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How Long Does it Take for Us to Forget?

This week’s cease-fire in Gaza probably passed most people by – except for quick glimpses of rockets being fired back-and-forth and the commentary from safe television studios by those who try to collapse a whole history lesson into a few minutes of short, sharp sentences.  I am sure we were all relieved that the war was halted by an equally abrupt ceasefire.

However, the news reminded me of a time when I was much smaller and of the 6 Day War of 1967 – and more particularly my father’s reaction to it.  He had strong opinions about this part of the world having been posted to Palestine at the end of the Second World War.  By luck, he was minutes away from the King David Hotel (1) when it blew up on 22 July 1946.

The bomb killed 91 and injured 46.  The Irgun planted a bomb in the basement of the main building of the hotel, under the wing which housed the Mandate Secretariat and a few offices of the British Military headquarters.  If my father had arrived a few minutes earlier, I would not have been born.  Nor would my brother nor sister.  A sobering thought (for my siblings and me, at least).

My father therefore had a very different perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict – and would merely say “remember what happened to the Palestinians.”  This did not have anything like the meaning for me as it did for him.  And for my children, it is probably just  another history lesson in a country that they have not yet visited somewhere in the Middle East.  In reaching a bit deeper into the subject, I came across a quote (2) by David Ben-Gurion (the first Prime Minister of Israel):

“I don’t understand your optimism,” Ben-Gurion declared. “Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations’ time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it’s simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.”

What struck me by this quote was not so much that the Prime Minister of Israel was admitting to the fact that the Israelis had stolen “their” country from the Arabs, but more the idea that it takes one or two generations to accept; one or two generations to forgive; one or two generations to forget.

It reminded me of some research I did a few years ago on the famous Russian economist, Nikolai Kondratiev (3).  Kondratiev came up with the theory of the long-wave economic cycle which takes about 50-60 years from peak to peak.  Kontradiev’s views were so controversial in his country at the time that he was sent to the gulag and was executed in 1938 at the age of 46. It was Joseph Schumpeter who named the wave in Kondratiev’s name in 1939.  I remember reading about long wave economic cycles about 20 years ago and wondered what might cause  these types of patterns in history.  I can’t remember exactly where I heard the theory at the time – but I remember hearing the idea that the 50-60 year cycle is natural because “it takes two generations to forget”.  Given that a significant number of children are born to women between 25-30 (from(4) – see chart below), this is somehow quite an interesting idea.

If you take the theory and apply it to the cycle from the Wall Street Crash in 1929 (and the Great Depression of the 1930s) to the financial crisis of 2008 and our current post-crash turmoil, then 1929 to 2008 is about 80 years.  Some of you might point out that the time between is not 50 or 60 years, so the theory does not hold.  But perhaps this is due to the fact that we are now all living a bit longer?  In any case, the underlying pattern of loosening financial controls within the international financial system seems clear – as is the pattern of forgetting the lessons learnt from the previous generation’s Grandparents.  I’m not a qualified economist – but as an inquisitive observer, the theory somehow makes sense – even if it is not numerically accurate.

So we have wars, we have waves and we have history repeating itself and it got me thinking about the recent flooding that is currently taking place (again) across many parts of the UK.   Over 5 million people in England and Wales live and work in properties that are at risk of flooding from rivers or the sea. (5)  Yet there seems to be considerable political pressure on encouraging the building industry to “get building” so that we can kick-start the economy.  In Kent, where I live, many of the new houses have been built on the flood plains around Ashford – and there is the famous story of the Vodfaone Headquarters building in Newbury being built on the old racecourse that was well-known for flooding.

And so it was that I came across a story (6) about the tsunami that struck Japan last year.  Many people living by the sea lost their lives, but there was one village, apparently, in Aneyoshi that has a stone which reads:

“High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants.

Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. 

Do not build any homes below this point.”  

Those who headed the warning (like the residents in Aneyoshi) were spared from the destruction of the recent tsunami. Other towns did not. Yuto Kimura, aged 12, from Aneyoshi said they studied about the markers in school, and when the tsunami came, his mother got him from school and the entire village climbed to higher ground.

