“We’re Building Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company”

When you pay the Earth’s “most customer centric company” $50 to nicely gift wrap Xmas presents for your loved ones… this is what you get this year. Enjoy

This must have been used as a football

The office party in the warehouse did everything apart from vomit on my Xmas gifts

Here you go Auntie. What, you can see the present from the outside? And that dog hair on the wrapping? Oh, that was the warehouse rottweiler that was chewing your DVDs when they were wrapping it.

Don't worry about the holes in the wrapping we're having a party back here in the warehouse and too fricking drunk to care

Ok enough of these ugly things… you have been warned.

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You’re probably wondering why I’ve committed to this website with renewed vigor. The answer is here

One of my key takeaways from Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is in the opening chapter:

“An airplane spends 95% of its time off-course.”

How true that it’s not just the airplane - it’s us. We spend 95% of our lives off-course blown by the winds of circumstance, change and urgency. Whether the internal memos and calls to action within our organizations or our own personal finances, we are constantly tugged and pushed by the immediate.

It’s only having the benefit of a compass that enables us to reach our destination. This website is a compass for me and hopefully it can provide you with insights from the stories I share from business, travel and the bigger questions.

Most of us fail dismally because we cannot cope with the winds of change - we grab at the quick fixes (The Secret, Social Media, Oprah’s miracle ‘South Beach’ diet or “Learn Japanese in only 10 minutes a day”) to help us get back on course because it’s exactly those that sell these fixes that appreciate our vulnerability in being off-course in the first place. One correction will bring us back in line. People do it. Organizations do it on a grander scale because they’re the aggregation of numerous egos and insecurities.

It’s never that simple, it’s a constant kaizen of application and that’s why I’ve committed myself to writing on a regular basis. I’m doing it anyway, so I’d rather share the learnings with you here.

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There is an old story of a farmers cat and the mice. Farmers don’t like mice, they eat the ears of the corn so the Farmer bought himself a cat and instructed the cat to go chase the mice. Cats don’t respond well to instruction but so the cat would “play” with the mice as cats do (i.e. bite off their tails and appendages and watch them flail helplessly) then adjourn to the barn to sleep somewhere warmer and less taxing. On finding the cat asleep on a hay bale the Farmer shouted at the cat and kicked him back out into the field to perform his duty. So play became duty and the cat performed rather unwillingly before acknowledging his ingrained habits and retiring to the barn. The Farmer scolded the cat each time he caught him in the barn. Now, every time the cat sees a mouse he runs away in fear.

Where’s the salt?
So you open the kitchen cupboard door and look for the salt and get frustrated looking for it - it must be in here somewhere. I can’t understand, it was here yesterday. So you call out to your partner in the next room “Where’s the salt?” “In the cupboard on the 2nd shelf” she replies. “Where???” you say as your impatience builds. She slams down her magazine and storms into the kitchen with purpose - “There!” she says pulling the salt shaker from out under your nose. It was right there in front of you. Feeling half stupid, half puzzled you are lost for words you blurt out “Why did you put it there??” knowing full well that it’s always there (or thereabouts).

If we’re in anyway connected, it’s because we’re curious - we’re travellers. Not in the literal sense maybe but manifested in our desire to seek answers and discover the wonder that awaits us out there.

I’ve been seeking an answer to how I can integrate my studies, my key passions in life - business, travel, psychology and philosophy and it occurred to me that no matter how I tried, the jigsaw just didn’t accommodate. Needless to say, every attempt began with a sense of expectation that the means weren’t tangible but the end was a glorious “arrival” in my own story - the closure that eased the uncertainty.

And, needless to say, every attempt failed. These areas appeared irreconcilable.

One brick at a time
I often envied the artisan. When I started my first business back in 1998 money was short. I’d have to catch the bus to and from the office every morning - a long and arduous process that resurrected memories of school commutes. Maybe it was for a reason because I remember, distinctly, one hot Summer’s day with the Sun’s heat fully beating down on the passengers I caught a glance from the top deck window of a builder, obviously in the middle of putting up a brick wall, taking 5 minutes out to appreciate his work. There he stood, bare-chested in the August sunshine mug of tea in one hand and cigarette in the other. Leaning against the wall, his gaze was soft, trancelike, out of focus resting on the wall in front of him. What was he thinking? Maybe nothing. Hopefully nothing.

