Greg Smith, now a former Goldman Sachs executive director, made a very public resignation in the New York Times that raises the question: Is there a right and wrong way to resign from a position?

We can all probably agree that with a few minor changes to the text, this letter could be used by many employees engaged in ethical activities for companies who appear to have a clear mission, yet practice unconscionable methods.

But, once you make up your mind to leave an organization, the first question is when and how you will leave. If you’re in the middle of your own Greg Smith situation, you need to move on as soon as possible and do it in a less public manner than Mr. Smith. Your ethics are important and personal to you and only you. Quitting means you have chosen the option best for you but should not include blasting your employer. You have to suppress valid concerns but ultimately achieve the goal…resignation from a job by just using a generic resignation that simply states you are resigning from Company XYZ and what will be your last day of employment. Explanation of the reason for resignation need not be explained, but you can close the letter by expression for the appreciation of the opportunities the role has provided you.

When addressing if this voluntary public resignation helps or hinders Smith, one must first understand where Smith is personally and financially. Some of us are willing to stand up to the conflicting morals and values even in the face of economic hardship. Albeit Greg Smith will also have to face possible moral attacks by Goldman Sachs, he also faces being shunned by his colleagues and personal friends.

The fallout for Goldman Sachs could be in several forms. For example, they are now subject to loss of goodwill in the financial community, and unyielding attempts by regulators and criminal authorities seeking validation to the accusations, either voluntary or through compulsory subpoenas. In either case, both parties will face a grueling road ahead.

Photo Credit

Resignation © Some rights reserved by timsnell on Flickr

The Right or Wrong Way to Resign? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Julia McLean expresses her opinion about changes over the decades in television programming.

Did you see the youth of Britain at its best? Rioting and raiding. S***, if that’s all you have to do to get Gucci jeans – I’m off to Paris/Milan/Rome/wherever for a quick dip into luxury stores. Some of those so-called dis-possessed crashed into stores and carried off flat screen televisions. I wonder why they bothered. Having just acquired a TV for the first time in 12 years, I can tell them it is not worth the candle nor the criminal record.

We had had French TV years ago but it was really dreadful. Although not quite as bad as Egyptian or Syrian TV, which seem to spend a lot of time broadcasting some Imam chanting the Koran, French TV didn’t appear very professional. There were a lot of game shows and old films but nothing mind-stretching, challenging or even educational. Television news was appalling before the European Union – very inward-looking, referring to France’s glorious past, and the presentation sounding very bombastic and De Gaulle-ish in its patriotic fervour. Christine Ockrent, one of the best news presenters, disappeared one evening after the elections because her point of view was not that of the government. The French were only being presented with government propaganda; certain films which criticised the French attitude during the war (most notable ‘Le Chagrin et la Pitie’) were not shown on television until 20 years later; documentaries about the Algerian War have only been shown very recently.

However, the French were mostly united in a common culture. Nowadays, Sarko and the TV pundits are worrying that British and American programmes get better ratings than French. I asked several French friends why they watched British imports and the reply was that they were better scripted and that historical/period pieces were outstandingly well dramatised and beautifully filmed, making use of wonderful sets and gorgeous scenery.

So we got a British satellite dish.

It was from television, at 10 years old, that I learnt most of my botany: I saw flowers growing in time lapse photography and all sorts of weird and wonderful plant life. I gleaned most of my knowledge of chemistry, biology and mathematics from excellently presented programmes by top science gurus. Probably most of my practical geography was the fruit of travelogues by some member of the Attenborough family or Whicker’s World. The theatrical tradition has always been strong in the UK so gritty drama was very much on screen: Cathy Come Home, Look Back in Anger and adaptations of Alan Sillitoe; writers such as Dennis Potter, Alan Bennett, David Mercer made significant contributions; directors like Ken Loach, Alan Clarke and Mike Leigh made our TV dramas worth staying home for.

Benny Hill, The Goodies, The Two Ronnies, Dad’s Army, Morecambe and Wise, Monty Python, Only Fools and Horses, The Likely Lads were all well-scripted comic shows which kept us doubled up with laughter. Monty Python’s Flying Circus brought oddball humour to the fore; Pop culture was covered by Juke Box Jury, Saturday Night Live and political satire was covered by That was the Week That Was and by The Frost Report. Television was an educational experience and a window on the world.

Our 5 channel world was enough to educate and amuse but most of all to bind us together in a common culture with common linguistic references such as ‘This time next year we’ll be millionaires’ or ‘Listen carefully, I will say this only once’ ‘Sausages!’ .’Nice to see you, Nice’ ‘That’ll be nice’.

The ‘Window on the World’ that was offered to us from the 50’s to the 70’s, no longer exists. The 200 or so channels available, mostly amuse, thrill and, in many cases, disgust; mindless quiz shows, talent shows, cooking shows by the inept, dimwit dinner shows with ill-mannered ignorant people, celebrity shows and too much sport.

We are no longer a nation united by our love of knowledge, our sense of humour and our sense of right and wrong. We have not inculturated our incomers, so they do not share our values and aspirations. The world we are presented with is one in which most people are on welfare and have every expectation of obtaining their ‘human rights’ but no real knowledge of their duties to the society they live in and depend on.

