What I have learnt (in 2012)

This year is coming to an end and the time for making plans for the next is upon us. Even if you are not the type of person that likes making new years resolutions these holidays are as good a time as any for planning your next move. I encourage you to give your thoughts some room and take time in between Christmas dinner and counting down from 10 to make a decision about your personal priorities. Here are some of my reflections about the year that has passed:


What I have learnt in 2012

As a trainee I have had the chance to work on several projects at my bank and found ways to test and develop my abilities at leading from within a group. I had my troubles at first, taking on too much responsibility for the outcomes and trying to force my ideas on people where I needed to be convincing them and taking their opinions openly. Everything worked out fine and I found new pleasure in my role after I relaxed into the idea that the success or failure of our common effort was not 100% in my hands. 
Lesson: Leadership takes practice (or: having read all the advice on a topic does not mean you know how to follow it) 

For three monthy I worked in human resources. I was there for quite a few job interviews and got to challenge people with probing questions about their life and career. I got to decide who was invited for interviews and whose resumé did not fit the description of the job. This task was difficult to do well because while I was impressed by some people and underwhelmed by others the first and last question always was if they were the right person for the job. 
Lesson: Testing and judging people is not the job I want.

This whole year was pretty much entirely shaped by work. I found less and less time to regularly follow my hobbies and other interests that make me feel complete. When I decided to run a half marathon, inspired by a coworker, I trained hard for three months and achieved my goal. Still: motivation is harder and energy is scarcer than before. 
Lesson: Keeping up with many interests at once takes a lot of effort. In the future I will give more attention to my work-life-balance again.
 

Metamorphosis

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Swans, geese, and ducks molt all their flight feathers at once, which means they may be unable to fly for several weeks afterwards. We humans don't do anything like that in a literal way, but we have a psychological analog: times when we shed outworn self-images. I suspect you're coming up on such a transition, Aries. While you're going through it, you may want to lie low. Anything resembling flight -- launching new ventures, making big decisions, embarking on great adventures -- should probably be postponed until the metamorphosis is complete and your feathers grow back. 

 

I have been working a lot in this last year. Since I came to my current employer at the end of last year I have been learning a lot about the financial world and business in general. My dad remarked on how my use of language had changed to a different vocabulary that includes all those professional terms and expressions like "communicate changes within the team", "control the resources of our project", "manage my time". I seldom emerged from work to really reflect on the changes in my life and in myself. However I still make sure that I get to relax and spend time with my friends and family, but that leaves little time to sit down and be still. 

Note to self: Make more time to reflect and plan the future next year and get ready to complete the metamorphosis! Take flight again!

Principles of Change

Through a blogpost by "Civilised Money" I stumbled across this guy, Carne Ross. Some years ago he was a British diplomat who stood up to Blair and Bush when they proposed war in Iraq on the basis of misleading information, today he sides with the Occupy movement, works on creating an alternative banking system and confesses that he hates hierarchy. Thus, he wrote a book on a leaderless revolution. According to him there are nine principles that make real political change possible.

He explains his principles in this very nice in-depth interview by one of my journalistic heroes, Bill Moyers. I really enjoyed listening to those two, who really have seen the inside of important and powerful political institutions until becoming somewhat disillusioned and eventually both turning to other political means in their respective - and quite impressive - ways. It's people like that that give me motivation and inspiration for action, so I would like to share their conversation with you:

So here are the nine principles of Carne Ross's leaderless revolution:

1. Excavate your convictions - What are the things you really really care about? this knowledge will give you the motivation to act.

2. Who's got the money and who's got the gun? - Take a step back and analyze the situation thoroughly. What mechanisms are at work here? Where does the action need to take place?

3. Act as if the means are the end - Inspired by Gandhi, Ross says that the form of politics you choose is the end. So you can only reach a goal, if you embody the principles of that goal.

4. Ask, don't assume - The Golden Rule is only a proxy that assumes that other people are similar to us. We should just go and find out, what people actually think.

5. Address those suffering the most - Happiness is not empirically measurable, suffering however is. And therefore it's both easier and more ethical to take care of the sufferers first. The poor, the hungry, the sick.

6. Consult and negotiate - Measures taken without including people in the process won't work as intended or they won't work at all. Don't take people for granted and consult with everybody in a participatory democracy.

