Mountain, Clouds, Church and Septic Tank (2012)In interviews with Bill Moyers, mythology scholar Joseph Campbell said "aum" is the sound of the mystery of the world.
Campbell also said,
"People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking.
"I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that the life experiences that we have on the purely physical plain will have resonances within those that are of our own inner-most being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That’s what it’s all finally about....
“Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here-and-now which thinking in 'time' cuts out.
"This is it. If you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity—right here and now—is the function of life.”
Refrigerator DrawingCriticism is not negative. Criticism is debatable, uses evidence, and persuasives you to see what it sees using a mix of description, analysis, and evaluation.
Description proves the critic can see form in how the artist treats subjects and how we perceive the world.
Analysis is the interpretation of meaning of form based on the clues found during the description.
Evaluation is a judgement of whether the art was successful in conveying some meaning within its own criteria.
Criteria is the curator, the difference in how we evaluate art for the refrigerator, for the best works of the 21st century, and everything in between. Criteria is key to good criticism.
When in doubt of what to think about a piece of artwork, begin by describing what you see "in the frame" and trust the art will cause an idea to emerge.
That trust, when met by genius in excess of our expectations—when we reevaluate criteria itself—that's the bliss of it all.
We are not born with a sense of self. It emerges at around age two.
Unconscious memory controls 90% of our actions and reactions.
During creativity, the hormone dopamine stimulates neural networks in the frontal brain. These networks at the front of the brain connect with long-term memory at the back of the brain.
There are six basic emotions:
anger
joy
surprise
fear
distress
disgust
The facial expression for each is recognized across cultures.
Sensory input begins in the thalamus. The amygdala processes emotion for how you feel about the input, and the prefrontal cortex asks if what you feel is rational.
The brain is 2% of body weight but requires 20% of the blood supply.
Why does a car have brakes? Not so it can stop, but so it can drive fast.
"Fox Games" by Sandy Skoglund, Denver Art MuseumIn Taiwan and China exists a concept of social and business interaction called guanxi (GWAN-shee), which translates roughly as “having the connections necessary to get things done.” All social and business interactions create or destroy guanxi. You increase or decrease your guanxi with others depending on how you treat them.
If you have no guanxi, you can’t get your ideas off the ground; you have no support system or person you can call on for help.
If you have guanxi with someone, it is because you have done a favor and you are “owed” a favor in return. A favor thus returned increases guanxi between the two people. It continues to grow by reciprocal turns, starting small and gaining strength and importance over time.
Guanxi never ends, and it pops up when you least expect it.
For example, after a cocktail party in graduate school, I noticed several Taiwanese classmates getting on the wrong bus to return home. They were living in the U.S. for the first time and did not speak or read English very well. And they were tipsy from the wine-fueled function.
I got them off the bus, explained the schedule, and—after seeing it would take over 30 minutes for the right bus to arrive—gave them a ride home in my truck, via my house, for a few beers and a game of darts in my garage.
That began a friendship, but it also began guanxi between me and these Taiwanese guys. I did not realize how much guanxi had been created until I visited Taiwan years later and called these guys up on a whim, to see if they wanted to meet one night in Taipei for dinner.
Not only did they want to meet, but they wanted to host me in their homes for several days, cook me authentic meals, introduce me to their wives and friends, and show me some of the best night markets and sights only local Taiwanese know about.
I asked them why they would drop everything and host me on the spot. “Because we have guanxi,” they said, and they explained about how I fostered it when I gave them a ride home years ago.
I had no idea I was creating such an impression. That’s how guanxi works.
Another example occurred on that same trip to Taiwan when I wanted to make a stamp as a gift for a friend. The Taiwanese use ink stamps, usually in red ink, as their official signature or personal mark. I wanted to have a stamp made as a thank you to a friend for letting me visit and stay in his apartment (small gifts are a good “guanxi” move).
I needed a stamp maker to scan my friend’s actual signature, which required more photoshopping and graphic design than the shops I asked were willing to provide. I told this to my Taiwanese friend, who thought for a moment and then mentioned a guy he knew who could help us.
Why would this guy help me? Because the two men had guanxi from years ago when they served in the Taiwanese military together, and I was connected through guanxi now, too.
