Life's secrets

What does it mean when you call someone and they go "Sorry, I can't talk to you right now, I am in a meeting". Why do they answer their phone if they can't actually speak?

But wait. It gets even more curious. I actually had someone call me the other day and go "I can't talk to you right now". What? They called me! Crazy shit!

Are cellphones making us more stupid? Is the progress paradox laughing its ass off? Perhaps the secret to life is hidden somewhere in your phone. And speaking of the secrets to life, I recently learnt that there are 2 secrets to success in life: Number one: don't tell people everything you know.

Posted by Ronnie Apteker

Quality VS quantity

Just a decade ago farming used to be all about producing the best crop. Now it is about the most crop. It is all about the numbers. That is what this era represents to me – numbers. In the previous decade the world clearly shifted from quality to quantity as we saw the commoditization of everything that used to be sacred. From clothing, to sports cars, to cocktails, to dance music, to perfumes, to food, to travel, to entertainment, to high fashion magazines. You name it.
Last time I wrote about cellphones and email. I said they were efficient but not effective when it comes to romance, and building relationships. Cellphones and e-mail are all about quantity. You can e-mail hundreds and thousands of people all at once. But it is meaningless. You can’t outsource purpose, passion and love to some cold keystrokes. Real conviction comes from face-to-face communications. You can’t lead via remote control. You have to be hands on. There is very little quality of communications in this new age of digital diversity.

The digital world is unromantic. It is all about quantity – the digits – yes, digital is all about numbers. Everything was assigned a number in the 90s. The stand-up comic Chris Forrest reminds us that even food bares a number. He said when he goes into MacDonalds he always orders a number one. But last time he swore it looked more like a number two. And MacDonalds is still counting; 100 billion served – yes, it is all about numbers to them. Quantitative existence is the name of this game. And qualitative life takes a back seat while this is going on. The American dream used to be about putting bread on the table. Now it is all about getting a bigger table. That is what the movie American Beauty so magnificently illustrated to the world. But no, instead of embarrassing America, instead of our Western friends doing something about their dysfunction, they would rather give their work of art the Oscar award. They celebrate their great movie, and they move on to the next thing they can commoditize. Weird world we live in.

I remember going overseas when I was a teenager. I remember how all the passengers clapped when the plane touched down in New York. These days no one claps any more. There is nothing sacred about air travel any more. It is like catching a bus. And let me tell you, I would rather be traveling relaxed with peace of mind at the back of the plane then be up in first class with the world on my shoulders. Yes, economy-class may be uncomfortable but it is only for 8 hours or so. I would hate to carry the world on my shoulders the whole year round. Take a look at these late 20 to early 30 stressed out yuppies that travel in business and first class. As soon as the plane lands their cellphone goes on, and their stress levels peak. These guys sure are trapped by the intriguing paradox of progress. They are living quantitative lives. Quality of life is a mystery in this day and age. The progress paradox reminds us that with medical technology, for example, we have added years to life but not life to years.

I remember when fashion had pretentious names and it came from Italy and France. And now we have the American flag as a fashion statement. I remember when TV had huge audiences that were engrossed with shows like Dallas. And now we have reality TV, where scripts and been replaced with humiliating the guy next door. I remember when casinos used to be classy places to go to. People used to dress up and make a night of it. But the days of putting on a dinner suite and going out for an evening of sophisticated entertainment are over. These days casinos are everywhere and they will take your money whether you are in shorts or wearing beach slops. I remember when a camera made clicking sounds and then you waited with excitement to see how your pictures came out after dropping them at the photo lab. And now it is digital camera, without a clicking sound, and there is no excitement of getting back prints. The digital world and this era of quantitative commoditization is all about instant gratification. I remember when people used to write letters. Now they send e-mail. There is no romance. No mystery. No intrigue. Everything is rushed. Everything is the same. Everything is mediocre.

Throw away your watch. And get a compass. A watch is all about numbers. A compass is all about direction. If you know where you are going then it doesn’t matter about numbers. If you have direction then it doesn’t matter how long it takes to get there. Because we always need to remember that life is a journey. And the quality of the journey is what inspires and excites. Life is about relationships, not schedules. And relationships are what bring quality to one’s life. This is one thing we cannot commoditize. Wise people will always tell you how they would rather have a few good friends than dozens of acquaintances. This is what the fundamentals are all about. Don’t get me wrong. Technology and progress have their place in the world. I am just trying to say that technology is not effective when it comes to romance, relationship building and the quality of live. All this information and all this technology should be revolving around us, not the other way around. We must control progress, not be controlled by it. Tolstoy said it best, "The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life."

Posted by Ronnie Apteker

Our neighbours

Today we added all of our neighbouring countries (and a few others) to Vottle. We are hoping to start creating a sense of community with our site. You can now post at a county level and you can also search and view at a country level too. The potential here is highly compelling.

You can run two browser windows side by side and compare different communities. Of course, we will need a lot more data before this yields any interesting conclusions. So, please help spread the word and let us know if you find any bugs.

