Resource Planning Quotes

There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. ...Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.

As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.

A strategy is an action plan of what you want to achieve and how. It defines where you want to see yourself in the long-term and how you are going to use your resources, skills and competencies to achieve that.

Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation. Now, it's long been understood very well that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails as long as it's possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited: that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage-can. At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or, alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole and, by now, that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass-communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely, to impose necessary illusions, manipulate and deceive the stupid majority, and remove them from the public arena. The question, in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.

If you can dream it up, you can team it up.

Father, I declare that my decisions today will change the trajectory of my future and bring it into alignment with Your plans for me. Wherever I place my feet, I walk in Your authority and expand my territory for Your name’s sake. Increase my productivity and efficiency and give me the anointing of Solomon to wisely manage my resources today. In Jesus's name, amen.

[..]Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species." Yes? Why is that?" Because it means the end of innovation," Malcolm said. "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behaviour. We innovate new behaviour to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. [..]

Faith drives a wedge between ethics and suffering. Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they are evil and worth of punishment (sodomy, marijuana use, homosexuality, the killing of blastocysts, etc). And yet, where suffering and death are found in abundance their causes are often deemed to be good (withholding funds for family planning in the third world, prosecuting nonviolent drug offenders, preventing stem cell research, etc). This inversion of priorities not only victimizes innocent people and squanders scarce resources; it completely falsifies our ethics. It is time we found a more reasonable approach to answering questions of right and wrong.

I plan to intern for a law firm in my hometown next summer with the hopes of getting a job in their human resources department. Then I’m going to buy a house with Jameson and we’re going to live together, get married, and make cardigan-wearing babies.

What you do with your resources in this life is your autobiography.

So for those who think abuse survivors can simply logically process their situation and get out of and over the situation easily, think again. The parts of our brain that deal with planning, cognition, learning, and decision-making become disconnected with the emotional parts of our brain – they can cease to talk to each other when an individual becomes traumatized. It usually takes a great deal of effort, resources, strength, validation, addressing wounding on all levels of body and mind, for a survivor to become fully empowered to begin to heal from this form of trauma.

Waste is any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value. — James P. Womak and Daniel T. Jones,

We burn through a lot of resources obsessing over possible outcomes and forming contingency plans, but in reality we’re just fueling our anxiety.

If the data reveals that your customers are unhappy with your product, then not making a decision to improve your product is a waste of your resources and time spent on learning this.

The startling truth is that our best efforts for civil rights, international peace, population control, conservation of natural resources, and assistance to the starving of the earth—urgent as they are—will destroy rather than help if made in the present spirit. For, as things stand, we have nothing to give. If our own riches and our own way of life are not enjoyed here, they will not be enjoyed anywhere else. Certainly they will supply the immediate jolt of energy and hope that methedrine, and similar drugs, give in extreme fatigue. But peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love. No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

Slavery wasn’t a crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into one. Racial discrimination wasn’t a crisis until the civil rights movement turned it into one. Sex discrimination wasn’t a crisis until feminism turned it into one. Apartheid wasn’t a crisis until the anti-apartheid movement turned it into one. In the very same way, if enough of us stop looking away and decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one, and the political class will have to respond, both by making resources available and by bending the free market rules that have proven so pliable when elite interests are in peril.

Startups that succeed are those that manage to iterate enough times before running out of resources.

If the research is done for brand awareness and the results don't show any rosy picture, then maybe you want to share those results with your marketing head who can include more brand awareness strategies in her marketing plan.

When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isn’t going as we hoped, our first instinct isn’t usually to rethink it. Instead, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment.

Those who favor a “grand plan” over experimentation fail to understand the role that failed experiments play in creating progress in society. Failures quickly and efficiently signal what doesn’t work, minimizing waste and redirecting scarce resources to what does work. A market economy is an experimental discovery process, in which business failures are inevitable and any attempt to eliminate them only ensures even greater failures.

Mark Twain once wrote, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”49 Worry has a way of holding our attention hostage. This is especially true for things we can’t control due to the elevated level of uncertainty. We burn through a lot of resources obsessing over possible outcomes and forming contingency plans, but in reality we’re just fueling our anxiety. Trying to think our way out of situations beyond our control may feel productive, but it’s nothing more than a powerful distraction. Worry baits us with the promise of a solution but usually offers none.

God has a habit of using people, their gifts, and their resources to carry out His plans. In fact, we were created to be God’s deputies, doing His work on earth.

I must accept those things over which I have no control. I must turn my adversities into advantages. The second rule meant carefully husbanding any resources and planning with those in mind.

City Planners, collectively, play a huge role in societies’ ability to steward capital wisely. With most of humanity living in cities, their efficiency or lack there of has huge implications for how people interact with resources. And from an ESG perspective, the condition of civilization can be largely measured by the interactions between people and resources

Whether or not we are able to realise our desires, put our plans into effect, do what we know to be right, will depend on our access to powers and resources which we need to acquire, or to have acquired, from the world around us.

If economic catastrophe does come, will it be a time that draws Christians together to share every resource we have, or will it drive us apart to hide in our own basements or mountain retreats, guarding at gunpoint our private stores from others? If we faithfully use our assets for his kingdom now, rather than hoarding them, can't we trust our faithful God to provide for us then?

Putting aside the concerns about the intentions of the rulers and the incentives for the workers, socialism cannot work because the central planner(s) would lack market prices and hence would have no way of determining, even after the fact, if their “rational” plan for production made an efficient use of resources.

When the ships had lifted, they returned across the river to the silence of death. Then his grandfather told him, "Many fine things your father had planned for you: learning and useful work and a life of satisfaction and peace. Do you recall this?" "Yes, Grandfather." "The learning you shall have. You will learn patience and resource, the ability of your hands and your mind. You will have useful work: the destruction of evil men. What work could be more useful? This is Beyond; you will find that your work is never done—so therefore you may never know life of peace. However, I guarantee you ample satisfaction, for I will teach you to crave the blood of these men more than the flesh of woman." The old man had been as good as his word.

* Be ready for rainy-day emergencies * Avoid excessive debt; be content with what we have * Use the resources of the earth wisely; don´t be wasteful * Prepare for the future by making spending and savings plans * Keep a family or personal budget * Teach children wise spending habits and help them save for the future * Obtain an education or vocational training * Find gainful employment As we become self-reliant, we will be prepared to face challenges with confidence and peace of mind.

distinct vision, a precise plan, plenty of resources, and incredible leadership, but if you don’t have the right people, you’re not going to get anywhere.

If you can dream it up. You can team it up.

Prayer Releases All Your Eternal Resources

This was my sole resource, my only plan: Till that which suits a part infects the whole, And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

The more you plan, the more you will know the likelihood of your idea is successful, the time needed for that, and the other resources required.

Far from shocking the rulers of Europe, the war that erupted in August 1914 was widely anticipated, rigorously rehearsed, immensely resourced and meticulously planned.

Only a small part of our population is encouraged to believe in themselves and their potential from childhood on. People raised with advantages tend to see more possibilities. People who were taught self-worth from a young age are more likely to believe in their capabilities as adults. People with more resources usually perceive a goal as more easily achieved than those who have less.

With a comprehensive action plan, a coalition can engage peole, ideas, and resources across sectorsto create a synergy of health and prevention efforts that will have a lasting effect on community health.

