And now … to continue the torture of the music world .. Walking Down The Street ..
Click to play: Walking Down The Street
June 12, 2009
I am Excentric
I recently – and partially because of my new re-found dedication to music – wrote a few poems and convert them to songs. This is one of them:
Click to play: I am Excentric
April 27, 2009
Music Experiments – First of Many!!
Over the last few months I have revived a long lost pasion for music. In particular playing the guitar, composing music and recording it. I do not claim to be a Motzart, and I do this for my own enjoyment.
Here is one of the pieces I am working on. Of course, as always, comments are welcomed.
click to play:In The Fast Lane
December 31, 2008
The Closing of 2008
2008 has been a hard year for me. Not hard in the sense of bad, but hard in the sense of long, with comings and goings, hardships and uncertainties, a number of disappointments and many changes. And through all the year’s developments, my wife and kids have been there for me. I am one lucky guy.
The year started well enough with the new job. Zumbox is live so I can discuss it openly. Zumbox is an alternative to the traditional postal service. The best way to explain it is in the following manner: “95%+ of the mail you receive in your mailbox starts life electronically; why print it”. There are a number of efficiencies that are gained by using Zumbox; one of them is the environmental impact. Now, I do not mean to sound too eco-friendly, so I will present the environmental impact from a cost savings point of view: No printing saves not only trees, but money. And postage is a fraction of what the postal service is. To make matters even more attractive, there is no need to have a bunch of warehouses for mail sorting and staging, etc.
We spent the whole year building the product; starting with product definitions, graphic design, technology strategy, software architecture, modules design, systems architecture and design, implementation, so on and so forth. It was not always easy, especially during design changes, but we pulled through and we have an incredible product. The first version of the product was launched on 08/08/2008. It was a private beta from which we learned a great deal. The second and current version was launched on December 10th. And … you ain’t seen nothing yet!!! We have a bunch of product enhancements and features in the pipeline.. We are now on our beta period. Being part of Zumbox is very exciting. We are changing the world. Or a least a part of it. We also have an incredible team.
On July 15th we moved from Torrance to Thousand Oaks. We had been living in the South Bay for the last 12 years. I liked it a lot. I had built a good set of friends and my wife’s family, all of it, lives there as well. Family gatherings were easy. Not only friends and family where close by, but business associates as well. I was finally rebuilding my consulting practice. Taking the job in Westlake Village meant at least a one and a half hour commute each way. It killed not only my emerging consulting business but time with my kids and wife. Not to say that part of getting the job was predicated on moving. So we moved.
Finding a suitable house was not easy. I must have seen over one hundred different properties. Some of them too crappy. Some of them too expensive, etc. And from the subset I selected, my wife had to choose one. We finally set on a nice property in Wildwood. A nice double cul-de-sac with an awesome back yard and good neighbors. We decided to rent and the renting process was too painful. I am not going to go into details, but let’s just say, it was not a pleasant experience. The actual moving was not so bad. We took a few weeks to pack and then, all in one day, we moved.
Now … the house in Torrance needed to be rented. My wife wanted to sell, but with the financial markets the way they were, selling was not a good idea. Not only that, I wanted to have an income property anyway. The house needed to be fixed before it was rented; and a job that was supposed to take a week and a few thousand dollars ended up taking over a month and several thousands of dollars. In the process I lost two prospective renters that would have paid well. I guess it was not meant to be. It took us a while to rent the house but we finally did to a very nice couple. All the while until it was rented, we were paying rent and the mortgage. So … the house was finally rented.
There were a series of similar experiences through the rest of the year. I really do not want to go into them. They all, so far, ended well and we are the better for it; but each experience took a little bit out of me. And each taken little bit, I have not gotten back yet. I guess what does not kill you makes you stronger.
On the people side of things, I was disappointed by a few people that I held in high esteem and regard. People that shared most of my values or so I thought. It makes me truly sad. I think about how I felt about these people and the energy I invested in building a friendship and how that was wasted. It is not that I was expecting something in return. My expectations are more about longevity and familiarity. I am sure they are as disappointed in me as I am in them. Still, it does not change how I feel… life goes on.
Not all was doom and gloom … There are a few experiences that transpired this year that are very good …
I had stayed in touch with an ex-boss of mine. We fished together, got drunk together, and went to Mexico together and always had a good time. We always discussed that we needed to work together again. Finally the opportunity arose and I was able to hire him. Pat is not the easiest guy in the world, but he is an awesome person and I am glad he is my right hand. He had a hard time this year as well and I did the best I could to support him and stand by him. Hopefully it helped.
