Wednesday, August 27, 2008
China Syndrome
Look at all those happy smiling oriental faces, the colourful costumes, the delightful dancing, the precision marching, the fireworks, the buildings, the sheer scale of inventive entertainment…China is such a lovely place, isn't it?
Now, let’s get this straight, I love sport. Some world shattering events in Beijing misted my eyes. But I am a bit of a fundamentalist and would eradicate all those activities in the Olympics that seem too far removed from the traditional business of the athletics stadium, the pool and the gym; football, tennis, BMX and so on. But, leaving my asceticism aside, the biggest blot on the Olympics' showcase of human endeavour these days, is the marketing of a deceitful image of a host country that seeks to hide its inhumanity, institutionalised corruption and imperialism under the saccharine glitz of the ‘ceremonies’.
The notion of promoting national pride goes all the way back to Hitler. Miraculous fusions of Busby Berkeley routines, mammoth pyrotechnics and hi-tech gimmickry have now become competitive in their own right. Each successive Olympic Games presents the host country with an even more costly and wasteful mountain to climb. China’s sins remain in the shadows behind the TV set. And not just the gross suppression in Tibet, the pillaging of African resources or its internal, geriatric dictatorship, leading to the slaughter of the young at Tiananmen Square, but the every day abuses of its citizens such as the neglect of the thousands of bereaved and homeless families following the recent earthquakes or, in order to stage the Games, the rape of the most basic resource of all.
This latter concerns the huge consumption of water at the Games, not just to hydrate the enormous population that had been so dramatically gathered in one place but also the lush environment created as a backdrop to the spectacle. To do this, the Chinese authorities effectively endangered the livelihoods of thousands of poor farmers by stealing their water. It takes a truly oppressive regime to regiment multitudes, create fantastic architecture and promote a profile of itself so far removed from actuality that the huge circus that gathered in Beijing and the audiences around the world, embrace its presence as a leading power in the new world order, while, at the same time, averting their eyes from the inhumane governance of its own population and that of its neighbours.
We should dump the Olympics unless some kind of moral compass is used to measure the culture in which it is to be staged.
So that’s stuffed London, then! In fact it’s stuffed just about every country that I can think of!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Birds' Eye View
Those of you who are regular readers of this weekly blog will know that I spend time in both Ghana and France during the year. This toing and froing is punctuated by management consultancy work in the UK, or the little I restrict myself to these days. Currently I am in France in my Pyrennean eyrie. Each time I drive up here from the plains around Perpignan I see magpies. They are rather smart looking birds in their white bibs and black tails. And like a certain type of boorish dinner guest, they are argumentative bullies. I suppose I am falling into the trap of anthropomorphising their black and white natures but, as in most writing, it is a manipulation of the world to suit my literary purpose.
Given that my professional work involves a multi-disciplinary approach to developing teams and individuals to become more effective and humane in their professional practice, my key focus is normally upon self-awareness. Unless an individual develops this it is unlikely that he or she will go on to be able to change behaviour in any meaningful way other than by rigid imposition of some stick and carrot regime. At the same time we all have blind spots and these can be perennial or can emerge owing to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. A blind spot may be a personal trait that irritates others at one end of the spectrum or, in extreme leopard-like circumstances, the spots become so numerous the individual is virtually friendless – and still doesn’t know why.
The BBC web page has an interesting little science update which bears strongly upon the foregoing. The latest research on magpies shows that they can recognise themselves in mirrors. Apparently, bits of sticky tape in various colours were affixed to them where they could only be seen in a mirror, whereupon the said birds scratched and pecked them off, just as we try to remove the embarrassment of a bit of tomato skin between the teeth, or dab away dripping mascara or cover a hideous (to us) erupting spot on the cheek with creams.
While this was not seen to equate with self-awareness in the birds, it was regarded as a possible precursor to what was once thought to be a unique human mental ability. I realised, on reading about the research, that I have missed a trick in my professional work. Before I enter into a ‘coaching relationship’ in future, I will secrete rolls of sellotape of varying colours, in my pockets…
Those of you who are regular readers of this weekly blog will know that I spend time in both Ghana and France during the year. This toing and froing is punctuated by management consultancy work in the UK, or the little I restrict myself to these days. Currently I am in France in my Pyrennean eyrie. Each time I drive up here from the plains around Perpignan I see magpies. They are rather smart looking birds in their white bibs and black tails. And like a certain type of boorish dinner guest, they are argumentative bullies. I suppose I am falling into the trap of anthropomorphising their black and white natures but, as in most writing, it is a manipulation of the world to suit my literary purpose.
