Have you wondered why some people just seem to get all the breaks in life? You hear these stories all the time, like the one about the man and woman who accidentally meet on a plane ride, strike up a conversation with each other, and fall in love and then end up happily married till the very end or how a chance meeting between two guys at some random party turns into a successful business partnership. Some of the world’s most successful models were discovered standing in line waiting to get ice cream. It just seems like some people, when it comes to careers, relationships and just about everything, are a magnet for good fortune. There are even some people out there who are multiple lottery winners. Unfortunately, on the other end of the spectrum, there are those unfortunates for whom nothing seems to go right. Divorce, debt, poverty and failed careers reign supreme in their lives. It’s always one disaster after another. Sure intelligence and looks are obviously factors that come into play. But there are lots of smart and good-looking people in the world. Furthermore, I think it’s quite obvious that the world’s most successful people are not necessarily the most intelligent or physically attractive. Sometimes it seems to be the exact opposite. There seems to be no rhyme or reason behind why some people come into good fortune. Why oh why are some people just so damn lucky?! Well, author and psychologist Richard Wiseman set out to answer that question, scientifically. After objectively examining scores of so-called lucky and unlucky people, he claims to have identified four discrete principles that have been scientifically proven to attract good fortune. So enjoy these excerpts from his international best-seller that reveal The Luck Factor (ISBN: 9780099443247). Oh, and good luck to you!
“Luck exerts a dramatic influence over our lives. A few seconds of bad fortune can unravel years of striving, whilst a moment of good luck can lead to success and happiness. Luck has the power to transform the improbable into the possible; to make the difference between life and death, reward and ruin, happiness and despair.” Pg. 11
“Luck could not simply be the outcome of chance events. There were too many people consistently experiencing good and bad luck for it all to be chance. Instead, there must be something causing things to work out consistently well for some people and consistently badly for others. Given the importance of luck, it seemed vital to try to understand why this was the case. Were these people really destined to succeed or fated to fail? Were they part of some huge, cosmic game plan? Were they using some form of psychic ability to create good and bad luck? Or could it all be explained in terms of differences in their beliefs and behavior? Most important of all, if we understood more about what was happening, would it be possible to enhance people’s luck?” pg. 20
Principle One: Maximize Your Chance Opportunities
Lucky people create, notice and act upon the chance opportunities in their life.
Sub-Principle One: Lucky people build and maintain a strong ‘network of luck’
“Joseph, a 35-year old mature student, has also encountered life-changing chance opportunities in his life. When he was young he found it very difficult to settle down in school, and was in constant trouble with the police. By his late twenties he had drifted in and out of prison for several minor offenses, and from one job to another. Then a chance encounter changed his life. He was travelling on a train when it got stuck between two stations. Joseph became bored and struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to him. She was a psychologist and the two of them started to talk about Joseph’s life, and he began to confess to some of his self-destructive tendencies. The woman was impressed with his insight and social skills, and suggested that he would make an excellent psychologist. As the train pulled into the station the two of them parted company, but the women’s idea stuck in Joseph’s mind. He looked into the type of training and qualifications he would need to become a psychologist. He eventually made the decision to change his entire lifestyle and go to college. He is currently studying psychology at university and will graduate next year. Joseph told me ‘I’ve learned that if you initiate conversation with people you can get a lot out of it-to me, it improves my luck immensely.’ Pg. 43
“The differences between the lucky and unlucky people were dramatic. The lucky people smiled twice as much as unlucky people and engaged in far more eye contact.” Pg.44
“Lucky people are effective at building secure, and long lasting attachments with the people that they meet. They are easy to get to know and most people like them. They tend to be trusting and form close relationships with others. As a result, they often keep in touch with a much larger number of friends and colleagues than unlucky people, and time and time again, this network of friends helps promote opportunity in their lives.” Pg. 45
Sub-principle Two: Lucky people have a relaxed attitude towards life
“Lucky people’s ability to notice opportunities is a result of their relaxed way of looking at the world. It is not that they expect to find certain opportunities, but rather that they notice them when they come across them.” Pg. 53
“But being relaxed does not just help lucky people notice money in the street, or spot helpful items in newspapers, magazines and on the radio. Exactly the same principle applies when they meet and chat with other people. They do not go to parties and meetings trying hard to find their dream partners or someone will offer them their perfect job. Instead, they are simply relaxed and therefore more attuned to the opportunities around them.” Pg. 54
Sub-Principle Three: Lucky people are open to new experiences in their lives
“When it comes to holidays, we never book up, we just fly on the spur of the moment and get a hotel when we get there.” Pg. 58
“If you told me to go to the same store every single week and pick up the same thirty items, exactly the same, that would drive me mad. I have to go to one store one week, another the next week and a third the week after that.” Pg. 58
“Many of my lucky participants went to considerable lengths to introduce variety and change into their lives.” Pg. 58
“Imagine living in the center of a large apple orchard. Each day you have to venture out into the orchard and collect a large basket of apples. The first few times it won’t matter where you decide to visit. All parts of the orchard will have apples and so you will be able to find them wherever you go. But as time goes on it will become more and more difficult to find apples in the places that you have visited before. And the more you return to the same locations, the harder it will be to find apples there. But if you decide to go always to parts of the orchard that you have never visited before, or even randomly decide where to go, your chances of finding apples will be massively increased.” Pg. 59
Principle Two: Listen to Your Lucky Hunches
Lucky people make successful decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings
“When I asked lucky and unlucky people what was behind their successful and unsuccessful decisions they had very little idea how to explain their consistent good and bad luck. Lucky people simply knew when a decision was right. In contrast, unlucky people viewed many of their poor decisions as yet more evidence of how they were always destined to fail. I undertook research to discover why lucky people’s decisions led to so much success and happiness that those of unlucky people. The results were to show the remarkable abilities of our subconscious minds.” Pg. 71
Sub-Principle 1: Lucky people listen to their gut feelings and hunches.
“Lucky people’s intuition, gut feelings and hunches can play a massively important role in their lives. In fact, sometimes they may have made the difference between life and death.” Pg. 81
“A few years ago I was asked to speak at a business conference being held by a large bank. The timing of the talk meant that I had to stay overnight in the hotel attached to the conference center. When I booked in, the clerk behind the desk asked to take an imprint of my credit card to pay for the room. I have been in this situation hundreds of times before and usually hand over my card without really thinking about it, but this time I suddenly felt uneasy about the situation. I had no idea why I felt so uncomfortable, but I was simply reluctant about handing over the card. In fact, the intensity of the feeling was such that I took the very unusual step of paying for the room using a check. The following day I gave my talk and returned home. It turns out that the employee at the conference hotel had recently been arrested for his part in a large-scale credit card fraud.” Pg. 85
Sub-Principle 2: Lucky people take steps to boost their intuition.
Lucky people use the following techniques to boost their intuition:
1) Meditation
2) Return to the problem later
3) Clearing the mind
4) Finding a quiet place
Principle Three: Expect Good Fortune
Lucky people’s expectations about the future help them fulfill dreams and ambitions
“My research revealed that lucky people do not achieve their dreams and ambitions purely by chance. Nor does fate conspire to prevent unlucky people from obtaining what they want. Instead, lucky and unlucky people achieve, or fail to achieve, their ambitions because of a fundamental difference in how they think about both themselves and their lives.” Pg. 98
Sub-Principle 1: Lucky people expect their good luck to continue in the future
“I always go into things believing they’ll work out well. I am convinced that everything will be great. I’ve certainly come unstuck, but even then, good things come out of the bad and I always come out smiling. Some people don’t realize their luck when it is there. They look out the window and say ‘Oh dear, it is raining today,’ but I see the rain and think ‘Great, my flowers will be out tomorrow.’” Pg. 106
“Lucky and unlucky people have amazingly different expectations about the future. These expectations play an absolutely vital role in explaining why one group obtains their dreams with uncanny ease, whilst the other group rarely get what they want from life.” Pg. 107
“Lucky people are convinced that unpredictable and uncontrollable events will consistently work out for them. Unlucky people are the opposite: events within and outside their control will always work against them.” Pg. 107
“Unlucky people are convinced that any good luck that does happen to them will soon fade away, and that their future will continue to be bleak and miserable. Lucky people dismiss any unlucky events in their lives as short lived and transitory. In doing so, they are able to maintain their expectations of a bright and happy future.” Pg. 108
“What impact do these unusual and extreme expectations have on people’s lives? Our expectations have a powerful effect on the way in which we think, feel and act. They can influence our health, how we behave towards others and how others behave towards others. My research revealed that the special kind of expectations held by lucky and unlucky people had a huge impact on their lives.” Pg. 108
“Imagine that you are feeling a bit down because you have just moved to a new neighborhood and are finding it difficult to meet people. Just for fun, you decide to go along to the local fortune teller to find out what the future holds for you. The fortune teller takes your money, gazes into her crystal ball, smiles and says that the future looks bright. She says that within a few months you will be surrounded by many close and loyal friends. You are reassured by the fortune teller’s comments and walk away feeling happier than when you arrived. Because you now feel happy and confident about the future, you smile more, go out more and chat to more people. In short, you start to behave in a way that greatly increases your chances of making friends. After a few weeks you find that you are indeed surrounded by a close circle of friends and frequently recommend the fortune teller to others. In fact, it is quite possible that the fortune teller did not actually see into the future but instead actually helped to create it. Her comments affected your expectations about your social life and this, in turn, caused you to behave in a way that increased the chances of these expectations becoming a reality. Your expectations became a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Pg. 109
“Self-fulfilling prophecies so not just affect children’s levels of attainment at school. They affect our health, how we behave in the workplace, how we behave with others and how others respond to us.” Pg. 110
Sub-Principle 2: Lucky people attempt to achieve their goals, even if their chances of success seem slim, and persevere in the face of failure
“I just know that in the end everything will be okay. I know that I will win the lottery. I may not win $10 million, but I know I will get something significant. But you do have to try. If you don’t buy a ticket then you are not going to win. It’s the same in other aspects of your life. If you expect to be lucky, you will be lucky. It’s a state of mind. My mother and father were a great influence on me-I grew up to believe that you can do whatever you want if you believe in yourself enough and are positive.” Pg. 117
“Marvin’s persistence has certainly paid off. Despite his failing his woodwork exams at school, he applied for a job as a carpenter in a large shipyard. Marvin went along to the interview full of energy and hope. The interviewer was won over by his enthusiasm and offered him the job. Later on in his life he decided that he wanted to work as a private detective. Despite having no formal training or experience, he wrote to all the private detective agencies in the area, but didn’t even get one reply. Instead of giving up, Marvin put on his best suit, and went to visit the offices of one of the largest agencies in the region. The head of the company just happened to be standing in the foyer when Marvin walked in, and the two of them started chatting. The man liked Marvin and offered him a job with the company. A few hours later, Marvin walked away with headed stationary, business cards and his dream job.” Pg. 117
“Lucky people expected things to work out well and so were much more likely to attempt to achieve their goals, well and so were much more likely to attempt to achieve their goals, even if the chances of success were slim, and were far more likely to persevere. These differences actually caused many of the apparently lucky and unlucky events in their lives. They could make the difference between whether they won or lost competitions, passed or failed important examinations and succeeded or failed to find loving partners.” Pg. 119
Sub-Principle 3: Lucky people expect their interactions with others to be lucky and successful
“Lucky people expect to meet people who are interesting, happy, and fun to be with.” Pg. 120
“If I want something, I dream it through. I used to do that in business when I was doing competitions in sales. I would dream that I was winning them and receiving the prizes. I’d find myself in bed at night dream wishing. It could be six months ahead to the final outcome; I would still dream it through. I plan telephone calls even before I pick up the receiver. I sit down and I even focus on the person I will be speaking to being positive towards me. Whether I know the person or not, I’m still thinking and trying to imagine him or her saying the right things to me. At a lot of training courses I mentioned dream wishing and people laughed and probably thought I was mad! But when I tried it, all of a sudden sales figures started increasing, so I just kept doing it. I’ve had many good reactions, and been so successful, that I am certain there is something to it.” Pg. 123
“It’s odd. Things have always worked out for me. It’s wonderful because I know that, anywhere I go, I can always get a job and a place to live, because it always just happens for me like that. It’s given me an amazing amount of confidence and ability to travel. Anywhere I go into I’ll be able to get a job. Every job I’ve ever had, from the first one when I was sixteen, I’ve just walked in and been hired immediately.” Pg. 124
“Lucky people have very positive expectations about the future. They expect to be lucky in all areas of their life, and in situations that are both within and outside their control. These expectations have a major impact on lucky people’s lives-they have the power to become self-fulfilling prophecies and make dreams come true.” Pg. 128
“During my research, lucky people often spoke about how they visualize themselves experiencing good fortune.” Pg. 132
Principle Four: Turn Your Bad Luck into Good
Lucky people are able to transform their bad luck into good fortune
“In Japan, there is a common good luck charm called a Daruma Doll. It is named after a Buddhist monk, who according to legend, sat so long in meditation that his arms and legs disappeared. The Daruma Doll is egg shaped with a heavy, rounded bottom. When you knock it over it always stands back up. Lucky people are similar to the Daruma Doll. It is not that they never encounter ill fortune, but rather, when bad luck happens, lucky people are able to stand straight back up. The secret of lucky people’s ability to turn bad luck into good lies in four techniques. Together, these form an almost invincible shield that guards lucky people against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Pg.134
Sub-Principle 1: Lucky people see the positive side of their bad luck.
