Faith + Reason = Truth

The Financial Times has an article by Clive Crook today (no link, since it requires a subscription) that delves into whether President Bush is villified for his bad decisions or for the bad outcomes of his decisions, which may have actually been good ideas at the time.  It has obvious relevance across all spheres:  politics, business, sports, you name it.  I'll go the sports route with my potentially relevant example.  Another professional American football league is being explored (seems a new one is tried every 10 years or so).  On the surface, this may seem a bad idea, given the history of failure since the lone successful attempt at competing with the NFL ended with the AFL-NFL merger around 1970.  But those failures were due to poor implementation, rather than lack of merit in the idea.  As Mark Cuban, a force behind the latest potential competitor, astutely points out, there is obviously more demand than supply when it comes to pro football.  The reason I give his idea a chance of working is solely based on him personally:  he is an extremely successful pro sports franchise and facility owner, and more importantly, he owns his own broadcast distribution network.  Other leagues may have been doomed from the start by a lack of exposure to their products, which could be enforced by the NFL employing strongarm tactics in prohibiting partner networks from helping the other fledgling leagues.  They also may have had ownership groups that had no idea of what goes into successful sports leagues.  Cuban single-handedly takes care of both of these issues, and in an age of quality, household name players finding themselves out of work due to "cap constraints", this environment, coupled with Mark Cuban's unique position, experience, and resources, may be the ideal combination to give an alternative pro football league its best shot since the 1960's when the NFL and television itself was still in its adolescence.
In the broader scheme of things, see if you can think of some great "idea men/women" who were labeled failures as a result of their inability to execute or implement, in spite of the brilliance of their ideas.  You may actually find some ideas worth a second (or, as in this case, a third or fourth) look, with the only thing missing being the right person or team to pull them off.

Buddhism:  it took hundreds of years after Siddhartha Gautama died before his orally-transmitted teachings were written down.  Homer's epics:  hundreds of years, maybe thousands.  The Old Testament:  definitely thousands of years of survival by word of mouth only, and then finally written down.  Once written, the words are available for all to learn and experience, right?  No; one must also know how to read, which the vast majority of humanity did not know how to do until fairly recently.  And even then, one could only read what was written in a language known by the reader, and the written copies of texts were not plentiful.
How much observation, insight, knowledge, and wisdom was lost over the course of the 1st 10,000 years or more of "civilization" because the observer or holder of the insight/wisdom couldn't write down their thoughts and were not able to successfully pass them on orally?  That, to me, is the single most influential differentiator between the "advanced" cultures of the Old World as compared to the New World.  Although individual brilliance can and does pop up anywhere, anytime, in any culture, a people can only accomplish so much without a writing system that enables them to refer to and build on existing knowledge.  The minuscule number of "geniuses" throughout the ages is almost certainly several orders of magnitude larger than we know, but we have no record of their brilliance which died with them.  The explosion of invention, creativity, knowledge, and all else which springs from the mind of humanity that has taken place over the last few hundred years is, I believe, due to nothing more than the widespread ability to read, write, translate, and mass produce copies of writings into languages and onto media that can be consumed by the whole human race, allowing all Mankind to stand on the shoulders of giants.

