What leadership can we depend on for the future of Hong Kong?

When looking closely a lot of problems and conflicts in our Hong Kong community on many issues recently, there often exist a lack of observation by differentiation, inabilities to recognize the source of problems, misallocation or misassignment of responsibilities for the parties involved, addition of lies to alter the real picture and therefore problems seemed unsolvable. Let's look further:

1) Use of identification (by making everything in the incident the same value with each other to have no difference at all) method as a simple problem solving solution : For example, we assume the identification of all cases presented by “Lehman Brothers mini-bond investors” as all misled by high pressure selling methods by all related banks in Hong Kong so we have legitimate cases that we could assign 100% responsibilities to the banks, HKMA, HKSEC including their failure in regulating the business of the banks in Hong Kong; and the affected investors are totally irresponsible including the neglect of their own right and responsibilities to do inspection and regulating function on any of their actions.

It looked like a simple solution by making all other people totally responsible and the affected investor can be fully compensated for the loss from the banks as agents of the investment products.

Unfortunately this is how the minds of many people work to think in terms of identification as a solution method in life. For example, a woman who failed in her marriage and came to the conclusion that “every man is no good” when experiencing all these painful emotion. From there on, she would not try to differentiate and observe each man but by using this simple solution of “every man is no good” to avoid the previous painful emotion. However, she at the same time had lost the ability to look, no longer able to observe every man she met correctly and gave up her own chance or right to find the right man. If we look closely everything in our universe, no two things are exactly the same. Take two apples in front of you, examine it closely and you know they are not the same exactly in all aspects. So you can see the disadvantage of "identification thinking" in reducing our abilities to observe. Only when one can improve his ability to observe and differentiate, one can really enjoy any experience in life. When one can observe correctly, he or she can decide and act correctly.

Followed with this seemingly simple solution method for the case of "Lehman Brother bond investors in Hong Kong", then one may ask who had failed to regulate the HKMA and HKSEC in the first place? If we cannot find the ultimate source which had created the problem by failed regulation and supervision in the first place, one cannot really solve the problem. So one can ask and track it further down the parties including the legislative council, every Hong Kong public, Lehman Brothers, Investment Rating companies, US government, IMF, World Bank, etc and possibly one may even ask why God does not regulate us to cause so much problems? But don't you think the truth of the matter is when you examine the history of man that God only help those who help themselves.

Responsibility includes effort one put on himself and others to get thing done correctly. Misallocation or misassignment of responsibilities will therefore create problems with confusion and things get messier.

If anyone of us fails to take his or her own responsibility, it simply adds the lies to the picture and will further reduce the abilities and effectiveness of the community concerned. Don’t you think our community will only do well if everyone takes his own responsibility? And hopefully you can see why the workable solution of the “Lehman Brother Mini-Bond investor” case is the proper assignment of responsibilities which should be the purpose of any needed investigation.

2) “You are right by being the opponent with opposing voices all the time” unless....

It is true that for any opinion or viewpoint that we believe is true or helpful, we will insist on it and make sure it's heard and even to be implemented.

Do you notice that it is easier to communicate with anyone to tell you how right they are rather than how wrong they could be in many things? Ask yourself or anyone around you and I am sure you'll find a lot of examples. Even when they could admit they're wrong but they will still defend their being right to be wrong with a lot of reasons why they are doing so.

So you see that it is no use to debate with anyone whether he or she is right or not...but rather ask them to look whether the action is based on the greatest good to the greatest number of people involved (which could include self, family, group, race, mankind, earth). The true leaders of the community can assume all the viewpoints from all parties involved and make the decision based on the greatest good to the greatest number of people concerned or the least harm to the greatest number of the people concerned.

It's therefore less valuable to put oneself (like some political parties and their members) always into the position of being the opponent to the government or any real or imagined enemies when expressing one's opinion; or simply acting on behalf of a small niche of the community for some other reasons. One cannot achieve the goal of really helping the community with a more sustainable survival value in this manner by being the "opposing party" alone all the time; without offering solution to create value to the most people concerned.