A friend of mine restores antique lamps for a living. Since we both graduated (over 15 years ago) he’s devoted his life to lovingly recasting and furnishing these lamps. Despite our very different life paths, our friendship has endured all these years. Perhaps it’s my fascination for his work; here is a man who wakes up thinking about antique lamps and dedicates himself to these lamps from morning to night. In my travels having experienced a vast array of different folk, I have met many who would say this existence - without strategy, planning or any sense of audacity in “life goals” to aspire towards is an existence without purpose. Yet, I disagree. There is an almost zen-like beauty in simplicity in dedication to one simple action.

Looking for answers
Having many interests, therefore, would mean a dilution of my energies. If I was to become the best antique lamp restorer I could be I needed only focus on one skill - the appreciation of the lamp - and complicating my mind with business, travel, psychology and philosophy would be a distraction.

So my quest; to reconcile these apparently disparate energies.

I’d like to say there was an epiphany moment where, faced with a life-threatening reality as carved out by so many self-help books, the answer simply arrived. It didn’t. And perhaps that was itself an important learning - that so many of our positive outcomes are the result not of innovative breakthroughs and “aha” moments but small increments that lead us (less impressively but equally importantly) along the path.

Lego Bricks
Perhaps if there was anything like an epiphany it came disguised in the clothes of parental education. Skimming through the countless volumes of self-help books on parenting at Borders and close to giving up on anything that didn’t involve “bringing up your child as a good Christian” or similar, I discovered the words “How you discipline your child is the message”. What exactly does that mean? It’s not what you tell them, it’s how you tell them that they learn. Allow me to indulge; if your child was to throw a tantrum and kick his Lego bricks over the floor you could “punish” them by taking away the bricks saying “if you behave that way, you don’t get to play with your bricks”. What does the child learn? He learns not that “behaving that way” equates to “no bricks” - he learns that when grown ups want to resolve a problem they resort to control.

Content vs Context
And in many ways, we get lost in the “content” not the “context” of what we’re experiencing. We are both the Farmer and his cat - trying to get something done and beating ourselves up when we don’t achieve it because we create an association in our mind at the level of the content rather than the context of our activity.

As for my “studies” - the process itself was the teacher; what had concerned me was not necessarily the content of the subjects that fascinated me but the way in which people dealt with the content - change. Many of us are fortunate to travel but what do we learn? Do we reaffirm to ourselves that our way of living/transport system/food/family values/weather/cars/clothes are superior? I’ve lived in Japan and experienced foreign co-workers spend their time in Japan complaining about the customs, food, language, people etc. I admit, I’ve freaked out too - once when I lost my cool trying to ask for a plastic bag in “Tokyu Hands” (a grocery store). I scurried back to the bosom of my fellow co-worker and we both complained about how the Japanese were poor listeners.

I hear it all the time, wherever I go in the world - stepping out of our comfort zone into the unknown exposes us. When we are no longer the “native” we are exposed to the insecurities which challenge us to react. While I’ll never overcome the knee-jerk reaction to these incidences, I’m more aware of them and able to let them go. “Ba-gu” is not Japanese for bag, as I have discovered and Japanese aren’t poor listeners.

Vagabonding
You don’t need to “travel” to experience its wonder; the ability to see the “context” rather than “content” of our reality is as much discoverable in a business meeting as in sitting in ancient Durbar Square in Kathmandu or throwing yourself out of a plane in the hope your instructor fully checked your chute. In many ways, terrifying and stimulating ourselves with experiences are less permanent than the ability to sit and observe in our daily life.

Travel is Change and Change is Travel. Our daily lives are full of experiences that challenge us but we pull back into our shell of security and discard the opportunity through our world view. Many times I’ve reminisced on my travel experiences - from sampling new foods from the street hawkers of Kuala Lumpur’s night markets to sauntering through downtown Soho in New York and thought, I wish I hadn’t retreated into this bubble. Next time I think “are the people more fashionable here?” or “can I buy this cheaper back home?” or “how much does this person earn?” I’ll let the thought go as an observer as opposed to an actor.

