Underutilized Synergy

Now here is an interesting principle:

"The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system."
-Robert Metcalf

As real-time communication between vast numbers of nodes (people) throughout the world becomes a reality, the power of this principle will become exponentially more apparent. The reaction time of entire organizations will reduce and the landscape will allow anyone to compete with anyone else. Identity management will inevitably become an overwhelming concern, while a node's geographic location will only be important for knowledge acquisition. But what happens to the people at these nodes? Physically, they are all staring at a computer screen sending and receiving pieces of information. The purely intellectual involvement of people in work is not natural, and its physiological effects ultimately limits productivity. Example: The same architect who, no more than two generations ago, would have been playing with blocks, sticks, and paper to design a house, is now staring at a computer screen using computer software to “build” a piece of intellectual capital, which will ultimately be used to build a house. Is creativity hindered, bolstered, or left unchanged? With lower levels of physical involvement in work, blood circulation slows, hand-eye coordination is redefined with a mouse/keyboard, and energy levels decrease. Daily exercise, while extremely beneficial for maintain health, is rarely coordinated with intellectual activity. The end result for the individual at a node is better networking capabilities, combined with lesser contributions to the network. Networking enables synergy, but what is the cumulative power of people when intellectual faculties are not being fully-utilized?

Change

In business literature, this has to be one of the most commonly addressed topics. Evolution, whether its economic, technological, or biological, enables people to adapt to the environment. Since the environment changes without regard to the comfort level or adaptability of people, the burden to change rests upon people as individuals, groups, and ultimately populations.

The process of change can be viewed in two ways: inside-out and outside-in. The latter is comprised of endless trials, innumerable errors, extensive documentation, probabilities, major resource investments, and most importantly, hope. The former is the result of enlightened action; a "knowing" of exactly how to respond to a particular change in the environment, avoiding trial and error. In considering biological evolution, Darwinianism is an example of the outside-in approach. Mutations, most of which are unsuccessful, fail until one ultimately succeeds at helping an organism adapt to its environmental conditions. In business, however, market research and analysis provides us with a view of the market environment; a luxury not available to living organisms that don't have access to the Weather Channel. A company's response to market conditions is not a "shot in the dark" as it is in evolution, but rather a calculated action with probabilities of success associated with it. Such "enlightened" change can only occur through an accurate view of the market conditions. The accuracy of that view, then, is paramount.

Clarity

A crystal clear pond reflecting the trees surrounding it and the sky above it; like a mirror it reflects the terrestrial world we live in, masking the beauty that lies beneath. A pebble crashes against its glass-like surface, creating perfectly circular waves that move outward and decrease in amplitude as they spread to cover the entire surface captured by the observer's field of vision. In the rare mind that thinks with complete clarity, the disturbance of the pebble, is like a thought that permeates an entire field of thinking. Intense and piercing in the beginning; vast and mellowed as the disturbance is absorbed. As the mind ponders focused complexity, it eventually learns to accept it and allows it to affect everything else within that field of thought. Wisdom results and eventually, a reversion to clarity. Too many pebbles and no time to revert...this is what beginning a semester with a severe bout of jet lag feels like.

I just got back from Bombay and Goa, India where I met Bollywood movie stars and Sai Baba of Shirdi, and you don't get any pictures..haha!

Mistakes

Doh!
They say there is no way around this. We all make mistakes...damn I hate that phrase. Some even go so far as to say that this is a good thing. This is how you learn, they say. What a bunch of hooey! Mistakes are bad. Dress it up with sugar and chocolate frosting all you want but when you make a mistake, it is a bad thing. Hopefully you'll learn not to make the same mistake again. Hopefully the mistake won't be one where you'll experience lifelong consequences. Hopefully, you'll recover....hopefully. I guess there are two ways to view this.

First is in a psylo. A mistake, in and of itself. You do something that results in a a bad feeling for you. So you think "Hmm....that was not so fun.". End. What good can come of this? Well, without this negative emotion following the mistake, we would never associate bad feelings with this purportedly bad action. So I guess that's a positive, right? Associating bad feelings with bad actions will (we hope) prevent you from participating in these bad actions again...thus avoiding the bad feelings.

The second way to view a mistake would be to analyze the cumulative effect of many mistakes on your persona. The cumulative effects of multiple instances of associating bad feelings with purportedly bad actions. I would imagine that this affects a person in a restrictive way.

Since a mistake prevents a particular, purportedly bad, behavior, a series of mistakes prevents many, purportedly bad, behaviors. So the end result is that a person avoids many of these behaviors. Now lets apply this to the ever changing dynamic of life. Since mistakes don't cause a person to behave in a different way, but rather cause a person to not behave in a particular way, how do we know that the avoidance of that, purportedly bad, behavior will always be good? For instance, let me use the worst possible example I can think of. One of those snipers that was running around in Atlanta a few years ago points a gun at a crowded bus from afar. He shoots and kills an innocent person. He gets caught and put in jail. "You're a bad man" they tell him. "Bad bad bad". So he thinks "I better not do that again when I get out of the slammer. If I do, I'll get put back in the slammer and get all these bad feelings again. I made a mistake by thinking that shooting my rifle at a bus full of innocent people was okay." So one day he gets out of jail and he is avoiding shooting a rifle at a crowded bus. One day he spots a crowded bus from afar, full of terrorist suicide bombers, all with those dynamite vest things strapped to them, driving full speed towards a building full of innocent people. He just happens to have a rifle on him because...well...he's a sniper. "Should I pull out my gun and shoot?" he thinks. Having previously associated bad feelings with this, purportedly bad, act, he avoids taking out the rifle and the worst case scenario takes place. Little does he know that criminal law provides "defense of others", as a complete defense against manslaughter charges.

