The Psychlogy of Creatures

Looking into dogs...

A dog is better off not tied than tied...

A dog is better off to wander around the house and let loose...

Observing a dog tied, the dog does almost anything and the only thing in mind for the dog is to get loose... When the dog manages to escape or the owner who has tied the dog for most of its life lets the dog loose, the dog runs away so quickly...

But, I always notice the dog to always come back, I guess the dog just wants to see what's out there...

See, when the dog runs away, its just that he wants to see what's out there and experience something else, experience another environment, experience a different environment, any different environment, as long as its not the same environment he has been tied in for the longest time..

These dogs that run away, does not want to run away but just experience another environment... I guess the dog does like and love his owner coz he has lived with the owner's love and care for the longest time but being tied just is different for the dog...

The dog that ran away always comes back... Except when it isn't being tied the dog is trying to escape but the owner's brutality, and sometimes the dog even comes back and forgive this... Or if somewhere along the way, some other person managed to catch that dog and doesn't let it loose... At this instance, the dog still tries to get loose from this other person who managed to catch him and go back home to his real owner... Or, at times, the dog was just lost and couldn't manage to find his way back home...

A dog who has attached himself to the owner doesn't want not to be with his owner...

Maybe that dog is just waiting for his owner to come and find him and take him back home...

Funny how it is with animals, its not just dogs... Also cats, birds and whatever else is out there that knows how to think...

Its just exactly the same with people...

Judgement and Friends...

sometimes I wonder why it's so easy for others to judge people. The sad part is - when people judge someone at the peak of his pain. A values education teacher in high school once said, "friendship doesn't mean you have to carry the axe and kill someone for an injured friend - it means being able to offer your hand, your shoulder, or your entire self to help him get up on his feet again". Hence, if you call yourself a friend - don't pass judgement. Just listen and understand. It's enough to make the world a better place to live in

One's business and irrationality...

Some people just don't know how to mind their own business... If not they just are plain irrational and lacks wisdom to understand how life works...
I guess these are products of their past that just has difficulties in moving on to the present by learning through experience and not actually making the world much WORST!!
See, some people who went through tragedy or hardships in the past tend to bring it to their present, instead of making the present much better, they tend to get stuck in their pasts and actually exaggerates the hardships they went through in the past to their present, making irrational behavior and decisions in life...
I guess, its really hard to change oneself... But I have seen a lot of people change their attitudes and become a better person...
Im actually happy seeing a lot of changes with this certain person, I hope all's well...
Although, still I see a lot of people who just doesn't know how to become mature despite one's age... I guess, that's why people around them treat them not like his/her age...
No wonder...

What Keeps a Person in Denial...

There are just some things that we cannot accept... Different circumstances and instances that we deny what is and has become reality... We tend not to face this and accept this reality... Making us unrealistic people, irrational, and sometime very uptight without even being aware of ourselves...

So, as people who cope with reality, we often tend not to face these circumstances or instances... We tend to shy away to what is real and hide outselves in our own ways... Different coping mechanisms that we go through coz of our so called denial...

Things that people often do when in denial is drinking, meaning liquor abuse... If not, there's illegal substances, sleeping, over eating, and many more but even worse is suicide... These are things people do to avoid a problem a reality that they do not want to face...

Im not saying that coping mechanisms are negative... But see, we cope in healthy manners... Never through these things I have mentioned above.... We can cope by constructive discussions with friends or positive peers or family... Maybe through a spa treatment, a walk, a drive or treating ourselves with something to pamper us... Legally!!! After this, we go back and think of how to make our realities better, on how to solve our problems...

People often misconstrue that illegal substances or drugs, liquor, over sleeping, over eating, etc. solve their problems, it doesn't... It would only take away the feeling temporarily... It doesn't solve anything, but actually adds up to your problem... After the quick fix, the problem comes right back to your face and actually would turn out to become a much more bigger problem...

So where are we now... Denial...

What keeps a person in denial is him/herself... Actually sucking up to his/her own sadness and addicted to these certain feelings... not wanting to face what is real, choosing to hide in his/her own shell and own reality...

Sometimes, people tend to make up their own realities.. At times, people actually gets stuck to these realities that they create coz they were coping from something from the past...

That's why at times, people grow insane...

Now, who wants to get stuck in denial???

Terrorism

I was browsing around and saw this theory on a religious at the same time educational website...