We Brits and you Canooks, have the ultimate WYSIWYG television. What you get is half-hearted do-gooders with half-baked opinions, no backbone from self-seeking politicians, appeasement from councils and a dis-affected, disconnected populace. ‘The Little Mosque on the Prairie’ is not going to change that. Come back John Wayne!

Photo Credit

“Televsion.”  Flickr Creative Commons. All rights reserved by stevetaylor.fivefour

 ”Benny Hill.”  Flickr Creative Commons.  All rights reserved by pietschreuders

“Little Mosque on the Prairie.”  Flickr Creative Commons.  All rights reserved by Claytonium

Television: A Window on the World is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

 Not so long ago, my enthusiasm for what I had learned about positive training and behavioural science turned me into an evangelist for modern training.  But is pushing my training philosophy any more acceptable than pushing political or religious beliefs?  Time has helped me temper my approach but the debate still rages within the positive training community.  How far do we go to change the dog-owning world?

That time in my life when I had to come to terms with how poorly I had trained my dogs was difficult.  That story is told in the first article I wrote here at Life As A Human.  It was an important time filled with introspection, regret, new learning, and most importantly hope for a better future with my dogs.  The things I was discovering were not new but they were new to me.  It was an exciting time and I was eager to share what I was learning with friends and family who had dogs themselves.

When I got my new puppy and began to raise her based on the principles of positive dog training, I was amazed almost daily at how quickly and easily she was learning new behaviours.  I couldn’t wait to do our next training session to see what we could accomplish.  It seemed to me that some veil had lifted and suddenly I had the knowledge to become a “master dog trainer” almost overnight.  It was very easy to lose my perspective and, for a time, I did.

We Can Change The World

The principles of positive reinforcement training were startlingly simple.  And they worked!  They worked on my dogs, they worked on other people’s dogs, and, if the books I was reading were correct, they worked on hundreds of species.  And they are still trying it out on new ones.  In my excitement at what I had learned, I wanted to show everyone how to train dogs.  I wanted to change the dog-owning world. There is just one small obstacle to changing the world - it would be a lot easier if the world wanted changing.

Enthusiasm can be a dangerous thing.  Enthusiasm to share a particular set of information or point of view can come very close to evangelism.  I knew what I was doing with my own dogs was working.  More than that, I was enjoying my dogs more than I ever had before and they seemed to be enjoying me more as well.  Small wonder that I wanted to share all of this with others.  But there is a difference between telling people of your own new successes and insisting that they must try what you do for themselves.  It went beyond that to telling people not just that their training was wrong but explaining to them in detail how and why it was wrong.

Safety In Numbers

Looking back on it, I’m not so sure it was a good thing that I found online communities of other positive trainers to talk with during those early years.  These internet discussion forums and mailing lists were full of people who had come to their own “enlightenment” around positive training methods.  They were a wonderful place to share stories of our new discoveries and improving relationships with our dogs.  We talked “techie” about applying various techniques and principles to best effect in our training.  Since this type of training is based on science, it was easy to get all “geeky” about it.  Our dogs were quite happy to work through our experiments in positive reinforcement because that just meant more treats for them!

The downside of all this support was the false impression that being “right” about dogs and dog training gave me permission to pass judgement on other trainers.  Every time I felt challenged on a particular point by more traditional trainers, I could simply run back to my community of positive trainers with my story and instantly feel vindicated in my views.  The support of my fellow positive trainers gave me the courage to go back out there and badger more unsuspecting dog owners who did things differently than us “positive trainers” did them.  It didn’t take me long to realize that I was becoming as popular as a born-again Atheist at a Christian revival meeting.

Is It Just Me?

As the years passed, I mellowed quite a bit.  Perhaps the cold, uninterested reactions from many of my fellow dog owners had something to do with that.  Perhaps it didn’t.  It’s hard to say. Something I have been noticing lately is that I don’t seem to be alone in my evangelical reaction to learning about positive training.  Certainly it is a message worth spreading but it seems that as the number of positive trainers has grown, so has the number of positive trainers who are taking a more self-righteous stand on their training philosophy and methods.

What concerns me about this phenomenon is that there seems to be a brand of “purist” developing in the positive training community.  Their way is the “RIGHT” way to train and all others are doing it wrong or “not quite right” at best.  The guiding principles of behavioural science give way to specific techniques or methods to teach this or that behaviour.  Suddenly there are “rules” for the right way to use a marker signal or to deliver a reinforcer.

A Battle On Two Fronts

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this phenomenon, in my view, is the in-fighting that sometimes occurs within the positive training community.  One trainer claims that another is not really a positive trainer because they mentioned a particular author or use a different technique.  Perhaps that trainer suggested a technique to interrupt or punish an unwanted behaviour.  Now the “Purely Positive Trainer” adopts a “holier-than-thou” stance and declares their superiority over this other trainer who “isn’t doing it right” or is just “paying lip service” to positive training.

The majority of the dog owning world seems to be only dimly aware of many of the things most positive dog trainers have known about dogs and training for decades.  Is this really the time for positive trainers to be turning on each other to battle it out over who has the “RIGHT” approach to positive training?  There just seems to be so much to do in raising the general awareness about dogs and training that in-fighting among ourselves only serves to weaken our message to the average dog owner.  As positive trainers, shouldn’t we be positive with each other first?

