The Rashomon Effect by Patricia H. Werhane from Environmental and Economic Sustainability
August 30, 2007
“The Academy Award-winning 1950 Japanese movie Rashomon depicts an incident involving an outlaw: a rape or seduction of a woman and a murder or suicide of her husband. A passerby, who is also the narrator, explains how the story is told to officials from four different perspectives: that of the outlaw, the woman, the husband, and himself.
The four narratives agree that the outlaw, wandering through the forest, came upon the woman on a horse being led by her husband, tied up the husband and had sex with the woman in front of the bound husband, and that the husband was found dead.
The narratives do not agree on how these events occurred or who killed the husband.
The outlaw contends that consensual sex occurred between him and the wife and he claims to have killed the husband.
The wife depicts the sex as rape, and claims that because of her disgrace, she killed her husband.
The husband through a medium, says that the sexual act began as rape and ended as consent, and that, in shame after being untied by the outlaw, he killed himself.
The passerby’s story agrees with the husbands account of the sex and the bandit’s account of the murder of the husband.
Interestingly, because the passerby is also the narrator of the film, recounting to friends the strange contradictory reportings of this event, we tend to believe his version. But, actually what took place is never resolved.
I begin by stating a commonly held and, I believe, true assumption. All experience is framed and interpreted through sets of conceptual schemes or mental models that function on the individual, institutional, societal, and cross-cultural levels. We can neither experience an event nor present a story except through mental models. Still, depending on which model or models is or are operative, interpretations of a situation or event by persons, groups, institutions, or societies may differ greatly from each other.
Because conceptual schemes are learned and incomplete, we can also create, evaluate, and change our mental models. Still, sometimes we become so embroiled in a particular set of mental models that shape our stories or narratives, whether or not of our own making, that we fail to compare a particular narrative with other accounts or evaluate its implications.
Thus, the way we present or re-present a story, the narrative we employ, and the conceptual framing of that story, affect its content, its moral analysis, and the subsequent evaluations. Sometimes, narratives clash or contradict each other. Other times, when one narrative becomes dominant we appeal to that one for reinforcement of facts, even though it may have distorting effects. The result in either case is a Rashomon Effect. Yet we seldom are aware of the “frame” or mental model at work or attempt to reframe the narratives we employ.“
Living An Unreal Life by Manoj Sharma
August 28, 2007
Most of the suffering a human being experiences across a lifetime is mental and emotional and human beings have been conditioned over generations to keep this “more often than you can imagine” suffering hidden from others and generally take it, in their thinking moments, to be the normal malaise of society.
The truth of the matter is that the part that is hidden is largely a counter-to-magnificence pretense, while the belief in it being the normal malaise of society, is absolutely erroneous and simply an ill, due to ignorance of what could have been and what can still be for generations to come. To contemplate and become even remotely and briefly aware of the extent of human suffering permeating and being caused across all strata of society from time immemorial, is to become aware of the urgent need to discern; discern between what is real and not real and to start to live an unreal life.
Consider for starters that what is real to you (through whatever means of perception) may well be not real to another. And on that basis what is not real for you, may well be absolutely real to another. We have learned to base our realities on our perception and forget that this reality of our may not be the true reality.
To understand the above is to start to live an unreal life, having realized that real and not real are non-objective illusions. On that basis, true reality therefore must be more than a subjective, me-centered, myself-included, I-based, ego-revolving reality. And this is a critical point that needs to be appreciated and embraced at the mental level first before it can lead to any removal of the unnecessary mental and emotional suffering you will otherwise continue to subject yourself to or remain open to over your lifetime in the pursuit of ____________ (you can fill in this space with the various major pursuits of your lifetime).
Once this point is understood, automatic discernment, distinction and differentiation can start to take place leading not just to the depreciation, dissolving and disappearance of generally experienced suffering in your life, but also its gradual or radical elimination across society and generations too. Name, form and delusion will evaporate, leaving you in the presence of the truth, as it is. That is the reward for living an unreal life.
