DrContrarian

Read an article by an ex-executive of Shell Corporation. It reports on material and significant findings of research project ( http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/degeus.htm ) that was designed to establish which factors account for the survival of companies (for more than 500 years). Read it - its fascinating. If you are in a hurry - here is a short summary of the findings: 1. Sensitivity to the environment represents a company's ability to learn and adapt. 2. Cohesion and identity, it is now clear, are aspects of a company's innate ability to build a community and a persona for itself. 3. Tolerance and its corollary, decentralization, are both symptoms of a company's awareness of ecology: its ability to build constructive relationships with other entities, within and out-side itself. 4. Conservative financing is a very critical corporate attribute: the ability to govern its own growth and evolution effectively. As usual the research raises further questions, b...

The Secret continues to gain traction. For every disciple there seems to be a dozen detractors. The basic response of the unbelievers is simply a ‘rational’ reaction that scoffs at the notion of people being luck magnets. Being able to attract abundance through sheer will is just too close to ‘magic’ to be realistic. There are many very credible naysayers, but there are equally powerful proponents of ‘the secret’. Who to believe? Like any good sect, that adopts the best bits from traditional religion but leaves out the inconvenient bits, the secret does the same with reality. It is true that we are simply manifestations of energy. But the truth is also that opposites attract (in the real world of positive and negative poles of magnets). By spinning ourselves into a ‘positive’ state of expectation, we will sure attract the opposite if science is anything to go by? It is true that people are by and large responsible for their own miserably lives, but the truth is also that control...

The Secret continues to gain traction. For every disciple there seems to be a dozen detractors. The basic response of the unbelievers is simply a ‘rational’ reaction that scoffs at the notion of people being luck magnets. Being able to attract abundance through sheer will is just too close to ‘magic’ to be realistic. There are many very credible naysayers, but there are equally powerful proponents of ‘the secret’. Who to believe? Like any good sect, that adopts the best bits from traditional religion but leaves out the inconvenient bits, the secret does the same with reality. It is true that we are simply manifestations of energy. But the truth is also that opposites attract (in the real world of positive and negative poles of magnets). By spinning ourselves into a ‘positive’ state of expectation, we will sure attract the opposite if science is anything to go by? It is true that people are by and large responsible for their own miserably lives, but the truth is also that control...

A rhetorical question today: Do you also wonder (sometimes) if we are truly able to make our own life (successes and failures) or whether it has been pre-determined by God? The age-old debate of predeterminism: God must know everything - or else He is not omniscient. If God knows everything, then my decision is already made. Is life worth living if my success or failure is not as a result of my labour and initiative and creativity? The answer lies in what the image to the right represents. It is an image of Pollock's paintings ("Convergence: Number 10, 1952" at The Albright-Knox Gallery). It is a fractal image. Just Google 'fractal pattern') and you will see tens of thousands examples. Fractal image is an image of chaos. It illustrates one of the tenets chaos theory very clearly: At the level of the whole it appears chaotic; random swirls and lines. Look closer and you will see fine repeating patterns. And Life is like that: For the individual in his or her own ...