Pride Parade celebrated in Tel Aviv
Gay community's main event in Israel held under heavy concerns of political clash over flotilla raid. Politicians take part. Mother of Nir Katz, slain in attack on gay youth center, says 'his murder helped many come out of closet'
Yoav Zitun
Published: 06.11.10, 14:24 / Israel News
Pride Parade celebrated in Tel Aviv
Gay community's main event in Israel held under heavy concerns of political clash over flotilla raid. Politicians take part. Mother of Nir Katz, slain in attack on gay youth center, says 'his murder helped many come out of closet'
Yoav Zitun
Published: 06.11.10, 14:24 / Israel News
How to keep someone with you forever
- Jun. 9th, 2010 at 9:39 AM
So you want to keep your lover or your employee close. Bound to you, even. You have a few options. You could be the best lover they've ever had, kind, charming, thoughtful, competent, witty, and a tiger in bed. You could be the best workplace they've ever had, with challenging work, rewards for talent, initiative, and professional development, an excellent work/life balance, and good pay. But both of those options demand a lot from you. Besides, your lover (or employee) will stay only as long as she wants to under those systems, and you want to keep her even when she doesn't want to stay. How do you pin her to your side, irrevocably, permanently, and perfectly legally?
You create a sick system.A sick system has four basic rules:
Rule 1: Keep them too busy to think. Thinking is dangerous. If people can stop and think about their situation logically, they might realize how crazy things are.
Rule 2: Keep them tired. This is a corollary to keeping them too busy to think. Of course you can't turn off anyone's thought processes completely—but you can keep them too tired to do any original thinking. The decision center in the brain tires out just like a muscle, and when it's exhausted, people start making certain predictable types of logic mistakes. Found a system based on those mistakes, and you're golden.
Exhaustion is also the perfect defense against any good thinking that might slip through. Fixing the system requires change, and change requires effort, and effort requires energy that just isn't there. No energy, and your lover's dangerous epiphany is converted into nothing but a couple of boring fights.
Rule 3: Keep them emotionally involved. Make them love you if you can, or if you're a company, foster a company culture of extreme loyalty. Otherwise, tie their success to yours, so if you do well, they do well, and if you fail, they fail. If you're working in an industry where failure isn't a possibility (the government, utilities), establish a status system where workers do better or worse based on seniority. (This also works in bad relationships if you're polyamorous.)
Also note that if you set up a system in which personal loyalty and devotion are proof of your lover's worthiness as a person, you can make people love you. Or at least think they love you. In fact, any combination of intermittent rewards plus too much exhaustion to consider other alternatives will induce people to think they love you, even if they hate you as well.
Rule 4: Reward intermittently. Intermittent gratification is the most addictive kind there is. If you know the lever will always produce a pellet, you'll push it only as often as you need a pellet. If you know it never produces a pellet, you'll stop pushing. But if the lever sometimes produces a pellet and sometimes doesn't, you'll keep pushing forever, even if you have more than enough pellets (because what if there's a dry run and you have no pellets at all?). It's the motivation behind gambling, collectible cards, most video games, the Internet itself, and relationships with crazy people.
How do you do all this? It's incredibly easy:
Keep the crises rolling.
To read the rest of the post click here
.
How to keep someone with you forever
- Jun. 9th, 2010 at 9:39 AM
So you want to keep your lover or your employee close. Bound to you, even. You have a few options. You could be the best lover they've ever had, kind, charming, thoughtful, competent, witty, and a tiger in bed. You could be the best workplace they've ever had, with challenging work, rewards for talent, initiative, and professional development, an excellent work/life balance, and good pay. But both of those options demand a lot from you. Besides, your lover (or employee) will stay only as long as she wants to under those systems, and you want to keep her even when she doesn't want to stay. How do you pin her to your side, irrevocably, permanently, and perfectly legally?
You create a sick system.A sick system has four basic rules:
Rule 1: Keep them too busy to think. Thinking is dangerous. If people can stop and think about their situation logically, they might realize how crazy things are.
Rule 2: Keep them tired. This is a corollary to keeping them too busy to think. Of course you can't turn off anyone's thought processes completely—but you can keep them too tired to do any original thinking. The decision center in the brain tires out just like a muscle, and when it's exhausted, people start making certain predictable types of logic mistakes. Found a system based on those mistakes, and you're golden.
Exhaustion is also the perfect defense against any good thinking that might slip through. Fixing the system requires change, and change requires effort, and effort requires energy that just isn't there. No energy, and your lover's dangerous epiphany is converted into nothing but a couple of boring fights.
Rule 3: Keep them emotionally involved. Make them love you if you can, or if you're a company, foster a company culture of extreme loyalty. Otherwise, tie their success to yours, so if you do well, they do well, and if you fail, they fail. If you're working in an industry where failure isn't a possibility (the government, utilities), establish a status system where workers do better or worse based on seniority. (This also works in bad relationships if you're polyamorous.)
