I have referred to it before – the cognitive black hole that consumes reason in the Less than United States (my neighbours to the south). Regardless of what I might write about those Less than United States (LUS), I hope my readers will realize that I wish the best for the folks in that troubled country.
Despite our win against the LUS hockey team in the winter Olympics, Canadians remain just one step behind LUS citizens in most respects. The 2 weeks of euphoric feelings of national unity that came to Canadians with the Olympics in Vancouver was a welcome surprise for a federation of 12 less than united provinces. When all is said and done, I and my fellow Canadians want friendship and collaboration with LUS citizens to continue and grow. A bilateral announcement this week of new automotive emission standards was the happy result of Canada-US collaboration.
Over many years, I have studied and written about human nature and the basic principles that govern human dynamics. When I hear about current events, I compare what is going on now with my descriptions of what has always been going on, with the view to improving or changing those descriptions. For example, I am convinced that humans do best living and working in small groups. As organizations grow larger, they often fail as a matter of course.
In Group Dynamics, I wrote:" The desirability of unlimited corporate growth and mergers is doubtful unless enlarging corporations re-organize around small, semi-autonomous groups. The inefficiencies and failures of enlarging human systems is a product of the distinct cognitive limitations of the participants. While smart and apparently well qualified people become CEOs of large corporations their limitations eventually become obvious. One paradox is that experts are people who focus their attention on details of small parts of large and complex systems, but do not understand how the whole system works. Another paradox is that managers develop competence in smaller systems and advance to the level of their incompetence as the company grows. Even the smartest, best-informed human cannot comprehend how large complex systems work overall."
Collins, writing in Fortune magazine’s annual addition that lists the top 500 US corporations, reflected on the ephemeral nature of big corporations. Only 71 companies of the 500 best listed in 1955 were still in business in 2007. Most of the 2000 companies that made the list in subsequent years have dropped out. Collins blames managers for the failures. He points to examples of corporations that faltered, adapted and continued on a successful path because of new and inspired leadership. While managers are often at fault for corporate failures, I would argue that even the best qualified, most honest managers are just people with distinct limitations who may not cope with the relentless recurrence and complexity of the problems they face.
There have been a succession of business Gurus such as Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, published in 1982) who have studied management styles and strategies. The main advice that emerged for executives was to stay involved with employees and customers; reduce the number of middle managers and empower productive employees to become innovators. A big problem that Peters identified was that executive officers withdrew progressively into their exclusive and privileged offices and clubs. Like aristocrats of old, they would not mingle with the commoners and were oblivious to employees and customers. They developed delusions of grandeur and collected false beliefs such as "my company is too big to fail."
I believe that Barack Obama is a great president. I am really happy that he is charge of the LUS. If someone offered me his job, I would decline without hesitation. Why turn down such a great job? The main reason is that it's difficult or impossible to succeed, especially if you are an idealist and want to turn the ignorant and belligerent into constructive citizens.
A great leader will motivate his audience with empowering suggestions, but will realize that inspiration alone is not sufficient to change the status quo. A big country with diverse regions has a terrifying inertia; it takes years of painfully slow, incremental changes to head in a new direction.
Barack is an idealist with amazing stamina. Now, he did not take my advice to get out of Afghanistan ASAP, but I understood why. The real reasons are not his stated reasons. I am sure he realizes that there is no need to travel half way around the world to find terrorists. He has plenty of people close to home planning to overthrow the federal government.
Sedition is not new to the LUS and other countries have the same problem, but there is renewed hatred emerging there and in too many other places on the planet. This hatred is a cognitive black hole that swallows reason and motivates property destruction and killing.
Governments (as overly large organizations) do fail. Federations of many states also fail as a matter of course. Top down solutions may sound good in theory, but, in practice, they usually fail.
If I am really perplexed, I consult the great LUS sociologists and philosophers such as P.J. O'Rourke and several New York Times columnists: Maureen Dowd is one of my NYT favourites because she combines local insider knowledge with insight and a skillful use of irony and sarcasm, a special ability of smart women who can outclass smart men in social commentary.
What is remarkable about human nature is the moral depravity associated with notions such as "national security." You might ask, how can any nation be secure if it is busy creating new enemies, especially in foreign poor countries who want what you have? What about the golden rule that recommends treating others the way you would like to be treated? Just turn that excellent rule around a little and you realize that if you travel to a foreign country to kill people and blow up buildings that you have given permission to to those people to come to your country and carry out the same acts of death and destruction. Tit for Tat.
In terms of LUS foreign policy, PJ wrote the definitive equation: "Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy. "
Maureen is fearless in her writing. In her recent description of the growing hatred directed against Obama, she wrote: " I've been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer - the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids - had much to do with race. I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids - from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton. For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both. Don Fowler, a former Democratic Party chief stated: "A good many people in South Carolina really reject the notion that we're part of the union… when slavery was destroyed by outside forces and segregation was undone by civil rights leaders and Congress, it bred xenophobia. We have a lot of people who really think that the world's against us, so when things don't happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders."