7. Big picture, little deeds - Individuals are agents of change, because by doing the little deeds they do every day they create the world we live in. The same way, with a good look at the big goals we can better choose our small daily steps towards them.

8. Use non-violence - Non-violence doesn't mean pacifism, nor does it mean doing nothing. Non-violent action is a proven way to build positive and lasting social change.

9. Kill the king - (a chess metaphor) Voting won't solve problems, action will. There is no silver bullet, don't think there is a simple solution. Your actions matter, not your opinions.

***
Have a great weekend! And be good :)

Still rockin'

Old Spice Muscle Music from Terry Crews on Vimeo.

This is me giving a life sign. I had a very interesting talk today. Good interesting. The kind of talk that you leave with a sense of appreciation for the other person. With clear feelings, and with perspective. All may not be good, but it's alright. It's good to know what matters. I feel that we all need a reminder now and then, so here is one for you. And while you gain distance from your worried mind, go ahead and play the muscle drum ;-) Sausages!

Chuck Close writes to his younger self

As you will have noticed reading my blog I am a fan of inspirational people. Artists have always given me special outlooks and insights, because their work consists of introspection and measuring their own reaction to things they like or don't like to a higher degree than less aware people.
I aspire to that level of awareness where I can recognize what I like and what I am good at more easily. To define this clearly for myself is a task that I would give my younger self. So I am happy to have found these words by Chuck Close, an American portrait painter and photographer, who writes to his younger self and all of us what hindsight has taught him.

Source: Video on CBS News / Picture by John Agoncillo, check out his beautiful blog

This is a note to myself at age 14: 

I WAS in the eighth grade and was told not to even think about going to college. I couldn't add or subtract, never could memorize the multiplication tables, was advised against taking algebra, geometry, physics or chemistry and therefore would not get into any regular college. Since I was good with my hands, I was advised to aim for trade school, perhaps "body and fender" work. 

NEVER let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don't apply to you. 

I APPLIED to a junior college in my hometown with "open enrollment", got in and embarked on a career in the visual arts.

VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING I've done is influenced by my learning disabilities. I think I was driven to paint portraits to commit images of friends and family to memory. I have face blindness, and once a face is flattened out, I can remember it much better. 

INSPIRATION IS for amateurs -- the rest of us just show up and get to work. Every great idea I've ever had grew out of work itself. 

SIGN ON to a process and see where it takes you. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today you will do what you did yesterday and tomorrow you will do what you did today. Eventually you will get somewhere. 

NO ONE gets anywhere without help. Mentors, including your parents and an occasional teacher, can make you feel "special" even when you are failing in other areas. Everyone needs to feel special. 

MY FATHER died when I was 11. That was the tragedy of my life, a horrible thing to happen when you are so young. Oddly enough there was a gift in this tragedy. I learned very early in life that the absolute worst thing can happen and you will get past it and you will be happy again. Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic. 

IF YOU are overwhelmed by the size of a problem -- break it down into many bite-sized pieces. 

QUADRIPLEGICS DON'T envy the able-bodied - we envy paraplegics. We think they've got an easier row to hoe. THERE IS always someone worse off than you. 

I AM confident that no artist has more pleasure day in and day out from what he or she does than I do.

Happy Easter from Spain

Semana Santa, the week leading up to Easter Sunday (Domingo de Pascua), is a very big week in Spain.

Different "parroquias" (parishes) in every city celebrate the Passion and Resurrection of Christ in long and solemn processions during the whole week. There are special gowns and dresses worn and brass bands play slow marches to the steps of sometimes more than 100 people carrying immense altars with a statue of Jesus on the cross or Holy Mary.

On the sidelines people are often less serious. Hotels everywhere are booked to the limit when loads of tourists flood Seville and are handed schedules where to be at what time. It is a holiday week and the processions are an event that you attend socially. Spaniards sit for hours on their prepared stools and chairs next to the street where the procession will pass, eating "pipas" (sunflower or pumpkin seeds) and chatting with friends. Until finally a big "Aww" spreads across the crowd, when the altar comes into sight around a street corner and people marvel at how beautiful the shrine looks and clap for the people carrying it. Sometimes the procession stops for a while, giving the altar bearers a moment to gather strength again. With a ring of hand bells the altar is picked up again and is carried further down the streets until it enters the church it belongs to.

