If strategy is destiny, then is it akin to saying that destiny is always the optimal solution and that life is only a set of optimization problems thrown in one after the other. But that would mean that decisions taken on emotional criterion (such as Y's contract is denied because he bullied the contractor's GM aka X, when he was in Jr. KG) would be out of the equation, which isn't the case in real life is it.
Life's most important decisions cannot be based on emotional criteria. For example, decisions made by responsible sane adult minds (assuming they are 21 and over..) cannot be based on emotion...If they are, then such decisions lead to failures. I cannot give a two crore construction contract to a bidder whose wife bears an uncanny resemblance to charlize theron..however i may just slip if i can go to bed with her (may be???)
However, even when it comes to issues like LOVE, one cannot deny the use of strategy. On the contrary, a good lover is also a good strategist. Albeit he wears an emotional mask to hide his true intentions, he calculates each and every move that can help him achieve his goal. Man is the architect of his own destiny..if we do not strategize our path how can we chart out our destiny??
cannot be / should not be based on emotional criteria - is the ideal case scenario. My question was - are we excluding emotional variable factors in strategizing, and does that represent ALL true life decision scenarios.
Even with sane & rationale adults & let me add the qualifier 'people who have made the right decisions all the way along', do make decisions not JUST based on what the analysts say. If they were to do that, then any Vikram, Shivram & Amit can become CEO's and CFO's.
Life's most important decisions WILL HAVE some emotional criteria. Are you tellimg me that when anyone like Vikram (wrong example)goes bride-hunting, he is not going to see if he shares anything on an emotional level. Or just going to strategize to get the girl with the biggest waist/hip ratio and 2. who can make more variety of sounds than him in any given conversation.
I do agree that business/monetary decisions should have a very low emotional content, to the point of being non-existent. But then my question was infact are we to assume than life and any business situation (a subset) is also just optimization problems thrown in one after the other.
and on your statement 'we chart out our own destiny', why would anyone chart out horrible situations in one's life such as suffering in love etc., if the objective and strategy is to always get the best.
I feel that the analogy of sailing is more applicable here. You steer your boat somewhere in the direction you want, based on your goal, based on a strategized route planning and based on other things. But that other things is variable and not equal to zero. and I am not talking of unexpected catastrophic events here.
but the arranged marriage argument got me thinking - there is no way i could logically figure out i share anything with a person in one meeting. i just will have to go my gut feeling (contra-logical), no? scary but thrilling nonetheless.
you should write on your views on marriage - i am sure there will be a lot of discussion. one more thing though, leave me out of the discussion!
the problem with us is that we look at the world mechanistically. Too deterministically. As a balance between needs, desires and sources of their fulfilment.
we assume that each individual is seeking, at whatever cost, to further his own interests, either in love or a career.
i read in a book called 'you are being lied to' that there are certain group of people who live in the artic whose language does not have words for different colors. The concept of 'color' does not exist! They would not know what to call a red piece of paper; their environment does not have colors, just shades of gray and brown. They however do have words to identify patterns on a reindeer's back. To you and me all reindeers would look gray! Our knowledge system has not equipped us to percieve what they do.
There are things in the world we will never understand. One person understands certain things better, one culture better than others and so on. we are young, so let's not jump the gun!
