Tag: Social sciences

Snow cover

It doesn’t matter what color your roofing is or the shape of your lawn.

Snow covers them all. In a blanket of white.

Wet and white.

Crushing underneath your feet, leaving foot prints and tire marks.

The power of (snow flakes) accumulation and its compounding effect.

Nature’s lesson to men: there is a season for everything.

Time to be born and time to die.

Nature is self-healing and self-correcting. It shows that nothing is constant  except for change (hint: hard times don’t last).

Go with time flow and season change. Resist not.

Stop playing God.

As if we could.

Born this way. But die some other way.

While alive, pay forward.

Stand tall. And ask not.

Sometimes I wonder what people living in the 60’s  regreted, because, now, we regret life in the 60’s.

When things did not break down as easily, when customer service picked up the phone and spoke your language, and people stopped to help strangers (Good Samaritan).

Now we got a labor surplus (and because machines got more efficient) due to population explosion (3 to 7 Billion). With density, we’ve got scarcity. And the pendulum swings from prosperity to austerity. Yesterday’s dream is today’s problem.  Yet the dream must go on, at least, a version that resonates. It will need new packaging and new label, over the generic, the organic and the authentic. Because if we don’t sell the dream, others will. And their version of snake oil would be worse. Albeit their pitch more perfect. Sugar-coated and snow-covered. Snow, like death, comes uninvited and buries everything. Snow buys us some time regardless what’s underneath. To reflect and to change course before all is revealed.

All to the payload

Nothing goes to waste. Neither a minute nor an experience, good or bad.

This is not pre-destination. It is how our brain stores and evolves. Millions of calculation, prediction, reflection and reinvention.

Like technology which evolves, so do we. We made a mistake. We did it again. Then we learned. Both David Brooks and Jeremy Rifkin talked about Empathic Civilization and how men have come to relate emotionally.

We (men) were taught at an early age to hunt, to conquer and move on.

e.g. the All-terrain man (NYT Magazine March 20-2013)

If we failed, shake it off with whiskey and move on.

Tough guys don’t dance, or buy-in to empathy, emotional intelligence or group therapy.

Yet studies like the Grant Study found that men do learn from mistakes and adjust in due course.

Partly because the nature of warfare has changed (from hard to software), partly because of women have moved further in the workplace (which gave birth to a bunch of stay-at-home dads).

Whatever the reasons, we do see a generation of sensitive men emerge (or titles like “The End of Men”.

Men who use I-pod, I-phone and I-pad.

Men who drive electric cars (which Tom Wolfe calls the Elf, in his latest Back-to-Blood novel). Men who could be President (Clinton) or just be big-dog supporter of our currently re-elected President.

Not much ego there. Just collaboration across the aisle and across the ocean.

We are living in interesting times: Outgoing Chinese President, and incumbent US  President.

We wouldn’t hear comments as back in Watergate days “I would run over my grandmother for the job” (Chuck Colson).

Now, it’s 2012. The world is tweeting, sharing, Liking, posting, commenting and crowdsourcing.

Utopia? Not quite.

But much better. More empathic a civilization. The late stage of evolution. Grown men do drink milk. Wear tight pants, and do yoga. Yes, I know how you feel. Nothing goes to waste. Those hours of watching and feeding the kids.

It’s well worth it. The bonding at bed-time reading. We have become role-models. For me, I hope my generational “curse” stops here. (unlike the final scene in Exorcist where the young priest, tormented so much he had to take his own life to end the never-ending downward spiral).

I hope for my girls a much better life than mine.

Nothing goes to waste. We transmit those DNA strands and a few variables of our own. It happens to be the first stage of empathic men, last stage of Alpha male.

God bless Aimy and Maily.

Alternate Dream

American Dream has undergone a makeover of late (maybe because the Chinese economy itself was heading for a cliff, so it needed to apply a break on lending).

Whatever the underlying reason, America middle class is contracting not because of shrinking population , but mostly because of declining income and consumption. In short, the good old time isn’t rolling back anytime soon.  At least, not for the same people. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

For the past few years, we became schooled in all kinds of financial instrumentation: derivative, quantitative easing etc….

New economy, old economists.

