Manners

I saw this quote attributed to Edmund Burke on Tumblr. Once I read this so many things seemed to come clear for me.
"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners, are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals; they supply them or they totally destroy them.”
Edmund Burke (via chasingtailfeathers)

The rudeness in society is rampant. We spend too much time chanting support for those that shout the loudest. Then you realize the futility of it, because these people who make their points by spouting the most or loudest rhetoric do not listen. They will do and say anything to keep talking. At times it feels like they don't even know what they support or why. Their ears are closed off because they themselves expect to be constantly talking. We have given too much credit to politicians, government bureaucracies, lawyers, banks, news shows, and celebrities. If they cannot hold Captain Kangaroo's magic words as revered markers of their own conduct, they are most likely a poor representative for what they preach. And they cannot be trusted.
We all laughed at the etiquette classes given in LDO/CWO School, but now I can see we didn't spend enough time on it. Good manners is a key to good leadership I think. We have become so analytical, and believe in decision tables, metrics with charts and graphs as the absolute truth. These are only tools, but have integrated them so completely in our lifestyle we forget the importance of manners, which is a path to develop respect.

A Little Rant

Every now and then I feel like just shouting into the wind.  It was easier when on a ship at sea, but sitting here is sometimes frustrating.  My faith in people has been drastically curtailed with my experience in the corporate arena.  I say that, even though most of the people I dealt with were retired or ex military, so when they showed the traits I would never expect of a person with the same background, it hurt.  So in the last few years, my faith in the government, my faith in people in general has been stress tested to its limits.

Off that tangent.  Today was an iOS and OSX update from Apple.  This is the second iOS update in so many weeks.  We gradually migrated over to the Apple way of life.  We first went over with the iPod, the revolution that started this new age of information dependence.  With the complexities involved with divorce and custody, we went to the cell phone quickly.  I made sure my daughter had a phone as early as possible.  We did Nokia, then went to the Razr.  We went to 3 different versions of Android, finally ending up with getting my daughter her iPhone.  I came over to the iPhone after we upgraded her iPhone.  I was sold.  Eventually, when my daughter needed a computer I went with the Apple.  So a MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air, and an iMac added to the iPhone, and iPod.  Then of course we added the iPad, the iPad2, then the newest iPad.  I went over to the iMac when my Sony desktop bit the dust, and have been sold over completely.  I have always loved using UNIX, but never really got hooked with Linux.  Loved the SunOS.  So when I started using my iMac and discovered xCode and my command line, I was really sold.  After iOS 5 came out everything changed and now we are an Apple family and have truly been sold over to the lifestyle.

So when this series of iOS updates came out fixing problems caused by the previous updates, I was really disappointed.  Part of the life change is that we support the hardware, to software uniformity so as to expect a higher level of performance and stability in our systems.  Even though the faults of the updates were truly minor, we that have sold our souls to the Apple mantra expect excellence.  I would have rather them miss an update timetable in order to fully test the functionality and performance of an update.  This in the Microsoft world might be expected and something you live with, but in the Apple world it is unacceptable.  So please, now is the time to adjust away from the Steve Jobs change the world method.  He already did that.  Now is the time for Tim Cook to make Apple the societal glue, that means quality products, fully trustworthy integration, and make customer support evolve into community support.  I believe if you do that you will be growing the world that Steve Jobs envisioned, and you will make our society and community better.