"What Kind of World Do We Live In?" (not finished)

"What Kind of World Do We Live In?" (not finished)
--- Michael Crichton, introduction to his book "Micro".


In 2008, the famous naturalist David Attenborough expressed concern that modern schoolchildren could not identify common plants and insects found in nature, although previous generations identified them without hesitation. Modern children, it seemed, were cut off from the experience of nature, and from play in the natural world. Many factors were held up to blame: urban living; loss of open space; computers and the Internet; heavy homework schedules. But the upshot was that children were no longer being exposed to nature and no longer acquiring a direct experience of nature. It was ironic that this should be happening at a time when there was in the West an ever greater concern for the environment, and ever more ambitious steps proposed to protect it.

Indoctrinating children in proper environmental thought was a hallmark of the green movement, and so children were being instructed to protect something about which they knew nothing at all. It did not escape notice that this was exactly the formula that had led to well-intentioned environmental degradation in the past -- the deterioration of American national parks being a prime example, and the American policy of forest fire prevention, another. Such policies would never have been instituted if people really understood the environments they were trying to protect.

The problem was that they thought they did. One can argue that the new generation of schoolchildren will emerge even more certain. If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon--you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and it's violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks.

Perhaps the single most important lesson to be learned by direct experience is that the natural world, with all its elements and interconnections, represents a complex system and therefore we cannot understand it and we cannot predict its behavior. It is delusional to behave as if we can, as it would be delusional to behave as if we could predict the stock market, another complex system. If someone claims to predict what a stock will do in the coming days, we know that the person is either a crook or a charlatan. If an environmentalist makes similar claims about the environment, or an ecosystem, we have not yet learned to see him as a false prophet or a fool.

Human beings interact with complex systems very successfully. We do it all the time. But we do it by managing them, not by claiming to understand them. Managers interact with the system: they do something, watch for the response, and then do something else in an effort to get the result they want. There is an endless iterative interaction that acknowledges we don't know for sure what the system will do--we have to wait and see. We may have a hunch we know what will happen. We may be right much of the time. But we are never certain.

Interacting with the natural world, we are denied certainty. And always will be.

How then can young people gain experience of the natural world? Ideally, by spending some time in a rain forest -- those vast, uncomfortable, alarming, and beautiful environments that so quickly knock our preconceptions aside.

The Honest Truth about Dishonesty -- Dan Ariely

The Honest Truth about Dishonesty -- Dan Ariely

>>> SMORC -- simple model of rational crime -- cost/benefit analysis
Not as simple as it seems. --- people would have cheated more if it is based solely on SMORC

>>> Distance from money
The larger the distance, the more likely that people will cheat
Eg, people will not take petty cash to buy pencils to bring home, but will not thing twice taking stationeries home from office
Eg2, people will more likely to cheat if paid in tokens (and then exchange for cash) than in outright cash

>>> Blinded by our own motivations
conflict of interest -- giving people a way to rationalize

>>> Why we blow it when we are tired?
Mental or physical tiredness will cause people to give in to temptation to cheat
Eg, illegal parking, stopping, U-turn

>>> Why wearing fakes make us cheat more?
Having done one small cheating (immoral act), people are more likely to commit another dishonest act

>>> Cheating ourselves
Make belief

>>> Creativity and dishonesty
Creative minds can come up with more ways to rationalize a dishonest act

>>> Cheating as an infection
If you identify yourself with the people who cheat, you are likely to follow the crowd
If you identify the cheater as an outsider (from rivalry group), you will cheat less than normal
Crimes, even very small ones, should not be tolerated else others will be tempted to follow

>>> Collaborative cheating
Altruistic cheating -- aka Robin Hood (benefiting others)
Monitoring by others (big brothers watching)
Relationship between boss and worker will determine

>>> People don't cheat enough
No cultural difference -- all humans are the same when it comes to cheating
The different environment (rules and implementations allowing cheating) causes the difference in amount of cheating in different countries

Forces that shape dishonesty ---

Increase dishonesty :
Ability to rationalize
Conflict of interest
Creativity
One immoral act
Bring depleted
Others benefiting from our dishonesty
Watching others behave dishonestly
Culture that gives examples of dishonesty

Decrease dishonesty :
Pledge
Signatures
Moral reminders
Supervision

No effect :
Amount of money to be gained
Probability of being caught

The Moral Equivalent of War by William James

The Moral Equivalent of War by William James

This essay, based on a speech delivered at Stanford University in 1906, is the origin of the idea of organized national service. The line of descent runs directly from this address to the depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps to the Peace Corps, VISTA, and AmeriCorps. Though some phrases grate upon modern ears, particularly the assumption that only males can perform such service, several racially-biased comments, and the notion that the main form of service should be viewed as a "warfare against nature," it still sounds a rallying cry for service in the interests of the individual and the nation.

The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party. The military feelings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered than the glory and shame that come to nations as well as to individuals from the ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade. There is something highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation to war. Ask all our millions, north and south, whether they would vote now (were such a thing possible) to have our war for the Union expunged from history, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time substituted for that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories and legends, are the most ideal part of what we now own together, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood poured out. Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing, in cold blood, to start another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not one man or woman would vote for the proposition. In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.

It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder.

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.

History is a bath of blood. The Illiad is one long recital of how Diomedes and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector killed. No detail of the wounds they made is spared us, and the Greek mind fed upon the story. Greek history is a panorama of jingoism and imperialism -- war for war's sake, all the citizen's being warriors. It is horrible reading -- because of the irrationality of it all -- save for the purpose of making "history" -- and the history is that of the utter ruin of a civilization in intellectual respects perhaps the highest the earth has ever seen.

Those wars were purely piratical. Pride, gold, women, slaves excitement were their only motives. In the Peloponesian war, for example, the Athenians ask the inhabitants of Melos (the island where the "Venus de Milo" was found), hitherto neutral, to own their lordship. The envoys meet, and hold a debate which Thucydides gives in full, and which, for sweet reasonableness of form, would have satisfied Matthew Arnold. "The powerful exact what they can," said the Athenians, "and the weak grant what they must." When the Meleans say that sooner than be slaves they will appeal to the gods, the Athenians reply, "Of the gods we believe and of men we know that, by a law of their nature, wherever they can rule they will. This law was not made by us, and we are not the first to have acted upon it; we did but inherit it, and we know that you and all mankind, if you were as strong as we are, would do as we do. So much for the gods; we have told you why we expect to stand as high in their good opinion as you." Well, the Meleans still refused, and their town was taken. "The Athenians," Thucydides quietly says, "thereupon put to death all who were of military age and made slaves of the women and children. They then colonized the island, sending thither five hundred settlers of their own.

