“Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve.”
Ray Bradbury
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Happy Halloween.
I have a love – hate relationship with Halloween.
Love. Love the chocolate and the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of one of the goofiest nights in the world as ghosts and spirits of loved ones <and I assume some not-so-loved ones> wander the world being as persnickety <I just wanted to type that word> and aggravating as they were when they stood near you in their flesh & blood, and children can wander the neighborhood unattended dressed up as whatever they want trick-or-treating <begging/demanding as much sugar as they can possibly consume> or, in general, simply wreaking havoc as young people do <just not in cars – that comes later in the teen years>.
Hate? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … the cats.
Cats are probably the most useless animals and pets in the world. I am sure they have some redeeming value it is just that I have yet to find any <if but one>.
Oh. Please note here … I am a dog guy.
Anyway.
Cats. Halloween has too strong an association with cats for my liking.
We seem to be able to blame this association on European pagan religions which were tightly associated with the animals of nature, including the cat, in the good ole <dark ages> days.
Then Christianity put the kibosh on all that pagan stuff — kind of decided that witchcraft was a bad thing — and since everyone associated cats with witches, well, there you go. Cats were deemed evil by association.
Aside from the old Popes <who apparently were dog lovers too> there are a bunch of old myths that attribute bad luck to cats:
– King Charles I of England owned a black cat and the day it died he was arrested.
– An old sailor’s legend said that meeting cats in the shipyard meant an unpleasant voyage of storms or other bad luck.
– In Babylonian folklore a curled up cat on the hearth is seen as similar to evil serpent.
There you go.
Hopefully I have covered my butt with all the crazy cat ladies who want to throw used kitty litter at me for saying I hate cats by noting that my cat concerns are rooted in some historical, if not mythical, thoughts.
Regardless.
Some things you should be aware of that you may not know <albeit I doubt is very useful> about Halloween:
– There’s a $1,000 fine for using or selling Silly String in Hollywood on Halloween.
The prank product has been banned in Hollywood since 2004 after thousands of bored people would buy it on the streets of Hollywood from illegal vendors and “vandalize” the streets. The city ordinance calls for a maximum $1,000 fine and/or six months in jail for “use, possession, sale or distribution of Silly String in Hollywood from 12:01 AM on October 31 to 12:00 PM on November 1.”
– Dressing up on Halloween comes from the Celts <no, not the Boston Celtics, the Celts in great Britain history>.
Celts believed their version of a Halloween date was a time when the wall between our world and the paranormal world was porous and spirits could get through. Because of this belief, it was common for the Celts to wear costumes and masks during the festival to ward off or befuddle any evil spirits.
– Ah. Celts were pagans, but the name “Halloween” comes from the Catholics.
Hallowmas is a three-day Catholic holiday where saints are honored and people pray for the recently deceased. At the start of the 11th century, it was decreed by the pope that it would last from Oct. 31 (All Hallow’s Eve) until Nov. 2,
<speculation on my part: we should note that the dog loving Popes were smart enough to place this holiday at this time most likely because that was when the cat loving pagans celebrated and the church was trying to convert them – into dog lovers>.
“All Hallow’s Eve” then evolved into “All Hallow’s Even” and by the 18th century it was commonly referred to as “Hallowe’en.”
– Turnips
Pumpkins are a fraud. We should probably blame Hallmark, but instead we can just blame America for this too. Halloween originally had nothing to do with pumpkins … it was turnips.
The origin of Jack-O-Lanterns comes from a Celtic folk tale of a stingy farmer named Jack who would constantly play tricks on the devil. The devil responded by forcing him to wander purgatory with only a burning lump of coal from hell. Jack took the coal and made a lantern from a turnip using it to guide his lost soul. The myth was brought over by Irish families fleeing the potato famine in the 1800s, and since turnips were hard to come by in the U.S., America’s pumpkins were used as a substitute to guide lost souls and keep evil spirits like “Jack of the Lantern” away.
– Media is part of the horror story of Halloween.
Media is made up of witches and warlocks. Well. They must be. Because fears of poisoned Halloween candy are unfounded but a constant story on media.
One of our biggest fears is a child’s Halloween candy is poisoned or contains razor blades.
The truth?
This fear is almost entirely unfounded.
