Category Archives: Fear

Fear as a motivator

Business, Fair - Justice, Fear, Money, Power

Monetary Reform

I’ve just finished watching Bill Still’s “The Secret of Oz”

and just for good measure I watched his older offering of “The Money Masters”

Close to five an a half hours of documentary watching. These films give an interesting historical timeline to world events and their relationship to availability of money at the time.
I’m not an economist but in a nutshell the film proffers as fact that “He who controls the money supply, controls the world” and that this control is presently held by unelected officials and thus are unaccountable to the people.
Essentially this means there is no such thing as democracy in the world today, just the illusion of it.

To it’s credit these films don’t just dramatically expose the problem but offers a quick and seemingly easy solution. Bill Still, like me, has a plan to “Save the World”. His solution, which incidentally I see merit in, is monetary reform.

The essence of his solution is to firstly hand back control of the money supply to elected officials (Governments) and for them to issue the money debt free backed purely by good faith in the economies they represent. (i.e. Fiat currency) This function becomes a utility for the benefit of citizenry. Secondly, to abolish fractional reserve banking over a two year period by recapitalising the banks by issuing more money until their reserves have a one to one ratio to their outstanding loans. The bank’s business model changes over this period to essentially become brokers bringing together buyers and sellers of debt. They can still make money but nowhere near as much as they can now.

If it weren’t for the fact that in the past assassinations have been financed, wars have been started, and politicians have been bought, in an effort to stop this solution from happening, it would all seem quite simple and logical.

My solution of Kahatika is a little more subtle than this and works to similar ends but from a different angle. It may well be the step that makes Monetary Reform possible and meaningful.

Fear

First Follower

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Tony Robbins contends that people are in general more motivated  towards the absence of pain than they are by the pursuit of pleasure.

I wish it weren’t so but I’m not disputing it.  What absence of pain is in play for those joining the following movement?

Short term alleviation of the pain of remembering you’re in overdraft, your partner left you, you haven’t got work or you’re going to work tomorrow when you don’t want to. The fear and anxiety of just living.

The buzz you get from overcoming the fear of being thought a fool gives you a chance to forget the fears and anxieties you live with every day. Likewise the buzz from being part of something or simply the buzz from doing something physical with your body.  The natural drugs we use to get us through our lives.

What happens to the movement when the music stops? Like the rate of hits on this video there is a peak and then a waning of enthusiasm. Viral distribution can only go so far.

How can we keep the buzz going by systematically tackling our fears and anxieties and thus moving forward as individuals and as a group?

Kahatika is the answer and I’m looking for the First Follower.

Business, Fear, Giving, Money, Power, Technology

Ok, I’ll bite

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Thought I’d take a few minutes to answer Seth Godin’s survey to see if I could get more clarity on what I’m doing with Kahatika.

From his latest blog 8 questions and why we get

  • Who are you trying to please?

    • Myself
      Why? – Highest in the hierarchy of needs, Self-actualisation

  • What are you promising?

    • To “Save the World”
      Why? – Seemed like a fun problem to sink my teeth into. Better question; Why not?

  • How much money are you trying to make?

    • Trillions
      Why? – Because money engages peoples interest. Vast amounts of money will have them asking why?

  • How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?

    • Not much now, as I get older more and more
      Why? – Life is a journey not a result and I have a plan that makes a large loss of freedom unnecessary

  • What are you trying to change?

    • Business
      Why? – Because it’s the most powerful card in the deck

  • What do you want people to say about you?

    • He gave it a go
      Why? – Hope that they may emulate

  • Which people?

    • All people
      Why? – Everyone has something to contribute

  • Do we care about you?

    • Probably not yet
      Why? – You, as of yet, don’t have an acceptable, safe way to practice compassion

Business, Fear, Love

Constant Improvement in Conscience

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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.

Business, Fear, Saving the World, Science, Technology

Spreading Dangerous Ideas

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I’ve just read a blog by Seth Godin about Protecting vs Spreading Ideas. The moral of his blog, as far as I can tell, is; “Get good at what you do”; “Spread your Ideas Freely” they belong to everyone.

I agree with this philosophy but have often agonised over possible exceptions to this rule.

Lets take a hypothetical rewrite of History.  Lets say Rutherford split the atom and kept it to himself, he went on to do a few more experiments and discovered in isolation the power that could be obtained from such activity and kept it to himself. Pondered a bit more he decided to try the reverse of splitting the atom and discovered that fusing together atoms was even more powerful than splitting them. He still didn’t tell anyone. Experimented a bit more and came up with a working fusion reactor. This he told. In fact he gave building instructions, that an idiot could follow, to every country in the world.

