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Thinking on the run.

September 2, 2015 //
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I’ve just found this joke in my e-mail, in Romanian. Had a laugh and thought about sharing it with you so I searched for a translation. Thanks Gaudeaugroup.com.

“A wealthy man decides to take a hunting safari in Africa and takes his faithful dog with him so he doesn’t feel so lonely out in the middle of the bush. The first day out on the expedition the dog starts  absent-mindedly chasing butterflies.  Before long, the dog discovers that he has become separated from the safari group. He starts wandering around in the wilderness, lost, when he suddenly notices a leopard a little way off, heading rapidly in his direction, with the obvious intention of making a meal out of him.

dog w-bone“Now I’m in deep doo doo!” thinks the dog, and starts racking his brain to figure a way out of his dire situation. He notices some bones nearby, and an idea hits him: He settles down comfortably to chew on the bones, with his back to the leopard. Just as the leopard is about to pounce, the dog exclaims loudly: “Man, that was one delicious leopard I just ate! I wonder if there’s any more around here?

Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid stride, a look of terror on his face, and quietly slinks off into the bush again, thinking: “Whew! That was close! That demon dog almost got me!”.

Meanwhile, a monkey had been watching the whole scene from the top of a nearby tree.  The monkey figures he can put his information to good use and trade it with the leopard for protection. So off he scuttles, but the dog sees him heading after the leopard at great speed, and figures something is going on.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, cuts a deal, and tells him the whole story. The leopard, furious at being fooled so easily, exclaims: “That dog! I’m gonna get him for that! So the stupid dog thinks he can make a fool of me, lord of the wilderness, does he? We’ll show him who eats who around here! Come on, monkey: jump on my back, and we’ll go get him!”  The monkey jumps on, and the two of them head off in search of the dog.

The dog sees the leopard coming from a long way off, this time with the monkey on his back. “What a sneaky little monkey!”, thinks the dog to himself. “Now what am I going to do?” Instead of running, the dog sits down on the ground, his back to the attackers, pretending he hasn’t seen them yet, and waits for them to get close enough to hear him. “Where’s that rascal monkey!” exclaims the dog, loudly.  “Never can trust him! I sent him off half an hour ago to bring me another leopard, and he’s still not back!””

While putting this post together something else crossed my mind.
How come such a ‘genius’ got lost in the wilderness, ‘absent-mindedly chasing butterflies’?!?
That’s more likely for a careless brat than for a seasoned ‘old hand’…

PS.
I somehow feel this fits well in here:

SECOND OPINION
Ever since I was a child, I’ve always had a fear that someone was hiding under my bed at night, so I finally went to a shrink and told him “I’ve got problems. Every time I go to bed I think there’s somebody under my bed!! I’m scared. I think I’m going crazy.”
“Just put yourself in my hands for one year”, said the shrink. “Come talk to me three times a week and we should be able to get rid of those fears.”

“How much do you charge?”, I asked.
“Eighty dollars per visit”, replied the doctor.

“I’ll sleep on it”, I said.
Six months later the doctor met me on the street. “Why didn’t you come to see me about those fears you were having?”, he asked.
“Well, eighty bucks a visit, three times a week for a year, is $12,480.00. A bartender cured me for $10.00. I was so happy to have saved all that money that I went and bought me a new pickup truck.”

“Is that so?” With a bit of an attitude the shrink said, “And how, may I ask, did a Bartender cure you?”

“He told me to cut the legs off the bed……..Ain’t nobody under there now.”
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Categories Frames of mind, Psychology, The world as described in jokes

We need to make up our minds. Fast!

September 2, 2015 //
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I thought the modern mantra was ‘make as much money as you can, in a legal way – if possible’….
Meanwhile the likes of Trump are lionized for their exploits yet those who are happy to nibble some crumbs from Uncle Sam’s table are treated with scorn!
Is there any real difference between Trump using eminent domain to rob people of their homes and the guys depicted above scamming the federal budget?

Photo: Associated Press

““He has been a proponent of using eminent domain to take property from small property owners and use it to make business and make money for himself,” Paul said. “There was a case of a woman who had lived in a house for 30 years. He built a casino next door and when she wouldn’t sell, he used the government to take it from her.”” Rand Paul, quoted by BostonHerald.com

You may also want to check what Snopes.com has to say about the matter.

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Categories collective identity, corruption, Frames of mind, Money as goal, politics, Psychology

Self driving cars. Where to?

August 28, 2015 //
4

The automobile has been both a huge opportunity for the humankind and a sort of a turning point in its history.

Humans have been faced with an extremely interesting provocation during their entire evolution. In order for the community to become stronger its individual members had to become simultaneously more autonomous and more involved in the communal life.

At first the automobile helped with both. It offered the individual the means to travel faster and further – hence it increased individual autonomy – and it drove people to ‘band together’ – to form the corporations that build automobiles, to build roads and bridges, etc., etc.