The Strategy of Osama bin Laden
The goal of the Jihadists to restore Islam to a dominant place in the world today, using "terror" as a strategy, gives us some insight into the mindset of bin Laden when he gave the go-ahead for the attack of September 11, 2001. While the actions of the highjackers were gruesome and incomprehensible to Westerners, they are part of a strategic plan to change the balance of power in the world. The leaders of al Qaeda see the Islamic world being occupied by non-Islamic forces. To change the balance of power in the world al Qaeda must find a way to end the Aoccupation@ and re-unite Islam. Since the United States is the leading power in the world and the patron of many Islamic regimes, it is the power behind the "occupation and, therefore, the great enemy that motivates and controls the anti-Islamic agenda. Defeating the United States directly is not a realistic option. But the kind of war bin Laden has unleashed burdens America with billions of dollars of expenses to fight "terrorism" at home and abroad. It distracts Americans with the constant fear of unsuspected attacks. It makes Americans feel as insecure as Europeans and Israelis have felt for decades. It makes isolationism look more attractive. If, in the process, the United States can be caused to withdraw from the Islamic world, other anti-Islamic powers such as Russia, India and Israel would be helpless to intervene. Corrupt and secular governments in the Muslim world would then have no base of outside support and would be overthrown by the Islamic masses. So al Qaeda does not expect to destroy the United States directly, unless some doomsday weapon comes into its hands. The United States is too powerful and too distant to defeat. Rather, bin Laden's strategy has been to force the United States into a series of actions that destabilize the governments of those Middle Eastern countries that are dependant on Washington. If the United States could be made to look weak and vulnerable in the eyes of the Arab street, the governments of the Middle East would lose their credibility. If pressure from the United States then forces those governments to join the US in fighting Islamic militants or to remain silent in the face of Israeli aggression, popular uprisings could easily lead to their collapse. The ultimate goal would be the establishment of an Islamic superpower, a vast Islamic state stretching from Morocco to the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, governed by Islamic law. Could a bin Laden achieve such goals? He clearly believed the United States does not have the stomach to suppress a mass, popular uprising. Unlike al Qaeda, Americans as a rule do their best not to hurt innocents. The same military that is virtually invincible in battle would have a difficult time handling an army of unarmed women and children. Although the United States has important interests in the Islamic world, they are not on a scale to justify the expense and casualties involved in a long-term occupation. To the degree that further jihadist acts in the US should occur, the American populace could easily sway toward an isolationist stance. If this isolationism should lead to withdrawal from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and even the partial abandonment of Israel, the political world would have changed considerably in favor of the Islamic agenda. So from bin Laden's perspective war in diplomatic, economic or military terms would only result in the further humiliation of Islam. But this new kind of war has altered the battlefield odds. Since the targets vastly outnumber the defenders, al Qaeda has designed a war strategy in which it has significant advantages. U.S. power is weakened in that defensive action must be widely dispersed. Suicidal fervor creates a low-tech battlefield in which superior technology is neutralized as a weapon. The goal of the attacks on September 11, 2001 was not to defeat America. America was too powerful and too distant for that to happen. Osama bin Laden's goal was a very strange one from the Western perspective. He wanted to provoke America to attack the islamic world. More specifically he wanted to provoke America to attack Saudi Arabia. Did you notice that 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudis? While the trained pilots were generally from other countries, the "beef" of the operation (the muscle-men who would take over the plane) were almost all from Saudi Arabia. Osama wanted it to appear that this was a Saudi attack on American. While he anticipated the attack on Afghanistan in 2001, he was sure that President Bush would not stop there. In order to stop al Qaeda he would have to control Saudi Arabia as well. Why provoke an attack on Saudi Arabia? Because that is the holy land of Islam, the place where Allah met the prophet Muhammad, the place of pilgrimage, the land of Mecca and Medina. If any action could be calculated to inflame the passion of the islamic masses in the Middle East it would be a Western occupation of the holy places. Osama bin Laden wanted above all else to arouse the fervor of the people to rise up against the invaders and make life so miserable for them that they would be forced to withdraw, as the Soviets were forced to from Afghanistan. Yesterday, Afghanistan. Today, Saudi Arabia. Tomorrow? The world! Does it sound like the demented scheme of a madman? To many it does. But when you consider what other options were available to stimulate a rebirth of Islamic power in the world, bin Laden's scheme doesn't sound so crazy. It was a shrewd calculation that the only way to get rid of corrupt and secular governments in the Middle East was to find a way to humiliate the sponsor of those governments, the United States. Once the sponsor proved powerless, these Arab governments would fall and the Islamic Empire would be reborn. So let me summarize Osama bin Laden's dream scenario. His goal for September 11 was to do something so horrific that the United States would feel forced to invade the Middle East, preferably Saudi Arabia. Osama and his friends could then label it an attack on Islam itself. A guerilla war against the invaders would provoke the Americans to kill and wound many innocent bystanders. The "Arab street," the common, everyday man and woman in the Middle East would rise up in righteous anger against the occupiers. The military might of America would prove helpless against an uprising of "people power," unarmed men, women and children who would be willing to die for their faith. In the face of such an enemy, America would have little choice but to pull back into bases and leave the streets in the hands of the insurgents, much as had occurred in Vietnam years before. Eventually, America would grow tired of the conflict. Media and congress would unite to force the president to withdraw and leave the Middle East to its own devices. In the wake of that superpower defeat, the masses in the Middle East would embrace Islam and Sharia law and the stage would be set for an islamic superpower that could extend from Morocco to Indonesia. That was Osama's dream and it will likely outlive him regardless of the outcome in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

