamers and imaginists, where each life is honored as a delicate thread pulled by experience of time into the possibilities of an exquisite tapestry, in the unfolding of a Personal Manifest Destiny...an inherent destiny that causes inside of you a sense of being induced into falling in love with life...a re-enchantment with life, one's own personal life, to live more courageously, to live more passionately, live more genuinely...to trust the truth of one's own visions and dreams and discoveries, and dare to live that truth. The challenge, then, is to be the creative force in the makeup of your own life, so that your life is not made for you by well-meaning significant others of a collective mind, who may be clueless concerning the depth and the joy and the significance of your freely chosen walk through the landscape of your life...a walk wherein you can stop and smell the roses of your experiences, to drink deep, to taste the succulence of the fruits of your own labors.

Welcome 2 Entelechis, where individual minds truly matter; in the mental acres of Entelechis we nurture life force and raise consciousness.

NOT SO SMART
There are lessons in asking Ynot

Every auto company makes mistakes. Usually it's poor execution-weak design, sloppy handling, zipless engines or misunderstanding a market. But sometimes the bosses just forget what an automobile is supposed to be. They get carried away with an idea and spend hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars to build a vehicle that makes no sense.

Examples: General motors' electric car in 1997, a two-seater with a range of 40 to 80 miles. In 2002 there was the Ford Blackwood, a kind of sport utility pickup that couldn't pick up anything and lacked four-wheel drive. Every automaker-yes, even Toyota, Honda, BMW, Porsche, all of them-have built cars they would rather forget.

It pays to remember that a car is valuable because it is a versatile tool. It carries lots of people and stuff for huge distances in all kinds of conditions. No matter how breathtaking or exciting, when it can't do these things, it doesn't sell. The Smart car, made by DaimlerChrysler in Europe, is the latest example of a failure that came from car executive who just forgot what a car is supposed to be.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal recently ran stories on the Smart disaster, but, strangely, neither asked why it happened. And there's a lesson for the industry in that particular ynot.

Smart was conceived by the Swatch watch people of Switzerland. Volkswagen rejected the project. But the Daimler board (the makers of Mercedes...meaning they knew little about small cars) jumped at a partnership. Before long Swatch, which knew nothing about the auto business, was sent back to cheap watches.

The idea was a tiny car, only 98 inches long, easy to park in Europe's crowded cities, with high fuel economy and incredibly cute, like the watch. Indeed, the concept included changeable body panels so an owner could change the car's colors to match an outfit.

Journalists and elitists loved the idea. But Smart made no sense. First, people really don't buy a car to park it. They buy it to get from here to there and to carry people and stuff. Parking may be a problem, but it isn't a reason for existence. Then, too, the Smart, 4 feet shorter than the new Mini, was a two-seater. A couple couldn't take along a friend or the baby.

The engine was fuel-stingy, but the car was slow. Supposedly it could go 80 miles an hour. I drove one with a diesel engine on a racetrack. I was standing on the pedal to get it up to 60 and scared to death of the Lotus coming up behind me. This was not a car to drive any distance. Frankly, I would not drive it in American traffic. And who in her right mind would take apart the car body to match a dress?

Daimler built a new plant for Smart in Hambach, France with a campus of suppliers nearby. The company needed to sell about 200,000 a year to break even, when the most sales for any two-seater were half that.

The concept made no sense from Day One and, by the way, I was there on Day One when the first car rolled out of the plant six years ago. European sales reached just half of capacity. Over its first four years the car lost $3 billion, and it's still losing big money. Daimler even had to pay supplier's hundreds of millions of dollars because the volume didn't meet expectations. What's more, for the price of the Smart, a European could buy a much more competent car, like the VW Polo, which carries four passengers and can go anywhere, not just around town. The Mercedes people didn't seem to know that you take size out much easier than cost.

Why not lengthen Smart 2 feet and squeeze in a back seat? Alas, the original couldn't be stretched. The designers would have had to come up with an all-new chassis.

Why not just quit? First, executives hate to admit mistakes. Second, the plant was built in France, a public symbol of German-French cooperation. Shutting the plant and firing all those Frenchies would be politically embarrassing for Germany.

Mercedes is now promoting a second, larger Smart sedan (called the ForFour) and plans to ship a third model, a small sport utility (called the ForMore) to the U.S. from Brazil someday. It would be the size of a Honda CR-V. But the decline of the dollar might crimp these plans, and anyway, Mercedes people are finally getting frightened by those losses, so it's all up in the air.

The point is that the Daimler leaders forgot that a car is a tool and worth lots of money because it will do lots of things. Easy parking and a cute design just aren't enough.

It's a lesson to remember today as revolution creeps into the industry: hybrid cars and fuel cell cars. No matter how exciting the idea, they still must do what cars are supposed to do to be accepted. Otherwise they, too, will fail.

Educational Institutes Seem to never ask, Ynot?

To ask Ynot, at times, is hard to do, but very revealing. Could it be that Educational Leaders at every level of schooling are not seeing they could be bringing their own demise as an Institutionalized Industry? Remember the introduction of the Billion Dollar "New Math Revolution" of the 70's? No? Government would like to forget it too. We could go on and on about educational programs where those in charge forgot the purpose of their products. Here at Ynot we invite your Ynots, we have to know how we're doing thru your eyes and Y's...Ynot shoot us an email?