I actually concur with what vicks and amit say..however there are exceptions to the situations given below: 1) Marriage(either love or arranged): When i talk about situations as mentioned above, i speak for the overwhelming majority..there are instances where in i have been proved wrong as there are exceptions for any given situation. okie....now lets say that we have vikram who goes bride hunting. emotional criteria should play a role but not a major role...coming back to vicks..now vicks being an indian..will probably look for someone who is a chennai based tamilian...however, he will not look at the waist/hip ratio but will definitely look at her face, her ass, her tits and so on..i do not think vicks or for that matter any sane person will go for a woman who looks like johnny lever with tits and a hole!!..(however brilliant and emotionally intelligent she may be)..therefore, when you look at materialistic values (beauty, family background etc)..you are negating the very concept of love..infact, i believe that everyone here has fallen in love or at least experienced a feeling where in they wanted to be with someone for the rest of their lives. Emotion does play a role...but it is only for a few seconds or a few months...if one has to build a sucessful and stable relationship, it has to be based on a variety of parameters raning from financial stability to caste, religion and ethinicity as well.... What in effect i am trying to say is as in my case, i am a hindu tamil brahmin, it is very highly unlikely that i will actually fall in love with a muslim (aka bombay) and make it work.This does not go to say that it is impossible....but statistics say even if i do the relationship has a high chance of failing which is what i mentioned in my earlier posting *such decisions lead to failures. so essentially, we are mechanizing the whole process of love by preselecting whom or whom not to fall in love with now coming to the second issue of strategy is destiny... Man is still the architect of his destiny, however, whether or not you can acheive what you strategize about is questionable.. for example, i am graduating this december and am working hard to get a full-time job, i have given 9 interviews so far and have not received any job offers yet. Sometimes, things are just beyond your control...but if i had not applied for these jobs (i had not strategized) then i wont even have a chance...therefore if you strategize, you maximize your chances of acheving your destiny...but there is always a luck factor..that determines whether or not you get what you want!!! hope that clears things up... in btw, i am an electrical engineering major and am graduating with a BS in Electrical Engineering from TAMU, i would be glad if someone would help me get a job!!!....else i shall be wasting time blogging like everyone else (:
So then I repeat my doubts on whether Strategy is Destiny (a whole claim) OR is strategy a way of narrowing down the options that destiny can take (again doesnt imply that destiny WILL take one of those options).
With regards to Vikram's search for a chennai based tamilian, its a criterion (somebody else's strategy), which will certainly bring down the possiblt alternatives that his destiny can take. But then again do you think that Vikram would not consider a proposal, if Carmen Electra proposed to him (wrong example probably) :)
Basically all that I am eager to know is if indeed strategy is the only parameter in anyone's destiny.
Amit, i believe when Andy Grove,mentioned that "strategy is destiny"..i guess what he meant was that one needs' to strategize their every move to acheive their ambition (or destiny in this case)...in Andy's case it worked out well..Intel is doing great and so is he.. So the terminology Strategy=Destiny in literal terms or even in logical terms doesnt make sense..but Strategy---->Destiny does..in a way think of strategy as a means of transportation from point A to B..with B being your destiny and A being your present position. Possibly if you did not have "strategy" then you might be stuck at A or go on a different path to C walking. Coming to the second part, strategy is not a parameter of destiny..the reasons i have alredy outlined above.. And as far as the hermit goes..i believe he has alredy met his match!!!
I think you are blurring the demarcation line between ambition (where one desires to be/go) & destiny & reality (there is an extremly small distintion between the last two, but its there).
well...sometimes you can consider your ambition to be your destiny (in case you achieve it)...or you can make your destiny you ambition...depends on which way you look at it..for example when i was 14 years old...all i wanted to become was an IAS officer...now am 24..and i am a jobless electrical engineer..in a way i guess my destiny has shaped my ambition...in the future, however well i strategize, i might still end up being a sweeper in chennai municipal corporation 22 years from now...who knows? In conclusion, all i would like to say is that sometimes the best things and the worst things that come along in life are unplanned....but i guess it is always safe to strategize
Right ! I never said that a person should not strategize and sit back abd wait for things to happen.
All my doubts were: if you strategize, doesnt mean your destiny is finalised also as per what you have decided in your strategy. and if that is so, then Strategy isnt == destiny.
true..which is exactly what i was tryin to say strategy is not== destiny...but has a role to play.. Destiny is a pretty ambiguous word, none of us really know our destiny...but we just assume that what happens or what has to happen has alredy been preordained..so its a little bit tricky...
whether an absolute concept of destiny exists, is as much a matter of personal belief as guesswork.