Alexander's career was piracy pure and simple, nothing but an orgy of power and plunder, made romantic by the character of the hero. There was no rational purpose in it, and the moment he died his generals and governors attacked one another. The cruelty of those times is incredible. When Rome finally conquered Greece, Paulus Aemilius, was told by the Roman Senate, to reward his soldiers for their toil by "giving" them the old kingdom of Epirus. they sacked seventy cities and carried off one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants as slaves. How many they killed I know not; but in Etolia they killed all the senators, five hundred and fifty in number. Brutus was "the noblest Roman of them all," but to reanimate his soldiers on the eve of Philippi he similarly promises to give them the cities of Sparta and Thessalonica to ravage, if they win the fight.

Such was the gory nurse that trained soldiers to cohesiveness. We inherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism that the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history. Dead men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than this they have left no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war both governments began with bluff, but they couldn't stay there; the military tension was too much for them. In 1898 our people had read the word "war" in letters three inches high for three months in every newspaper. The pliant politician, McKinley, was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war with Spain became a reality.

At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally allowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy. England and we, our army and navy authorities repeat without ceasing, are solely for "peace." Germany and Japan it is who are bent on loot and glory. "Peace" in military mouths today is a synonym for "war expected." The word has become a pure provocative, and no government wishing peace sincerely should allow it ever to be printed in a newspaper. Every up-to-date dictionary should say that "peace" and "war" mean the same thing, now in posse, now in actu. It may even reasonably be said that the intensely sharp preparation for war by the nations is the real war, permanent, unceasing; and that the battles are only a sort of public verification of the mastery gained during the "peace"-interval.

It is plain that on this subject civilized man has developed a sort of double personality. If we take European nations, no legitimate interest of any one of them would seem to justify the tremendous destructions which a war to compass it would necessarily entail. It would seem that common sense and reason ought to find a way to reach agreement in every conflict of honest interests. I myself think it our bounden duty to believe in such international rationality as possible. But, as things stand, I see how desperately hard it is to bring the peace-party and the war-party together, and I believe that the difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in the program of pacifism which set the military imagination strongly, and to a certain extent justifiably, against it. In the whole discussion both sides are on imaginative and sentimental ground. It is but one utopia against another, and everything one says must be abstract and hypothetical. Subject to this criticism and caution, I will try to characterize in abstract strokes the opposite imaginative forces, and point out what to my own very fallible mind seems the best utopian hypothesis, the most promising line of conciliation.

In my remarks, pacifist though I am, I will refuse to speak of the bestial side of the war-regime (already done justice to by many writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic sentiment. Patriotism no one thinks discreditable; nor does any one deny that war is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are the soul of any patriotism, and the possibility of violent death the soul of all romance. The militarily-patriotic and the romantic-minded everywhere, and especially the professional military class, refuse to admit for a moment that war may be a transitory phenomenon in social evolution. The notion of a sheep's paradise like that revolts, they say, our higher imagination. Where then would be the steeps of life? If war had ever stopped, we should have to re-invent it, on this view, to redeem life from flat degeneration.

Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. It's profits are to the vanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question of profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature at its highest dynamic. Its "horrors" are a cheap price to pay for rescue from the only alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and teachers, of co-education and zo-ophily, of "consumer's leagues" and "associated charities," of industrialism unlimited, and feminism unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor any more! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a planet!

So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy minded person, it seems to me, can help to some degree parting of it. Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for everyone is sensitive to its superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military character in stock -- if keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and as pure pieces of perfection, -- so that Roosevelt's weaklings and mollycoddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the face of nature.

This natural sort of feeling forms, I think, the innermost soul of army writings. Without any exception known to me, militarist authors take a highly mystical view of their subject, and regard war as a biological or sociological necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary psychological checks or motives. When the time of development is ripe the war must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications pleaded are invariably fictions. War is, in short, a permanent human obligation. General Homer Lea, in his recent book The Valor of Ignorance, plants himself squarely on this ground. Readiness for war is for him the essence of nationality, and ability in it the supreme measure of the health of nations.

Nations, General Lea says, are never stationary -- they must necessarily expand or shrink, according to their vitality or decrepitude. Japan now is culminating; and by the fatal law in question it is impossible that her statesmen should not long since have entered, with extraordinary foresight, upon a vast policy of conquest -- the game in which the first moves were her wars with China and Russia and her treaty with England, and of which the final objective is the capture of the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, and whole of our Coast west of the Sierra passes. This will give Japan what her ineluctable vocation as a state absolutely forces her to claim, the possession of the entire Pacific Ocean; and to oppose these deep designs we Americans have, according to our author, nothing but our conceit, our ignorance, our commercialism, our corruption, and our feminism. General Lea makes a minute technical comparison of the military strength which we at present could oppose to the strength of Japan, and concludes that the Islands, Alaska, Oregon and Southern California, would fall almost without resistance, that San Francisco must surrender in a fortnight to a Japanese investment, that in three or four months the war would be over and our republic, unable to regain what it had heedlessly neglected to protect sufficiently, would then "disintegrate," until perhaps some Ceasar should arise to weld us again into a nation.

A dismal forecast indeed! Yet not unplausible, if the mentality of Japan's statesmen be of the Ceasarian type of which history shows us so many examples, and which is all that General Lea seems able to imagine. But there is no reason to think that women can no longer be the mother of Napoleonic or Alexandrian characters; and if these come in Japan and find their opportunity, just such surprises as The Valor of Ignorance paints may lurk in ambush for us. Ignorant as we still are of the innermost recesses of Japanese mentality, we may be foolhardy to disregard such possibilities.

