How does your Behavior impact others?

Sunday Morning Sermon - Sep 22 2013

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. One of the most interesting parts of this test is the Feeling 'F' versus Thinking 'T' scale. This scale rates how you make decisions in your life and within the world around you. In other words, when you are making decisions, do you consider facts more than feelings?

Those who rate very highly on the 'T' scale often find it difficult to empathize with others because their decisions are based primarily on rational facts. Thus, at work they can struggle in management positions when it comes to addressing their staff, as their (at times) tactless and abrupt manner often offends. They tend to find it very difficult to sugar coat issues and to truly empathize with emotional problems they cannot relate to. These individuals are unfortunately often completely oblivious to their impact on the health and well being of their staff.

In contrast, this Myers-Briggs scale is particularly interesting when you consider those who rate highly on the feeling scale. Often people who are strong 'F's on the scale assume they are very considerate and kind towards others. However, these very people can be completely unaware of their negative behavior towards other considerate and kind individuals. Because they base their behavior so strongly on feelings, they can fall into the trap of assuming these nice people will simply accept their rudeness, disrespect, lateness and so on. A classic example of this is when they choose to make an effort to please those they are not confident around and thus ignore, pay little attention towards, and neglect friends, colleagues and associates who they assume will just always be there for them. Usually, by the time they realize this person has had enough, the relationship has been tarnished beyond repair.

The most interesting aspect of this type of behavior is that these very individuals are often the first to complain about being mistreated by others (usually by those very people they have tried so desperately to impress). The lesson for those bearing the brunt of this negative behavior is to be assertive, to try to make the 'F' people aware of their behavior and stop it before it completely tarnishes the relationship.

In work situations this happens all the time. Senior Managers who are not aware of, or do not consider, the impact of their decisions on their staff are often left wondering why their staff are not loyal, have a high turnover, or are no longer willing to work overtime to impress tho boss! When treated in a disrespectful manner, staff will eventually become disheartened and lose interest when treated with disrespect.

The moral here is that if you want positive relationships with the people you really care about in life to last - you have to make an effort and give these people the respect they deserve. Don't assume you can return their calls when you feel like it (eg after you've spoken to all the people you're trying to impress). Don't turn up late to social events without advising them or making up a lame excuse that you bumped into an old friend on the way. Don't repeatedly cancel at the last minute because something better came along or you've just lost interest. Don't assume you can get away with making little or no effort and they will always be there.

Life is all about balance and give and take. You get what you put in, so be mindful of those who perhaps you have been taking for granted and take this chance to tend to this relationship more closely.

Amen!

To shoot or not to shoot

Sunday Morning Sermon - Sep 15 2013

Its been a while now since the US has been deliberating a military attack on the Syrian regime in order to deter it from using chemical weapons against its own people.

WMD's have been used by so many across the ages since we saw. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Gaza, and the lot, in our lifetime. How often did the powers that be try to step in and stop the killings? Its been a wait and see approach in almost all the cases.

Two Republican senators who are among President Barack Obama's sharpest foreign policy critics on Saturday blasted a Syrian chemical weapons agreement as "an act of provocative weakness" by America that will embolden enemies such as Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear.

What concerns us most is that our friends and enemies will take the same lessons from this agreement: They see it as an act of provocative weakness on America's part," Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in a joint statement. "We cannot imagine a worse signal to send to Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon."

So the people are on both sides of the fence. Most Americans do not want a military confrontation while some are shooting from the hip.

What the two senators do not support is the agreement their former colleague, Secretary of State John Kerry, announced Saturday in Geneva after days of tense talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The deal calls for securing and destroying Syria's chemical weapons stockpile and imposing penalties if the government of President Bashar Assad fails to comply with its terms. The agreement was the result of a surprise proposal by Syria's staunch ally, Russia.