Sure enough, this man worked after-hours in his shop to make my stamp. He did all the scanning and cleaning up of the image. He gave us beer and cigarettes and whatever food he had, as we hung out with him in his printshop amongst scads of random banners, standees, and boxes upon boxes of forgotten business cards—the byproducts of his business. He handled everything and gave me the finished stamp later that night after getting someone with whom he had guanxi to stay open late in order to manufacture the stamp.
Guanxi connects to guanxi connects to guanxi...
That web-like connection is one of guanxi’s most important aspects. To make one $5 stamp called on many relationships to operate without question or excuse. If I were unthankful for the work of any of the chain of participants, it would not reflect badly upon me, it would instead damage the guanxi between my Taiwanese friend and the connection he first called upon.
Damaged guanxi results when you recommend someone to a third party, and the recommended person does not maintain the highest standards of thankfulness and courtesy. That is, damaging guanxi doesn’t immediately affect the person who did the damage; it affects the guanxi of the person who recommended him in the first place.
This not only creates a sense of duty, but a strange sense of guilt, because you will rarely know if you did harm or good to the guanxi of another relationship. Guanxi leaves you in a state of constant effort to reciprocate, and no direct information as to whether you were successful or not. No one will tell you.
Guanxi is unspoken and works similar to fate or fortune, with the same ability to make or break you, before you even know it’s playing a critical role. You never pay it off. You never call it even.
Imagine how different our society would be if we tended to the unspoken rules of guanxi. It is like karma in the popular sense or perhaps like the golden rule, only without the individualism: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto your friends.”
As reported on ABC TV moments ago, since the year 2000, 10 of the last 12 NCAA champions in men’s basketball had:
a streak of at least 10 wins during the regular season,
a non-losing road record,
a scoring margin of 10 points or higher, and
shot at least 37% from beyond the arc
The only teams to do that this year are:
Baylor
Belmont
Creighton
Kentucky
Missouri
Murray State
New Mexico
Weber State
The probability of the national champion coming from that bin of teams is apparently .833.
One Other Criteria
Add to that: 9 of the last 12 national champions were ranked in the pre-season Top 10. There’s only one team to meet all five criteria this year:
Kentucky.
It would seem you could bet the farm on the Wildcats this year, especially if you like bluegrass. Otherwise, how about putting your money on the fighting Ninteenth-Century Boatcaptains—champs for the first time since 1951!
"An old method for testing if the alcohol content was correct involved mixing equal amounts of gunpoweder and whiskey, a seemingly volatile concoction. If the powder wouldn't burn when a flame was put to it, the whiskey was too weak. If it burned brightly, it was too strong. A slow even burn with a blue flame signified perfection; it was 100 percent proof.
"In another method to test the strength of this homespun whiskey, the stiller studied the bead. He'd shake the whiskey in a glass, and if the bubbles were about the size of No. 5 shot, the proof was good. If the bubbles were big and loose—known as "rabbit eyes" or "frog eyes"—then it was too weak" (54).
Image from drinkstuff.com
Smaller Means Better Story
In shot sizes, 7 is smaller than 5, which would suggest stronger whiskey according to the bead-size method of proof. Jack Daniel was a master marketer. He probably called his whiskey "No. 7" to differentiate his product from other No. 5-proved whiskeys. Perhaps on a scale of 1 to 5, Jack's whiskey was a 7.
Later in his life, Jack gave control of his distillery to a nephew, Lem Motlow, who instituted some changes (not all of them successful), including Lem's introduction of a Jack Daniel's No. 5 line of whiskey, "called that simply because it was a younger whiskey than No. 7" (196).
Truer Than True
Many divergent legends about No. 7 exist, including that it was the seventh trial batch, that Jack had seven girlfriends, that his signature J looked like the number 7, and so on. The distillery loves these storied myths. Maintaining a mystery has been part of Jack's recipe since 1866.
In “The Illusions of Entrepreneurship,” author and professor Scott A. Shane shows the reality of American entrepreneurship as being decidedly different from the myths that have come to surround it.
