Friday Filosophy v.08.05.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.08.05.2022

In Friday Filosophy v.08.05.2022, founder and managing member Ron Slee shares quotes and thoughts for consideration from Aeschylus.

Aeschylus was born in c. 525 BC in Eleusis, a small town about 27 km northwest of Athens, in the fertile valleys of western Attica. Some scholars argue that his date of birth may be based on counting back forty years from his first victory in the Great Dionysia. His family was wealthy and well established. His father, Euphorion, was said to be a member of the Eupatridae, the ancient nobility of Attica, but this might be a fiction invented by the ancients to account for the grandeur of Aeschylus’ plays. 

As a youth, Aeschylus worked at a vineyard until, according to the 2nd-century AD geographer Pausanias, the god Dionysus visited him in his sleep and commanded him to turn his attention to the nascent art of tragedy. As soon as he woke, he began to write a tragedy, and his first performance took place in 499 BC, when he was 26 years old. He won his first victory at the City Dionysia in 484 BC. 

In 510 BC, when Aeschylus was 15 years old, Cleomenes I expelled the sons of Peisistratus from Athens, and Cleisthenes came to power. Cleisthenes’ reforms included a system of registration that emphasized the importance of the deme over family tradition. In the last decade of the 6th century, Aeschylus and his family were living in the deme of Eleusis. 

The Persian Wars played a large role in Aeschylus’ life and career. In 490 BC, he and his brother Cynegeirus fought to defend Athens against the invading army of Darius I of Persia at the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians emerged triumphant, and the victory was celebrated across the city-states of Greece. Cynegeirus was killed while trying to prevent a Persian ship retreating from the shore, for which his countrymen extolled him as a hero. 

In 480 BC, Aeschylus was called into military service again, together with his younger brother Ameinias, against Xerxes I‘s invading forces at the Battle of Salamis. Aeschylus also fought at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. Ion of Chios was a witness for Aeschylus’ war record and his contribution in Salamis. Salamis holds a prominent place in The Persians, his oldest surviving play, which was performed in 472 BC and won first prize at the Dionysia. 

Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, an ancient cult of Demeter based in his home town of Eleusis. According to Aristotle, Aeschylus was accused of asebeia (impiety) for revealing some of the cult’s secrets on stage. 

Other sources claim that an angry mob tried to kill Aeschylus on the spot but he fled the scene. Heracleides of Pontus asserts that the audience tried to stone Aeschylus. Aeschylus took refuge at the altar in the orchestra of the Theater of Dionysus. He pleaded ignorance at his trial. He was acquitted, with the jury sympathetic to the military service of him and his brothers during the Persian Wars. According to the 2nd-century AD author Aelian, Aeschylus’ younger brother Ameinias helped to acquit Aeschylus by showing the jury the stump of the hand he had lost at Salamis, where he was voted bravest warrior. The truth is that the award for bravery at Salamis went not to Aeschylus’ brother but to Ameinias of Pallene. 

Aeschylus travelled to Sicily once or twice in the 470s BC, having been invited by Hiero I, tyrant of Syracuse, a major Greek city on the eastern side of the island. He produced The Women of Aetna during one of these trips (in honor of the city founded by Hieron), and restaged his Persians. By 473 BC, after the death of Phrynichus, one of his chief rivals, Aeschylus was the yearly favorite in the Dionysia, winning first prize in nearly every competition. In 472 BC, Aeschylus staged the production that included the Persians, with Pericles serving as choregos.

Aeschylus married and had two sons, Euphorion and Euaeon, both of whom became tragic poets. Euphorion won first prize in 431 BC in competition against both Sophocles and Euripides. A nephew of Aeschylus, Philocles (his sister’s son), was also a tragic poet, and won first prize in the competition against Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Aeschylus had at least two brothers, Cynegeirus and Ameinias.

