Saturday, September 23, 2006

Quote on War

Quote

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Big brother

Some observations on the psyche of government officials.

Seniority within the organisation is no indication of leadership or personal qualities. One could be promoted to the very top while striving to cover one's a** all the time.

Personal commitment or volition to any task could be unheard of.

The biggest threat that can emanate from the lips of an official (at which they expect the listener to cower and run is "I can write a note on this to the department..."). Situations where this fails to frighten the listener completely flummoxes them.

At times, they fall into the habit of referring responsibility to a primordial omnipotent entity called 'Government' in case they want to absolve themselves of the issue at hand.
(E.g. 'The Government will decide upon what to do...', or 'The Government will take this up...')
Sometimes they refer to it lovingly as if it were alive.

N.B. These are the defining characteristics of organization culture. There are always exceptions.