Category: Social Order & Disorder

Spotting incompetence

Critical Thinking / Management & leadership / Philosophy / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Further to my earlier post, I wanted to provide some tips on how to spot incompetence in an employee or, especially, in managers and executives. I understand that incompetence may be a subjective view. What some view as incompetence others may see as cautionary, conservative or even adequate. But here’s what others have identified as incompetent or dysfunctional behaviour or personality traits in managers and leaders. Incompetence is not black-and-white. It comes in many shades. And incompetence doesn’t (always) mean stupid: intelligent people may get promoted above their competence level, according to the Peter Principle, discussed in my previous post. They ……… click below for more ↓

Some of the Dharma

Books & Reviews / Buddhism / History & Biography / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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I first started reading Jack Kerouac in 1968, a battered paperback copy of On the Road, reprinted a decade after its original publication and kept in a pocket of a pack sack for easy reference as I hitchhiked around the country one summer. The book enjoyed a small resurgence of interest as the early hippies imagined themselves as the spiritual descendants of the beats and enjoyed a similar flowering of art, music and literature. For a brief while, many of the beat writers and musicians and their contemporaries basked in that renewed interest. I listened to Charlie Mingus, The Fugs, Miles Davis, Thelonius ……… click below for more ↓

The Wolf and the Dogs

Culture / Humour & Satire / Legends & Myths / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Once upon a time, there was a pack of good-hearted dogs who were known for their good deeds, and indeed their good natures. They travelled around the town unmolested, loved by everyone they met, helping with the chores, keeping the town safe from wild animals and intruders. The humans fed and pampered them, the other animals in the town bowed to them. Their leader, a kindly, gentle dog, was loved by all. But there were animals in the forest who grew envious of the dogs. They hated their popularity, their good deeds, their companionship with people. They wanted what the dogs had. Most ……… click below for more ↓

The ‘Sharing Economy’ is a Hoax

Critical Thinking / Marketing / New Age Codswallop / Politics / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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Stop calling it the sharing economy. It’s an oxymoron, like ‘creation science’ or ‘sustainable capitalism.’ It’s not collaborative: it’s the new indentured servant economy. If you believe these corporations are all about sharing and collaboration, then you’re mightily gullible. You’ve been had. These are big, multi-billion dollar corporations whose executives are millionaires. They are more akin to drug cartels than to cooperative economics. The economic similarities are evident: both use others – the users or subscribers – to break the law for them, to generate their wealth for them, to do their dirty work, then leave those users to face legal, moral ……… click below for more ↓

Sloppy Reporting and Secret Agendas

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Media Issues / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

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One really doesn’t actually expect sterling journalism, good, investigative reporting or excellent editing from a community newspaper, but we do expect factual accuracy. And we expect reporters and editors to do at least the basics of their jobs. Some parallel stories in the local papers show just how inaccurate – and sloppy – local reporting and editing can be. And how this is letting council get away with its secret agendas unreported. The first story, in the Connection, is headlined, Collingwood calling on Collus Powerstream to divulge salaries of executives, employees. It opens: Salaries paid to executives and employees of ……… click below for more ↓

Where Have the Ratepayers’ Groups Gone?

Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Why don’t Collingwood’s ratepayer groups and associations last? In the 25-plus years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen several come and go. Every one has dissolved, evaporated or imploded within a year or two. Seldom do they last longer than a single term of council. Is this a normal part of the life cycle of such organizations, or is Collingwood at the unfortunate end of the Bell curve with these brief groups? Perhaps the answer for their short lifespans is twofold: first, they do not represent the general public, but rather a small and usually elitist group; and second, because they are one-trick ……… click below for more ↓

The birth and death of privacy

Critical Thinking / Manners & Civility / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder / Technology & GadgetsOne Comment

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I was in a local grocery store recently and it was my misfortune to enter, and walk most of the same aisles at the same time as a voluble woman shopper. She spent her entire time there on her cell phone. From before she entered, through the time she collected her groceries, went through the cash register, and exited, she did not once stop talking. Loudly. And it was a very personal, intimate conversation, as I and those in her near vicinity heard. Not intimate as in sexual, but she talked about private and personal issues, about other people, her feelings, her job, ……… click below for more ↓

