Tag Archives: efficiency

The Road to Diamond, Day 114: Intuition

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 22, 2025- The little boy went over to an office building that was closed, and walked around it, then came back. Even though he looked like he was just exploring, I knew he was looking for a toilet. So did his father, who came and took him to the Port-o-San. The man smiled appreciatively, in that, though neither one spoke English, I had been keeping an eye on his son. Intuition is what keeps things running smoothly.

I had a messaging exchange earlier this morning, with someone who is frustrated at the pace of a construction project with which I had helped a few months ago. I made it clear that I would not be able to get things accelerated and that I am being careful with my money. After a while, the person understood and expressed appreciation for what I have done already. Good things take time, and sometimes have to wait for bad things to play out. Intuition can be in play, even over long distances.

This evening, I took in a robust performance by a guitarist who frequents the small cafe that I alternate with The Raven, on weekends. He was having some difficulty with certain parts of his instrument. I am familiar enough with this gentleman that I could offer the name of someone who might be able to help him with the issue. His own preferred method seeming to be not working, he winced but thanked me for the tip. Intuition can be dicey sometimes, but it pays to take initiative and offer help. We are all in this together.

I can see that we will be needing to refine our intuition, in the weeks and months ahead, if we are to keep a close watch on the rather sloppy use of Artificial Intelligence, lest it end up counteracting the nobler aspects of the current Administration’s efforts at decreasing waste. Nothing is gained, if these efforts go too far, and end up derailing themselves.

The Road to Diamond, Day 85: Worn Out Phrases

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Family, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

February 21, 2025- “Woke” is worn out. So are “MAGA”,”DOGE”; and “Long live the king”. For that matter, “DEI” could use a vacation-as a slogan. Abraham Lincoln said “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. A country is like a house and for that matter, so is the human race.

Let’s look at the above-mentioned words and acronyms. Woke is the past tense of To Wake. It is also a term, taken from the Ebonics spoken by enslaved African-Americans and their descendants, to mean “aware of surroundings”,”paying attention”, and so on. That’s all it means and being “woke” does not, in and of itself, make one superior to all others. It just means that one is not easily fooled.

MAGA-“Make America Great Again”-catchy phrase, this-if one has been fooled into thinking that the change which this and other countries have been undergoing, in a time of global ferment, is somehow foreign to the human experience and thus should be resisted and counteracted. The United States of America has achieved several measures of greatness, precisely because of our diversity. White, male capital has needed the polyglot work force to bring its dreams into fruition. An educated work force is far more productive than a conglomerate of human oxen. This is one reason why Andrew Carnegie, no egalitarian by any means, nonetheless saw fit to relegate a hefty part of his fortune to a system of free public libraries, which became a model for such institutions the world over. The United States of America has never stopped being great. There is no “again”.

DOGE-“Department of Government Efficiency”: Here, we have taken our penchant for compartmentalizing aspects of our collective being to the next level. Efficiency, the good stewardship of what we are given, is somehow to be viewed as separate from every other element of our being. My parents, grandparents, parents-in-law- in short, everyone who survived the Depression, and before that, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Gilded Age, World War I, Influenza of 1918-must be spinning about, underground, to the extent that a 9.0 may be in the offing!

Every day of my formative years, I was told to count my dollars and cents, to know how much I earned per newspaper I delivered and to look about for further opportunities. I was taught to plan my day, each morning and to take stock of what had transpired, at day’s end. Efficiency has never been separate from any other aspect, of any enterprise that I have ever seen be successful. It falls to every entity to practice efficiency, in and of itself. We compartmentalize at our peril.

“Long live the king!”- That’s fine for Charles III or for Sultan, of Saudi Arabia. Kingship is their job. In a constitutional republic, kingship is a ludicrous proposition-even if the term is tossed out half in jest. No one man, or woman, can carry on alone. The above-mentioned monarchs know this-and thus, each has his Cabinet, his Prime Minister/Crown Prince, Parliament/Council of Elders. Only a lunatic actually believes in his own omnipotence. Shakespeare wrote King Lear, in reflecting on the reign of Henry VIII, for this very reason. No one of good will wishes death upon another person, but long life does not need to feature untrammeled obedience from one’s fellows.

