Generations

This week we talk about generations. Have you ever thought about why your parents act in a certain way and why they put some things first? Have you ever thought about why you put the things you put first first? Why the conflict between different understandings of life from generation to generation? How did it become so?

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Generations... value creation.

Truthfully the times when i think about the question of how people of different ages think differently is usually (or rather most of the time) when there is conflict between what i think and what my parents think. Its simple and clear to see that from generations to generations, there are conflicting ideologies between each of the different generations. Why is that so? And these conflicts do not just exist in the family, it exists almost everywhere, at the work place, in organizations, in the mrt, on the streets. Its not very prevailent but it does to a certain extent happen. Then i came upon an article entitled: Can You Trust Anyone Under Thirty?

I was surprised because i'm a part of this research (like many of you are). The article disected the generations into three groups: the baby boomers, generation X and Generation Y. Check this out:

"Boomers were raised in the post-World War II era of social stability and relative prosperity. Divorce was relatively rare; schools were safe, and jobs were secure[...] They were loyal and committed to their organizations, learned to pay their dues patiently and wait for the opportunity for advancement, and largely defined themselves and their successes in terms of their organizational rank[...]

In contrast, Xers (that is generation X), grew up in two career families, where divorce rates were increasing rapidly[...] They are the products of daycare, technology, including television, and perhaps most important downsizing[...] As a result, Xers are advised everywhere to "consider themselves to be free agents" [...] They are fiercely independent, agresseive, hardworking entreprenuers even if they are working in corporate structures[...]they also tend to form relatively superficial and inauthentic relationships in the workplace[...] they want rewards to be based on performance not seniority[...]

Tentatively labeled the Y generation, next generation or Millennials, they were born between 1982 and 2002[...] they have had more disposable income and are more technologically sophisticated[...] they are highly optimistic and see a world of opportunities in front of them[...] They are team oriented and obsessed with planning- many of them knew what they wanted to do with their lives when they were in middle school[...] Xers often view them as demanding, self absorbed, and presumptuous[...] Bosses complain about their short attention spans and habits like talking to their friends via cell phone or instant messaging or downloading music while at work."

*Note: This essay was written along with the research of the generations in the States.

I think this article ingeniusly captures the very general views of why we actually think differently and want different things. And i think to a very large extent this is very true of the different generations (espcially mine). However, having read it, i think there are many other factors why generations conflict. I should keep this entry short.. what do you think of this?

(To be continued...)

Interpretations

This week we'll be talking about the questions of interpretations. Our very first topic talked about how experience is made different by each person. Why are experiences different? Remember i also, i said people experience one situation with different levels of thoughts and feelings. These thoughts and feelings comes from a history of past experiences as well as actions. On a very big scale, these thoughts and inspirations comes from how we look at things- our interpretation. How would interpretation work to our advantage and how might it harm us? What are the connotations of seeing things in more positive way? Is thinking/interpreting positively a good thing? Or is there another way of interpreting things?

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Interpretations- Seeing, looking and understanding differently.

There were some really good discussions on the topic of experiences and choices, i really encourage you to tag on the board just at the bottom after reading the entries. It has been a busy week for me at the same time a great deal of self reflection had been done. I am someone who strongly believe that the right choices I remember saying that choices affects where you'll be, what you'll do and who you'll meet but i felt very strongly that something was missing. What could it be? What made people see the world in a different light if choices was the main reason things happen? Thinking about why i am where i am today and the kind of choices i made really woke me up again to take every action to make my life a worthy legacy...

However the antiphon only came to me when i was reading my communications textbook on organizational communication. Quote: "The systems of meanings that individuals create together influence their impressions of one another, their interpretations of their relationship, and the meanings that they attach to their communication." (Strategic Organizational Communication In a Global Economy, by Charles Conrad and Marshall Scott Poole) Not wanting to bore you with the details, what the chapter that i read wanted to say was the meaning we give to things forms realities. In the book it talks about how organization is an entity formed not only by the top management but also by the members. Through communication people as separate entities comes together and brings with them two things, they are histories and expectations. With these two things people form the norm of the organization and its skeleton.