But far too often when we face the failure of a business venture, we let that failure paralyze us from trying again. The failure could stem from a lack of financial planning, a lack of resources, or the lack of the right team members. But you have to realize that failure is part of the process when you are on the road to success. The only way to get back on track is to come up with another plan. I’ve failed more times than I can count. But you can’t let the failure freeze you in place and stop you from pursuing your dreams.

You will rarely have things go the way you planned. Just remember you're objective and keep on moving in that direction. Make do with what resources you have and deliver the agreed upon result anyway. It will set you apart from most of the rest.

When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isn’t going as we hoped, our first instinct isn’t usually to rethink it. Instead, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment. Evidence shows that entrepreneurs persist with failing strategies when they should pivot, NBA general managers and coaches keep investing in new contracts and more playing time for draft busts, and politicians continue sending soldiers to wars that didn’t need to be fought in the first place.

The political merchandisers appeal only to the weak­nesses of voters, never to their potential strength. They make no attempt to educate the masses into becoming fit for self-government; they are content merely to manipulate and exploit them. For this pur­pose all the resources of psychology and the social sciences are mobilized and set to work. Carefully se­lected samples of the electorate are given "interviews in depth." These interviews in depth reveal the uncon­scious fears and wishes most prevalent in a given so­ciety at the time of an election. Phrases and images aimed at allaying or, if necessary, enhancing these fears, at satisfying these wishes, at least symbolically, are then chosen by the experts, tried out on readers and audiences, changed or improved in the light of the information thus obtained. After which the political campaign is ready for the mass communicators. All that is now needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look "sincere." Under the new dispen­sation, political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The person­ality of the candidate and the way he is projected by the advertising experts are the things that really mat­ter. In one way or another, as vigorous he-man or kindly father, the candidate must be glamorous. He must also be an entertainer who never bores his audience. Inured to television and radio, that audience is accustomed to being distracted and does not like to be asked to con­centrate or make a prolonged intellectual effort. All speeches by the entertainer-candidate must therefore be short and snappy. The great issues of the day must be dealt with in five minutes at the most -- and prefera­bly (since the audience will be eager to pass on to something a little livelier than inflation or the H-bomb) in sixty seconds flat. The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to over-simplify complex is­sues. From a pulpit or a platform even the most con­scientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth. The methods now being used to merchan­dise the political candidate as though he were a deo­dorant positively guarantee the electorate against ever hearing the truth about anything.

... General Petraeus recognized the sacrifice made by two soldiers who had planned to become naturalized citizens at the ceremony, and were now represented by two pairs of boots on two chairs, having been killed in action two days before. "They died serving a country that was not yet theirs," Petraeus observed... I wish every American who out of ignorance or worse curses immigrants as criminals or a drain on the country's resources or a threat to our "culture" could have been there. I would like them to know that immigrants, many of them having entered the country illegally, are making sacrifices for Americans that many Americans would not make for them.

You have everything within you to do great things in this world. Maybe, you are inspired to sing a song, write a book or poems, create art in various forms. Or you may decide to find a cure for disease, end world hunger, prevent abuse, or take a stand politically. The question is how to begin the process of fulfilling your vision. Start where you are and use the resources you have to build from there. Inspiration is what motivates you to achieve your remarkable ideas. Also it takes time and dedication to excel to the next level.

Why does socialist central planning not work? The means of production are not held privately, so there cannot be any exchange markets for them and therefore no exchange ratios established. That means there is no way to calculate profit and loss. Without profit and loss, there is no way to assess the tradeoffs associated with alternative uses of resources.

Advertising makes it possible for a company to make it our problem that it makes a product that solves a problem we do not and will never have.

The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.

Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be.

As entrepreneurs we have a “can do” mindset. This often means that when something needs to be done, we are tempted to just roll up our sleeves and just do it. However, spending a lot of time doing things that aren’t your area of expertise or aren’t a good use of your time can quickly become a very expensive exercise. Remember, money is a renewable resource—you can always get more money but you can never get more time.

Let’s see, you will need a project plan, resource allocation, a timeline, test cycles, a budget, a contingency budget, lots of diagrams, flowcharts, a media release, a strategic vision, a charter, technical specifications, business rules, travel expenses, a development environment, deployment instructions, a user acceptance test, stationary, overtime schedule, a mock-up, prototypes…” “Tell me,” she said, “did the people who built the pyramids have any of those?” “Mostly, they had beer. Come to think of it, if there had been such a thing as a Business Analyst in ancient Egypt, then the hieroglyph for it would have been very graphical, if you know what I mean.

I use “anticapitalist” because conservative defenders of capitalism regularly say their liberal and socialist opponents are against capitalism. They say efforts to provide a safety net for all people are “anticapitalist.” They say attempts to prevent monopolies are “anticapitalist.” They say efforts that strengthen weak unions and weaken exploitative owners are “anticapitalist.” They say plans to normalize worker ownership and regulations protecting consumers, workers, and environments from big business are “anticapitalist.” They say laws taxing the richest more than the middle class, redistributing pilfered wealth, and guaranteeing basic incomes are “anticapitalist.” They say wars to end poverty are “anticapitalist.” They say campaigns to remove the profit motive from essential life sectors like education, healthcare, utilities, mass media, and incarceration are “anticapitalist.” In doing so, these conservative defenders are defining capitalism. They define capitalism as the freedom to exploit people into economic ruin; the freedom to assassinate unions; the freedom to prey on unprotected consumers, workers, and environments; the freedom to value quarterly profits over climate change; the freedom to undermine small businesses and cushion corporations; the freedom from competition; the freedom not to pay taxes; the freedom to heave the tax burden onto the middle and lower classes; the freedom to commodify everything and everyone; the freedom to keep poor people poor and middle-income people struggling to stay middle income, and make rich people richer. The history of capitalism—of world warring, classing, slave trading, enslaving, colonizing, depressing wages, and dispossessing land and labor and resources and rights—bears out the conservative definition of capitalism.

Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it’s a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody knows. Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.” “Yes? Why is that?” “Because it means the end of innovation,” Malcolm said. “This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh, that hurts. Are you done?” “Almost,” Harding said. “Hang on.” “And believe me, it’ll be fast. If you map complex systems on a fitness landscape, you find the behavior can move so fast that fitness can drop precipitously. It doesn’t require asteroids or diseases or anything else. It’s just behavior that suddenly emerges, and turns out to be fatal to the creatures that do it. My idea was that dinosaurs—being complex creatures—might have undergone some of these behavioral changes. And that led to their extinction.

. . . published the Road Map to Peace. The premise of this plan, as the Palestinian historians Samih Farsoun and Naseer Aruri point out, "is that the nearly forty-year-old impasse is not caused by an abnormal and illegal occupation but by the Palestinian resistance to that occupation. Progress was thus linked to ending the intifada and all acts of resistance rather than ending the occupation or reversing decades of colonial impoverishment of land, resource, and institutions.

Months later, I learned that what happened that first day at restorative yoga hadn’t been entirely spiritual—I hadn’t just found the exact spot on the astral plane to tap into my sacred core. Instead, my instructor’s techniques happened to be the perfect mechanism to turn down my DMN. The default mode network is so-called because if you put people in an MRI machine for an hour and let their minds wander, the DMN is the system of connections in our brain that will light up. It’s arguably the default state of human consciousness, of boredom and daydreaming. In essence, our ego. So if you’re stuck in a machine for an hour, where does your mind go? If you’re like most people, you’ll ruminate on the past or plan your future. You might think about your relationships, upcoming errands, your zits. And scientists have found that some people who suffer from depression, anxiety, or C-PTSD have overactive DMNs. Which makes sense. The DMN is the seat of responsibility and insecurity. It can be a punishing force when it over-ruminates and gets caught in a toxic loop of obsession and self-doubt. The DMN can be silenced significantly by antidepressants or hallucinogenic substances. But the most efficient cure for an overactive DMN is mindfulness. Here’s how it works: In order for the DMN to start whirring, it needs resources to fuel its internal focus. If you’re intently focused on something external—like, say, filling out a difficult math worksheet—the brain simply doesn’t have the resources to focus internally and externally at the same time. So if you’re triggered, you can short-circuit an overactive DMN by cutting off its power source—shifting all of your brain’s energy to external stimuli instead.

Presenters in strategy meetings often seem to not seek a conversation at all. Instead, they appear to deflect as many questions as they can, saying they are “trying to get through the materials.” They want to move to the last page of the presentation as smoothly as possible and then get that all-important “yes” to the plan, that “yes” to the resource request, that “yes” to have a shot at the next promotion. A successful meeting is deemed to be one with little friction and maximum good feelings.

As the seemingly well-intentioned French journalist spoke about Africa’s scarcity and its limited resources, Nine smiled to himself almost condescendingly. He considered such statements an absolute joke. Africa did not, nor did it ever have, limited resources. Nine knew something the journalist obviously didn’t: Africa was the most abundantly resourced continent on the planet bar none. Like the despots who ruled much of the region, and the foreign governments who propped them up, he knew there was more than enough wealth in Africa’s mineral resources such as gold, diamonds and oil – not to mention the land that nurtured these resources – for every man, woman and child. He thought it unfortunate Africa had never been able to compete on a level playing field. The continent’s almost unlimited resources were the very reason foreigners had meddled in African affairs for the past century or more. Nine knew it was Omega’s plan, and that of other greedy organizations, to siphon as much wealth as they could out of vulnerable Third World countries, especially in Africa. The same organizations had the formula down pat: they indirectly started civil wars in mineral-rich regions by providing arms to opposing local factions, and sometimes even helped to create famines, in order to destabilize African countries. This made the targeted countries highly vulnerable to international control. Once the outside organizations had divided and conquered, they were then able to plunder the country’s resources.

In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity.

It will hardly be wise to adopt the suggestion… that we must stop treating the little sins as though they were big sins. That suggestion means apparently, that we must not worry too much about the little sins, but must let them remain unmolested. With regard to such an expedient, it may be suggested that in the moral battle: we are fighting against a very resourceful enemy, who does not reveal the position of his guns by desultory (lacking purpose) artillery actions when he plans a great attack. In the moral battle, as in the Great European War, the quiet sectors are usually the most dangerous. It’s through the “little sins” that Satan gains an entrance into our lives. Probably, therefore, it will be prudent to watch all sectors of the front and lose no time about introducing the unity of command.

Position B: Wolves, as top predators, are a natural part of healthy, complex, self-regulating ecosystems, and removing most of them (the plans call for 80, even 100 percent reduction in certain management units) is only bound to screw things up. Without wolves, deer and moose numbers explode in unsustainable numbers, then crash, over and over. Wolves, too, are a valued resource on which trappers and subsistence hunters depend, and a multimillion-dollar cash cow attracting throngs of ecotourists and photographers. Their presence also offers inestimable aesthetic value to many residents, even if they never manage to see one. Besides that, shooting wolves from airplanes is just plain wrong and reflects horribly on the state’s image. Anyone who doesn’t see things that way is a nearsighted, beetle-browed, knuckle-dragging redneck.

Original sin is now also translated into sickness, calling in a new and scientific priest craft who rush to the rescue. Man is sick, addicted, lame, and dangerous, needing constant protection and supervision by the state, insurance companies, and a never-ending parade of caring, licensed professionals. We are told over and over again that man’s illness and addictions are costing US billions. Man the slave/resource, is causing US trouble, he is interfering with OUR Plans. Man’s debt has now increased a billion-fold. Those who question the “plans” or the sanity of the metaphors in play, are diagnosed as morally unfit or mentally ill. Evil emerges as a metaphor which refers to those who refuse to accept the Plan—the prevailing Garden of Eden—created by God so She may bestow Her Love and Grace. If man refuses he must be force-fed.

We must flatly say that one of the greatest contemporary barriers to meaningful spiritual formation in Christlikeness is overconfidence in the spiritual efficacy of “regular church services,” of whatever kind they may be. Though they are vital, they are not enough. It is that simple. Individuals and local congregations of disciples must discover and effectively implement whatever is required to bring about the inner transformations of those who have really become apprentices of Jesus and who really do gather in immersion in the Trinitarian presence. In doing so they will have put in place the principles and absolutes of the New Testament churches, and they will certainly see the corresponding fruits and effects. Jesus did not give us a plan for spiritual formation that will fail, and he has the resources to see to it that it does not.

A definite pessimist believes the future can be known, but since it will be bleak, he must prepare for it. Perhaps surprisingly, China is probably the most definitely pessimistic place in the world today. When Americans see the Chinese economy grow ferociously fast (10% per year since 2000), we imagine a confident country mastering its future. But that’s because Americans are still optimists, and we project our optimism onto China. From China’s viewpoint, economic growth cannot come fast enough. Every other country is afraid that China is going to take over the world; China is the only country afraid that it won’t. China can grow so fast only because its starting base is so low. The easiest way for China to grow is to relentlessly copy what has already worked in the West. And that’s exactly what it’s doing: executing definite plans by burning ever more coal to build ever more factories and skyscrapers. But with a huge population pushing resource prices higher, there’s no way Chinese living standards can ever actually catch up to those of the richest countries, and the Chinese know it. This is why the Chinese leadership is obsessed with the way in which things threaten to get worse. Every senior Chinese leader experienced famine as a child, so when the Politburo looks to the future, disaster is not an abstraction. The Chinese public, too, knows that winter is coming. Outsiders are fascinated by the great fortunes being made inside China, but they pay less attention to the wealthy Chinese trying hard to get their money out of the country. Poorer Chinese just save everything they can and hope it will be enough. Every class of people in China takes the future deadly seriously.

Psalm 111:10. The fear of God. The awe and dread of all that spooky action at a distance. And the Devil was understood to be less an adversary than a particularly evil employee of God. He was that bastard in the Human Resources Department who looks for ways to screw with your life. Satan was real. And he wandered around each day with an eye out for opportunities to tempt ordinary people into sinning. And God allowed it. There was presumably a housing crisis in Heaven or something, and he let Satan roam the earth, tricking people out of their renting privileges in the afterlife.

To be exploited fundamentally means to be confused. When you're not confused you can't be exploited because you have clarity about the situation. To confuse people you must provide contradictory information. People who really want to do you harm will provide you confusing measures of good and bad feedback because that keeps you disorientated. Evil always want to camouflage itself as virtue witch means all the bad things that evil does is called justice against immorality. So they camouflage their brutality as a mask of virtue. Camouflage is so fundamentally an aspect of the predator-prey relationships. The mugger does not camouflage himself but, that's because he can leave. He is gonna run off and you'll never find him or catch him or at least that's the goal or plan right? The relationships were you're supposed to stay and continue to provide resources are the ones were camouflage is the most essential because you're constantly looking at somebody who is a predator and that have to continually camouflage themselves as somebody who is not a predator. The most fundamental thing is the camouflage of non-empathy with empathy. This is why people who lack empathy always use the language of empathy and that's whats so confusing. There are a lot of great antidotes to this. I mean, you just ask that person questions about yourself that they dont have any self interest in knowing and find out whether they know the answers. All the things personal to you that dont have any direct impact on the other person. It's a great way to find out whether they have empathy or curiosity about you or not.

Many companies enter businesses planning to capture only a small percentage of the market. Such plans are not conservative; they are extremely dangerous. They are strategies for failure. The only good plans and the only good marketing programs are those aimed at dominance, backed by sufficient resources to achieve it, and executed with precision.

We have got to find a a new plan of attacking it. Something that will show clearly not only the magnitude of the industries and commercial developments, and the changes they have brought in various parts of the country, but something which will make clear the great principles by which industrial leaders are combining and controlling these resources.

If it is humanly possible, you should plan to have one or more in-person meetings with your boss early on. It is essential to make face-to-face connections early on to begin to establish a basis of confidence and trust (the same is true if you’re leading a virtual team). So if this means you need to fight for the resources and fly halfway around the world, you should do it.

When we lose a righteous person who is dear to us, we have the wonderful opportunity to honor that person by incorporating the best principles from his or her life into ours. What were his gifts? What were her talents? A desire to serve, a happy outlook on life, generosity with material possessions, an even greater generosity in having a heart that included everyone? Following the example of a loved one, we can love the Lord, make covenants with the Lord, and keep them faithfully. We too can seek to understand the Savior's great mission of atonement, redemption, and salvation. We too can seek to become worthy followers of the Son of God. And we too can anticipate that when the time comes for us to step through the veil of mortality, leaving our failing and pain-filled bodies behind, we will see the loving smile and feel the welcoming embrace, not only of our Heavenly Parents and of the Savior, but also of our loved ones who will greet us in full vigor, full remembrance, and full love. When we are in the valley of the shadow, it is a time of questions without answers. We ask, "How can I bear this? Why did such a good woman have to die? Why aren't my prayers being answered?" In this life, we will not receive answers to many questions of "why"—partly because the limitations of mortality prevent us from understanding the full plan. But I testify to you that the answer of faith is a powerful one, even in the most difficult of circumstances, because it does not depend on us—on our strength to endure, on our willpower, on the depth of our intellectual understanding, or on the resources we can accumulate. No, it depends on God, whose strength is omnipotence, whose understanding is that of eternity, and who has the will to walk beside us in love, sharing our burden. He could part the Red Sea before us or calm the angry storm that besets us, but these would be small miracles for the God of nature. Instead, he chooses to do something harder: He wants to transform human nature into divine nature. And thus, when our Red Sea blocks our way and when the storm threatens to overwhelm us, he enters the water with us, holding us in the hands of love, supporting us with the arms of mercy. When we emerge from the valley of the shadow, we will see that he was there with us all the time.

The final element is execution. The only way a strategy can get implemented is if we dedicate resources to it. Good intentions are not enough—you’re not implementing the strategy that you intend if you don’t spend your time, your money, and your talent in a way that is consistent with your intentions. In your life, there are going to be constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward. That’s a dangerous way to build a strategy. All of these factors—priorities, balancing plans with opportunities, and allocating your resources—combine to create your strategy.

To get a better grasp of the problem, we have to ask: is the leader introducing the changes relying on his own resources, or does he depend on other people’s support; that is, does he have to beg help to achieve his goals, or can he impose them? If he’s begging help, he’s bound to fail and will get nowhere. But if he’s got his own resources and can impose his plans, then it’s unlikely he’ll be running serious risks. This is why the visionary who has armed force on his side has always won through, while unarmed even your visionary is always a loser. Because on top of everything else, we must remember that the general public’s mood will swing. It’s easy to convince people of something, but hard to keep them convinced. So when they stop believing in you, you must be in a position to force them to believe.

It is possible in a city street neighborhood to know all kinds of people without unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations, fears of giving offense, embarrassments respecting impositions or commitments, and all such paraphernalia of obligations which can accompany less limited relationships. It is possible to be on excellent sidewalk terms with people who are very different from oneself, and even, as time passes, on familiar public terms with them. Such relationships can, and do, endure for many years, for decades; they could never have formed without that line, much less endured. The form precisely because they are by-the-way to people’s normal public sorties. ‘Togetherness’ is a fittingly nauseating name for an old ideal in planning theory. This ideal is that if anything is shared among people, much should be shared. ‘Togetherness,’ apparently a spiritual resource of the new suburbs, works destructively in cities. The requirement that much shall be shared drives city people apart. When an area of a city lacks a sidewalk life, the people of the place must enlarge their private lives is they are to have anything approaching equivalent contact with their neighbors. They must settle for some form of ‘togetherness,’ in which more is shared with one another than in the life of the sidewalks, or else they must settle for lack of contact. Inevitably the outcome is one or the other; it has to be, and either has distressing results. In the case of the first outcome, where people do share much, they become exceedingly choosy as to who their neighbors are, or with whom they associate at all. They have to become so.

By striking at welfare programs and unemployment benefits, blocking a national health care system, and making threatening gestures toward pension plans and social security, not only did this politics cripple social democracy, but in the process it undermined political democracy, the one political system that depends upon those who work. It might be recalled that the totalitarian regimes of Soviet Russia and Germany each instituted a strong network of social services; inverted totalitarianism seeks to dismantle or significantly reduce them, thereby throwing individuals back on their own resources, reducing their power. How far that power is being reduced can be gauged by the response of businesses to the lack of national health care and guarantees for pension systems. They have cut pensions and health care benefits while lavishing huge bonuses upon departing executives.

Find the resources, he proposed to Darden, for me to create a new center on the campus of the University of Virginia, and I will use this center to create a new school of political economy and social philosophy. It would be an academic center, rigorously so, but one with a quiet political agenda: to defeat the “perverted form” of liberalism that sought to destroy their way of life, “a social order,” as he described it, “built on individual liberty,

1. Recruit the smallest group of people who can accomplish what must be done quickly and with high quality. Comparative Advantage means that some people will be better than others at accomplishing certain tasks, so it pays to invest time and resources in recruiting the best team for the job. Don’t make that team too large, however—Communication Overhead makes each additional team member beyond a core of three to eight people a drag on performance. Small, elite teams are best. 2. Clearly communicate the desired End Result, who is responsible for what, and the current status. Everyone on the team must know the Commander’s Intent of the project, the Reason Why it’s important, and must clearly know the specific parts of the project they’re individually responsible for completing—otherwise, you’re risking Bystander Apathy. 3. Treat people with respect. Consistently using the Golden Trifecta—appreciation, courtesy, and respect—is the best way to make the individuals on your team feel Important and is also the best way to ensure that they respect you as a leader and manager. The more your team works together under mutually supportive conditions, the more Clanning will naturally occur, and the more cohesive the team will become. 4. Create an Environment where everyone can be as productive as possible, then let people do their work. The best working Environment takes full advantage of Guiding Structure—provide the best equipment and tools possible and ensure that the Environment reinforces the work the team is doing. To avoid having energy sapped by the Cognitive Switching Penalty, shield your team from as many distractions as possible, which includes nonessential bureaucracy and meetings. 5. Refrain from having unrealistic expectations regarding certainty and prediction. Create an aggressive plan to complete the project, but be aware in advance that Uncertainty and the Planning Fallacy mean your initial plan will almost certainly be incomplete or inaccurate in a few important respects. Update your plan as you go along, using what you learn along the way, and continually reapply Parkinson’s Law to find the shortest feasible path to completion that works, given the necessary Trade-offs required by the work. 6. Measure to see if what you’re doing is working—if not, try another approach. One of the primary fallacies of effective Management is that it makes learning unnecessary. This mind-set assumes your initial plan should be 100 percent perfect and followed to the letter. The exact opposite is true: effective Management means planning for learning, which requires constant adjustments along the way. Constantly Measure your performance across a small set of Key Performance Indicators (discussed later)—if what you’re doing doesn’t appear to be working, Experiment with another approach.

The United Nations will soon come out with a plan known as Agenda 21, in which they will push everyone into cities so we can keep better track of them, and the common, everyday people will no longer be able to access the great outdoors without having to go through a lot of red tape. The governments of the world will start declaring vast stretches of land in their own countries as national monuments or just buy up the land to prevent the freedom to create more energy reserves so that only a few will be in control over all of the resources of the world.

Failure to act in a crisis is tantamount to accepting a dreadful outcome. I must try to save myself before a rash personal act stubs me out reminiscent of a sucked dry cigarette. I lack a disciplined mind to engage in rigorous study. I am an accidental psychologist, an unreliable philosopher, an unscrupulous self-ethnographer, a crackpot cultural anthropologist, an untrustworthy historian, and a deceitful reporter whom surrounded himself with a facade of untruths, delusions, and illusions. I need to gather personal willpower and attempt my level best to tackle my greatest obstacle – a personal penchant to parley with self-destructive behavior. I seek to penetrate the barriers of constructed falsehoods and reveal the brutal truth of why my soul is so tarnished, engage in many acts of contrition, and atone for a wasteful life. My goal is to construct a living philosophy that will sustain me through all stages of life. I shall use whatever resources are available to me including an intuitive belief in free will to design a self-rescue plan. I must obliterate all vestiges of narcissistic and selfish persona by slaying the ego and dissolving a grotesque sense of self that is preoccupied with the past and fearful of the future.

OKRs have two variants, and it is important to differentiate between them: Commitments are OKRs that we agree will be achieved, and we will be willing to adjust schedules and resources to ensure that they are delivered. The expected score for a committed OKR is 1.0; a score of less than 1.0 requires explanation for the miss, as it shows errors in planning and/or execution. By contrast, aspirational OKRs express how we’d like the world to look, even though we have no clear idea how to get there and/or the resources necessary to deliver the OKR. Aspirational OKRs have an expected average score of 0.7, with high variance.

I have talked with many pastors whose real struggle isn’t first with the hardship of ministry, the lack of appreciation and involvement of people, or difficulties with fellow leaders. No, the real struggle they are having, one that is very hard for a pastor to admit, is with God. What is caused to ministry become hard and burdensome is disappointment and anger at God. We have forgotten that pastoral ministry is war and that you will never live successfully in the pastorate if you live with the peacetime mentality. Permit me to explain. The fundamental battle of pastoral ministry is not with the shifting values of the surrounding culture. It is not the struggle with resistant people who don't seem to esteem the Gospel. It is not the fight for the success of ministries of the church. And is not the constant struggle of resources and personnel to accomplish the mission. No, the war of the pastor is a deeply personal war. It is far on the ground of the pastor’s heart. It is a war values, allegiances, and motivations. It's about the subtle desires and foundational dreams. This war is the greatest threat to every pastor. Yet it is a war that we often naïvely ignore or quickly forget in the busyness of local church ministry. When you forget the Gospel, you begin to seek from the situations, locations and relationships of ministry what you already have been given in Christ. You begin to look to ministry for identity, security, hope, well-being, meeting, and purpose. These things are already yours in Christ. In ways of which you are not always aware, your ministry is always shaped by what is in functional control of your heart. The fact of the matter is that many pastors become awe numb or awe confused, or they get awe kidnapped. Many pastors look at glory and don't seek glory anymore. Many pastors are just cranking out because they don't know what else to do. Many pastors preach a boring, uninspiring gospel that makes you wonder why people aren't sleeping their way through it. Many pastors are better at arguing fine points of doctrine than stimulating divine wonder. Many pastors see more stimulated by the next ministry, vision of the next step in strategic planning than by the stunning glory of the grand intervention of grace into sin broken hearts. The glories of being right, successful, in control, esteemed, and secure often become more influential in the way that ministry is done than the awesome realities of the presence, sovereignty, power, and love of God. Mediocrity is not a time, personnel, resource, or location problem. Mediocrity is a heart problem. We have lost our commitment to the highest levels of excellence because we have lost our awe.

Visualize a purpose and an outcome. This concept really struck me from reading Frankl, and it’s a lesson all leaders need to master. Think of it as a mental dress rehearsal for what will happen (notice I said will, not could). If you picture a positive result, it trains your brain to look for the resources that will help you achieve it. Seeing what you want stimulates your creativity and strengthens your confidence. This is more than just daydreaming. It’s eliminating the self-doubt and negativity that can deter you, and putting in place a plan that will lead you on your desired path. And once you know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s much easier to face the dark.

This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh, that hurts. Are

Some feel absolutely incapable of ever saying no to other people, even though they know that to say yes means that their own resources will be taxed to the limit or beyond. They feel guilty doing something for themselves or having plans of their own. They are always ready to serve others at the expense of themselves, not because they have transcended their own physical and psychological needs and have become saints, but because they believe that that is what they “should” do to be a “good person.” Sad to say, this often means that they are always helping other people but feel incapable of nourishing or helping themselves. That would be too “selfish,” too self-centered. Thus, they put other people’s feelings first, but for the wrong reasons. Deep down they may be running away from themselves by serving other people, or they may be doing it to gain approval from others or because they were taught and now think that that is the way to be a “good person.” This is a kind of faux selflessness. This behavior can create enormous stress because you are not replenishing your inner resources, nor are you aware of your attachments to the role you have adopted. You can exhaust yourself running around “doing good” and helping others, and in the end be so depleted that you are incapable of doing any good at all and unable to help even yourself. It’s not the doing things for others that is the source of the stress here. It is the lack of peace and harmony in your mind as you engage in doing all the doing.

Judging by its commercial, political, and media success, the evangelical movement seems to be booming. But is it still Christian? I am not asking that question glibly or simply to provoke a reaction. My concern is that we are getting dangerously close to the place in everyday American church life where the Bible is mined for “relevant” quotes but is largely irrelevant on its own terms; God is used as a personal resource rather than known, worshiped, and trusted; Jesus Christ is a coach with a good game plan for our victory rather than a Savior who has already achieved it for us; salvation is more a matter of having our best life now than being saved from God’s judgment by God himself; and the Holy Spirit is an electrical outlet we can plug into for the power we need to be all that we can be.

When planners fail to account for gender, public spaces become male spaces by default. The reality is that half the global population has a female body. Half the global population has to deal on a daily basis with the sexualised menace that is visited on that body. The entire global population needs the care that, currently, is mainly carried out, unpaid, by women. These are not niche concerns, and if public spaces are truly to for everyone, we have to start accounting for the lives of the other half of the world. And, as we've seen, this isn't just a matter of justice: it's also a matter of simple economics. By accounting for women's care responsibilities in urban planning, we make it easier for women to engage fully in the paid workforce - and as we will see in the next chapter, this is a significant driver of GDP. By accounting for the sexual violence women face and introducing preventative measures - like providing enough single-sex public toilets we save money in the long run by reducing the significant economic cost of violence against women. When we account for female socialisation in the design of our open spaces and public activities, we again save money in the long run by ensuring women's long-term mental and physical health. - In short, designing the female half of the world out of our public spaces is not a matter of resources. It's a matter of priorities, and, currently, whether unthinkingly or not, we just aren't prioritising women. This is manifestly unjust, and economically illiterate. Women have an equal right to public resources: we must stop excluding them by design

I thought the most likely explanation was that most of the people in the world just didn't know they were allowed not to have kids. Either that, or they were too unimaginative to think of anything else to do, or too beaten-down to do whatever it was they thought of. That had been a big reason why I had wanted so much to get into Harvard: I'd been sure it would be full of fortunate, resourceful, courageous people who had some better-conceived plan for life that I could learn about. It was a great disappointment to find that, even at Harvard, most people's plan was to have children and amass money for them. You would be talking to someone who seemed like they viewed the world as a place of free movement and the exchange of ideas, and then it would turn out they were in a huge hurry to get everything interesting over with while they were young.

FDR’s August 1941 oil embargo of Japan proved to be the final straw. As former State Department official Charles Maechling explains, “While oil was not the sole cause of the deterioration of relations, once employed as a diplomatic weapon, it made hostilities inevitable. The United States recklessly cut the energy lifeline of a powerful adversary without due regard for the predictably explosive consequences.”144 In desperation, Japanese leaders approved a plan to deliver a preemptive “knockout blow” against the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, clearing the way to seize resource-rich territory in Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies. As scholar Jack Snyder notes, Japan’s strategy reflected its conviction that “if the sun is not ascending, it is descending,” and that war with the US was “inevitable” given America’s “inherently rapacious nature.”145

In the end, I thought the most likely explanation was that most of the people in the world just didn’t know they were allowed not to have kids. Either that, or they were too unimaginative to think of anything else to do, or too beaten-down to do whatever it was they thought of. That had been a big reason why I had wanted so much to get into Harvard: I’d been sure it would be full of fortunate, resourceful, courageous people who had some better-conceived plan for life that I could learn about. It was a great disappointment to find that, even at Harvard, most people’s plan was to have children and amass money for them. You would be talking to someone who seemed like they viewed the world as a place of free movement and the exchange of ideas, and then it would turn out they were in a huge hurry to get everything interesting over with while they were young.

My dad, shattered by Mom’s exit, began to work hard at becoming the husband who could be kind and caring toward his wife. Through many months of counseling with Rick, our family friend, my dad began the process of self-examination and rethinking what it means to love someone. He began to put his time, energy and resources into his relationship with Mom—planning special trips alone together, listening to her as she shared her thoughts and feelings, and learning to support and encourage my mom instead of demeaning and criticizing her. When Growing Pains filmed in Hawaii for a second time, Dad gave Mom a new wedding ring set, asking her to rejoin him. All of us were astonished by the change in Dad. He grew to be much more loving and tender with Mom. He bought her gifts and spoke to her in a sweet voice. He became a different husband—and we all reaped the benefits of his maturity.

But capitalism has not stood still since Marx's day. Writing in the middle years of the nineteenth century, Marx could not be expected to grasp the full consequences of his insights into the centralization of capital and the development of technology. He could not be expected to foresee that capitalism would develop not only from mercantilism into the dominant industrial form of his day—from stateaided trading monopolies into highly competitive industrial units—but further, that with the centralization of capital, capitalism returns to its mercantilist origins on a higher level of development and reassumes the state-aided monopolistic form. The economy tends to merge with the state and capitalism begins to "plan" its development instead of leaving it exclusively to the interplay of competition and market forces. To be sure, the system does not abolish the traditional class struggle, but manages to contain it, using its immense technological resources to assimilate the most strategic sections of the working class.

Much of the so-called environmental movement today has transmuted into an aggressively nefarious and primitive faction. In the last fifteen years, many of the tenets of utopian statism have coalesced around something called the “degrowth” movement. Originating in Europe but now taking a firm hold in the United States, the “degrowthers,” as I shall characterize them, include in their ranks none other than President Barack Obama. On January 17, 2008, Obama made clear his hostility toward, of all things, electricity generated from coal and coal-powered plants. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal . . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. . . .”3 Obama added, “. . . So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”4 Degrowthers define their agenda as follows: “Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions.”5 It “is an essential economic strategy to pursue in overdeveloped countries like the United States—for the well-being of the planet, of underdeveloped populations, and yes, even of the sick, stressed, and overweight ‘consumer’ populations of overdeveloped countries.”6 For its proponents and adherents, degrowth has quickly developed into a pseudo-religion and public-policy obsession. In fact, the degrowthers insist their ideology reaches far beyond the environment or even its odium for capitalism and is an all-encompassing lifestyle and governing philosophy. Some of its leading advocates argue that “Degrowth is not just an economic concept. We shall show that it is a frame constituted by a large array of concerns, goals, strategies and actions. As a result, degrowth has now become a confluence point where streams of critical ideas and political action converge.”7 Degrowth is “an interpretative frame for a social movement, understood as the mechanism through which actors engage in a collective action.”8 The degrowthers seek to eliminate carbon sources of energy and redistribute wealth according to terms they consider equitable. They reject the traditional economic reality that acknowledges growth as improving living conditions generally but especially for the impoverished. They embrace the notions of “less competition, large scale redistribution, sharing and reduction of excessive incomes and wealth.”9 Degrowthers want to engage in polices that will set “a maximum income, or maximum wealth, to weaken envy as a motor of consumerism, and opening borders (“no-border”) to reduce means to keep inequality between rich and poor countries.”10 And they demand reparations by supporting a “concept of ecological debt, or the demand that the Global North pays for past and present colonial exploitation in the Global South.”11

I’m talking about all the order in the natural world,” Malcolm said. “And how perhaps it can emerge fast, through crystallization. Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it’s a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody knows. Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.” “Yes? Why is that?” “Because it means the end of innovation,” Malcolm said. “This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh,

the kind of woman you want to be. Be the kind of woman who is proud to be herself. Be the kind of woman who has so much love inside her that she won’t be tempted to change herself in order to get love from others. Be the kind of woman who focuses more on being interested than on other people thinking she’s interesting. Be the kind of woman who laughs loudly and often. Be the kind of woman who is generous—no matter how much money is in your bank account, you have a wealth of resources to offer others. Be the kind of woman who spends a lifetime learning, because knowledge is power and those who think they know it all are often the dumbest among us. Be the kind of woman both your eleven-year-old self and your ninety-year-old self would be proud of. Be the kind of woman who shows up for her life. Be the kind of woman who understands that she was made for more. Be the kind of woman who believes that she is capable of doing amazing things in this world. Be the kind of woman whose own dreams make her nervous—and then go ahead and do them anyway. Be the kind of woman who never asks permission to be herself. BEHAVIOR 2: CHOOSE ONE DREAM AND GO ALL IN Here’s the thing I believe about a goal that often annoys people: you can only focus on one at a time.

Sure, zombies can “be a metaphor.” They can represent the oppressed, as in Land of the Dead, or humanity’s feral nature, as in 28 Days. Or racial politics or fear of contagion or even the consumer unconscious (Night of the Living Dead, Resident Evil, Dawn of the Dead). We could play this game all night. But really, zombies are not “supposed to be metaphors.” They’re supposed to be friggin’ zombies. They follow the Zombie Rules: they rise from death to eat the flesh of the living, they shuffle in slow pursuit (or should, anyway), and most important, they multiply exponentially. They bring civilization down, taking all but the most resourceful, lucky and well-armed among us, whom they save for last. They make us the hunted; all of us. That’s the stuff zombies are supposed to do. Yes, they make excellent symbols, and metaphors, and have kick-ass mythopoeic resonance to boot. But their main job is to follow genre conventions, to play with and expand the Zombie Rules, to make us begin to see the world as a place colored by our own zombie contingency plans. […] Stories are the original virtual reality device; their internal rules spread out into reality around us like a bite-transmitted virus, slowly but inexorably consuming its flesh. They don’t just stand around “being metaphors” whose sole purpose is to represent things in the real world; they eat the real world.

I mentioned earlier how everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one's closest friends alive lost its value. Everything was sacrificed to this end. A man's character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated (having planned, however, to make full use of him first-to the last ounce of his physical resources)-under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life. The men were herded-sometimes to one place then to another; sometimes driven together, then apart-like a flock of sheep without a thought or a will of their own. A small but dangerous pack watched them from all sides, well versed in methods of torture and sadism. They drove the herd incessantly, backwards an forwards, with shouts, kicks and blows. And we, the sheep, thought of two things only-how to evade the bad dogs and how to get a little food.

You may not recognize the name Steven Schussler, CEO of Schussler Creative Inc., but you are probably familiar with his very popular theme restaurant Rainforest Café. Steve is one of the scrappiest people I know, with countless scrappy stories. He is open and honest about his wins and losses. This story about how he launched Rainforest Café is one of my favorites: Steve first envisioned a tropical-themed family restaurant back in the 1980s, but unfortunately, he couldn’t persuade anyone else to buy into the idea at the time. Not willing to give up easily, he decided to get scrappy and be “all in.” To sell his vision, he transformed his own split-level suburban home into a living, mist-enshrouded rain forest to convince potential investors that the concept was viable. Yes, you read that correctly—he converted his own house into a jungle dwelling complete with rock outcroppings, waterfalls, rivers, and layers of fog and mist that rose from the ground. The jungle included a life-size replica of an elephant near the front door, forty tropical birds in cages, and a live baby baboon named Charlie. Steve shared the following details: Every room, every closet, every hallway of my house was set up as a three-dimensional vignette: an attempt to present my idea of what a rain forest restaurant would look like in actual operation. . . . [I]t took me three years and almost $400,000 to get the house developed to the point where I felt comfortable showing it to potential investors. . . . [S]everal of my neighbors weren’t exactly thrilled to be living near a jungle habitat. . . . On one occasion, Steve received a visit from the Drug Enforcement Administration. They wanted to search the premises for drugs, presuming he may have had an illegal drug lab in his home because of his huge residential electric bill. I imagine they were astonished when they discovered the tropical rain forest filled with jungle creatures. Steve’s plan was beautiful, creative, fun, and scrappy, but the results weren’t coming as quickly as he would have liked. It took all of his resources, and he was running out of time and money to make something happen. (It’s important to note that your scrappy efforts may not generate results immediately.) I asked Steve if he ever thought about quitting, how tight was the money really, and if there was a time factor, and he said, “Yes to all three! Of course I thought about quitting. I was running out of money and time.” Ultimately, Steve’s plan succeeded. After many visits and more than two years later, gaming executive and venture capitalist Lyle Berman bought into the concept and raised the funds necessary to get the Rainforest Café up and running. The Rainforest Café chain became one of the most successful themed restaurants ever created, and continues that way under Landry’s Restaurants and Tilman Fertitta’s leadership. Today, Steve creates restaurant concepts in fantastic warehouses far from his residential neighborhood!

Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned

A confidential report delivered in June 1965 by Abel Aganbegyan, director of the Novobirsk Institute of Economics, highlighted the difficulties. Aganbegyan noted that the growth rate of the Soviet economy was beginning to decline, just as the rival US economy seemed particularly buoyant; at the same time, some sectors of the Soviet economy - housing, agriculture, services, retail trade - remained very backward, and were failing to develop at an adequate rate. The root causes of this poor performance he saw in the enormous commitment of resources to defense (in human terms, 30-40 million people out of a working population of 100 million, he reckoned), and the 'extreme centralism and lack of democracy in economic matters' which had survived from the past. In a complex modern society, he argued, not everything could be planned, since it was impossible to foresee all possible contingencies and their potential effects. So the plan amounted to central command, and even that could not be properly implemented for lack of information and of modern data-processing equipment. 'The Central Statistical Administration ... does not have a single computer, and is not planning to acquire any,' he commented acidly. Economic administration was also impeded by excessive secrecy: 'We obtain many figures... from American journals sooner than they are released by the Central Statistical Administration.' Hence the economy suffered from inbuilt distortions: the hoarding of goods and labour to provide for unforeseen contingencies, the production of shoddy goods to fulfill planning targets expressed in crude quantitative terms, the accumulation of unused money by a public reluctant to buy substandard products, with resultant inflation and a flourishing black market.

According to Bartholomew, an important goal of St. Louis zoning was to prevent movement into 'finer residential districts . . . by colored people.' He noted that without a previous zoning law, such neighborhoods have become run-down, 'where values have depreciated, homes are either vacant or occupied by color people.' The survey Bartholomew supervised before drafting the zoning ordinance listed the race of each building's occupants. Bartholomew attempted to estimate where African Americans might encroach so the commission could respond with restrictions to control their spread. The St. Louis zoning ordinance was eventually adopted in 1919, two years after the Supreme Court's Buchanan ruling banned racial assignments; with no reference to race, the ordinance pretended to be in compliance. Guided by Bartholomew's survey, it designated land for future industrial development if it was in or adjacent to neighborhoods with substantial African American populations. Once such rules were in force, plan commission meetings were consumed with requests for variances. Race was frequently a factor. For example, on meeting in 1919 debated a proposal to reclassify a single-family property from first-residential to commercial because the area to the south had been 'invaded by negroes.' Bartholomew persuaded the commission members to deny the variance because, he said, keeping the first-residential designation would preserve homes in the area as unaffordable to African Americans and thus stop the encroachment. On other occasions, the commission changed an area's zoning from residential to industrial if African American families had begun to move into it. In 1927, violating its normal policy, the commission authorized a park and playground in an industrial, not residential, area in hopes that this would draw African American families to seek housing nearby. Similar decision making continued through the middle of the twentieth century. In a 1942 meeting, commissioners explained they were zoning an area in a commercial strip as multifamily because it could then 'develop into a favorable dwelling district for Colored people. In 1948, commissioners explained they were designating a U-shaped industrial zone to create a buffer between African Americans inside the U and whites outside. In addition to promoting segregation, zoning decisions contributed to degrading St. Louis's African American neighborhoods into slums. Not only were these neighborhoods zoned to permit industry, even polluting industry, but the plan commission permitted taverns, liquor stores, nightclubs, and houses of prostitution to open in African American neighborhoods but prohibited these as zoning violations in neighborhoods where whites lived. Residences in single-family districts could not legally be subdivided, but those in industrial districts could be, and with African Americans restricted from all but a few neighborhoods, rooming houses sprang up to accommodate the overcrowded population. Later in the twentieth century, when the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) developed the insure amortized mortgage as a way to promote homeownership nationwide, these zoning practices rendered African Americans ineligible for such mortgages because banks and the FHA considered the existence of nearby rooming houses, commercial development, or industry to create risk to the property value of single-family areas. Without such mortgages, the effective cost of African American housing was greater than that of similar housing in white neighborhoods, leaving owners with fewer resources for upkeep. African American homes were then more likely to deteriorate, reinforcing their neighborhoods' slum conditions.

Smart Sexy Money is About Your Money As an accomplished entrepreneur with a history that spans more than fourteen years, Annette Wise is constantly looking for ways to give back to her community. Using enterprising efforts, she qualified for $125,000 in startup funding to develop a specialized residential facility that allows developmentally disabled adults to live in the community after almost a lifetime of living in a state institution. In doing so, she has provided steady employment in her community for the last thirteen years. After dedicating years to her residential facility, Annette began to see clearly the difficulty business owners face in planning for retirement successfully. Searching high and low to find answers, she took control of financial uncertainty and in less than 2 years, she became a Full Life Agent, licensed Registered Representative, Investment Advisor Representative and Limited Principal. Her focus is on building an extensive list of clients that depend on her for smart retirement guidance, thorough college planning, detailed business continuation, and business exit strategies. Clients have come to rely on Annette for insight on tax advantaged savings and retirement options. Annette’s primary goal is to help her clients understand more than just concepts, but to easily understand how money works, the consequences of their decisions and how they work in conjunction with their desires and goal. Ever the curious soul who is always up for a challenge, Annette is routinely resourceful at finding sensible means to a sometimes-challenging end. She believes in infinite possibilities as well as in sharing her knowledge with others. She is the go-to source for “Smart Wealth Solutions.” Among Annette’s proudest accomplishments are her two wonderful sons, Michael III and Matthew. As a single mom, they have been her inspiration and joy. She is forever grateful to the greatest brothers in the world- Andrew and Anthony Wise, for assistance in grooming them into amazing young men.

He appeared to live entirely on sweet tea, condensed milk, hand-rolled cigarettes, and a sort of sullen internal energy. Shadwell had a Cause, which he followed with the full resources of his soul and his Pensioner’s Concessionary Travel Pass. He believed in it. It powered him like a turbine. Newton Pulsifer had never had a cause in his life. Nor had he, as far as he knew, ever believed in anything. It had been embarrassing, because he quite wanted to believe in something, since he recognized that belief was the lifebelt that got most people through the choppy waters of Life. He’d have liked to believe in a supreme God, although he’d have preferred a half-hour’s chat with Him before committing himself, to clear up one or two points. He’d sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn’t come. And then he’d tried to become an official Atheist and hadn’t got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that. And every single political party had seemed to him equally dishonest. And he’d given up on ecology when the ecology magazine he’d been subscribing to had shown its readers a plan of a self-sufficient garden, and had drawn the ecological goat tethered within three feet of the ecological beehive. Newt had spent a lot of time at his grandmother’s house in the country and thought he knew something about the habits of both goats and bees, and concluded therefore that the magazine was run by a bunch of bib-overalled maniacs. Besides, it used the word “community” too often; Newt had always suspected that people who regularly used the word “community” were using it in a very specific sense that excluded him and everyone he knew. Then he’d tried believing in the Universe, which seemed sound enough until he’d innocently started reading new books with words like Chaos and Time and Quantum in the titles. He’d found that even the people whose job of work was, so to speak, the Universe, didn’t really believe in it and were actually quite proud of not knowing what it really was or even if it could theoretically exist. To Newt’s straightforward mind this was intolerable. Newt had not believed in the Cub Scouts and then, when he was old enough, not in the Scouts either. He was prepared to believe, though, that the job of wages clerk at United Holdings [Holdings] PLC, was possibly the most boring in the world.

It was discussed and decided that fear would be perpetuated globally in order that focus would stay on the negative rather than allow for soul expression to positively emerge. As people became more fearful and compliant, capacity for free thought and soul expression would diminish. There is a distinct inability to exert soul expression under mind control, and evolution of the human spirit would diminish along with freedom of thought when bombarded with constant negative terrors. Whether Bush and Cheney deliberately planned to raise a collective fear over collective conscious love is doubtful. They did not think, speak, or act in those terms. Instead, they knew that information control gave them power over people, and they were hell-bent to perpetuate it at all costs. Cheney, Bush, and other global elite ushering in the New World Order totally believed in the plan mapped out by artificial intelligence. They were allowing technology to dictate global control. “Life is like a video game,” Bush once told me at the rural multi-million dollar Lampe, Missouri CIA mind control training camp complex designed for Black Ops Special Forces where torture and virtual reality technologies were used. “Since I have access to the technological source of the plans, I dictate the rules of the game.” The rules of the game demanded instantaneous response with no time to consciously think and critically analyze. Constant conscious disruption of thought through television’s burst of light flashes, harmonics, and subconscious subliminals diminished continuity of conscious thought anyway, creating a deficit of attention that could easily be refocused into video game format. DARPA’s artificial intelligence was reliant on secrecy, and a terrifying cover for reality was chosen to divert people from the simple truth. Since people perceive aliens as being physical like them, it was decided that the technological reality could be disguised according to preconceptions. Through generations of genetic encoding dating back to the beginning of man, serpents incite an innate autogenic response system in humans to “freeze” in terror. George Bush was excited at the prospects of diverting people from truth by fear through perpetuating lizard-like serpent alien misconceptions. “People fear what they don’t know anyway. By compounding that fear with autogenic fear response, they won’t want to look into Pandora’s Box.” Through deliberate generation of fear; suppression of facts under the 1947 National Security Act; Bush’s stint as CIA director during Ford’s Administration; the Warren Commission’s whitewash of the Kennedy Assassination; secrecy artificially ensured by mind control particularly concerning DARPA, HAARP, Roswell, Montauk, etc; and with people’s fluidity of conscious thought rapidly diminishing; the secret government embraced the proverbial ‘absolute power that corrupts absolutely.’ According to New World Order plans being discussed at the Grove, plans for reducing the earth’s population was a high priority. Mass genocide of so-called “undesirables” through the proliferation of AIDS4 was high on Bush’s agenda. “We’ll annihilate the niggers at their source, beginning in South and East Africa and Haiti5.” Having heard Bush say those words is by far one of the most torturous things I ever endured. Equally as torturous to my being were the discussions on genetic engineering, human cloning, and depletion of earth’s natural resources for profit. Cheney remarked that no one would be able to think to stop technology’s plan. “I’ll destroy the planet first,” Bush had vowed.