Life, the Universe and Everything

Life: The bottom of the chain

2006-07-23T10:51:00.000-03:00

Why do we always seem to look up, or forward, or to the future, however you want to put it we never seem to look down, look back or to the past. Sometimes we should just take a minute and stop where we are and take a look around us, including down, or back ,or to the past. There are lessons back there that could be very valuable when dealing with what's ahead.

I was watching TV the other day, one of those, discovery national geographic science know it all type programs, the topic was the food chain, and as I watched this I realized that they were concentrating on the top of the food chain. Well I wondered what about all the other links in that chain, where do they fit in the grand scheme of things?

This is when it dawned on me, the most important part of the chain is not at the top, its at the bottom. If we are to consider ourselves, humans, at the top of the chain, then we essentially eat everything below us in one form or another. What happens if the bottom of the chain dies out? That would mean that the animal that eats whatever is at the bottom of the chain may perish as well and in turn the one that feeds up on it and on and on. This makes the chain extremely weak and as links start to break the chain falls apart, and sooner or later we will the top of the chain. So even though this program concentrated on the top of the chain, which may be more interesting to the viewer, its the bottom of the chain that should be of great interest to us all.

Now I thought this is TV show focused on exactly what big business does. Companies focuses on the top, which in most cases is the performance of the CEO and the corporate shares. What about the bottom of the corporate scale, your technicians, sales people, the janitor etc. These people normally get lost in the corporate machine, they are the least paid, least respected and most of the time are considered the most expendable positions in the company. These are also the positions that have direct, face to face or over the phone contact with the customer, they are the face of the company.

So that a company will consider the face of the organization the most expendable just doesn't bode well for a company, maybe that's why there is such a large number of companies that go under, or are forced to merge with a larger company (limiting the consumers choice in the marketplace).

So using the food chain as the model, what if we made the bottom of the chain the most important positions and treated the people in those positions accordingly. Well lets look at the obvious, if they are given the tools and authority to do their job to support and service the customer, as well as give them the pay that this level of authority warrants, the company may have employees that feel empowered, and compensated to do the job. They might just start taking pride in the job that they do, that pride then translates into better service for the customer and in turn better reputation for the company, more sales, better bottom line, happier management, and shareholders.

Hmmm, keeping the bottom of the food chain healthy keeps the rest of the chain healthy as well. Make sense to me.

Now don't stop looking up, forward or to the future, that's how we make progress, but every now and then stop and take a look at down. Make sure that the bottom link in your life is healthy otherwise you could be in trouble.

Life

2004-10-09T18:44:00.000-03:00

Our family just lost someone, she lived a long and happy life, almost reached 100 years of age. This event and the fact that I'm not getting any younger, actually reaching what humans call middle age, makes me think about where I've been and what I want to do with the rest of my life.

We all have a finite amount of time here, we all come and go, and when we are gone most of us are forgotten within a generation at most two. There are very few of us that ever live to leave a lasting impression on, society, humanity or the planet. Perhaps a handful of scientists; Newton, Einstein, to mention but two, whose discoveries will forever change the way that we look at the world around us, or perhaps a politican or two, and a handful of business leaders. The rest of us will pass away into utter obsecurity.

Now I know this sounds depressing, but this is just the way it is. Nothing we can really do about it, we just have to accept the fact that we will not live on and that what we do on this earth really doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things ....... or does it.

Lets take the 10,000,000 foot view of what we are and what each of us does day to day. For the most part we all get up in the morning, we eat, we go into the world, we interact with one another, (Even if you think you don't in some small way we all do.) We are a community, a global community, and we all impact each other, most of the time in ways that you just don't realize. The guy/gal who is stressed out at work and takes out his/herfrustrations on a clerk in a store, to the missionary who gives their life for the betterment of others we all have an impact on one another. So now you expect me to say something like "Lets all be nice to one another and the world will be a wonderful place to live." Well, no, that's not it at all.

Life is a balance, between good and bad, right and wrong, easy and hard for example. We all have our good and bad days, we have all been right as well as wrong, and have hard days as well as easy days. Balance! There are those people that live hard, lives, they work hard, they have hard problems at home, and have to deal with hard decisions and consequences, there are those people that seem to have easy lives, almost like life was handed to them and they can do no wrong. The mass majority of us live in the flotsam in between where we have both hard and easy moments.

This is the trick, take each moment and decide for yourself what you want or what is right. This may mean that you have to work hard at a job that you don't really like because with the money you make you can buy the things you want, or go to the places that give you enjoyment, balance. If you have money you may have other problems, "friends" may want your time or resources or you may have to protect yourself from predators at all times, again balance. What we all need to do is find a balance that works for each and everyone of us at an individual level and for each moment and believe it or not ..... your life will work itself out.

Now on the topic of balance, if you can find that middle ground where you give as much as you take your life will take a positive turn, you will be happier, and more importantly the people around you will be happier. This in turn lends toward bringing balance to others as well and on and on it spreads, like warm butter on bread, from one person to another. The impact that one person can make on those around them by finding balance can be astounding.

You may just be remembered for something like that.

This is my two cents .... please comment.

The Universe

2004-10-07T09:59:00.000-03:00

Here it is, the structure of the universe is much like the structure of an atom. We have planets circling stars, there are rogue elements floating around and pushing their way around at incredible speeds.

Now lets take a closer look, starting with a solar system. What does a solar system consist of, hmmm, planets, a star, asteriods, metorites, gasses, and a whole bunch of other stuff. So lets make some equations. The star is the neucleus, a magnetically powerful source of energy emitting radiation, then that would make the planets electrons circling the neucleus, hey we have an atom.

Nearby we have other solar systems, all with similar structures, sounds like we have a molecule forming here, or do we call it a galaxy? Whatever.

Now how to do you explain all those other things floating around out there, comets, asteriods, meteors and whatever else. Quirk and quarks, those strange high energy items that we have floating around in the atomic soup.

But how can this be? If we look at an atom everthing is moving so fast. Yeah, measures of scale is what I call it. The rotation that our planet makes around our sun takes one year, but if someone was looking at us through a microscope they might see one rotation as a blur because to them we would be moving extremely fast. Sub atomically fast, and to us they would seem to move extremely slow. Cool eh?

So lets take this one step further, if our solar system is an atom, and we are living on an electron, and in turn we are made of atoms, who's to say that some of those electrons (planets) on those atoms don't have people living on them, and they would be made of atoms their electrons (planets) would have more people living on them and on and on. This would work in the other direction as well, we are living on an electron of a larger organism, which in turn is living on an electron from a larger organism.

This would make the universe infinitely small and at the same time infinitely large. Now there's a brain buster.