NEXT> by Ramla @ TrendHunter.com

NEXT> by Ramla is seeking collaborations with like-purpose websites and print publications. To test-launch the idea of syndication, NEXT> and its creator, yours truly Ramla, have been publishing a carefully curated list of trends at TrendHunter.com since February 2007.

I was wild with joy when Jeremy Gutsche, the visionary young owner of TrendHunter, made me a Senior Trend Hunter within two weeks - in acknowledgment of the quality of trends and the writing of content. I would give credit to the purpose that I dedicate NEXT> to: searching for a better possible future, envisioning a better tomorrow and creating solutions and strategies for it.

Here is a selection of my favorite trends:

1/LOHAS - Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability
What is LOHAS? According to LOHAS.COM: “LOHAS is an acronym for ‘Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability,’ a market segment focused on health and fitness, the environment, personal development, sustainable living, and social justice.”
[Read More...]

2/Capitalism 3.0 - Reinventing the Commons

Barnes proposes Capitalism 3.0 that protects the commons while preserving the many strengths of capitalism as we know it. His major innovation is the commons trust—a market-based entity with the power to limit use of scarce commons, charge rent, and pay dividends to everyone. [Read More...]


3/ Voluntourism - Volunteerism + Tourism
No longer do tourists have to just walk in and out of a very “interesting area” - they can actually VOLUNTOUR. The idea is to “combine travel and service” - says Voluntourism.org. [Read More...]



More next time!


Check the portfolio here. Some trends are available at the NEXT> by Ramla blog, most only on TrendHunter.com.

E-mail: nextbyramla AT gmail.com

Using the Law of Attraction: 4 Steps to Preparedness

This is the third in a series of posts about The Secret - 1 & 2 here.

What is The Secret/Law of Attraction?
Humans can create what they want.
More here

What is more important than The Secret?
"The End" - that is, what we want to do with the Law of Attraction. Which is only a method, though very powerful.
More here

Recap: Be Careful What You Wish For

a. To use the Law of Attraction, we have to want something. In fact, when we want something, the law of attraction automatically sets to work; whether we know or not.
b. Want the right thing. Because the law of attraction has consequences.
c. Prepare yourself to be the kind of person who wants the right thing, naturally...
d. ...So that when the not-so-secret law of attraction sets in motion, you can be sure that you get the thing you most wanted, and...
e. ...it was for the greater good.

Q: How Do I Prepare Myself?
A: Four Steps to Preparedness

I first called them the four steps to "enlightenment" for want of a more apt word. In this context, "preparedness" may be a better word.

To prepare yourself to be the person who naturally wants the right, good thing - and therefore sets the Law of Attraction to work for the better of all humankind (and so, yourself), these are the four steps, in this order:

1. Gain Awareness: To know that one knows nothing


2. Cleanse & Train Oneself: To prepare the heart’s intent, and to cleanse the self of desire


3. Seek Education: To gain what is known as “knowledge;” the pure understanding of the what, how, when, why, for/by whom, where in our circle of concern


4. Gain and Apply Wisdom: To judge between right and wrong; to make fair and right use of education so that education may attain what the heart knows our purpose is

Remember, learning is a continuous cycle.



E-mail: nextbyramla AT gmail.com

Beyond The Secret: "THE END"

This is the second in a series of posts about The Secret.


What is The Secret?
Humans can create what they want.

More Important than The Secret...
...is knowing what to do with it: "The End." The Secret is only a method. A means. A strategy. A "How?"

The End is the "What?"

Beyond The Secret: at The End of Individual Paths

I believe in what I call "the theory of individual paths." A revolutionary manifesto for humankind, the Qur'an says:

And to you have We revealed the Scripture with the truth, confirming whatever Scripture was before it, and a watcher over it. So judge between them by that which Allah has revealed, and follow not their desires away from the truth which hath come to you. For each We have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed Hu could have made you one community. But that Hu may try you by that which Hu has given you (Hu has made you as you are). So vie one with another in good works. To Allah you will all return, and Hu will then inform you of that wherein you differ.