What am I trying to get at? If you see an organization as an entity that forms norms and logic and how things should be done and make decisions, how about how people becoming who they are? How people form their logic and how they decide. Also, something that happens before we make choices are affected by the two points that I pointed out; histories and expectations. Do you know what it is?

It is again, one word. Interpretation. If Interpretation of a situation comes before we make choices and decisions, isn’t it important that we know something about it? What is interpretation? Interpretation in the very simplest definition would be how we understand things, situations and problems. I find that the best way to explain or to get across an idea is to tell stories. For this entry you’ll get two stories and I’m not going to elaborate on them because I think many readers get a lot more from the tag board than what I write so here it comes:

This first story requires you to put yourself in the main character’s shoes. So try your best to imagine that you are in that situation…

Imagine you are at the airport you just had a great meeting with a friend from Perth and you are waiting for your flight home. Because you had such a great talk with your friend you forgotten to have lunch and it is now 3pm. Your empty stomach starts churning and then it starts growling.

Dragging your trolley luggage on the carpeted traveler’s shopping area, you find a cookie shop. The smell of sugary rich cookies made your mouth water. You decided to buy 200g of cookies. After buying, you start to look for a seat so that you could have your cookies.

You found a seat just at the end of a row and you sat down. Beside you there was a man, wonderfully dressed with a coat and a tie. You smiled and he smiled back. After sitting down your stomach starts its protest again so you reached down into the plastic bag and pulled out the box of cookies you just bought earlier. The funny thing is you start feeling this man staring at you… no not at you but at the cookies. What is he trying to do? He was staring intensely at what you were doing.

You opened the box and took one cookie and started munching on it. To your surprise the man reached into the box and took one as well and he started eating your cookie! But he didn’t just take one, after every time you reached into the box for a cookie; he reached into the box for another! Is this guy mad? What is he doing eating my cookies. But you being a nice person, you thought probably he is as hungry as you were, so you didn’t do anything about it.

This goes on for about a few minutes (you take one cookie, he takes another) until there was only one cookie left. You look at it for a long time. This time, he doesn’t wait for you to take a cookie (probably because there would be none left after you take the last one). However he doesn’t just take the cookie, he broke it into half and gave half a cookie to you!!! Then you start thinking about how you are going to tell all your friends about this strange man; eating your cookies, sharing the last one with you.

He finishes his half, stands up smiles and leaves.

After finishing your half, you still felt hungry (what a big eater!). And since your flight was still sometime away, you decided to buy another box of cookies to eat. You visited the cookie shop again and bought another 200g of cookies. When you got back to your seat (Thank god nobody took your seat), you sat down, stretched and got ready to dig into your cookies again. You reached down for the plastic bag but you felt nothing so you look under the chair. To your surprise you found not one but two bags with a full box of cookies in each.

Than you realized, that when you reached down for your cookies for the very first time you didn’t reach into your bag, the one you bought was still there. When you reached down to take the box of cookies you accidentally took the man’s cookies by mistake! Something really big changed just there, that’s right, your interpretation.

Just imagine what kind of impression would you have of that man if you haven’t found your first box of cookies? What kind of impression would you have of that man when you found your first box of cookies? What would you have told your friends about this, if you had not found your first box of cookies? And what you would have told you friends now that you had found your first box? Would you even tell your friends about it?

Ready for more? Here’s the 2nd story for this week’s entry:

I don’t remember where I read this from but there was once a man, lets call him peter. Peter takes the train a lot; to work, to gatherings, visits etc. And on a typical day he took the train as usual to work. Peter likes to read while he is on the train so once he got on, he found a seat and he took out his book and started reading. After about 10 minutes the train reaches a station and the doors open, two children ran in and started playing on the handles jumping and screaming at each other. The man behind them, who obviously was the children’s’ father sat down beside Peter and just looked at his children play disruptively.

The children a boy and a girl who seemed to be around the ages of 8 and 10 made a whole lot of noise, treated the handles on the ceiling of the train as monkey bars and jumped around in the train. In less than, 2minutes everyone on the train was looking at these two children AND their father.