The last time our family traveled (a month in Australia through the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef down to tropical Brisbane) I made the explicit promise that we’d do it with one carry-on backpack each. Not easy with a 3 year old child. We (just about) made it and I have to confess it’s a liberating experience. The day I sold my S-Class Mercedes was perhaps a turning point that released a whole stream of thoughts and experiences that were far more real than in my more attached word. Don’t get me wrong, attachment never leaves you and I’m not living the mendicant life of an ascetic monk. I still find myself saying “I’d like to buy that Range Rover Sport” but now I’ll acknowledge its existence and let go of it rather than struggle with it. I’d like to buy it because it covers some insecurity not because it’ll make me any freer.

Full Circle
There’s an esoteric vibe going on here that perhaps doesn’t sit to well with our business acumen. Or at least that’s what I used to think and that’s why I was always struggling to reconcile these “studies”. What I’ve discovered is however, the esoteric stuff touches everything - it helps us understand what exactly is important in the business world and is applicable to determining which path to take as it is in formulating a marketing plan. That’s because if you strip away the “content”, you’ll find what’s important - change, and how we deal with it.

I’ve sat in presentations and watched marketing managers squirm at my suggestions that competitors are stalking their customers as they speak and rather than ask the question “what do we do about it?” they go for the salt-shaker response “…but we’re different”. It’s a response that comes in many forms: “we’re not in the soda business”, “we’re different here in Spain” or “we don’t give a s*** what Boost Mobile are doing down in the US”.

When you strip away the content of KPIs, marketing plans, quarterly earnings, HSDPA, Android or the rest of the content that fills our lives you get to the point - that there is change and you’re either going to react to it and retreat into your shell or you’re going to jump in feet first.

That’s as relevant in the business life of board room presentations as it is when you land at Narita airport or deal with a family crisis. Change is the underlying force in all of our daily motivations. In fact, you could consider that life is change, change is life.

Like the salt shaker, it’s there right in front of us but we obsess about the detail, the world view that prevents us from seeing it.

And that’s why this blog is about Change because it applies to all of us in so many aspects of our lives and lessons learned on the road can be applied in business, perhaps more so than your “5 Ps” or your “Porters Forces”. It’s a journey and I think because you’re here you’ve already put one foot in front of the other so I look forward to learning from you in the process when we bump into each other on the Path.

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Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now

The beauty of a flower is in its impermanence. How beautiful are fake flowers, even when they look real? The subtle fragility of the flower tells us that one day it will be gone so we have to enjoy and appreciate it whilst it is here with us.

“Like the birds that gather in the treetops at night and scatter in all directions at the coming of day, phenomena are impermanent” Shabkar

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Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now

“God has no religion” Gandhi

“Out beyond our ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing - there is a field. I’ll meet you there” Jal-al-Adin Rumi

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.” Andre Gide

“When you forget the good and the non-good, the worldly life and the religious life, and all other dharmas, and permit no thoughts relating to them to arise, and you abandon body and mind—then there is complete freedom. When the mind is like wood or stone, there is nothing to be discriminated.” Pai-chang Huai-hai

When we create schism we exercise power. The counter to our position no longer becomes one of mediation but the opposite to our values. Questioning the need for war becomes not about protecting human values but about propagating un-American or unpatriotic belief systems.

Schisms are not political but psychological. Society requires that we believe in schism. The battle between good & evil, the forces of light versus the dark are no creation of Hollywood but as old as mankind first could evoke language and document the overpowering of the nighttime by the rising of the Sun.

Our days are filled with schism. We complain about the traffic, immigration, crime, the price of petrol and the queues at the checkout. Our schismatic thinking is at odds with reality. We complain because we seek to make the other person wrong. The traffic is wrong, the government is wrong and the checkout attendant is stupid. Each schism elevates our own moral code to a higher level. We feel better about ourselves.

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Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now

“Fear keeps us observing life rather than living it. We are spectators rather than participators” Tom Hodgkinson

“We continue to create suffering, waging war with good, waging war with evil, waging war with what is too small, waging war with what is too big, waging war with what is to short or too long, or right and wrong!, courageously carrying on the battle.