Read Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason http://www.personadigital.net/Persona/groupdynamics/index.htm
Despite our win against the LUS hockey team in the winter Olympics, Canadians remain just one step behind LUS citizens in most respects. The 2 weeks of euphoric feelings of national unity that came to Canadians with the Olympics in Vancouver was a welcome surprise for a federation of 12 less than united provinces. When all is said and done, I and my fellow Canadians want friendship and collaboration with LUS citizens to continue and grow. A bilateral announcement this week of new automotive emission standards was the happy result of Canada-US collaboration.
Over many years, I have studied and written about human nature and the basic principles that govern human dynamics. When I hear about current events, I compare what is going on now with my descriptions of what has always been going on, with the view to improving or changing those descriptions. For example, I am convinced that humans do best living and working in small groups. As organizations grow larger, they often fail as a matter of course.
In Group Dynamics, I wrote:" The desirability of unlimited corporate growth and mergers is doubtful unless enlarging corporations re-organize around small, semi-autonomous groups. The inefficiencies and failures of enlarging human systems is a product of the distinct cognitive limitations of the participants. While smart and apparently well qualified people become CEOs of large corporations their limitations eventually become obvious. One paradox is that experts are people who focus their attention on details of small parts of large and complex systems, but do not understand how the whole system works. Another paradox is that managers develop competence in smaller systems and advance to the level of their incompetence as the company grows. Even the smartest, best-informed human cannot comprehend how large complex systems work overall."
Collins, writing in Fortune magazine’s annual addition that lists the top 500 US corporations, reflected on the ephemeral nature of big corporations. Only 71 companies of the 500 best listed in 1955 were still in business in 2007. Most of the 2000 companies that made the list in subsequent years have dropped out. Collins blames managers for the failures. He points to examples of corporations that faltered, adapted and continued on a successful path because of new and inspired leadership. While managers are often at fault for corporate failures, I would argue that even the best qualified, most honest managers are just people with distinct limitations who may not cope with the relentless recurrence and complexity of the problems they face.
There have been a succession of business Gurus such as Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, published in 1982) who have studied management styles and strategies. The main advice that emerged for executives was to stay involved with employees and customers; reduce the number of middle managers and empower productive employees to become innovators. A big problem that Peters identified was that executive officers withdrew progressively into their exclusive and privileged offices and clubs. Like aristocrats of old, they would not mingle with the commoners and were oblivious to employees and customers. They developed delusions of grandeur and collected false beliefs such as "my company is too big to fail."
I believe that Barack Obama is a great president. I am really happy that he is charge of the LUS. If someone offered me his job, I would decline without hesitation. Why turn down such a great job? The main reason is that it's difficult or impossible to succeed, especially if you are an idealist and want to turn the ignorant and belligerent into constructive citizens.
A great leader will motivate his audience with empowering suggestions, but will realize that inspiration alone is not sufficient to change the status quo. A big country with diverse regions has a terrifying inertia; it takes years of painfully slow, incremental changes to head in a new direction.
Barack is an idealist with amazing stamina. Now, he did not take my advice to get out of Afghanistan ASAP, but I understood why. The real reasons are not his stated reasons. I am sure he realizes that there is no need to travel half way around the world to find terrorists. He has plenty of people close to home planning to overthrow the federal government.
Sedition is not new to the LUS and other countries have the same problem, but there is renewed hatred emerging there and in too many other places on the planet. This hatred is a cognitive black hole that swallows reason and motivates property destruction and killing.
Governments (as overly large organizations) do fail. Federations of many states also fail as a matter of course. Top down solutions may sound good in theory, but, in practice, they usually fail.
If I am really perplexed, I consult the great LUS sociologists and philosophers such as P.J. O'Rourke and several New York Times columnists: Maureen Dowd is one of my NYT favourites because she combines local insider knowledge with insight and a skillful use of irony and sarcasm, a special ability of smart women who can outclass smart men in social commentary.
What is remarkable about human nature is the moral depravity associated with notions such as "national security." You might ask, how can any nation be secure if it is busy creating new enemies, especially in foreign poor countries who want what you have? What about the golden rule that recommends treating others the way you would like to be treated? Just turn that excellent rule around a little and you realize that if you travel to a foreign country to kill people and blow up buildings that you have given permission to to those people to come to your country and carry out the same acts of death and destruction. Tit for Tat.
In terms of LUS foreign policy, PJ wrote the definitive equation: "Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy. "
Maureen is fearless in her writing. In her recent description of the growing hatred directed against Obama, she wrote: " I've been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer - the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids - had much to do with race. I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids - from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton. For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both. Don Fowler, a former Democratic Party chief stated: "A good many people in South Carolina really reject the notion that we're part of the union… when slavery was destroyed by outside forces and segregation was undone by civil rights leaders and Congress, it bred xenophobia. We have a lot of people who really think that the world's against us, so when things don't happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders."
Read Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason http://www.personadigital.net/Persona/groupdynamics/index.htm
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