September 2007 Archives

Art historians can tell us why some pictures have a strong emotional impact on us. In a free booklet (available in PDF format if you can read Danish) issued by the Faculty of Humanities at Aarhus University, Denmark, focusing on the topic "war," art historian Lars Kiel Bertelsen takes a closer look at the powerful and famous pictures taken after the World Trade Center attack and compares them with religious and nationalist pictures, which have a striking resemblance.

There are comparatively few pictures available showing situations of horror, fear, and defeat from the World Trade Center attack used in the media coverage of the event. But there are numerous pictures of tired, heroic rescuers or survivors that escaped before the buildings collapsed.

One of the most famous pictures is that of the fire fighters carrying the dead body of the fire department's priest, Father Symon Judge. This picture is compared with the painting of Jesus being taken down from his cross to be resurrected from the dead. The picture receives the same symbolic value, presenting the dead priest as a Christ or a saint. It is quite remarkable in this regard that the priest's name was "Judge."

Similarly, the picture of rescuers raising the American flag in the ruins of the Twin Towers is a striking parallel to the famous picture from Iwo Jima during the Second World War where American soldiers erected the flag on the top of the island to symbolize victory.

It is unclear whether the images were carefully selected by a skilled propaganda team, or whether they just had a strong emotional appeal to the American people who felt that the pictures communicated national history. Lars Kiel Bertelsen is convinced that in any event the pictures were consciously used to justify the Bush administration's "war on terror."

Regardless of intent, the choice of pictures expresses a cultural background—or a desired cultural background—that one wishes to communicate to others or reinforce in oneself.

In the case of the World Trade Center attack, the pictures communicate the Christian resurrection and victory which has been a recurring theme in the American rhetoric in the war against "the axis of evil." According to Lars Kiel Bertelsen:

Terrorist Tycoon from Clandestine Action Games is the latest addition to the huge and growing array of tycoon games on the market. According to Clandestine Action Games:

With Terrorist Tycoon, you design, build, and manage your ultimate terrorist organization. You're in control of everything from politics to combat, always keeping your terrorist army content with your leadership and discontent with your enemy.

Spread propaganda through Al Jazeera or Fox News to gain the support of your patriotic terrorists, and use lies and religion to mislead the world opinion to support your invasion of a country rich with resources using any excuse necessary.

Create trade embargos to "prevent the enemy from using medicine for explosives," or build an economy based on opium to survive. Set up import trade routes for enriched uranium and weapons, but remember to hide your financial transactions so that no-one discovers that your chief arms customer might be your enemy.

Train your combat units in hidden desert camps, experience exciting challenges as your opponents intercept your plans or capture your important leaders, and regroup as former allies become your sworn enemies.

Destroy historical buildings such as the Twin Towers of the former World Trade Center to strike fear in your enemy, or torture your political opponents in the Abu Ghraib prison. Immerse yourself in stunning 3-D effects as bodies are thrown to the ground by a suicide bomber, and watch wounded children drag themselves to safety as your coalition of the willing bombs their homes in your organization's "defense" against its "enemies."

Become the most powerful nation on Earth through your skilled leadership and the support of your God, and make you the one that can call your opponents the terrorists: Bring them on!

Sociotags is a plug-in for Movable Type 4 that adds a list of "sociotags" to your entries. Sociotags are the little images you may have seen on various pages that let you add the page to Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Slashdot, etc.

The Sociotags plugin includes a huge array of references to page sharing sites, and each of them can be enabled or disabled. With sociotags enabled, you'll get a box that looks like this (not an exhaustive list):

Requirements

• Movable Type 4
• Template Installer

Installation

1. Download Sociotags for Movable Type, and extract the archive file.
   
2. Upload the contents of the "mt-static" folder to the "mt-static" folder in your Movable Type installation.
3. Upload the contents of the "plugins" folder to the "plugins" folder in your Movable Type installation.
4. Go to Preferences -> Plugins for each of the blogs where you want to enable Sociotags.
5. Go to the Sociotags plug-in, press "Settings," and click on the "Install Templates" button. This will install the necessary stylesheet template.
   