There are only two known cases of poisoning, and both involved relatives, according to LiveScience. In 1970, a boy died of a heroin overdose. The investigators found it on his candy, but in a twist they later discovered the boy had accidentally consumed some of his uncle’s heroin stash, and the family had sprinkled some on the candy to cover up the incident. Even worse, in 1974 Timothy O’Bryan died after eating a Pixy Stix his father had laced with cyanide to collect on the insurance money <according to Smithsonian Magazine>.
Besides that the razor blade in apple story is a myth <unproven or simply staged>.
The real point of sharing this is that your kid has less to fear from some unknown random neighbor than he/she does from someone they already know <that is an extremely unfortunate Life truth in general … sigh>.
– I hate Candy Corn. Oh. And it was originally known as chicken feed.
Invented by some guy at the Wunderle Candy Company in Philadelphia in the 1880s, Candy Corn was originally called “butter cream candies” and “chicken feed.” Ah. There was a reason. Back then corn was commonly used as food for livestock <they even had a rooster on the candy boxes>.
At that time candy corn had no association with Halloween or fall and was sold seasonally from March to November.
After World War II, advertisers began marketing it as a special Halloween treat due to its colors and ties to the fall harvest <the bastards … who the heck actually eats that stuff?>.
– A full moon on Halloween is extremely rare.
Although almost every Halloween decoration seen is with witches flying across the full moon … just another marketing lie. The next full moon on Halloween won’t occur until 2020. The last was in 2001. Before that it was in 1955. Brilliant marketing … but it is just another lie <sigh>.
– Trick-or-treating has been around for a long time <so America or capitalism cannot be blamed for this greedy little maneuver>.
Versions of trick-or-treating have existed since medieval times.
It was known as ‘guising’ where children and poor adults went around in costumes during this time begging for food and money in exchange for songs or prayers. It was also called “souling.”
– thank you Great Pumpkin and Charlie Brown. 
Trick-or-treating as we know it was re-popularized by cartoons.
Trick-or-treating was brought to America by the Irish and became popular during the early 20th century, but died out during WWII when sugar was rationed. After the rationing ended in 1947, children’s magazine “Jack and Jill,” radio program “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” and the “Peanuts” comic strip all helped to re-popularize the tradition of dressing up in costumes and asking for candy from door-to-door. By 1952, trick-or-treating was hugely popular again <thank you Charlie Brown and Linus and the Great Pumpkin>.
There you go.
Today in America we will share or consume something like 90 million pounds of chocolate.
Awesome <and we wonder about a national obesity issue … sorry … different post, by the way, I blame cats for that too by the way>.
Americans will also spend about $6 billion on Halloween including candy, costumes, and decorations <note: that does not include the wacky cat costumes crazy cat people make their cats wear>.
Happy Halloween.
Ever get the feeling you are doing a lot of ‘somethings’ and, yet, you look around and it sometimes looks like nothing? I tend to believe a lot of people feel some version of this. I have a stack of unanswered emails to people I really would like to respond to and, yet, I always have something to do. I rarely have an open minute, by my choice and I like it that way, but some of those minutes mean not doing something else. And therein lies ‘nothing.’ Nothing IS something. It resides in the choices left behind. I am doing nothing with all these emails and people who I genuinely like and conversations I genuinely would like to have and, yet, I have done nothing with them. They are something and what I have done is something and have created nothing in doing so. This may sound convoluted and slightly absurd, and it should.
I am not sure, but it’s possible “more” could have worked okay in the models of work if we weren’t simultaneously stuck in a zero-sum mindset. In that mindset universe ‘more’ comes at the expense of someone else and, worse, if someone is getting “more” that means less for you.
things are not criteria for what is the ultimate value – the result or outcome. Productivity is inextricably tied to achievement which also suggests productivity that does not attain some objective achievement has little or no value. It’s a 
quantity becomes a result of a focus on progress where doing something means something. This thought also suggests the future isn’t going to be solved by working smarter, but rather a smarter way of working. I would also suggest the current way of working is not a logical result of centuries of logical reasoned thinking about how work should be done, but rather a battle between ideas on a way to work. That last thought becomes a semi-important thought because it suggests we don’t need a new way of doing business, or a new way of thinking, or even some magical transformation, but instead we should be seeking out the ideas that exist and maybe lost a key battle here or there. It is not about a fundamental shift, but rather a revisit to the fundamentals. In doing so we change the concept of productivity and progress in business and that begets a shift in systems, policies and practices. Ponder.