I reconnected with Ron. When Pat and I worked together, Ron reported to Pat and I reported to Ron. Ron and I had also a grand time back then. When I moved to Thousand Oaks, I moved only couple of miles from Ron and of course, we resume our friendship. Ron and Georgia are great; and both my wife and I feel very lucky to count them as our friends. Now … I did not know Ron is a musician. When I was a kid I spent 3 years at a music conservatory. And throughout my life I have been on-again-off-again involved in music. From very involved to not whatsoever. When Ron and I reconnected, he reintroduced me to music and ever since I have spent a great deal of time playing and studying guitar. I focused for a while on blues; now, I have also added classical. Music has always filled my heart with joy. This time is no exception. I am even somewhat teaching my children. I have to thank Ron and Georgia for it. Now … the draw back of my music obsession is that I have spent no time with photography or writing. But … it is still a creative outlet for me and that works.
Kort and Debbie … well … I really enjoy them. We became friends through our daughters. Our connection is also music. They are great people so I feel that the connection through music is an excuse to hang out and a common point. If that connection did not exist, I still would feel the same way.
The move to Thousand Oaks has not been bad; as a matter of fact, it has been very good. It has changed a great deal of our behavior and daily activities. My wife loves it. We have cultivated great friendships. My workmates are good and intelligent. My boss – Bob – is also very intelligent and we enjoy some good discussions. My kids are flourishing and both are in the school’s honor roll. Not only that, they are really much happier than they were before.
But for as good as the move was, we now do not spend as much time with Dan and Sheryl. I miss them. Both have helped us in ways that I can not begin to thank them or replay them. And not just this last year … ever since we met them. I wish we could see them more often and spend time with them.
On a completely different note .. I do not want to forget to mention Guido. Last, but not least. I am not a faithful person. I do not blindly believe in anybody or anything, except for my wife and Guido. Beyond him being my business partner, he is my FRIEND.
So, in closing … during this year I have experienced a good share of hardship and uncertainties. Financially, it was also a hard year but I began to recover towards the end of the year. And needless to say, the economic downturn did not help. But it was also a year filled with good experiences as well. A year of reconnecting with all friends and fulfilling certain wills. A year of meeting new folks that enrich us daily. A year of hard work with some big wins.
Happy New Year to you all. May 2009 bring only good things.
Fabian E. Schonholz
November 12, 2008
An Answer That Even An Single Cell Organism Can Understand
By Agustin M Rela
Translated by Fabian Schonholz
I hired Ramiro Rela back in late 2002 or early 2003. The reality is that I did not want to hire him because he did not have the relevant experience I was looking for. I would have had to contend with mutiny had I not hired him. Allowing my other employees to convince me was one of the best decisions I ever made. Ramiro is a scholar and a gentleman, a friend, a fantastic co-worker (when we did work together) and a very intelligent individual with whom I enjoyed pizza, beer or wine and some deep intellectual and technical conversations.
With the CERN turning on the LHC and the rumors around the event – whether a black hole can be produced by it or not – Ramiro asked his father, who is a physicist, to explain what a particle accelerator was and how it worked, all in terms a “single cell” organism would understand. Now … the single cell organisms are the people at the office who were “aptly” concerned about black holes generated by a particle accelerator … and influenced by the WWW’s rumor mill.
I have translated Ramiro’s father’s explanation because I think it is brilliant and it MUST be shared. It explains in very clear terms not only what an accelerator is but some basic quantum physics concepts needed to understand how and why accelerators are built. I have included the original text in Spanish for those who would rather read the original and save themselves from my horrible and butchered translation. Besides, if you can read it in Spanish, even better, since Agustin writes beautifully.
Here it goes …
Dear Ramiro:
Physics studies everything the hard way. It is one of its curses.
In 1916 Max Plank and others discovered Quantum Physics, which establishes that objects with definite contours do not exist and that matter is only diffused energy waves. To make matters worse, these waves can only manifest in packets called “quantum” and as whole packets. This discovery changed the philosophy of Physics, since it wiped the borderline between object and subject and the principle of causality and set a numeric limit to the knowledge of reality.