Happy Vottling!

Posted by The Vottlers

Love is a verb

I was busy downloading a virtual love letter cum greeting card from something called Blue Mountain when my phone rang. I was so excited to hear it was a dear friend of mine calling from America. "I can’t speak to you right now," she said. "But you just called me." I responded. Has all this technology made us stupid? I believe it has. It has also made us unromantic and expedient. Imagine a woman telling you she is crazy about you via some online virtual post-card. I mean, that must have taken a full 30 seconds of effort to send me. Come on, where is the romance in the digital age?

Isn’t love a verb? If it were really a noun then it would be implied that one could buy love, and we know this is not the case. Love requires action. And actions require time. Sending some an SMS message to wish them happy birthday lacks imagination. Virtual flowers. Keep ‘em. E-mail love letters. Forget it. And my all time favourite, the cellphone call from the car. Don’t bother. All of these are about convenience and love has never been about this. Where is the romance in this? Romance is about a journey, not a destination. Sipping a glass of wine as you glide a fountain pen on a piece of delicate writing paper is what makes the dance so worth while. Feeling the words, and thinking of how to put them together is what makes sending a letter so tender and loving. Spending quality time is what love is about. All this new technology has its place, but don’t fall into the trap of trivializing the most fundamental of human needs. Our souls need to express themselves. And sending someone you love an e-mail to share something precious with them is simply unromantic and boring. Efficient, yes, effective, no. Romance, love and passion are things that are meant to be rushed. True love is never-ending, so why the hurry?

I remember some lines from one of my favourite movies where the main character, a schoolteacher, asks his class why we read and write poetry. And he said, "We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion." Yes, it is cute to get an SMS message now and then, and yes, e-mail can be fun, and yes, cellphones can be wonderfully distracting, but they are not mediums of substance. Our teacher goes on to say, "Medicine, law, business, engineering – these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, art, romance, love – these are what we stay alive for."

What do you stay alive for? I can’t believe it is so that you can catch up on your emails and return all those missed calls. The most beautiful moments of my life are when my time has been filled with feelings of love and passion. Romance is what inspires me. Beauty is what excites me. And by beauty I am referring to more than just aesthetics. I love the beauty in an imaginative plan, a provocative letter, a naughty card, or a late night phone-call that lasts an hour. Life can truly feel beautiful when real time is given to you by someone you love. And real time is all to confused with real-time in this age of high-tech and low-patience.

Technology is not only being used as a poor vehicle for romance but it is also interrupting those who do in fact stick to the fundamentals. The next time someone takes you for a romantic dinner, switch your cellphone off, or better still, leave it behind. I often wonder if people in bed would take a cellphone call. Where do we draw the line? Yes, I am sure during love making they would not answer a ringing phone, but what about a few minutes afterwards, when our two lovers are lying there together, snuggling, and listening to each other’s heart’s beat. Do you answer your phone then? Is there no time for feeling? Is there no time for reflection? Is there simply no time, period?

Perhaps the problem is not one of a lack of romance in the world. Perhaps the problem is more about discipline. Learn to switch those phones off. Learn when not to send that email and instead wait to see him or her in the flesh. Love is about learning. And learning is what makes life so inspiring. So, try and learn to be stop being controlled by all these time saving technologies. Because, time is what you will soon run out of when you realize that life has passed you by and you did not have a chance to truly express yourself. Love is about expression. And this means using your imagination. We all have an imagination. Let’s use our imaginations more and make the world more decadent and romantic. We really need too in these mediocre times.

Posted by Ronnie Apteker

Head and heart stuff

Here is something I wrote many years ago for the Sunday Times. It is about the head and the heart. It is about Jerry Maquire. And it is about to be re-visited here in an updated and tightened piece.

Watch it again, and again. The main characters are Jerry Maguire played by Tom Cruise and Rod Tidwell played by Cuba Gooding Jr. An amazing transference takes place as we witness two heroes who go on a journey (motion pictures typically feature a hero who goes on a journey of sorts and whose character goes through a transformation, or "character arc"), one learning how to love a woman, and the other learning how to love the work he does. By the end of the film Jerry accepts his responsibilities as a man, and as a husband, and Rod comes to terms with his purpose – he learns to work, in this case play football, from the heart, not from the head.

Jerry undergoes a struggle right at the start of Cameron Crowe’s masterpiece of a screenplay where he realizes that work is the transference of love made visible. You see, Jerry loves what he does, sports management, that is, but he does not like the fact that everything is becoming about money. He cannot reconcile trading quality for quantity. He can’t sleep one night and he gets up and says, "I had lost the ability to bullshit." He sits by his laptop and writes his turning-point memo – the mission statement his company needed: Less customers, less profits, better relationships. He got fired that week.

