Empathy II

Everyone of us carry a tonne of worries and concerns at any given point. We try to isolate a particular issue and try to focus on it when we "concentrate" on something. All the others are noises are disturbances when we "concentrate".

Where do empathy takes us? Give a little room for the other disturbances when you are really concentrating. While writing pay attention to the birds chirping, while thinking about the db design spare a thought to your children who are left with a tyrrant or something like that.

That gives meaning to your life and roundedness to life. If you are meeting someone, empathize with yourself and extend the empathy to the other party. The dynamics change dramatically. You are no longer haggling over or discussing some petty business matter. You are communicating or communing with a whole human being.

What Osho, Krishnamoorthy, Ramanar, Buddhar or Gandhi lived you get it. This is how Gandhi could instantly forgive someone who imprisoned him for years and put him to hard labour. That is how Ramanar can take care of the old ladies to the little squirrel. That is how Buddhar could inspire millions of people to follow him. That is how Osho casts a magic spell over others.

Live life fully.

Human Beings

Each human being is a complex entity. We tend to look at everyone as Bus Driver, Doctor, Customer, Teacher, Principal etc. But each and every person has led a life from being a baby, having relatives and friends, physical problems, family problems and professional concerns.

When we meet some one or see somebody in the street if we keep the whole picture in mind, we have empathy towards them. That is what set apart the greats from the ordinaries. When Buddha, Rajneesh (Osho), Gandhiji or Jesus looked at someone, they had the empathy to attract, inspire and lead fellow human beings. What difference they made to millions of lives.

Peopel are ignorant of their omnipresence and omnipotence. They project their petty concernes on to their omnipresence/omnipotence being and that is catastropical for the mind and soul.

It is a true liberation whereby I am able to think about higher things, work on important issues and dedicate myself to the causes I have taken upon myself. God is great.

I need to disabuse myself of the negative energies acquired during the 8 years phase from 1997 (North India, Hindi, Women). The empathy is the one which will help me to connect with humanity.

Charity and Social Service

Business men top the list of those giving to social causes. Starting from Bill Gates and Melinda Foundation to the crores of rupees to the Thirupathi temple, people who make money and people who are successful give a part of their earnings to others' benefits.

Wait a moment! Do we really need that? If you run your business honestly and ethically, there will not be any surplus to distribute to the causes. Charity begins at home. If you find that your business is making more money that what is needed for your personal use, you can realign the business practices to benefit the stakeholders more:

1. Increase the employee compensation and benefits.
2. Increase the value to the customer by adding more features and eliminating more bugs from your product. Invest in a separate building and a few thousand people who work only on security aspects of Windows for example.
   
3. Reduce the price a wee bit to put more money into the pockets of your customers.
4. Pay more to the suppliers.
   
5. Clean up your emissions better.
   
6. Stop tax management and pay up the tax to the government.

It is not the job of an individual or a business to decide what social cause is to be funded. That is the job of the elected governments and social groups. The business has to make sure that tall the stakeholders benefit equally. That will make sure that there is not much left to worry over where to give.

Going back to pre-1999

1999 is the year the slide started. My moral slide I mean.

I was idealistic, demanding on myself and never asking for favours from anyone. I get what I deserve.

Things changed when I decided to resign from Tata taking a chunk of money, hurting the senior managers. There was the deception of BLC, there was the wasted times in Shanghai fighting and plotting to grab money from somebody. Looking at everyone I was thinking of how to make money out of that person. But the real me was shining out through all the self imposed degradations.

The real me is doing what is needed, doing the best, working more than anyone else. Being the best, not being the higher earner.

Pongal

Resolved to cancel the trip to Nagercoil, if we do not manage to issue salary cheques to all the staff before Pongal. Things are crystallizing, let us see.

Cash is the king. We have done a lot of ground work to reach where we are today. The need of the hour is to respond to the market, deliver what the market wants and reap the returns.

Cutting down on reading helped a lot. Now have more time to think through matters. Separation from children is also in the right perspective. For their long term good, they should not grow up in a home where oppositve energies pull against each other. I will have my day under the sun. What I am going through is nothing compared what others have endured.

Just put the head down and concentrate on the next ball. I am not to be wasted on useless pursuits but to put my talents for the best use. Today, I am in that position. Let me make the best use of it.

Small ideas big impacts

Working small ideas spending small chunks time which will create a large impact is the key to success. It is like the example in my school science book. Two workers removing stones from a garden. One of them is picking of a lot of stones and throwing them out. One is on a big stone trying to move it, the stone not buding an inch.