 In other news my travel companion and I were stuck in Málaga for two more days than we had originally planned. We had been informed that all the supermarkets would be closed on Thursday and Friday and we had duly bought all the extra food we needed. What I forgot to consider however was that I had parked the car in that same supermarket's free parking lot ;-) Things happen, and I have no regrets for spending an extra day in a very pleasant coastal city after many days of constant travelling.

Today I am sending a big "Happy Easter" out to all of you. I do it in the hope that - whichever faith or non-faith, persuasion or non-persuasion you adhere to - you are enjoying a peaceful Sunday with your loved ones.

Travelling together

In the past I have tried out a lot of different travel styles (except for all inclusive vacations, not really my thing) and travelled with many people. I travelled alone in my car, took planes, buses, trains and ferries. I have slept in hotels, hostels, motels, on people's couches, in my car, went camping and even spent nights at bus stations. I went on some trips with people I had only met a short while before and took journeys with some of my closest friends and my family. You should think that by now I should have decided which is the best way to travel for me :)

But it's not like that. With every new destination and every new person things are different. I change while travelling and learn something about myself. Travelling with only one other person is maybe the most enlightening experience among the possible constellations, more enlightening to me than it was travelling alone and certainly quite different from travelling with two or more people.

Being on the road can be stressful. There is a co-dependent relationship between two people who have decided to stick together for the time being. None of you can easily do "their own thing", take all their time, be always comfortable. So you need to do a lot of planning, calculate for down-time and food and accomodation to everybody's liking. I have heard stories of many a travelling group that has broken up over some sort of fight or other. If you wanna test a relationship, go on a long trip with your partner. By the end, you will know what the two of you can withstand and you will not only know your partner better, but also yourself. And you will be better for it.

On a related note I send you greetings from Portimão (Algarve) in Southern Portugal. I might tell the many adventures I have lived through with my travel companion on another day. Life is good and time is passing quickly :) For your benefit I have added a picture of probably the most perfect travelling couple I have met so far, two charming Chinese people I saw at the Mosteiro dos Gerónimos in Belém (Lisbon).

Back on the road

I am packing again. In the next three weeks there should be enough stories to tell from my roadtrip through Spain. I am travelling with a friend, visiting new and well-known places. People are always different though, so I am looking forward to a very interesting time. It's spring and temperatures are rising, so there will be oranges and cafés con leche and possibly some beaches to enjoy around Spain and Portugal. This is what I am expecting:

I Love People: 5,000 Miles, 930 People, 162 Seconds from Benjamin Jenks on Vimeo.

Have a great weekend!

Occupying banking

If someone had told me half a year ago that I would be working for a bank fulltime and loving it, I would have been completely incredulous. For all my principles of keeping an open mind and trying not to judge, banking was among the things I could hardly imagine myself doing. To have money as the content of my work, to worry about interest rates, capital, credit lines, wasn't a very romantic or fulfilling picture.

And it wasn't very likely either. Mind you that in my education I haven't put great emphasis on the kind of skills commonly associated with banks. Sure, I know a little bit about industrial accounting, have completed a two-year round in a big company as an apprentice, but first and foremost I have spent the last years of my life as a social science student at university doing scholarly things like reading, traveling, hearing lectures, and learning a bunch of languages. Also, sociologists around here have a reputation of being somewhat to the left of the political spectrum, while the future bankers - your clichée economics majors - are generally deemed a lot more conservative.

So if life were a straight line I would probably be protesting with the occupy movement now or writing about what is wrong with our financial and political system today (I still might, just wait *g*). Instead I am sitting at a desk 40 hours a week working for a financial institute associated with one of the biggest banks in Germany. And I'm happy with it!

A huge part of my fun at work is owed to my position in the company. I am a trainee in the business development department and thus the topics I am concerned with have a lot to do with societal, economic and technological trends. Yes, the angle is financial, and the products I constantly learn more about are deposits, exchange tradeable funds, and credit cards, but I enjoy the complexities of this new and unknown field. I am surrounded by intelligent and fun people who enjoy what they are doing. They do not comply with any of the stereotypes that the news proliferate, when they report about the debt crisis and wall street execs. Those people exist somewhere, I am sure, but my definition of banking and bankers has become a lot more concrete in the last three months and I have gained respect for the people making a living with it.

Of course understanding the financial industry is not the same as saying it is all good. There are a lot of things that need improvement. More transparency is probably the biggest change I would wish for and possibly also the one the financial industry is most afraid of, because money is earned every time customers do not fully understand a product. A lot of the revenue is justified however, because banks are in the risk management business and taking a risk off people's hands should be rewarded. But in the long run, we might all be better off, if kick-backs from selling expensive and complex products were replaced by annual fees for bank advisory services. My knowledge of the matter is still thin of course and tomorrow another piece of the puzzle might come to me that changes my outlook. But that's part of the beauty of a new job, so much to learn!

2012 will bring many new things to my life and I will keep shifting activities for a while to come. One of them is blogging and it remains something I truly enjoy. I modestly hope to contribute something to your life as well as my own. I hope you are all doing well and have started 2012 with good energy. Take this smile and have a great week :)

A New Year

I can't find better words than Neil Gaiman today. He says what I wish for everybody. I for one expect great things in this new stretch on the calendar and it feels like there is a lot to be discovered. The best from last year I will take with me, the rest I will leave there. Please enjoy your start into 2012 and share your joy and positive anticipation of what is to come with your loved ones!

Life after work

Wow, life has flown by for the past months. I was so busy that I hardly got time to reflect on all the changes my new job has brought with it. Life before was about family, studies, travel and friends far away. Now that I live in a big city and work full-time it's about work, housekeeping, shopping, and friends in my city.

Of course I miss some things from my old life. I have seen much less of my family, which sometimes makes me sad, because I got so used to having them around me regularly. All the happier I was when my granddad turned 90. Happy birthday again, Rudi! I miss my brother, who has been traveling for months all around the world and will be spending Christmas away from Germany this year. I don't miss my studies too much, but I have noticed that with the end of constant language practice some of my vocabulary is lost (mostly my Spanish, although some Portuguese is kept fresh thanks to doing capoeira). The time to travel will be very limited from now on, but I have already started to dream about where I might go and where to spend my precious free days next year. All that skill at travel planning I have amassed over the last years shouldn't go to waste, right?! Spain is high on the list and who knows, maybe I will be joined by another traveller from the other end of the world.

Mostly though I really have a lot of fun with my new lifestyle. For one, having money gives a nice feeling of freedom although I expected it to make even more of a difference than it does so far. A more noticeable change is that I now live in the same city as many of my oldest and dearest friends. We spend some hours every week to get together and do sports and eat. A week ago we were baking cookies for christmas at different homes on three days in a row. "Weihnachtsplätzchen backen" is a fine German tradition :) And with my new flat being 4 times as big as my old tiny room in Augsburg also comes the opportunity to invite more people to my home. I have already tried it on a few occasions and am quickly getting used to being a host. At the end of the year I will have people over to play videogames and just hang out at my place. I am happy to start a new year here and get an opportunity to build my new life with the people and activities I want in it. Before January I will take some quiet time and imagine what I want to achieve in 2012. Some things I might share here, others I will keep to myself. But you can expect another blog post soon, where I will tell you about my first experiences of what it is like to be a banker after being a sociology student for so long :) Take care and have a nice week!

On Work

Then a ploughman said, "Speak to us of Work."
And he answered, saying:
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. ... And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret. ... And what is it to work with love? ... It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit ... Work is love made visible.

I am starting my new job tomorrow. It is not only my new job, but also in most ways my first. I am not anxious or afraid, but tense, curious, and slightly uncertain. Will I like what I have to do for money? Will I be able to use my creativity in new ways to further goals other than ideals and my own good life? How can I bring my personality into my new environment to make it richer and not lose myself in work thus making everyone poorer? What new potentials will this unleash in me? What will I discover about myself that nothing up to this point has brought to the surface?

Maybe I have become idle and lost touch with the procession of the seasons. If so, I am going to make up for it now by bringing myself to a new task and breathing life and love into it.