I need to explore a theory with you, with others, and independently:  that people should be called to seek the ultimate truth, to know God, to follow Jesus [or insert your spiritual belief here], but NOT to be spiritual leaders of others.  I am coming to believe that only the individual, along with the guidance of and attraction to the spiritual entity and ultimate truth they seek, can be their own spiritual leader, and not another person.  That rules out churches and preachers and imams and all of that bureaucracy!  If you desire fellowship and camaraderie with other seekers who are further or not as far along the developmental continuum as you are, that's fine.  Do it if it works for you - but don't put the development of or passion for your faith in the hands of another human being.  This theory, developed over the past few months, calls to mind all of the times over the years that I've heard various friends and family members talk of switching congregations or even denominations because "something's missing".  To me, it's not about the church or the pastor or the ritual, it's about your own spirit and soul and its connection with God.  If something's missing, don't go looking for it from other people or buildings or organizations:  look for it first from God and then, or actually simultaneously, within yourself.  That's where it is.  Individuals can be motivational or inspiring (or quite the opposite in many cases!), but that's a cult of personality, not God.  If you seek Him, you will find Him when you are ready, and not before, and not by getting jazzed by words from someone who's a gifted public speaker who would be just as effective at getting people fired up about a big ballgame or a political rally.  If you're really where you want to be spiritually, you should be able to be just as connected and fired up about God all by yourself in a remote forest as you are when listening to Pastor Pump Us Up in an amazing facility packed in with 3000 other people singing and dancing and yelling.  Same thing with churches that are kid-friendly:  I welcome messages and activities that make the life and teachings of Jesus more understandable to kids, but that doesn't mean I need to "be" a Baptist or Methodist or Catholic or whatever.  It means people have different levels and capacities of understanding, including children, and little children can't be expected to understand or pay attention to materials drawn up for adults, and if I find a way to make the message more understandable to them, I'll try it.  I see how you may point out that this logic could also apply to adults:  why not go to a place that facilitates my understanding of the message?  Again, I have no problem with seeking clarification or better understanding from those who have a solid grasp of the message as it applies to them, and their being able to assist you in its application to your personal existence.  Just don't come to depend on them or lean on them in place of your own spiritual and mental efforts and development, which is what tends to happen when you stay in one place for too long - and this goes for any of life's endeavors, be them spiritual, professional, intellectual, you name it.

Machiavelli wrote The Prince just over 500 years ago (it was published some years later, but written in 1505).  Long story short:  the ends justify the means, or at least Renaissance-era Italian princes believed so, resulting in the moral certainty of their brutal actions to bring about a "better" state when all was said and done.  Here we stand, over 500 years later, watching grown men in all their wisdom vying for the right to lead the free world saying, almost to a man, that the end justifies the means, even when specifically referring to the means of torturing people.  I must disagree, as must all civilized people.  Beyond the obvious question of "what if they really don't know anything more than they're telling you?", people in positions of authority must be above moral reproach.  Especially people who are leaders of a nation trying to set an example of being the shining beacon of hope and goodness for the rest of the world to aspire to become (and if the rest of the world doesn't see it that way, by golly, we'll MAKE 'em!).  Very simply, we must do what's right and strive to achieve desired outcomes through methods that are recognized by all people as civilized and just.
But what, you say, what of the case where we can prevent the loss of innocent lives (presumably at the expense of other, different, fewer innocent or not-so-innocent lives)?  For example, dropping atomic bombs on 2 Japanese cities to end WWII and spare potentially a million invasion casualties at the expense of a mere 100,000 civilians incinerated by the splitting of atoms in their close proximity.  Again, the answer is simple:  find a better way.  Would you drop the bombs on 2 American cities to end the war, killing 100,000 American civilians in order to save a million invasion casualties?  Of course not.  So it's not just about the numeric trade off, with 100,000 being less than, and therefore more desirable than, a million lost lives.  It's about "they are the enemy and therefore are more deserving of death than us."  Yet they were fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, going about their daily lives, and then BLAM!
Were those means justified by the ends?  No.  People gave up trying to find a better way and apologized later.  That's clearly and plainly never an acceptable course, to do something wrong in hopes that a desired outcome of that wrong action will somehow vindicate it.  It was wrong 500 years ago, it is wrong today, and it will be wrong 500 years from now, when we're still operating under the same barbaric, uncivilized, unenlightened logic of primitive, murderous, and warlike intellect.

