A friend from a Northern country writes:
"I am likely going to the ABC Republic in the summer and we will be talking with people about Micro Enterprise Development. I’ve been thinking about your comments on usury. Micro lending could fall in that category! What is the alternative? It seems to me one is trying to get them to gain ownership of the business, and our taking a stake in that business might be counter productive? Any thoughts you may have?"
My reply:
On financing without usury: an interest-free loan is fine, a grant is fine (to a group, so that they can recycle the money between themselves and grow it through productive enterprise). Also fine, as you suggest, is your folks actually taking a stake in the local businesses – which could be counter-productive if your stake is too large. But if it is less than 50%, and if you continue to support the business with skills, expertise, contacts... then that could be very beneficial. Naturally, you don't want the local folk to feel that it is "your" business, and the level of involvement that is appropriate for your team depends on their skills/availability, but it depends much more on the local culture (as that determines whether they feel it IS "their" business)
________________________________________
His response:
Thanks, Prabhu. The challenge, as I understand it, is to even do an interest free loan in the area we are going because there is no sense of the responsibility to pay it back. I have lots of reading to do before the trip, but am looking forward to it, Lord Willing. Where we are going is very primitive,….
I replied:
I know these sorts of situations well from my own experience in India.
Usually, the sense of responsibility is lacking for 2 reasons:
(1) because the immediate needs for survival are so great that people
cannot think any further than that, and
(2) because there is an inappropriate sense of responsiblities – e.g. responsibilities to relatives and friends come before responsibilities to strangers, even though the strangers are actually giving them money and the relatives are, parasite-like, taking money….
Logically speaking, (1) needs to be addressed before (2)…. but in fact the two are tied together....as long as poor people don't save and invest productively they will never come out of the poverty trap…
What seems absolutely obvious to you and me, brought up as we are in a culture that was built by the Bible (even though people may choose to reject it), is basic notions such as the right to earning, buying and using property, and keeping your word (all this is of course declining, as the culture decays, as it must do if the Bible is rejected)….
In any case, before the money will make any difference in practice, they need instruction on what the Bible teaches about property rights, about keeping your word, about breaking with the negative aspects of the current culture while preserving the positive aspects of the current culture, and so on.
People don't have to be followers of Jesus to do this, and not all Christians are good at such things: In Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries, for example (not to speak of Hindu, Buddhist and tribal societies), there was till recently very little sense of everybody's obligation to work, of the duty to save and to apply resources wisely, of creative hospitality and philanthropy but not to people who don't deserve it if they are lazy or spendthrift. By contrast, the resurgence of Japan from the middle of the 18th century, and specially after World War II, and the current resurgence of China, is testimony to the fact that any society can put at least some Biblical principles into practice and prosper….
best
p
micro-lending, usury, property rights, Micro Enterprise Development, responsibility, paying back, survival, invest, culture, followers of Jesus, Christian, development, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu, Buddhist, tribal, hospitality, (tagname), 18th century, Biblical, China, Guptara
Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Monday, February 27, 2006
How much is "enough"?
Having listened to me on PBS, a listener wrote:
"I am an Educator, of Young Adults and of Parents, helping families to teach a responsible relationship with money. I was grateful to listen to your ideas on the Feb 26 broadcast in the series "Speaking of Faith"; you speak with clarity and insight. Where can I learn more, particularly expanding on your mention of 'Enough'?"
My reply:
"Enough" is as difficult to measure or define as is "poverty".
Here are some preliminary thoughts:
The concept of "enough" is essentially related to CONTENTMENT and PHILANTHROPY - and those are driven by a load of spiritual, cultural, economic and physical factors.
Let's start with the economic/physical ones as these are the easiest to relate to:
1. "Enough" for a poor person is obviously different from what might be "enough" for a rich person (whatever may be the definition of "poor" and "rich" in any particular society)
2. "Enough" is obviously dependent to a certain extent on whether one has dependents (parents, spouse, kids...)
3. "Enough" is obviously related to a certain extent on one's state of health
4. "Enough" is obviously tied to one's metabolic rate (people who are highly active, mentally and/or physically, need more calories!)
5. "Enough" is obviously dependent to a certain extent on one's physical characteristics (a tall, heavily-built person usually needs more food compared to a short and slightly-built person, allowing for the metabolic rate, hormonal imbalances, and so on)
6. "Enough" for poor person "A" may be different from "enough" for poor person "B", depending on whether and what sort of roof/ clothes/ job s/he already has
7. "Enough" for rich person "X" may be different from "enough" for rich person "Y", depending on their social and professional and business responsibilities – e.g. some people are required by their job or social roles to have a bigger house then they would really wish to have, as the wining and dining of guests may be part of their job. Other people may like to have a larger home because they enjoy offering hospitality to friends, relatives and strangers.
8. All the research shows that, for most people (whether rich or poor), "enough" is about 10% more than they have currently!
Spiritual/cultural factors clearly influence one's concept of enough:
A. Most pre-modern cultures (i.e. pre-Reformation ones) emphasised being comfortable with the socio-political status quo, so the perception of what was "enough" was naturally influenced by the level of prosperity of any particular society (in addition to considerations 1-7 above)
B. Reformed or "Modern" cultures (starting with the European and American, but then spreading through globalisation to many other parts of the world), both democratised individual ambition and made rapid progress possible, and insisted that, because wealth is a gift from God, it has to be used responsibly as humans have to give account to God someday of how they have spent their life and resources. As modernity spread through other parts of the world, it planted some seeds of discontent with the status quo there, by enabling people to see that it is possible to have a higher level of income and quality of life, if one adopts specific values/ attitudes/ practices. However, modernity added, to the cultural norms that existed in these areas (regarding care for family and the immediate community, some seeds regarding "responsibility" so that, as the older cultural norms faded, in most cases, these were replaced at least to a certain extent by the Protestant concept of "responsibility". The difference between the Protestant view of "responsibility" and the pre-Protestant view is basically that the pre-Protestant focused on care for family and immediate community. The Protestant version looked well beyond it, so that at least 10% of one's income has to be given away to people who should not normally expect any help from you – this derives of course from Jesus' teaching in answer to the famous question "And who is my neighbour?".
C. Post-modern cultures may be considered to have started around the 1980s with the re-emergence of the notion of the lack of objective truth. Post-modern culture is at present confined to the intellectual elite levels (e.g. university professors, post-grads, and artists) but is rapidly spreading into the rest of the population. Post-modern attitudes split into two:
(a) "if you have it, flaunt it", and
(b) "I only have it because of luck, and I should be responsible in my use of wealth" (though people who hold the latter have, in light of their own worldview, no one to be responsible to, and no particular reason to be "responsible", beyond parental/cultural conditioning; they therefore have very little to say, objectively, to anyone who takes view (a) – because people who take view (a) presumably take it because of THEIR parental/cultural conditioning).
Implications for today:
Whatever the history and the reasons, people in developed countries (such as the USA) who wish to take seriously the concept of "enough" today, may wish to ask themselves the following questions:
i. Can I be considered to have internalised the concept of "enough" if I don't give away at least 10% of my income? (NOTE: in the past, really rich people have given away up to 99% of their income – e.g. the Barclay, Rowntree and Cadbury families in the UK, and families such as Colgate and Palmolive in the USA..... There is one such person who I know personally – though only a little! ).
ii. Are the goods in my house, the size of my house, the quality of my house, the location of my house, the holidays that I take, the car that I drive (you can extend the list for yourself) at the same level as they are for those who are earning what I am earning? How can I live on less than I do live on, so that I can give away more than I do? (of course, in some matters you may want to have MORE than the average for your income-level because you want to share them with others – but beware! the human heart is highly deceptive and many people use this argument to have, say, a large house, but rarely do the sharing!)
So here's my summary: If you have three square meals a day, two pairs of clothes and some sort of roof over your head, what is "enough" is a matter of what is going on in your head and your heart.
Perhaps this will become clearer if you will allow me to conclude by telling you a short story. There was a time when we were relatively poor and living in a rather small house. A relative came to visit and, at the end of his visit that evening, I expressed my ambivalence about the visit as it had been lovely to see him but the visit had been rather short. My child innocently asked me "But, Taji (that's what the children call me), if he had wanted to stay, where would we have put him up?". My answer was the simple and traditional answer: "Dearest one, if there is space in your heart there will always be enough space in your home, however small the house may be. But if you don't have space in your heart, then there will never be enough space in your home, however large the house may be".
BTW, if you don't know the Tolstoy story, "How much land does a man need?", it is a riveting exploration of exactly the same subject, and far easier to use in teaching!
Warm regards, prayers and blessings for your important work
Prabhu
Tolstoy, enough, money, contentment, philanthropy, spiritual, cultural, economic,
physical, poor, rich, pre-modern culture, pre-Reformation, prosperity, Reformed, Modern, Post-Modern, Jesus, intellectual elite, Guptara Sphere: Related Content
"I am an Educator, of Young Adults and of Parents, helping families to teach a responsible relationship with money. I was grateful to listen to your ideas on the Feb 26 broadcast in the series "Speaking of Faith"; you speak with clarity and insight. Where can I learn more, particularly expanding on your mention of 'Enough'?"
My reply:
"Enough" is as difficult to measure or define as is "poverty".
Here are some preliminary thoughts:
The concept of "enough" is essentially related to CONTENTMENT and PHILANTHROPY - and those are driven by a load of spiritual, cultural, economic and physical factors.
Let's start with the economic/physical ones as these are the easiest to relate to:
1. "Enough" for a poor person is obviously different from what might be "enough" for a rich person (whatever may be the definition of "poor" and "rich" in any particular society)
2. "Enough" is obviously dependent to a certain extent on whether one has dependents (parents, spouse, kids...)
3. "Enough" is obviously related to a certain extent on one's state of health
4. "Enough" is obviously tied to one's metabolic rate (people who are highly active, mentally and/or physically, need more calories!)
5. "Enough" is obviously dependent to a certain extent on one's physical characteristics (a tall, heavily-built person usually needs more food compared to a short and slightly-built person, allowing for the metabolic rate, hormonal imbalances, and so on)
6. "Enough" for poor person "A" may be different from "enough" for poor person "B", depending on whether and what sort of roof/ clothes/ job s/he already has
7. "Enough" for rich person "X" may be different from "enough" for rich person "Y", depending on their social and professional and business responsibilities – e.g. some people are required by their job or social roles to have a bigger house then they would really wish to have, as the wining and dining of guests may be part of their job. Other people may like to have a larger home because they enjoy offering hospitality to friends, relatives and strangers.
8. All the research shows that, for most people (whether rich or poor), "enough" is about 10% more than they have currently!
Spiritual/cultural factors clearly influence one's concept of enough:
A. Most pre-modern cultures (i.e. pre-Reformation ones) emphasised being comfortable with the socio-political status quo, so the perception of what was "enough" was naturally influenced by the level of prosperity of any particular society (in addition to considerations 1-7 above)
B. Reformed or "Modern" cultures (starting with the European and American, but then spreading through globalisation to many other parts of the world), both democratised individual ambition and made rapid progress possible, and insisted that, because wealth is a gift from God, it has to be used responsibly as humans have to give account to God someday of how they have spent their life and resources. As modernity spread through other parts of the world, it planted some seeds of discontent with the status quo there, by enabling people to see that it is possible to have a higher level of income and quality of life, if one adopts specific values/ attitudes/ practices. However, modernity added, to the cultural norms that existed in these areas (regarding care for family and the immediate community, some seeds regarding "responsibility" so that, as the older cultural norms faded, in most cases, these were replaced at least to a certain extent by the Protestant concept of "responsibility". The difference between the Protestant view of "responsibility" and the pre-Protestant view is basically that the pre-Protestant focused on care for family and immediate community. The Protestant version looked well beyond it, so that at least 10% of one's income has to be given away to people who should not normally expect any help from you – this derives of course from Jesus' teaching in answer to the famous question "And who is my neighbour?".
C. Post-modern cultures may be considered to have started around the 1980s with the re-emergence of the notion of the lack of objective truth. Post-modern culture is at present confined to the intellectual elite levels (e.g. university professors, post-grads, and artists) but is rapidly spreading into the rest of the population. Post-modern attitudes split into two:
(a) "if you have it, flaunt it", and
(b) "I only have it because of luck, and I should be responsible in my use of wealth" (though people who hold the latter have, in light of their own worldview, no one to be responsible to, and no particular reason to be "responsible", beyond parental/cultural conditioning; they therefore have very little to say, objectively, to anyone who takes view (a) – because people who take view (a) presumably take it because of THEIR parental/cultural conditioning).
Implications for today:
Whatever the history and the reasons, people in developed countries (such as the USA) who wish to take seriously the concept of "enough" today, may wish to ask themselves the following questions:
i. Can I be considered to have internalised the concept of "enough" if I don't give away at least 10% of my income? (NOTE: in the past, really rich people have given away up to 99% of their income – e.g. the Barclay, Rowntree and Cadbury families in the UK, and families such as Colgate and Palmolive in the USA..... There is one such person who I know personally – though only a little! ).
ii. Are the goods in my house, the size of my house, the quality of my house, the location of my house, the holidays that I take, the car that I drive (you can extend the list for yourself) at the same level as they are for those who are earning what I am earning? How can I live on less than I do live on, so that I can give away more than I do? (of course, in some matters you may want to have MORE than the average for your income-level because you want to share them with others – but beware! the human heart is highly deceptive and many people use this argument to have, say, a large house, but rarely do the sharing!)
So here's my summary: If you have three square meals a day, two pairs of clothes and some sort of roof over your head, what is "enough" is a matter of what is going on in your head and your heart.
Perhaps this will become clearer if you will allow me to conclude by telling you a short story. There was a time when we were relatively poor and living in a rather small house. A relative came to visit and, at the end of his visit that evening, I expressed my ambivalence about the visit as it had been lovely to see him but the visit had been rather short. My child innocently asked me "But, Taji (that's what the children call me), if he had wanted to stay, where would we have put him up?". My answer was the simple and traditional answer: "Dearest one, if there is space in your heart there will always be enough space in your home, however small the house may be. But if you don't have space in your heart, then there will never be enough space in your home, however large the house may be".
BTW, if you don't know the Tolstoy story, "How much land does a man need?", it is a riveting exploration of exactly the same subject, and far easier to use in teaching!
Warm regards, prayers and blessings for your important work
Prabhu
Tolstoy, enough, money, contentment, philanthropy, spiritual, cultural, economic,
physical, poor, rich, pre-modern culture, pre-Reformation, prosperity, Reformed, Modern, Post-Modern, Jesus, intellectual elite, Guptara Sphere: Related Content
Monday, February 20, 2006
Disruptive Innovations and Technologies
There is a fascinating discussion taking place on a particular list, which prompts the following thoughts:
Every new technology is disruptive, though some new technologies are more disruptive than others
The degree to which any particular technology is disruptive depends not only on its inherent disruptiveness (technologically and socially) but also on the degree to which it is allowed to develop its own momentum in the marketplace
Today, the technologies that are being released into society are more and more disruptive – e.g. in nano, bio, info, and robotics.
The world is divided between those who are blithely ignorant about the potential impact of these technologies, and those who are aware of it.
Those who are aware are divided between unfettered market-believers who think that all new technologies are eventually beneficial even if temporarily disruptive, and market-skeptics who think that technology-induced disruptions are not always beneficial, or might need to have their disruptiveness moderated for a while in order to have a better balance of disadvantage and benefit.
