Saying what you mean

We often are told that being effective in what we do is, in part, dependent on how well we can differentiate between what is important and what is urgent.  This is an example of the former which got displaced by the latter.

I started writing this in January 2010 after watching Glenn Beck attempt to show how Progressivists have misrepresented or disconnected history from people today.  That particular issue has nothing to do with my topic, nor is this supporting or disputing Beck’s arguments, but I mention it because it provided me with the jumping off point for my thinking.

On at least two occasions in his program Beck said, “Back in a second” before a break.  For some reason I counted those seconds and, the first time counted 210, the next one I didn’t count accurately, but estimate that it was at least 150 seconds.

The point here is that we use many words and expressions which do not mean what they say, and when we use them we often don’t even consider what it is that we intend to say … rather we just utter something that expresses an approximate idea that we haven’t even clarified for ourselves.

One of the most frequent terms that comes to mind which is used by younger people is “whatever,” as a response to somehow indicate that no further discussion is wanted.  I’m not intending to be critical of young people when I say this, but wouldn’t it be much better to simply say something like, “Let’s talk about something else”? Or, “This topic bores me,” or whatever really expresses the mood of the moment.

If we, ourselves do not take the responsibility of choosing and using terms which express clearly what it is that we want to communicate, why should we be the least bit surprised if politicians, journalists, teachers, children, or anyone are misunderstood or ambiguous.

Like anything else, if we wish to see change in things around us, we must initiate a change in ourselves and if we want others to start meaning what they say, we, too, must do the same and the start to that is to choose words that allow us to say what we mean and to insist that others who are trying to communicate with us do the same.

Technorati Tags: Glenn Beck,Progressivism,communication,language,journalists,meaning

You’re Wrong Fred!

Fred Reed is an interesting blogger and he doesn’t shy away from taking on controversial topics, but in his blog which he calls A Polity of Castrati he argues that women are purely consumers of what men produce.

Actually, on the surface, the arguments he presents are quite convincing, but I believe he is missing an essential point:  That women’s role in most of the world today is a cultural distinction, not one which is determined by the essential nature of women.

He spends considerable time developing the idea that women do not produce the things which make our lives and civilization as a whole what it is to day, the implication being that they are not capable of doing so.

I’m wondering, however, if in many areas, if there aren’t achievements or discoveries which women have made that he has overlooked and that perhaps our whole society doesn’t easily recognize.

I agree wholeheartedly with the observation that women are essentially different from men.  They are physically different and I’ve little doubt that these physical differences don’t lead to some differences in the way that they think and act.

In his conclusion Fred seems to imply that his country is being feminized right up to the governing level and seems to be dubious over the future prospect over that happening.

I do agree with some of his observation that many affirmative action laws and similar actions have produced some strange and undesirable results, but I think he is missing the point when he fears for the future because of women’s role in government.

I would agree with the assertion that gender equality, just for equality’s sake is not a good policy.  Women should be allowed to do what they do best, and men what they do best and people must be given the freedom to choose the best person for whatever they want done based on who can perform best … not on some arbitrary formula dreamed up by someone who believes that everything should be homogenous.

It is not so much women’s role in government which is producing the problems that loom in the world today, it is the nature of government itself – regardless of who (or what sex) it is comprised of.

Technorati Tags: women,government,laws,fred reed

How to get 2 Site Build It! businesses for the price of 1

Have you been thinking about starting an internet business?

If so, you need to consider Site Build It! (SBI! 2.0)?

An NOW is the prime time to do it.

SBI has had a tradition of offering 2 SBI! subscriptions for the price of one every year at Christmas, but right now there is a 72 hour exception to this practice.

The reason is that Sitesell.com has been quickly rising on Facebook and at 9PM EST on March 25th, crossed over a  10,000 “Like” target.

To celebrate, they are offering this same 2-for-1 special offer for only 72 hours.

How can you best benefit from this offer?

1. Get 2 SBI! Sites for $299.  Start right away on your first business and you have up to 9 months to activate the other one.

2. Split the cost with someone in your family or a friend – each of you gets an SBI! 2.0 site for less than $150.00. This is an incredible bargain when you count up all the training and collection of tools which are included in the price.

In both cases, follow this link and you’ll not only get Site Build It! 2.0 for half the price, I’ll guide you with personal coaching, if you want it.

 

Technorati Tags: SBI,site build it,2 for 1

A luxurious trip

The image is an ad promoting a casino which is giving away a luxurious trip to Dubai.  I saw the image above on a billboard as I was driving in to town in the morning and started thinking.  What is so special about a trip to Dubai?

I know I have noticed the opulent luxury in some of the hotels and things which have been built in that country but apart from seeing what people with virtually unlimited funds can buy, I wonder of what value a trip there would be to anyone.

Certainly there is a lot of appeal to winning such a trip, but if a person isn’t in any position to be able to afford such opulence to begin with what would they get out of being exposed to it and being given a taste of it first hand?

Would this experience be satisfying to that person or would it create a feeling of resentment or longing for something which is so far out of their reach?  Or perhaps, it might stimulate them to return to their normal surroundings and begin to splurge on luxuries which they couldn’t afford in the first place to try to prolong the illusion that they experienced in winning such a trip.

If, out of the blue, someone came up to me and offered me such a trip, I don’t think I’d hesitate in accepting it, but I know that I’m not likely to visit a casino (which I seldom do anyway) in the hopes that I might be the lucky winner.

From a purely marketing point of view, I would be curious to know how this promotion worked out in comparison to other campaigns which they’ve run to attract donations to their purse.