The waiting has an end and the energy is starting to rise again. Here I come :)

And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire--
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

(Find the full text of Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" here. The last quote is from the "Spoon River Anthology" by Edgar Lee Masters)

Magic of Technology

Fascinating! I wish you a magical week :)

About the economy

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This is the starting quote from Charles Dickens' classic masterpiece "A Tale of Two Cities". The cities are London and Paris, or maybe metaphorically the old Paris and the new Paris, before and after the French revolution of 1789. It is the story of how the privileges of the wealthy and politically powerful, their pride and sense of entitlement, and not least their abject disgust of the less fortunate, who are unable to lift themselves up from poverty, brought about a revolution and all the horror that followed in its wake. It is a cautionary tale about how ugly, emotional, and violent things can get, if the majority of the people in a country is continuously disregarded and feels neglected by their entitled leadership. Of course, there are no parallels to our modern enlightened democracies, where people choose their leaders themselves. Or are there?

I just came across this documentary involving the statements of some politicians and economists done by Al Jazeera English, that makes an excellent case, that there is a growing disconnect between the politically and economically powerful and the majority of Americans.



Although this report is specifically describing the American situation, it is not an American problem. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening or already as wide as it gets in many countries of this world. I could cite GINI coefficients or top tax rates to make this point, but the sad thing is that we are all already very aware of the inequality in the world.

But there are two very different outlooks on the problem and how to solve it. Some say: "Well, if we could only get the world economy on it's feet again and finally relax those trade rules to get government out of the way and stop pussy-footing around who is really creating value on this planet.", while others say "We are in a desperate situation, where the rich control politics through money. Trickle down economy has been proven wrong, but they try to keep people oblivious. If we could only get the rich to pay their fair share, maybe through a global tax on financial transactions, or there will be hell to pay."

I personally believe in the democratic process of debate and compromise. I also have a high opinion of meritocracy, when it comes to economic issues, but not when it comes to social class. You should not have to earn your right to speak by having enough money, but every voice should be represented independent of its weight in gold. Politicians who do not follow this guideline of balancing the interests of all members of society, irrespective of economic power, but based on their human value as citizens, are making a devil's bargain. They are becoming puppets of interests other than the common good.

I happen to agree with the rating agency Standard & Poors on their assessment of "America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed." I think one way out of this mess is to re-establish reliability and accountability in politics. Not by "brinksmanship", as the Republicans have shown by holding the country's future hostage, but by putting every opinion out there and having an unemotional and reasonable debate that does not negate any of the facts. A compromise is when all sides give a little and everybody albeit grudgingly still supports the final deal. It would definitely make policymaking a lot more predictable and effective! And, hopeless idealist that I am, I think also a little more just...

Open choices

You are free, but you have to choose something. My mother used to say: "an open oven bakes no bread" -- Paulo Coelho

Sometimes I feel like I don't have a choice. There is no choosing without alternatives. Well, alternative choices are all around us. Life itself is a series of choices: subconscious choices, immediate choices, well-thought-through choices, forced choices, emotional choices, hurried choices, bad choices, good choices. Living is choosing. And one recipe to give ourselves room to make good choices is openness. Openness about the direction a choice might take us in.

I am a social scientist, an intellectual, a people person, a traveler, but I might as well describe myself as a manager, an entrepreneur, an analytic brain, and a good networker. It's about the self-definition, not about the contents or skills of my person. By realizing this, a lot more choices open up to me. I don't have to follow a pre-drawn path that is determined by what I have done in the past. The Self that made those decisions does not exist, because every time a decision was made there was a random collection of (mostly unconscious) decisions about what experiences to pick from my past and what behaviors to nominate as "characteristic" of myself (my self!).
WWID - What Would I Do? in this situation is the question that many people ask themselves to feel consistent in their self-image. But a consistent self-image is a trap. It locks your choices into a cage that becomes harder and harder to break. To minimize the pain and anguish at our limitation, we proceed to rationalize the cage as the real us, our personality, and if we are lucky we can say of ourselves (our selves!) that we are what we have always wanted to be.

But there is so much more out there. Throwing the past overboard can be healthy. It's never too late to start looking again for what you wanna do with your life. Maybe you would love to start a new career, there are usually lots of new places that you would like to see before you die, or you could be looking for a hobby by crowd-sourcing the search.