The Strategy of George W. Bush
But that brings us to the obvious question, doesn't it? In the invasion of Iraq in 2003, wasn't President Bush doing exactly what Osama bin Laden expected and wanted? Wasn't he playing directly in the hands of the jihadists? Wasn't he placing young Americans in an impossible situation where they could be picked off in ones and twos? Wasn't the Iraq adventure doomed from the very start? Then why did he go there? Was it simply bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction? Was it really all about the oil after all? Here is where the deeper motivations behind the news have been poorly understood. The real geopolitical goals of the Iraq War have been hinted at in the media but rarely spoken out loud. The President himself has been careful never to tip his hand publically, even in the face of just criticism of the goals that were actually stated. Let's briefly go behind the scenes and unravel the deeper actions and motivations that don't always make the news. What did the invasion of Iraq have to do with the war on terror? Why did Bush play bin Laden's game? What was he hoping to gain? The usual reasons make no sense. The invasion was not really about weapons of mass destruction. While it turns out that Saddam Hussein no longer had any weapons of mass destruction, everybody, including the Europeans, believed that he had. Yet in spite of that belief, most did not think that was a reason to invade. The invasion was not really about Saddam Hussein. Sure, he was a rather unsavory character. Sure, he gassed the Kurds and massacred the Shiites. Sure his secret police was killing people right and left. But such events had been occurring for the last twenty-five years and had provoked no American invasion up to that point. Why invade now? The invasion was also not really about control of Middle Eastern oil. The oil was flowing fine before the war. The war has, in fact, driven up prices and created uncertainty. War hinders trade, it doesn't promote it. So all of the public reasons for the invasion make no real sense. The real purpose of the invasion was the dismantling of al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is not a national government. It is not a definable state with borders and institutions that can be destroyed. To dismantle al Qaeda means shutting off the flow of funds, most of which had been coming from Saudi Arabia. To deal with al Qaeda requires co-operation from every nation in which al Qaeda operates. It requires the free flow of intelligence information. It requires people to turn in relatives and friends who are part of the conspiracy. Since al Qaeda has always been rooted in the Arab context, it cannot be defeated without projecting power into the Middle East at some point. Osama bin Laden knew that and included that into his calculations of American behavior. Let me illustrate the problem. It is reported that Osama bin Laden had at least 53 siblings from a variety of different mothers. Many of these were not sympathetic to the goals and methods of the jihadists. Many were living happily in the United States when September 11 occurred. Some, however, were sympathetic. The only way to accurately separate the "jihadists" from the "friends of democracy" in the bin Laden family itself is to be inside the family. In other words, the United States and allied governments need to be able to penetrate such families intimately and encourage brother to "rat" on brother and/or turn them in to the authorities. This is kind of thing is heavily destructive in any close-knit family and will be resisted in most circumstances. The dilemma for the rulers of Saudi Arabia after September 11 was that they had to choose between pleasing the United States, who wanted to root out every potential jihadist in Saudi Arabia, and pleasing their own people, who didn't want such disruptive activities occurring in their own country and in their own families. Why would they choose to please the United States over their own people? After all, if they offended their own people, their own people would be motivated to overthrow them! So there was no way the Saudi rulers would fully co-operate with the United States in "the war on terror" unless they became more afraid of the United States than they were of their own people! In a desperate attempt to distract the United States, the Saudi leadership began floating exciting proposals for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These proposals had no chance of being accepted by those who would be most affected by them, but offering the proposals set conditions for Saudi co-operation in the war on terror that the United States could never fulfill. What the United States heard in these proposals was that the Saudis had no intention of helping to destroy al Qaeda. So how could the United States get at al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia? One option was to invade Saudi Arabia and do the job themselves. But that is exactly what bin Laden was hoping for and would likely have resulted in a mass uprising against the United States. The other option was to raise the threat of invasion to such a high level that the Saudi leadership would become more afraid of the United States than they were of their own people. To do that the United States had to find a way to effectively project power into the Middle East without inflaming the opposition of the Arab masses. The United States had to find a way to convince the average Middle Eastern Arab that the United States was overwhelmingly powerful, even at the street level, and much to be feared, and that al Qaeda could put on a big show, but was essentially weak and could not protect its own. In other words, the United States had to create the perception that the jihadist project was doomed to failure and that casting one's lot with the United States was the more effective way to create positive change in the Middle East. Enter Saddam Hussein. If there was one ruler in the Middle East who was widely despised in the Arab world and whose demise would cause few tears to be shed, it was Saddam Hussein, the secular, oppressive president of Iraq. President Bush gambled that taking out Saddam Hussein would not inflame the Arab street. There would be anger at the presence of foreign occupiers, but it would be a manageable anger. And if Saddam could be replaced by a government "of the people" there might even be some gratitude for American intervention.