A Pickthall translation, with my emphases and modifications of the pronouns, esp. "He" to "Hu" (005.048)

Each person has their own path. Yet at the end, these paths converge at the common good of all humanity. That's why, it's NOT OK if my littering habits choke up the community works drain. OR the smoke from my factory crosses borders into enemy territory, even. OR my fifth generation is left with the memories of an ancestor with a notorious history. OR my child suffering because I pay too little attention to the family while demanding my rights.

As ecologist Garrett Hardin said, "We cannot do merely one thing." (I love Hardin!)

So before doing something, and having tremendous powers like the law of attraction get to work for us, we have to know the best thing to do. To do that, we have to be prepared. The Secret/Law of Attraction comes afterwards.

"THE END" is primary. The Secret is secondary.
Humanity tends to get fascinated with cause and effect. We get tangled in the technology of things. What is important is not the technology or the means to do something, but that something itself.

The Secret is only a technology. A method. It doesn't tell what should one achieve.

Imagine the power ending up in the wrong hands. In fact, it very often has been the case.

Q. So. What Now?
There has to be a way forward. More, in the next blog post.



E-mail: nextbyramla AT gmail.com

The Secret Law of Attraction - only means, not end

"The Secret."
"The Law of Attraction."
The knowledge of the ancients.
What all great people knew.

This one thought with its many names has been making the rounds for quite a few months now, since the release of the movie Law of Attraction.

Very simply put, here is the secret:

Humans can create what they want.

It's called a law of Attraction because once a human decides what they want, they start attracting the required resources and situations. The Wikipedia summary of the idea is more enlightening:

You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.

There a few complications, though:

1. You've got to know what you really want, as opposed to what you think you want. So if you're telling your friend ok, I'll go with you to the beach whereas you really want to stay at home, don't be surprised if the plan doesn't work out at the last minute because "no one was ready." Admit it. Isn't that what you really wanted?
2. Don't be afraid to get what you want. Fear contradicts the want.
3. Once you know what you want, you've got to take that little trouble of doing something about what you want and...
4. Not stand in the way when the forces of creation get into motion. If you are giving birth to a chicken, and that's what you really, really want - allow the egg to hatch. Or.


Of course. Any Paulo Coelho fan knows this. So, what's the big deal?

Hype? Not Really.
First of all, there's the usual fluff about The Secret being discovered by the Western hemisphere of the world in a big way. As we know, the science-dominated Western thinking has been unappreciative of spirituality. Until very recently. So, those of us who are spiritually tuned (or assume they are) have to put up with the excitement of the discovery.

But is The Secret itself just hype because people have suddenly been getting hyper?

No.

Where is this Secret? Hint: You'll have to Look
I think it's one of the simplest things we should have seen, except it hides out like ibexes in this picture. You can't readily see it, until you look.

We are all creators.
Personally, to me this realization came a couple of months ago only as I was reading the Qur'anic verse about creation:

"Be!... and it becomes!" (036.082)

I realized that this is how all creation comes into being. The creator of anything large or small decides that it should be, and so it begins to happen. Finally, it does happen. Engineers with blueprints know it. Authors and writers with outlines know it. Anyone who makes a mental note knows it. Even passive folks know, at some level, that they let things happen to them.

We can all create. Ordinary humans are capable of it. And it is a knowledge of great potential.

Just like the atomic energy. Great potential. Sans the ethics.

And this is what leads us to the question:
Is knowing The Secret alone good enough?

My answer: No; The Secret is only secondary. The Secret is a mean, not an end.

What is important is what we want to DO with The Secret.

E-mail: nextbyramla AT gmail.com

Citizens Rising - Disruption to come, and then glory

The aftermath of the suspension of the Chief Justice of Pakistan is getting complicated. It's a free-for-all for the police, the government, the bar councils of the country, media, politicians and anyone's aunt.

