Category: Core thought

Can’t see the wood for the trees.

Debt, Inflation, Recession, Depression?  Finding some truth!

How blessed we are with almost instant access, via the Web, to mind-numbing amounts of information.  So, for example, it was easy to check the origins of the quote that forms the subject line.

Yes, the saying is at least five hundred years old, and probably a century or two could be added to that, for it must have been long been in use to have been recorded in 1546 in John Heywood’s ‘A dialogue Conteynyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue.’ He wrote ‘Plentie is no deinte, ye see not your owne ease. I see, ye can not see the wood for trees.’

From here.

Anyway, to the substance of this Post.

Read more of this Post

This crisis of Capitalism

Yesterday, a Post asked the question “Are we now living through a historic turning point in terms of attitudes and behaviours?”

Further browsing found a very thought-provoking article in The Guardian newspaper, online version, of the 6th May 2009.  Let me encourage you to follow the link and read the article by quoting the opening and closing paragraphs:

What do we want to see emerge from the greatest crisis of capitalism for 70 years? If I had to answer in a single phrase, I would say: new models for a sustainable social market economy. This requires us to change as well as our states.

And the article closes with this (my underlining):

What you end up with is not just a systemic conundrum but also a personal challenge to every one of us. The challenge is to find a new balance in our double-lives as producers and consumers, at the same time consciously contributing to a larger set of new international balances between economy and environment, oversaving east and overspending west, rich north and poor south. That, too, is what I mean by a sustainable social market economy.

By Paul Handover

Interesting times

May you live in interesting times is reputed to be the English translation of an ancient Chinese proverb, the first of three of increasing ‘cursedness’, the other two being:

  • May you come to the attention of those in authority.
  • May you find what you are looking for.

Anyway, a quick Google search will reveal many references to the saying, and others, if one is so minded.
Read more of this Post

A week in review!

Well, it’s been exactly a week since Learning for Dogs was promoted to a couple of Forums and a couple of hundred email contacts.

Just wanted to say ‘thanks’.

Thanks, first of all, to the good guys and gals at WordPress.  They provide a really impressive product and lots of great support.

Thanks to Google for some really smart search optimisation tools.

Thanks to all the friends and colleagues who have given me feedback.

And, finally, thanks to all of you who have looked in at the Blog and especially those who have chosen to subscribe.  As new Blogs go, it looks like this is getting off to a great start.

Going to take a break for a few days but, automagically, Posts will be published each day.

By Paul Handover

Maybe Dogs should be in charge?

While dishonesty, in all its forms, is ultimately counter-productive (well, that’s the thesis of this Blog) sometimes integrity, as in a steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code, is complicated.

Take, for example, something very clear.  A person pays for an item in cash at a checkout and is short-changed.  That person has every right to point out the error and receive the correct change.  A person pays for an item and is given too much change.  A person with intergrity points out the error and pays back the excess change.  A person without integrity thinks this is a lucky day and walks out the store feeling pleased. Read the rest of this post

Resting and Playing

Few people go through their lives without periods of great angst and emotional pain.  Many at this very moment will be in the middle of situations that, perhaps, could be described as hopeless.  What on earth does that have to do with resting and playing?  Because, however grim life may look like just now, a period of rest or play makes things better.

Dogs (and many other warm-blooded animals) are masters of resting and playing.  Now, of course, it would be wrong to see these behavioural traits in the same way that we regard resting and playing but nonetheless they are great examples for us.  When dogs used to live their lives in packs, within the pack would be an Omega dog, the joker dog, whose role was to keep the pack ‘happy’.

One of the things that is apparent when travelling on the European Continent is how many countries still preserve Sunday as a day of rest.  Sadly not England and, it is suspected, nor America.  Maybe having a day of rest from whatever stresses and strains are in a life has much to recommend it.

So to with play.  And here’s a wonderful example of a group of humans having incredible fun and producing a remarkable result.  What’s the point?  Who knows.  But you can be sure that not one of the participants came away from that stage feeling worse than when they went in.

By Paul Handover

Welcome!

Beloved Pharaoh. Born: June 3rd., 2003 – Died: June 19th., 2017. A very special dog that will never be forgotten.

Dogs live in the present – they just are!  Dogs make the best of each moment uncluttered by the sorts of complex fears and feelings that we humans have. They don’t judge, they simply take the world around them at face value.  Yet they have been part of man’s world for an unimaginable time, at least 30,000 years.  That makes the domesticated dog the longest animal companion to man, by far!

As man’s companion, protector and helper, history suggests that dogs were critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer.  Dogs ‘teaching’ man to be so successful a hunter enabled evolution, some 20,000 years later, to farming,  thence the long journey to modern man.  But in the last, say 100 years, that farming spirit has become corrupted to the point where we see the planet’s plant and mineral resources as infinite.  Mankind is close to the edge of extinction, literally and spiritually.

Dogs know better, much better!  Time again for man to learn from dogs!

Welcome to Learning from Dogs