Strategic Organizations in a Connected Collaborative World: Flat, Flexible and Self-organizing.

Yesterday’s solutions are tomorrow’s problems.  We can wait until it is a problem or we can manage an organization that is connected and constantly connected to where innovation is being created.    Constant small change avoids or mitigates disruptive reorganization.  Reorganizations are a huge risk forced by catastrophic short-sightedness or lack of connections: you missed the future until it happened to you.  

A connected and collaborating business world is going to further undermine the weaknesses of tight hierarchically controlled organizations.  A small highly paid group of executives isn’t going to be able to manage hyper advancements.  Dominant players can’t shape and maintain the market as they once did.  The age of creating your own reality is over, information moves too quickly to allow false reality to remain for any period of time.  The Bush Administration learned this lesson over 8 years, the lone economic and military super power couldn’t control the world view.  

The challenge today is managing hundreds of small improvements across an organization.  What if instead of just an R&D team driving innovation you are receiving ideas from your suppliers and customers too?  Now scale this to every facet of your business, from products to process to management.  The first challenge is to get connected to all these sources to ensure you have access to all these potential innovations.  The second challenge is leveraging this flood of innovation to maximize your benefit.

How do you set up and run the connected enterprise?  How do you get all your people as connected as possible?  How do you ensure that these connections are yielding value to your organization?  How do you manage the massive influx of innovative ideas?  You want to maximize innovation but avoid expensive mistakes.  You need to act on ideas immediately and end failures just as fast.  The organization needs resources to flow to the action.  Enron and IBM have done this in two different ways.  Enron ran its business by allowing individuals to create and pursue business opportunities and attract inside talent to support the effort.  IBM does it when project teams are assembled to meet a customer’s project requirements.  Talent is solicited as needed on a project.  The individual contributes for as long as their expertise is required.  After completing their task they are released to work on other projects.  So a small group of customer project managers create a core group that is then augmented by talent pool from around the world to complete a specific customer project tasks.  Size really helps in this situation.  A worldwide talent base allows IBM to address any issue that arises on a specific project without locking in a consultant for an entire project.  Projects aren’t “staffed”, they are recruited and released.  

This is similar to the model used in academic research.  Grad students select advisors.  They are attracted to researchers doing interesting work in their field of study.  Research professors are connected around the world to others in their specialty and tangential fields.  None of the teams are forced, the advisor’s role is mentoring not authoritarian.  Students are encouraged to duplicate the model with fellow researchers to expand their reach and input by expanding their own projects.  Some teams find great success others fade away.  The University is no worse for the wear.  What might this look like in business?

Passion comes from people doing what they want to do, having a degree of control and pursuing interesting opportunities.  Not everyone is pursuing a passion all the time but an organization that increase the opportunity to pursue passion will have more passionate people.  Freedom is in itself a large component of passion.  You can be assured that people under tight control do not love it.  If that is the only way, passion is out.  Can an organization survive in the future maintaining that kind of grind?

Teaching

If I lectured, they didn’t show up.  If they showed up, they didn’t take notes.  If I gave a test, they cheated.  If I assigned projects, they cut and paste from the Internet.  I finally settled on having the students teach the class by assigning them a segment of each lecture to present to the class.  Each student learned to research and present the class material.  I got my point across, you can know anything by tomorrow morning.  I never tested them on it but they all learned it without noticing my primary objective.  I was rewarded in the last week of class when a student successfully explained and diagrammed how an MRI works!

Human Population Growth-Just a Drip

Human population growth and wealth are shaped like a water drop just barely clinging to the tap. The top is very narrow and ends at the point where the drop will separate from the tap. This represents the wealthy of the world, a tiny segment of the overall population that is becoming a smaller percentage of the total population controlling an increasing percentage of the world wealth. This increasing wealth is largely being created by the expanding legions of poor. The bottom of the drop represents the rapidly expanding population of poor. These are the people that are lucky to become part of the labor force in outsourced manufacturing plants creating the goods for the developed wealthy countries.

