The practical idealist is a benevolent realist. Most of our prophets have been in this category.

Most people I know can’t stand spending time with their own minds, undistracted.

The first victim of a little red dress is Philosophy.

When food replaces religion we know the empire is starting to crumble.

A collection of owls is not a pod nor a coven, but a parliament.

Which begs the question, which came first?  The birds or the boys?

Love, an acceptance of reality is required to deal with it properly.

Affluence comes in two forms; an excess of free time and an excess of pointless activities designed to occupy that free time. Genuine innovation, of thought or deed, requires one of these and not the other.

An intellectual denial of the ‘here and now’ reality is very much a part of numerous philosophies. Just occasionally this approach has everyday functionality, normally when things look very bleak.

So we can draw a link between survival in the extreme, over-emphasised intellectualism and out of this world philosophies, in all their varieties. Then we can analyze the same with real world psychology (pick a flavour, any flavour) and disappear right up our own arseholes.

I have a friend who is practised in the art of negativity, mostly focused on the lives of others known to us. It’s packaged in a suave and intelligent wrapping and is very engaging. But therein lies a trap which I refuse to partake and I must stay very alert so as not to be sucked into the Eddy current.

For myself it has been a good lesson in how not be to be. For my friend I think its part habit and partly a reflection of his own brain chemistry and unsatisfied dreams. I do wonder to what degree this state of mind has participated in ensuring the latter.

Apparently Sartre was the first to label himself a existentialist. He probably did it in the fifth person. Wanker.

(Sartre says “I know a bloke who has a mate who thinks Sartre might be an existentialist, you know”. In the original French version that sentence was in fact a half hour interview.)

What to do when you have too much to do? Simply do the stuff which has the nearest term deadlines. And keep doing it until the crisis has passed.

If this doesn’t work you have to let some of your bishops know that their outcomes can’t be achieved and that their deadlines need to be renegotiated.

Which ones? Either the least important or the most time consuming; it’s a judgement call on your part. And do not discuss the other work you have; keep it simple and focused and avoid getting into debates about the relative merits of the importance of their work versus the rest.

The point of this is to learn not to freeze or throw your hands off the wheel and crash. It’s hard work sometimes but rarely is it as impossible as it looks.

In my dream last night a large pelican swallowed another smaller pelican. The little one was still alive and I could see it moving around, outlined within the big one. Maybe it was an ibis. That would make more sense for reasons I don’t understand. Exxy.

They have passed me by, all of my life. The noun that is.

Existentialism is a left-overs odd-bin for those philosophical egomaniacs who can’t be otherwise binned. I can’t be an existentialist since I have a Groucho-like aversion to clubs. Hang on, I am arguing against myself here. Beer time…

On more than one occasion I have judged people too quickly and in the negative. Only to find out later, much later, there was much more to them. Note to self; stop it.

Unusually I am watching tv. I just watched two ads in a row which I didn’t understand. I think they were some sort of urban mum jokes; no idea. This makes me very happy.

Helpfully, my cafe this morning had signs letting us know how many people are allowed per table. Weirdos.

I have better things to do with my life than to cop shit for trying to do the right thing.

Today, the financial paper is full of chatter on the subject of ‘productivity’. Business wants an increase in profits via gains in productivity, which has apparently been going backwards in Australia for sometime (as measured by who exactly?). This can’t happen unless government allows either a decrease in real wages or reduced regulatory costs, allowing the use of less labour. And of course our corporates couldn’t simply seek growth into foreign markets, now could they?

The high regulatory burden is how we keep people employed in Australia, so that won’t change. The only politically acceptable way to decrease wages is to increase inflation, which would be achieved by printing money and lowering our dollar, which would also enhance exports directly.

My novel answer to the political issue of reduced wages, and therefore also consumption and corporate revenues, is to pay people the lost income via shares, so they claw back their wage losses via gains in share prices. Otherwise this is all just an exercise in wealth transfer in Club Australia. Duh.

Whatever happens, taxes have to go up in the short-term to pay off the higher foreign debt burden.

Lurking behind all this is a desire for the ready availability of low-cost servants. I found this out by accident one drunken night in talking to a bunch of lawyers, after I had reduced their arguments to the core. Stripping away all the BS they simply want two distinct classes of people no matter what the cost to the economy.

“Measures to move women into topless roles”. The heading to the article was in fact “…top roles”; what a misread!

Some smart people have focused on the issue of gender imbalance in our boardrooms and decided that the best solution is quotas for women.

Since most Australian corporations thrive in a closed market with government mandated anti-competitive protections, why not?

Considerations of which of the current or new regime would be more effective simply aren’t debated because everyone knows, deep in their hearts, that these people don’t matter much. These roles are sinecures.

To be honest I feel more passionate about the class inequities than the gender inequities. A pox on the North Shore I say; woman and all.

I just met the Chief Scientist of NSW. Who woulda guessed?

The RBA is promoting its prudent actions that “saved” Australia during the GFC, along with strong prudential control of the banks by related organizations.

Total bullshit. Australia is simply too small to warrant the large Wall Street investment banks being parked here and controlling government.

Otherwise known as a master of corporate advancement. Useless otherwise.

When placed in a difficult environment in order to execute a tough job the good man has two moral challenges of note.

Firstly, any role has the functional goals set by an immediate superior which the good man constantly measures against the stated goals of the organization. This reconciliation often presents a paradox that tortures the good man.

Corruption, the second issue, exists as ‘direct-in-your-face’ corruption but then there are also many more subtle forms that do not even break any rules. In a difficult working environment often some corruption is more effective than no corruption. This presents the moral man with another challenge.

Pity the good man because he does not hide from these challenges.

I have known a few artists in my time. Normally these are very right brain people with little or no left brain training. And herein lays the trap for some.

Some artists know not what they are trying to express, at least not in words. To do so would be to attempt to explain a right brain activity with left brain methodology, which they aren’t very good at. So they have right brain issues being expressed with right brain communication channels. This is all good until the critics and academics start wading in with their left brain waffle; the artists rarely agree.

Contrast this to the odd artist who uses their art to comment on, say, a current social issue. The approach of using art as a medium at first disguises the fact that, when pressed to discuss the issue in words it becomes apparent they are absolute dilettantes. The art may have technical merit, but it is communicating absolute rubbish.

“We will help your child be the best person they can be; to be independent, empathetic, balanced, aware and resilient. These things are not promoted by a focus on final exams; so we don’t. If a child’s parent(s) do not match our ideals then we don’t take the child; we can’t beat what happens at home. Our school is free; we run entirely on alumni contributions.”

Ok, so I made it up. Sounds good though, doesn’t it?

I really, really struggle buying reading material for a flight these days. The kindle doesn’t suffice since it has to be turned off for takeoff and landing. Which leaves me with newspapers and magazines, or the tinnitus of my mind.

I think it’s a sign of having read and assimilated so much knowledge that I cannot get interested in much of what the newsstand offers.

Which makes me realize that I have not just been absorbing information, but also systematically modeling the underlying human systems. Once the model is complete and tested to be working I lose interest, somewhat, in further details. Surprising.

I find faded beauty quite fascinating, especially where there is a little self-denial about the ‘faded’ bit.  Its very subtle, this stuff, but most of us immediately know when anothers’ rubber band has been over-stretched. It’s just our own that is harder to monitor, for some.