6. Go to the templates list, and rebuild the Sociotags stylesheet templates.
7. Go back to the Sociotags settings, check the "Enable" box, and click "Save Changes."
8. For each template for which you plan to use Sociotags, add the following line between the <head> and </head> tags (if you are using the MT4 default templates, go to Template Modules and edit the "Header" template):

<$MTSociotagStyles$>

9. Add the following tag to the templates that generate your entries (if you are using the MT4 default templates, your best best is probably to edit the "Entry Metadata" template):

<$MTSociotags$>

10. Add a link to the Sociotags for Movable Type page on your own blog on all pages where the Sociotags are shown (you'll probably want to do this in the "Footer" template). The software is free of charge, but you must add a link.

Note: to use Sociotags for Movable Type, you must place a link to the Sociotags for Movable Type page on your own blog on all pages where Sociotags is used to display quotation boxes.

Please use the comments for bug reports and feature requests.

Imagine that you know someone that believes in Santa Claus. We probably all do: little children often believe in Santa Claus. But imagine that this person you know is an adult person that honestly believes in Santa.

Now, I don't want you to think this person is stupid. I want you to imagine that this adult believer in Santa Claus is an intelligent person who is skilled at his job. He may even have attended university and graduated with high honors. He's easy-going and generally a nice person. Sure, he's not perfect, but on the overall you can't really point your finger at him. He's like most, except he believes that Santa Claus lives somewhere on the North Pole with his reindeer and little helpers, delivering your presents at Christmas, and he believes that he must behave nicely because Santa wants him to be a nice person.

It is easy to recognize that his good deeds are linked to his belief, because although he doesn't brag about them, he encourages others to note. It may be the little badge on his shirt stating that he donated to some charity, or the occasional mention that he is a board member at the local chapter of Santa-believers, who do good for the community.

In fact, I'd like you to think there's nothing wrong with this person. I think you'll agree with me... except for that Santa part, right?

Well, he's skilled and smart all right, and generally a trustworthy and nice person, and apparently his Santa belief makes him do good things, even if it seems a little quaint.

Yet, somehow you'd be a little hesitant to believing his judgment skills, wouldn't you? That is, after your initial surprise of learning that he believes in such superstitious drivel has worn off.

Perhaps you might secretly wonder if he's genuinely such a nice person, or whether the only thing preventing him from being nasty is his belief that Santa wants him to do good. After all, he would hardly believe that humans would do evil without a belief in Santa if he didn't think that he himself would do evil without this belief. You might also feel slightly offended because it means he views you as an evil person because of your disbelief. You would rightfully suspect him of not liking or trusting you, and you would rightfully suspect him of lying whenever he claimed otherwise.

He also maintains that morals and ethics are based on the belief in Santa, so in politics, negotiations, and human relations you'll find him rejecting the values and opinions of other human beings and ignoring human rights because he contributes more importance to opinions that are consistent with those that he believes are given by Santa than opinions differing from his belief voiced by mere humans. He is particularly skeptic against cultures that don't celebrate Christmas. The implication of his assertion that Santa's opinions matter more than human opinions is that human rights can be overruled by the belief in a supernatural, non-human entity.

All of a sudden, this person may not seem so nice. You should perhaps begin to seriously worry what might happen if your acquaintance doesn't get his presents for Christmas.

You realize that his nice behavior is motivated by an egoistic desire for the gift of Santa, that is, his actions are based on the assumption that Santa will give him presents for Christmas if he's behaved well. All of his good deeds are based on this egoistic desire. He believes that Santa will also give presents to anyone else that behaves well according to Santa's wishes. In fact, those people that have been struck by misfortune probably had it coming somehow, since they don't acknowledge the gifts that Santa will provide if they believe in him and behave according to his demands. If they need help, your acquaintance would rather have them profess their belief in Santa than take action or provide tangible help. He genuinely believes that a letter to Santa Claus is better than real help, and he will be happy to show his "helpfulness" by writing such a letter.