An A. Malachi Mixon III Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University, Shane equates "entrepreneurship" with small business start-ups. He compared data from the past 30 years done by university researchers on business startups and found, first of all, that the United States isn’t very entrepreneurial.
In 2002, the top 10 countries in percent of population that owned new and young businesses were Thailand (27.2%), China, New Zealand, Greece, Brazil, Switzerland, Australia, Jamaica, Venezuela, and Finland (16).
America was at 9.9%. And America hasn’t gotten more entrepreneurial over time. In fact, Shane cites that a higher proportion of people started businesses in 1910 than they do today in the U.S (7).
Shane points out that the more entrepreneurial countries are generally poorer than less entrepreneurial countries. One explanation: capitalism, as equipment increases production, more people quit working for themselves (traditionally, farming) and go work for other people who own the equipment.
Also, as countries get richer, “they change where economic value is created; first from agriculture to manufacturing, then then from manufacturing to services,” which also accounts for a shift from people working for themselves to people working for others (19).
Image from highwoodsbees.com
Farmers and Postmen
In the U.S. from 1983 to 2002, all 100% of horticultural specialty farmers were self-employed, and 98.59% of all farmers were self-employed. Health practitioners, podiatrists, dentists, auctioneers, fishers, and authors all scored as over 70% self-employed, as well (49).
The lowest percentage of self-employed workers during that same time were Federal mail carriers (0.02%) and elementary school teachers (0.03%). Police, high school teachers, bank tellers, miners, technicians, administrative support and assemblers all scored less than 2% self-employed.
7.2% of engineers were self-employed;
12% of car and boat salesmen;
26% of actors and directors;
29% of carpenters;
39% of lawyers;
45% of musicians and dressmakers;
50% of hunters and trappers;
54% of veterinarians;
71% of writers.
Photo from eating colorful.blogspot.com
Wyoming and California
San Francisco has a far lower proportion of small businessmen than the U.S. city with the highest: Laramie, WY. Per capita, there are two and a half "new-business entrepreneurs" in Laramie for every one entrepreneur in San Francisco, which is ranked 121st behind places like Bozeman, MT; Farmington, NM; Rock Springs, WY; Rapid City, SD; Pikesville, KY; Laredo, TX; Brunswick, GA; Newark, NJ; Anchorage, AK; and Enid, Oklahoma (23).
Most of Americans think only of venture-capital backed, high-growth technology businesses as "entrepreneurial," but those firms—Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.—make up only a tiny fraction of new businesses. Businesses of opportunity rather than necessity, venture-capital backed tech and medical companies generate virtually all value and jobs from start-up businesses.
“Since 1970, venture capitalists have funded an average of 820 new companies per year. These 820 start-ups—out of the more than 2 million efforts to start a business in this country every year—have enormous economic impact. In 2003, companies that were backed by venture capitalists employed 10 million people, or 9.4% of the private sector labor force in the United States, and generated ... 9.6% of business sales in this country” (162).
That means venture capitalists only fund 0.03% of all new businesses every year, making the odds of getting venture capital for a new business 1 in 4000. The odds of fatally slipping in the bath or shower? 1 in 2232 (91).
So what do most small businesses in the U.S. look like?
Shane says, “The typical entrepreneur [is] a married white man in his forties who started his business because he didn’t want to work for someone else and who is just trying to make a living, not build a high-growth company.
“The characteristics that make people more likely to start businesses aren’t all the desirable ones that our myths associate with entrepreneurship. The data show that the likelihood that a person starts a business increases if he:
is unemployed
works part-time
has changed jobs often
makes less money
“Finally ... the experiences often associated with being an entrepreneur—immigrating, dropping out of school, and networking—don’t actually increase the odds that people will start businesses.
“Instead, going to college, getting a professional degree, and having some experience managing others in a business setting are the experiences that actually increase a person’s odds of starting a company” (63).
According to Shane's research, the typical start-up is home-based, employs one person, and has no intention or prospects of growing. It was started using $25,000 or less of the founder’s savings in a run-of-the-mill industry where there are many firms and profits are slim. The business's lifespan is five years or less, during which time the founder makes less money and has fewer job benefits while working more hours than if he worked for someone else (160 - 161).
