In Sun Tuz art of war, it talks about the importance of intelligence, saying before fighting a war, you need doing your homework, to know your enemy and know about yourself. The more homework you done, the better chance you got of success. When you got correct intel, your chance of winning, increase dramatically, when you don’t do your homework, your chance of winning decrease. But, if you got bad intel, those are counter-productive to success and only enhance your chance of failure.
One of the most interesting things, I’ve
seen amount some baby boomers is that for example, a baby boomer might hire a
catering company and on one hand, doesn’t want Chicken to be serve, but on the
other hand want to please his/her guest that want Chicken. Any reasonable
person would understand they must make a choice, either don’t serve chicken and
fail to please his guest that want Chicken or serve chicken to please their
guest, but fail to have a dinner with no Chicken that he/she hopes for.
However, what the baby boomer did is, he/she insist for the catering company to
please their guest by serving them chicken in the dinner, while in the same
time forbid chicken to be serve in the dinner, not understanding he/she is
asking for the impossible. And when the caterer naturally not able to deliver
on insane demand, the baby boomer doesn’t think it is a situation where he/she
is asking for the impossible, but it is a situation where the caterer is
incompetent and is 110% at fault. If you please the dinner guest by serving
them chicken, the baby boomer would get angry at you for serving chicken during
this dinner, while they specifically said not to serve chicken, on the other
hand, if you don’t serve chicken, they will get angry at you for not pleasing his/her
guest by serving them chicken. I am not sure whether any caterer would take on a
business with such ridiculous demand.
This sort of behavior we normally see
amount baby boomer that is older, usually the older they get, the more likely
we see it. This is due to, as human the emotional side of our brain is
unreasonable and irrational, think of it this way, can you reason with a drunk
person? And is your dream ever reasonable? There are times where our emotions can
be an advantage, while in other time, it can be a disadvantage, thus, emotional
management skill become important (especially anger management skills), so we
can channel our emotions to be used to be in a constructive manner. However,
when a person think they are always right, there are no reason for them to
think, they are at fault and to such extend, it allows them to be indulged in
their emotions, when they cannot or shouldn’t be emotional and to be completely
unreasonable and irrational. People such as those in the catering story above, it
is possible we might even see a situation, where they forget to call for an uber,
this morning and only call it during the afternoon, yet angry at the uber
driver for not coming this morning, such unreasonable and irrational anger, is
something we not likely see in people with good emotional management skills,
but common amount those with poor emotional management skills. People with good
emotional management skills, commonly refer to as “rational people” or “logical
people” might experience emotions of unreasonable or irrational anger, but due
to their good emotional management skills, won’t be unreasonable nor irrational
as a result, nor would they act upon those emotions and more likely, the
emotions would end within a few seconds, but for those who fail to exercise
emotional management, they would loose their temper at people, at some instance
even conduct acts of physical violence against the uber driver, due to that
anger, leading them to later be sentence by the court to take anger management
class.
This sort of behavior is more likely to
exist amount older baby boomers, due to been indulge in their emotional side of
their brain for too long and lack exercising good emotional management skill,
resulting from thinking “I am always right”. It is similar to a person that allow
himself to be indulged in the emotions of his anger and refuse to exercise anger
management, it is possible as time went by, their capability of anger
management, might decrease as a result, due to a lack of exercise, similar to a
lack of exercise might lead to decrease in muscle mass.
Thus, we are more likely to see this sort
of none sense, amount baby boomers that are in their 60s or late 50s,
especially amount housewife that doesn’t need to work and PMS, usually just
make it even worse. As a result, we see a situation where, unlike our grand
parent’s generation that usually demonstrate wisdom come with age, some people
from our parent’s generation, seem to just get more childish and immature with
age, especially amount housewife, despite not suffering from disease such as Alzheimer
nor experiencing a situation where they are so old, they are no longer able to
think clearly.
It is reasonable to question, whether a more extreme cases of such attitude, can be categorize as a form of mental illness. They are more likely to continue see themselves as a serial victim, due to thinking it is always everybody else's fault. For example, the woman that is angry at the uber driver for not coming in the morning and think the uber driver is at fault, despite it is her that forget to call the uber till the afternoon. And as we seen, this sort of thinking of "I am always right" increase the chance of unreasonable and irrational sub episode rage that helps to isolate them self from any support network, possible, get them in trouble with the law or can be counter productive to their own health.
Of course it is not saying, every person from our parent’s generation won’t take responsibility for their failure, for example Former US President George W Bush Junior, after leaving office, wrote an entire book, reflecting on his failure as President, I still remember late night TV playing a joke saying “That is going to be a very long book.” And not every world leader from our parent’s generation made this very stereotypical baby bomber generation mistake, for example, former US President Barack Obama was willing to listen to the advice of his Generals and Middle Eastern experts, adding to he also come from a Muslim background the Obama administration stabilize the quickly deteriorating situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, during the Bush administration, despite Obama never served a single day in the military.
However, some leaders from our parent's generation, till the date where even after they left a train wreck of mess due to their firm belief of "I am always right" and burn everything to the ground, still think they did no wrong and it is everybody else's fault, most obvious, when we observe some national leaders from our parent's generation.
The same issue applies with the teaching of the bible, it believe the god of its religion is perfect and can do no wrong, to be a god with unlimited experience point and expert knowledge in all topic, thus, with unlimited wisdom and goodness and whenever things goes wrong, it must always be somebody else’s fault, it is also due to this sort of attitude of the Abraham religion, when US retaliated for the Taliban’s 9/11 attack, the Taliban see it as a situation where the Americans are persecuting Muslims and w
hen we look at the perspective, of Christian been persecuted by Romans, in early Christian history, from a neutral and objective point of view, we discover, it was very much the same case! In addition to that,
the bible took it to a further step saying all not from its religion, to be evil, from Satan.
The other religions on the other hand, despite the general belief of the gods got way more experience points and expert knowledge in more topic or in greater depth, thus, greater wisdom, doesn’t believe the gods to have unlimited experience points, to be an expert on everything or to have infinite wisdom and willing to admit, even the gods can have flaws and there are even a small majority of gods that are evil, commonly known as demons.
PS: In my opinion the favor term of
incompetent people is “I am not 40, 50, 60 years old for shit!” or “I got 20,
30 years of experience” or “Mum knows best” or a term in Chinese 我吃過的鹽比你吃過的米還多 (English
Translation: I eat more salt in my life, then the amount of rice you eaten.) It
reminds me of a story I’ve seen. A person working in an over staffed civil
servant department, the department is highly over staffed and is plague by
corruption and incompetent and mainly just pull in their own friends and
family, to draw a paycheck and create even more useless position for more
friends and family. To resolve the problem, a new senior Director appointed by
the minister proposed downsizing, as an opportunity to get rid of those that
are corrupt, incompetent and the overstaff problem and introduce standard
examination and a set staff number. The older generation, directors that
doesn’t want to see this happening, as they want to use it to keep taking more
money, draw in family, for more corruption, so they proposed to further
increase department staff number and disapprove of civil servant exam and wants
to keep using interview, so they can keep hiring more of their friends and
family. So, in response to the young director that wants downsizing and limit
staff number and use examination to hire staff, the old director says “What do
you know? When we start working here, you were still in diapers.” So, old
people that says stuff such as “I am not 40, 50, 60 years old for shit” way
more frequent then necessary, (Of course there are certain time, you should be
talking about how many years of experience you got, for example on a resume. I
mean situation where boosting about how many years of experiences you got, isn’t
productive.) it is either a defense mechanism to hide their own corruption or
incompetent or they are an incompetent, but arrogant old person. (I mean they
only need to scream “I GOT 20 years experiences!” but they got no need to tell
people for the last 20 years, for 15 years they were stuck in junior role with
little or no promotion due to incompetent and only get to middle management
later, due to they can’t find anybody with the minimum 10 years experiences
require for the job) An old person that is truly a wise old man, got lots to
offer the younger generation as mentor and they don’t need to boost about their
age or years of experience, as often, as they can give constructive criticisms
and productive arguments.
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