ought to be adjusted.................

 

Throughout, however, Burke demonstrates his ability to combine specific details with Olympian generalization.  Thus a discussion of imports from Jamica and the malign effects of the Stamp Act yields the timeless Burkean insight that 'politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.'

-Jesse Norman, Edmund Burke: The First Conservative

adjustments..................

 

Technology paces industry, but there's a long lag in the process. Industry paces economics. It changes the tools, a great ecological change. And in that manner we come finally to everyday life.

The politician is someone who deals in man's problems of adjustment. To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.

-Buckminster Fuller

creative readjustments......................

 

You don't want to abandon the skills and experience you have gained, but to find a new way to apply them.  Your eye is on the future, not the past.  Often such creative readjustments lead to a superior path.

-Robert Greene, as quoted in The Way of the Champion

The need to be "maladjusted".....................

       Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word.  It is the word "maladjusted."  Now we all should seek to live a well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.  But there are some things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call you to be maladjusted.   I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination.  I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule.  I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism.  I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things.  I call upon you to be as maladjusted as Amos who in the midst of the injustices of his day cried out in words that echo across the generation, "Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."  As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation could not exist half slave and half free.  As maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, "All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a dream of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.  God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to go out and change our world and our civilization.  And then we will be able to move from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

-Martin Luther King, Jr., as he concluded a June 7, 1957 speech.  From A Testament Of Hope

On persistence..............

 The important thing is how we work with something that isn't working.  Being pig-headed and repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again is not the answer.  Persistence should be coupled with the ability to adjust how you approach your challenge.  Trying multiple angles is the key to making your persistence work for you.

-Ben Aldridge, How to Be Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable

Discipleship....................

     Effective management is putting first things first.  While leadership decides what "first things" are, it is management that puts them first, day-by-day, moment-by-moment.  Management is discipline, carrying it out.
     Discipline derives from disciple—disciple to a philosophy, disciple to a set of principles, disciple to a set of values, disciple to an overriding purpose, to a superordinate goal or a person who represents that goal.
     In other words, if you are an effective manager of your self, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will.  You are a disciple, a follower, of your own deep values and their source.  And you have the will, the integrity, to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, your moods to those values.

-Stephen R. Covey, as taken from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The antifragility of capitalism..............

We come here to the great paradox and tentative explanation about why the networked public, so destructive of the status quo, has tolerated and to some extent embraced the standing economic system. . . .  In the current environment, as I understand it, businesses have proved no wiser, more far-seeing, or successful than other institutional actors.  But capitalism, as a whole, has made more productive use of the failure of its parts than most institutions under assault by the public.  To borrow Taleb's terminology, capitalism appears to be "antifragile": it "regenerates itself continuously by using, rather than suffering from, random events, unpredictable shocks, stressors, and volatility."  This has allowed the system to prosper despite the horrors of 2008, while, not unrelatedly, bestowing on the consumer a multitude of new technologies and products.

-Martin Gurri,  Revolt of the Public

Rebelling..........................

People who are recognizably human have walked the earth for roughly two hundred thousand years.  During those millennia, we survived by continuously adapting to our fickle environment.  We braved harsh winters and punishing landscapes, and feared animals much fiercer than we were, bowing to nature, whose spell overwhelmed us, whose magnificence humbled us, and around which we anxiously rigged our lives.  After a passage of time too long to fully imagine, and too many impression-mad lives to tally, we began rebelling against the forces of nature.  We grew handy, resourceful, flexible, clever, cooperative.  We captured fire, chipped tools, hewed spears and needles, coined language and spent it everywhere we roamed.  And then we began multiplying at breathtaking speed.
-Diane Ackerman,  The Human Age:  The World Shaped By Us

Adjustments......................

"... think of all recessions as adjustment problems."
-Arnold Kling, as excerpted from here (and here).   If you want something to ponder today, consider his list of the adjustments required by the Great Depression.  Have a great day.

Life in the Age of Snowden

8.   Ever since Edward ███████, I don’t feel free ███████ ██ ███ ██████ █████ and also in ████ ████. The ███ ██ ███-███████ ██, █████ ██ happily keep watching Netflix. For me, this █████ ████████ █████ ██ █ self-censorship that makes me want to ████. ██ ███ and █ really ████ ███████ in our █████, we should keep asking ourselves whether we really want to live under these conditions.

As excerpted from this post at the friendly anarchist blog.

Good to remember...................................

Break out of your rut......................

..............................................in seven easy steps.

So............................

..............how are your plans for 2014 working out?

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"No plan of battle ever survives contact with the enemy."
-Helmuth von Moltke, the elder

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