On Working #2

There seems to me to be two ways a person can become rich whilst employing others to work for them. They could offer sufficient rewards for their workforce to work harder, to be more efficient, more productive. Not just incentives to hit targets but a good wage for a good days work. Therefore as they become richer so do those that work for them. This, surely, will make the workers more motivated which in turn leads to them making more money. And so the whole thing will grow.
On the other hand they could get rich by exploiting those that work for them. Using threats and punishments and the fear of job loss to drive the workforce. Yes this will make the employer more money but is it self-driving? Personally I don’t think so.
So we can either have a system where the employer can become very rich indeed. And so can the workforce. Everyone wins. Or we can have a system where the employer can become merely rich. And quite probably hated by their entire workforce. It would seem evident to me that the first system is the best. By a long way! So why is the second system the one that is the most widespread? By a long way? Maybe, just maybe it is because when everyone is rich, no-one seems rich!

Future Modeling

From where I stand at this moment my future could go any number of ways. For example: I could choose to walk to the left or to the right on the path in front of me. If I go to the left I come to a junction with another path just over the brow of this hill. There I could continue with this path or head off into the woods on the new path. If I choose to head towards the woods there are many new options that will open out in front of me. It can be seen, therefore, there are at this moment in time a large number of ways my life could go. A very large number. I just wonder is anyone has calculated it?

Accountants please note #2

I would suggest that you all learn what compound interest means

On Working #1

I used to work for a large company. Last year a fair percentage of the workforce were laid off. This was not the first group within the company to be laid off, nor, I am sure will they be the last. But it got me wondering why they were laid off. Was it because they were no longer needed? No I don’t think so. On the contrary, the people who were let go seemed, to me, to be the people who actually made the products we were selling. OK, I thought, was it because we made a loss as a company? Nope, we made a profit, A very, very large (some might say obscenely large) profit. OK, so maybe these people were bad at their job? Once again the answer appeared to be no. Talking to them at the trendy coffee bar the company installed they all seemed to be way above average performers. OK, I thought, what the hell is going on? We had, as a company, seen our profits (not just our turnover) grow on a yearly basis. Yep, you read it right: Every year we made more money than the year before but we were getting rid of the people responsible for that growth. So, the company seemed, to me, to be getting rid of the ability to make money. This seemed crazy! I was sure there was a rational reason behind the move. Boy was I mistaken! After a lot of digging, annoying my line managers and their line managers and so on up the company food chain I found out that the underlying reason was that the company didn’t increase their profits over the previous year by as much as it had promised. It didn’t miss by much but it did miss. And so, in order to appease some anonymous shareholders that no-one had ever seen, someone had to go. And was it the people who had made the absurd profit promise in the first place? I don’t think so. It was the people who had actually created the very large profit we had made. Now that is certifiable lunacy! And that is why I used to work for that company.

Question #5

Do freedoms set you free?

Accountants please note

I am not a cost, I am a human being!

Question #1 Again

If I am responsible for creating my world and my existence within it then why isn't it always summer?

Oh how the years fly past

It’s my eldest daughter’s birthday today. She’s nineteen. Quite the young lady. Strangely it is on days like this rather than on my own birthday that I feel old. I mean really old. Tired old. As my memory stretches back over those nineteen years I remember. I remember the birth (Caesarian), I remember first holding her (she was, and still is, so small), her first tears, her first everything it seems. It all feels so long ago. I know it isn’t maybe in human terms but it is in one human’s (me) terms. I don’t think it is the actual time elapsed since her birth that makes it seem such a long time but, rather, all the many, many events, both good and bad, on the path of our joint travel through life that contribute to this feeling. It is also on days like this that I look to the future and see that one day, maybe soon, maybe later, that that path will diverge. And one day, maybe soon, maybe later one of those paths will end. Yep, today I am feeling old. Really old.

Politician

A politician lies
While a mother cries
As her baby dies

How do I know?

