I’m back, baby

For those of you who did not know, I have been away in China for the past two years. I have had internet access and have been writing my blog on my Facebook page, but thanks to the wonderful work the Chinese internet police are doing, I have not had access to this blog, the Menso Guide to Life. But now I’m back, baby!

In the coming weeks, this blog will write about Barack, globalisation, and the roots of war and conflict. There will also be a series called Individualism: the Reappearing Ideal, about the debate between individualism and collectivism and its impact on our world.

I have also finished writing my book, Why Interculturalism Will Work. If you would like a copy, email me at mensoelrey@yahoo.ca with the subject “Why Interculturalism Will Work” and I will send you one. You can also use that email address to find me on Facebook. In the meantime, enjoy the Menso Guide to Life! It’s good to be back, baby.

Successful Relationships

On a registration form for a speech competition I entered several months ago, I was asked to list my biggest achievements. I put “many successful relationships”. Perhaps it strikes you as a strange achievement. Putting aside the definition of “successful” (until a later post), would you say you have had many successful relationships? Have you ever sat down to think why a relationship goes well or poorly?

I might be alone in this but my relationships with others are my highest value. I define relationships broadly. For me there are four categories.

1) romantic
2) intimates, your close friends and family members
3) good friends
4) acquaintances, coworkers, partners and neighbours.

All but the romantic category (in some cultures, anyway) can have as many people in them as you want. Here are some tips for starting relationships.

To be a good lover, be a good friend. If you have never had good friends, you will not understand how to trust and be trustworthy, how to open and be open, loyal, caring, helpful and understanding.

Trust your instincts. If your initial reaction to someone is that you think you could have a good relationship with this person, as a lover or a friend, go with it. You know what kind of people you like. When you meet them, you know nothing about them but a part of your brain tells you you like them. Listen to it. You don’t need to know everything. Initial reaction is everything.

BUT before you leap into a commitment with someone (eg. moving in together, getting married, having children or even just saying “I love you”), make sure of a few things.

You must have some of your assumptions about the world in common. For example, I am an optimist, a capitalist and an interculturalist. If I tried loving a pessimist, a communist or a racist, we would be fighting all the time; and not just about how to organise society but how to spend our time together, where to live, how to raise the children, and so on.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that.” Good. Because many people get so caught up in the initial flurry of passion that they make rash decisions—like marrying someone they are not compatible with—and get divorced. Let’s continue with my advice.

Know yourself. What do you want out of life? To travel and never settle down, to live and die in comfort, to meet as many new people as you can or to work every waking hour? What kind of person are you? The kind that runs away from conflict, welcomes it as a path to resolution, sees it as a necessary but unpleasant part of a relationship or lets argument turn violent? Ask yourself this type of question. And you don’t have to find someone identical to you (in fact, whenever I meet someone like me I am more turned off than interested) but the better you know yourself, the better you will know who is right for you.

I hope you were not looking for the “where to meet women” or “what to do on a first date” post because clearly this is not one of those articles. Those are cheap and, frankly, useless. If you want to have successful relationships, be a good friend, trust your instincts, have assumptions in common and know yourself well. Those are my four suggestions. Do you have any others?

Judgementalism

I have been called judgemental by three people in my writing about China. At first I accepted it but I have since decided that I have been labeled with unfair abandon.

I will admit to being judgemental if you admit that anyone with an opinion is judgemental. Sometimes I am called judgemental for disagreeing with others’ actions or values, which may be fair; but can’t I complain about anything without being called judgemental? Or am I only allowed to complain about things from “my country”? Judging something means saying if it is good or bad. For example, am I judgemental because I believe that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s tight grip on power in China is wrong? So call me judgemental. So I think dictatorship is wrong because it tramples on universal human rights (which China signed up to) like freedom. The only people who do not value freedom are those who take theirs for granted or those who have not experienced it. (Incidentally, I would have posted this on my blog earlier but in China I am not allowed to use or view blogs.) This may also be a good time to mention that my values are not supplied by “my country”, since I don’t think of myself as having a country, but by my experiences. So are yours, actually. Go get more experience and then challenge your own views a little more.

Hate it or love it, I am a very opinionated person with strong ideas of what is right and wrong. And I am not closed minded, either. My beliefs are firm enough that I feel I know what is right and wrong and yet fluid enough that I continually challenge even my most basic principles. Next time don’t be so quick to throw around a label like “judgemental”. If you read this blog, you will have heard me judge many things and I am not about to stop saying what I think because I’m afraid of offending a few billion people. Instead of getting insulted, consider that I might be right.

Documentaries and the truth

I have trouble believing how naive we can be. The National (Canada’s national daily news program) ran a story tonight asking if we should expect documentaries to tell the truth. Their example was Michael Moore and his movies, saying that Moore’s work was not all true and were more entertaining than informative. You expect the truth from the media? Don’t.