“The different way in which lucky people and unlucky people looked at the ill fortune in their lives emerged in many of their interviews. Agnes, an artist from Scotland, has a very happy family life and has been lucky throughout her career. Agnes has come face to face with death on several occasions throughout her life. Amazingly, Agnes hasn’t let this lifetime of deadly accidents and injuries get her down. Instead, her spontaneous ability to imagine how each of the situations could have been much worse has helped keep her spirits high and see herself as a lucky person.” Pg. 140
“Lucky people tend to lessen the impact of their ill fortune by comparing themselves to people who have been unluckier than themselves.” Pg. 142
Sub-Principle 2: Lucky people are convinced that any ill-fortune in their life will, in the long run, work out for the best
“There is an ancient parable about a wise farmer who realized that many of the seemingly unlucky events in our lives often have an uncanny way of turning out to be lucky in the long run. One day, the farmer was out riding when his horse suddenly threw him to the ground. The farmer landed badly and broke his leg. A few days later his neighbor came to commiserate with him on his bad luck, but the farmer replied ‘How do you know that this is bad luck?” A week later, people in the village were due to hold a special festival, but the farmer was unable to attend the celebrations because of his broken leg. Once again, his neighbor expressed some sympathy for his misfortune and said, once again, the farmer replied ‘How do you know that this is bad luck?’ There was a terrible fire at the festival and many people died. The neighbor realized that the farmer’s run of apparent ill fortune had helped save his life, and that the farmer had been right to question whether these events had been unlucky.” Pg. 143
Sub-Principle 3: Lucky people do not dwell on their ill fortune
“Unlucky people tend to dwell on the bad luck in their lives. As one unlucky person put it: ‘It’s almost as though I have had a curse put on me. There have been times when I don’t know where to turn. I have lost a lot of sleep worrying about everything that has gone wrong, even though I can’t do anything about it. I wonder what I have done that is so bad to deserve this.” Lucky people do the opposite. They let go of the past and focus on the future.” Pg. 145
“I think meditation helps me to get a better perspective on life. You can switch off, calm down and when you wake up de-stressed, you take a different view on things. It makes you realize that if you can’t change a situation then there’s no point in getting stressed. If you can take some action and do something about it, then do it; but if there’s nothing you can do-like if you’re sitting in traffic on the motorway-then you might as well forget about it and calm down.” Pg. 145-146
“I used to go to Buddhist meditation and that was really helpful. I learnt to just let things go if something wasn’t right or was bothering me. You just have to put it behind you as an experience that hasn’t been good and then try not to worry about it. I find that very easy to do; I don’t dwell on stuff.” Pg. 146
“I very rarely worry about the past. Instead, I look for the treasure in the mountain of trash and very rarely get bogged down into the negative aspects of things. I normally focus on what’s good about this situation and how I can benefit from it.” Pg. 147
“Research has shown that when people dwell on the negative events in their lives they start to feel sad. When people concentrate on positive events from their past, they feel much happier.” Pg. 147
“When facing problems, lucky people tend to describe how they would persevere rather than give up, how they would treat these kinds of experiences as opportunities to learn from past mistakes, and how they would explore novel and more constructive ways of solving the problem, such as consulting experts and engaging in lateral thinking.” Pg. 148
Sub-Principle 4: Lucky people take constructive steps to prevent more bad luck in the future
“After imagining going on three failed dates, one lucky person explained how they would persevere: ‘I’d try, try, and try again. Don’t be deterred, go for it. You can’t just give up that easy. Life’s set these little tasks for you and you’ve just got to see them through.” Pg. 150
After imagining going on three failed job interviews, another wrote: ‘I’d just shrug my shoulders and carry on. I think probably the same day I’d write off to more places, so I felt that I was doing something positive.” Pg. 150
“So, lucky people persist, and have more constructive responses, in the face of failure.” Pg. 151
Take these five steps to solve a difficult problem:
One: First, don’t assume that there is nothing you can do about the situation. Make a decision to take control and not be a victim of bad luck.
Two: Do something now-not next week and not tomorrow, but right now.
Three: Make a list of all your various options. Be creative. Think out of the box. Try looking at the situation from different points of view. Brainstorm. Come up with as many potential solutions as possible, no matter how silly or absurd they may seem. Ask your friends what they would do under the same circumstances. Keep on adding more and more possible solutions.
Fourth: Decide how you are going to move forward. Consider each and every possible solution. How long will the solution take? Do you have the knowledge and skills to implement the solution? What are the likely outcomes if you decide to adopt a particular solution?
Fifth: Finally, and most important of all, start to solve the problem. Obviously, sometimes the solution might involve waiting rather than rushing to do something foolhardy-that’s fine, providing your inaction is part of a plan and not simple procrastination. Also, be prepared to adapt your solution as the future unfolds. Such self-restraint and flexibility are important aspects of being lucky. But the important point is that you start to concentrate on finding a solution rather than fixating on the problem.” Pg. 167
Oh, just last thing I gotta get in before I close this blog, I have a feeling I'm gonna piss off
some people. But I don't care. So here goes with my closing thought. If you become a fervent, spirit-filled Christian (or Messianic believer, whichever term you find most apt), you will automatically fulfill all of the conditions needed to attract luck. So good luck and G-d bless!
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Monday, May 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Book Review of “What’s so Great about America?” by Dinesh D’Souza
“Why are some countries more successful than others?” I’m sure this question has crossed the minds of quite a few people. Many books have been written to answer this question. Some of them have propounded evolutionary and environmental theories while other hypotheses are rooted in religion. Others state that the rise and fall of nations is cyclical. Every nation has its glorious day in the sun before fading away such as Great Britain and the Roman Empire before that. China is also upheld as an example of a nation that was once great, lost its former glory and is now making a comeback. I myself have obsessed over this question for quite a long time and in my quest to find a reasonable answer, I devoured quite a number of books. Over time, the results of my research have basically yielded one overriding conclusion. I affirm that the history of the nation of Israel and the gift of monotheism this nation has bequeathed to the world culminating in the coming of the messiah has been the one decisive factor that has shaped history. At this juncture, I am sure that quite a few people will write me off as being one of those religious nuts who views everything through the lens of a biased Biblical worldview. Well, to be honest with you, they would be right. I do view everything through a Torah-based worldview because I believe it is God’s word to mankind. But that’s not the point here. The point is, am I right? Based on the socio-historical and existing empirical evidences, does my affirmation hold water? In support of my theory, I offer to you the following quotes from one of America’s sharpest political thinkers as he explores the real roots behind what has made the United States of America a beacon of light to the other nations of the world. Be prepared to have the foundations of your worldview shaken at its very foundations.
“I am impressed at the fact that Americans cannot fight a war and say they are doing it for strategic advantage or for oil; they have to be convinced, or to convince themselves, that they are fighting to expel a tyrant, or to secure democracy, or to ensure human rights. In other societies there are multiple measures of social recognition, such as family background, education, caste, and so on; in the United States, it pretty much comes down to how much money you have. Even so, ‘old money’ carries very little prestige in America; all it means is that your grandfather was a robber baron or a bootlegger. As a frequent speaker at American companies, I am struck by the ease with which Palestinians and Jews, Hindus and Muslims, Turks and Armenians, all work together in apparent disregard of the bitter historical grievances that have shattered their communities of origin. Elsewhere in the world the poor aspire to middle-class respectability, but in the United States the wealthy seek to dress and act like middle-class people, or even like bums. American children seem to believe quite literally that you can ‘be whatever you want to be,’ implausible though this seems to people in other places. American parents seem unnaturally eager to befriend their children and to treat them as equals, yet the children seem firmly convinced that they are far wiser than their elders. Young people in the United States ‘go away to college’ and typically never return home to live. In many other countries this would be regarded as abandoning one’s offspring. Americans are the friendliest people you will encounter, but they have few friends. Most people in the United States do not believe in idleness and pursue even leisure with a kind of strenuous effort. There are very weird people in America, but nobody seems struck or bothered by the amount of weirdness. In many countries old people believe their life is over and pretty much wait to die, while in America people in their seventies pursue the pleasures of life, including remarriage and sexual gratification, with a zeal I find unnerving. While the funeral is a standard public ceremony in most countries, funerals are a very rare public sight in America, and no one likes to go to them. It seems that Americans don’t really die: they just disappear.” Pg. 32
“We live in a world that has been decisively shaped by Western civilization. Travel to virtually any part of the globe, and the signs and symbols of Western dominance are prominent.” Pg. 37
“The British left India in 1947, and India became free. The Indians could easily have cast off their suits and ties and returned to their native garb. They had the option of returning to ancient tribal modes of government. The Indians could have outlawed the English language and required all education to be in Hindustani or one of the native dialects. But the Indians did not do any of these things. They decided on their own, and for their benefit, to continue doing many of the things that they had learned from the British.” Pg. 38
“If one begins with the multicultural premise that all cultures are equal, then the world as it is makes very little sense. After all, we live in a world where, by virtually any measure of achievement or success, some cultures are advanced and others are backward. To take one measure of success that everybody seems to want-economic development-it is obvious that the West is vastly ahead of everyone else. There is simply no comparison between, say, the per capita income of Europe and America and that of the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. If sub-Saharan Africa were to sink into the ocean tomorrow, the world economy would be largely unaffected.” Pg. 40
KEY QUESTION:
“Why did Western civilization become so dominant in the modern era? How did this massive transformation of the world begin? This important question is rendered all the more provocative by the realization that for most of human history other civilizations have proven far more advanced than the West: more advanced in learning, in wealth, in exploration, in inventions, and in cultural sophistication and works of the mind. How did the West accumulate so much economic, political, and military power that it was able to conquer and subdue all the other cultures of the world put together?”
Pg. 43 & 45
BEFORE WE ANSWER THIS QUESTION, LET’S EXPLODE THE COMMON EXISTING THEORIES.
1) THE ENVIRONMENTAL THEORY
“According to this view, cultures are the product of location and natural resources, and whether a culture develops or remains stagnant depends on such factors as the availability of mineral resources, climate, proximity to rivers, and such. The most eloquent expression of this argument is given by Jared Diamond in his bestselling book Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond argues that Europe enjoyed immense natural advantages in prehistoric times that gave it a ‘head start’ over the other cultures of the world.”
WHY THE ENVIRONMENTAL THEORY IS FALLACIOUS:
“If Diamond is right that Europe enjoyed a natural advantage from ancient times, then why did this lead not become manifest until modern times? For more than a thousand years-say between A.D. 500 and A.D 1500- the West was a civilizational laggard and showed no signs of becoming the world’s dominant civilization. As we have seen, all bets were on China and the Islamic world. For the success of the West in the past five hundred years in ‘coming from behind’ to take over the world, Diamond and the environmental school have no plausible explanation.” Pg. 43
2) THE OPPRESSION THEORY:
“According to this view, the reason that Western civilization became dominant in the past five hundred years is because it is evil. Oppression-and specifically the crimes of ethnocentrism, colonialism, imperialism, and racism-is said to be the key to Western success. In other words, the West grew rich and powerful by beating up everybody else and taking their stuff.” Perhaps the most powerful exponent of oppression theory is the anti-colonial writer Frantz Fanon. Fanon writes, ‘European opulence has been founded on slavery. The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races.” Pg. 44-45
WHY THE OPPRESSION THEORY IS FALLACIOUS:
There is nothing intrinsically Western about the practices of ethnocentrism, colonialism, and slavery. Hence, these cannot be the underlying reasons behind Western dominance. Besides this statement seems to beg the question, because what we are really trying to discover is the source of power that allowed the Western brand of ethnocentrism, colonialism and slavery to dominate. In other words, why is the Western brand of ethnocentrism, colonialism and slavery superior to let’s say Islam’s or China’s brand of ethnocentrism, colonialism and slavery? Regardless, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The real answer is that the West succeeded in spite of ethnocentrism, colonialism and slavery, not because of it.
DEBUNKING ETHNOCENTRISM
“When we look to other cultures, however, we find that there is nothing distinctively Western about ethnocentrism. It is present in abundance beyond Western shores. The Chinese, for instance, believed themselves to be the Middle Kingdom, the center of the universe. Of course, Islam resembled Christianity in believing itself in possession of the whole revealed truth, with everyone else consigned to ignorance and darkness. Indeed, it is frequently the case that the less developed a tribe, the more ethnocentric it is. What this research confirms is that ethnocentrism is universal, and it is not necessarily substantiated by civilizational achievement. WHAT IS DISTINCTIVELY WESTERN IS NOT ETHNOCENTRISM (or racism), BUT A PROFOUND AND HIGHLY BENEFICIAL EFFORT TO TRANSCEND ETHNOCENTRISM.” Pg. 49-50
“It was the West, after all, which invented the notion of the ‘noble savage.’ We take this curiosity so much for granted that is surprises many to learn that other cultures historically have not shared it.” Pg. 50
3) THE COLONIALISM THEORY
“Those who identify colonialism and empire only with the West either have no sense of history or have forgotten about the Persian empire, the Macedonian empire, the Islamic empire, the Mongol empire, the Chinese empire, and the Aztec and Inca empires in the Americas. Shouldn’t the Arabs be paying reparations for their destruction of the Byzantine and Persian empires? Come to think of it, shouldn’t the Byzantine and Persian people also pay reparations to the descendants of the people they subjugated? And while we’re at it, shouldn’t the Muslims reimburse the Spaniards for their seven-hundred-year rule?” pg. 54
“As the example of Islamic Spain suggests, the people of the West have participated in the game of conquest not as the perpetrator, but also as the victims. Ancient Greece, for example, was conquered by Rome, and the Roman Empire itself was destroyed by the invasion of the Huns, Vandals, Lombards, and Visigoths from northern Europe. America, as we all know, was itself a colony of England before its war of independence; England, before that, was subjugated and ruled by the Norman kings from France. Those of us living today are taking on a large project if we are going to settle upon a rule of social justice based upon figuring out whose ancestors did what to whom.” Pg. 54
4) THE SLAVERY THEORY
“Perhaps it is not colonialism but slavery that is distinctively Western. Actually, no. Slavery has existed in all known civilizations. In his study Slavery and Social Death, the West Indian sociologist Orlando Patterson writes, “Slavery has existed from the dawn of human history, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized. There is no region on earth that has not at some time harbored the institution.” The Sumerians and Babylonians practiced slavery, as did the ancient Egyptians. The Chinese, the Indians, and the Arabs all had slaves. Slavery was widespread in Greece and Rome, and also in sub-Saharan Africa. American Indians practiced slavery long before Columbus set one foot on this continent.” Pg. 54
DEBUNKING THE SLAVERY THEORY
“If slavery is not distinctively Western, what is? The movement to end slavery! Abolition is an exclusively Western institution. The historian J.M. Roberts writes, “No civilization once dependent on slavery has every been able to eradicate it, except the Western.” Pg. 55
“The uniqueness of this Western approach is confirmed by the little known fact that African chiefs, who profited from the slave trade, sent delegations to the West to protest the abolition of slavery.” Pg. 55
“THE DESCENDANTS OF AFRICAN SLAVES OWE THEIR FREEDOM TO THE EXERTIONS OF WHITE STRANGERS, NOT TO THE PEOPLE OF AFRICA WHO BETRAYED THEM AND SOLD THEM.” Pg. 55 (capitalized emphasis mine-Rich Oka)
“A trenchant observation on the matter was offered years ago by Muhammad Ali, shortly after his defeat of George Foreman for the heavyweight title. Upon returning to the United States, Ali was asked by a reporter, ‘Champ, what did you think of Africa?’ Ali replied, ‘Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat.” Pg. 56
“But starting in the seventeenth century, certain segments of Christianity-initially the Quakers, then the evangelical Christians-began to interpret biblical equality as forbidding the ownership of one man by another. Only then, for the first time, did slavery become a political problem.” Pg. 111
HOW THEN DID THE WEST BECOME DOMINANT?
“I want to suggest that the reason the West became the dominant civilization in the modern era is because it invented three institutions: science, democracy, and capitalism. These institutions did not exist anywhere else in the world, nor did they exist in the West until the modern era. Admittedly all three institutions are based on human impulses and aspirations that are universal. But these aspirations were given a unique expression in Western civilization, largely due to the influence of Athens and Jerusalem-Athens representing the principle of autonomous reason and Jerusalem representing the revealed truths of Judaism and Christianity.”
HOW DID SCIENCE DEVELOP IN THE WEST?