How do I know what I know? I know that there is much I have learned, through books, experience, at school and so on. And there is much that I have seen others do and, in seeing, have fixed the knowledge in my mind. But, and this is where my question arises, there is still more that I just seem to know. Let me give an example from my own life: I am a very good cook. In some way I seem to be able to instinctively know what ingredients work with what and in which way they are best prepared. I say this not to be big headed but to illustrate a point. I have, however, no training in cooking either formal or informal. Neither do I remember spending much time in the kitchen when I was growing up watching my parents prepare food nor did I watch cooking programs on TV or read cooking books by way of relaxation. So, I have to ask, how do I know how to cook? I cannot think that it is somehow instinctive because how many of my Viking ancestors needed to prepare a nice Sauce Béarnaise after a good day out looting English monasteries or discovering Greenland? Or, going even further back, did my Cro-Magnon/Neanderthal ancestors really need a light, fluffy chocolate soufflé to follow their barbecued Mastodon? So, once again, I must ask where did my knowledge originate? I have to admit that I don’t know! This is not the only thing that I seem to know without learning it: Computer programming is something else. Almost the first time I saw a computer (in the dim distant past before the PC was a glimmer in IBM’s eye) I knew I could program it. Yes I had to learn a computer language to program with but not how to program. I know a lot of people will believe you can’t have the latter (programming) without the former (language) but you can. Believe me on that. It was almost as if I was born knowing. I know that sounds stupid and impossible but how else can I describe knowing without learning? Can anyone out there explain? Please? I am not saying my knowledge is perfect. It isn’t! Not by a long, long way. But then again neither is any other type of learning I know. But any theory about this has to explain how I could go to a restaurant when I was young (about 11-12 years old) and taste a dish and make it or how I could hear a cheese soufflé described on the radio and make it without a recipe and without ever seeing a soufflé. And no I really don’t know how it’s done.

On Money #2

I think I understand about the use of money now: Money, as such, doesn't buy you more or better possessions, a faster car, a larger home. That is the error of the newly rich. No those who have been rich a long time know that money buys you power and privilege. And money attracts money as power attracts power.

Question #4

If I wish to teach what I know who will listen?

And of those who listen who will understand?

And of those who understand who will learn?

It doesn't cost anything

Why does no-one smile any more? Have we used up all the happiness there is in the world? If this is so then is this not a disaster on a greater scale than global warming? If it is not so then how do we nurture it and make it grow and shine out once more into the world?

Question #3

I'm on a train and I've just had my ticket punched. Who will punch my ticket for my journey through life?

On Money

Do I despise money? Not as such, no! Do I despise those who through their own labour physical or mental have money? Not as such, no! Do I despise those who, having money, work to make it grow but do no harm physical or mental to those around them? Not as such, no! Do I despise those who employ others to work and enrich them but who in doing so enrich those around them in turn? Not as such, no! Do I despise those who have money by accident of birth alone? Yes, those I despise! Is it jealousy? Thinking on it it may be. But I am, after all, only human! Do I despise those who have obtained money on the exploited backs of others? Yes, those I despise most of all. More than that, for them I reserve my contempt! Utter, utter contempt. They are sub-beings. They belong not with us! Why do I feel this? Because I am, after all, only human!

Question #2

I exist in space and I exist in time. Is there anywhere else I exist?

Maxim #1

Do not tell me why a thing cannot be done but rather tell me how a thing can be done!

Observation #1

What is it that makes us human? What is the spark that makes us rise above the level of animal? I have traveled to some of the worlds remote places and I think it is our ability to create inordinate amounts of litter!

Question #1

If I am responsible for creating my world and my existence within it then why, oh why, did I create something this dreary?

A dark road traveled

I remember walking home after nightfall many years ago along a Welsh country lane. It was dark. The sort of dark that my childhood nightmares were full of. The only light from a few cold distant stars. The feint, feint outlines of trees and fences and gates. Sudden sounds from the blackness setting the whispered beginnings of panic on the edge of your reason. The dark almost taking on the fevered from of some primordially remembered monster.

We stumbled home that evening bumping into obstacles unseen, into posts or wire or walls. Being scratched by the hedgerow and by the thistles and by the nettles. Each a cause for cursing and swearing and a growing fear.

Thinking back on it I realise how like my life that is. My only consolation is that eventually we did find our way home. Find our way to a safe, peaceful haven where the feelings of danger and panic subsided. And it was warm and it was cosy!

20:20 Hindsight

So many people in my life have said "You can't do this" or "You can't do that" and I have listened to them because they were older than me or seemed wiser. I have listened and have become paralysed. By fear. By Inaction. By Doubts.

I wish now that I had not listened but rather looked and recognised that those who spoke were imprisoned by their own fear and doubts. And maybe, just maybe, I could have set them free to live a life fulfilled and, in doing so, freed myself.

My Best Teacher

The best teacher I ever had at school was not the one who knew their subject best but the one who loved their subject best

In Control?

I have recently re-read some of the works of Richard Bach and, as far as I can understand it, I, on some level unconscious or not, decide on my level of happiness, mental state, what I do, say, am etc.. i.e.

• If I am miserable it is because I choose to be miserable


• If I am happy it is because I choose to be happy


• If I am depressed it is because I choose to be depressed

So: What mental process or power must I employ to move from one state (miserable, say) to another (happy for example). Is there some sort of "mental switch" that I can flick?

Contentment

I am not content. I think that is what drives me. It is what feeds my constant yearning and leads me in my continuing thirst for learning.
It is draining though, this constant restlessness. Not physically draining but mentally, emotionally. I wish, just once that I could sit on a beach and just listen to the waves crash on the shingle, listen to the cry of the gulls, listen to the wind whipping the water white and feel complete.