Katas in Industry?

I'm working on the problem on which culture is best suited to harbor the future and an interesting thing occurred to me.

The Japanese did very well in making cars. This probably depended on the fact that performing motorical sequences assempling a car resembles performing so called katas in martial art. A kata is a series of motions executed to practise a sham fight. They are practised by repetitive performances and it is known today that some 10,000 repetitions is necessary to optimize a motion program. Katas are part of Zen Buddhism and it is religion for many Japanese.

However, the assembly line was invented in the individualistic USA where free spirits probably suffered more in straight jacketing themselves into repetitive motion schemes. It would appear that the Japanese could have had an easier path to inventing the assembly line by just setting up a series of katas to make a car? Today the Japanese assemble cars faster than the Americans. They also write more patents per capita. They are doing worse on the GDP per capita though. They lost ground against the Americans on this parameter lately.

Perhaps it is time to start talk about what you innovate and not how much you innovate?

I'm beginning to feel that the political culture is very important for the quality of research. Therefore it is very hard to be Swedish globally speaking because what Hobbes, Locke, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton did was trendsetting and very mature early on, still going strong. If Germany is going their own way now, it is also very hard to be a European because they will part philosophically and value wise. If this split becomes real in the wake of the euro-zone debt crisis this might have effects on coordinating research EU wise but it might be good for the competition in Europe.

Mental Attitude?

I was interested in comparing the pantheistic Shinto to Religious Humanism which is also pantheism but only materialistic. Read The Essence of Shinto from 2006 by Motohisa Yamakage who is the 79th descendent of Shinto Masters in Yamakage Shinto and also a graduate in Economy.


Shintoism is an originally Japanese spiritual movement that blended with Buddhism when it came to Japan around the 6th century from China and therefore also has Confucian and Daoistic elements. It is pantheistic and non-personal in character but spiritual not religious since there is not really any canon or doctrines. There is a head God or Kami that is closely linked with Nature but also other inferior Kamis which to some mean a polytheistic character although the head Kami gives it a pantheistic touch. There is a clear supernatural component and as Descartes said about Christianity you don’t need intelligence or knowledge to practice Shintoism. It is all about mental attitude. Ethics and esthetics are closely intertwined.
Shinto has no founder. The mental attitude—as opposed to the words and sermons—of the priests that are deeply committed to the devout life can move many hearts. Shinto has no idols. Shinto has no organization. They don’t have temples but shrines. Shinto begins and ends with harai. The art of restoring balance. Also central in Shinto is misogi or purification. There are four types of purification, seimei seichoku: clean, bright, right and straight. Bright also means happy whereas straight means honest. Seimei means a clean and happy attitude of inner mind that is achieved by purification. Seichoku means right action or behavior as well as the social aspect of being right, not committing any crime or offense, and behaving with honesty openness and frankness towards others.
There is life after death and the body is in essence just discarded as unclean after death. Burials are too unclean for taking place at shrines. Purifying the mind means purifying our words and thoughts and straightening our way of thinking and way we experience reality. For it is always so easy for human minds to expand lazily and limitlessly and in so doing lose stability.
The priest of Shinto is therefore supposed to radiate a certain charisma which he or she obtains from generating a mental attitude where words and thoughts are purified. It is more important that they radiate this attitude than that they impress people with words. I can’t help thinking about if it is possible to clean one’s thoughts or not. How do we know what to discard in order not to lose creativity? In my mind it would be important to have one’s mind as a laboratory for the preparation of speech and writings so one cleaning procedure is what to retain in the spoken language or writings. It is obviously possible to remove profanities from processing but not from memory so they might still have unknown effects. By keeping one’s mind active on more noble pursuits it would seem one could generate better ideas?
It is not clear from the book whether or not thoughts are supernatural or part of the body. You go to a shrine to have a Kami descend on you after having cleaned yourself but there is talk of a dualism with body and spirits. Thought processes might therefore be spiritual in character. In Religious Humanism, like Spinoza originally suggested, they are part of the body but might not be material in the sense of consisting of atoms but rather being results of atom processes. In Shinto they might think they want to harmonize thoughts with Kami and thus the need for purification. In Religious Humanism this would not be so important.