“A notion crucial to the development of science is the idea of development itself-the idea of progress. Sociologist Robert Nisbet terms it “one of the master ideas of the West.” We see it, for instance, in the teenager who says to her mother, “Mom, how can you believe that? This is 2002!” That cliché is freighted with philosophical significance: it presumes a higher consciousness for the present than existed in the past. The belief in progress is also evident in the widespread expectation that our knowledge and our economy will continue to grow, and that our children will know more and have a better life than we do. Europeans and Americans take these things for granted, but they are novel concepts that arose recently in the West.”
“The idea of progress, like the idea of reason, is a doctrine that cannot be proved but must be taken on faith.” Pg. 63
“The modern West is the only civilization to entertain the idea that there is a meaningful pattern to history, that this pattern is onward and upward, that knowledge is cumulative and that its applications to human betterment are continuous and never-ending, that the future is certain to be better than the past.” Pg. 63
“Where, then, did the Western belief in progress come from? From Christianity. It is Christianity that introduced the idea of a divine plan for man and the world. In this view, history was not one meaningless event after another: it represented the fulfillment of a story line-a story line that began with the Fall but would end in triumph with the second coming of Christ.” Pg. 64
Conclusion: “Colonialism and imperialism are not the cause of West’s success; they are the result of that success.” Pg. 66
WHY AMERICA IS UNIQUE
“One of my high-school teachers in India liked to say, ‘If Hitler had been ruling India, Gandhi would be a lamp shade.” This man was not known for his sensitivity, be he had a habit of speaking the truth. His point was that the success of Gandhi and of the Indian protesters, who prostrated themselves on the train tracks, depended on the certain knowledge that the trains would stop rather than run over them. With tactics such as these, Gandhi his followers hoped to paralyze British rule in India, and they succeeded. But what if the British had ordered the trains to keep going? This is certainly what Hitler would have done? I don’t see Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun being deterred by Gandhi’s strategy. Even as the Indians denounced the West as wholly unprincipled and immoral, they relied on Western principles and Western morality to secure their independence.” Pg. 71
“The ideologues who proclaim the equality of all cultures simply cannot account for why so many people around the world seem perfectly willing to dump their ancient cultures and adopt new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that they associate with America. Nor can they account for the millions of people who have come as immigrants in the search of the American dream. If all cultures are equal, why aren’t people breaking down doors to get into Cuba or Iraq or Somalia?” pg. 74
“In America, the immigrant immediately recognizes, things are different. The newcomer who sees America for the first time typically experiences emotions that alternate between wonder and delight. Here is a country where everything works: the roads are clean and paper smooth, the highway signs are clear and accurate, the public toilets function properly, when you pick up a telephone you get a dial tone, you can even buy things from the store and then take them back.” Pg. 77
“I have a friend of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States for nearly a decade. Finally, I asked him, ‘Why are you so eager to come to America?” He replied, ‘Because I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.’” Pg. 77
“The American view is that the rich guy may have more money, but he isn’t in any fundamental sense better than you are. The American janitor or waiter see himself as performing a service but he doesn’t see himself as inferior to those he serves. And neither do the customers see him that way: they are generally happy to show him respect and appreciation on a plane of equality. America is the only country in the world where we call the waiter ‘Sir’ as if he were a knight.” Pg. 78
“As Irving Kristol once observed, there is virtually no restaurant in America to which a CEO can go to lunch with the absolute assurance that he will not find his secretary also dining there. Given the standard of living of the ordinary American, it is no wonder that socialist or revolutionary themes never found a wide constituency in the United States.” Pg. 79
“This notion of you being the architect of your own destiny is the incredibly powerful idea that is behind the worldwide appeal of America.” Pg. 84
“America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. History will view America as a great gift to the world, a gift that Americans today must preserve and cherish.” Pg. 193
“I am impressed at the fact that Americans cannot fight a war and say they are doing it for strategic advantage or for oil; they have to be convinced, or to convince themselves, that they are fighting to expel a tyrant, or to secure democracy, or to ensure human rights. In other societies there are multiple measures of social recognition, such as family background, education, caste, and so on; in the United States, it pretty much comes down to how much money you have. Even so, ‘old money’ carries very little prestige in America; all it means is that your grandfather was a robber baron or a bootlegger. As a frequent speaker at American companies, I am struck by the ease with which Palestinians and Jews, Hindus and Muslims, Turks and Armenians, all work together in apparent disregard of the bitter historical grievances that have shattered their communities of origin. Elsewhere in the world the poor aspire to middle-class respectability, but in the United States the wealthy seek to dress and act like middle-class people, or even like bums. American children seem to believe quite literally that you can ‘be whatever you want to be,’ implausible though this seems to people in other places. American parents seem unnaturally eager to befriend their children and to treat them as equals, yet the children seem firmly convinced that they are far wiser than their elders. Young people in the United States ‘go away to college’ and typically never return home to live. In many other countries this would be regarded as abandoning one’s offspring. Americans are the friendliest people you will encounter, but they have few friends. Most people in the United States do not believe in idleness and pursue even leisure with a kind of strenuous effort. There are very weird people in America, but nobody seems struck or bothered by the amount of weirdness. In many countries old people believe their life is over and pretty much wait to die, while in America people in their seventies pursue the pleasures of life, including remarriage and sexual gratification, with a zeal I find unnerving. While the funeral is a standard public ceremony in most countries, funerals are a very rare public sight in America, and no one likes to go to them. It seems that Americans don’t really die: they just disappear.” Pg. 32
“We live in a world that has been decisively shaped by Western civilization. Travel to virtually any part of the globe, and the signs and symbols of Western dominance are prominent.” Pg. 37
“The British left India in 1947, and India became free. The Indians could easily have cast off their suits and ties and returned to their native garb. They had the option of returning to ancient tribal modes of government. The Indians could have outlawed the English language and required all education to be in Hindustani or one of the native dialects. But the Indians did not do any of these things. They decided on their own, and for their benefit, to continue doing many of the things that they had learned from the British.” Pg. 38
“If one begins with the multicultural premise that all cultures are equal, then the world as it is makes very little sense. After all, we live in a world where, by virtually any measure of achievement or success, some cultures are advanced and others are backward. To take one measure of success that everybody seems to want-economic development-it is obvious that the West is vastly ahead of everyone else. There is simply no comparison between, say, the per capita income of Europe and America and that of the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. If sub-Saharan Africa were to sink into the ocean tomorrow, the world economy would be largely unaffected.” Pg. 40
KEY QUESTION:
“Why did Western civilization become so dominant in the modern era? How did this massive transformation of the world begin? This important question is rendered all the more provocative by the realization that for most of human history other civilizations have proven far more advanced than the West: more advanced in learning, in wealth, in exploration, in inventions, and in cultural sophistication and works of the mind. How did the West accumulate so much economic, political, and military power that it was able to conquer and subdue all the other cultures of the world put together?”
Pg. 43 & 45
BEFORE WE ANSWER THIS QUESTION, LET’S EXPLODE THE COMMON EXISTING THEORIES.
1) THE ENVIRONMENTAL THEORY
“According to this view, cultures are the product of location and natural resources, and whether a culture develops or remains stagnant depends on such factors as the availability of mineral resources, climate, proximity to rivers, and such. The most eloquent expression of this argument is given by Jared Diamond in his bestselling book Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond argues that Europe enjoyed immense natural advantages in prehistoric times that gave it a ‘head start’ over the other cultures of the world.”
WHY THE ENVIRONMENTAL THEORY IS FALLACIOUS:
“If Diamond is right that Europe enjoyed a natural advantage from ancient times, then why did this lead not become manifest until modern times? For more than a thousand years-say between A.D. 500 and A.D 1500- the West was a civilizational laggard and showed no signs of becoming the world’s dominant civilization. As we have seen, all bets were on China and the Islamic world. For the success of the West in the past five hundred years in ‘coming from behind’ to take over the world, Diamond and the environmental school have no plausible explanation.” Pg. 43
2) THE OPPRESSION THEORY:
“According to this view, the reason that Western civilization became dominant in the past five hundred years is because it is evil. Oppression-and specifically the crimes of ethnocentrism, colonialism, imperialism, and racism-is said to be the key to Western success. In other words, the West grew rich and powerful by beating up everybody else and taking their stuff.” Perhaps the most powerful exponent of oppression theory is the anti-colonial writer Frantz Fanon. Fanon writes, ‘European opulence has been founded on slavery. The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races.” Pg. 44-45
WHY THE OPPRESSION THEORY IS FALLACIOUS:
There is nothing intrinsically Western about the practices of ethnocentrism, colonialism, and slavery. Hence, these cannot be the underlying reasons behind Western dominance. Besides this statement seems to beg the question, because what we are really trying to discover is the source of power that allowed the Western brand of ethnocentrism, colonialism and slavery to dominate. In other words, why is the Western brand of ethnocentrism, colonialism and slavery superior to let’s say Islam’s or China’s brand of ethnocentrism, colonialism and slavery? Regardless, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The real answer is that the West succeeded in spite of ethnocentrism, colonialism and slavery, not because of it.
DEBUNKING ETHNOCENTRISM
“When we look to other cultures, however, we find that there is nothing distinctively Western about ethnocentrism. It is present in abundance beyond Western shores. The Chinese, for instance, believed themselves to be the Middle Kingdom, the center of the universe. Of course, Islam resembled Christianity in believing itself in possession of the whole revealed truth, with everyone else consigned to ignorance and darkness. Indeed, it is frequently the case that the less developed a tribe, the more ethnocentric it is. What this research confirms is that ethnocentrism is universal, and it is not necessarily substantiated by civilizational achievement. WHAT IS DISTINCTIVELY WESTERN IS NOT ETHNOCENTRISM (or racism), BUT A PROFOUND AND HIGHLY BENEFICIAL EFFORT TO TRANSCEND ETHNOCENTRISM.” Pg. 49-50
“It was the West, after all, which invented the notion of the ‘noble savage.’ We take this curiosity so much for granted that is surprises many to learn that other cultures historically have not shared it.” Pg. 50
3) THE COLONIALISM THEORY
“Those who identify colonialism and empire only with the West either have no sense of history or have forgotten about the Persian empire, the Macedonian empire, the Islamic empire, the Mongol empire, the Chinese empire, and the Aztec and Inca empires in the Americas. Shouldn’t the Arabs be paying reparations for their destruction of the Byzantine and Persian empires? Come to think of it, shouldn’t the Byzantine and Persian people also pay reparations to the descendants of the people they subjugated? And while we’re at it, shouldn’t the Muslims reimburse the Spaniards for their seven-hundred-year rule?” pg. 54
“As the example of Islamic Spain suggests, the people of the West have participated in the game of conquest not as the perpetrator, but also as the victims. Ancient Greece, for example, was conquered by Rome, and the Roman Empire itself was destroyed by the invasion of the Huns, Vandals, Lombards, and Visigoths from northern Europe. America, as we all know, was itself a colony of England before its war of independence; England, before that, was subjugated and ruled by the Norman kings from France. Those of us living today are taking on a large project if we are going to settle upon a rule of social justice based upon figuring out whose ancestors did what to whom.” Pg. 54
4) THE SLAVERY THEORY
“Perhaps it is not colonialism but slavery that is distinctively Western. Actually, no. Slavery has existed in all known civilizations. In his study Slavery and Social Death, the West Indian sociologist Orlando Patterson writes, “Slavery has existed from the dawn of human history, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized. There is no region on earth that has not at some time harbored the institution.” The Sumerians and Babylonians practiced slavery, as did the ancient Egyptians. The Chinese, the Indians, and the Arabs all had slaves. Slavery was widespread in Greece and Rome, and also in sub-Saharan Africa. American Indians practiced slavery long before Columbus set one foot on this continent.” Pg. 54
DEBUNKING THE SLAVERY THEORY
“If slavery is not distinctively Western, what is? The movement to end slavery! Abolition is an exclusively Western institution. The historian J.M. Roberts writes, “No civilization once dependent on slavery has every been able to eradicate it, except the Western.” Pg. 55
“The uniqueness of this Western approach is confirmed by the little known fact that African chiefs, who profited from the slave trade, sent delegations to the West to protest the abolition of slavery.” Pg. 55
“THE DESCENDANTS OF AFRICAN SLAVES OWE THEIR FREEDOM TO THE EXERTIONS OF WHITE STRANGERS, NOT TO THE PEOPLE OF AFRICA WHO BETRAYED THEM AND SOLD THEM.” Pg. 55 (capitalized emphasis mine-Rich Oka)
“A trenchant observation on the matter was offered years ago by Muhammad Ali, shortly after his defeat of George Foreman for the heavyweight title. Upon returning to the United States, Ali was asked by a reporter, ‘Champ, what did you think of Africa?’ Ali replied, ‘Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat.” Pg. 56
“But starting in the seventeenth century, certain segments of Christianity-initially the Quakers, then the evangelical Christians-began to interpret biblical equality as forbidding the ownership of one man by another. Only then, for the first time, did slavery become a political problem.” Pg. 111
HOW THEN DID THE WEST BECOME DOMINANT?
“I want to suggest that the reason the West became the dominant civilization in the modern era is because it invented three institutions: science, democracy, and capitalism. These institutions did not exist anywhere else in the world, nor did they exist in the West until the modern era. Admittedly all three institutions are based on human impulses and aspirations that are universal. But these aspirations were given a unique expression in Western civilization, largely due to the influence of Athens and Jerusalem-Athens representing the principle of autonomous reason and Jerusalem representing the revealed truths of Judaism and Christianity.”
HOW DID SCIENCE DEVELOP IN THE WEST?
“A notion crucial to the development of science is the idea of development itself-the idea of progress. Sociologist Robert Nisbet terms it “one of the master ideas of the West.” We see it, for instance, in the teenager who says to her mother, “Mom, how can you believe that? This is 2002!” That cliché is freighted with philosophical significance: it presumes a higher consciousness for the present than existed in the past. The belief in progress is also evident in the widespread expectation that our knowledge and our economy will continue to grow, and that our children will know more and have a better life than we do. Europeans and Americans take these things for granted, but they are novel concepts that arose recently in the West.”
