"From the observable data and experience we select some and affix meaning to it. This forms the basis of our assumptions. And then we come to conclusions which in turn influence our beliefs. Our beliefs are the basis of our actions which bring more data and experience from which we select some, affix meaning and so on. We tend to believe that we affix meaning to the observable data, oblivious of the selection we always make. In a similar way we believe that we draw conclusions by clear reasoning, while we actually always apply some assumptions."Beliefs and Capabilities:
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” - Immanuel Kant (Categorical Imperative. try here)In this rather short video clipped from the BBC documentary - "Justice: A Citizen's Guide to the 21st Century", Prof. Michael Sandle picks up an ethical dilema from a real-life kidnapping case that took place in Germany in 2002, and bounces it off to a Kantian activist and journalist, and to Peter Singer, the utilitarian Bioethics professor at Princeton University.
Theoretical Physicist Dr. Sheldon Cooper Sc.D. has hardly anything to do with this post except for an optimistic allusion toward his positive delight at throwing a monologos tantrum such as this in any of The Big Bang Theory episodes preferably not named as the same suggested title.
You see,If you look at the syllabus, you would notice that we read a number of great and famous books. Books by Aristotle, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and others. [...] We will read these books, and we will debate these [philosophical] issues, and we will see how each informs and illuminates the other [school of thought]. This may sound appealing and interesting enough, but here I have to issue a warning:[Transcript-ed from the actual lecture. Emphasis added. Official transcript could not be resourced.]
To read these books, in this way, as an exercise in self-knowledge, carries certain risks. Risks that are both personal and political. Risks that every student of Political Philosophy has known. These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know. There is an irony: the difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings, and making it strange. [...] Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing.
But, and here is the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it is never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'. What makes this enterprise difficult, but also revetting, is that Moral and Political Philosophy is a story, and you don't know where the story would lead, but you do know that the story is about You. Those were the personal risks.
Now, about the political risks: one way of introducing a course like this is to promise you that by reading these books, and debating these issues, you would become a better, more responsible, citizen. You will examine the presuppositions of public policies, you will hone your political judgement, you will become a more effective participant in public affairs. But this would be a partial and misleading promise. Political Philosophy, for the most part, hasn't worked that way. You have to allow for the possibility that Political Philosophy may make you a worst citizen rather than a better one. Or at least, a worst citizen *before* it makes you a better one. And that is because philosophy is a distancing, even debilitating, activity. And you see this going back to Socrates [and his dialogue with his friend Callicles who tried to talk him out of philosophising]. [...] Philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions, and settled beliefs. Those are the risks - personal and political.
And in the face of these risks, there is a characteristic evasion. The name of the evasion is skepticism It's an ideal. [It goes something like this] we didn't resolve, once and for all, either the cases or the principles we were arguing about when we began [with the case studies]. And if Aristotle, Locke, Kant and Mill hasn't solved these questions after all these years, who are we to think that we can resolve them? So, maybe, its is just a matter of each person having his or her own set of principles, and there is nothing more to be said about it. No way of reasoning. That's the evasion of skepticism. To which I would offer the following reply:
It is true, these questions have been debated for a very long time. But the very fact that they have recurred and persisted may suggest that though they are impossible in one sense, they are unavoidable in another. And the reason they are unavoidable, the reason they are inescapable, is that we *live* some answers to this questions everyday. [...]
The aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason, and to see where it might lead...
They also call it acting "professional".Nearly all of us will lose our jobs sometime, but is there a right way to be terminated? What differentiates fired employees who make the best of their situation from those who do not? One answer is mind-set. Many 'workers' unconsciously hold a "tenure mind-set", believing in the promise of employment security. By contrast, other workers hold an "assignment mentality", seeking each job as one in a series if impermanent, career building stepping-stones. Most corporate board members and CEO's have this later mentality and consider their executives to be terminal assignments...
When the employees who hold the tenure mind-set are suddenly laid off, they can fall into three common traps: "lost identity" trap - executives who have over-identified with their jobs and feel indispensable fall into this trap and react to termination with anger and bitterness; "lost family" trap - employees who posses tight-knit, emotional bonds with co-workers feel betrayed and rejected when fired; "lost ego" trap - some introverted executives fall into this trap and they quietly retreat without negotiating termination packages.
To prepare for the eventuality of termination it is suggested that executives adopt assignment mind-set all the times. They should keep their social network alive, include a termination clause in employment contracts, and consider hiring an agent [...] By assuming control over the way they are fired, people can gain control over their careers...
As in almost all walks of life the key has been identified as Mind Gap. The paper is very well illustrated with real-life examples and handles the delicate issues with required gentleness as well as practical wisdom. Whilst the situation of job loss is almost a daily news in the high-cost and profit-centric regions, the so called low-cost locations are also catching up, for every organization would want to replicate itself albeit at a smaller scale when it creates presence in the low-cost region, and in doing so also clones its HR policies.Jobs belong to the organizations, but careers belong to the individuals.Update: HBR ran a cover story - The layoff - in their March' 09 issue. Go here for the online copy.
