Finding pleasure in such reading, and indeed in majoring in English, was a declaration at the time that education was not at all about getting a job or securing one’s future. In comparison with the pre-professional ambitions that dominate the lives of American undergraduates today, the psychological condition of students of the time was defined by self-reflection, innocence, and a casual irresponsibility about what was coming next.
 
Also visible in the late 1940s and early 1950s were thousands of GIs returning from World War II with a desire to establish for themselves lives as similar as possible to those they imagined had been led by the college generation before their own. For these veterans, college implied security and tradition, a world unlike the one they had left behind in Europe and the Pacific. So they did what they thought one always did in college: study, reflect, and learn. They would reconnect, they thought, with the cultural traditions the war had been fought to defend.

 
My attitude in college was study, learn, and earn. After all, there were student loans to pay back and family to take care of. There wasn’t much room for self-reflection. It took a decade after personally experiencing the dot-com bubble, global outsourcing, and the worse financial crisis since the Great Depression, for me to see how we arrived in the age of white collar slavery through that very system I came out of. Today corporations dole out deliverables and its accompanying script to follow. Every output is measurable. People sit in cubes and use their brains to generate words and numbers instead of sweating under the sun erecting pyramids; yet still no true thinking, deciding, and its associated risk taking are necessary. So are these white collar workers – the accountants, analysts, lawyers, programmers, whatever office person – really valuable, or simply replaceable cogs that can be swapped out for the next cheapest alternative?
 
As the years progressed, I’ve come to realize the value for effectively thinking, communicating those ideas, and acting on them, all things we’ve been deprogrammed to do. I’ve witnessed this through my professional experiences: programmers who generated ideas instead of just pumping out code, or consultants who did those things better than everyone else. These things translated into huge profits for the businesses they were hired by. Ironically, even corporate executives want other people to do the thinking and risk-taking for them. (Hey, we followed the money consultants’ advice and failed, it’s not our fault.)
 
The most valuable people, the ones reaping disproportional rewards are the creative types who bother to reflect, create, and share. The rest are commoditized and weeded out through a slow death of declining salaries and vanishing long term security. This is evident in all forms of businesses and media: technology companies, movies, food production industry, even newspapers. This phenomena is magnified by our information age. There’s little value in sheer quantity (when’s the last time you read anything memorable or even thought-worthy from the AP?), because there’s already too much content on the Internet. The problem is winning people’s limited attention to consume your content. And they won’t unless it’s of value.
 
What does this have to do with the role of liberal arts? Our entire system, from education to corporations to democracy, predicates its existence on making drones out of us, beating us into conforming to non-thinking, not-challenging the status quo. That’s a slippery path and that’s why we should emphasize true thinking in our education and especially in our value system. It may seem inconsequential to producing growth or saving the world. How can dead authors help us today, right? I say it’ll yield a better society, one not soley measured by per capita GDP. Meacham puts up a good argument:
 

… the difficulty of making the case for something so expensive and so seemingly archaic—an undergraduate liberal education—in an economic and cultural climate that favors efficiency and tangibility. It is inarguably hard to monetize a familiarity with Homer or an intimacy with Shakespeare.
 
It is just possible, though, that the traditional understanding of the liberal arts may help us in our search for new innovation and new competitiveness. The next chapter of the nation’s economic life could well be written not only by engineers but by entrepreneurs who, as products of an apparently disparate education, have formed a habit of mind that enables them to connect ideas that might otherwise have gone unconnected.

 
I’m not arguing for everyone to pursue a liberal arts degree. I am saying we should elevate its status and more importantly what it represents: rigorous thinking, reflection, and articulating one’s mind. Demand more of others and yourself. Be picky in what you consume and spend the effort to digest the quality out there. Reward your favorite writers and columnists through buying books or sharing links to their writing. Reward the filmmakers out to generate thought and not mere blockbusters. Subscribe to the blog that makes you think. Pay for the music download that made you feel something. Do all that, incorporate it into you, and give it back in your personal form. Become a producer, not a consumer in the world of thought.
 

I picked up the God Delusion off my shelf. I found it an appropriate book after watching the move Religuous.

Before reading this, I had several threads of thought that closely mirror those presented.  But they were loose and unorganized.  And even though, through my own background, I am already familiar with most of the “ten flatteners” Friedman describes, I appreciate his taking out the time to organize and present these current events in such an informative and enjoyable read.  He summarizes those loose thoughts of mine nicely into a congruent theory, replete with anecdotes, statistics, and insight.