“The idea of progress, like the idea of reason, is a doctrine that cannot be proved but must be taken on faith.” Pg. 63
“The modern West is the only civilization to entertain the idea that there is a meaningful pattern to history, that this pattern is onward and upward, that knowledge is cumulative and that its applications to human betterment are continuous and never-ending, that the future is certain to be better than the past.” Pg. 63
“Where, then, did the Western belief in progress come from? From Christianity. It is Christianity that introduced the idea of a divine plan for man and the world. In this view, history was not one meaningless event after another: it represented the fulfillment of a story line-a story line that began with the Fall but would end in triumph with the second coming of Christ.” Pg. 64
Conclusion: “Colonialism and imperialism are not the cause of West’s success; they are the result of that success.” Pg. 66
WHY AMERICA IS UNIQUE
“One of my high-school teachers in India liked to say, ‘If Hitler had been ruling India, Gandhi would be a lamp shade.” This man was not known for his sensitivity, be he had a habit of speaking the truth. His point was that the success of Gandhi and of the Indian protesters, who prostrated themselves on the train tracks, depended on the certain knowledge that the trains would stop rather than run over them. With tactics such as these, Gandhi his followers hoped to paralyze British rule in India, and they succeeded. But what if the British had ordered the trains to keep going? This is certainly what Hitler would have done? I don’t see Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun being deterred by Gandhi’s strategy. Even as the Indians denounced the West as wholly unprincipled and immoral, they relied on Western principles and Western morality to secure their independence.” Pg. 71
“The ideologues who proclaim the equality of all cultures simply cannot account for why so many people around the world seem perfectly willing to dump their ancient cultures and adopt new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that they associate with America. Nor can they account for the millions of people who have come as immigrants in the search of the American dream. If all cultures are equal, why aren’t people breaking down doors to get into Cuba or Iraq or Somalia?” pg. 74
“In America, the immigrant immediately recognizes, things are different. The newcomer who sees America for the first time typically experiences emotions that alternate between wonder and delight. Here is a country where everything works: the roads are clean and paper smooth, the highway signs are clear and accurate, the public toilets function properly, when you pick up a telephone you get a dial tone, you can even buy things from the store and then take them back.” Pg. 77
“I have a friend of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States for nearly a decade. Finally, I asked him, ‘Why are you so eager to come to America?” He replied, ‘Because I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.’” Pg. 77
“The American view is that the rich guy may have more money, but he isn’t in any fundamental sense better than you are. The American janitor or waiter see himself as performing a service but he doesn’t see himself as inferior to those he serves. And neither do the customers see him that way: they are generally happy to show him respect and appreciation on a plane of equality. America is the only country in the world where we call the waiter ‘Sir’ as if he were a knight.” Pg. 78
“As Irving Kristol once observed, there is virtually no restaurant in America to which a CEO can go to lunch with the absolute assurance that he will not find his secretary also dining there. Given the standard of living of the ordinary American, it is no wonder that socialist or revolutionary themes never found a wide constituency in the United States.” Pg. 79
“This notion of you being the architect of your own destiny is the incredibly powerful idea that is behind the worldwide appeal of America.” Pg. 84
“America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. History will view America as a great gift to the world, a gift that Americans today must preserve and cherish.” Pg. 193
Friday, December 10, 2010
Book Review of “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” by Dinesh D’Souza
Dinesh D’Souza is one of my favorite writers and I would heartily recommend pretty much any of his books to friends and family. He has a knack for being able to approach a complex subject, get to its crux, and then render it in a concise, precise and prosaic manner that is easily digestible to the layman. A couple of weeks ago, I watched a debate he had with famed atheist Chris Hitchens. I really had trouble following Mr. Hitchens’ line of reasoning. I remember mumbling to myself several times, “What the hell is this guy saying?” However, whenever D’Souza spoke, there was a clear line of reasoning that was easy to follow. In other words, I could understand him. Now some might say, that just reflects your Christian mindset. I disagree. While I am a fervent believer in the Christian faith, I don’t think that particular argument is relevant here. In such a debate where the majority of listeners are likely NOT to be philosophy or religion specialists and where the theoretical tenets of evolution are going to be meticulously picked apart, the arguments presented need to be coherent and fairly easy to understand. So from that perspective, Chris Hitchens’ sucked big time in my opinion. Anyway, I’ve gotten off track. My point is, whether verbally or via the written word, D’Souza is a most effective communicator and is in particularly fine form with his recent book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”.
So what’s the book all about? Well, let me take a stab at being concise, precise and prosaic. In a nutshell, Dinesh claims that the our current President is driven by forces rooted in a raging anti-colonial philosophy that took its most virulent form in the writings of Frantz Fanon and that as a result the policies being formed in the White House today will ultimately hurt more than help the United States. Well, there you have it in one sentence. But let’s dig a little deeper by looking at some of these excerpts:
“Who was Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr.? First and foremost, he was an anti-colonialist. He grew up under British rule in Kenya, and he came of age during the struggle for independence. He was considered one of his country’s bright young stars, one of an elite group of African scholars who came to study in the United States, and then returned to their home countries with a goal of helping them form their independent identities. This Obama was an economist, and as an economist he was influenced by socialism, but he was never a doctrinaire socialist; rather his quasi-socialism sprang from and was integrated into an anti-colonial outlook that was shared by many of his generation, not only in Africa but also in Asia and South America.” Pg. 28
The four tenets of colonialism presented in Dinesh’s book are as follows:
First Tenet:
Empires are produced by murderous conquest and sustained by unceasing terror and violence.
Second Tenet:
Colonial regimes are racist-they systematically produce the dehumanization of the colonized.
Third Tenet:
Colonialism is a system of piracy in which the wealth of the colonized countries is a system of piracy in which the wealth of the colonized countries is systematically stolen by the colonizers.
Fourth Tenet:
The colonial powers have a new leader: America
“For Obama, the task ahead is simple: he must work to wring the neo-colonialism out of America and the West. First he must reign in the military so that it does not conduct wars of occupation against other countries. Then he must use American leverage to restrict military adventurism on the part of America’s allies, especially the former colonial powers in Europe. Even symbolic measures of humiliation are helpful in showing the former European colonialists that their day is now gone. In addition, Obama seeks to check American and Western consumption of global resources so that the formal colonial (and now neocolonial) powers do not consume what belongs to others. Another objective for Obama is to bring the powerful sectors of American industry, such as investment banks and health care, under government supervision and control. Obama seeks a large custodial state as a protection against the dangers of concentrated corporate power. Finally, Obama seeks to castigate and expose the rich, who are viewed as a neocolonial force within American society, so that they cease to be exploiters of the rest of the population. It may seem shocking to suggest that this is Obama’s core ideology, and that he believes it still. This is the moral and intellectual foundation of his ideology. It is a dream that, as president, he is imposing with a vengeance on America and the world.” Pg. 35
“Obama’s voice rises in pitch when he condemns the scoundrels on Wall Street or gives a tongue-lashing to the CEOs of large banks or insurance companies. ‘The rich in America have little to complain about,” Obama wrote in the Audacity of Hope. Recently in Illinois he condemned well-heeled executives for trying to earn as much as possible. Obama snapped, ‘I do think that at a certain point you’ve made enough money.’” Pg. 38
“I want to draw attention to what makes the guy irritable and mad, what makes him go bitter and sarcastic on us. The answer: big corporations and rich people.” Pg. 39
“When Obama hears the word ‘profit,’ he thinks of neocolonial exploitation.” Pg. 39
Telltale signs revealing Obama’s rage towards neocolonialism:
“The ultimate insult to the English was when Obama, right upon assuming the presidency, came upon a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office and promptly decided to return it. Churchill, of course, is routinely quoted by American presidents, and the bust has been loaned to America from the British government’s art collection. In a way it symbolized America’s special relationship with Britain. Somewhat shocked by Obama’s decision to remove the bust from the White House, British officials suggested that perhaps Obama could display it elsewhere. Obama declined.” Pg. 42
“Addressing the nation on the BP oil spill on June 15, 2010, Obama stressed that Americans ‘consume more than 20% of the world’s oil, but have less than 2% of the world’s resources.’ Obama went on to say that for ‘for decades we’ve talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.” Unfortunately, “time and again the path has been blocked’ by, among others, ‘oil industry lobbyists.’ Now on the face of it, this is a perfectly reasonable statement from a liberal politician who thinks this is what the American public wants to hear. But ask yourself what does this have to do with the oil spill? Would the oil spill have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world’s resources? Of course not. The point is that for Obama, the energy and environmental issues reduce to a simple proposition. America is a neocolonial giant eating up more than its share of the world’s resources, and in doing so America is exploiting the scarce fuel of the globe; consequently, this gluttonous consumption must be stopped. This is the heart of Obama’s energy and environmental agenda: not cleaning up the Gulf or saving the environment in general, but redressing the inequitable system where the neocolonial West-and neocolonial companies like BP-dominates the use of global energy resources.” Pg. 48
OBAMA DOESN'T GIVE A DITTY ABOUT THE AFGHANISTAN WAR!
“Now why would a president who has a big political stake in Afghanistan not care about proposed strategies to successfully prosecute the offensive and maybe even win the war. Short answer: he doesn’t want to win. If Obama views Afghanistan as a war of colonial occupation, then his only concern is how fast he can get America out.” Pg. 51
Comment: It should be noted here that the recent surge in troops was simply a matter of political expediency. (So chill out Michael Moore. Obama doesn’t want US troops in Afghanistan anymore than you do.)
CONCLUSION:
“The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s-a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash), raging against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions.” Pg. 198
“For many, it still may seem too fantastic to be true. Yet it is true. The great strength of our anti-colonial theory is not only its psychological plausibility-it is rooted in Obama’s vivid and persuasive self-description-but also its explanatory power. The anti-colonial hypothesis explains both Obama’s economic and his foreign policy. Obama’s domestic and foreign agenda operate in a kind of reverse action: Obama wants to expand government power at home even as he works to contract America’s broad power abroad.” Pg. 199
WHY OBAMA’S ANTI-COLONIALIST NOTIONS ARE WRONG AND MISPLACED
“The blunt truth is that anti-colonialism is dead; no one in today’s world cares about it-except the man in the White House. He is the last anti-colonial. The rest of the world has no interest in how many schools the Belgians built, or didn’t build, in the Congo, or how British officials in Kenya used to beat their house servants with canes. We are now living in a new world. And while most of the world is facing the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the twenty-first century, Obama refuses to embrace the promise of that growth-for his African homeland or for the country he was elected to lead. Instead, President Obama is committed to bring down the ‘neocolonial’ forces in the economy and to lasso the rogue elephant that is America.” Pg. 215
KEY QUESTION: What harm can Obama due to America and world?
“Obama may have nothing to offer Africa, but are his policies harming people today? Even with the power of his presidency, Obama is not going to stop globalization or the information revolution. But there is another way that he could gravely damage the engine of global prosperity: that is by removing its cordon of protection, a cordon that is provided by the United States. Trade, after all, is vulnerable to thugs who want to disrupt trade routes and save themselves the trouble of buying and selling by taking and plundering. That’s why contrary to the views of some economists, global free trade cannot by itself solve the world’s problems of scarcity and want. The world needs a policeman, and in case you haven’t figured it out, the United States has that job.”
Pg. 216
“Call it empire if you will, but America’s role is very different from that of previous empires. Contrary to the charges of the anti-colonialists, the United States today has no intention of ruling or seeking tribute from other countries; American’s foreign policy goals are basically to encourage people to trade with us and to make sure they don’t bomb us. That’s pretty much it. Of course America could stop being the global policeman, but then there wouldn’t be anyone to deter North Korea from nuking South Korea or to prevent China from kicking around the small countries in its neighborhood, or to put a stop to genocidal wars in Bosnia or Rwanda or the Middle East. Someone has got to be the cop, and it’s a role that I don’t want to hand over to China, Russia or the United Nations. There is currently no alternative to American leadership in the world, and deep down even American liberals know this.” Pg. 215
“So one great threat posed by Obama is that in weakening America he will jeopardize the security and stability that America provides for not only its own citizens but for the world. Then there is the second threat that Obama poses to his own country. America is currently the world leader, but it is faced with serious competitive challenges from leaner, hungrier nations like China and India. The economic balance has tipped in favor of these countries; they are growing five times faster than the United States. Chinese cities are bigger, newer, and glitzier than anything in America today. Also, China and India have larger populations and this too has economic significance. Since China has more than three times the number of people that America has, even if the Chinese per capita income only rises to one-third that of the United States, China will have a bigger GNP than America. At current rates, the Chinese economy will overtake that of the United States in a few decades. The American era will be over and, if history is any guide, it will never return.” Pg. 217
CLOSING THOUGHTS:
As not only an ethnic minority but a person of mixed race (half-French, half Japanese) Obama being elected to the President of the United States held a special significance for me. Let me share with you an incident from my youth when I 21 years old. At that time, like any ambitious young person, I wanted to succeed greatly in this world. In order to achieve this goal, I become an avid reader of popular self-help literature of which one of the most prominent authors was Napoleon Hill, best known for his book Think and Grow Rich, one of the best-selling books of all time. However, prior to that, Hill had published what could be considered a precursor to Think & Grow Rich titled The Laws of Success. It was a huge thick volume and I was very excited about it, thinking that if I absorbed the information contained in its pages I too could become another Henry Ford or Thomas Edison. However, within the pages of that book, I came across a passage that would devastate me and for a short period of time almost spiritually and psychologically destroyed me. Unfortunately, since I have since discarded the book, I cannot provide a direct quote here, but basically the passage went something like this:
“In a neighborhood not too far from here, there lives a woman, an average, fair-skinned American woman. She is married to a black man. And they have a child. One who is neither black nor white and will never be able to fit in with either of the two races. THIS IS PERMANENT FAILURE as there is nothing this poor child can do to rectify his genetically-based curse.”
In typical self-help fashion, the passage went on to state (obviously directed at a white audience) that no matter how trying your particular circumstances may be, at least you can take action to rectify your situation, unlike the mixed child. Being of mixed race、this passage devastated me. I even showed the passage to some friends and they tried to console me by pointing out that the book was written in the early 1900s and as a result was simply the product of the author’s mind at that time. Regardless, it did little to console me. And I began to curse the day my mom married a Japanese man. Interestingly, reflective of my Minnesota white upbringing, I was never pissed at my father for marrying a white woman. My rage was directed at my mom for marrying a Japanese man at the time. I wanted to be white and have access to all of the privileges of that race. I never forgot that passage. Those words of “PERMANENT FAILURE” had seared themselves into the recesses of my consciousness. As a result, I went through a period of depression that never really lifted until I found hope through my Christian faith.
So when Obama was elected to be President of the United States of America, I was euphoric. In a sense, I felt like almighty G-d Himself had answered my prayers by saying “Mixed race! Hah! Mixed race my ass! I’m gonna take what was once considered to be the wretched of the earth and make him the president of the United States.” I need to stress that while the majority of the world was probably looking at Obama as an African American, I was looking at him as being more like me, a mixed-race person. Hence, on election night, I mentally took that passage from Hill’s book that had haunted me for so many years and trashed it. It has never bothered me since.
So, as superficial as it is, it is true that my support for Obama was based solely on his ethnic background. I would be lying if I admitted otherwise. In fact, prior to Obama’s election, I never really had much interest in politics, considering it to be like some kind of closed white boy network that I could never be a part of anyway, so why bother. However, Obama’s election to the presidency, changed my outlook and I’m pretty sure has changed the outlook of millions of non-White Americans including the mixed races.