Mass is equivalent to energy through Einstein’s E = mc2. And the energy of a quantum (of which you can calculate its mass) is E = hf. Where ‘h’ is Plank’s constant and f the frequency measured in hertz – or cycles per second.
On the other hand, in order to see an object you need to use waves smaller than the object. That is why a virus can not be seen with an optical microscope, since the smallest light wave we can see is of 1/1000th of a millimeter and viruses are 100 times smaller. In order to observe them we need to use shorter length waves provided by electrons – let’s remember that electrons are themselves waves. A more familiar example is waves in the ocean of 2 or 3 meters long. They go around the dock posts like they were not there but bounce back once they hit a boat. However, the waves generated by a fisherman’s floater reflect perfectly off the same dock posts.
A high frequency means a short wave length, as we realize that mice squeak but do not roar. And as Planck’s formula tells us the higher the frequency the greater the energy associated to a particle. It is an injustice that in order to see a small particle we need to violently shake it with great energy while to see an elephant a faint sound wave is sufficient.
Historically, large molecules could be seen without instrumentation. Atoms could only be seen if you bombarded them with particles emitted from radioactive sources. Atom’s nuclei can be seen by using a cyclotron, a machine in whose interior electrons gyrate thanks to synchronized attractions and repulsions. With such machine we can obtain high energy electrons, thus, high frequency and short wavelength. As a consequence, these electrons are apt for bouncing against smaller elements than an atom, e.i.: its nucleus.
To see what’s inside a nucleus higher energy particles are needed, in other words, faster particles. Particles are accelerated by attracting and rejecting them with correctly polarized electricity. The largest accelerators are big vacuumed tunnels so accelerated particles would not collide with anything; and they are attracted and repelled by rings of changing polarity. It is as though a horse was running along the tunnel being offered a carrot at one moment and spanked immediately after. Each trainer ought to rapidly change his attraction strategy for a repulsion as soon as the irrational goes by their noses. Such is what the electric poles do in the accelerator.
The famous LHC or Great Hadron Collider is today the largest in the world. It differentiates from the previous in that it can accelerate particles until they have enough energy to see what is inside a particle that belongs to an atom’s nucleus It accumulates up to 5 trillion electron volts per particle. A Hadron is a type of subatomic particle composed of quarks and characterized by strong nuclear interactions; i.e.: protons and mesons. Hadron means “heavy” in Greek.
There is no risk that these experiments may destroy the world. Moreover, the world is constantly being bombarded by cosmic rays with an energy of ten to the twentieth electron volts while the LHC does not even reach ten to the thirteenth of the same units. It was built because there is not time to wait for just the required cosmic ray in the required place needed for an experiment.
Some people call the LHC “The God Machine” since it produces and is used to produce particles that where abundant during the beginning of the universe. The religious tradition associates the beginning of the universe with Creation.
Objections are heard that a large quantity of resources have been invested in basic or pure science with no immediate concrete application. But that always happens. When the first experiments with nuclear energy were conducted, nobody knew that France and Japan were going to obtain today most of the electricity they consume from nuclear energy; nobody knew that cancer was going to be cured with radio-isotopes; or sterilized surgical instrumentation with atomic radiation. And when Isaac Newton imagined in 1684 the placement of an artificial satellite on an orbit around Earth, he set in play the wildest and freest scientific imagination, that today, make it possible for people to be evacuated hours before a hurricane hits; or airplanes to save a third of their gas thanks to weather forecasting; or make it possible for me to receive your questions and for you to receive my answers.
Regards.
AgustIn M Rela
14.Sep.2008
—- Spanish Version —-
Querido Ramiro:
La física estudia todo a los golpes; ésa es una de sus maldiciones.
En 1916 Max Plank y otros descubrieron la física cuántica, que establece que los objetos de contornos definidos no existen, y sólo hay ondas difusas de materia. Para colmo, esas ondas sólo se pueden manifestar en paquetes llamados cuantos, y no en fracciones. Ese descubrimiento cambió la filosofía, porque barrió la frontera entre objeto y sujeto y el principio de causalidad, y puso límite numérico al conocimiento que se puede tener de la realidad.
La masa es equivalente a la energía a través de la famosa fórmula de Einstein, E=m.c². Y la energía de un cuanto (de la que se puede calcular la masa) vale E = h.f, donde h es la constante de Plank, y f la frecuencia de la onda, en hertz, o ciclos por segundo.