After College, What's Next?

Every now and then we read about success stories in the papers. To name a few successful entrepreneurs: Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, Mrs. Soccoro C. Ramos, founder and general manager of the National Book Store; Entrepreneur of the Year, Mr. Henry Gozon, who wants to maintain GMA Network Channel 7’s leadership position in TV networks; and Mr. Henry Sy, Sr. Top Retailer, Visionary of Philippine Retail, with his chain of SM Malls all over the Philippines and a global reach in China. Then there are outstanding recipients in the Philippines for such important awards as the Palanca award for literature, National Academy of the Science and Technology award for outstanding research and award for outstanding dealer or award for successful franchise. When asked about what helped the awardees realize their achievements, the answer almost always revolves around vision, focus, and hard work. In this brief article, I would like to write about vision. In Collins dictionary there are two definitions of vision that I found meaningful, no pun intended. Vision is the “act, faculty, or manner of perceiving with the eye, sight:…”the ability or an instance of great perception, esp. of future developments…” Vision then goes beyond what the eyes see, it uses our other faculties that enable us to see beyond and create images of the present, retain pictures of the past and perceive or build images of our future Vision allows us to see ourselves, our capabilities, strengths, as well as our weaknesses. It also enables us to be aware of the outside world – the diverse opportunities and challenges open to us. Today, we see that globalization and technological innovations are bringing about rapid changes and diverse influences on our economic, political and social lives. They are opening up our doors to diverse nationalities and varied experiences and opportunities. The world indeed has become “flat”, a concept introduced by Thomas Friedman in his book entitled The World is Flat (2005). He describes the unintended consequences of the flat world as putting different societies and cultures in much greater direct contact with one another. It connects people to people much faster than people and cultures can often prepare themselves. China, India, the Philippines and many other countries have become part of the global supply chain. There are tremendous opportunities out there but we need vision to see beyond our four walls. We need to take advantage of the educational information we can obtain from reading about other cultures, other ventures and from meeting people and building networks that will help us in the future. Vision helps us decide what to focus on – what capabilities and strengths to explore and how to prepare for the challenges ahead of us. Focus and hard work are the two other significant instruments for success. Focus helps us to aim at a target, stay on track and with hard work and perseverance we end up with success.
Somehow, thinking about successful people brings me back to the sad story of Ann. I knew Ann when I was director of employment at a major health care center in the United States. Ann was the only child, with parents who were very protective and she lived a sheltered life. The choice of a major in college was made by her parents who expected her to be a successful corporate lawyer someday. Her father, after all, was a frustrated lawyer. Ann spent all her college days in school and home, not having any extracurricular activities at school or in the community and not having participated in any of the school field trips. When her parents suddenly died in an accident, Ann decided that she would not pursue a law degree but she would find a job. Although a business venture could have been an option, she did not know how to invest the little sum of money that she got from insurance after her relatives took their share from it. When I first met Ann, we talked about her and possible jobs in the organization. She had just finished her Bachelors degree. Her parents thought that she would move on to law school after college, but Ann was not at all interested in law. Having finished college, Ann surprised me with her naiveté. She did not know much about what was going on in the world or even in her state, New York. She was at a total loss as to what she could or should do. She was hired as a patient receptionist at the health care center where I worked. We thought that this job might open her eyes to possibilities in the health care field. After five years in the same position, she felt that she could do better, after all she was a talented and good natured lady. She just did not have enough self-confidence. During that time, She witnessed a lot of employment activity around her - co-workers have been promoted, some went to college to further their education, others changed jobs or employers. These activities helped her see the need to move on. I referred her to our organization’s career counselor and the last time I heard, she had finally established a career goal.
There are some people in this world who, like Ann, are unable to answer the question: After college, what is next? Like Ann, they do not know what to do and where to go from here. While in college, Ann apparently never put to practical use what she was learning from books and from her lessons. She did not have the opportunity to look beyond her “little confined world” to experience the challenges and prepare herself for a competitive and demanding world. College is transition stage in life where one should see and discover oneself and observe the “outside world” – watch people succeed and others fail and vicariously learn from these experiences. We are in a fast moving world open with tremendous opportunities but we have to see, grab and pursue the opportunity that fits our capabilities, keep focused and support it with hard work. College provides us with the tools for successfully pursuing these opportunities. College students need to use their vision and the tools offered them while in school to enable them to answer with confidence, the question: After college, what’s next?


By: Melva M. Diamante, D.B.A.