Half of them was right half of the time. The other half call themselves “contrarians”.

I bet on the future.  I know kids are smart. They have been told to play it safe, to hold their cards closer to the chest.

And it (the Dream) did not materialize for them (at least, not  for their European counterparts).

So, they figure. I am going out on the limp to strike for gold myself.

Estonian kids saw the success of Skype. As a result, they are learning how to code at an early age.

Long way from the fall of the Berlin wall  to the building of the firewall.

Meanwhile, back  at the range, American are forced to be “content” with loss leaders, everyday.

Dollar Stores are rising while the dollar itself isn’t worth much.

Made-in-China use to be jeered at. Now it’s the only game in town.

I know new games are in the works. Part of the chain of evolution is to invent disruption e.g. flat panel TVs vs tube TV‘s,  Wi-fi vs cable wiring. Perhaps someday we will see the electrification in transportation. For now, adjust your expectations. Wake up hot-dog nation. Rise from your slumber. Step out into the darkest of nights where the stars are few, but much brighter. The glass has always been half full.  It’s in the American character, belongs to those who left behind the familiar for the unfamiliar. Those who dare to dream and dream big. Anchor it  really high. And turn a portion of it into reality. One by one, and together, Yes We Can, again. An adjusted American Dream., smelled more like our new reality, is still better than none.

Speaking one’s mind

She came back today to visit the school, accompanied by her Dad.

Forthcoming, confident and spoke her mind. After all, to her, “time is money”.

Up to 19 AUD per hour, doing what natives wouldn’t otherwise do: taking care of old folks.

Another day at work. Another day of plugging away, but not without occasional joy of seeing others’ dreams come true.

Mine was simple: just to survive, to grow, to learn and to love.

Not even qualified as a dream. Yet it has been difficult, like Scott Peck‘s opening sentence in The Road Less Traveled.

People like myself ardently refuse to accept that the line between A and B is the shortest.

To the end.

Because my “B” has yet been determined. It could be the Omega, or it could be next life. It could be out of space (unobservable, hence unmeasurable), or inner space.

You are welcome to debate.

But then, the practicality of life kicks in and ends all debates. Time out for lunch.

Who is going to pay for it?

Life is easy and difficult at the same time.

Lottery winners found it easy for a while, until they burned it all.

Back to training, to equipping students for the journey.

They found that despite all the inoculation, it still took two months to adjust to a new surrounding (culture shock).

Then, it’s their turn to come home. To speak one’s mind. To tell it all, as returnees from the West should. With freedom comes free thinking, not necessarily clear, but free.

Lay it all out. I can take it. I am gamed . Take a shot. Strength in broken places.

All Cast

My neighbor got off his cast today. I congratulated him, and told him, me too,

had a broken arm after my first month of Kung Fu. “It’s itchy and hairy”.  I got a chuckle out of him (who would otherwise looked so mean).

A few minutes later, I walked past a man with only one arm. His left short-sleeve shirt flips in the wind. He must have just gone back from his morning walk.

I was warned! Keep it to yourself! There is misery and menace, determination and destruction in this world. Just as you thought you have seen it all.

Buon oi, Chao Mi. (Bonjour Tristesse).

The existential loneliness is just a base line. On top of that, we got heart-break, and war that left scars and perpetual prejudice (zero-sum game).

While Moore’s Law reflects on the doubling speed of chip processing capacity, we have human with broken limps and broken dreams, carry on with half-life capacity.

“Buon oi, yeu duong la the” (that’s what love is)

Yes, as human, we are witnessing convergence of bio-tech, information-tech and neuro-science (empathic civilization). But can we still feel? Our analog make-ups don’t evolve as  fast.  We obviously cling to stars from the past.

All cast.

Red Carpet at the Oscars still features Bo Derek (used to appear in 10) and Glenn Close (Big Chill).

Give me one more take.

All cast, all crew. Dream on.

All smoke and mirror. All Cloud. The jumpers (out of the Twin Towers).

Toward oblivion. Out of the ash, the phoenix shall rise.

Broken arm, but not broken dream.

All hairy and itchy, but healed and strengthened.

Stand up and fight on. One-arm man walks on by. Stirring up empathy in me.