The death of Aeschylus illustrated in the 15th century Florentine Picture Chronicle by Maso Finiguerra

In 458 BC, Aeschylus returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting the city of Gela, where he died in 456 or 455 BC. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed outside the city by a tortoise dropped by an eagle (possibly a lammergeier or Cinereous vulture, which do open tortoises for eating by dropping them on hard objects[24]) which had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell. Pliny, in his Naturalis Historiæ, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avoid a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object, but this story may be legendary and due to a misunderstanding of the iconography on Aeschylus’s tomb. Aeschylus’ work was so respected by the Athenians that after his death his tragedies were the only ones allowed to be restaged in subsequent competitions. His sons Euphorion and Euæon and his nephew Philocles also became playwrights. 

The inscription on Aeschylus’ gravestone makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements:

  • He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. 
  • Obedience is the mother of success and is wedded to safety. 
  • I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery. 
  • From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow. 
  • It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath. 
  • Whoever is new to power is always harsh. 
  • It is best for the wise man not to seem wise. 
  • Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times. 
  • There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. 
  • Memory is the mother of all wisdom. 
  • Death is softer by far than tyranny. 
  • It is always in season for old men to learn. 
  • God lends a helping hand to the man who tries hard. 
  • God’s most lordly gift to man is decency of mind. 
  • God loves to help him who strives to help himself. 
  • It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer. 
  • But time growing old teaches all things. 
  • It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted. 
  • Married love between man and woman is bigger than oaths guarded by right of nature. 
  • The words of truth are simple. 
  • And one who is just of his own free will shall not lack for happiness; and he will never come to utter ruin. 
  • Too few rejoice at a friend’s good fortune. 
  • Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain?

The time is now.

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Friday Filosophy v.07.29.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.07.29.2022

Founder and managing member Ron Slee shares quotes and thoughts for consideration from Aesop, the fable writer, in Friday Filosophy v.07.29.2022.

Aesop, 620–564 BCE, was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop’s Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales associated with him are characterized by anthropomorphic animal characters.

Scattered details of Aesop’s life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states. Older spellings of his name have included Esop(e) and Isope. Depictions of Aesop in popular culture over the last 2,500 years have included many works of art and his appearance as a character in numerous books, films, plays, and television programs. 

The name of Aesop is as widely known as any that has come down from Graeco-Roman antiquity [yet] it is far from certain whether a historical Aesop ever existed … in the latter part of the fifth century something like a coherent Aesop legend appears, and Samos seems to be its home.

The earliest Greek sources, including Aristotle, indicate that Aesop was born around 620 BCE in the Greek colony of Mesembria. A number of later writers from the Roman imperial period (including Phaedrus, who adapted the fables into Latin) say that he was born in Phrygia. The 3rd-century poet Callimachus called him “Aesop of Sardis,” and the later writer Maximus of Tyre called him “the sage of Lydia.” 

From Aristotle and Herodotus we learn that Aesop was a slave in Samos and that his masters were first a man named Xanthus and then a man named Iadmon; that he must eventually have been freed, because he argued as an advocate for a wealthy Samian; and that he met his end in the city of Delphi. Plutarch tells us that Aesop had come to Delphi on a diplomatic mission from King Croesus of Lydia, that he insulted the Delphians, was sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of temple theft, and was thrown from a cliff (after which the Delphians suffered pestilence and famine). Before this fatal episode, Aesop met with Periander of Corinth, where Plutarch has him dining with the Seven Sages of Greece, sitting beside his friend Solon, whom he had met in Sardis. (Leslie Kurke suggests that Aesop himself “was a popular contender for inclusion” in the list of Seven Sages.) 

Aesop may not have written his fables. The Aesop Romance claims that he wrote them down and deposited them in the library of Croesus; Herodotus calls Aesop a “writer of fables” and Aristophanes speaks of “reading” Aesop, but that might simply have been a compilation of fables ascribed to him. Various Classical authors name Aesop as the originator of fables. Sophocles, in a poem addressed to Euripides, made reference to the North Wind and the Sun. Socrates while in prison turned some of the fables into verse, of which Diogenes Laërtius records a small fragment. The early Roman playwright and poet Ennius also rendered at least one of Aesop’s fables in Latin verse, of which the last two lines still exist.  

