Optimism Is Opium

Optimism is the opium of the people.

- Milan Kundera (in the novel 'Joke')

The quote alerts us to a common pitfall.

What we need is a healthy balance of optimism and realism.

Pattern in Thoughts

Sometimes, on looking back at previous work, you find a fortuitous thread that suggests more coherence exists than is felt through daily developments of concepts.

- George Siemens, an expert on learning, in his blog

True. I have myself been surprised by the coherence in the ideas that I expressed at different points in time.

What Is Spawning Violence All Around Us ???

Serial blasts in Assam: news on TV this morning.

There is so much of violence around us today: Islamic terrorism everywhere in India, Maoist violence in the eastern and central parts of the country, ULFA terrorism in Assam, and various streams of terrorism in the rest of the North East. I am intrigued; I feel ignorant for not being able to comprehend all this violence. Well, to be honest, I have little understanding of even the Punjab terrorism prior to the Operation Bluestar - assuming I can ascribe the violence after the Operation Bluestar and the Delhi riots to the injury these events caused to the Sikh psyche.

One can say that the Islamic terrorism is an international phenomenon, but what about the Maoist and other streams of terrorism that are indigenous?

I think I am not clued in on the origins and motivations of this violence because I am disconnected from a large mass of the country. And I am not an outlier; my disconnect and ignorance are reflective of the state of the nation today. There seems to be an unprecedented socio-cultural disconnect in the country today along class, community and regional lines. The urban India is socio-culturally disconnected from the rural India like never before; the middle-class India is socio-culturally disconnected from the lower-class India like never before.

How has this disconnect come about? If anything, poverty and hunger levels have come down sharply in the last 20 years. Then why is there so much of social unrest? Is it because of the widening gulf between the rich and the poor despite the poverty levels coming down? Is it to do with the growing awareness among the marginalized people and their aspiration to claim their rightful place under the sun? I am groping for answers.

There is a lot of triumphalist noise in India today. There is a sense of profound economic achievement and much of it is justified, but it is also important to listen to other noises. Something extraordinary is happening between the rich and the poor. Once, there was at least a common culture between rich and poor, but that has been eroded, and people have noted that.

… A large number of people are not benefiting from the economic boom.

- Arvind Adiga, writer

Profession of Policing

Policing is not like any other profession. A policeman is continually exposed to the underbelly of society. This does not make it an easy or likable profession, at least not for me. As I have written before, your profession influences your personality to a considerable extent.

Lure of Lucre

I don’t really care for money, but love the things money can buy..! :)

These are someone else's words in the blogosphere, but hold true for me as well.

'Things', for me, would include things, experiences, feelings, and relationships.

Here is what money gives me by way of 'feeling':

The happiness that money brings is not having to worry about it.

- Jose Ingenieros

Efficiency Vs. Effectiveness

Recently I attended a training program on time management. Overall the program wasn’t great, but it provided me a couple of useful distinctions:

• Urgent tasks vs. Important tasks
• Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

The Harvard Business Publishing website has a good, short article on how to deal with the dilemma of urgent and important tasks.

The Efficiency vs. Effectiveness distinction was first made by Peter Drucker:

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. For manual work, efficiency was enough. In today’s world, the center of gravity has shifted from the manual worker to the “knowledge worker”. For knowledge work, effectiveness is more important than efficiency.

- Peter Drucker

Effectiveness is basically the ability to pick out and execute the tasks that are important.

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.

- William James

Sound of Music

Browsing through the blogosphere randomly I stumbled upon a picture that reminded me of a similar picture of mine. The dateline of the blog post reveals that the two pictures are one year apart.

These pictures are taken in the Austrian city of Salzburg where the legendary Hollywood movie 'Sound of Music' was filmed. A guided tour of the various shooting locales is an essential item in the itineraries of all tourists from English-speaking countries (the movie is not known in the non-English world). The bus in the pictures is of a popular 'Sound of Music' tour operator in Salzburg.

I must tell you about our guide for this tour - Trudy. She is the most amazing guide I have come across. Her voice quality, bredth of knowledge, sense of humour and exuberance are exceptional. The Net has so many blogs heaping praise on her. Here is a picture of hers. The structure in the background may remind you of 'Sound of Music'.

To Simplify or Not to Simplify

Seek simplicity and distrust it.

- Alfred North Whitehead

What a simple and insightful quote!
 

Assuming that by 'simplicity' Whitehead means 'simplification', I interpret the quote as follows:

Simplification involves ignoring some part of reality, especially exceptions and outliers, and so it does not bring out the whole truth. It is nevertheless immensely useful for comprehension and communication.

 

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.
- George E. P. Box

 

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

- Colin Powell

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

- Martin Fischer