Play element

We seem to have lost touch with the play aspect in life and work.

I am thinking of John Lennon and Steve Jobs at the moment.

Both pursued their passion, and both were dead.

One married interracially, the other just loved all things simple (even foods).

They were famous, and still are, although they could not take that with them.

Their legacy is huge. Just listen to #9 Dream on the I-pod.

Sit back and have a siesta.

Then you’ll know what I mean.

How can someone who sang about dream but brought us so much life!

Could it be that life is all illusion? Then within an illusion we can still dream up another?

I was at my best when company’s culture encourages creativity, collaboration and tons of energy.

When it’s a chore, we lost the play element.

Conversely, when it’s play, it’s no longer a chore.

To serve with gladness.

Love those we interact with. Just love them first, as a person, then our service to their need will be an extension of that human connection.

You can tell when a singer just sings for the money. To him/her, it’s just a gig. He/she faked the emotion.

But once in a while, we feel sad or lonely, or abandoned. then a song seems to voice our feelings.

Then we  got a hit. It’s a hot night. The heart feels glad. There is vibration, that feeling of being alive and realizing it at the same time.

No Play, the world see only zombies and walking dead.

Dream on. And on and on. Jobs did not believe in the off switch.

Easily swayed

According to social scientists, any two people are only separated by 6 to 7 degrees of connection. Last week I put it to test.

Surely enough, the quake victims in Japan somehow are separated from me by only three degrees. My niece’s friend had relatives who fled Japan and came to stay with them. Two short introductions and a short ride stand between us.

We are living on a planet of 7 billion people, 2 of which are online.

The cumulative brain powers are enormous. For the first time, it seems as if a lot of things are now made possible, from wikipedia to wikileaks.

Thirty years ago, I gave up my summer in between school years to do relief work. The only resources at my disposal was an address book of friends from college and a roll of stamps. I copied fund-raising letters, sent out to my “network” and waited for donation. Quite a risky adventure, both on the funding side and visa turn-around time. But we pulled it off. The summer turned out to be a highlight of my life.

If we had the online resources as currently available, we would probably have uploaded a Youtube clip of boat people cramped and confined in Hong Kong prison facilities, women who were raped and turned cannibalistic to survive….

You know the drill. My contention is, we are now resource-rich, but are we becoming more compassionate ? In other words, does the good-will increase proportionately with the tools to express it? Or precisely because of information-overload that led to compassion fatigue?

To sell something people need and want is easy. Costs vs benefits results in change (buy).

To sell an idea that people can become their better selves requires enchantment.

People died in mass protests (herd instinct) or annual Run-of-the-Bulls (even cheese rolling downhills). But to spare a change for the guy holding the homeless sign takes a lot more. He will need to sing and dance. He will have to put on an act of desperation before the lights turn green.

We act differently in public vs in private.

When survival instinct kicks in, self-preservation is above all else.

Multiply that 7 billion times. Then we get the picture of state of the world.

How does the quake in Japan affect our lives: a lot. Someone relates to someone who knows my relatives is suffering. He/she is doubling up in a house near ours.

Then the Toyota dealers in town won’t get foreign parts etc… Go Hyundai, this is your chance in this no-hire-no-fire economy. Sometimes people change because they are forced to, not because they would like to. But change is as sure as the sun that rises tomorrow. You don’t see it because you are not 30,000 feet above ground. Those who are at the executive level know to expect change, prepare contingencies for it, and profit from it. Same crisis, but it is danger to some and opportunity to others. We will learn to make use of the Web from sharing cute kitten clips to vendor’s immolation clip. Welcome to the age of participation/consumption. It’s never been more exciting and dynamic than time present, when both push and pull technologies are vying for our attention, swinging and swaying our votes and demanding our devotion. Hold on to your wallet while keeping an open mind, to quote Buffett.

Poverty and empathy

Studies show an inverse relationship between socio-economic background and emotional intelligence.

http://geronimarion.posterous.com/emotional-intelligence-linked-to-socio-econom

In short, those privileged kids don’t give a damn how you feel, at work, that is.

Kids whose fathers fell from grace (Madoff, Skilling) committed suicide (former) or died a mysterious death (later). And we all knew what happened with Hearst and Getty‘s.

