Irrational Focus

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...