And, rightly so. Mahatma Gandhi, who always advocated for equanimity of all religions, was not a Buddhist, yet, without any exaggerations, he was a perfect example of one. Mahatma brought independence to his people through practising non-violence, and that is what the Lama teaches the world.
[Right: Police pull down a demonstrator along the route of the Olympic torch in London. Protesters advocating Tibet's independence disrupted the torch's path in London, Paris and San Francisco. - time.com]
[Above: Countries that have boycotted Olympics - Montreal-1976 (yellow), Moscow-1980 (blue) and Los Angeles-1984 (red).]
China has a lot at stake, for, along with it's investor 'friends', it has infused billions into infrastructure development in/around Beijing to host this event. China's business plans in terms of first breaking even, expand infrastructure at the cost of tourists' money and hyper-consume it's own products in the process, and then make billions in profit, had not accounted for Tibet - Or might have underestimated Tibet, because that's what it seems now. And I suppose that is where China is at its most vulnerable (numbers are not released by China; for London 2012 the budget is £ 9bn = ~USD 18bn). After all, it's all about Money. Threats to Beijing Olympics were first proclaimed by China (not the Dalai Lama, as some media had first reported, and then corrected. The Dalai Lama has rather favoured the Olympics, calling them a peaceful event.). One of the reasons why China had to sound the bugle could be for all those US/EU investors to help cover the grounds. It is supposed to be a very effective strategy if executed properly - let those 'western' investors resist anti-Olympics (i.e. anti-Chinese) propaganda in their respective home-land for the sake of their own invested money.economics (ĕk'ə-nŏm'ĭks, ē'kə-)
n.
1. (used with a sing. verb) The social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems.
"... the strategy is to focus market development efforts on the end-user community [who you want to use your system], not on the technical community. Specifically you want to enlist the support of the economic buyer, the line executive or manager in the end-user organization who has the profit-and-loss responsibility for the given function your product serves... [Psychologically] you should not expect to secure primary sponsorship from the IT professionals... [A new product and a paradigm shift] is not in the interest of the IT department. It means extra work for them, and it exposes their mission-critical systems to additional risks... [Psychologically] it would not have been in the interest of the end users who report to the economic buyer. From their point of view, the old paradigm is more familiar and secure. In the short term, with the learning curve required to come up to speed on the new one, they are actually going to be less effective. So they may resist you as well. It is only the economic buyer, who has to pay the ongoing cost of the status quo but can no longer afford to do so, who can be counted on to be unequivocally supportive of the change..."As it happens elsewhere, so is in this example, that the strategy has the psychology and economy components in a direct interplay. Towards the end of the quote it also gives the hint that it is not simply restricted to marketing strategy, but is equally found in change management as well.
An ancient Sanskrit saying has it:
तुंडे तुंडे मतीः भिन्ना।
(tunde tunde mateehi bhinna)
Which literally means that every head has a differing mind. Less subtly, everyone has a different opinion.
It may remain unsubstantiated at this hour, but I would argue that this difference and diversity is stemming from the ‘Genetic diversity’ as found prevalent as a principle under Biodiversity as a hole. Biodiversity, in a sense, is a science of studying all the various species and their interdependence that gives the significance to the ecology and bio-ecosystem of the Earth. Taken a few logical steps further on the same line, this would translate into the social phenomenon classified as Cultural diversity, and so forth.
It is the Mind, the psychology, that divides and at the same time units all individual aspects under the single ecology of the cultural fabric.
In other words, things are as they are in the world, good or bad, because of this Diversity principle - what may be considered good for one may not be good for someone else... If one applies this theory to the state of one's living, saying that the solution to your given prevailing unfavourable personal condition lies is a certain product or service, one becomes a party to the economy. For this very principle is also an integral part of world economy. (Look around and you would find examples are aplenty.),
It is that Gap, disparity, demand vs. supply, the fundamental logic behind any economy, that gives goals and 'purposes' to individual lives in the contemporary world.
And, as we just argued, that gap, the economy, stems from Mind, the psychology.
Having said that, one may approach psychology through economy and argue that - economy also contributes into framing of an individual psychology. Which is absolutely true as well - for economy is largely responsible for the socio-political environment one lives in. This environment influences one's thought process all the way from childhood - which the psychoanalysts know as conditioning of the 'mind'.
Now, here we have Mind (the psychology) stemming from the gap (the economy).
So, I suppose it is safe to say that both of these are like best buddies, going hand-in-hand, none leading the other, nor one following the another. They are like the two aspects of the duality that is so omnipresent in the world at large.
These two, always co-joined, create what I would want to call a Mind Gap, which is perhaps more significant than all other gaps – generation gap, cultural gap, socio-political gap, et al. And it is this combination of psychology and economy that rather 'rule' and 'runs' the world.
Mind, the Gap.