Current situation:

1. Fighting on the streets of Islamabad; tear-gassing, shelling by police, and stone-pelting by people
2. Police attack on the Islamabad office of Geo News a couple of hours ago - prompting strong reaction from the Minister of Information, politicians, people, and of course the press
3. Exploitation of the situation by those who do nothing for Pakistan given a chance

It is TIME. It begins, as many say.

To me, it's not about one pillar of the state against another - the pillar being legislative, executive, judiciary, and media.

To me, it's about the Citizens vs. Everything Wrong with Pakistan. It's about the fact that the citizens of Pakistan have always been brushed aside by whoever had power - law, government, feudal lords, media, academia, the educated people, the wealthy, the resource-owners.

It's about have's and have-not's. And now, the people have a voice, and an emotional bank account in the red.

In the next few days, Pakistan will witness an un-stoppable rising of the unpolitical Citizens, rising only for Citizens' Fundamental Rights. Only time will show what will happen - we all have ideas which are better not expressed.

In a recent Q&A session after futurist Rohit Talwar's talk on Pakistan's Vision for the year 202o, I gave my opinion that within 30 years, Pakistan will be one of the few leading powers of the world. The conference was attended by business leaders and managers of Pakistan, and some expressed surprise at the idea.

I gave my anxious opinion only in private to those who prodded: my belief is that in thirty years, a new Pakistan, led by the youth of today, will have emerged on the map of earth. The IDEA of Pakistan will be stronger, and we will be on our way to great glory - which was always the fate of Pakistan. However, the anxiety was about the disruptive change that will have to occur before we reach that stage. Pakistan, as it is now, is not what the idea of Pakistan is. It is so far removed, that we will need to uproot ourselves from the current situation, and create a new world of our ideas.

My opinion is only of the doctor who sees a patient with advanced cancer, and must tell the truth. The recovery will require drastic therapy, followed by a lifestyle of rigorous health and responsibility.

I believe in Pakistan's future, though Pakistan's present is fraught with discord, and more will come. That is why, I wear a White Band, and not a black one to mark my feelings about the present.



E-mail: nextbyramla AT gmail.com

Needed: Future Ready Thinkers - are the schools ready?

Image: Elisha Otis's Elevator Patent Drawing, 01/15/1861.

From my personal notebook

There are two persistent problems with education anywhere today:

1. What they teach at any school is backward-looking. The textbooks are old, based on even older material, based on even older events and analysis.


2. Most institutes do not teach a human child or adult to use their own mind. In fact, thinking with one’s own mind is believed to be a dangerous and reckless tendency viewed suspiciously. It is “liable to punishment.”

This is my dream for the overhaul of education: To rally schools (anywhere, all age groups, all social groups) around two things they must have in order to be compatible with the needs of life and the modern man:

FUTURE STUDIES
All schools must have a dedicated “future studies” course. This course must cover the study of, at least, changes in the STEEPLE factors in the next 5-10 years. STEEPLE is an amazing model for analysis of environment of life. It is simply an acronym for Society + Technology + Economy + Environment + Politics + Law + Ethics. It is a framework to study the environment in which we exist.

Ecology as a Basis to Understand the System of Life
A note: I’d rather replace the word “environment” in the framework with the more apt “ecology.” In any institute of future studies… ecological studies, to me, is a must. I imagine that each school gives compulsory education to students of all levels about ecology and the dynamics of life. So that we may finally develop human children into sensitive beings with a personal responsibility for the biosphere. I also imagine that a school’s negligence in teaching ecological studies is “liable to punishment” by law…. Hmmm. I can sense the theme of my next campaign…

STEEPLE-S, with Spirituality
Another idea is to add spirituality as a separate factor in the analysis model. It’s a possibility I want to dedicate more thought to.

Own Vision, Own Future
In the future studies course, students will not only learn from futurists, but mostly form their own extrapolative pictures of the future. After all those who imagine the future shape it. There will be no forced conclusion – it’s not history but future so all cannot agree – instead broad areas of future concerns will give the universal framework within which to excite imagination and generate solutions.

