Annie Q Syed

I am drooling over a new book I just bought: Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano.

You can read more about the book here. Having read only a few pages I highly recommend it. The writing is delicious and moves along easy.

He writes, “Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good soccer. I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’ And when good soccer happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”

“The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty.”

There is no question for most of us if we are going to live a connected life, use cell phones, read blogs, and engage on social networks. The real question is how are we going to do so?

Shared by Soren Gordhammer, author of Wisdom 2.0 Conference

The Tale of the Zen Master and the Chess Game

There once lived a young man who was very sad and unsatisfied. He went to visit a Zen temple, thinking this may help.

“You must know that I am quite useless,” the boy explained upon meeting the Zen master of the temple. “I have never committed myself to anything for any length of time, and I have no real skills. But I want to learn and I wonder if there is any way for someone like me.”

“Well,” said the Zen master, “there is, but it is not easy. First, tell me what you have you studied?”

“Not much. The only thing I was really interested in was chess.”

“Ah,” replied the master, and he summoned one of his assistants. “Fetch me a chess board, now,” he commanded, “and bring a very sharp sword too.”

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An email to The “List”…

Hi you all….

So, believe it or not, the five articles below came from five different sources. All today! If you actually browse them you will think I was doing a research on this topic!

Talk about synchronicity! Perhaps my conscious and unconscious querying is reflective of the state of affairs all over…so that would constitute as a subliminal research of sorts…and this means the virtual world is headed towards the emergence of a new wave of online connecting…or maybe that is just my wishful thinking…

For the last week I have been wondering all these thoughts and questions that are addressed in the articles below.

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Time for US Revolution–Fifteen Reasons by Bill Quigley

“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing oriented” society to a “person oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” ~ Rev. MLK Jr.

Excellent article.

The following is a transcript of a lecture given by George Soros at Central European University on October 29, 2009.

Statements that deeply resonated with me are in bold if you don’t care to read through the entire thing. Mr.  Soros is an inspiration and simply brilliant.

Thanks,
~a.q.s.

Today I want to explore the conflict between capitalism and open society, market values and social values. I am going to approach the subject indirectly, by first introducing a phenomenon that has attracted my attention only recently, but has assumed such importance in my thinking that I could almost call it the fourth pillar of my conceptual framework. That phenomenon is the principal-agent problem.

Agents are supposed to represent the interests of their principals, but in fact, they tend to put their own interests ahead of the interests of those whom they are supposed to represent. That is the agency problem.

It has been extensively analyzed by economists, but they look at it exclusively in terms of contracts and incentives and they largely disregard questions of ethics and values. Yet if you leave out ethical considerations the problem becomes pretty well intractable. Values like honesty and integrity lose their grip on people’s behavior and people become increasingly motivated by economic incentives.

By claiming to be value free, market fundamentalism has actually undermined moral values. Continue reading