Worth keeping a link to this collection. Interesting.
I agree with several of them; I’d probably add Big Yellow Taxi.
Rhetoric is the Message @georgegalloway
I’m a big fan of George, not least because a party called Respect names the right virtue for a complicated life, and politics is as complicated as it gets. And, being a small independent, you can be fairly sure George is genuinely true to his expressed principles. Trust and respect – a great combination.
Much twittering around the personally dismissive straw-man Dave threw back at George in response to his PMQ – about hypocrisy in which Islamic regimes we support and which we don’t. Now (see complicated, above) there is always a level of “hypocrisy” between actions and justifying reasons, and even with open debate before the Mali action, I doubt the outcome of supporting the French in Saharan Africa would have been different. Even with principles, in practice you always need to choose your battle-grounds, fighting where you might expect a positive result, pulling punches where …. life’s complicated.
George is a first class rhetorician, and an ace orator in steadily enunciating his whole question amid the house heckling, and ultimately in resisting the impulse to react to the personal insult he received for his troubles. In fact you might say he’s too good; hoist by his own petard even. His own use of rhetoric, right from the off with the euphemistic “adumbrate”, followed by a string of emotive venom-loaded barbs within the basic question, meant the undoubted moral high-ground in the question, is largely eroded by the time we get to its end. In essence:
“Could the PM explain why his government chooses to support Regime X but not Regime Y?”
The PM is maybe entitled to respond to the rhetorical barbs, but he is not entitled to introduce a straw-man of George’s controversial personal history, nor is he entitled to use it as a deflector to avoid the actual question. Too many barbs let Dave off the hook. (Anyway – the follow-up is in writing.)
But of course the question was not framed to elicit an answer, it was framed as a sound bite to raise the debate in public. Too good ? Very good. Dave and George both knew it full well. It’s a tough high-stakes game, a rhetorical arms-race. Another case of “the medium is the message” when the medium is George – quite clear from the moment Bercow introduces George to speak.
[Post Note: Here in intelligent debate with Andrew Neil – very impressive. A side issue, but given my rhetorical comments above, interesting that Neil opens with the question of his PMQ leaving him open to the attack.]
Skilled Cheese Wits
One for the “creative writing” pile.
(Hat tip to Hugh McLeod)
Aaaggghhh!!! – Brian Cox
I am to Brian Cox as Stephen Hawking is to Schrödinger’s cat:
“When I hear of Schrödinger’s cat, I reach for my gun”
The worst possible face of popular science imaginable. (Closely followed by – I am to popular news items about the Higg’s Boson as Hawking is …. but that’s last years “news”.)
A Sense of Responsibility
Amazingly candid and positive comments from Dave Kitson, talking about the pain of relegation with Reading FC:
“You are responsible for people losing their jobs and you are coming into training in your nice car and you see people carrying boxes of their possessions out. You just think, ‘I did that, that’s my fault’. It has affected me to this day and I nearly lost everything over what happened there.”
“They’re my team and they’re the team I take my son to watch; I always have a chat with [Reading boss] Brian McDermott after their games, whatever the result, He was the one who convinced Steve Coppell to take a chance on me and I can never thank him enough for that. I really hope he can keep them on their current run and they can survive.”
Funny after (appearing to be one of those) holding out for unreasonable financial reward following the demise of Pompey, but as he says in the article he nearly lost everything. I remember Dave Kitson standing out at Cambridge against Reading before we bought him. He was never going to be “top-flight” Premiership quality, but fondly remembered after that oh-so-nearly era of Butler, Cureton and Forster.
Motivation 3.0 – Pink Does Maslow
Dan Pink’s “Drive” caught on as a best seller in the last couple of years in promoting the concept of “Motivation 3.0”. Of course, the terminology catches the fashion of the internet generation, and good luck if the brief readable book, with its “Toolkit” of ideas does lead to more management catching on in more organizations. (Hat tip to Robin for bringing up Pink’s Drive in a business call.)
Some many resist its obviously “faddish” looks, and some will be attracted precisely by that latest-fashion aspect, but like all good messages, there is nothing new under the sun. Absolutely nothing, and that’s why you can tell it’s good, despite the tag line “the surprising truth” – nothing could be less surprising, even though it opposes “received wisdom”. The core idea of autonomous engagement is very simple, far from rocket science, and not difficult to implement providing one overcomes the fear of letting go.
In a word, the first aspect – Autonomy.
