Ramkumar's Log

Dark Forces are Gathering

Eric Karjaluoto with a poignant piece on the urgent imperative to reassess how we live our lives on this planet.

I’d argue that we’re in just this sort of a “pickle”: as individuals, as nations, and as a society. We treat profit as our sole measure of economic health. We’ve bought into the myth that our excessive wealth doesn’t come at any cost to others. We have also held fast to the notion that the next thing (be it: car, house, suit, promotion, or raise) will somehow be the one that finally makes us happy. This last example seems to be the most odd of the lot: underscoring our inability to actually learn very much from our actions. We repeat this behavior ad infinitum, even in spite of the constant reminder that few material or monetary gains ever fill the voids we sometimes feel.

We continue in this ‘pickle’, he says, because we would otherwise have to confront all the flawed choices we have made so far. It’s just easier not to.

We’re running out of clean water, experiencing mass extinctions, have massive islands of plastic floating in our oceans, and (when I last checked), BP had barfed something like 4.1 million barrels of oil into our oceans. This is really just the tip of the iceberg—but all relatively good indications that we must take some kind of drastic action. Still, we sit, silently, tossing about phrases like “sustainability,” “social responsibility,” and “doing good,” as though uttering these words might somehow affect sufficient change.

Meanwhile, our behaviour has only left more to be desired.

We have “retail therapy,” an increasing list of things we “deserve,” and maybe even a little extra “me time” at the mall. And of course we do… because it’s easier to talk about the iPhone 4 and its lovely new display, than it is to ask whether our lust for new gadgets needs to be rethought in light of the conflict minerals they are most likely reliant upon. Similarly, it’s easier to point the finger at BP for their blunders, than it is for us to actually park our cars and instead sit on the bus next to “Mr. Stinky,” who perhaps treats baths as a “quarterly affair.” Fairness is inconvenient, so, we cast it aside and order another Big Mac (pity they don’t come in those neat styrofoam containers any longer).

The core problems: laziness, greed and stupidity.

My deep worry is that forces have in fact aligned, but instead of being comprised of “Disney-esque” villains, these forces are ones of laziness, greed, and stupidity. When we occasionally look past this thin illusion of “everything being OK,” that we’ve grown so accustomed to, we’re left facing a situation that is difficult to pawn off on anyone else. We’ve sown seeds with perilous consequences. Sadly, we’re too busy tweeting, obsessing over the amount of froth in our lattes, and asking whether we’ve “found ourselves,” to stop for a moment and ask, “is this all really worth the cost?”

Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech

Deconstructing the educational system.

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

IDEO re-thinks the ATM

If Women Ruled the World, Nothing Would Be Different

“The biggest problem with American feminism today is its obsession with women.”

This article is 5 years old, but still very relevant. Lisa Jervis pretty much nails it here. What is wrong with feminism today?

…much of the contemporary American feminist movement is preoccupied with the mistaken belief—call it femmenism—that female leadership is inherently different from male; that having more women in positions of power, authority, or visibility will automatically lead to, or can be equated with, feminist social change; that women are uniquely equipped as a force for action on a given issue; and that isolating feminist work as solely pertaining to women is necessary or even useful.

Instead, she proceeds to make what is in essence a simple but oh-so vital point. It’s not about women, it’s about gender.

…a useful, idealistic, transformative progressive feminism is not about women. It’s about gender, and all the legal and cultural rules that govern it, and power—who has it and what they do with it.

After a little detour about we ended up here, she quotes various examples of women’s organizations and eventually gets to it.

But the problem with femmenism goes even deeper than these strategic missteps. Because it’s founded on gender difference, it retains a strong investment in gender divisions. Not only will we never dismantle gender discrimination as long as gender divisions are philosophically important to feminism, but we’ll end up reproducing the gendered oppression we’re supposedly fighting against.

Femmenism seeks a circumscribed set of qualities for womanhood the same way that conservative, gender-traditional patriarchy does. (…) This sort of gender essentialism can be particularly divisive when it comes to women’s and feminist activism, because it polices the boundaries of womanhood; implicitly or overtly, femmenist organizations, groups, and events require a certain degree of “femininity” for participation.

And the goal? Stop clinging to gender categories.

If we cling to any gender categories at all, we lose out on tremendous liberatory potential. In other words, the half-witted, sentimental obsession with women that is femmenism causes sloppy thinking, intellectual dishonesty, and massive strategic errors. Thanks to the tremendous feminist work of the last century, we have the opportunity to leave that obsession behind. If vital feminist work is going to continue, we need to seize it.

P.S. The copyright message at the end of that article isn’t exactly permissive. Nevertheless, I hope this post is still acceptable. If it’s not, let me know LiP Magazine.

The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals

Several good points from Jason Fried in this piece. Starting from the importance of avoiding your e-mail as the first thing in the morning, he describes his typical work day and goes on to condemn the typical 40-hour workweek.

Employees come to the office if and when they feel like it, or else they work from home. I don’t believe in the 40-hour workweek, so we cut all that BS about being somewhere for a certain number of hours. I have no idea how many hours my employees work — I just know they get the work done.

And meetings:

They’re a huge waste of time, and they’re costly. It’s not one hour; it’s 10, because you pulled 10 people away from their real work. Plus, they chop your day into small bits, so you have only 20 minutes of free time here or 45 minutes there. Creative people need unstructured time to get in the zone. You can’t do that in 20 minutes.

He goes on to stress the important of ‘screwing around’.

Everyone should read stuff on the Web that’s goofy or discover something new. I hate it when businesses treat their employees like children. They block Facebook or YouTube because they want their employees to work eight hours a day. But instead of getting more productivity, you’re getting frustration. What’s the point? As long as the work gets done, I don’t care what people do all day.

Read the whole thing here.

Uh-oh. I didn't know a conversation had rules.

Scott Adams on the rules of conversation.

A conversation, like dancing, has some rules, although I’ve never seen them stated anywhere. The objective of conversation is to entertain or inform the other person while not using up all of the talking time. A big part of how you entertain another person is by listening and giving your attention. Ideally, your own enjoyment from conversation comes from the other person doing his or her job of being interesting. If you are entertaining yourself at the other person’s expense, you’re doing it wrong.

These rules, he says, are surprisingly lost on many. And much like him, I was also very much in the cluless camp until I took a course at KTH. It wasn’t specifically on this subject, but a fair bit of time was devoted to active listening and connecting with people.

…I believed that conversation was a process by which I could demonstrate my cleverness, complain about what was bugging me, and argue with people in order to teach them how dumb they were. To me, listening was the same thing as being bored. I figured it was the other person’s responsibility to find some entertainment in the conversation.

Read the post here. It starts off with advanced alien life form in a dance club on Earth.