Retirement endgame

Where are you and where are you going?
Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by Nuuka »

I wonder what was/is/wouldbe ERE-idol Renessance Man’s attitude towards favours and corruption?

Note to myself: need to find a book about the personal values of renessance time.
Last edited by Nuuka on Fri Oct 18, 2019 8:37 am, edited 5 times in total.

Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by Nuuka »

About work related stress. I have been thinking of different stress mechanisms that I was vulnerable on.

One of the biggest stressors for me was backstabbing. Backstabbing means using inside information leak to cause harm to someone. An example: we had made some deal (for example budget allocation) and after the deal someone leaked information of the deal and questioned the honesty of the decision making process and the decision makers, such as the integrity of chairman of the meeting (=me). This really put my head boiling. On the first time I encountered this I didn’t know how to react to this. I spoke with my trusted colleague who had admin experience from a major business company. His advice was not to do anything when you are backstabbed, because backstabber’s real purpose is to get you out of balance, agitate you to defend yourself and make noise. Then others would think there is no smoke without fire. This would weaken your authority. Backstabber tries to provoke you doing something stupid. I followed his advice of doing nothing and it worked.

I still sometimes feel desire to pay backstabber(s) back, i.e. to revenge. But I know revenge is a luxary that you seldom can afford. Stoic classic philosophy (Marcus Aurelius) recommends to eliminate thoughts of revenge because these negative feelings disturb self balance and are vain because each person have their destiny so you don’t need to help the destiny do its work.
Last edited by Nuuka on Sun Oct 06, 2019 1:01 am, edited 8 times in total.

Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by Nuuka »

i wonder what was/is/wouldbe Renessance Man’s attitude towards backstabbing and revenge?

Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by Nuuka »

Another big-time stress-generator for me was inheritance execution after my father died. It seems that forthcoming inheritance wakes up and brings out to the open the worst animal spirits out of diseaced’s family members.

In my case the conflicts were between us siblings. I do not want to describe details but after 7 years of various twists and shouts, I had to file a request for local court to nominate ombudsman. It was only after that ombudsman mediation there was final distribution of the inheritance. And since that, my siblings don’t speak to me anymore, unless it concerns my mother’s care.

But my family is not the worst I have come across. I spoke to a colleague of mine who is the only child and she told me that she expected that inheritance execution, after her father died, was supposed to be piece-of-cake process. But on the contrary, she has now fought with her mother for over a year. Mother has threatened to burn all the assets and to withdraw money from the bank as bills and to burn them as well, so child gets nothing while mother keeps the house as long as she lives. Daughter was considering with a lawyer on applying a cease order from local court to prevent burning of assets.

i wonder what was/is/wouldbe Renessance Man’s attitude towards generating envy and towards envious people?
Last edited by Nuuka on Sun Nov 10, 2019 6:43 am, edited 5 times in total.

Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by Nuuka »

Continuing about the stress issues.

There is a variant of backstabbing called “trap”. Basically there is preample phase before the backstabber’s inside leak takes place. The preample contains controlled injection of false information to the decision making process so that sub-optimal decisions will be taken later in the process before the leak takes place.

Trap is more powerful than plain backstabbing considering the outcome but it is more dangerous to the backstabber and false informant injecters. Often trap requires a conspiracy, i.e cooperation of several persons. This means it is much slower to set up.

I have run into trap once. It was quite painful experience and it brought stress level skyhigh. I didn’t understand that it was a trap at first when the backstab leak happened. It was only about a month later I found evidence of false information. Generally the best approach for handling trap is the same as backstab: do nothing.

If you do what comes first to your mind, you will just worsen your situation. If you call out that you are set-up or that there is a conspiracy, everybody will think that you have lost it, that you are crazy, or that you are on a war path. If you deny, everybody interpretes it as there must be something because he denies it.

How to proceed after the trap and doing nothing phase. Basically you have two choices either (1) revenge or (2) proactive prevention of further false information injections and inside leaks. I prefer not to spend effort in (1) but to focus on (2) by thinking whose data to believe and who to take in processing and decision making, i.e. thinking carefully whom to trust. Since you cannot throw out immediately the conspiracy people you may need to develop inner layer of trusted people until you can slowly direct the conspiracy people somewhere else to somebody else’s problem (This is often called sidewaying or sending to Siberia).

Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by Nuuka »

I have used a variant of backstabing/trap myself once towards some people who were corrupted in the sense that they had their own education businesses which sold repackaged training materials and used the same teachers as the host education provider organisation. Basically they were eating from the payload.

What I did I acted as a whistleblower and went to speak privately to chief financial officer and told her that it might be good idea to select DepartmentX for as annual audit target. In this education provider organisation every year some parts of the organisation are selected as targets for audit. I was myself working as vice-director (Number2) in Department X,, i.e. I effectively ordered audit to my own organisation. Of course the audit selection was done by some committee, so my name was not visible anywhere. only CFO knew me as whistleblower.

Then about 6 months passed and then there was announced that there is an audit for Deparment X and there will be private interviews for key personnel of the Department. I was one of the interviewed. I basically told what I knew about suspicious activity. The interviewer compiled a summary report of findings and it was distributed. After a while all hell broke loose. There was a meeting called up by Director (Number1) where there was accusations of false statements and threats of lawsuit and so on. But they didn’t know who was source. There were no consequences afterwards because the interview report was written by the auditor, and any possible litigation would be targeted against him or his company.

The audit was very healthy for the organisation. I didn’t know if any of the corrupt quys got any warnings but their operations took distance from the use of the teaching materials and teachers. My relations with the corrupt quys were not very good before and they became worse after the audit. I guess they suspected I was the source. I believe they had no idea that I had ordered the audit. I didn’t care so much becuase i didn’t respect these quys anyway.

Later I found one of these quys voted against me in one election for manager term and I lost the vote but I was selected anyway because I was more experienced as my competitors. So at least one of the quys tried to revenge.

Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by Nuuka »

There is another whistleblow mechanism available in all public government organisations called “administration inquiry”. It allows anyone to make formal inquiry on any administration function whether it is acting as it is meant to act in the formal charter. Formal charter is a written description of admin actors, their roles, responsibles, and how positions are filled. This is powerful mechanism, because the max time to report is about 3 months and the formal inquiries and reports go to highest level board chairman. He is in charge of bringing serious cases to board for deciding on necessary corrective actions. The whistleblower does not need to show evidence, he can present free text description of the problem, and it is responsibility of the admin chief to find out if there is any truth in it. It normally leads to interviews of the persons involved. Of course the persons interviewed will be scared for their jobs because most people have some “skeletons” in their office drawers.

Very few people know that this mechanism exist. And admin never mentions it because it is one of their biggest risks if they have any monkey-business going on.

I have used this whistleblow-mechanism twice in my career. Both times I used to protect against admin overreach of power that threatened the unit I was in charge. In both cases the cause was sudden change of budgeting criteria that threatened reduction of budget. In both cases official outcome report was that there was nothing wrong found, but in both cases the overreach-persons either quit or were sidewayed within 2 years. In both cases I was contacted and advised that I should cancel my formal inquiry. I politely answered that I prefer to keep my inquiry because I am interested to see the result. I guess people were scared and tried to keep their careers clean. The latter case the person who asked me to cancel was the CEO. I was a bit suprised why he took such action to protect an administrator. I still don’t understand why. Anyway I didn’t cancel.

Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by Nuuka »

Found black_son_of_gray’s interesting ERE analogy to phases in the game of Chess

Opening - midgame - endgame

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5853&start=20#p158239

Clearly I am in the endgame phase now.

(1) When and how did I complete midgame?

I think In my case it was when I lost competition for promotion for one more layer up in management. It was when I was 58.
There was an open call and there were 4 candidates including me. I was among the top two but I was not selected.
At that time it was a huge disappoinment. Later I have come to recognise it was good for my health that I was not selected.
Anyway after that I knew that this is the top and after this it will be downhill. After that I was ready to go for 4 day week.