And so it is.  Maybe we are all cursed with the fact that it takes two generations to forget.  But for the wise ones who read the markers that have been laid down from previous generations, it is worth teaching the next generation about the deeper lessons from history.  It is worth encouraging them to take less time to accept, less time to forgive and more time to forget the important things in life.

Then again, we are all creatures of habit, so I expect the addage that “it takes two generations to forget” will last for many more generations to come!

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

(2) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Kondratiev

(4) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2051374/Average-age-women-having-baby-climbs-29-start-family-later.html

(5) http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/default.aspx

(6) http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/969855–japan-nuclear-plant-plugs-highly-radioactive-leak

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Lagom är bäst

I am always intrigued when I find a word in a foreign language that has no direct equivalent in the English language.  When I come across one, I feel that I have somehow found a new way of looking at the world that most people who just speak English cannot see.

And so it was, in doing some research for a client earlier this week, I had a single idea – and I was looking for a word or a phrase in the English language to describe it.  The phrase might describe the sort of contentment that a Zen Bhuddist Priest might have about life – all the time.  Not seeking or being exploited.  Just absorbing and giving back to the world sufficient energy, food, water, conversation that is appropriate in the moment.

On delving into Wikipedia the best phrase I could find was one from Swedish: “Lagom”.  Roughly translated, it means “just the right amount”.  No more.  No less.  There is a Swedish proverb: “Lagom är bäst” which translates as “the right amount is best”.  AhHa!  I thought.  This is it!  This is the word I have been looking for.

The word “lagom” (also spelled “lugum” or “lugom”) also exists in Norwegian. The connotations in Norwegian, however, are somewhat different from Swedish.  In Norwegian the word has synonyms as “fitting, suitable, comfortable, nice, decent, well built/proportioned”.  While some synonyms are somewhat similar in meaning (e.g. “suitable” and “reasonable”, “fitting” and “in balance”), many present in Swedish don’t exist in Norwegian and vice versa. The Norwegian words “passelig” and the more common “passe” are very similar, translating roughly as “fitting, adequate, suitable” in English. “Passe” can be used in every context where the Swedish “lagom” is used, e.g. “passe varm” (right temperature/adequately warm), “passe stor” (right size), etc.

The concept of ‘lagom’ is similar to Russian expression ‘normal’no’ (нормально, literally normally), which indicates a sufficient and sustainable state, for example of one’s livelihood. In Russian, the word is often used as answer to the question “how are you”. Comparable terms are found in some south Slavic languages, for example Serbian and Croatian umereno or umjereno.

Ιn ancient Greek, there was the infamous phrase of Cleobulus, ‘Métron áriston’ (μέτρον ἄριστον) i.e.: “Moderation is best”

Wikipedia further cites the origin of the term “Lagom” as “an archaic dative plural form of lag (“law”), in this case referring not necessarily to judicial law but common sense law. A translation of this could be “according to common sense”. A popular folk etymology claims that it is a contraction of “laget om” (“around the team”), a phrase used in Viking times to specify how much mead one should drink from the horn as it was passed around in order for everyone to receive a fair share.” 

What a rich idea!  What a joyous thought!  Passing mead around the team to ensure everyone gets their fair share.  It does not surprise me that the Scandanavian countries have enriched their language with this single word – when the rest of the English speaking world has no such idea in common parlance.  It somehow goes with their culture.

Furthermore, as the English language has been manipulated by marketeers and journalists into visions and scripts designed to stimulate through  sensational exaggerations, the idea of having just the right amount is no longer tolerated.  Even the world “sustainable” now comes loaded with connotations and political nuance.  The idea of having just the right amount is counter to the way the current consumerist (Western) economy works.  If people stopped consuming, then the economy would come to a halt, surely?

