Irrational Focus

Forget nukes or environmental damage, the 20 th century's greatest enduring legacy is our refinement of 'marketing'. Given that insanity, we need to change our formerly pagan seasonal holiday from being some wishy -washy family-oriented value-inspired celebration of some kid born well over 2000 years ago, to one that celebrates the real modern values of Christmas: the power of Marketing! After all -- like lemmings to a cliff -- we succumb to the propaganda wave year after year, buying tonnes of useless stuff for each other so that we can either immorally re-gift it, or just toss it into our basements to await the untold years and inches of dust buildup, before someone else comes along and dumps it into a land fill site where it really should have been sent earlier. They say Christmas was an early propaganda attempt to sway the hordes from celebrating their drunken festivals -- such as Saturnalia -- which would make it a very early form of mass marketing. An historic spin-f...

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless" -- Steven Weinberg The key to our spiritual needs is the answer to the question "why are we here?" No other question, in history has ever been answered so often with so many different variations. Yet, for many people they still search for an answer they can accept. It is, of course, our Achilles heel, that fabled weak point to which virtually anybody can seize control of our will and our actions if they understand how to invoke the right magical incantations. Countless religions, cults and other "organizations" have existed since our very origins as a socialized species whose sole claim to control is the possession of this answer. How many of our billions are under some spell or another? It is funny, because it always seems like the little kid in the car screaming "are we there yet?" every five minutes. I mean, do we really need to know why? We've kinda guessed at...

I always knew it was coming. Since I was a kid, somehow I figured that my generation was going to be the one to live through the height of modern civilization. We were destined to get to the other side and see a long slow steady decline. Maybe it was all of that nuclear paranoia, or the talk of asteroids. It might be those sci-fi books on biological disasters, or our more recent understanding of our own environmental consequences. One thing is certain, I am convinced that the end is coming soon and fast. I feel kinda like one of those crazies on the street with a picket sign prophesying our impending doom. "The end is nigh", it says. You just can't live through that much anti-propaganda and still remain positive. I figure that for all of the potential environmental, biological or natural disasters, we're most likely to do it to ourselves. We are overwhelmed by the sheer number of indicators that are leading the way. We feed on fear in the news. The media keeps deliver...

We are gathered here today to lament our old friend character. Dead; due to our conformist desires to all dress in the same dark colors, shop at same annoying thrifty stores, repeatability watch the same bad plots and listen to the same recycled music. A premature demise driven by the miracle of globalization that not only made our world smaller, but also shrank our culture, our food and quite possibly our minds. We now look and sound so similar that even the weirdest are barely distinguishable; our own mothers couldn't tell us apart. The end clearly visible in our daily zombie march towards the grey lifeless towers where we create endless rules and marketing campaigns to bind us to our hollow existence. We huddle together claiming freedom, but fearing to use it. What a wonderful species we will be when we can no longer detect ourselves in the masses. A dark dull army consuming our way through the last of the planet's resources. And not a character amongst us. Farewell old fri...

I'm such a fool. No, really I am. I keep daydreaming that if I write a really good post, one that is entertaining and worthwhile people will actually come to think that I am smart. You know, if indirectly I write that I am smart, then people will believe it, and so in the end I will be smart. But alas, no. I probably can't write something smart enough to get beyond my own foolishness. It would be nice to be famous just for being famous. There are certainly a lot of examples of that going around; that has to be the craziest thing ever. If you can exploit being famous, then you can get the freedom to do the things in your life that you put off because you are too busy not being famous. Or does fame eat too much of your time? Perhaps, I should just settle for rich? Or do I have to get famous to find a quick way to get rich? I am certainly getting too old to spend too much time trying to get rich the slow way. Still, I can't help thinking that people will listen to me if I am f...