DEI: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. When I was 17, I was taken aback, momentarily, by the sight of a person of colour in a small rural community in Massachusetts. Looking back, it is obvious how silly my reaction was. This planet has been a diverse community since Day One of living things. Sameness doesn’t exist in nature. It does exist in monoculture, to an extent, and we can see that monoculture ends up choking itself out of existence, in fairly short order.

Why, then, should we pursue either a forced uniformity or a contrived, artificial diversity? The former brought about the latter, true-but it is time to relegate both to the scrap heap, and let mature humans pursue their natural inclination towards diversity. This means allowing all who seek to join in a given activity or enterprise, the chance to take part. Inclusion is a natural process, not a feature of statute, to be enforced by fiat.

Equity? When my parents were raising us, my youngest brother needed things that the rest of us did not He was given what he needed, to the best of our parents’ ability to provide. I did not begrudge him this. He, in turn, was not given driving lessons, or expected to get a part-time job, in his teen years. Opening the way for a human being to meet individual or small group needs is not discrimination against all others. Helping People of Colour to overcome, in specific ways, the effects of institutionalized bias is not a travesty. It is true that none of us alive today are responsible for establishing elements of bias. Why, then, do we act like we have such vested interest in them?

DEI, as doctrine, should not even be necessary. Nor should MAGA, or DOGE, or rule by fiat. In this day, each of us is responsible for living an integrated, well-balanced life. Why, then, do we choose to compartmentalize?

Streamlined

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

April 2, 2024- Something to consider: It now takes eight hours, or less, for one bank to transfer funds to another. This has long been a goal, one purpose of which is to minimize the amount of bet hedging by less than responsible customers, who write checks or transfer funds, thinking that “There might be a business day that will pass without sufficient coverage, but surely no bank will be so efficient as to catch on so fast.”

Guess what-Most banks do catch on-and within the aforementioned eight hours. I am glad to have set up a system to meet obligations as they arise, and not expect the institutions to dawdle, and hold off their end of the deal. It’s just nice to actually be able to face lightning-fast challenges, with like response.

Despite the misconception that progressive governments are lenient and inefficient, especially in the face of rapid change, I have noticed that everything from tax returns to the actual arrest and deportation of miscreants who are here under false pretenses is actually being handled in a more streamlined manner. Some of it is moving more slowly than other aspects, but things are moving along. A lot of the COVID-based, supply chain shortage-caused mishandling of people and goods is clearing up.

Then, there are the squatters-who move into another person’s home and cry to sympathetic judges for relief, when they are removed. Recently, a Venezuelan national tried to recruit people from his country to engage in mass squatting, saying that he knew judges who would back him up. He has been arrested in Ohio, on Federal charges, and sits in Geauga County Jail-pending trial in a Federal court, where he does NOT know the judges. Many states are now streamlining their laws, so that police can protect homeowners, even if they are away from the home for as long as six months.

Just because people are kind, nice, considerate does not mean they are disorganized and weak. It’s worth remembering this, in the weeks and months ahead.

Grassroots

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

June 11, 2021, Bellemont, AZ- Today is the last full day of the camp which I have been supervising. A few people left for home, due to work and family obligations. The teens who are left have busied themselves with clean-up projects, both on campus and across the road, where an illegal dumping site has collected detritus, probably for several decades.

These efforts have brought to mind the fact that grassroots actions can begin to correct even the most longstanding of offenses or errors in judgment. It will take a great deal of such work, to counteract the mistakes made as result of top-down decision-making. The latter is closely tied with “efficiency”, but that is so only in the sense that things can be done more quickly, when the elite is making snap decisions. True efficiency involves BOTH grassroots AND the decision-makers at the top. So, there needs to be a clear-cut system of transparency-which only the slow-moving engine of trust can provide.

As always, my charges have taught me as much, if not more, than was imparted to them. It is this that has kept me in the youth work game, a lot longer than I might have stayed. There is no end to what we can achieve, if we draw lessons from everyone we meet-of all ages and backgrounds.