There are those who also claim that the chemical weapons that Assad is throwing out are the very MD's that good old Saddam had in Baghdad which he stealthily shipped out to Damascus. Are they opening a brand new can or worms here to prove that the WMD's did actually exist in Iraq?

But then who armed Saddam with the WMD's in the first place?

We live in a bitter and vicious circle of men, machines, and molotovs that seem to be manufactured, distributed, sold, and moved around for personal benefit, be it for cash or for conflict.

When will the madness stop?

Amen  

Oppressing Women

Sunday Morning Sermon - Sep 8 2013

[better late then never, the pastor was too bz this week]

In the corporate culture that we do live in these days, we don’t monitor or measure women’s advancement adequately. Overall, we as a people understand an issue better when we have ways to perceive, analyze and measure it.  Our Corporate Planet still hasn’t effectively quantified and measured the impact of the lack of women leaders on business outcomes, or researched and identified effectively where in the pipeline women are falling out, why, and how to address it.  Diversity programs abound, but the needle has yet to move.

In many peoples view, quite a number of women haven’t themselves made the decision about how far they want to go in business or government or readied themselves to deal with the consequences.  We believe that there will always be a work-life balance struggle that women will face more intensely than men traditionally have (although that may be changing with younger generations on the ground today).   “Men have always sacrificed not staying home with the kids, and women haven’t thus far been willing to make that sacrifice to the same degree. “ Women now need to decide definitively how far they wish to go, and commit to actions that support those decisions.

There are hundreds of women who have fought very hard to lead, thrive and grow in the corporate environment and in the political arena, but our culture has yet to embrace them.  In short, people are more comfortable with what they know, and men have remained more comfortable with men at the top.  As long as 95% of senior corporate leadership is male, the  culture will be challenged in integrating and promoting women leaders. 

In politics, women don’t really help women.  In fact, most women are “super critical” of other women.  Nations need to grow more accustomed, as some countries have, to accept women at the top, as powerful, intelligent, highly capable agents of authority, command, and change. Why aren’t women voting for women?”

It’s vitally important to include women in key decision making roles and to encourage diversity of all kinds — of background, culture, gender, socioeconomic background, etc. – in leadership and teams to ensure success. Research shows that the more diverse a group, the more capable it is to solve the problems at hand and arrive at better solutions.

David Landes – eminent Harvard historian in his book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealth-Poverty-Nations-Some/dp/0393318885]

 asserts that one of the key forces behind how an economy will perform is its openness to new ideas.  And one of the best gauges of that openness is how a country treats its women.   The best clue to a nation’s growth and development potential is the status and role of women, and the economic implications of gender discrimination are serious.

Kathy Matsui, renowned top-ranked equity strategist in Japan, conducted groundbreaking research on what she calls “Womenomics” which points to investing in women as the key to creating stronger economies and a more equitable global society. She asserts that women’s education is the best investment our generation can make for global peace and sustainable development.  In her TEDxTokyo Talk on Womenomics, Kathy shares that companies who have adopted explicit practices that promote diversity – for instance, programs that support working mothers or ensure objective evaluation and performance metrics — experience higher average profit margins than companies that don’t.

This tells us that it is vitally important for both companies and individuals to step up and do what they can to support the education, development and growth of women globally.

Amen!

Man's Inhumanity towards Man

Sunday Morning Sermon - Sep 1 2013

Mark Twain's major theme in the novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is man's inhumanity to man. Huck Finn states, "Human beings can be awfully cruel to one another".

This theme is no surprise to us all. We have, throughout history, read about the many events of such cruelty inflicted by man upon his own species.

The question that we now ask is whether we have learned any valuable lessons from this history?

When WWII ended we heard the voices say, "never again", yet we've seen so many new wars that have been fought, lost and won, since then. Millions have suffered or died in vain.

What motivates man to kill his own?

Yes, we know that animals and other creatures do kill each other. But they do it only as a form of instinct to survive. Never on a planned and hidden agenda to oppress or abuse. In the case of man its different.