These humans generally live in squalid slums without safe drinking water, sufficient food and medical care. Forget the opportunity of an education; the children of the poor are unlikely to survive childhood. They are lucky if they can become slave labor in terrible conditions in factories for wages that cannot sustain them or their family. There is a joke in development circles, “Better sweatshops then no shops.” Isn't that a nice ladder up we offer the poor in developing countries, an opportunity to make all the wonderful consumer goods that they will never enjoy just so they survive and fulfill our consumerism materialistic desires.

Things we don’t have to explain:

For Safety Reasons.

For Security Reasons.

For Legal Reasons.

For Privacy Reasons.

It’s understood as very important and disclosure of the explanation would in itself divulge or undermine the very important warning.  Governments and aspiring authoritarians prefer these tyrannical no explanation required for why restrictions are in place.  

Novelty

I learned that buying a new car is one way to increase the excitement from novelty. Now I understand that new experiences can provide the same novel excitement and leave me with a wealth of new experiences and knowledge. A car leaves me with a monthly payment in a consumption cycle. Learning to live new experiences means giving up our vision of security rooted in things lasting, being stable and life following a known expected path from birth, family, accumulation and retirement. Life is dynamic when we embrace it and reduce our requirement for material security comforts. We can enjoy the flow of life experiences when we are not grasping to maintain and increase our material possessions.

Seeing Ourselves

Perhaps one day we’ll gain the skill to see ourselves, our country and our follies. Now the best way is to leave our country and culture for another. Just as we look askance across the border at Latin American countries, Old Europe and repressive Asia, they too look over their border at American lies and denials. None of us is exempt from “vested interests masquerading as morel truth.”

Reliable Eco System

If you were driving down the freeway and discover a mosquito in the back seat you wouldn’t let loose a can of Raid.  If you discover a hundred dollar bill under your driver’s seat, you wouldn’t remove the seat to get at it.  Nor would you do a host of other things to your vehicle while it is in operation.  Unfortunately we don’t have this option with Earth.  It is our space vehicle with a very complex system that we require to survive in the very hostile environment of space.  The sheer size of the planet has given us a false sense of security that we can let loose that can of Raid over there and not worry that there will be any consequences over here.  We were right, sort of.  By the time the pesticide gets over here it has so dispersed it is inconsequential, to us at least.  So we thought that meant we could let loose as much Raid as we wanted.  We didn’t think about the logic we are relying to ensure our safety.  Dispersal works to a point, that point is when the concentrations of the dispersed creeps up to unsafe levels everywhere or at least in certain eco systems where the chemicals tend to collect.  If that eco system happens to support a creature that is part of our food chain we risk the chemical working its way up the food chain or the extinction of the creature and the collapse of that particular food chain.  We see this consequence now as we find chemicals in the bodies of lower species in our food chain working its way up the china to foods we consume like PCBs in tuna.  

We are going to have to rebuild our ship while we are underway in a storm.  We have pushed the limits on every front, population, chemical use, consumption, pollution and continued reliance on fossil fuels.  It seems clear we are not going to act decisively until the crisis hits.  That means we will have little time to think, plan and act.  Eco systems will be collapsing, food shortage will occur, and nations will be hording resources.  Once the cascading process start, it’s going to accelerate.  Think of the 2008 financial crisis, one bankruptcy and the system starts to unravel because of all the interconnections.   Remember, we have a central banking system in place to intervene in a financial collapse.  We have no such central environment system in place to respond to a global eco system crisis.

  

The inter-connected global economic system with extensive supply chains moving resources around the planet to maintain dense population centers will start to break down.  Cities that rely on food coming from around the world will discover that a crop failure on another continent, a drought on the other side of the country, or a wild fire down under, all impact what’s available to put on the dinner table next week.  People will start to wonder if there is enough food and will they have access to it.  This is when an eco-crisis goes exponential.  People of the developed world have not had to consider food shortages in their lifetimes.  Suddenly, seemingly inexplicably, the most basic human fear will emerge:  How will I feed my family tonight?