Other militarists are more complex and more moral in their considerations. The Philosophie des Krieges, by S. R. Steinmetz is good example. War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the essential form of the State, and the only function in which peoples can employ all their powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible save as the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat for which some vice or weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, physical health and vigor -- there isn't a moral or intellectual point of superiority that doesn't tell, when God holds his assizes and hurls the peoples upon one another. Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht; and Dr. Steinmetz does not believe that in the long run chance and luck play any part in apportioning the issues.

The virtues that prevail, it must be noted, are virtues anyhow, superiorities that count in peaceful as well as in military competition; but the strain is on them, being infinitely intenser in the latter case, makes war infinitely more searching as a trial. No ordeal is comparable to its winnowings. Its dread hammer is the welder of men into cohesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human nature adequately develop its capacity. The only alternative is "degeneration."

Dr. Steinmetz is a conscientious thinker, and his book, short as it is, takes much into account. Its upshot can, it seems to me, be summed up in Simon Patten's words, that mankind was nursed in pain and fear, and that the transition to a "pleasure economy" may be fatal to a being wielding no powers of defence against its degenerative influences. If we speak of the fear of emancipation from the fear-regime, we put the whole situation into a single phrase; fear regarding ourselves now taking the place of the ancient fear of the enemy.

Turn the fear over as I will in my mind, it all seems to lead back to two unwillingnesses of the imagination, one aesthetic, and the other moral; unwillingness, first, to envisage a future in which army-life, with its many elements of charm, shall be forever impossible, and in which the destinies of peoples shall nevermore be decided quickly, thrillingly, and tragically by force, but only gradually and insipidly by "evolution," and, secondly, unwillingness to see the supreme theatre of human strenuousness closed, and the splendid military aptitudes of men doomed to keep always in a state of latency and never show themselves in action. These insistent unwillingnesses, no less than other aesthetic and ethical insistencies, have, it seems to me, to be listened to and respected. One cannot meet them effectively by mere counter-insistency on war's expensiveness and horror. The horror makes the thrill; and when the question is of getting the extremest and supremest out of human nature, talk of expense sounds ignominious. The weakness of so much merely negative criticism is evident -- pacifism makes no converts from the military party. The military party denies neither the bestiality nor the horror, nor the expense; it only says that these things tell but half the story. It only says that war is worth them; that, taking human nature as a whole, its wars are its best protection against its weaker and more cowardly self, and that mankind cannot afford to adopt a peace economy.

Pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical point of view of their opponents. Do that first in any controversy, says J. J. Chapman, then move the point, and your opponent will follow. So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a rule they do fail. The duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured in the utopias they paint are all too weak and tame to touch the military-minded. Tolstoi's pacifism is the only exception to this rule, for it is profoundly pessimistic as regards all this world's values, and makes the fear of the Lord furnish the moral spur provided elsewhere by the fear of the enemy. But our socialistic peace-advocates all believe absolutely in this world's values; and instead of the fear of the Lord and the fear of the enemy, the only fear they reckon with is the fear of poverty if one be lazy. This weakness pervades all the socialistic literature with which I am acquainted. Even in Lowes Dickinson's exquisite dialogue, high wages and short hours are the only forces invoked for overcoming man's distaste for repulsive kinds of labor. Meanwhile men at large still live as they always have lived, under a pain-and-fear economy -- for those of us who live in an ease-economy are but an island in the stormy ocean -- and the whole atmosphere of present-day utopian literature tastes mawkish and dishwatery to people who still keep a sense for life's more bitter flavors. It suggests, in truth, ubiquitous inferiority.

Inferiority is always with us, and merciless scorn of it is the keynote of the military temper. "Dogs, would you live forever?" shouted Frederick the Great. "Yes," say our utopians, "let us live forever, and raise our level gradually." The best thing about our "inferiors" today is that they are as tough as nails, and physically and morally almost as insensitive. Utopians would see them soft and squeamish, while militarism would keep their callousness, but transfigure it into a meritorious characteristic, needed by "the service," and redeemed by that from the suspicion of inferiority. All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs him. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride; but it has to be confessed that the only sentiment which the image of pacific cosmopolitan industrialism is capable of arousing in countless worthy breasts is shame at the idea of belonging to such a collectivity. It is obvious that the United States of America as they exist today impress a mind like General Lea's as so much human blubber. Where is the sharpness and precipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's own or another's? Where is the savage "yes" and "no," the unconditional duty? Where is the conscription? Where is the blood-tax? Where is anything that one feels honored by belonging to?

Having said thus much in preparation, I will now confess my own utopia. I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of some sort of socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of the war function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in intellectual refinement with the science of production, I see that war becomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations must make common cause against them. I see no reason why all this should not apply to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples.

All these beliefs of mine put me firmly into the anti-military party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states, pacifically organized, preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or less socialistic future toward which mankind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built -- unless, indeed, we which for dangerous reactions against commonwealths, fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood.

The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the martial virtues, although originally gain by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and ambition in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is no reason for supposing them to be its last form. Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection. But who can be sure that other aspects of one's country may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame? Why should men not some day feel that is it worth a blood-tax to belong to a collectivity superior in any respect? Why should they not blush with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in any way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this civic passion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark until the whole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals of military honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds itself up. What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise. The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.

Let me illustrate my idea more concretely. There is nothing to make one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should toil and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all are such, and we can stand it. But that so many men, by mere accidents of birth and opportunity, should have a life of nothing else but toil and pain and hardness and inferiority imposed upon them, should have no vacation, while others natively no more deserving never get any taste of this campaigning life at all, -- this is capable of arousing indignation in reflective minds. It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that some of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly ease. If now -- and this is my idea -- there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dishwashing, clotheswashing, and windowwashing, to road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They would have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare against nature; they would tread the earth more proudly, the women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and teachers of the following generation.

Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would have required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of one's life. I spoke of the "moral equivalent" of war. So far, war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until and equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skilful propogandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic opportunities.