Given that my professional work involves a multi-disciplinary approach to developing teams and individuals to become more effective and humane in their professional practice, my key focus is normally upon self-awareness. Unless an individual develops this it is unlikely that he or she will go on to be able to change behaviour in any meaningful way other than by rigid imposition of some stick and carrot regime. At the same time we all have blind spots and these can be perennial or can emerge owing to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. A blind spot may be a personal trait that irritates others at one end of the spectrum or, in extreme leopard-like circumstances, the spots become so numerous the individual is virtually friendless – and still doesn’t know why.
The BBC web page has an interesting little science update which bears strongly upon the foregoing. The latest research on magpies shows that they can recognise themselves in mirrors. Apparently, bits of sticky tape in various colours were affixed to them where they could only be seen in a mirror, whereupon the said birds scratched and pecked them off, just as we try to remove the embarrassment of a bit of tomato skin between the teeth, or dab away dripping mascara or cover a hideous (to us) erupting spot on the cheek with creams.
While this was not seen to equate with self-awareness in the birds, it was regarded as a possible precursor to what was once thought to be a unique human mental ability. I realised, on reading about the research, that I have missed a trick in my professional work. Before I enter into a ‘coaching relationship’ in future, I will secrete rolls of sellotape of varying colours, in my pockets…
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Sex and Death
Back in the sixties when Timothy Leary held an influential sway on new social possibilities and we wore Loons and mini skirts to advertise it, we also brushed against religion with our growing, mystical wings. The influence of Alan Watts’ Zen translations was strong on me. I remember an aphoristic question of the time, or perhaps it was more a loose allegory but it went, “How does a goldfish know that there is a God?”. The answer was, “Because how else is the water changed twice a week?”. Along with that there came the philosophical nicety that the one thing that a goldfish could never know, is water, itself. It is much the same for humans. Much of what we, ourselves, swim in, we don’t understand. We exist in so much invisible, intangible stuff that we don’t even see. We postulate that there is ‘dark energy’ blasting the universe apart and dark matter, grimly trying to hold the galaxies together and that everything in the universe is so filled with space, from atoms to molecules to our very bodies that we ought to be able to drive trams through each other.
The sixties was also a time of an emerging cognizance that sex was an atomic driver in the broad spectrum of basic energies. The Victorian religious zeal that had promoted fundamentalist strictures to keep sex for procreation was suddenly eroded, though, as any strict Catholic will maintain, echoes of it still remain. Even as we got to grips with the potential of Tantric sex and the Kama Sutra and reading Lady Chatterley, there was still an awkward stumbling for words, an embarrassment if it became a matter of public discussion round the dinner table with friends, never mind strangers.
From the taboo of sex we gradually moved on to the taboo of ageing. The myth was born that old age was the period of post-sex. The lines on the face and the flapping of once-toned muscles became signals of the lost fight against mortality. A great proportion of the elderly are maltreated daily by their families and in their care homes. Their images appear in the Sunday magazines as either pitiful victims of abuse or, at best, the subject of aesthetic camera work which sees them not as people but as intricately marked miracles of the ravages of time. Asexual subject matter. Like detailed shots of the moon's surface.
The two foci, sex and ageing, have come together in recent research which, the NHS affirms, proves that orgasms delay ageing. The more we get it on, the less wrinkles, the less cancer and the less mental senility. This could lead to an interesting conflict in social attitudes. Sex is big business in the media which likes to reveal as much of our jig-a-jig as it can, always pushing back the envelopes of our skin. But what will it do when the skin is somewhat leathery, the bones protrude and the muscles waste ? Will the camera, no matter how much it is tuned to the wonderful filigree of lines on their ancient faces, ever show us two lovers, fighting back the last tides of mortality, heaving in ecstasy with the Karma Sutra opened beside them on the shag-pile carpet?
Or will these acts remain a taboo; dark energy and dark matter, something we know is all around us but will we never see?