As usual, please feel free to send me your thoughts and comments to Info@DifferWorld.com And if you’d like to explore how you, your teams and your organization can benefit from the above and other DifferWorld initiatives please feel free to drop me a note by clicking here, or contacting me at DIFFERWORLD at SKYPE now!
Initiative by Richard Buckminster Fuller from Critical Path
August 28, 2007
“The things to do are the things that need doing that you see need to be done and that no one else sees need to be done.
Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done that no one else as told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviours that are induced or imposed by others on the individual.
Try making experiments of anything you conceive and are intensely
interested in. Don’t be disappointed if something doesn’t work.
That is what you want to know – the truth about everything and the truth about combinations of things. Some combinations have such logic and integrity that they can work coherently despite non-working elements embraced by their systems.
Whenever you come to a word with which you are not familiar, find it in the dictionary and write a sentence which uses that new word. Words are tools and once you have learned how to use a tool you will never forget it. Just looking for the meaning of the word is not enough. If your vocabulary is comprehensive, you can comprehend both fine and large patterns of experience.
You have what is most important in life – initiative. Because of it, you wrote to me. I am answering to the best of my capability. You will find the world responding to your earnest initiative.” — by Richard Buckminster Fuller from Critical Path
Special thanks to Johnson Tang for the above quote.
The Successful Professional Of The Future by Manoj Sharma
August 21, 2007
Interacting with numerous global organizations, listening first hand to their rising international challenges, bouncing ideas with their top executives and with my present future focus towards individual, team and organizational profitability, performance and fulfillment - here is an outline as to what The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to be, to seek and to create. Read it and see for yourself how you stack up to it.
Education
The Successful Professional Of The Future requires a continuous quarter on quarter, ever increasing and highly valuable professional education and the maturity to go along with it. This is necessary to connect the dots and formulate a clear picture of the real picture behind the noisy conversations in the mass media. Thereafter The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to use this new insight towards formulating plans and actioning them towards delivering great results. To do this, The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to personally invest monthly in increasing the quality of their education and not wait upon their organizations to provide it.
Technology
The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to understand that the demands of their jobs will continue to increase and that they will need to stay ahead or at the cutting edge of the technological curve to make life both more productive and also easier for themselves. To do this The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to explore and adopt the full gamut of technologies available towards meeting their end goals.
Balance
The Successful Professional Of The Future must be a) plugged into the global landscape, b) tuned in to what is of real value, c) turned on and be available internationally, d) well connected to other respected professionals, e) nimble in thought and fast to act when necessary and f) also know when to switch off to rest, relax and recuperate. To do this The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to know how to apportion their time effectively.
Network
The Successful Professional Of The Future has to create and be part of collaborative networks by being in service and becoming genuinely interested and interesting. To do this The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to seek out collaborative networks, offer to assist people in anyway they can, go out of their way if necessary to come through on their offering, and enrich their mind.
Fulfillment
The Successful Professional Of The Future should fast endeavour to discover how to create self-fulfillment and job satisfaction through having a life long professional coach who can assist them live and work more purposefully while boosting their profitability, performance and fulfillment levels. To do this The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to engage a great professional coach with whom they can overcome the endless challenges of a lifetime faster, better and more effectively than the person next to them.
Finances
The Successful Professional Of The Future has to work in an environment that has no ceiling on financial earning potential and must learn how to manage their finances especially towards retirement and achieving great mental, emotional, physical and spiritual work /life balance. To do this The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to find such an organization and work in an area of expertise in which this option is available, while increasing their financial, mental, emotional, physical and spiritual quotients. While the weak will not last in this environment, the tough will succeed beyond their expectations.
Organizations
The Successful Professional Of The Future needs to seek out or create organizations that allow for all of the above. And that has to start, not tomorrow, but right now, because your tomorrow will easily turn into ten years later, by which time, it will be too late for the above to be a competitive advantage.
As usual, please feel free to send me your thoughts and comments to Info@DifferWorld.com And if you’d like to explore how you, your teams and your organization can benefit from the above and other DifferWorld initiatives please feel free to drop me a note by clicking here, or contacting me at DIFFERWORLD at SKYPE now!