The martial type of character can be bred without war. Strenuous honor and disinterestedness abound everywhere. Priests and medical men are in a fashion educated to it, and we should all feel some degree if its imperative if we were conscious of our work as an obligatory service to the state. We should be owned, as soldiers are by the army, and our pride would rise accordingly. We could be poor, then, without humiliation, as army officers now are. The only thing needed henceforward is to inflame the civic temper as part history has inflamed the military temper. H. G. Wells, as usual, sees the centre of the situation. "In many ways," he says, "military organization is the most peaceful of activities. When the contemporary man steps from the street, of clamorous insincere advertisement, push, adulteration, underselling and intermittent employment into the barrack-yard, he steps on to a higher social plane, into an atmosphere of service and cooperation and of infinitely more honorable emulations. Here at least men are not flung out of employment to degenerate because there is no immediate work for them to do. They are fed a drilled and training for better services. Here at least a man is supposed to win promotion by self-forgetfulness and not by self-seeking. And beside the feeble and irregular endowment of research by commercialism, its little shortsighted snatches at profit by innovation and scientific economy, see how remarkable is the steady and rapid development of method and appliances in naval and military affairs! Nothing is more striking than to compare the progress of civil conveniences which has been left almost entirely to the trader, to the progress in military apparatus during the last few decades. The house-appliances of today, for example, are little better than they were fifty years ago. A house of today is still almost as ill-ventilated, badly heated by wasteful fires, clumsily arranged and furnished as the house of 1858. Houses a couple of hundred years old are still satisfactory places of residence, so little have our standards risen. But the rifle or battleship of fifty years ago was beyond all comparison inferior to those we now possess; in power, in speed, in convenience alike. No one has a use now for such superannuated things."

Wells adds that he thinks that the conceptions of order and discipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of physical fitness, unstinted exertion, and universal responsibility, which universal military duty is now teaching European nations, will remain a permanent acquisition when the last ammunition has been used in the fireworks that celebrate the final peace. I believe as he does. It would be simply preposterous if the only force that could work ideals of honor and standards of efficiency into English or American natures should be the fear of being killed by the Germans or the Japanese. Great indeed is Fear; but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy. The amount of alteration in public opinion which my utopia postulates is vastly less than the difference between the mentality of those black warriors who pursued Stanley's party on the Congo with their cannibal war-cry of "Meat! Meat!" and that of the "general-staff" of any civilized nation. History has seen the latter interval bridged over; the former one can be bridged over much more easily.

The Vigilant Investor -- Pat Huddleston

The Vigilant Investor -- Pat Huddleston

Who is a vigilant investor?

The vigilant investor:

> understands that all healthy humans are vulnerable to investor fraud

> is aware of his cognitive biases and compensates for them

> understands that scam artists target accomplished people not just because they have money, but also because it is easier to manipulate their pride

> does not count on the investment cops to keep her safe

> investigates the people behind the proposed investment, using regulatory websites etc

> insists on seeing evidence of profitable trading and avoids anyone who is unwilling to be transparent

> does not invest if he does not understand the investment

> avoids investments that encourage investors to recruit their friends and family

> understands that the most dangerous scams look perfectly legitimate and never sound too good to be true [investments that sound too good to be true and offered by amateur scamsters]

> confirms the identity of those who vouch for an investment

> talks to people at the business from which the money flows to confirm the salesperson's representations

> remembers that scam artists love the headlines and is suspicious of any investments that seems especially timely

> checks on claims of patents for new technology through the US Patent and Trademark Office

> confirms the use and profitability of new technology by talking to the end users

> is never blinded by celebrity or power and avoids investments offered by name-droppers

> remembers that savvy scamsters rent the credibility of those whose others trust

> questions trusted advisers about commissions that they receive from any investment that they recommend

> says "NO" to a test-drive of an uncommonly profitable investment

> never accepts a salesperson's offer to serve as the investor's protector and stays alert to the effects of the loss aversion bias

> remembers that citing the law does not indicate compliance with the law

> accepts her public duty to help expose investment crime

Criticism

"If U are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished then?" Rumi

Courage

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at its testing point -- C S Lewis

Creative thinkering by Michael Michalko (interpreted by HCM)

Creative thinkering by Michael Michalko (interpreted by HCM)

What we have learnt might obstruct us from being creative -- need to prevent established concepts from becoming road blocks to creativity

1. Don't use usual thinking channels if you want to create new ideas.

2. Blend concepts from dissimilar disciplines.

3. Take a bird's eye view.

4. Use random inputs to trigger thinking.

5. Change your angle and adopt various angles to view issues.

6. Invert. Consider the opposite.

7. Push and break boundaries. Stop thinking about the boundaries.

8. After the initial focused thinking, take time-off so as to allow ideas to grow "undisturbed".

9. You must have the intention to create. Leaving your brain to function on "auto-pilot" is to drift into established thinking channels.

10. Positive thinking -- change the way we speak. Need to be optimistic to encourage divergence thinking.

11. Show up and take the plunge -- you become what you pretend to be. Willingness to try is crucial to creativity.

Everything you know about business is wrong by Alastair Dryburgh

Everything you know about business is wrong by Alastair Dryburgh

WHY WE THINK WRONGLY?

## Caveman brain --
1. familiarity is security
2. social conformity

## Thinking traps --
1. lure of magical "sure win" recipe
2. status quo bias
3. silo
4. risk aversion
5. attribution error (it's the situation, not the person)

Examples of wrong business rules

A. Pricing should be based on cost of production (Wrong!)
A woman asked Picasso to make a portrait of her. He grabbed a piece of paper and in 5 minutes sketched the woman's portrait. He asked for 5 thousand francs. "but it took you only 5 minutes .." "No madam, it took me my whole life!"

Avoid two types of leakage:
1. A customer who values you very highly buys at the same price as everyone else. They would have paid more -- you have left money on the table.

2. A customer who puts a low value on your offering doesn't buy at the price you charge everyone else. They would have been profitable at a lower price but you couldn't find a way of offering it to them without other customers migrating to that lower price point.

B. Cost cutting is a good way to boost profits (Wrong!)
Cost cutting is just one of many possible solutions to boost profits. It could be poor product pricing, wrong markets, wrong strategy .... that you should take care of. Only if you have waste and excess capacity that cost cutting makes sense.

* The only reason for spending money is because it produces a return on investment (ROI), that is to say you get back more than you put in.

