POINTS OF VIEW
9301 Social Theory 1 - THINK
For many years, under the father and then the son, IBM’s in-house motto was ‘THINK’. You saw it everywhere. Almost everybody had it on their desk, as a metal sign, but they might also have had it as a slogan on the wall behind them. It also featured on promotional literature, on notepads and – in particular – was the title of the IBM magazine. It was literally to be seen everywhere you looked.
The outside world scoffed!
Yet this slogan was the power-house of IBM philosophy, as it should be for the rest of the world. It encapsulates the one activity which is essential to control the prejudicial irrationality which is part of our Darwinian inheritance.
Of course, politicians and promoters of special interests don’t want you to think. Most blatantly, the black arts behind deceiving their electorates – by telling carefully crafted lies over and over again until they gain popular currency – have been seen at their most damaging in recent UK and US elections. Yet even the worst of these cannot survive an electorate which commits to THINK!
Thus, the most powerful message which you should take from the many documents in this folio is the simple plea to THINK. Only by doing that will you defeat the machinations of the spin merchants.
By the way, IBM’s external motto was ‘World Peace Through World Trade’. IBM then meant it. Since then the world has certainly taken the latter part of this to heart. Unfortunately, it has decoupled it from the first part. ‘Peace’ is no longer an essential element of the mindset of our leaders; whose beliefs are now shaped by competition and confrontation.
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