Just finished reading the new book from Jeffrey Archer. It was called “Mightier than the Sword”. It was the fifth book of the “Clifton Chronicles”, and the sixth is to come in 2016. The first book of the series, “Only Time Will Tell”, was released in 2011. It was the story of how a shipyard boy, Harry Clifton, born in 1920 England, became the owner of a shipping line. In “Mightier than a Sword”, Harry was in his fifties. He became a writer of detective stories. In this book, Jeffrey Archer told, though very briefly, how a writer’s pen could be mightier than a sword.
After 4 years and 5 books, the
story began to lose heat. It was still
typical Jeffrey Archer, but the writer tended to have his attention lapsed. He was more interested in lingering on than
developing the story. Plots were often
oversimplified, sometimes to the point of absurdity. Harry was able to beat the IRA (Irish
Republican Army) and the KGB of the former Soviet Union single-handed. His escape from danger was purely due to luck.
A hand-shake was as good as a contract. Public officers would promptly step down when
public opinions were against them. Even
the most shameless bad guy killed himself in this book when his crime was
exposed.
Wait! How come I equated valuing a hand-shake
promise, or stepping down of public officers with fighting IRA and KGB
single-handed as absurdity? Weren’t
these common believes? Weren’t these
once core values? Had I been changed
without noticing it myself? Are
prevaricating and obfuscating the norm now? Then I read 2 articles in the Next Magazine
issue 1304. Stephen Vines wrote about an
enormous scandal in Britain in which advertisers influenced the editorial
content of the Daily Telegraph. What he actually wanted to say was clearly
spelled out in the title of the article: No
scandal here… unfortunately. The
following page was an article in Chinese by LAM Pun Lee. He noticed the recent attacks on the
University of Hong Kong by different people in different fronts. He concluded that it was the result of
high-rank HKU management bowing to the rich and the powerful in recent years. The title of the article said HKU invited
others to follow suit by insulting herself.
I am not going to exclaim, in
high pitch, that “This city is dying!” But
I know that this city is changing. Or,
at least, I am changing. Motivational
interviewing says that changes take stages. When you try to move someone, you need to move
him through such stages. Buddhism
teaches that one should be mindful of his state of mind (leaving alone those
masters who can master emptiness). I
thus sat down and contemplated various scenarios in which common core values
should have applied. There were plenty
of such. All I needed to do was just to
go through recent newspaper clips. Though,
common core values were no longer common. I worked out the following 6 stages.
- Realize that there is a problem and voice out
- Realize that there is a problem and do nothing
- Realize that there is a problem and try to take advantage of it
- Ambivalent about whether there is a problem, as such things are common
- There is no problem, this is the norm
- There is no problem, and such practice should be encouraged and promoted
I used my experience as a real life example to illustrate. In a meeting, a member made an interesting complaint, stating that the inspectors of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department should be selective in their prosecution. They should be sympathetic to poor citizens who worked hard to earn their livings in this hostile economic situation. Obviously this member was at Stage 6. I was at Stage 2. I could identify problems with selective prosecution. The inspectors would soon be threatened with violence or got corrupted. However, the member looked serious and fierce enough for me to keep my mouth shut. I was amazed to find that members were roughly evenly distributed among the 6 stages, with the legal advisor assuming Stage 1. I guessed she was paid to do so.
I believed no one would be interested
in the state of my mind, nor whether it had changed to the better or the worse.
However, it might be worthwhile to
understand more about a committee, a tribunal or an organization. How about a city? My mind reverted back to that of a doctor. A doctor tended to associate staging with
cancer. The TNM staging might not be appropriate.
Then I remembered the Gleason grading
system for prostatic cancer. We could
randomly sample a city, challenged the samples with different staging scenarios
and worked out a score.
I could not come up with a better
name for the ingeniously invented staging system. So, I called it the CM staging for carcinoma
of city.
(Source: HKMA News March 2015)