Por otra parte, para ver un objeto hay que usar ondas más chicas que el objeto, por eso no se puede ver un virus con un microscopio óptico, dado que la onda de luz más chica que podemos ver es de media milésima de milímetro, y el virus es centenares de veces más chico. Para observarlo hay que usar ondas más cortas, provistas por electrones. (Recordemos que los electrones son ondas, igual que cualquier otra cosa.) Un ejemplo más familiar es que las olas del mar, de dos o tres metros de longitud, pasan alrededor de los postes del muelle como si no existieran, pero rebotan en un barco más grande. En cambio las olas pequeñas que hace el corcho del pescador se reflejan perfectamente en los mismos postes.
Una frecuencia alta significa una longitud de onda corta, como nos damos cuenta al comprobar que los ratones chillan, pero no rugen. Y como la fórmula de Planck dice que cuanto mayor es la frecuencia, tanto más grande es la energía asociada a una partícula, resulta la injusticia de que para ver cosas muy chicas hay que sacudirlas a lo bruto con gran energía; en cambio para ver un elefante alcanza con muy débiles ondas de sonido.
En la historia, las moléculas grandes se vieron casi a simple vista. Para ver átomos hubo que bombardearlos con partículas emitidas por fuentes radiactivas. Para ver los núcleos de los átomos hubo que usar un ciclotrón, que es una máquina en cuyo interior giran electrones gracias a repulsiones y atracciones sincronizadas. Con esa máquina se obtienen electrones de mucha energía, por tanto, de alta frecuencia; y por eso, de escasa longitud de onda, y en consecuencia aptos para rebotar en cosas más chicas de un átomo; por ejemplo, su núcleo.
Para ver lo que hay dentro del núcleo hacen falta partículas de más energía, o sea más veloces. Se las lleva a gran velocidad atrayéndolas y rechazándolas con electricidad de la polaridad correcta. Los aceleradores más grandes son túneles en los que se hace el vacío para que las partículas no choquen con nada, y se las atrae y repele con anillos de polaridad cambiante. Es como si por el túnel corriera un caballo y le ofrecieran zanahorias por delante, y lo castigaran a patadas por atrás un momento después. Cada entrenador debería cambiar rápidamente su estrategia de atracción por una de repulsión, apenas pase el irracional frente a sus narices. Eso hacen los polos eléctricos del acelerador.
El famoso LHC, o Gran Colisionador de Hadrones, hoy el más grande del mundo, se distingue de los anteriores en que puede acelerar partículas hasta que tengan la energía suficiente como para ver qué hay dentro de las partículas que forman parte de los núcleos. Acumula hasta 5 billones de electrón voltios por cada partícula. (Algunas fuentes dicen trillones, por error de traducción.) Un hadrón es un tipo de partículas subatómicas compuestas por quarks y caracterizadas por una interacción nuclear de la llamada fuerte; por ejemplo el protón y el mesón. Hadro significa pesado en griego.
No hay riesgo de que esos experimentos destruyan el mundo, porque de hecho todos los días nos bombardean rayos cósmicos de diez a la veinte electrón voltios, mientras que el Gran Chocador no llega a diez a la trece de las mismas unidades. Se lo construyó porque no hay tiempo para esperar que justo aparezca un rayo cósmico en el lugar requerido por un experimento.
Algunos llaman al LHC la Máquina de Dios, porque las partículas que estudia fueron las más abundantes en los comienzos del universo, y la tradición religiosa asocia ese origen con la Creación.
Se oyen objeciones a que se haya invertido una cantidad muy grande de recursos en ciencia básica o pura, o sea sin aplicación concreta a la vista. Pero eso pasa siempre. Cuando se experimentó con la energía nuclear por primera vez, no se sabía que Francia y Japón iban a obtener hoy de ella casi toda la energía eléctrica que consumen; que se iba a curar el cáncer con radioisótopos, o a esterilizar instrumental quirúrgico con radiaciones atómicas. Y cuando Isaac Newton imaginó en 1684 la colocación de un satélite artificial en órbita, puso en juego la más pura imaginación científica libre y desenfrenada, sin sospechar que hoy los satélites hacen que se pueda
evacuar a tiempo una región amenazada por un huracán; ahorran hasta un tercio del combustible de aviación gracias al pronóstico meteorológico, y permiten que me lleguen tus preguntas, y que tellegue esta respuesta.