According to the physical definition of work the second guy is doing zero work. Even though he is putting in a lot more effort, nothing useful is accomplished.

Let us take small baby steps to improve our software.

The pleasure of cracking something

Made AJAX to work with our libraries. It is simple,

1. You create an xml-http object (Javascript)
2. Call a function on change/blur event of the source field which connects to the server with the source field id and fetches the xml formatted values for the destination fields. (Javascript)
3. Write a file in the server to generate values for destination fields based on the source id received from the request and send them in xml form. (PHP)
4. Assign the values to the destination fields in the client (Java Script)

To do this,

1. Created an ajax.inc files to include the javascript code in any page as a function call.
2. Pass the variables (url of the responding php script, source field, destination fields as an array) to the function.
3. Modified the generateSelectMenu code and input tags to include an id tag.
4. That is it, it works like a charm.

Combining Smarty and AJAX we have a rich client, easy to program in the browser.

I borrowed the ideas from the above tutorial for the AJAX implementation.

It is a gift to understand complex concepts and it is a greater gift to explain to others in understandable terms. Thanks to Bill Bercik for his time/effort in writing the tutorial. http://www.webpasties.com/xmlHttpRequest/

Poetic Justic

Apache httpd server 2.0 was release a couple of years back. One of the successful components of Apache webserver use is php which is developed and maintained by a separate group.

Apache 2.0 implements multi-threading support. The PHP guys recommended against upgrading to 2.0 version of Apache and asked php users to stick to 1.3.3x series of Apache webserver. To my knowledge all major distros started including Apache 2.0 version. But the hostility of php group did hurt apache 2.0 adoption and further development.

The argument was php is not thread safe and even if they can make php thread safe they can not guarantee the multitude of external libraries would be threadsafe. Apache 1.3.x version works and why upgrade to 2.0 version.

Now the otherside happens. PHP releases a latest and greatest version 5.0. Guess what many user groups started arguing why to upgrade to 5.0 when 4.x series works well. There is no guarantee that the number of PHP applications would comply with 5.0 requirements any time soon, so don't upgrade.

I think the lead developers would feel a bit of remorse at their anti Apache 2.0 stand now when the boot in on their foot.

Vision for the future

Ellorum ellamum pera vendum, ingu illamai illatha nilai vendum.

When someone overconsumes, another person is deprived of his/her needs. How?

Say, an average child needs 10 toys to play happily and be satisfied. In an ideal condition, the toy factories will produce 10 toys each for all the children in the society and sell them at a price of economic cost (say Rs 10/- each) affordable to the poorest of the group (the richer ones get the toy at a lower price even though they can afford to pay more).

To elaborate, some one with purchasing power of Rs 10/- per toy gets it at just the right price. One group might be willing to pay Rs 11/- and gets the toy at Rs 10/- and use the Rs 1/- for other purposes. Yet another group might be willing to pay as much as Rs 50/- for the toy, they also get the toy at Rs 10/- and enjoy the satisfaction of (to them) a Rs 50/- product.

Now some of the richer ones find that they can buy more toys if they offer Rs 11/- to the toy seller instead of Rs 10/-. To keep the argument simple, some of the poor kids can not buy the toys now as they have only Rs 10/-. The resultant toys are available to the rich kid at Rs 11/- and the market price is pushed up to Rs 11/-. Now all the children in all the groups are forced to pay Rs 11/- for a Rs 10/- toy.

There is more money available in toy selling than the cost (Rs 10/-). The sellers will resort to advertising, promotions and adding non-functional elements to the toys (which they can afford from the extra money they get from the kids). This leads to a cycle by which the toy price goes up and up and more and more children are left out and more and more is paid for deriving the satisfaction of playing with toys by those children who can afford to pay higher price.

The poor kids do not have the toys. The medium income kids pay more for the same toy. The rich kid got the satisfaction that he/she has more toys than anyone else.

You can fit this argument for any goods with any group.

Then, how to prevent this situation.

Gandhi pirantha maN

Here is one place you can see people eating near open drainages and within 100 metres a shop selling Rs 5000+ sarees for the super rich to purchase.

When you overeat or hold things more than what you require you are stealing from another person, this is Gandhian economics and perfectly logical economics.

The rich shall be trustees of the wealth entrusted to them by the society and apply them for the general development of the society (which does not mean giving it away). Earn and spend money honestly and ethically.