Improvements

Twentyfive years ago I belonged to the jogging/running culture. Where ever I travelled I brought my jogging shoes. When I was on my missions for THAI Airways in Bangkok I usually started the days at 06:00 in Lumpini Park running two or three laps. And so it continued, year after year.
In 1988 I followed my wife to an aerobic class in Stockholm. I thought it would become an easy piece of cake as I was physically well trained. But it was not. To my surprise I hade to realize that even though I had strong legs the rest of the muscles in my body was not trained at all. So I started to regularly attend the aerobic classes to build up my abilities for coordination, physical flexibility and strength. Three years later, at the age of 53, I became educated and trained as an aerobic leader, and I am still in this business (which in fact is no business at all as I belong to a fitness association and not a fitness commercial company). I think that I am today physically fit on about the same level as I was thirty years ago (well…perhaps an overstatement, but…).
But this kind of strength does not come from nowhere. I have had to fight for it, spending a lot of time in the aerobic training halls.
The same goes for trying to reach an improved mental standard. No one becomes more bright by lying on the couch looking at junk programs on TV. No one will reach a higher level of all round mental competence by doing nothing to earn it.
It happens that I question people about how old they want to become in their lives. A common answer is around 85 years of age. And what are your life strategies to keep alive and to keep fit until then, is my next question.
Well, what do you say?
Do you want to improve?
What is your plan to reach your goals? Do you have a plan?
If yes, congratulations. So, go ahead!
If not, well….you have to trust somebody else then, because apparently you can not trust yourself.

Creativity and making illusions

The human brain is like an enormous game arena. By this fantastic organ we are superinventors, finding solutions on how to expand our markets, forcing ourselves forward – we want for sure to win the games! But we are also superillusionmakers. When reality hits us in our face telling us that here is the ultimate limit, we try our best to deny the facts, making up new scenarios, where we can go on like nothing happened. This is an effect of our creativity. We are continuosly creating new maps, new landscapes, new roads – and sometimes, but for sure not always, all these creations are just imaginations, far from being true in a more broad sense. The present economical crisis is just one example about these human imaginations. The environmental threats, which are far more serious in the long run, are other examples. Regretfully the human history shows an almost infinite number of events of the human creative activities – for good and for bad.

Fighters and flighters

I am not always a very brave fighter, but I want to state that I, with very few exceptions, always try my best to provide with my replies in a debate, especially if someone says something that is of concern to me personally or is within my fields of interests. But I have to state that several colleagues of mine, and other people as well, seem to prefer the flight position, which means that they just hide away, saying nothing. They act like mussels or clams, no voices, thick shells…vanishing in silence. I think that they think that this is the best protection to be found. And they are perhaps right. If you do not stand up and fight for your rights, but just try to find a shelter, keeping a low profile, saying nil and nothing more than that, you could perhaps have a chance to become regarded as a non-problematic, kind and easy-to-live-with guy, adjustable, flexible, a cosy follower. There are certainly a lot of employers and a lot of those looking for smooth consultants, speaking low, that prefer those mussel-guys. But the main question is anyhow how they really feel – inside. I am not so very sure that they will become the survival-of-the-fittest in the long run.

Psychoengineers vs psychologists

Some psychologists have chosen to act as psychoengineers. They are looking at the world and at other humans as entities that could become measured by measurement tools and then to become issues for mathematical and statistical calculations. Those psychoengineers love psychological tests because the tests are measurement tools providing numbers. They are technicians and many times skilled as such. But in the same time they are walking around in very narrow lanes, focusing such areas that appear very visible and just in front of them. They are very seldom talking or thinking of the society, of the human history, of how we have organized ourselves during centuries and how we organize our lives today. They do not like to discuss politics and they do not want to make too many interpretations from human behaviour to basic psychological theories as this is too vague and unclear. They are looking for facts and facts are mostly numbers written in black based upon all those measurements. They turn away from psychological giants as Sigmund Freud because they do not understand his writings. But they are often fortunate in the meaning that they make money when they sell their engineering tools and their engineering thoughts to the companies, which prefer clear facts in measured results giving no options for alternative thinking. And they love the computers and the Internet because they look at computers as possible human brains, and as they do that they imagine that people could talk to computers instead of talking to other living humans.
Beware of the psychoengineers! They treat you as you already are a robot.

Killing the father – and keeping “him” alive

There is an old, natural and ritual behaviour among human beings, especially when they are forming a group of people: they slowly but safely try to get rid of the original, still living “father”, the old leader. This could be done in many different ways: from an open opposition to a point, where the people turn their back to the leader, vanishing in silence or not any longer bother about the words coming out from his mouth. This is of course acts of disrespect and of silent violence. It is quite common, particularly in the Western countries, following old Jewish-Christian traditions. I know quite well how this game is played. I, myself, has once been the typical “son”, turning from my “father” (and I am not talking of being a real son to a real father, but the younger, ideological heir and the older tutor), and since some years back I, myself, am the “father”. And I have certainly been treated with disrespect and by deceit from a few of my past younger friends and colleagues.
But this is common stuff. This is parts of life.
And I could watch and observe how people around me in the same time are attracted to all legends of special great men, for example to the legend of the prophet Jesus, who came to be called Jesus Christ.
The prophets are always males, and they have always preached about the Lord, who is also a male. Always male figures.
This is the way of how people try to compensate the loss of their “fathers”, who they have killed or who they have turned away from. In these, more or less religious ways, they integrate a new, different kind of father figure in their minds, thus keeping “the father” alive.
Killing the father – and inventing a new one in the mind is the key process in lots of groups of ordinary people.