Companies should ask themselves these questions::

1. What do we offer to the customers? Higher quality? Cheaper? Faster?
2. Do the customers care about our offer?

## What is Right-sizing?
Right-sizing does not automatically means down-sizing. Sometimes, need to upsize.
Down-sizing does not mean becoming a smaller elephant (from a big elephant). It means becoming a monkey or a deer.

Measurement

-- we know what's happened but we don't know why.
-- we don't know what to do to improve result.
====> we have been measuring the wrong things.

Useful measures have two things in common --
1. They are NOT revenue related to sales (like gross profit as % of sales) but revenue related to staff or customers (like profit per employee, profit per customer)

2. Specific to company

** Efficiency measurements destroy efficiency
-- measuring time spent per customer call increases number of transfers (from one officer to another) and this ended up with longer time needed for resolution of problem and angry customers
-- measuring wait time in hospitals ended up with more non-urgent cases being treated

Sensible measurement
1. Focus on the whole process
2. Measure what matters for the customers
3. Assume that people will game the system
4. Cost of whole process, not by parts
5. Cost of servicing customers
6. Lifetime value of customers
7. Cost of acquiring new customers

You need 2 finance directors

1. Control and compliance
needs Consistency, Regularity, Accuracy.

2. Business partner
needs Out-of-box thinking and detailed digging

Budgeting and planning

Recognize that these are separate things:
1. An expectation is what I think will happen
2. A possibility is what could happen
3. A need is what must happen

-- we have to make at least 1 million or we will be in trouble (need)
-- I think we could realistically make 1.2 million (expectation)
-- we might have a chance of doing 1.4 million (possibility)

# If it ain't broke, it will soon. So, do something NOW!
# It it is broken, don't fix it. It might be cheaper and faster to build new ones.
# Don't take massive action. Or it might cause you to be blind, rigid and stubborn.
# Failure might be a good option. Sunk cost is sunk.
# Don't just do it. Check to see if you have plan, skills and support.
# Forget about time management - Just Say No (to low value activities, to tasks others can do
better, to complicated solution)

陈式太极扇 〈林�兴〉

陈式太极扇 〈林�兴〉

预备势
一、一柱朝天
二、丹凤朝阳
三、霸王请客
四、顺水推舟
五、一夫当关
六、孤雁出群
七、力劈华山
八、袖底藏花
九、仙女下凡
十、美人照镜
十一、金�倒挂
十二、白鹤亮翅
十三、开门迎客
十四、金鸡独立
十五、哪吒深海
十六、悬崖勒马
十七、古树盘根
十八、横扫千军
十九、风卷残云
廿、犀牛望月
廿一、钟离施扇
廿二、翻江倒海
廿三、夜叉探海
廿四、夺命穿肘
廿五、龙腾虎跃
廿六、迎门挥扇
廿七、玉女空梭
廿八、孤骛斜飞
廿九、风扫落叶
三十、嫦娥奔月
三十一、苍龙如海
三十二、海底翻花
三十三、摘星�斗
三十四、海底捞月
三十五、翻花舞袖
三十六、横扫三江
三十七、一蹬倒柱
三十八、拨云望月
三十九、蝴蝶吸水
四十、仙鹤冲天
四十一、奇峰倒插
四十二、灵蛇出洞
四十三、漫步推磨
四十四、怀中抱月
收势

The Behavior Gap -- Carl Richards

The Behavior Gap -- Carl Richards

1. We don't beat the market, the market beats us

Return of investments > Investors' return ==> behavior gap
Investor's psychology ==> flipping between Fear and Greed
Cost of mistakes is proportional to level of confidence
The greater fool theory ==> doing something dumb and hoping someone else is dumber

The process ::
a. Have a real plan (know where you are, where you want to be, and how to behave to get there)
b. find investments to populate your plan ==> this comes at the end of planning process
c. Admit there is a problem
d. Face the fact that cash is not a solution to a crisis
e. develop a checklist of questions to ask before you make major financial decisions
f. Take your time
g. Incorporate new information slowly
h. Focus on your own behavior, not the market's behavior

2. The perfect investment

Stop looking for ::
a. Perfect investment
b. super fund
c. Super stock
d. Super guru to follow

Chance of a fund will stink is direct proportional to its expense ratio

Bad decision that led to good outcome is STILL Bad decision

3. Ignore advice, make fun of forecasts

Personal finance is Personal
Their advice, your money
Chance of a forecast being right increases with the number of forecasts

4. Life planning, not financial planning

Memorable experiences WITH people you love ==> a great source of Happiness

Happiness ::
Increases with income initially but flatten out quite soon after a reasonable lifestyle is attained
Decreases as you are trying to keep up with the Joneses
Increases with positive relationships and experiences
Decreases with the time spent looking for it

Setting up an emergency fund ==> important and Urgent
Estate Planning ==> important but not urgent
Lists of stocks you "must buy now" ==> urgent but NOT important
What Jim Crammer said last month ==> Not important and Not urgent

5. Too much information

Chances you will make a mistake is proportionate to your awareness of cover stories about market direction
Long term wealth is inversely proportionate to the frequency you follow the market

6. Plans are worthless

The planning process is important, not the Plan

A traditional financial plan ==> a bunch of assumptions over a long time
Focus on things that matters and you have control on

7. Feelings

Mistakes is proportionate to emotional attachment to an investment

Overnight test -- assuming all the stocks in your portfolio are being liquidated overnight, will you buy them back today assuming there is no transaction costs? If the answer is NO to some stocks, maybe it's time to sell them?