Technorati Tags: gambling,Dubai,luxury,travel,marketing

Life’s Challenges

Today a posting by Steve Pavlina in Facebook where he stated:

The point of weight training is to get stronger, not to move hunks of metal up and down. Many of life's challenges are similar in nature.

brought to my mind an experiment I undertook in my own life to deal with challenges.

I was about to depart on an international flight from Canada to Chile which, in the past had always been a challenge.  I recalled that every time I had taken that journey, there had always been un-expected problems which seemed to turn the trip into an unpleasant experience.

What I decided to do was to expect problems and see how capable I was at getting through them.  In other words, rather than hope that everything would just go perfectly –or at least without any difficulties- I was actually looking forward to them as a challenge to my own capabilities.

Well, as it turned out there were unexpected things which would have been horrible under other circumstances, but when the first one came along (and there were several), my first reaction was to think: “Hey, this is my first problem of this trip … how am I going to handle it?”

I’m not sure if I had previously decided to expect more than one problem, but by dealing with each and then taking the attitude of “well that’s dealt with … now, what’s next” I wasn’t setting myself up to be suddenly smitten by another problem coming out of the blue when I “thought” I’d dealt with them all.

If we can establish this kind of thinking about everything in our lives, then life’s challenges will be no more onerous than adding another few pounds to the weight we’re trying to lift in a weight-training program.

Technorati Tags: steve pavlina,life,challenges,difficulty

What is policing?

Today I made a stop at a Starbucks near to my residence to warm up on a cold day.

When I arrived I noticed 3 uniformed police officers at a table near the window.

I took my time, warming up and passing a few long minutes reading an interesting article on my Kindle and noticed that these officers didn’t seem in any hurry to leave and continue doing their duty.

Then I started thinking:  What do police officers do when they are policing?  In the end, I’m sure that these three officers were in this particular Starbucks well over an hour and while I wasn’t able to hear or observe anything about what they were up to, it didn’t seem to me to have much of a “policing” nature to it.

I’m not writing this to point fingers because I can’t say that these individuals were acting like typical police officers in this area, nor can I even conclude that what I saw was the way they acted on a regular basis.

All it did was get me to start thinking what it is that police officer do when they are policing and asking if what they do might be done well in a group of three sitting in a Starbucks cafe.

Technorati Tags: police officer,starbucks,kindle

Image South Australian police officer via Wikipedia

Calling spades spades

To anyone who knows me it would not come as a surprise that I believe in the precepts of free-market capitalism (FMC).

T hat being said, it is also vital to recognize that I do not condone any and all actions that are taken or promoted under the banner of FMC. I also feel it is important to take into account the fact that there has never—ever—been a country which has been a 100% pure FMC economy.

To my recollection the USA, even at it’s very inception, was a mixture and it has moved more and more away from FMC every year even though it is popularly held up to be the exemplary model of FMC.  Perhaps, it is still the most free of all the countries today—although there may be much reason to doubt that—it is still far from a pure FMC and should, in reality, be called something else.

With this background I wish to express some doubts that I’ve had in recent times which grow out of the increasing concerns—both in number and loudness—that I’ve been hearing about the movement of the US towards a socialistic or communistic economy.

The crux of my concern is the connection which is always shown between the horrible actions of major communistic movements in the past in terms of genocide and suffering.

The questions which I am asking is what is there in socialism or communism that is inherently violent, or that makes a nation which adopts these systems to start killing off people on a large scale.

Yes, we can look at a large sampling of nations and name leaders like Mao Zedong, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, etc and show that under them millions of people perished.  I’m not arguing about these facts … but the thing that I am asking is whether it is the system that is at fault, or the person or people who were flawed.

From the evidence I’ve seen I have little doubt that the most efficient way for an economy to operate is the FMC model, but that, in itself, doesn’t make the other systems inherently evil, just as travelling in an ox cart is slower than a bicycle, comparing the two needs to be done on the basis of what you wish to achieve and not on the personalities of the famous people who have used ox carts or bicycles.

What this point of view raises is another issue which is possibly more vital to our future than the exact mixture of economic systems which we use:  the issue is that some individuals are possibly much more inclined to abuse power than others.

With this in mind, then we need to concern ourselves with two points:  1) Identifying who are most likely to abuse power and 2) Limiting the power which they can have so as to limit the damage which they can do.

Technorati Tags: economics,USA,communism,socialism,free market

Coming back to haunt you

I think that one of the greatest challenges we face in life is being honest with ourselves. 

We may be conscious of using some deception or attempts to influence the thoughts of other, but somehow we even go to great lengths to avoid the fact that we may be doing

the same to ourselves.

When my children were small, I always attempted to teach them what I believed would be helpful to them in their lives, although I may not have always realized that there was some variance between what I said and what I did.  You may remember the old saw: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

One of the things I frequently would say to my girls whenever they complained that some rule or outcome or event “wasn’t fair”, was “Who ever told you that life was fair?”, or as an alternative I’d say “Fare is what you pay to the bus driver.”

Recently I’ve moved from being an active worker into the realm of the retired, and as such, have felt that my life should be much more relaxed and free from obligations imposed by the needs and desires of others.

My wife, however, decided to take up employment where she was on call, and could be called at a pre-dawn hour to work.  On a couple of occasions I was awakened and asked to drive her to her place of employment, arising several hours before I would have otherwise.

On one of these times I found myself thinking: “This isn’t fair! Now that I’m retired, why should I have to ‘work’ too, just so my wife could work”?

Then, as I was searching for the answer to that question, I recalled what I had attempted to instil into my children … now I have to decide:  Do I live by my own teachings, or do I decide that I’d been wrong all that time?

Technorati Tags: teachings,honesty,values