French poet, touted as the most influential romantic writer of the 19th Century, Victor Marie Hugo, and his thoughts on:

Religion

These two haves of God, the Pope and the emperor.

God became a man, granted. The devil became a woman.

Obstacles to Fame

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do no bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.

Death Penalty

You insist on the example [of the death penalty]. Why? For what it teaches. What do you want to teach with your example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach thou shalt not kill? By killing.

Progress

A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.

Ideas

One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.

Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.

Balance

To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.

Humanity

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.

Tolerance

There shall be no slavery of the mind.

Revolution

I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party of revolution, civilization. This party will make the twentieth century. There will issue from it first the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World.

Life

To love is to act.

Foundation

 The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.

The following post is an email from Domingo T. Ligot:

Not too long ago Jessica Soho had Bongbong Marcos on a one-on-one interview on live television and, as may be expected, Jessica asked Bongbong what his take was about the past regime of his father qualifying it as one of the blackest (pardon the paraphrase) in this nation’s history. Bongbong did not respond immediately and appeared at a loss prompting Jessica to follow up to ask “mahirap bang sagutin ang aking tanong?” This time Bongbong replied “hindi, pero matagal ng pinagusapan and tunkol sa regimen ng aking ama at lahat ng maaring sabihin tungkol dyan ay nasabi na” now, what then?

Indeed, really, what then? I lived through the martial law years of Marcos and even before that, I voted for him for his first term. Certainly there were scandalous episodes then (as in all succeeding regimes) among which I vividly recall is an alleged affair of Marcos with a foreigner (American I think) actress named Dovie Beams. The affair with very sordid details was written about in a Playboy Magazine purportedly based on the confession of Dovie Beams and it was a sensational smash at that time especially because Imelda reportedly threatened Marcos  with ending their union unless he stopped this nonsense. I recall that Martial Law was declared during the final years of Marcos’ second term and, as Teddy Boy Locsin admits in his TV journal in “The World Tonight”, Marcos was twice elected in a democratic process and should be treated as such. There were many incidents happening in Manila prior to the declaration of Martial Law and in hindsight many would claim, rightly or wrongly depending on whose side one was on, that all of these were merely contrived and stage managed to justify the declaration. In the years before the war in Europe Germany reportedly went on a sustained media blitz warning the Germans and the rest of Europe that France was gearing up to invade Germany so that when war finally broke it was more a sigh of relief among many Germans that the war that they have been anxiously anticipating finally came. Historians report that it was Germany all along that wanted the war and the media campaign was really just a mind conditioning ploy to gain the people’s support for Germany’s plan to crush France and Russia first on its way to conquer the whole of Europe. Media was a tool then of the powerful as it has always been, even more so now. But during the time of Marcos the owners of most of media were his enemies so that among the first things that Marcos did after establishing Martial Law was to close down all media until new ones sympathetic to his regime started sprouting and were allowed to flourish. Opposition media however continued underground.

Historian Louis Paul Benezet in his book “The World War and What was Behind It” wrote “Someone has said that no people are happier than those living in a despotism, if the right kind of man is the despot”. He was referring to one Otto Eduard Leopold Von Bismarck-Schonausen or more popularly known simply as Bismarck. His one object was a united Germany, which should be the strongest nation in Europe. He organized the German army and equipped it with every modern weapon anxious to use it to accomplish his purpose to conquer all of Europe. The historian noted how “marvelous to see how near he came to carrying through his whole plan”.

The first years of Martial Law I remember were very positive. There was discipline among the people I noticed that people begun lining up to board jeepneys and buses and most importantly the economy markedly improved and boomed. I remember that I was at one time a scholar in The Hague, Netherlands under the sponsorship of the UN for students from developing countries during those years and my colleagues were all praising Marcos and the progress of the Philippines under his Martial Law regime. But as the saying goes: “power corrupts and absolute…” you know how it ends, and perhaps like Bismarck in Germany, Marcos despite his lofty intentions (I will grant him this) was destined to deteriorate in power as well as his health sooner than the time line required for his plans to succeed. That is over now and I agree with Bongbong that talking about it still will serve no useful purpose. As he said “What then!”

