Organizations : Impersonalism and personalism

Anything the world has got an impersonal and personal comonent and they cannot be separated. Lets take Government. On one way, any Government is headed by a leader : a person or a group of persons (with name and individuality) but when the Government acts, its impersonal.

President of a Country is a person – an individual but when his will acts through different departments or ministeries, it is impersonal.

If we expand this metaphor of government to the whole cosmic manifestation, we find impersonalism first ( the Nature is working like an automatic machine) but it does not satisfy us fully. We enquire : Whose Nature ? Who is controlling this machine ?

Now coming back to organizations – business organizations to be specific : find the same impersonalism and personalism issue.

There is a limit or balance between this impersonal and personal component and our ‘sense of comfort’. Large Corporations are mostly impersonal. They are so large, vast and interwined that for all practical purposes, we are dealing with its impersonalism aspect and personal controllers are very very far away or hidden. Once this comes to a critical level, chaos starts building in the conceptual framework.

Credit Crisis : Suppose a small bank in your street has defrauded its clients. Immedeiately, the person / persons are known or can be identified. In theory at least. Now the  credit crisis has demonstrated how impersonalism can give rise to a situation where there is no conceivable way to bring accountability without blasting off the whole framework. Too big to fail in this context is = too big or nothing

There is a point after which we cannot handle impersonalism meaningfully. Our consciouness is designed that way.

The whole idea and activity of celebrity mania / idol worship / divine status of some people in media, sports, entertainment tell how a considerable proportion of humanity cannot remain in impersonal glory.

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Health, Un-heath and Fear of Un-health

One of my friends and well-wishers of www.pentasect.com, Dr. T Rama Prasad has written an article – one of the boldest ones I have read coming from a doctor on a medico-social phenonmenon . Read below.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article2801701.ece

Few thoughts this article triggered and here are they:

1. Health is something which none can give you : all medical science can do is to ‘remove’ the symptoms that arise due to un-health. Hence, there will always remain a very fine, subtle distinction between someone who treats and someone who heals.
2. The art of healing is not crafsmanship, nor knowledge, nor technical aspects alone. Our body (for that matter, body of any living entity) is so exceedingly complex and designed by an intelligence so much higher order than us that no amount of gadget, diagnosis, instrutment, check can do anything when a higher authority commands the ‘body-machine’ to falter or to stop functioning altogether [ death]. If you disagree : Please note that the CEO of Apple Corporation and a real and insignificant bug in an apple orchard – both had to die.
3. Coming to health check-up business. Suppose you are owner of a Pharma-Medico-Health-Fitness-Well Being (they all deal with body and mind) company and you need to increase sales/profit. Let us call this as Jambalayam Corporation. Now, Jambalayam CEO reasons like this:

It appears that the best way to have continuous sales and higher profit is to make repeat sales and discover new and new customers for repeat sales. One way is very simple :

1. Let us take certain parameter of our body (there are enough choices). Let us call this parameter Faltufuss. Now we check the regulatory bodies manual and they say its value should be within 100 – 120. Now, we commission a survey, do a PR and all kinds of ‘awareness campaign’ and now conclude that due to lifestyle, development, hunger for growth (and perhaps wealth to enjoy immortality), this parameter has to be shifted to 90-110. Changes in faltufuss in little amount can cause maladies like brain impiarment in children, congenital insanity, cerebo-spasmo dilation, omega-3 fatty acid congestion and other horrors yet to be known.
2. Jamvhalayam Corporation commissions great doctors and professionals and regulatory bodies not to be considered some mediavel fool says yes. With this decision, Jambhalayam has done wonder: it has made millions even billions technically un-healthy and with little suggestion to doctors and patients: sick.
3. For many, is it better to have an insane baby or to have spent INR 5000 for a faltufuss shot ?

          Dislcaimer: The above is completely imaginary and displays my ignorance about medical science. However, the sad story is that it is true.

 

 

Focus vs Blindness

I come across excellent freelancers with very high focus on their work but this is causing side-blindness. A highly focused beam can cause temporary blindness. Sustained period of working in focused way can cause loss of side-vision. 

Many organizations and businesses get de-focused because of this side-blindness. 

Opportunities, trends and dominant trends is having no contract to follow the path of your focus’s beam. Its always the other way around.

For a freelancer, one of the easiest ways to avoid this is to have a wider area of honest curiosity and intention to invest by reading. 