Criticism of selling tests to laymen

In the Swedish magazine Psykologtidningen (the Psychologist Magazine), published by the Swedish Psychologist Association and Union, there is at the moment an intense debate going on about the business of selling psychological tests to non-psychologists. There are some business minded test publishers and at least one business goal oriented Swedish consultant company (the same that at present is hired by THAI Airways International) that have offered its psychological tests for sale also to people that are not educated or trained psychologists. According to my point of view this is like offering dentists’ instruments to people who would like to act dentists without proper dentist training, or surgical tools to people without training as surgeons. But certain people seem to be prepared to sell anything to anyone as long as they have a chance to make money out of it. Money, money, money makes the world go round….as they sing in Cabaret. But not always. During these days there is space for question marks everywhere about the power and the glory of money. And I am not happy about psychologists forcing doors to a hungry market for test instruments for the sake of business deals.

The past is the best predictor…

…of the future. It is perhaps not the whole truth for every situation or for every nation or for every organisation or for every single individual, but there is a lot of valid information that speaks in this direction. We, the human beings, are for sure creative animals on this planet, but we happen to go round and round the bush, repeating and repeating ourselves, making the same mistakes over and over again, until the day comes when we are forced into a new group of people, forming a new culture with new behaviour patterns. But still, the past is a very good predictor of the future. Economical booms have always been followed by economical depressions and the depressions have always been followed by booms. Round and round we go.
When employing a new member to your team – have a profound look at the candidates’ past. The most common mistakes done are that we, as recruiters, just look at the here-and-now behaviour and the here-and-now abilities. All this stuff gives of course some information of value, but certainly not everything.
If you look back you will be able to see the future.

Everything will be worse…

…until it will be better again. I am of course thinking of the present financial crisis. This is partly an effect of mass hysteria and the fact that lots of people have put their trust in money. Money is the “bed pillow”, the “mother’s breast” and the “father’s penis”. Money is supposed to give comfort when you are down and power and strength when you are upright and on the go.
Well, well…it is as in the fairy tales. There are illusions everywhere.
But the reality will always, sooner or later, show its’ face. Sometimes it just laughs at us.

Someone there?

I happen to know a lot of people that I try to communicate with. There are normally no problems with people that I meet now and then, but trying to start a mutual communication by e-mail is much, much harder. I think that this is partly due to a sort of suspicion against the written words. If you just talk, personally, to somebody, and he (or she) responds in a way that shows his dissatisfaction or even anger, you can always try to repair the situation by saying that he really missed your point or misunderstood you, and you may use a lot of new words to change the content in what you recently said. But written is written. The words and letters are obviously there, black on white (mostly). It is not easy to withdraw or regret your expressions. It happens that I send my questions or my viewpoints to people I want to reach and whose replies I look forward to, but mostly (with certain exceptions) I wait in vain. Silence. Dead ends. Hello, someone at home?
Nope.
Nothing.
This nothingness starts an imagination in my head: the other one is perhaps dead. Or unable to say something to me because he is unable to think in a clear way.
Do you want to increase your intellectual ability?
Then try your best to write.
You can just as an example write a comment on my blog. It is for free and the risktaking is very, very low.

I am just the innocent child…

The world trembles as an effect of an almost collapsing financial system. And when the financial system goes down to a level where it is declared as impotent and sick there are shock waves all around the globe. Hundred thousands, perhaps millions, will be out of work and the poverty among the lower classes will increase.
Just like many others I was up in the blue about my imaginations concerning the banking business. I thought that a bank was stable as a rock in the bubbling water. I thought that all money that was put in the bank, and paid as fees to the bank went directly into a sort of locked security strongroom or vault, and there it was – until I wanted to withdraw my money. How naive could I be?
The banks are just transferring money, my money as well, around in the capitalistic circus of our time. The bank spends my money in their acts of businesses. There is no big vault in the bank. The bank takes my money and put my money into other banks and into other financial systems and into other private peoples’ and other companies’ pockets in order to earn even more money. And the circus demands that the speed of those transactions must increase…and increase…faster…and faster…., and, hey there…get some more money from us….take a BIG loan, pay a LOT of interest…we can help YOU with your investments… and the train rushes forward, speed increasing, faster, faster, faster…and then, suddenly….CRASH!
Hey there, what happened? Where is the Prime minister? Where is the President? Where is the King? Why do they not do anything? Daddy! Hi there, Daddy! And Mom! Do something, you just have to do something! I was just the innocent child, you know…