When having a discussion about a new topic, it pays to take time to understand how words are being used. When my friends and I discuss deep topics, such as those in this book, we always take some time to make sure that we are on common ground in what our words mean. That is the purpose of this section. The following terms and words are listed alphabetical order.
Blind-Spot-Thinking - The blind spot is a part of our ocular vision where we actually don’t see. We don’t see, but our vision system “covers up” for it, so we don’t notice. This saves us from wandering around all day and all night, day after day, knowing that there’s a spot where we don’t see. (If you want to see the blind spot, there is a simple exercise described in the Wikipedia article above.) My term Blind-Spot-Thinking is the same thing happening at the thinking level. We engage in an activity, but we don’t see that it isn’t working - working in the sense of accomplishing what we want it to accomplish. Instead we “cover up” the ineffective result and continue on with our lives, not paying attention to the waste it is causing.
Bottom Line - One of the virtues of people who operate businesses in a free market system is they are constantly paying attention to profitability. Always. This means they are constantly searching for things that can be improved when viewed from a profit point of view. These can be things that have become outright wasteful such as broken machines that no longer produce or have become obsolete because better tools and techniques are available, or subtler things such as management reorganization to improve decision making which will improve how quickly we respond to changes. Business improvements may also be required when products become irrelevant, when sales drop, or when sales and service levels decline to the point of frustrating or upsetting customers who then discontinue their patronage.
When business people become complacent or distracted from making improvements, competitors will quickly make them aware that they have a problem. The problem shows up as lost rather than gained revenue. This is the virtue of the bottom line: It is quick and easy to see, and it is a constant and forceful measure of what is important to a business and how well the business is doing at staying in touch with harsh reality.
Cheap shot - This is from team sports. It is when Player B looks around to be sure people aren’t watching, particularly the referee, and whacks Player A from the other team in some illegal way. Outraged, Player A, curses, turns around and takes a swing at Player B. Sadly, now everyone is watching, so Player A gets the penalty. If this is a schoolyard playground, Player B then yells “Nyaaa, nyaa, nyaaa!” at Player A as he heads for the penalty box. Player B has taken a cheap shot on Player A. Player A has been wronged, but he is helpless to do anything about it.
Community - I use the word community in a general fashion. It means a social organization. It can be a family, a company, a sports team, a village, a nation… any group of people living together and coping with the particular situation I am discussing at the time.
Evangelism – In this book an evangelist is someone who is spreading the word about something in an enthusiastic way. They have enthusiastically embraced an idea and are now telling others all about it. I picked up this usage during the eighties when I was an employee of Novell, and I was meeting with Apple employees. Novell and Apple were both interested in getting personal computers networking smoothly so the companies coordinated a lot. The Apple culture of that era talked about “evangelists” and the term spread to Novell. An evangelist was a person informally assigned to promote an idea within the company. For example one of the features that Novell networking supported was email, so one of our employees was nominated to become “email evangelist;” he helped make sure that supporting email was kept in mind as new software and hardware were designed.
Exile - Exile means a person is forced out of a community and must live somewhere else. In Neolithic Village environment this often happens when a person is on the losing side of a dispute in which the community gets involved. The person leaves and goes to settle somewhere far enough away that future encounters with the community are rare. In this book, I use exile in a general sense, as in, when someone is forced to leave a community. A common form of exile in civilized living is going to prison. A prisoner is someone who has lost a criminal legal dispute and is forced out of the community to live elsewhere. Prison is an extreme and formal form of exile. There are less extreme forms such as living in a brothel or a closed cult. One other big difference between earlier forms of exile and modern forms is that nowadays it is much more difficult to walk away from your past. In the US in the 1800’s a person could start a new life by moving west. They would move to a new setting, a bit older and wiser, and not be troubled by their past disputes and misdeeds. Nowadays, thanks to modern communications, starting a new life with a clean slate elsewhere is a lot harder to pull off.
Exploit - I use this word most often in its positive sense, as in, to make productive use of something. For many people the word has the negative connotation of using something unfairly, but I use it that way much less often. When you see exploit, think positive.
Goat Sacrificing – In its classic meaning, these are actions that are initiated and continued in order to stave off fear and instill hope that the worst won’t happen. In this book, goat sacrificing refers to those actions that are being taken to combat a problem, but don’t actually solve the problem. Nevertheless, the actions continue to be taken because they make people feel like the problem is being combated. Goat sacrificing is, in effect, a ritual, not a solution.
Mother Nature, Design Engineer - This is my anthropomorphizing of the evolution process and natural selection processes. I envision her up in the sky sitting at a drafting table, trying out experiments on all living species. These experiments are mutations. She gives an organism a mutation, then watches for success. Success is simply defined: have lots of grandchildren.
The important point here is that Mother Nature, Design Engineer, is satisfied with quick and dirty fixes. Elegant is better, but that can come with time and more experimentation. In the meantime, if a fix works, it works.
Symbiotes - is a biological term, (and a Marvel Comics monster). It refers to organisms that are living in a symbiotic relationship. This means they are living closely and sharing resources in some fashion. They can be benefiting each other (mutualistic) or one can be harming the other (parasitic). In this book I use the word to refer to different groups of people who are interacting for mutual benefit.
The Curse of Being Important - This happens when too many people in a community think an idea is important, and they all want a say in how it is exploited. The proverb version is “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Too many people can get interested in what someone else is doing for a variety of reasons. The project can be something that kids are doing and helicopter parents are watching, such as baking cookies for the first time; something that will affect the day-to-day lives of a lot of people, such as building a road; or something that inspires many peoples' dreams, such as being able to soar like a bird. The reasons for meddling range from enthusiasm to fear, from altruism to envy, and beyond. What all these reasons have in common is that they affect how the idea is implemented, and if they affect it in ways that make success less likely, the project falls under The Curse.
Waste – I will talk a lot about waste. What I mean by this is people spending time, money, and attention to get something accomplished, but in the end it isn’t accomplished. They have, in effect, wasted their resources – that time, money, and attention could have been spent on something else and much more would have been accomplished. It is wasting the world’s resources just as much as polluting air and water and destroying things in a war. The big difference between the waste of money and effort on a never succeeding project and the obvious wastes associated with pollution is blind-spot-thinking, which means the waste isn’t seen by the person or community engaging in the activity.