Once we understand where we have come from, why we are here, and where we are going, we will realize what we must do.
Ostad Elahi, 1895 – 1974
Iranian Philosopher, Musician and Jurist
Author: Louis Page 58 of 115
The past week saw two big religious festivals taking place in Singapore: the Deepavali for Indian Hindus and Hari Raya Puasa for the Muslims. As a result, every where you went, it was easy to spot the traditional costumes for these two cultural groups. However, believe it or not, come Chinese New Year time next year it will be extremely difficult to see a similar array of traditional Chinese costumes on the road, except among the elderly.
Simply could not resist posting this online after I received it by email!
Let’s see how many of these characters you can recognize??
Learnt a few things about leadership from a very a knowledgeable colleague today.
It seems that as early as the Ancient Greek days, Plato had laid down a recipe for team/community motivation:
- Ethos: Make people feel that they belong to the team – in fact there is some recent psychological studies which indicate that IQ can be affected by this sense of belonging.
- Pathos: ‘Create’ (or, most of the time, just point one out) a common enemy – take for example all the war propaganda both in the past and the present.
- Logos: Use logic to round out the corners – by now, you have done all the hard selling.
Secondly, as a result of Larry Leifer’s work at Stanford University, it seems that the number of unique noun-phrases interspersed in our daily written or oral communications can be a good gauge to the quantity of creative ideas.
This has a rather Zen feel to it.
What we should do is not ‘future’ ourselves so much. We should ‘now’ ourselves more. ‘Now thyself’ is more important than ‘Know thyself.’ Reason is what tells us to ignore the present and live in the future. So all we do is make plans. We think that somewhere there are going to be greener pastures. It’s crazy. Heaven is nothing but a grand, monumental instance of the future. Listen, now is good. Now is wonderful.
Mel Brooks