Un abrazo,
AgustIn M Rela
14.Sep.2008
July 23, 2008
From my iPhone
Wow…can you believe it. An iPhone app to write on my blog. This is fantastic and believe it or not, this post is being written on my iPhone. The aspect I will need to figure out is workflow. Normally after I write a post my wife edits it and then it gets published. Such a workflow does not lend itself to writing on the iPhone.
I do see, however, this app as a quick way to jot down some notes and quick ideas that I can later develop into full blog posts. For now … What I need to do is do finish with a few of the blog posts I already started.
April 20, 2008
Customer Service In The Era Of The Internet
I despise talking to customer service. Most of the companies I have had to call either for information, to report a problem, ask for a refund, get an RMA, or anything related to service, have resulted in horrible experiences. The customer service reps have been rude, they have lacked product knowledge, they have been less than attentive and willing to listen and have made no efforts in trying to find a solution that worked; to make matters worse US based reps can barely speak intelligent English. To the above equation you need to add reps not based on the US. It is not the accent that bothers me – mine is so thick you can cut it with a knife – but the lack of a customer centric culture. The accent just gets further in the way and aggravates the situation.
There are two companies where the experience is 180 degrees in the other direction: USAA and LaCie.
To call USAA’s customer service exceptional is to not do them justice. They are superb. I am not sure how the reps are trained, but I am yet to talk to a rep on the phone and not gotten the help I needed. What impresses me is that when a rep does not know the information, they freely admit it and they are not exactly apologetic. However, they know where to go get the information and who to hand you over to. The hand over from one rep to another is also fantastic. The first rep introduces you to the second. The second greets you and the first one asks the second if he/she has you. If the answer is positive, the first bids you good bye and now you are talking to the second rep, who had been fully briefed before you started talking, thus, not having to repeat yourself. Of the few times I had to call USAA – they have a great track record – and in those few times the experience has been consistent: Great customer service every time I call.
The experience with LaCie was completely different. I called to complain about an order I had placed where one of the items was back-ordered. My complaint was that I had been charged for the back-ordered item even though it had not been delivered, or so it seemed. The customer service rep, although I was very short, was nice, cordial, composed and quickly turned the situation around by being understanding of how I viewed the situation. He very quickly changed the mood and tone of the call and resulted on a happy customer. I am not sure if that is the experience I will get next time. Regardless, it was a pleasant one. The most important part of this experience was that even though I was in “the wrong”, I was never made to feel that I was wrong.
Few other experiences rival LaCie’s. So few that I can count them with one hand and have change. By at large, my experiences are really crappy and frustrating. The worst experiences are the in-store experiences. Two companies are notorious in my book: CompUSA and Fry’s Electronics. I will not go into details of these experiences because there is nothing to learn from them and in all honesty, I would waste your time describing them. But let’s just say that the reps where less than intelligent; their knowledge of what the products they carry is near nil; their interest in taking care of you is non-existent; their personal hygiene and presentation also lacking. And their vocabulary … well … let’s just say that my children have a better vocabulary than the people I encountered have.
I completely understand that the opportunities for education these people have had are not, to any degree, comparable to mine or my children’s. And I do not blame them for their lacks. I will, on the other hand, make them responsible for it. Who I really blame is the store managers (who probably also do not know any better) or regional managers. I blame people all the way to the top. They are the ones that lack customer focused service and since they lack it, they can not expect their chain of subordinates to react any different than they currently do.
A while back I was recommended I read a book called “Raving Fans” by Blanchard and Bowles. This book is a good example of why USAA and the CS Rep at LaCie are so effective in providing exemplary customer service. I recommend you read it. To think of it, the person that recommended it should read it again. His organization’s customer service is beyond lacking to the point that Fry’s and CompUSA’s in comparison are not too bad.
The customer service landscape today is, based on my experiences, a minefield with a few safe havens. But it needs not to be such a disaster. Traditionally customer service had information issues. In other words, a customer service rep lacked complete and accurate information. And when the data was available, it was hardly ever integrated and presented in such a way that helped the rep. Once upon a time I used to work for Prudential Group Insurance, West Coast Operations. My main responsibilities were to provide technical assistance to customer service reps (CSRs) and help them navigate a series of disconnected mainframe based systems. This was in 1994, ages ago in internet times.