Japan now had the energy they previously went to war over, no nuclear bomb got dropped, in fact it never got invented because there was no need for it.

Now lets assume instead that anywhere along this time line that Rutherford dies taking his ideas to his grave.

No splitting of the atom, no discovery of fission, again, no bomb.

OK I’m not a science historian. I have no knowledge of how long it would have been before someone else would have discovered the splitting of the atom bringing the world through the sequence of discoveries that have got us to where we today rather than the impossible events that lead to my Utopian scenario. It does however illustrate the possible need for exceptions and why I spend time agonising over it.

Are nanotechnology ideas going to progress or harm humanity’s  progress? How about genetic engineering? Biotech?

Was the letter, sent to the American President, which sparked the Manhattan Project, and signed by Albert Einstein, an exception to the rule?

History documents Einstein’s  anguish over the decision to send that letter.

Business, Fair - Justice, Fear, Love, Money

Not for Love nor Money?

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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.

Robin Hood Tax
Take from the Rich to give to the Poor
Business, Fair - Justice, Fear, Love, Money, Power

We have a Crisis of Trust.

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Despite all the complicated Systems and Mechanisms our society institutes to reduce the need for trust, our day to day lives are manageable only because we do trust.

We trust that the oncoming traffic will stay on their side of the road, we trust that the money we give to the banks will be available to us when ask for it. We trust that we will be paid, things will arrive on time, that basically agreements written and implied will be kept. It’s not because of our laws and systems that enable us to do this. Most of us couldn’t afford the time nor expense of seeking formal justice in every instance where trust is involved.

If we didn’t trust, we would be in a paralyzing state of indecision, leaving our lives impotent. Inaction would be the norm. Societal evolution of humans is fundamentally down to trust.

In what environment do we feel most comfortable with trust? The answer to that is, when we feel the most loved.

In what environment do we feel most uncomfortable with trust? The answer to that is, when we are afraid; in a state of fear.

This link gives rise to the definition I heard at a course I went on called Money and You  “The opposite of Love is Fear”

Having also learned Deming’s 8th point of his 14 point philosophy; “Drive out fear where ever it exists in your organisation” was perhaps couched that way because he simply didn’t believe he could sell the idea “Exhibit Love everywhere within your organisation”

Economists the world over would agree that the Global Financial Crisis is essentially a crisis of trust. The collapse of Lehman Brothers, an organisation the global financial institutions trusted, was found to be not trustworthy. If Lehman Brothers could collapse, who else could go the same way.  The flow of money, which was primarily based on trust, between these powerful organisations stopped. This had a knock on effect, falling business confidence, foreclosures, unemployment, bankruptcy. Recession.

In summary the world has just had a whole hunk of love ripped out of it and had it replaced with fear.

The solution; put back the Love.

Agnostic, Business, Fear, Love, Power, Saving the World, Science

The Climate is Changing?

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The world needs saving because the climate is changing. This is impacting on the way we as humans currently live and we are all worried.

Being agnostic I find I just don’t know what the truth of the situation is. There is so much conflicting information out there that seems to be so complicated and with so many compelling reasons for it to be presented in a particular way that I can’t trust what I see or hear.

But nobody likes a fence sitter. You have to decide.

Anyone could be forgiven for deciding that this is where you concentrate your efforts to Save the World.

Our planet is under attack, and it’s under attack by us.

Seas are rising, ice is melting, floods are massive, droughts are long, hurricanes are bigger and more frequent; and that’s just the start. We are also going to freeze to death. As individuals we must all do our bit, right? Rah rah rah speeches, social media campaigns, politics, advertising.

  • How do we keep everyone on track?
  • How does everyone stay engaged?

You can generally get everyone on the same page for a short period of time when in a time of war. Define an enemy, generate some hate by laying blame, tell everyone what to do. If they don’t do it, kill them. Unfortunately the enemy seems to have been defined as all of us. If we use the same strategy we’ll legitimise killing our neighbour simply because they don’t car pool.

The generation of an enemy to accelerate change unfortunately works but it is wrong, when the enemy is us, it is really really wrong and self-destructive.

If Deming was right and over 90% of the problem is due to the system not the people we must look at the system.

Regardless of the debate over climate change; and there is still significant debate, moving around the proportion of responsibility for action is simply an elaborate dance.