Back in the sixties when Timothy Leary held an influential sway on new social possibilities and we wore Loons and mini skirts to advertise it, we also brushed against religion with our growing, mystical wings. The influence of Alan Watts’ Zen translations was strong on me. I remember an aphoristic question of the time, or perhaps it was more a loose allegory but it went, “How does a goldfish know that there is a God?”. The answer was, “Because how else is the water changed twice a week?”. Along with that there came the philosophical nicety that the one thing that a goldfish could never know, is water, itself. It is much the same for humans. Much of what we, ourselves, swim in, we don’t understand. We exist in so much invisible, intangible stuff that we don’t even see. We postulate that there is ‘dark energy’ blasting the universe apart and dark matter, grimly trying to hold the galaxies together and that everything in the universe is so filled with space, from atoms to molecules to our very bodies that we ought to be able to drive trams through each other.
The sixties was also a time of an emerging cognizance that sex was an atomic driver in the broad spectrum of basic energies. The Victorian religious zeal that had promoted fundamentalist strictures to keep sex for procreation was suddenly eroded, though, as any strict Catholic will maintain, echoes of it still remain. Even as we got to grips with the potential of Tantric sex and the Kama Sutra and reading Lady Chatterley, there was still an awkward stumbling for words, an embarrassment if it became a matter of public discussion round the dinner table with friends, never mind strangers.
From the taboo of sex we gradually moved on to the taboo of ageing. The myth was born that old age was the period of post-sex. The lines on the face and the flapping of once-toned muscles became signals of the lost fight against mortality. A great proportion of the elderly are maltreated daily by their families and in their care homes. Their images appear in the Sunday magazines as either pitiful victims of abuse or, at best, the subject of aesthetic camera work which sees them not as people but as intricately marked miracles of the ravages of time. Asexual subject matter. Like detailed shots of the moon's surface.
The two foci, sex and ageing, have come together in recent research which, the NHS affirms, proves that orgasms delay ageing. The more we get it on, the less wrinkles, the less cancer and the less mental senility. This could lead to an interesting conflict in social attitudes. Sex is big business in the media which likes to reveal as much of our jig-a-jig as it can, always pushing back the envelopes of our skin. But what will it do when the skin is somewhat leathery, the bones protrude and the muscles waste ? Will the camera, no matter how much it is tuned to the wonderful filigree of lines on their ancient faces, ever show us two lovers, fighting back the last tides of mortality, heaving in ecstasy with the Karma Sutra opened beside them on the shag-pile carpet?
Or will these acts remain a taboo; dark energy and dark matter, something we know is all around us but will we never see?
Labels: Sex. Ageing. Taboo. Health.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Chaos Theory
It is said that the beat of a butterfly's wing may eventually precipitate a hurricane, ten thousand miles away. Everything is connected. Similarly, the food thrown away by the average family in some parts of the world, now results in the deaths of families at similar distances removed. However you examine it, life is being squandered in rubbish bins.
It is said that the beat of a butterfly's wing may eventually precipitate a hurricane, ten thousand miles away. Everything is connected. Similarly, the food thrown away by the average family in some parts of the world, now results in the deaths of families at similar distances removed. However you examine it, life is being squandered in rubbish bins.
Labels: Chaos. Food. Waste.
Work is a four letter word
In the 60s when I started work, there was a kind of hemp-stained anarchic change in the air. Having been in both Paris and London in 1968 and witnessed and to some extent been part of the ‘student revolution’; on the run from French and Belgian police in the former and participating in sit-ins in the latter, I have a curious set of definitions for the word ‘work’. Whilst I DID work in the 60s and 70s, when many friends and acquaintances chose to drop out, trial the new drugs from dope to acid and set up squats or smallholdings or hitch to Afghanistan, I can’t say that I saw a great purpose in it. Work, that is. The cliche then was the phrase used in the title for this blog. I enjoyed the teaching and I liked the tough adolescents, making their own way, far removed from middle class hippy indulgences but work was something imposed and a restraint on what seemed to be the inalienable right to grow how you might.