What exists, however, is change; uncertainity. There is a certain level of change that is comfortable and some that occurs in quantum leaps, occuring unexpectedly. I guess this is Andy's way of saying, there is a way to handle change. have a plan. that is a very simple way of putting it but like we generally agree (am and wanksta highlight in their discussions) strategy is definitely a helpful tool.
the question that intrigues me further is that do we know what we want? if you do, half the work is done. Andy is here because, i guess, he always knew what he wanted. maybe not in absolute terms but in a wholistic sense of the way. Anybody who is that sure and works for it, all his life, is worthy of respect; irrespective of the fact that his business is doing well :-)
I guess it depends on what stage of life we are at...i guess its fair enuff to say that at 25 years, a man knows what he wants from life.. How we go about attaning this is what andy calls strategizing..but then again Destiny in different cultures has different interpretations. In a karmic culture like ours, destiny seems to be pre-ordained..my fate alredy seems to be have been written..which kind of brings us back to square one. Interestingly, rebirth, rewards..the vicious circle of life and death all seem to have a role to play in an indian's life. I have had some experience with astrologers and sometimes, i ponder if my future has alredy been determined..what is the point in having the right to choose a path?
can shed a light on the indian notion of destiny. it is said that in cultures where people face a lot of hardship, religion evolves to explain the difficulty by saying that it is destiny and something preordained. This way the common man will feel consoled and reconcile himself to the fact that his misery cannot be denied.
sociology interprets religion as a power base that the ruling class uses. from that perspective, a man who does not try to fight against his misery, whatever the source may be, is an ideal subject; a willing slave.
to put a nicer perspective on things, think of your life as a book and you it's author. whatever said and done, make it a book worth reading. you get only one shot at writing(life)!
19 comments:
ahaaa..so very true..the shaft produces fluid as long as you stroke it..your penchant for newtonian physics moves me
thank you for making me realize that it is not wisdom but perspective that is the key!
If strategy is destiny, then is it akin to saying that destiny is always the optimal solution and that life is only a set of optimization problems thrown in one after the other. But that would mean that decisions taken on emotional criterion (such as Y's contract is denied because he bullied the contractor's GM aka X, when he was in Jr. KG) would be out of the equation, which isn't the case in real life is it.
A
Life's most important decisions cannot be based on emotional criteria.
For example, decisions made by responsible sane adult minds (assuming they are 21 and over..) cannot be based on emotion...If they are, then such decisions lead to failures.
I cannot give a two crore construction contract to a bidder whose wife bears an uncanny resemblance to charlize theron..however i may just slip if i can go to bed with her (may be???)
However, even when it comes to issues like LOVE, one cannot deny the use of strategy.
On the contrary, a good lover is also a good strategist. Albeit he wears an emotional mask to hide his true intentions, he calculates each and every move that can help him achieve his goal.
Man is the architect of his own destiny..if we do not strategize our path how can we chart out our destiny??
cannot be / should not be based on emotional criteria - is the ideal case scenario. My question was - are we excluding emotional variable factors in strategizing, and does that represent ALL true life decision scenarios.
Even with sane & rationale adults & let me add the qualifier 'people who have made the right decisions all the way along', do make decisions not JUST based on what the analysts say. If they were to do that, then any Vikram, Shivram
& Amit can become CEO's and CFO's.
Life's most important decisions WILL HAVE some emotional criteria.
Are you tellimg me that when anyone like Vikram (wrong example)goes bride-hunting, he is not going to see if he shares anything on an emotional level. Or just going to strategize to get the girl with the biggest waist/hip ratio and 2. who can make more variety of sounds than him in any given conversation.
I do agree that business/monetary decisions should have a very low emotional content, to the point of being non-existent. But then my question was infact are we to assume than life and any business situation (a subset) is also just optimization problems thrown in one after the other.
and on your statement 'we chart out our own destiny', why would anyone chart out horrible situations in one's life such as suffering in love etc., if the objective and strategy is to always get the best.