  

That is the crisis we are racing towards.  We continue to deny that we are entirely dependent on the planet for our livelihood.  We have dumped, mined, over harvested, stripped, over populated and ignored our only space ship.  The further we go without addressing the imbalances the deeper the collapse, the greater and longer the suffering.  We can’t say no one warned us, the warnings have been coming since the ‘50s.  It was just easier to ignore them.  Not much different than the individual who chooses to ignore their doctor’s warning about smoking, diet and exercise.  Then one day they have a heart attack.  If they survive, they typically make immediate and radical changes to their lifestyle to avoid a second heart attack.  Not everyone survives their first heart attack.  It’s often just a matter of luck who survives and who dies.  In the case of the global eco system, we are all at risk and have an unknown prognosis.  We have heard the story of the chain smoker and heavy drinker living in to their 90’s, odd that we are willing to take that risk with all of humanity in the balance.

Institutional Thinking

Most institutions are founded on and wedded to a core set of ideas.  It is these ideas that form the mind set and outlook of these organizations and the individuals that form them.  But with all ideas, time tends to prove them invalid yet few institutions have the infrastructure to embrace and adopt advances in knowledge.  Most organizations resist change with all their resources, often counterproductive in itself and contrary to the stated mission.  It is the institutions position and individual power that is protected, regardless of the mission or ideals.  This goes a long way to explain human discrimination, it is not that humans naturally discriminate between those that are different from themselves but rather our institutions seek to insulate themselves from change by creating barriers between individuals.  These barriers stop the flow of new ideas and with it the change, disruption and over turning of existing structures in society in the natural process of evolution.  Evolution delayed builds into revolution.

Two Scoops of Truth Please

I mean truth as we understand it today with a degree of scientific scrutiny, that is, what is currently believed to be true but likely to be proven untrue later with further inquiry.  Perhaps we should think of it as partial, emerging or evolving truth, a stepping stone on the way to a fuller deeper truth in the future.  Today’s truth is then the current state of our knowledge.  Better then what we once held as true but not as complete as a future truth.  

Learning and knowledge discovery is a process, one that will yield an increasing and improving understanding of the universe.  No amount of followers makes a belief any truer, only popular.  Popularity fails to meet the scientific standards for verified knowledge.  A valid theory must make testable prediction that can be repeated and peer reviewed, otherwise the idea is simply philosophy.  It is typically easier to prove something false then to prove it true.  It only takes one test to prove something false.  It often takes unlimited tests without failure to increase confidence in a theory.  Every current truth awaits its demise by the one test that demonstrates it false.

You Showed Me

I know by the fear you communicate that you doubt the validity of your beliefs.  If you held utmost confidence in your beliefs you would not worry about others who choose to live differently or who are born different.  Your need for conformity or elimination speaks volumes of your confidence in your beliefs.  You know they are likely false but are too afraid to challenge them.  You resent those who are free to express their doubts, disbeliefs and live without the boundaries you submit.  

No one wants to wake up one day to realize the belief system they have lived their lives committed to is a shame, a lie, a complete fiction.  So we build the walls higher, more unstable, more repressive, more discriminatory, more lethal.  What was good and just in our beliefs is lost in defending them.  Our beliefs become our lies.  Left unchecked we go to war to defend them.  We’d rather die than face the falsity, our error, our foolishness, our blind sightedness.  A life is lost, a society consumed, all for refusing to consider alternatives, the lack of a willingness to change.  Is it really that scary, that difficult?  Why is learning so damn frightening? 

Living an Example

Demonstrate remorse/sorrow/contrition by how you live your life from the moment you realize your error.  You apologize for bumping into someone.  You cannot undo profoundly harming another with simply words.  You can only acknowledge your wrong, make amends, change your actions to prevent a repeat and help others avoid the same error.

Democracy: Wisdom of the Crowd

The underlying idea behind democracy is that the average of citizen’s views leads to a moderate wisdom that is both egalitarian and restrained.  This doesn't eliminate the tyranny of the majority, masses can be whipped up into illegitimate fervor.  In general a broad consensus evolved from those who will suffer the greatest consequences of failure ensures a slow and balanced progression.  This is a critical aspect of democracy: broad based citizen lead representative government ensures that those with the least, the least resources and protection from failure, have the greatest influence on the course of government as a group.  

