Zen Quote #1

"If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?"

-Dogen

Capitalism Reloaded

With the fall of Berlin wall, free-market capitalism remained as the lonely survivor on the battlefield of economic ideologies. Today, being the only system that provides any future, but also being the system of the rich and powerful, it has come under increasing attack. Capitalism has been shown to be well suited for the provision of goods and services to the middle class, as well as to low-income classes in richer nations. However, there are still many challenges which capitalism has not been able to solve:

• Efficient poverty alleviation for the absolutely poorest
• Credit for the poorest people in the world
• Supply of drugs for Malaria, HIV/AIDS etc. in poor countries
• Efficient supply of healthcare, even in rich countries
• Education systems for all, that humanize instead of commoditize individuals
• Sustainable energy usages (I.e. 100% clean technology)
• Economy supporting life, not economy as life
• Capitalism as a force for human rights, instead of against

It has clearly been seen that state-centered power has been unable to resolve these issues. Even though dreams of socialism are far off in todays debate, I still think it is important to understand that even the governments today are too isolated, too bureaucratic and too slow to efficiently handle the problems listed above. Capitalism has succeeded in handling many problems to which it has been applied. It is now time to apply capitalism to a greater range of projects. This could be done by two major modifications of todays capitalism:

• Extending Capitalism. Through applying free-market mechanisms on the provision of services for health care and education we can create more dynamic sectors that can create more value, especially for the underprivileged who are weak even in todays welfare states. Funding does not necessarily need to be private in order to provide free-market supply of services, funding could be achieved through a combination of government social insurance and private funding for those who can afford it.
• Adding a layer to Capitalism. A new layer has to be added to capitalism. We are so stuck in seeing solutions either being legislation-driven or market-driven. I believe that there is a third way: dialogue-driven solutions. We need to create a new set of social technologies and institutions based on dialogue, both on a local level as well as on a global level. This will allow partnerships, social innovation and value for all to emerge.

I am far from the first one to put the spotlight on these issues. Below is a list of great books to read on the topic:

• Machinery of Freedom, David Friedman
• Capitalism at the Crossroads, Stuart L. Hart
• Banker to the Poor, Muhammad Yunus
• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, C.K. Prahalad
• The Mystery of Capital, Hernando de Soto

Ken Wilber – world’s fittest philosopher

For those of you who don't know Ken Wilber, here's a short introduction. Ken Wilber is America's most translated academic author. Although he never studied an MsC or a PhD, he published his first book on spirituality and psychology at the age of 23. Since then he has published a long series of books describing what he calls an integral theory, integrating basically everything. =) He is also a Buddhist (even though he does not call himself that).

This is how he looks;

Anyhow, I found these Ken Wilber jokes online, and I just thought I would share the funniest ones with you!

• Ken Wilber is finishing up an Integral re-working of the entire Oxford Dictionary, Encyclopedia Brittanica, Tripitaka, Wikipedia, and Bible. This took him 2 months, a little longer than he would have liked, but he thinks that it may be his best work yet
• Ken Wilber doesn't shave his head. He long ago willed his hair to stop growing
• Ken Wilber can go from ego to nondual in 3.9 seconds
• In an argument between Wittgenstein, Aurobindo, and Richard Dawkins, Ken Wilber would win
• Ken Wilber is behind you right now
• By using Ken Wilber's abdominal muscles as a rudimentary abacus, one can convert anything to the metric system
• Once Ken Wilber had an epiphany and it resulted with the manifestation of all 57 varieties of Heinz (including the green and purple ketchup)
• Ken Wilber can divide by zero
• The Inuit tribe of North America has 37 words for Ken Wilber.
• He can say, with a straight face, that a certain developmental level enjoys having sex with all sentient beings... for a reason
• Ken Wilber is the world's most cunning linguist

If I were to do a PhD

Lately I have been thinking about doing a PhD. I have a whole bunch of relatives who have done PhDs in computer science, geography, mathematics, medicine (M.D.), chemistry & economics. If I were to do one, what subject matter would I study?

My main interest is social systems, and how these social systems change. Based on that I guess I would do a PhD in organization studies (organizational behavior, industrial/organizational psychology, management etc.). I was emailing an old friend just before lunch, and I gave him two bullets that I would be interested in researching.

The first bullet was organizational/systemic change. I was always fascinated by the processes that led to the downfall of the Berlin Wall as well as the end of Apartheid in South Africa. On a personal note I worked hard during high school to establish a self study group as a means to change the way we learnt and studied. AIESEC, being an incredibly dynamic organization, offered many opportunities to drive (and fail at driving!) organizational change. Based on this background I would like to study change processes, organizational dynamics during change as well as to develop practical tools for how to best create sustainable change.

The second bullet was empowering organizations. I don't know exactly what I should call this. Margaret Wheatley speaks of life-affirming organizations. WorldBlu promotes freedom-centered organizations and democratic organizations. Through my long years of study during adolescence I often felt that the system was nor empowering, nor life-affirming nor freedom-centered. The Swedish education system was system-centered, regulation-worshipping and incapable of seeing individuals as individuals (just in case they were not standard issue!). I found it quite repressive, to say the least. Since then the idea of creating organizations, (groups, organizations & societies) that can empower people to become all they can be, has inspired me greatly.

Check out Margaret Wheatley and WorldBlu!

Mind & Body

Recently I have had some reflections on the dualism of mind and body. In western thought mind and matter (body) has been separated ever since Descartes wrote his Meditations. Scientific positivism has taken this a step further and claims that mind actually does not exist, that it can be reduced to matter. I.e. that all mental and spiritual experiences can be reduced to chemical processes taking place in our brain.

A common modus operandi for me during my life has been to embrace this dualism and also to put mind over matter in terms of making decisions. Through reading western philosophy and Ayn Rand’s Objectivist theories it was easy to slip into a mode of always prioritizing intellectual and rational thoughts as bases for decision, rather than body-based decision making (emotions, intuition and gut feeling).

Having recently read a bunch of texts and books on Zen and Buddhism, I am starting to believe that the dualism between mind and matter actually does not exist. Neither am I a fan of reductionism. Actually, it is beginning to seem, that the best ways of taking decisions is through integrating mind & body.

If you listen to the thoughts and ideas that emerge naturally during moments of stillness and quietness as well as to the valuation signals that your body (mainly nerve centers in your stomach, behind your ears as well as nerves in your chest and throat) gives when you contemplate different courses of action, I believe that better decisions can be taken.

Here are two exercises that you can try out:

Letting go and letting come meditation
Find a quiet place and sit either on the floor, on a pillow or on a chair in an upright but relaxed position. Focus inwards, on your own mind and consciousness. There will be many thoughts coming up. Just observe that they enter your mind, but don’t cling on to them, instead just let them drift away. After a while you will see that different kinds of thoughts emerge. If you sit long enough you will find that deeper, more profound thoughts about your life and your concerns. Listen deeply to what comes out. Afterwards, question yourself. Which thoughts emerged during my meditation, without me forcing them? Which were the thoughts that just came up, by themselves? These thoughts are probably valuable to you.

Gut feeling scenarios
This technique was taught to me and my MC Team in AIESEC Sweden 0607 by our mentor and former PAI Lennart Bjurstrom. When faced with a decision that you have to make between 2 or more options, take 10 minutes to fully immerse yourself in what it would be like to decide on one of the options. Try to make yourself excited about that option, try to think as if you had already decided. Give each of the options 10 minutes of “simulation”. Afterwards, ask yourself: Which option gives the best gut feeling? That is probably the right option for you to choose.

Skip the MBA - Read Dilbert!

I have known about the cartoon Dilbert for a long time, but I never really read it. Now that I am working in a corporate office myself I have discovered the endless wisdom of Dilbert. Skip the MBA, you don't need it, Dilbert will teach you everything you need to know about business.

Here's a sample:

Dilbert is actually drawn by U.C. Berkeley MBA graduate Scott Adams. He also wrote a book called "The Dilbert Principle" along with an article in the Wall Street Journal. Wikipedia says that:

"The Dilbert Principle...(states)...that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage that they're capable of doing...In the book, Adams writes that, in terms of effectiveness, use of the Dilbert Principle is akin to a band of gorillas choosing an alpha-squirrel to lead them."

I fully agree.