“As we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity on ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not”

Our is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss, and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature” Jack Kornfield

“People construct this terrible machine of power… They are afraid of anarchists’ bombs.” Tolstoy

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now

“I don’t want a holiday in the sun” Johnny Rotten

“One who strives to attain enlightenment must expect to encounter terrible obstacles: anger, desire, mental confusion, pride and jealousy” - Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Exactly how much of your salary goes on maintaining your salary? Travel to office, clothes, that “holiday in the sun” to recover, drinks after work, hp payments on the car because the company makes you feel not enough, the tv and the license to “relax”, eating on-the-go and so on.

Boredom is the very opposite of beauty and truth. A mass market, sterilized reality that offends nobody but pleases none.

The challenge of daily life is that society, peers and media planners are the gravity to your beating wings, bringing you back to earth, creating inertia. You don’t really want to write music, you want a mindnumbing job in a call centre so you can pay for that holiday in the sun or Audi TT you bought on hire purchase. The car you thought would bring you recognition and freedom as portrayed in the advertising has now yoked you to a miserable daily commute stuck in a traffic jam, a precursor to what lies in store when you arrive at the office. You complain about the rising cost of living, office politics and the crap salary but you signed the contract

Advertising is persuasion but persuasion is no longer the science of choosing coke or pepsi, its the permeation of the consumer’s psyche such that brand choice is driven by the dis-ease of not being enough. I need the Audi TT because I haven’t arrived unless I’m seen by my old college classmates driving one. Advertising works on the basis that consumers are more driven by the need to remove discomfort than the desire to be happy. Discipline, conversely, is about remembering what makes you happy.

Just as Winston sings a nursery rhyme in defiance of authoritarian brutality of the individual in Orwell’s 1984, letting go of mainstream ideology and schisms is never done through force. To experience nature, to sit still, to be in the moment is enough.

Incredible bravery is the mark of accomplishment. Bravery is not measured by one’s ability to engage in combat, or to motivate others to battle with iconic ideologies and platitudes but those individuals who, despite criticism, showed us pride in being oneself in the face of societal oppression and ridicule.

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Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now

“God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables — slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” - Fight Club

“Anxiety suits the status quo very well. Anxious people make good consumers and good workers” Tom Hodgkinson

The credit rating is the most effective form of control invented by man. People pay bills early, allow government authorities to send de facto threatening letters indicating forced entry to your home, work jobs they hate just to get a good credit rating.

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“We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything” Jack Kornfield

“Life is becoming no more than staring at a screen. We stare at screens in the gym. Buses now have screens installed in them. There are screens on trains. Then we get home and stare at our computer screen before staring at the tv screen. For entertainment we stare at cinema screens. Work, rest and play: all involve staring at screens.” Tom Hodgkinson

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Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now

“Are you guys bullshitting me??” McMurphy on realizing the ward’s inmates in Keasey’s “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” were all voluntary admissions.

“Schuld (guilt), Schulden (debt).Whether in financial or emotional means we are indebted to and therefore enslaved by the system” Nietzsche

We are complicit in the entrapment. The couple who “stretched every financial sinew” so that they could barely afford a modest home in west kensington in order that they could pretend they had enough money and the single mother who took a second mind-numbing shift at the supermarket so that she could keep her child in the lastest PS games and sneakers. Our debts are born of our guilts.

On that note, any excuse to include possibly one of the finest pieces of character direction from Stanley Kubrick in Full Metal Jacket.

“Full Metal Jacket is a masterpiece in depicting dehumanization and our complicity. In Full Metal Jacket a group of enlistees for the Marines are put through hell in training camp and then face hell again when they are deployed to Vietnam. The scenes that depict the training are arguably the best scenes in the movie. The drill sergeant, who is played brilliantly by R. Lee Ermey, is absolutely brutal to the trainees. One trainee in particular gets the brunt of the drill sergeant’s punishments.

Private Pyle, who is played by Vincent D’Onofrio, is overweight and slow which makes him a target of the drill instructor. The whole point of the drill instructor is to make the trainees capable of killing. The drill instructor pushes Pyle so hard that Pyle begins to go insane and eventually he shoots the drill instructor and then puts the gun to his head. Once again in Full Metal Jacket, the glare shot is used. This time it is in a bathroom where Private Pyle is sitting on a toilet with an M16 in his hands. The glare shot shows just how much Private Pyle has changed since the beginning of the movie. In the beginning he was a cheerful fun loving type. Eventually, all the insults and beatings get to him and he loses it.