Don't get stuck with a number ==> it is not where you bought them that is important

8. You're responsible for your behavior (but you can't control the results)

Conflict of interest ==> research required
"Hope" is NOT a strategy
Investing is NOT entertainment

9. When we talk about money

Quality decisions come from great conversations

We have different views on money and value ==> talk about it so we understand each other

10. Simple, not easy

We often resist simple solution because it requires us to change our behavior
===> that's why when trying to plan for retirement fund, we think of buying super stocks, super funds rather than spending less

Money problems increases with instances of Instant Gratification
-- try to put on hold a purchase
-- go on a multi week buying fast
-- track your spending
-- put a price tag on your goals
-- think about what you earn if you invested the money instead of spending it

在生命中，再无聊的时间，也是限量版

在生命中，再无聊的时间，也是限量版

国君进贤

国君进贤

孟子曰：国君进贤，如不得已 ，将使卑逾尊，疏逾戚。可不慎与 ！左右皆曰贤 ，未可也；诸大夫皆曰贤 ，未可也；国人皆曰贤 ，然后察之 ；见贤焉，然后用之。左右皆曰不可 ，勿听；诸大夫皆曰不可 ，勿听；国人皆曰不可 ，然后察之；见不可焉，然后去之。

When recruiting officials, avoid choosing those from upper echelons and those who are closely related to you. If those within your circle are in favor of someone, don't listen; if the people are in favor of someone, observe him and if he is wise, recruit him. If those within your circle are not in favor of someone, don't listen; if the people are not in favor of someone, observe him yourself, if he is no good, let him go.

�い by さだまさし

償い

作詩・作曲：さだまさし

　月末になると　ゆうちゃんは薄い給料袋の封も切らずに
　必ず横町の角にある郵便局へとび込んでゆくのだった
　仲間はそんな彼をみてみんな貯金が趣味のしみったれた奴だと
　飲んだ勢いで嘲笑っても　ゆうちゃんはニコニコ笑うばかり

　僕だけが知っているのだ　彼はここへ来る前にたった一度だけ
　たった一度だけ哀しい誤ちを犯してしまったのだ
　配達帰りの雨の夜　横断歩道の人影に
　ブレーキが間にあわなかった　彼はその日とても疲れてた

　　人殺し　あんたを許さないと　彼をののしった
　　被害者の奥さんの涙の足元で
　　彼はひたすら大声で泣き乍ら
　　ただ頭を床にこすりつけるだけだった
　
　　それから彼は人が変わった　何もかも
　　忘れて　働いて　働いて
　　償いきれるはずもないが　せめてもと
　　毎月あの人に仕送りをしている

　今日ゆうちゃんが僕の部屋へ　泣き乍ら走り込んで来た
　しゃくりあげ乍ら　彼は一通の手紙を抱きしめていた
　それは事件から数えてようやく七年目に初めて
　あの奥さんから初めて彼宛に届いた便り

　「ありがとう　あなたの優しい気持ちは　とてもよくわかりました
　　だから　どうぞ送金はやめて下さい　あなたの文字を見る度に
　　主人を思い出して辛いのです　あなたの気持ちはわかるけど
　　それよりどうかもう　あなたご自身の人生をもとに戻してあげて欲しい」
　
　　手紙の中身はどうでもよかった　それよりも
　　償いきれるはずもない　あの人から
　　返事が来たのが　ありがたくて　ありがたくて
　　ありがたくて　ありがたくて　ありがたくて
　
　　神様って　思わず僕は叫んでいた
　　彼は許されたと思っていいのですか
　　来月も郵便局へ通うはずの
　　やさしい人を許してくれて　ありがとう
　
　　人間って哀しいね　だってみんなやさしい
　　それが傷つけあって　かばいあって
　　何だかもらい泣きの涙が　とまらなくて
　　とまらなくて　とまらなくて　とまらなくて

Outwitting the devil -- Napoleon hill

Outwitting the devil -- Napoleon hill

The devil's devices to control men: negative thoughts

(1) Fear -- of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age, death

(2) ignorance -- Poverty discourages man from thinking and make him easy prey for the devil. Some wealthy men serve the devil's cause by the way they use their wealth.

(3) habit of drifting -- drifters allow themselves to be influenced by circumstances or others without thinking through things themselves. Drifting destroys the power of individual initiative.

A drifter -- lack major purpose in life, lack self-confidence, never accomplish anything requiring thought and effort, spends all he earns and more (if can get credit), sick or ailing to real or imaginary illness, no imagination, lack enthusiasm, ill-tempered, will not attract people to him, have opinions on everything but accurate knowledge of nothing, can't cooperate, repeat same mistakes, narrow minded and not open to criticism, eat too much and exercise little, criticize but no suggestion,

(4) destroy the power to think
Nature does not need one's consent in order to place him under the spell of hypnotic rhythm. It needs only to find him off guard, through any form of neglect to use his own mind.

Any successful attempts to break the habit of drifting must be done before nature makes the habit permanent, through hypnotic rhythm.

The 9 doors to human minds
Fear, superstitions, avarice, greed, lust, revenge, anger, vanity, laziness

Laziness + indifference = procrastination = drifting

(5) flattery -- vanity + egotism

(6) propaganda

Bribes utilized to get into people's mind:
Love, thirst for sex, covetousness for money, desire to gain something for nothing, vanity, egotism , desire to be the master of others, desire for intoxicants and narcotics, desire for self-expression through words and deeds, desire to imitate others, desire for perpetuation of life after death, desire to be hero, desire for physical food ......

The non-drifter takes from life whatever he wants, but he takes it on his own terms. The drifter takes whatever he can get, but he takes what he gets on my terms -- devil.

Every principle of good carries with it the seed of an equivalent danger.

7 principles to attain spiritual, mental, and physical freedom:

1. Definiteness of purpose

2. Mastery over self

Self discipline -- (a) food, (b) sex, (c) speech without accurate thinking

3. Learning from adversity

Every adversity brings with it the seeds of an equivalent advantage
Failure is man made. When you accept temporary setback as permanent, then it becomes failure.
Failure breaks the grip of hypnotic rhythm and frees the mind for a fresh start

4. Controlling environmental influence (associations)

Stay away from negative sources!

5. Time (giving permanency to positive, rather than negative thought-habits and developing wisdom)

Time is the law of hypnotic rhythm. The lapse of time is required to give permanency (during the life if the individual) to thought-habits

Wisdom comes only to non-drifters who form positive thought-habits as a dominating force in their lives.

6. Harmony (acting with definiteness of purpose to become the dominating influence in your own mental, spiritual, and physical environment)

The proper relationship is one that brings to all connected with it, or affected by it, some form of benefit.

7. Caution (thinking through your plan before you act)

If you just drift into the next thing without thinking, you are likely to get yourself into a bad position very soon.

You are where you are and what you are because of your thoughts and your deeds.

Everything having a real existence is capable of proof

The devil controls people by making negative thinking and destructive deeds pleasing to them.

