Category Archives: Love

Agnostic, Fair - Justice, Giving, Love

The Festive Season

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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?

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, Love, Science

Distillation of Information

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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.

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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.

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, 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, Family, Love, Power, Saving the World, Science, Technology, Tools

Symptoms of Love

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“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.

Business, Communication, Giving, Love, Money, Religion, Saving the World

Role of Love and Compassion in Business?

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If the role of business is to identify an others pain and offer a cost effective solutions to that pain, one would suspect compassion would have a major role in business.

Should more businesses be embedding, or at least deriving inspiration from a Charter for Compassion when formulating the company mission and standard operating procedures?

Does the profit motive of business explicitly rule business out as vehicles of true love and compassion?

Agnostic, Fair - Justice, Love, Saving the World, Technology

The Decision

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If you had a virus that if given to a patient, cured them, and once cured, would give that patient the ability to infect other sick people with that virus, hence curing them and so on until all sick people were cured; Would you start the ball rolling by giving that virus to the first willing patient?

What would your answer be if only patients with the capacity for compassion were cured and patients without this capacity for compassion died as a result of becoming infected?

“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile Universe.” ~ Albert Einstein

Communication, Love, Power, Saving the World, Science, Technology

Yet we still Trust

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Having just written about a Crisis of Trust I must recognise that, as a society, we still trust.

The following TED talk I found reassuring. His observations provide partial reason for why my Plan to “Save the World” may just work.

Like every world changing idea now-a-days, mine too involves the internet to a very limited degree. More importantly it involves some aspects of Human behaviour Jonathan touches on.

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.