A corporation has a kind of ongoing scoreboard for its efforts, although it's largely keeping score of itself vs. prior and future efforts.  There is also comparison between its score and the scores of its competitors, though they don't really compete against each other directly, but rather they observe a set of rules and vie for recognition of who can do the best under those rules.  For the most part it's more like golf than, say, football, since you're competitor isn't standing on the field defending against or attacking you directly (I take that back - there actually are plenty of ways to attack or defend against your business competitors, but the ultimate objective is for your business to do well more so than it is for other businesses to do poorly), but is instead trying to do its best to generate a better score than you.  This scoreboard is the combination of financial statements and operational metrics that companies report on and attempt to improve upon.
It would make working life more interesting if there were seasons and off-seasons in these corporate competitions, as in sporting events or even education.  Then, at the end of the 9 or 10 month season, winners and losers would be recognized, contracts would be signed or re-structured for the next season, employees could be let go or signed away by the competition, etc.  Much the same as it is now in the working world with employees coming and going to and from the competition or other fields entirely, with the exception that your roster would largely be set for an entire season and almost all movement would take place during the off-season.  The off-season would also be the time for employees to clear their heads, take a couple of months off, refocus, look at other options, etc.  But once they signed for the upcoming season they would be committed to that company for better or worse, as would the company be to them.
I could go on with the analogy, but you get the point.  One reason why this wouldn't work:  business doesn't stop and take time off.  Ever.  But there could be staggered seasons throughout the year, all say 9 months long, but with a new one starting every quarter so that a 1000 employee company would actually have 1250 people working for it in a given year but have 250 of them going through a set 3-month off-season at any given time.  I think this would keep it more interesting for employees (and employers), allow them to recharge and assess their lives more often than they currently can/do (for employees and employers), keep them more motivated since they'd be trying to make themselves more valuable since they'd perpetually be faced with an upcoming off-season that would require finding another contract (even if multi-year deals were signed with some really great employees, they would know that nothing is permanent, a fact that is already in place but not actually considered by the vast majority of corporate employees).  Every benefit to this scenario would work both ways, for the employee and the employer.  This actually does sort of exist in some fields such as investment banking, public accounting, law, medical doctors, etc., at least at the level where they recruit from schools at certain times of the year and then evaluate progress at set times/points along clearly laid out career paths - perhaps not coincidentally, these are some of the highest-performance educational and professional groups that exist today.  What about everybody else?

We know that one of the most effective attractors of colonial America was the freedom of religious expression.  Puritans, Quakers, Calvinists, you name it - all were welcome.  This doesn't really appear to have been tested to a great extent by those of Jewish and Islamic faiths, but there does not seem to be any record of persecution of these groups, so it would seem the only serious "religious" persecution was centered around the Salem witch trials (which were actually probably politically and civilly-motivated, but spun to make it an issue of witchcraft and Satanic dealings to get the public behind it).
In any case, as my wife and I prepare my own children for their own formal religious education (we're Catholic), and as I continue my philosophical and religious explorations throughout my adult life, I'm wondering what would happen if my kids said "no" to church.  Would they have the protection of the Constitution on their side?  What would the Supreme Court hold, assuming the sensational case would eventually ascend to their wise judgement?  As their parents, we are responsible for their physical, educational, and moral upbringing, and though moral behavior exists with or without religion, the two are frequent companions.
So it would seem that it would be well within our parental rights, even responsibilities, to expose them to, or force upon them, whatever religious indoctrination that we deem appropriate.  If this seems like a harmless supposition (after all, Catholics as an organization haven't brutally harmed other groups en masse in CENTURIES, or at least decades, not including defenseless child victims of sexually abusive clergy), then take it a giant step further:  what if the parents were not Christian?  What if they weren't monotheistic?  What if, even more shocking, they were Satanists?  Would you then afford those parents the same "religious freedom" protection to force that indoctrination onto their 5, 6, or 7 year old children?  Of course not.  But what about a gray area that exemplifies the non-black and white term perfectly for most of us, since we don't really know anything about it:  what about Scientology?  Many people think it's a bit nutty, maybe even financially harmful to its adherents, but not associated with illegal physical harm or anything of that nature.  Are those parents allowed to force their beliefs on their children, against their children's will?
Fortunately, my wife and I share a strong religious faith and it is very appealing to our children at this point in their lives, so there are no conflicts.  But what if they refused to believe?  What if they refused to even enter the Church?  Who could they turn to for help or protection, and what would that authority say to them?  What would our courts say?

This morning's Chrysler sale news, after months of speculation, fulfilled a "prophecy" of sorts, if it can be called that.  In this blog, and in Comments on other blogs, I frequently speculate on business matters (and I'm ALWAYS right, of course).  One such matter was the eventual "sale" of Chrysler, of which I predicted at the very start of the talks that Daimler couldn't actually sell it but would have to give it away in their best case scenario, due to the expenses of pension and other liabilities that would come with the company.  And so it is apparently happening in the deal with Cerberus.
Every time a prediction comes to fruition, I get a nice feeling - and also a thought of "hmmm, if what I predict usually comes to pass, then what do I WANT to come to pass, and how can I reasonably predict it?"  It doesn't work that way though, as all accurate predictors know.  They call 'em like they see 'em, whether they like it or not, just like the prophets of ancient times as recorded in the Bible and elsewhere.  Sometimes they saw good, sometimes bad, but they earned their cred and trustworthiness by having their predictions play out as predicted.
Politicians, on the other hand, cannot have or make public such realistic visions.  Their visions and plans must consist of rosy futures, optimism, and good/better times for all, because that's what people want.  Even if they are proven inaccurate and untrustworthy in their glorious plans and promises for our futures 100 times out of 100, we still vote for the one whose story we like the best, though the story has no basis whatsoever in either present or future reality.  What politician has actually predicted an accurate future state of affairs, complete with positive and negative aspects, and won the election?  I don't know of one.  It's not because they can't see it; it's because they can't say it, or else the people won't vote for them.  So the smart ones are in touch with what we want/need to hear, they try to be as sincere and believable as possible in the oral delivery of their made-up visions (and maybe so effectively as to come to believe their message themselves), and then do what they REALLY think/know what needs to be done once they are in office.
They cannot be faulted for these actions, since they are only trying to win the game as the rules have been laid down and played out and displayed by generations of human behavior before them.  The rules would need to change for the behavior to change.  But should the rules change, or is this system "good enough" to continue the slow but sure evolution of more and more individuals and governments around the world being forced into better and better behavior as the generations go on?  The answer to that question depends on your opinion of whether the world and humanity will survive long enough to evolve into what we need to become, or if a risky change needs to come about to speed up that evolution at the possible expense of making things even worse.

It's all about the name.  When you search for something, and you decide to go to a search site rather than use your browser's search that's built into the toolbar, you type in a url.  Typing google.com or yahoo.com feels "cooler" than typing in msn.com - first, because they're creative words that you really weren't using in your everyday vocabulary until those companies came along; second, because they're not initials; and third, because there's no direct connotation of Microsoft and all of the evil empire/Darth Vader imagery that the name is associated with for so many people.
The solution is simple, really:  just make up a creative-sounding word that in no way implies any association whatsoever with Microsoft, and then take a small percentage of the billions that would be used to buy a Yahoo and instead start building the new brand.  Building brands can be done in the blink of an eye and with virtually no resources compared to how long it used to take (just ask Youtube, MySpace, Digg, Technorati, ...), although Microsoft isn't in the position of having to worry about resources.  It is, however, up against it in terms of getting this new brand built quickly, with every passing day seeing Google expand its already gargantuan lead.  And if you've looked at Google's balance sheet and income statement lately, you'll notice that it's no longer the under-resourced,try harder scrapper that it once was in comparison to big bad Darth.  In fact, it has quickly become an empire in its own right, with the jury still out on the question of whether it is becoming or has already become evil.  Microsoft's msn.com could have the best search technology in the universe (it doesn't, but it could), and people wouldn't use it because of the name.  That's a situation that can and should be rectified in short order if Microsoft is serious about how important search and ad revenue is to its future.

