Discourse on the Great Recession
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Friday, November 27, 2015
Civil Society - Why monolithic institutions are hurting us
How “civil” is “civil society”? There is no cohesive entity here, the interpretation of the term "civil society" which describes civil society as “individuals
and organizations in a society which are independent of the government.” is
perhaps the most desirable. The fact is, these groups
of formal and informal elements that are civil society, are what make our
society what it is. When the state’s influence gains control, or a "critical
mass" of influence over civil society OR when the inverse is true OR when the interface is entwined, bad things happen.
As civil society
is a collection of entities, each of which has interests, it is inherent that
they become competitive for influence, often this competition becomes heated
and then there is uncivil society. If this competition becomes excessively
heated, fissures form in society and factions emerge then discord follows. Democracy
offers some offsetting influence in that it has systematized disruption, discord quelling discord if you will; it has
been ostensibly enough to have the two societal entities – government and civil
society maintaining order in most western democracies for some time. Government detachment from civil society is important because, absent detachment, state power tends to be set to work against elements of civil society - this is a corrupting influence.
Influence pools – in the physical world big
things attract little things and hold them in their orbit, so it is true of
influence or power. Unique to influence however, when it pools or concentrates too much, it loses
numbers - with fewer numbers influence diminishes and disruption occurs. When government and civil society co-exist over
an extended period of time the distinction between them blurs and the state becomes
an instrument of private interest, rather than an administrative agency that
supports a vibrant and diversified society. The extent to which civil society
is diverse, the extent to which it resides distanced from government and the
extent to which government remains neutral in its administration, is the extent
to which freedom will exist. When government has distance between itself and
civil society it permits 1000 flowers to bloom; when it is the most advantageous
and in whatever configuration is favourable.
There are a lot of things antagonistic to a vibrant civil
society, in fact, many of the things we do to build a cohesive population under
flag, are antagonistic to a vibrant civil society. There are trends in society that threaten a diverse civil society,
like the evolution of mass media and the emergence of a strong common narrative
in society, government itself as it attempts to define itself relative other
nations, the reintegration organized religion with government, the monopolization of services by big institutions and the wide spread
communization of our education system. The finer the gradation in civil
society, the greater the diversity of life practices and a richer pool from
which to draw for solution. Mass media has distilled the human complex down to
a few stereotypes, massive monolithic institutions offer the same basket of
solutions in “one size fits all”, the reemergence of religious factionalism is impairing government response to diversity (all religion is valid in government until it detracts from widely held societal consensus disproportionally to population and or impinges on a large minority) and a single education system is quickly
limiting us to a single school of thought. There is a high degree of fragility
in societies that are monolithic and resist the vibrancy that disruption
brings. They say that society rots from within; the rot is really stagnation or
the absence of disruption or most importantly the vibrancy of influence that is
provided by managing and embracing disruption.
What difference can one person make against the masses, very
little, this is the reality that causes the massing of interest groups in civil society – mass forms
around the successful and the people exterior to sources of success and / or by
competing successful entities. What determines success in society is that there
is provision for the individual to inform themselves and choose as an autonomous
agent what to support. The critical element common to us all is the right to autonomy.
The government needs to hold paramount the support of the individual.
Disruption always comes, never has any source of dominance
lasted forever, the longer the period absent disruption, the greater the
magnitude of disruption. Paradoxically, by managing society in a way that seeks
a perpetual state of disruption we are provided a circumstance of stability.
The more fragmented and clearly defined civil society is, the more short cycle
disruption we will experience, the more diversified our response to the living environment
will be and from this a healthier the long term reality.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Ajax Mine - Response to Kamloops Strong & Klean
The British Columbia mining
industry has been a very successful industry when benchmarked to world
standards. The mining act and accompanying regulation are very sensitive to
environmental concern. I am unsure how you define self-regulated? I think the
fact that there are provincial inspection personnel and requirements for a plethora
of government personal to oversee the creation and operation of a mine suggests
government oversight. The Prosperity mine invested in the neighborhood of $500
million in processing their application only to have it refused.