There is no better process other than reading widely and with a disinterested curiosity to avoid temporary or permanent loss of side-vision

Challenge vs Risk

There is a fine line between challenge and risk although both terms are used without this distinction. Here is a small story that brings out this distinction 

A longtime friend of mine, a VP in a telecom MNC invited me for a lunch and we talked for an hour. He was little bored in his job, not finding much opportunity outside (in the corporate ecosystem) and was asking the ‘insider story’ of being a freelancer / business-owner / independent consultant. 

For him, leaving the job and doing some business on his own was a ‘risky business’ as per his estimation. 

Then I posed him a challenge : I offered him to work with me for 15 days (taking leave from his office) just to have an idea as what doing business means – first hand.

He found this model risky too. Why ?

He judges investing 2 weeks of time and attention is also a matter of risk.

He mixed up risk and challenge. 

 

 

 

 

The University of Meaning

Products, services, business verticals and even whole civilizations collapse where there is a crisis of meaning. Human beings, having higher intelligence than animals ‘weave’ meaning into everything. Mathematics deal with meanings about situation never encountered in our experience with gross sense organs (think about tensor analysis or space time inside a black-hole).

Crisis and Catastrophes – in individual and collective level suddenly shake us and we ask for meaning. ‘What it means’ is only what we have ‘programmed ourselves about it’.

Let us examine few simple issues about which we have more or less experience :

1. Death : Death of a dear one or someone who has influenced us shake us and we ask : What does it mean ? We are most-inexperienced about death although we talk glibly talk and ‘philosophize’ about it. None knows what Death is. Death is extra-terrestrial in a sense that we find it not manufactured here. What we know as death – medically, philosophically, scientifically is symptoms and immediate causes. Death causes a singularity of meaning in our individual matrix of meaning and we either accept it or avoid it. Little sober thinking tells us that our birth is also same : we only see immediate causes (parents and their union) but nothing else.

2. Aging : Aging is the symptom of time working on us. We not only create new meanings but the whole ‘meaning matrix’ gets processed through aging. There are so many ‘symptom’ studies of age but no case or evidence where one has overcome aging for all time. Matter + Time = the stuff this whole cosmic manifestation is made up of. Then, what does age when we say we are 10,20, 30,40,50… years old ? Is it the body ? Is it the mind ? Is it our intelligence ? What does age ?

3. Disease We have made machines that can live hundreds and thousands years perhaps ( Voyager / Mariner space probes) but the maker of the machine is so ephemeral. Even a simple RCC house outlives the maker / owner by hundred years at least. Our machines are getting better and better. But we fall ill – be it the CEO of Apple Corporation or that of a real apple-bug in an orchard – there is no escape from disease. No one can claim one is completely immune to disease. Even if someone can claim so, none can escape the final disease called Death.

4. Birth : A logical question of meaning : Is there birth after death ? Someone can say : I dont believe. The question is not of belief. Laws of Nature will act irrespective of my belief in it. I will fall down from a height even though I may not have faith on gravitation. For the sake of argument, let us think that our ‘I’ gets rebirth. Re-birth means another body with my ‘I’ inside it. You believe or dont believe, you have no control on what is going to be your next birth just like you did not have any control on this birth. The process was decided in your absence and without you being consulted. This is a fact and is self-evident.

Any Civilization that does not become aware of the ‘crisis of meaning’ around these four aspects of our existence will collapse sooner or later.

The University of Meaning

Products, services, business verticals and even whole civilizations collapse where there is a crisis of meaning. Human beings, having higher intelligence than animals ‘weave’ meaning into everything. Mathematics deal with meanings about situation never encountered in our experience with gross sense organs (think about tensor analysis or space time inside a black-hole). 

Crisis and Catastrophes – in individual and collective level suddenly shake us and we ask for meaning. ‘What it means’ is only what we have ‘programmed ourselves about it’. 

Let us examine few simple issues about which we have more or less experience :

1. Death : Death of a dear one or someone who has influenced us shake us and we ask : What does it mean ? We are most-inexperienced about death although we talk glibly talk and ‘philosophize’ about it. None knows what Death is. Death is extra-terrestrial in a sense that we find it not manufactured here. What we know as death – medically, philosophically, scientifically is symptoms and immediate causes. Death causes a singularity of meaning in our individual matrix of meaning and we either accept it or avoid it. Little sober thinking tells us that our birth is also same : we only see immediate causes (parents and their union) but nothing else. 