The wise and learned elite often have reserves to minimize the consequences of failure.  The wealthy can afford to take great risks because they are not betting tonight’s dinner.  They will not suddenly face starvation.  This is the stark divide between how the majority living pay check to pay check and an elite minority with large buffer of reserves will run the country.  Slow, cautious and considered suddenly makes sense when your daily survival may be at stake.  

A deliberate government with checks and balances to slow change is wise when your goal is to protect the least secure in society.  Until we return government to the people we can expect a gamblers mentality running our country.  The logic of saving the bankers and letting the homeowners fail makes sense to the power player seeking to maximize national income and international power.  To the individual hoping to obtain and maintain a comfortable life, the high stakes games of international relations and global economics runs counter to ensuring a stable and secure environment to raise a family.  

We once debated guns or butter when deciding on national spending priorities, the debate has been silenced, the decision made: the US will serve as the policeman of the world.  We will borrow from our children to maintain today’s spending levels.  We will cut social programs before reducing military spending.    

Henry Ford had the epiphany that if he didn’t pay his workers a living wages they could never afford to buy the vehicles they were producing.  Today we outsource production to reduce labor costs rather than ensure sufficient good paying jobs for Americans.  Today rather than raising wages to purchase goods made in America, we reduce the cost of goods so Americans on lower wages can afford to purchase products from developing countries.  Today rather than building automobiles, televisions and great infrastructure projects, America has become a service economy, we don’t build, we serve.  We take orders at fast-food restaurants, calls in customer service centers and orders in stores at malls to support the consumer driven service economy.  Was that our collective dream for America?  

The elite financial market makers and corporate titans are having a ball placing their big bets in the financial markets.  Is circulating money while skimming a cut off the top, acting on insider knowledge and manipulating markets with sheer volume a productive economic activity?  Is this the market systems that we have been assured will provide for us and create the stability our family’s desire and enable us to grow as individuals?  A nation of people struggling just to keep ahead of the next crisis is not one that will have the opportunity to make productive choices to improve their lot in life. 

It is time to wind down the casino markets and re-establish our core human values of ensuring the basic human need of security, stability and an educational system that offers the individual the opportunity to achieve through participation and effort in an equitable and accessible system.  We may never be able to make the world fair but we can at least offer a basic level of opportunity to all citizens to participate in the economic system and reap the rewards of hard work and fair play.

Old Farts

One either dedicates themself to lifelong learning or allows themself to become an old fart that dissipates into the air becoming irrelevant.  The only exceptions are Senators and CEOs who maintain enough power to be able to enforce their errant outdated views.  This class of old white fart is currently driving us over the edge in the effort to maintain their office.  The only question is will it be different this time?  Will there be profound consequences to growth as the cure to all ills, ignoring pollution and consuming non-renewable resources at ever faster rates?  I feel a bit like Willy E. Coyote in the Road Runner Cartoons looking down at my feet and discovering no terra firma and seemingly being one of only a few to notice, while my fellow countrymen argue over which old political ideology is going to grow us out of the current financial wreck.

Institutions that Create Coincides of Interests

Power is a failed human phenomenon.  Those in power are rarely if ever pursuing the interest of the larger group.  If the interests of the leaders and group do not coincidently coincide, the group’s interests will always be ignored.  Institutions must be created to foster coincidence of interests across society.   Without mutual interests those with the guns will starve those without.

Party on Dudes!

In 1980 we made a choice in direction and philosophy that our country would follow for the next generation.  We might not have realized at the time how significant the choice was but it is clear now.  We had the option of re-electing a President who was warning us about a looming crisis in natural resources and limiting our life style or a happy-go-lucky Californian B actor who only saw a bright future for an exceptional Nation.   The option was stark, cut back or spend our way to prosperity.  Can’t fault us for following the optimist! 

Now we are told that our life-style IS American, in our very blood.  Anyone threatening to impinge on our life style is an enemy.  That is an interesting outlook as it ultimately puts anyone and everyone who competes with us for natural resources in our sights.  Today it is oil, the Middle East and Muslims.  A newly discovered oil super field find creates a new hot spot, new conflicts and new enemies if they do not agree to our terms.  