Instinctively -- when you encounter one -- you know that you are looking at a bloated bureaucracy; the real question, is how to prove it? We obviously need some simple form of cost-based accounting, that gives us a decent metric on which to compare various organizations and their effectiveness. The key here is the the measure be simple and that it cannot be subverted by those trying to apply it. Clearly, it is in a bureaucracies best interest to hide its own inner ineffectiveness; that is the very essence of why the organization is defective in the first place. To keep it simple we only need to deal with two basic observations. The first is that at the end of the day all organizations produce either products or services, nothing else. Regulatory monitoring for instance, is just a service for the public to insure that the rules are followed. Building roads is a product, while maintaining them is a service. Everything falls into one or the other category. The second observation is that a...

Lonely in a sea of humanity? Urban dwellers encounter so many forgettable people on a daily basis that they feel entirely anonymous. It is funny to be surrounded by people, but to not notice. Faceless faces. Within that sense, we tend to not care much about about our behavior in public. People who would never be rude to their friends or acquaintances, have no problems behaving horribly towards strangers. They feel they won't ever see them again, so why bother being polite. The bigger the city, the better the odds of not seeing those people again. As more people congregate in larger groups, their behavior when they are alone degenerates. It can be wonderfully horrible in a big city to observe just how low people will let their behavior slide. It is not just that sense that the other people don't matter, so you shouldn't bother to be nice to them; some people actively go out of their way just to behave poorly to others. On crowded city streets it is noticeable, but it reaches...

What is it with people wanting to believe the craziest things? Given a bunch of presented facts, they'll pick and choose only those few which bolster their position. These, they will cling to forever, while ignoring all of the rest. We seem to decide first and then look towards reality to backup our position. Having a truly open mind seems to be rare if not impossible. There are always trade-offs to be made within subjective frameworks depending on one's needs and opinions, but I guess because people like flexibility they want to make trade-offs in accepting concrete and unassailable pieces of information. A fact is by definition an absolutely true piece of information. The sun rises every morning, that's a fact. The clock strikes twelve twice a day, that too is a fact. An alteration of either of these would likely mean you are not on the planet earth anymore, or your somewhere so remote it is just weird. For most of humanity, most of the time, these two things are indisput...

Small minds ensure that greed drives corporate policy. When it all comes down to money, we incorrectly value of all of those things that are really -- at the end of day -- far more important to success.

Whatever our origins and beliefs, we all agree that there exists idealistic concepts called good and evil. We all agree that they are distinct from each other, nothing can be both and that together they form the whole set of morality judgments. Things are either good or they are evil. Our categorizations may differ somewhat, as the concepts are deemed to be relative and can be localized, but our world has shrunk enough lately so that we all pretty much agree on nearly similar definitions. Since these are ideas of the highest order, to be truly civilized we must come to understand them to have only universal definitions. Where they change from society to society, region to region, the cause is our own immaturity; our own lack of progress. Not the ideas. Despite our infancy, we do know some things for certain. For instance, the cause can never justify the actions. You cannot do something evil, to justify something good. If your actions are evil, the cause becomes evil too, no matter how ...

For those that do, but don't worry about it. You've been told: just do it; the early bird gets the worm. To the winners go the spoils. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Everybody reveres action-oriented people, those that aren't afraid to strike out and get the job done. You can't win if you don't play. You'll be rewarded by society. All rich people wormed their way to the top, or at very least their ancestors did. They're the elite. They are better. Of course you know actions have consequences, but thinking about dull things like consequences only slows you down. Keeps you from succeeding. Push, don't stop. If you try hard enough it will get done. If you don't do it, someone else will? That bad things that are done by you, or in your name? Just trivial side effect of your great efforts. It all evens out in the end. Your accomplishments more than justify a few small problems. Complaints: just more wining. Whatever. You net worth is not negative. Ac...