The number two and the number three in the world

I have been following the row between China and Japan for a while now. Apparently a Chinese fishing boat captain rammed a Japanese coast guard vessel outside the Senkaku islands that are disputed by not only China and Japan but also by Taiwan, and got arrested according to Gideon Rachman's weekly pod cast.

The situation headed up daily and after rumors of blocked shipments of rare earth metals to Japan from China the captain was released. It is of course not clear if there was a causality between the two events. However, people in Japan took to the streets and complained over giving in to the Chinese.

Why is the situation so tense? The Financial Times runs an analysis today about the Chinese catch up game in high-speed trains that offers one possible irritation item. The Chinese are now after some years becoming a low-cost competitor to the Japanese Kawasaki Heavy Industries, the German Siemens and the French Alstom on these trains after having "digested" the technology in question for a while.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governator, is asking the Chinese to compete for the planned trains in California. They can get trains more inexpensively in this way but have not lost any technology in this case. In any case, the Chinese are building an extensive high-speed train network that according to some is a prestige project that is not going to pay off and is more and more preventing foreign competition by legal means, although it is a green project.

Fighting to get out of a recession is apparently a cut throat game where the ones with cash siphon off technological know-how. Will the Swedes follow the lead of the Governator if they are going to build high-speed trains?

Sudan--a Chinese Affair?

Sudan's election: Let those people go The Economist: "Just in the west and the south together, more than 9m people depend on food handouts from abroad. Mr Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity."

The 41m strong Sudan, to the area the largest African country, is about to break into two parts. Omar al-Bashir has promised that the south may secede. The north Muslim part with the capital city Khartoum and the south Christian and animist rebel part with the town Juba. 20% of the Sudanese import comes from China and they export 48% of their goods, mainly petroleum products, to the same. 32% of the export goes to Japan. al-Bashir runs the oil business from Khartoum which is quite developed. The periphery of the country is, however, in very poor shape. Transparency International ranks Sudan with Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq in terms of corruption, ie, the bottom four in the rank.

In 2005 after the longest civil war in Africa with 2m dead, the so called Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed between the north National Congress party (NCP) of al-Bashir and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) of the semi-autonomous south. As part of the deal was an election for democratization that happened this weekend. 25% of candidates in the parliament would be women. However, the so called Umma party, the Communists and the SPLM have boycotted the election due to overt fraud in the set-up which makes it a walk in the park for Mr Bashir at the same time as its relevance is minimalized.

Mr Bashir who came to power in a coup 1989 is supposed to be what keeps Sudan a notch over Somalia and his presence, despite the ICC warrant, is necessary for not inciting chaos his supporters claim. Early next year there is supposed to be a referendum held for the possibility of the secession of the south. Independence is not going to make the south prosper in the short run, unfortunately. A somewhat pessimistic account of the election is given in this New York Times article. Considered a warm-up for the referendum it has given a bitter taste.

Sustainable development in the EU?

Apparently sustainable development was first contemplated 1997 in the Treaty of Amsterdam which came into force 1999.

A review of what has been accomplished since then was published 2009. Two things stand out:

The availability of natural resources will be 30% above sustainable in 2050 when the population is calculated to become 9bn.

Furthermore, money invested in research and development have gone from 1.85% of GDP to 1.83% between 2000 and 2007 and thus deviates from the 2010 EU goal of 3%.

The EU goal is set because the current levels for the USA and Japan are 3% and over.

Universal Human Rights?

How Different Cultures Shape the Brain - Sharon Begley - Newsweek.com: "Especially when it shows how fundamental cultural differences are—so fundamental, perhaps, that 'universal' notions such as human rights, democracy, and the like may be no such thing."