This brought to mind another paradox: parents can leave behind earthly belongings, but  can’t fill the kids’ void with stuffs. This applies to both rich and  poor families ( millions of rural Chinese children are left to be raised by relatives, while their parents went to work in the cities).

Mr Rifkin recently published a huge book entitled “the Empathic Civilization“.

In it, he traced human evolution, and recent discoveries in neuron sciences to illustrate our  latest stage: empathy. In other words, all those striving should result in better understanding of how others feel.

Growing up in a very narrow alley in the heart of Saigon, I know how people live, love and learn to overlook their differences. We have to. Co-existence in a collective culture helps distinguish differences in kind vs degree.

Back in the 60’s, there were a lot of experiments on sharing the stuff (and a joint too).

But that too became unraveled.

Then, corporations started to pay attention to EQ.

In today’s world, we need to pick team members who are smart (IQ), savvy (EQ) and sociable (SQ). Unfortunately, digital natives seem to progress better on the former, but lack later two (Emotional and Social Intelligence). Bad for business, bad for the overall performance of the team (which needs collaboration instead of compartmentalization).

Fortunately, the study concluded that those skills can be improved.

David Brooks mentioned that students in his NYC Class tend to favor data analysis and decision points.

Corporate training could focus on team building, small-group communication, sales skills (if you can do this, you can do anything) and internship abroad to groom executives with a global mind-set. Fridays (google) off to boost team “play” project. In our 24/7 interconnected world, where human resource now encompasses the globe, we cannot afford a huge blind spot (low EQ).

As we move beyond basic subsistence (food, shelter and clothing), Maslow observed that we next strive for love and understanding. Not just understanding, but empathic understanding of those from other cultures. Like it or not, they will be coming and living on our streets and online. A great attitude toward nature (with other people included) is a legacy worth leaving behind besides “stuff” for our kids, as they live on without doubt in an increasingly multi-cultural society. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/us/05census.html?_r=1&hp

Human ingenuity

When you see population growth which doesn’t equate with starvation, it’s a testimony to our human ingenuity.

The US has less than 2 percent of its labor force in agriculture, yet no one is without a hamburger (even when it’s thrown out by McDonald).

From Malthus to Moore, we have moved up the value chain.

The race to dominate mobile application is driving companies and start-ups to faster deploying wireless devices and software application.

No more excuses, such as  “let me get back to the office”, since office is now mobile (computer and car cultures converged).

Tablets used to be carried around by UPS men.

Then car rental companies used wireless receipt printers in their return parking lot.

And now, I Pad for everyone, everywhere.

Bio tech century ushers in longer life expectancy (hint, longer customer lifetime value).

Clever marketers would think like a customer, visualize not just today, but tomorrow as well.

Engineering has made its mark. The next century belongs to international marketers who can trade without borders.

Not just Multi -National Companies (MNC), but localized product and market development for domestic consumption (BRIC and CIVETS).

(AIG spins off its Japan branch, or Macy in Atlanta has more hat selections).

We learn more about each other, strength and weakness (Kissinger said, ” we did it to ourselves” in retrospect about the war in Vietnam).

So we learn our lessons and move on. Human ingenuity is not without pain. In fact, pain is a prerequisite.

As long as we learn from our mistakes, and factor them into future plan. The sub – prime experience for instance. It should have been limited  to a lesser share of the pie (but loan pushers wouldn’t settle for those otherwise suffice non-sub prime packages. Up-sell til we melt).

Or as President Carter kept saying, ” I should have factored in one more helicopter” – when referring to the debacle of hostage rescue attempt during his last year in office.

We made mistakes. But great men admit them, learn from them, and work them into the equation. In sales, we call it the funnel. We anticipated the many NO’s coming our way. This, we did it unto ourselves i.e. rejection and objection. Part of the job. Part of growing pain. Part of tapping into the well of human ingenuity.

As of this edit, David Brook of the NYT has a piece on “the Humanist Vocation”. Huffington Post has a piece about the anniversary of the Pentagon Papers. All learned lessons. Work that into future Syria strategy. Work that into the next app. Stop not learning and growing.