A while ago I discovered "The Algerbraist" by Iain Banks and loved it. I was so inspired by his writing style that I went out to find more books by him and thankfully he has well over a dozen. I tried reading "Against a Dark Background" but just could not quite get in to the story. I had bought "The Player of Games" around the same time, but after failing on Dark Background, I let Games sit for a long while.
I started reading it last weekend and finished it last night. It is another great book, by a really good Sci-Fi author. Banks writes in many genres, I haven't tried his non-sci-fi stuff yet. But I'd easily put him up there with Issak Asimov in the depth and richness of his vision of the far off future. He has created the most believable "utopian-esque" society I've read. The world he creates works. The characters are interesting and the landscape is facinating.
Two thumbs up for Iain Banks and "The Player of Games."
I think I have finally put my finger one what is wrong with Americans…
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When I lived in the
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There have been several moments in conversation where I’ll say something conceptual that I felt was fairly obvious only to have my Kiwi co-workers smile politely and ask me why that was important. This usually revolves around the ideas of price competition and in general beating our competition. I began to realize that while a competitive nature is healthy and alive in Kiwi’s, it isn’t ingrained in their thinking. It isn’t cultural. I then began to realize that Americans are really obsessed with competing and, more importantly, with winning.
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In this epiphany I saw clearly all the ways Americans act and re-act in a competitive nature to win. In all our negotiations we strive for the “win-win”. In all of our most popular sports—only Americans compete. The World Series, the NFL, NBA, NASCAR—all of them are American sports and predominantly only played in the
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By the American definition, winning is making the most money and having the most power. Always being able to get what you want when you want, regardless of what others may want, is what the American Dream is really all about. We have some mental picture that all Americans can achieve this and we just assume the wealth will come from “somewhere” and we don’t particularly care from where. As an extension of this “ideal” we see the
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What we don’t realize is that the culture of winning (read as, Obsessed with winning) is not universal. Certainly other cultures value wealth, success and even competition, but the zeal that Americans have is still unique to Americans. When you are inside a culture and have little exposure to other cultures you can’t see these traits. We naturally assume that the rest of the world is, more or less, just like us only with slight “differences” like placing more importance on ancestry—but still… everyone likes to win and likes winners, right?
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Here is the fatal mistake. We assume that because we are winning, that everyone else would naturally like to win too and therefore they will probably try to copy us—in fact, they probably even admire our ability and respect us! Or at least they should… We’re Winning! Because we are so good, we obviously have the best of everything… OR if we don’t have the best, then we’ve had to make a sacrifice in a few areas to ultimately remain the winner.
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We are blind to the value the rest of the world has to offer. We implicitly believe that if other cultures were as good as ours, then they would be winning and not us. We have very little awareness of how well the rest of the world operates and no awareness of how completely stupid we appear. We have not come all that far from the “Might makes Right” philosophy. The leadership of
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The
Completed! We finally got see seals over in Island Bay (just West of Wellington CBD). While I did capture some video of them, I didn't get any pictures of them. My digicam battery was dead. I did snap some mobile shots along the walk, but I apparently didn't get any seals. Ah well, we are sure to go back. Check out the new shots in the Mobile Pics II photo journal.
It was a good walk--4 km each way. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful walk. The whole time Amy and I were just amazed that we live on a beautiful island in the South Pacific. The hills and cliffs along the coast are dramatic, but still appear scaleable--although I know dang well that I couldn't. The ocean was at least 5 shades of blue. There were fun surf beaches and turbulent craggy rocks. Someday, I would really like to get some goggles and snorkel around. We saw a few sea anemenies (no idea if that's spelled right) and one tiny exotic fish in a tide pool. But you don't see much sea life from the shore.
The seals were big males. This particular coloney is populated year round and is exclusively male. It makes seeing them a lot less stressful as the bachelors don't have cubs or females to protect. They just flop around and lay in the sun. They are pretty big critters. I had some image that seals would be roughly dog sized, but these were some pretty big dogs! They had to weigh 400 pounds or more... really more small bear sized. But oh so sleepy.