What do human beings kill for? Usually its territory, power, religion, culture, ethnicity or basically, the inability to accept and tolerate one another.

Where did racism stem from? Racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior, or superior..

Historical economic or social disparity is alleged to be a form of discrimination caused by past racism and historical reasons, affecting the present generation through deficits in the formal education and kinds of preparation in previous generation, and through primarily unconscious racist attitudes and actions on members of the general population.

A hypothesis embraced by classical economists is that competition in a capitalist economy decreases the impact of discrimination. The thinking behind the hypothesis is that discrimination imposes a cost on the employer, and thus a profit-driven employer will avoid racist hiring policies.

Although a capitalist economy would avoid discrimination in order to avoid extra cost, this can be avoided in other ways. A capitalist company, for example, may use racist hiring policies as it deviates towards the “cultural norm”. For example, in a predominantly white society, hiring a person of color into a position of management may then cause disputes, and damage communications between other employers. Thus, the company would be economically put in a deficit because of the discrimination of other companies, as they invoke discrimination and isolate that company. Although this may be a radical, over exaggerated point of view, it portrays how pervasive racism is and how a company may sometimes deviate towards racist hiring policies in order to not be isolated, thus preventing the company from going into an economic deficit. 

Settler colonialism has always been one of the main contributors of segregation of human beings into groups and levels of social hierarchy, which then develops into a form of racism and divisiveness. The South African model is the best example of this.

Today, we see so many fires burning across many nations where people are involved in fighting their own people espousing their own causes and justifications. Interventions by more powerful first world nations have rarely brought forth a permanent solution to this madness. In fact such interventions have actually fueled the fire even further drawing more blood across wider landscapes.

Are we humans doomed to destruct ourselves in this manner, sooner than later?

Only time will tell.

Amen!

Military Madness

Sunday Morning Sermon - Aug 18 2013

Throughout history, the military has been concerned with much more than national defense. In Imperial Rome, for instance, by the era of the mid Empire it had become customary for the military to influence the selection of the new Emperor. In modern times, virtually all Latin American and African nations have seen military interventions, often culminating in military coups and the emergence of military dictatorships. There are also instances of military involvement in domestic politics, even in apparently consolidated democracies. In 1958, the democratically-elected French government was forced to back down in a confrontation with a unified military command. Today, as we are all witnessing on the ground, the Egyptian military has ousted a democratically elected President and the result has been absolute chaos, destruction, and death on the streets. Sri Lanka, in recent days put down a protest in Welweriya​,

​ 

using the military,​

​ 

where the

​ village people were only demanding drinking water.

The basic analytic​al framework is simple. Two groups, the elite rich and the ​ordinary ​citizens, are in conflict under democratic and nondemocratic regimes. Under democracy, redistributive policies benefit the citizens at the expense of the rich. Under oligarchy the rich keep their wealth but have to create (and pay) a repressive military to maintain them in power. A repressive military is a double-edged sword, however; once created, it has the option of attempting to establish a military dictatorship, seizing power from democratic or oligarchic governments. This is the political moral hazard problem at the core of the situation.

​This supports 

​the ​

military’s relationship with oligarchies, specifically the conditions under which the military will act as a perfect agent of the elite in oligarchies, and the conditions under which the military will turn against the elite and attempt to set up its own dictatorship.

It also clarifies thinking on the military’s role in transitions to democracy. The key element concerns the credibility of future pay-offs. Since oligarchies need a repressive military in ways that democracies do not, the oligarch’s commitment to future pay-offs is credible while those of a democratic government may not be. Consequently, our framework suggests that military coups are more likely to take place against democracies than against oligarchies because of the inability of democratic regimes to commit to not reforming the military in the future. 

Nevertheless, military coups against oligarchies are also possible when the political moral hazard problem is sufficiently severe. The point turns on the assumption that there is a probability that coups against oligarchies will fail.

