I have close friends who venerate Adam Smith, John Rawls, Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, John Maynard Keynes, Ayn Rand, John Stuart Mill, Ludwig von Mises, Paul Samuelson, Deirdre McCloskey, Elinor Ostrom, Hannah Arendt, Alexis de Tocqueville, David Hume, Murray Rothbard, Paul Krugman, or Thomas Jefferson. This veneration of the Great Names mystifies me on two levels.
Tag: wisdom
On Euphemism
One of the most unfortunate components of language is euphemism. The creation and use of euphemism seems mostly a dastardly act, to fool others into agreeing with something which should be held in contempt.
Forelle’s Rule of Web Apologistics
The need for apology on the Worldwide Web for the actions of a public figure varies inversely and proportionately to the wisdom of those actions. Apology includes defense, justification, rationalization, outrage, denial, and ad hominem attack.
Life Is a Trading Game
Once upon a time, there was a man who traded a red paperclip for a car. Now granted, he went through a lot of intermediary trades to get there – from paperclip to pen, pen to something else, and so on. He traded up. Not all of us are as savvy at bartering. But in a sense we all are playing a trading game in life itself.
Victory Against Evil Is Never Final
I was talking with some church friends last night about the frustrating cycle of history found in the Biblical stories. People turn to violence and injustice and fall to violence and injustice again and again, cycle after cycle. It’s really depressing. If you look more broadly, you can find the same cycle of failure and redemption and new failure in stories and in history. We see the same evils coming back again and again. And there is no guarantee that good done now will obviously last forever.
Workplace Personalities, Self-Knowledge, and Office Conflict Immunization
Relating to new personnel in a job can be hard. When scaling happens fast or when you’re busy, it can seem unnecessary. But if you want to avoid unnecessary conflict and gain necessary wisdom with these outsiders, try “inoculating” yourself to all the different kinds of people who make up the world of business, for better or for worse.
Crisis Management
Recently, Forbes magazine published an article listing four rules of crisis management. The rules were illustrated with examples from the current hullabaloo over the confirmation of the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice.
When a “Child” Isn’t a Child
If Cody Wilson did what he is accused of, it wasn’t smart. But neither was it “assault” or “sex with a child”, and it shouldn’t be a crime.
The Blue-Collar Knowledge Worker Manifesto
The more I’m exposed to the industry of marketing, the more I learn about the pitfalls as well as the advantages of work in a job that is so based in ideas. And I’m beginning to think that we marketers could learn a lot from my former landscaping and hardware store colleagues.
Milgram Experiments and Workplace “Common Sense”
We all know the lesson of this experiment: people give up responsibility for their decisions to authority figures. But people could note that the experiment never really ended, and that despite its lessons we’ve learned little about saying no.