Tag: Netherlands

Grace Jones, Jim Jones, Terry Jones

All with a “view to a kill”.

Jim Jones at least took the cool-aid himself.

Terry Jones, after delaying the Quran-burning date for a few months, gave in to his arsenic urge (or attention-getting disorder).

I am all for learning, from book lessons, and life lessons.

Life teaches us lessons from the doing and wrongdoing of others (this is the basis of Good vs Evil struggle in movie themes).

Eventually, consequences of an individual’s aggression will catch up with him.

For now, just as the young, educated middle class in Egypt and neighboring countries wanted a piece of the democratic dream, we got the worst exhibited here (in Netherlands, the comment from a mall-shooting witness was “we heard this sort of things happened in American schools, but little did we know, it’s here – the Netherlands-where we live”).

So, this is how the world perceives America, land of the free.

A few years back, in Little Saigon (Orange County, CA), a pirated-video shop owner exhibited a Ho Chi Minh portrait knowing full well his action would cause distress to his patrons and community he served. Westminster police had to protect him against demonstrators  while the FBI eventually moved in to confiscate his stocks (FBI warning at the beginning of every video came in handy). If they hadn’t he would eventually have joined Blockbuster Video in bankruptcy court anyway (karma-coded video).

The case was nowhere as huge as the Gainesville church’s sponsored Quran-burning.

In his burning, he dampens world’s enthusiasm for what America stood for.

We sent out mixed signals: follow us, we are the good guys/burn us down, we are the bad guys.

Which is which? 007 or Death Angel?.

When Malcolm X advocated separate-but-equal, he was shot down too.

Now, times have changed. While the desecration of others’ sacredness is constitutionally protected, it should not be encouraged (because it incites hatred and polarizes an already hate-filled world in need of healing and soft-power diplomacy).

There is another higher law: love your neighbor (and what they believe as sacred) as yourself (and what you consider as sacred.)

The Gideons better get hurried because a lot of Motel 6 bibles might be collected and shipped back to the Mid East to be burned in retaliation.

It’s tit for tat, and the best-case scenario. I hope the worst already happened last week.

Dressing up for online presence

The author of “the everyday presentation of self” will need to completely rewrite his book for 21st-century readership.

For instance, what is the equivalence of holding the door online? (Leave a larger space for Comment ?)

Business and communication are out of breath, trying to catch up with network effect and the ProAm movement.

How to facilitate “listening”, meeting-up and following-up.

In short, traditional marketing are upended and PR will really need the “R”  (as opposed to blasting the message.)

We all need to embrace “less is more” when tweeting.

And business will have to eat the upfront costs, hoping  to reap long-tail reward.

With the Web, we can really experience deep reach. I love the long winding comments about “what are the lessons learned from your first job” on one of the sites.

(it’s now available as an E-book, on Audiobook.com I think).

People just pitched in. This is a great demonstration of  crowd sourcing.

As a species, we will learn how to lead double-life i.e. living out our lives on and off-line, dog life and digital life.

Our digital presence is and should be different from our analog one. One is a sub-set, not an extension of the other, until it evolves and takes on a life of its own (like our grown-up daughters). At a certain point, we will master the art of transition to this Second life e.g. searching, learning, listening, and selling online. Finally, we will completely be hybridized. Those of us who are bi-cultural can testify to this (Read Netherlands).

I have my daughter’s work station next to mine. We both log on and for those hours, we live separate lives. Not from each other, but each, from one’s self.

When the machine boots up, that’s when I walk on stage, oops, online. I answer the curtain call to step into the digital theatre which opens 24/7 and archives everything eternally.

Shakespeare was right when said “life is a stage”. He couldn’t have foreseen our double life, on and off-line. But a stage, nevertheless, with things to say and people to see.

No more “all dressing up and no place to go”. The online world will always be there, beckon you and I to log on, to look around and to listen & engage.