Santa is capable of performing miracles, such as bringing your son back safe from Iraq of Afghanistan for Christmas, or in other ways making sure you're reunited with your loved ones. It is the belief in Santa, not personal involvement, that makes the change, according to your acquaintance. Getting your son back safe from the battle field is a matter of belief rather than social responsibility, because your acquaintance wants belief and shuns the thought of responsibility to the responsible. Show your belief in Santa, if you wish to be granted a miracle, and deny the profane methods of the non-believers. That is also how he would prefer that you be treated at the hospital, because he considers this medicine thing to be disgracefully distrustful of Santa's abilities.

You had better hope there are not too many of his kind.

This attitude of his is either a corollary of his belief or symbolized by his belief, but it is in no way caused by, or indicative of, some fundamentalist stance towards Santa. The attitude is the same no matter if he keeps his belief half-heartedly to himself or flaunts it openly. It is that he believes in a supernatural authority that reveals his social irresponsibility and perception of other human beings, not the intensity of his belief.

The belief in Santa that seems a little eccentric at first has major implications that affect the person's life and the person's interaction with other human beings. It indicates how badly this person thinks of other human beings, and how poorly this person treats other people.

Now imagine that you believe in the Christian God, the Muslim Allah, or some third metaphysical being. Maybe now you know what I think of you. I don't mind your specific belief, because belief systems come a dime a dozen. I mind you, the way you are, what you think of me and others, and the way you treat other people, which are revealed by the fact that you believe. You might strike me as skilled and smart, and generally a trustyworthy and nice person... except for that thing about your belief and its implications.

Swan Lake 2003

I have usually just shaken my head at the saccharine-sweet romance that accompanies the lifestyle marketed in the shape of Barbie dolls. In 2003, however, my slight contempt was replaced by indignation when the toy company Mattel introduced "Swan Lake" as a new theme in the Barbie universe: a dream of romance and love in the enchanted wood, where true love conquered the evil sorcerer, according to the commercials.

The original German story of the swan lake did indeed include both romance, love, and enchantment, but it is a tragedy. During his hunt for swans a prince meets the beautiful Odette, and they fall in love. She explains that a sorcerer has cast a spell on her, turning her into a swan and only allowing her human shape by the lake at midnight. The spell can only be broken if a man promises her eternal love. At the wedding when the prince expects Odette as his bride, the sorcerer plays a trick that causes the prince to promise his love to someone else. Odette's curse cannot be broken, and the prince has lost his love. When Odette forgives the prince his mistake, and the story seems about to end happily, the sorcerer drowns the lovers in the lake.

Tchaikovsky cast the story in music, and turned the Swan Lake ballet into one of History's most spectacular musical works. If Mattel's distortion of the original tale alone should cause some wonder, it is a mockery against this classical masterpiece to reduce it to Barbiefied pop culture.

Fairy Tale Exorcism

Mattel is not the only trend-setter. Disney has also discovered that romance sells better than tragedy, so in Disney's version of The Little Mermaid, the mermaid does not die and become the foam on the surface of the sea; she is married to the prince. And in Pocahontas, Disney prefers falsification of History to a tale of American extortion and brutality against the Amerinds.

The children's fairy tale books are also polished. Early versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales abound with bloody gruesomeness against children and other creatures that you won't find in today's renditions.

It is clear that popularization of fairy tales has taken a distinct direction. Fairy tales must no longer be too sad or too scary. Bloody scenes are converted to pastel-colored Teletubby worlds, and grand conflicts are converted to momentary disagreements.

In general, children must no longer be confronted with the dark side the fairy tales of fear, scare, and evil.