The power of independent thought backed by definiteness of purpose -- the most important requirement to a free life

All negative desires are frustrations of positive desires

Nature will not tolerate idleness or vacuum of any sort. All space must be and is filled with something ... When the individual does not use the brain for the expression of positive, creative thoughts, nature fills the vacuum by forcing the brain to act upon negative thoughts.

Edward de Bono on Thinking

Edward de Bono on Thinking

Is having acute eyesight equivalent to having the ability to look in the right direction?

Intelligence is a potential. The way we use that potential is "thinking skill". Believing that intelligence is enough is dangerous.

Intelligent people can process information faster but it does not mean they have better thinking skills.

Intelligent traps --
(1) defense -- Ability to defend vigorously does not imply the validity of a position
(2) attack -- using superior intelligence to attack others thinking (showing how relatively stupid others are) is an ego boosting activity, a primitive form of aggression carried out with less primitive means.
(3) intelligent people understand and they play well the game in which they are placed. They become excellent in understanding and analysis but never develop the skill to design.
(4) intelligent people likes to have everything under control. He likes to proceed step by step, in logical progression. It's difficult to be creative in this mode.
(5) intelligent people sees more risks than others and therefore less ready to go into action mode.

Intelligent tests were initially used for identifying below average students so that they get more attention. IQ test tells you how good a person is in doing the IQ test. It does not tell you how well the person can think.

Gang of Three thinking skills:
Socrates -- argument
Plato -- ultimate truth
Aristotle -- box logic (either in or out of box)

G3 thinking methods work well in many situations, like science and technology, but inadequate and dangerous in some areas, like human affairs.

Argument -- inefficient way to explore a subject. When arguing between possibility A and B, there is no effort in designing other possibilities like C, D or E. It's about attacking and defending, winning and losing an argument. It's about ego and emotion.

Godel's Theorem says that from within any system you can never logically prove the starting points, which are arbitrary perceptions and arbitrary values.

Truth -- what is truth is just a perspective shared by many. 90% of errors in thinking are errors in perception, not errors in logic. (David Perkins)

Perceptual tools:
(1) PMI -- plus, minus, interesting (pros, cons, interesting points of a suggestion)
(2) C&S -- consequence and sequel (near, medium, long term effect/impact)
(3) OPV -- other people's view

Universities should also be teaching:
-- thinking skills
-- people skills
-- management skills

Universities are all about 'what is' -- knowledge, information, descriptions of things. These are important and essential.
Equally important is dealing with 'what can be'. It's about how you can bring things about.

Creativity is a kind of thinking skill. It can be learnt. Creative ideas always look logical in hindsight.

Education has always about literacy and numeracy. We need 'operacy', which is the skills of doing.

Analysis is not enough. Analysis leads to understanding, not necessarily lead to action.

There is only one form of stupidity -- arrogance.

You can analyze the past but you have to design the future.

Pattern -- if at every moment the next step has a higher probability of being taken than any other step, then you are on a pattern.

The brain is a self organizing information system. Incoming information organizes itself into patterns. The patterns formed in our brain determine our future perceptions.

Basic processes in thinking

1. Broad/specific -- move back and forth from broad to specific and back

2. Projection -- we can't check everything out and so projection is needed. But, need to know that our projection might be wrong due to insufficient info.

3. Attention directing -- depending on what caught our attention will limit the amount of information we get. Need to direct attention to look for info. (read 6 frames).

4. Recognition and fit -- we need to be mindful of the pattern we recognize and fit what we see. Fitting a pattern does not automatically makes something 'correct'.

5. Movement -- how to move forward from this position?

CoRT program

CoRT1 -- breadth
CoRT2 -- organization
CoRT3 -- interaction
CoRT4 -- creativity
CoRT5 -- information and feeling
CoRT6 -- action

CoRT1 tools:
1. PMI -- (+, -, interesting)
2. CAF -- Consider All Factors
3. C&S -- consequences and sequels -- time scale factor
4. AGO -- Aims, Goals, Objectives
5. FIP -- First Important Priorities
6. APC -- Alternatives, Possibilities, Choices
7. OPV -- Other People's Views

The 5 stages of thinking
________
TO LO |
----- PO |_____
| SO GO
------------

TO -- aim, objective (where do I want to go TO?)

Thinking action :
Define the purpose of your thinking
Redefine the purpose
Alternative definitions
Smaller definition
Larger definition
Breaking it down to smaller purposes
Change the purpose of your thinking
What is the 'right' definition? It is often seen in hindsight

- If u are interested in new ideas, do not put constraints an qualifiers into purpose definition.
- If u are interested in new ideas but do not have the time, put a few constraints and qualifiers into the purpose definition but do not overload it.
- the constraints and qualifiers should always be available in the information stage. Even if you are going to ignore them in the next stage.
-- in the assessment stage the constraints and qualifiers must be used in order to end up with a practical usable idea. Challenge these constraints and qualifiers.

LO -- information available and needed, perceptions

What information do we need?
Search for info should be broad base.
Sometimes, need to have a hypothesis to help the search.
Perceptions and values are important in this stage

PO -- possibilities

Do not mistaken possibility for the truth.

3 levels of possibility: possibility, fantasy, provocation

This is the creative, productive and generative stage.
4 broad approaches:
* search for routine - traditional approach as we seek to identify the situation and appropriate actions
* general approach - concept fan, work backwards from desired results
* creative approach - lateral thinking techniques to generate ideas
* design and assembly - lay out needs and ingredients in parallel and design ways to move forward

SO -- narrowing down, choosing, conclusion

The sequence within the SO stage:
* Development stage -- modify, build and improve [shaping, tailoring, strengthening, practicality, acceptance, cost, simplify]
* Evaluation and assessment stage -- examine each ideas, pros and cons and difficulties, feasibility
* Choice stage -- reduce to several choices, priority,
* Decision stage -- decide whether to go ahead and which idea, risks involved
[who decides? how many stages in deciding? what is the frame for the decision?]
[who needs this decision? Do we need to decide? What if we wait?]
[is there pressure to make the decision?]

GO -- action steps

It is a mistake to think that action is someone else's business. Thinkers and doers are not to be separated. "operacy" is as important as numeracy and literacy.

