Which ones to trust?

The last day, for this time, in Thailand. I have been travelling around. I have met people, both Thai people and tourists. I have made my conclusions. Some of those I have met are genuinely openminded, willing to exchange ideas and thoughts. Others are mostly playing the social game. They try to act as kind ones, as willing to assist and so forth, but you´ll never know what is going on in their minds. The acts are easily seen – if you are interested in learning the difference between acts and other kind of behaviour. I have met Thai people who I really trust, and I have met others that have left me with a feeling of discomfort. I have met farangs, or foreigners, that I have immediately found honest and reliable and I have met those who are not.
It is of course the same at home, in my own country. There I have learned a lot of lessons the hard way. I am happy to have real friends, and I have been unhappy to have been betrayed by those, who have just played acts, and who have shown up as unreliable, sometimes silent and withdrawn, and sometimes just taking actions that have been far from friendly. It has strongly come to my mind this time in Thailand.
How about your life experiences?

The Far East Kingdom

I have returned to the Kingdom in Far East. Yesterday I saw hundreds and hundreds of people in Krung Thep dressed in yellow sport shirts and men in yellow ties, and men and women carrying yellow bracelets. In this way they all pay respect to the King, who this year will become 80 years of age and who is not so well. Yellow is the colour of the King and Monday is a special day as the King was born on a Monday. The people in Thailand is greeting the King, hoping the very best for his health, calling out: Long live the King! I admire the Thai people for their honest positive and serious support to the front Leader of the nation. The Thai people is in this way united, enforcing its identity, which helps people to behave in a friendly and solid manner. We, in Sweden, have a lot to learn by a very old and a very fine culture in Far East.

Separations

Every long lasting move from one point to the other creates a feeling of more or less anxiety or worry. Even if you plan to come back in a few days you will never know if that will become realized. Anything could happen anytime. A lot of people try their best to deny feelings like that. They repress them, or they try to convince themselves that worries like that are just bullshit. They try to empower themselves by internal visions of being almost immortal.
I am going abroad, a very long journey. I am going to meet friends of mine. I am going to see new places. I am going to smell and taste things that are not common in my own country. It makes me somewhat excited, curious, interested – and worried. It is as if my brain suddenly was divided into two parts: one, in my forehead, says: Fun! Good! Enjoy!. The other part, deeper inside cries out: Watch out! You´ll never know what you will be up to! You are not as strong as you once were!
Every step from a very well known and common point brings forward my separation anxiety. And – joy!
Life is not easy.

Males, females and the question of identity

Suppose we lived in a world in which all Human Beings were hermaphrodites with the ability to create new babies just by yourself or, perhaps, with anyone else. There were no males and no females. In such a world we would of course develop fundamentally different emotional and other mental profiles. There would not be any specific male or female behaviour.
But in this world, in which we all live, we are not unisexified. We are separated into two halves – males and females. As half a person there is a very visible force, driving most of us, towards each other. The outcry is: “Where can I find my perfect other half?”
Now, in our present culture, there is a trend among mostly younger men and women to diminish or reduce the feeling of being half that is looking for another half in order to become united into a whole. Instead they try to say that “I am enough just being me”, and “I need no specific other half”, or “I chose anyone or anything, a male, a female, a child, a pet, shoes, just anything that increases my lust”. I recognize this trend as a Human backlash, a desperate try to eliminate the emotional pain being just “a half”, creating an internal vision of being something very powerful and strong. The result is a less humble and mature attitude and a loss of reality. It is just a game, playing with identities. In the long run it will show up as a dangerous game with lots of certain risks.

When are we “good” and when are we “bad”?

The issue of being good or bad is basically a philosophical question. What do we mean by “good”? A certain behaviour in one country and during a special historical time could very well be named as good, while the same behaviour in another society and in another time could be looked upon as cruel and very bad. When we are acting out of kindness we could risk to become assessed as corny and stupid ones by others. In fear of not stepping too obviously into any direction, neither the good or the bad one, most people do….nothing that is clearly visible for the others. They are just following the mainstream of movements in the society, getting up early in the morning, going to the working place, doing exactly, but nothing more, what is expected and asked for, getting home in the evening, eating, watching TV, sleeping. This behaviour will be the norm of how to appear without causing anything that could be regarded as disturbances, and in this sense most people expect to be met with acceptance: they are “good”. But as an effect the men and women in real power in the society will get a lot of freedom to activate and to exploit what they want, just for the fun of it. And that is one of the driving forces creating a society with separate social classes. Do you belong to the good ones?