Market-skeptics are further divided between those who are principally concerned for the welfare of society as a whole, and those who are simply trying to protect vested interests – though it may be difficult to distinguish between these two groups.
For a variety of reasons, market-believers tend to focus on the upside and underplay the downside; conversely, also for a variety of reasons, market-skeptics tend to focus on the down-side and underplay the upside.
Generally, the principal and undisputed beneficiaries from the introduction of any technology tend to be the owners of that technology, though some benefit (nowadays less and less) goes to employees, suppliers and customers.
Society benefits in terms of increased "wealth-creation" but suffers in terms of the disruptive effect of the new technology. Till recently, the social benefit was large: technology tended to enlarge the middle class, principally because of new employment opportunities. But, nowadays, technology (combined with financial and other economic and political factors) is doing the opposite: technological advances are reducing the size of the middle class in Europe, America and other developed countries.
The result (well documented by any number of economists in any number of developed countries) is that the decreasing middle class is tending to splinter into a smaller fraction becoming richer and a larger fraction becoming poorer. This trend towards the decline of the middle class is offset by two developments:
(a) an increase in the size of the middle-class in "currently successful" countries such as China and India; and,
(b) greater mobility across classes, upwards as barriers to entry are lowered and new opportunities are presented by technological disruption in society, and downwards, because investment is not without its risks and hardly anyone understands the financial world as it is now (even the Fed has admitted that it does not understand all that is going on in the US, let alone the global, economy).
However, due to continued technological advances, the size of the middle classes in "currently successful" countries such as China and India is also going to decline (even without taking demographic factors into account).
Increasing social instability is therefore evident both in the developing and in the developed worlds.
It is easy to see why technologists and entrepreneurs are market-believers, and call for faster introduction of innovative (and disruptive) technology.
It is also clear why those who are not technologists, and those who are entrepreneurial and innovative in other areas than technology, wish to question whether further disruption of society is necessarily a good thing right now, or whether the introduction of socially-disruptive technologies might not usefully be slowed: if there is such a thing as a metabolic rate in society, is it possible that the metabolic rate was possibly too slow for the period preceding say the nineteenth century, but is becoming too fast in the twenty-first century?
When I raise points such as the above, market-believers tend to say "Nothing can stop the onward march of technology!".
However, they forget that money is what enables technological innovation to take place. Starve certain kinds of science/technology of money and that sort of science/tech tends to slow down. Improve the input of money into a particular area of science/technology, and the development of that kind of science/technology tends to speed up.
The question therefore is WHAT KIND OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS DOES GLOBAL SOCIETY MOST NEED AT PRESENT? Certainly we most need technologies that reduce our consumption of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, technologies that enable the environment to be healthier, technologies that improve family life, technologies that enhance the quality of life of the poorest and most disadvantaged. Regrettably, in spite of the self-serving publicity given to financing of technologies for these purposes, the proportion of money spent on these is actually declining. Compare, for example the amount of money spent on research into drugs for the diseases of the rich versus the amount of money spent on diseases for the poor.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Every new technology is disruptive, though some new technologies are more disruptive than others
The degree to which any particular technology is disruptive depends not only on its inherent disruptiveness (technologically and socially) but also on the degree to which it is allowed to develop its own momentum in the marketplace
Today, the technologies that are being released into society are more and more disruptive – e.g. in nano, bio, info, and robotics.
The world is divided between those who are blithely ignorant about the potential impact of these technologies, and those who are aware of it.
Those who are aware are divided between unfettered market-believers who think that all new technologies are eventually beneficial even if temporarily disruptive, and market-skeptics who think that technology-induced disruptions are not always beneficial, or might need to have their disruptiveness moderated for a while in order to have a better balance of disadvantage and benefit.
Market-skeptics are further divided between those who are principally concerned for the welfare of society as a whole, and those who are simply trying to protect vested interests – though it may be difficult to distinguish between these two groups.
For a variety of reasons, market-believers tend to focus on the upside and underplay the downside; conversely, also for a variety of reasons, market-skeptics tend to focus on the down-side and underplay the upside.
Generally, the principal and undisputed beneficiaries from the introduction of any technology tend to be the owners of that technology, though some benefit (nowadays less and less) goes to employees, suppliers and customers.
Society benefits in terms of increased "wealth-creation" but suffers in terms of the disruptive effect of the new technology. Till recently, the social benefit was large: technology tended to enlarge the middle class, principally because of new employment opportunities. But, nowadays, technology (combined with financial and other economic and political factors) is doing the opposite: technological advances are reducing the size of the middle class in Europe, America and other developed countries.
The result (well documented by any number of economists in any number of developed countries) is that the decreasing middle class is tending to splinter into a smaller fraction becoming richer and a larger fraction becoming poorer. This trend towards the decline of the middle class is offset by two developments:
(a) an increase in the size of the middle-class in "currently successful" countries such as China and India; and,
(b) greater mobility across classes, upwards as barriers to entry are lowered and new opportunities are presented by technological disruption in society, and downwards, because investment is not without its risks and hardly anyone understands the financial world as it is now (even the Fed has admitted that it does not understand all that is going on in the US, let alone the global, economy).
However, due to continued technological advances, the size of the middle classes in "currently successful" countries such as China and India is also going to decline (even without taking demographic factors into account).
Increasing social instability is therefore evident both in the developing and in the developed worlds.
It is easy to see why technologists and entrepreneurs are market-believers, and call for faster introduction of innovative (and disruptive) technology.
It is also clear why those who are not technologists, and those who are entrepreneurial and innovative in other areas than technology, wish to question whether further disruption of society is necessarily a good thing right now, or whether the introduction of socially-disruptive technologies might not usefully be slowed: if there is such a thing as a metabolic rate in society, is it possible that the metabolic rate was possibly too slow for the period preceding say the nineteenth century, but is becoming too fast in the twenty-first century?
When I raise points such as the above, market-believers tend to say "Nothing can stop the onward march of technology!".
However, they forget that money is what enables technological innovation to take place. Starve certain kinds of science/technology of money and that sort of science/tech tends to slow down. Improve the input of money into a particular area of science/technology, and the development of that kind of science/technology tends to speed up.
The question therefore is WHAT KIND OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS DOES GLOBAL SOCIETY MOST NEED AT PRESENT? Certainly we most need technologies that reduce our consumption of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, technologies that enable the environment to be healthier, technologies that improve family life, technologies that enhance the quality of life of the poorest and most disadvantaged. Regrettably, in spite of the self-serving publicity given to financing of technologies for these purposes, the proportion of money spent on these is actually declining. Compare, for example the amount of money spent on research into drugs for the diseases of the rich versus the amount of money spent on diseases for the poor.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Understanding "Islamic rage"
My last blog ended by challenging the Muslim world to make up its mind regarding whether it belongs in the modern world or whether it wants to continue to belong to the pre-modern parts of the world.
On reflection, however, I am now convinced that the reaction to the Danish cartoons is being framed the wrong way around the world.
The matter has little to do with the issue of freedom of speech or the freedom of the Press, whether in the West, or internationally. The rules for that are more or less well settled in each Western country, as well as in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights– even if those documents are not followed in many countries who are members of the UN, such as China and most so-called Islamic countries.
As we should all know by now, unlike Judaism and Christianity, the Koran does NOT forbid representations of the Prophet (PBUH), though some schools of thought among Muslims do so. There are images of the Prophet (PBUH) in a pulpit in Medina itself, in the Topkapi in Istanbul, and in museums in Bokhara, Samarkand and Isfahan itself. Most European museums have miniatures and book illuminations depicting Muhammad, at times wearing his Meccan burqa (cover) or his Medinan niqab (mask). There have even been statues of Muhammad, and several Iranian and Arab contemporary sculptors have produced busts of the prophet. One statue of Muhammad can be seen at the the U.S. Supreme Court, where the prophet is honoured as one of the great "lawgivers" of mankind. The Janissaries -- the elite of the Ottoman army – used to carry into battle a medallion stamped with the Prophet's head (sabz qaba). As for images of other Muslim prophets, they run into millions. Two years ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran honoured the painter Kamal-al-Mulk, who is famous for having painted a portrait of the Prophet (PBUH)showing him holding the Koran in one hand while the index finger of the other hand points to the Oneness of God. The rulers of Islam probably did this only because Kamal-ul-Mulk had been exiled by King Reza Shah in 1940!
Therefore, logically, the Muslims who claim to be so upset about the Danish cartoons should not burn the Danish flag, but the Iranian one!
In any case, the matter has little to do with asking people around the world to be "sensitive" to the religious concerns of their Muslim neighbours – or, for that matter, other religious neighbours: some people are sensitive, and so much the better for them; some are insensitive and so much the worse for them.
The matter has to do primarily with the need for Muslim fundamentalists to "mobilise and motivate" the Muslim masses in relation to their cause. And if they don't find Danish cartoonists and newspapermen to use for this purpose, it is clear that they will find something else to do so.
Witness the fact that "in retaliation" for the Danish ones, some Muslim leaders have come up with use of anti-Jewish cartoons - not anti-Christian cartoons or anti-modern cartoons or anti-liberal cartoons! As if Jyllens-Post, the Danish newspaper which published the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), or its editor or the people or government of Denmark had anything particular or special to do with Zionism! In any case, Zionism (as Muslims understand it today) was a bogey inherited from Hitler's fascists and their campaign to take over power in Germany and has little to do with the real issues facing a resolution of the problems in the Middle East today.
I don't deny that understanding the Danish cartoons as a "Zionist plot" is a remarkable bit of self-delusion on the part of individuals.
However, for the key instigators of the protests - the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and the Movement of the Exiles (Ghuraba) – it is merely cynical manipulation of any fact or incident or idea that might somehow be possibly twisted to suit their purposes.
The modern world should expect such tactics from such organisations.
What is worrying is when entire States get in on the act, such as Iran's cessation of trade relations with Denmark.
Why ever would any country want to do so, when it should be clear at least to the rulers of such countries that there is a completely different political and cultural context in the West, where political parties do not control the Press and Media either formally or informally?
Well the answer to that question is simple. The ruling elite in Iran too needs to use religious hysteria to continue to keep its people in thrall, at a time when the people are becoming restive, as they see through the religious masks used by their rulers to conceal their greed and corruption.
Increasing recognition of the true nature of their rulers is spreading in the Muslim world, along with a recognition of the material and civilisational benefits of the modern world, so the rulers need to find ways of distracting the populace with "threats" in order to "justify" putting in place ever more draconian measures to keep the population under their control.
If the leaders of the Muslim world really believed, for example, in the Palestinian cause, they would not have stopped funding the Palestinians simply because their then-leaderYasser Arafat supported Saddam Hussein's attack on Kuwait. The claim of Muslim leaders to genuinely support the Palistinian people would have been easier to accept if they had created ways of continuing to support the Palestinian people while trying to influence Yasser Arafat.
Instead, for years and years, the ONLY people around the world supporting the Palestinians financially were the European Union!!!
So it should be clear at least to the Palestinian people, who are their true friends and who are simply using their cause for their own nefarious purposes.
Similarly, it should be clear to Muslims who their true friends are in the current clashes and who are simply manufacturing and using "Islamic rage" for their own purposes.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
On reflection, however, I am now convinced that the reaction to the Danish cartoons is being framed the wrong way around the world.
The matter has little to do with the issue of freedom of speech or the freedom of the Press, whether in the West, or internationally. The rules for that are more or less well settled in each Western country, as well as in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights– even if those documents are not followed in many countries who are members of the UN, such as China and most so-called Islamic countries.
As we should all know by now, unlike Judaism and Christianity, the Koran does NOT forbid representations of the Prophet (PBUH), though some schools of thought among Muslims do so. There are images of the Prophet (PBUH) in a pulpit in Medina itself, in the Topkapi in Istanbul, and in museums in Bokhara, Samarkand and Isfahan itself. Most European museums have miniatures and book illuminations depicting Muhammad, at times wearing his Meccan burqa (cover) or his Medinan niqab (mask). There have even been statues of Muhammad, and several Iranian and Arab contemporary sculptors have produced busts of the prophet. One statue of Muhammad can be seen at the the U.S. Supreme Court, where the prophet is honoured as one of the great "lawgivers" of mankind. The Janissaries -- the elite of the Ottoman army – used to carry into battle a medallion stamped with the Prophet's head (sabz qaba). As for images of other Muslim prophets, they run into millions. Two years ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran honoured the painter Kamal-al-Mulk, who is famous for having painted a portrait of the Prophet (PBUH)showing him holding the Koran in one hand while the index finger of the other hand points to the Oneness of God. The rulers of Islam probably did this only because Kamal-ul-Mulk had been exiled by King Reza Shah in 1940!
Therefore, logically, the Muslims who claim to be so upset about the Danish cartoons should not burn the Danish flag, but the Iranian one!
In any case, the matter has little to do with asking people around the world to be "sensitive" to the religious concerns of their Muslim neighbours – or, for that matter, other religious neighbours: some people are sensitive, and so much the better for them; some are insensitive and so much the worse for them.
The matter has to do primarily with the need for Muslim fundamentalists to "mobilise and motivate" the Muslim masses in relation to their cause. And if they don't find Danish cartoonists and newspapermen to use for this purpose, it is clear that they will find something else to do so.
Witness the fact that "in retaliation" for the Danish ones, some Muslim leaders have come up with use of anti-Jewish cartoons - not anti-Christian cartoons or anti-modern cartoons or anti-liberal cartoons! As if Jyllens-Post, the Danish newspaper which published the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), or its editor or the people or government of Denmark had anything particular or special to do with Zionism! In any case, Zionism (as Muslims understand it today) was a bogey inherited from Hitler's fascists and their campaign to take over power in Germany and has little to do with the real issues facing a resolution of the problems in the Middle East today.
I don't deny that understanding the Danish cartoons as a "Zionist plot" is a remarkable bit of self-delusion on the part of individuals.
However, for the key instigators of the protests - the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and the Movement of the Exiles (Ghuraba) – it is merely cynical manipulation of any fact or incident or idea that might somehow be possibly twisted to suit their purposes.
The modern world should expect such tactics from such organisations.
What is worrying is when entire States get in on the act, such as Iran's cessation of trade relations with Denmark.
Why ever would any country want to do so, when it should be clear at least to the rulers of such countries that there is a completely different political and cultural context in the West, where political parties do not control the Press and Media either formally or informally?
Well the answer to that question is simple. The ruling elite in Iran too needs to use religious hysteria to continue to keep its people in thrall, at a time when the people are becoming restive, as they see through the religious masks used by their rulers to conceal their greed and corruption.
Increasing recognition of the true nature of their rulers is spreading in the Muslim world, along with a recognition of the material and civilisational benefits of the modern world, so the rulers need to find ways of distracting the populace with "threats" in order to "justify" putting in place ever more draconian measures to keep the population under their control.
If the leaders of the Muslim world really believed, for example, in the Palestinian cause, they would not have stopped funding the Palestinians simply because their then-leaderYasser Arafat supported Saddam Hussein's attack on Kuwait. The claim of Muslim leaders to genuinely support the Palistinian people would have been easier to accept if they had created ways of continuing to support the Palestinian people while trying to influence Yasser Arafat.
Instead, for years and years, the ONLY people around the world supporting the Palestinians financially were the European Union!!!
So it should be clear at least to the Palestinian people, who are their true friends and who are simply using their cause for their own nefarious purposes.