This is, of course, a ridiculous example. However, the point I'm trying to make is that while the cumulative effect of mistakes on the psyche are restrictive in the strictest sense, their resulting effect on behavior may not always be a good thing. There are situations when a person has to look back on their life and reassess the lessons they learned in the past against new situations.

Decisions

Everyday, we make a series of choices. These choices reflect our beliefs about the world around us and allow us to move in our intended direction. Decisions differ from choices in some very important ways. A decision is a categorical choice. It is one option out of a limited number of options. There are limits; boundaries within which we much elect a path. A choice, however, is borne of nothing. It enters our mind sporadically. Its only limitations are those we impose it from our own beliefs. Fear, hesitation, insecurity, and anxiety are the kinds of emotions that limit our choices. One of the most beautiful things about young children is that they have not had the time to develop these restrictive sensations. Living a moment without worry of the next is where bliss lies; and this is where we lived as children. Bringing it back seems difficult (if not impossible). Plagued with memories that highlight our inadequacies and lower our self-esteem, we “grown-ups” focus on consequence. Consequence unfortunately, lives only in a moment that has not yet taken place; the future.

So being the pessimistic fortune-tellers that we have learned to become through the traumatic process of “growing up”, we have lost focus on NOW. And losing focus on now hinders our ability to make a choice that is pure and untainted by our tendency to consider consequence as a part of the equation.

A man once walked down the street and heard a loud bang from his right. To his left, a person fell from what had turned out to be a gunshot. Two years later, the same man walked the street and heard a loud bang from his right. Immediately, he looked left anticipating another person wounded, and reflexively ran for cover. The bang was, in actuality, a backfiring Harley Davidson. This man’s mind had unfortunately been tainted with a rather unlikely result. Like Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the ring of a bell, he had internalized an outcome from an illogical association.

Similarly, we grow up. We experience many things; some unlikely events. And our choices become more like decisions. Predictability sets in. Imagination muscles get weak. Creativity takes a back seat to redundant motions. My solution? Snowboarding!!!!

Friends

Making friends isn't easy. Some people like to think this is an easy thing to do or you have to "choose" your friends and stay away from the people who are not of your "ilk". This is quite self-centered I think. I don't know about everyone else but its rare that the people I want to associate myself with, happen to be the same people who want to associate themselves with me. The rare occasion in which that does happen is when there is that "click", whatever it is. But I guess both the other person and I realize that we are lucky to have met each other. For me, this is when I make a friend. I admit, there have been times that I want to associate myself with someone because 1.) I want something from them 2.) I respect them and it doesn't bother me that they think I'm just some shmoe off the street (low self esteem) or 3.) They make me feel better about myself because subconsiously, I think I'm better in some way. These are all stupid and selfish thoughts and the people to whom I am associated with, with these thoughts are not my friends. They are simply acquaintences. The beauty of human intuition is that it picks up on these qualities in others and subconsciously, these people most likely realize the limitations of our relationship, and respond accordingly.

Subconsious....what a concept. The gut feeling. They say to always trust it. Some of the greatest businessmen in history have preached the importance of trusting their gut. So what is this gut? Subconsiousness? Is this a product of our environment or genetics? Or possibly an interaction of the two. Can this gut feeling be taught to children at a young age or do people with strong gut reactions have children with strong gut reactions? I'm going to go out on a limb here but I think it has to do with a person's attitude; the outward facing thoughts that a person has towards the outside world. Something like "I want to take as much as I can for myself" (Kenneth Lay), "I want to help as many people as possibe" (Florence Nightingale), or "I want to have as much fun as possible" (Keith Richards). People have different and distinct attitudes and I would imagine that these attitudes are unique to the person who has them. Since teenagers rebel and ultimately become just like their parents (especially if they expressly TRY not to be like them), I am led to question whether attitudes are borne of genetics or childhood environment. So just to be safe lets just say its a result of genetics and environment.

So success in making friends...is this simply a consequence of success in the mixing of two attitudes? If this is true, then theoretically, we can be friends with anyone with a little "attitude adjustment". But if attitude results from genetic/environment interactions, then attitude adjustment is impossible. I guess this is where we draw the line between friends and acquaintences. Those with whom we have genetic factors in common with, are more likely to become friends as opposed to acquaintences. Further, those with whom we have childhood environmental factors in common with are also more likely to be our friends. Societal homogeneity is impossible to escape it seems.

