I was reading the HBS speech by Clayton Christensen, titled "How will you measure your life?", which later on became the core of the book you are reading. As I read it, I was slowly discerning the similarities of approach between him and Covey. In both cases, there is a hidden zealot of the hard line Christian thought. So I wasn't surprised when I found out that he was born in Salt Lake City, to Mormon parents.
The middle eastern religions provide instructions and dictats, and are more application oriented, in the external world. The Hellenic influence on Christian thought has brought a lot of focus on reason and certainty. Thus the western thought is about how you should behave in the external world, with a huge emphasis on determinism. Only recently they have started looking inward, and even then their analysis of self is in light of the external world. It is struggling to flow from outside to inside.
The oriental thought, on the other hand recognises that we still, after 2500 years since Buddha, do not know more than 0.05% of the universe, and thus real knowledge attainable by us is not the knowledge of material world, but our own selves. Our discourses are thus flowing a little more fluidly from inside to outside.
This isn't a critique of the western thought, for there is nothing good or bad in things that exist or come into being. It is just the way they are.
The matter in hand is our situation. We come from a diverse thought culture which in one sweep embraces, the profoundly philosophical, rational and almost atheistic treatise of Kapil's samkhyasutra, deeply spiritual and only symbolically religious Mohamudgar, or Nirvana Shatakam of Shankaracharya, and pantheistic tendencies of the semi-religion, wrongly known as Hinduism. On this, when the deterministic and narrowly focused western thought on work and god and country is imposed, for almost 400 years, it is bound to create some terrible confusion in our minds.
China, has avoided that to a great extent. And I believe that is a key difference (not necessarily bad or good) between us and them.
Have a great weekend!!
:-)