It will serve us better to look into our present and talk about where we should be heading. Accusations fly thick and plenty that P-noy is showing signs of authoritarianism and some even say that he is even worse than Marcos. Surely, with Sec. De Lima defying a TRO of the Supreme Court and we can rightfully assume that this is with P-noy’s blessing or upon his direct orders even, indeed there are signs that this regime is headed towards a despotic regime.
Any lawyer will tell you that a court order must be obeyed more so if it is the highest court that orders it, subject only to well defined exceptions under the constitution. This is another case where all that needs to be said has already been said so lets leave this to the courts to finally decide. As lawyers would say the matter is now “subjudice”.

My take on whats happening however is, granting that P-noy is intending (this must be intentional no less) to rule the country as a despot and will not tolerate political opposition of whatever color, he must look at it as an opportunity to progress the country. At the end he will either be loved or despised depending on what happens to us. As the historian said “no people are happier than those living in a despotism, if the right man is the despot.”

Domingo is a retired lawyer from the Philippines. He has worked in various capacities as a lawyer in both the private sector and Philippine government.

This post is an email from Domingo T. Ligot:

In his book entitled “The Tipping Point” Malcolm Gladwell wrote about a campaign slogan a long time ago about cigarettes which read “Winstons taste good like a cigarette should”. Slogans like these are coined by highly paid experts employed by advertising agencies who sell their services to anyone wishing to promote something like an item or product for sale including a candidate seeking public office. Mr. Gladwell recounts that the Winston slogan successfully “stuck” in the minds of cigarette smokers in America first then the rest of the smoking world that steadily Winston started to gain ground and eventually begun to outsell its competition like Philip Morris, L&M, and other brands. It goes without saying that the study and coining of effective slogans certainly requires an understanding of its target market. The market for Winston cigarettes and its competitors Philip Morris and L&M clearly would be a higher strata of the smoking public than perhaps smokers of Bataan Matamis, Gold Coin, and Fighter, local cigarette brands then that were cheaper (1/2 the price of Winston etc. or cheaper for those who still remember) so that the slogan for Winston must appeal to a more sophisticated motivation to choose this cigarette from its competitors than slogans promoting the cheaper cigarettes. It will not be unusual therefore to find slogans aimed at lower strata markets like the poor sounding unsophisticated, inane, and ridiculously simple because, lets face it, they would’nt be able to understand or appreciate a sophisticated slogan anyway. (Do you recall a sound bite for Bataan Matamis that aired over the AM radio many years back which even sounded like a “ngo-ngo” speaking? The idea perhaps was to promote Bataan Matamis to the real poor even a “ngo-ngo” who is a ridiculed but amusing fellow likes it). An ad agency which does not know or appreciate this basic reality will fail in its business.

With the foregoing as background let us now examine certain political slogans of the recent past. Candidate Joseph “Erap” Estrada used the slogan “Erap Para sa Mahirap” when he won the presidency and more recently candidate Noynoy Aquino had the slogan “Kung Walang Corrupt Walang Mahirap” when he won the presidency. Glaringly common in the two slogans is the word “Mahirap” betraying that the target of both slogans are, you guessed it, the “Mahirap” or poor. Going back to the Winston slogan analysis above, it makes sense that when your target market for a slogan are the lower strata of society it must by necessity sound inane and ridiculously simple otherwise it will not be effective or, in the words of Malcolm Gladwell, it will not “stick”. If we are to ask their promoters whether the candidates sincerely believed or meant what their slogans said, we will probably just get a shrug and a “who cares they won did’nt they” retort. But unfortunately the “Mahirap” will swallow these slogans as true albeit inane and insincere, just look at how Erap remains popular among the poor despite his shenanigans while he was in office, and in the case of President Noynoy you can see how the poor currently resonate with his supposed anti corrupt campaign they have become like mindless hooligans out to lynch GMA at whatever cost. The lamentable thing however is many of those who should know better ride on this ignorance and instead of promoting calm and orderliness they serve like rah-rah boys egging the poor to proceed in their mob mentality (Recall who were on platforms with microphones egging the “masa” to invade Malacanang during the so-called EDSA III and those now in congress, especially the party list kind, and priests who love to run and those who love to appear in media every chance they get who are dressed and speak nowhere near being poor). Are the poor really in the hearts and minds of these powerful people, are they concerned that the poor are just being exposed to more harm than good? Who cares, they won didn’t they!