Airline pilot requirements

I have, among other things, worked with airline pilot selection in more than forty years. Working for such a long time leads to a natural question: what is the main driving force behind my interest in this very special field? Well, in my case I would say that it is certainly not about the money. I am not that kind of primary business oriented psychologist. I have never wanted to create and to build a big consultant company with a lot of people employed, working all over the world with issues about pilot work and Human Factor questions. But together with my wife and a few close networking colleagues I have always wanted to contribute to find airline pilot candidates that really a) are motivated for pilot work, b) have certain acquired capacity skills that make it easier for them to cope with sudden, very demanding situations under stress, c) have developed firm personality traits such as awareness of responsibility and a sense of very good judgement, which are both aspects of a very good maturity development, and d) are able to walk in to and out from several close social interactions with other people without causing too much of conflicts or other disturbances. None of these four mentioned areas are less important than the other ones. Safety first is an important credo, used by lots of airline companies. And “safety first” must be embedded into every good pilot thinking and actions. At present time, when most wheels in the modern societies are spinning faster and faster, and when money seems to rule the world – it is not so very easy to find and to select those honest, serious, well engaged men and women that want to be, or to continue to be, pilots. But they are there.

Responsibility

The concept responsibility is a construct of the words “ability to respond”. If you are able to respond in a proper way, and if you really express yourself clearly and loudly as a reply to what other people have said to you, or how they have treated you, or how they by other means have done things that is within your concern, then you take responsibility in the situation. But if you are just hiding yourself in the bushes, not telling anything about your feelings or your opinions or your thinking, then you are failing in taking responsibility. The “ability to respond” does not include pure violent actions such as starting to fight against anyone that has displeased you. Starting to fight and to use violent actions is always to overdo things. Killing the guy that you dislike is not an action of responsibility; it is just an act of Human stupidity, a primitive reaction that should not belong to a civilized country. That is why I am against capital punishment. And I am also against those people that turn away from me, not saying anything, always keeping silent. In that way they try to force me off from the playground, but it is not based on fair play, and it is certainly not any action of responsibility.

Everyone needs an identity

Identity is a social construct. Identity is the dynamic bridge in between you as a biological, single creature and the social world around you. Without such a bridge it is hopeless to establish a reliable and long lasting sense of being a Human being. Already from early start the small child is intensively looking for such bridges. It is a matter of mental survival. So, it tries to find a good enough bridge in its relations to the parents and to the brothers or sisters or to other important persons in the close neighbourhood. Every time there is a threat to the sustainability of such a bridge the child gets struck by panic. It is called separation anxiety. The identy bridges could very well change to new partners or friends as you grow up. But they must be there. The same is valid for adults. All of us are looking for possibilities to establish strong enough identity bridges to people around us. Military men are for example normally very good indeed to establish strong identity cultures, mostly in the name of “brotherhood”. As a military man, especially if you are an officer, you really belong to the culture, you are a brother among brothers. Other examples are football (soccer) clubs, or men and women belonging to a special church or temple. There is however one back side of the coin. The more intense the identity is, the more heat that is prduced among “us who belong to the Thing, and who are “brothers” (or “sisters”), the more you are starting to take a distance to the others, those who are on the outside and who do not belong to the same belief system that you do. It becomes a “we-against-them” process. And this is like an ignition spark that could light up and start a lot of troubles – and in a prolongation – even a war.

Another peculiar dream

The other night became a violent night – in my dreams. I stayed in a quite big hotel suite with a lot of work material and other stuff. One day when I returned to my hotel I found that my suite had became invaded by a lot of people. I recognized a few, but most were strangers. I became pissed off and asked what the heck they were doing in my room. They just giggled and laughed and went on talking to each other. I then raised my voice and told them to immediately leave the scene. As they refused I started to throw them out, one by one, and suddenly I became awake and felt that I am quite satisfied finding that I have still some powers of mine.
Who are they, those people, who have acted as intruders, trying to force me out from the scene?
Well, I think I know.
The dreams wake me up. My brain is trying to convince me that I ought to do something, not just playing the game of being a victim.

Leader and manager – the same?

To act as a manager in a company means that you have to carry the burden of the basic set-ups of the basic rules of the company. You are the sub-director of the circus arena, in which all your collaborators and subordinates appear, and it is up to you to evaluate and to report if the achievements are up to the expected levels. As the headmaster of the team it is up to you to act clear enough to make the others comprehend exactly what to do and what you, as the responsible one, are expecting from each one.
The leader is another role. The leader is the one that takes the leading part in the projects, the one that could be looked upon as the inspiring example of how to go and how to do. The leader could act as a coach of the team, the one that makes it easier to set up goals and the one that gives hints of how to reach them.
A lot of people seem to mean that there ought to be a complete equality in between management and leadership. But if this is wished for the requirements of that kind of managers are, and must be, very, very high, possibly far too high for most of the candidates that aspire to become managers/leaders.