People perform better if given a reasonable degree of autonomy. The hard bit is working out for your own particular case how much is reasonable, but even then, Pareto’s 80:20 rule of thumb says, anything less that 20% autonomy ought to be considered suspect, 32% autonomy a normal case, and 80% autonomy about as good as it gets. Go figure. No need to read on if that’s self-evident already.
Anyway, between then (F.W.Taylor and Abraham Maslow say) and now (Dan Pink say) there have been a thousand management gurus plying their trade in the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st. Each standing on the shoulders of giants, though as I often point out, in order to do that, you have to recognize the giant. Even the original Psybertron agenda (About >> Agenda) includes recovering from the status quo where “management mistook itself for a science” – a thinly veiled allusion to the errors of Taylorism. Very old news. (Gurus that spring to mind, all referenced in this blog, include; Taylor, Maslow, MacGregor, Ouchi, Argyris, Parker-Follett, Drucker, Handy, Peters, Godin, Gladwell, Ariely, Pink to name but a few, and not to mention the myriad of empirical anthropologists, behavioural-psychologists, scientists and philosophers of mind on whose research they depend. You no doubt have your own favourites.)
If we go back to Maslow, we can superimpose quite easily the evolving story that management gurus are trying to communicate to us. In fact he has been much maligned and, as I already blogged, there is a significant movement to rehabilitate Maslow in the “positive psychology” school.
Naturally, the first three levels of Maslow, are pretty much accepted as basic human rights anywhere in the developed and developing world, so they quite rightly look antiquated as motivators these days. They remain important of course, if you understand the hygiene rule. And like all generalizations, exactly what motivates / demotivates in each band varies by individual and circumstance; any general rules implied are “for guidance of the wise and the enslavement of fools“. And, as Theodore Zeldin reminds, us we all have imperfect knowledge and understanding as well as limits to our own competencies, whatever our motivation. In the modern “professional” world most people find themselves somewhere through Motivation2.0, with diminishing returns on, even seemingly-perverse negative responses to, extrinsic rewards as motivators. As Pink highlights, we’ve been struggling with variations of Motivation2.x (ref any number of management gurus) on our way to recognising Motivation3.0 for what it is.
The other main thrust of Drive is Engagement.
Once properly motivated and “empowered” by autonomy, the point is that people can properly engage with tasks, achieving a sweet-spot in performance. Zen and the Art of … doing what you do well … Optimisation is achieved when the task and the person effectively become one – there are no extraneous distinctions between the task and the person – what a radical empiricist / monist like James or Pirsig might call “dynamic quality” – or kinetic quality, relationalism, inclusionality, you name it – what has been dubbed “flow” since Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
And finally for now, this is all closely tied to the movement that suggests we all recognize the difference between our life’s work and our day job. Or to express that the other way around, the closer our day job – the one that pays the bills – comes to our life’s work – that which we find intrinsically valuable to our purpose and meaning in the world – the better for all of us.
[Post Notes:
Oh look, the following day Dilbert is on topic too:
And recently, Gaping Void’s Message for the Next Generation.
[And on the motivational commencement speech genre, try the one by David Foster-Wallace.]
Further Reading ?
If any of this looks new or unbelievable to you,
or you can’t imagine how you would apply it in real life,
then read Dan Pink’s Drive, it’s an easy read with practical advice.
Or if you prefer, start with this video animation.
Pink has his own list of further reading, so I won’t put a spoiler here;
suffice to say Peter Drucker is amongst them.
In this up to date context, Drucker is interesting and impressive;
generally recognized as having been the guru of management gurus,
he himself acknowledged his own debt to Mary Parker-Follett.
(Drucker and Parker-Follett jumping off points already linked above.)
If you want some deeper background on the psychology,
or more generally on “how the mind works” in these contexts,
my recent favourites are Haidt, Kahneman, Kauffman and McGilchrist.
Not to mention recognizing the “flow” in the “peak experiences” writings of
James and Dewey, much-used by much-maligned Maslow.]
[Post Note : An interesting corrective on real autonomy and empowerment. It’s bottom up you dummy.]
[Post Note : Here an interesting reminder that Maslow’s Hierarchy / Pyramid is a later visual representation of Maslow’s ideas, maybe by Drucker or Parker-Follett. Not critical to my position – since ideas evolve anyway, and the essential value is there – but might be worth researching who originally proposed that evolving representation? Hat tip to @DrSarahEaton and @JulesEvans77.]