Oil as the center of the developed economy is likely to transition to a new fuel as it once did from coal.  We cling to oil because we are the leader of the oil based economy.   Other nations are seeking to change the game by investing in renewable energy.   We seem to be the only nation on the planet that can’t see the decline of oil.  It is not renewable and will one day decline in output.  It is highly polluting when burned.  The extraction, transportation and refining processes are environmentally damaging.  

This is where being the leader is a disadvantage.  We want to leverage our capital investment in the fossil fuel infrastructure we built.  Change is not to our competitive advantage.  If we continue to attempt to maintain the status quo, we’ll succeed in extending the oil economy but at the cost of a collapse when the world finally does transition to the next energy source.  We’ll be in the unfamiliar and unenviable position of playing catch up.  We need to pull the tentacles of vested interest out of our government so we can make the best competitive national decisions for our long term success, stability and longevity.  Oil is not in the best interests of individual American’s, only the oilman gains by delay.

Living a Low Income, Low Impact Life

Today I live on 10 dollars a day on Camiguin Island in the Philippines versus 350 dollars a day in Long Beach California.  How has my life changed?  Stress, I never realized the level of continuous underlying stress in my life until the last few years living in developing countries without all the stuff around my neck.  When I gave up the house, the cars and boat, I became aware of how much worry goes into maintaining all that great stuff, all the worrying about maintenance, damage, theft and monthly payments.  The stuff requires a full time job without interruption!

Futures

Nature is fractal.  Most things can be broken down into smaller parts that are similar to their larger origins.  Small steps are always easier than larger steps.  Things change, processes change, patterns change, systems change.  Sometimes nature includes large jumps.  They are infrequent but hugely impactful. Think asteroids.  We cannot predict when they will happen.  We can only know that they will happen.  Don’t ignore the big one for lack of a finite prediction.

  

Life isn’t anything like what anyone says it is.  Keep doubting the experts.  They are being paid to guess at the future and will continue to do so for as long as people keep paying them.  Great work if you can find it.  People have always been willing to pay for lousy predictions.  See the tarot card readers on Venice Beach and the financial advisors in the high rises behind them on Sunset Blvd?  Everybody has got to eat, just don’t give them your dinner.

International Relations

While I have no doubt that the US is playing the game as it has always been played, just as rough, cruel, violent, self-serving and duplicitous while unabashedly lying to its citizens, we must stop.  The spot light is on the US as the world leader.  We will take the blame for the failing world economy and unstable geopolitics that we have had our dirty hands in whether it is fair or not.  When the post WWII US lead party ends every nation state with a grudge is going to happily point the figure at us.  Somebody has to take the fall and our ability to manage and manipulate world opinion is waning while the up and coming nation states are rapidly growing.  The change power will turn on momentum and preserved future.  Just like any politician that has been in office too long, people simply get tired of the same old face and the same old rhetoric.  It would be wise to start cleaning up our act before we get tarred with the worst of our actions as the international power base shifts away from a US centric world.

Sailing Free

The day I learned to sail the ocean without the boat taking up space in my mind I was finally free upon the sea to experience all of life, a beginning and an end the only sure thing.  All that happens in between is up to me, chance and luck.  We've having wonder relationship, I owe them my life.

The Human Stack

The Rose

We Don’t Need More of the Same

Get clear of your parents. The more space the better. Become your own person and see your parents for what they are, good and bad. We all make the best decisions based on the situation we find ourselves and our own abilities. We can take some control over our situation and abilities so our choices can be better, more effective and balanced. This requires education, foresight and effort.

Staying close to our parents turns us into our parents and repeats the cycle. This doesn’t mean turning our back on family, it means living our own life and responding to the circumstance we can clearly see without the biased eyes of our parent’s outlook. Facing our own challenges and fears, learning how to overcome them to create our own unique foundation of strength, confidence and outlook to prosper in life and contribute to the wellbeing of all humans.

We Cannot Continue to Defend Our Lifestyle

Our way of life is going to kill us and destroy the planet’s ability to support human life. We need to retire those that have spent their life protecting our way of life. We need to change now. We need new leaders who understand and lead us through the required changes so we will survive.