I have not seen this notion debated actually but it is important and raises important questions. Especially in the current school curriculum debate in Sweden. Sharon Begley discusses some differences in brain function between Asians and Westerners. It seems like we are born with a certain so called "hard wiring" of the brain that is malleable by culture to a certain extent. A phenomenon called neuronal plasticity.

The crucial question is if this cultural change of brain function and thus of personality represents a new type of racism? Because at the same time you conclude that there is a difference, it does not matter that it is not genetic, the problem of which culture, if any, is most superior arises. It is fairly clear that Christianity in Europe led to the development of modern science which represents a world record for achievement at the time.

However, is the management of these assets better performed by the Asians with their collective-tuned personalities? It is a little like the difference by liberals and conservatives in the West. It is perhaps a little easier to make new discoveries that break with past rituals than if you are hard-wired to the collective. At least this represents evolutionary thinking on the problem. Faster progress is possible.

The above discussion is of course not simplified with the current research on the human genome from different areas of the world. James 'DNA double helix' Watson ran into a heavy turbulence over some statements in this general direction the other year. The topic is so sensitive that it basically cannot be discussed in the open. However, it is fair to assume that small, and perhaps significant, differences exist in the neural hard-wiring of different races. Especially now when functional, culture induced, differences apparently are possible to discuss in the fine salons of the world.

So are human rights universal? Most people in the West seems to think so. They seem to work better in Japan than in China which would then perhaps be ascribed to a cultural effect. One additional problem might be that even if one culture is superior at a given time, it might not be all the time. Then there is the question if there is equal suffering in China and the West, a characteristic that is actually measurable?

There is more and more talk about an Asian Union--would such a creation not become too big?

Op-Ed Contributor - A New Japan, a New Asia - NYTimes.com: "In the same way that Europeans built a self-sustaining regional peace, Japan should capitalize on the stability afforded by its alliance with the U.S. to make a push for Sino-Japanese reconciliation and regional integration."

With its present growth rate China is positioned to overtake Japan this year for the number two economy of the world. G. John Ikenberry sees the Japanese independence from US as something positive. And why not, if the UK and Germany can be friends, why couldn't Japan and China. However, the governing systems in Europe are more similar than those of Japan and China and I could see problems with a sudden love affair between the two countries. However, Japan is exporting a lot to China these days. Geopolitically the UK is in an equal position to the EU as Japan is to China but China has not matured, or stabilized, as a nation yet.

Its the 50th year anniversary of the US-Japan Alliance this week. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's new government under the guidance of the Democratic Party of Japan is more set to liberate Japan from the foreign policy of the US. Young Japanese are apparently, as Europeans, currently not wishing to share the foreign policy of the US to the same extent as did the Liberal Democratic Party.

Ikenberry points out that a certain schizophrenia exists in the response of the US to Japan in that the military side, ie, Robert Gates has problem with US bases whereas civil US, ie, Obama wants to see the Japanese as "equals". As a European is obviously see the Japanese as equals but what would be interesting to know is whether Japanese identify more with the Western civilization or with the Chinese? Perhaps they are just fine in the middle.

Siesmic changes are taking place currently in Asia. China might overtake the US economy already 2020 and India might then push Japan down to fourth place in 2030. Will it be possible to take part in this clash of civilizations situated around China or will Europe more watch this phenomenon occur? Focusing on Green development is probably a smart way to position itself. It is going to be a battle of life style changes as a mean of adaptation.

Fredrik Reinfeldt said in his Christmas speech that we need to learn more about China because they seem to have learned a lot about us. I have lived and worked in the US for ten years and I spent some time learning about Japanese culture. I learned European history of science and philosophy and American political history. In other words I have concentrated on the democratic West and its origins. China will have to wait until it becomes interesting. One Chinese said that "he doesn't have anything against learning from the West but he doesn't want any of the double moral". I wonder what he meant by this?