So the tensions in the current world continue to need one thing and promote another.  We have those who need to manipulate the public into buying more; into consuming more; into projecting a sense of needing and wanting more; grabbing attention in a world that is producing an ever-increasing amount of information.  IBM recently published an astonishing piece of data: that “90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone”.

And yet we know the world needs something else.  The thought that whatever you have is somehow just right requires a new way of thinking – perhaps triggered by a new word in the English Language.  Perhaps Lagom is just the right word for what we need!

Not “sustainable” – just Lagom.

Sources:

Wikpedia entry on Lagom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom

Picture: Viking Royal Meadhorn Design from Beowulf Blog: http://www.joshviers4.blogspot.co.uk

IBM Quote: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/

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The Answer Lies in the Space Between

We are in recess.  In the gap between:

  • The wet weather and what’s to come
  • July and September
  • The Olympics and the Paralympics
  • The Euro Crisis and its eventual resolution
  • Taking off the honey and extracting it
  • Writing an action on the “to-do” list and doing the things you need to do so you can cross it off
  • Birth and Death
  • …X…. and ….Y….

Yet with all the tensions in life and all the things that we are somehow in the middle of completing, I find it more and more interesting to search the space between.  And to settle, for a moment, here and now, into a state of  stillness.  A state of mild contemplation of what the gap looks like between these different tensions.

If you have had your holidays, I hope they were good!  If you are not going on holiday, hope you have a future one to look forward to!  And if, like me, you are still to go away, then enjoy the experience and the space between going away and coming back!

The answer, after all, lies in the space between!

 

Image Copyright iStockPhoto: Illustration 000019183913

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The Shapes of Stories and How to Write Them

A good friend and regular reader, Anthony, sent me the link to a great anonymous blog a few weeks ago – Farnam Street.

Yesterday, they pointed to a brilliant set of rules on how to write a short story by Kurt Vonnegut:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

There is another video which is even more worth watching on the Shape of Stories:

It got me thinking about how we all love stories, the ups and downs of life, the drama unfolding, the game(s), the chase, the great ending!

Please share any insights or thoughts you have on this great subject below!

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Inventories, Unread Books and Generation Why

Last week there were no Thursday Thoughts.  I was in Edinburgh and thinking far too much to write about it.  Today I had to go up to London and got writer’s block until a chance Skype conversation with Malcolm about random stuff.  It got my right brain going and I am now back in the flow.

In much of the work I do, I am drawn to creating order from chaos by documenting the present situation.  One very useful tool is to take an inventory of what is.  A version of the truth that is accurate enough to be good enough.  It is like the difference between German and British accounting: German accounting is always exactly wrong: British accounting is almost roughly right!

So it was I was chatting to Malcolm on Skype who was listening to Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time – a discussion on James Joyce’s Ulysses.  At the start of the talk, Bragg points out that it is one of the most famous books of the last century – and one that few have read cover-to-cover – myself included.

It got me thinking about the fact that 95% of books are never read.  Mine included……

So I thought, what about an inventory of all the books I have – and then work out how many I have actually read?  More than 1,000 books – and less than 5% read?   I suppose that the types of books I collect are not novels.  They are more like factoid books, text books, “how to” books.  Bee books, personal development books.  I don’t read novels.  My father used to say “Life has enough drama in it that I don’t need to go to the theatre”.  I think the same about reading books.

So the inventory, used with the mirror, forces to look at yourself, your behaviour, your reality.  But the Skype conversation I was (and still am) having with Malcolm on this touched on another interesting thread.  The fact that I am of a generation where physical books represents learning, knowledge and intelligence.  But for my children, the world is very different.  An Amazon Kindle could contain the same number of books as on my bookshelves and many more besides.  For generation Y (which I call Generation Why – because they always seem to be asking the question Why?)  the value of owning physical books is almost diametrically opposite to mine.  To take an inventory of Apps on my MacBook (which I also collect) takes less than 5 seconds.  The software can be updated across the internet when new versions arrive.  Information is more transient.  More connected, near-free to produce.

So what?  Well it is time for me to start to clear the clutter of my bookshelves.  To stop ordering physical books on Amazon.  To change my behaviour.  One of the most difficult things to do.  But the inventory and the mirror are perhaps the most powerful tools to help change behaviour.  Question is whether I can  reduce my inventory without being distracted by workload, the bees, the dogs, the children – oh and that urge to go onto Amazon to buy another book on my Wish List!

Time for an inventory.  Time to put the mirror up!  It works with clients – but is so much harder to do to oneself!

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Become What You Are

I pulled off a book from my bookshelf the other night with the title of this post. The book is a collection of writings, including nine chapters never before published in book form by Alan Watts. Watts was a British pilosopher, lecturer and author who interpreted Eastern thought for Westerners. He was born close to where I live in Chiselhurst, Kent in 1915 and died in California in 1973. Other more famous titles of his include “The Way of Zen” and “The Book”.

I have copied the article below – which has the same title as the book – which gives a good insight into Watts’ writing – as well as a piece to ponder on this Thursday:

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Become What You Are

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It has been said that the highest wisdom lies in detachment, or, in the words of Chuang-tzu: “The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.”  Detachment means to have neither regrets for the past nor fears for the future; to let life take its course without attempting to interfere with its movement and change, neither trying to prolong the stay of things pleasant nor hasten the departure of things unpleasant.  To do this is to move in time with life, to be in perfect accord with its changing music, and this is called Enlightenment. 

In short, it is to be detached from both past and future and to live in the eternal Now.  For in truth neither past nor future have any existence apart  from this Now; by themsleves they are illusions.  Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal.  For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it persists for ever.  This movement and change has been called Tao by the Chinese, yet in fact there is no movement, for the moment is the only reality and there is nothing beside it in relation to which it can be said to move.  Thus it can be called at once the eternally moving and eternally resting.

How can we bring ourselves into accord with this Tao?  A sage has said that if we try to accord with it, we shall get away from it.  But he was not altogether right.  For the curious thing is that you cannot get out of accord with it even if you want to.  Though your thoughts may run into the past or future, then cannot escape the present moment.  However far back or forward they try to escape, they can never be separated from the moment.  For those thoughts are themselves of the moment; just as much as anything else they partake of and indeed, are the movement of life which is Tao.

You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now – otherwise you would not be here.  Hence the infinite Tao is something which you can neither escape by flight nor catch by pursuit; there is no coming toward it or going away from it; it is, and you are it.  So become what you are.

Source: Become What You Are – pp10-11 from the book with the same title by Alan Watts – (c) Shambhala Press 2003

More on Alan Watts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts

Podcasts at: http://www.alanwatts.org/

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The Scale of Things

I was chatting to Oscar the other night and he pointed me to a really interesting site:

If the frame above does not work for you, then you can link to the site HERE.  It makes you think how extraordinarily small in the Universe we are.  And how big we are too!  If you did not see my previous entry, the great 1977 video from IBM: “The Powers of Ten”, then have a look at that too.

The day before, I had come across another rather more abstract view that sets a new world record for representing a Mandelbrot Set – which gives a bit more of a zany trip towards infinity.

Oscar liked it – and called it “trippy”!

I hope these two views stretch your mind to think a bit more about our place in the Universe, touching both your left and right brains.

As ever, please feel free to comment below.

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Four Beautiful Christmas Trees

In celebration of the time of the year, I found these four sets of elegant Mathematical Formulae which I thought would make excellent Christmas Trees!  As we leave 2011, here are two that celebrate the symmetry of eleven:

                               +

                      1 x 9 + 2 = 11
                    12 x 9 + 3 = 111
                  123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
                1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
              12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
            123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
         1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
       12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
    123456789 x 9 +10 = 1111111111

                       =====

                          ===

And here is another that balances the tree above with another set of elevens:

                                   *

                             1 x 1 = 1
                          11 x 11 = 121
                      111 x 111 = 12321
                   1111 x 1111 = 1234321
               11111 x 11111 = 123454321
            111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
         1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
     11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
  111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

                                =====

                                   ===

And for those of you who believe, like the Chinese, that “8” is lucky, I have dressed this one in red:

                               +

                      9 x 9 + 7 = 88
                   98 x 9 + 6 = 888
                 987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
               9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
             98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
           987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
         9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
       98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888

                           =====

                              ===

And finally this one, my favourite, which took me ages to decorate!

                                +

                       1 x 8 + 1 = 9

                    12 x 8 + 2 = 98

                  123 x 8 + 3 = 987

                1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876

              12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765

            123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654

          1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543

        12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432

      123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321

                           =====

                              ===

A very happy Christmas and successful and abundant New Year!

 

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Predicting and Influencing the Future for the Better

Last night I had a fascinating dinner with a few friends at the Frontline Club where we discussed how you influence the future. We ended up designing a system of brainstorming panels which had 3D glass shelves and used 3D icons that could change colour and show pictures and movies – all hitched to a reconfigurable database the cloud! By 10.30 my mind was totally boggled and we headed home!

The conversation was triggered by last week’s post where we explored the idea of Presence as being a better paradigm to describe effective organisations and trying to show that the current obsession of process reengineering is so lacking as an organising idea for the new internet era.  This week I intend to look at whether or not we can predict the future – and we can influence outcomes at an individual, organisational and world level.

To start with, I love the quote by William Gibson: “The future is here.  It’s just not widely distributed yet.”  Since the beginning of recorded history mankind has held in some sort of reverence (or equal cynicism) those who say they can see the future.  The oldest book in the world is based on the stories of the ancient prophets.  Seers and clairvoyants have always held a deep romantic fascination for me as guides to some sort of futre picture (whether  good or bad) and they seldom seem to be accountable for whether their predictions happen or not.  Just as Gibson observes, seers and prophets might actually be in the future and are describing things that most of us can’t see yet because we are stuck in the past (perhaps tied up in processes that were invented by someone else long ago ;-)).

If you fancy your clairvoyant skills, then there is even an Australian website where you can enter them – and it keeps track of whether or not they come true!  Here is a list of War on Experts’ top 10 best predictions.  There is also an interesting podcast from Freakonomics on why we just love trying to predict the future and how louzy we are at it.

In my work, I find the basis of “back-to-front” thinking an absolutely critical tool when trying to find the best courses of action to achieve objectives.  You can’t really be successful unless you know what success looks like – and you can’t get there unless you have worked out how to get there back-to-front.  So, in many ways, the predicted (reinforced) path to get from where you are now to where you want to get to requires some sort of prediction and willing yourself into the future.

There is some fairly extraordinary research being run at Princeton University into human consciousness that records how the human race reacts to specific events around the world.  With the help of correspondents around the world, events that can be expected to bring large numbers of people to a “shared or coherent emotional state”. The following is a partial, illustrative list of criteria and examples:

  1. Suddenness or surprise. Terror attacks, especially where they are not usual.
  2. Fear and compassion. Large natural disasters, typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes.
  3. Love and sharing. Celebrations and ceremonies like New Years, religious gatherings.
  4. Powerful interest. Political and social events like elections, protests, demonstrations.
  5. Deliberate focus. Organized meetings and meditations like Earth Day, World Peace Day.

There seems to be evidence that human consciousness actually changed a few seconds BEFORE any jet was rammed into the Twin Towers with the monitoring of  these”eggs” placed round the planet by Princeton University which generate random numbers.

Results still show that one of the main ways to make the world more peaceful and better place is to get a group together and go into a group meditation.  Forget about thinking.  Just sit and meditate.  So whether you believe we can see the future or not, by changing our own consciousness, it appears that we can actually make the future more peaceful!

As Niels Bohr is famously quoted: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”  but I am certain we can influence and make the future happen by our actions in the present and by envisioning the future back-to-front into our lives.

Beautiful day here.  Hottest September afternoon in the UK on record, apparently. Off to go and meditate with the bees and raise the level of peace vibes on the planet!

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