Today I finished the sites for the relaunch of the good-will website. It has been totally revised. During installation some problems showed up, which my son will take care of. So the good-will site will be closed for the next few days. In the meanwhile have a look at the blog-posts.

Probably there won’t be any blogposts until the last week of the month. When this post is being published, we will be already on the way to Spain, camping with the children…

Today I was at the Online Dialogue and Marketing Forum ODMF in Zurich Oerlikon. About 200 marketeers – representatives of enterprises and marketing agencies – in black suits and with sober faces had assembles in a conference centre to hear about innovations and methods of web-related marketing – search engines, website-optimizing, e-mail trade… An aura of smartness surrounded most of them, you could nearly grasp the ambience of intelligence focused on “seducing the prima donna”, the consumer, as one of the presenters called it. One of the first speakers introduced the distinction between the “digital immigrants”, those born before 1980, who had grown up in a world without internet and electronic media, and the “digital natives”, the afterbornes, who take the new media as a natural part of their lives. I belong to the immigrants, though I feel quite well in the new world…

It was interesting to observe these condensed thought energies of marketing specialists, ready to sell their services to whatever has to be marketed. The online market has other rules and mechanics than the traditional media market, and the behaviour of the people, too, has changed with the online world. Customers have become more independent, volatile, deciding themselves about where to stay and where to click. An enormous creativity from the side of the specialised agencies has brought about fascinating approaches to capture the attention, and award-winning examples were presented.

The energy of marketing can be directed into all kinds of directions, but normally its master is money, not man. When the energy is steered towards life-supporting products and attitudes, this will surely have a great impact on mass consciousness. It is a matter of good will to use the instruments for the general well-being and not for manipulation, may it go to realise goals of good will.

You might be interested to read the blogposts on Vampires of Attention, or on Marketing and Commitment.

Direct marketing on the market

Last week I read an interesting interview in the NZZ with Theo Wehner, professor for work psychology at the Center for Organization and Work Sciences of the ETH Zurich, about the identity crisis of the work society:

Often in our modern society people don’t succeed in blending work, meaning and fun. In surveys about one third of the persons employed said they would like to stop working if they could. However, two thirds would like to continue, though under changed conditions.

In the 1980ies people said they would like to change their working conditions, in the 1990ies they wanted to have less pressure of time, and now they want more “authority over time” or leisure time.

People however, who lose involuntarily their work are often so much blocked that they can no longer even fulfil their personal duties nor their hobbies. Working is a measure for disciplining and socialising.

It is more and more difficult to find meaning in modern industry and service jobs. Work is being experience as being chopped up into little pieces, and one’s own contribution cannot be experienced within the whole.

Many people commit themselves to voluntary work without payment in charitable or non-commercial activities. They want to do an activity which they like and which is meaningful to them. This is more important than making new acquaintances or giving money for some charitable activity. They found out from their researches over the last years that the main purpose is to do something meaningful, and this is difficult to find in many jobs.

Most volunteers are middle-aged people, where they feel that they want to give something back to society. If they cannot do this, there is the danger of burnout or “mentally giving notice”. Jobless people first want to find a job before going into volunteer work. They found people who after having lost their jobs weren’t anymore able to do their previous activities in an association.

People who had a meaninful life normally can also cope well with the situation of retirement and find something new. The dream of “never working again” seems to be the result of a failed work relation and not a way into freedom.

See also the blogpost on “How to live happy” or the post on The Future of Volunteer Work.

When the old tracks are blocked: Finding a new orientation in work life.

My wife is accompanying several young people in different situations in their lives. It is done very informally, but from her side with intention and not just undesigned. She said to me this morning: “I had been missing such orientation very much in my youth, perhaps that’s the reason why I’m trying to help this way.”

She told me of a talk she had with the daughter of a friend who is about to start her university studies. Since over a year the girl has a committed relationship. The affair seems to be symbiotic, i.e. both feel a passion for each other and want to live together. However, there are differences in attitudes. My wife asked, what the common ground was, and it was not so clear. The girl said, doing projects together, but didn’t exactly know what kind of projects. From the beginning he wanted from her an “eternal commitment”, she felt constricted by this. She was unsure what in these incertitudes was her part and what was from her partner.

My wife loves illustrating inner processes and relations with little diagrams (see here, here and here): A person who is centred within himself is living in a right angle:

and integrated . You might encounter situations or emotions without losing your right angle.

In a relation, you can turn to the other without losing your inner centre. It is like turning your right angle cross towards the other, and the angles meet. The meeting point can be on different levels – on the physical, emotional or mental or even higher levels (represented by the sun). And you can meet on different planes at the same time. When you have a congruence in something higher – common ideals, attitudes, values – it is more easy to find congruence also in other points, like doing a project together. And also to overcome problems and conflicts in matters of day-to-day life and not to get stuck-up. In a relation harmony isn’t always necessary, but if the fundamentals are sound, it is likely to continue as a good relation, where the partners aren’t bound to each other by conflicts.

My wife mentioned: “Some couples just seem to have as a common project raising the children, and when the children are grown up, they separate again.” She asked the student about her higher meeting points with her partner, and the young woman wasn’t sure about them. She wasn’t even sure about her own purpose in life, nor about her partner’s. She felt, she had to ponder on what really is the common denominator in her relation. She surely will find out.

This blog-post has been translated into Spanish, together with some other posts of this series.

Today one year ago I set up the blog software and started blogging from March 31st, 2006 on. Looking back I’m astonished about the evolution it has taken, the multi-facetted spectrum of blogposts. The idea however, is still the same: Creating links between everyday experiences / information and the experiences / information from the teachings of eternal wisdom. This is for me a very interersting dialogue – and it seems for blog visitors, too 🙂

Little angel trumpeting over the city – the inspiring genius of this blog? Girona, Spain, July 06

At the moment I am sitting in an internet cafe at a noisy corner in Visakhapatnam, India, answering some mails. In a few minutes we will start for an excursion, and tonight we (the members of the group living of the World Teacher Trust, where I am at the moment) will take the night train to Hyderabad, and then tomorrow we will continue to the old temple site of Sri Sailam, about 270 km from Hyd. Just this much for the moment.

Back from holidays my PC went on strike – harddisk problems. Even trying to set up a new harddisk and data restoration failed – so there remains no time at the moment for blog posts -� probably until a new machine is installed 🙁

On March 31st I posted the first blog-entry, not knowing what would follow. Now, a bit over 3 months and 99 blogposts later I’m still fascinated by this medium and by the multitude of facets of “flowers on the wayside”, which every day come “along the roads of good will”.
Normally I write in the early morning hours, fresh thoughts are dropping into a still calm mind. During the daily hustle and bustle there doesn’t remain much time for a meditative reflection, which nevertheless is an elixir of life. So lets drink this elixir to the well-being of the blog. Cheers!

If you like to see humorous cartoons, have a look at Randy Glasbergens website. The cartoon from monday this week reflects well the “problem” of good-will activity, (see: cartoons from the past seven days) even though it plays in heaven…