It is not enough not start a family as a means of finding meaning and fulfillment in life. We cannot continue to raise children and a next generation that continues to plunder the planet in an ever increasing effort at wealth accumulation and consumption. The human population has doubled in my lifetime from three and half billion to seven billion people. There is no magic to raising children; any idiot can do it. The question to ask now is what values did you successfully instill in your off spring that will benefit the world? Did you create a mirror imagine of yourself as a capitalist plundering machine devouring the planet’s resources and dumping our waste killing eco system? Or did you instill a sense of meaning and fulfillment through acts of goodness and mutual benefit. Did you teach them that winning is the name of the game or that collaboration wins the long haul?

Don’t fool yourself, look at your kids, are they surrounded by material possessions and working to acquire more or are they working with people to improve the lives of others. This is no time to pretend and deny reality. The ship is sinking, we can get to work filling the holes or sink. We don’t know if we will be successful, we have no manifest destiny that is just another human creation to make us feel more secure about the uncertain future. It was useful and helpful at one time but now leads us to denial and complacency. 

Fulfilling Psychological Needs with Material Goods

Are you trying to fulfill psychological need with material consumption? You can’t create a meaningful life, passion for your work, love, companionship, self-worth and security from the material world. These are phenomenon of the mind and can only be fulfilled through actions that lead to social outcomes. A new car or clothing won’t get you there. Cleaning up a polluted stream might.

Merry Christmas!

Why Don’t We Have Some Answers?

We have a significant period of modern history, especially the period since the end of WWII, which should provide us solid trial and error or success on policies and programs run by government in any number of areas. Yet we seem to know no more than we did before the initial program. There seems to be a real effort to undermine learning and knowledge acquisition by opposition to programs. Individuals and interest groups never admit failure, error in ideology or give up a vested interest that’s contrary to the larger public good. A hundred years later and we are still re-inventing the wheel every day with every program. We cannot progress if every ideology and vested interest is going to maintain their own set of facts.

Why I Volunteer Abroad

Living abroad has been the most broadening experience of my life.   The culture and society we grow up in defines the world as we know it.  Living in other countries is an opportunity to differentiate between what is part of human experience and what part of social human interaction.  Each new country I live in unravels another aspect of my life that I believed to be a basic component of life to discover it is nothing more than an American social or cultural norm.

  

Growing up in the United States means being a part of a consumer driven materialist society.  Most of the interactions between individuals are of a level far above the basic human concerns of daily survival.  Focusing on the less consequential matters of material comforts verses the essential needs of life creates a void.  Life has less purpose when one’s daily concerns are of a primarily material nature.  While this does not reduce the stresses of life, it does leave one living a relatively superficial existence.  The experience of a loved one passing highlights the aspects of the superficial life.  When one is faced with the loss of a loved one, the superficial aspects of life drop away, only the essential components of human existence remains.  A central part of one’s life is suddenly lost and with it, for a time, the concerns of the material world.

I felt a separation between how I was living and what was meaningful and had purpose in life.  Working and living in developing countries side by side with people focused on the essentials of life has taught and shown me that what is important in life is the experiences, not the things.   Life is lived in the mind.  Beyond basic sustenance, the material world does little to expand the human experience.  The last peso that bought food is far more valuable than the next peso that affords a bottle of rum.  Ensuring that all humans reach the maximum income utility in the most ecologically sustainable and psychologically fulfilling manner has become my focus.

  

In the process of volunteering in two countries I have realized that the most basic contribution one human can provide another.  While engaged in all manner of projects to support development with unknown outcome, one fears that failure means waste and loss.  After working a project for months or years, project failure or outcome failure seems a complete loss of effort and resources.   But this is the nature of life.  It is the journey not the outcome that is living.  When faced with failure and the feeling of wasted effort I came to understand that how I behaved and carried on was my greatest contribution.  Sometimes all we can succeed at doing is being a positive role model, whether we stimulate a young person to think to themselves “I want to be like him someday” or encouraging a colleague to keeping trying to succeed.  Giving up is the end, failure is part of the process.