Similarly, it should be clear to Muslims who their true friends are in the current clashes and who are simply manufacturing and using "Islamic rage" for their own purposes.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
On the cafuffle regarding the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)
It may be instructive to recollect the history of the relationship between blasphemy (lack of religious "correctness") and state power in the West, something that most Westerners forget, having been secularised for two or three generations.
Representations of God are forbidden in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. However, the Christian West, from the time of the adoption of Christianity as the state religion by the Emperor Constantine in the 3rd/4th Century, started accepting representations of God and of Jesus, though various reformers tried to get the churches to go back to the original ban, with some success from the time of the Reformation (sixteenth century) onwards. One of the main differences between the Reformed (Protestant) churches and the Roman Catholic and Orthodox ones (with Anglican/Episcopal ones falling somewhere in the middle as they are not "properly Reformed" but only "half-Reformed") is that the Radically Reformed ones do not accept representations of God.
It is necessary to make a distinction between, on the one hand, the Magisterial Reformation of reformers such as Luther, which entered into collaboration with state power and do accept representations of God and, on the other hand, the Radical Reformation which does not accept representations of God, and moreover drew a sharp separation between religion and state e.g. in the USA.
Since the Catholics, Orthodox and Anglicans were integrally connected to state power, they were more interested in the concept of blasphemy, so that blasphemy laws were put in place more in such countries than in Protestant ones, which pioneered religious liberty, and were therefore more open to discussion of religion from all sorts of perspectives, including attitudes ranging from "merely negative" to that of scoffing and ridicule.
Not only were and are the Protestant areas of the world more economically successful, they were responsible for all the developments that broke the mould of the pre-modern world and created the modern world. These developments include, inter alia, universal literacy, freedom to debate and therefore free thought, the birth of modern science and technology, economic progress and political liberty. It is no exaggeration to say that, in terms of the history of ideas, what we call globalisation is simply Protestant culture without any necessary allegiance to Protestantism (with a still unresolved battle between individualistic greed and communal/global responsibility). That is why the attitude of the Protestantism (lack of interest in the concept of blasphemy) has come to mark the modern world more than the attitude of the Orthodox/ Catholics/Anglicans (and Muslims).
Gradually, the Protestant attitude has come to erode, in this as in other areas, the attitudes of the Orthodox/Catholic/Anglicans, so that such countries have gradually relaxed their blasphemy laws till these are now a dead letter (though the space previously occupied by them is now sought to be filled by laws such as the recent Racial Hatred Bill passed last week in the UK).
India is a special case, where the ruling powers have only rarely (e.g. under the Emperor Aurangzeb in the 17th century) attempted to use state power to enforce a particular religious line. That is, till recently, when the Hindu fascist parties, such as the BJP and its allies in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad) under the previous government of Mr Vajpayee tried to do so (and will no doubt do so again if they come back into power). A similar story could be told of Buddhist countries, where traditional tolerance has been replaced by militant Buddhism at the same time as the populations of the countries concerned have largely moved to modern tolerance or even indifference regarding such questions.
My own view is that one cannot have a progressive society, characterised by free markets in goods and services, without an equally free marketplace in religious ideas – because it is impossible to distinguish religious ideas from non-religious ones, or to distinguish ideologies from non-ideologies (the connection between "science" and state power has recently been documented by Philip Mirowski, _The Effortless Economy of Science?_ Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. v + 463 pp. $25 (paperback), ISBN: 0-8223-3322-8). Capitalism itself is an ideology after all and its religion-like qualities have been documented in a spate of books.
So what bearing does all this have on the matter in hand? Briefly, that in a free world, people have the right to express their opinions, including the right to make cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, of Jesus the Lord, of the Buddha, or of any other leader, religious or secular. Equally, individuals and groups (whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or owing allegiance to any other ideology/religion), have the right to be offended, to withdraw their custom/patronage and to express their outrage in any form – except violence.
Of course whenever one takes that view, one has to be aware that one is taking the view that was pioneered by the Radical Reformation and is what distinguishes the modern world from the Islamic world.
Islam has to decide whether it belongs in the modern world pioneered by Protestantism, or whether it will continue to belong to the mental world of the pre-Protestant (that is, pre-modern) parts of the world.
yours sincerely
Prabhu Guptara Sphere: Related Content
Representations of God are forbidden in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. However, the Christian West, from the time of the adoption of Christianity as the state religion by the Emperor Constantine in the 3rd/4th Century, started accepting representations of God and of Jesus, though various reformers tried to get the churches to go back to the original ban, with some success from the time of the Reformation (sixteenth century) onwards. One of the main differences between the Reformed (Protestant) churches and the Roman Catholic and Orthodox ones (with Anglican/Episcopal ones falling somewhere in the middle as they are not "properly Reformed" but only "half-Reformed") is that the Radically Reformed ones do not accept representations of God.
It is necessary to make a distinction between, on the one hand, the Magisterial Reformation of reformers such as Luther, which entered into collaboration with state power and do accept representations of God and, on the other hand, the Radical Reformation which does not accept representations of God, and moreover drew a sharp separation between religion and state e.g. in the USA.
Since the Catholics, Orthodox and Anglicans were integrally connected to state power, they were more interested in the concept of blasphemy, so that blasphemy laws were put in place more in such countries than in Protestant ones, which pioneered religious liberty, and were therefore more open to discussion of religion from all sorts of perspectives, including attitudes ranging from "merely negative" to that of scoffing and ridicule.
Not only were and are the Protestant areas of the world more economically successful, they were responsible for all the developments that broke the mould of the pre-modern world and created the modern world. These developments include, inter alia, universal literacy, freedom to debate and therefore free thought, the birth of modern science and technology, economic progress and political liberty. It is no exaggeration to say that, in terms of the history of ideas, what we call globalisation is simply Protestant culture without any necessary allegiance to Protestantism (with a still unresolved battle between individualistic greed and communal/global responsibility). That is why the attitude of the Protestantism (lack of interest in the concept of blasphemy) has come to mark the modern world more than the attitude of the Orthodox/ Catholics/Anglicans (and Muslims).
Gradually, the Protestant attitude has come to erode, in this as in other areas, the attitudes of the Orthodox/Catholic/Anglicans, so that such countries have gradually relaxed their blasphemy laws till these are now a dead letter (though the space previously occupied by them is now sought to be filled by laws such as the recent Racial Hatred Bill passed last week in the UK).
India is a special case, where the ruling powers have only rarely (e.g. under the Emperor Aurangzeb in the 17th century) attempted to use state power to enforce a particular religious line. That is, till recently, when the Hindu fascist parties, such as the BJP and its allies in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad) under the previous government of Mr Vajpayee tried to do so (and will no doubt do so again if they come back into power). A similar story could be told of Buddhist countries, where traditional tolerance has been replaced by militant Buddhism at the same time as the populations of the countries concerned have largely moved to modern tolerance or even indifference regarding such questions.
My own view is that one cannot have a progressive society, characterised by free markets in goods and services, without an equally free marketplace in religious ideas – because it is impossible to distinguish religious ideas from non-religious ones, or to distinguish ideologies from non-ideologies (the connection between "science" and state power has recently been documented by Philip Mirowski, _The Effortless Economy of Science?_ Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. v + 463 pp. $25 (paperback), ISBN: 0-8223-3322-8). Capitalism itself is an ideology after all and its religion-like qualities have been documented in a spate of books.
So what bearing does all this have on the matter in hand? Briefly, that in a free world, people have the right to express their opinions, including the right to make cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, of Jesus the Lord, of the Buddha, or of any other leader, religious or secular. Equally, individuals and groups (whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or owing allegiance to any other ideology/religion), have the right to be offended, to withdraw their custom/patronage and to express their outrage in any form – except violence.
Of course whenever one takes that view, one has to be aware that one is taking the view that was pioneered by the Radical Reformation and is what distinguishes the modern world from the Islamic world.
Islam has to decide whether it belongs in the modern world pioneered by Protestantism, or whether it will continue to belong to the mental world of the pre-Protestant (that is, pre-modern) parts of the world.
yours sincerely
Prabhu Guptara Sphere: Related Content
Friday, January 13, 2006
The destruction of words, language and thought - 1
The language used in economic, financial, management and business writing seems to me to be getting more and more lax.
Take the following headline in an electronic newsletter from one of the most respected firms in the world: "Corporate governance in emerging economies: stronger boards boost performance".
In order to keep the discussion at a digestible lenght on this Blog, let us take for our purposes today only the use of the word "boost".
This indicates a strong sudden upward thrust, not merely gentle improvement. So, for what kind of improvement in performance should one use "boost performance" rather than "improve performance"? Clearly, when the improvement in performance becomes unusually strong.
Is any such improvement indicated in the article concerned? No.
So the word "boost" has been used in the headline simply because it seems the stronger word to use - not because the stronger word fits the facts of the case.
This tendency to use "strong" words even when a "weaker" word is more fitting, devalues the "strong" word and makes it unfit for any use at all. If every little improvement is to be described as a "boost", what words does one have left to describe genuinely above-average performance improvement? Clearly, only long and cumbersome words such as "outperformance".
Now that's a perfectly good word in itself, but it is not the sort of word that fits easily into a headline. Can you imagine a headline such as "Stronger boards outperform performance"? NO! So, what about "Stronger boards help outperformance"? Well, pretty inelegant, really.
The solution lies in trying to use the right word for the right occasion, not merely the strongest word that occurs to one.
Consider that a hammer is entirely appropriate if one wants to drive in a nail, but it is not the right instrument if the nail needs to be taken out. On the other hand, a hammer is nowhere near appropriate if one what has to put in or take out is a screw! And not every hammer is right for every nail: some hammers can be too big, others too small.
If one uses the wrong instrument, or an instrument of the wrong size, it is not only the nail or the screw that can get ruined but sometimes the wood itself can get damaged.
In the same way, the tendency to avoid thinking about the words one uses and, instead, to use the first word that comes to hand, distorts otherwise good words - and, in the end, damages language - which is the instrument with which we think. So the result is damaged thinking.
A point that we will explore further in my next Blog on the subject (whenever I have time to get around to it!)
FINITO Sphere: Related Content
Take the following headline in an electronic newsletter from one of the most respected firms in the world: "Corporate governance in emerging economies: stronger boards boost performance".
In order to keep the discussion at a digestible lenght on this Blog, let us take for our purposes today only the use of the word "boost".
This indicates a strong sudden upward thrust, not merely gentle improvement. So, for what kind of improvement in performance should one use "boost performance" rather than "improve performance"? Clearly, when the improvement in performance becomes unusually strong.
Is any such improvement indicated in the article concerned? No.
So the word "boost" has been used in the headline simply because it seems the stronger word to use - not because the stronger word fits the facts of the case.
This tendency to use "strong" words even when a "weaker" word is more fitting, devalues the "strong" word and makes it unfit for any use at all. If every little improvement is to be described as a "boost", what words does one have left to describe genuinely above-average performance improvement? Clearly, only long and cumbersome words such as "outperformance".
Now that's a perfectly good word in itself, but it is not the sort of word that fits easily into a headline. Can you imagine a headline such as "Stronger boards outperform performance"? NO! So, what about "Stronger boards help outperformance"? Well, pretty inelegant, really.
The solution lies in trying to use the right word for the right occasion, not merely the strongest word that occurs to one.
Consider that a hammer is entirely appropriate if one wants to drive in a nail, but it is not the right instrument if the nail needs to be taken out. On the other hand, a hammer is nowhere near appropriate if one what has to put in or take out is a screw! And not every hammer is right for every nail: some hammers can be too big, others too small.
If one uses the wrong instrument, or an instrument of the wrong size, it is not only the nail or the screw that can get ruined but sometimes the wood itself can get damaged.
In the same way, the tendency to avoid thinking about the words one uses and, instead, to use the first word that comes to hand, distorts otherwise good words - and, in the end, damages language - which is the instrument with which we think. So the result is damaged thinking.
A point that we will explore further in my next Blog on the subject (whenever I have time to get around to it!)
FINITO Sphere: Related Content
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Japan's Population and National Budget are Shrinking – So how come Guptara argues that its Economy will Expand to Number One by 2020?
I have just finished writing an article on why Japan (and neither China nor India) will become the number one economy in the world by 2020. The editor tells me that he is making it the lead article in the edition of The Globalist in the week after next. So you might like to watch out for it.
In the meanwhile, the figures for the Japanese national budget for 2006 make interesting reading.
Inspite of an economy that has been in the doldrums for nearly a third of a century, Japan marked a fifth straight yearly increase in R&D expenditure, to a record 17 trillion yen. In percentage of gross domestic product, the R&D expenditure remained at an all-time high 3.35% and is among the world's highest. BTW, the number of researchers in Japan has also increased to a record 790,900.
That is particularly notable in view of the fact that, at the same time, Japan has set its LOWEST national budget in 8 years, down from 82.18 Trillion Yen in 2005 to 79.69 Trillion Yen in 2006. So what's being cut? Tax grants to local governments will go down to 14.56 trillion Yen (that's 1.53 trillion less than last year) and there will be a cut of 920 billion Yen in other areas of policy-related expenditure, so that comes down to 46.37 trillion Yen. General spending is going to include a 4.4% cut to public works projects. In brief, that's pain for general welfare, gain for science and technology.
I also see that, according to a survey by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan's population has started to shrink for the first time ever this year (2005). The number of births fell to a record low of 1,067,000 and the number of deaths increased by 48,000 to 1,077,000. The balance between births and deaths is therefore minus 10,000 – representing the first natural decline in Japan's population since records started being kept in 1899. Political and business circles are apparently taken aback at the drop in population. In 2002, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research had predicted that the country's population (including immigrants) would begin to decline only in 2007. The concern is that the decline in the birth rate will begin to lead to a decline in the working population and therefore a decline in GDP and consumption, and that the decline in the number of workers would make it difficult to maintain social security.
This is typical of bureaucratic nationalistic thinking which makes it impossible to see the effects of the robotic revolution that Japan is launching.
BTW even The Japan Robot Association (JARA) suffers from this kind of compartmentalised nationalism. The history of JARA, a voluntary organization, goes back to March 1971, and records its aims as furthering "the development of the robot manufacturing industry by encouraging research and development on robots and associated system products and promoting the use of robot technology. Through this, the Association strives to promote the use of advanced technology in industry and to enhance the welfare of the nation".
Note that there is apparently no understanding or concern for the impact of robots on the welfare of humanity as a whole. But that is not surprising, considering that robots will benefit Japan but create chaos in the rest of the world as Japanese robots displace most workers worldwide. That is what will happen very quickly if the current international arrangements in taxation, subsidy, retraining, education, finance, monetary policy and so on don't change rapidly - as I have been urging for some time now.
If you are not aware of my recommendations, read the article in The Globlalist, the week after next.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
In the meanwhile, the figures for the Japanese national budget for 2006 make interesting reading.
Inspite of an economy that has been in the doldrums for nearly a third of a century, Japan marked a fifth straight yearly increase in R&D expenditure, to a record 17 trillion yen. In percentage of gross domestic product, the R&D expenditure remained at an all-time high 3.35% and is among the world's highest. BTW, the number of researchers in Japan has also increased to a record 790,900.
That is particularly notable in view of the fact that, at the same time, Japan has set its LOWEST national budget in 8 years, down from 82.18 Trillion Yen in 2005 to 79.69 Trillion Yen in 2006. So what's being cut? Tax grants to local governments will go down to 14.56 trillion Yen (that's 1.53 trillion less than last year) and there will be a cut of 920 billion Yen in other areas of policy-related expenditure, so that comes down to 46.37 trillion Yen. General spending is going to include a 4.4% cut to public works projects. In brief, that's pain for general welfare, gain for science and technology.