Is the Green stuff an ideology?

There is a lot being written about the possibility of fusing the Green party with liberal dittos and the question was asked whether this is possible or not.

My question is whether or not the Green initiative really is an ideology or if it is just common sense engineering for not dirtying the environment. Tighten up your house. Don't do unnecessary trips with your car.

A such all parties are green and the Greens are doomed to a rather low percentage fraction of the votership. Other parties, though, seem to be more reasonable as to the tempo of the engineering and thus costs.

Another thought is that some people in a secular society might start treating environmentalism as a religion of sorts rather than a political movement. Especially so, perhaps, when the Churches are moving in with the argument that God said we should take care of our creation.

Since I myself worship Nature as God in Religious Humanism, I would take the opportunity to clarify that this religion does not have anything to do with Japanese Shintoism where objects in Nature have a soul. My God concept is non-personal.

Interestingly, Japanese are very fond of robots, contrary to Christians, and it is believed that this has to do with Shintoism.

The Blame Game

Tärande politik - DN.se: "Skulle Maud Olofsson ha haft större förtroende för en vd som nöjt sig med vattenkraft, och på sin höjd subventionerat lite fler vindsnurror? Med en sådan ledning för Vattenfall hade svenska folket varit många hundra miljarder fattigare. Vi hade fått betala ett högre elpris och saknat möjligheter att på allvar påverka Europas klimatpolitik."

Niklas Ekdal have the kindness of delivering facts but is in the process too negative regarding the government role. After all most acquisitions to Vattenfall AB were done prior to the Alliansen government. Economics minister Thomas Östros was reprimanded for example by KU for failing to properly steer Vattenfall AB in May 2005.

However, the above citation brings up the question of the cost of protection from the climate change problem. Ekdal points out that USA, China, Japan and Germany all are heavy users of fossil fuels and they are currently the top economical performers. I have noted that both Germany and Japan have recently begun a climate friendly approach that perhaps have as a by product a competition promoting element vis-à-vis their larger competitors.

Having concluded this it is easy to see why ownership of a energy company today becomes a liability for the government and why Jan Björklund and Fredrick Federley started talking about a sale. It is also evident from the the bouquet of blogs from the opposition preying on this issue. The state should not own companies is an other conclusion. Systembolaget and tobacco companies are other funny examples where the companies make negative commercials on their products. They produce something that is bad for you but that people like to use. The web site of Vattenfall AB gives the customer an opportunity of selecting electricity from for example only hydroelectric power for no extra charge.

In retrospect it may be possible to say that having diagnosed the problem earlier people from Alliansen should have prepared for a sale of Vattenfall AB earlier on. They could have guessed that they would be reprimanded in the same fashion as the Social Democrats and that they would be attacked during the end of the EU chairmanship for optimal deletary effect and just in time for the election process to begin. On the top of this, the potential flop of the Copenhagen meeting will then make the government look idling. The problem is of course that selling of the problem might give an air of irresponsibility that the opposition can capitalize on instead.

Obama--America's first non-transatlantic president?

'America's first Pacific president' - Mike Allen - POLITICO.com: "Trying to reassure allies and rivals, President Barack Obama billed himself Saturday as 'America’s first Pacific president,' promising the nations of Asia 'a new era of engagement with the world based on mutual interests and mutual respect.'"

So, it is finally said. President Obama, born in Hawaii, is the first President that is going to put focus on Asia. We have seen it already. He did not surface at the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin wall. While the US makes money in China, Indonesia and India, the EU have to fight in the stone desert narco state they call AfPak. Almost in Asia as well.

It might just be more historic than most EU citizens may think. I can't help remembering the dismal report that was published by the EU Observer the other month about the fate of EU. There was for example the possibility that an occasional eastern state might become ruled by organized crime. Romania is currently looking in the danger zone. That's correct. All the top guys in the US are now on the Asia portfolio. The talk about the special relationship between the UK and the US shrivelled. This is indeed change.