THINKING
All schools must have a course dedicated to thinking. World’s leading thinker Edward de Bono is the main champion of that cause, and not without reason. If people are not taught how to think, we are being taught how not to think. If we are not thinking ourselves, who is thinking for us? And how, pray, are they superior in some way so as to take upon their shoulder a head that can think for others?

Why Won't Schools Let Us Think?
The educational practice of not letting people is rooted deep in the bias that some people are genetically or socially superior. These are the ones with the "right" to teach the rst what to think and what to do.

To bypass this utterly stupid bias, humans of all classes and races have tried to devise theories that would fit their own race and social system. So sometimes it’s the rich and the white that rule supreme. For a while then, being socially equal was in fashion – and now we are feeling that the racial favorability in tilting on the Asian side.

Whoever is the leading force locally or globally at any given time, it does not mean they are divinely superior in any way. This is proven by the history of humankind where one group of people has displaced another. There is no universal superiority except the superiority of Man over all kinds of life – and all humans can think for themselves.

It’s time that the education system of humanity aligns itself with this reality – so poignantly clear in the age of the Internet where all people are like all other people.

Think to Change
Thinking will help the children learn how to deal with change and devise new strategies for ever new situations. It is the tool one needs to be equipped with to deal with the chaos of life.

....

Why Do We Do Business?

What comes first when a person passionate about an idea wants to build a business around it: the idea, or money?

In a class where I was teaching entrepreneurship, we came across this question again and again. What really is entrepreneurship and why do people start businesses? Since the class was an academic route to entrepreneurship, I also had to figure in another angle: why would my students want to start businesses, given that they weren't "naturally" doing it?

I feel that in order to work out any idea, you need a vision. Vision is seeing a context for the idea (or an idea in the context). That makes an idea relevant to its use. Having an idea in itself may be quite worthless. You can get three ideas per second just searching the Net. I call these "ideas from the outer space."

The beauty lies in the vision of the person driving an idea. They can read the past, present, and future - find the gaps - and fill them in. Or they can see things that never were, and say, "why not?"

There is no text book on what does or should the vision hold. Life is amazingly dynamic, and every instance there is a new world, new circumstances. There will always be work to do for humans and not calendars and computers around for simply this one reason: only a human can deal with the amazing chaos of life. So there is a new vision for each time and its unique circumstances.

In this era, the global society is rapidly becoming aware of long-forgotten Responsibility/Response-ability. Responsibility to ourselves, our families, our communities, our environment. This is one wave that will just not turn back without changing the landscape. Nay, this isn't just a wave. It's the Tsunami of Change.

These new times demand a radical re-thinking of why we do business. To my mind, the days of the gold-diggers and king-makers are over. Not their reign, but their kind of mindset. The new generation of people is generally not dreaming on individual level - they feel responsible for change around them. At the very least, we know we can't keep escaping.

In these times, entrepreneurs won't think old-style: to madly pursue an idea and grow rich at any cost. The modern entrepreneur is doing a balancing act.

And for those entrepreneurs who are looking for a new kind of vision, a new thinking, a new mindset, a balance - I present the PC MOB: the People-Centered Model of Business. This model says, "We do business for the people." What? How? Why? The paper (PDF; 540K) answers the questions.

It's a first draft, and I can already see a ton of things to add and change. I'm excited. Get it here (PDF; 540K), read it, distribute it, link to this blog entry. Share with friends, use the ideas and send me your comments. Agree. Disagree. Let's talk!



E-mail: nextbyramla AT gmail.com

Will Robert Langdons of linguistics save the world?

I believe that in coming times, it will be linguists, and especially experts on semantics and syntax – in this order – who will change the world for better. As the world conflict increases because of misunderstandings of language, and the purpose behind language, linguists will be spurred into action. They will examine human language more closely; and during this study they will discover amazing similarity of patterns, tones, and themes in the language of humans.

