My Children are my Greatest Achievement

I heard a woman the other day say "my children are my greatest achievement" This set me to thinking because I was unconvinced it was true, like a lot of women these days her children were only one aspect of her life, she had been well educated, she had a job in which she had done well, served on community groups, was interested in cooking at a high level with which she entertained her friends etc.

So many aspects to her life where she was operating at a high level and yet the "achievement" was her children?

On first glance I thought she was confusing love and affection for acheivement after all few would deny the great love that a parent and potentially especially the mother has for her children. Many parents have given up even their own lives to protect their children in extreme cases and in the less extreme a still significant amount of resources and effort are devoted to children.

But lets be honest, they sort of get there regardless don't they ? I mean there are some terrible parents out there and their children still grow up and some even go on to  be great members of society and acheive great things in spite of thier upbringing. So as parents aren't we rather overstating "our acheivement" when we beam with pride at little Jimmys graduation. Our own graduation sure and my reference mother presumably had to put in a lot of effort to graduate herself, but when she had kids... well....

So the dictionary says;

Achievement –noun
something accomplished, esp. by superior ability, special effort, great courage, etc.; a great or heroic deed: his remarkable achievements in art.

Does this sound like having a child?

Well actually I think it does in the end, it takes great courage to set out on a long journey to bring a child into the world and raise them up. The chances of great hurt along the way are high, some children don't make it and a greater tragedy can not befall a human being, our children will themselves be hurt and we feel all their pain no matter how small or great. Despite my reference to bad parents most try hard as they understand the world to show their children the way and it takes great sustained effort over a long time.
And the rewards, well there are rewards no doubt but it is mostly a selfless act.

So here is to those making that great courageous and heroic effort to be a mum or dad and here is cheers to the giants on who's shoulders we stand our own heroic mums and dads.

Blame Storming

Blame Storming - sitting around figuring out who to blame for the latest stuff up.

Why do some corporates insist on this type of approach, we all know that people make mistakes and people say it so often that you almost forget that it is true. Then when people do make an error some personality types feel duty bound to punish them, effectively for being human.

Now we have a category of "mistakes" that we find unacceptable and worthy of punishment they are called crimes, the reason we punish is that we don't really think it was a true mistake. If we do think so then even within this category we make allowances. eg if you deliberately run someone over we will charge you with murder and you may spend a long time in prison, if however you have an accident and kill someone you may still be punished for essentially not being careful enough but the penalty will be nowhere near as severe.

So back to corporates and how they behave, I was speaking with someone recently who had discovered an error (not made it just discovered it) and was concerned about bringing it to the attention of thier boss because it would spark a round of recriminations and Blame Storming. I have to wonder how this organisation feels this is useful. It is clearly incentivising employees to stay quiet even if they are aware of issues, it will probably limit any willingness to take risks and therefore inovation (always a risk) will be stiffled, it will likely lower productivity as it may not be a happy place to work etc I can't really think of any positive reason to behave this way other than... it makes the boss feel superior (potentially) or some other ego boost for the people pointing the fingers.

OK so I can understand the frustration with the "non learning" employee who continues to make the same mistake over and over, however blame is still not very useful outplacement councilling is probably best.

Is this really the answer to everything?

So on the TV the other night is an UK based expert on the problems associated with Alcohol, who was here at the behest of some interest group or other presumably the anit Alcohol lobby as his message in a nutshell was to "ban alcohol" His views on the matter prehaps best tipified by the comment "if alcohol was invented today we would ban it"

Indeed "lets ban it" a message likely to be very well received here in NZ as this seems to be our standard response to anything we see as a problem and if we are not going to ban it outright we need to regulate it into oblivion.

But does this work? Has it ever worked? and do we stop to work through the consequences based on research not emotion?

While not something banned but something regulated cycle helmets are a fantastic example where there is no reliable data on the effectivness of these helmets in preventing injury. There is evidence that the number of fatalities increase amoung helmet wearing cyclists and the stat that I like the most on this subject is you are more likely to suffer a head injury walking and yet no one is suggesting helmets for walkers. Another negative statistic is that helmets are shown to decrease cycle participation.

But I digress back to Alcohol we have a fantastic experiment in the form of the American Prohibition period between 1920 to 1933 when Alcohol was in fact widely banned in America and to varying degrees they did try and enforce the ban. Clearly it didn't work but it did turn otherwise law abiding citizens into potential criminals and gave criminal gangs a fantastic source of revenue which they were prepared to defend with violence.

Sound familiar, sounds a lot like the current "war on drugs" that America and varioius other countries including our own is currently involved in. The sad facts are people are still doing, the gangs make money out of it and in the case of harder drugs a lot of suffering results not from the drug taking itself but the surrounding activities. Pharmacy grade cocaine is cheap (it is used in some medical situations) for example but not if you have to get it off your local gang member and it may not be of the same quality standard.

So none of the above is an argument in favour of drug taking or binge drinking (the current manifestation of our drinking culture) both can be very harmful to your health, relationships with others chances of employment etc, etc. However how does increasing restriction or outright prohibition help curb the problems, so far there is zero evidence that this is working so far.

With booze the often quoted solution is to increase the price, however as I understand it the price of P (methamphetamine) is very expensive (I am not a user so stand to be corrected) but it doesn't seem to put people off. Not only that but we now have the example of "pre loading" where young people will buy cheaper supermarket booze and get hammered at home before heading out for the night. I think in economics this would be called substitution, if the price of drinks in bars was more reasonable however prehaps a more controlled approach might be taken. After all you can't take your bottle with you to the pub unless it is inside you which is what happens after all. So sometimes the "solutions" make things worse.

In the exact same arena we have an example of a system that does seem to work. Once upon a time not so long ago no one thought anything about driving drunk and it is still possible at the squash club for example for older members to talk about when xyz got hammered and end up in a ditch and the yarn is told as an item of humor not warning. These same clubs where these stories are told will also tell you that bar takings now are "way down" as "no one wants to drink and drive"

So how did this happen? Education of course, we were all taught that drink driving was not funny and that it was socially unacceptable. "if you drink and drive you are a bloody idiot" went one advert. and over time it has worked. OK police will point to greater enforcement as a factor although the evidence of penalty as a deterent to behaviour is weak as a general rule but as social animals we are driven to conform to the social norms. Change the norms get a result.

Far from banning alcohol make it unacceptable to be drunk.

You will notice that the "ban it" logic is already creeping into the food debate because some people (actually quite a few) are fat. "lets tax fat" they cry, sigh some people are slow learners is all I can say.