Self Worth Nett Worth

This is a slogan of a training company, which I think is rather unfair and ungrateful to schools. It also has a very limited understanding of what being 'rich' is. While being rich mean having an abundance of desirable qualities and elements in general terms, it is common for many people to equate 'being rich' with one who merely has lots of money.

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Even restricting our definition of 'being rich' into the narrow scope of money, schools actually do teach us how to make them. For instance, good language abilities enable me to communicate effectively with others and read up on the fine details of product specifications and commercial laws. Ultimately, having good language skills help me to make money.

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Other subjects like maths, science, history and geography are obviously useful tools to make money with, and there are the more subtle ones that I have found even more useful. For instance, even the dreaded non-phonetic Chinese ideograms have helped to improve my pattern recognition abilities, alongside with the more congenial art lessons; and after all, business is but about recognising patterns and striking the opportunities at the right time! And what better way to be trained in precise timing than by learning music? Besides, music is also inherently highly structured and intuitive, which is among the traits of successful businessmen.

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So schools do teach us how to make money, and it is just a matter putting all the skills together. More amazingly, schools not only teaches us how to make money but also the moral duties to society, family and self. It teaches us to serve society and that money is but the fuel to our lifestyles, not the source.

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In highly urbanised cities, where its people are further and further removed from nature, it is easy to believe that money is the source of life. Yet, money is merely an invention by human beings to store value. The plants don't have money. The animals and the entire nature don't have money; and they live (until they are destroyed by humans). Nature, after all, is eternally regenerative and abundant. As Buckminster Fuller puts it, we are all multi-millionaires by the measures of what nature has already given us.

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So why do business 'gurus' say that schools do not impart the skills to become 'rich'? It could be their own myopia that being rich is just merely having money and their own shortcoming of not recognising the business skills that are implicit in all the subjects in school. Perhaps they didn't really understand those subjects when they were in school and have missed the essence in their own education! If not, then they could be using those silly slogans to whip up the feeling of inadequacy among the audience. That is, break their confidence, make them feel that they need something that is missing in their education and that they have to get it fast in order to make money. In other words, they are selling fear. Sadly, that's also a way to become rich make money - by selling fear.

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I have this video of Chris Gardner, the real life character in the movie "In the Pursuit of Happiness". He certainly did not attend any 'how to get rich" classes, but he got there to make lots of money and lots of good morals too! There is another post about him in this blog. For more of him, click here.

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Finally, look around you and find out if those well-rounded fabulously ones needed a business guru?

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Bucky Group 34 - Christmas 2008

Since it is Christmas, we have a feast this Saturday at the Salon. Everyone brought something to share.

After the usual Christmas songs, we switched to Bob Maley's "One Love" video.
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We even connected with one of our Bucky member, Rochele, her two Vietnamese friends doing PhD in Atlanta and another friend working for CNN in Atlanta to join our session. Together we danced and sang across the Internet. Perhaps this marks the start of the Bucky Group's Webcast to people elsewhere or anywhere. Isn't technology wonderful? We did this without any additional costs.
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In 2008, many of our topics pertained to "Happiness". In 2009, we will be focused on "Creativity". To start it off, we watched and listened to Ken Robinson's TED talk on "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"

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Discussion:

Our education system in the Polytechnics seem to prepare our students for fixed vocations and therefore focuses on the implementation specific technical skills rather than conceptual and fundamental skills.

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Some years ago, the government aimed to get into the IT industry in a big way, but they didn't succeed. (We are not cheaper and bigger than the Indians.) Then they tried media, which was also not successful as there were not so many employers hiring journalists in a small country like Singapore. So they went into gaming, which is also not successful. They are now aiming for technology for "Visual Effects". Bureaucrats in their present form of conditioned and constrained thinking will never catch up with the market demand in real time. If only they had focused on the fundamentals of bringing up creative minds, will they be able to adapt to changing needs of industries. Someday they will learn.

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One of my dreams is to start a Buckminster Fuller Institute/University and Cafe in the city centre as a meeting place for entrepreneurs, technologists, artists, musicians and investors. There, we will have a Bucky library, artifacts (like the geodesic dome and isocahedran), Bucky sessions and seminars. Artists can sell their wares by displaying them in the cafe and budding musicians can jam up for added exposure and to entertain. Outside the cafe in the open, we can run exercises to build some of Bucky's artifacts, like constructing the geodesic domes perhaps with bamboo sticks or to play the World Game. These sessions can be webcast via the Internet so that member cafes elsewhere can join in.

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From time to time, entrepreneurs with revolutionary and creative products can also demonstrate them at the cafe premises. Revolutionary products need good sounding boards to test their business models, and meeting other entrepreneurs and artists to debate and synergise will be invaluable.

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Such a cafe will broaden the minds of people who (sadly) have been educated in a highly industrialised, structured, narrow and specialised system; to become more comprehensive in their approaches. Bucky called this type of people, "Comprehensivists". A Comprehensivist is one who considers the Universe as one system obeying a set of generalised principles, and not many human-perceived systems obeying different principles.

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This cafe will also offer life long continuous learning to people who have missed out on education in the earlier part of their life, or are late bloomers. There isn't such a cafe in Singapore so far, so let there be one! Perhaps it is kind of a "Cafe 2.0", akin to "Web 2.0".

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Note:

The Bucky Group is one that anyone can join and there are no formal memberships nor fees to pay, but just the receptivity to life long learning and fun. The Group meets every Saturday and Sundays, and has been doing so for the last 13 years. Please send in your comments and suggestions for the Bucky Cafe above. Thanks.

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For more of what the Bucky Group does in the past meetings, click here.
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