2. Aging : Aging is the symptom of time working on us. We not only create new meanings but the whole ‘meaning matrix’ gets processed through aging. There are so many ‘symptom’ studies of age but no case or evidence where one has overcome aging for all time. Matter + Time = the stuff this whole cosmic manifestation is made up of. Then, what does age when we say we are 10,20, 30,40,50… years old ? Is it the body ? Is it the mind ? Is it our intelligence ? What does age ? 

3. Disease We have made machines that can live hundreds and thousands years perhaps ( Voyager / Mariner space probes) but the maker of the machine is so ephemeral. Even a simple RCC house outlives the maker / owner by hundred years at least. Our machines are getting better and better. But we fall ill – be it the CEO of Apple Corporation or that of a real apple-bug in an orchard – there is no escape from disease. No one can claim one is completely immune to disease. Even if someone can claim so, none can escape the final disease called Death. 

4. Birth : A logical question of meaning : Is there birth after death ? Someone can say : I dont believe. The question is not of belief. Laws of Nature will act irrespective of my belief in it. I will fall down from a height even though I may not have faith on gravitation. For the sake of argument, let us think that our ‘I’ gets rebirth. Re-birth means another body with my ‘I’ inside it. You believe or dont believe, you have no control on what is going to be your next birth just like you did not have any control on this birth. The process was decided in your absence and without you being consulted. This is a fact and is self-evident. 

Any Civilization that does not become aware of the ‘crisis of meaning’ around these four aspects of our existence will collapse sooner or later. 

Wordsmith University :6 Marketing Pillars of Modern Science

As a University newsletter or spokesman, I started a blog : Building a University without Buildings and I thought that freelancer will appreciate the debate. The post below tells as how 6 issues like Big Bang theory, Theory on Life (Consciousness) are more marketing stuff rather than science proper. At best, these are childlike curiosity and at worst – defrauding taxpayers

http://wordsmithuniversity.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/major-marketing-pillars-of-modern-science/

The post follows another one where these same psudo-science theories are ‘smashed’ by the hammer of real science : Manual of the Cosmic Manifestation : The Vedic Literature 

http://wordsmithuniversity.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/6-marketing-pillars-of-modern-pseudo-science-and-real-sciences-answer/

Freelancer’s Guide to Money

Money has mainly three states : liquid (cash), semi-liquid (non-cash investments – stocks, loans etc) and hardened ( house, consumables, I-pad, car) under the assumption that ownership is secured and you can exercise that ownership freely.

Here are few more background information :

• In general, we work hardest for working with money, i.e. how we can get money to do our work.
• Money changes state all the time and with a sufficient time scale, it can be shown to be changing from any state to any state.
• Money can either be used for consumption (good or bad), charity or will be destroyed.
• With a long time span, money can either leave you (loss) or you will leave the money (death)
• The power to issue interest on money is the greatest power in the temporal world and those individual or group who can exercise that option carries the greatest power in the temporal world.
• The core reason interest on money can be charged is because of the eternal desire of human being to manifest future consumption into present (desire). Debt is the manifestation of this process.
• Hence 99% of humanity in all historical ages have shown tremendous attraction towards money and those who control money supply always keep people connected with the money net – gross or subtle.

Now we enter into the Money Cycle – the core of this post. A true freelancer remains in most preferred position to appreciate the truism of it.

1. As per Vedic cosmology, living entity through consciousness has created the cosmic manifestation and it is not matter (some soup in some sea) after billion of years getting evolved to produce a human being. From subtle comes gross and not from gross to subtle. The whole material universe of five elements trace  this to subtle ether. Ether comes from still subtler mind. Above mind is intelligence. And above intelligence is false ego – I am (because I am this body and I think by my mind). Above this is the eternal consciousness in spark form – part and parcel of the sum and more of all Consciousness – The Chirst Consciousness or Krishna Consciousness. We as a conscious being can create few drops of water through perspiration and the Supreme Consciousness can create an ocean.

2. Living entities with consciousness and with false ego projects a desire. This desire once sanctioned by intelligence creates a wave in the ethereal realm (like a thought / idea which cannot be measured by a tape but has a finite area of influence). Then mind takes over and creates plans and finally these plans use material like silicon, spectrum, plastic, media to influence other minds.