  

We can all set an example of perseverance, positive outlook and ethical character.  We may never point to an object to say I built that but leaving behind a wake of people who persevere to achieve their life goals is the greatest contribution one can make.  I am most impressed by the number of people I work alongside in foreign lands who tell stories of the volunteers and missionaries who came before.  They tell of the impact these people had on their lives and I can see how they are different from the exchange.  I am lucky to have the opportunity to volunteer in other countries but I am not the one giving, it is the people who accept me into their lives and share their experiences who vastly broaden my life.  It drives me to focus on how I can act in such a way as to support the development of the next generation to fulfill their dreams.

Experiencing Truth

After climbing through the smog and into the clouds to finally peak your head above into the crystal clear blue sky and brilliant white and grey granite mountain tops is a moment of realization that can never be undone. The desire and drive to push through the resistance of society and culture when you find it so riddled and rotten with false belief and untruth is a task few take interest in and even fewer actually attempt. But once you have seen that there is a truth, a vindication arises and the past falls away. It is not that you cannot live the old way but rather that you can never forget the brilliance of truth. It is cold, arduous and lonely but that is the real nature of life. It is a miracle but not the dream we have attempted to portray it as in our lessons and religions. The way is tough, dangerous and no assurance of success. When it ends, it’s over and it may not be a story book ending. We can hide from the facts but we cannot escape them.

We Only Have Our Health

There is little pleasure without health. We cannot enjoy our world without health. Failing to focus first on health and well-being allows the ravages of stress, poor diet and limited exercise to grind our bodies up. The modern world has removed us from the daily effort to survive that demands a daily focu on providing food every day. Modern economics has provided specialization so we don’t need to produce each item of sustenance but with it the focus on quality has dropped. The focus on nutrition to taste been changed. Focusing on quantity rather the quality we consume empty calories, damaging calories unhealthy calories. Food and other substances becomes an antidote for stressful lives.

The series of books on statistics and probabilities is argues that the world in not the causal arrangement we suspect. How we take care of ourselves is to a large extent one of the few causal relationships yet we believe we can be saved, we can avoid the consequence through profound excuses but the quality of the excuse doesn’t mitigate the consequences. Once our health and well-being is lost, so is our quality of life and we are left in a depressed scramble of existence, a long and dark road with only a few bright spots to encourage us on.

We keep hoping for stability and security yet life offers none of this. Life is an adventure to be conquered each day. With the spirit of good health, a sense of well-being and a feeling of being at ease enable us to respond to life and the world. We can do no more. The bonds we create with others strengthens us and increases our likelihood of of survival and fulfillment. But we must start on the strong foundation of health with the valid vision of what is important in life and what is important to living. What will make this effort worthwhile? You must know the answer to put in the effort each day. Life without meaning or the hope of finding it is truly hopeless, empty and desolate.

Can an American Really Live on 5 Bucks a Day?

New budget!  Just so you all don’t think I'm living it up while you are suffering through the super recession, better known as a depression, but if you don’t say the word it isn’t so!!  I am attempting to live on the volunteer stipend I’m being given from the college where I teach.  I cut back from my lavish hundred dollars a month house to a private dorm/lodging house across the street from campus.  This addresses two expenses, housing and the need for a motorbike.  I save $3,000 PHP on the rent and $5,100 PHP on the bike rent and gas, a total $200 USD a month savings.  The school is paying me $6,000 PHP a month, $150 USD.  Divide by the 30 days of the month and you have five bucks a day.  Now my expenses are $25 USD a month rent and $145USD for food and $15 USD for electricity.  So I'm under five bucks a day.  This is not sustainable living as it does not include medical, clothing and a few other little items.  We’ll see how close I actually come to living within this budget and how much I subsidize for treats.  The big hole in the budget is the fresh baked bread, fresh coconut water and ice cream.  These little luxuries add up!  The gaping hole in the budget is the e books from Amazon.com!!  I don’t know why authors think they should get ten bucks a book!!  In the age of digital and high volume at no incremental cost, low price drives massive sales.  See Apple App store to understand the new paradigm on how to get rich selling digital for two bucks a pop and making a mint!  You can sell one copy for a million or a million copies for a dollar.