This leads me to my second point. According to Dinesh’s book (another ethnic American who has a mixed daughter I should add), the image Obama presented of himself is different than what we see manifesting in the White House as evidenced in the following excerpt:
“At the democratic convention in 2004, in which he said, ‘There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America and an Asian America…We are all one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.’ Let’s call the Obama who uttered these inspirational words Obama I. We haven’t seen much of Obama I in the White House. Instead, we regularly encounter Obama II, a very different character. This is the Obama who lambasts the banks and investment houses and forces them to succumb to federal control; the Obama who gives it to the pharmaceutical and the health insurance companies, bending them to his will; the Obama who demonizes his predecessor and his opponents, portraying them as the source of all the problems that only he can solve.” Pg. 19
Hence, in his book, what Dinesh has does for us is that he has given us an intelligent peak behind the public mask that is separate from Obama’s charismatic smile, his public speeches and his skin color. It is also a reminder to me that although I was inspired that Obama became the first African American US president, I need to judge him on other factors besides his racial background. I think this book is a good reminder of that and fulfils Martin Luther King’s vision when he said; “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
So what’s the book all about? Well, let me take a stab at being concise, precise and prosaic. In a nutshell, Dinesh claims that the our current President is driven by forces rooted in a raging anti-colonial philosophy that took its most virulent form in the writings of Frantz Fanon and that as a result the policies being formed in the White House today will ultimately hurt more than help the United States. Well, there you have it in one sentence. But let’s dig a little deeper by looking at some of these excerpts:
“Who was Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr.? First and foremost, he was an anti-colonialist. He grew up under British rule in Kenya, and he came of age during the struggle for independence. He was considered one of his country’s bright young stars, one of an elite group of African scholars who came to study in the United States, and then returned to their home countries with a goal of helping them form their independent identities. This Obama was an economist, and as an economist he was influenced by socialism, but he was never a doctrinaire socialist; rather his quasi-socialism sprang from and was integrated into an anti-colonial outlook that was shared by many of his generation, not only in Africa but also in Asia and South America.” Pg. 28
The four tenets of colonialism presented in Dinesh’s book are as follows:
First Tenet:
Empires are produced by murderous conquest and sustained by unceasing terror and violence.
Second Tenet:
Colonial regimes are racist-they systematically produce the dehumanization of the colonized.
Third Tenet:
Colonialism is a system of piracy in which the wealth of the colonized countries is a system of piracy in which the wealth of the colonized countries is systematically stolen by the colonizers.
Fourth Tenet:
The colonial powers have a new leader: America
“For Obama, the task ahead is simple: he must work to wring the neo-colonialism out of America and the West. First he must reign in the military so that it does not conduct wars of occupation against other countries. Then he must use American leverage to restrict military adventurism on the part of America’s allies, especially the former colonial powers in Europe. Even symbolic measures of humiliation are helpful in showing the former European colonialists that their day is now gone. In addition, Obama seeks to check American and Western consumption of global resources so that the formal colonial (and now neocolonial) powers do not consume what belongs to others. Another objective for Obama is to bring the powerful sectors of American industry, such as investment banks and health care, under government supervision and control. Obama seeks a large custodial state as a protection against the dangers of concentrated corporate power. Finally, Obama seeks to castigate and expose the rich, who are viewed as a neocolonial force within American society, so that they cease to be exploiters of the rest of the population. It may seem shocking to suggest that this is Obama’s core ideology, and that he believes it still. This is the moral and intellectual foundation of his ideology. It is a dream that, as president, he is imposing with a vengeance on America and the world.” Pg. 35
“Obama’s voice rises in pitch when he condemns the scoundrels on Wall Street or gives a tongue-lashing to the CEOs of large banks or insurance companies. ‘The rich in America have little to complain about,” Obama wrote in the Audacity of Hope. Recently in Illinois he condemned well-heeled executives for trying to earn as much as possible. Obama snapped, ‘I do think that at a certain point you’ve made enough money.’” Pg. 38
“I want to draw attention to what makes the guy irritable and mad, what makes him go bitter and sarcastic on us. The answer: big corporations and rich people.” Pg. 39
“When Obama hears the word ‘profit,’ he thinks of neocolonial exploitation.” Pg. 39
Telltale signs revealing Obama’s rage towards neocolonialism:
“The ultimate insult to the English was when Obama, right upon assuming the presidency, came upon a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office and promptly decided to return it. Churchill, of course, is routinely quoted by American presidents, and the bust has been loaned to America from the British government’s art collection. In a way it symbolized America’s special relationship with Britain. Somewhat shocked by Obama’s decision to remove the bust from the White House, British officials suggested that perhaps Obama could display it elsewhere. Obama declined.” Pg. 42
“Addressing the nation on the BP oil spill on June 15, 2010, Obama stressed that Americans ‘consume more than 20% of the world’s oil, but have less than 2% of the world’s resources.’ Obama went on to say that for ‘for decades we’ve talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.” Unfortunately, “time and again the path has been blocked’ by, among others, ‘oil industry lobbyists.’ Now on the face of it, this is a perfectly reasonable statement from a liberal politician who thinks this is what the American public wants to hear. But ask yourself what does this have to do with the oil spill? Would the oil spill have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world’s resources? Of course not. The point is that for Obama, the energy and environmental issues reduce to a simple proposition. America is a neocolonial giant eating up more than its share of the world’s resources, and in doing so America is exploiting the scarce fuel of the globe; consequently, this gluttonous consumption must be stopped. This is the heart of Obama’s energy and environmental agenda: not cleaning up the Gulf or saving the environment in general, but redressing the inequitable system where the neocolonial West-and neocolonial companies like BP-dominates the use of global energy resources.” Pg. 48
OBAMA DOESN'T GIVE A DITTY ABOUT THE AFGHANISTAN WAR!
“Now why would a president who has a big political stake in Afghanistan not care about proposed strategies to successfully prosecute the offensive and maybe even win the war. Short answer: he doesn’t want to win. If Obama views Afghanistan as a war of colonial occupation, then his only concern is how fast he can get America out.” Pg. 51
Comment: It should be noted here that the recent surge in troops was simply a matter of political expediency. (So chill out Michael Moore. Obama doesn’t want US troops in Afghanistan anymore than you do.)
CONCLUSION:
“The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s-a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash), raging against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions.” Pg. 198
“For many, it still may seem too fantastic to be true. Yet it is true. The great strength of our anti-colonial theory is not only its psychological plausibility-it is rooted in Obama’s vivid and persuasive self-description-but also its explanatory power. The anti-colonial hypothesis explains both Obama’s economic and his foreign policy. Obama’s domestic and foreign agenda operate in a kind of reverse action: Obama wants to expand government power at home even as he works to contract America’s broad power abroad.” Pg. 199
WHY OBAMA’S ANTI-COLONIALIST NOTIONS ARE WRONG AND MISPLACED
“The blunt truth is that anti-colonialism is dead; no one in today’s world cares about it-except the man in the White House. He is the last anti-colonial. The rest of the world has no interest in how many schools the Belgians built, or didn’t build, in the Congo, or how British officials in Kenya used to beat their house servants with canes. We are now living in a new world. And while most of the world is facing the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the twenty-first century, Obama refuses to embrace the promise of that growth-for his African homeland or for the country he was elected to lead. Instead, President Obama is committed to bring down the ‘neocolonial’ forces in the economy and to lasso the rogue elephant that is America.” Pg. 215
KEY QUESTION: What harm can Obama due to America and world?
“Obama may have nothing to offer Africa, but are his policies harming people today? Even with the power of his presidency, Obama is not going to stop globalization or the information revolution. But there is another way that he could gravely damage the engine of global prosperity: that is by removing its cordon of protection, a cordon that is provided by the United States. Trade, after all, is vulnerable to thugs who want to disrupt trade routes and save themselves the trouble of buying and selling by taking and plundering. That’s why contrary to the views of some economists, global free trade cannot by itself solve the world’s problems of scarcity and want. The world needs a policeman, and in case you haven’t figured it out, the United States has that job.”
Pg. 216
“Call it empire if you will, but America’s role is very different from that of previous empires. Contrary to the charges of the anti-colonialists, the United States today has no intention of ruling or seeking tribute from other countries; American’s foreign policy goals are basically to encourage people to trade with us and to make sure they don’t bomb us. That’s pretty much it. Of course America could stop being the global policeman, but then there wouldn’t be anyone to deter North Korea from nuking South Korea or to prevent China from kicking around the small countries in its neighborhood, or to put a stop to genocidal wars in Bosnia or Rwanda or the Middle East. Someone has got to be the cop, and it’s a role that I don’t want to hand over to China, Russia or the United Nations. There is currently no alternative to American leadership in the world, and deep down even American liberals know this.” Pg. 215
“So one great threat posed by Obama is that in weakening America he will jeopardize the security and stability that America provides for not only its own citizens but for the world. Then there is the second threat that Obama poses to his own country. America is currently the world leader, but it is faced with serious competitive challenges from leaner, hungrier nations like China and India. The economic balance has tipped in favor of these countries; they are growing five times faster than the United States. Chinese cities are bigger, newer, and glitzier than anything in America today. Also, China and India have larger populations and this too has economic significance. Since China has more than three times the number of people that America has, even if the Chinese per capita income only rises to one-third that of the United States, China will have a bigger GNP than America. At current rates, the Chinese economy will overtake that of the United States in a few decades. The American era will be over and, if history is any guide, it will never return.” Pg. 217
CLOSING THOUGHTS:
As not only an ethnic minority but a person of mixed race (half-French, half Japanese) Obama being elected to the President of the United States held a special significance for me. Let me share with you an incident from my youth when I 21 years old. At that time, like any ambitious young person, I wanted to succeed greatly in this world. In order to achieve this goal, I become an avid reader of popular self-help literature of which one of the most prominent authors was Napoleon Hill, best known for his book Think and Grow Rich, one of the best-selling books of all time. However, prior to that, Hill had published what could be considered a precursor to Think & Grow Rich titled The Laws of Success. It was a huge thick volume and I was very excited about it, thinking that if I absorbed the information contained in its pages I too could become another Henry Ford or Thomas Edison. However, within the pages of that book, I came across a passage that would devastate me and for a short period of time almost spiritually and psychologically destroyed me. Unfortunately, since I have since discarded the book, I cannot provide a direct quote here, but basically the passage went something like this:
“In a neighborhood not too far from here, there lives a woman, an average, fair-skinned American woman. She is married to a black man. And they have a child. One who is neither black nor white and will never be able to fit in with either of the two races. THIS IS PERMANENT FAILURE as there is nothing this poor child can do to rectify his genetically-based curse.”
In typical self-help fashion, the passage went on to state (obviously directed at a white audience) that no matter how trying your particular circumstances may be, at least you can take action to rectify your situation, unlike the mixed child. Being of mixed race、this passage devastated me. I even showed the passage to some friends and they tried to console me by pointing out that the book was written in the early 1900s and as a result was simply the product of the author’s mind at that time. Regardless, it did little to console me. And I began to curse the day my mom married a Japanese man. Interestingly, reflective of my Minnesota white upbringing, I was never pissed at my father for marrying a white woman. My rage was directed at my mom for marrying a Japanese man at the time. I wanted to be white and have access to all of the privileges of that race. I never forgot that passage. Those words of “PERMANENT FAILURE” had seared themselves into the recesses of my consciousness. As a result, I went through a period of depression that never really lifted until I found hope through my Christian faith.
So when Obama was elected to be President of the United States of America, I was euphoric. In a sense, I felt like almighty G-d Himself had answered my prayers by saying “Mixed race! Hah! Mixed race my ass! I’m gonna take what was once considered to be the wretched of the earth and make him the president of the United States.” I need to stress that while the majority of the world was probably looking at Obama as an African American, I was looking at him as being more like me, a mixed-race person. Hence, on election night, I mentally took that passage from Hill’s book that had haunted me for so many years and trashed it. It has never bothered me since.
So, as superficial as it is, it is true that my support for Obama was based solely on his ethnic background. I would be lying if I admitted otherwise. In fact, prior to Obama’s election, I never really had much interest in politics, considering it to be like some kind of closed white boy network that I could never be a part of anyway, so why bother. However, Obama’s election to the presidency, changed my outlook and I’m pretty sure has changed the outlook of millions of non-White Americans including the mixed races.
This leads me to my second point. According to Dinesh’s book (another ethnic American who has a mixed daughter I should add), the image Obama presented of himself is different than what we see manifesting in the White House as evidenced in the following excerpt:
“At the democratic convention in 2004, in which he said, ‘There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America and an Asian America…We are all one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.’ Let’s call the Obama who uttered these inspirational words Obama I. We haven’t seen much of Obama I in the White House. Instead, we regularly encounter Obama II, a very different character. This is the Obama who lambasts the banks and investment houses and forces them to succumb to federal control; the Obama who gives it to the pharmaceutical and the health insurance companies, bending them to his will; the Obama who demonizes his predecessor and his opponents, portraying them as the source of all the problems that only he can solve.” Pg. 19
Hence, in his book, what Dinesh has does for us is that he has given us an intelligent peak behind the public mask that is separate from Obama’s charismatic smile, his public speeches and his skin color. It is also a reminder to me that although I was inspired that Obama became the first African American US president, I need to judge him on other factors besides his racial background. I think this book is a good reminder of that and fulfils Martin Luther King’s vision when he said; “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Book Review of “Linchpin” by Seth Godin
Every once in a while, one comes across an author who is able to make simple sense out of and articulate clearly the vast technological changes that have occurred and our occurring in our world and how to not only survive but thrive in this internet-driven world. No doubt about it; the old way of doing things is long gone.
“The factory-that system where organized labor meets patient capital, productivity-improving devices, and leverage-has fallen apart. Ohio and Michigan have lost their “real” factories, just as the factories of the service industries have crumbled as well. Worse still, the type of low-risk, high-stability jobs that three-quarters of us crave have turned into dead-end traps of dissatisfaction and unfair risk.” Pg. 8
The problem is that most people are not aware of how things have changed and out of desperation and fear, are still clinging to the old failing models of job security.
“Just over a century ago, leaders of our society started building a system that is now so ingrained, most of us assume that it’s always been here and always will be. We continue to operate as if that system is still here, but every day we do that is a day wasted, dollars lost, an opportunity squandered. And you need to see why. The system we grew up with is based on a simple formula: Do your job. Show up. Work hard. Listen to the boss. Stick it out. Be part of the system. You’ll be rewarded. That’ the scam. Strong words, but true. You’ve been scammed. You traded years of your life to be part of a giant con in which you are most definitely not the winner. If you’ve been playing that game, it’s no wonder you’re frustrated. The game is over. THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY GREAT JOBS WHERE SOMEONE TELLS YOU PRECISELY WHAT TO DO.” Pg. 14
However, the internet has changed everything.
“Today, the means of production=a laptop computer with Internet connectivity. Three thousand dollars buys a worker an entire factory. This change is a fundamental shift in power and control. When you can master the communication, conceptual, and connectivity elements of the new work, then you have more power than management does. And if management attracts, motivates, and retains great talent, then it has more leverage than the competition. It starts with bloggers, musicians, writers and others who don’t need anyone’s support or permission to do their thing. So a blogger named Brian Clark makes a fortune launching a wonderful new theme for Wordpress. And Perez Hilton becomes rich and famous writing on his blog. Abbey Ryan makes almost a hundred thousand dollars a year painting a tiny oil painting each day and selling it on eBay. These individuals have all the technical, manufacturing, and distribution support they need, so they are both capitalists and workers.” Pg. 24
Hence, the solution is not to stifle your individuality by following some retarded formula such as go to a good school, get a job and then just work hard. In this day and age, that’s a pure prescription for complete failure.
