There’s something that happened last week that I wanted to remark on before it disappeared down the memory hole. Last week when being interviewed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the following:
Citing a colleague, Nadella began: “‘All HR systems are long-term efficient, short-term inefficient.’ And I thought that phrase just captured it. Which is, it’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith the system would actually give you the right raises as you go along. And that I think that might be one of the additional superpowers that, quite frankly, women who don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma, it will come back. Because somebody’s going to know, that’s the kind of person that I want to trust; that’s the kind of person I want to really give more responsibility to.â€
As you might imagine feminists immediately began jumping all over him for the statement which he later characterized as an error. He was correct: saying it was an error. I think it was a Kinsleyite gaffe, accidentally saying what he genuinely believed. I think his core beliefs include a belief in karma, the proposition that your actions in this like may be punished or rewarded both in this life and your subsequent reincarnations and what you experience in this life reflects what you did in prior lives as well as in this one.
I want to make three observations about that. First, I see nothing in the statement that would lead me to believe that his views are limited to women. I think he probably believes that karma applies to men and women alike.
Second, I think the remark brings into sharp relief a reality that too many would deny. There really are cultural differences in the world. Differences are not merely superficial. People believe different things. They have differing relative values. Do not interpret the actions of foreign leaders as having the same motivations as those of American politicians (a fundamental error made by American politicians). The guys who run ISIS are not simply appealing to the voters. They are pursuing salvation not electoral victory and failing to take that seriously is a grave error.
Finally, what are the implications of the man who runs America’s largest software company’s believing in karma? If I were a Microsoft shareholder I’d be thinking long and hard about that.
For number three, it could mean a more meritocracy at Microsoft. He could try to build an environment and culture where the best are promoted and paid the best without needing to ask, and this may have a peer driven element.
At the very least, he can be no worse than Ballmer. Maybe he knows that Balmer threw away the good karma from backward compatibility, and he will try to reestablish it. I saw the Windows 10 preview, and I may not pickup the extra Windows 7 OEM versions I was getting ready to buy.
For number two, I still believe ISIS is about power, but I agree that there are cultural differences. It is ironic that the term multi-cultural is thrown about, but everybody is assumed to have western liberal democratic values.
ISIS’s constituents do not find their methods to be extreme, and ISIS has a much larger constituency than most would like to believe (even the hawks). Their funders are just one part. To ISIS and their constituents, dunking somebody’s head under water is a way to get their hair wet not torture. What they consider torture is beyond many people’s imagination.
The fight against ISIS is also a fight against a cultural mindset. In WW2, fighting the Japanese was similar. To today’s iPhone generation, it seems unfathomable that it would be better to die than surrender, or that civilians would jump to their death rather than be captured. The tactics used against the Japanese are unfathomable today.
The left cannot fathom the mindset, and the right will not use the tactics necessary to fight the mindset. It is more than military. You are going to need to piss off a lot of people to win, and that will have economic impacts. Call me when you are serious.
Or the reverse. It could be presumed that every worker is receiving the pay that he or she deserves.
Get real. Karma is no weirder than the holy ghosts, angels, devils, unicorns, talking snakes and donkeys, assumptions, resurrections and other nonsense in the Bible.
Many people believe in marks of the beast, bodily resurrections, efficacy of prayer and other things that have never been shown to exist. In the case of prayer, a simple controlled experiment will show that it doesn’t work.
Why not tolerate a karma believer, especially if he doesn’t advocate killing of heretics, atheists and apostates as the Catholics and Muslims have done?
…..nonetheless, you gotta believe in something, someone. Maybe such a belief is merely a fabricated crutch. But, humans are neither immortal nor do they have super human powers themselves. Consequently, looking outside of oneself — a higher power, prayer, God, a supportive mentor, even supernatural remedies or mnifestations such as Karma — is ok by me if it serves some kind of positive, external oversight mechanism over one’s behavior. IOW, whatever helps, without hurting others, doesn’t seem like a bad vest pocket belief system to have.
@Jimbino, one should tolerate people with views that they recognize as based upon faith, but burn those who don’t recognize their beliefs as such.
“What comes around, goes around.” “Payback.” “He had it coming.” “Women can’t get pregnant from legitimate rape.”
What a really weird unAmerican notion karma is!
If that’s your understanding of karma, you have it backwards.
Likely so. I Am Not A Theologian! What I was aiming at, most people have some basic belief that the universe operates “fairly” — that Justice will eventually catch up to and punish Bad People, that Good People will get compensation for the ills they’ve suffered, that runs of Bad Luck will be balanced by Good, etc. They may differing explanations for how this balance is to be achieved — karma, satori, the Gambler’s Fallacy, Heaven and Hell, the Wheel of Fate, and so on — but the underlying psychology seems to be universal.
Maybe more than “universal” — I seem to recall studies indicate that apes and perhaps other animals expect some sort of fair treatment from their fellows, and may react aggressively to show resentment.