Also note that if you set up a system in which personal loyalty and devotion are proof of your lover's worthiness as a person, you can make people love you. Or at least think they love you. In fact, any combination of intermittent rewards plus too much exhaustion to consider other alternatives will induce people to think they love you, even if they hate you as well.
Rule 4: Reward intermittently. Intermittent gratification is the most addictive kind there is. If you know the lever will always produce a pellet, you'll push it only as often as you need a pellet. If you know it never produces a pellet, you'll stop pushing. But if the lever sometimes produces a pellet and sometimes doesn't, you'll keep pushing forever, even if you have more than enough pellets (because what if there's a dry run and you have no pellets at all?). It's the motivation behind gambling, collectible cards, most video games, the Internet itself, and relationships with crazy people.
How do you do all this? It's incredibly easy:
Keep the crises rolling.
To read the rest of the post click here
.
In my June 2nd article I reported that Retired IDF Navy Chief, Security Service Director, Knesset member and cabinet minister Ami Ayalon would speak at a J Street event in Manhattan. That appearance was one of several Admiral Ayalon made on a tour of US cities. To view his remarks in their entirety see the video below of his 87 minute talk at a suburban Chicago synagogue. J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami summarizes Admiral Ayalon's main points as follows:...To read the rest of the article click here
In my June 2nd article I reported that Retired IDF Navy Chief, Security Service Director, Knesset member and cabinet minister Ami Ayalon would speak at a J Street event inManhattan. That appearance was one of several Admiral Ayalon made on a tour of US cities. To view his remarks in their entirety see the video below of his 87 minute talk at a suburban Chicago synagogue. J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami summarizes Admiral Ayalon's main points as follows:
One, distinguish between victory and revenge. If your enemy hits you (rockets from Gaza, metal pipes on a ship deck) it may be satisfying to hit back harder (Operation Cast Lead, taking over a civilian boat with commandos), but ask whether such actions bring you closer to real victory.
"Winning" for Israel should mean achieving a safe, Jewish and democratic Israel. Perpetuating the occupation and relying only on force and power against Hamas is a losing strategy.
Two, don't look at Hamas solely as a military threat. While we see Hamas as a terrorist organization, Palestinians see it as an "idea," offering hope of achieving what they want - an end to occupation, freedom and independence. You can't beat an idea with brute force, only a better idea.
Immediate, bold pursuit of a diplomatic end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the only way to beat Hamas. Provide Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and other Palestinians who still favor two states with tangible proof that their approach works, and they (and we) will win. Deny them, and those who promote terror and violence win.
Three, recognize that reliance solely on force and power to advance interests in theMiddle East is counterproductive. Strength is important, but not useful if exercised in the absence of meaningful diplomacy.
Four, recognize that we aren't in some great Huntingtonian clash of civilizations, in which the forces of light (us) line up against the forces of darkness (them). Rather, recognize that we are witnessing a clash within civilizations between moderates and fundamentalists. Misunderstanding the battlefield dooms you to lose the war.
Five, the United States has the pivotal role to play. The gap in how Israelis and Palestinians see the situation is too large: Israelis believe they offered everything and got only rockets; Palestinians believe they've engaged in a peace process for eighteen years and gotten only settlements.
President Obama must step forward with a clear vision of the "end game" - what exactly each side will get in a final peace deal. Prior approaches that depended on step-by-step confidence building while delaying hard choices will fail. Drawing on his years at sea, Ayalon points out that there's no wind strong enough to take you where you're going when you have no idea where you're headed.
The bottom line: it is time for a dramatic course correction in Israeli and American policy in the Middle East and for President Obama to turn this crisis into an opportunity for a bold, new diplomatic push to end the conflict.
In response to the events of the past week, the American Jewish establishment and other "friends" of Israel have lined up, as expected, in unquestioning defense of Israel's actions at sea, and its policy toward Gaza, Hamas and the Palestinians generally.
They've tried to steer conversations toward the behavior of a few passengers on the Mavi Marmara or to how the world's reaction to the events is part of an effort to delegitimize the state of Israel.
Anything but focus on whether Israel's larger strategy or policy is actually fatally flawed.
My wish for America's Jewish establishment: spend even a few hours with Ami Ayalon. Perhaps he can help you re-conceive what it means to be a friend of Israel at this critical moment in the country's history and to realize that what Israel needs from its friends has changed over time. To support Israel in the past, we were asked to send money, to visit, and even to consider making "aliyah" (moving to Israel).
Today, says Ayalon, there is one imperative for friends of Israel: tell us the truth - even if it's painful. As it becomes increasingly isolated, insecure and scared, Israel is finding it harder to see for itself what is happening - how its actions are deepening its isolation and dooming the chances of maintaining a Jewish and democratic Israel.
Israel's future hangs in the balance. Without a major course correction, American friends of Israel are poised to witness, on our watch, a tragic fate for the Jewish, democratic state we've loved and supported over the past century.
It's a true act of friendship for us to help Israel see how critical it is to end the occupation and create two states, to make this the centerpiece of American and Israeli policy, and to rely again on our people's moral compass to guide the way.
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