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Kahatika – It Pays to Communicate
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Tag Archives: Giving
What is really giving?
Before I Die
I’d better get on with this Kahatika thing. I’m falling well behind the aspirations of this youngster. On the other hand, I hope I’d be just as happy if someone else was to “Save the World”. To be happy that I go to my death knowing I did my best, recognised or not.
Quotes I relate to
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 truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme; but in both extremes.”― Charles Simeon
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
The Festive Season
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?
Ok, I’ll bite
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?
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Myself
Why? – Highest in the hierarchy of needs, Self-actualisation
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- What are you promising?
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To “Save the World”
Why? – Seemed like a fun problem to sink my teeth into. Better question; Why not?
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- How much money are you trying to make?
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Trillions
Why? – Because money engages peoples interest. Vast amounts of money will have them asking why?
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- How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?
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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
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- What are you trying to change?
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Business
Why? – Because it’s the most powerful card in the deck
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- What do you want people to say about you?
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He gave it a go
Why? – Hope that they may emulate
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- Which people?
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All people
Why? – Everyone has something to contribute
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- Do we care about you?
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Probably not yet
Why? – You, as of yet, don’t have an acceptable, safe way to practice compassion
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Role of Love and Compassion in Business?
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?
Ok, you’ve got the solution. What is the ROI?
Lets assume for a moment that I have the solution that will save the world and an action plan to implement it.
If you think I have, you might invest in it. If you think I haven’t you won’t.
You’re a hard nosed investor, you’ve got no children to pass the world on to, you’re very self-centred and are only into what it returns to you.
Is the solution something that creates a return on investment?
The short answer is yes. (I think) The financial modeling I have done shows a Return on Investment of under three years.
What proof do I have other than the model it self?
None.
Ok, let’s assume for a moment that you are still interested.
What generates the return?
Increased efficiency is what I think produces the return. “More with Less”
We are talking about Saving the World why are you talking about ROI?
Because if I talk about Love, compassion, giving, family, communicating, justice, I become a “nut job” in your eyes, so I decided to speak your language.
Ah, so you’re starting some wacky religion?
See I told you.
The Little Red Hed – Revised
Once upon a time, there was a little red hen who lived on a farm. She was friends with a lazy dog, a sleepy cat, and a noisy yellow duck.
One day the little red hen found some seeds on the ground. The little red hen had an idea. She would plant the seeds.
The little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me plant the seeds?”
“Not I,” barked the lazy dog.
“Not I,” purred the sleepy cat.
“Not I,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen. So the little red hen planted the seeds all by herself.
When the seeds had grown, the little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me cut the wheat?”
“Not I,” barked the lazy dog.
“Not I,” purred the sleepy cat.
“Not I,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen. So the little red hen cut the wheat all by herself.
When all the wheat was cut, the little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me take the wheat to the mill to be ground into flour?”
“Not I,” barked the lazy dog.
“Not I,” purred the sleepy cat.
“Not I,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen. So the little red hen brought the wheat to the mill all by herself, ground the wheat into flour, and carried the heavy sack of flour back to the farm.
The tired little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me bake the bread?”
“Not I,” barked the lazy dog.
“Not I,” purred the sleepy cat.
“Not I,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“Then I will,” said the little red hen. So the little red hen baked the bread all by herself.
When the bread was finished, the tired little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me eat the bread?”
“I will,” barked the lazy dog.
“I will,” purred the sleepy cat.
“I will,” quacked the noisy yellow duck.
“Yes!” said the little red hen. “You are all welcome to share.” “I had fun planting, cutting, grinding and baking.”
“Now I can also enjoy watching the fruits of my labour being used”, and she did!
For the more traditionalists amongst you, the original story above.
As if you needed a reason to save the world
I’ve never been a disciplined person. I wish I was. I’m sure if I had been I would have achieved a lot more than I have by now. I know the theory but have a hard time putting it into practice. I should have goals. I know they should be attainable, measurable, and time bound. When I actually do set goals I generally, but not always, achieve them. So let’s start the process of setting me a goal, a really cool goal that I really care about.
So what do I really care about? Ummmm! See this is where it gets tricky, I have this tendency of letting my mind get away on me.
Take for instance the thought that I would like a happy life, which quickly gets extended to wanting a happy life for my daughter, and once I start thinking about that, I want her offspring to have a happy life as well. Well she doesn’t have any children yet, so I don’t know them, and yet, I want them to be happy. Ok, so I want people I don’t even know to be happy, well, I don’t know most of the people in the world, so if I move on down the thought process, I perhaps want everyone in the world to be happy. Very quickly I have got to something that I want that is seemingly unattainable. I have seemingly broken the first rule of goal setting by finding something I want that is unattainable.
I guess this is where you are supposed to break the thing down into manageable hunks and create some mini goals, which are attainable, that sets you off in the direction of your overall goal. I guess one could call that overall goal a mission or a vision.
So my mission is for “Everyone to be happy for evermore”?
Well first things first I guess, we need hope that there will be a “for evermore” for people to be happy in. So I guess my mission could be to “save the world”; yeh! That will do, my mission is to save the world and my mini goal is to come up with a plan to do it.
I can hear you saying hold on, that’s a complete waste of time. What ever you come up with will never work, much greater people than you have tried and thus far failed. What makes you think you can succeed where others have not?
The answer is “I don’t know” but it’s my mission now so time to give it a go.
Am I alone in this mission? Seemingly not, for a start I apparently have all the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant contestants wishing for world peace and determined to use their crowned stature to achieve it. I’m in good company. How common is this mission? If we look at what got me to my mission I would suspect it is very common. A huge proportion of the world population want to be happy and want their children to be happy. If we add in the constraint that this must be achieved in conjunction to adhering to one or other religious beliefs, this happiness desire is almost universal. Assuming everyone wants to be happy, by necessity we require a world to be happy in. Q.E.D. The world must be saved and its no less my responsibility to save it as yours.