Reflections

The end of a week is often a time for reflection.

How much did I achieve and where on earth did I put that item, I intended to use this weekend? 

This reflection time must be what professional comedy writers use to plan their material for the next week and we might profit from reviewing our weeks with comedy in mind.

Many years ago Lenny Bruce ( 1960's ) got all the authorities and moral guardians in an uproar because he named "unmentionable things" and he used the local newspapers as his primary source of material.  

Today, more than ever, we need a Lenny Bruce to rattle the cages of complacency, to encourage outrage instead of the slight curiosity displayed by people in general.

We live in a world that is upside down and more in keeping with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, than ever before.

Well, I for one, have had enough. I watched a program on television a few night ago where participants uniformly joked about politicians being liars, bureaucrats being bumbling fools and that "spin" is the accepted coin of the realm. 

The sad part is that somehow we accept this and re-elect, what is often, the best of the worst.    

Politically, the person ( Flowerpot ) who messed up his last assignment gets promoted and the norm appears to be that incompetence is rewarded, while responsibility and accountability are only words. ( Flowerpots marginally decorative but functionally useless )

Double speak has created a new "language" that has no value as a mechanism for communicating but boy does it sound impressive.  Cleary if you don't get it, you are over the hill and history. 

What started as a political tool to create confusion has now crept into the rest of our lives and we should resist, imho.  

Below are a few extracts to illustrate the point -

"the strategic importance of a new light pencil plan that will empower the strategic staircase and keep us out of negative territory because we wouldn't want to wrongside the demographic by only taking a high altitude view when it comes to paradigm shifts, as we have stakeholders who must come to the party and we can't have our cake and eat it, so we have to step up to the plate and face the music"
Say What, Really  !!!

An extract from a recent council business case.

There is a two way information flow between the program and project level benefits realisation plans with information from the program benefits feeding into project level benefits realisation plans and vice-versa. At the project level, benefits realisation planning is more granular with benefit owners signing-off on benefit metrics, measurement and delivery time frames. Any financial benefits defined in project benefits realisation plans will inform the value profile of the program and be represented in an aggregated form in the program benefits realisation plan.

The news item below, comments on the United Nations using language, that cannot be understood. - in relation to climate change.

"the net result will be transformational changes in social values, resource needs and technological advances as never before. The necessary conceptual models do not exist from which to develop a systemic understanding of the great transformations taking place now and in the future."

This madness is not confined to any one industry or discipline as a Time magazine article illustrates.

A glowing article on another "charismatic evangelist " Rick Warren, (and yes he is as mad as all the other, though maybe not as mad as his followers ), which describes his mission in language that can only be understood by left handed Martians.

" But he has spent the past few years positioning himself for just such a role as a suprapolitical, supracreedal arbiter of public virtues and religious responsibilities"

Watch out folks ! Here we have another zealot ( complete with myopic beliefs ) ready to train and influence the new "virtue police" and politicians, most of whom are too stupid to fart and chew gum at the same time.

Am I the only one who to have had a gutful of all this hocus pocus,  in business, politics and with an ever increasing push for politically correct behavior and a fear of offending the "Left Handed, Red Hair, vegetarian Union" or some such rubbish?

No matter the language, there are a few rules that are constant -

1. Whenever we choose to deal with reality in an irrational way, we are guaranteed to produce irrational results.

2. Beware of any person or group of people who are convinced that their Truth, is the only Truth.

3. The truth has never yet stopped politicians from squeezing the last vote out of a lie.

We are faced with a simple choice - We either participate in this lunacy or call it lunacy, when we encounter it.

Might I suggest that with the upcoming elections you switch on your BS detectors and vote wisely.

Maybe you think I have lost my marbles, but I say the king is not wearing any clothes. ?

 

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