When I was a young manager, a half a life-time ago, very simplistic theories about management were pervasive. When I was first appointed to manage a power station, my boss believed I should have some management training. He duly enrolled me into a weeklong live-in course conducted in a Gold Coast resort (although not a […]
There is a Hindu myth that in the beginning all men were as gods. However men abused their elevated status and the gods decided to take away the essence of godliness as punishment. “Where will we hide it?” they asked one another. “It will need to be hidden in a place where they cannot retrieve […]
Looking at my recent blog essays I have come to the conclusion (that many of my more prescient readers had arrived at long ago) that I have been taking myself too seriously lately. And after a full independent analysis (conducted by myself of course) that took five minutes and unfortunately, was not costed by Treasury […]
The American cartoonist, Walt Kelly, seems to be remembered largely for the utterance of his possum cartoon character, Pogo, who proclaimed, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” Kelly contrived Pogo, who lived in a swamp, to say this to highlight the human degradation of the physical environment. I am not denying […]
It has recently occurred to me what a slow learner I am. I don’t mean with respect to facts. You could tell me the height of Mount Everest is 8,850metres or whatever then I would have a fair chance of remembering it. But when it comes to human behaviour, and mine in particular I am […]
When the good Dr Phil and I published our little book, “Humanity at Work” we only had one review of note. It was from a very left-wing reviewer from “The Age” who accused us of making work sound like it could be enjoyable which was obviously a manipulative capitalist ploy designed to exploit “the workers”! […]
I have written extensively about one of the dilemmas of being human. This dilemma is a charade played out by the ego. The ego would have us believe that we are separate from our fellows and special. Let us see how the ego misleads us. The ego is a by-product of our consciousness – […]
Children are delightful and I suppose part of their attraction to us is their naiveté. When they behave in an inappropriate way we often excuse them by saying “they didn’t know any better”. Unfortunately as people grow older we seem less inclined to offer them the same latitude. Adults, obviously, should know better! Consequently we […]
Over forty years ago now, I acquired a little paperback by one Joseph Gaer which was titled How the Great Religions Began. The original copyright for the book was dated 1929 but had been renewed again in 1956. I found it quite engrossing. The author had tried, without bias, to lay out the history of […]
In the early centuries of the development of Christian belief, there arose two fairly well-defined Christian positions. The first was deliberately and aggressively anti-intellectual. The supporters of this position argued that since God had apparently spoken to us (through the words of the reasonably arbitrarily compiled scriptures) it was no longer necessary for believers to […]