  • No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
  • We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
  • The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
  • Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.
  • It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.
  • Appearances are often deceiving.
  • Slow but steady wins the race.
  • Persuasion is often more effectual than force.
  • Please all, and you will please none.
  • It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.
  • A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.
  • Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction.
  • He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
  • Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit; and it is but common prudence to see our way out before we venture in.

The Time is Now.

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Swap Stress for Serenity

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Swap Stress for Serenity

Founder and managing member Ron Slee writes today about the need for greater calm in our daily lives, and trying to find a way to swap stress for serenity.

It has long been a goal of mine: to find serenity in my life. 

As time has passed and that goal of serenity continues to be elusive, I am adjusting and adapting my outlook. Serenity just isn’t in the cards for me. I have much too busy a mind. Perhaps it is a reflection of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), or some other acronym that I can blame or use as an excuse. It really doesn’t matter.

As many of you who follow me know I am taken by a book titled “Indistractable” by Nir Eyal. I am learning, yes at long last, how to better manage my time and accomplish things. I was being much too precise in how I managed my To Do List. Now I have assigned “Time Blocks” to my life and it seems to be working better for me.

Can I really move from stress to serenity? Putting the two words together like that has helped all by itself. There is stress, for me, associated with a specific goal and a specific time allocation. I suspect the same is true for you as well. How does that become stressful? Our minds seem to work on deadlines. When we are up against a deadline, our To Do List, we feel stress. It seems that this is all very normal. We get interruptions all the time and those get in the way of our To Do List. More Stress. As a result of that realization, I went to time blocks. I assign the work I want to accomplish a block of time. No goal just a block of time. I have been trying to assign eight hours of time to work and sixteen hours or time to life. Imagine that?

It seemed weird looking at it. I had assigned all of the work elements I needed to get done in my work day. 

  1. One hour of email and social media 
  2. One hour on product development for LWS
  3. One hour for sales calls for LWS
  4. Half an hour to work on the quarterly newsletter
  5. Half an hour working on advisory boards
  6. One hour communication with the LWS team
  7. One hour of Zoom meetings

Total Eight Hours

Seems pretty simple yet rather strange looking at it, doesn’t it? Gone are finite goals with specific time lines. And after two or more weeks my level of stress has become much less problematic. I am calmer. Perhaps, dare I say it our loud, more serene.

The other sixteen hours are simple as well. Two hours for personal time. Exercise or reading or whatever it is that I want to do. Fourteen hours of living with my family and friends and sleeping.

When I look at it, I am stunned that it took me so long to come to this type of approach. It took a Behavioral Scientist to penetrate my thick head. I have been on this pursuit for most of my life. Finding easier ways to do things. Find my effectiveness or efficiency. My Industrial Engineering roots are showing. I was involved with Continuous Improvement as a teenager. I called it laziness. It wasn’t really. I was just trying to find a more effective way to do things. In fact, everything. It is in my genetic makeup.

At the same time many of you know I have been pushing a book called Ikigai. Which is the Japanese Pursuit of Happiness.

After all the only real goal to have in life is to be happy. To seek happiness. It has taken me a long time to get here but I am here now. The word “happy” dates back to the 14th Century when it was used to describe luck; someone who was “happy” was prosperous or favored by fortune. But as with many of you I had trouble and still do have trouble defining my understanding of my happiness. This concept can be very imprecise and perhaps that is what bothers me. There needs to be clarity and precision in things. Yet it turns out that there is no proven way to determine the factors of happiness or increase significantly a person’s level of happiness. That sounds like Don Quixote “tilting at windmills.” Perhaps that is why I have not achieved it. Don’t get me wrong I am a happy person. The glass is always more than half full. No matter what the problem is in my life or my work I can handle it. Nothing is too great an issue that it can’t be dealt with properly. 

And yet… What do you think? 

Care to join with me and swap some of your stress for more serenity? 