Fast forward to today. CSRs’ operations are no longer, for the most part, mainframe based, and most system have been integrated in such a way that the information is presented in a series of screens that make life much easier to find. To make matters better for CSRs, many of the system offer key-word search to assist finding information more efficiently. A clear example of some of these advances is banking. When you call your bank, in many cases (BofA Credit Card Services for example), you are connected to CSR in India, The Philippines, and other. The rep has access to a great deal more of information regarding your account and transaction history.
Putting the cultural and language elements aside, the first issue starts with security. Some person in some country half across the world has access to some of your most important financial information. But that would not change if the CSR was located here in the US, or for Europe in Europe or however local. What would change is the ability to do background checks. Secondly, what level of encryption in maintained for the connection between the outfit in India, for example, and the data repository in Colorado, again for example? If it was local, then there are regulations that need to be observed and regulatory bodies that conduct audits. Although these regulatory bodies extend their scrutiny to vendors and providers, I am not sure of the level of efficiency and transparency rendered in the above mentioned audits.
However, security, technolgy and data/information even though paramount, the problem remains with my chief complaint: Lack of customer focus on the part of the CSRs. And with the information they have at their disposal and the installed systems providing the information, I am utterly surprised service is still lacking.
April 13, 2008
Ethics And Morality
For a while now, I have been concerned with Ethics and Morality. What they mean, how they relate to each other, how humanity interprets and implements them, whether they extend beyond humanity and planet Earth, the history of Ethics and Morality and how they have evolved through time. Ethics and Morality did not start with Greece and the classic period, but for all accounts, at least as far as I know, the concepts were formalized then.
I have spent a few weeks now reading definitions. In the original version of this post, I had included a few of them. But then the post became too technical and about definitions rather than discussion and intellectual investigation. Moreover, I encountered contradicting definitions from different sources. I am enclosing a summary of the encountered definitions since they provides a frame of reference for the rest of the post:
- In one set of definitions Ethics was defined as the study of Morality, while Morality as the study of Ethics.
- A second set defined Ethics as the study of Morality and Morality as “the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior”.
- A third definition defines Ethics as the study of “what is good and what is bad and how it applies to behavior” and Morality as the study of Ethics.
Now you see the problem. The first definitions create a circular reference. It defines one in terms of the other and provides no scope as to what the true nature of these words really is. The second and the third are in direct conflict with each other. One defines Ethics in terms of what the other defines Morality.
My concern with these concepts goes beyond definitions, meanings and interpretations. I often argue that humans as a specie has yet to develop intellectually. We lack vision and imagination to truly incorporate time expanses of trillions of years and distances of billions of light years. And along those limitations, we lack the capacity to understand the true nature of the universe. Moreover, we have developed this limitation in the tongues we speak and write.
I try to think outside the box. I try, with some level of success, to think beyond the intellectual limitations inherent to humanity. Not because I am more intelligent, but because at least I recognize the limitations are there and I attempt to break through them. At the risk of sounding conceited and arrogant, if Einstein did it, so can I. In trying to break through the limitations I often try to organize concepts in hierarchies. Proof of my limitation is that I have started to think in trillions of years and billions of light years, while time and space are infinite; and no matter how I reconstruct my hierarchies, I can not visualize and internalize this infinity. But slowly, I am getting there.
Ethics and Morality are part of this thinking outside the box and organization. Just as Mathematics (I will argue the universality of Mathematics in a separate post) and mathematical concepts are true here on Earth, as in the Moon, Alpha-Centauri or 100’s light years away in any direction, other constructs and concepts must be as well. So, if the concept of 1 + 1 = 2 here on Earth or 10 Billion light years away holds, so does the concept of Good and Bad. However, before we can define this concept we need a framework.
Looking back at the summary of definitions above, I subscribe to the second one:
“… defined Ethics as the study of Morality and Morality as ‘the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior’”
This definition provides a workable framework for the way I see Ethics and Morality. Ethics is an abstract concept while Morality deals with specifics. In other words, Ethics is a theory, a collection of ideas and concepts that describe esoterically a state of being, while Morality is the implementation of the theory. There is no weight in Ethics. There is no judgement in Ethics. There is no bias in Ethics, just the description of how to build a system of moral values, whatever these values may be. On the other hand, Morality is all about weight, judgement and bias. Morality is the implementation of an ethical system.