Science and training technology is advancing rapidly these days thanks to real research and dedicated work by professional animal trainers who are kind enough to share their experience with the positive training community.  While open discourse and debate on issues and techniques is good, I’m concerned that we don’t fall into the trap of spending our time criticizing each other instead of getting our message out to the average dog owner.  Does it really matter that much if you use a clicker or your voice as a marker?  Does it really matter if you reward every single behaviour or not?  I think there are more important, more general messages we need to get across like “Punishment doesn’t really work as well as we think it does.”  The research is out there now and ready to back us up if we can focus on talking to dog owners rather than picking each other apart.

Beyond Evangelism

If you read my first article here at Life As A Human, you know that I came to positive training because I was turning my own dog aggressive through more traditional training methods.  My move to positive training, sometimes called “crossing-over”, was life changing as it affected not just how I trained but how I thought about dogs and understood what they were as beings.  It opened a new level of appreciation in me.  A part of that was a desire to spare other dogs from the stressful and sometimes unintentionally cruel training methods that I myself had used.  

These days I recognize a few things about the dog owning public.  Not everyone recognizes dogs for the potential that I and other positive trainers see in them.  Not everyone owns a dog for the same reasons I do.  Not everyone has the time or inclination to change what they know about dogs and training.  Not everyone wants the same things from their dog as I do.  As different as every dog owner may be, there is a different dog trainer to help them get what they need in their life with their dog.

As important as I feel it is to spread what I know about dogs, behaviour, training, and humane and positive work with dogs, I must recognize that not everyone is open to what I and others have to say about positive training.  More that that, not everyone has room in their life to make a radical change to how they have always approached dogs and training.  I have to recognize that for some, it is just not a priority and they feel they are doing just fine, thank you.

Not So Born Again

I think I have a more healthy perspective these days.  I’ve scaled down my goals.  I’m not trying to save all the dogs anymore, just a few will do.  I’m happier writing my column here and sharing podcasts about what I learn.  I don’t need to debate and discuss on internet forums as I used to do.  And I find that I look for ways to encourage any trainer who shows the slightest interest in using any facet of positive training in their own work with their dogs or other dog owners.

I know that there are minds out there that I cannot change.  It was not that long ago that I would have been one of them.  I knew what I knew and I was happy.  But that has changed for the better.  These days I use my dogs and my relationship with them as the best showcase for positive training.  Those that are open and interested will ask me about it.

The almost religious approach I once had has given way to a more practical approach.  I don’t need to change the world anymore.  If I can nudge a few people toward trying something new, that’s great.  I don’t feel any great need to be pushy about positive training and behavioural science these days.

And the dogs?  Well bless their hearts, we’ve bred them to stick with us through thick and thin.  They’ve put up with our ridiculous and sometimes painful attempts at communicating and training for thousands of years.  I’m sure they will happily stick around for as long as it takes.  I mean, things can only get better from here.  The more we know, the better we will be as dog owners and trainers.  There’s no need to be pushy about it.

Until next time, have fun with your dogs.

Photo Credits - 

Discussion - Ed Yourdon 2008 from Flickr
Debate - sfistrita 2007 from Flickr
Worth Saving - Joe Reicherts 2007 from Flickr

Are Positive Dog Trainers Positively Pushy? is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Julia Mclean challenges Britain’s immigration laws and suggests that there are some serious economic consequences for immigration laws that do not protect the citizens of Britain.

A recent case in the British newspapers has aroused anti-immigrant feelings which is not hard to do in a small country where the green and pleasant land is being gobbled up to make housing for the multitudes arriving on this pearl set in the silver sea.

The case in question is that of a 54-year-old Indian woman who is importing her husband into England to work in a factory. He is 58 and speaks no English. England’s Prime Minister David Cameron, in response to all those Brits who feel that the least our immigrants can do is make a stab at the language (instead of at us or our shopkeepers) had just proposed altering our immigration laws to make them point dependant as in Canada or Australia.

In the Canadian system, people are allowed in if the country needs their skills, plus they speak the lingo, plus they have a sponsor plus a heap of other rules to deter the lazy and those on the make. We have vast swathes of Britain occupied by people who not only do not speak our language but never even attempt to. This woman is taking Britain to court for breaching her human rights by insisting the husband learn some English before he arrives. He is too old to learn according to her. In two years time he will be old enough to qualify for a pension and because he hasn’t earned enough, he will have an income supplement to provide for his family.

Old people’s residential care is a disgrace, medical care is worse; we are threatening to remove Caesareans from a hospitals’ routine practice and certain new drugs are being withheld from patients as the system cannot afford them. I quote at length Rod Liddle’s recent comment in The Times.  ”One of the pleasures of reading our tabloids is the regular appearance on about page five of an unemployed, newly arrived Somali family photographed beaming with pride outside the £2m house just given them by some witless borough council.”  According to Liddle, the Somalis are beaming in the photograph because they think, in their naivety, that the newspaper ”wished to exult with them in their good fortune, rather than portray them as feckless, scrounging jackanapes who shouldn’t be here at all.“

He goes on to say that “a new study suggests that we will need an extra 415,000 homes to house immigrants over the next 25 years; meanwhile the old canard that we need immigrant labour to pay for our pensions was comprehensively demolished even before the latest unemployment figures showed that one in five 16- to 24- year-olds was out of a job.  There is decent moral argument in favour of immigration, but not an economic argument and we should stop pretending that there is.”  The British Government spends a fortune on translating its documents into the multitudinous languages that our immigrants speak and have, only now, started to insist that a minor grasp of our language should be a requirement.