Why would documentaries tell us “the truth”? Do we expect the truth from newspapers and news programs? The truth is a very complex idea–there is no natural, objective truth out there because everyone sees things differently. No one person, medium or religion will ever tell you the truth. If you keep your mind open for debate, like I said in my last post, you will learn. Michael Moore provides but one point of view in the sea of opinions we call the media. Seeking the truth is like digging for gold in your backyard: there may be some there, but you’ll be digging a long time.

So keep digging if you like, but a better idea would be to listen to everyone’s case and never completely make up your mind.

Where are all the women?

As a single man in the city, I am no longer looking for a girl. I am looking for a woman. My acquaintance of so many girls over the years has led to my total disillusionment with them—but at least I have learned to identify them.

 

A girl is someone who will string you along for a week until she tells you she has a boyfriend. A girl will make you work all night to take her home and then disappear with her girlfriends. Girls will kiss you and then turn around and kiss someone else, wink at you and then never look at you again, get you to buy them a drink and then dance with another guy. I have had it with girls. If you are a girl, nice to meet you, we can be friends if you want, but you’re not my type anymore. I want a woman.

 

To both men and boys, girls are irrational. A girl will get angry with you for a joke you made and then cross her arms and stop talking to you; but when you cheat on her, she can forgive you. Girls will turn you down for sex just to show you they don’t want it, even though they want it just as much as you do! Why? Because your frustration is all part of the game.

 

Whether knowingly or without realising, girls treat men that like them as pawns. A girl goes out with a guy who likes her and waits till he tries to kiss her before she drops the “I have a boyfriend” bomb. If she didn’t know you liked her, she is naïve; and if she knew, you are there to build up her ego. “Thanks for paying for dinner, though!” A woman knows why you took her out and might even pay for her own meal—now there is a woman I want to buy dinner for. A woman will tell you her life story on the first date to see where you fit into it. She’s ready to have a real relationship, one based on understanding and love and trust, not games.

 

Now women, I sympathise with you: there are a lot of boys out there, boys that don’t understand and don’t try to understand women. These boys need to learn respect and responsibility (and perhaps listen to a couple of songs by Beyoncé) before you consider them. But there is already an entire industry devoted to the critique of the intractable immaturity of boys, and not enough on the girls that frustrate the hell out of men. (These definitions of men, women, boys and girls will hold for all future posts on this blog.)

 

Unlike a girl, you can trust a woman. A woman will do what she said she’ll do. If she asked you to meet her for lunch, she’ll be there—and she doesn’t have a boyfriend. If she flirts with you, it’s not to make her man jealous or her girlfriends laugh, it’s because she likes you. Women have experience in relationships, meaning they have both loved and lost. They have been hurt, so they understand their emotions. Now, they know what they want from a relationship. When they love, they love with all their hearts, and when they lose, they cry and then get over it because they are better than that.

 

So where are all the women? Are they getting older? Do girls stay girls for longer now? It is not unusual to meet girls of 25 or 30 years old. And yet, some of my best friends are women of fewer years. So I know you women are out there. But you will need to prove to me that you are no longer girls. That means no games, no lying, no cheating, just caring and tenderness and love.

To men, there is hope: the women you are looking for are out there. Don’t waste any more of your time waiting for girls to turn into women. To all you women out there, you deserve a real man: don’t stop looking till you find one. To those girls who have recently become women, don’t worry: you can keep the fun, adorable and affectionate sides of your nature alongside your newfound maturity. And to the girls: call me when you grow up.

The most wonderful show on earth

The following is the speech I am giving at the final of the Golden Gavel speech competition.

Mr Master of Ceremonies, ladies and gentlemen. If there is one television programme I can say had the biggest impact on my sense of humour and my sense of fun; if there is one programme that taught me more about counting and reading than any other; if there is one programme that has the power to change the world, it is Sesame Street. This speech is a big thank you to the creators of the most wonderful show in the world.

 

Where else have we brought together Elton John, a six foot canary and a hundred hand puppets with individual personalities? Who could forget the wonder they felt watching Monsterpiece Theatre, hosted by Alistair Cookie, sitting there in his armchair, waiting to introduce a classic piece of theatre such as the Postman Always Rings Twice, starring Grover. Grover awaits his package as the baker, the florist, the movers, the drycleaner and the shoemaker enter, each ringing a different number of times, every character reminding us that “the postman always rings twice.” Grover eventually goes mad as his house fills up with people, when finally the postwoman makes it to his house. As Alistair Cookie returns to recap, his doorbell rings three times, indicating the cookie man is there, so he leaves without further comment.

 

Well, perhaps you have forgotten that particular scene, but no doubt the lessons of Sesame Street have made their imprint on anyone who watched. Children learn to count and spell, they learn a new language and they learn more about their culture. We learn how to accept people for who they are and not the groups they belong to. For adults, Sesame Street continues to exercise our imaginations with its witty satire and irony.

 

My favourite character is, without a doubt, Kermit. Kermit T. Frog (the T of course stands for “the”) is not only a leader in the show—the first one to take charge of difficult situations and the first to assume responsibility when things go wrong—but is also a versatile actor. He has been a reporter, an announcer and a stage performer all in the same episode. Could Tom Hanks do that? I don’t think so! But I’ve heard the criticism against Kermit. He loses his patience, loses his temper, gets rude and even irate, not qualities we want to promote to children—but we humans have our faults too, so it’s good that children learn that. Besides, we do learn to spell frog, and what could be more important? And if you’ve ever heard him sing or seen him dance, you will see just how talented frogs can be.

 

Sesame Street has spread to more than 120 countries. In South Africa, Sesame Street has a muppet with HIV to help children understand the disease that affects everyone. Children in Israel and Palestine can watch Sesame Street and see Jewish and Muslim children discussing their differences and their similarities and playing together despite them.

 

Sesame Street is still going strong into its 37^th season and will continue to entertain and educate all of us for many years. It has taught us, in deliciously bite sized morsels, the building blocks of life: culture, math, language, understanding ourselves and others. This speech was brought to you by the letters K and G and the number 5. Let us all take in an episode of Sesame Street again soon to remind us why it is the most wonderful show on earth. This has been Kermit T. Frog reporting live from Victoria, BC. Thank you very much.

How to reform education

We should modernise education all over the world. Basic education is adequate at teaching some things. It teaches us, to some extent, to use different parts of our brain, to get along and work with others, how to finger paint—but it is weak in many subjects that are so important in modern society. Here is my plan for reforming education: a list of the subjects we should teach in secondary schools.

 

Personal responsibility

-The first thing to teach anyone is that they are responsible for their direction in life, their actions and the way they change or accept things that happen to them. Once one accepts that fact, they will lead more fulfilling lives because they will stop blaming others for their fate and start taking action to achieve their goals.

 

Critical thinking

-Teach students many perspectives by giving them a variety of teachers from a variety of backgrounds—different countries, careers and skills. Teachers should not be afraid to show their students that they do not know everything, that there is more than one side to every matter, and that anyone, teachers, parents, government, etc, does not have all the answers. Critical thinking is something we should teach from elementary school.

 

Your legal rights

-Most of us do not know our rights as workers, employers or citizens. Don’t you think we should?

 

Financial awareness

-Financial law

-Accounting and budgeting

-Investing

-And while you’re at it, teach how important all these things are.

 

Teamwork

-Give them lots of opportunities to work in groups of 2 to 150, plus more to see if they can do it, then get them to analyse their team experiences.

-Giving and receiving feedback

-And all the other million aspects of working on a team.

 

Leadership

-How to lead

-How to recognise good and bad leaders

 

Adapting to and benefiting from change

-The world is changing rapidly and will continue to do so for a long time. Instead of starting wars like some people do, why don’t we teach people to take advantage of those changes? Any disadvantages that come with chaos can become opportunities. If we teach that change is good and could be your next business, people will welcome it.

 

How to find the right career

-Career services is a huge industry because throughout our lives we change careers several times and never know what is right for us. Bring in people from every conceivable job and level of experience once a week and help teenagers find their talents and their interests.

 

How to raise children

-How to decide if and when to have kids

-Apply it to babysitting and give them the chance to make money

-Bring in parents—mothers and fathers—to show them what to do

 

How to teach others

-Show them how to teach over a week

-Then, get them teaching their class something

-Then, get them to hand in a lesson plan: learning goals and measurement, how the lessons will go, how each contributes progressively to the learning goals, etc.

 

Entrepreneurship

-How to find opportunities

-How to start a business

-How to be entrepreneurial in your own job

Preface to my magnum opus

I have begun a long term writing project (that will eventually turn into a book) and while I am not going to tell you what it is about, I am going to write the preface to it here to get your feedback and to give you a little more insight into how I think.

I believe in possibilities. I believe in human ingenuity and adaptiveness. I believe that humans can make progress towards any world that we imagine. But this progress is not inevitable. We do not use our ingenuity and we are afraid to change. We spend so much time trying to make progress that we do not stop to think where we are going. We spend so much time creating visible and invisible barriers to our progress that we are hindering ourselves.