[Post Note : And an “Engagement” version of Maslow from David McInstosh Jan 2016:
[Post Note: And in 2018 Meaning as engagement in life itself by Steve Taylor in Psychology Today.
My own single sentence summary of the Meaning of Life:
Your experience will vary, but
there is an evolutionary hierarchy:… from yourself and your loved ones
surviving to live,… culminating in our striving
towards our best contribution to
wider humanity and the cosmos.
There is no more. All questions are about “what’s best?”.
See also #HTLGI2018 notes. ]
Morality Play #ballboy @charliem0rgan
OK, so since I tend to use the sins of Chelski as moral parables, I should restore the balance with this one.
Chelski’s Hazard did NOT kick the Swansea ball boy. He tried to get the ball from him and eventually kicked it out from under him. He shouldn’t have done that, he should no doubt have drawn attention to the officials that he had tried and the ball-boy was resisting. Fortunately the red-card seems to be the end of any “punishment”, but I’d say that was harsh if probably the letter of the law applied by the official for “excessive force”. He and Chelski seem to have taken their punishment on the chin, and responded appropriately.
The ball-“boy”, on the other hand, should be shot, along with his “coach”. Or made a public example, if the death penalty isn’t an option. Disgraceful behaviour by a 17-year-old, no doubt a football apprentice, as old as some in the professional game these days, rolling about like a true-pro actor for the cameras, no doubt doing as instructed by his coach – to waste time on behalf of his team and interfere with an opponent trying to get on with the game. Correct me if I’m wrong about the young man, his club and his coach, but … jeez … Swansea too, who had seemed model professionals on the pitch. This stuff should be stamped out of the game hard.
[Post Note – Oh yes, look, it was indeed pre-meditated:
https://twitter.com/CHARLIEM0RGAN/status/294135719700602881
I wasn’t wrong about the “boy”. Called in because he was needed for time-wasting.
Harry Rednapp – “He [Eden Hazard] kicked the ball from underneath him and the whole thing got blown out of proportion. You only have to see that he was tweeting before the game that he [the ball boy] was a super timewaster, I think it was disgusting the way he behaved.”
Heads must roll at Swansea. ]
[Post Post Note – Oh and the FA is planning further punishment of Hazard- shame – hopefully a matter of formality for an off-the-pitch action – this is a million miles from the Cantona precedent. Pretty weak wording – no doubt because these are issues for the competitions, beyond the FA’s jurisdiction – also saying the ball-boy’s action was “inappropriate” and clubs should control this. And finally – for Hazard – the buck stops there. Phew!]
[PS Unconnected but related, re Robbie Savage’s rant on 606 last weekend about justifying the “professional foul” – taking one for the team – I already addressed a few of years ago with John Terry’s cynical mis-calculation – game-changing rules change. That’s why we have judges in court and referees on the pitch, to notice the game-changers and have the courage to apply them. Any idiot can apply the existing explicit rule – rules, remember, are for the guidance of wise men, and enslavement of fools.]
Creation (of) Myth
Interesting “In Our Time” this morning. Subject is Romulus and Remus, but already majoring on the recurring myths aspect. Interesting in itself.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
Most interesting the argument about the original “creation” of the myth. I agree with those arguing against Peter Wiseman; there is no actual point when a particular story is created or first told. Evolution only throws up new “species” with hindsight, and the hindsight is a choice to attach the label to the recurring pattern. There is no point when all elements are “brought” together for the first time. (Even in biology, this speciation has arbitrary choice elements.)
Intriguing – just another “creation vs evolution” meta-myth of myths.
Scientology in London @BHAHumanists
Just to capture this image of the London Undeground Ad:
Obvious irony in the idea of joining a “church” in order to think for yourself. Reminds me of Pirsig’s problem with the “church of reason”.
[Post Note : Corruption story in HuffPo.]
[And another : Article in Free Thinker.]
Eating Herring
How long before Herring are the next “eat only occasionally” protected species ? I eat a lot of Herring; pickled, a habit picked-up in Norway, and kippers, a habit rekindled by returning to home not far from Whitby.
Mackerel have certainly dwindled in both size and abundance in my own experience. Back in the 60’s and 70’s you could hardly fail to catch 2 and 3 pounders from piers on the North Sea coast in the summer, these days you need to be out in a boat to get into a shoal of 0.5 to 1.5 pounders. Certainly always notice that those on the fishmonger’s ice are tiny compared to those we used to catch. Herring were never a rod-caught fish of course, but size-wise they still look like they always did. The Mackerel article recommends we eat Herring instead.