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.07.15.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.07.15.2022

Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB, KStJ, DL  22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941 was a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the world-wide Scout Movement, and founder, with his sister Agnes, of the world-wide Girl Guide/Girl Scout Movement. Baden-Powell authored the first editions of the seminal work Scouting for Boys, which was an inspiration for the Scout Movement. 

Educated at Charterhouse School, Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa. In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking. Several of his books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were also read by boys. In August 1907, he held a demonstration camp, the Brownsea Island Scout camp, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting. Based on his earlier books, particularly Aids to Scouting, he wrote Scouting for Boys, published in 1908 by Sir Arthur Pearson, for boy readership. In 1910 Baden-Powell retired from the army and formed The Scout Association.

The first Scout Rally was held at The Crystal Palace in 1909. Girls in Scout uniform attended, telling Baden-Powell that they were the “Girl Scouts”. In 1910, Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell started the Girl Guide and Girl Scout organization. In 1912 he married Olave St Clair Soames. He gave guidance to the Scout and Girl Guide movements until retiring in 1937. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died and was buried in 1941. His grave is a national monument. 

  • Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.
  • Swimming has its educational value – mental, moral, and physical – in giving you a sense of mastery over an element, and of power of saving life, and in the development of wind and limb.
  • The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.
  • Happiness doesn’t come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man.
  • Trust should be the basis for all our moral training.
  • Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one.
  • If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.
  • My belief is that we were put into this world of wonders and beauty with a special ability to appreciate them, in some cases to have the fun of taking a hand in developing them, and also in being able to help other people instead of overreaching them and, through it all, to enjoy life – that is, to be happy.
  • If you make yourself indispensable to your employer, he is not going to part with you in a hurry no matter what it costs him.
  • The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.
  • Correcting bad habits cannot be done by forbidding or punishment.
  • An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.
  • When you want a thing done, ‘Don’t do it yourself’ is a good motto for Scoutmasters.
  • Erudition – that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic – is taught in the schools; but where is the more important quality, character, taught? Nowhere in particular. There is no authorized training for children in character.
  • It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

The Time is Now

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The Sage on the Stage

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The Sage on the Stage

This week our founder and managing member, Ron Slee, asks us to take a moment to remember and wonder about the sage on the stage. Where are they now?

I started teaching children at a country club when I was a teenager. I taught people how to swim. I did that every summer from the time I was 14 until I had to get a real job in business. During my teaching of athletics, I ended up teaching at McGill University in Montreal. I was teaching students who were getting a degree in athletics. I was asked to develop a coaching and training program as well as water safety. I had classes three night a week. Half was in a classroom and half was in the pool. I loved it. I guess I am a teacher at heart as I truly love to see the lights go on in people’s eyes when they “get it.”

The classroom was long and relatively thin. It had a raised dais in the front of the room with a wall-to-wall black board. A stage. I was never comfortable with that situation so I started what a has become a habit of wandering around through the desks and among the students. Then recently I ran across the title of the blog “A sage on the stage.”

It was an interesting paper that was addressing the exclusive nature of education at University. The paper talked about the thirty-one million people in the US between the ages of 18 and 24. Thirteen million of them are current undergraduates; almost three quarters of them are enrolled in four-year-degree programs. The article also pointed out that 0.2% of the 18-to-24-year-old population was enrolled in Ivy league schools. 63,000 students.

Society at large as well as educators and legislators have been struggling with this problem for some time. Inertia is hard to overcome. Everyone in America is aware of the student debt problem. There are many issues to be faced in solving this problem. One of them is that trade schools fight with liberal arts schools for funding. This should not be a zero-sum game.

Looking at the structure today shows most classes have between three and four credit hours. A semester “load” is 12 to 18 credit hours and lasts for 15 weeks. Each year is two semesters and four years is what is required to earn a degree. That structure has been around for a long, long time. Many don’t think that is works in today’s world. Further information comes from a study by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. They tested 2,300 students and found that after first and second years 45% and found that once after four years they demonstrated no improvements in key areas including writing and critical thinking.