The Cause of the Evils in The World by Henry S. Salt from Seventy Years Among Savages
August 15, 2007
“The causes of each and all of the evils that afflict the world is the same - the general lack of humanity, the lack of the knowledge that all sentient life is akin, and that he who injures a fellow being is in fact doing injury to himself.” — by Henry Salt from Seventy Years Among Savages
The Wisdom Of The Ages 28 - ONENESS - by Manoj Sharma
August 15, 2007
Contemplate the following and make sense of it…
One minute thought, word, action and/or result involves and integrates the entire universe. It connects everything and allows for nothing to occur in isolation.
Everything connects to a oneness; a one certain something from which there is no exception and exclusion.
Oneness does not need, want and desire anything as it is all things and non-things.
Oneness is everything, everywhere, eternally.
The original conditions, the choices, causes and consequences that follow and lead to present conditions are but oneness at play.
Oneness does not require perfect as it is perfection.
Deep contemplation takes you to oneness and thinking takes you away from oneness once you are there.
Oneness takes all forms of creation, continuity and destruction. Recognizing this truth removes the illusion of birth, growth and death once and for all.
Oneness, Allness, Noneness are the same one thing.
To experience oneness, to be in oneness, requires a suspension of the duality of mind, removing the isolation of body, flattening the multiplicity of emotion and the absence of finances.
Oneness is truly love, bliss, tranquility.
Keep reading the above till the full meaning recreates itself as you.
This is the wisdom of the ages, inspired by insight and experience, influenced by Shijin No Mei, Lalitavistara, On Trust in The Heart, Gospel of Phillip, Katha Upanishad, Mila Grubum, Hekiganroku, Bhagavad Gita and Isha Upanishad.
As usual, please feel free to send me your thoughts and comments to Info@DifferWorld.com And if you’d like to explore how you, your teams and your organization can benefit from the above and other DifferWorld initiatives please feel free to drop me a note by clicking here, or call me at DIFFERWORLD at SKYPE now!
The Wisdom Of The Ages 27 - HUMANITY - by Manoj Sharma
August 15, 2007
Contemplate the following and make sense of it…
All of humanity springs forth from one consciousness and because of that all of humanity is one, from a standpoint of higher knowledge, all the differences we perceive with lower knowledge are absolutely superficial and illusionary.
As collective consciousness increases across humanity we give ourselves a chance to discover our greatness, but in the absence of this consciousness we give our individual egos room to reinforce our littleness.
Everything humanity has comes from nature and to nature it returns. This is inclusive of humanity itself, which like everything else follows the principle of creation, sustenance and destruction. Our presence on this planet is not guaranteed and is certainly not a right.
Every human being is born to fully realize the highest within. The highest within that connects not just all of humanity but the entire universe.
Eventually you as a human being will either make yourself rise to the highest levels of wisdom or plunge to the lowest levels of ignorance through your own thoughts, words, actions and results.
The humanity in a human being soars highest and fastest when that human being makes a choice and remains devoted to being in service to his/her fellow human beings.
No animal ever engaged in spirituality and ethics. A human being without engaging in spirituality and ethics is not far removed from a pain and pleasure gravitating, fear and desire motivated animal.
Humanity will delight in its highest or suffer in its lowest depending on the collective wisdom and ignorance of its time. Because humanity moves collectively, we are all in tandem, and we all have a part to play.
Humanity as far as we are aware has the highest form of consciousness in our universe. Isn’t it time we rose to our responsibility?
Only our ego stands in the way of appreciating that we are not separate from our fellow human beings and the universe itself.
Gaining a high level of consciousness does not preclude humanity from the suffering already caused into effect, but it has the power to radically change the experience and replace the suffering with a sweet mindful awareness.
Where there is no responsibility being taken by fellow human beings its entirely up to you to fill the gap and elevate the consciousness of all of humanity.