Action can be divided into:
- this I can do
- this depends on an outcome (if-box)

If-box may mean:
- asking for info,
- asking someone to do something,
- a search which may or may not be successful

Action planning involves a few stages.
(see 6 action shoes)

Implementation stages and sub-objectives -- monitor and checks
routine or flexible actions, fall back positions
People factor - motivation, persuasion, acceptance, obstructions, incentives and expectations, effectiveness, task forces, experts,

Energy of action -- sources?

Design to plug into systems that can provide the energy of action.

Amplification (read Tactics) -- through outsourcing, alliances, cooperation,

The 5 stages of thinking is not a one way process. Some backward movements are allowed. However, over doing the back and forth will cause the set stages to lose effectiveness.

On history --
"if you do not learn the mistakes of history you are doomed to repeat them" -- Santayana
"if you learn the successes of history you are doomed to be trapped by them" -- De Bono

Evolution fits the needs of the past not the needs of the future.

Evolution can optimize on the present and the past but not on the future.for that you need design.

De Bono's Law
'Any system with an input of information spaced out over time, and the periodic need to make the best use of available information, will always be sub-optimal.'
(because the sequence of arrival of the information plays too large a part in it's disposition)

We need simple ways of dealing with complexity rather than complex ways of dealing with simplicity.

茨木のり子

●自分の感受性くらい ---- 茨木のり子

ぱさぱさに乾いてゆく心を
ひとのせいにはするな
みずから水やりを怠っておいて

��しくなってきたのを
友人のせいにはするな
しなやかさを失ったのはどちらなのか

苛立つのを
近�のせいにはするな
なにもかも下手だったのはわたくし

初心消えかかるのを
暮らしのせいにはするな
そもそもが　ひよわな志しにすぎなかった

�目なことの一切を
�代のせいにはするな
わずかに光る尊�の放�

自分の感受性くらい
自分で守れ
ばかものよ



●倚（よ)りかからず --- 茨木のり子　※73�の作品

もはや
できあいの思想には倚りかかりたくない
もはや
できあいの宗教には倚りかかりたくない
もはや
できあいの学�には倚りかかりたくない
もはや
いかなる�威にも倚りかかりたくはない
ながく生きて
心底学んだのはそれぐらい
じぶんの耳目
じぶんの二本足のみで立っていて
なに不都合のことやある
倚りかかるとすれば
それは
椅子の背もたれだけ



●わたしが一番きれいだったとき --- 茨木のり子

わたしが一番きれいだったとき
街々はがらがらと崩れていって
とんでもないところから
青空なんかが�えたりした

わたしが一番きれいだったとき
まわりの人�が�山死んだ
工�で　海で　名もない�で
わたしはおしゃれのきっかけを落としてしまった

わたしが一番きれいだったとき
�もやさしい�り物を捧げてはくれなかった
男たちは�手の礼しか知らなくて
きれいな眼差だけを残し皆（みな）�っていった

わたしが一番きれいだったとき
わたしの�はからっぽで
わたしの心はかたくなで
手足ばかりが栗色に光った

わたしが一番きれいだったとき
わたしの国は�争で�けた
そんな�鹿なことってあるものか
ブラウスの腕をまくり卑屈な町をのし�いた

わたしが一番きれいだったとき
ラジオからはジャズが溢れた
禁�を破ったときのようにくらくらしながら
わたしは�国の甘い音�をむさぼった

わたしが一番きれいだったとき
わたしはとてもふしあわせ
わたしはとてもとんちんかん
わたしはめっぽうさびしかった

だから�めた　できれば�生きすることに
年とってから凄く美しい�を描いた
フランスのルオ��さんのように　ね



●知命　--　　茨木のり子

他のひとがやってきて
この小包の�　どうしたら
ほどけるかしらと言う

他のひとがやってきては
こんがらかった糸の束
なんとかしてよ　と言う

�で切れいと�言するが
肯じない
仕方なく手�う　もそもそと
生きてるよしみに
こういうのが生きてるってことの
おおよそか　それにしてもあんまりな

まきこまれ
ふりまわされ
くたびれはてて

ある日　卒然と悟らされる
もしかしたら　たぶんそう
�山のやさしい手が添えられたのだ

一人で�理してきたと思っている
わたくしの�つかの��点にも
今日までそれと�づかせぬほどのさりげなさで


　
●�屋 -- 茨木のり子　
　
人が　
�まなくなると
家は　
たちまちに蚕食される
何者かの手によって
待ってました！　とばかりに

つるばらは伸び放�
�々はふてくされていやらしく繁茂
ふしぎなことに柱さえ　はや投げの表情だ
�丈そうにみえた木�　ひきちぎられ
あっというまに草ぼうぼう　温�にむれ
魑魅魍�をひきつれて
何者かの手荒く占�する�配

�さえなく
吹きさらしの
�炉�の在りかのみ　それと知られる
山中の�居
ゆくりなく　ゆきあたり　寒�だつ
波の底にかつての�所�を
�てしまったときのように

人が
家に　
�む
それは�えず何者かと
果敢に�っていることかもしれぬ


●ぎらりと光るダイヤのような日　---　茨木のり子

短い生涯
とてもとても短い生涯
六十年か七十年の

お百姓はどれほど田植えをするのだろう
コックはパイをどれ位�くのだろう
教�は同じことをどれ位しゃべるのだろう

世界に�れを告げる日に
ひとは一生をふりかえって
じぶんが本当に生きた日が
あまりにすくなかったことに�くだろう


本当に生きた日は人によって
たしかに�う
ぎらりと光るダイヤのような日は
��の朝であったり
アトリエの夜であったり
果��のまひるであったり
未明のスクラムであったりするのだ

A short life -- by Ibaraki Noriko

a short life
a really short life
of 60 or 70 years

how much crops can a farmer produce?
how many pies can a chef make?
how many times can a teacher repeat his lecture?

when our time is up
as we review our life
we will be shocked to realize
so few are the days in which we had really lived

what is a really-lived day?
it depends on the individual
a day sparkled like diamonds could be
a day when a criminal is executed
a night spent gazing at stars
an afternoon in the park
or early morning rush hour scramble