The ad agency and the expert who came out with the slogans must have gotten a hefty bonus and a rousing celebration after the elections for coming up with the winning slogan, now they rest until the next election, that is simply how it works.

Domingo is a retired lawyer from the Philippines. He has worked in various capacities as a lawyer in both the private sector and Philippine government.

American entrepreneur, inventor, founder of Apple, Steven Paul Jobs, and his thoughts on:

Life

I want to put a ding in the universe.

Key Differences

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.

It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.

Customers

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we’d given customers what they said they wanted, we’d have built a computer they’d have been happy with a year after we spoke to them – not something they’d want now.

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.

Excellence

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Definition of Design

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Market Share

Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?

Innovation

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

Work

The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.

I think we’re having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And we’re always trying to do better.

Having spent a couple of weeks in New Zealand for a business trip, coincidentally coinciding with the Rugby World Cup, I thought it an interesting interlude to point you to a (rather dated but still interesting) post looking at some pseudoscience, rugby, and incidentally the All Blacks:

32 genetically determined combinations of left right dominance of brain hemisphere, hand, foot, eye and ear, determine people’s reaction to stress. Based on the genetic brain profile, Lotter and Associates claim that they are able to predict “blockages” persons will experience under stress. These “blockages” cause different parts of the brain to become inaccessible under stress.

“(Rugby) Players with left-eye dominance are overly sensitive to body langauge, and if you know that, you can throw them of their game by pulling faces or making gestures. You might also wonder how they would react to the haka (the Maori war chant used by the All Blacks)”

I find the post an interesting example of critique and persuasion (albeit satirical) on what is otherwise a passionate subject of rugby. Check out the rest of the post here.

Meanwhile back to the games… er… I meant work! And by the way, the All Blacks is facing Japan tonight! Go All Blacks!

 The internet is no longer a new thing, and with the explosion in internet traffic and most recently, social networking media — the pace at which data about everything circulates amongst everyone is faster than ever before. The internet is a powerful medium for exchanging information, and as Carol MacKnight writes for EDUCAUSE, is a perfect tool for education and encouraging learning and critical thinking:

Online communication offers the potential for collaboration as well as increased participation in the learning process, reflection, peer tutoring, monitoring of student learning as it is taking place, and extension of the classroom learning.

 Online forums, internet blogs (such as this), and social networking sites provide the venue for discussing ideas, debating arguments, and promoting advocacies. It does not come without a price though: the more information at the disposal of users, the more it demands from the users of that information. MacKnight is quick to point out (bold emphasis mine):

However, online communication puts emphasis on students’ comprehension and knowledge of the elements of an argument and thus on how to interact with ideas and each other in a meaningful way. We cannot assume that all students will come with sufficient critical thinking skills to advance an online discussion, nor can we assume that faculty have sufficient skills and practice in monitoring discussions or skills in creating productive communities of online learners. Both may need support and training.

Read the rest of MacKnight’s insightful article here.

Meantime, we join Carol MacKnight’s call in supporting and promoting critical thinking online as a tool for education.

I had not gone to the exhibit, but I have seen a number of pictures on the internet. Being a former Catholic, I could imagine how some of the Catholics would react. But being a spiritual atheist, such art did not bother me. I am not saying that Mideo Cruz created his exhibit to offend. In fact, in an interview, he explained his reasons for such display.

Most of the outcry has been about the phallic object placed on the works. Phalluses have been objects of devotion in many cultures; they use them as amulets, symbolic statues, etc. They might be a symbol of power and patriarchy.

If Mideo did have good intentions for the display, should the offended Catholics have the right to complain or not?

