September 11, 2001. I remember staying up past midnight, flipping through my hundred or so cable channels. Everything covered the attack. I went for a walk. TV light flickered from windows of every house. Everyone was up but nobody was out. Except one guy, on a payphone, highlighted by a street light glowing over him, speaking [...]
war
Here’s a fascinating article about the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue at Firdos Square in 2003 – a great case to examine how our desire for compelling stories and images makes us deceive ourselves. Some argue it may have made things worse — enabling the infamous “Mission Accomplished” announcement and causing people to overlook real problems. (More [...]
We tend to reduce faraway conflicts by figuring out who’s the good guy and who’s the villain, then working out the rest of the narrative around those simple distinctions. And more often than not we decide who the good and bad guys are based on how we associate them with particular good and bad guys [...]
What a first decade for a century! Even before Wall Street collapsed as the speculation bubble burst there was uncertainty everywhere: the United States was embroiled in the invasion of another state, suicide terrorists threatening (and succeeding) to assassinate heads of state, globalization extending into every market, untold millions of people seeking comfort in consumerism, [...]
… has to be laid on a robust background of sensible, generative dialogue. I don’t just mean “peace talks,” but rather a wider, deeper understanding of societies and how they interact.
I wasn’t sure if I’d write anything on Remembrance Day, but then I saw this National Post editorial: Still, we risk dishonouring those Canadians who have gone to war to defend our nation and its values when we seek to revise our history and downplay our contributions to wars fought in the name of freedom. [...]
A coincidence of events this week has led me to a surprising (and perhaps controversial) insight: war is not as complex as it may seem; at least compared to times of peace, it may even be fairly simple. During war there is a concentration of purpose. When we’re not at war, activity is less focussed, [...]
Burying the Best and the Brightest
by OpenConceptual on 07-09-2009
in commentary
I’ve been thinking about the pernicious effects of our overachievement society again, this time by way of Philip Delves Broughton (via NYTimes Opinionator), in a post called The McNamara Syndrome. The following is actually from the author’s book, Ahead of the Curve: One of the most famous alumni of Harvard’s MBA program is Robert McNamara, [...]
Tagged as: best and the brightest, careers, creativity, education, leadership, learning, management, opportunity, overachievement, robert mcnamara, war, work