My husband and I are off to Tunisia in October, where I shall be ordering my coffee with just enough sugar and tea with milk in Arabic. I have learnt enough to be able to introduce my husband by saying what sounds like ‘Haada jowsie’ and he has to learn to say ‘Haadi marti’(this is my wife). If I can do this in my 3 score years and 10, I am sure some semblance of English can be learnt by a canny fifty eight year old who does, at least, know on what side his bread is buttered.

Further Rod Liddle Reading:

Liberal Conspiracy

The Times

The Spectator

The Spectator

Photo Credit

Courtesy of Julia McLean

Speaking in Tongues: Learning a New Language is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Great moments in “laughtivism” from Yes Men Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, the guys who duped the BBC, embarrassed Dow Chemical, and mocked Halliburton.

By The Yes Men

Some say that laughter helped bring down the Soviet Union, by making “­Brezhnev” rhyme with “ridiculous.” At the Yes Lab, we help activists cook up funny antics and escapades to change public opinion—with laughter. We’ve used humor as a weapon to avenge corporate wrongdoing for more than a decade, ever since we started dressing up as phony PR men, comic strip heroes, and government officials.

Click on the image to download the Yes Men Starter Disguise

That’s because we know humor is powerful: people have used jokes and hoaxes for centuries to humble the bad guys and inspire the good ones. Here are some of our favorite moments in “laughtivism.”

1. Abbie Hoffman incites a money grab.

In 1967, Abbie Hoffman and members of the Yippies, a radical activist group, threw 300 one-dollar bills from the New York Stock Exchange balcony onto the trading floor. According to Hoffman, as brokers grabbed for petty cash, trading ground to a halt. The famous stunt mocked the unregulated greed that still pervades Wall Street.

2. Let’s kill dissent—just kidding.

In 1702, in an era of religious persecution in England, Daniel Defoe published a fake pamphlet called “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters.” It proposed that—rather than barring non-Anglicans from office­—it would be faster and easier to exterminate them. Some people believed the pamphlet was real, which so humiliated Anglicans that they had Defoe briefly imprisoned—during which time he produced some wonderful writing.

3. Daring satire tweaks Nazis.

In November 1943, a fake issue of the Belgian newspaper Le Soir was published by the Front de l’Indépendance, a Belgian resistance organization. The paper looked like the real thing, but a close read revealed biting satire about the Nazi occupation. Some of the publishers were sent to concentration camps, but their brazen humor gave many Belgians the courage to resist the Nazis.

4. Phony bid stops drilling.

In 2008, Tim DeChristopher, then a student at the University of Utah, went to protest a federal auction selling rights to drill for oil and gas in the Utah wilderness. He then performed what is surely the best prank of the century. DeChristopher intended to barge in and disrupt the proceedings, but a door attendant confronted him: “Are you a bidder?” Tim thought: “That’s funny. Bidder?” “Why yes,” he said out loud. “Yes, I am.” The attendant gave him a paddle, and Tim won 14 parcels of land. Finally the auctioneer caught on, put the auction on hold, and had Tim arrested. Months later, the Obama administration cancelled the sales. DeChristopher singlehandedly saved thousands of acres of wilderness and now looks forward to writing some wonderful things in prison, where he may be headed after sentencing.

5. Imposters “help” Dow do the right thing.

Mike and Andy had already begun a habit of impersonating corporate hacks and hacking corporate websites, when in 2004, the BBC fell for a phony site (dowethics.com) the two had constructed to mimic Dow Chemical’s website. The site described why Dow and its subsidiary, Union Carbide, had never taken responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal disaster, when a pesticide plant leaked, causing thousands of deaths and leaving behind a toxic legacy. The BBC booked Jude Finisterra (a.k.a. Andy Bichlbaum) to comment on the anniversary of Bhopal. Finisterra announced on international television that Dow would spend billions of dollars to clean up Bhopal. Major news wires picked up the story, and within 23 minutes, Dow’s stock price fell by 4.2 percent, a $2 billion loss. —YES! editors

(The humble Yes Men did not include one of their own stunts. But YES! Magazine editors (no relation), decided to anyway.)

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About the Authors: Yes Men Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno wrote this article for Beyond Prisons, the Summer 2011 issue of YES! Magazine.

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YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

5 Protests That Shook the World (With Laughter) is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs and knowledge slowly accumulated over the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic. So says Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince.

This year is the 700^th anniversary of the first edition of the King James Bible which has had such a civilizing influence on the history of the English-speaking world. Many writers have been inspired by it and many of its phrases have become common currency in our language. This edition was intended to bridge the gap between Protestant reformers and conservative Catholics. The KJV (King James Version) is part of our heritage, and even though many of us are not practicing Christians we have an architectural, literary, artistic, social, and musical heritage handed down to us by Christianity in Europe and certainly carried over to all those parts of the world where we settled as immigrants, very often driven by our interpretations of the bible.

