Personal Observations about Humans Series (5)

• Always be open while listening to others’ opinions/ speeches. Ending conversations with people you already know very well because you are confident you know how the conversation will end, or because you assume the speaker will draw the same conclusion drawn before is biased and assumes the speaker thinks always in repetitive patterns. This might be the least wise option as the end of the conversation and the message intended to be delivered might be totally unexpected. Please refrain from presumptions and previous knowledge and try to make wise judgments based on evaluation of new situations while weighing the need to whether refer to past experiences or isolate thoughts from the past.
• Disappointments could be of recurring pattern in a specific person’s life. It’s not bad luck; they expect and fail to meet their expectations before exploring the person/situation to verify if they meet these expectations with full confidence. Invest sufficient effort and time to understand whether the person/situation will be up to your level of expectations in the first place.
• If a friend betrayed their friend secretly and consistently, then we can say with quite confidence they were pretending to be friends and staying close to the person for some motive; e.g. competition, jealousy, envy, etc. They may have been merely following the rule “keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer”. Worse than that is faking they are sincere friends, investigating personal issues without any permission and interfering by offering help without being asked to, which altogether make early signs that these persons might be the major source of harm and cause of misery despite pretending they are the only salvation.
• It hurts but sometimes the person has to live with its price and painful consequences, as in the case of a lady where a man forces himself in her life, fails to fulfill any of his promises, presents a disappointment example in all aspects and turns his back only to leave cleaning the mess he caused to her own creativity. The main characteristic to manhood we should instil in our sons should be: standing up to any word a man says, and dealing with its consequences rationally.
• Some people make money of other people’s naivety and inability to be unique or have an independent character and mind set. When they try to deal with the pressure, they end up complying with peer pressure or trendy aspects of living, whether to survive/advance in the society they stand in or to become part of a higher-rank society. Brand names and spending fortunes on some of them is a good example. Behind some of these brand names is average CEOs sitting idly waiting for average people to consume their products/services and maximize their profits with least effort to brag about the outstanding results throughout economic news bulletins, magazines, newsletters, newspapers or other media. They benefit from societal jealousy, competition, envy, or desires mimicked from others when the person fears being rejected/neglected by a society where the person is judged by tags, and where capitalism rules only to feed economic greed, satisfy political goals, cold wars and armed struggles. The capitalistic model does an amazing job in making the rich richer, the poor poorer and financing wars which we, our nations, creeds, or our beloved ones might be its target. The economic-political system is amazingly interconnected, intelligently sucks our own efforts and relies on turning individuals into armies (with or without armor) to serve the desires of a specific person or move.

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.