Full Metal Jacket is the best example of dehumanization. It shows how Private Pyle is systematically conditioned to become a killer. He loses the innocence that he had before arrived at training camp and becomes a psychotic killer who kills himself.” Ryan Coates

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“Our ego or self-conception could be perceived as a leaking balloon, forever requiring the helium of external love to remain inflated and vulnerable to the smallest pinpricks of neglect.” Alain De Botton

“These trains of thoughts and states of mind are constantly changing, like the shapes of clouds in the wind, but we attach great importance to them. An old man watching children at play knows very well that their games are of little consequence. He feels neither elated nor upset at what happens in their game, while the children take it all very seriously. We are just exactly them” Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

The commercial world treats us like celebrities - ‘because you’re worth it’ it says. It flatters and kowtows to us and keeps on doing so right up until the moment we hand over our credit card details. Then we are cast aside and condemned to a purgatory of being held in a queue on a customer service line for all eternity. What fools we are.

Ahimsa or “non-violence” is not just the physical manifestation of non-action, it’s the whole statement of being. Non-violence means letting go of ideology, schisms, counter-arguments, atheism, theism, duality, nationality and identity.

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Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now

“Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those with live among. If they are amused by our jokes we grow confident of our power to amuse. If they praise us, we develop an impression of high merit. And if they avoid our gaze as we enter the room or look impatient after we have revealed our occupation, we may fall into feelings of self doubt and worthlessness.” Alain De Botton

“Worth” we are led to believe is a function of our career. Our initial altruistic notions of “doing good” and being recognized as a “person of worth” are given but one track to run on. The anxiety of not “getting ahead” or the feeling of “emptiness” that goes hand-in-hand with the corporate sovereign also comes with its own remedy - consumerism and the “holiday in the sun”. You’re happiness is but one purchase away and one more purchase puts you ever more into debt, the bonded slavery that forces you onto the misery express and divorces you from your family.

“If you are not ready to exchange your own happiness for the suffering of others, you will never know happiness in any life” Shantideva

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Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now

My early years were consumed with the illusion that one day, my labor would bear fruit, years of toil would be rewarded by that moment when I would put up my feet and announce “I have arrived”.

“If one were truly aware of the value of human life, to waste it blithely on distractions and the pursuit of vulgar ambitions would be the height of confusion” - Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

“An increasing faith in a reliable connection between merit and worldly position in turn endowed money with a new moral quality. When wealth had been handed down the generations according to bloodlines and connections, it was natural to dismiss the idea that money was any indicator of virtue besides that of having been born to the right parents. But in a meritocratic world, where prestigious and well paid jobs could be secured only on the basis of one’s own intelligence and ability, it now seemed that wealth might be a sound sign of character. The rich were not only wealthier; they might also be plain better” Alain De Botton

“Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues” Sogyal Rinpoche

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2: The history of human suffering is born of the need to tell our story

Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now

Public opinion’s defectiveness lies in the “public’s reluctance to submit its thoughts to the rigours of rational examination and its reliance on intuition, emotion and custom instead. “One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be an idiocy, because it has been able to appeal to a majority” Chamfort

“All those unhappy in the world are so because of their desire for their own happiness. All those who are happy in the world are so because of their desire for happiness of others” Shantideva

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“We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything” Jack Kornfield

Part of a new series published daily: The 12 Things I know now

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Part of A Series: The 12 Things I know now (stay tuned - published daily)

“Children, old people, vagabonds laugh easily: they have nothing to lose and hope for little. There lies simplicity, happiness and peace.” Matthieu Ricard

“Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspects of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities” Matthieu Ricard

“For someone who knows how to manage their free time, one day may last a thousand years. For someone whose heart is great, a hut may be the size of the universe”
Hong Zicheng

“Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things” Pema Chodron

“The actions of our daily life like walking, washing, lighting incense do not seem very important, but they comprise the whole cosmos” Master Taisen Deshimaru

“Terrible or not, difficult or not, the only thing that is beautiful, noble, religious and mystical is to be happy.” Arnaud Desjardins

Here’s the original trailer from Sean Penn’s Into The Wild featuring awesome perfomances by Emile Hirsch and Hal Holbrook.