As I discovered on a trip to Syria a few years back, Christian churches were built in the East as far back as 292 AD, as exemplified by Dura Europos on the banks of the Euphrates, and Palmyra (312 AD) which features four Christian churches, one recently discovered in 2008. Each Christian sect (Nestorians, Assyrians, Copts, Maronites, Armenians) lived side by side with other religions in reasonable peace, in Palmyra, Damascus, Aleppo and the Middle East. These churches are part of our world heritage or, as the French say, Notre Patrimoine.

Unfortunately, great parts of the French Christian Patrimoine were deliberately destroyed during the French Revolution. Cathedrals and churches were used as people’s meeting houses, and even our local cathedral did not escape having the Revolutionary Tricolour painted above its portal. Many cathedrals were stripped of their treasuries – the golden chalices and bejeweled crucifixes, smaller churches were desecrated — or just destroyed.

Although Britain has a larger remaining heritage of medieval churches than France, new reformation protestant brooms swept them clean to the extent of painting over the colourful frescoes. However, most of England’s cathedrals with their architectural traceries, stained glass windows and majestic naves are intact, although more than 800 monasteries were destroyed by Henry VIII who, in sore need of treasure to replenish his coffers, dissolved the monastic orders, destroyed the monasteries (more than 800 of them) and threw out all the monks and nuns. Tintern Abbey’s grandiose ruins are the results of his spoilage.

Since the end of the Second World War, more heritage-destroying conflicts have broken out in yet more merciless fashion between the Abrahamic religions. Examples of this destruction occurred during Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the brutal reaction of the Maronite Christians towards the Palestinian Christians and, more recently, the bombing of Christian churches in Alexandria, Egypt and Baghdad, Iraq.

The Armenian Christians in Turkey were all but wiped out after the First World War (Ein Wardo) and still suffer persecution today under the pretense that they are helping the Kurds. The Algerians have all but wiped out the Christians in their land: their latest effort some 14 years ago was to kidnap and kill by beheading the seven old Trappist monks of Tiberhine. The documents relating to this are still under a “For Your Eyes Only” embargo although President Sarkozy of France is trying to get these top secret documents opened up because the perpetrators of this brutal killing are still un-named.

This event has provoked many enraged articles in the French press and a film about this massacre, called Des Hommes et Des Dieux which won plaudits at Cannes. The Coptic quarter in Cairo, Egypt is under permanent army guard. The Syrian Christians in Aleppo have their own quarter and so far have escaped total destruction but they are now only 10 percent of the population instead of the 30 percent they represented in the 1900s. Iraq and Iran still persecute their Christian communities to this day. Why is this happening?

After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, there was little trade between the Christian West and the Muslim East. The West, in its desire to continue trading in silks and spices with the East, now that the Silk Road was lost to them, set out to find other routes, discovered America and became rich. The refusal of the Ottoman Muslims to trade with the West throughout centuries has left their populations relatively poor – too poor for them to cope with their garbage which litters the streets and railway lines out of towns, too poor to educate the greater part of their male populations who have no jobs and are currently rioting at the rising cost of foods in their countries.

I wonder if it is partly their realisation of the economic imbalances existing between East and West (and now too between North and South) rather than a desire to Islamicize the world, that is provoking reactions to the few Christians who remain in Muslim lands. It was after all the centre of Western wealth which was attacked when the Twin Towers went down.

In our eagerness to spread the culture of gentle Jesus, we often trampled on the sensibilities of the people whose lands we occupied. In these more enlightened times, we have come to regret it and even issued apologies. We have gone beyond the reforming King James Bible by admitting women to certain priesthoods and recognizing gay relationships. Learning to recognize the different facets of humankind, we are becoming more liberal, but I am wondering if turning the other cheek and looking the other way is the wrong approach.

The world was shocked by the Taliban destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan – a World Heritage Site — but remains unmoved by the plight of the Christians in the East and ignores the rape of innocent underage Christian girls in Great Britain, Holland and Australia who are groomed and abused by Muslim gangs. The newspaper accounts are heartrending and deeply shocking. It is a quiet extermination of souls, silent and vicious, which, for fear of appearing racist, the authorities brushed under the carpet. “What happened to [this girl] is a model of the calculated, predatory process that has initially flattered, then ensnared and finally wrecked, the lives of hundreds of British girls in recent years,” The Times reported on Saturday January 15 2011.

Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy said, “Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom had inspired.” Had he not been assassinated, he would surely have been heartbroken to see how little his culture, inherited from all those European refugees who make up the majority of the American population, is respected today. This may be another facet of an incipient World War Three. Some consider it Jihad.

Photo Credits

Marsaba Monastery, East of Bethlehem – www.sacred-destinations.com

Maalula – Mar Takla Church Syria www.sacred-destinations.com

Copts Coming Out of Church, Ephesus © Julia Mclean

Tintern www.sacred-destinations.com

Maalula Monastery  www.sacred-destinations.com

A Heritage of Beliefs is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

For our writer, a name is more than a collection of letters. It’s what you stand for — and what you’ll stand up for.

I don’t mean to contradict the Bard, but I think there is more to a name than just an arbitrary collection of letters that identify someone or something. I always have.

One of the most powerful – and valuable – lessons my parents ever gave me was on the importance of my name.

“Your good name is everything in this world,” they would say. “It can take a lifetime to build up, but only a moment to ruin.”