I feel that the analogy of sailing is more applicable here. You steer your boat somewhere in the direction you want, based on your goal, based on a strategized route planning and based on other things. But that other things is variable and not equal to zero. and I am not talking of unexpected catastrophic events here.
good repudiation Am. With you on this argument.
but the arranged marriage argument got me thinking - there is no way i could logically figure out i share anything with a person in one meeting. i just will have to go my gut feeling (contra-logical), no? scary but thrilling nonetheless.
you should write on your views on marriage - i am sure there will be a lot of discussion. one more thing though, leave me out of the discussion!
the problem with us is that we look at the world mechanistically. Too deterministically. As a balance between needs, desires and sources of their fulfilment.
we assume that each individual is seeking, at whatever cost, to further his own interests, either in love or a career.
i read in a book called 'you are being lied to' that there are certain group of people who live in the artic whose language does not have words for different colors. The concept of 'color' does not exist! They would not know what to call a red piece of paper; their environment does not have colors, just shades of gray and brown. They however do have words to identify patterns on a reindeer's back. To you and me all reindeers would look gray! Our knowledge system has not equipped us to percieve what they do.
There are things in the world we will never understand. One person understands certain things better, one culture better than others and so on. we are young, so let's not jump the gun!
I actually concur with what vicks and amit say..however there are exceptions to the situations given below:
1) Marriage(either love or arranged):
When i talk about situations as mentioned above, i speak for the overwhelming majority..there are instances where in i have been proved wrong as there are exceptions for any given situation.
okie....now lets say that we have vikram who goes bride hunting. emotional criteria should play a role but not a major role...coming back to vicks..now vicks being an indian..will probably look for someone who is a chennai based tamilian...however, he will not look at the waist/hip ratio but will definitely look at her face, her ass, her tits and so on..i do not think vicks or for that matter any sane person will go for a woman who looks like johnny lever with tits and a hole!!..(however brilliant and emotionally intelligent she may be)..therefore, when you look at materialistic values (beauty, family background etc)..you are negating the very concept of love..infact, i believe that everyone here has fallen in love or at least experienced a feeling where in they wanted to be with someone for the rest of their lives. Emotion does play a role...but it is only for a few seconds or a few months...if one has to build a sucessful and stable relationship, it has to be based on a variety of parameters raning from financial stability to caste, religion and ethinicity as well....
What in effect i am trying to say is as in my case, i am a hindu tamil brahmin, it is very highly unlikely that i will actually fall in love with a muslim (aka bombay) and make it work.This does not go to say that it is impossible....but statistics say even if i do the relationship has a high chance of failing which is what i mentioned in my earlier posting *such decisions lead to failures.
so essentially, we are mechanizing the whole process of love by preselecting whom or whom not to fall in love with
now coming to the second issue of strategy is destiny...
Man is still the architect of his destiny, however, whether or not you can acheive what you strategize about is questionable..
for example, i am graduating this december and am working hard to get a full-time job, i have given 9 interviews so far and have not received any job offers yet. Sometimes, things are just beyond your control...but if i had not applied for these jobs (i had not strategized) then i wont even have a chance...therefore if you strategize, you maximize your chances of acheving your destiny...but there is always a luck factor..that determines whether or not you get what you want!!!
hope that clears things up...
in btw, i am an electrical engineering major and am graduating with a BS in Electrical Engineering from TAMU, i would be glad if someone would help me get a job!!!....else i shall be wasting time blogging like everyone else (:
well put wanksta!
for heaven's sake leave me out of discussion. why must a hermit whose life is hermetically sealed figure in your discussions?
p.s. the hermit is yours truly!
So then I repeat my doubts on whether Strategy is Destiny (a whole claim) OR is strategy a way of narrowing down the options that destiny can take (again doesnt imply that destiny WILL take one of those options).