Mining is a provincial jurisdictional
concern; this has been the case since we joined confederation. We need to
ensure that we retain the right to manage our own backyard. The last thing we
need is to have another layer of government impairing us from doing what we
want, people turn to extra review processes to obstruct rather than seek rightful
process. I know you’re in the real estate business, look what is required for a
subdivision, mines are much more difficult to process. The environmental processes
in place now are effective and for the most part the industry has an excellent
track record.
One takes your point
regarding image for the city, the fact is we had Afton operate for years and
hardly knew it was there. The reclamation work done at Afton is excellent, and
with new technologies and planning for the future, we could do a better job.
“It helps some times to begin with the end in mind - imagine
if you will a time line requirement of, say, 25 years, from the beginning of
mining to full extraction of all valued minerals; at the close of mining
activates the city can plan for a residential development to replace the mine
site. With this in mind, a model residential development site could be part and
parcel of the mining process. So rather than a rectangular pile of rock as a
tailings pile, the site could be sculpted perfectly to suite residential lots.
Lots, with the perfect southern exposure, a sculpted lake, a geothermal complex
for community heating and perhaps a nine hole executive golf course. The point
here is, that what some perceive as destruction can be managed to provision a
superior outcome if that outcome is planned for. I offer the residential
development for thought, only because, that is what likely would have happened
anyway. “
It is about a hell of a lot
more than “Jobs”, it is about providing lives for young families – in Kamloops
we under perform in providing strong employment for young people. I frequent a
fast food restaurant because it is the only one open at 4 am, the caliber of
young people there in the middle of the night tells me we have to do better. I
can assure you, if we are aggressive in holding the mining company to account,
if we instate a long term operating agreement that protects our interests and
we narrow the extracting window, we can have the prosperity from the mine AND
something of value at the end.
Thank you for taking an
interest in the issue, it is an important one.
Additional Comments
Mount Polley was a unfortunate occurrence, it was also anomalous. The vast majority of the 1000s of tailing facilities used over BC history have been sound and well engineered. With respect to Ajax, the sensitivity to the issue is higher now than before and the lay of the land is different - the tailing facility offers very little risk. I would never suggest anyone trust anyone with important interests, that is why since the proposal first came to my attention I advocated for a long term operating agreement between the mine and the city, so the city could hold in effect a operational veto should agreed practices be breached. I am unable to speculate on what Kelowna might do, what is relevant to me is whether we can extract the benefit from the operation for the region, have an agreeable circumstance through as limited operating duration as possible and be left with an asset - I believe we can. We need to be aggressive in seeing to our interests.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Islam & the West – World Peace - Recent Events Belgium
"All that's necessary for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke.
It has been the case since the dawn of time that those
with the might make the rules; I have no evidence to the contrary in contemporary
times. So what to do, always make sure that might resides with those who are intent on
good. Good is a somewhat nebulous term, with plenty of opportunity for interpretation.
Here is one definition for good people – people who are seeking to provide
liberty to people, people who seek to influence human behaviour through a
process of enlightening others, people who actually believe love matters,
people who can look at the truths of others and accept them as being as valid
as their own truths, people who hold humanitarian concern as paramount and
people who have the strength to protect these goods by whatever means
necessary.
All faiths, all humanitarians, all people who are
enlightened, have the capacity to pursue these goods and to withstand dogma that
would have them venture into a violent sphere to promote one dogma over another
dogma. The challenge is that the world’s population is made up mostly of the indoctrinated
rather than the enlightened; even personally, I hold a Christian bias due to my
exposure to the Canadian narrative and my family history – even though I make an effort
every day to see the other side. When one is faced with tribalism, dogma and
survival as the life equation, reason is no longer an option – one is faced
with calculations like, conform to the immediate dogma totally or all that one
loves is destroyed – conformity at this point is the only way forward. People who want
to control populations always want conformity to dogma, this is the antithesis to
democracy, secularism or pluralism. The desire for compliance is in no way
peculiar to Islam, it resides in the hearts of many in western democracies, in
the hearts of people who would rather impose belief rather than to let belief
develop as people are exposed to the cultural tapestry there to teach us all.