John Krakauer writes (in the original article “death of an innocent“)

In truth McCandless had been raised in the comfortable, upper-middle-class environs of Annandale, Virginia. His father, Walt, was an aerospace engineer who ran a small but very prosperous consulting firm with Chris’s mother, Billie. There were eight children in the extended family: Chris; a younger sister, Carine, with whom Chris was extremely close; and six older half-siblings from Walt’s first marriage.

McCandless had graduated in June 1990 from Emory University in Atlanta, where he distinguished himself as a history/anthropology major and was offered but declined membership in Phi Beta Kappa, insisting that titles and honors were of no importance. His education had been paid for by a college fund established by his parents; there was some $20,000 in this account at the time of his graduation, money his parents thought he intended to use for law school. Instead, he donated the entire sum to the Oxford Famine Relief Fund. Then, without notifying any friends or family members, he loaded all his belongings into a decrepit yellow Datsun and headed west without itinerary, relieved to shed a life of abstraction and security, a life he felt was removed from the heat and throb of the real world. Chris McCandless intended to invent a new life for himself, one in which he would be free to wallow in unfiltered experience.

“I read somewhere how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong - to measure yourself at least once and find yourself in the most truly ancient of human conditions” Christopher McCandless/John Krakauer

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It used to be seasonal flu, now it’s Swine Flu H1N1(A). Seasonal flu kills 150,000 people a year. H1N1 has notched up but 1% of that figure yet dominates our media and confines school children to quarantine, customs officials to panic and the average citizen into believing that the unknown could kill you. Malaria kills 880,000 people annually and affects just over 250 million.

What used to be local is now playing out on the global stage. Tribalism and separatism - the historical gripes of local factions as old as the written word - from Waziristan to the Niger Detla have been collectively swept up into the media blender and labeled “Al Qaeda”. We live in fear of Al Qaeda “terrorist cells” and underground networks. Experts will tell you outright, despite the media’s best intentions otherwise, Al Qaeda is *not* an organization. If anything, Al Qaeda is a loose collection of ideals around which localized conflict has found (thanks mainly to the CIA and the media) a platform to globalize their grievances.

Dissent or difference of opinion is now “unpatriotic” or “unAmerican”.

Give something a name and you’ll start to see more of it. Naming brings a collection of tenuous connections into the fearful conscious of the mass - whether that be terrorism, witchcraft or heretics.

Swine flu or Al Qaeda - different enemy, same result - mass powerlessness.

“Fearful citizens are good consumers” (Tom Hodgkinson)

fear

(A Tribute to director John Hughest who died 6 Aug 2009)

“Life moves pretty fast. If you dont stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it”
Not the words of Nietszche, Plato or even Tony Robbins but high school drop out Ferris Bueller in the 80s teen flick “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.

Despite his lack of academic prowess, Bueller embodies many of the positive attributes a man should aspire to be - charming, curious, gregarious, subversive, loyal, witty, daring and ultimately free.

Ferris’s aphorism is one of happiness through a journey of self-discovery. The symbolism isn’t lost on Ferris’ wanton joy-ride through life courtesy of his buddy Cameron’s rich dad’s 1961 Ferrari GT California - the car so precious is was kept constantly under lock and key in the garage.

While very few of us could claim to owning the Ferrari GT California, we all democratically own time and happiness and the vast majority have, like Cameron’s father, kept it locked in the garage for that “some day” - that elusive future day when the toiling is over, we’ll put up our work-weary feet and declare “I have arrived”.

Ferris reminds us we are complicit in this manufactured reality, how society relegates the concept of “now” to the pejorative - subjugated to the ever present march of progress for more. Arrival removes the discomfort of not knowing, the fear of the unknown, the closure that closes the loop on the uncontrollable. Yet, our quests for security, a life spent slaving for the Man (be he the Firm or ourselves as the boss) may well yield that promotion, that sports car, that house extension, that holiday we yearn to advertise on Facebook but at what cost?

“Children, old people, vagabonds laugh easily: they have nothing to lose and hope for little.
There lies simplicity, happiness and peace.” Matthieu Ricard

Cameron: “The 1961 Ferrari, two-fifty GT California. Less than a hundred were made. My father spent three years restoring this car. It is his love, it is his passion . . .”
Ferris Bueller: “It is his fault he didn’t lock the garage.”

ferris bueller, John hughes

Posted via web from grahamdbrown’s posterous

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