After some time the automobile had become a mixed blessing. Not only that a lot of people were dying in car accidents but because in his search for increased efficiency man had invented the ‘assembly line’, thus heavily limiting the erstwhile huge autonomy of the very skilled laborers who used to build the first automobiles. Skills, which usually come with an independent mind, were no longer in such high demand and have been replaced by ‘hard work’. And later by sheer automation.

But at least we were still responsible for driving the damned cars. And, for many of us, that was the only really autonomous thing that we were allowed to do without outside supervision. Except for when the missus was in the co-pilot seat, of course. Just kidding, the husbands are the more obnoxious critics when it comes to driving skills, not the wifes. But the fact remains.

Not for long. In a short while not only that we will be transported by our future self driving cars but they, the cars, will have to obey the police first and only then take us where we told them to go.

And all of this in the name of progress…

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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, Frames of mind, Psychology

‘Pro whose life?’

August 28, 2015 //
2

The two sides are fighting this tooth and nail.

But what are they really fighting for?

With the pro-choicers things are relatively clear. They want the mother to have the ultimate say about the fate of the pregnancy, at least during the first three months. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are condoning abortions. All reasonable human beings finds this is not a commendable method for birth control and most pro-choicers agree that it should be used only as a last resort escape out of an untenable situation.

With the pro-lifers things are a lot more nuanced. They insist that the life of the fetus is sacrosanct and must be preserved at all costs. Only those costs are going to be supported almost exclusively by the mother and/or by the child itself.

Let’s see some facts about the abortions that take place in the US

“• Half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and about four in 10 of these end in abortion.[1]

• About half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy, [2] and nearly 3 in 10 will have an abortion, by age 45.[3]

• The overall U.S. unintended pregnancy rate increased slightly between 1994 and 2008, but unintended pregnancy increased 55% among poor women, while decreasing 24% among higher-income women.[1,6]

• Overall, the abortion rate decreased 8% between 2000 and 2008, but abortion increased 18% among poor women, while decreasing 28% among higher-income women.[3]

• Some 1.06 million abortions were performed in 2011, down from 1.21 million abortions in 2008, a decline of 13%.[4]

• The number of U.S. abortion providers declined 4% between 2008 (1,793) and 2011 (1,720). The number of clinics providing abortion services declined 1%, from 851 to 839. Eighty-nine percent of all U.S. counties lacked an abortion clinic in 2011; 38% of women live in those counties.[4]

• Nine in 10 abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.[5]

• A broad cross section of U.S. women have abortions:[3]

First of all 1 million abortions is a huge number but it is decreasing. A 13% decrease in 4 years is no small thing, right? How about concentrating the efforts towards the prevention of unwanted pregnancies instead of trying to outrightly ban the abortions?

What would happen if abortions were to stop tomorrow? Besides some of the women traveling abroad and others attempting empiric, and very dangerous, measures to ‘obtain’ a miscarriage?

How many of the women in their 20’s will be able to go on with their lives, even assuming they will give up for adoption their ‘unwanted’ children? How many of those who already have children will be able to afford another one? Specially those that are unmarried/not cohabiting AND economically disadvantaged? What will be the fate of these children? And of their brethren?

I find it rather strange that those who insist on saving the lives of the unborn don’t realize that at the same time they insist on ruining the lives of people who are already living.
Hence my question.
What makes one life more precious than the other and how come the pro-lifers are so sure about their beliefs that they would empower the government most of them distrust with imposing a certain belief, theirs, on somebody else?
While all the costs will be supported by, you guessed it, that very ‘somebody else’, not at all by the proponents of the imposition.

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Categories Choices we make, Frames of mind, Psychology

Adulthood?!?

August 27, 2015 //
0

Nope.
That’s self imposed servitude.
Becoming an adult means reaching behind the nape of your neck and removing the collar.

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Categories Choices we make, Frames of mind, Psychology

What goes around, comes around.

August 27, 2015 //
0

I recently stumbled upon this book and devoured it.

Then something really interesting downed on me. Maslow’s Pyramid and Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow suddenly had a new meaning.

Basically all three of them say the same thing, using different words and starting from different vantage points. Looking from each of those vantage points offers the traveler a vastly improved perspective on the subject.

Maslow says that after it was able to satisfy its basic and social needs it’s up to each individual to ‘spread its wings’ and determine where it wants to go from there on – ‘self actualization’ in his own terms.

Frankl says that it’s more important to understand than to have.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
No, it doesn’t contradict Maslow, it just starts from where Maslow has set his subjects free. While Maslow had taken his students up to a wide plateau and set them free to choose their own paths, Frankl – after having to endure conditions way crueler than any of those mentioned by Maslow as ‘basic and social needs’ – takes his students by the hand and leads them away from the precipice.
Maslow couldn’t conceive that anybody would go back after being shown the light, Frankl had experienced on his own skin the consequences of some idiots doing just that.

Finally Csikszentmihalyi brings forward a ‘how to’ guide, some very powerful advice about how to reach the pinnacle of our own potential.

From here it’s really up to us.

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Categories Choices we make, Frames of mind, Psychology

Two of the most common misconceptions of today.