“Explain this: “If I make a list of great artists (Alice Waters, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Spike Lee, Eliyahu Goldratt, Muddy Waters, Cory Doctorow, Richard Feynman, Shepard Fairey), not one of the names on this particular list is the product of a school designed to create him or her. A great school experience won’t keep you from being remarkable, but it’s usually not sufficient to guarantee that you will become so. There’s something else at work here.” Pg. 29
THE SOLUTION IS TO BECOME AN ARTIST!!! Now what does this mean? It means the absolute opposite of conforming! It means embracing and channeling your individuality out into the world, not for money, but because that’s what you were meant to do! That’s where your passion is.
“THE BOSS’S LIE: ‘What I want is someone who will do exactly what I tell them to do.’ ‘What I want is someone who works cheap.’ ‘What I want is someone who shows up on time and doesn’t give me a hard time.’ So, if this is what the boss really wants, how come the stars in the company don’t follow these rules? How come the people who get promoted and get privileges and expense accounts and are then wooed away to join other companies and get written up in the paper and have servants and coffee boys…how come those guys aren’t the ones who do this stuff? What the boss really wants is an artist, someone who changes everything, someone who makes dreams come true. What the boss really wants is someone who can see the reality of today and describe a better tomorrow. What the boss really wants is a linchpin. If he can’t have that, he’ll settle for a cheap drone.” Pg. 37-38
SCHOOL DOESN'T WORK
“Here’s what we are teaching kids to do (with various levels of success)
Fit in.
Follow instructions.
Use# 2 pencils.
Take good notes.
Show up every day.
Cram for tests and don’t miss deadlines
Have good handwriting
Punctuate
Buy the things the other kids are buying
Don’t ask questions
Don’t challenge authority
Do the minimum amount required so you’ll have time to work on another subject
Get into college
Have a good resume
Don’t fail
Don’t say anything that might embarrass you
Be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback
Participate in a large number of extracurricular activities
Be a generalist
Try not to have the other kids talk about you
Once you learn a topic, move on.
WHAT THEY SHOULD TEACH YOU IN SCHOOL
Only two things:
1. Solve interesting problems
2. Lead”
Pg. 47-48
“School expects that are best students will graduate to become trained trigonometricians. They’ll be hired by people to compute the length of the hypotenuse of a certain right triangle. What a waste. The only reason to learn trigonometry is because it is a momentarily interesting question, one worth sorting out. But then we should move on, relentlessly seeking out new problems, ones even more interesting than that one. The idea of doing it by rote, of relentlessly driving the method home, is a total waste of time.” Pg. 48
“You could do Richard Branson’s job. Most of the time, anyway. I spent some time with Sir Richard, and I can tell you that you could certainly do most of what he does, perhaps better than he does it. Except for what he does for about five minutes a day. In those five minutes, he creates billions of dollars’ worth of value every few years, and neither you nor I would have a prayer of doing what he does. Branson’s real job is seeing new opportunities, making decisions that work, and understanding the connection between his audience, his brand, and his ventures.” Pg. 51
“The law of linchpin leverage: The more value you create in your job, the fewer clock minutes of labor you actually spend creating that value. In other words, most of the time, you’re not being brilliant. Most of the time, you do stuff that ordinary people could do. A brilliant author or business woman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do. It might take a lot of tinkering or low-level work or domain knowledge for that brilliance to be evoked, but from the outside, it appears that the art is created in a moment, not in tiny increments.” Pg. 51
“Where does Apple add value? If all MP3 players play the same music, why is an iPod worth so much more than a generic one? It’s the breakthrough design that pushed through at Apple. In fact, if you consider the relative stock prices and profits of Apple versus companies that hire standard designers to do ordinary work, there’s really no comparison.” Pg. 53
“A great salesperson might deliver a thousand times as much productivity as a mediocre one. It’s the great salesperson who opens an entire region or an account in a new industry, while the ordinary one merely goes down the call list, doing quite average work. A very good senior programmer (who might get paid $200,000) gets paid about the same as a great programmer, who delivers $5 million worth of value for the same price. That’s enough of a difference to build an entire company’s profit around. Do it with ten programmers and you’re rich. Organizing around the average, then, is too expensive. Organizing around average means that the organization has exchanged the high productivity of exceptional performance for the ease and security of an endless parade of average performers. ” Pg. 54
“Wikipedia and the shared knowledge of the Internet make domain knowledge on its own worth significantly less than it used to be. Today, if all you have to offer is that you know a lot of reference book information, you lose, because the internet knows more than you do.” Pg. 55
“You get paid to go to work and do something of value. But your job is also a platform for generosity, for expression, for art. Every interaction you have with a coworker or customer is an opportunity to practice the art of interaction. Every product you make represents an opportunity to design something that has never been designed, to create an interaction unlike any other. For a long time, few people were fired for refusing to understand that previous paragraph. Now, though, it’s not an option. It’s the only reason you got paid to go to work today.” Pg. 57
“GIVE YOURSELF A D! The A paper is banal. Hand in a paper with perfect grammar but no heart or soul, and you’re sure to get an A from the stereotypical teacher. That’s because this teacher was trained to grade you on your ability to fit in. He’s checking to see if you spelled “ubiquitous” properly and used it correctly. Whether or not your short story made him cry is irrelevant. And that’s how school stamps out (as opposed to bakes in) insight and creativity. I say you should give yourself a D. Assume before you start that you’re going to create something that the teacher, the boss, or some other nitpicking critic is going to dislike. Of course, they need to dislike it for all the wrong reasons. You can’t abandon technique merely because you’re not good at it or unwilling to do the work. But if the reason you’re going to get a D is that you’re challenging structure and expectation and the status quo, then YES! Give yourself a D.” Pg. 60
“The challenge of becoming a linchpin solely based on your skill at plying a craft or doing a task or playing a sport is that the market can find other people with that skill with surprising ease. Plenty of people can play the flute as well as you can, clean a house as well as you can, program in Python as well as you can. If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensible. Statistics are a dangerous deal, because statistics make it strikingly clear that you’re only a little better than the other guy. Or perhaps not better at all. When you start down the path of beating the competition based on something that can be easily measured, you’re betting that with practice and determination, you can do better than Len Hutton or Jack Hobbs did at cricket. Not a little better, but Don Bradman better. And you can’t. On the other hand, being as charming as Julia Roberts or as direct as Marlon Brando or as provocative as Danny Boyle-that’s way easier than playing cricket better than anyone who has ever lived. Emotional labor is available to all of us, but it is rarely exploited as a competitive advantage. We spend our time and energy trying to perfect our craft, but we don’t focus on the skills and interactions that allow us to stand out and become indispensable to our organization. Emotional labor was seen as a bad thing, a drain on the psyche of the stewardesses studied by Hochschild for her book. The mistake in her analysis was failing to consider the alternative. The alternative is working in a coal mine. The alternative is working in a sweatshop. It’s called work because it’s difficult, and emotional labor is the work most of us are best suited to do. It may be exhausting, but it’s valuable.” Pg. 62-63
“Why do so many handmade luxury goods come from France? It’s not an accident. It’s the work of one man, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. He served under Louis XIV of France in the 1600s and devised a plan to counter the imperialist success of the countries surrounding France, England, Portugal, Spain and other countries were colonizing the world, and France was being left behind. So Colbert organized, regulated, and promoted the luxury-goods industry. He understood what wealthy consumers around the world wanted, and he helped French companies deliver it. Let other companies find the raw materials; the French would fashion it, brand it, and sell it back to them as high-priced goods. A critical element of this approach was the work of indispensable artisans. Louis Vuitton made his trunks by hand in a small workshop behind his house outside of Paris. Hermes would assign a craftsperson to work on a saddle for as long as it might take. The famous vintners of Champagne relied on trained professionals-men who had worked their whole lives with wine-to create a beverage that would travel around the world. At the same time that France was embracing handmade luxury, Great Britain was embracing the anonymous factory. Looms that could turn out cotton cloth with minimal human labor, or pottery factories that could make cheap plates. “Made in France” came to mean something (and still does, more than three hundred years later) because of the “made” part. Mechanizing and cheapening the process would have made it easy for others to copy. Relying on humanity made it difficult-it made the work done in France scarce, and scarcity creates value. “ Pg. 63-64
“Bob Dylan knows a little about becoming indispensable, being an artist, and living on the edge: ‘Daltrey, Townshend, McCartney, the Beach Boys, Elton, Billy Joel. They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly…exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So there is no point in trying to duplicate them. Anyways, I’m no mainstream artist.’ The interviewer then reminded Dylan, ‘But you’ve sold over a hundred million records.’ Dylan’s answer gets to the heart of what it means to be an artist: ‘Yeah I know. It’s a mystery to me too.’” Pg. 68
“David has been working in the midtown branch of Dean & Deluca for six years. This mini-chain of high-end coffee shops in New York has very high turnover, so six years I quite an achievement. I met David while having coffee with a friend. The first thing I noticed was that he had walked over to a line of tourists and cheerfully said, ‘Hey, guys! We have another bathroom upstairs. No need to wait.’ With a smile, he moved away, energetically cleaning off tables and straightening things that didn’t seem particularly crooked to me. If this was menial labor, no one told David. As the hour wore on, I saw him greet people, help without asking, offer to watch a table or get something for someone. In a coffee shop! I asked him about his attitude. He smiled, stopped for a second, and told me, ‘I work for blessings.’ Almost anyone else would have seen this job as a grind, a dead end, a mind-numbing way to spend six years. David saw it as an opportunity to give gifts. He had emotional labor to contribute, and his compensation was the blessings he got from the customers (his customers). His art was the engagement with each person, a chance to change her outlook or brighten his day. Not everyone can do this, and many who can, choose not to. David refused to wait for instructions. He led with his art.” Pg. 69-70
“WAIT! ARE YOU SAYING THAT I HAVE TO STOP FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS AND START BEING AN ARTIST? SOMEONE WHO DREAMS UP NEW IDEAS AND MAKES THEM REAL? SOMEONE WHO FINDS NEW WAYS TO INTERACT, NEW PATHWAYS TO DELIVER EMOTION, NEW WAYS TO CONNECT? SOMEONE WHO ACTS LIKE A HUMAN, NOT A COG? ME?
Yes.” Page. 89
“The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security. When it is time for layoffs, the safest job belongs to the artist, the linchpin, the one who can’t be easily outsourced or replaced.”
Pg. 91
“Does the technology used by the artist appear on the scene to match what the artist needs, or do artists do their art with the tools that are available. Shakespeare didn’t invent plays; he used them. Salinger didn’t invent the novel; he wrote a few. The technology existed before they got there. I don’t believe that you are born to do a certain kind of art, mainly because your genes have no idea what technology is going to be available to you. Cave painters, stone carvers, playwrights, chemists, quantum-mechanic mechanics-people do their art where they find it, not the other way around. The art that you do when you interact with a customer, or when you create a new use of a traditional system or technology-it’s still art. Our society has reorganized so that the answer to the question “where should I do art?” is now a long booklet, not a simple checklist of a few choices.” Pg. 92
“I’ve found people in every job you can imagine doing art. There are waiters and writers and musicians and doctors and nurses and lawyers who find art in their work. The job is not your work; what you do with your heart and soul is the work.” Pg. 97
Remember, an uneaten cake that sits in the oven whether half-baked or not iis ultimately worthless. So ship dammit!
“The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship. Shipping means hitting the publish button on your blog, showing a presentation to the sales team, answering the phone, selling the muffins, sending out your references. Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world. The French refer to esprit d’ escalier, the clever comeback that you think of a few minutes after the moment has passed. This is unshipped insight, and it doesn’t count for much. Shipping something out the door, doing it regularly, without hassle, emergence, or fear-this is a rare skill, something that makes you indispensable.”
Pg. 103
IT AIN'T ABOUT THE MONEY!!!
“Some people think that you can’t be generous until after you become a success. They argue that they have to get theirs, and then they can go ahead and give back. The astonishing fact is that the most successful people in the world are those who don’t do it for the money.”
“One of the reasons people give for not giving gifts is that they can’t afford it. Gifts don’t have to cost money, but they always cost time and effort. If you’re in a panic about money, those two things are hard to find. The reason these people believe they can’t afford it, though, is that they’ve so bought into consumer culture that they’re in debt or have monthly bills that make no sense at all. When you cut you’re expenses to the bone, you have a surplus. The surplus allows you to be generous, which mysteriously turns around and makes your surplus even bigger.” Pg. 166
“Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work.” Pg. 171
“Money isn’t the way to show respect. Money is an essential element of making a living in this world, but money is a poor substitute for respect and thanks. Wall Street has learned this the hard way.” Pg. 171
“If you are fortunate enough to find an artist, you should work hard to pay him as much as you can afford, because if you don’t, someone else will.” Pg. 172
“You must become indispensable to thrive in the new economy. The best way to do that are to be remarkable, insightful, an artist, someone bearing gifts. To lead. The worst way is to conform and become a cog in a machine.” Pg. 174
THE TWO REASONS SEEING THE FUTURE IS SO DIFFICULT
“Attachment to an outcome combined with the resistance and fear of change. That’s it.” Pg. 178
Conclusion:
The simple truth is: practically every sentence in this book is a gem and there is no way I could post every paragraph or sentence I found inspiring without having to retype up this whole book on my blog here. Just get the book. I’m planning to read it 10 times at least. It offers a sane and inspiring prescription for thriving in this post-Lehman world we live in today.
“The factory-that system where organized labor meets patient capital, productivity-improving devices, and leverage-has fallen apart. Ohio and Michigan have lost their “real” factories, just as the factories of the service industries have crumbled as well. Worse still, the type of low-risk, high-stability jobs that three-quarters of us crave have turned into dead-end traps of dissatisfaction and unfair risk.” Pg. 8
The problem is that most people are not aware of how things have changed and out of desperation and fear, are still clinging to the old failing models of job security.
“Just over a century ago, leaders of our society started building a system that is now so ingrained, most of us assume that it’s always been here and always will be. We continue to operate as if that system is still here, but every day we do that is a day wasted, dollars lost, an opportunity squandered. And you need to see why. The system we grew up with is based on a simple formula: Do your job. Show up. Work hard. Listen to the boss. Stick it out. Be part of the system. You’ll be rewarded. That’ the scam. Strong words, but true. You’ve been scammed. You traded years of your life to be part of a giant con in which you are most definitely not the winner. If you’ve been playing that game, it’s no wonder you’re frustrated. The game is over. THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY GREAT JOBS WHERE SOMEONE TELLS YOU PRECISELY WHAT TO DO.” Pg. 14
However, the internet has changed everything.