Business for better or worse is always going to be the main change agent. Inventing the light bulb didn’t change the world, commercialisation of the light bulb did.

A seemingly forgotten base principle of business needs to be revived. “More with Less” (See Buckminster Fuller Institute, Deming Institute, Excellerated Business Schools)
Following that fundamental principle in combination with following the principle of, “Think Global act Local” would render the debate redundant. There would be no reason to debate if the climate was changing or what was causing it. The consequence of following sound first principles simply because they are the right thing to do puts us on the right track and eliminates the need for an enemy.

Furthermore the original reasons for incorporation of a business needs to be remembered. The law was originally written to produce entities to serve the people. “Us”. Build roads, bridges, railways etc. Through a succession of  bastardisations of that original law do we get the entities we have today. (see the movie “The Corporation”)

We also need to remember that it’s not that the climate is changing it’s the speed of predicted change that is the problem.

Assuming the climate will follow these predictions how do we get our biggest most powerful change agent to respond quickly enough?

Thats all I can remember that we should remember. I’m sure there are other things, I just can’t remember.

Love, Peace, Bellbeads 🙂

P.S. This is not the solution but it is related. Read on.

Agnostic, Fear, Money, Saving the World

The Journey is the Goal

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You can imagine with a goal or mission to “Save the World”, especially when you are not certain that it even needs saving, that the journey along the way becomes pretty important.

You’ve got to like the process. You have to enjoy pondering things. You have to find it interesting connecting disparate things together and deriving solutions from first principles.

Finding elements that are very likely to be  close to the truth and working forward from there.

Ultimately you have to find it fun to be so deluded that you think it is possible that you may have the/an answer. After-all this delusion is your reality.

I often wonder how many people out there have the solution but like me have been too fearful of ridicule to share it.

I did a personal/business development course once called Money and You. The course put you through a survival game to teach the value of synergy. As a team and as an individual you had to plan your survival and the results compared. It exposed that there was a greater probability of success as a team than as an individual. The bigger thing I got out of it however was in the debrief afterward. There are always one or two individuals that would have survived by themselves but as a team met their demise. The learning point was that their inability to get their message across to their team literally killed their team members and themselves.

So where does this put me with my plan to “Save the World”?
Leave it to others who are more certain that their solution will achieve it? The problem is that they may be wrong, or worse still, their solution may accelerate the world’s demise.

The same course offered this definition of Courage. “Doubt + Action = Courage”

Not noted for my extraordinary levels of courage and my agnostic view of the world providing me enormous amounts of doubt;  Simple algebraic arithmetic “Action = Courage – Doubt” which in my case is of course negative.

Does this realisation stop me from pursuing my mission to save the world or does it just mean my action is always backwards?

I have had a consistent course of action for the past twenty six years, producing parts of the plan and slowly fitting them together. The short answer is “I guess not”.

Rest assured I am enjoying the journey.

Business, Fear, Money

Deming

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In the early 1980’s I climbed out of my teens, I entered the workforce and started to learn how business worked. As part of a company following the flavour of the month management philosophy I was put through W. Edwards Deming Institute’s training program. Being young and impressionable I thought the philosophy was excellent. I still do. I was tasked as a lower middle management employee to champion the new philosophy through the company.

I knew these sorts of things needed to be championed from the top. I thought that upper management were all committed. I found to the subsequent demise of my employment how wrong I was. A lesson learned. Don’t challenge the boss by pointing out where they aren’t following the philosophy they are committed to following.

There were two things that particularly stuck in my mind from my Deming Training.

  • Firstly, that “Fear” was an impediment to good business.
  • Secondly, that random remuneration was infinitely more motivating than the current systems of remuneration.

Like all good business management philosophies the relevance of their wisdom extends beyond the business context.

Many systems have stemmed from Deming’s teaching; Kaizen (Tony Robbins calls it Cani), Just in time, Six Sigma and many more have tweaked and branded their way to successful consultancy service models. Almost without exception they all tended to avoid what Deming had to say about remuneration.

It wasn’t that they avoided the question of Money and how to dish it out. It’s just that of all Deming’s wisdom, this was the piece that was most consistently ignored.

I came to realise over the years that the reason for that was probably “Fear”.

The following video is old but still true. It is worth watching in it’s entirety but if you don’t have time skip through to the 3 and a half minutes starting at 5 minutes in.

This part is what Deming regards at his third Deadly Sin and what I remember most vividly from my training.  As with many people who have been trained along these lines I have come to realise, it applies not only in business but in every day life. Life just isn’t fair