One needs grounding, mine was Christian and as such, all other thinking is held
juxtaposed to Christian teaching – the difference between being a bigot and enlightened
resides in one’s ability to permit belief to migrate as the facts change. The challenge
with extremists is they are locked into one belief and they will kill to keep
it or forward it; for them, the only solution is to subdue them and the only mechanism
to do so is to be in possession of greater might.
Josip Broz Tito ruled Yugoslavia with an iron hand, an
iron hand that insisted that factions got along – an enforced pluralism if you
will. Under his leadership, the various factions, Muslims to Christians lived in
close quarters, across the street from one another, peacefully. Absent the
presence of Tito’s hegemony, Yugoslavia “balkanized” into several states and
factional war resulted in a massive human tragedy. What is the moral of this
story, having a Hegemon works, even when the hegemon is a benevolent dictator.
Yugoslavia disintegrated before the very eyes of the present-day United
Nations, why, because the United Nations is a place of talking as opposed to a
place of action. One human tragedy of massive proportions after another transpires
while United Nations watches, why, because the United Nations is a place of
talking as opposed to action. Winston Churchill said, there is no use in having
Judges and Magistrates absent a constabulary – passing judgement is a mere
thought, acting on that judgement changes outcomes.
The Hegemony in the world now is NATO, the military might
of a collection of the most progressive and prosperous nations in human
history. Is NATO flawed, certainly, do we need to be able to kick nations out
as easily as they are brought to membership. NATO – or a military force –
that has as its master human choice is the Hegemony we need to support, build
and improve. There are a cross-section of Nations that are members of NATO,
Turkey is one of note given recent events, the organization is clearly dominated
by the secular democratic imperative. The world hegemon now, from a single
nation perspective, is the United States, the United States hegemony commenced
shortly after WW2, please make an objective assessment of our world now and
post WW2, and exercise judgement.
OTHER THINKING ON THE SUBJECT
Friday, November 13, 2015
Past Initiatives – Current Opportunities - Human & Capital Resources Required
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Thursday, November 12, 2015
Some thoughts on the Bonaparte Plateau Fishery Management
Some Thoughts on the Bonaparte Plateau Fishery, from the
perspective of the sport fishing industry.
In lakes with Squaw Fish populations challenging the Squaw
Fish population worked, there was a marked improvement in size of fish in a
couple years after the process started. The challenge remains however, that the
traps only get a portion of the population, even once we trapped, I still saw
them “balling” up in large numbers. I believe this is the portion of the
population that “shore spawns”, apparently they are prolific. I know people who
have had success with “spot” applications of Rotenone, when one sees the fish
“balling up”, applying Rotenone to the surface kills a major portion of the
population – it ends up being targeted and with very little damage to the
overall biology of the lake, in contrast to typical applications of Rotenone.
There was an old time operator on in the area, who shall remain unnamed, who
enjoyed success with this process; he also would wait until the creeks were
full of squaw fish in the spring, with few trout, and used the same technique.
It is an interesting outcome that in using triploids, that
the fish population in the mixed specie test lakes decreased in size and
quality after the introduction of the triploids. This in conjunction with the pure culture Lake reality which had triploids
gaining in size rapidly in a pure culture lake, makes for some interesting
contemplation. It maybe the mix specie situation is a product of other fish
management stopping, trapping, slot limit and the like. Blackwaters, while piscivorous fish, eat
insects; it maybe that they are just eating insects and leaving the Squaw Fish unfettered; reflecting on the pure lake circumstance of rapid growth of the
triploid fish stocks.
The thing that seems to be missing in the management of fish
by the government, is what ranchers lay awake at night thinking about, how to
make livestock bigger – like begets like bible says. So at the risk of oversimplifying, if you kill the big ones, the little ones breed. Like my animal
science mentor use to say, “select for what you want and cull what you want to
avoid”. In the context of a pure culture
lake, slot limits are likely to work because you take the immature fish and the
small, the larger fish have opportunity to mate. I believe this to be true of the mixed culture
test lake, there was a marked improvement in size of fish after the trapping
program – and if my memory serves – another improvement after the slot limit
was used. The mixed culture test lake having
a Squaw Fish infestation adds to the complexity of assessing this challenge,
culling what you want to avoid begins to have a broader application.
If there were a way to select for larger fish and introduce
them to the population, from a “sport fishing” perspective you would enjoy
better success. The fish breeding management for sport fishing's “end in mind” is to have really big, dumb,
hungry and angry fish.
As I know many aware, XXXXXX Lake is likely the best fishery
on the Bonaparte Plateau. There is commonality in weed specie types between XXXXXX
and the very productive lakes south of
Kamloops. There can be a number of contributing factors affecting weed species,
one I think may hold prominence is PH. I am unsure what the optimum weed specie
complex is and what PH contributes to the complex, I do know however, lakes in
areas with PH nearing Alkali tend to be more productive. The plateau lakes are more
acidic, as is characterized by the tea coloured water, Lilly pads and the like.
It is on this basis that I would contemplate liming the lake in winter by
applying lime to the ice as late in the winter as possible. My observations support this as a course of
action. It is interesting also that there has been a generalized degradation in
fishery since the “bug Killed” pine have shed their needles (acid in nature) - it seems possible this could be a part of the
complex of influencing factors.
There is likely merit also in fertilizing key weed beds.
Having altered the PH,spurring the growth of plant species conducive to a
richer aquatic ecosphere, it seems rational to encourage growth, the mixed
culture test lake, as is the case in many of the lakes up there, is “undernourished” from the viewpoint of optimizing the fishery.
I hate to be critical of the present choice to maintain a
catch and release fishery, while counter intuitive, taking trout improves the
overall experience, especially if it is done with care – slot limits and the
like. It seems the experience with the
mixed culture test lake is supporting this. On the pure culture lakes this is especially
true, they really do need some fish taken. XXXXXX may be one exception,
although, a slot limit would likely be okay. I share the view, that the data
from stomach contents is critical as well.
This is some preliminary thinking, there would a little work
to do before executing.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Fixing Africa - Aid People Never Governments
What is the cause of the consternation that
exists in helping Africa find prosperity, the
people are intelligent, the land rich, the climate excellent. It would seem
that a constellation of resources and circumstances has emerged to produce the
wealthiest continent earth, and yet Africa
remains the poorest. Contrast most of Africa
with Canada Canada Canada Africa ’s people, when any objective
assessment of bioclimatic realities would indicate it should be the other way
round. Everybody knows the answer, Canada Africa as the cause of Africa ’s ills, if you witness the flow of Canada Canada Africa find
prosperity, we need to empower and envalue the people and circumvent inept and
corrupt governance. The assertion that it will take time for governance to
evolve in Africa is true, but having traveled that evolutions path, the west
can accelerate the process.
There are many people screaming for FUNDS
as though money poured into Africa is the
solution. The present mode of aiding with money has had as many ill effects as
it has had good. It is apparent that as more and more money flows through
corrupt channels, those channels gain strength with the perverse effect of
enriching the corrupt in a greater proportion than empowering the people
requiring a hand up; exacerbating the negative situation. Additionally, as
people in need are provided aid in the form of goods and services, often local
channels for goods and services are disrupted or made permanently unviable by
the requirement to compete with free goods and services; effecting dependence
on the population. What’s required is that the population is put in situation
where, by possessing resources, the African people attract goods and services
to them. We have Viagra because there is a population able to pay for it; we
are absent a drug for Malaria largely because the people who get Malaria have
no money. If every citizen of Africa was a
millionaire, we would be over there cutting their grass for $125 / hour.
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In business we refer to a business reaching
critical mass, the point at which a business has sufficient resources to fully
capitalise on the opportunities a given environment provides. Poverty is a
state of critical masslessness or depletion, where there are insufficient
resources to respond to the opportunities a given environment provides. Often a
company, when provided with a proportionally small amount of capital leavers that capital to
generate exceptional results. Capital and knowledge combine to generate
results, assuming there isn’t a corrupt official stealing the proceeds. As
western economies evolved, the populace has become envalued, they have garnered
the ability to accumulate sufficient wealth to attract goods and services. As
the populace has become increasingly more prosperous creating goods and services
they’ve attracted provide more goods and services; a virtuous cycle has emerged. There
is strong support, as one views the various information sources related to the Africa situation, for priming the pump of human
endeavour. For support to the population to be successful three things must be
satisfied, resources must be isolated from corruption, the funds must be
supported by information and funds must envalue people directly.
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As is often the case, one lives so close to
the solution it is difficult to see. Wireless technologies offer the
opportunity to direct information and resources directly to people and
circumvent government all together. Electronic currency is ubiquitous in our
world now, as are the electronic means of exchange. Cell-phones can purchase food
from a vending machine, and via the internet I can transfer funds from my to my
daughters account. We take these developments for granted, but these
developments dispersed to Africans, in a manner that tailors technology to the
Africa circumstance, gives us the means to prime the pump of human endeavour in
Africa by empowering the people’s action.
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Imagine and electronic device, provided to
people cast to the riggers of the environment, war and corruption, that would
provide a means to receive a daily stipend directly circumventing corrupt
officials, that would provide them with pertinent information on whereabouts of
food, that would provide them with a secure means of exchange, that would
provide them with means to safely accumulate money, that would provide them
with reputation systems that put societal bullies at the people’s whim as
opposed to the other way round, that would provide information peculiar to
their given endeavour. This device exists now in so many forms, is it only a
matter of consolidating technologies, developing a functional organizational
model to build and deliver them, and garnering the appropriate support for the
venture.
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To appreciate the value of a device of this
nature it is useful to imagine how it could be utilized by people in their
daily lives. Consider an African mother going to a market in which the devices
were utilized, she would interface with the various vendors by purchasing
goods and transferring funds to their “device” electronically; she has no worry
about her money being stolen as it is electronically “held”; her device is
biometrically protected so it is useless in the hands of another person; if a
corrupt office requests a bribe on her way home and compels her to transfer
funds to his device, she can anonymously activate a reputation system that
flags this transaction as a bribe, identifying the official and providing the
contributing organization the ability to track the number of bribes a given official
has taken and or reversing the transactions or engaging is some other
corrective action; given that she is geo located regionally sensitive
information can be directed to her perhaps on the best time and types of crop
to plant; now that she has been envalued by having a secure source of funds
services will travel to her, perhaps a vender with a $.99 aids test or some
other medical service; now with a secure means to accumulate money she can
accumulate the money her actions generate; now that she has a track record of
having funds flowing in she can request a loan. This device then facilitates
her life by; empowering and envaluing her; isolating her resources to her hence
protecting them from others; helping to secure her ongoing existence as the
only way others can access her daily resources is by her being there to
distribute them; gives her the means to police her government by providing the
means to record the actions of its officials. This is a device of empowerment,
as it puts the entire panoply of modern technologies in accessible form, right
in the hands of the world’s most vulnerable.
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Many people yearn to bring change to
populations of Africa who are disadvantaged by
circumstances largely created by dysfunctional institutions. Yet the solutions
they turn to involve either creating more institutions who are hampered by the
existing dysfunctional institutions or somehow trying to access the people
through dysfunctional institutions. Clearly, a better course of action is to
make institutions responsive to the people who need help. By creating a channel
for information and resources to flow to people, regardless of the condition of
the state, people become empowered. Rather than the government being given lump
sums of money from international institutions, moneys are disbursed to their
populations who can choose to support the government or not. Inherent in this
approach is the strengthening of democratising forces and the ability for
populations to pull services and governmental responsiveness to them.
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This proposal of creatively utilising new
technologies needs to be done on a massive enough scale to ensure that no
individual state can influence its function. I envisage these devices
functioning under a continent wide satellite umbrella. The devices themselves
being broadly distributed for free to the populations. Once designed the
manufacture of millions of them will drive their unit cost to very low levels.
