Before I forget to make note of this for my Kahatika Project I must embed a couple of videos of interest. The first I am interested in as far as a movement to encourage empathy

The second is the CEO of Whole Foods talking of the importance of love in business.
I’ve made note of this before but it’s great to see some business leaders seeing the light.

• David Cameron suggests the wisdom of yesteryear can be brought to fruition through modern technological tools.
• “The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play; it does not include the beauty of our poetry of the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate for the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country it measures everything in short except that which makes life worth while.” ~ Robert F Kennedy 1968
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• “Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs).“  ~ Institute of Policy Studies 2001
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• “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war” ~ Abraham Lincoln 1864
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• In 2007, the wealth disparity grew to its highest number on record, based on US tax data going back to 1917. ~ University of California-Berkeley economist Emanuel Saez 2007

If management of corporations is just as influential if not more influential than management of our countries then systems of corporate management are to be scrutinized and upgraded in the next wave of global change.

Since the end of WW2 democratic systems have broken out the world over.

If devolution of power to citizenry for our countries is so popular, could some additional devolution of power to individual employees work in corporations?

In no particular order I list some quotes that have relevance to the intentions of Kahatika.

“For it is in giving that we receive.” ~ St. Francis of Assisi

“All communication must lead to change” ~ Aristotle

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” ~ Jimi Hendrix

“Integrity is the essence of everything successful.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” ~ W.Edwards Deming

“Everything is practice.” ~ Pele

“You (never) change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete.” ~  R. Buckminster Fuller

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” ~ Nelson Mandela

“If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.” ~ Buddha

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

“Love is the gift of life. It’s a human need and a privilege. It’s one of the few energies in life where the more you give it the more you have!” ~ Tony Robbins

“The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.” ~ Tony Robbins

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” ~ Dalai Lama

“There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” ~ Ronald Reagan

The design of Kahatika embeds the essence of these words. Truely we “Stand on the Shoulders of Giants” ~ Bernard of Chartres, made famous by Issac Newton

Is it possible to distill your message down to something that resonates universally?

or is it only possible to continually adapt your message in such a way as to it resonates within a smaller and smaller segmentation of the population?

My interpretation of this top down vs bottom up conundrum is that you try to do both.

The adaption of your message as you progressively segment your audience will ultimately lead you to be talking to one other person in isolation and telling them exactly what they want to hear.

While on the other hand, if you truly believe in your message and you work and work on distilling your message down to the absolute essence of what you are trying to say, the last word, before your message finally disappears in the distillation process, will be, “Love”.

Logically, combining the two approaches, communication will always come from a position of Love.

Sherwin Nuland speaks of hope and the indomitable “Human Spirit”.  About half way through he makes the statement “The world will not be saved by the internet, it will be saved by the human spirit”. This is as true now as the day the first humans learned to draw, the printing press was invented, and the first telephone conversation took place.

At the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nikita Khrushchev’s Human Spirit was what “Saved the World”. However, without the technology of Radio, the message that he was ordering the pull out of missiles from Cuba it would never have been delivered fast enough to have had any practical effect.

Without Tesla and Marconi I may not be here to write this blog. This all goes to show that we all have our part to play and communication is the key.

It’s an interesting time of year to observe human behaviour. All the monotheistic religions are having or recently have had a major event in their calendar. That seems to put a perceivable buzz in the air that effects us all, regardless of whether we have a faith or not. It manifests in lots of ways, not all good. Stress, violence, suicide all go up at a time when we practice rituals designed for us to engage in positive things like Love and Compassion. Both reason and faith in a benevolent higher power has us wonder at the irony of these strange statistics.
Is there only so much love in this world to go around? Do some people experience the joy of the festive season at the expense of those who experience negative feelings?
Is it something to do with the ways we are executing our rituals? Has social evolution of rituals over thousands of years improved the system?
Is this part of some Darwinian evolution model where the way we act at a given time of year, strengthens those in society where its to our species advantage for them to survive and weakens those detrimental to our species?

What is it that we do at this time of year?
A lot of time is spent in and around the act of giving. Obviously when there is a lot of giving happening there is a whole bunch of receiving also happening. The process itself generates expectation, and leads to contemplation on fairness and justice.
Does this contemplation on fairness and justice cause our stress, violence and suicide rates to go up? Is anger and despair generated as a consequence of additional time to make a comparative analysis on our lot in society? Some of us count our good fortune and it just doesn’t stack up with our expectations?

Perhaps our ritual of giving needs to be reassessed? Maybe a small tweak to the system to de-emphasize cause and effect in the giving process would be in order?

A return to anonymous giving?

Watching the World Debate on the BBC last night I noted co-winner of the Nobel prize for physics 2009 Willard Boyle’s take on the internet.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

Like him I often find the Internet Plaghh!

His idea of entrusting organisations to distill information for human consumption is a little bit like entrusting a government formed through representative democracy.

None of us have time to sift through the vast amount of information to come up with an informed opinion on science. Take climate change science as a case in point. In the end we have to trust the system. Deep inside all humans we search for love and truth and therefore, unfettered, the scientific process will eventually deliver something closer to the truth than we previously had.

Now if I could just figure a trustworthy method of distilling the wisdom inherent in our most powerful change agent, business.

Our biggest change agent “Business”, develops, causing society to progress in some direction or another, for what seems like more and more inexplicable reasons.
Surely as a society it would be great to have confidence that our most powerful change agents are doing what they do for admirable reasons?

According to a new study by Badenoch & Clark, claims that 83% of employees think their employer lacks proper commitment to corporate social responsibility. In fact, 28% dismissed their companies’ efforts as nothing more than a box-ticking exercise.

The case could be made that poor internal communications are responsible for this interesting statistic. The employees just don’t know what is in the heart of their power brokers?
A more probable answer is that the employees are in fact the most reliable source of true understanding of the heart and mind of an organisation.

Either way, a method of constantly measuring that heart and mind, that doesn’t require expensive surveys by expensive consultants would seem sensible.

I seem to concerned about Love but what is my concern for Money?

Ahh! I see, you’re a conspiracy theory nut blaming the banking industry  and big business for the woes of the world!

Not at all, just trying to reveal just how controlling the money system is, and how that impacts on our ability to exhibit Love and Compassion.

If after pondering the Money as Debt concept for a while, it may seem hopeless.

Then again a tiny tweak to the system may just reverse that hopelessness……who knows?

Here are a few clever people who appear to be wondering about the solution.

Lionel Barber, Alain de Botton ,Simon Schama, Charlie Mayfield, Stefan Stern, and Noreena Hertz have their say

Seems like something needs to be done, exactly what still eludes them.

Take from the Rich to give to the Poor

“The world would be saved if we could just love one another.”

An airy fairy statement used by hippies and dreamers?

No matter how true the statement may be, it is hardly a pragmatic plan of attack to “Save the World”.

Defining love is difficult in many ways. It’s association with sexual intimacy, and it’s broad context of use where many contexts are deemed socially unacceptable to even have a hint of that association, make in depth discussion of love uncomfortable for many.

• Love your spouse
• Love your Children
• Love your Parents
• Love Trees
• Love a Business Idea
• Love a good Steak
• Love your God

There are so many different contexts where the word Love is used that it is impossible to determine if the world is increasing or decreasing in it’s level of Love.

In science, technology and business, when you have something you wish to measure, which is seemingly unmeasurable, you look for substitute characteristics, or if you are lucky, a substitute characteristic, which correlates strongly. Then you measure that. Interventions can then be trialled and reasonable assumptions on those interventions’ success or failure can be made from the analysis of data. Society moves in some direction or another as a result.

Pretty simple stuff, but what would be a measurable substitute characteristic for Love? I guess we are looking for an indicator or a “Symptom of Love”.

Furthermore perhaps we are looking to build the technology to provide the interventions, measure the results, analyse the data, and rework the interventions where appropriate to maximise the love.

Perhaps if this helped us practice the Symptoms of Love we could and would, over time, generate genuine love.

Use the old “Fake it until you make it” technique of self improvement on a global scale.

Now if I just had such a thing……….I reckon I’d call it Kahatika.