أزبــكيـة

Snow   Orhan Pamuk Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murder, The superstitious atheist. ~ Robert Browing, 'Bishop Blougram' Apology' Politics in a literary work are a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, a crude affair though one possible to ignore. We are about to speak of very ugly matters. ~ Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma Well, then, eliminate the people, curtail them, force them to be silent. Because the European Enlightenment is more important than people. ~ Fyodor Destoevsky, Notebooks for The Brothers Karamazov The Westerner in me was discomposed. ~ Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes As he watched the snow outside the window fall as slowly and silently as the snow in his dream, the traveller fell into a long-desired, long-awaited reverie; cleansed by memories of innocence, he succumbed to optimism and dared to believe himself at home in this world.  After a lifetime whose every experience of affection was touched ...

Blindness Jose Saramago A minute later, because of one of those all too common abdications of the body, that chooses to give up in certain moments of anguish or despair, when, if it were guided by logic alone, all its nerves should be alert and tense, a kind of weariness crept over him, more drowsiness than real fatigue, but just as heavy.  He dreamt at once that he was pretending to be blind, he dreamt that he was for ever closing and opening his eyes, and, that on each occasion, as if he were returning from a journey, he found waiting for him, firm and unaltered, all the forms and colours of the world as he knew it. Fighting has always been, more or less, a form of Blindness And when is it necessary to kill, she asked herself as she headed in the direction of the hallway, and she herself answered the question, when what is still alive is already dead. But it is a question of being patient, of letting time take its course, we should have learnt this once and for al...

 HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy Harvard Business Review IN ESSENCE, THE JOB of the strategist is to understand and cope with competition. Often, however, managers define competition too narrowly, as if it occurred only among today’s direct competitors. Yet competition for profits goes beyond established industry rivals to include four other competitive forces as well: customers, suppliers, potential entrants, and substitute products. The extended rivalry that results from all five forces defines an industry’s structure and shapes the nature of competitive interaction within an industry.   A substitute performs the same or a similar function as an industry’s product by a different means. Videoconferencing is a substitute for travel. Plastic is a substitute for aluminum. E-mail is a substitute for express mail. Sometimes, the threat of substitution is downstream or indirect, when a substitute replaces a buyer industry’s product. For example...

العلمانية الجزئية والعلمانية الشاملة عبد الوهاب المسيري   قد يكون من المفيد أن نذكر أنفسنا بحقيقة بديهية، وهي أن كل الأشياء والظواهر والأفكار المحيطة بنا، المهم منها والتافه، تجسد نموذجا حضاريا متكاملا، وتستند إلى رؤية شاملة تحوي داخلها إجابة عن الأسئلة الكلية النهائية التي تواجه الإنسان، فإن كانت هذه الأشياء (مثل الهامبورجر والتي شيرت) والظواهر (مثل الانتقال من القرية إلى المدينة) والأفكار التي قد تبدو بريئة (مثل الدعوة إلى اقتصاديات السوق) تجسد رؤية علمانية أو حتى تخلق تربة خصبة لنمو موقف علماني من الحياة، فإنها ستقوم بإعادة صياغة وجدان وأحلام ورغبات الناس (حياتهم الخاصة) وتعلمنهم بشكل شامل كامل، دون أن يشعروا بذلك، من خلال عمليات غاية في التركيب والكمون. وقد نجم عن ذلك أن رصد الواقع يتم دون وجود نموذج تفسيري مركب شامل، قادر على الإحاطة بكل أبعاده وجوانبه في تداخلها وتشابكها وتطورها وتحولها، ولذا، فواقعنا يواجهنا كأنه مجموعة من الظواهر التي لا يجمعها جامع. فلننظر إلى تاريخ الأدب الغربي على سبيل المثال منذ نهاية العصور الوسطى. سنجد في حكايات كانتربري لتشو...

Dare to Lead Brene Brown  I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.   Courage is a collection of four skill sets that can be taught, observed, and measured. The four skill sets are:   Rumbling with Vulnerability   Living into Our Values   Braving Trust   Learning to Rise   Fear is the emotion at the center of that list of problematic behaviors and culture issues—it’s precisely what you’d expect to find as the underlying barrier to courage. However, all of the daring leaders we interviewed talked about experiencing many types of fear on a regular basis, which means that feeling fear is not the barrier.   The true underlying obstacle to brave leadership is how we respond to our fear. The real barrier to daring leadership is our armor—the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that...