The purpose of this article is not on the Mideo’s intentions with his art. It is not even to figure out if Mideo is guilty of anything or not. What a lot of people here in the Philippines are concerned about is Mideo’s art and how it impacts the idea of “free speech” and “free expression”. While a lot of people are offended by his art, a lot of those same people also do not want to censor such expression since it might serve as a precedent and limit free expression in the future.

I am not a lawyer, but my curiosity made me read the on the internet on what possible laws may be related to free speech and expression?

Article 201 of the ‘The Revised Penal Code of the Philippines’ is under ‘Offenses against Decency and Good Customs”.

Art. 201. Immoral doctrines, obscene publications and exhibitions and indecent shows. — The penalty of prision mayor or a fine ranging from six thousand to twelve thousand pesos, or both such imprisonment and fine, shall be imposed upon:

(1) Those who shall publicly expound or proclaim doctrines openly contrary to public morals;

(2) (a) the authors of obscene literature, published with their knowledge in any form; the editors publishing such literature; and the owners/operators of the establishment selling the same;

(b) Those who, in theaters, fairs, cinematographs or any other place, exhibit, indecent or immoral plays, scenes, acts or shows, whether live or in film, which are prescribed by virtue hereof, shall include those which (1) glorify criminals or condone crimes; (2) serve no other purpose but to satisfy the market for violence, lust or pornography; (3) offend any race or religion; (4) tend to abet traffic in and use of prohibited drugs; and (5) are contrary to law, public order, morals, and good customs, established policies, lawful orders, decrees and edicts;

(3) Those who shall sell, give away or exhibit films, prints, engravings, sculpture or literature which are offensive to morals. (As amended by PD Nos. 960 and 969).

Section 4. No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.

In addition to these Philippine laws, We have a statement, supposedely from no less than the United Nations. In this webpage we see a writer giving his opinions. The title of his article, “United Nations Affirms the Human Right to Blaspheme”

According to paragraph 48, “Prohibitions of displays of lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible with the Covenant, except in the specific circumstances envisaged in article 20, paragraph 2, of the Covenant.” Article 20, paragraph 2 calls on states to prohibit “advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence.” The Comment is careful to require that any restrictions must not violate the Conventions’ guarantees of equality before the law (Article 26) and freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (Article 18).

A relevant question here is, “What about religious insult?” I think the next paragraph will answer that.

Laws against blasphemy or “religious insult” (found throughout the world, including half of all Council of Europe member states) are inherently discriminatory against secularists and religious dissenters. They are discriminatory in that secularists have no legal recourse—nor should they—when the words of believers offend their moral sensibilities, nor can gays take the publishers of Leviticus to court for the spiritual affront to them that it surely is. Skeptics and heterodox believers, on the other hand, do have an Article 18 right to live and speak according to their conscience even when it offends the orthodox.Paragraph 32 of the new comment also cautions states against employing a narrow notion of so-called public morals to restrict speech, effectively ruling out laws that defer to a particular faith tradition: “the concept of morals derives from many social, philosophical and religious traditions; consequently, limitations… for the purpose of protecting morals must be based on principles not deriving exclusively from a single tradition.”

Here is the document which he was referring to.

As you can see, while the Revised Penal Code may penalize such acts, the Constitution just might allow it. Furthermore, the United Nations advices that blasphemy be a human right. From this, it is no surprise that such action, although possibly religiously offensive may actually escape legal sanctions. Actually, some legal experts say that Mideo Cruz did not violate law.

Atty. Florin Hilbay of UP Law argued that “the right of Cruz to express himself through ‘Poleitismo’ is recognized by the constitution. It was not as if the CCP exerted extra effort to offend the feelings of subscribers to the Catholic faith.”

This was also shared by another colleague at UP Law, Dean Raul Pangalangan.

“Cruz’s work, shocking as it may be, will fall within that protective clause,” Dean Pangalangan said on “24 Oras,” Aug. 16.

“The artist in question is…entitled to the protection of speech clause,” he said on “TV Patrol.”

From this, a common person who is not legally inclined may feel that if his art or writing is less ‘offensive’ than Mideo Cruz, chances are he will not get sued.

The big question here is if free speech and free expression has limits. Do people really have the right to be as offensive as they please? If you look at what the U.N. says, it seems that sky is the limit.

When you think of it, there are reasons why blasphemy should be allowed. What one persons considers as truth may actually be blasphemous to another. Who is to say that one is blasphemous and not the other. For example, for Christians, Jesus is the son of God, but for Muslims, Jesus is only a prophet. For a Christian,  claim that Jesus is only a prophet and not the son of God may be considered blasphemous, but for Muslims, Jesus being the son of God may be equally blasphemous. Christians believe that  Jesus died on the cross, Muslims believe that Jesus did not die on the cross. Can you imagine both parties citing ‘article 201′  ”(1) Those who shall publicly expound or proclaim doctrines openly contrary to public morals;” to sue each other.

If you are Catholics, there are rules which the Vatican assumes that you should follow. You should not indulge in premarital sex and you should not indulge in homosexual acts. What if you are a writer and you would want to make several books with subjects which propagate those acts, should the law allow you to be sued? What if you made books which are contrary to Catholic teachings such as: The Joys of Premarital Sex, The Joys of Homosexual Sex; is it right for you to be vulnerable to lawsuits?

Maybe they are antiquated laws, maybe no one will use them, but you will never really know. Less than 10 years ago in Singapore, the country had consideredreviewing their oral sex law after a policeman was jailed for two years for having oral sex with a female.

He said that the government is considering decriminalising oral sex between men and women above the age of 16. A ban on homosexual fellatio looks set to stay.

The Singaporean public were outraged by a case involving a 27-year-old policeman who was jailed for two years last November for having oral sex.

A lot of offensive things which happen to Non-Catholics in this country. It is just that a lot of Catholics take it for granted. When some Catholics say or insinuate that a person of another religion has the wrong religion, that is offensive. When a Catholic tells an atheist that he is an evil person because he does not believe in God, that is even more offensive. The height of offensiveness occurs when the victim is a minor and is threatened with the concept of hell at such an early age. I actually know of  someone who would have nightmares at night if he masturbated before going to bed due to the guilt driven by such brainwashing.

If you are pro RH bill, you can be considered offensive to the Catholic Church. God believing religions are supposed to be representing God. If you don’t follow them, you could be insinuating that they are not representing God properly. Sure they have the right to call you non-Catholics, but you also have the right to call them fake representatives of God.

That is really what  free speech and free expression is all about. We all have our beliefs and we should be free to say or express them even if it offends and goes against the grain of what the public believes in. With no free speech we would be left in a society which hardly changes and is stuck on medieval beliefs.

I shall give you an idea on how free it is on other parts of he world. The next examples are on Larry Flynt and Hustler Magazine.

In 1988, Flynt won an important Supreme Court decision, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, after being sued by Reverend Jerry Falwell in 1983 over an offensive ad parody in Hustler that suggested that Falwell’s first sexual encounter was with his mother in an out-house. Falwell sued Flynt, citing emotional distress caused by the ad. The decision clarified that public figures cannot recover damages for “intentional infliction of emotional distress” based on parodies. After Falwell’s death, Flynt stated that despite their differences, he and Falwell had become friends over the years, adding that, “I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.”^[33]

Following is a trailer then a part of the fictionalized film.

If you think that was bad guess what the next one is.

Who’s Nailin’ Paylin? is an American satirical pornographic film released on November 4, 2008, that satirizes former U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.^[1] The film was directed by Jerome Tanner and stars Lisa Ann, Nina Hartley and Jada Fire. Besides being aparody of Sarah Palin, the film includes spoofs of Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Todd Palinand Bill O’Reilly.^[2]

And for the curious ones, here’s the trailer.

The International Institute of Management (IIM) released a white paper on the symptoms of dysfunctional organizations and dysfunctional leadership. Bad politics is a disease that can drain organizations of productive potential, and the IIM white paper also proposed some possible cures to help afflicted organizations out of the rut and back to health.