I also see that, according to a survey by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan's population has started to shrink for the first time ever this year (2005). The number of births fell to a record low of 1,067,000 and the number of deaths increased by 48,000 to 1,077,000. The balance between births and deaths is therefore minus 10,000 – representing the first natural decline in Japan's population since records started being kept in 1899. Political and business circles are apparently taken aback at the drop in population. In 2002, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research had predicted that the country's population (including immigrants) would begin to decline only in 2007. The concern is that the decline in the birth rate will begin to lead to a decline in the working population and therefore a decline in GDP and consumption, and that the decline in the number of workers would make it difficult to maintain social security.
This is typical of bureaucratic nationalistic thinking which makes it impossible to see the effects of the robotic revolution that Japan is launching.
BTW even The Japan Robot Association (JARA) suffers from this kind of compartmentalised nationalism. The history of JARA, a voluntary organization, goes back to March 1971, and records its aims as furthering "the development of the robot manufacturing industry by encouraging research and development on robots and associated system products and promoting the use of robot technology. Through this, the Association strives to promote the use of advanced technology in industry and to enhance the welfare of the nation".
Note that there is apparently no understanding or concern for the impact of robots on the welfare of humanity as a whole. But that is not surprising, considering that robots will benefit Japan but create chaos in the rest of the world as Japanese robots displace most workers worldwide. That is what will happen very quickly if the current international arrangements in taxation, subsidy, retraining, education, finance, monetary policy and so on don't change rapidly - as I have been urging for some time now.
If you are not aware of my recommendations, read the article in The Globlalist, the week after next.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Saturday, December 31, 2005
On the British Court of Appeal's grant, to a Muslim schoolgirl, of the right to wear the hijab, in a uniform-wearing school
In March 2005, a Muslim girl was given the right to wear the traditional Muslim dress, the hijab (or, in Bengali, the jibab) in schools that have, up to now, had a school uniform.
This is as unhelpful a decision as the decision was some years ago for Sikh boys to be allowed to wear a turban in school.
Neither is essential to the religions concerned, according to their own texts.
A turban is a traditional sign being "respectable" in traditional Indian society and is worn by people of EVERY religion in India either all the time in public (for example, among landlords) or on appropriate public or ceremonial occasions (e.g. marriage). Sikhism elevated all converts to sikhism to the upper-caste and the turban was the sign of this elevation.
Similarly, the neither the Koran nor the Hadith says anything about wearing the long shapeless robe that was traditional for women in the Arab world and has now become part of the fashion for some religiously-committed Muslims also in other parts of the world.
What Islam is adamant on (and, in my opinion, given the sorts of minds men have, the Islam is quite correctly adamant on this) is that women should be modestly and fully dressed.
That requirement does not have to be met by a jibab. It can be met as fully with a school uniform as it can by a salwar kameez (traditional dress among Muslims and NON-Muslims in Pakistan, North India and areas of the world influenced by fashions there).
The requirement can also be met by long Western dresses.
By contrast, there are now some highly expensive and fashionable long Arabian dresses, that are supposed to be hijabs, that can be quite as sexually-provocative as any short Western dress.
The ignorance of Cherie Blair in representing this case is only topped by the unbelievable ignorance of the British Appeal Court.
We will next be told that all sorts of other totally non-Islamic things are also "fundamental" to practicing Islam.
These kinds of decisions do nothing to bring the law into respect with most British people today, whether they be Asians or others.
So this is now the end of the school uniform, which has been the single greatest leveller of class in the UK.
We will now have materialists who will no doubt claim that it is part of their fundamental right to practice their religion to wear diamond-encrusted clothes and accoutrements to school – leaving those students who can't afford these, or whose parents on principle object to such displays of wealth, feeling like second-class citizens.
Shame on the Labour Party for further accentuating such nonsensical divisions within schools.
This "victory" for Islam is a classic case of winning on something superficial, while losing thereby something equally valuable and much more important: equality in schools.
In Western societies, Muslims ought to focus on decreasing, not increasing, class differences.
In British society (unlike most Islamic societies), the girl concerned certainly has the right to wear whatever she wants outside school, and she would of course continue to have the right to wear whatever she likes after she finishes school.
There are much bigger and more important battles for Islam to fight. In so-called "Islamic" societies, Muslims need to focus their energies on working towards freedom of religion, as freedom of thought is the fundamental building block of personal happiness, social well-being and economic prosperity - and all of these are at risk in all so-called "Islamic" societies today.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
This is as unhelpful a decision as the decision was some years ago for Sikh boys to be allowed to wear a turban in school.
Neither is essential to the religions concerned, according to their own texts.
A turban is a traditional sign being "respectable" in traditional Indian society and is worn by people of EVERY religion in India either all the time in public (for example, among landlords) or on appropriate public or ceremonial occasions (e.g. marriage). Sikhism elevated all converts to sikhism to the upper-caste and the turban was the sign of this elevation.
Similarly, the neither the Koran nor the Hadith says anything about wearing the long shapeless robe that was traditional for women in the Arab world and has now become part of the fashion for some religiously-committed Muslims also in other parts of the world.
What Islam is adamant on (and, in my opinion, given the sorts of minds men have, the Islam is quite correctly adamant on this) is that women should be modestly and fully dressed.
That requirement does not have to be met by a jibab. It can be met as fully with a school uniform as it can by a salwar kameez (traditional dress among Muslims and NON-Muslims in Pakistan, North India and areas of the world influenced by fashions there).
The requirement can also be met by long Western dresses.
By contrast, there are now some highly expensive and fashionable long Arabian dresses, that are supposed to be hijabs, that can be quite as sexually-provocative as any short Western dress.
The ignorance of Cherie Blair in representing this case is only topped by the unbelievable ignorance of the British Appeal Court.
We will next be told that all sorts of other totally non-Islamic things are also "fundamental" to practicing Islam.
These kinds of decisions do nothing to bring the law into respect with most British people today, whether they be Asians or others.
So this is now the end of the school uniform, which has been the single greatest leveller of class in the UK.
We will now have materialists who will no doubt claim that it is part of their fundamental right to practice their religion to wear diamond-encrusted clothes and accoutrements to school – leaving those students who can't afford these, or whose parents on principle object to such displays of wealth, feeling like second-class citizens.
Shame on the Labour Party for further accentuating such nonsensical divisions within schools.
This "victory" for Islam is a classic case of winning on something superficial, while losing thereby something equally valuable and much more important: equality in schools.
In Western societies, Muslims ought to focus on decreasing, not increasing, class differences.
In British society (unlike most Islamic societies), the girl concerned certainly has the right to wear whatever she wants outside school, and she would of course continue to have the right to wear whatever she likes after she finishes school.
There are much bigger and more important battles for Islam to fight. In so-called "Islamic" societies, Muslims need to focus their energies on working towards freedom of religion, as freedom of thought is the fundamental building block of personal happiness, social well-being and economic prosperity - and all of these are at risk in all so-called "Islamic" societies today.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Monday, December 26, 2005
The Demonisation of Regulation
The global elites have now made it politically correct to demonise regulation.
All attempts at any kind of regulation are regularly ridiculed by them.
Particular bits of regulation can of course be incompetent or worse.
But the solution to bad bits of regulation is the right political process so that it can turn out the right kind of regulation.
Without government regulation, all business activity would immediately cease.
Why? Because money is itself a product of government regulation, as are the existence of the Internet and the financial agreements which make international trade possible.
The global elites understand this very well.
That is why, alongside demonising regulation in public, they privately spend such vast sums of money in lobbying politicians to try to ensure that regulation benefits themselves!
In a discussion on a private e-mail discussion group, I called for taxation on the development and implementation of a particular technology. A representative of a large multinational company responded that my observation and analysis were entirely correct, but that my solution was not, because "nothing good ever came out of regulation".
I felt like asking (but politely did not, specially as there were more substantial issues at stake) how much his corporation had spent on lobbying every single day in the last 12 months.
Routine demonisation of government regulations started in the USA. Tom Delay, till recently arguably the most powerful man in the US congress, started his very successful political career in the 1980's crusading against environmental regulations he saw as "unfairly" constraining his Texas-based pest control business.
Today, this demonisation has spread worldwide and, to my surprise, I find otherwise good-hearted and publicly-spirited people falling prey to this political correctness.
People who are good-hearted and publicly-spirited should undoubtedly decry all bad legislation and regulation. But we should also try to work toward the right political processes, so that the best kind of regulation and legislation is produced.
Today, what is vitiating the legislative and regulatory process is not only this kind of demonisation of regulation (and indeed of all politics) but also the weakening of politics. That is, in turn, the result of the weakening of the civic impulse in the West (in the rest of the world it was never as strong anyway). And the civic impulse was itself the result, as I have pointed out elsewhere, of the European Reformation with its strong emphasis on duties rather than rights - an emphasis that began to be weakened by the French Revolution, which emphasised rights instead – with results that are plain for all to see.
So we need to kick aside the debilitating effects of the French Revolution and get back to the public spirited sense of duty that was inculcated by the European Reformation.
Of course, we don't all have to be Evangelicals and Protestants if we want our countries to have public-spiritedness, good-heartedness, proper legislation and healthy politics. But it is essential to find ways of inculcating in the masses that sense of duty which alone leads to healthy politics.
Through history, Marxism, Nationalism and various other "isms" have succeeded in inculcating a sense of duty, but none of them have done so as effectively or with such long-lasting effect as the Reformation. Countries which were most influenced by the Reformation remain to this day the countries which have the most extensively-demonstrated sense of duty, public spirit, good-heartedness, clean politics and responsible legislation.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
All attempts at any kind of regulation are regularly ridiculed by them.
Particular bits of regulation can of course be incompetent or worse.
But the solution to bad bits of regulation is the right political process so that it can turn out the right kind of regulation.
Without government regulation, all business activity would immediately cease.
Why? Because money is itself a product of government regulation, as are the existence of the Internet and the financial agreements which make international trade possible.
The global elites understand this very well.
That is why, alongside demonising regulation in public, they privately spend such vast sums of money in lobbying politicians to try to ensure that regulation benefits themselves!
In a discussion on a private e-mail discussion group, I called for taxation on the development and implementation of a particular technology. A representative of a large multinational company responded that my observation and analysis were entirely correct, but that my solution was not, because "nothing good ever came out of regulation".
I felt like asking (but politely did not, specially as there were more substantial issues at stake) how much his corporation had spent on lobbying every single day in the last 12 months.
Routine demonisation of government regulations started in the USA. Tom Delay, till recently arguably the most powerful man in the US congress, started his very successful political career in the 1980's crusading against environmental regulations he saw as "unfairly" constraining his Texas-based pest control business.
Today, this demonisation has spread worldwide and, to my surprise, I find otherwise good-hearted and publicly-spirited people falling prey to this political correctness.
People who are good-hearted and publicly-spirited should undoubtedly decry all bad legislation and regulation. But we should also try to work toward the right political processes, so that the best kind of regulation and legislation is produced.
Today, what is vitiating the legislative and regulatory process is not only this kind of demonisation of regulation (and indeed of all politics) but also the weakening of politics. That is, in turn, the result of the weakening of the civic impulse in the West (in the rest of the world it was never as strong anyway). And the civic impulse was itself the result, as I have pointed out elsewhere, of the European Reformation with its strong emphasis on duties rather than rights - an emphasis that began to be weakened by the French Revolution, which emphasised rights instead – with results that are plain for all to see.
So we need to kick aside the debilitating effects of the French Revolution and get back to the public spirited sense of duty that was inculcated by the European Reformation.
Of course, we don't all have to be Evangelicals and Protestants if we want our countries to have public-spiritedness, good-heartedness, proper legislation and healthy politics. But it is essential to find ways of inculcating in the masses that sense of duty which alone leads to healthy politics.
Through history, Marxism, Nationalism and various other "isms" have succeeded in inculcating a sense of duty, but none of them have done so as effectively or with such long-lasting effect as the Reformation. Countries which were most influenced by the Reformation remain to this day the countries which have the most extensively-demonstrated sense of duty, public spirit, good-heartedness, clean politics and responsible legislation.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Movie review: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
Just back from business travels in India and Jordan (which concluded nearly 16 weeks of more or less unceasing travel), the family whisked me off for a couple of days skiing in the Swiss Alps, after which we came back to the beautiful Christmas Eve service at the International Protestant Church in Zurich (standing room only!) with its Zurich Opera singers and Conductor, who outdid themselves this year.
Then on to the next hightlight, director Andrew Adamson's cinematic retelling of C S Lewis's classic THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. I should say that I know the story only from dim memories of overhearing my wife reading it at bedtime to the kids a couple of decades ago. However, I do remember seeing the BBC film of the story, so the inevitable comparison in my mind was with that.
First, I must say that Adamson's version is thoroughly enjoyable, and I warmly recommend it.
Then, I probably ought to say that as the BBC version was more "British", it was probably more in keeping with the spirit of the original story (all the villains in the Adamson version story have American accents!). And the BBC version's Ice Queen (or Witch) was more striking (more deliberately beautiful, so more likely to gain at least initially to attract one character's as well as the audience). Apart from that, the two versions are comparably good, with a greater use of special effects in this version.
For those who don't know the story, here is my summary of it (no doubt a melange of memories from long ago, the BBC version and this version!):
The four young Pevensie children are evacuated (as so many other children were) to a country estate while London suffers under the German Blitz during World War II. There, the bored kids—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy—discover a mysterious wardrobe that leads them all to a land called Narnia, which has familiar elements from our world as well as fantastical creatures from Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology. An Evil Witch (the Ice Queen) has usurped Narnia from its rightful owner, Aslan the Lion, and keeps Narnia in a perpetual state of winter (with no hope of Christmas, let alone Spring). It turns out that the arrival of the two Sons of Adam and the two Daughters of Eve in Narnia has a unique role to play in fulfilling an ancient prophecy so that the witch's spell will be broken and her reign ended. One of them (Edmund) betrays the rest to the Ice Queen, with the result that, when he is rescued, she demands his life. Aslan offers his own life instead, and is killed by the triumphant Ice Queen, leaving a transformed Peter and company to lead Aslan's troops in a valiant but losing battle against the hordes led by the Queen. However, Aslan is miraculously restored to life and intervenes in the battle, so that the Foursome are, at the end, elevated to four royal thrones, before Aslan leaves.
Adamson's film, and especially Georgie Henley as Lucy, convey wonderfully Lewis's childlike entrancement in the story and though I have various minor cavils, there is excellent use of motion picture technology, particularly in the visualization of C.S. Lewis' beloved creatures.
However, the highlight of the film, for me, is James McAvoy's acting as the faun Tumnus, with human torso and lower body of a goat - believably awkward but comfortable.
One word of warning. When you go to see the film, don't walk out when the credits begin to roll: the final scenes of the film are still to come before the final roll of credits continues.
I am not sure why Adamson took to this gimmick. It detracts from the film: the cinema that I was in opened the doors at this point and several people got up to leave (this probably happens in other cinemas too!), depriving the final scenes of the film of some of their poignance.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Then on to the next hightlight, director Andrew Adamson's cinematic retelling of C S Lewis's classic THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. I should say that I know the story only from dim memories of overhearing my wife reading it at bedtime to the kids a couple of decades ago. However, I do remember seeing the BBC film of the story, so the inevitable comparison in my mind was with that.
