Dreams are Illustrations from The Book your Soul is Writing about You

I wasn't really sure where I was going exactly, but I had a general sense of the direction I wanted to go. I went up stairs in to a train station, but I should have walked down the hill to the road. I'd been walking around for a long time. A man said something to me, I think he was a teacher or authoritative figure of some sort. It seemed he had a go at me for some reason but I can't remember what he said, except that I snapped. He just didn't get it and he didn't know me. I was wandering, looking for something desperately. Maybe it was something to help my brother. Maybe I was just looking for answers. Either way, I searched aimlessly, knowing that I wouldn't find it. Especially now that I was lost. I felt resigned and defeated. Hopeless. A train was pulled into the station, so I got on it. But when it started, it ended up going in the opposite direction to where I wanted to go. I thought I should probably get off at the next station, then wait for a train in the other direction, so I would be going the right way. I moved down the front of the carriage, closer to the driver. I realised then that the train wasn't on any tracks, in fact it seemed more like a bus - the driver was driving it on roads, through the city. 

He was actually steering it. When we stopped, I told him of my plans and asked him how long it would be until another train came along. I had no idea where I was, so I wasn't relishing the thought that I might have to wait for hours for the next train in the other direction. But he didn't answer me, and I moved to get off, but there were other seats hemming me in, there weren't any aisles. Then I looked around and was stunned and panicked when I realised the train also didn't have any doors or exits. Just long, wide, sealed glass windows and walls. I called out to the driver: "How do I get off?". He seemed to know I wanted to but was still waiting. He told me that I had to stay in my seat, that a mechanical mechanism of some sort would arrive to bodily lift the entire seat out of the train to exit me on to the road. I could only wait, I was trapped after all. It appeared everyone knew this was how the new trains worked, and I felt naive, inexperienced, freaked out. So I waited. And I woke up. Those who have compared our life to a dream were right. We sleeping wake, and waking sleep. Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1580.

Principle Nixes every Book in the Library for e-readers - 2

Once a book is published it can only disappear if it's burned, all the e-readers need to do is catch a virus or miss an upgrade and it's useless. The entire move seems ridiculous. Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a "learning center", though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine. This is a prep school so I guess the charge of elitism is a cheap shot, but in this case they deserve it, and I use that term with a focus on being out of touch with reality. I honestly doubt kids are going to curl up with Twilight or even Anna Karenina at a coffee shop with their e-reader.

Principle Nixes every Book in the Library for e-readers

Cushing Academy has all the hallmarks of a New England prep school, with one exception. This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, literature, fiction, novels, poetry, history, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital. "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books", said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ (the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned). We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology".

As the folks on engadget say "unless there are only 18 students at Cushing Academy, we're pretty sure the e-reader supply is going to come up short". The book is at the height of information technology, not the bottom, and I will tell you why. The book never needs an upgrade,it is extremely inexpensive making it available to the poorest of the poor and the rich alike, the only energy source required to read it is sunlight, and the only knowledge one needs to attain to decode it's contents is reading. Now, I'm all for technology, especially when you're referring to information that is updated on a daily basis like reference information found in encyclopedias, but that kind of information is not free and requires a subscription. It's also easily controlled or changed depending on who is reviewing and posting the information, the interest groups the information supports or denounces.

Protecting Us from Our Freedoms: Congress Set to Renew Patriot Act Spy Provisions

As night follows day, you can count on Congress to serve as loyal servants and willing accomplices of our out-of-control National Security State. Last week, in another shameless demonstration of congressional "bipartisanship," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) forged a filthy backroom deal that reauthorizes insidious surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act for an additional four years. "Like clockwork," the ACLU reports, Reid and McConnell "introduced a bill, S. 1038, that will extend the provisions until June 1, 2015." As of this writing, the text of that measure has yet to be published. And, like a faint echo from the past when the Patriot Act was signed into law nearly a decade ago in the wake of the 9/11 provocation and the anthrax attacks, the ACLU tells us that "the Senate begins its debate on Monday with votes possible that same night".

But why not forego a vote altogether. After all, with the White House "skipping a legal deadline to seek congressional authorization of the military action in Libya" under the War Powers Act, "few on the Hill are objecting," the Associated Press reports. Why not extend congressional "courtesy" to the White House over demands that their illegal spying on Americans continue indefinitely "as long as consultations with Congress continue"? Consensus by congressional Democrats and Republicans over extending the provisions, the World Socialist Web Site reports, "meets the demands of the Obama administration and the Justice Department for a 'clean' extension, that is, one that does not make any concessions to concerns over the infringement of civil liberties, particularly in relation to the authorization to seize the records of libraries and other institutions".

The Power of The Ideea - 2

Most people I have met who are quick to use their lack the capital to start businesses as their main excuse for not being entrepreneurs do not even have in the first place any ideas to work with. Instead, they are waiting for the capital to land before they then start looking for ideas. I have had people come up to me and say“,  have N1m, what business do you think I should go into?” to which I always lack what to tell them. As far as I am concerned, I think that isn’t entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship starts with idea generation, not finance. You have an idea that you are so passionate about, and then you persist in trying to see it get off the ground. The hustle in getting it to work.