This is something I took to heart and that has guided me throughout my life.  It’s probably also no accident that I chose PR as a profession and now spend my working days guarding the good names of my clients.

The importance to me of my name was brought home one night recently when I received a private message from an acquaintance on Twitter.  He informed me I’d been “called out” in that week’s episode of a podcast that focuses on pop culture, technology and social media.

“What?” I wrote back. “What did I do?”

My acquaintance didn’t reply right away and so my brain began to spin scenarios in my head.  Had I done something wrong? Had I offended someone? Had my use of Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn been held up for ridicule?

What was going on?

(Side note: If you’re ever telling someone they’ve been slammed in public, it’s probably a good idea to give some context, if only to prevent possible cardiac arrest.)

That my mind leaped to my use of social media is interesting, but not surprising.  It’s the sphere in which my name is most public.  I am active on Twitter and Facebook, and interact daily with a wide range of people.  I am also careful about how I use social media, the image I project, and what I do with my good name online.  Of course, I’m not perfect.  I occasionally engage in the odd bit of whining or complaining, especially if I’ve gotten bad service. I can be quick with a witty or Smart Alec comeback that might be taken the wrong way. But, in general, I think I do OK, and the thought I’d been “called out” for something I’d done online upset me a great deal.

Since my acquaintance still wasn’t providing additional details, I DM’d friends on Twitter who I knew listened to the podcast. I also fired up my computer and downloaded the episode.

Within about 30 minutes I’d pieced together what happened.

The podcast has a Facebook page and, because I know someone involved with it, I “liked” it. At the start of the episode in question, one of the podcast’s main commentators – not my friend, who wasn’t there for that week’s show – decided to call out, at random, people who had liked the Facebook page but who had never joined the online chat during the live podcast. My name wasn’t alone. Several others were mentioned. The general tone was one of ridicule and insult.

OK, mystery solved. I wasn’t being called out for anything I’d done. Perversely, it was something I hadn’t done that sent my name spinning into cyberspace. Once I’d understood this, I calmed down – and then I got angry. Really, really angry. It took a couple of days for me to simmer down. I didn’t do anything overtly public about it, as I know that’s not the way to handle such things, but, privately, I was pretty outraged.

When I finally cooled off and could look rationally at my response, I realized why the situation had pushed my buttons. On the surface, I suppose you could say I was overreacting.  After all, I wasn’t being called out for something I had done.  And, yet, that was the point.  I hadn’t done anything to provoke the misuse of my name. All I’d done was like a Facebook page for a podcast – an act I’ve now remedied – and then chosen not to listen to it live.  That’s it. And, for that, my good name was called into question.

I believe that there are consequences for our actions. If I’ve done something wrong or offended someone, then, by all means, call me out for it (though, perhaps try a more private means of alerting me first). But to have my name abused when I hadn’t done anything to deserve it, that’s just not right.

It especially angered me to have my name misused online, where I’ve taken great pains to build up trust and relationships.  I meet many people online before I meet them in person – and so my online good name has become just as important as my in-person good name, if not more.  The fact that it was someone who only knows me online who alerted me to the situation in the first place only underscores this fact.  Even though I think he knows there’s more to me than this one situation, I will probably be forever associated in his mind with being called out in that podcast, and there’s not a darn thing I can do about it.

So, maybe I can’t take a joke. Maybe I overreacted. But, I don’t think so. I think it’s more that I know the power of having a good name – and the importance of respecting the good names of others.

Image Credit

“The Letter K-Kevin”

A Kevin by Any Other Name is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

His bloodcurdling screams echoed throughout the mall. A terrified Middle-Eastern boy, no more than seven or eight years of age, ran frantically through the aisles in an obvious search for his missing parents. It is a frightening situation for any child, but what was even more frightening is the fact that as the child dashed aimlessly among the crowd, the only adult who stopped to assist him was me.

As I rushed to his aid, I totally flashed back to the first time that I was separated from my parents. I was about the same age as this child, but the location was a small department store, no more than 500 square feet. An employee escorted me to the customer service booth and an announcement went out that a little girl wearing a white blouse and a pair of pink shorts had been found and would be waiting in the booth.

With a clearer head, I probably could have walked a few aisles over and found my mother, so I could just imagine the fear that paralyzed this child, misplaced by his parents in this three-story gigantic mall filled with thousands of people. I waited with him and fortunately he knew his father’s cell phone number. I was able to connect with him to reunite the family.

But why was I the only one to come to his aid? Has our society become so self-absorbed that we can’t risk assisting another human being, especially a child? I guess he wasn’t totally ignored, because the child did receive glances from people he passed, who looked as if to say “Poor thing, he must be lost” and “Not my kid, not my problem.” But why wouldn’t you help a child? What could make you close your eyes to such a vulnerable innocence?

Is everyone so overwhelmed with their day-to-day minutia that they can’t possibly take on one more dilemma? It seems automatic pilot is becoming the “new lifestyle,” creating a mundane routine that can only be changed with active consciousness. What’s the reward in allowing the dramas of life to consume you to the point of non-reaction? The reward is quickly becoming lost children dangerously enmeshed in a sea of unconsciousness.