There are some who will say that this picture of the future is unrealistic. It is not. Anything and everything is realistic when you remove the barriers to humans’ ability to realise their potential individually and collectively. I wrote this book to share my vision for the future, a future that understands our resourcefulness, our adaptiveness and most of all, our imagination. And even if you do not believe in the same vision for the Globe, I wish that, by the end of this book, you agree with me that anything is possible for humans.

Some things I never want to hear you say

I comment regularly on my beliefs, and how sick I am of hearing about things like human nature. Here is a list of things I hear every day that annoy me.

1. “Be objective”. We cannot be objective. No one can. Being human means being subjective. Science is not objective because it is created by humans. You can minimise bias, human influence and error but not eliminate it. Therefore, I never want to hear you tell me to be objective again. Alternatives: “Try to see it from this perspective”; “balance your bias with other biases”.

2. “I can’t” and “I have to”. You can, you just don’t want to. You don’t have to, you choose to. You can do almost anything you want to do, but if it is not your priority or something that will hold value for you, then don’t do it. These go along with “I don’t have time”. You have time, you just have other things you would rather do. Alternatives: “I am doing something else”; “I don’t want to”.

3. The weather. Unless you are a farmer, the weather is not a legitimate topic of conversation. Think of something else to talk about or don’t say anything.

4. “The gap between rich and poor is growing.” Why is that a problem? Answer that question and then get back to me.

5. “Think outside the box.” Hasn’t this mindless cliche reached its peak yet? If you are thinking outside the box you can come up with a better phrase for it. Alternatives: “Think creatively”; “challenge your assumptions”; “think about it from different perspectives”.

6. “The West”. I don’t know what you think the West is, but chances are you are wrong. Don’t ever generalise over a badly defined group of about 800m people and their values, beliefs, ways of life or political views. If you are, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Be specific about what part of the world you mean and what aspects of culture or society you are discussing.

7. “It’s been proven.” There is a phrase that inspires suspicion. Have you ever noticed that, six weeks after something has been proven, it becomes disproven? So have I. That is why “proving” something is not proving anything. Explain to me why you and these scientists are so sure of it and then we can have a discussion. Alternative: “One theory says…”

8. “Keep it real”. I don’t know what that means.

9. “It’s not my fault.” Are you sure? I’ll be that in some way it is at least partly your fault. Find a way to take the blame for something and stop passing it around to everyone else. If we listened to you, nothing would be anyone’s fault. Alternative: “It is my fault and I take full responsibility.” There, was that so hard?

10. Extra words. People add extra words because they know that, the more words we use, the more important we sound. Examples: process, activity, situation, current, concrete, different. Instead of saying “we will begin hiring”, they say “we will begin the hiring process”. Instead of saying “our crew can handle any emergency situation that may occur”, or something equally verbose, you could just say “our crew can handle any emergency”. See how much simpler that is? You don’t need those extra words–find a way to cut them out of your speech and writing.

11. “A group of individuals”. Well, is it a group or an individual? Alternative: “a group”.

12. “Crisis”. Sometimes “crisis” is an appropriate word, but be careful how you use it. When you use a word to describe everything, it ceases to main anything.

13. “Progress”.  The reason I object to this word is that it is another word usually used with no context. We see a new skyscraper going up and some people object, and then someone has the nerve to say “well, you can’t stop progress!” Progress on what? Humankind’s war against the environment? Progress means moving forward. Before you use the word, consider the following question: If that is progress, what are we progressing towards? Until we decide that, there is no progress but simply movement.

14. “Clash of civilisations”. Thank Samuel Huntington for this gem. I don’t think you have read his essay, but even if you have, do not fool yourself: there is no clash of civilisations. Groups that go to war with each other are as similar as they can possibly be. The reason they go to war is because they see in others an unpleasant reminder of their own failings. In fact, I don’t want to hear you say “civilisation” because whatever you mean, whomever you are talking to thinks it means something else.

15. Euphemisms and political correctness. Are we so afraid to face the truth? There are so many things I am not allowed to say it makes me sick. The Pride Collective at the University of Victoria has a great way of striking down political correctness. Their pamphlet lists a whole bunch of words that are used for homosexuals (or more accurately, non heterosexuals), and said you can use any of these words, but they’re not insults, so don’t use them as insults. Right! So it doesn’t matter what you say, it’s the context that counts. For more on the pointlessness of euphemisms and political correctness, listen to anything George Carlin has done since the early 1990s.

The Beginning

Welcome to the Menso Guide to Leadership, World Issues and just about everything else. My name is Christopher Haynes but you can call me Menso. At this, the end of my career in AIESEC, a year after my graduation from the University of Victoria, Canada, with a political science degree, and the beginning of my entrance into the workforce, I want to share with the world my teachable points of view on what I consider the most important things in the world. Feel free to post your comments and I look forward to arguing with you.