Image from Flickr.com
Don't Forget the Death and Taxes
In his NOLO series book "Deduct It! Lower Your Small Business Taxes," accountant Steven Fishman reports that these kinds of sole proprietor start-ups are much more likely to get audited than other business entities—especially middle-income sole proprietors (462).
In 2010, the IRS audited:
0.4% of partnerships
0.4% of S corporations
0.7% of regular C corporations with assets worth less than $250,000
However, in that same year, the IRS audited:
2.5% of sole proprietors earning between $25,000 and $100,000
4.7% of sole proprietors between $100,000 and $200,000, and
3.3% of sole proprietors above $200,000
Fishman advises that incorporating or forming an LLC greatly reduces your audit risk, but comes with added complexity, fees, and, in some states, additional taxes (467).
Don't Believe the Job-Creation Hype
Contrary to popular political arguements, Shane says “start-ups don’t generate as many jobs as most people think, and the jobs they create aren’t as good as jobs in existing companies” (161).
“New companies—those that are one to two years old—employ only 1% of people in this country,” Shane says, “Newly formed firms account for only 6 to 7% of gross or net new jobs created every year. ... For ‘new’ firms to create 50% of net new jobs, we would have to expand the definition of ‘new’ to include all firms that are nine years old and younger” (158).
Add to this, “most businesses are started by people who have a significant amount of experience working in the industry in which they are launching their new companies.” (69).
Photo from heirloom radio.com
Small Business Is Usually Necessity
So why do Americans start small businesses that aren’t innovative, have no intentions to grow, lack a competitive advantage, and generally involve providing the same skill or service provided at the founder’s last place of employment? Because they are forced to.
Should we create policies that make it easier and more attractive for more people to start these small businesses? We should not. America isn’t getting more entrepreneurial. More than anything, we are repackaging entrepreneurship out of surplus unemployment.
Shane says we need to reduce loans, subsidies, regulatory exemptions, and tax benefits for small businesses. “Because the average existing new firm is more productive than the average new firm, we would be better off economically if we eliminated policies that encourage people to start businesses instead of taking jobs working for others”—assuming that jobs working for others exist (163).
Shane dismisses the claim that we don’t know which start-ups will become high-growth businesses. “This view may be politically appealing, but it is naive. It assumes that we can’t identify the things that make new businesses more likely to survive, generate profits, increase sales, and hire people.
“Unless the beliefs of venture capitalists and sophisticated business angels are completely wrong, and the research discussed in this book is completely incorrect, we know what criteria to focus on” (63).
Image from Daily Mail UK
What If You Can't Resist the Myth?
For those who feel they must start a business, Shane’s advice is fairly straightforward:
Recognize that 90% of the fastest growing private companies in this country sell to businesses (118)
Start marketing sooner rather than not at all (119)
Don’t compete on price, but rather on quality or service (119)
“Improve your chances of success as an entrepreneur by starting a company in an industry that is better for start-ups” (116)
D'uh. From 1982 to 2000, the best industry for start-ups was pulp milling. If you started a paper pulp mill during the 1980s or 90s, you had an 18% chance of becoming a big, rich, job creating, Inc. 500 firm. Six mills made it in 18 years!
Computer firms were second with 4.2% of 2,359 firms becoming Inc. 500 firms; Guided missiles and space vehicles were third with 3.3% of 60 (115).
Other notable industries and proportions:
Measuring and controlling devices, 2.0% of 2,482;
Communications equipment, 1.9% of 1,543;
Drugs, 1.8% of 1,092;
Legal services, 0.008% of 129,207;
Eating and drinking places, 0.007% of 494,731;
Used merchandise store, 0.004% of 24,442;
Automotive repair shops, 0.004% of 124,725;
Beauty shops, 0.004% of 79,081;
Residential care, 0.004% of 27,710;
Videotape rental, 0.004%, or 1 of 27,793.
Even with the terrible odds, we cannot help but admire the riverboat gambler mentality of those who give small business a whirl. After all, somebody wins the lottery: an attitude of hopeless optimism perfectly in line with America's Winner Take All economy.
What If It's Not About The Money?