“Today, the means of production=a laptop computer with Internet connectivity. Three thousand dollars buys a worker an entire factory. This change is a fundamental shift in power and control. When you can master the communication, conceptual, and connectivity elements of the new work, then you have more power than management does. And if management attracts, motivates, and retains great talent, then it has more leverage than the competition. It starts with bloggers, musicians, writers and others who don’t need anyone’s support or permission to do their thing. So a blogger named Brian Clark makes a fortune launching a wonderful new theme for Wordpress. And Perez Hilton becomes rich and famous writing on his blog. Abbey Ryan makes almost a hundred thousand dollars a year painting a tiny oil painting each day and selling it on eBay. These individuals have all the technical, manufacturing, and distribution support they need, so they are both capitalists and workers.” Pg. 24
Hence, the solution is not to stifle your individuality by following some retarded formula such as go to a good school, get a job and then just work hard. In this day and age, that’s a pure prescription for complete failure.
“Explain this: “If I make a list of great artists (Alice Waters, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Spike Lee, Eliyahu Goldratt, Muddy Waters, Cory Doctorow, Richard Feynman, Shepard Fairey), not one of the names on this particular list is the product of a school designed to create him or her. A great school experience won’t keep you from being remarkable, but it’s usually not sufficient to guarantee that you will become so. There’s something else at work here.” Pg. 29
THE SOLUTION IS TO BECOME AN ARTIST!!! Now what does this mean? It means the absolute opposite of conforming! It means embracing and channeling your individuality out into the world, not for money, but because that’s what you were meant to do! That’s where your passion is.
“THE BOSS’S LIE: ‘What I want is someone who will do exactly what I tell them to do.’ ‘What I want is someone who works cheap.’ ‘What I want is someone who shows up on time and doesn’t give me a hard time.’ So, if this is what the boss really wants, how come the stars in the company don’t follow these rules? How come the people who get promoted and get privileges and expense accounts and are then wooed away to join other companies and get written up in the paper and have servants and coffee boys…how come those guys aren’t the ones who do this stuff? What the boss really wants is an artist, someone who changes everything, someone who makes dreams come true. What the boss really wants is someone who can see the reality of today and describe a better tomorrow. What the boss really wants is a linchpin. If he can’t have that, he’ll settle for a cheap drone.” Pg. 37-38
SCHOOL DOESN'T WORK
“Here’s what we are teaching kids to do (with various levels of success)
Fit in.
Follow instructions.
Use# 2 pencils.
Take good notes.
Show up every day.
Cram for tests and don’t miss deadlines
Have good handwriting
Punctuate
Buy the things the other kids are buying
Don’t ask questions
Don’t challenge authority
Do the minimum amount required so you’ll have time to work on another subject
Get into college
Have a good resume
Don’t fail
Don’t say anything that might embarrass you
Be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback
Participate in a large number of extracurricular activities
Be a generalist
Try not to have the other kids talk about you
Once you learn a topic, move on.
WHAT THEY SHOULD TEACH YOU IN SCHOOL
Only two things:
1. Solve interesting problems
2. Lead”
Pg. 47-48
“School expects that are best students will graduate to become trained trigonometricians. They’ll be hired by people to compute the length of the hypotenuse of a certain right triangle. What a waste. The only reason to learn trigonometry is because it is a momentarily interesting question, one worth sorting out. But then we should move on, relentlessly seeking out new problems, ones even more interesting than that one. The idea of doing it by rote, of relentlessly driving the method home, is a total waste of time.” Pg. 48
“You could do Richard Branson’s job. Most of the time, anyway. I spent some time with Sir Richard, and I can tell you that you could certainly do most of what he does, perhaps better than he does it. Except for what he does for about five minutes a day. In those five minutes, he creates billions of dollars’ worth of value every few years, and neither you nor I would have a prayer of doing what he does. Branson’s real job is seeing new opportunities, making decisions that work, and understanding the connection between his audience, his brand, and his ventures.” Pg. 51
“The law of linchpin leverage: The more value you create in your job, the fewer clock minutes of labor you actually spend creating that value. In other words, most of the time, you’re not being brilliant. Most of the time, you do stuff that ordinary people could do. A brilliant author or business woman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do. It might take a lot of tinkering or low-level work or domain knowledge for that brilliance to be evoked, but from the outside, it appears that the art is created in a moment, not in tiny increments.” Pg. 51
“Where does Apple add value? If all MP3 players play the same music, why is an iPod worth so much more than a generic one? It’s the breakthrough design that pushed through at Apple. In fact, if you consider the relative stock prices and profits of Apple versus companies that hire standard designers to do ordinary work, there’s really no comparison.” Pg. 53
“A great salesperson might deliver a thousand times as much productivity as a mediocre one. It’s the great salesperson who opens an entire region or an account in a new industry, while the ordinary one merely goes down the call list, doing quite average work. A very good senior programmer (who might get paid $200,000) gets paid about the same as a great programmer, who delivers $5 million worth of value for the same price. That’s enough of a difference to build an entire company’s profit around. Do it with ten programmers and you’re rich. Organizing around the average, then, is too expensive. Organizing around average means that the organization has exchanged the high productivity of exceptional performance for the ease and security of an endless parade of average performers. ” Pg. 54
“Wikipedia and the shared knowledge of the Internet make domain knowledge on its own worth significantly less than it used to be. Today, if all you have to offer is that you know a lot of reference book information, you lose, because the internet knows more than you do.” Pg. 55
“You get paid to go to work and do something of value. But your job is also a platform for generosity, for expression, for art. Every interaction you have with a coworker or customer is an opportunity to practice the art of interaction. Every product you make represents an opportunity to design something that has never been designed, to create an interaction unlike any other. For a long time, few people were fired for refusing to understand that previous paragraph. Now, though, it’s not an option. It’s the only reason you got paid to go to work today.” Pg. 57
“GIVE YOURSELF A D! The A paper is banal. Hand in a paper with perfect grammar but no heart or soul, and you’re sure to get an A from the stereotypical teacher. That’s because this teacher was trained to grade you on your ability to fit in. He’s checking to see if you spelled “ubiquitous” properly and used it correctly. Whether or not your short story made him cry is irrelevant. And that’s how school stamps out (as opposed to bakes in) insight and creativity. I say you should give yourself a D. Assume before you start that you’re going to create something that the teacher, the boss, or some other nitpicking critic is going to dislike. Of course, they need to dislike it for all the wrong reasons. You can’t abandon technique merely because you’re not good at it or unwilling to do the work. But if the reason you’re going to get a D is that you’re challenging structure and expectation and the status quo, then YES! Give yourself a D.” Pg. 60
“The challenge of becoming a linchpin solely based on your skill at plying a craft or doing a task or playing a sport is that the market can find other people with that skill with surprising ease. Plenty of people can play the flute as well as you can, clean a house as well as you can, program in Python as well as you can. If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensible. Statistics are a dangerous deal, because statistics make it strikingly clear that you’re only a little better than the other guy. Or perhaps not better at all. When you start down the path of beating the competition based on something that can be easily measured, you’re betting that with practice and determination, you can do better than Len Hutton or Jack Hobbs did at cricket. Not a little better, but Don Bradman better. And you can’t. On the other hand, being as charming as Julia Roberts or as direct as Marlon Brando or as provocative as Danny Boyle-that’s way easier than playing cricket better than anyone who has ever lived. Emotional labor is available to all of us, but it is rarely exploited as a competitive advantage. We spend our time and energy trying to perfect our craft, but we don’t focus on the skills and interactions that allow us to stand out and become indispensable to our organization. Emotional labor was seen as a bad thing, a drain on the psyche of the stewardesses studied by Hochschild for her book. The mistake in her analysis was failing to consider the alternative. The alternative is working in a coal mine. The alternative is working in a sweatshop. It’s called work because it’s difficult, and emotional labor is the work most of us are best suited to do. It may be exhausting, but it’s valuable.” Pg. 62-63
“Why do so many handmade luxury goods come from France? It’s not an accident. It’s the work of one man, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. He served under Louis XIV of France in the 1600s and devised a plan to counter the imperialist success of the countries surrounding France, England, Portugal, Spain and other countries were colonizing the world, and France was being left behind. So Colbert organized, regulated, and promoted the luxury-goods industry. He understood what wealthy consumers around the world wanted, and he helped French companies deliver it. Let other companies find the raw materials; the French would fashion it, brand it, and sell it back to them as high-priced goods. A critical element of this approach was the work of indispensable artisans. Louis Vuitton made his trunks by hand in a small workshop behind his house outside of Paris. Hermes would assign a craftsperson to work on a saddle for as long as it might take. The famous vintners of Champagne relied on trained professionals-men who had worked their whole lives with wine-to create a beverage that would travel around the world. At the same time that France was embracing handmade luxury, Great Britain was embracing the anonymous factory. Looms that could turn out cotton cloth with minimal human labor, or pottery factories that could make cheap plates. “Made in France” came to mean something (and still does, more than three hundred years later) because of the “made” part. Mechanizing and cheapening the process would have made it easy for others to copy. Relying on humanity made it difficult-it made the work done in France scarce, and scarcity creates value. “ Pg. 63-64
“Bob Dylan knows a little about becoming indispensable, being an artist, and living on the edge: ‘Daltrey, Townshend, McCartney, the Beach Boys, Elton, Billy Joel. They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly…exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So there is no point in trying to duplicate them. Anyways, I’m no mainstream artist.’ The interviewer then reminded Dylan, ‘But you’ve sold over a hundred million records.’ Dylan’s answer gets to the heart of what it means to be an artist: ‘Yeah I know. It’s a mystery to me too.’” Pg. 68
“David has been working in the midtown branch of Dean & Deluca for six years. This mini-chain of high-end coffee shops in New York has very high turnover, so six years I quite an achievement. I met David while having coffee with a friend. The first thing I noticed was that he had walked over to a line of tourists and cheerfully said, ‘Hey, guys! We have another bathroom upstairs. No need to wait.’ With a smile, he moved away, energetically cleaning off tables and straightening things that didn’t seem particularly crooked to me. If this was menial labor, no one told David. As the hour wore on, I saw him greet people, help without asking, offer to watch a table or get something for someone. In a coffee shop! I asked him about his attitude. He smiled, stopped for a second, and told me, ‘I work for blessings.’ Almost anyone else would have seen this job as a grind, a dead end, a mind-numbing way to spend six years. David saw it as an opportunity to give gifts. He had emotional labor to contribute, and his compensation was the blessings he got from the customers (his customers). His art was the engagement with each person, a chance to change her outlook or brighten his day. Not everyone can do this, and many who can, choose not to. David refused to wait for instructions. He led with his art.” Pg. 69-70
“WAIT! ARE YOU SAYING THAT I HAVE TO STOP FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS AND START BEING AN ARTIST? SOMEONE WHO DREAMS UP NEW IDEAS AND MAKES THEM REAL? SOMEONE WHO FINDS NEW WAYS TO INTERACT, NEW PATHWAYS TO DELIVER EMOTION, NEW WAYS TO CONNECT? SOMEONE WHO ACTS LIKE A HUMAN, NOT A COG? ME?
Yes.” Page. 89
“The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security. When it is time for layoffs, the safest job belongs to the artist, the linchpin, the one who can’t be easily outsourced or replaced.”
Pg. 91
“Does the technology used by the artist appear on the scene to match what the artist needs, or do artists do their art with the tools that are available. Shakespeare didn’t invent plays; he used them. Salinger didn’t invent the novel; he wrote a few. The technology existed before they got there. I don’t believe that you are born to do a certain kind of art, mainly because your genes have no idea what technology is going to be available to you. Cave painters, stone carvers, playwrights, chemists, quantum-mechanic mechanics-people do their art where they find it, not the other way around. The art that you do when you interact with a customer, or when you create a new use of a traditional system or technology-it’s still art. Our society has reorganized so that the answer to the question “where should I do art?” is now a long booklet, not a simple checklist of a few choices.” Pg. 92
“I’ve found people in every job you can imagine doing art. There are waiters and writers and musicians and doctors and nurses and lawyers who find art in their work. The job is not your work; what you do with your heart and soul is the work.” Pg. 97
Remember, an uneaten cake that sits in the oven whether half-baked or not iis ultimately worthless. So ship dammit!
“The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship. Shipping means hitting the publish button on your blog, showing a presentation to the sales team, answering the phone, selling the muffins, sending out your references. Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world. The French refer to esprit d’ escalier, the clever comeback that you think of a few minutes after the moment has passed. This is unshipped insight, and it doesn’t count for much. Shipping something out the door, doing it regularly, without hassle, emergence, or fear-this is a rare skill, something that makes you indispensable.”
Pg. 103
IT AIN'T ABOUT THE MONEY!!!
“Some people think that you can’t be generous until after you become a success. They argue that they have to get theirs, and then they can go ahead and give back. The astonishing fact is that the most successful people in the world are those who don’t do it for the money.”
“One of the reasons people give for not giving gifts is that they can’t afford it. Gifts don’t have to cost money, but they always cost time and effort. If you’re in a panic about money, those two things are hard to find. The reason these people believe they can’t afford it, though, is that they’ve so bought into consumer culture that they’re in debt or have monthly bills that make no sense at all. When you cut you’re expenses to the bone, you have a surplus. The surplus allows you to be generous, which mysteriously turns around and makes your surplus even bigger.” Pg. 166
“Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work.” Pg. 171
“Money isn’t the way to show respect. Money is an essential element of making a living in this world, but money is a poor substitute for respect and thanks. Wall Street has learned this the hard way.” Pg. 171
“If you are fortunate enough to find an artist, you should work hard to pay him as much as you can afford, because if you don’t, someone else will.” Pg. 172
“You must become indispensable to thrive in the new economy. The best way to do that are to be remarkable, insightful, an artist, someone bearing gifts. To lead. The worst way is to conform and become a cog in a machine.” Pg. 174
THE TWO REASONS SEEING THE FUTURE IS SO DIFFICULT
“Attachment to an outcome combined with the resistance and fear of change. That’s it.” Pg. 178
Conclusion:
The simple truth is: practically every sentence in this book is a gem and there is no way I could post every paragraph or sentence I found inspiring without having to retype up this whole book on my blog here. Just get the book. I’m planning to read it 10 times at least. It offers a sane and inspiring prescription for thriving in this post-Lehman world we live in today.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Book Review of "Tokyo Vice" By Jake Adelstein
Absolutely riveting! Out of the many hundreds of books that I go through year in and year out, this one was an absolute page turner.
An autobiography of sorts, Tokyo Vice chronicles Jake Adelstein's 30-year tenure as a bilingual reporter working for Yomiuri Shinbun, one of Japan's most prestigious newspapers. The book's prologue opens with a shuddering depiction of the author being threatened by a mafia member to not publish a certain article that would expose the underground activities of a certain mafia boss who had arranged for a liver transplant at a US hospital. From there in Chapter One, we are transported back to his fresh-out-of-school job hunting days where we find our young and poor protagonist living in a cramped apartment with no air-conditioning ( apparently Jake would stretch out his legs and place his feet into his tiny
refrigerator to cool off during the hot summers) . After passing Yomiuri's
initial examination and a series of interviews, Jake begins his first year of
employment where he makes new friends (and enemies) while learning the ropes of
journalism and more importantly develops the capacity to cope with the many
subtle cultural differences needed to survive in a large, traditional Japanese
corporation.