They believe, as we do at Learning Without Scars (LWS), that Lifelong Learning needs to help people move in and out of the classroom. In fact, we should be creating and experimenting with dozens of new models to keep the workforce and the new entrants to the workforce in a position that they have skills that apply to the ever-changing workplace.

One of the thoughts on changing learning is to have three staggered 12-to-18 months of learning and work interspersed. This is similar to how many technical school programs work today. Western University in Canada has had this type of program for decades. It works.

One of the missing pieces, in my opinion is that we do not have enough advising and mentoring in education and career selections. We also need to have much more intensive internships and career development available to students and parents. As we have found at LWS learners benefit from more frequent, low-stakes real time individual assessments and quizzes interspersed in learning programs. This type of constant assessment and quiz changes how a student learns and enables more serious concentration on the material being presented by teachers. There is an awareness that the usual checking-in and checking-out listening and learning that has become the norm with a fifty minute or longer class doesn’t work and the students learn with very quickly with constant quizzes and assessment through learning experience.

This also leads to more awareness at the student and business level of the need for constant learning and relearning of skills and knowledge. Those of you who follow our blogs know that Ed Gordon has made a pronouncement that 50% of the current American work force will not have the skills required to hold and keep a job by 2030. That, if it becomes true, which is quite likely will mean very radical changes in the American society. How can the American education system, business community, and state and federal taxation handle such a situation?

Many people have written on this subject most recently is Senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska who was once a University President. This is a very serious situation and one that needs much more debate and thought. 

 The Time is Now.

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Just Say Yes!

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Just Say Yes!

Founder and managing member Ron Slee modifies the Nike slogan in this week’s blog, as he asks readers to “Just Say Yes!”

Nike started it didn’t they? Just Do It. How could you forget it as it was and continues to be everywhere? I was reminded of that yesterday during a Zoom meeting with Steve Clegg of Winsby. We were having a discussion about finance and forecasting when the discussion turned to questions that are asked of dealers. Steve opined that there are too many answers to questions that are posed by customers to dealers. Many are met with a response of another questions. Seeking more information or clarity. Steve suggested that there was a better approach to the questions that are asked of dealers. The questioner is really just asking for help. So why not respond with a simple YES. I can do that for you. I can help. I will get it for you. Take the problem the concern away from the customer.

A few weeks ago, in another discussion with another group of people, Mets Kramer and Stephanie Smith the same point came up from a different direction. When the customers come to your website what are they doing? We changed our website to ask a question on the landing page. Right in the middle of the page and it zooms towards you and away from you so you can hardly miss it. We ask “Need Help Finding Something? Click Here.” And you are taken to a series of choices available to the visitor from the website. It is making a difference for our website visitors. I had not taken into consideration that there is a such a large volume of information on our site. I know where everything is so why shouldn’t everyone else? That is what in the teaching profession we call the curse of knowledge.

Customers are looking for solutions not answer. That was my take away when Steve presented that thought to me.

Recently I wrote about us living in “The Golden Age of Information.” We can get answers to nearly anything. Just ask “Google” or “Siri” or “Alexa.” Our access to information is amazing to consider. It used to be a barrier to entry to our industry, dealers in the capital goods world, information. That is no longer true. The problem is that too many of us still are thinking that our sales force is available to give information to customers. That our sales force is a group of people that act as if they are “walking brochures.” 

Our customers do their own research at their convenience and when they are ready to do something then they call us. Alex Kraft has understood this and created a wonderful tool for customers and dealers and the sales force. He has created an internet-based tool that uses text messages to announce that a customer has a need and is looking for a machine. That information is texted to the clients of his Company Heave. He has answered the question with YES. Going further he is asking the sales force who receive the texts “Do you want to help?”