What helps me are my advisors, the people around me that challenge my arguments for doing the things I do, but never stop me from doing something they did not really expect. Friends and family know me well enough to trust my decisions, once I have made them and still help me while I collect arguments for or against a certain idea. Change is always scary, but with people like this, it is half as bad!

Uncertainty

The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with. ~Tony Robbins

The search for a job is a difficult phase, especially when you are quite new to it as I am. There are so many variables in this equation of interests between you and your potential employers. You you can never have all the data you want before your decision (although you will surely get it after you have decided).

On the employers' side there are mechanisms that try to filter people:
instruments like formal requirements (resumé, cover letter, correct spelling, good grades), personal tests (assessment centers, interviews), and criteria your character should fit (authenticity, honesty, ability to work in a team, analytical thinking, creative traits, business understanding, etc). The aim of any employer will be to find the most qualified and motivated person to fit the organisation's goals and culture for a productive work together. Only problem with this is that there is no perfect applicant and if there is, no amount of interviewing will ascertain to 100% that this work relationship will work out.

On the candidate's side there is even more uncertainty. It starts with the selection of possible future jobs, let alone employers that you could imagine. The most detailed research cannot rule out the possibility that you missed a very important point about your new job: the work environment feels oppressive, you find it hard to deal with your new tasks, you would rather be working at the other end of the world. Of course, few jobs are perfect, and they are not meant to be fun, but being productive and happy depends to a large extent on you doing something you are good at and feel comfortable doing. And there are only very few, if any, people who always know exactly what that is.

I guess what all this means is that while there is no way to know what is the best path, everybody eventually finds some thing to do with their lives. Where you land is hugely determined by luck and how well you can motivate yourself to take action towards the few things you actually are sure about. This is easier said than done, but it may help to look at the situation from the outside and remind yourself that your uncertainty is not limited to you. After all this is what life is about, we just need to take it one step at a time!

Search for inspiration

This is Bono giving a commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania. It is customary at universities in the United States to have a notable speaker to celebrate another year of graduates leaving the institution with a degree. I wish this was also a tradition at universities in Germany because it gives graduates like me something they are very much in need of: inspiration.

Now you might say "come on, you just got a degree, you are young and successful, so if you can't come up with brilliant ideas for your life, no one can", but it is not as simple as that.
Yes, it is true, people with masters degrees are certainly less likely to end up unemployed (statistics tell me this, while the clichee still goes about students of humanities driving cabs and selling hot dogs). I acknowledge that I am privileged. I am well-educated, safely funded, and able-bodied.

Nothing can stop people like me. Except for ourselves.

Inspiration is the spark that can make this generation live up to its potential, but it does not grow in an environment of "no, you can't" or of "yes, but". When there is high unemployment we are told to go for security and are discouraged from our dreams because really, what does my generation know about making a career. When the job market is good, we are encouraged to go for the jobs that pay best. Security and money seem like the most obvious categories by which to judge the quality of a job. And it feels limiting. When I turn on the news I listen to politicians naming job creation as their highest priority, as if work was a value in itself. It is not. A healthy, happy, and just global society however is! The shortsighted requirements of creating jobs for our economy to sustain the unsustainable goal of infinite growth are sending a signal that does not lead to the best outcomes.

Everybody has something that inspires them! For me it is the interaction with people, the collaboration to do something good. I also draw energy from things that upset me, from phone companies' bad service, to educational inequality, preventable environmental disasters, global poverty and disease, and the incredibly slow pace of change. If I can harness my passionate instinct to help out with the emergency situation of poverty, environmental change, migration, lack of education in most parts of the world, I am sure to be more productive and more fulfilled in the long run.

The inspiration to help must be steeled against frustration, shielded from cynicism and, very often, from pragmatism. Bono speaks about idealism under attack, and he is right. For years I have learned about the inequalities that our society produces, about the structures that keep the poor in poverty and the uneducated dumb. I know that the time to act has come.

I know that my role in this world is somewhere out there, helping to organize a future that is more just that our past, setting up the structures that will lead to less violence and more education. I have a dream that my children will live in a world that is not shackled by the responsibility for a neglected Global South. In my dream university graduates will not have the odd feeling of choosing between their ideals and a sensible career. This is my mission statement. Feel free to make your own!