First, I must say that Adamson's version is thoroughly enjoyable, and I warmly recommend it.
Then, I probably ought to say that as the BBC version was more "British", it was probably more in keeping with the spirit of the original story (all the villains in the Adamson version story have American accents!). And the BBC version's Ice Queen (or Witch) was more striking (more deliberately beautiful, so more likely to gain at least initially to attract one character's as well as the audience). Apart from that, the two versions are comparably good, with a greater use of special effects in this version.
For those who don't know the story, here is my summary of it (no doubt a melange of memories from long ago, the BBC version and this version!):
The four young Pevensie children are evacuated (as so many other children were) to a country estate while London suffers under the German Blitz during World War II. There, the bored kids—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy—discover a mysterious wardrobe that leads them all to a land called Narnia, which has familiar elements from our world as well as fantastical creatures from Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology. An Evil Witch (the Ice Queen) has usurped Narnia from its rightful owner, Aslan the Lion, and keeps Narnia in a perpetual state of winter (with no hope of Christmas, let alone Spring). It turns out that the arrival of the two Sons of Adam and the two Daughters of Eve in Narnia has a unique role to play in fulfilling an ancient prophecy so that the witch's spell will be broken and her reign ended. One of them (Edmund) betrays the rest to the Ice Queen, with the result that, when he is rescued, she demands his life. Aslan offers his own life instead, and is killed by the triumphant Ice Queen, leaving a transformed Peter and company to lead Aslan's troops in a valiant but losing battle against the hordes led by the Queen. However, Aslan is miraculously restored to life and intervenes in the battle, so that the Foursome are, at the end, elevated to four royal thrones, before Aslan leaves.
Adamson's film, and especially Georgie Henley as Lucy, convey wonderfully Lewis's childlike entrancement in the story and though I have various minor cavils, there is excellent use of motion picture technology, particularly in the visualization of C.S. Lewis' beloved creatures.
However, the highlight of the film, for me, is James McAvoy's acting as the faun Tumnus, with human torso and lower body of a goat - believably awkward but comfortable.
One word of warning. When you go to see the film, don't walk out when the credits begin to roll: the final scenes of the film are still to come before the final roll of credits continues.
I am not sure why Adamson took to this gimmick. It detracts from the film: the cinema that I was in opened the doors at this point and several people got up to leave (this probably happens in other cinemas too!), depriving the final scenes of the film of some of their poignance.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Sunday, December 25, 2005
The Corruption of Ideals in our Time
Having just been in Delhi for a week, travelling around on business, I could not help noticing the enormous increase in the number, size and spendour of the temples there.
In my youth, Delhi had only one Hindu temple with any size and that was the Birla Mandir. Though architecturally impressive, it is not particularly splendid, and the Birla family achieved a nice balance (to my mind) between creating something attractive on the one hand, and something reasonably in keeping with the spirit of most Indians.
The recent penchant for temple-expansion and temple-glory reminds me of Europe in the 14th to 16th centuries when all the splendid Roman Catholic cathedrals were built.
Europe was then, as India is now, increasingly corrupt, with religion itself part of that corruption.
In conversation in India, you will find any number of people ready to regale you with tales of the corruption and the incredible wealth of Indian "religious leaders".
When religion itself becomes a corrupting influence then there is no hope for the masses.
And we are now witnessing the world-wide corruption not only of religion but also of idealism of all sorts.
There are now innumerable examples of people using "high and noble and apparently humanistic" objectives only to make money for themselves. The biggest secular temple in the world, the World Economic Forum in Davos, is (as far as I can make out) one such example. Various gurus (from different religious traditions!) are other examples. I am not saying that all gurus are charlatans or that WEF necessarily belong in this category till one has evidence one way or the other.
But we have sadly reached a situation worldwide that one has to be specially careful and suspicious when people invoke what is "high and noble and humanistic". Or, to put it differently, the more "high and noble and humanistic" the aims of the individual or organisation, the more careful and suspicious one needs to be....
Idealistic people can be gullible and that tendency has always been exploited by the hypocritical – think back to Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale in the 14th Century!
That is why there has always been a danger of "dharma" (principles, ideals, values, religion) becoming "dhanda" (business).
Of course idealisms and religions do not have to become corrupt and corrupting. Religion can also be a great cleansing and progressive force, as it was in Reformation Europe, when it struggled with a corrupt and corrupting Roman Catholicism and finally to a large extend cleaning up feudal society and transforming it into what we would today call a modern society.
Similarly, as I have pointed out elsewhere, religion was an enormous positive force in early nineteenth century England, where the Evangelical movement both saved the nation from revolution and cleaned it up, transforming one of the most corrupt countries (including a corrupt and corrupting religion) and making it one of the cleanest that history had known till then. I am not saying that Victorian England was perfect. I am saying merely that in terms of social and environmental concern, political freedom and public justice, no society till then had achieved what it did (and this involved, moreover, cleaning up as much as any colonial power had ever done in history in its colonies, by means of a relatively enlightened colonial policy). I am also saying that the achievement was entirely the fruit of the Evangelical movement.
The challenge for people of all idealistic, humanitarian and/ or religious motivations is how to match the achievements of the European Reformation and the Evangelical movement in nineteenth century England.
The sad thing is that, since the end of the Second World War, the systematic inculcation by the British and global elite of the Theory of Evolution, and the consequent rise of godlessness, has had the result that the achievements of the Reformation and Evangelicalism are understood, even in Christian circles, only "religiously" and not in terms of transformation in knowledge generation, intellectual power, economic progress, political justice and social and environmental concern.
Recovering and studying the real history of the European Reformation and of the Evangelical movement in eighteenth century England has important lessons for our struggle today to clean up idealisms, clean up religions, and focus energy on addressing the enormous challenges posed by the totalitarianism of the capitalist elite, whether in India or around the world.
That is great theory.
But how can you, in practice, tell whether someone (let us call this person Mr Krishna) is a charlatan or whether s/he is truly idealistic/religious/committed to human values?
I have 3 simple questions that I ask myself, and I commend these questions to you as a reasonable place to begin:
1. Considering other people who run charitable organisations of a size similar to that run by Mr Krishna in her/his country, does Mr Krishna have property, possessions and a lifestyle approximating the middle class among such people?
2. How sacrificially does Mr Krishna live?
3. How much of his personal income does Mr Krishna give away to people who are not related to him (by blood, marriage, caste, and so on)?
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
In my youth, Delhi had only one Hindu temple with any size and that was the Birla Mandir. Though architecturally impressive, it is not particularly splendid, and the Birla family achieved a nice balance (to my mind) between creating something attractive on the one hand, and something reasonably in keeping with the spirit of most Indians.
The recent penchant for temple-expansion and temple-glory reminds me of Europe in the 14th to 16th centuries when all the splendid Roman Catholic cathedrals were built.
Europe was then, as India is now, increasingly corrupt, with religion itself part of that corruption.
In conversation in India, you will find any number of people ready to regale you with tales of the corruption and the incredible wealth of Indian "religious leaders".
When religion itself becomes a corrupting influence then there is no hope for the masses.
And we are now witnessing the world-wide corruption not only of religion but also of idealism of all sorts.
There are now innumerable examples of people using "high and noble and apparently humanistic" objectives only to make money for themselves. The biggest secular temple in the world, the World Economic Forum in Davos, is (as far as I can make out) one such example. Various gurus (from different religious traditions!) are other examples. I am not saying that all gurus are charlatans or that WEF necessarily belong in this category till one has evidence one way or the other.
But we have sadly reached a situation worldwide that one has to be specially careful and suspicious when people invoke what is "high and noble and humanistic". Or, to put it differently, the more "high and noble and humanistic" the aims of the individual or organisation, the more careful and suspicious one needs to be....
Idealistic people can be gullible and that tendency has always been exploited by the hypocritical – think back to Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale in the 14th Century!
That is why there has always been a danger of "dharma" (principles, ideals, values, religion) becoming "dhanda" (business).
Of course idealisms and religions do not have to become corrupt and corrupting. Religion can also be a great cleansing and progressive force, as it was in Reformation Europe, when it struggled with a corrupt and corrupting Roman Catholicism and finally to a large extend cleaning up feudal society and transforming it into what we would today call a modern society.
Similarly, as I have pointed out elsewhere, religion was an enormous positive force in early nineteenth century England, where the Evangelical movement both saved the nation from revolution and cleaned it up, transforming one of the most corrupt countries (including a corrupt and corrupting religion) and making it one of the cleanest that history had known till then. I am not saying that Victorian England was perfect. I am saying merely that in terms of social and environmental concern, political freedom and public justice, no society till then had achieved what it did (and this involved, moreover, cleaning up as much as any colonial power had ever done in history in its colonies, by means of a relatively enlightened colonial policy). I am also saying that the achievement was entirely the fruit of the Evangelical movement.
The challenge for people of all idealistic, humanitarian and/ or religious motivations is how to match the achievements of the European Reformation and the Evangelical movement in nineteenth century England.
The sad thing is that, since the end of the Second World War, the systematic inculcation by the British and global elite of the Theory of Evolution, and the consequent rise of godlessness, has had the result that the achievements of the Reformation and Evangelicalism are understood, even in Christian circles, only "religiously" and not in terms of transformation in knowledge generation, intellectual power, economic progress, political justice and social and environmental concern.
Recovering and studying the real history of the European Reformation and of the Evangelical movement in eighteenth century England has important lessons for our struggle today to clean up idealisms, clean up religions, and focus energy on addressing the enormous challenges posed by the totalitarianism of the capitalist elite, whether in India or around the world.
That is great theory.
But how can you, in practice, tell whether someone (let us call this person Mr Krishna) is a charlatan or whether s/he is truly idealistic/religious/committed to human values?
I have 3 simple questions that I ask myself, and I commend these questions to you as a reasonable place to begin:
1. Considering other people who run charitable organisations of a size similar to that run by Mr Krishna in her/his country, does Mr Krishna have property, possessions and a lifestyle approximating the middle class among such people?
2. How sacrificially does Mr Krishna live?
3. How much of his personal income does Mr Krishna give away to people who are not related to him (by blood, marriage, caste, and so on)?
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Financial Bubbles, Damaged Brains and the Condition of Society Today
On 21 July this year (2005), there was an intriguing article published by Jane Spencer, a staff reporter, in The Wall Street Journal.
Titled "Lessons from the Brain Damaged Investor", it said that researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Iowa had concluded that people with an impaired ability to experience emotions might be able to make better financial decisions than other people under certain circumstances.
Intrigued, I thought I would follow up at some convenient time. That has finally arrived, and I found that the research had been published the previous month in the peer-reviewed journal, Psychological Science, so we can be confident that the study is "scientifically valid", at least from the viewpoint of the peculiar mixture of science and art that is called psychology. Actually, the research is part of a fast-growing interdisciplinary field called "neuroeconomics" that explores among other things the role biology plays in economic decision making, by combining insights from cognitive neuroscience, psychology and economics.
The fifteen brain-damaged participants who were the focus of the study had normal IQs, and the areas of their brains responsible for logic and cognitive reasoning were intact. But they had lesions in the region of the brain that controls emotions, which inhibited their ability to experience basic feelings such as fear or anxiety. The lesions were due to a range of causes, including stroke and disease, but they impaired the participants' emotional functioning in a similar manner.
In the study, the participants' lack of emotional responsiveness gave them an advantage when they played a simple investment game. The emotionally impaired players were more willing to take gambles that had high payoffs because they lacked fear. Players with undamaged brain wiring, however, were more cautious and reactive during the game, and wound up with less money at the end.
The trouble with biologists and psychologists is that they do not understand real-world finance. The way their game was constructed "rewarded" taking high risks. In the real world, high risk can sometimes equal high reward, but it can also mean high loss, or complete loss, of capital.
The highest-risk form of investment is straightforward gambling, and the returns from that are well established. If you are in love with gambling, then the best way to "play" is not to place bets, it is to set up a company that organises gambling games or, better, invest in a company that is already successful at gambling. (NOTE: I am not recommending that you be involved in gambling at all. I personally consider gambling immoral – not necessarily to participate as a gambler (that is merely financially stupid but if you enjoy the activity I can't see that a moderate amount of the activity does any harm – the problem is only that one can get "hooked" on gambling, but then one can also get "hooked" on chocolate or coffee or anything else, so it is not the coffee or the gambling that is the problem here, but one's tendency to get "hooked"); however, organising gambling as a commercial activity is immoral because it exploits the weakness of those who are most vulnerable to the "attractions" of gambling, such as emotionally and financially weak people.)
Having considered the study, I can only conclude that the researchers "fixed" the results by "fixing" the rules of their game. If you construct a game in which those who take high-risks win (which is not necessarily the case in the real world) then you will get high-risk takers winning.
The only thing that the study proves is that brain-damaged people are less able to take a balanced view of the nuances of a situation, and so are more likely to take higher (and probably unrealistic) risks.
So all that the study proves is that brain-damaged people are likely to take high risks – but we did not need the experiment to tell us that!
Modern academic activity is unfortunately now too full of such rubbish. My advice to anyone thinking of investing their lives in such research is to stay away till the researchers can learn some basic lessons about logic, experimental design and real-life economics, finance and investing.
In fact, we have known from experience for at least a hundred years that successful investing requires objectivity. To put it differently, it requires the ability to look at all the facts and come to one's own rational conclusions. It requires the ability not to be swayed by emotions such as fear or greed or ambition or what might be called the "herd factor".
On the other hand, the successful investor does have to take the "herd mentality" into account rationally as a factor in making any investment decision today, because so much of the market has stopped being driven by fundamentals. Most of the market is in fact driven by emotions as more and more "small investors" are doing their own investment and disinvestment. As these inexperienced and professionally untrained and perhaps even psychologically-unsuitable investors have entered the market in greater and greater numbers, they have changed the nature of the market from a more or less rational field, to an increasingly emotion-driven field.
The challenge as an investor is how to "sense" where the market is going, when there are no (or few) fundamentals to guide you. The current housing bubble in metropolitan areas around the world clearly illustrates the challenge. We know that, from the viewpoint of fundamentals, house prices should have started coming down a long while ago. The key questions are: WHEN will they actually start coming down and how far will they fall.
A parallel case was the IT bubble from 1998 or so till Spring 2000. No one knew when the "bust" would begin or how low prices would fall, even though it was clear (certainly from 1998) that the situation was a real bubble. But we had apparently serious students of economics, technology and finance telling us that we were in a "new economy" where the old rules did not apply. The old rules certainly did not apply in this market for a couple of years or more, but then they struck with a vengeance.
So investors who were stupid, emotionally-challenged or even brain-damaged could profit for a couple of years from a market gone mad. And they did profit. Many executives ended up in top positions simply because they were functioning in an area which "benefited" from that madness. Many CEOs earned millions who should never have been CEOs in the first place. Many companies were bought and sold that should never have been bought or sold (think AOL-TimeWarner). The ability to be genuinely objective is unfortunately too rare, whether among investors, executives or CEOs. It is easy to be influenced by what is currently fashionable or by your class or your nation or your own family.
However, the good thing is that everyone can play and you might be lucky or unlucky with your timing. The "irrational exuberance" regarding shares the late 1990s has, since then, been replaced by the "irrational exuberance" regarding housing now. Only a fool will invest in housing now. But fools can get lucky. (I am just buying a house myself at present, but that is for domestic reasons and because I have no option in the location where I need a house).
The interesting question, as more and more people enter the investment market and realise that ones needs to be either lucky or "brain damaged" in order to be successful is the following: "What are the consequences of living in a brain-damaged society such as we are producing today?" Sphere: Related Content
Titled "Lessons from the Brain Damaged Investor", it said that researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Iowa had concluded that people with an impaired ability to experience emotions might be able to make better financial decisions than other people under certain circumstances.
Intrigued, I thought I would follow up at some convenient time. That has finally arrived, and I found that the research had been published the previous month in the peer-reviewed journal, Psychological Science, so we can be confident that the study is "scientifically valid", at least from the viewpoint of the peculiar mixture of science and art that is called psychology. Actually, the research is part of a fast-growing interdisciplinary field called "neuroeconomics" that explores among other things the role biology plays in economic decision making, by combining insights from cognitive neuroscience, psychology and economics.
The fifteen brain-damaged participants who were the focus of the study had normal IQs, and the areas of their brains responsible for logic and cognitive reasoning were intact. But they had lesions in the region of the brain that controls emotions, which inhibited their ability to experience basic feelings such as fear or anxiety. The lesions were due to a range of causes, including stroke and disease, but they impaired the participants' emotional functioning in a similar manner.
In the study, the participants' lack of emotional responsiveness gave them an advantage when they played a simple investment game. The emotionally impaired players were more willing to take gambles that had high payoffs because they lacked fear. Players with undamaged brain wiring, however, were more cautious and reactive during the game, and wound up with less money at the end.
The trouble with biologists and psychologists is that they do not understand real-world finance. The way their game was constructed "rewarded" taking high risks. In the real world, high risk can sometimes equal high reward, but it can also mean high loss, or complete loss, of capital.
The highest-risk form of investment is straightforward gambling, and the returns from that are well established. If you are in love with gambling, then the best way to "play" is not to place bets, it is to set up a company that organises gambling games or, better, invest in a company that is already successful at gambling. (NOTE: I am not recommending that you be involved in gambling at all. I personally consider gambling immoral – not necessarily to participate as a gambler (that is merely financially stupid but if you enjoy the activity I can't see that a moderate amount of the activity does any harm – the problem is only that one can get "hooked" on gambling, but then one can also get "hooked" on chocolate or coffee or anything else, so it is not the coffee or the gambling that is the problem here, but one's tendency to get "hooked"); however, organising gambling as a commercial activity is immoral because it exploits the weakness of those who are most vulnerable to the "attractions" of gambling, such as emotionally and financially weak people.)
Having considered the study, I can only conclude that the researchers "fixed" the results by "fixing" the rules of their game. If you construct a game in which those who take high-risks win (which is not necessarily the case in the real world) then you will get high-risk takers winning.
The only thing that the study proves is that brain-damaged people are less able to take a balanced view of the nuances of a situation, and so are more likely to take higher (and probably unrealistic) risks.
So all that the study proves is that brain-damaged people are likely to take high risks – but we did not need the experiment to tell us that!
Modern academic activity is unfortunately now too full of such rubbish. My advice to anyone thinking of investing their lives in such research is to stay away till the researchers can learn some basic lessons about logic, experimental design and real-life economics, finance and investing.
In fact, we have known from experience for at least a hundred years that successful investing requires objectivity. To put it differently, it requires the ability to look at all the facts and come to one's own rational conclusions. It requires the ability not to be swayed by emotions such as fear or greed or ambition or what might be called the "herd factor".
On the other hand, the successful investor does have to take the "herd mentality" into account rationally as a factor in making any investment decision today, because so much of the market has stopped being driven by fundamentals. Most of the market is in fact driven by emotions as more and more "small investors" are doing their own investment and disinvestment. As these inexperienced and professionally untrained and perhaps even psychologically-unsuitable investors have entered the market in greater and greater numbers, they have changed the nature of the market from a more or less rational field, to an increasingly emotion-driven field.
The challenge as an investor is how to "sense" where the market is going, when there are no (or few) fundamentals to guide you. The current housing bubble in metropolitan areas around the world clearly illustrates the challenge. We know that, from the viewpoint of fundamentals, house prices should have started coming down a long while ago. The key questions are: WHEN will they actually start coming down and how far will they fall.
A parallel case was the IT bubble from 1998 or so till Spring 2000. No one knew when the "bust" would begin or how low prices would fall, even though it was clear (certainly from 1998) that the situation was a real bubble. But we had apparently serious students of economics, technology and finance telling us that we were in a "new economy" where the old rules did not apply. The old rules certainly did not apply in this market for a couple of years or more, but then they struck with a vengeance.
So investors who were stupid, emotionally-challenged or even brain-damaged could profit for a couple of years from a market gone mad. And they did profit. Many executives ended up in top positions simply because they were functioning in an area which "benefited" from that madness. Many CEOs earned millions who should never have been CEOs in the first place. Many companies were bought and sold that should never have been bought or sold (think AOL-TimeWarner). The ability to be genuinely objective is unfortunately too rare, whether among investors, executives or CEOs. It is easy to be influenced by what is currently fashionable or by your class or your nation or your own family.
However, the good thing is that everyone can play and you might be lucky or unlucky with your timing. The "irrational exuberance" regarding shares the late 1990s has, since then, been replaced by the "irrational exuberance" regarding housing now. Only a fool will invest in housing now. But fools can get lucky. (I am just buying a house myself at present, but that is for domestic reasons and because I have no option in the location where I need a house).
The interesting question, as more and more people enter the investment market and realise that ones needs to be either lucky or "brain damaged" in order to be successful is the following: "What are the consequences of living in a brain-damaged society such as we are producing today?" Sphere: Related Content
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Response to John Seely Brown and John Hagel III's new book, THE ONLY SUSTAINABLE EDGE
John Seely Brown and John Hagel III in their recent book The Only Sustainable Edge
suggest a three-stage future transformation in business (deepening specialization within firms; mobilizing best-in-class capabilities across enterprises; and, ultimately, accelerating learning across broad networks of enterprises). When they do this, however, they come to the limits of what is possible within our current global economic and political system.
It is entirely true that, at present, advantage does come from an institutional capacity to work closely with other highly specialized firms to get better faster. However, long-term, we need, as companies and as society, much more system-wide approaches creating a genuinely "flat" world (in Friedman's terminology) rather than merely a digitally and financially "flat" world, which is what we have at present. A genuinely "flat" world would also be "flat", for example, in terms of environmental and social legislation and infrastructural requirements.
In fact, the first two stages of their "future stages" are already occurring. Beyond their third stage (accelerating learning across broad networks of enterprises), I see the creation of genuine "mega-corporations", which will be the natural and inevitable result of their suggested "learning" phase.
How will these megacorporations be different from old-fashioned conglomerates? Well, conglomerates hold an unrelated portfolio of business for the purpose of balancing potential income over differing business cycles in different industrial sectors, and the reason they generally failed (though let us not forget that there are some outstanding successes such as GE in the USA and Virgin in the UK) was that understanding and experience of one industry does not necessarily enable you to manage another industry. Moreover, having a conglomerate was fine when the various industries in your portfolio were performing as you expected, but the structure of world industry has changed since 1989 and we have seen supposedly counter-cyclical industries converge, so that they have turned sour at very similar times. Since the business cycles have changed and the world has become increasingly chaotic, it is no longer possible with certainty to identify counter-cyclical businesses.
In any case, the essential difference between the old-style conglomerates and the new megacorporations is that the latter will leverage across industries the emerging changes in the relationship between customers and producers on the one hand, and on the other hand between producers and suppliers, producers and marketers, and producers and financiers or investors.
Megacorporations will need to employ very few people and will entirely reconstruct the value chain – again across industries - by providing customers a confidential, convenient, quick, cheap way of getting an extremely wide range of products and services (or indeed ALL products and services) with the assistance of worldwide electronic networks stretching from production to delivery. We can see this already beginning to happen with companies such as Amazon and e-bay. The first of these warehouses products, the second does not since it simply acts as a marketing platform. I think neither model will obtain, but rather a megacorporation model, in which the company handles not only the marketing, warehousing and delivery, but also the manufacture of all its products and services (Amazon has just begun to move in this direction). That Amazon and e-bay are enabled to do reasonably well even in the current world of text-based electronics should persuade us that the tendency to move in the direction of supplying all possible goods and services will be multiplied as video-based electronic nets come into being, and are complemented by networks which are designed to carry Virtual Reality as well. The first move in this direction can just be discerned as Sprint Sprint Nextel announced on the 2nd of November 2005 a partnership with the #1, #2, #4, and #7 cable (MSOs) in the US - Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Advance/Newhouse, respectively. Their mutual goal is to offer combined wireless broadband, cable video, and telephone services to consumers in a single package. This is of course not yet a megacorporation, but it testifies to the move to supplying in an increasing range of goods and services. Why is it not a merger? Why is it only a co-operative venture or partnership? Because of the Street's fixation with competences and with "sticking to one's own knitting".
There is much talk of core competences at present, but the Street will soon learn a few basic lessons. A "core competence" by itself means nothing. For example, if I am the world's expert in the structure of the Mongolian language, that by itself may not even enable me to make a living let alone become a millionnaire. The question is always: For what core competences will which market pay how much? So let us think in a clearer way about the core competences which will be required by the best-paying markets in the future. If the megacorporations which I have theorised about do in fact come into being, as I think they will, then it is fairly evident that the core competences of that world will be three principal ones: marketing-related, logistics-related and innovation-related. Anyone who can help in the brand wars which already exist and which will intensify in the times ahead will be worth a lot. So will anyone who can help re-engineer the logistics-chain. Finally innovation will be much in demand, whether it is a rich elite who come to dominate the world, or a more just world for everyone.
In this new world, the new core competences are not going to be along the old lines of industry. The core competences of the future are going to focus on only three areas:
- excellence in marketing (or, rather, excellence in recruiting and
retaining a loyal base of customers);
- excellence in organising and operating an "intelligent“/robotised value
chain; and,
- excellence in innovation (new products, services, ways of
marketing and ways of organising logistics, perhaps
through technological creativity and innovation).
These could form the basis of the "industrial divisions“ of the immediate future, though it is likely that even more genuinely massive mega-corporations will already emerge first, which will integrate such "industry divisions“.
So what are the key competences that will enable companies to survive and flourish? Let us think of that question along the following lines. At present, we are going through another phase in the world economy in which the slogan of the day is "return to roots" or "back to the core". Executives do not seem to understand that, while we built up our present level of success on the basis of our original core business, the current situation does not guarantee survival. One cannot "return to innocence". An angel with a flaming sword guards the way back to Eden! Radically new strategies are needed for our times. The key competence for the future is the willingness and ability to recreate one's company in radical fashion: much bigger or much smaller.
Today, the choice is either to shrink your company down to a suitable niche in order to enable it to continue being profitable, or to integrate existing corporate giants or, alternatively, to build from scratch the chain across industries which can supply a range of cross-sectoral products and services to the customer.
Some people do not and will not believe that this is possible. They will of course never attempt to build such megacorporations. But some people do believe this is possible. Clearly, the people who will attempt to build these megacorporations will come from the ranks of such "believers".
Many such people may fail in their attempts to build these megacorporations. It could be argued that AOLTimeWarner and Vivendi Universal were attempts to create the first such megacorporations and that these attempts have failed. But the point to remember is that just because those executives failed, or some other fail in their attempts, it does not mean that every one of those who tries to create a megacorporaton will fail - many people die in their attempts to scale mountains, but that does not prevent others from trying, and when the first hardy soul succeeds in climbing a particular mountain, he or she not only makes history, he or she reshapes our horizons regarding what is possible and indeed changes our perception of reality. In fact, Dick Parsons, the Chairman and CEO of AOL TimeWarner has recently said that he believes the AOL TimeWarner combination still makes sense and he wants to make it work better as a single corporation.
It is not "politically correct" to speak about "mega-corporations", that is why no one discusses them. The moment anyone succeeds in creating such a mega-corporation, the entire game will change, and we will go from the third stage suggested John Seely Brown and John Hagel III, to my fourth stage of mega-corporations.
In any case, you don’t need many megacorporations to succeed. In fact, not many can succeed. There is room for somewhere between, say, twelve and 25 megacorporations, depending on anti-trust activity on the part of governments. Without that activity, there is room for perhaps five megacorporations in the world.
The point to keep in mind is that today’s industrial, technological and economic logic is undoubtedly in favour of the creation of megacorporations, and that the limits to the creation of such megacorporations are set not in the worlds of industry, business, management, technology, finance and economics, but in the worlds of society and politics.
The basic issue that the world needs to address, sooner rather than later, is: should we allow such mega-corporations to be created? (Existing legislation in the USA and Europe certainly allows for their potential creation, as seen by the short-lived flourishing of AOL Time Warner and Vivendi Universal). If we do continue to allow the creation of such mega-corporations, then the basic issue for the world is: how many mega-corporations do we need or should we allow? These are of course political questions. And the mark of the age into which we are now embarked is that political, economic, business, ethical and social questions come together more and more.
Regretfully, most companies are not equipped, at present, to negotiate their way through this complex modern reality. So the real challenge for companies today is not merely making joint ventures and learning alliances of various sorts work effectively. It is rather how to learn to negotiate their way through the complex and multi-dimensional and at the same time rapidly-changing world in which we now live. That is why most companies are in strategic paralysis today.
In other words, the only sustainable edge does not consist in partnerships, of the sort suggested by Seely Brown and Hagel. The next sustainable business edge consists in the creation of mega-corporations. The problem is that the creation of such mega-corporations also poses an enormous socio-political question and challenge to the whole of our globalising world.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
suggest a three-stage future transformation in business (deepening specialization within firms; mobilizing best-in-class capabilities across enterprises; and, ultimately, accelerating learning across broad networks of enterprises). When they do this, however, they come to the limits of what is possible within our current global economic and political system.
It is entirely true that, at present, advantage does come from an institutional capacity to work closely with other highly specialized firms to get better faster. However, long-term, we need, as companies and as society, much more system-wide approaches creating a genuinely "flat" world (in Friedman's terminology) rather than merely a digitally and financially "flat" world, which is what we have at present. A genuinely "flat" world would also be "flat", for example, in terms of environmental and social legislation and infrastructural requirements.
In fact, the first two stages of their "future stages" are already occurring. Beyond their third stage (accelerating learning across broad networks of enterprises), I see the creation of genuine "mega-corporations", which will be the natural and inevitable result of their suggested "learning" phase.
How will these megacorporations be different from old-fashioned conglomerates? Well, conglomerates hold an unrelated portfolio of business for the purpose of balancing potential income over differing business cycles in different industrial sectors, and the reason they generally failed (though let us not forget that there are some outstanding successes such as GE in the USA and Virgin in the UK) was that understanding and experience of one industry does not necessarily enable you to manage another industry. Moreover, having a conglomerate was fine when the various industries in your portfolio were performing as you expected, but the structure of world industry has changed since 1989 and we have seen supposedly counter-cyclical industries converge, so that they have turned sour at very similar times. Since the business cycles have changed and the world has become increasingly chaotic, it is no longer possible with certainty to identify counter-cyclical businesses.
In any case, the essential difference between the old-style conglomerates and the new megacorporations is that the latter will leverage across industries the emerging changes in the relationship between customers and producers on the one hand, and on the other hand between producers and suppliers, producers and marketers, and producers and financiers or investors.
Megacorporations will need to employ very few people and will entirely reconstruct the value chain – again across industries - by providing customers a confidential, convenient, quick, cheap way of getting an extremely wide range of products and services (or indeed ALL products and services) with the assistance of worldwide electronic networks stretching from production to delivery. We can see this already beginning to happen with companies such as Amazon and e-bay. The first of these warehouses products, the second does not since it simply acts as a marketing platform. I think neither model will obtain, but rather a megacorporation model, in which the company handles not only the marketing, warehousing and delivery, but also the manufacture of all its products and services (Amazon has just begun to move in this direction). That Amazon and e-bay are enabled to do reasonably well even in the current world of text-based electronics should persuade us that the tendency to move in the direction of supplying all possible goods and services will be multiplied as video-based electronic nets come into being, and are complemented by networks which are designed to carry Virtual Reality as well. The first move in this direction can just be discerned as Sprint Sprint Nextel announced on the 2nd of November 2005 a partnership with the #1, #2, #4, and #7 cable (MSOs) in the US - Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Advance/Newhouse, respectively. Their mutual goal is to offer combined wireless broadband, cable video, and telephone services to consumers in a single package. This is of course not yet a megacorporation, but it testifies to the move to supplying in an increasing range of goods and services. Why is it not a merger? Why is it only a co-operative venture or partnership? Because of the Street's fixation with competences and with "sticking to one's own knitting".
There is much talk of core competences at present, but the Street will soon learn a few basic lessons. A "core competence" by itself means nothing. For example, if I am the world's expert in the structure of the Mongolian language, that by itself may not even enable me to make a living let alone become a millionnaire. The question is always: For what core competences will which market pay how much? So let us think in a clearer way about the core competences which will be required by the best-paying markets in the future. If the megacorporations which I have theorised about do in fact come into being, as I think they will, then it is fairly evident that the core competences of that world will be three principal ones: marketing-related, logistics-related and innovation-related. Anyone who can help in the brand wars which already exist and which will intensify in the times ahead will be worth a lot. So will anyone who can help re-engineer the logistics-chain. Finally innovation will be much in demand, whether it is a rich elite who come to dominate the world, or a more just world for everyone.
In this new world, the new core competences are not going to be along the old lines of industry. The core competences of the future are going to focus on only three areas:
- excellence in marketing (or, rather, excellence in recruiting and
retaining a loyal base of customers);
- excellence in organising and operating an "intelligent“/robotised value
chain; and,
- excellence in innovation (new products, services, ways of
marketing and ways of organising logistics, perhaps
through technological creativity and innovation).
These could form the basis of the "industrial divisions“ of the immediate future, though it is likely that even more genuinely massive mega-corporations will already emerge first, which will integrate such "industry divisions“.
So what are the key competences that will enable companies to survive and flourish? Let us think of that question along the following lines. At present, we are going through another phase in the world economy in which the slogan of the day is "return to roots" or "back to the core". Executives do not seem to understand that, while we built up our present level of success on the basis of our original core business, the current situation does not guarantee survival. One cannot "return to innocence". An angel with a flaming sword guards the way back to Eden! Radically new strategies are needed for our times. The key competence for the future is the willingness and ability to recreate one's company in radical fashion: much bigger or much smaller.
Today, the choice is either to shrink your company down to a suitable niche in order to enable it to continue being profitable, or to integrate existing corporate giants or, alternatively, to build from scratch the chain across industries which can supply a range of cross-sectoral products and services to the customer.
Some people do not and will not believe that this is possible. They will of course never attempt to build such megacorporations. But some people do believe this is possible. Clearly, the people who will attempt to build these megacorporations will come from the ranks of such "believers".
Many such people may fail in their attempts to build these megacorporations. It could be argued that AOLTimeWarner and Vivendi Universal were attempts to create the first such megacorporations and that these attempts have failed. But the point to remember is that just because those executives failed, or some other fail in their attempts, it does not mean that every one of those who tries to create a megacorporaton will fail - many people die in their attempts to scale mountains, but that does not prevent others from trying, and when the first hardy soul succeeds in climbing a particular mountain, he or she not only makes history, he or she reshapes our horizons regarding what is possible and indeed changes our perception of reality. In fact, Dick Parsons, the Chairman and CEO of AOL TimeWarner has recently said that he believes the AOL TimeWarner combination still makes sense and he wants to make it work better as a single corporation.
It is not "politically correct" to speak about "mega-corporations", that is why no one discusses them. The moment anyone succeeds in creating such a mega-corporation, the entire game will change, and we will go from the third stage suggested John Seely Brown and John Hagel III, to my fourth stage of mega-corporations.
In any case, you don’t need many megacorporations to succeed. In fact, not many can succeed. There is room for somewhere between, say, twelve and 25 megacorporations, depending on anti-trust activity on the part of governments. Without that activity, there is room for perhaps five megacorporations in the world.
The point to keep in mind is that today’s industrial, technological and economic logic is undoubtedly in favour of the creation of megacorporations, and that the limits to the creation of such megacorporations are set not in the worlds of industry, business, management, technology, finance and economics, but in the worlds of society and politics.
The basic issue that the world needs to address, sooner rather than later, is: should we allow such mega-corporations to be created? (Existing legislation in the USA and Europe certainly allows for their potential creation, as seen by the short-lived flourishing of AOL Time Warner and Vivendi Universal). If we do continue to allow the creation of such mega-corporations, then the basic issue for the world is: how many mega-corporations do we need or should we allow? These are of course political questions. And the mark of the age into which we are now embarked is that political, economic, business, ethical and social questions come together more and more.
Regretfully, most companies are not equipped, at present, to negotiate their way through this complex modern reality. So the real challenge for companies today is not merely making joint ventures and learning alliances of various sorts work effectively. It is rather how to learn to negotiate their way through the complex and multi-dimensional and at the same time rapidly-changing world in which we now live. That is why most companies are in strategic paralysis today.
In other words, the only sustainable edge does not consist in partnerships, of the sort suggested by Seely Brown and Hagel. The next sustainable business edge consists in the creation of mega-corporations. The problem is that the creation of such mega-corporations also poses an enormous socio-political question and challenge to the whole of our globalising world.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
What is the difference between being a Follower of Jesus and being a Christian?
Within the last few weeks, I was invited by a Christian to get involved in a seminar seeking to explore "Christian perspectives" on a certain field that is of interest to me.
Now, I should make it clear that I treat in an exactly equally way all invitations whether they come from Christians or from Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Confucians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Tribalists, or whatever. So I am, in principle, open to being involved in exploring "Jewish perspectives", "Muslim Perspectives", "Utilitarian perspectives" and so on.
However, it is not always necessary for me to make clear to people that I am a follower of Jesus. This particular case was one of those where I felt that it was necessary to make this clear. Usually, this creates no difficulty. In this particular case, I had the following response:
After much thought on my part, and upon discussion with the Planning Committee for the project, I judge it best to not re-invite you to this seminar. My decision is based primarily on your own words that you "do not wish to be involved with any project that has the word 'Christian' associated with it". I understand your reasons for feeling this way, and I also am grieved by the fact that many professing Christians (myself possibly included) do not adequately live up to their profession, and do not adequately conform their actions to true "biblical perspectives". Nevertheless, I do not believe this is sufficient reason to discard the name "Christian" (who I believe is a person who aspires to be a "follower of Jesus", however imperfectly that may be lived out). So, we are not prepared to eliminate the word "Christian" from our description of this project.
Nevertheless, I wish you well in all your endeavors as you seek to be a "follower of Jesus", which, I assure you, is also my aspiration and the aspiration of all those participating in this project.
I provide my response below, as this may help readers to understand the distinction between being "a good Christian" and "a follower of Jesus":
Dear …
Many thanks for your kind message.
I quite understand your decision.
However, I cannot help responding to the *basis* of your decision by saying that just as there have always been Christians who do seek to follow Jesus,
there have also been people who like to call themselves Christians while publicly making clear that they have no intention of following Jesus as Lord
Historically, these "Christians without Christ" have included Popes, Bishops, Priests, and Theologians, as well as lay people
On the other hand, today, there are Hindus who follow Jesus (such as myself), Jews who follow Jesus (but are not christians - "Messianic Jews"), Muslims who follow Jesus ("True Muslims") and so on
So Americans need to wake up and realise that "Christian" is an irrelevant category today.
The relevant category is not "Christian" but "follower of Jesus".
We are not likely to agree on this matter in a hurry, so I will close with prayers and blessings
Prabhu
For those who are interested, the distinctions between "Christians with Christ", "Christians without Christ", "Non-Christians without Christ" and "Non-Christians with Christ" were first made in writing by Sadhu Sundar Singh in the early twentieth century.
However, the distinctions implicitly go all the way back to the Jewish Bible which distinguishes between "righteous vs. unrighteous gentiles" and "righteous vs. unrighteous Jews".
As far as I am aware, Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Confucians, Hindus, Muslims, Tribalists and others have not so far made this sort of distinction in writing.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Now, I should make it clear that I treat in an exactly equally way all invitations whether they come from Christians or from Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Confucians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Tribalists, or whatever. So I am, in principle, open to being involved in exploring "Jewish perspectives", "Muslim Perspectives", "Utilitarian perspectives" and so on.
However, it is not always necessary for me to make clear to people that I am a follower of Jesus. This particular case was one of those where I felt that it was necessary to make this clear. Usually, this creates no difficulty. In this particular case, I had the following response:
After much thought on my part, and upon discussion with the Planning Committee for the project, I judge it best to not re-invite you to this seminar. My decision is based primarily on your own words that you "do not wish to be involved with any project that has the word 'Christian' associated with it". I understand your reasons for feeling this way, and I also am grieved by the fact that many professing Christians (myself possibly included) do not adequately live up to their profession, and do not adequately conform their actions to true "biblical perspectives". Nevertheless, I do not believe this is sufficient reason to discard the name "Christian" (who I believe is a person who aspires to be a "follower of Jesus", however imperfectly that may be lived out). So, we are not prepared to eliminate the word "Christian" from our description of this project.
Nevertheless, I wish you well in all your endeavors as you seek to be a "follower of Jesus", which, I assure you, is also my aspiration and the aspiration of all those participating in this project.
I provide my response below, as this may help readers to understand the distinction between being "a good Christian" and "a follower of Jesus":
Dear …
Many thanks for your kind message.
I quite understand your decision.
However, I cannot help responding to the *basis* of your decision by saying that just as there have always been Christians who do seek to follow Jesus,
there have also been people who like to call themselves Christians while publicly making clear that they have no intention of following Jesus as Lord
Historically, these "Christians without Christ" have included Popes, Bishops, Priests, and Theologians, as well as lay people
On the other hand, today, there are Hindus who follow Jesus (such as myself), Jews who follow Jesus (but are not christians - "Messianic Jews"), Muslims who follow Jesus ("True Muslims") and so on
So Americans need to wake up and realise that "Christian" is an irrelevant category today.
The relevant category is not "Christian" but "follower of Jesus".
We are not likely to agree on this matter in a hurry, so I will close with prayers and blessings
Prabhu
For those who are interested, the distinctions between "Christians with Christ", "Christians without Christ", "Non-Christians without Christ" and "Non-Christians with Christ" were first made in writing by Sadhu Sundar Singh in the early twentieth century.
However, the distinctions implicitly go all the way back to the Jewish Bible which distinguishes between "righteous vs. unrighteous gentiles" and "righteous vs. unrighteous Jews".
As far as I am aware, Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Confucians, Hindus, Muslims, Tribalists and others have not so far made this sort of distinction in writing.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Thursday, October 20, 2005
The Indo-Caribbean Custom of "Jhandi"
The latest issue of the Newsletter of the Indian Diaspora Project raises a fascinating question. Is the Caribbean Indian custom of raising a "jhandi" (a little flag on a long bamboo stick, planted after a Hindu ritual of sacrifice), an unique Indo-Caribbean invention? The custom is apparently hardly found in India nor is it found in other Indian diaspora communities.
In order to understand my answer, readers will have to familiarize themselves with at least the bare bones of the history of sacrifice in Indian tradition and Indian spirituality (available on my website (www.prabhu.guptara.net) - please click on "Articles and Reviews", and then "by subject" and then (at the very bottom), "Vedas", where you will find two articles, one "Sacrifice" and the other on "Indian Spirituality". These will provide the background in terms of India.
When the practice of raising the flag came in, I am not sure, but I would guess that it had to do with the horse sacrifice (aswamedha), which was performed originally to assert a claim of kingship over a certain geographical area.
I would further guess that this notion was then extended to assertion of spiritual rule over a certain area by the spirit or god that was being propitiated by the sacrifice over which the flag was raised.
The practice was probably first started in India, but then discontinued in India because of the objection of either British or Indian rulers who did not want such flags raised in competition to theirs.
The objection to "religious flags" probably disappeared in India with the rise of the independence movement, when various flags of all sorts began to be raised.
However, this is simply "informed speculation" on my part. I will be pleased to have any further scholarly or anecdotal information on the subject.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
In order to understand my answer, readers will have to familiarize themselves with at least the bare bones of the history of sacrifice in Indian tradition and Indian spirituality (available on my website (www.prabhu.guptara.net) - please click on "Articles and Reviews", and then "by subject" and then (at the very bottom), "Vedas", where you will find two articles, one "Sacrifice" and the other on "Indian Spirituality". These will provide the background in terms of India.
When the practice of raising the flag came in, I am not sure, but I would guess that it had to do with the horse sacrifice (aswamedha), which was performed originally to assert a claim of kingship over a certain geographical area.
I would further guess that this notion was then extended to assertion of spiritual rule over a certain area by the spirit or god that was being propitiated by the sacrifice over which the flag was raised.
The practice was probably first started in India, but then discontinued in India because of the objection of either British or Indian rulers who did not want such flags raised in competition to theirs.
The objection to "religious flags" probably disappeared in India with the rise of the independence movement, when various flags of all sorts began to be raised.
However, this is simply "informed speculation" on my part. I will be pleased to have any further scholarly or anecdotal information on the subject.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
Friday, September 09, 2005
Reflections on Buddhism, Christianity and Jesus in the Contemporary West
The Dalai Lama's recent visit to Switzerland was incredibly popular. Tens of thousands of people turned up to his public lectures, quite apart from the private visits which were possible for the really rich and distinguished.
I have been reflecting on why India, the country in which Buddhism was founded, eventually rejected Buddhism. Equally, I have been reflecting on why, while the Churches continue to be surprisingly popular in the contemporary West, Jesus himself is so unpopular with the Western elite.
It is worth recollecting that Buddhism was, in essence, a movement to break the hold of the corrupt and corrupting Hindu caste system, which had come into existence some centuries earlier. At one stage, something like half of India was Buddhist - the other half gave its allegiance to the competing reform movement of Jainism, which is now practically unknown outside Indian circles. Buddhism, however, was internationalised as a result of the missionary activities of the Emperor Ashoka who sent out missionaries with diplomatic status to all the surrounding countries. As Buddhism grew in numbers and in countries which were geographically diverse, it absorbed many of the features of these cultures (as happened with what is now the Roman Catholic Church in Europe initially, and has now happened with it worldwide). The result was that a corrupt priestly caste developed in Buddhism too. And, as far as I can discover, that is the main reason that India then rejected Buddhism - if Buddhist priests were going to be as corrupt as the Hindu priests has been earlier, then there was no reason to be Buddhist! This rejection was facilitated by Hindus who incorporated the best aspects of Buddhist thought and learning into our own philosophy and practice (for example, in what came to be called "Advaita" philosophy). For a fuller discussion of the history of the development of Indian religion and philosophy, see my short publication, Indian Spirituality, available for free download on my website.
In any case, the story of the Buddha (the enlightened one) provokes many questions. Here is a young man who suddenly awakens to human suffering, gives up his life of princely comfort, trains himself in the disciplines of yoga and undergoes the physical trauma of other ascetic practices, faces tremendous temptations, eventually awakens to enlightenment, and goes on to teach others how they too can find his way to enlightenment.
It is worth asking:
- Where did this young Prince's intense awareness of suffering come from? And from what source came the compassion he felt? Why do some people feel such compassion more than others? Why do some people apparently never feel such compassion? Why do those who feel it, not always follow its impulses?
- Why in all his seeking and thinking and teaching, did the Buddha neglect or ignore the question of the existence of social and political evil?
- To fight such evil in the world, is it enough to simply focus on the psychological dimension of individual peace as Buddhism does?
- Does the peaceful idividualism of Buddhism actually explain its lack of interest in tackling political and social evil, as is clearly seen (with few exceptions) in countries which have been Buddhist for centuries?
- Might it be the case that we have here also the secret of the popularity of Buddhism in the West as well as the secret of the current unpopularity of Jesus in the West? Is it possible that Westerners are so exhausted by the emotial battering of daily life that they are attracted to the Buddhist offer of personal peace and comfort, and are equally happy with the comforting rituals of Christian Churches, but do not wish to cope with the demands of the teachings of Jesus, who offers us a living relationship with God on condition that we are willing to die to our own interests and spend our lives fighting ignorance, disease, scientific and technological irresponsibility, economic exploitation, environmental degradation, political oppression and social injustice worldwide? Sphere: Related Content
I have been reflecting on why India, the country in which Buddhism was founded, eventually rejected Buddhism. Equally, I have been reflecting on why, while the Churches continue to be surprisingly popular in the contemporary West, Jesus himself is so unpopular with the Western elite.
It is worth recollecting that Buddhism was, in essence, a movement to break the hold of the corrupt and corrupting Hindu caste system, which had come into existence some centuries earlier. At one stage, something like half of India was Buddhist - the other half gave its allegiance to the competing reform movement of Jainism, which is now practically unknown outside Indian circles. Buddhism, however, was internationalised as a result of the missionary activities of the Emperor Ashoka who sent out missionaries with diplomatic status to all the surrounding countries. As Buddhism grew in numbers and in countries which were geographically diverse, it absorbed many of the features of these cultures (as happened with what is now the Roman Catholic Church in Europe initially, and has now happened with it worldwide). The result was that a corrupt priestly caste developed in Buddhism too. And, as far as I can discover, that is the main reason that India then rejected Buddhism - if Buddhist priests were going to be as corrupt as the Hindu priests has been earlier, then there was no reason to be Buddhist! This rejection was facilitated by Hindus who incorporated the best aspects of Buddhist thought and learning into our own philosophy and practice (for example, in what came to be called "Advaita" philosophy). For a fuller discussion of the history of the development of Indian religion and philosophy, see my short publication, Indian Spirituality, available for free download on my website.
In any case, the story of the Buddha (the enlightened one) provokes many questions. Here is a young man who suddenly awakens to human suffering, gives up his life of princely comfort, trains himself in the disciplines of yoga and undergoes the physical trauma of other ascetic practices, faces tremendous temptations, eventually awakens to enlightenment, and goes on to teach others how they too can find his way to enlightenment.
It is worth asking:
- Where did this young Prince's intense awareness of suffering come from? And from what source came the compassion he felt? Why do some people feel such compassion more than others? Why do some people apparently never feel such compassion? Why do those who feel it, not always follow its impulses?
- Why in all his seeking and thinking and teaching, did the Buddha neglect or ignore the question of the existence of social and political evil?
- To fight such evil in the world, is it enough to simply focus on the psychological dimension of individual peace as Buddhism does?
- Does the peaceful idividualism of Buddhism actually explain its lack of interest in tackling political and social evil, as is clearly seen (with few exceptions) in countries which have been Buddhist for centuries?
- Might it be the case that we have here also the secret of the popularity of Buddhism in the West as well as the secret of the current unpopularity of Jesus in the West? Is it possible that Westerners are so exhausted by the emotial battering of daily life that they are attracted to the Buddhist offer of personal peace and comfort, and are equally happy with the comforting rituals of Christian Churches, but do not wish to cope with the demands of the teachings of Jesus, who offers us a living relationship with God on condition that we are willing to die to our own interests and spend our lives fighting ignorance, disease, scientific and technological irresponsibility, economic exploitation, environmental degradation, political oppression and social injustice worldwide? Sphere: Related Content
Amartya Sen on Democracy
Amartya Sen is highly respected both for winning the Nobel Prize in Economics and for his wisdom and humaneness.
His latest book, The Argumentative Indian, among other things documents for how long and how extensively the world has strained after democracy.
However, he fails to answer or even raise some key questions:
- why was it the case that the only cultures able to create, nurture and maintain a democratic culture for more than three generations have been Protestant ones?
- Why do non-Protestant cultures (tribal African Tanzania with "Uhuru", China under Mao, Japan since WWII, Russia under the Marxists, Iran under the Shah) accommodate democratic tendencies only so far as to begin to clean up the usual kleptocracies and initiate "participatory reasoning and public decision-making", but then become static as has Japan for the last two decades or descend into chaos as has Russia since Gorbachev, or return to authoritarianism as has Russia under Putin? Or as Ukraine seems to be doing now? Sphere: Related Content
His latest book, The Argumentative Indian, among other things documents for how long and how extensively the world has strained after democracy.
However, he fails to answer or even raise some key questions:
- why was it the case that the only cultures able to create, nurture and maintain a democratic culture for more than three generations have been Protestant ones?
- Why do non-Protestant cultures (tribal African Tanzania with "Uhuru", China under Mao, Japan since WWII, Russia under the Marxists, Iran under the Shah) accommodate democratic tendencies only so far as to begin to clean up the usual kleptocracies and initiate "participatory reasoning and public decision-making", but then become static as has Japan for the last two decades or descend into chaos as has Russia since Gorbachev, or return to authoritarianism as has Russia under Putin? Or as Ukraine seems to be doing now? Sphere: Related Content
The current situation of Hedge Funds
A few weeks ago there was a news item in the UK's Financial Times: "Hedge funds flat in dodging bullet".
I hope it was hugely reassuring to everyone now playing hedge funds.
However, it did raise some interesting questions:
- are the "sophisticated financial customers", to whom these sorts of funds supposedly sell under UK law, actually as sophisticated as they appear, if they are willing to pay more as fees to hedge fund operators now than was the case when these funds were new, innovative and in scarce supply?
- are these "sophisticated financial customers" perhaps even a little stupid, if they are paying more in fees now, when hedge funds are broadly losing money, than was the case when hedge funds were clearly making a lot of money?
- why is it that a supposedly intelligent marketplace allows hedge fund operators, who take no risk, to cream off 20% or more of the upside, while not sharing in the downside?
- in what other business is it the case that an involved party can share in the upside without sharing in the downside?
- should hedge fund operators be allowed to share in the upside only if they also take on the burden of sharing the downside? Sphere: Related Content
I hope it was hugely reassuring to everyone now playing hedge funds.
However, it did raise some interesting questions:
- are the "sophisticated financial customers", to whom these sorts of funds supposedly sell under UK law, actually as sophisticated as they appear, if they are willing to pay more as fees to hedge fund operators now than was the case when these funds were new, innovative and in scarce supply?
- are these "sophisticated financial customers" perhaps even a little stupid, if they are paying more in fees now, when hedge funds are broadly losing money, than was the case when hedge funds were clearly making a lot of money?
- why is it that a supposedly intelligent marketplace allows hedge fund operators, who take no risk, to cream off 20% or more of the upside, while not sharing in the downside?
- in what other business is it the case that an involved party can share in the upside without sharing in the downside?
- should hedge fund operators be allowed to share in the upside only if they also take on the burden of sharing the downside? Sphere: Related Content
On the Prospects of Democracy in China
Liberal Westerners often express the view, "Sooner or later China will embrace democracy".
However, I have never heard a Chinese national, let alone a Chinese official, express this view.
Have you?
So how much do these liberal Westerners know of China? Are they aware that China has not had democracy for some 5000 years? Are they aware that China has done very well for the last 20 years without democracy - indeed precisely because of a lack of democracy?
Terrified as the Communist Party is of losing power, as well as of domestic chaos, what will ever prompt it to want to loosen the handcuffs?
If the international community is interested in seeing democracy come to China, it has to do more than simply crow a bit.
We have the ridiculous situation of having, as a Member of the UN Security Council, a country that has, systematically and openly, never stopped flouting the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
So, for a start, how about a campaign agains companies that invest in China - unless China implements basic human rights of association and freedom of thought and religion and association, to which it has already signed up? Sphere: Related Content
However, I have never heard a Chinese national, let alone a Chinese official, express this view.
Have you?
So how much do these liberal Westerners know of China? Are they aware that China has not had democracy for some 5000 years? Are they aware that China has done very well for the last 20 years without democracy - indeed precisely because of a lack of democracy?
Terrified as the Communist Party is of losing power, as well as of domestic chaos, what will ever prompt it to want to loosen the handcuffs?
If the international community is interested in seeing democracy come to China, it has to do more than simply crow a bit.
We have the ridiculous situation of having, as a Member of the UN Security Council, a country that has, systematically and openly, never stopped flouting the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
So, for a start, how about a campaign agains companies that invest in China - unless China implements basic human rights of association and freedom of thought and religion and association, to which it has already signed up? Sphere: Related Content
Thursday, September 01, 2005
The difficult question of the rate of immigration
One key issue is the rate at which immigrants can be absorbed.
The question is: absorption into what?
Clearly, there is an economic dimension: "too many" immigrants could certainly lower salaries. However, this dimension is well understood and has historically been paid enough attention (moreover, we have at least some tools with which to examine this issue).
Then there is the emotional dimension. That has been thrust to the forefront recently in the UK when it emerged that the recent London bombers were "homegrown". So the issue is: at what rate can the receiving country ensure that new immigrants *lose* their old allegiances and develop sufficiently strong new ones? A politically incorrect question for some people! And the political incorrectness is intimately related to the following point, which is the most important of the three and the one for which there are the least number of tools.
That is the "values dimension". Immigrants bring their own values with them. If they can make the transition to accepting the values of the receiving country, then genuine integration can happen. Race, religion, educational level are contributing factors, but are neither absolute enablers nor absolute precluders.
The challenge is that receiving countries, at least in the West, often no longer have a clear sense of what their "own" set of values IS....and without such clarity, the task of enabling immigrant groups to immigrate in terms of values is of course much more difficult.
The reason receiving countries have no clear sense of their "own" set of values is that, in the West, it is part of a contested discourse: is Europe a "Christian" continent? Every Muslim and every Hindu understands instinctively that that is so. Not every European, agrees, however (and the ruling establishment in Europe certainly does not agree at present). But even that question cannot be answered without being clear about what exactly is meant by "Christian"? Nor is the job made easier if we simply abandon the word "Christian" and substitute "Humanist": what exactly is meant by that?!
The simplest way of resolving this "values dilemma" is not by trying to clarify definitions of such words as "Christian" or "Humanist" or "European", but developing a sophisticated and detailed contrast between "the way in which things are done" in the receiving country as against that in the sending country.
To the degree that the contrast is in fact sophisticated and detailed, it will be easier to set up ways of nurturing, examining, monitoring and "rewarding" integration at the level of values.
What exactly might be covered if one is to develop a "sophisticated and detailed analysis of the way in which things are done" in the receiving country as against that in the sending country?
Well, here is a starting list, for discussion:
- education (purpose of, pattern of, style of...)
- friendships (how deep? How wide? ...)
- love, sex (public displays?)
- marriage (Arranged?...)
- work (ethic of, remuneration for....)
- politics (how active is one expected to be? What routes are there for ambition? Dissent?....)
- morality (bribery and corruption...)
- private sphere versus public sphere.....
- role of individual versus role of family versus role of community...
- conversational style (polite? Confrontational? Explicit? Wordy? Gestures? ....)
- attitudes to hierarchy....
- attitudes to history....
- attitudes to time....
- attitudes to language...
- attitudes to dress.....
The difficulty is that, in the US, discussion of such issues has been banned to the private sphere since the 1930s (in Europe, since even earlier, probably the 1880s).
So the earlier ban needs to be reversed and we need to re-commence, now, a discussion of the values of receiving countries, with the intention of becoming clear at least about the actual culture of the receiving countries.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
The question is: absorption into what?
Clearly, there is an economic dimension: "too many" immigrants could certainly lower salaries. However, this dimension is well understood and has historically been paid enough attention (moreover, we have at least some tools with which to examine this issue).
Then there is the emotional dimension. That has been thrust to the forefront recently in the UK when it emerged that the recent London bombers were "homegrown". So the issue is: at what rate can the receiving country ensure that new immigrants *lose* their old allegiances and develop sufficiently strong new ones? A politically incorrect question for some people! And the political incorrectness is intimately related to the following point, which is the most important of the three and the one for which there are the least number of tools.
That is the "values dimension". Immigrants bring their own values with them. If they can make the transition to accepting the values of the receiving country, then genuine integration can happen. Race, religion, educational level are contributing factors, but are neither absolute enablers nor absolute precluders.
The challenge is that receiving countries, at least in the West, often no longer have a clear sense of what their "own" set of values IS....and without such clarity, the task of enabling immigrant groups to immigrate in terms of values is of course much more difficult.
The reason receiving countries have no clear sense of their "own" set of values is that, in the West, it is part of a contested discourse: is Europe a "Christian" continent? Every Muslim and every Hindu understands instinctively that that is so. Not every European, agrees, however (and the ruling establishment in Europe certainly does not agree at present). But even that question cannot be answered without being clear about what exactly is meant by "Christian"? Nor is the job made easier if we simply abandon the word "Christian" and substitute "Humanist": what exactly is meant by that?!
The simplest way of resolving this "values dilemma" is not by trying to clarify definitions of such words as "Christian" or "Humanist" or "European", but developing a sophisticated and detailed contrast between "the way in which things are done" in the receiving country as against that in the sending country.
To the degree that the contrast is in fact sophisticated and detailed, it will be easier to set up ways of nurturing, examining, monitoring and "rewarding" integration at the level of values.
What exactly might be covered if one is to develop a "sophisticated and detailed analysis of the way in which things are done" in the receiving country as against that in the sending country?
Well, here is a starting list, for discussion:
- education (purpose of, pattern of, style of...)
- friendships (how deep? How wide? ...)
- love, sex (public displays?)
- marriage (Arranged?...)
- work (ethic of, remuneration for....)
- politics (how active is one expected to be? What routes are there for ambition? Dissent?....)
- morality (bribery and corruption...)
- private sphere versus public sphere.....
- role of individual versus role of family versus role of community...
- conversational style (polite? Confrontational? Explicit? Wordy? Gestures? ....)
- attitudes to hierarchy....
- attitudes to history....
- attitudes to time....
- attitudes to language...
- attitudes to dress.....
The difficulty is that, in the US, discussion of such issues has been banned to the private sphere since the 1930s (in Europe, since even earlier, probably the 1880s).
So the earlier ban needs to be reversed and we need to re-commence, now, a discussion of the values of receiving countries, with the intention of becoming clear at least about the actual culture of the receiving countries.
ENDS Sphere: Related Content
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