The table below is provided as an example of other conceptual and implementation associations in the hopes that it will clarify the argument above:
From the definition and table above I have established that Ethics is a theoretical construct while Morality is its individual implementations. Thus, what follows is that there is more than one morality, which indeed there are.
If we want to think of Morality as a complete concept, whether or not as an implementation of Ethics, we need to think of it as a collection of individual moralities. These moralities, in the majority of cases, are based on religious or cultural basis. We can consider a Christian Morality, which in itself could be considered a collection of individual moralities following the different Christian splinters (Roman Catholic, Baptist, Episcopalian, Church of England, etc.) Similarly, a Jewish Morality may follow an alike pattern and be a collection or moralities in the same form as Christian Morality. So on and so forth. (But, outside of religious based moralities, what other moralities can we find? We will come back to this later.)
These moralities all deal with specific behaviors. In the case of Judaism, in particular within the orthodox communities, there are 613 Mitzvoth (commandments) that must be followed and observed. A portion of these are regarding good: “You Shall”, and a portion regarding not good:”You Shall Not”. These commandments are the basis for a behavior and the compendium of moral codes. Yes, I am equating commandments to behaviors, but that is exactly what a commandment is: a discrete behavior. A commandment is a quantifiable action and the collection of quantifiable actions represents a behavior(s). I will assume that Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc., follow a similar pattern of commandments and behaviors. Furthermore, while I do equate commandments or compendiums of moral codes to behaviors, I am not equating religion and dogma with morality. This distinction is important.
Does Ethics deal with good and bad? Or Good and Evil? This is an important question. In my opinion no it does not. However, when discussing Ethics we normally fall into discussion of good and bad, Good or Evil. Why is that? Because our inability to maintain a level of abstraction. Based on the above definition: “ … Ethics as the study of Morality …” we can clearly see another reason why we fall into identifying Ethics with good and bad, Good and Evil, it seems implicit in the definition since Morality is defined as the study of good and bad “behaviors”. What seems implicit, it may not be.
Athenians and Spartans shared the same logical bases and by at large the same code of Ethics. But their moralities had points of difference. While Sparta condoned euthanasia, Athens repelled it. The moralities of the two city-states where based on the same set of religious beliefs, the same set of logics, same philosophical backgrounds and bases of governments. However, Spartans, based on their needs supported the systematic disposal of undesirable genetics traits by killing new-borns that did not measure up. Today, we would consider this practice evil. But that would be our morality speaking and not Ethics.
To summarize
- Ethics is the theory of actions and behaviors that can lead to good and bad, Good and Evil. However, it does not label any of the identified actions and good or bad, Good or Evil. It also deals with the concept of good and bad, Good and Evil but does not create an association between actions and these concepts.
- Morality creates associations between actions and behaviors and good and bad, Good and Evil. These associations are normally built in the context of religious dogma and culture.
- Ethics is universal. Since it does not deal with associations, the concepts can be transposed to any part of the Universe without loosing validity.
The exceptions that prove the rule
There are two questions that I will not answer, but are pertinent to the topic in this post:
- When we talk about business and the concepts of good and bad, we discuss them in the context of Business Ethics. However, isn’t this the case of a mislabeled morality?
- Is “truth” (not THE TRUTH) part of Ethics or Morality?
March 30, 2008
Photo Galleries – The Start Of A New Chapter
Message from Fabian Schonholz:
Hello all. I hope you have enjoyed the pictures and photo galleries I have posted on this blog. A few weeks ago I decided to separate my blog into two sites:
- This site (http://www.fabianschonholz.com) where I will keep on hosting my blog posts focusing on phylosophy and business writtings.
- A photo blog site (http://www.schonphotos.com) where I will not only host my photo galleries, but provide links to those interested in buying copies of my photos.
Part of my decision has come as I am trying to develop my photography business and not wanting to use this site for that. I rather keep things separate as I will be developing an online marketing strategy around the photo site that hopefully will bring the level of revenues I would like.
Part of my decision has come as a means to provide more focus to both sites. On one hand it was easy to have all in one place. On the other, however, if you like my writings why should you deal with my photos? And if you like my photos, why should you deal with my writings? If you like both, well … I am so sorry, but you will have to go to two separate sites.
In the end, I think that the separation is more for me and the way I like to do things.
Again, I hope you enjoyed and continue to enjoy my photos in the new site; and I hope you all keep on reading my posts and comment, specially if you bring a challenge.
Fabian Schonholz.
