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cluetrain and Martin Luther



Indeed. When Martin Luther tacked up his 95 theses, it started a religious
revolution but it was also a revolution which included the redistribution
of power, control and also information flow. Previously (OK well it still
is---and I can say this b/c I'm Catholic [nearly 12 years of Catholic
school]) the Catholic church held all the cards. People could not
interface w/God directly according to Catholic dogma. They had to go thru
a priest. If you died w/o getting last rites, you were either straight to
hell or getting to hang around purgatory for millenia if you're
lucky. The whole indulgences thing was what really set it off of course 
b/c it became glaringly apparent that the "interface" between the
people adn God was corrupt and therefore not needed and not actually
able to perform the role of intermediary due to their biased
self-interests.

The Manifesto is also trying to get the individual to talk to the
company. However, it's like trying to compare apples & oranges. When an
individual person chooses to open up a dialogue w/God, or Allah, or
whoever and whatever they consider to be the higher power, although this
conversation may be flavored and somewhat influenced by outside sources,
for the most part it is truly one on one.

This is not the case when an individual talks to a company. James
addressed this point in his essay:

   Companies benefit from fostering and participating in an open
   marketplace conversations.  They benefit from better information about
   customer needs and they're better able to allocate their resources
   toward satisfying customer demand.  This marketplace conversation,
   however, extends beyond the company and its customers.  The failure to
   acknowledge and address this broad scope is a shortcoming of the
   manifesto.  The conversation encompasses a company's entire supply
   chain: suppliers, manufacturers, resellers, shareholders, and
   regulators, not only its employees and customers.  There's an ongoing
   conversation in each of these relationships.

It is for this reason that I find the whole mimicing of Martin Luther
rather disturbing. Yes, the Cluetrain folks seem to call for a revolution
which they claim is already underway (let me ask you: When is a revolution
NOT underway?) and on the very surface level Cluetrain seems to resemble
the basic tenets of the Protestant Revolution as I described in the first
paragraph but a lot of revolutions have dealt w/the redistribution
of power, control and also information flow. This is where the
similarities end however, imho.

Robyn

"Reality is the leading cause of stress
among those who are in touch with it."
--Jane Wagner


On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Paul Jones wrote:

> Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 04:52:40 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Paul Jones <pjones@MetaLab.unc.edu>
> To: Harry Ahlas <hahlas@email.unc.edu>
> Cc: inls310-74@ruby.ils.unc.edu
> Subject: Re: take the cluetrain
> 
> of course they picked 95 for a reason: to allude to Martin Luther's famous
> (or is that legendary) act of posting 95 theses on the door of castle
> church in wittenberg back in 1517. this act began the protestant movement.
> http://www.luther.de/e/95thesen.html
> ==========================================================================
>                              Paul Jones
>    "We must protect our precious bodily fluids!" General Jack D Ripper
> http://MetaLab.unc.edu/pjones/ at the Site Formerly Known As SunSITE.unc.edu
>   pjones@MetaLab.unc.edu   voice: (919) 962-7600     fax: (919) 962-8071 
> ===========================================================================
> 
>