Soraksan Photos

Date: 4 - 6 Nov 2007

Place: Soraksan, South Korea

Experience: mountains, mountains, mountains... place of outstanding beauty.

Universals of culture

What are the aspects of daily life?

George Murdoch's universals of culture

1. Age Grading
   
2. Community Organization
   
3. Cooking
   
4. Cooperative Labor
   
5. Cosmology
   
6. Courtship
   
7. Dancing
   
8. Decorative Art
   
9. Divination
   
10. Division of labor
    
11. Dream Interpretation
    
12. Education
    
13. Eschatology
    
14. Ethics
    
15. Ethno-botany
    
16. Etiquette
    
17. Faith Healing
    
18. Family Feasting
    
19. Fire Making
    
20. Folklore
    
21. Food Taboos
    
22. Funeral Rites
    
23. Games
    
24. Gestures
    
25. Gift Giving
    
26. Government
    
27. Greetings
    
28. Hairstyles
    
29. Hospitality
    
30. Housing
    
31. Hygiene
    
32. Incest Taboos
    
33. Inheritance Rules
    
34. Joking
    
35. Kin Groups
    
36. Kinship Nomenclature
    
37. Language
    
38. Law
    
39. Luck Superstitions
    
40. Magic
    
41. Marriage
    
42. Mealtimes
    
43. Medicine
    
44. Obstetrics
    
45. Pennal Sanctions
    
46. Personal Names
    
47. Population Policy
    
48. Postnatal Care
    
49. Pregnancy Usages
    
50. Property Rights
    
51. Propitiation of supernatural beings
    
52. Puberty Customs
    
53. Religious Rituals
    
54. Residence Rules
    
55. Sexual Restrictions
    
56. Soul Concepts
    
57. Status Differentiation
    
58. Surgery
    
59. Tool Making
    
60. Trade
    
61. Visiting
    
62. Weather Control
    
63. Weaving
    

Source:
In the bubble
John Thackara
Page 134
MIT Press
ISBN: 0262201577

Ethnosphere

National Geographic explorer Wade Davis argues passionately that we should be concerned not only for preserving the biosphere but also the ethnosphere - the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination. It is humanity's great legacy. It's a symbol of all that we are and all that we can be as an astounding and inquisitive species.

Top 10 Believes

What are my top 10 believes now?

1. Nothing is permanent ( including this list ).
   
2. Things fail when it is not designed to evlove with changes.
   
3. One can reduces one's ignorance by learning more about oneself and the World around us.
   
4. Sharing what I discover about myself and the World around me is intellectual philanthropy.
   
5. There is power when one knows one can be wrong.
   
6. There is always more than one way of seeing and doing things.
   
7. Listen to people who have unpopular views.
   
8. Do one's own thinking.
   
9. If one does not make choices, choices make one.
   
10. Connecting the disconnects
    

What are your top 10 believes now?

Mother Teresa's definition of poverty

The hungry and the lonely, not only for food but for the Word of God; the thirsty and the ignorant, not only for water but also for knowledge, peace, truth, justice and love; the naked and the unloved, not only for clothes but also for human dignity; the unwanted, the unborn child, the racially discriminated against, the homeless and the abandoned - not only for a shelter made of bricks, but for a heart that understands, that covers, that loves; the sick, the dying destitutes and the captives - not only in body but also in mind and spirit; all those who have lost all hope and faith in life, the alcoholics and drug addicts and all those who have lost God ( for them God was but God is ) and who have lost all hope in the power of the Spirit.

Source:

A simple path

Lucinda Vardey, Mother Teresa

Page 30 - 31

Rider

ISBN: 0712674527

Generalize, don't specialize

Why should we generalize instead of specialize?

Sense from:

Operating manual for Spaceship Earth

Buckminster Fuller

Page 40 - 41

Arkana

ISBN: 0140194517

A type of bird which lived on a special variety of micro-marine life. Flying around, these birds gradually discovered that there were certain places in which that particular marine life tended to pocket-in the marshes along certain ocean shores of certain lands. So, instead of flying aimlessly for chance finding of that marine life they went to where it was concentrated in bayside marshes.

After a while, the water began to recede in the marshes, because the Earth’s polar ice cap was beginning to increase. Only the birds with very long beaks could reach deeply enough in the marsh holes to get at the marine life. The unfed, short-billed birds died off. This left only the long-beakers. When the birds’ inborn drive to reproduce occurred there were only other long-beakers surviving with whom to breed. This concentrated their long-beak genes.

So, with continually receding waters and generation to generation inbreeding, longer and longer beaked birds were produced. The waters kept receding, and the beaks of successive generations of the birds grew bigger and bigger. The long-beakers seemed to be prospering when all at once there was a great fire in the marshes. It was discovered that because their beaks had become so heavy these birds could no longer fly. They could not escape the flames by flying out of the marsh. Waddling on their legs they were too slow to escape, and so they perished.

This is typical of the way in which extinction occurs through over-specialization.

10 ways to reinvent your company

Here's a crash course from Keith Yamashita, cofounder and principal of Stone Yamashita Partners on the art and science ( mostly art ) of creating strategy and unleashing change.

1. Outlaw PowerPoint. Write down your vision as a story - with a beginning, middle and end - to clarify what must change first.
   
2. Don't rely on words alone. Bring your thinking to life: Create an exhibit, use diagrams, prototype ideas.
   
3. Make strategy an everyday act. The creation and re-creation of strategy shouldn't be a process that you undertake only when budgets are due.
   
4. Argue forcefully against your most dearly held hypotheses. Only then will you know if they stand up to scrutiny.
   
5. Make decisions, right or wrong. There's nothing worse than waffling.
   
6. Take over the TV station. Airtime is everything. Reinforce your messages in everything that you do. Use every ad, press release, store, package, and event to tell your story.
   
7. Embrace thine enemy. Make a list of the people who could legitimately stop your big idea from taking root. Befriend them. Convince them. Make it their responsibility to improve on your vision.
   
8. Don't hold meetings longer than two hours. ( Otherwise they're workshops, which require more planning. ) And don't walk out of a meeting without assigning a name to every item that needs follow-up.
   
9. Startle people. Break out of your comfort zone and do something unexpected. Run an offbeat ad. Institute casual-dress Tuesdays.
   
10. Don't throw anything out. Don't kill ideas that won't work right now. Someday soon, the world might be ready for them.
    

Source:

Keith Yamashita wants to reinvent your company

Fast Company 2002 Oct

Polly Labarre