Leveraging contacts, making the most of what you have and the constant refining of the idea is a large part of the fun of being an entrepreneur. If all entrepreneurs were to wait until they had enough capital before setting out to change their world with their ideas, only a fraction of today’s enterprises would exist. It reminds me of the Bible verse in Ecclesiastes 11:4: “Farmers who wait for the perfect weather never plant; if they should watch every cloud, they will never harvest”. Waiting for the perfect conditions before you set out on that road of entrepreneurship is as good as never setting out on that road: the conditions will never be perfect. Create that idea and believe in its power. Start wherever you are. “Start weaving. God will provide the thread” - German Proverb.

The Power of The Ideea

As someone who is very passionate about entrepreneurship and what it can do for the entrepreneur and the society at large, I never pass up on any opportunity to talk about it to others. And when I start, I could go on and on. One of the most common responses I have encountered is that of no capital or finance to start one’s own business. The lack of start-up finance is a very major obstacle, but is it enough to prevent entrepreneurship? One thing I have noticed, both from my experiences and observations is that you rarely ever have enough capital to get that your ass-kicking idea off the ground. This is especially so in Nigeria where there are barely any venture financiers willing to take risks with a new venture, where the banks are also sceptical about lending to small businesses, and have cut-throat interest rates. 

In other words, to start a business here, you must have enough personal funds or have family to support you. I remember my first business idea when I was 18, an internet music start up for which I needed a modest few hundreds of thousands of naira. It wasn’t the fact that I had the capital that spurred me to create that idea, because I didn’t have the money. What I believed in was the power of the idea and its immense potential. I knocked on doors with my business plan and travelled to meet people whom I could pitch my idea to. Even though the idea never took off eventually, I learned an invaluable lot from that experience, especially in trying to raise venture financing. I learned that in looking for a breakthrough, God doesn’t give you one. He shows you where to break through. It is your persistence at that point that does the work for you.

Education, Intelligence and One Other Thing

These passions of mine were directly linked to my talents, which mean they derive from my purpose. In my own case, it is a set of passions. For someone else, it might just be one. But the main point here is I discovered myself, and that made my education much easier. Some of these things cannot be acquired via a degree, or in a systematic manner in a controlled environment. But it has not stopped me from polishing my rough diamonds by self-education: books, mentoring, and practical activity. For me, when I call myself intelligent, it is not because I can name the capital of every country in the world (well, almost) or that I was a contestant in the Zain Africa Challenge for Universities, but because I am applying myself to give people value and myself fulfilment and satisfaction. And this is what education and intelligence should be about. Admittedly, not everyone would be able to discover his purpose or self, as I pointed out in my previous post: Why the North has fewer entrepreneurs. But everyone can and should be intelligent: be able to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Let it be that one is not intelligent because he graduated from a university with a First Class degree, but because he is applying the knowledge he has, gained from within and outside a classroom, aided by skills to bring value to society. Now, this is the responsibility of our educational system, especially at the tertiary level.

Now this brings us to the 2 other things: creativity and entrepreneurship. Creativity is defined as “relating to or involving the use of imagination or original ideas to create something”, while entrepreneurship, in my own words, is “the implementation of ideas created, be it in business, film, social change or politics”. From what I have experienced and observed, the discovery of self, which helps us to identify our passions gives us a paradigm shift in the way we view our world. For example, someone passionate about design sees the world through the eyes of design. That said, when that person ventures into design work, his/her work will be something new, from a different perspective. Another person equally passionate about design will also approach design from a new perspective, possibly building upon the work of the previous person. How come two people passionate about design approach it differently? This is because even though their passions are the same, their purpose is not the same. Every person’s purpose and passion(s) in life are shaped by this acronym: (S)pirit-filing, (H)eart’s Desires, (A)bility, (P)ersonality and (E)xperiences. This shows that no two people can have the same SHAPE, hence their view of the world cannot be the same because what is in them is not the same. 

This is one of the biggest influencers of creativity: in the sense that discovering oneself helps you see the world differently, and when you venture to apply yourself, you apply it differently. Discovering yourself never makes you a copycat. It makes you more original. Now since we have already defined entrepreneurship as “the implementation of ideas”, we now come to see why world over, entrepreneurs are regarded as bastions of creativity and innovation; why start-up ventures are envied for the flow of ideas in the workplace. This can be simply explained in the fact that entrepreneurs are people who have discovered themselves (educated), hence are applying themselves (intelligent) in a new, different, improved manner (creative). Whether that entrepreneur is an artiste or a businessman or a scientist, whatever he does is creative, ground-breaking and capable of defining history. I have tried within the limits of my knowledge and intelligence (pun intended) to be able to bring light to this issue. I also continue searching by asking myself questions and hoping that the Omniscient One reveals to me more, that I may share with the world and also learn from it. In subsequent posts, I shall continue exploring these subjects. May we all be educated, intelligent, creative and entrepreneurial. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein.