We are all genetic chimeras, at once saints and sinners, champions of the truth and hypocrites not because humanity has failed to reach some foreordained religious or ideological ideal, but because of the way our species originated across millions of years of biological evolution.
THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, Edward O. Wilson, 2014
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. This is the art of leadership at its best: the art that conceals art.
Lao Tzu (Laozi), Tao Te Ching, Chapter 11. 6th C. BCE
If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place? Who will be the new power brokers? It won't be the Bad Feminists like me. We are acceptable neither to Right nor to Left. In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity.
Margaret Atwood - The Globe and Mail, January 13, 2018
Your car is Japanese. Your Vodka is Russian. Your pizza is Italian. Your kebabs are Persian. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your movies are American. Your tea is Tamil. Your shirt is Indian. Your oil is Saudi Arabian. Your electronics are Chinese. Your diamonds are African Your numbers Arabic, your letters Latin.
Article by one of the originators of the Agile Manifesto, Dave Thomas, on how "Agile" has lost its way.
For example, compare Deloitte's 2016 'Agile Landscape' with...
When faced with two or more alternatives that deliver roughly the same value, take the path that makes future change easier.
"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal."
Goethe
"Look, Leonard; we know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good."
Columbia Records label head Walter Yetnikoff
Life is our reaction to the basic insecurity which constitutes its substance. Hence it is an extremely serious matter for a man to find himself too much surrounded by apparent securities. A consciousness of securities kills life.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
If we have data to make decisions with, lets use the data. If all we have is opinions, lets use mine.
Eric Fleischman
What, then, is to be done? To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it naturally happens.
Epictetus: Discourses
Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
Ernest Hemingway
Not only is this sentimental, but its also a good example of anthropomorphic projection: the wolves are given human characteristics, groupthink and modes of communication.
A wolf pack: the first 3 are the old or sick, they give the pace to the entire pack. If it was the other way round, they would be left behind, losing contact with the pack. In case of an ambush they would be sacrificed. Then come 5 strong ones, the front line. In the center are the rest of the pack members, then the 5 strongest following. Last is alone, the alpha. He controls everything from the rear. In that position he can see everything, decide the direction. He sees all of the pack. The pack moves according to the elders pace and help each other, watch each other.
A massive pack of 25 timberwolves hunting bison on the Arctic circle in northern Canada. In mid-winter in Wood Buffalo National Park temperatures hover around -40C. The wolf pack, led by the alpha female, travel single-file through the deep snow to save energy. The size of the pack is a sign of how rich their prey base is during winter when the bison are more restricted by poor feeding and deep snow. The wolf packs in this National Park are the only wolves in the world that specialize in hunting bison ten times their size. They have grown to be the largest and most powerful wolves on earth.
WHY DOES MARS HILL TALK ABOUT MONEY SO MUCH? Quite simply, we do because Jesus did.
I'd vaguely heard of Uber before today. Now I've downloaded the app. Bloody brilliant. Massive own-goal by taxi drivers.
— Daniel Barnett (@daniel_barnett) June 11, 2014Yet another example of a historic profession -- with all its attendant ceremony, apprenticeship and apparent barriers to entry -- failing to adapt and probably in danger of being rapidly superseded.
Do we still need the 'knowledge' when we've got Google Maps and Siri?
In recent movie history, Gattaca may have taught this best -- in a mass media kind of way -- but this comes close, and is much more concise.
Shame it's an advert flogging unpleasant sugar water.
The art of letter writing is fast dying out...1871
Claims of supernatural powers
The long-coming and oft-denied Canadian real estate meltdown just got one step closer to reality, with a stern---but still too little, too late---warning from the chief economist of TD bank.
We need to acknowledge that a significant imbalance has developed and it poses a clear and present danger to Canadas medium-term economic outlook. It also suggests that further actions to constrain lending growth may be prudent, he said. If the overvaluation was fully unwound rapidly, it would be three times the correction in the early 1990s.
Meanwhile 418 units in a Vancouver pre-sale sold out in a breathless four hour scramble.
Seth Godin's recent work is the poster-child of a kind of 'new apocalypticism', an idea which has blossomed since the economic meltdown of 2008. Classic apocalypticism is a specific kind of belief for oppressed communities: that everything will come right in the end for the believing community after all that's wrong with the world is swept away.
This 'new apocalypticism' does something similar for people who's lives have been rocked by the breakdown of the 'capitalism compact'---which contained amongst other things the belief that a rising tide raises all boats. This idea has been blown apart by the financial crisis and ensuing economic fallout, and those most affected are looking for something new to believe. Something which will make the injustices of recent economic history right.
This loss of belief in the old ideas (the economic metanarrative if you like) is the most telling change of the last few years. People feel betrayed that the dramatic economic expansion since 9-11 was actually an illusion caused by a debt bubble--and doubly so because a few 21st century 'robber barons' are the only ones to benefit.
The message of the 'new apocalypticism' is that the old way was wrong. It's how you feel that matters, not the actuality of your situation which is in all probability rather depressing. A great army of authors, social theorists, coaches and motivational speakers has adopted this idea and most of Seth's recent work (post 2008) focuses on it from several different angles. Variously, according to Seth, we all need to become; leaders, corporate innovators, irreplaceable artists and marketing storytellers. His most basic notion is the idea that 'how people feel about a product or service is three times more important than the actual product or service.' Given that the middle class has experienced a decline in living standard since the 1990's and that people are working harder and longer (those with jobs at least) than any time since the pre-war era they are looking for something to make themselves feel better and Seth is making a successful business out of doing exactly what he preaches: making his customers feel better.
Not sure how i missed this when it came out five years ago.
Former management consultant Matthew Stewart's witty and damning article on the state of Management Consulting and business school education reads like a synthesis of the ideas of Pfeffer, Mintzberg, and Bennis et al, but is actually the result of his own experience as partner in a management consulting business.
With a PhD in Philosophy from Oxford rather than the habitual Harvard MBA, his writing is a refreshing change from most business journalism.
As reported in the fall, Millenium water, the second name for the briefly proud Olympic Village of the 2010 Winter Olympics, went bankrupt after 6 months of trying to sell itself as an overpriced luxury condo village.
This month, the former Olympic Village has been renamed yet again to the ridiculously parochial "The Village on False Creek" and will try once more to lure unwary buyers. Funny how marketers are convinced that all that's required to smooth away a debacle is a new name and brand statement.
They might want to try something else.