After this initial honeymoon period, Jake is assigned to cover the police
beat where the real rollercoaster ride begins as he is thrust into a world of
sex trafficking, gang violence, drugs and murder. The stories move at a fast pace and we are allowed inside the author's innermost thoughts as he weaves his way through a world of bribery, erotic massages, and cop-gangster partnerships. However, no matter how blurred the line of conscience separating right from wrong becomes, I couldn't help but sense that there was a moral voice of outrage inside Jake, guiding him, urging him on to get to the truth and bring about justice whether confronting sex trafficking or attempting to gather forcible evidence that would bring about the downfall of a crime lord or yet-to-be-convicted murderer. Though somewhat subdued, I felt like the book did end on a positive note as Jake finally does bring down his primary antagonist mentioned in the first paragraph of this review. However it is a bumpy ride filled with many twists and turns, but definitely a move Sun Tzu would have been proud of. A couple of steps in retreat and then BAM! You're dust baby. Or given the author's ethnicity, maybe I should say a dynamic combination of Jewish ingenuity and chutzpah.
What I learned the most:
-That the extent of stereotypical collusion between the different Japanese
newspapers are not as bad as I had been led to believe. Newspapers compete
ferociously with each other to be the first one to get a story out. Further, while there may be instances where the police and newspapers do collude or cooperate with each other, I gathered from this book that it's more the exception than the rule. Newspaper reporters have to do a lot of ass kissing and gift giving in order to reach that point where their relationship with a police officer will lead to a disclosure of information.
What I found most shocking:
-That a white(albeit Jewish) foreigner was able to be accepted as an equal permanent employee in a traditional, very Japanese company. Further, the fact that Jake was able to hone his Japanese language ability to the point where he could write newspaper articles simply blows me away.
What made me laugh:
There is a humourous scene where after a company drinking party, one diminutive superior doesn't take kindly to Jake and provokes him into a fight that occurs outside on the sidewalk. Within a few seconds, Jake using his Wing Chun kung fu skills gets the upper hand and ends up straddling his attacker from the frontside. Just as he is about to pummel him into submission, the fight is stopped and the idiot who initiated the attack is called a dwarf and chewed out for his immaturity. It was quite funny actually.
What made me cry:
There is a touching chapter about one of Jake's fellow female reporters. She was a human rights activitist passionate about protecting and bringing recognition to handicapped people through her journalistic gifts. However, she gets in an altercation with her boss leading to her being demoted to an irrelevant HR position where she can no longer work as a reporter. She falls into a depression and unable to shake off the despair commits suicide.
What made me angry:
-The fact that the yakuza (Japanese Gangsters) are able to extort ridiculously huge sums of money from their front enterprises and also how well-entrenched the yakuza are in normal politics and businesses such as real estate.
What I thought was missing:
I guess the only criticism I would have is that there was nothing detailing how Jake acquired his superlative Japanese language skills. Being an avid Japanese language student myself, I would have loved to have received some tips and insights. In fact, I'd be really interested to know if there was some special training he underwent at Yomiuri to acquire his newspaper writing skills.
Who would I recommend this book to?
Anybody interested in the real, dark underside of Japan. Possibly a lot of foreigners have this idyllic image of cherry blossoms and giggling ladies sitting at home sipping green tea in kimono while their husbands are out working 24 hours a day. All I can say is, if anybody is carrying around such a ridiculous stereotype, prepare to have it completely exploded after reading this book.
Some Snapshot Excerpts:
"'Either erase the story, or we'll erase you. And maybe your family. But we'll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die.' The well-dressed enforcer spoke very slowly, the way people speak to idiots or children or the way Japanese sometimes speak to clueless foreigners. It seemed like a straightfoward proposition. 'Walk away from the story and walk away from your job, and it'll be like it never happened. Write the article, and there is nowhere in this country that we will not hunt you down. Understand?'"
Pg. 3
"If you want to be an excellent reporter, you have to amputate your past life. You have to let go of your pride, your free time, your hobbies, your preferences, and your opinions. If you have a girlfriend, she'll be gone as soon as you're not around."
Pg. 33
"For a reporter, dating is impossible. My budding relationship with my first serious girlfriend effectively ended with a phone call. Not from her but from Yamamoto, at nine in the evening. It was the first day I'd had off in three weeks, and I-chan and I were on my futon, catching up on some long-missed sex, when the phone rang. I had no choice but to dismount and pick up. 'Adelstein, we got a probable murder in Chichiby, and we need you to go to the scene. Get your ass down here in ten minutes.'"
pg. 73
"As far as entertainment districts went, in 1999 nothing beat Kabukicho for pure sleaze. Drugs, prostitution, sexual slavery, rip-off bars, dating clubs, massage parlors, S-and-M parlors, pornography shops and porn producers, high-dollar hostess clubs, low-dollar blow job saloons, more than a hundred different yakuza factions, the Chinese mafia, gay prostitute bars, sex clubs, female junior high school students' soiled uniforms/panties resale shops, and a population of workers more ethnically diverse than anywhere else in Japan. It was like a foreign country in the middle of Tokyo. Of course, I didn't have any idea of how sleazy the place was at that time. All I knew was that I had been assigned to cover it."
Pg. 141
"People get killed or injured here(Kabukicho) all the time. But who cares if some chink, yakuza thug, or whore gets whacked? The cops don't, and the public doesn't either. Nine times out of ten, no matter how much it looks like a murder, the Shinjuku police will write it up as a case of assualt resulting in death-or manslaughter. Why? So they don't have to launch a full-fledged investigation. They could find a Chinese skimmer stabbed thirty-six times in the back on the streets of Kabukicho, and they'd call it an accidental death."
pg. 143
"The Japanese have words for sadness that are so subtle and complicated that the English translations don't do them justice. Setsunai is usually translated as 'sad,' but it is better described as a feeling of sadness that is physical and tangible. There is another word, too-yarusenai, which is grief or lonliness so strong that you can't get rid of it, you can't clear it away."
Pg. 203
"Over time, I lost interest in sex. It seemed a vulgar, nasty, and brutish thing. Everything about it seemed vaguely unpleasant. I wasn't impotent, I just wasn't interested. Chronic fatigue didn't help either."
pg. 260
"'You know, I like the work, I tried being an English teacher, which pays all right, but I hate that work. Especially dealing with obsessive grammarians. What's the past perfect imperative tense? Who gives a fuck, you know? I realized when I took the money the first time for sex that I'd much rather make a living on my back than standing up. Fifty thousand yen-I could work as an English teacher for three eight hour days and still not clear that.'" (Response received during interview with an Australian prostitute.)
pg. 271
"I spent one evening with The Perfect Manual for Suicide in an old hotel built in the twenties, contemplating giving it a try. It seemed like an option. In Japan, after a certain number of years, many Japanese life policies pay off even in cases of suicide. If I took myself out, I'd leave behind money for my family and there would be no reason for Goto to bother anyone I cared about. I never would have imagined that I might even consider joining the ranks of the unfortunate who put the manual into the practice."
pg. 311
An autobiography of sorts, Tokyo Vice chronicles Jake Adelstein's 30-year tenure as a bilingual reporter working for Yomiuri Shinbun, one of Japan's most prestigious newspapers. The book's prologue opens with a shuddering depiction of the author being threatened by a mafia member to not publish a certain article that would expose the underground activities of a certain mafia boss who had arranged for a liver transplant at a US hospital. From there in Chapter One, we are transported back to his fresh-out-of-school job hunting days where we find our young and poor protagonist living in a cramped apartment with no air-conditioning ( apparently Jake would stretch out his legs and place his feet into his tiny
refrigerator to cool off during the hot summers) . After passing Yomiuri's
initial examination and a series of interviews, Jake begins his first year of
employment where he makes new friends (and enemies) while learning the ropes of
journalism and more importantly develops the capacity to cope with the many
subtle cultural differences needed to survive in a large, traditional Japanese
corporation.
After this initial honeymoon period, Jake is assigned to cover the police
beat where the real rollercoaster ride begins as he is thrust into a world of
sex trafficking, gang violence, drugs and murder. The stories move at a fast pace and we are allowed inside the author's innermost thoughts as he weaves his way through a world of bribery, erotic massages, and cop-gangster partnerships. However, no matter how blurred the line of conscience separating right from wrong becomes, I couldn't help but sense that there was a moral voice of outrage inside Jake, guiding him, urging him on to get to the truth and bring about justice whether confronting sex trafficking or attempting to gather forcible evidence that would bring about the downfall of a crime lord or yet-to-be-convicted murderer. Though somewhat subdued, I felt like the book did end on a positive note as Jake finally does bring down his primary antagonist mentioned in the first paragraph of this review. However it is a bumpy ride filled with many twists and turns, but definitely a move Sun Tzu would have been proud of. A couple of steps in retreat and then BAM! You're dust baby. Or given the author's ethnicity, maybe I should say a dynamic combination of Jewish ingenuity and chutzpah.
What I learned the most:
-That the extent of stereotypical collusion between the different Japanese
newspapers are not as bad as I had been led to believe. Newspapers compete
ferociously with each other to be the first one to get a story out. Further, while there may be instances where the police and newspapers do collude or cooperate with each other, I gathered from this book that it's more the exception than the rule. Newspaper reporters have to do a lot of ass kissing and gift giving in order to reach that point where their relationship with a police officer will lead to a disclosure of information.
What I found most shocking:
-That a white(albeit Jewish) foreigner was able to be accepted as an equal permanent employee in a traditional, very Japanese company. Further, the fact that Jake was able to hone his Japanese language ability to the point where he could write newspaper articles simply blows me away.
What made me laugh:
There is a humourous scene where after a company drinking party, one diminutive superior doesn't take kindly to Jake and provokes him into a fight that occurs outside on the sidewalk. Within a few seconds, Jake using his Wing Chun kung fu skills gets the upper hand and ends up straddling his attacker from the frontside. Just as he is about to pummel him into submission, the fight is stopped and the idiot who initiated the attack is called a dwarf and chewed out for his immaturity. It was quite funny actually.
What made me cry:
There is a touching chapter about one of Jake's fellow female reporters. She was a human rights activitist passionate about protecting and bringing recognition to handicapped people through her journalistic gifts. However, she gets in an altercation with her boss leading to her being demoted to an irrelevant HR position where she can no longer work as a reporter. She falls into a depression and unable to shake off the despair commits suicide.
What made me angry:
-The fact that the yakuza (Japanese Gangsters) are able to extort ridiculously huge sums of money from their front enterprises and also how well-entrenched the yakuza are in normal politics and businesses such as real estate.
What I thought was missing:
I guess the only criticism I would have is that there was nothing detailing how Jake acquired his superlative Japanese language skills. Being an avid Japanese language student myself, I would have loved to have received some tips and insights. In fact, I'd be really interested to know if there was some special training he underwent at Yomiuri to acquire his newspaper writing skills.
Who would I recommend this book to?
Anybody interested in the real, dark underside of Japan. Possibly a lot of foreigners have this idyllic image of cherry blossoms and giggling ladies sitting at home sipping green tea in kimono while their husbands are out working 24 hours a day. All I can say is, if anybody is carrying around such a ridiculous stereotype, prepare to have it completely exploded after reading this book.
Some Snapshot Excerpts:
"'Either erase the story, or we'll erase you. And maybe your family. But we'll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die.' The well-dressed enforcer spoke very slowly, the way people speak to idiots or children or the way Japanese sometimes speak to clueless foreigners. It seemed like a straightfoward proposition. 'Walk away from the story and walk away from your job, and it'll be like it never happened. Write the article, and there is nowhere in this country that we will not hunt you down. Understand?'"
Pg. 3
"If you want to be an excellent reporter, you have to amputate your past life. You have to let go of your pride, your free time, your hobbies, your preferences, and your opinions. If you have a girlfriend, she'll be gone as soon as you're not around."
Pg. 33
"For a reporter, dating is impossible. My budding relationship with my first serious girlfriend effectively ended with a phone call. Not from her but from Yamamoto, at nine in the evening. It was the first day I'd had off in three weeks, and I-chan and I were on my futon, catching up on some long-missed sex, when the phone rang. I had no choice but to dismount and pick up. 'Adelstein, we got a probable murder in Chichiby, and we need you to go to the scene. Get your ass down here in ten minutes.'"
pg. 73
"As far as entertainment districts went, in 1999 nothing beat Kabukicho for pure sleaze. Drugs, prostitution, sexual slavery, rip-off bars, dating clubs, massage parlors, S-and-M parlors, pornography shops and porn producers, high-dollar hostess clubs, low-dollar blow job saloons, more than a hundred different yakuza factions, the Chinese mafia, gay prostitute bars, sex clubs, female junior high school students' soiled uniforms/panties resale shops, and a population of workers more ethnically diverse than anywhere else in Japan. It was like a foreign country in the middle of Tokyo. Of course, I didn't have any idea of how sleazy the place was at that time. All I knew was that I had been assigned to cover it."
Pg. 141
"People get killed or injured here(Kabukicho) all the time. But who cares if some chink, yakuza thug, or whore gets whacked? The cops don't, and the public doesn't either. Nine times out of ten, no matter how much it looks like a murder, the Shinjuku police will write it up as a case of assualt resulting in death-or manslaughter. Why? So they don't have to launch a full-fledged investigation. They could find a Chinese skimmer stabbed thirty-six times in the back on the streets of Kabukicho, and they'd call it an accidental death."
pg. 143
"The Japanese have words for sadness that are so subtle and complicated that the English translations don't do them justice. Setsunai is usually translated as 'sad,' but it is better described as a feeling of sadness that is physical and tangible. There is another word, too-yarusenai, which is grief or lonliness so strong that you can't get rid of it, you can't clear it away."
Pg. 203
"Over time, I lost interest in sex. It seemed a vulgar, nasty, and brutish thing. Everything about it seemed vaguely unpleasant. I wasn't impotent, I just wasn't interested. Chronic fatigue didn't help either."
pg. 260
"'You know, I like the work, I tried being an English teacher, which pays all right, but I hate that work. Especially dealing with obsessive grammarians. What's the past perfect imperative tense? Who gives a fuck, you know? I realized when I took the money the first time for sex that I'd much rather make a living on my back than standing up. Fifty thousand yen-I could work as an English teacher for three eight hour days and still not clear that.'" (Response received during interview with an Australian prostitute.)
pg. 271
"I spent one evening with The Perfect Manual for Suicide in an old hotel built in the twenties, contemplating giving it a try. It seemed like an option. In Japan, after a certain number of years, many Japanese life policies pay off even in cases of suicide. If I took myself out, I'd leave behind money for my family and there would be no reason for Goto to bother anyone I cared about. I never would have imagined that I might even consider joining the ranks of the unfortunate who put the manual into the practice."
pg. 311
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