I don't know if Barry Ritholtz thinks Microsoft should buy Yahoo this time around, but he's becoming more convinced that they will (here's a link to his post).  I agree that they will hammer something out and not take no for an answer this time, for the same reason that I believe they should not.  Psychology:  the same psychology that goes into paid search buys themselves.  When a person or business needs to give the growth/eyeball acquisition engine a nudge, they go out to a paid search provider (o.k., they go to Google).  They plunk down their cash, generate the growth in audience (not necessarily customers though), and from there they hopefully have a compelling enough destination for these eyeballs to generate some benefit from the additional site traffic.  It frequently doesn't work though, and what they find themselves with are more eyeballs, less money in the coffers, and no additional benefit to their business, since they have a destination worth paying people to visit.
The same scenario can be in play with the big boys, with MSFT looking to grow their ad search business through the acquisition of YHOO and then be able to more effectively compete with GOOG.  Unfortunately though, they still won't have the thing that gets people to choose Google's offering over either Microsoft's or Yahoo's - whatever that "thing" may be.  So they will find themselves with lots more paid search customers for the time being, lots less money in the coffers, and still no compelling reason for Google customers or future customers to choose them over Google (if customers are not choosing either Yahoo's or Microsoft's offering now, why would choose a combined offering?  More combined eyeballs?  No - clicks are priced per click, so customers could just do Microsoft and Yahoo separately now if that's what they wanted).  Like a company putting a lot of money into a paid search campaign, MicroHoo will see a short-lived burst of additional activity generated by interest and publicity from the deal, followed by resumption of their (now combined) slow fade into irrelevance, obscurity, and oblivion.
In the meantime, 3 guys in an apartment are putting their hearts, souls, family's money, and spare time into building something that will make the web a little more entertaining and easier to work with than it currently is, and once they get something working, word of their new "thing" will virally spread over a few weeks to garner 10 million users, and will be purchased by Google for a billion dollars - only this time, Google will only wait 6-9 months before purchasing, unlike the year they waited with YouTube, by which time YahSoft's MBAs and acquisitions group will have just completed their analysis.

A short and sweet blog post over at Infectious Greed got me thinking.  Paul mentions that while his engineer buddies at Google are realizing that they work for a growing bureaucracy, new MBAs are listing it as the company where they'd most like to work.  So here is my comparison of companies to houses:  the company starts with someone who wants to build it, just as a home does.  This process needs a visionary/architect, financing, equipment/materials, engineers/construction workers.  With these, the company/house gets planned, financed, and built.  But then what happens to the company/home?  The MBAs/housekeepers & lawn help come in to maintain things.  And they are quite happy to do so, because they've got a nice place to work for a fair wage and they know how to do their jobs.  Sure, they get to express some "creativity" now and again (make new charts and spreadsheets out of basically the same data/cut new designs into the yard or arrange the pillows on the bed in different ways), but it's pretty much the same company/house being maintained on an ongoing basis.  And the engineers/construction workers?  Well, they can either be authorized and set forth on building on to the company/house through new service offerings/additional rooms or even a deck or swimming pool, or they can move on to the next company/home to be built from the ground up, totally different than this one.  But there's really no point in sticking around the company/home once it's been built if you're a TRUE engineer/construction worker, unless there is REAL WORK to be done on it in terms of additions and expansions.
So, the question to those Google engineers who are increasingly existing with larger and less-fun bureaucratic machinations:  is the work that remains to be done engaging enough to justify dealing with it, or have those options vested or come out of lockup so that you can move on to the next company (maybe even your own!) to build and this time, do it even better?
And for you MBAs:  I've seen some nice homes in my day, but the one that those engineers built over in Mountain View takes the cake.  I'd say get over there as fast as you can and start maintaining, if you're lucky enough to be invited!