same time. Now, this may feel like a crisis, but I’d suggest its more that it’s a number of issues, many of which feel unsolvable or unstoppable, all occurring at once. This leads me to intentionality. In order to meet the moment, we need to shed the thinking that (a) we need to deal with one at a time, (b) they are unsolvable, (c) I can do nothing that will have any real impact, and, well, implement some intentionality at an individual level, a community (collective) level and societal level. Yeah. I’m suggesting intentionality can bend the arc of existential issues away from stagnancy (or regressive behavior) and actually toward progress.
And while we talk about how the internet and social media creates an existential issue, let’s take a moment and reflect upon how television has affected intentional mindsets. I would argue that if television reflects our values, principled behavior and what we stand for, the whole system is rotten. And if that system is rotten, we need to think about how we are bound to a system. That is most likely the greatest existential issue, yet, we never seem to discuss it nor discuss it existential nor discuss the intentionality one must take to ‘unbound’ a system and from a system. Systems are bound by mindsets. Oh. We may talk about fairmindedness or equality (or equitable), or meritocracy or any other cage we have built that is a system within which we do and think, but existential systems are sneaky bastards. They establish a foundational mindset which colors everything else in hues that are always a derivative of that mindset. Suffice it to say, I believe we are in the midst of an existential unraveling with regard to societal expectations and aspirations.
community and society. It demands a coherence of resilient intentions because diffusion in environment – all these existential issues – quadruples the challenge for any intentionality. One must assume the mantle of responsibility and responsibility requires intentionality. Inevitably this intentionality is the weapon against disorientation. Intentionality gives is a ‘sense of agency’ in which we no longer simply get buffeted by asynchronous waves of skepticism and obstacles to progress but rather we become ships on a sea of progress. We become responsible and accountable and gain at least some semblance of control. But that is just your part. Communities must work together, the collective needs to accept both individual and society as part of the grander narrative and society needs some common sensemaking. I would argue the trick is to mix and match strategies in response to the nature of the opportunity and the behavior, actual and desired, of the population. We need to stop attacking genuine good intentions and intentionality with false cries of “Hypocrisy!!” toward all moments where someone’s intentions fall short of some dubious judgement of someone else’s behavior.
Look.
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I talk about emergence and agility a lot. In fact, I sometimes believe I talk about it so much people think I don’t believe in any replication and standardization. Today I’d like to resolve any misunderstandings. If we are honest, all of us, successful business is in the replicating business. Replication is the foundation upon which all profitability and execution effectiveness resides upon and it isn’t the place where the typical employee drops down to a lower level of mental performance.
information and I will also suggest replicating information is the key to not only ongoing success, productivity, improvement as well as agility.
Data is actually the result of someone doing things over and over again through connections with other people. Maybe think of it as a massive research program of ‘one-on-one interviews’ <not just of people but with resources, machines, etc., i.e., the system itself can be interviewed> that provides some quantitative and qualitative pattern/coherence information to think about. And, as with any research, when you compile the interviews, you can very easily lose sight of the fact that each data point represents real people who dedicated their real attention at some particular identifiable moment. But if you look at data that way, well, you realize that opportunities can be seen as clusters of people acting in a coherent/connected fashion over a period of time. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out everything I just said is replication.
information is necessary, within the given time horizon and context, to enable the persistent pattern of things. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this information enables people to make decisions and do things in the service, or in relationship to, other groups of people. Information elevates the value of interactions and connectivity. In a nutshell that’s the business of replicating business and that’s the value of replicating information.
decision making, needs to expand beyond the moment itself and incorporate some larger patterns and consequence recognition (not just causal).
Look. Replication is actually a dance, not marching. And even then, the natural order of replicable things is that it can fit a lot <that’s what makes it useful>, but not perfectly. It’s not optimal, but can be quite useful. It’s the core of organizational efficacy.
time it revolves around words and the use of words.
I feel a need to point out that research says that ‘text speak’ <young people communicating in texts & shortened euphemisms>, rather than harming literacy, could have a positive effect on the way children interact with language. Researchers from Coventry University <published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology> studied children aged between 10 and 12 to understand the impact of text messaging on their language skills. They found that the use of so-called “textisms” could be having a positive impact on reading development.