Slow Down and Keep Quiet

Critical Thinking / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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I’m tired. I’m tired of a-holes treating my town streets like their personal raceways. I’m tired of immature jerks racing along streets well over the speed limit, squealing tires, ignoring stop signs. I’m tired of drivers who think they’re above the law; that the laws don’t apply to them. That what matters is that they can do what they want and screw the rest of us. Look, we get it. You’ve never matured beyond the show-and-tell stage. You’re releasing your inner six-year-old. You want to have a tantrum in the restaurant or the mall or some other public space like ……… click below for more ↓

Fortuna: Why Plans Fail

Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Psychology & Sociology / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Niccolo Machiavelli used two words in his book, The Prince, to describe the factors that influenced events. In English these are virtue or character (virtu), fortune or chance (fortuna). Only virtue is internal – our nature – and although it manifests as voluntary action, it can only be somewhat, but not entirely controlled.* The other – chance or fortune – can make the best-laid plans of mice and men go aft agley, as Robert Browning wrote, regardless of our efforts to the contrary. In Chapter 25 of The Prince (What Fortune Can Effect In Human Affairs And How To Withstand Her), ……… click below for more ↓

Nope, That’s Not by Marcus Aurelius

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social2 Comments

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An image appeared on my Facebook feed one day purporting to be a quotation taken from the Roman emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. Having read his Meditations more than once in multiple translations, I was baffled because it didn’t look at all familiar or even sound like him. But was it a new translation? The quote is: Everything we hear is a opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. It’s a good line, even if a tautology (the statement is itself an opinion), but I can’t find it in any online version of the ……… click below for more ↓

Hats, Manners and Society

Manners & Civility / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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I was at a local restaurant on the weekend, enjoying a nice meal with my wife. Of the six males – I hesitate to call them ‘men’ for reasons below – in the particular room in which we sat, I was the only one not wearing a baseball cap. I was also the only one not under 30. Wearing a hat indoors, as I was taught by people whose manners were impeccable (my parents and grandparents), is gauche. Gauche: graceless, awkward, unsophisticated. Wearing at hat at the table during a meal was so crude as to be viewed in social terms in ……… click below for more ↓

Time of Use Billing

Provincial Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Until I sold my business, a few years ago, and started working from home again, I didn’t realize how much of an aggressive assault on many Ontarians – especially seniors and stay-at-home parents – our hydro time-of-use  (TOU) billing is. I had a naïve belief that it was fair. A user-pay balance. A tool to encourage us to conserve and use our appliances more wisely. And I’ve always been a big believer in conservation. But time-of-use is not what we hoped. It targets the people generally least able to afford it. Hydro rates have risen rapidly under the current government: we in Ontario already ……… click below for more ↓

The Continued Rise of Anti-Intellectualism

Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / US Politics8 Comments

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I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people’s politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true. Neil deGrasse Tyson on Twitter* Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America, says the headline in this recent Psychology Today story. The subtitle reads: Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason. I wrote about anti-intellectualism as the new elitism back in late 2013. Since then, it seem the trend has not only increased dramatically, but the backlash against it has grown. However, the opposition trying to restore reason is neither organized nor has the same sort of shiny baubles to attract adherents ……… click below for more ↓

Conrad Black: Wrong on Religion, Again

Atheism & Spirituality / Christianity / Critical Thinking / Faith / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Atheists renounce and abstain from religions; they don’t reform them. So said Conrad Black in a recent National Post column. Black seems to be increasingly theological in his writing; perhaps he has had some sort of epiphany in prison. If so, it seems to be pushing him towards a Pauline-style intolerance and exclusivity, religiously speaking. That attitude is not conducive to dialogue, but it certainly suits the writer. And, as he has been in the past, he is wrong about both religion and atheism. He speaks from the position of the True Believer for whom no other perspective, let alone ……… click below for more ↓

Fishy Thoughts

Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / Science & Technology / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Canadians, the headline reads, now have shorter attention span than goldfish thanks to portable devices. The story in today’s National Post underscores a growing problem that is fuelled by technology: our dwindling attention spans. The Microsoft study of 2,000 Canadians found our collective attention span has dwindled to a mere eight seconds, down from an already embarrassing 12 seconds a similar study found back in the year 2000. Goldfish have an average nine second attention span. Eight seconds! How can you read a newspaper article, let alone a novel, with such a short attention span? How can you write or ……… click below for more ↓

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