Travelling North
Personal / Philosophical – Articles Index
Oh Please: Not Again, Surely!!
One of the many puzzles in life is why some things seem to be cyclical. Despite apparently disappearing forever into the wilderness they return, only to disappear again, and so the cycle continues time after time. Such regular returns can be good, of course. The continuing reappearance of writers who make a real contribution to our lives through fact or fiction is reassuring.
Walter Paepcke played an important role in my life. I never met him, but seventy years ago, he made a series of decisions that impacted on me and countless others. He also set out to address an issue that remains as important today as it did seventy years ago.
From time to time I ask myself the question “What do I think about ….?” It is form of questioning that has led to various ideas and explorations, some of which have finished up as contributions to this blog. However, right now I have found myself caught up in a really challenging topic – instead of thinking about some particular issue I have started to explore the question “What do I think about thinking?”
We are a long way off living in a global world, and the clash of cultures seems likely to be with us for a long time. Consultants and business schools promote a variety of courses for business travellers to learn all about the culture of a country that they are about to visit, on the grounds that it is important to ensure they behave appropriately. That appears to be reasonable advice, but leaves open the questions as to what does ‘behave appropriately’ mean?
No More Talk About Millennials
I am beginning to despair over the constant flood of articles about the millennial generation. It is becoming almost as bad as the never ending contributions on the theme of ‘disruption’ in business (and how to be disruptive). However, I have commented on disruption before, and further comments on that can wait for another rant! So, to return to my theme, I wonder how much more we will be forced to read that ‘explains’ the millennial generation and why it is different from ours?
Christmas is a time for traditions and rituals. In our family we like to listen to the Messiah every December, and the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College in Cambridge on Christmas Eve. That sounds very sophisticated, so let me redress the balance by admitting that we can’t help ourselves and just recently restarted another tradition – listening to John Williamson’s ‘The Golden Kangaroo’. Don’t ask, just go and find it on YouTube: all I can add is “boing, boing, boing’!!
I am beginning to despair over the constant flood of articles about the millennial generation. It is becoming almost as bad as the never ending contributions on the theme of ‘disruption’ in business (and how to be disruptive). However, I have commented on disruption before, and further comments on that can wait for another rant! So, to return to my theme, I wonder how much more we will be forced to read that ‘explains’ the millennial generation and why it is different from ours?
For the past two months, the big story has been Donald Trump. Most commentators felt he was doomed to fail in his presidential bid (just as many in the UK felt Brexit was destined to be rejected). As with the UK, I think the outcome revealed a failure to look outside the rather closed circle of like-minded Democrat supporters and sympathisers that many of us inhabit.