If we believe for one moment that someone in Shakespearean time wouldn’t look at us today after listening to two 50somethings talk, looking at us like we were crazy <possibly unsophisticated>, maybe even from a different planet, and ‘unwoke’ to their generation, we just haven’t thought about it well enough.
This expense can come in a variety of larger perspective forms — character, self-limitation and time.
immediately but at some point – you realize you have to be accountable for what you have done under the guise of ‘surviving.’
about what you do and how the objectives need to align with a certain moral code <this can get even trickier because not everyone’s moral code is the same>.
note Life, people and business, are inherently inefficient <despite all their efforts to be efficient>. I think the insight resides in the fact this creates a recipe for disaster. Disaster in that what is easy, or even useful, is not necessarily good for us.
coin 6 straight times. Yeah. You can see the possible problem there. Circling back, let’s assume each of those 6 coin flips are driven by efficiency. Yeah. You can see the possible problem there. Let me stretch the efficiency issue out a bit more. Efficiency demands a division of labor, resources and energy. So, if the algorithm is driving all those things toward the ‘most efficient’, well, there are always consequences to a choice.
A collection of people can be stupider than an individual (often even stupider), and, an individual can be stupider than a collection of people. The trick is to always to find when one is smarter than the other.
this up because algorithms, driven by efficiency, are temporal, but you cannot actually see whether they are converging or diverging. Well. At least until it’s too late.
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Complexity, in business, is in the midst of a weird time. In the attempt to translate 
He suggests that each person is a cross section of the self – the depths & dimensions – and the conflict and potential inherent in the interactions with social, economic and cultural fabric – all amped up in a technological world. Freinacht calls this ‘a transpersonal perspective.’ Its not just that we are each a billiard ball that interacts with other people. We co-emerge or ‘intra-act.’ He suggests we have a lived experience as well as a creational experience. We experience and absorb from all experiences and in doing so we, systemically, change. What this means is that society is present within each individual as well as within the relationships one forges with what we call ‘self.’ Here is the uncomfortable suggestion — there is no true individual nor is there any true collective there is simply an evolving interlinked emergent set of ‘transviduals.’ This makes each of us inseparable, in a complete sense, rather than some simplistic unique separate life story. This means each person should be viewed as an open and social process, a 
would be naïve. Systems exist everywhere. Systems influence everything we do. The idea of a social system implies that relationships between its parts strongly influence human behavior. To put the matter more bluntly, a social system implies that people act partially as cogs in a social and economic machine. In other words, people play roles demanded by pressures of the whole system. This idea is a bit uncomfortable because at its core it suggests people aren’t totally free to make their own decisions. That said. Suffice it to say all social systems have some ‘design’ features (or have actually been designed) which, tying back to Hanzi, means people, as social constructs, are designed by social systems.
best, we will always remain a step or two behind not only the world but behind any semblance of a sane world. But here is where it gets, well, bad. As the world becomes increasingly complex and we become increasingly overwhelmed and under increasing pressure to ‘do something’, there will always be someone peddling ‘simplicity’ or some tool/tactic to ease us through that situation. Uhm. Easy does not equal what is best for us <
getting fucked by our own data. Basically, other people make money off our data by them using our data to get us to spend money. How fucked up is that? Beyond that there are some real pragmatic issues that with all of our data floating out there beyond our control it can be used in some quite nefarious ways. All that said. Some people with integrity are attempting to change it all. The majority of this discussion is focused on regulation, i.e., regulating how companies gather and use our data.
mind, it begins to establish some validity to one’s own data within the black box. In other words, if all of a sudden, I know for sure the data that I am receiving (information is data) is valid and not some bot, well, then all of a sudden I start thinking “hey, mine has been evaluated and is valid too.” Its an indirect way of establishing some value proposition. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that, collectively, it also begins establishing some shared sense of truth (or truthiness) and that is an excellent foundation for establishing my personal value within that shared sense of truth.
In the end.
I am not a past guy and I believe “authentic” is one of those words that is currently being abused in a variety of definition-type ways, but, I would offer a reminder to everyone that if you want something authentic it is actually the past <I will expound on that in a minute>.