What is Netanyahu doing?!

Recently I have written less about politics. One of the reasons is that when you are going on public record with a personal opinion you better be well-informed and prepared to handle the reactions. Often I feel either not informed enough or not passionate enough about the issues to write about them. Sometimes however, things need to be said, because politics lives from public discourse and I definitely welcome discussions.

What got me upset was an interaction between two nations, the United States and Israel, and their respective leaders, Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu. On May 19th, President Obama held a speech on American foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa. He was gracious, welcoming and thoughtful about the chances and risks facing the countries shaken up by the so-called Arab Spring. This movement for democracy has spread from Tunisia to Egypt and is sparking a lot of resistence from the political establishment, resulting in turmoil and violence especially in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Obama pledged support for the young democracies without disputing their right to form their own future without US meddling.

However, it was not his proposed policies that sent the news cycles spinning, but the last part of his speech where he focused on the issue of Israel and Palestine. He said "Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist" and also "The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation". If this sounds even-handed and just to you, you are right. It is completely fair and has been the cornerstone of US policy for a very long time. Just like the following bit: "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." Like I mentioned this is not outlandish, just reasonable and direct, setting up another round of talks that is ultimately meant to secure Israel's standing in the Middle East while ending the violent and horrific oppression of Palestinians.

Netanyahu's reaction however was something to behold. In a statement he let the world know that he "expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004" and enraged a lot of Americans who found it inappropiate for Netanyahu to reprimand the US president who continues to double over ensuring Israel about his support, for proposing that it make some concessions to a lasting peace itself. By taking this position Bibi continues to alienate more and more people outside (and inside) Israel, a tactically very unwise move. Part of his reasoning for not being able to accept the 1967 borders is that demographic changes have occurred that make those lines indefensible. But what seems more indefensible to me is the fact that population density in Israel, even while it is continuing to expand settlements in occupied territory is at 360 people per square kilometer, while in the Gaza strip 4100 people live in that same space inside borders sealed off by Israeli military.

This conflict has been going on for decades and violence has been committed by people on both sides, and today more than ever before it is inequivocal who is preventing a peaceful and just solution. The mind of Netanyahu is a miracle to me, but I am convinced that he is very wrong and needs to change, if he wants this to end well for himself and his country. I hope he will come to his senses soon, because even though I hope he is wrong these are Netanyahu's own words: We don't have a large margin for error and (...) history will not give the Jewish people another chance.

Smile!

In keeping with my blog's name and my personal philosophy I would like to suggest you watch 8 minutes of scientific facts that should convince even the most hard-core frowner to smile more often:



Among many people I know it is already common knowledge that smiling is good for you. I have embraced this wisdom long ago and friends sometimes doubt that I am ever not smiling and cheerful. However there are difficult times and sad situations, when I feel my face go a little droopy, tired, or sad. Gladly the people close to me always lend me a smile whenever I run out. So if you are currently in need of inspiration to smile, try these two previously posted videos that always help me: here and here.

And if you think spreading joy and happiness around you is not a sufficient argument to smile, maybe business success will convince you. My recommendation is to re-read Dale Carnegie's long time bestseller "How to Win Friends and Influence People" :)

Justice has been done

(...or has it?)

So the leader of the world's most feared terrorist organization is dead. His influence was destructive and I am glad he is no longer going to influence people to take up arms for a radical cause. However it is a fact that he has already succeeded in making the world more violent, and as a martyr he might just continue to do so for a while, if somebody does not stop this vicious cycle. There will be others and an idea cannot die like a person.

Put it however you like, I just don't think that the death of a man is a reason to party in the streets. It is eerie to imagine the similarity in feeling between the terrorists after a successful attack and those civilians celebrating the death of their enemy.

Maybe we should take the moment to reflect on some perspectives we are less used to in the west. So here is an article about reactions from parts of the arab world.
And I would like to invite you to something even more interesting than reading about what other people think. Listen to a sociologist for a couple of minutes and let him help you explore an interesting way to think empathetically about other people. His experiment sure had an effect on me, maybe it will on you: Sam Richards' Radical Experiment in Empathy

Hope you are all having a happy and peaceful day out there!