With regards to Vikram's search for a chennai based tamilian, its a criterion (somebody else's strategy), which will certainly bring down the possiblt alternatives that his destiny can take. But then again do you think that Vikram would not consider a proposal, if Carmen Electra proposed to him (wrong example probably) :)
Basically all that I am eager to know is if indeed strategy is the only parameter in anyone's destiny.
A
Amit, i believe when Andy Grove,mentioned that "strategy is destiny"..i guess what he meant was that one needs' to strategize their every move to acheive their ambition (or destiny in this case)...in Andy's case it worked out well..Intel is doing great and so is he..
So the terminology Strategy=Destiny in literal terms or even in logical terms doesnt make sense..but Strategy---->Destiny does..in a way think of strategy as a means of transportation from point A to B..with B being your destiny and A being your present position. Possibly if you did not have "strategy" then you might be stuck at A or go on a different path to C walking.
Coming to the second part, strategy is not a parameter of destiny..the reasons i have alredy outlined above..
And as far as the hermit goes..i believe he has alredy met his match!!!
I think you are blurring the demarcation line between ambition (where one desires to be/go) & destiny & reality (there is an extremly small distintion between the last two, but its there).
well...sometimes you can consider your ambition to be your destiny (in case you achieve it)...or you can make your destiny you ambition...depends on which way you look at it..for example when i was 14 years old...all i wanted to become was an IAS officer...now am 24..and i am a jobless electrical engineer..in a way i guess my destiny has shaped my ambition...in the future, however well i strategize, i might still end up being a sweeper in chennai municipal corporation 22 years from now...who knows?
In conclusion, all i would like to say is that sometimes the best things and the worst things that come along in life are unplanned....but i guess it is always safe to strategize
Right ! I never said that a person should not strategize and sit back abd wait for things to happen.
All my doubts were: if you strategize, doesnt mean your destiny is finalised also as per what you have decided in your strategy. and if that is so, then Strategy isnt == destiny.
true..which is exactly what i was tryin to say strategy is not== destiny...but has a role to play..
Destiny is a pretty ambiguous word, none of us really know our destiny...but we just assume that what happens or what has to happen has alredy been preordained..so its a little bit tricky...
whether an absolute concept of destiny exists, is as much a matter of personal belief as guesswork.
What exists, however, is change; uncertainity. There is a certain level of change that is comfortable and some that occurs in quantum leaps, occuring unexpectedly. I guess this is Andy's way of saying, there is a way to handle change. have a plan. that is a very simple way of putting it but like we generally agree (am and wanksta highlight in their discussions) strategy is definitely a helpful tool.
the question that intrigues me further is that do we know what we want? if you do, half the work is done. Andy is here because, i guess, he always knew what he wanted. maybe not in absolute terms but in a wholistic sense of the way. Anybody who is that sure and works for it, all his life, is worthy of respect; irrespective of the fact that his business is doing well :-)
I guess it depends on what stage of life we are at...i guess its fair enuff to say that at 25 years, a man knows what he wants from life..
How we go about attaning this is what andy calls strategizing..but then again Destiny in different cultures has different interpretations.
In a karmic culture like ours, destiny seems to be pre-ordained..my fate alredy seems to be have been written..which kind of brings us back to square one.
Interestingly, rebirth, rewards..the vicious circle of life and death all seem to have a role to play in an indian's life.
I have had some experience with astrologers and sometimes, i ponder if my future has alredy been determined..what is the point in having the right to choose a path?
can shed a light on the indian notion of destiny. it is said that in cultures where people face a lot of hardship, religion evolves to explain the difficulty by saying that it is destiny and something preordained. This way the common man will feel consoled and reconcile himself to the fact that his misery cannot be denied.
sociology interprets religion as a power base that the ruling class uses. from that perspective, a man who does not try to fight against his misery, whatever the source may be, is an ideal subject; a willing slave.
to put a nicer perspective on things, think of your life as a book and you it's author. whatever said and done, make it a book worth reading. you get only one shot at writing(life)!
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