My blogging colleague, Bob Morris, is more able to tackle this post than I am — but here’s my try.

I was reading a couple of the speeches in the great William Safire compilation, Lend Me Your Ears.  (I blogged about this before here and  here, and Bob reviewed the compilation here).  I read this toast: George Bernard Shaw:  George Bernard Shaw Salutes His Friend Albert Einstein.  It is a remarkable piece.  Here is a key excerpt from the beginning of his toast:

Napoleon and other great men were makers of empires, but these eight men whom I am about to mention were makers of universes…  I go back twenty-five hundred years, and how many can I count in that period?  I can count them on the fingers of my two hands.
Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Kepler, Copernicus, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein – and I still have two fingers left vacant…
Newton made a universe which lasted for three hundred years.  Einstein has made a universe, which I suppose you want me to say will never stop, but I don’t know how long it will last.

George Bernard Shaw

 

It was the phrase “makers of universes” that grabbed my imagination.  I really don’t think that we can put the business luminaries listed above in the same category.  (Well, maybe Drucker).  But in a lesser sense, and certainly in a narrower arena, I think we can say that these business thinker/business book giants have created at least some small universes.

Here’s what I mean.  When you think of “leadership,” you think of Bennis.  When you think of studying successful companies, extracting their secrets, you think of Peters and Collins.  Collins “hedgehog principle” has become part of our vocabulary.  And Gladwell is the true master at introducing phrases that become part of our understanding and vital parts of our vocabularies, (even if he borrows the ideas from others):  “tipping point,” “outliers,” the “10,000 hour rule.”

And, if you had only one you could read, you could make the case that Drucker is the one you would choose.  Many have observed that in communication, Aristotle said it first, and everyone else simply provides commentary and updates illustrations.  Well, in business, Drucker said it first, and everything else builds, in one way or another, on his work.

As I said earlier, Bob Morris is far more qualified to choose the names that could be called the “makers of the business universe.”  But I like the quest – who are the voices, the minds, that have most shaped our usable understanding of business effort and success?  Who has created our business universe?

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible…”

- George Bernard Shaw

Copyright: Misty R. Lemons/Misty Expressions Photography

On November 18:

326 The old St. Peter’s Basilica was consecrated

1477  William Caxton produced Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres, the first book printed on a printing press in England.

 

1903 The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.

1916 : First Battle of the Somme ended when British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig called off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.

1918  Latvia declared its independence from Russia

1926 George Bernard Shaw refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”

1928 The release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon stars Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey’s birthday.

1939 Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer, was born.

1942  Susan Sullivan, American actress, was born.

1947 The Ballantyne’s Department Store fire, Christchurch, New Zealand, killed 41 people.

1963 The first push-button telephone went into service.

1978 Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult in a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them at Jonestown itself, including over 270 children.

 

1983  Jon Johansen, Norwegian software developer, was born.

1993 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed in the House of Representatives.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

“You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?” – George Bernard Shaw

Hola bloggers!
Les escribo para contarles la obra en la que estoy trabajando junto con mi equipo de la universidad (UCAB) para la cátedra de Artes Escénicas: es Pigmaleón del escritor inglés George Bernad Shaw.
Seguimos practicando para mejorar las caracterizaciones.

Pronto les informaré sobra nuestra evolucióny por supuesto de la fecha de estreno. Solo els digo que será en enero 2010.

Saludos,
Vicky.

Last night was the last Birmingham show of Mrs Warren’s Profession, Theatre Royal Bath’s production with Felicity Kendal. It was good to see a full house, and the production really deserves it, too. In many ways it’s an awkward play, perhaps, because it is so much of a period piece, and because the central part of Vivie Warren is difficult to play credibly, but the performances from the whole cast are remarkably strong. Felicity Kendal is excellent – humorous and light but with obvious distress as the play reaches its conclusion, but she does not steal the limelight from Lucie Briggs-Owen, who plays Vivie.