Then I cared for disturbed adolescents in a therapeutic centre and work became idealistic and altruistic. Even political. Every child that came, abused, neglected and fragmented by family and/or social services was the focus of unconditional love and support. A high proportion made their way out of the cycle of generations of degradation and into something more socially comparable with their average peer. They didn’t want to drop out. They wanted to belong. Later still I took up research and found it was something I could do. I didn’t have to be a dry, middle of the road, small c conservative academic, playing the game to get a professorship, either. There was enough room to be marginal and creative. Work had suddenly become intellectual play. But it was/is a privileged kind of play which depends upon a brain and the capacity to have an impact on individuals and organisations. As a management consultant (a little distant from the howling laughter provoking depictions in The Office, I hope) I can mix play with challenge, insight, analysis and development and produce a notion of work which is, personally, highly fulfilling.
Now I am in Ghana and these latter definitions of work seem even more the toying of a man in the developed world where there is little sense of the real value of basic human requirements such as food, sanitation, water, safety and electricity and they are squandered until they are at a premium and market forces prevent more and more citizens from using them. Driving in to work among the somewhat undisciplined cars and lorries here, the lines of traffic somehow stop at red lights. From the sides of the roads swing into view the young men and women, literally, earning a crust. They carry water sachets, loaves and fruits of all kinds in head-baskets, arms festooned with cheap Chinese imports of toys, sweets, fabrics and so on. The heat is oppressive, even now in the temperate months of a daily 30 degrees and high humidity and they toil for hours in the exhaust fumes. They are admirable in their proud stoicism in the face of drivers’ lack of consideration for their safety, the continual spewing of exhaust fumes and their low ‘hit rate’ of sales. They are also, often, astonishingly graceful and beautiful in a way that damns the pretensions of the average European or American walking a high street. You have to be very fit to carry so much weight, perpetually balanced on your crown in such conditions.
Work for these people is also a four letter word. Food.
In the 60s when I started work, there was a kind of hemp-stained anarchic change in the air. Having been in both Paris and London in 1968 and witnessed and to some extent been part of the ‘student revolution’; on the run from French and Belgian police in the former and participating in sit-ins in the latter, I have a curious set of definitions for the word ‘work’. Whilst I DID work in the 60s and 70s, when many friends and acquaintances chose to drop out, trial the new drugs from dope to acid and set up squats or smallholdings or hitch to Afghanistan, I can’t say that I saw a great purpose in it. Work, that is. The cliche then was the phrase used in the title for this blog. I enjoyed the teaching and I liked the tough adolescents, making their own way, far removed from middle class hippy indulgences but work was something imposed and a restraint on what seemed to be the inalienable right to grow how you might.
Then I cared for disturbed adolescents in a therapeutic centre and work became idealistic and altruistic. Even political. Every child that came, abused, neglected and fragmented by family and/or social services was the focus of unconditional love and support. A high proportion made their way out of the cycle of generations of degradation and into something more socially comparable with their average peer. They didn’t want to drop out. They wanted to belong. Later still I took up research and found it was something I could do. I didn’t have to be a dry, middle of the road, small c conservative academic, playing the game to get a professorship, either. There was enough room to be marginal and creative. Work had suddenly become intellectual play. But it was/is a privileged kind of play which depends upon a brain and the capacity to have an impact on individuals and organisations. As a management consultant (a little distant from the howling laughter provoking depictions in The Office, I hope) I can mix play with challenge, insight, analysis and development and produce a notion of work which is, personally, highly fulfilling.
Now I am in Ghana and these latter definitions of work seem even more the toying of a man in the developed world where there is little sense of the real value of basic human requirements such as food, sanitation, water, safety and electricity and they are squandered until they are at a premium and market forces prevent more and more citizens from using them. Driving in to work among the somewhat undisciplined cars and lorries here, the lines of traffic somehow stop at red lights. From the sides of the roads swing into view the young men and women, literally, earning a crust. They carry water sachets, loaves and fruits of all kinds in head-baskets, arms festooned with cheap Chinese imports of toys, sweets, fabrics and so on. The heat is oppressive, even now in the temperate months of a daily 30 degrees and high humidity and they toil for hours in the exhaust fumes. They are admirable in their proud stoicism in the face of drivers’ lack of consideration for their safety, the continual spewing of exhaust fumes and their low ‘hit rate’ of sales. They are also, often, astonishingly graceful and beautiful in a way that damns the pretensions of the average European or American walking a high street. You have to be very fit to carry so much weight, perpetually balanced on your crown in such conditions.
Work for these people is also a four letter word. Food.