Humanity needs a new religion, independent of all past religions. A new religion infused with the awareness of universality.
It is up to every human being to remove ignorance from oneself, daily, again and again. Not just for the benefit of oneself, but for the benefit of all of humanity.
A human being in true contribution is one who in his/her own way actively uplifts all of humanity.
Keep reading the above till the full meaning recreates itself as you.
This is the wisdom of the ages, inspired by insight and experience, influenced by the Manual of Discipline, Dhammapada, Vishnu Purana, Hadith, Baha’u'llah, Staff of Wisdom, Dasam Granth, Talmud, Mencius, Ramayana, Munetada and Rig Veda.
As usual, please feel free to send me your thoughts and comments to Info@DifferWorld.com And if you’d like to explore how you, your teams and your organization can benefit from the above and other DifferWorld initiatives please feel free to drop me a note by clicking here, or call me at DIFFERWORLD at SKYPE now!
Affluence, Sustainable Consumption and Sustainable Development by Laura Westra from The Business of Consumption
August 14, 2007
Affluence, Sustainable Consumption and Sustainable Development by Laura Westra from The Business of Consumption: Environmental Ethics and The Global Economy
“Our affluent northern lifestyle is based on a free enterprise system, emphasizing consumption. We depend on an ongoing proliferation of products and services, the presence of which defines, circumscribes, and supports our “good life”. However, in recent times, we have begun to acknowledge the need to emphasize sustainability as well as economic growth and development. We have also accepted the fact that there are global dimensions to both and that justice requires that our “development” and its “sustainability” be viewed in the light of the consequences they engender beyond our own countries.
Further, it is not only those in developing countries who may be adversely affected because of our practices but also our own minority communities. One could object that the problems of justice, fairness, and their multinational dimensions are standard issues in business ethics and and that corporations are increasingly aware of the need to consider ethics in order to help steer a clear path in their corporate activities to ensure that these are both politically correct and ethically unexceptional….
Our main concern is foundational. It is not about how to conduct business but about whether to continue to sustain an enterprise that is based on increased consumption. Not everyone agrees that this is a dangerous trend. Some suggest the possibilities of “technological fixes” through substitutions, and many corporations in fact see their future gains as closely allied to the “greening” of their operations. Others instead, argue that we should no longer speak of growth or even development, particularly in the Northwest, because even an average North American lifestyle is completely unsustainable. Our ecological footprint appropriates many times the resources of others (particularly in developing countries) in order to support our lifestyle and preferences. Folke, Larsson, and Sweitzer, for instance, show that ‘to satisfy consumption of renewable resources, the 29 cities in the Baltic Sea region appropriate an area of the ecosystem that is 200 times the total area of the cities themselves.‘
Hence, many argue, the drive to development and increased productivity is unsustainable, as both sources and sinks are as finite as the earth in which they are placed. In fact, even the necessary economic expansion of poorer countries in the Southeast can only be envisaged, realistically, in the context of reduced consumption on our part. But our institutions and democratic laws support individual choices and preferences and often militate against restraints, or the promotion of a communitarian good at the expense of limits to our individual freedoms.
Predictably, environmental ethicists are often skeptical about the possibility of sustainable consumption, let alone sustainable development. In contrast, business ethicists may view the present environmental crisis as a new opportunity to modify, adapt, and find new ways to ‘green’ their operations, while maintaining or even increasing their profits. The present collection of new essays views these questions from both the environmental and the business perspective. The issues here debated are at the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation. We propose this group of readings as an introduction to help us frame the questions we must urgently address now, as individuals and global citizens.” – from The Business of Consumption: Environmental Ethics and The Global Economy
A Chilling Account Of The Future from Cities Transformed
August 14, 2007
“Over the next 30 years, most of the growth in the world’s population is expected to occur in the cities and towns of poor countries. Cities are now home to nearly half of the world’s total population and over three-quarters of the population of high-income countries.