The play was written in 1893, but banned from the stage until the 1920s due to its references to Mrs Warren’s profession, the details of which come out during the course of the play. The plot follows Vivie’s discovery that her (largely absent) mother has been making her money through a less than respectable profession (she was a prostitute, of course, and ends up running brothels across Europe). Vivie is at first forgiving, as she learns why her mother chose this way of life, and then shocked as she discovers that it still continues. This discovery affects her own life choices, including her own profession and potential marriage. The play is notable for its insight into the difficulties faced by women wishing or needing to be independent; I remember arguing in my university interview that Bernard Shaw uses his characters (notably St Joan) as mouthpieces for his own political and social views, and that’s equally true here, yet they are much more than puppets.

This production, with its beautifully crafted set and strong cast, brings out the nuances of humour as well as tragedy and social injustice. It’s on tour now; I recommend you see it.

There is one quality which one must possess to win,
and that is definiteness of purpose,
the knowledge of what one wants,
and a burning desire to possess it.”
~ Napoleon Hill

It’s the beginning of the week . . . you’d better come out swinging!

Today is the perfect day to fight battles.

Slay dragons.

Test your courage.

Prove your determination.

Refuse to take “no” for an answer.

Stay in the ring for one more round.

Disregard the buzzer.

Ignore the crowds.

Keep fighting until you are victorious.

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.  I don’t believe in circumstances.  The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them“ [G. B. Shaw].

Today is your day to make history!

Circle this date on your calendar, draw a line in the sand, issue a challenge, sound the battle cry, and saddle up your horses . . . you have an enemy to engage, a giant to face, a battle to win!

Whatever you are, be a victorious one!

Deanna

The subject of this blog post is a 1912 article from The New York Times entitled: “Babes Of The Future: Major Leonard Darwin Tells True Purposes Of Eugenics“. Major Leonard Darwin was the son of Charles Darwin and held the honour of being the President of the First International Congress on Eugenics.

In a later article from the New York Times published in 1932^[1], Major Leonard Darwin appeared again in the news – that he wanted to create a caste system similar to that practiced in India that “would be so rigid as to prohibit all movement between the different social strata”. Basically, what this would mean in economic terms is that someone pigeonholed into a ‘middle/lower class’ position would never have the means to climb atop the ladder in this hierarchic society. (it also needs no pointing out that Adolf Hitler’s Aryan caste system was pretty much an implementation of Major Leonard Darwin’s theories)

From the article:

The main aim of the eugenist is to insure the interests of the unborn of the future always being held in view in connection with all of our social customs and all our legislation.”

The interests of the unborn is in short used here as an ‘euphemism’ for: preventing them from being born as some sort of preventive abortive measure. Indeed, the eugenic sterilization laws of the United States and Nazi-Germany ensured just that – eugenic pre-screening of the parent and forced sterilization if the parent was determined to be ‘feeble-minded’ (based on flawed intelligence tests and racially biased outlooks).

“As to our other aims, they will become more definite as our knowledge increases”

As Francis Galton (the founder of ‘eugenics’) advocated: “eugenics should be pushed as a creed”. First came the basic creed (which was being spread in the early pre-twenties by such influential figures as Woodrow Wilson [the POTUS at the time], Margaret Sanger and of course Major Leonard Darwin), afterwards came the actual policies – such as ‘gas chambers’^[2], ‘forced sterilization, ’segregation of the unfit’, and so on.

We can, however, positively affirm that we do not advocate any interference whatever with the free selection of normal mates in marriage

The misdirection going on here is that the ‘eugenic screening process’ would determine who qualifies as ‘normal’ and who qualifies as ‘feebleminded’. An early abuse of this can be found in the post-Great Depression days. Paupers (poor people without money) were perceived as having a ‘poverty gene’ that might attribute to them being in the economic straits they found themselves in. Socio-economical conditions and plain common sense did not even figure into this – according to eugenicists, whether or not you were poor had all to do with your inheritance.

There will no doubt always remain a class outside the pale of all moral influence, and of these there will be a small proportion who, if they become parents, are certain to pass on some grievous mental or bodily defect to a considerable proportion of their progeny.”