One of the author’s perspectives that resonated was on what the US should do in education and attitude towards the surrounding competition.  He conveys the point of how fewer students today find science and engineering an attractive field of study compared to just a few decades ago.  Not only that, but our government has done little to attract both homegrown and foreign talent to research and development in those fields.  Back in first grade when I declared my intent to become a scientist, it was met with sound approval and encouragement all around.  But nowadays, it’s treated as nerdy and uncool, thanks to a sense of complacency and misportrayal by the entertainment industry.  I wonder at what point in our society did being “cool” and having an analytical, quantitative mindset become mutually exclusive.  Regardless, if you haven’t been paying attention, the gap between US and the rest of the world is becoming surprisingly thin.  I couldn’t have found a better analogy to compare this to than the one Friedman conjures – the recent failures of the US basketball team in international competition.

Many critics claim he oversimplifies.  But Friedman does in fact present the many potential obstacles in the world, such as terrorism and political instabilities, that could erect the walls back up again.  He even describes how people with the intent of creating chaos can and will use the very same flatteners to bring those walls back up.  Nonetheless, he shares my view, which is to approach the future with grounded optimism and to spread the ideal of creating something positive for others.

My decision to undertake my studies abroad has been reaffirmed by Friedman’s ideas.  When you read his book, you will understand why I find my upcoming education at INSEAD so exciting and so crucial.

I believe that the manner in which people deal with this notion reflects the meaning they attach to their lives.  In both cases, the protagonists respond to a gaping loss of meaning, spawned so suddenly and unexpectedly.  Yet while I refuse to ever allow the significance of my being to be defined by the placement of hope and attachment on external and uncontrollable outcomes, I can’t help ponder how many people unintentionally end up in hopeless situations guided by societal and cultural expectations, and obviously by the very human emotion of love.

Given my relatively young age and focus in life, my dismissal of people’s lack of meaning can appear condescending and outright insensitive.  But I think what I really want to question is whether people as a whole lose their love for living as a result of societal expectations, aging, or the gradual diminishing of the spark that ignites one’s reason d’etre.  Why cannot parents attach the same passion and curiosity to their lives as do their children? Responsibilities, unfulfilled dreams, physical breakdown?  I suppose we can make any of these (and more) an excuse, but then again, we can also choose not to.

As I kid, I loved to read the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr Watson.  Needless to say, those memories made this book very enjoyable to me, as Holmes’ character is close to my heart.  But in allusion to the rave reviews on how Cullin succeeds at portraying his human frailties, part of the famous sleuth’s attraction for me was his superhero-ness, the persona that was beyond ordinary humans.  The deft presentation of this humanity leaves me wondering which I would’ve preferred.  Do I cling to Sherlock Holme’s invincible aura I was so accustomed to reading about as a kid, or do I feel more connected to the being that I can better relate to, one with weaknesses and faults?  Due to the moroseness of these frailties presented, I am tempted to say the former.  But I hesitate to declare this choice unequivocally.  In making me squirm as I read about my hero and question how I really want to remember him, the author demonstrates his mastery in touching the reader on a personal and intimate level, perhaps uncomfortably so.  As I put the book down with mixed feelings about the story, I invite you to enjoy the superb writing and come to your own conclusions on how you feel about it.

Several points that stood out: To get a promotion, you have to deliver surprising results above what your boss normally expects from you.  Say you’re an engineer, you can’t just complete your component on time with quality.  You have to actively seek out additional projects, such as putting in new features or processes that help the team.  In many ways, I did this in my career but didn’t see it the way it was explicitly spelled out in the book.  I viewed my actions as just doing a great job, but not as a way to force a promotion.  Instead, I would ask my boss what needs to get done to reach the next level, and when I delivered and sometimes still didn’t get the promotion, I was frustrated.  Jack Welch points out that if you only deliver the expected, then you’re just “doing your job” and you don’t get rewarded with fast promotions for that.

Another thing he said, “I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but the world generally favors people who are energetic and extroverted.  That’s also something you learn young, and it’s reinforced in school, at church, at camp, in clubs, and usually at home too…”  He goes on to describe that while not a requirement for success, this helps tremendously in many aspects of life and career.  Again, something I always implicitly understood but never thought about explicitly.  Back in the high school days, the intellectual nazi in me would confuse being outgoing and extroverted with boisterous and juvenile.  Later, I came to see it differently, but seeing it in print really cemented that realization.

Apparently he’s gotten a bunch of flak for touting GE’s practice of differentiation, where people are ranked in the three groups of 20-70-10, the numbers denoting percentile ranking.  I see that at our company, but we don’t even come close to GE’s candor and transparency of the ranking process and how to move within it.  Welch also mentions people actually do get let go from the bottom 10 group, whereas at our company, I always felt that the bottom five percent (BFP) was just an empty threat.

Many other nuggets of goodness included in the book make for great light reading before bed.  If you get a chance, read it and learn something new and interesting about making it in the corporate world.