Embracing Fear

In earlier times it was a very real and familiar fear that the children could find in the fairy tales. The risk of being abandoned by one's parents was only too imaginable, and hunger and misery was often a daily challenge. Witches, trolls, and magic were something you believed in, and Hansel and Gretel weren't the only children that were left to die in the woods as a result of food shortage.

Fairy tales were thus not just exciting stories. They were scary because they confronted children with those things they had the most reason to fear. Fairy tales were gruesome tales, but they made children face their fears, enabling the children to process these fears.

At the same time, fairy tales confronted the children with a number of conflicts such as desparate love, the relation to an evil stepmother or stepfather, or the situation of being abandoned by one's parents. These conflicts might not have been solvable, but the fairy tales helped children use words or images for conflicts that the children felt but did not quite understand.

Protection from Evil

Responsible parents know that it is only elements of real danger that children should be protected against, such as falls from considerable heights. One should not protect the children from bumping against sharp table corners when they play around the tables. The only result of shielding the children against such accidents are clumsy children that bump into anything that has a shape.

The same is true for children's feelings. Just like a parent should not protect a child against any sharp corner in the house because that will produce a clumsy child, a child will develop a bad response to emotion by the parents that protect the children against its own emotions and feelings. If a child does not learn to cope with the obstacles in its daily life--be they physical or emotional--the child will be poorly prepared for life.

But that is exactly what one does by shielding the child against fear by softening the fairy tales. The fairy tales loose their original scary aspects, and the conflicts are lost. In doing that, the fairy tales loose the very effect that made them so appealing. They no longer provide children with a healthy and safe confrontation with fear and conflict.

If any conclusion is to be drawn from the recent tendency to add artificial sweeteners to the old fairy tales and folklore, it is that children are to be protected against pointy and sharp feelings that may hurt.

The parents' eagerness to protect their precious offspring by any bruise on its self-confidence and any scratch in the sense of justice can only lead to children that have no idea what to do when one day these feelings become pressing. I expect that the new generation will be unable to cope with emotional challenges. They will become even more dependent on religious pipe dreams and more or less dubious therapists and psychologists than currently characterizes the country that produces the Barbie dream.

More Fear, Less Costume

The alternative to padded wrapping of children's emotions will not lead to the brutalization that some film and movie critics warn against. I think the reason movie violence is in fact often a compensation against the movie's protection of the audience against the real fear, leading to a requirement for much more powerful effects before the movie leaves a reaction. If in the original fairy tale one was afraid of being abducted by a monster, the brutalized fairy tale would be a version where the fear of abduction was overlooked while the monster had been very fearfully described.

This is why the movie Alien is much scarier than its successor, Alien 2, where monsters are everywhere. The first movie captures the very thing one fears the most: the fact that there is a cunning and very dangerous monster that is hunting you, not how it looks. If a movie can capture the actual fear, its need for brutal helpers diminishes. Ironically, it is the very protection against the fearful element that turns the tale brutal.

In raising our children, we have never attempted to prevent them from being bruised, neither physically nor mentally. I think they learn that a scratch or a hurt feeling may be uncomfortable but temporary. It will not cause them to panic or to become incapable of coping.

I prefer that my children do not watch the Disneyfied interpretations of old tailes where conflicts have been filtered and brutality removed. We try to encourage self-confidence and a feeling of safety in our children, but we have also purchased a Brothers Grimm book of fairy tales from the time when blood and dismemberment was allowed in the fairy tales—and our children love the stories.

When a person lies, usually it is a conscious attempt to lead a person in another direction than the person would otherwise have taken. Although lies of course share the common feature of deceit, they come in many forms. I've listed some of the more common forms below--not necessarily to suggest any ideas, but to provide an indication of what to beware of:

1. Make a false statement. Such statements range from simple "the grass is blue" expressions to more sophisticated statements, such as stating that one's earlier statements were based on testimonies from people that made type 5 lies (see below).