Same basic argument as today.

Finally, we advocate economic forces being brought to bear in certain directions;

As far back as Thomas Malthus (chief economist for the British Empire), eugenic measures went hand into glove with monetary and economic policies. In the nihilistic mind of a state planner, lesser people entails lesser mouths to feed for the state – and if a qualitative difference could be established amongst the masses, those could be classified as the ‘useless eaters’ that had to be taken care of. Malthus advocated that sick or poor people be placed into poor houses with poor sanitation so that those people would die off quickly. This was widely practiced in insane asylums all throughout the US and UK, as can be read in Edwin Black’s ‘War Against The Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign To Create A Master Race‘ (2003). Dr. Harry Haiselden even admitted to as much[3].

as for instance, in making taxation, and also the pay of employees in all public services, vary somewhat with the size of the family to be maintained, and in administering the poor law so as not to encourage reproduction on the part of degenerate paupers.”

Poor families were to be discouraged from having larger families – whereas the rich were allowed to have families as large as they wished.

In The Netherlands, similar policies were enacted in the mid-1800s^[4].

These are, in brief, the aims of our societies, for which we appeal for widespread sympathy.

so ends the article. In the following section, I will provide a full transcript of Major Leonard Darwin’s letter to the New York Times (NYTimes’ PDF is image-only I’m afraid – they didn’t bother to convert it into text using OCR).

Transcript – entire letter

BABES OF THE FUTURE:
Major Leonard Darwin Tells True Purposes of Eugenics

To the Editor of The New York Times:

As there appears to be a good deal of doubt on both sides of the Atlantic with regard to the objects and methods of eugenic societies, perhaps you will be good enough to give me an opportunity of stating briefly what they should be in our opinion.

The main aim of the eugenist is to insure the interests of the unborn of the future always being held in view in connection with all our social customs and all our legislation. For the sake of our fellow-creatures of to-day and to-morrow every effort should without doubt be made to improve the environment of mankind by rational methods. But, as regards the more distant future, we can now practically only beneficially affect the great stream of humanity through the agency of heredity. We desire therefore greatly to increase the sense of responsibility in connection with all matters pertaining to human parenthood, to spread abroad a knowledge of the laws of heredity as are as now known, and to encourage further research in that domain of science.

With regard to this last point, about which there is little controversy, scientific investigation must remain to a great extent in the hands of such bodies as the Carnegie Institute of Washington, which is pouring forth such a volume of admirable work. Eugenic societies may perhaps play a useful part in collecting material, such as carefully compiled human pedigrees, and in impressing on the public the scientific value of such information when accurately rendered. By means of such co-operation between the general public and the expert investigator progress may be greatly facilitated.

As to our other aims, they will become more definite as our knowledge increases. We can, however, positively affirm that we do not advocate any interference whatever with the free selection of normal mates in marriage. But we firmly believe that, if the moral sense of the nation could be aroused to the importance of the eugenic problem great benefits would result. These advantages, we hold, would arise because the fit, if suitably mated, would recognize more clearly than they do at present the moral evil of avoiding the duties of parenthood; whilst, if not already mated, they would more often refuse to mate with the unfit. Again, as regards the unfit in body, they would more often refrain from marriage for fear of passing on their defects to future generations.

Hence we regard the educational campaign which we are carrying on as being of the greatest practical importance. There will no doubt always remain a class quite outside the pale of all moral influence, and of these there will be a small proportion who, if they become parents, are certain to pass on some grievous mental or bodily defect to a considerable proportion of their progeny. Here and here only must the law step in. As to whether surgical sterilization should ever be enforced on such persons we have still an open mind, but certainly not till further information on this subject is available. Unquestionably these unfortunates must be treated with all practical consideration, and must be made to feel that they are not being punished for a crime, yet sufficient control must be maintained over them in institutions or elsewhere to prevent them from breeding.

Finally, we advocate economic forces being brought to bear in certain directions; as for instance, in making taxation, and also the pay of employees in all public services, vary somewhat with the size of the family to be maintained, and in administering the poor law so as not to encourage reproduction on the part of degenerate paupers.

These are, in brief, the aims of our societies, for which we appeal for widespread sympathy.

LEONARD DARWIN, President

Footnotes

1 [^]Read the article linked to below for more information on Major Leonard Darwin’s remarks.

Link: – http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/index2.html?tag=1805 (“Genes and Eugenics,” New York Times (8/24/1932), critical review of Third International Eugenics Congress)
2. [^]In fact, back in 1910 George Bernard Shaw proposed at the International Congress of Eugenics that gas chambers be implemented as a humane method for killing off the ‘unfit’.

From Edwin Black’s book ‘War Against The Weak‘, page 248:

“A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence, simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.” – George Bernard Shaw, Lecture to the London Eugenics Education Society, 1910

It would take until the mid-1930s before a regime would be established (Nazi-Germany) that was willing to go out on a limb and push this through in legislation.

3. [^]Dr Harry Haiselden was a Chicago physician that became the point of controversy in 1915 when he refused to give an infant a life-saving operation that would have saved its life. This he did so out of conscientious eugenic objections. He was taken to court by the parents, but he eventually won the case. During the court proceedings, Haiselden made remarks such as: “I should have been guilty of a graver crime if I had saved this child’s life. My crime would have been keeping in existence one of nature’s cruelest blunders.”

He felt his victory in court was a vindication of his action – shortly after he ramped up the eugenic killing spree and ordered his staff to withold treatment from even more deformed or birth-defcted infants. Sometimes he would handle it personally, letting a child bleed to death, for instance. He held regular interviews with the media on his ‘plight’ to save mankind from passing on its hereditary defects to the next generation and he also played himself in a major Hollywood production called ‘The Black Stork‘ (a thinly-disguised eugenics propaganda piece).

The following snippet from Edwin Black’s book ‘War Against The Weak’ goes into Harry Haiselden’s assessment of the mental health institutions (page 254):

“Haiselden continued to rally for eugenic euthanasia with a six-week series in the Chicago American. He justified his killings by claiming that public institutions for the feebleminded, epileptic and tubercular were functioning as lethal chambers of a sort. After clandestinely visiting the Illinois Institution for the Feebleminded at Lincoln, Illinois, Haiselden claimed that windows were deliberately left open and unscreened, allowing drafts and infecting flies to swarm over patients. He charged that Lincoln consciously permitted “flies from the toilets, garbage and from the eruptions of patients suffering from acute and chronic troubles to go at will over the entire institution. Worse still,” he proclaimed, “I found that inmates were fed with the milk from a herd of cattle reeking with tuberculosis.”

4. [^]According to Margaret Sanger’s book ‘The Case For Birth Control’, during the mid-1800s there was an anti-pauperism/anti-poor policy in Holland that encouraged the poor to take contraception so that they could not bear children – and the poor were generally encouraged to have smaller families than the rich.

“Holland is an intensely patriotic country, and its need for military efficiency is beyond dispute. It is inconceivable that her statesmen could contemplate a policy in any way detrimental to this. Yet it appears that in 1881 an organisation having as its direct object the reduction of the birth-rate, especially among the poor, was formed in Amsterdam, and that it received the warm support of Dr. van Houten, Minister of the Interior, and of Mynheer N.G. Pierson, the Finance Minister. It was thus enabled to conduct an energetic propaganda in favor of small families among the poorest classes, whose means or health did not permit them to do justice to large famillies. In 1895 its work had become so appreciated that it was approved by Royal Decree as one of the Societies of Public Utility.” – Margaret Sanger, The Case For Birth Control, p73

Link: – http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021854561 (Internet Archive: Margaret Sanger – The Case For Birth Control)

I heard a great quote from my friend today, quoting George Bernard Shaw with the basic idea that:

People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who advance in this world are those who get up, look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, they make them.

My friend reminded me of another story I once told her this summer. We couldn’t remember it then, but this is how it goes: A man fell in love with a woman. His friends could see it in the way he glows, so they tried to tease him. The conversation goes like this:

Friend: What if you could only love her for 4 days in a whole lifetime–which days would you choose?
He: Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring.
Friend: That’s too greedy. What if you only had 3 days?
He: I would love her yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Friend: What about 2 days?
He: The odd and the even days.
Friend: You are too much, what if you only had 1 day? 1 day!
He: I would love her with the day that I live.

Un documentar excepţional, aici.

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.”

~ George Bernard Shaw

“This is the true joy in life – being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

~George Bernard Shaw

Earlier today I wrote about the Republicans’ claim that most Americans are “over-insured.” This, they say, is the real problem with our health care system, because it encourages people to have “unnecessary” and costly treatments.

This claim, in turn, points to an enduring myth about health care that has yet to be seriously challenged, even by Democrats, in the current debate. It’s the idea that if people had better access to health care, it would lead to “overuse,” and therefore increased cost. That’s why we can’t have single-payer or any other reform that gives people freer, cheaper access to health care services, conservatives argue—because without financial barriers, everyone would be running to the doctor every time they sneezed.

This myth treats medical procedures as if they were enjoyable leisure activities that everyone would like to partake of more often if only they were given the chance: “Gosh, I’ve got some free time today–I think I’ll go sit in my doctor’s waiting room” or “Wow, I’d love to have another colonoscopy this month” or “Hey, why don’t I have my hip replaced–after all, it’s free.” The overuse myth suggests that a large portion of the U.S. population is suffering from Munchausen syndrome—or at the very least, that we are masochistic hypochodriacs.

In reality, there’s scant evidence that better access leads to overuse–although the opposite is certainly true. And the meteoric rise in health care costs, beginning in the 1990s, has no apparent relationship to greater access. As Physicians for a National Health Program pointed out several years back:

[T]hose with interests in rising health expenditures will try to make sure the American public does not understand the real causes of the recent surge in medical inflation. Their loudest argument is that Americans overuse medical care and that such overuse would only worsen if all Americans were insured.

Overuse does exist, the evidence indicates. But so does worrisome underuse. And overuse cannot explain the latest burst in health insurance prices or the sharp rises in what drugstores and doctors charge. There is no credible evidence that Americans received a lot more medical care in the past few years. But the price of health care has skyrocketed nonetheless. That inflation is because of the market power of insurers, drug manufacturers, hospitals and other suppliers of medical services.

PNHP also argues that ”the expectation that patients (especially the sickest 20 percent of the population that account for 80 percent of health spending) should be able to distinguish between what care is ‘necessary’ and what is not is fantastical.” In other words, if people are having too many costly treatments, it’s not because they are choosing to do so; it’s because they are being told to do so by parties with a vested interest in making money off those treatments. 

The real myth is the notion that a system of medicine-for-profit can yield sound health care. In  the preface to his 1909 play The Doctor’s Dilemma, George Bernard Shaw (an early advocate of a publicly run health care system), described the internal contradiction inherent in this idea:

It is not the fault of our doctors that the medical service of the community, as at present provided for, is a murderous absurdity. That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity. But that is precisely what we have done. And the more appalling the mutilation, the more the mutilator is paid. He who corrects the ingrowing toe-nail receives a few shillings: he who cuts your inside out receives hundreds of guineas, except when he does it to a poor person for practice.

Scandalized voices murmur that these operations are necessary. They may be. It may also be necessary to hang a man or pull down a house. But we take good care not to make the hangman and the housebreaker the judges of that. If we did, no man’s neck would be safe and no man’s house stable.

Shaw’s words of advice for those approaching the health care system: “Treat the private operator exactly as you would treat a private executioner.”

Imagination is thebeginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
George Bernard Shaw

“Science is always wrong.  It never solves a problem without creating ten more.“   — George Bernard Shaw

“Although I cannot lay an egg, I am a very good judge of omelettes”

-George Bernard Shaw