The white paper describes symptoms of bad leadership, which upon reading, have a strong correspondence to a lack of critical thinking:

3. Performance Diagnosis Checklist

Even fast-growing and profitable companies can develop bad internal politics and unproductive work habits that will eventually lead to declining performance. It is true that the larger the organization, the more susceptible it is to the breakdown of communication, the emergence of management silos and misalignment. Yet, in my experience many of the smaller companies also suffer from similar problems. When management tends to focus so much on one management area, e.g., sales, and has no time to manage the internal organization challenges, dysfunction creeps in and takes hold. To build and sustain high-performance teams, leadership and human resources managers should keep an eye open for the following symptoms and treat the root causes before it becomes too late.

Dysfunctional leadership symptoms and warning signs:

• Dictatorial Leadership: Management that does not allow disagreements out of insecurity or arrogance.
• No 360 Degrees Feedback: There is limited or no leadership performance feedback.
• Personal Agendas: Recruitments, selections and promotions are based on internal political agenda, for example hiring friends to guarantee personal loyalty at the expense of other highly performing and more-qualified employees.
• Political Compensation: Stock options, bonuses and perks are not fairly linked to performance.
• Inefficient Use of Resources: Budgets are allocated between business units or departments based on favoritism and power centers rather than actual business needs.
• Empire-building Practices: Managers believe that the more people they manage and the bigger the budget, the higher the chance that they will be promoted. This results in raging battles around budgets, strategies and operations.
• Unequal Workload Distribution: You’ll find some departments are underutilized while other departments are overloaded.
• Too Much Management: There are many management layers in the organization, thus, hindering communication and resulting in slower execution.
• Fragmented Organization Efforts: Interdepartmental competition and turf wars between rival managers lead to the emergence of silos, which results in communication gaps. Management silos almost always result in fragmented and duplicated budgets and projects, thus wasting valuable company investments.
• Too Much Talk: Plans are heavy on talk but light on action. In a political corporate culture, image management becomes far more important than actions.
• Ineffective Meetings: Argumentative and heated cross-divisions meetings with discussion and language focusing on point scoring and buck-passing rather than sharing responsibility and collaborating to solve the problem
• Lack of Collaboration: Every person for himself/herself. Low sense of unity or camaraderie on the team. The key criterion for decision-making is What is in it for me?
• Low Productivity: Management wastes more time and energy on internal attack and defense strategies instead of executing the work, innovating and overcoming challenges. Critical projects fall behind on deadlines, budgets and performance targets (e.g. sales, market share, quality and other operational targets).
• Constant Crisis Mode: Management team spends most of their time on fire fighting instead of proactive planning for next-generation products and services.
• Morale Deterioration:Muted level of commitment and enthusiasm by other teams. Even successful results cannot be shared and celebrated due to animosity and internal negative competition.
• Backstabbing: Backbiting among the executives and managers becomes common and public.
• Highly Stressful Workplace: There is a high rate of absenteeism and a high employee turnover rate.

The IIM paper provides a good basis of how critical thinking can help (or the lack of can destroy) organizations from a practical perspective. 

Read more here.

Download the paper here.

Billionaire investor, industrialist and philanthropist, Warren Edward Buffett, and his thoughts on:

Vox populi

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

Overthinking

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

Derivatives

Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.

Suits

I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.

Market Relativity

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.

Fear and Uncertainty

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.

Media

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

Wealth

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

Hindsight

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

Risk

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.

Taxes

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.

Investors

We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’

Contrarian Thinking

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

Bad business

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

Diversification

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

Billionaire financier, businessman, philanthropist, and advocate of liberal idealism, Gyorgy Schwartz, more popularly known as George Soros, and his thoughts on:

Open Societies

A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.

An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.

I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.

Markets and Social Needs

I think there’s a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they’re not sufficient because markets don’t look after social needs.

Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It’s really a great invention and I wouldn’t under-estimate the value of that, but they’re not designed to take care of social needs.

Markets and Uncertainty

Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is make by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

Philanthropy

I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.

War on Terror

Bush’s war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.

Marijuana

Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws.

Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade – and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.

The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.

Testing

The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios… The idea that you can actually predict what’s going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.

Fallibility

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.

The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it’s possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.

Contrarian Thinking

The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside.

The United States

We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.

We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity.