The slightly different Retrospect 2015: strange flowers of zeitgeist
There are Yoga championships. No kidding. Scantily clad participants do Yoga poses on stage. The organizers say that it is still about personal development and not competition. Strange: why do they award points and produce rankings then?...How about Go-Crazy-Yoga? Or a meditation battle: „sit your opponent to pieces.“ Or a speed way of St. James? Help us...there are some things that you don’t can’t get with a shortcut or as an event. That would be worthwhile learning.
Heard about the app that allows you to donate 40 cent to children in Lesotho with a click? Or the one letting you choose your project, and then you donate by click? So here it is: the altruism drone! Sit cosily in a bunker and press the button. Makes it a lot easier to walk by the beggar in the shopping mall. Why Lesotho? No matter. The list of donateable projects is defined by the makers of the app...let me be understood: doing good is never bad. And yet, even if I risk to make me very unpopular: In my view it’s a problematic tendency to export compassion and then make a social-media-look-how-good-we-all-are-hype out of it. Compassion in organisations would be a much more powerful lever.
Wladimir Klitschko is supposed to lecture on innovation and change management at the HSG. I already wrote about that, but of course he has to be in the hit parade: Bulls go to china shops, Klitschko goes to the HSG.
Animal rights activists have sued for the copyright of a photo for an ape who took the picture himself after grabbing the photographer’s camera. I suppose they want to transfer him the royalties after hunting him down in the forest to get his bank account number...the massive degree of regulation doesn’t spare anybody.
US universities try to ban everything that could possibly harm the wellbeing of anybody in any way. The famous play „vagina monologues“ was taken off the schedule because it neglects women without a vagina...so they ban a play that the author uses to raise money for projects against violence against women because they claim that the play is violent against women. We have reached a state where not only suffering shall be banned from our lives: now we even go for potential indisposition. Honestly: how violent is that?
In a half page article in the economy section of a newspaper there were the following words: Stock turbulences interest politics expansion path full employment target exchange rate regime prospect of higher interest rates exports economic downturn domestic economy zero-rate policy devaluation slowing down growth currency collapse raw materials market appreciation deflationary pressure inflation expectiations inflation rate bond prices inflation target market conditions prices for food and energy foreign exchange market bond acquisition program verbal interventions low exchange rate oil price Euro experts China latent risk interest rate screw. Why don’t we just admit that we don’t have things under control? How about trying with monkeys? At least they seem to outperform exchange traders.
Allegedly Facebook is planning to launch a hug-button so you can express your sympathy and care. Digitalisation of our emotional world is progressing: Zuckerberg’s contribution to our emotional competence. I suggest an I-like-it-big-hug-for-everybody-love-button. Just in time for christmas.