Actually I don't believe in this new romance. I have said it before. Europe and the US belong together. Japan, China and India each are something very different. However, at the same time as America goes Pacific Europe is fragmenting in the parts delineated during the 18th century in philosophy. The Germans just played along until they were unified. Now they are on their own again. So is France. So is the UK.

The question is if Obama is getting the same response from Asia as he got from the Muslim world? I read somewhere that he wanted to lead. He will probably get the same response as he got from Germany on that one. If I have understood this correctly, no one wants to be led by the US.

I saw this coming but I'm still disappointed. I hoped for a transatlantic focus on essentials. We could have taken it to the next level.

So Far So Good!

Japan’s New Prime Minister Takes Office, Ending an Era - NYTimes.com: "Mr. Hatoyama has promised to reverse Japan’s long economic decline by boosting social benefits and aligning policies more closely with public needs, rather than those of big business. He has also spoken of redefining Japan’s relationship with the United States, its closest ally."

However, Hatoyama tapped a Liberal Democrat, Shizuka Kamei, a "vocal critic of pro-market reforms" for a position involving banking and finance. Hatoyama is also against globalization which just might have to do with the rise of China, an age old rival.

China--a non-nationalist perspective

Gunnar Hökmark » Arkiv » Kina är en del av den nya tidens utmaningar: "Men utmaningen är större än så. De ideér och den politik som präglar det kinesiska samhället, med sin syn på den enskilde, demokratin och det öppna samhället får inte underminera våra värden, däremot måste vi se till att demokratin med respekten för den enskilde kan omfattas av fler i världens diktaturer."

Johan Norberg also points out that it is dangerous to succumb to China's power. Thomas Friedman's article as well as Fareed Zakaria's Chinophilia probably translates to the care of a large potential market for their respective papers, The New York Times and Newsweek.

I guess it boils down to which school of thought you adhere to rather than to which seems to become largest and most powerful. It is a matter of daring to stay with your moral compass.

Hökmark suggests that it would be possible to change people's minds in dictatorships. I'm not so sure. We have the experience of the imploding Soviet Union. People changed for a while but now they are back in defiance of Western values. The way people are organized these days probably makes it impossible to create revolutionary nuclei.

Hökmark further discusses what would generate security for the people now in a world of changed power arrangements. I believe that it is good to try to remember to which contingency you belong. The EU and the US belongs together. More similarities than differences. The good thing with a Democratic president is that the trans-Atlantic relationship is clearly improving. The Chinese and Japanese cultures, both competing for the number two position economically, are very different and does not create the same potential for security. There should not be any problems in the foreseeable future securing our values working closely with the US.

Something I feel increasingly is that we should not spend so much time fighting fundamentalist Islam, when the challenge is elsewhere in Asia. Not only do we loose good faith among the countries in the world we also loose money. The first is probably more serious. People in the world are going to use moral environmental arguments against us because they don't give us credit for generating modern science and technology. We do not need to seem belligerent at the same time.

A small country like Sweden might feel lonely, especially with the old neutrality perspective. However, however our civilization is very strong and enduring and the EU and the US together will continue to lead and prosper.

Japan fascinates!

Japan's ruling party could re-emerge after losses - Yahoo! News: "'Japan isn't like the United States or Britain,' Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said Wednesday. 'We don't have a framework to carry out this transition.'"

This is in all probability an important point. One of the arguments that Yukio Hatoyama, the new leader, had was that it was time to give power back to the politicians from the bureaucrats. Yes, the "bureaucrats", whatever that means. Here in Sweden Alliansen has had similar problems with the Social Democratic power circle as they have been below in the polls most of the time since the elections 2006. Democracy in molasses?

Grundforskningspolitik

Två artiklar i SvD.se i helgen som avhandlar grundforskningspolitik förvånar och är värda en kommentar. Den första är från näringslivsrepresentanter och den andra från forskare.

Tydligen har investeringarna i grundforskning halkat efter under lång tid men man har ingen förklaring till varför detta har skett. Är det som den gamle amerikanske presidenten Jefferson sade: "science is to important for political trickery"? Nu ber man opolitiskt i vart fall regeringen om hjälp.

Båda representanterna anför ett EU mål på 1% av BNP som en av orsakerna till behovet. Det gäller nu att inte halka efter andra länder. För några år sedan fanns där en artikel i den Franska dagstidningen LeMonde av Romano Prodi, då arbetandes som president inom EU kommissionen (1999-2004), där ett katastrofscenario målades upp.

Japan och USA hade 9 respektive 8 forskare per 1000 industriarbetare medan EU hade endast 5/1000. Jag frågar mig om denna rapport ligger bakom EUs 1% mål? Frågan är i vilket fall om pengar kommer att stimulera blivande forskare till professionen eller om andra mer subtila fenomen sker i Europa som gör att intresset har minskat relativt USA och Japan. Man efterlyser nya visioner för ungdomarna som skall locka dem till kallet forskningen.

För den oinvigde ser det ut att vara frågan om krav som är närmast revolutionära. Man yrkar på en fyra gångers höjning av anslaget till Vetenskapsrådet, den instans som fördelar forskningsanslag till grundforskningen.

Dock är det bristande grundforskningsresurserna inget nytt. För 10-20 år sedan tvingades ju Astra börja rekrytera forskare utomlands och därmed flytta denna sysselsättning till där människorna fanns.

En sådan utveckling talar ju i stället för att man borde satsa pengar på att entusiasmera svenska ungdomar i en förberedande skolform av toppkvalitet för en senare forskargärning utomlands som sedan indirekt betalar tillbaka till Sverige med kontakter och i utlandet utbildade spetskompetenspersoner, snarare än att försöka hålla grundforskningen igång i Sverige.

De två artiklarna får mig att ställa frågan, har Sverige blivit en förort till USA och de stora forskningscentra i Europa forskningsmässigt sett? Är de efterfrågade anslagsökningarna en sista dödsryckning eller legitima krav?

Fortfarande kontroversiellt

TIME Magazine July 16, 2007 har på sidan 12 en liten notis om hur Fumio Kyuma, den Japanske Försvarsministern, tvingades att avgå på grund av vad han yttrade om atombombfällningarna vid Hiroshima och Nagasaki vid Andra Världskrigets slut.

Enligt Wikipedia, som redan har en artikel, avgick försvarsministern 3 juli för att han inte ville vara en belastning för Premiärministern Abe.

Naturligtvis är atombombsfällningarna en fruktansvärd tragedi och man hoppas att det aldrig kommer att hända igen. Dock tror jag, som Fumio Kyuma, att det var en militär nödvändighet att använda detta vapen för ett så lite, i liv räknat, kostsamt slut på kriget.

Fumio Kyuma hade sagt på ett tal vid Reitaku Universitetet utanför Tokyo den 30 juni 2007 att: "I understand the [atomic] bombings brought the war to its end. I think it was something that couln't be helped".

För detta ådrog han sig signifikant kritik från arga politiker och allmän opinion men har sedan dess tagit tillbaka sin kommentar och bett om ursäkt för att det han sa skulle ha varit riktat mot atombombsoffer enligt SvD. SvD avslutar sin artikel med att påstå att Japan var besegrat när bomberna släpptes och att detta inte skulle ha varit nödvändigt.

Personligen tror jag inte detta var fallet. Japan gav sig ju inte efter första bomben vilket ju klart säger att de inte var besegrade och att alternativen var beräknade att kosta fler människoliv. Tolkningarna av krigsslutet verkar ha fått en tro- och vetande-debatt karaktär vid det här laget.