Rod Tidwell is a man who understands the importance of personal relationships. He loved his wife, brother, and family more than anything in this world. Hence, he was looking for the personal touch in his career – he was a people’s person. After being fired from his "sports factory" Jerry becomes a sports agent with one client and the pay-off line was "In Rod we Trust." Leaving the movie aside for now, let us look at what has happened here. Two people struggle to find balance in their lives. They are deeply spiritual but they each have only half the equation. Life is about relationships, in the home and in the workplace.

This story is about quality and quantity. Jerry and Rod’s character arcs are in the opposite direction. But both are focused on quality. They lack balance though and together this transference in the other direction is facilitated. From work to family in Jerry’s case and from family to work in Rod’s. This is a compelling moment when Jerry says to Rod, "You are a pay-cheque player. No wonder you haven’t got your big contract yet. It’s because you play from the head and not the heart." The message here is about my favourite subject: PURPO$E. Do what you do from inside – play and work with love and passion – do it from the heart - and the entire universe will conspire to reward you!

So, what was Jerry saying in his watershed mission statement. Was he saying we don’t want your business? Perhaps what he was saying is that we want to grow relationships and there are only so many hours in the day. We cannot cheat nature although with technical advances in the area of cellphones and e-mail etc. we continually try. Well, Jerry didn’t buy it.

The skeptic’s movement is growing rapidly, and although sometimes one needs to be cynical at times there are those romantic stories that do come along that really do have things to say based on something more profound than sales, ticket sales at the box office that is in this case. Things that are actually worth listening to. Jerry Maguire is one of these precious gems. No, it's not perfect, and no, it may not uncover truth for every last second of its running time, but if you come away from it with a frown rather than a deep desire to take a step back and look at yourself, then there's no romance in your soul at all.

We all love the movies. Have you ever really thought why though? Sure, there is 2 hours of escapism when your body and mind don’t have to work. But there is more to it than that. Movies that really inspire us present stories where a person, the hero, goes on a journey and transforms from one state to another. Some may learn to love another person, someone may learn to forgive, someone may learn to work passionately, and so on. And this is what we all want in our own lives. We all want to change ourselves and movies present this alternate reality. They allow us to escape into an unreal world and participate on the change we seek in the world. Ghandi once said, "Let us be the change we seek in the world."

Yes, movies can serve to enlighten and uplift the world - Jerry Maguire is one such film that did so. There will be more films like this in the future, especially in a time where so many people are looking for purpose in a pay-cheque. We live in age where people in the Western world are working longer and longer hours. Stress is on the up and up. And there is a growing consciousness towards spiritual identity. People are searching for meaning and motion pictures provide for entertaining detours often with important messages. Like I said, watch this particular film again – I think it will be even more relevant in this millennium.

We always automatically read every story as a metaphor and measure our own performance and behaviour against those of the heroes and villains. Who are the heroes in this compelling movie? And who are the villains? The heroes are those qualitative people. And yes, for those villainous quantitative antagonists, we don’t want your business. Instead we want your friendship, your trust, your passion, we want to concentrate and focus on what is dear. This is the message of this great work of moving art: relationships are the most important thing in the world.

Posted by Ronnie Apteker

Let’s make a deal

Deal making is on the up and up. Everywhere I turn I hear people talking about the deals they are doing. Everyone seems to be doing a bit of this and a bit of that. I have never understood what this really means, but whatever it is, it seems to be heating up.

I was reading in a financial magazine recently that of the 1000 new dollar-based billionaires that were created in the past year, over half of them were in the hedge fund business. Now, I don’t even know what a hedge fund really is, but I do know it has something to do with managing money; from what I understand, other people’s money. And lots of it.

The message that this kind of publicity puts out to the youth, who all want to get rich quick, is that there is big cash to be made in the “money business”. So, if hedge fund folk become the new role models and the masses are inspired to become money managers then I have important question to ask: who is doing all the real work? If everyone starts becoming money managers then who is creating the initial wealth that then goes on to get managed?

In this world of high finance and fast deal making it seems that once again the fundamentals are being left aside. This can only mean one thing, a correction is coming. But, if you listen to the financial experts, no one seems to think that it is anytime soon. When the last bubble burst we never considered the influence of the new emerging power houses, China, India and Russia. There is so much money floating around out there for investment that it seems like the party is never going to end.

I remember when I was active at Internet Solutions. The financial guys spoke of financial year end, of profits, of performance, etc. These days, when it comes to all this deal making, I don’t hear people speaking about profits or growth or financial year end pressures. The other day I asked someone if they had a good financial year end, and they replied by saying that they had a good year. You see, profits didn’t seem to come into it. I didn’t hear any talk of a good year, just a good time. Yup, it seems that the party if still going strong. So, let’s make a deal !

Posted by Ronnie Apteker

Viva Vottle

By Ronnie Apteker

We have had a record day on Vottle today, and there's still a few hours left. The traffic is higher than ever. We launched a new look and feel home page last night with some very powerful new functionality to do with regions/locations.

Our vision with Vottle all along was to be able to create a platform that lets you view two communities side by side so that you can see and compare the cost of living, what's popular, trends, etc. With the new changes we just rolled out we are a big step closer to this objective.