2. Combine two unrelated, true statements to a third, false statement. This is often done by religious fanatics who argue that their teachings are true. They can provide numerous true examples of how their religion has helped people (for example, their religion may talk about helping people in need, and some people belonging to that religion may work in hospitals), but that doesn't mean their teachings are true.

3. Modify a component or change the order of components in a structure of true statements, so that the meaning of the structure is changed without making any type 1 lies. This is common in "spin control," where a different phrasing changes the "spin" of a statement.

4. Use idea association where unrelated components are added to a structure of true statements, changing the meaning of the structure. For example, we know that Stalin, Pol Pot, and the Chinese government all were/are proponents of state ownership of the industry. Completely unrelated to this fact, they all were/are responsible for human massacres. If this unrelated component is added, one is left with the impression that state ownership of industry implies massacres of the people.

5. Omit selected statements from a structure of true statements, changing the meaning of the structure. The classic version of this lie is the use of "snips" in statements, where it would be quite easy to reproduce an opponent's speech as follows (albeit more subtly than in this example): "the economic politics of the Democrats focus on (snip) rechanneling the economy (snip) to people that don't need money." Like the type 3 lie, this lie is common in spin control and commercials, where a product's weaknesses are omitted from the description of the product.

6. Ask a third party, whose statements are known to include the desired false statements, to provide an explanation. The third party will thereby be responsible for the lie.

7. Use a surprise attack, where you present a person with so vast amounts of information that the person does not have enough time to process the information. The person will then prefer to believe in an incorrect executive summary of the information rather than process the information himself.

8. Extrapolate, using an otherwise true statement beyond its valid range. For example, we often see Christians, who usually don't appreciate the idea of comparing humans with other animals, state that because a particular animal is monogamous, then so are humans.

9. Mention a false component in a way that makes it seem true. The old classic in the software development business is the defect that is said to be a feature.

10. Repeat the lie. Ignore all counter-evidence to your lie, and refuse to meet the objections. Then repeat the lie as often as necessary, still ignoring others' calling your bluff. Eventually your audience will perceive the lie as just a repeat expression, and although the lie is still recognized as a lie, the initial feeling of being lied to has lost its intensity, and the resistance from your opponents wanes.

If one always spoke the truth, one could simply repeat what had happened if one was to be asked at a later time. If one had originally told a lie, however, there is the potential problem that one must be capable of repeating the story without alterations. This places the demand on the liar that he or she either have a very good memory, or that the liar is able to forget that there ever was another truth than the lie.

Research of human consciousness has shown that human memory finds it easier to believe in that which requires the fewest mental resources to accept. Not surprisingly, in practice this means that a lie either has to seem so probable that it isn't necessary to think about it, or that the lie must provide a mental shortcut for the victim, providing a sort of "aha" experience that "explains" a series of complex connections or lack of same.

Perhaps the key skill is therefore to make lies look like truth. In the simplest version one may appear credible and persuasive when one lies. In a more advanced form, one can build confidence by introducing a type 1 lie with a number of demonstrations of truthful intentions designed to lead the victim into a trustful position. Feelings of guilt or an appeal to higher insight can lead a person to feel indebted or stupid, which will prepare the person to believe you. There are numerous such methods of setting the stage for a lie.

At a somewhat more "spiritual" level, lies is a war of space. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu explains how a battle is won by leading one's enemy into a desired (other) place. This creates a vacuum where the forces were moved from. A vacuum tends to be filled, and by placing one's own forces in the vacuum, the enemy can be hit there. The art is to find the right place to create a vacuum, and to lead the enemy to move his forces from that place.

The vacuum is thus "the place where the person was." In its most primitive form of war, a fist in someone's face is also a war of space. The attacked person is hit because the fist "removes the person from his space" and the fist fills the space where the head used to be. In some martial arts, a person can easily be thrown to the ground by exploiting the fact that certain movements create a natural "vacuum" that the person falls into. The vacuum is that person's weak point.

