Ideas, Books, Anthropology: Jared Diamond - Collapse

"In Collapse, Jared Diamond shows how societies destroy themselves."

Source: The New Yorker

(Since first posted the review has been moved by the New Yorker. One can now purchase everything written in the New Yorker before 2005 on cd. The New Yorker overcame copyright concerns by scanning the pages so they can't be searched.)

Ideas: Power and Population in Asia

"Few would contest the general proposition that the population factor bears directly on the course of the friendly — and sometimes unfriendly — competition between states in the world arena today. Problems arise, however, when we try to move from the general to the specific. How, exactly, do human numbers (population size, composition, and trends of change) affect the ability of governments to influence events beyond their borders — or affect the disposition of a country’s interactions with outside actors? And this is no less important for the would-be strategist: How can we use population indicators to anticipate, with some reasonable hope of accuracy, the impact of yet-unfolding demographic forces on the balance of international power? This essay explores these questions for the world’s largest strategic arena: the great Asian/Eurasian expanse."

Source: Power and Population in Asia by Nicholas Eberstadt - Policy Review, No. 123

Ideas: Lakoff

A critical concept:

'Frames', according to Lakoff, are the key to understanding how political ideas are received. Human beings don't absorb information as raw material; we sift input through frames of meaning carried in the language we use.

Ideas: aperspective space

Without or not yet having developed a perspective ... a useful state, me thinks.

"Hans-Ulrich Obrist: Jean Gebser tried in his texts about the development of the history of perspective, which he conceived in 1932 and wrote in the 1940's, to work towards an aperspective perception of space which succeeds the unperspective and perspective world. He was not yet able to realize the connection between this development and the speed of media and the resulting tyranny of real time, but already he predicted a new age of perspective."

Source: Jean Gebser

Management: Corporate Consulting Types - Possibly Relevent Article for your Practises

"The demise of the corporate pecking order is a myth, says Stanford professor Harold J. Leavitt. Middle managers are the ones who bear the brunt when an organization pretends that everyone is equal." Source: HBS Working Knowledge: Leadership: The Plight of Middle Managers

A related thesis was really well presented in Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success by Art Kleiner.