Things that matter

A conversation is communication by two or more people, or sometimes with one’s self, on a particular topic. Conversations are the ideal form of communication in some respects, because they allow people with different views on a topic to learn from each other.

Paul Grice, a British-educated philosopher of language who spent the final two decades of his career in the U.S., noted that all conversations follow a basic set of rules which people use to express themselves when speaking.

Imagine what would happen to language if there were no rules to follow during conversations. It would be perfectly acceptable to follow “Hi, how are you doing?” with “birds fly in the sky”, or to simply lie with every statement you make. But then conversations would be impossible to have. And while everyone follows Grice’s rules, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people are aware of what the rules are or how they work. In fact, Grice’s maxims often work outside of our immediate awareness.

The question now is, what exactly are these rules? Read the rest of this entry »

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Huxley

Obedience is defined as receiver compliance to source authority. The classic example of obedience is the officer giving orders to the soldier. The soldier complies with the officer because the officer has legitimate, organizational power. The compliance does not occur because the soldier likes the officer or necessarily respects his judgment and expertise, but rather simply because the the officer has power and the soldier was trained to obey.

As demonstrated by the Milgram experiment in the 1960s, humans have been shown to be surprisingly obedient in the presence of perceived legitimate authority figures.

Stanley Milgram carried out his experiments to discover how the Nazis had managed to get ordinary people to take part in the mass murder of the Holocaust. The experiment showed that compliance to authority was the norm and not the exception.

In “Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View” Stanley Milgram writes:

“Obedience, because of its very ubiquitousness, is easily overlooked as a subject of inquiry in social psychology. But without an appreciation of its role in shaping human action, a wide range of significant behavior cannot be understood. For an act carried out under command is, psychologically, of a profoundly different character than action which is spontaneous.The person who, with inner conviction, loathes stealing, killing, and assault may find himself performing these acts with relative ease when commanded by authority. Behavior that is unthinkable in an individual who is acting on his own may be executed without hesitation when carried out under orders. Read the rest of this entry »

Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves. – Lord Chesterfield

Everyone seems crazed by the desire to best manage their time in order to achieve an increased productivity. Such a great intention that is!…

The common definition of time management sounds something like this: management of time in order to make the most out of it. However, David Allen, in a 2001 interview, observed:

“You can’t manage time, it just is. So “time management” is a mislabeled problem, which has little chance of being an effective approach. What you really manage is your activity during time; and defining outcomes and physical actions required is the core process required to manage what you do.”

To better understand why time management is a mislabeled problem, you need to know what the word management means and what is its etymology.

Management is the guidance and control of action or resources that is necessary to reach a goal.

The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand).

Knowing these things about management enables us to find out what time management really says: handling time to make the most out of it.

In a nutshell, what time management advertises is the ability to control time. A thing which, in my opinion, is false advertising… Read the rest of this entry »

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Before I knew anything about it, I was attracted to the ideal of philosophy. I thought of it as a practical subject that could make a real difference, that might have wise things to say about everyday worries – like

failing in a job, not having any friends. Philosophy promised something that might sound a little naive, but was in fact rather profound: “the way to learn to be happy.”

And as I found out more, I discovered that there were a few ancient philosophers I was particularly interested in, because they had the wisest things to say about the areas of life that I thought were rather problematic.

Anger

Anger refers especially to that faculty of the mind which subsists between reason and desire and which seeks to direct the latter in accord with the former – a faculty which seeks to ordinate the self and its environment. It is part of the brain response to a perceived threat of pain – mental of physical.

Anger may be expressed actively or passively. When expressed actively, an angry person “lashes out” verbally or physically at a target. When expressed passively, it is often characterized by silent sulking, passive-aggressive behavior, hostility and tension.

Anger is usually magnified and lasts longer when a rational decision is made about the intent of the source of the disturbance. In other words, if one decides the pain infliction was intentional or deliberate, the emotion of anger that results is usually more intense. This also happens when one thinks he can do something to change an unchangeable painful situation.

Getting angry is not a hard thing to achieve. Is is sufficient for one to drive through a city, especially if it is a crowded one, to get very frustrated because of the careless drivers that seem to be everywhere.

The world we live in is a very frustrating one and most of us seem unable to respond very philosophically to it. Anger seems as much a part of our lives today as bad driving and traffic jams. Read the rest of this entry »

Because many readers responded positively to a previous post that required a simple counting of how many F’s are in a text, I thought of posting another brain exercise. This one will get your brain on its knees using some simple colors.

What you’ll need to do in this exercise is to read aloud the color of the words below – not the color named by them – and time your performance. Read the rest of this entry »