On group facilitation

Yesterday I facilitated a workshop for trainees in China at the January National Conference. The workshop was about 5 hours long and it was an interesting experience. I had decided to facilitate it using Open Space Technology, using the following questions to start the dialogue:

• How am I experiencing culture shock and how am I dealing with it?
• What am I learning about myself through my experience in China?
• What do I appreciate the most about my experience here in China?
• How can trainees take responsibility to improve the AIESEC-LC-Trainee community?

The workshop was supposed to start at 11 AM, and I arrived at 10.55 due to the one and a half hours it took me to go to the suburbs of Shanghai. Due to the randomness of Chinese agendas the workshop had started already at 10.30. When I arrived I found a group of 8 trainees, assorted laowai and Chinese sitting in the workshop room, happily chatting away about everything and nothing. I felt a bit stumped, since I had expected 20 trainees to be there. It turns out that most of them got too drunk the night before and still were in bed.

I didn't know what to do, so I did nothing. I just sat there listening in to the discussion trying to get a sense of what was interesting to this group. I decided that Open Space Technology was not really suitable for such a group, instead we could just have a free-flowing, facilitated, no-rules dialogue. Since the group represented a cross section of the local AIESEC communities (trainees, Chinese and random laowai) I felt that it could be interesting to explore questions around how we perceive each other, how we interact and how we could increase the integration between Chinese and laowai.

As I had entered the room after the discussion had started, a social field and structure had already developed, without me facilitating it. While not trying to cancel their discussion, but rather slowly edge myself into it I experienced the difficulties of shifting focus of a group without behaving like a dictator. Ever so slowly I managed to focus the social field on areas of common interest and we proceeded to share our stories on how we found it going for internships and trying interact with the locals.

After lunch we got hold of some flipcharts and markers and we were able to map out the following things:

• Perceptions of laowai and Chinese from the perspective of the other
• Challenges within the AIESECer-Trainee community
• Ideas for how to increase integration in said community

The output was carried forward by a smaller group of laowai and Chinese who promised to speak to the MC about the possibility of hosting a plenary session during the conference to share our findings with the rest of the conference delegates. Two of the main points that came out of the discussion was:

• Laowai and Chinese both perceive the other group to be a bit childish, in different ways. Laowai perceives many Chinese as unexperienced and naïve. Chinese tends to perceive laowai as undisciplined.
• The perfect way of interacting between the two groups is dinner and cooking together. Clubbing or KTH seems to only capture the interest of one of the groups, while both love eating and talking!

During the workshop I learnt a lot about facilitation and myself. Here are a couple of points:

• I am having difficulties in keeping to facilitating the process. Since the subject matter is relevant to me personally, I tend to jump in with my own contributions at times. I try to stop myself from doing so, and concentrate solely on the process
• If a proper “container” is not created at the beginning of the meeting, it is harder to move the group towards a common intention and sense of common “ground rules”
• The social field (the atmosphere, the general sense of what is happening in the room) can take many different qualities. During the workshop I experienced the following qualities of the social field; un-focused chatting, focused dialogue, mildly aggressive debate, generative dialogue, feeling of being stuck and unable to move forward and momentum towards action
• The inner state of the facilitator greatly determines the outcome of the discussion. Inside myself I could experience the following states: stillness, stress, boredom and excitement. I find that most importantly a facilitator should practice to keep his insides peaceful, calm, quiet and still. This state enables deep listening and proper actions to emerge automatically, without too much thought involved.

I want to thank all the participants for giving me an opportunity to learn so much!

The evolution of a worldview

The other day I was thinking a bit about how my worldview has developed over the last few years. I plotted my path, connecting the dots with the wisdom of hindsight! =)

Age 15-17 Pseudo-Christian
I went on a Christian summer camp for the confirmation of one's baptism. It's a common thing to do for Swedish teenagers (and elsewhere in the Christian world, I suppose?) at the age of 15. I was amazed by the inclusivity of the culture as well as the willingness of the people to explore spiritual ideas. I found the Swedish Church (Svenska Kyrkan) to be an open minded organization. Fundamentalism is definitely not exclusive to religion. I find religion can be quite open minded.