What we need today is the true leaders who can recognize the source of problems, decide and take action according to the greatest good to the greatest number of people concerned.

What leadership can we depend on for the future of Hong Kong? Can we work together for a better Hong Kong for ourselves and our next generation? It is time for each of us to examine our own responsibilities and do something about it.

What have been violated to be the victim of "Financial Tsunami"?

We love “games” which can be expressed in any of our human activities-study, sports, family, relationship, career, investment, social or political participation, etc.

If you really look to the basic of our universal human rights, they can be linked to this fundamental right: “right to play a game and right to leave a game”. Any game is consisted of “freedom, barriers, purposes and power of choice”. When we know the elements of the game, we can play the game with fun.

However, we sometimes may enter into some games by other determinism, or the barriers are not known or we are not sure our purposes that we can get ourselves easily trapped into the game; and worse we could get stuck to reduce our abilities to leave the game.

So you see that it is not enough to have the right to play or leave a game, but also the abilities to play or leave a game so you can really enjoy any game you choose and have fun in life as only a dead man has no game to play at all. Any game has winner or loser and in some games we have either all winners or all losers. Therefore the ability to play the game includes one’s willingness to be a winner or a loser and know how to be the cause and effect of winning or losing.

Before any game can be brought into the field, we need either ourselves or others or both to design some games based on the above four elements that we can use them to invite other people to play the games. Any game requires game designer(s) and game players.

In fact, any good leaders including government should be able to design good and fair games for their people to play to lead them to have better lives. The government also carries the ethics function with its administrative bodies by making sure the games in the field consisting fair sets of rules that no parties are abused to play the game at disadvantage. Then, you can see why the prosperity of any business or country depends on what kind of games the people are playing to a large degree; and how their right and abilities to play or leave a game are fully protected.

As there can be a lot of players in many games, for example, investment world, sometimes the rules of the games are not known or clear to be unfair to the other players. It’s true that there are some people wearing “black hats” to muddle our field and employ any swindle to cost us a lot of loss that may require regulation or legal means to enforce better rules of the games. But this subsequent solution does not offer us the first layer of protection of our rights.

Before we try to assign total responsibility to other parties including the government and any regulating bodies, what actually have been violated before anyone becomes the victim of the game?

If you don’t know the barriers and the rules of the game, don’t enter it. If you found any unfairness in any game, report them even you may not enter it. If you cannot leave any game, don’t enter it. If you do not have the ability to play the game, don’t enter it until you get the knowledge and ability to play so. If you cannot lose the game or don’t know the magnitude of loss, don’t enter it. If you know the risk or anticipate some uncertainties in the game and still enter it, then please don't blame your luck or others when you somehow lost the game.

If both of the game designers and game players take their own responsibility and the regulators keeping their eyes open all the time to make sure fair sets of rules in place, I believe we have better playing fields that people will have fun as their rights are fully protected.

Many interest groups and political parties if they really want to help any "victims" of "financial tsunami", like the "Lehman Brother mini-bond investors" in Hong Kong, they should also focus to rebuild the first layer of protection of the rights of the games for the victims. Otherwise, they may deprive the rights of the victims to regain their own right and ability to play or leave a game; and worse it may possibly violate the rights of other citizen not in this game but forced to be into this game, like the taxpapers and the shareholders of the related banks.

The real fun of playing any game is to play it with “spirits of play” without any seriousness that you can enjoy with livingness. By itself, you can be senior to any game you are playing. It is time to regain our rights of game, rehabilitate or strengthen our abilities to play the game that we can play both sides of the game: winning and losing.

Be a responsible game designer or game player, we can all be easily "winning" in that type of the game.

Have fun in whatever games you are playing!

P.S. Please feel free to add any comment to my blog(by clicking the small square grey conversation icon on the top right corner next to the title of the post). I will try to write at least one post every week.