August 21, 2015 //
0

huge errors

a. Asking your broker for advice. If he had any reliable understanding of the market he would have been trading his own money for his own profit, not your money for a lousy commission.

b. That you can buy your way out of every situation you’ve got yourself into. You will, eventually, use all the canned goods and ammo you were able to buy. And no, buying huge amounts of any of them won’t help either. The more goods you have the more ‘attractive’ to the thieves you become so you’ll have to hire a lot of guards. Who, at some point, might decide that they don’t need you to tell them what to do: they have the real power and all that you really have under your ‘command’ is the receipt for the goods. What good will that do for you in a lawless world?

How about becoming your own man? Learn to make your own trading decisions, to grow your own food and to become a person who is respected for his ability to help those around him, not for what he owns. Canned goods, ammo, whatever…

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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, Frames of mind, Psychology

“The older I get”, my version.

August 17, 2015 //
1
I believe you are already familiar with this meme.
Here’s what I’d have used as a caption:
The older I get the more I realize that during my last days I might depend heavily on those around me.
Hence I started to treat them fairly, just as I expect them to treat me towards the end of my life.
Most of them responded in kind.
Therefore the older I get, the more I enjoy life.
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Categories Frames of mind, Mutual Respect, Psychology

A democratic conundrum.

August 16, 2015 //
7

                                                                                                                                                             Rebecca Cook/Reuters

Donald Trump is making big headlines in his bid to conquer the White House.
Covering this subject the Atlantic published a very pertinent question posed by Conor Friedersdorf to Trump’s supporters:
“You’re right to mistrust conventional politicians. But why do you think he’ll treat you any better?”

This is one side of the entire development.
If we dig a little deeper we have to observe that the person who actually occupies the Oval Office – or any other public office, in no matter which democratic country, is important indeed but even more so is the fact that that person has to be voted by a majority in order to accede to that office.

In other words, America has a little over 300 million inhabitants. There must be better contenders out there.
Better than either Trump or Clinton!
What’s keeping the ordinary Americans from recognizing and bringing some of THEM to the fore of the American politics?

PS. Click on this link and read the comments, besides the article. As always, they are are at least as revealing as the article itself, if not more so.

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Categories collective identity, democracy, Frames of mind, politics, Psychology

Again about Maslow’s pyramid

August 11, 2015 //
0

black driver pulled from job

The Root reports that a customer “asked that no black delivery driver be sent to her home” and that a manager decided to “honor” that request.

As most of you already know Maslow’s five leveled pyramid can be simplified into a three three tiered one: Physiological needs, Relational needs (safety, emotion and esteem) and Self Actualization. Maslow said that you cannot skip any one of this levels, for instance you can not deal with your emotional needs on an empty stomach. And who cares about self actualization if he doesn’t know where he’s going to sleep tonight?

Well…intuitively we have to admit that Maslow’s words do make some sense…

Studying this example we can draw some interesting conclusions on this subject.

For instance simply climbing to a certain level doesn’t mean one is mature enough for it.

The customer had certainly satisfied her basic needs yet she has some deep emotional problems.
OK, I can imagine that a person can be so ‘dense’ as to be able to make such a demand but no second thoughts after you produced such a frack-ass?
“”I got a right to have whatever I want and that’s it,” the woman said. “No, I don’t feel bad about nothing.””

But the most interesting examples here are the manager and the driver.

Lowe’s is not at all a small operation. Rising to management level is not a simple thing and should provide some security and self esteem to an individual. Enough for that individual to start thinking with his own head. After all that’s what managers are supposed to do, right? That would also help that individual bring himself up to date – ‘self actualization’, that is…
Was that particular manager capable of fulfilling his duty? Lowe’s didn’t think so… Me neither, on different grounds though.

Let’s see what the driver has to say:
“”To me, it just ain’t right for a business that we work at to go on with the woman’s wishes,” Brooks told the news station.
“It was one of those things like, ‘These guys will get over it, they’re tough guys, they’re delivery guys,’ ” Brooks said. “And that’s kind of where I just had to put my foot down and say I couldn’t do it with them.””
So a “mere” driver has more guts than a manager…
No matter if the manager shared the customer’s racist feelings. He had to have the wisdom to understand that catering for such kind of wishes – specially in this manner,  is extremely bad for the company. And for himself as an employee of that company.
So he should have solved that situation properly, not botchedly – he was a manager, remember?

“Despite the letdown, Bradley added that he won’t be missing any time at work.
“I mean, I gotta work,” he said. “I’m going to keep going to work like I’ve always done. But I would think Lowe’s would take it into consideration to think about what they’re doing next time.””

So the driver has a clearer view of the situation – including his own standing – than the manager…

What’s going on here? Did Maslow got his pyramid upside down or the whole world has turned over and is now standing on its head?

Maybe that is the whole ‘self-actualization’ thing. Being able to use wisely the amount of autonomy one happens to have at his disposal.

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Categories Frames of mind, Psychology
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