My Christian belief was perhaps not the most traditional. It was a way of making sense of the world, and Christianity provides some themes and stories that should resonate with most ethical people. I especially find the following story beautiful from John 8;

"But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus,

"Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"

They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them,

"If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

The Christian message of forgiveness and humanity is still with me, even though I find it hard to believe in the Christian metaphysics, theory of creationism and their image of God. What finally broke my faith was the Theodicé paradox; How can there be so much evil in the world when God is both good and omnipotent?

Age 17-22 Objectivist/Libertarian
It all started with the book of a Swedish author, Johan Norberg, called "In defence of global capitalism". The book basically argues for why deregulation and free markets helps to eradicate poverty, increase wealth, create more egalitarian societies and decrease environmental problems. The book is filled with supporting statistics from UN organs and other renowned institutions. Always having been an anti-authoritarian (due to my repressive educational experience) I was excited by the idea that things could be made so much better, if the state just stopped controlling. That was just how I percieved my life. If the school administration (and at length, through regulation, the government) could just stop controlling my life, all would be so much better.

After that I bought Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" on mailorder from a Danish antiquariat. As soon as I finished the book I turned over to the first page and started again. I have probably never been so moved by a book. Ayn Rand was born and educated in Russia and immigrated to the United States at the age of 20, yet her command of the English language is superb. The vision she paints in her books is that of man as an upright, proud and heoric being. She espoused a philosophy of objective reality, rationalism, individualism and laizze-faire capitalism. She was, and still is, a very inspiring author to me. This is how she sums up her philosophy;

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute"

I continued reading Libertarian literature. Robert Heinlein wrote many books featuring freedom-loving characters, and I devoured them all. I also came across David Friedman's (the son of Milton Friedman) "The Machinery of Freedom". The book is a brilliantly written argument for a anarcho-capitalist society. That is a society where all public goods are provided by the market; security, law and order. This argument is done on utilitarian grounds rather than the usual libertarian natural rights grounds. The book has a beautiful poem on the first page, which describes the libertarian sentiment in simple words;

"Why can't you see
We just want to be free
Have our homes and families
And live as we please"

Never having seen any good in the workings of government it was easy to adopt the anarcho-capitalist view of society. Essentially it is about viewing relationships between men as traders (commerce for financial gain) instead of as slaves and masters (regulation by law and force).

Age 23-24 Organizational Learning
Intellectually I was a convinced libertarian and objectivist. However, I found it hard to connect to other people who claimed they shared the same view. When I was studying in Gothenburg I went for a meeting with the local Objectivist Club. The people there were the most narrow-minded, selfish and arrogant people I had met in a long time. I never joined their club meetings again.

I also tried to engage myself in the Swedish Conservative Party's youth section (Moderaterna). There I found the people to mostly be concerned about money and status. Most of them came from rich families and were not afraid to flaunt it. The people also cherished not only conservative fiscal policies, but also conservative social views. I myself was a fiscally conservative and morally liberal.

I disengaged from both these movements and immersed myself in my business studies. I did not consider politics to be a tool of change anyhow so I did not mourn the loss of association with those movements.

At the same time I joined AIESEC, and inspired by the organization´s obvious organizational learning roots started to read Peter Senge´s "Fifth Discipline". This book also rocked my worldview throught it´s passionate account of organizations driven by passion, dialogue, freedom and never-ending learning.

As I ventured down the organizational learning path and read Senge et al´s "Presence" as well as recently Otto Scharmer's epical "Theory U" I started to fill a void in my worldview that I hadn´t seen before. As I was envisioning the retreat of the state from the public domain my picture of what would fill the void had not become clearly visible yet. "Theory U" describes the social technology of presencing through which dialogue can enter a generative stage. Speaking of social technologies was something new for me, but it was exactly the kind of tool that I needed to fill the void that the state had left after itself as it got sucked out of the public sphere. As I was reading the book I saw the opportunity to build institutions and organizations which was not built on coercive methods, but rather on deep insight, empathy, dialogue and listening.

So here I am, at the age of 24. I guess I am not trying to lable myself as much any longer, and I also feel that my worldview has been fleshed out quite extensively. I will finish of her with a quote from Peter Senge et al's "Presence";

"It’s common to say that trees come from seeds. But how could a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources needed to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or environment within which the tree grows. But the seed does provide something that is crucial:a place where the whole of the tree starts to form. As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth. In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges."