Dale Hanna and Foresight Intelligence eliminate the need for questions with their SMS program which sends text messages to customers that are having work done onf their equipment. Rather than playing phone tag to find out the status of a repair between the customer and the dealer service department, which typically requires a few calls to connect, Foresight has a system that sends a text to each customer, at their choice, of any action of their machine. It could be an inspection, it could be a quotation, it could be pictures, it is rather slick, if you ask me. There is no longer the NEED, to ask the questions to get a status update. You get that update at the “speed of text.” That doesn’t eliminate the customer’s ability to talk to the dealership, it changes what the conversation is about.   

Just say YES. A rather simplistic approach to an issue of concern to your customers.

Simon Sinek has become famous with his question “WHY.” This is part of one of the most viewed TED talks “Start with Why.” He poses three questions in his “Golden Circle.” What do you do” How do you do it? Why do you do it? It has become rather commonplace now for people to explore the answers to these three questions. The magic is that the WHY is not for the money. It is for some deeper meaning. It goes to the heart of who you are and what you believe. If you haven’t already watched the TED talk, I strongly urge you to take the time and do it.

 That talk touches the same point as the “Just Say YES” message here. The customer is looking for help. For something. Whatever it is just say YES. I used to respond to customers when they called me and said they had a problem “No Sir, you don’t have a problem, I do.” It caused a few pauses I know but the customer “Got It” I was taking on their problem I was going to find an answer. I was going to solve it for them. I say YES. What do you do?

The Time is Now.

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Friday Filosophy v.06.24.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.06.24.2022

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an Anglo–American atheist, writer and debater. He wrote for various magazines including The Nation, Free Inquiry, Slate, and others. He was a supporter of the philosophical movement humanism.

Hitchens was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. After graduation in 1970, he became a magazine writer. In 1982, he moved to Washington, D.C. In 1988, he learned from his grandmother that his mother was Jewish, but had kept her religion a secret. Hitchens remained an atheist and did not adopt any religious faith. He did not write about his religious views until his 2007 book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. 

Hitchens tried to write from first-hand experience. To write his essays, he braved gunfire in Sarajevo, he was jailed in Czechoslovakia, and in 2008, he was brutally beaten in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2009, Hitchens agreed to be waterboarded. He wrote in Vanity Fair magazine, “If waterboarding does not constitute torture then there is no such thing as torture”.

Hitchens died of esophageal cancer. 

  • Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God. 
  • I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness. 
  • Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy. 
  • I’ve had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat. 
  • One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? 
  • A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue. 
  • My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either. 
  • The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It’s a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation. 
  • Well, I’m in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
  • You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can’t be English American. Why not? 
  • The fact is: It’s true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it. 
  • When you hear people demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in courtrooms and schoolrooms, always be sure to ask which set. It works every time. 
  • In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker. 
  • I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators. 
  • Chemotherapy isn’t good for you. So, when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, ‘Well that is a good thing because it’s supposed to be poison. If it’s making the tumor feel this queasy, then I’m OK with it.
  • My favorite time in the cycles of public life is the time when the Pope is dead and they haven’t elected a new one. There’s no one in the world who is infallible for those weeks. And you know, I don’t miss it.

The Time is Now

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Friday Filosophy v.06.17.2022

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Friday Filosophy v.06.17.2022

Alice O’Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum Russian: Алиса Зиновьевна Розенбаум .February 2, 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand was a Russian-born American writer, screenwriter, playwright and philosopher. 

She published several popular books in the United States during the mid-1900s, including her two best-selling novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, plus We the Living and Anthem. Her novels promoted a viewpoint of laissez-faire capitalism as a political and social goal. It is a kind of political philosophy known in the U.S.A. as libertarian conservatism. She called this philosophy ‘objectivism‘. 

Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and grew up during the Russian Revolution, in the years after World War I. She left Russia to visit relatives in Chicago in the United States when she was 21 years old. She did not want to return to live under Communism, and stayed in the US. She changed her name, partly to protect her family in Russia. Rand moved to California to become a movie writer.

Movies at the time did not have sound, and stories were mimed on camera. Dialogue was not important, so Rand could write simple stories while she improved her English language skills.

