Hi All
Here's an item to bring us back to earth after the holiday weekend! A friend recently raised a fascinating point about a fundamental difference in the psychopharmacology of beverages. Drinking tea, she suggested, tends to make thoughts go all over the place. Coffee, on the other hand, helps to focus the mind. If this is true, it could have substantial implications for the conduct of OST meetings, among them being: Logistics Making only tea available in and around the opening session. Making only coffee available towards the end of the gathering. Ethics Is it ethical to manipulate participants' thinking processes in this way? Who makes the decision as to whether this will happen or not? Questions to ponder Does this become part of the deep structure of an OST forum? When reporting an OST event do we mention whether or not there was any attention paid to this logistics issue? Are tea drinkers aware of a predilection to scatter brain thinking? Is the format of an OST gathering really an extended coffee break? Research needed prior to implementing such a measure Is there a difference between the number of agenda items generated by inveterate tea drinkers and by coffee habitués. (Water drinkers could be controls). Is there a difference in the drop out rate of tea drinkers, who may disappear once they have made their contribution to divergence, and that of coffee drinkers who could be waiting to make theirs at the end? Are there varietal differences among tea and coffee in their putative influences? I wonder if anyone is aware of this issue and if anyone has taken action on it? Good to converse, with love Alan Adelaide www.creativestate.biz