(2) What assets, and how much damage and ballast, do I carry when entering endgame?
King= myself, mental health, integrity, reputation, independence (financial, favour, corruption, envy)
Queen= my wife (trusted life companion)
Tower, Messanger = My children (to run my errands when I am no more capable)
Horse= my cars and caravan, driving license, passport (my capability to move freely)
Pawns= my financial assets

Damages= stress induced health problems
Ballast= inheritance created bad relations between siblings, old mother to take care of, after she passes away, sibling empire strikes back
Last edited by Nuuka on Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:05 pm, edited 8 times in total.

Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement endgame

Post by Nuuka »

One of my new QoL activities is bird watching and photography. I decided to start with iphone based rig. For this purpose I have bought
- telescope with adjustable zoom
- tripod
- iphone attachment bracket
- remote shutter

I will use old iphone as camera because of small size and good enough camera and availability of pro camera apps. Later when I have gained some experience I may start upgrading the rig.

My first bird project is to make a photo blog or journal of the birds living at and visiting my cabin lot which is close to a national bird observation site.
Last edited by Nuuka on Sun Nov 10, 2019 6:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Path to retirement endgame

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

Do you attach the telescope to the iPhone somehow? Or take the pics with the phone with no additional lenses?

Sorry about the pain related to the inheritance. Something similar happened in a part of my family. It seems to be very common.

Nuuka
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Re: Retirement endgame

Post by Nuuka »

@GdP Iphone attachment is with a (mechanical spring-loaded rubber-coated) bracket positioned to where you normally watch with your eye. You need to remove the rubber flange first.
Last edited by Nuuka on Sun Nov 10, 2019 6:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Nuuka
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Re: Retirement endgame

Post by Nuuka »

Inspired by some other journals, studying at personality types today I found myself match with Assertive Advocate (INFJ-A).

https://www.16personalities.com/article ... ate-infj-t

It is funny because I have used to take the role of Devil’s advocate when I see something weird, and then tell the truth that I see. So I intuitively have used the role of advocate without being aware of my personality type.

https://www.16personalities.com/infj-personality

Now I can see why I felt important to write about the mechanisms of stress. Why the backstabbing caused me so high stress. Why I used whistleblowing mechanisms. Why I thought that being fired is better than quit. All this is explained by the personality type.
Last edited by Nuuka on Sun Nov 10, 2019 6:44 am, edited 2 times in total.

daylen
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Re: Retirement endgame

Post by daylen »

Nuuka wrote:
Sun Oct 20, 2019 9:13 am
Looking at personality types I found myself match with Assertive Advocate (INFJ-A).
That actually seems correct. Tests are often unreliable but in this case it seems to fit. Your Ti is fairly well developed, so I imagine that it has been a major learning vector throughout your life. The function stack for INFJ is Ni - Fe - Ti - Se.

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fiby41
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by fiby41 »

Nuuka wrote:
Fri Oct 04, 2019 4:34 pm
attitude towards favours and corruption?
Corruption to me is putting personal, party, state, group interest before the national interest.

Favours are part of the social life of higher order animals. Vampire bats share the blood they've sucked with those who had a dry night.
It becomes crucial to keep a record of who shared the blood with you and who denied you that favour.

Nuuka
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Re: Path to retirement

Post by Nuuka »

fiby41 wrote:
Sun Oct 20, 2019 9:57 am
Corruption to me is putting personal, party, state, group interest before the national interest.

Favours are part of the social life of higher order animals. Vampire bats share the blood they've sucked with those who had a dry night.
It becomes crucial to keep a record of who shared the blood with you and who denied you that favour.
Not sure about what is meant by ”national interest”. Laws are defined by national level, in that sense definition of what is criminal corruption is defined at that level. But there are forms of corruption that are not serious enough to be criminal but yet against the ethics of society, or community, or company culture, or <define your sphere here>.

Forms of corruption I have seen during my work career
- variants of stealing (eating from the payload)
- advancing the career of relatives or friends (freemasons, religious sects, political parties) causing hiring over the best qualified
- bribery, nowadays called also ”pay to play”
- forgery of documents or scientific work, and their coverups
- Copyright, Intellectual Property Right (IPR) violations

Favours: Would be interesting to read a scientific study about the use of favours throughout the history and changing role as money came along. (Note to myself: ask my history science colleague about history/cultural antropology of favours if there are any studies on it.)

However favours may have a renessance now on higher Wheaton levels when persons try to minimise usage of money. You need more skills and you can get access to skills through bartering, and transforming barter obligation to a favour.

Above thoughts lead to further questions: Is ERE effectively reducing usage of money but instead stimulating usage of barter and favours? Is ERE a giant jump back in time to barter trade in small (virtual) communities? Is ERE inherently local and thus against globalisation? What would happen if everybody would be ERE? How would taxman collect taxes if transactions were barter and favours?

(Note to myself: blockchain can be used to record non-financial transactions such as barter and favours)

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fiby41
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Re: Retirement endgame

Post by fiby41 »

I just returned after voting in the assembly elections. We get to vote 3 times every term of 5 years. To elect the representative who'll represent us at center level, state level, and local governing body level. There were 13 candidates to choose from although coalitions reduced the number of parties contesting by 5.

The things you classify under corruption have these names also
-theft
-nepotism
-lobbying (that's illegal here)
I do not believe knowledge should be behind paywalls hence do not support IPR. IPR is just a secular form of the doctrine of Christian discovery with the church replaced by state, it has caused enough bloodshed to not be accepted blindly.

Nuuka
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Re: Retirement endgame

Post by Nuuka »

@fiby41
Intellectual Property Rights: I haven’t thought all levels and history out, but I can assure that nowadays in local innovation commercialisation chain (from research knowledge, enterpreneurship, start-up company, seed funding, venture funding, growth, access to distribution chain) innovation patenting is vital.

Without patents, nothing would prevent bigger companies from copying whatever startup company produces and sells. Eventually there would be just one megacompany in the world if there were no patent protection. Hence there would be no local startups, it would not make sense to educate reserchers and developers. All hope would be lost locally.

Information behind the paywall is different thing from patenting. Paywall is question of copyright protection. It is naive to think that world would be better without copyright. That would mean that no author, painter, or sculptor would have copyright to their art. Anybody could just copy anything. How would those artist make their living? It is the same with any digital information. If you can freely copy it who would invest anything to develop it?
Last edited by Nuuka on Mon Oct 21, 2019 8:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nuuka
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Re: Retirement endgame

Post by Nuuka »

I am now using the endgame chess horse button: Greetings from Florence, Italy. On holiday travel to check out true Renessance Man. Trying to gain understanding on Renessance Man’s life and values.
Last edited by Nuuka on Sun Nov 10, 2019 6:47 am, edited 3 times in total.

Nuuka
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Re: Retirement endgame

Post by Nuuka »

Fiosole is place where Leonardo da Vinci was observing birds. Magnificent view over Florence.

Leonardo da Vinci museum downtown Florence. Interesting place but focus is on the work and legacy, not who he really was. What was a suprise to me was that he himself wrote his name as Leonardo D’Avinci.

Leonardo da Vinci Exhibition at Florence Santa Maria Novella Museum. It was quite comprehensive, a lot to see there. Anyway I was able see his drawings of birds and birds flying dynamics.

Leonardo’s Florence time shortly: The renessaince in Florence was started by rescue of East Rome Empire archives when it collapsed around 1480. There was a concerted effort by that age scientists invited to Florence to analyse those archives. All this was funded by Medici family. So there was perhaps first time ever critical mass of knowledge and brains available. And Leonardo came to Florence to absorb all this.
Last edited by Nuuka on Sun Nov 10, 2019 6:13 am, edited 2 times in total.

Nuuka
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Re: Retirement endgame

Post by Nuuka »

I like Tuscany and Piemonte regions in Italy because they have maintained local economy intact. They have agricultural and tourism business that works with local companies and cooperatives. Most of the wineyards, hotels and restaurants are family businesses. Perhaps the best place to understand this is the town Bra in Piemonte where is the Slow Food movement originates.
People buy most of their food and everyday needs from farmer markets or local shops.I visited Piazza Mercato Cenrale Firenze which is farmers market in downtown Florence. So also in Italian big town you still have end-to-end agriculture product chain in local business hands.

There is a big difference when compared to France. There local villages have lost the shops and look about dying and there are big global supermarkets outside of villages in fields.

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