Sunday, October 26, 2014

Mindfulness and "skill in action"

Mindfulness is the ability to cultivate awareness of the present moment while putting aside our lenses of judgment. It is being in connection with the direct experience of the present moment, the here and now. 

Skill in action.


This is the prime message of many spiritual classics too, all of which embody insights into the difference between engaged action and the concept of action (unrealistic ideas or ideas ideas about what might happen or should havehappened).  

  • Bhagavad Gita chapter 2 verse 47:  You have control over action alone, never over its fruits. Do not live for the fruits of action, nor attach youself to inaction.
  • Likewise, the Buddhist concept of non-attachment does not mean withdrawal, or inaction, but the realization that action only occurs in the full engagement with the present moment.  
  • The Taoist principle of Wu wei (non-action) does not mean inaction, it means fully effective action that does not diverge from what is natural and actual.

Quote on the Best Kind of Coworkers

The best kind of people to work with take their work seriously but don't take themselves seriously.

Chaos theory in the News

There is no such thing as Order. Order is nothing but another random part of Chaos. Order can be part of Chaos, Chaos can not be part of order. 

The fundamental basis of science is cause and effect. Every effect has a cause. And therefore, there is no chaos in the universe, simply an inconceivable number of causes.

Chaos theory is not *a* theory, it's a field of study, which, scientifically speaking, is a completely different concept.

From comments on article:

"The chaos theory is a complicated and disputed mathematical theory that seeks to explain the effect of seemingly insignificant factors. The chaos theory name originates from the idea that the theory can give an explanation for chaotic or random occurrences. The first real experiment in the chaos theory was done in 1960 by a meteorologist, Edward Lorenz. He was working with a system of equations to predict what the weather would likely be.

In 1961, he wanted to recreate a past weather sequence, but he began the sequence mid-way and printed out only the first three decimal places instead of the full six. This radically changed the sequence, which could reasonably be assumed to closely mirror the original sequence with only the slight change of three decimal places. However, Lorenz proved that seemingly insignificant factors can have a huge effect on the overall outcome. The chaos theory explores the effects of small occurrences dramatically affecting the outcomes of seemingly unrelated events."


Thursday, October 23, 2014

"Are You Cooked Yet?"


As an employee, are you held accountable for work that you are unable to do well due to mismanagement of resources and/or a lack of tools (aka, proper technology)? Are you and your peers given directives to be creative and innovative, yet must suppress creative ideas for fear of being labeled “subversive” by the organization?

Your organizational culture might be codependent. The leadership needs, yet fears, their smart, creative workers. But creativity is not fostered because change is threatening to the comfortable status quo.  Employee low morale is bad for teamwork – and that’s the point – then leadership can blame the employees’ lack of collaboration for the organization’s shortcomings. Over time, just like in an abusive relationship, the employee develops self-doubt and low self-esteem.

“It’s a bit like placing a frog in a pot of warm water that it is then set to boil. Because the temperature rises so gradually, the frog never even realizes it’s being cooked.”

-Article about “gas lighting”<Link>


Sunday, October 5, 2014

Superposition etc

The main idea of quantum mechanics is that an object like an electron or a photon behaves as both a particle and a wave… The other weird characteristic of quantum particles is that they can exist in multiple places at once, a phenomenon called superposition. But superposition is a fragile state. The moment that scientists try to measure the particles, the superposition state collapses and the particles come to exist in only one spot. Before the particles are disturbed, they exist in multiple places all at once.

Quantum entanglement is superposition on a larger scale… Particles become entangled when they interact with each other. Entanglement means that when an action is performed on one particle, it directly affects that particle's entangled partner no matter how far apart they are.

Friday, October 3, 2014

What makes life worthwhile?

"...It is true that the number of people striving ardently for the right and the worthwhile things is small. But the existence of these few is what makes life worthwhile.”
Einstein, 1951