ILLUMINATI

''It’s a strange union, this marriage of light and knots'' - Anton Desyatnikov  

POST-PRE LAPSARIAN GLAMOUR

 

''They were very proud not only of the elegant designs but of the quality of the workmanship that went into all their products'' ...  

http://thephilosophersmail.com/capitalism/the-great-philosophers-william-morris/

TIGGER OECONOMY - A BOUNDIFUL HOUSEHOLD

''For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger''... http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/why-humans-evolved-to-love-watching-animals/

ARTISINAL COURAGE

''therefore all those who make it their business to seek Art, build storehouses to preserve it, and hand down to posterity its stimulus in example, do an inestimable service to mankind'' ... 

NORM-AN LINDSAY

''Search for all that common minds reject as useless to the struggle for Existence, and you will find all that serves Life'' - Norman Lindsay, Creative Effort: An Essay In Affirmation

DICTUM EST PACTUM

''For whatsoever is so tied, or environed, as it cannot move but within a certain space, which space is determined by the opposition of some external body, we say it hath not liberty to go further'' ...  

#BIGPOLITICS #BIGVISION

''Paul's love was music so when we were invited to an evening of Opera in the Park at Sydney's Domain, Bob and Hazel, Paul and Annita and Rae and I accepted and were royally entertained as guests of Ita Buttrose, Patrick Veitch and the other nobs of the music world. We were roped off from the masses and enjoyed our Bollinger and sesame-seed pate with the elite. Paul broke the silence and returned us to our working-class roots. "Hey, Bazza, this beats being in opposition, mate! If we were we'd be up the back chewin' a Mars bar''.

YES!!!!!!!!!

BEST ALBUM EVER?

OPERATION RIGHTEOUS FLAME

BATHED IN WORLDS

''The voluptuous Cleopatra-Culture throws ever again
the most priceless pearls, the tears of compassion for
the misery of slaves, into her golden goblet'' - Friedrich Nietzsche

TERRIFYING PROSPECT

''Extremism is the wish to make your will prevail by silencing your opponent, and terror is the expression of that wish by silencing anyone at all'' - Clive James 

MEDUSA SEDUCED

''HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?)
Outside fair costume--within ashes and filth,''  

 

KERS

Baby, you can drive my car..   

 gereports.com/post/79478645669/going-solo-formula-1-s-lone-american-driver-alexgereports.com/post/79478645669/going-solo-formula-1-s-lone-american-driver-alex

''And I saw my own face in the dark, and loneliness'' #frozeninheaven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA3DHY2yIts

SCALABLE LEARNING (a la Bob Sutton, John Hagel III)

PLANTING PARADOX: SOMETIMES LESS IS MORE (taken from Peters and Waterman's study of Western Electric)

 

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/how-ge-applies-lean-startup-practices/; http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/07/insourcing-at-ge-the-real-stor/

SCALE: IN PRAISE OF ''IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE''

Live it, Learn it, Love it

IMPLEMENT YOUR AHA!

(Or someone else's) 

A Light to Clear the Sky, or the Desire for Darkness? [Fidelity to a Fault]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srALym8j9MA; https://www.youtube.com/watch?; v=DItwLjGAZdk


''Well, if my heart must break,
Dear love, for your sake,
It will break in music, I know,
Poets' hearts break so'' - Oscar Wilde

--------------------
A 21C NAVIGATIONAL DILEMMA


The recent, unaccountable disappearance of Flight MH 370 is both a mystery and tragedy, for obvious human reasons. But it is also perplexing for what it says to me about human systems. For, complex as the machinery inside Flight MH 370 clearly was, those systems (in the plural), inter-operating within a wider system of aerial transportation, were designed by humans for humans.

Alex Malley, CEO of CPA Australia and head of the accountancy profession here has spoken about the need to account for value in Australian Parliament as well as Australian corporates. (It is a position shared, among others, by Prof Margaret Abernethy of Melbourne Business School). Malley argues that accountants ought to become more active in political life and even run for office. The corollary would be better representation and better governance, since accountants are trained to quantify and realise value.

I concur with Malley that we, as a nation, must account more fully for value generated by government and the corporate sector. At the same time, I suggested to Malley that over-representation of specific interests has per se locked out other voices from public life, and that Accountancy and Political Representation are themselves substrates of generalised value. Where value is unaccounted for - for example, in unfunded liabilities or off-balance sheet accounting - the estimation and realisation of sustainable value becomes nigh impossible.

Over the last few years, in light of the GFC and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as such, I have begun to worry about how we, as a human species, account for numeric and political value.

So what is Value? And what does it mean in the 21st Century?


MY BULLET-POINT OVERVIEW OF THE ''VALUE PROBLEM''


- Accounting systems, like aircraft machinery and electronics, are another question about system.

- Financialisation has contributed to liberalisation of political and economic systems. And to globalisation.

- How we account, however, ‘’COMPTER’’ is fundamental to WHO we are and aspire to be.

- Therefore, how do our ‘’entities’’ serve us? And what do we serve? (Cf scholastic debate, Aristotle, Marx, Smith) And of course Compte, who ironically counted on positivist organisation for secular progress.

- When does the rational spill over or elide into the irrational or bizarre, the grotesque or baroque?

- Units of account are generally abstracted, if not abstractions. Through time and inertia valuable, however, units of account in any system fall away from some conceptual or ethical UNITY toward a systemic mess or chaos.

- Which makes it all the more complex and vital to determine real value in our intellectual, commercial and cultural systems (Cf European Union and Euro Crisis, the writing of Ralston Saul, Pacioli, Malley and the humanist ideal espoused by Erasmus of Rotterdam).

- Are we living in an open system, or are we living in a closed, rationalist system which generates increasingly irrational externalities from its core product?

- At the bottom of every system – to generalise (and univeralise) the problem – is Paradox.


ONE PARADOX: A FUNDAMENTAL VALUE DISTORTION OR CONUNDRUM?


- Our political system is itself reducing representation through facilitating it, at least monetarily.

- Liberal democracy is either 1) not the ‘’end of history’’ and/or 2) institutionally threatened or decrepit from within and in need of revitalisation.

- So how do we define and ‘’refine’’ the relevant balance between the tangible and intangible, and, to beg the original question to any large-scale complex system made up of complex entities, what is the simplest thing we are aiming for and how do we reach it?


AND A READING LIST TO JOG YOUR THOUGHTS  : )  

Bibliography

Leszek Kolakowski, Satyajit Das, John Ralston Saul, Tony Judt, Joseph Stiglitz, John Hagel, Alain de Botton, Ron Ashkenas

: 0 : 0 : 0 ~~ WIN THE NARRATIVE ~~ 0 : 0 : 0 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_22D31NyUzQ 

TEACHABLE MOMENTS

''In essence, leadership is about inspiring other people to perform''

- Bruce Elder, 'Communication and Job-Seeking Skills'

FROM BALANCE OF POWER 2 BALANCE OF INTEREST: SURFING THE INTERNATIONAL CYBER SEAS

(Reflections on re-reading The New Digital Age):



*Can we globalize ''positives'' and localize ''negatives''? 


As we move from a Balance of Power to a balance of interest, there will be a premium on -

    #Being geopolitically sensitive and technologically aware
   
In order to avoid Balkanization of the Internet (cf ''deep-packet inspection'', photonics and proxy DNS), cyber-communities will have to preserve/enhance -

     #Cyber-Comity and civility
     #Cyber-Cultural Discipline


so as to navigate the INTERNATIONAL CYBER SEAS.


HISTORY IS ONLY NOW ''UPLOADING'' - [The end of history is over..]

       #Virtual will complement physical space (and indeed override) in the search for intellectual meaning.

        #Hence humint signalling has the power to override or recharge historical narrative...

Within the Global Metanarrative (Cf Jean-Francois Lyotard), there will exist manifold mini-narratives.


Which does the species SUBSERVE, SUBVERT or SUBSUME in the quest for Cyber-Destiny?

LORD SKIDELSKY AND HOW WE JUST-ABOUT AVOIDED ECONOMIC IMPLOSION

When I re-read Skidelsky's Keynes: Return of the Master, I just thought wow! Or, more like, gasp...



Here's why (note, the statistics, data drawn from econometric series, IMF reports etc are inside):


*The UK and US economies were geared toward fixed-assets such as property beyond any figure imaginable historically

*The GFC, post-Lehman, saw a devastating run on money-markets globally

*Banks were up to their eyeballs in securitised, mortgage-backed ''subprime'' security debt

*Banks, in their Universal guise, were holding this debt as Tier 1 equivalent capital

*Economists - at least the ones markets listened to - said that business cycles were largely a thing of the past

*Under the Rational Expectations Hypothesis, subject to exogenous ''shocks'', markets supposedly cleared now and inter-temporally

*Given wage and price adjustments, commodity prices would apparently remain stable

*Despite the above, none of this was true! 

*The global economy almost experienced a complete meltdown of commodity, property and financial market assets in a period of days



Rereading this book, the asset destruction throughout the GFC was 'eye-watering', as Skidelsky put it.
According to Skidelsky, we assume - that is, policymakers, many economists etc - that recovery will follow slowly - perhaps agonisingly so.

Keynes, however, might suggest that we are about to suffer a long-term demand slump without productive investment in the real economy.

What's the answer????

I hope a ''relapse in confidence'' lol!!!

 

MANTRA (Clear Skies)

  Perhaps I am nothing

Then let it Be....    

INTER-GENERATIONAL WAR & PEACE

I confess, I'm writing this piece in anger.. I have a very tense relationship with my parents: I always have. In many respects, they represent, to me, the ultimate Bourgeois lifestyle.

And I see now, from a certain perspective, they're an instance of inter-generational enmity.

From as far back as I can remember, they have represented the commandment, ''Thou shan't''; ''Thou canst'': I've never been good enough to achieve anything for them.

~
You're not good at law; you can't talk about economics, you haven't studied it; you're not special; you're not a nice person. Followed by the good cop routine, ''We care'', "We'll spend money on it''.

The world has changed since 197-? Mom and pop don't have all the answers. They never did. I just wish they could accept that I know that, and build from there..

BROADEN THE QUESTION

 

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Yearly range - Approximation  (stretch goal)  $11.00 - 15.00

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW THE RAIN IS GONE