LiftPort Staff Blog

This is another edited-out element/addition to the Discovery Channel Blogs.  Talking about Peter Diamandis and the informal speech he gave to ISU.

______

“Drinking Kool-Aid” is a real world example of the story of the pied piper – the man that played a tune so well, that he was able to lead all the rats out of town.  And then, when not paid by the townspeople, played a different tune, and led all the children from town away…

Typically, “Drinking Kool-Aid” has a very very negative connotation.  It was derived from this horrible incident, in Jonestown Guiana. James (Jim) Jones was a cult-leader that convinced his followers to murder/kill themselves. Somehow he talked them into mass murder/suicide, just by the power of suggestion and his will.  The method of this gruesome death was – you guessed it – by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid.  (that’s the myth anyway, reality is that only some of the victims did this, others were forcefully injected with poison) Some people knowingly drank Kool-Aid from a glass that they saw the person that drank before them Fall. Over. Dead.  So you can see that this “Drinking Kool-Aid” image is not a very positive one.  Yet, there we sit, our class at the International Space University, mesmerized by the brewmaster of Space Kool-Aid himself, Dr. Peter Diamandis.

Honestly, I am not trying to insult they guy.  In fact, I’d like to congratulate him on his ability to convey a vision of the future, and his ability to lead in a positive direction.  Some people have complained that he doesn’t have a solid sense of practical reality to ground him.  My friends at the Space Cynics often complain that the “NewSpace” culture is often firing without having worked all the numbers (business case as well as engineering requirements).  Some people believe that Diamandis’s Kool-Aid speeches harm more than they help.

On the other hand, I think that ‘hope is contagious’ and ‘a vision is worth fighting for’.

I had an ex-girlfriend call me a ‘hope-junkie’ once.  She said it in a mean, derisive way.  I smiled, and took it in as a compliment.  (That was the least of our disagreements!)

So when I see Peter go into ‘brewmaster mode’, I already know the flavor Kool-Aid he is serving, and I drink deep.

Related articles by Zemanta

• First impressions of Barcelona
• Top Ten Space People and Organizations to Follow on Twitter
• Space Adventures Buys Zero-G

Written by Michael Laine and posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 1:20 pm and is filed under 2. Communicate, 3.1. Media / Social, 3.1.1 Religion, International, MJL Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.