Cause and consequence / Urgent and important

In psychology cause and consequence refers to the concept of causality. An action or event will produce a certain response to the action in the form of another event. People tend to have first reaction as a doubt. Doubt is defined as a safeguard, as the demarcation of truth and untruth, as well as the delimitation of the credible and incredible.

English: A doctor examines a female patient. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The basic “misunderstanding” of the concept of cause and consequence - two different parts of the same coin - is revealed time and again when visiting a medicine doctor in basically any country of the Western hemisphere. Based on your complaints a physician determines what is “wrong” with you and then prescribes a medicine. Normally, they don’t bother themselves with the cause of your problem. Why? Is it ignored due to insufficient and incomplete knowledge or are there other reasons? In ancient China there was a different practice when dealing with illness and medical doctor earnings. People gave payments to a doctor not when ill but when they were healthy. When sick they were invited by a doctor to live with him and a doctor had to treat them free of charge. And how do our “Western” physicians earn their living?

To trust the Capital?

You will all remember the oil spill across the Gulf of Mexico back in April 2010?

The oil spills are a classical ‘low probability -- high-impact events’ as the one in Santa Barbara, California, in 1969, when more than eleven million gallons were dumped into coastal waters. From there on, we’ve seen more than our share of these kinds of accidents.

If there are lessons to be learned from those catastrophes, among the first ones are that “pre-disaster assumptions tend to be dramatically off base” and that “the worst-case scenarios were downplayed or ignored”.

We could argue whether this attitude is driving us against all the basic principles of Nature. Uncontrollably destroying the natural environment and exploitation of resources beyond recovery are just some of the profit-oriented results. Is such a conduct responsible behaviour to future generations?

The Economy and a ‘cultural noise in the background of our minds’

The word economy can be traced back to the Greek word oikonomos meaning ‘one who manages a household.’ The first recorded todays’ meaning of  economy was traced in the work, although could not be proven but was very likely  composed in the year of  1440, referring to ‘the management of economic affairs,’ in this case, of a monastery.

Very few would argue that a modern economy is customarily said to have begun with Adam Smith (1723–1790). Smith characterizes economy as three orders in society: those who live by the rent, by their labor, and by the profits. Therefore we could say that we have been caught under the Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, the economic paradigm, more than 250 hundred years ago. And it was modeled upon the prevailing ‘cultural background noise’ of that age. It was also very much ‘trapped’ by religion.

Joseph Schumpeter described economy also as three-folded namely, monetary, interests, and value theory within a natural-law perspective. And those two economists were not the only ones thinking it this way. It really looks like the economy is based on three main concepts. One does not need be an expert to deduct: a (free) market, which can by definition is something imaginary as a Holy Ghost; a (private) property, which equals to omnipotence - the God; and the third is labor, which can be linked to a sacrifice - Jesus Christ.

Leadership and Charisma

What makes a leader motivating others? The most common answer I have come across is "charisma." People want to hear what charismatic leaders have to say and do, what they advise. “Charismatic people always combine two messages,” says Fox Cabane. “They give the impression that they have a lot of power and also that they like you, or could like you, a lot. Humans are hard-wired to dislike uncertainty, so when they come across someone who shows none they tend very hard to resist.” Therefore, it is not surprising that in nowadays of crisis many organizations seek to hire those who exhibit charisma.

Today more than ever we are in need of inspiring employees to confront problems, the need of workers that focus on tasks, and voice their opinions. Here leaders and not managers are setting their organizations up for needed transformation. Leaders, which have virtue, vision and “internal” power to do it.

It is not about the definition of a bad or good leader, it is about how he or she should behave and what she or he should aim for to be a successful one.

Why this book (West vs. East) ...

There are hundreds of books addressing the yáng of outer leadership, complete with checklists, game plans, and first person accounts of how successful people exercised leadership. But I wanted to write a book about the yīn or an inner leadership.

Connected to those leadership issues, my other different views and thinking came from my martial arts practice and their philosophy toward life and fights.

I've learned that East wants to be in harmony with nature; the Western approach is to control nature also spurred by the Western way of life and religion. Martial arts in the East have a focus on the martial way and the mental culture united with body, while in the West their perspective is sportier and competitive, where winning becomes their main objective. We could say, using the concepts of Eastern is a ‘soft’ approach as in yīn, and Western is ‘hard’ as in yáng. Eastern mentality is like a bamboo tree which is quick to bend with wind, but in its absence becomes stronger. The West is like an oak tree unperturbed by the wind, only to be ‘unfortunately’ pulled out by a hurricane later on. There are other areas where similar contrasts can be made. The West talks about human rights, whereas the Far East understands collective rights or even more profound, rights for all living life-forms. The West is not economical with energy, whereas martial arts including Tai Chi, are good at preserving it and only call on it in an emergency.

Why yellow

A Chinese character for colour is 顏色 (yán sè). Before the Five Elements Theory was used and according to Daoists’ believe, there were only two colours: opposing, yet complementary principles, black and white, yīn (阴) and yáng (阳).

According to Chinese calendar system, the Ten Celestial Stems (shí tiān gān 十天干) are connected with the Five Elements or Phases (wǔ xíng 五行) representing five states of forces of expansion or condensation (the plus energy, or , expansion; the minus energy, or , condensation) and their corresponding colours are:

Why dragon

Dragons are deeply rooted in the Chinese culture. This mythological symbol dates back to 3000 BC and stands for happiness, immortality, procreation, fertility and activity. The Chinese call the dragon lóng - 竜 and it is the first of the four Divine Creatures to Chinese – the others being the unicorn, the phoenix and the tortoise. The Chinese often consider themselves, 'the descendants of the dragon' (龍的傳人; pinyin: lóng de chuán rén).

Chinese dragon has the following nine characteristics: 

• head is like a camels,
• horns like a deer's,
• eyes like a hare's,
• ears like a bull's,
• neck like an iguana's,
• belly like a frog's,
• scales like those of a carp,
• paws like a tiger's, and
• claws like an eagle's.