​

This 

​thinking​

 also suggests that military coups may be more likely when the external role of the military is more limited. When a strong military is needed for national defense, democratic regimes can also commit to keeping a relatively large military, thus reducing the incentive for military takeover at the early stages of democracy.​

​The ​

historical relations between nondemocratic regimes and the military are important for the consolidation of democracy once th

​e​

 regime emerges. If a powerful military has been created by the elite to prevent democratization, then this military will be present at the early stages of the nascent democracy. However, since democracy does not have as much of a need for coercion as the nondemocratic regime, the military anticipates future reforms by the democratic government to reduce its size and power. This anticipation induces the military to take action against nascent democratic regimes, unless credible commitments for the continued role of the military in politics or other significant concessions can be made.

Other factors include the extent of income inequality and abundance of natural resources. Greater inequality increases the conflict between the elite and the citizens and encourages oligarchic regimes to maintain power by using stronger militaries. This increases both the risk of military intervention during the oligarchic regime and also once democracy emerges. Natural resources further increase the political stakes and make it more difficult to prevent the political moral hazard problem because the military can exploit natural resources once it comes to power. As such, they often make military interventions more likely.

One of the important implications of this state of affairs is that, when trying to shape or influence transitions to democracy, it is important that policy makers consider the complexities of the three-way interactions between the elite, the military and citizens. 

​Amen!​

Maintenance

Sunday Morning Sermon - Aug 11 2013

A body comes into existence.  If nurtured well, this body grows and matures into a healthy being.  Along the way however, steps have to be taken to ensure the continuous growth and development of this body, in a manner that will produce very little setbacks for a healthy and productive life.  These necessary steps are what I call "maintenance".

The same philosophy could very easily apply to all around us.  Not just to humans, but to the vast infrastructure around us.

In the post independence ‘50’s and ‘60’s the possibilities of taking our motherland, Sri Lanka, into an economical and social miracle was fully available. We had every opportunity, skill, resource, and even support from our Colonial master, Britain, to step ahead. However, petty politics, based on power struggle and selfish needs has made this a difficult target to achieve. Still, development of the infrastructure in this country has moved, even at snails pace, towards what it is now.  Billions of rupees have been spent to forge, build, and implement projects for the enrichment of the people and the infrastructure is reasonably on its way forward as we see it on the ground today, even if the socio-political climate has suffered tremendously, through hatred, wars, and mistrust between peoples.  

Communities have sprouted practically overnight in places where there was only bare land before.  Smaller towns have quickly developed and transformed into large metropolitan cities.

Hardly a day went by when one did not hear of or witness a new scheme or development beginning to take roots.  Foreign aid and development projects have also contributed effectively to this cause. People, both locally and from outside, have contributed in their own way and with their own expertise to the challenges faced with this mammoth task.  The maturity of society has still been slow in keeping pace with the expected development.

Today, t

​h​

e situation on the ground is received with mixed feelings. While infrastructure has improved the mindset of the people has deteriorated. Ethnic conflict is strife with the majority community taking and "Us and Them" attitude towards the minorities who have also made valuable contributions to the progress for over many centuries. Many have left the shores in search of greener pastures, peace, safety, and comfort.

After all this time, the ravages are beginning to show through the 

​glass ​

ceiling and we are on our way to simply becoming chronicled monuments of a recent era.

This does not have to be the case.  The key element missing here is maintenance, something we tend to ignore in just about every facet of our lives.  We tend to neglect our bodies, and on a larger scale, tend to neglect everything around us.  After all, why bother with something that works just fine for now?

This illusion is fine so long as things work well.  But the moment that something falls apart, we are taken off guard by the unexpected.  The evidence of such a demeanor is all around us.