The father of the two children didn’t seem to notice the stares from the other passengers. He just didn’t do anything to control his children. Peter was trying very hard to concentrate in his reading but failed, even worst, the boy who was jumping around crashed towards Peter when he lost his balance.

No being able to stand it anymore, Peter turned to the father of these two children and said, “Hey could you please ask your children to behave! This is not the playground!”

The father of the two children turned to peter and said,

“I’m sorry sir, we just came from the hospital… their mother just died, I don’t know if they can handle it… I know I can’t…”

This is just something to think about every time you interpret or judge people, things and situations. My suggestion is whenever you see something, don’t just interpret it with your histories and expectations, interpret creatively.

I do hope you have got something out of this week’s entry, I know I have.. Alot.

Choices

In this entry we'll be talking about the questions of how people become who they are. Through experiences? What about the much talked about choice? Can we really choose to become who we choose to become? If that is true why then are there so many people who led and are leading unhappy lives? Is that what they choose?

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Have you become someone you chose to become?

There are many many questions in life that are often left unanswered (at least for now) and some answers that do not really complement the question. One of these questions have always been that of how people become who they are. People, whether around me or on the net, the TV, are different. And the fact that they are different makes me wonder can any two people agree on everything their whole life? The antiphon came to me quite recently as a very big no. If anyone was to say otherwise one of the two people that he or she referenced would most probably be lying..

The reason being this: We being molecular objects (i mean our physic) can never really step into each other's shoes to experience what another person have, having the same line of thought and judgement at the time we experience it; as the person did. Even though two people may experience one same situation in their lives, one would have a different experience from the other.

There are two reasons for this. One is that we all are constrained by two things: time and space. We can never really be at two places at the same time (even though some technological advancements allow us to communicate through great distances and time). At the same situation in the same area of space two people cannot be standing in the same area and position. One situation is always looked at from different angles; slight difference counts.

So what i am trying to say is no one ever shares an experience, they may experience it together but at different angles and different levels of thought and feeling.

The other reason for us having different experiences even though we might be living on the same planet, country, home, or room is that of the fact that we already each have a past of many different experiences that would eventually affect how we see, learn, judge and feel in situations. A situation filled with great sorrow for one might not be quite the same for another.

How each person has experienced the many happenings in their lives and how each person decide to react to any of the situations and what is going on in the persons' mind when those situations happened all have profound impact in the formation of what kind of a person one becomes.

Things as small as deciding not to brush your teeth today, deciding to dance rather than sit at a corner at a party, getting a haircut, listening to your mp3 on the train rather than the sound of the moving train and the people talking, all affects who we are and who we might become.

However, something rings louder than the uncontrollables steering our lives and making us become who we are. It is one word. And that word is choice. Have you experienced something that is never affected by choice? Even though we are not in control of everything, even though we do not choose every single thing that happens to us, every single thing that happens to us can be or rather is affected by our choices. Nothing can illustrate this better than this story:

There was a man, lets call him jack, he had many problems and challenges in life. He was a heavy smoker, a gambler, a drug addict, a alcoholic and was jailed twice for violence and abuse. Jack had two sons one named john and the other named russel. They both grew up under the "support" of jack and their mother.
Jack's situation was really worst; up to a point where he was charged with killing a man and got a life sentence in jail.

John and russel both grew up but they walked quite different paths. Russel, like his father, became a drug addict and was involved with lots of fights. He was jailed three times for gangfights and drug trafficing.. John on the other hand has a well paid job, a family, a paid house, a car etc. John has great lifestyle with his family and was very successful with his job.

A reporter from ABC times read about jack and was really interested in why there was two different outcomes from the very same kind of way both children have been brought up, so she visits russel, who was serving a jail term for drug trafficking, and interviews him.

One of the questions that she asked was this: "What do you think is the reason you became who you are today?"

And russel said: "With a father like that, who do you want me to become?"

In addition she visited John at his home, she asked the same question again...

What do you think is the reason you became who you are today?

The answer came...

"With a father like that, who do you want me to become?"