The perception of a lie as a war of space should be taken quite literally. A person's thoughts and attention is part of the person's body, and if the body is affected, so are the thoughts--and vice versa. Lies are used as "movements" that create a vacuum where the person's attention to the truth used to be, and becomes the place where the victim has a weak point. Depending on the character of the lie, the person may simply fall into the vacuum by drawing his own conclusions, or the victim will be dependent on the lies that the liar--quite tellingly--fills the victim with. As in a physical battle, there are many techniques for lying, and the techniques listed earlier are just a small taste.

If a person lies to himself, it is within the person himself that the vacuum exists. Most people that know such a person understand it intuitively. The person defines himself by things outside of himself, is shallow and "empty." If such a person happens to lie to you only to feed his own self-deceit, it is the person's own vacuum that you might get drawn into. Beware of such people, because if war is a battle of space, then it is a war between you and that person--and that person has trained for combat his entire life.

There are many ways of figuring out whether a person lies. Similarly, there are many ways of making a person admit that he lies, often without the person ever being aware of it. Only an undetected lie is successful, and the liar must defend himself against a significant arsenal of weapons that can be used to reveal the liar. I will take a closer look at these methods in part two of The Art of Lying, which will appear on this blog in about a month. So bookmark this blog and check back often!

Part I, Part II, Part III

I can follow some religious fundamentalists that claim that atheists have no morals. But only with some interpretation, and only some of the way.

Most movements, including Christianity, define themselves according to "positive" and "negative" comparisons. A positive definition is when the movement makes statements about who its followers are, what they believe in, and what their opinions are. A negative definition is when the movement makes statements about what it isn't; for example, Christians will readily state in which areas their religion differs from Islam, and the various Christian groups will gladly explain how they differ from other Christian groups. A positive definition is the religion's "what we are" statement, and a negative definition is the religion's "what we are not" statement. Both are valid descriptions helping define the movement, and both are moral statements of what one believes in and what one doesn't believe in.

Atheism is only negatively defined. It rejects the notion of gods but there is no explanation of what atheism is instead. Atheism only implies a non-belief in gods. Moral questions are not covered by atheism. As a "movement," atheism has no shared interests to gather around--just like one doesn't create an organization with the goal of not collecting stamps. Atheism can easily state itself in negative terms (i.e., it is the disbelief in gods), but cannot state itself in positive terms, that is, atheism cannot answer the question of what atheism offers.

In short, atheism has nothing to offer, and the corollary is that since atheism doesn't have moral statements to offer, then it isn't atheism that contributes to any atheist's morals. Morals have to come from somewhere, and according to the definition of atheism, morals can't come from atheism. Both from a religious view and an atheistic view one can sensibly argue that if atheism rejects the concept of gods, then atheism also rejects the notion of god-given morals.

In the hypothetical situation where atheism was all alone, atheism would in fact lack morals, and probably no society could exist without these non-spoken rules of behavior. One can therefore argue that the various religions accusations that atheist have no morals are in fact true.

The mistake in such an argument is of course that although atheism may not offer particular ethical or moral views, atheism isn't shielded from society, and while atheism rejects the existence of gods, atheism doesn't reject ethics or morals. Atheism can easily include Christian morals or other kinds of morals, even if these morals happen to be founded in a world-view that involves the belief in gods. Modern atheism began to appear while belief in gods was widespread (and that's how things still are), and in a sense adopted the morals that were already found in these societies. It means that although atheists don't believe in gods, in practice they behave as if they did.

Atheists thus find themselves in a difficult position, because if they are to draw the consequences of the non-existence of gods, at least they must come up with a good explanation of why the existing morals can be accepted. It is a rather poor argument to state that existing morals should be accepted because their justification is the belief of many people in a particular god.