Or was the child’s race the deciding factor that led to him being overlooked and discounted? Does a belief exist that only a minority can help a minority? After all, there was a good chance that the child might not speak the same language. Yet fear is a universal emotion and can be sensed without the benefit of words, much like the emotion of love. And no one can recognize the emotion of love more rapidly than a child. In this case, my caring demeanor allowed the little boy to find some comfort and assurance that he would see his family again.

In closing, my prayers will be continuous in asking for protection of all the children in the world to feel safe and loved without limitation, and for the adults in the villages of these children to have the courage to transcend beyond a comfortable zone to aid another human life.

And just know that I will watch over your children, no matter what.

Photo Credit

“Art of Healing” hkoppdelaney @ flickr. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

And a Child Shall Lead is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Since today is Earth Day, I wanted to share with you what is a cornerstone of my belief system. The article itself is not so much about the Earth as it is about good stewardship. I believe that good stewardship demands excellence and integrity, and if those two qualities were at the forefront of all we do as a species, well; we would have an incredible planet, truly a magical world!

We live, or so it seems, in a time where the pursuit of riches has left us with an enormous debt to pay. The abysmal state of the economy bears witness to the fact that many of our current business models have failed miserably. The airwaves are abuzz with the voices of financial analysts struggling to explain the situation and even more so to prescribe solutions. They tell us this monetary quagmire is a complicated issue that will be very difficult to untangle.

I have a thought or two about this. To begin, I do not subscribe to the notion that the cause is difficult to explain. Using numbers to explain it however is the wrong approach. I also believe that defining the cause immediately reveals the long-term solution. This implies that the solution is easy to describe. The question then becomes; given a solution, will we choose to act?

To make my argument, I will first define a few attributes that must be a part of the equation. You can think of them as the ingredients required for a successful outcome. Then I’ll paint a little picture and pose some questions meant to stimulate thought on the subject.

Commitment to Excellence

A commitment to excellence ultimately delivers quality and value. Pride in what we have accomplished compels us to continue producing quality and value. This desire drives mentorship, which is commonplace within entities that have a commitment to excellence. Mentorship develops new talent allowing for product improvements and innovation.

Striving for personal excellence will lead to personal development and self-improvement. When we strive to be more than we are, we make the world a better place. We do so because improving ourselves by extension improves the world around us.

Integrity

“Integrity may be seen as the quality of having a sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for one’s actions.” – (From Wikipedia)

You could say that integrity breeds excellence. Integrity will evaluate methodologies but it is not defined by them. Rather, integrity has everything to do with approach, personal philosophy, substance and character. When you lose integrity, you lose trust. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to sell a product or re-kindle a relationship. Both propositions are virtually impossible without trust.

Integrity always calls for win-win situations.

Revenue vs. Profitability or Quantity vs. Quality

Much of today’s corporate thinking focuses more on revenue than it does on profitability. Growth in revenue equates to an expansion of market share. Increases in market share are great for investors but if a company shows a loss of revenue, they are perceived to be losing market share. This inhibits companies from focusing more on profitability and leads to a place where quality takes a second seat to quantity.

I don’t know about you, but running a profitable organization is at the top of my list, just under excellence and integrity. I’d rather sell one item for ten dollars that nets me four dollars profit than have to sell two at ten dollars to make the same profit. My revenue may be higher, but the profitability remains the same and my cost of doing business goes up. This becomes very apparent when you start thinking in higher volumes.

I elaborate further on this point in an article titled The Mixed Blessings of Corporate Metrics.

How Things Are

As driven by today’s economic model, to drive market share, companies need to get products out faster and in greater quantities. In order to do so, many of them compromise their commitment to excellence by sacrificing quality for quantity and profitability for revenue. Companies that were once profitable now labor under enormous debt loads to try to keep up with demand. The result is everything from cars that break down sooner to gardening implements that barely make it through a season or BBQ’s that rust out within a few years. Stated otherwise, we end up with inferior products.

That’s ok because we, the “consumers”, will soon run out and buy more stuff. Competition for this market share drives companies to lower their prices and so they make more compromises in product development. Lower prices motivate us to go and buy more stuff. First though we need bigger and bigger houses to keep all that stuff in. Still, we need to dispose of the stuff we have no room for and so to the dump it goes, along with all the packaging used for the new stuff.

What used to be mounds of garbage have now become mountain ranges of scrap. It is a travesty that these heaps of our own making now measure our character. They will stand for many years, a testament to our wasteful and careless nature.

Makes you wonder doesn’t it?

What has happened to excellence? Where did it go? What happened to the notion that quality represents value? Where is mentorship today? Where was the integrity in so many of the financial products we have read about recently that carried far too high a risk? How could financial institutions in “good conscience” present customers with a product destined to fail? Could it be because there was no commitment to excellence? Was it driven by greed? Clearly, a win-win mindset was not present in the thinking that led to the development of these products.

How else are we to explain that a used shovel I purchased built in the 50′s is in better shape than the new one I purchased not so long ago?

What happened to the specialty stores? Many were forced to shut down because they could not compete with the emergence of the mega-stores. Do you know what we lost? Expertise, value and quality of service. For the sake of a few percentage points in savings, we traded expertise for lower pricing on inferior products. Sure, many of these stores provide us with instant gratification by allowing us to return products for a full refund. These products bejewel our landfills and the mega-stores eventually falter because there was not enough profit in their coffers to support the model. The lack of expertise will eventually lead us back to the smaller specialty stores.