Rand met Frank O’Connor on a movie set, when they both appeared as extras. When O’Connor married Rand in 1929, she could live permanently in America. She later became an American citizen. O’Connor gave up his acting career, to work full-time so Rand could write full-time. Later he retired, when Rand’s work made a good income. He began painting late in his life. He died in 1979.

Rand was a longtime tobacco smoker. She had lung cancer, but she recovered from the disease after surgery. She died of cardiovascular disease in New York City on March 6, 1982.

  • A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
  • Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. 
  • The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. 
  • Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. 
  • The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity. 
  • We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. 
  • Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. 
  • Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. 
  • The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. 
  • Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
  • Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. 
  • Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. 
  • Upper classes are a nation’s past; the middle class is its future. 
  • Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
  • Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. 
  • Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason. 
  • Do not ever say that the desire to ‘do good’ by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. 
  • When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

The Time is Now.

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It Is Time to Fail Faster

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It Is Time to Fail Faster

Founder and Managing Member Ron Slee shares words of wisdom he heard recently in today’s blog post: It Is Time to Fail Faster.

I never thought that I would call for “failing faster” in my life. Imagine failure? Of course, if we think about this, a moment’s failure is important to anyone who is interested in getting better at how they do things. 

I was given this “line” by Stephanie Smith, Vice President of Marketing from Newman Tractor on a recent Podcast with Mets Kramer. We were talking about Marketing and the Digital Dealership and how fast change was happening. Stephanie calmly stated that we have to learn how to fail faster. I stopped her and asked her to repeat it. I found it to be so profound. Days later, to me it is still a very profound observation.

I was in school in the 1950s and the 1960s. It was a very basic education. Nothing particularly fancy. Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. My Mother was a teacher, she was the Vice Principal at the grade school I attended. She chose all my teachers. I couldn’t get away with anything. My Grandmother was a teacher in the proverbial one room schoolhouse. She got a Master’s degree from the University of Manitoba in the early 1900s. One year I was doing miserably in Geometry and Latin. I hated studying so I refused to memorize. I either understood it or I felt it was not that important. My Grandmother took over my schooling on the weekends. I spent several months with her every weekend. The first semester I got 38% in both Geometry and Latin. That was unacceptable to Granny. By the final report card, I averaged 78% for the year. I had no choice but to stop failing. I was “taught” a very important lesson that year. It wasn’t “don’t mess with Granny.” No, it was “apply yourself or there will be a consequence.” Did I ever learn! That, plus my experiences in the swimming pool as a competitive swimmer, made me who I became.

That led me to my favorite question: “Why?” It seems from a very young age I was always asking why. Perhaps every child does. But that meant I would try things. That was when I started experiencing failure. I remember one instance when I was doing some work in the warehouse at the Caterpillar dealership in Montreal. I think we were moving parts around trying to make more space. Bob Hewitt, the dealer principal, came out to the warehouse and put his arm around my shoulders. I was surprised. Here I was in a sweat shirt and jeans working and dirty in the warehouse. He was in a three-piece suit looking very elegant. He looks me in the eye and says “I am really disappointed in you.” Even in those early years I was rarely at a loss for words. I quickly responded “me too. Why are you disappointed?” I looked up at him and I could see his face start to twitch. He said “when you are finished come see me in my office.” The thing he was disappointed in was that the roads to a remote branch were closed for the winter and I had placed a stock order that wasn’t going to get there. I hadn’t planned for an early snowfall. I told him if I would have known that snowfall was coming, could have predicted that, I would be working somewhere else. True story.

I have made an unbelievable number of mistakes over the course of my lifetime. They continue even today. The trick with mistakes from my perspective is very simple. You are going to make mistakes, that is clear, identify the mistakes as quickly as you can and make adjustments, corrections, fix it. Fast. Today with the rate of change in society, in technology, in telecommunications, in fact in nearly every aspect of our lives is dramatic. Change is coming at us so fast it is impossible to keep up. At least that is true for me.

When Stephanie made the comment, we have to “fail faster” I was amazed. It was so appropriate. It was profound to me. It was an “aha” moment. It forced me to think about things again in a new way. I needed to pick up my pace and make more changes more quickly. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Don’t worry about failure. That is going to be a consequence of doing more things. Mistakes and failures are also a part of the process of learning. You just have to recognize when things don’t work and make adjustments. Make corrections. Everything will continue to be alright. No one is going to shoot me. At least, not for making a mistake. 

Thank you, Stephanie.    

The Time is Now.

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How Do We Find Our Individual Potential?

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How do we find our individual potential? 

As many of you know, the primary purpose of our Learning Without Scars business is to help people find their personal potential. That confuses a lot of people. Most of us don’t have any idea of our potential. Early on in civilization it was quite basic and very simple – to have the strength to be able to find and get food. We were hunters and gatherers. If we couldn’t find food, we died. Simple, right?

Today it is much more complicated. Governments are determined not to have people die from lack of food. We have many social programs to ensure that people will have access to the basic requirements of life. Even in these advanced times, we have many who choose to stay off the grid for one reason or another.

In the United States in 2020, about 18% of the population was under 15 years old; 65% from 15 years old to 64 years old; and 17% over 65 years old. I believe that understanding our potential changes with our age. It varies as we get older. One of the definitions of potential causes me some difficulty. It is the “possibility of becoming something more.” Isn’t that always the case? Aren’t we constantly learning things? Another definition is “coming to self-realization that there is more to our lives.” This definition gets rather personal for me. One day, while my father was still alive, we were having a glass of “brown water” and solving the problems of the world, he paused and looked at me and said “I don’t understand you. You are never satisfied.” I responded quickly with the blithe comment “well there is always more, isn’t there?”

And that becomes the challenge of potential. There is always something more.

One of my grandchildren is in High School and we were talking about what he wanted to do with his life. He said, “I don’t know.” It is a terrific answer for someone in High School today. There are so many choices available to us. There are the sciences and the fantastic developments being made within them. The arts and the various media – sculpture and painting – as well various methods to express ourselves visually. Music and literature and drama. Fashion and Makeup. I might add that many of the early school years tend to “stifle” creativity not “encourage” it. How do you start in finding this something “more?”

Well, how about starting with those things that do not turn you on? These are the things that you don’t like to do. In 1998 Sir Ken Robinson led a commission created by the government in the UK – “Commission on creativity, education and the economy.” It turns out he was highly critical of the education system under which he was taught. He regretted the fact that neither the primary school, secondary school nor college enabled people to develop their talents and discover what they really wanted to devote themselves to in their lives. Doesn’t that condition still exist where you live? Where you went to school, or your children and grandchildren are going to school? Where are we supposed to find this magic “thing” to which we want to devote our lives?          

This is a difficult undertaking, isn’t it? This pursuit of our potential. How about we look at the other side of the question. What don’t we want to do? What aren’t we very good at in our lives? Sometimes that is easier to identify.

  1. What was something you disliked studying?
  2. What were some jobs you hated?
  3. What are some of the household chores you really don’t like doing?

Isn’t there anything common in the items above? 

  1. Are they some activities you do alone or without somebody else?
  2. Does someone tell you to do these tasks or does it depend only on you?
  3. Do the activities need something physical or intellectual?

Now let’s make another list.

Write down everything you like or liked to do in the areas below: 

  1. School or Education
  2. Jobs
  3. Everyday tasks

Now find the common denominator in these items.

Have you stopped any of these activities you enjoyed? 

  1. Why?
  2. Can you recover it and start it again?

Now let’s rank the things you liked to do.

  1. What is in first place?
  2. Can you make it more prominent in your life?

Some things should now be standing out. Things should be clearer.

Now comes a big question. I think it will have become clearer to you. You know better now some of the things you want to do. So, let’s ask that magic question? What have you always wanted to do but were afraid to start doing it? Do you think it is time to start doing it? That is the beginning of your potential. The possibility of becoming something more. Are you ready to get started?

The Time is Now.

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