Being an intern

This is what it's like to be an intern:

Guesstimates

I'm doing interviews with a consulting firm right now. As a mental workout they give you "guesstimates", impossible questions that you should try your best to answer. Here's one:

How many golf balls can you fit into a Boeing 777?

Let’s assume that we will only fit balls into the main body of the aircraft. It would be possible to fill the gas tanks in the wings with golf balls, but we will just fill the cockpit, the main body and the tail section with golf balls.

In a Boeing 777 you have 2 aisles with 3 seats between each aisle and window, and 4 seats between the aisles. A seat is roughly 50 centimeters wide and an aisle is roughly 50 centimeters wide as well. That makes for a total width of (12x50=600 centimeters) 6 meters.

We assume that there are 300 seats on the aircraft, and every occupant is given 1.5 meters of space along the length of the aircraft (chair, including margin for reclining of chair and leg space). That gives us 30 rows (10 seats in each row) of seats each occupying 1.5 meters which gives a total length of 45 meters.

There are 3 additional factors that need to be added to this to get the total length of the aircraft: emergency exits, tail section (storage of food etc.) and cockpit. If there are 2 sets of emergency exits (1 on each side) that will roughly add another 1 meter each, in total 2 meters. We are now up to a length of 47 meters. Let’s then assume that the cockpit requires another 3 meters (not including the nose of the aircraft that carries navigation and communications equipment). The tail needs to support the rear fins (2 horizontal and 1 vertical) and needs to be sturdy. Let’s assume it is 10 meters long. We now have a cigar shaped tube roughly 60 meters long and 6 meters in diameter. For simplicity’s sake, let’s also assume that the floor and the ceiling of the aircraft make this into a box rather than a tube (even though the ends are still tapered). The inner sides of the aircraft would still be curved but for simplicity’s sake we will ignore that. The height of the aircraft is assumed to be 2 meters. Our box is thus 2x60x6 with tapered ends.

A ball is roughly 5 centimeters in diameter. We can therefore fit 120 balls in width, 40 balls in height and 1200 balls in length. This does not account for the space occupied by the seats (and other equipment). Let’s assume the seats cover 15 % of the total volume. This gives us 85% out of 120x40x1200=5 760 000 balls, which is 4 896 000 balls. Let’s say that the tapered ends can carry half the amount of balls per meter of length compared to the midsection. That means that we need to subtract half of the balls that fit into a 13 meter section (cockpit and tail end, 3+10 meters, assuming no chairs). That corresponds to 120 balls in width, 40 balls in height and 260 balls in length, all divided by 2. Mathematically written 0.5(120x40x260)=624 000.

This gives us a total of 4 896 000-624 000 which is 4 272 000 golf balls.

"The Real World"

After AIESEC I was plunged into “The Real World”. Once there I was expected to renounce my old beliefs, visions and values, simply because “this is The Real World”. I suppose the phrase refers to the set of expectations, assumptions and generally held beliefs that dominate corporate life, especially at the lower levels of a multinational corporation. Tragically, even experienced AIESECers can espouse the litany of conforming and essentially, giving up. Obviously there are different rules in place outside of AIESEC. In AIESEC we have no real influence over the state of the world, but we create a container around us, and then we charge that container with hope, love and intentions towards creating a real world.

When we leave AIESEC, what happens to us? Do we change, do we lose the spark or do we just do what we have to do to survive in our new environment? I believe that the most important (tragically so) thing that happens after AIESEC is that we lose a community that was valuable to us. Obviously we still have our friends from AIESEC, but it is not a community any longer. It loses its intentionality.

There has been interesting work done on what is called Communities of Practice. CoPs are essentially groups of people who come together to learn, support each other and to push each other towards higher performance in relation to a common domain. It can be a group of software programmers sharing advice in a Silicon Valley bar, or it can be a bunch of AIESECers meeting virtually and physically to support each other to achieve what they said they wanted to achieve when they were in AIESEC.

My intention is to create a Community of Practice for ex-AIESECers who want to support each other and learn from each other, in regards to the common domain of trying to have an impact in society. I have written an input paper, and started a Google Group for any ex-AIESECer who wishes to participate in such a community, even after AIESEC.

The input paper can be found here

And the Google Group can be found here