The free provision of this devices and the information and resources they will
provide, will ensure immediate penetration of this technology. Now having
considered the benefit and opportunity to democratise that the broad
distribution of these devices would provide, one needs to consider an
organisational model to deliver both the device and the supporting services.
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Presently one of the challenges of the
African aid landscape is the fractured response to societal challenges.
Consider for a moment the millions of religious, NGO, corporate and government
organizations, in good spirit, working to help the impoverished inhabitants of Africa . They are doing some good but, the duplication of
service and effort costs valuable resources. The device based continent wide
system being proposed here would provide a single unifying platform on which
all organizations could facilitate their efforts on a common logistical
substrate.
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Jeffery Sacks suggests that the number for
bringing the African continent on toward the rich worlds living standards is
$125 Billion US annually. The challenge presently is there is an absence of an
effective channel for those funds to be distributed. The device system proposed
here provides such a channel. Given the proper development of the appropriate
organization, the rich world would gain confidence enough to provide its
support as the entire project has the focus of shifting all benefit away from
governments and directly to the people.
The ability to circumvent state barriers has
such great value, consider this proposal in the context of Zimbabwe
There is a broad requirement or aid in Africa , additionally this is thriving industry across the
continent. The device system itself and the supporting satellite network offers
opportunity for a revenue stream very likely sufficient is size to support the
charitable components of the system. Charitable components of the system being
the functional equipment and servicing of the that equipment. The description
of all the possibilities for revenue for a system such of this is outside the
scope to this letter, but when you consider a continent wide telecom linked to
the world, opportunities for revenue are endless. We know that this model is
viable as there are thousands of profitable services of this nature functioning
the world over.
Technology really does hold the answers for
liberating the impoverished of Africa, this simple service in collaboration
NGOs, corporations and governments gives a direct and unencumbered channel to
the people in need. In providing a direct flow of funds in conjunction with
information, corruption is largely circumvented and people of little worth now
will at least be valued at their stipend. Even the spending value of a modest
stipend will cause the emergence of services from local and regional sources by
inciting local entrepreneurs to respond to a new market, existing market
systems will be enhanced rather than diminished. Perhaps most importantly, this
system provides means (monetary, informational and communications) to people
who are in extremely exploitable circumstances, turning the tables on
oppressive or inept and corrupt governments, by truly making them accountable
to people. When you look at the African situation from thirty thousand feet the
present incoherence of the total aid effort is disheartening, as duplication
and uncoordinated action steal valuable resources; the provision of a
widespread device based distribution system provides a vital substrate for
collective action on the part of the aid providers.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Who aspires to ordinary?
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I’ve wanted to be a lot of things in my life, but ordinary, never – I take comfort in never having had anyone accuse me of being ordinary. The challenge with people who espouse about “ordinary” is that I think they see themselves as ordinary absent any clear definition of ordinary, except perhaps the juxtaposing to extra-ordinary. There are some who voice support for ordinary people; they want to build policy for “ordinary” people so government serves the ordinary, ordinarily. The challenge I have is that in all my time on earth I have never met an ordinary person, in the very middle of the societal bell curve, I have never encountered “ordinary” people – there I have found the extra-ordinary amongst the “ordinary”.
I’ve wanted to be a lot of things in my life, but ordinary, never – I take comfort in never having had anyone accuse me of being ordinary. The challenge with people who espouse about “ordinary” is that I think they see themselves as ordinary absent any clear definition of ordinary, except perhaps the juxtaposing to extra-ordinary. There are some who voice support for ordinary people; they want to build policy for “ordinary” people so government serves the ordinary, ordinarily. The challenge I have is that in all my time on earth I have never met an ordinary person, in the very middle of the societal bell curve, I have never encountered “ordinary” people – there I have found the extra-ordinary amongst the “ordinary”.
