Personal Observations about Humans Series (4)

Civilization cannot be obtained merely by purchasing brand name products, driving luxurious cars, or spending a relaxing vacation in an expensive resort or spa. Civilization is about deeply rooted and effortlessly repeated civilized practices of living. That is; once the civilized practice is set to be the norm, it turns into a basic of living. Onwards, the civilization can build on this basic to standardize it through translating it into societal behaviors and attitudes. Real evolving civilizations would even improve such basics further and continuously, in order not to render their civilization to obsolescence in a continually evolving world.

In some cases, a business that failed might be better than a business idea that remained experimental or was never converted into an actual investment. Even in extreme and painful cases of business failure, the lessons learned comprise a treasure if documented and shared properly for learning purposes.

Some societies focus in their businesses on the image, on the expense of a solid core that successively survives fierce economic climates and fluctuations, and on quick and massive short term gains, on the expense of recurring and sustainable real long term profits. Businesses of such societies lend themselves to inevitable deterioration that might develop into termination even when success has been experienced at the outset. Shortcomings here are evident in:

• People who run the business focus on a quick image they want to reflect to easily and quickly market themselves and their businesses, before they focus on building solid internal operations and processes which would result normally in reflecting an actually existing good business image.
• The short term orientation impedes businesses from having a real vision and translating it into goals and smart objectives to achieve. In addition, the organization population is denied their basic right to a learning organization and both a planned and structured learning curve. Therefore; real growth is hindered and a steadily growing and sustainable annuity of revenue on the long term cannot be achieved.

The person might expect, and end up facing a reality that fail way shorter than their initial optimistic expectations; a matter which is acceptable if the expectations weren’t based on scientific and knowledgeable bases. Meanwhile, it is not acceptable for estimates of a desired situation to fall way shorter than the actual situation (resulting in a significant gap) if estimates were based on historical data and implicit trends uncovered in the data.

To reduce risks on your investment, distribute your portfolio investments on several industries and businesses with varying seasons and well-studied and documented risk types and levels. Likewise, to reduce social risks, distribute your relationship investments on diverse and dispersed networks. However; maintain good management when networks intersect and shared connections exist (or are created deliberately) as the situation and the entire socialization process might turn into complete chaos with disastrous outcomes, where one party alone bears its full expense.

Allied parties (partners) with shared cause and goals should be careful when they are disconnected and communication channels are cut completely due to the resulting rage when both parties think the other party has more information, possesses greater knowledge about the situation, and keeps this knowledge and information discretely to themselves from the partner. The situation might be escalated until allied parties consider each other the sole and greatest-threat enemies and start treating each other accordingly. Indeed; an intervening third party who involved themselves (or were involved incidentally by one party) and pretend to be a saint-like friend or advisor who care for both parties’ well-being could be the real party who has the information and uses it secretly to create a gap in the alliance and widen it until the alliance is broken into bunch of hostile groups busy fighting each other, instead of focusing on the real enemy.