Every so often, the idea that "we should change the world for the better" pops into someone's head. When this occurs, they -- like all thinking people that ponder over the deeper structure and meaning they see in this world -- sincerely wish for the world to become a better place. After which, they go back to their lives. They go back to worrying about money or they go back to worrying about their future. They go back to worrying about their kids if they have any, and they certainly go back to worrying about their friends and family. They go back to eating, and sleeping; to reading, and to talking to people. They go back to following the world as it moves through its many various patterns. Back to all of those things that bind us to our day-to-day existence. Some common things, some cultural and some regional ones. In that instance, just before they turn back to focus on their own existence, they usually wonder: why is the world such a harsh place? Why do so many horrible...

Building something is easy, sustaining it is the real challenge. We cannot bear the weight of our own creations; they come tumbling down faster than we can patch them up.

Continuing on from my posts at Yahoo 360 , where I restricted myself to just using two sentences in a 'thoughtlet'. The first sentence is a general statement, while the second should appeal directly to the reader, possibly suggesting some action: Faith can be an excuse to hide error or misdirection. We need to demand reasonable answers to reasonable questions; even spiritual beliefs must be rooted in truth and reality.

So another couple of protesters chained themselves to a coal-carrying ship in an effort to draw attention to the use of the destructive and polluting fuels that fulfill our addiction to generating cheap electricity. So what. By now we know it's bad. We get it, we really do. Freakin bad things are the popular fare. So, really, how hard is it to complain about it. Again. And again. Just sit there all day and moan about the state of being. Blaa, blaa, coal is bad, blaa, blaa so is nuclear, blaa, blaa, blaa. Jumping in a dingy and chaining yourself to something is pretty much the same as just complaining. Protesters. You'd figure they'd get it. If we shutdown the coal and nuclear, then the resulting economic disaster would wipe out daddy's savings accounts, destroying their means of protesting and they'd have to get a real job. Harsh, but true. Not that shilling for an eco-cause isn't big business. These days it probably rivals banks in profits. Yep, collect...

Like a hoard of angry insects, the next buzz is upon us, and its name is Enterprise 2.0 . But we should not judge something too harshly before we have at least investigated a bit. Digging not too deeply, we see that Enterprise 1.0 is a hierarchy, while 2.0 is a 'flat organization'. Interesting. The last time I worked for a 'flat' organization, it was that way for an unfortunate reason. The spin was that no one reported to anyone else. Everyone was more or less equal. Initially you might think that this might be quite the novel idea, but as we so often learn, nothing in life comes for free. The lack of an official reporting structure doesn't stop people from having to report upwards, but it does insure that there are no pesky middle-managers between the top and the bottom. To put it bluntly, it is a control freak's dream reporting structure. You sit at the top, tell them they are all equal, and then use that to drive them all nuts. No fuss, no muss and definitely...

I figure there is a duality in mankind where we are split between our evolutionary roots and our idealistic aspirations. Intellectually we operate on higher order concepts, while emotionally we let our impulses drive us forward. That is a fancy way of saying we are caught half way between being animals and being civilized. Evolution is an on-going progress, and there is still a long road yet to travel. Something that I always keep in the back of my mind, as I watch the news. We see then, on rare occasions, examples of people at their finest. Individuals or groups that have applied their intelligence towards constructive efforts to make the world a better place. Always inspirational, but all too infrequent. More often we see those that have fallen from our current heights. Setting aside over 10,000 years of civilized behavior they let their base impulses drive them towards acts of madness. Often they can't even see what they have become. What they have been reduced to. Sadly, if you...

Have you ever wondered if everyone else is crazy ? Maybe it's some type of "lead poisoning" thing again, similar to what is believed to have helped destroy Roman civilization? Apparently it does make a quite different, the type of metal you use in your plumbing . It has to be something like that. Otherwise, our only real explanation is that most of those nearly-hairless upright uptight barely-conscious hyper-active clothed monkeys are just completely whacked. That wouldn't bode well for the future of the species, would it?

The point of this blog? I think, for me it is to play with writing, a bit of experimenting with layout and to fiddle with the settings in blogger. Should you continue to read this? Maybe, maybe not. What are you asking me for?