One crisis at a time

I’m no hypocrite, and have no problem in admitting that a tooth ache bothers me more than all the hunger in Africa or the abuses to the human rights in China.

If you aren’t going to do anything about it, have no power to change things according to your sense of justice, talking about it and making a sad face is no more than a waste of time and pure hypocrisy.

Especially when you don’t help out, put on a poor show about it and got out to dinner in a fancy restaurant or spend a bundle in a perfume.

I’m not against luxury, the luxury goods industry creates many jobs and prevent a lot of people from having to compete with others less qualified that would have no chance against them. In fact, luxury goods are what create the need for excellence and advance in technologies.

I woke up early this morning and read a magazine I bought yesterday, that is supposed to bring you up to date with the world matters. Social issues and politics, some scandals and tricks used by the rich and famous to rise above the crowd and be successful in life. Basically it adds nothing to my perception of human relations and what people are capable of to get a minute attention by the media. Some articles are interesting thou. Not too profound, more like an appetizer.

One spoke of the new trend of seven stars hotels. The rich are fed up with the lack of exclusivity they get at a Sheraton, for instance. They want to be indulged, have no one bothering them while they take time off. I can understand that very well. Being stalked by the press and fans everywhere you go has to be emotionally exhausting. Even I, an ordinary Joe, many times want to take some time off from the world and my of life.

Taking time off is one of the best things we can do, otherwise our entire existence is drowned in what we usually do, and there is not time left to get to know other realities, forms of thinking and life styles. What we call cultures. That leads us to evolution. And since evolution is based on change, to many, a crisis can occur.

Some of us have evolved into something called “crisis manager”. We perform what is multitasking in computation. Let’s get a little technical here.

Lot’s of computers were sold (and still are) with a single word. Multitasking: the ability to perform numerous tasks simultaneously. And the salespersons showed that happening, right in front of the shoppers very eyes. You can listen to music, be on the internet, play a game and burn a DVD all at the same time. Well, that’s just the sugar coat. In reality, what you have inside that computer is no more than a single processor acting like a fireman. The operating system (managing program) is guiding his actions, telling it when to work on a task, what to do, how fast and for how long. By cycling very fast the tasks at hand, to the shopper it seems that the computer can actually do a lot of stuff at the same time.

The only way a computer can do more than one task at a time, is by having more than one processor. That way, it can be working on more than one task at a time, without interrupting to put out the next major crisis at hand.

It might seem that we are like computers. That is almost correct, except for the timeline. Computers are like humans. Having only one brain, we too can only solve one problem at a time. Remember the panic button? That is what the computer is doing when you ask it to do more than one thing simultaneously. The big difference here is that computers are designed to work like that, while we weren’t. OK, not entirely true. We have that potential, but require some training, respect for ourselves and our space and mostly, serenity.

Managers are required to have those and other skills. Be able to work like a bottleneck that receives information, prioritize it, work, decide, and come out with answers to the problems posed. Since we are all managers at some level, we all are required to do the same thing.

Computers use something called a stack to keep track of what they have to do, done already and what happened to that information. Mathematically it’s a fabulous idea and in theory it works like a charm. In practice, sometimes it doesn’t. The physical world still has some secrets and we can’t yet explain everything. The exceptions to the rule happen so few times that they become unimportant and easily solved. Hit the reset button and you are on your way again. But the important thing here is, computers have flaws too. And we designed them, so we know almost everything about them.

Nature designed the human brain. We are still poking it and seeing what happens. We came with no instructions manual, so that’s the only way we have to try to figure it out. I got a taste of it when I was asked to learn how to program a robot that was in a German based programming language. Needless to say, I can only swear in German, and I’m still lousy at it.

Having only one brain, we have to act like the crazy fireman that runs off to the one with the biggest flames, and cycle thru them while trying to keep the whole house from burning down. Since we did not designed our brains and our knowledge over it is still very little, variables like emotions can cause a crash in our organic processor, AKA brain.

So, not knowing much about what our brain really is and how it works, we were still capable of building a machine that has those functions we already know of, and made it better: much faster, extremely precise, reliable, and recently, quite cheap. But it still can fail. If somehow it loses control over what is happening, it freezes. The panic button is still being pounded and the stack eventually fills up. Memory overflow. You just ran out of memory in which to store information about the new demands, and that is because you could not empty the stack fast enough.

Both computers and humans have limitations as to how fast they can get work done. And sometimes, if you want that job done, you will just have to wait.

In the modern world waiting is a forbidden word. We all want everything NOW. That is why we have memory overflow’s, and are increasingly making use of the reset button. Have you noticed how much more drugs we are using just to keep up with the pressure? And when drugs don’t work, we always have mental institutions for the one’s that couldn’t handle it.

Success is measured in a lot of ways. Technical abilities are required, but some expertise in emotional intelligence is fundamental. Let’s get tech again.

Most people associate the word Protocol to politics. Actually, a protocol is a set of rules that enable two entities to communicate. It’s like a language. You can understand me because we are using the same protocol, the English language. Well, humans need more than just a common spoken or written language. They need a behavioral protocol in order to be compatible. And in the case of emotional intelligence, it’s even harder, because the rules are always changing. You have to sync with the other person.

Try to picture yourself blind and using a cane to move around. You have to touch the objects in your path in order to avoid them and get safely to your destination with no bruised legs due to a collision with the coffee table or the fire hydrant. That’s how emotional intelligence works. You have to feel were are the emotional hard spots, and avoid them in order to get to a smile with the person you are talking to. Otherwise, you might get bruised, and these bruises take longer to heal.

Everyone is talking about emotional intelligence these days. Mostly directed to others. But what about using it on ourselves? We too have a need to keep functional, and when pressure increases, we can only do that thru self-respect. If you don’t respect yourself, you don’t respect your limitations, and eventually you will have to press that reset button. The people that put the pressure on you will criticize you for not knowing when to say halt, alleging that they couldn’t guess when you were over the top. Your crime: no self-respect, and as a consequence, you tried to compensate that by being a nicer guy, that never said no.

Computers were created based on us. We have prepared them to say no. So why do we demand more from us, than from the machines we created to serve us? Can it be that humans already deserve less respect than machines?