The only other explanation Shane gives for why people would start a small business involves the human perception of satisfaction. “It makes people happier,” he says, as 62.5% of people who work for themselves report being satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs, compared to only 45.9% of others.
Women cite the flexibility to work while caring for small children. Men and women both cite the importance of working in a small organization where they can interact directly with everyone and have more autonomy, flexibility and control over their lives.
“Studies show that to be as satisfied when he is working for others as he is when he is working for himself, the average person needs to earn 2.5 times as much money” (109).
Image from fashionfame.com
Is "Satisfaction" Enough?
At the core, it depends on how much an individual enjoys working hard for less money while enjoying the perception of more freedom. Those feelings of satisfaction are probably not worth the opportunity cost of more gainful employment at established businesses, except for those who are truly satisfied working alone against the odds.
Perhaps this fatalism, mixed with a handful of strike-it-rich stories, is what we really mean by “the American entrepreneur" in our cultural myth.
However, to feed the myth by artificially forcing the rates of entrepreneurship up is bad economic policy. As Shane concludes, “Increasing the number of people founding construction firms and hair salons and taxi services that don’t do anything innovative isn’t going to do us much good. In fact, it might hinder our economic growth because new businesses are, on average, less productive than existing ones” (162).
Any political argument that exalts small business probably plays on voters' minds in the same way that Las Vegas casinos do: by turning losing odds into big gains for the few who get the many to put some skin in the game.
Image from mlive.com
As Paul Krugman stated in an op-ed piece "America Isn't a Corporation," we should not mistake governing a macro-system as conceptually the same as doing what’s best for an individual firm.
Shane’s book suggests that perhaps we should govern in a way that’s actually worse for the majority of individual small businesses and strive to create conditions that supplant their having to start in the first place.
Kill Mom-and-Pop businesses? Pay Mom and Pop better in the job market than the satisfaction they feel "working for themselves"? Our myths suggest we will not make that happen: myths about working hard, myths about creating jobs, myths about freedom.
Source: “The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By,” Scott A. Shane, Yale University Press, 2008.
Compromise is talk; Collaboration is action. In compromise, everyone represents his own interests and fights to satisfy them in a negotiation of terms. In collaboration, every person works together to build something that changes as it grows and defines itself.
Compromise requires opposing sides and conflict.It makes conflict the central element of problem solving and puts a premium on maintaining an asymmetry of knowledge. Cat and mouse. Cops and robbers. Court-ordered minimums.
Nobody gets his way in a compromise, and everyone must cooperate for a payoff that is less than the sum of the parts. It’s every man for himself.
Collaboration requires cooperation, too. But in collaboration, everyone pushes his interests to the center of the table. Knowledge is shared, not hoarded. Expertise is offered, not auctioned. Self-organizing maximums, as long as social anxiety doesn't turn it all to mush.
Collaboration can create something greater than the sum of the parts. It satisfies the separate interests each participant has, while illuminating a bigger, shared interest underneath it all.
Compromisers don't share. They mind turf. In fact, that’s what they were doing the entire time you wondered what the hell they were doing.
It is difficult to collaborate with compromisers, because they cannot contribute to the actual work of a project. Contracts become the main product for compromisers, and those who plan on breaking contracts love nothing more than to draw one up. “It won’t work without us,” is a favorite slogan, because it absolutely could.
The words say it all. “Compromise” means to settle differences with mutual concession or reciprocal modification of demands. “Com + promise” literally means to declare what will be done, together: to promise something together.
“Col + laborate," on the other hand, literally means to engage in productive activity, together: to labor on something together.
Henry Clay of Kentucky, The Great Compromiser
Beware the compromiser. Promises over action, concessions over gain, his incredible devotion to finding a balance between the slave and free state.
The compromiser fears he has nothing to offer in collaboration. He is correct. If not in the beginning, by the end, he will leave the business of enforcing rules to people who, for better or worse, never wanted them.
Friday, May 25, 2012 at 1:15PM ;)
Mountain, Clouds, Church and Septic Tank (2012)In interviews with Bill Moyers, mythology scholar Joseph Campbell said "aum" is the sound of the mystery of the world.;)
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