Why after centuries of building roads do we still build intersections only to dig them up a few times within a month of their completion? Why does one man dig while three others watch him? Poor planning indicates an absence of excellence. We build cities on top of old cities without updating the infrastructures that support them. A century later, we have cities that require multi billion dollar initiatives to provide sewage treatment systems. We then argue that it’s too expensive and unnecessary because the ocean is big enough to handle the waste we will indiscriminately dump into it. Imagine for a minute doing this at our own home. We break some municipal bylaws and pile mounds of rotting rubbish all over our lawn. We would be told in no uncertain terms to clean it up. If we used the “it’s too expensive” excuse, we would likely pay a fine, potentially lose our home or possibly end up in jail. We should all be grateful that the planet has not sentenced us in this way .. yet. So why is it wrong at an individual level, but not at the collective level?

Where is the “integrity” in this picture? There is none, and we are all complicit in the making of it. We got what we paid for and now we have to pay to get out of this mess. I just don’t think we need to pay in dollars. We need to pay with a commitment to creating an environment conducive to the re-birth of excellence. It starts when we stop thinking of ourselves as “consumers” and begin to see ourselves as “citizens”.

The Solution …

Excellence and integrity demand quality. Without them, absolute failure is the only possible outcome.

If every one of us makes a personal commitment to excellence, we will begin to see the re-birth of integrity. Guided by integrity, we will start to make smarter choices and build a much better world; one devoid of so many man-made crises, a world where we consider the needs of others as highly as we do those of our own.

In closing this article, I want to say it is not my intent to suggest that there are no companies or individuals out there committed to excellence. They do exist and are all around us. If you are one of them, thank you! Please continue to shine as an example of what is possible when we commit to being the best that we can be.

Photo Credits

NYSE © Ryan Lawler – Public Domain

Landfill © Ashley Felton – Public Domain

Originally posted at synaptici.com on March 25, 2009

The Re-Birth of Excellence is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Easter has always been a big deal for me. When I was a kid, my parents bought each of their seven children a new outfit, including hats, bags and gloves for the girls. I still have a soft spot for patent leather shoes and mauve hats.

When I was five or six, I was astounded when my Sunday school teacher announced that Jesus died for us. Jesus’s father told him that he had to die for everyone else’s sins. Now my father would not have killed me for someone else’s sins, I’m sure of it. Human sacrifice was never discussed in my family.

When I asked why God would kill his son, I was told to just listen to the story. This from the same woman who only four months before told us about the little baby Jesus who was so precious that kings came from far away to meet him, and baby lambs kept him warm. It made no sense.

By the time I was 11, I was getting very impatient with this United Church of Canada stuff. I decided to shop around. The Lutherans were too serious and the Presbyterians were too Scottish, but the Catholics had beautiful stuff! This was the place for me.

My best friend at the time was taking catechism classes in preparation for her confirmation. I couldn’t believe she got to dress like a mini-bride, so free of sin and guile. I wanted this for myself.

Dutifully, my dad starting driving past the United Church on Sundays, muttering about papists, to drop me off at the Catholic Church.

When Easter Sunday came around, I sat with my best friend’s family and waited with anticipation. The priest puffed out his chest and stood to his full height, imploring us to worship no idols. That confused me, as it was the golden Jesus and the golden haloed Virgin Mary that had initially attracted me. We didn’t have these in Protestant churches. Weren’t these idols? Or at least idolizing the holy ones, which would still be wrong, right?

Next, we rose and shuffled to the front for communion. My friend’s mom – Mrs. H. – whispered that I couldn’t receive communion as I wasn’t a baptized Catholic but I could receive a piece of the cross.

When my turn came, the priest blessed me as his assistant placed a tiny sliver of wood in my hand. Riveted, I peered at this minute splinter in disbelief. I may have only been 11, but I did know my math. How could this have survived all these years? And how many people received pieces of the cross? A sharp elbow from Mrs. H startled me to reality and back to our pew.

Still distracted by the cross fragment thing, I was only half listening. I came to just in time to hear the priest intone, “And he said, ‘Father, why hast thou forsaken me?’” I knew the rest of the story: kings, cross, death, resurrection. I just wanted to go home.

I was very quiet when my mom found me in my room, still clutching that little piece of wood. Old enough to hear contradictions, too young to understand metaphor: my mind was reeling.

On Easter Sunday 1968, I not only quit my Catholic experiment, I quit church shopping all together. And yet, Easter is still very important to me. It’s what I do in place of Spring Equinox, I suppose.

Easter is soft baby lambs, cherry blossoms and love struck frogs croaking below my bedroom window. It’s welcoming a new year of fresh food crops and pale green buds weighing down the maples, threatening to coat my deck with its sticky, yellow pollen.

This year I’m ditching the ham and going for a walk in the forest. I’ll drink in the fresh smells of loam and moss, stepping lightly to protect the fresh growth. One might say I’m living the resurrection metaphor of new spring life from the death of winter. I say I’m just trying to avoid the human sacrifice.

Photo Credits

“Easter lily macro: aresauburn™ @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Halifax church © Maggie Kerr-Southin

“Easter Parade Finalist” Sister72 @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Cherry blossoms” © Adrian Southin

I Loved Easter, Until the Church Got Involved is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN