STEM deserves our scrutiny

Can we really trust STEM to save our economy and our environment, if the driving force behind it is coming from established companies like Chevron?  Yes, we need students who are strong in the 'hard' sciences, but we also need students who are equally strong in innovative, creative thinking, and morality.  We need people to scrutinize the establishment, not just operate it.

At present, STEM professions fit snugly into the capitalist paradigm, but that paradigm is broken.  The economic problems we're seeing won't be solved by throwing more engineers into the system.  Infinite growth does not work in a consumer economy, especially in a world with finite resources and a large population.  Climate change, recession--these are signs that capitalism is failing us--that we've pushed too far and the system is pushing back.  So let's make sure that our engineers and scientists and computer programmers can think for themselves, and make decisions that aren't driven by short term profit.


To balance STEM, I say we need PAMPHLET

Politics Art  Music Philosophy History Literature Economics  Theatre

Let's build a new paradigm!

everything louder than everything else

Logging into my facebook last night, I saw this ad on the homepage.  My god.  People are always talking about how narcissitic our generation is, and it's already such a tired old platitude that most of the time it's annoying to listen to people chuckle over.  But sometimes you find examples of this narcissism so blatant that it's hard not to laugh.

narcissism, commodified and sold to narcissists

So, I concede--to the older generation--that millennials are narcissistic.  However, we millenials are narcisstic for good reason.  Narcissism is not a gene, or a temperament.  It is a behavior.  Which is why i think it is important for people to realize that:

1. Narcissism is not a personality trait.  It is a market survival strategy
• In the 21st century labor market, people sell themselves, their skills and their ideas on the marketplace.  This requires marketing and advertising.  Where it gets complicated is when public and private begin to meld.  What looks like good advertising in public can definitely look like narcissism in private.
2. Baby boomers invented the technology that allowed this explosion of narcissism
• If you give your child a smartphone, a camera, an internet, and about a hundred different platforms for self-broadcasting, what do you expect to happen?
• The irony of posting this on a blog is not lost on me

Peter Drucker

Managing the Nonprofit Organization has been my introduction to Peter Drucker's body of work, and I must say I am impressed.  Before I knew who he was, I was skeptical of his near universal acclaim as a great business thinker.  His great popularity led me to believe that he was some type A alpha-male businessman celebrity.  But I was wrong.  Drucker isn't a celebrity in the traditional sense.  He's not good looking or cocky.  He's one of the most genuine writers in the business-lit. field I've ever read.  Wise, softspoken and old-fashioned come to mind.  He skillfully mixes exposition on his theories of management with historical examples, personal anecdotes, old proverbs.  The result is clear, practical no-nonsense business wisdom.

Here are a handful of the takeaways I got from this book:

• Raise standards, and you not only have better performance and attract more people
• "What attracts people to an organization are high standards, because high standards create self-respect and pride...it is the job of the leader to set high standards"

• To operate effectively, non-profits must frame moral causes in economic terms
• "to believe that whatever we do is a moral cause, and should be pursued whether there are results or not, is a perennial temptation...[however] the nonprofit must set specific goals"

• Good executives make only as many decisions as they have to, and no more
• "the least effective decision makers are the ones who constantly make decisions"

• Always test new ideas.
• "At the full scale, even tiny and easily correctible flaws will destroy the innovation"

• Reward people for their performance, not their potential.  No "crown princes"
• "the worst thing an organization can do is limit its development is by importing society's class system into its own operations"

• Set high standards, even it requires people fail before they succeed
•  "One can always relax standards, but one can never raise them."

• Inspiration flows top down
• [giving advice to new teachers] "Make sure you don't lose the top 10% of the class.  If you lose those, you've lost everybody.  But if the top 10% are excited and learn, the average student will learn"