3. Money is the token of organized humanity’s propensity of sense gratification – genuine and whimsical ones.

4. The subtle desire after various transformations seize money and then money circulates and manifests gross and measurable things like real estate, cars, signs of so called prosperity

5. In normal case, the equilibrium is maintained between the subtle desire and gross objects. In abnormal cases, this equilibrium is disturbed and the subtle aspect balloons and the gross shrinks. This is essentially the disconnect we find in the ‘speculative economy’ today and the ‘real economy’

6. Time acts as a state-changer of money. An example : a businessman builds a company and then diversifies into other areas. The company remains in family or becomes public. Time carries all and various phase changes occur. Gross objects are sold to acquire cash. These are brought up by the next generation of ‘rich’. Holders of cash project their desire and then the gross gets attracted and by the inevitable law of conservation of resources, a rich man is a poor man of the past and a poor man is a rich man of the future.

7. There remains nothing new in this cycle. This is called ‘charbita-charvanam’ – chewing the chewed. In appearance and for less-intelligent things appear as new but there cannot be anything new except this ever present cycling of subtle matter to gross matter

8. And then, our body and mind being matter also gets recycled and that recycling point is called death which is as inevitable and without any antidote for the Founder of Apple Corporation and a bug in a real apple in some orchard

9.  Men and women with a certain kind of propensity equate ‘money’ with ‘power’ although this very identification with material thing itself is a sign of weakness.

A true freelancer, having realized this aspect of money in the most cosmic scale does not become feverish with desire nor fret over un-manifested desire.

Brahma-bhuta prasannatma na sochati na kankhati

[ A Man of such level neither broods nor desires ]

Freelancer Futuristics Series : A 7 episode training session in proz.com

As a Freelancer, I feel fear and uncertainty sometimes. Moreover, the world economic, geo-political and business environment is quite turbulent. There are reasons to be reflective and some very respected commentators are talking about profound changes. Changes we do observe in our professional lives.

As a Freelancer, I found two very powerful approaches to manage this fear and anxiety due to logically dealing with uncertainty in a vast scale. First, to have faith in the hope that the supreme cosmic power or the Supreme Lord who is maintaining  trillions of freelancers across species in the cosmic manifestation will also take care of me. Secondly, to sow the seed of fearlessness in others. Courage, like fear is infectious. In this world, any emotion, action, word, deed share a fundamental commonality : they are all infectious.

The first strategy is little inner, experiential and comes after one has been exposed to certain critical level of uncertainty /hopelessness in gross or subtle form in some part of one’s life. This may be sudden collapse of all safety nets, sudden parting of a dear one, meeting a life-changing personality who will touch your very soul across lives or an inner flowering. I dont want to speak more as this feeling is like a Hyku as well as a Zen Koan : words can only darken the sparkle. The same truth, by some comic law blooms with different petals inside each one’s heart but the eternal fragrance is the same and the signature of its autheticity.

The second strategy is easier to be articulated  and less personal. Fear is mind’s content feed remaining unedited. Courage is stopping the feed. To be fearless is to be an editor of both – voluntary and involuntary  feed of the mind.

FFS-series is my own journey starting 20th January in trying to sow the seed of fearlessness in other fellow colleagues. I am not going to train in the traditional sense because I have no new information to share, no new knowledge to impart, again in the normal sense.

My attempt in these 7 hours, spread over almost two and half months will be to analyse my own fear and anxieties, document my own path with detachment and empathy in real time with a few colleagues across continents over the canopy of Internet. And I would pray so that while we continue, we can all hum the tune that an English poet has left for all of us to hum :

If Winter Comes, Can Spring be Far Behind ?

p.s: Will give a detailed brief on the 7 hour series in the next post

The potential difference between ‘Know all’ and ‘I don’t know’

In all our transactions there is a potential difference between ‘know all’ and ‘I dont know’ or ‘Let me know’. All sales talk happen because this potential difference exists. Electrons from an emitter moves towards base in a transistor when a difference is applied in the form of a voltage. We approach a teacher because we create a potential difference of ‘I need to learn’.

However, in all spheres of life, we come across people who are neutral and any potential PD (Potential difference) is being instantly neutralized by them by the ‘know all’ bias. You spell something and they go on giving you opinions (to be considered authoritative and conclusive) and the opportunity is lost. 

Large corporations practice this neutralization most-diligently and to the perfection. 

How ?

They put a faceless army, most stressed-up, most bored and most exploited group in their Call Centres to be the first line of interaction with their most valued asset : cuistomers. 

Why ?

Because they ‘know all’ – as what these millions of people may need to ask them for. They cannot think of anything else other than some annoyance for which a customer may like to touch the sensors of the organization.