In practice, atheists choose one of two options when confronted with this question. One option is a rather shallow notion that one just follows a "naturally appearing" moral--where unfortunately one misses the devil in the detail that the moral that feels most natural happens to be the moral that one was raised to believe in by one's predominantly Christian parents. The other option is to consider morals as created by human hands, that is, to rely on, e.g., secular humanism or adopt ideas from, say, objectivism (although the morals of objectivism are highly reminicent of the ethics identified as protestant work ethics by Max Weber more than a century ago).

Atheists are faced with a hard decision: either they adopt the morals and ethics of the religious people they grew up among, or they must face the consequence of a world with no Heaven og glory bright and no Hell where sinners roast: it is a world with no supernatural purpose with life; it is a world where you have only one life which you're responsible for making the most of yourself; it is a world where no authority but humans themselves make the rules. As an atheist, you choose between the hypocricy of claiming atheism yet living according to religious beliefs, or you walk the talk by playing what the religious people have long considered the Devil's game.

Religion has something to offer, and not all of if is intangible. Religion provides a sense of belonging, the feeling of purpose in one's life, and in many cases a social network. Religion has an advantage that will keep would-be atheists from non-belief until atheists can offer an alternative to the emotional, physical, and mental gratification that religions have to offer.

The primary cause of company failure is sometimes found in the company top.

Professor Per Nikolaj Bukh at Aalborg University, Denmark, has identified eight leadership tendencies that can kill your company.

The common denominator behind the eight tendencies is that the entrepreneur who has built a successful business thinks that he can handle everything himself, believing that the success of the company is singularly attributable to his superiority in decision-making and leadership.

This little guide, which is based directly on these eight tendencies, is so easy to follow that many company owners have already taken it to heart. Here is a tried-and-tested "how to ruin your business," no matter how great your products are or how competent your employees might be.

1. Decide Everything

Since you're the owner of your company that built your own business, it's you who can and should decide everything. You made the decisions when you created your company and made it what it is, and that means you should go on doing this. You may have hired subordinate managers since then, but don't let that keep you from making their decisions for them.

Make sure you become the bottleneck, and never mind the fact that although it's manageable to make all of the decisions in company with 15 employees, it's impossible with 200 employees. Also, don't pay attention to the fact that your subordinate managers become disgruntled and demotivated because their influence does not match their responsibilities.

2. Lose the Financial Overview

As your company grows, company finances become more difficult to control, and at some point a single person cannot manage the finances without an advanced business finance system that can provide an accurate picture of the financial status. Don't let that keep you from maintaining the financial records in your own head.

3. Go for Any Opportunity

The market is ripe with opportunities. Don't spend time stabilizing and consolidating your company with all these opportunities for making money. Let your development, customer promises, and deliverables slide while you you seek new avenues for profit.

4. Stay as Long as You Can

It's your company, right? If you must hand over your company to a successor, stay in your company and make the decisions as you always did, without mentoring your successor who won't get the required insight in the company to truly take over when the time comes.

5. Stick to Your Own Methods

You're a busy person, and you have lots of things to do. You won't have time to get out of your office and learn new techniques or get inspired by your staff. Using your known methods and sticking with your known tools beats skill building any time, even if it means your methods are outdated compared with those of your competitors.

6. Rely on Key Employees

If you delegate work, make sure you don't make the delegation role based. Your trusted employees must be named, few, and vital to your work so that you'll lose critical knowledge and skills if they are hired by other companies.

7. Make Wrong Investments

Your company is successful because you built it yourself. Don't outsource production tasks, and don't buy components from suppliers, but develop tools and components yourself.

Your best choice is to use your own investments for these developments, such as having your staff work on them. Firstly, such investments aren't clearly visible on your ledger, and secondly you know better than to trust academic business principles such as demanding a higher revenue from invested money than from borrowed money to justify the expenses.

8. Get the Bad Customers

The more customers the better, so focus on sales. Don't spend valuable time evaluating the customer's expected order placements or ability to pay, and don't spend time determining whether the customer matches the needs of your company. You need all the customers you can get, so don't reject customers that place too small or too large orders.