Plutarch tells how the Athenians kept Theseus’s ship for centuries, replacing each rotten plank with new timber, until philosophers argued about whether it was still the same ship. Sixteen centuries later, Thomas Hobbes asked what would happen if someone built a second ship out of the old planks.
Replace the planks one at a time. Then see what happens to the old ones.
Organisations replace their people, products, offices and even their names, and still call themselves the same company. Whatever makes it the same, it isn’t the planks.
Ask yourself. If everything changed, what would make it still yours? Is that what you’re protecting?
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Most people skip this. The ones who don’t are the ones it changes.
That’s the whole collection examined, every room. Now imagine doing this with your own life, for a year, with two people who come to know it well. That’s membership.