Take to the roads today and tell me how you feel.  Are they being properly maintained?  Is the electricity service to your home steady and reliable?  Is the water supply piped in constant or intermittent? Walk into a modern and state of the art building or structure built in the last decade or so, only to notice the beginning stages of neglect and decay.  Or try using a service, which although recently introduced has fallen to hard 

​times. 

Look at your neighbor. Is he Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim or Burgher? How do you feel about him living next to you home?

 Does it bother you in any way? if so, why?

​ ​

Our philosophy and indifference towards maintenance is a major factor towards this decline.  An individual buys an expensive automobile, yet may search for the cheapest of labor to operate it.  The same attitude could apply to those investing in factories or industries.  Just about any responsible individual or party is more concerned with the initial investment in a project than the continuing expenses of maintaining his investment.

Is it indifference or ignorance? I sometimes wonder. Does not the analogy to a human body apply to just about everything we build or create?  Admittedly, maintenance comes with a price.  But the cost of neglecting this necessary function is far greater than imagined.

It is easy to complain and criticize, but how could one go about addressing this issue.  Well, we hear a lot about the high cost of living among the people.  Why not put our minds to get around them to drop the ethnic issues and concentrate on the needs for maintenance of the nation? Sooner or later, many professionals and skilled workers may leave, and with them so will a huge pool of talent.  Utilize that expertise now while they are here and develop a maintenance team of people, dedicated to the proper preservation of all things around us.

It takes more to build a community. It takes planning ahead, creative ingenuity and diligence to maintain it at a level acceptable to all.  And yet that is a challenge which many of our public service agencies have yet to fathom.

When are we ever going to learn?

Amen!

Profanity v Obscenity v Vulgar

Sunday Morning Sermon Aug 4 2013

Profanity is when something is considered insulting to a religion, its god(s), or people’s beliefs in them. Obscenity involves offense to taste or common decency, something vulgar enough to be taboo in a given context (often relating to sex or bodily functions).Vulgarity can mean crude, in general.There are legal nuances in all three terms.

Lets look at a common occurrence in our everyday life to illustrate this. 

You just stubbed your toe on a metal pillar or maybe opened your tax statement that came in the mail, and you want to let loose with some language that would make a sailor blush. Which category would those colorful words fall under?

If you're being profane, you may not need to worry about the arm of the Law, but if you believe in an immortal soul, you might be in trouble. Profane (from the Latin profanes, meaning "outside the temple" ) originally referred to things not belonging to the church. Later it meant blasphemy, sacrilege or taking the Lord's name in vain (we just call that blasphemy now).

Today, profanity is an expression that is specifically offensive to members of a religious group. The definition also extends to expressions that are scatological, derogatory, racist, sexist, or sexual. What is and isn't profane largely depends on the context and the company you keep.

Obscenity (from the Latin obscenus, meaning "foul, repulsive, detestable" ) generally covers sexual or scatological references to the body or bodily functions (i.e. F*&k and s#$t). The term is also used in a legal context to describe expressions (whether words, images or actions) that offend the sexual morality of a given time and place.

Vulgarity (from the Latin vulgis, meaning "the common people," ), which used to refer to text written in a vernacular instead of Latin, has two definitions today, depending on who you ask. For some, vulgarity is generally coarse or crude language. For others, it is more specifically the act of substituting a coarse word in a context where a more refined expression would be expected.

The actual intent and application of all these three category of words may have their nuances and variations in languages other than English, although in general, they must conform to the common definitions outlined above.

Schooldays were always filled with many of these "choice" words, be it in the classroom between colleagues or even in the playing fields. Cricket has its own share of vocabulary, referred to as sledging, that players choose to sling at each other during a game.

Pakistai dudes have a tendency to greet each other on the phone with a massive dose of "mother/sister" related "good mornings". At first I found that rather offensive in nature but eventually got used to it once I found that it was part and parcel of their Operating System, done in a very fun like and acceptable manner.

Whatever category they may belong to, the bottom line of the real meaning of many of these expletives is intent.

Amen!