Not only will pure language (?) reveal interesting relations among world languages, but the themes in global stories and folklore will also appear to have amazing commonalities.

This knowledge will travel down from the academic world to the general public. For the first time, the population of the world will be surprised – and shocked – that they all may have been saying the same thing, differently.

Which way to Hellfire? Gehinom, and Jahannum

For me, the realization was accidental. Thanks to the company of learned family, educators and friends, I have known for a long time about the etymology (origins) of many Urdu words, and have had some idea about the derivation of the language Urdu itself. But I had no idea of similar concepts…sounding alike…in Urdu and… Hebrew!

While reading up on Jewish eschatology (beliefs about the end of world), I saw the term “Hibbut ha-kever, the pains of the grave.” I like new languages, so I said the word out loud. It sounded familiar. Urdu readers who try this out will not miss. Soon, they will hear something that sounds like, “haibat e-qabar.” Meaning? “The horror/s of the grave.” Then there’s Gehinom (“purgatory” in Hebrew) and Jahannum (“hellfire” in Urdu). With slight difference, the concepts largely refer to the same things. Eureka! *

Robert Langdon: an Intercultural De-mystifier

No, I do not think Dan Brown is a literary genius, only a phenomenon. Both The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons were “putdownable” half way down. But I like character Robert Langdon’s career interests: he is a (religious) symbologist connecting the dots and revealing the hidden links between religious symbols and their history. The most important contribution of the Code, indeed, might be to spark an interest in (religious) art history.

Just as Robert traces links between symbols and weaves a thread across cultures and thus beliefs, the linguists of the near (near, I hope) future will present for the people of the world links between their words, and concepts and constructs. A little help from philosophers, of course, will be needed.

The Talk of Civilizations

While there has been much work on conflict resolution and language already, the issue is making that knowledge a part of the social construct of the societies around the globe. Besides, knowledge alone is often worth not much in itself, but its application is.

Knowledge is like fire; it is the application that makes the difference. Which is why the use of knowledge by the untrained or ill-willed can make knowledge useless or dangerous.

The knowledge is out there, mostly already worked out by the left-brained. With the rise of the creative class and the right-brained, there is higher hope that the connections between bits of knowledge will be made to lead to a wider understanding approaching the universal.

Yours Literally

The most heart-breaking (at first) and heart-warming (later) realization will be that much we each took for “literal” was actually symbolic or analogical. The folklore of the world has been hiding layers of meanings. Most recently, Harry Potter fans, critics, and “analysts” have dedicated sites and written books to discover the layers of meanings in the series. Know what the horrific Dementors personify? I like the one that says they personify Depression. They suck energy out when they’re around, and a dose of chocolate helps after they paid a visit. I tested this one on many die-hard Potter fans. None knew.

Interestingly, we may be missing similar meanings in ancient, older, and foreign texts and taking them too literally.

Grapes or Angoor?

Or we may realize that in many instances, it was merely a difference in our language, which is a form of concepts, that we differed over in substance. A Sufi story saw that a long time ago. In the story, men of various nationalities fought over what they will buy for food. The Pakistani wanted, “angoor.” The Englishmen insisted upon buying “grapes.” The German wanted “trauben.” And the Spaniard demanded, “uvas,” instead.

I have modernized the nationalities, but the story remains the same. For how long will it? We don’t know. For the sake of humanity, it’s hopefully a short period before realization dawns.


* Most references are from Wikipedia, as of February 11, 2006. Wikipedia will provide an excellent starting point for more research on the topic. In itself, Wikipedia is a melting pot – a phenomenon of multi-cultural and multi-linguistic interaction, and the many differences that arise naturally.

- This article has just been edited because I couldn't read it myself. Hey, I do feel language must get simpler! I promise no more late-night writing. I channel some old spirit when I write late night. Happy reading!


Image credits: Logoi for the Chinese alphabet; and andrea_j for the letter A. Alphabet "Alif" is a painting by Ali Omer Ermes.