So I went to a suburban public high school in the Boston area and I remember how separated our cafeteria was at lunch. You could see how everyone "chose" their friends. I'll spare you the details but I would imagine anyone who attended a large suburban high school knows what I mean. Regardless, I suspect that making friends necessitates characteristics that run deeper than attitude. If you go deep enough, we are all the same. A very wise lady once told me that if you go deep enough, we are all connected. She said "Its like the islands of Hawaii: just lower the water to see that its all just one big island". Superconsciousness is the term I believe.

Superconsciousness...what a concept. The world population is currently nearing the 7 Billion mark. If you go back a couple of thousand years, it was much smaller than this. We are all related somehow, and it is only time and environmental pressures that separate us. The beauty of the diversity in the United States of America is that people come from all sorts of cultures, ethnicities, religions, and yes, genetics. Since Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection teaches us that biodiversity is a consequence of successful mutations in the face of environmental pressures, it follows that genetic variation can simply be reduced to differences in environment exposed to inescapable lever of time across generations. It follows then, that genetic predispositions are a fascade. They don't exist. The biological fact that there is no genetic basis for race corroborates this theory. Yes, you read that right. Look it up if you want. There is no genetic basis for race.

So lets think about our ability to make friends then. That quiet girl reading her book in the corner of the coffee shop, the hoodlum with oversized clothes strutting down the street, or the accomplished old guy driving a Porsche. There are simply too many kinds of people to mention but their attitudes all result from childhood environmental factors. Their genetics are simply a reflection of their generational environmental factors. And their race is factually meaningless. Are there really any differences between us? I'm going to go out on a limb again and say no.

There is nothing stopping us from being friends except our willingness to reach out, and our willingness to be receptive enough to anothers attempt at reaching out to us.

Support

Support is an important thing to have in one's life. Support comes in all sorts of forms; a wife, a friend, a teacher, an idol, God, and sometimes even someone you don't know all that well. I once had a friend tell me something that rings in my ear till this day. We were sitting in a taxicab in Bangkok in the middle of the night, having seen a rather rough part of the city with all these underage prostitutes (sad state of affairs really). We get back in the car and he says to me, "You may not be something to everyone, but you will be everything to someone". I mention this because that someone, to whom we are lucky enough to be "everything" to, is likely a source of support for us. Life is tough. All these responsibilities just keep piling on and memories of the days of yore, riding powder through the trees on some random mountain plague the mind like the carrot in front of the donkey. To survive this, we all need support in one way, shape, or form.

Spirituality then, is a rather abstract form of support. Think about it; its always there. We can always close our eyes and pray to something that makes us feel better. By the way, if you haven't tried this, please give it a shot. Praying is almost as cool as a Bluebird day with 28 inches of freshies in Vail, Colorado. I'm not sure what this thing is that we "pray" to. Honestly, I'm not even sure exactly what it means to pray. All I know is that if I feel bad about something, I can always take 5 minutes and try to think about nothing. Yes nothing...which is much harder than it sounds. Everytime I try this, I can usually make it about 1.5 to 2 minutes or so and then my mind starts thinking about snowboarding or economics or something. But that short period of time has quite a positive effect. At the end I say or think "God, you rock." And that's it. Nine times out of ten, I'll feel much better.

Snowboarding

Everyone has a passion in life. Whether they realize it or not. Some people who you ask will say "Nothing" but then all you have to do is ask them about their family. They get this twinkle in their eye, their voice rises in pitch, and their body posture opens up. This is how I define passion. It has little to do with the thing that you are passionate about and everything to do with how that thing affect you. Its the quickest way to identify heterogeneity in our increasingly homogenous society. Just look at our automobiles! If the cars that people drive serve as any kind of indicators of their personality, its amazing to see the relative lack of creativity....but after all, it is simply transportation.

My passion is snowboarding. Yes, I know. Childs Play. I have to grow up 0ne of these days and take on responsiblity and start a family and all that stuff but c'mon...everyone has their poison. For me, this is what it is. Those who have tried the sport and don't feel addicted to it amaze me. I just don't see how you can't fall in love with this sport. There is no feeling in the world like laying down a nice toeside carve at high speed in fresh, untracked powder. Absolutely nothing in the world like it! Geez I get that silly feeling in my stomach just thinking about it. Then there's air. How many sports give you the freedom to throw yourself off of a jump and go 30+ feet in the air. And once you try it, its really not that scary or dangerous all. I know what you're thinking..."Oh boy, he's one of those Type A personalities" Well maybe I am but let me tell you. This is relaxing. It is freedom. This kind of feeling is probably what a man who was freed from slavery felt like in his first day out of chains. Its the feeling that a newborn probably gets as soon as he comes out of the womb. Snowboarding is this kind of feeling. If you don't believe me, just try it for yourself.

So yeah, call me selfish but I'm not an environmentalist because I care about Mother Nature or natural resources or any of that other BS. Its primarily because our carbon dioxide and free radical emissions are the cause of global warming. And global warming makes it more difficult to snowboard!!!! So someone needs to come out with a four wheel drive hybrid Prius one of these days so I can conserve my way up to the hills.