Baby Steps to Justice

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, impediments, Personal Values, Striving

February 22, 2021-

I spent most of today waiting for my tax return to be done. I ended up having to make a certain adjustment in my personal financial structure, so as to be in compliance with government regulations. It will end up costing the government more, in the long run, but who’s counting?

After that, I checked on my jury interview for tomorrow, and it’s still on. If I get chosen, it will likely be my first and last time, given that the pool is large and I have only five years until the cut-off age of 75. So, I will go and get at least a taste of the selection process.

Justice, at least in the human realm, is an odd thing-as everyone’s concept of it is different. Even among those who adhere to the Golden Rule, there are varying notions of what justice is, and how it ought to be applied. I have, by and large, been fortunate in the course of life events. When misfortune has happened, though, it has taken some time and effort to overcome the urge to deflect blame and to focus, instead, on how I might learn from the unpleasantry.

The lessons I have acquired and internalized, however, made today’s challenges much easier to face and the tasks brought on by them quicker to complete.

The Black Hand

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Posted by on in collaborating, distraction issues, Education, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal goals, Personal Values, Spiritual, Striving

March 30, 2019-

In the Planet Fitness where I work out, there is a large seat, shaped like a Black Hand, in each of the stations where a hydromassage bed is located.  It strikes me that this is a symbol of challenge, that there are always difficulties to be overcome, whether self-imposed or brought on by others.

I have had to do a lot of re-assessment, after a rough past few days.  What I have determined is that: 1.  I am going to make fitness a higher priority than it’s been, having shown that I can make time for a workout, even on the busiest of days.

2.  I am going to cut way back, if not eliminate, my appetite for pastries and other high sugar-based food items.  Neither having my cake nor eating it, at least for the last two months of work.

3.  Doubling down on avoiding violence, no matter how violently I might be attacked, either by one of my charges or anyone who is deranged.  My reaction, from now on, will  be to distance myself, until assistance is at hand, at least in the work setting.

4.  Being more mindful and present.  Neither Alzheimer’s nor Parkinson’s has knocked on my door, but problems have presented themselves, through a combination of fatigue and autism.  I have done better, today, and need to continue getting enough rest, so that there is no repeat of incidents on Thursday and Friday.  The same old story:  When I am challenged by an authority figure, when I’m in a fatigued state, I come out with a blather of telling the person what I think they want to hear and making myself look guilty of something that, in actuality, never happened.

5.  Tax returns are done and I have worked out a more efficient system of time management, so despite some of the above, things are on an upswing.

Impact

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Posted by on in Assistance, Community, Education, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Striving

December 24, 2018, Phoenix-

One of the admittedly annoying aspects of e-mail is the constant barrage of “Double (Triple) Your Impact!” pitches for donations. So as not to be misunderstood, I like efficient use of funds and that which increases the likelihood that more people will be positively affected by the contribution is all the better.

A positive framework for the term is Impact Experience, a company that focuses on bridge building, in terms of a network between investors and communities at risk.  Founded by Jenna Nicholas, in 2015, this enterprise has worked in communities, regardless of local political culture-the main thrust being reworking the way people see local economies and potential for prosperity.  http://impact-experience-dev.squarespace.com/process/

The common attributes noted for a culture whose purpose is prosperity, rather than profit, are:

  • Distribution of wealth, by partnership, rather than by force.
  • Consultation as the primary communication model.
  • Employee development
  • Sustainability

This culture must undergo change, which occurs in the following stages:

  • Definition;
  • Communication;
  • Reinforcing education;
  • Integration;
  • Practice;
  • Reflection

Where things have fallen apart, in recent years, has been the lack of persistence, often from a skewed perception of the process of change.  One, or more, of the above steps have either been omitted or not properly completed.

As was said earlier, real change is messy.  People stumble, are embarrassed, get discouraged or cave in to pushback.  It helps to realize that few of those who question change are, in the real sense, reactionaries or “knuckle draggers”, just as few of those wanting drastic change are wild-eyed revolutionaries, or “bomb throwers”.

Change is messy, trust comes hard, but both are necessary, in order to bring about the economic justice, for which so many pine.  Listening, with both ears, and action, with all one’s attention and effort, are imperative.