I spent most of my life at the altar of exceptionalism,
reading Winston Churchill speeches and the like, it was my first and only wife,
that taught me about the extra-ordinary amongst the ordinary. When I was
reading about Mr. Churchill, she would be talking about a neighbor. She had the
capacity to admire the people who filled her everyday life, to see and
appreciate a quality that a person possessed – save perhaps the person who left
their socks on the floor one too many times. This is a lesson I got from one that
considered herself from the ranks of the ordinary, it was a good one.
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The point here is that the only time there can be ordinary
people is when you’re looking at a “herd” of people, the moment you take person
out of the “herd” they become exceptional. Therein lays the evil in collectivism.
Whenever you aggregate human existence, an ill-defined blob is born where an
individual use to be, where there was once a thousand flowers to bloom, there
is now no flower to be noticed. The tall poppy syndrome comes to play, it is necessary
only because collectivism wants people to be the same, treated the same, having
the same – no exceptional individuals. My wife’s lesson was that all people are
exceptional; my observation is they get lost in a crowd.
Cub Scouts to C Suites – Culture starts at Initiation
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In his book The Anatomy of Power, John Kenneth Galbraith offers “conditioning” as the most powerful element in the administration of power. The more I spend time observing human behaviour, the more I realize how true his assertion is. It seems at every turn you witness the emergence of the past, we are inextricably linked to intergenerational memes that are the product of intergenerational conditioning; some good and some bad.
As a boy, I attended Boy Scouts, our “troop” leader had as a
practice “running the mill”. When you did something that fell short or miss behaved, you would be instructed to “run the mill”. A line was formed
with each individual about three feet apart, standing with their legs apart so
as to facilitate plenty of room to swing one’s hand. The subject was instructed
to get on their hands and knees and crawl on all fours down the “tunnel” formed
by their peer’s legs. As the subject crawled along, the people in the line
would swat the behind of the subject, open hand was the requirement.
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It is highly unlikely you would find this practice in Boy
Scouts now; I think generally that is a good thing. It did however, serve
several purposes, the one most important purpose was to reveal the character of
your peers. Some in the line would merely make the motion so that their "swat" delivered
no pain to the subject, others would take glee in the process and make sure
when their opportunity to swat came, it hurt. It was curious to me, that the behaviour
of an individual which had no effect on another specific individual, would be
met with vigour at the opportunity to inflict pain; they would seek to hurt
only because the forum to hurt was provided. When you find people who will exercise
themselves in this way, people who hurt only because there is a forum to hurt,
remember them, as they are the one’s who are likely to become an institutional
zealot. One understands that organization has inherent in it the forfeiting of “self”
to some degree, however, a zealot, in the midst of the rational is institutional
poison.
Wikipedia Definition ““Hazing is the
practice of rituals and
other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used
as a way of initiating a person into agroup.
Hazing is seen in many different types of social groups, including gangs, sports teams,
schools, military units, and fraternities and sororities. The
initiation rites can range from relatively benign pranks, to protracted
patterns of behavior that rise to the level of abuse or criminal misconduct.
Hazing is often prohibited by law and may comprise either physical or psychological abuse. It may also include nudity
and/or sexually based offences.”
“Fundamental Attribution Error” comes to mind here, the process of placing too
much weight on innate character and under-weighting the environment that people
are exercising themselves in. We need to remember, when you
introduce competition between peers and add to that processes of initiation, we
are creating a circumstance where the ensconced and operationally secure can seek to eliminate completion
from the yet to be initiated or those yet to be through the induction process.
This seems obvious enough, what is less obvious is why we persist with the
process. Peer-based selection is more effective when it is criteria-based
rather than the product of multi-party assessment, human assessment is very
subjective and is most often influenced by things unrelated to the organization’s
mission.
One understands the necessity to determine the nature of
a person at the point they come to an organization; can we count on this
person or not in any given situation. The question is, is the process you’ve
built to determine this really giving you that information and what is the
downstream effect on the overall culture of an organization and its
performance. There are few things as pernicious
to an organization than “intra” organizational competition, because, in competition
there are winners and losers - an organization is a product of the “some” of
its parts. It is better to define the mission, set the objectives, have clarity
in performance metrics and let knowledge rule rather than “gangs”.
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