By 2020 the developing world as a whole is likely to have become more urban than rural. The changes underway are not only a matter of percentages, but also of scale. At the beginning of the twentieth century, just 16 cities in the world - the vast majorities in advanced industrial economies - contained a million people or more. Today, almost 400 cities are of this size, and about three-quarter of them are found in low- and middle-income countries.
In the near future, then it will no longer be possible to conceive of developing countries as being mainly rural. Both poverty and opportunity will take on an urban cast. This transformation will be a powerful force in shaping family, social, economic and political life over the next century. And yet, in the research conducted to date on developing countries, demographers have devoted very little attention to the implications of urban contexts for marriage, fertility, health, schooling and children’s lives. As poor countries continue to urbanize, the distinct features of urban life will have to be taken into consideration in demographical research and the policies it informs.
As the demographic trends unfold, the nature of urban life in low-income countries will itself be changing. The world is in the midst of a period of fundamental economic restructuring, driven by globalization and the revolution in information and communication technology. Many poor countries are industralizing rapidly, while advance economies are shifting away from manufacturing towards finance, specialized services, and information processing. These changes are forcing countries - and, indeed, individual cities - to redefine their comparative advantages so as to be competitive in the global marketplace. As they link themselves to international markets, the cities that participate in global circuits are increasingly exposing their residents to the risks, as well as the benefits, that come from being tightly integrated in world networks of finance, information, and production.
The speed and scale of these changes present many challenges. Of particular concern are the risks to the physical environment and natural resources, to health conditions, to social cohesion, and to individual rights. For many observers, however, the immediate concern is the massive increase expected in the number of the urban poor. In many countries in the developing world, at least one in four urban residents is estimated to be living in absolute poverty. The manifestations of poverty are clearly visible in all major cities: overcrowded neighborhoods; pollution; inadequate housing; and insufficient access to clean water, sanitation, and other social services. Compounding matters, each year cities attract considerable number of new immigrants who, together with the increasing native population, can expand squatter settlements and shanty towns, exacerbate problems of congestions, and confound the abilities of local authorities to provide infrastructure and basic amenities.
At the same time, the benefits derived from urbanization must not be overlooked. Cities are the locations where diverse social and economic resources are concentrated. This concentration can bring substantial benefits in the form of positive social and economic externalities, which are expressed in technological change and economic growth. Historically, urban growth has been most rapid where economic growth rates have been highest. This is clearly the case today in Pacific Asia, where urbanization is accelerating - and being accelerated by - a new globalized economy that is changing the face of the planet.
As cities grow and evolve, the task of managing them becomes even more complex, in part as a result of jurisdictional conflicts arising from the expansion of cities beyond existing administrative and political boundaries. The nature of management and governance is also undergoing fundamental change. The policy and program environment in urban areas is being transformed as national governments decentralize service delivery and revenue raising to lower tiers of government. In the areas of health, family planning, and poverty alleviation, many national governments are beginning to allow local governments to operate the levers of policy and programs. But, at present, few local governments are equipped with the technical and and managerial expertise they need to take on these new responsibilities.” — from Cities Transformed
Distinguishing Two Kinds Of Knowledge
August 13, 2007
There is a need to distinguish two kinds of knowledge: The lower, conventional, practical, relative knowledge and the higher absolute knowledge.
The lower knowledge is the product of the senses and intellect - that is knowledge that is obtained through superimposition. Consequently, it is knowledge of the changing, finite, objective world of our empirical experience. This knowledge is necessarily governed by the subject - object distinction.
With respect to lower knowledge, one can always ask, “Who is the knower?” as all lower knowledge is propositional and constructed through names and forms.
In brief, lower knowledge is knowledge of the world of appearance, the realm of illusion and ignorance, masquerading as higher knowledge.
On the other hand, higher knowledge is non-perceptual, non-conceptual and hence non-propositional. It is the knowledge of the real, the innermost, eternal, formless and nameless self.
It is attained through intuitive, mystical insight through disciplines that involve union with your highest self. Higher knowledge is neither subjective, nor objective and therefore transcends all three categories of lower knowledge, namely, the knower, the known and the knowing.