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Rule 1:
Take time to
think
This may be considered a cliché,
but is an essential requirement for any mental achievement.
The task of thinking has been eminently treated by professor
Stuart Wells in his book Choosing
the Future, Power of Strategic
Thinking. Although written for the business scene, this text
also apply to private thinking. "If you really want to fire
up your brain, you`ve got to read this book" wrote CEO Jim
Kouzes.
Rule 2:
Live in the
real world
Many people are living in a kind of
virtual reality, screened from the real world as it is and
without knowledge of the world as it will be. Be
precautious, that your "Weltanschauung" is not governed by
wrong impressions. Age is no vaccine against neglecting the
world as it is. Knowing and understanding the world of today
and the world of tomorrow is a must to maintain and gain
power of mind.
One of the ambassadors for a real life
picture is Robert D. Kaplan. Everybody should read his book
The
Ends of The Earth. It may present
you some negative impressions, but those seeking reality
should be prepared to meet a lot of blood and tears. This
book should not be mistaken for The
End of the World by John Leslie.
This has a dark cover and a dark inside. You should read the
reviews, but preferably not the book.
Arnold J. Toynbee, preeminent historian,
has condensed the situation of Man in his book Mankind
and Mother Earth, published two years before he died in
1975:
Mention has already been made of the
discrepancy between the political partition of the Oikoumene
(the habitat of Man) into local sovereign states and the
global unification of the Oikoumene on the technological and
economic planes. This misfit is the crux of mankind's
present plight. Some form of global government is now needed
for keeping the peace between one local human community and
another and for re-establishing the balance between Man and
the rest of the biosphere, now that this balance has been
upset by Man's enormous augmentation of human material power
as a result ofthe Industrial Revolution.
However, the magnitude and the
impersonality of operations on the global scale are
daunting; and the generation responsible for securing the
survival of the human race is jeopardizing it by trying to
split the unity of life into an ever greater number of ever
smaller compartments. The increase in the number of local
sovereign states is matched by a contemporaneous increase in
the number of academic 'disciplines', and this progressive
fission is making business unmanageable and informaton
unintelligible. The plethora is not being dispelled by this
evasive action; on the contrary, it is being allowed to
swell to a magnitude at which it might come to be completely
out of hand. Mankind is in a crisis as grave as the two
world wars and the outlook is perplexing. Manifestly mankind
has a prospect of continuing to survive in the biosphere for
perhaps a further 2,000 million years, if human action does
not make the biosphere uninhabitable at some earlier date;
but Man now possesses the immaterial power to make the
biosphere uninhabitable in the near future, and it is
therefore possible that people who are already alive might
have their lives cut short by a man-made catastrophe that
would wreck the biosphere and would destroy mankind together
with all other forms of life. Evidently these are two
possibilities; but they are certainly not the only two
alternatives.
The future is undiscernible because it
has not yet come into existence; its potentialities are
infinite, and therefore the future cannot be predicted by
extrapolating from the past. Anything that has occurred in
the past may, no doubt, recur, if conditions remain the
same. But a past occurrence is not bound to recur; it is
merely one among an unknown number of possibilities; some of
these possibilities are unforeseeable because they have no
known precedents; and there is no precedent for the power
that Man has acquired over the biosphere in the course of
the two centuries I763-I973. In these bewildering
circumstances, only one prediction can be made with
certainty. Man, the child of Mother Earth, would not be able
to survive the crime of matricide if he were to commit it.
The penalty for this would be self-annihilation.
This book is out of order. But you may enjoy his
Change
and Habit: The Challenge of Our Time.
Additionally, everybody should seek
information on his or her environment, true and without
makeup.
Rule 3:
Ask the right
questions
Without asking the right questions, you
will never get the right answers. And nobody has yet been
born with the ability to "dream" just right questions.
Therefore, being conscious about the questions to ask is
tremendously important in a strategic view.
The "right questions" often have the
tendency to be difficult, troublesome and with no or several
answers. But with growing age, you will gain experience and
insight to answer more and more questions. And this site
will help you finding an answer to the remaining.
Rule 4:
Define your
ethic
Every citizen will need a relation to God
and a relation to ethic. And the last one may be the most
important in practical life. It is a difficult issue, which
some may need help to resolve. In reality, ethic is a
question of wealth. With a hungry child, you may steal, with
affluence you may donate millions. The simplest question to
ask is: How ethical can I afford to be? Another way of
turning is would be: How ethical would my grandchildren want
me to be? As the main purpose of any living being seems to
be to carry its genes forth, the grand view would be to ask
the last question. In a world of pure competition, things
would be simpler. But Man at large has never grown
accustomed to being a social creature. Therefore the
question of ethic is normally either not asked or creating
troubles.
The senior person may gain power by
having a strong view on ethics, both for personal reasons
and for being a model.
Rule 5:
Never forget
Darwin's Law
"More individuals are born than can possibly survive.
A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall
live and which shall die, -- which variety or species shall
increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally
become extinct. As the individuals of the same species come
in all respects into the closest competition with each
other, the struggle will generally be most severe between
them; it will be almost equally severe between the varieties
of the same species, and next in severity between the
species of the same genus. But the struggle will often be
very severe between beings most remote in the scale of
nature. The slightest advantage in one being, at any age or
during any season, over those with which it comes into
competition, or better adaptation in however slight a degree
to the surrounding physical conditions, will turn the
balance." (From Origin of The Species)
Nature never invented a game or battle
without a looser. This will also apply to the game called
human life. Therefore: stay on a team helping everybody to
do his or her best. If you are in a leading position, your
aim No. 1 should be to motivate and help all team mates to
excel.
If you are on a team or in a society
punishing excellence and praising mediocrity, you will
certainly be on the loosing team. Survival was never a
right. Edward D. Bean restated Darwin's Law: The demise
of the unfit.
Thus, a requirement for gaining power is
the consciousness on this law. You may determine the "grain
in the balance" in your favor just by always being aware of
the rules of play.
Rule 6:
Determine what
matters
In the later stage of life or after a
serious illness, one will gain insight in what matters more
and what matters less. The priority of what matters is
valuable from the very beginning. So play the role of being
terminal ill and find what kind of activities and what
practical gadgets you need and enjoy. You should also look
to Rule
Rule 7: Coming!
Rule 8: Coming!
Rule 9: Coming!
Rule 10:
Beware of the
I-am-to-old-to syndrome
It seems to be a fact: mental aging is
only partly a physiological phenomenon. We try to put simple
what professonals would explain more sophistically: Your
memory may weaken, your ability get impressions may be
restricted by illness and hancdicaps and your attitude may
be different from that of the next generation. But your way
of thinking systematically and creatively and you wealth of
knowledge may be maintained.
Ten Pointers
1. Be yourself. Cultivate
desirable qualities.
2. Be alert. Look for opportunities to
express yourself.
3. Be positive. Determine your goal
and the route to it.
4. Be systematic. Take one step at a
time.
5. Be persistent. Hold to your
course.
6. Be a worker. Work your brain more
than your body.
7. Be a student. Know your
job.
8. Be fair. Treat the other man as you
would be treated.
9. Be temperate. Avoid excess in
anything.
10. Be confident. Have faith that
cannot be weakened.
Everett W. Lord
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