The Mores (and why these strict rules are so useful)

The (unwritten) rules of the student union in the Netherlands are commonly referred to as Mores. They are:

1. If you are standing at the bar, do not stand with your back in its direction.

2. Do not stand behind the bar if you do not have bar service.

3. Close the door behind you.

4. Do not wear sneakers in the association building.

5. Do not wear your jacket inside the association building.

6. White sport socks are out of the question.

7. No messing around (kissing etc.) inside the association building.

8. Do not wear a hat inside the association building.

9. Do not use your phone inside the association building.

10. A member that introduces another member is responsible for his behavior and is required to ensure that he respects the rules.

11. No pictures or clips of whatever happens in the association building.

These rules are somehow a social code for respectable behaviour. The rules also contribute to a much more pleasant night of drinking. The rules can derived from core social principles and can be divided according to its derivation.

The rules of respect to the bartender (1 and 2)

An empty association building or 'sociëteit'

For every member of the student union there is a mandatory bar service. It is very rude to stand with your back towards the person on duty. He is providing a service for you and it is odious to repay this by rudities. Same is for the second rule as when fooling around in his workspace you are inhibiting his ability to serve beer. As you are there to drink beer and party you are simply ruining the occasion.

The rules for exemption of the etiquette illiterate(3, 4, 5, 6 and 8)

The second set of rules are a derivation of etiquette. Etiquette has been under discussion for a long time especially with new students inspired by progressive thoughts of their hipster illusion of ‘freedom’. Etiquette is very important and is going to bring you very far in life as it is a composition of generally respected behaviour. Some of these rules, such as rule number three, will seem obvious. Somehow there are people that tend to forget this. Same for four and five. I see this often in school when riff-raff attends classes they sit with their jacket on and with a hat. Once you enter a building you take your headpiece off and you hang your coat. It’s they part of the principles of socially accepted behaviour. If you think you are too good for the rules of sociability you do not belong in an ambiance of sociability.

The rules for social behaviour contributing to sociability(7, 9, 10 and 11)

In order to create an ambiance of sociability you must eliminate anything that inhibits social connections. Rule number seven and nine are to make sure people are contributing to conviviality and not to personal satisfaction or solely individual experience of positive emotion. One must, when inside the association building or when in any environment of community drinking contribute towards the communal goal of sociability. Rules ten and eleven are also part of sustaining such an environment. The elimination of attention towards anything other than social interaction can be found in rules seven nine and eleven. Rule number eleven also contributes to the fact that pictures tell a thousand words and that means when talking about something awesome, these thousand words are taken from your speech by the picture.

How to live more effective

Definition of succes

The challenge in life is not reaching other people’s definition of success. It’s reaching your own unique potential. Most of sadly follow a desire for fame, achieving status or results for an exam. Achieving your own definition of success is a much more fulfilling path. Fortunately it may not reach other’s definition of success. It makes you develop yourself and help you make the most of your talents.

Assesing your strengths and weaknesses

An important step in developing yourself and helping you to reach your potential is finding out what your strengths and weaknesses are. Now somehow most of the times people do not know these two fundamental things about themselves. They may be able to take a shot at their strengths but remain unable to think of their weaknesses. A huge misconception people tend to fall for is thinking they have to be as good as all their peers at everything they are doing. So to find out what you’re strengths and weaknesses are and most of these will be blindspots for you. You are going to need to ask people that are around you, that see you, and you need to be open to feedback.Receiving feedback is something you should to systematically. To achieve this you have to be open to advice and feedback and open to hearing things you don’t want to hear. Moreover this feedback has to be skill-based. You cannot go round asking “What am I bad at?”, you should reflect on a certain exercise or task you have completed or are working on. Self-reflection should become part of every task.

“It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” 

The art of war - Sun Tzu

Building strong relationships

In order to reach your potential you’re going to need some help. You need coaching you need and feedback. You need to be able to talk about your fears your insecurities your doubts or sometimes just for a reality check. Unfortunatly in this hyperconnected world people no longer have that many relationships. 

Relationship means: mutual trust, mutual respect, mutual understanding.So for each of these three parts you can do an exercise to help you form or reinforce this relationship. The first is self-disclosure: In order to have a relationship with someone you have tell them something about yourself, nothing superficial, but something fundamental. This fundamental aspect will make them understand you better. Some people are so buttoned up that they don't ever do that. The second step is inquiry: Asking someone a question that makes you understand them better. Keep in mind to ask about something fundamental. The last step is seeking advice:: Frame a situation in which you need advice or an area of self-doubt and ask advice. Just think how great you feel when somebody tries to seek your advice. I feel flattered, they are showing me a lot of respect.

A new side-job?

Youth unemployment has become a significant effect of our current economic crisis. You might have gone through the trouble of applying for the lowest paid jobs in your area and you are told the place has been taken. You might want to look into a new unconventional method of earning money on the side. The trading business. Trading stocks might seem inaccessible to students as you do not have the capital to invest on the stock exchange. First of let me tell you how trading stocks works and secondly how CFD-investing has enabled people with small amounts of capital to be able to earn some money. And thanks to the invention of online brokerage, all you need is about a hundred dollars, a laptop, pc or smartphone and internet connection.

As you probably know, if a corporation thinks it needs funds it can decide to give out stocks. This can be done in private, inviting a private investor to directly buy a part of the company or by registering at the exchange. Now you’ve probably seen the graph of an exchange before, it fluctuates. Earning money on this fluctuation is called trading. The middle-man enabling people to buy from the exchange is called a broker. There is two ways to earn money on this: buying and shorting. Buying is the most obvious and concerns a trader buying a stock or a contract for the current market price and selling it when the market price is higher thus earning a return on the difference. Shorting is basically the opposite. If you short a stock you actually bet your broker the market price of that specific stock is going to fall and if you turn out to be right you profit on the difference of the fall. Advanced traders earn on the difference of milliseconds and people investing their capital on the side or to secure a pension for the difference of years or even decades. For a student the most profitable time-span would be minutes if you have some spare time or hours if you are in class.

CFD is an abbreviation for Contract For Difference. This means you are not buying (or shorting) a stock but you are trading with a leverage. Say you have a hundred bucks. You want to buy Acompany’s stocks which are at a market value of $50 per stock. You expect that during one math class the value is not going to change more than a dime so you think it’ll only be profitable if you have a hundred of Acompany’s stocks. The initial problem: you’re a student and don’t have $5000. So if you buy with a leverage your broker actually buys the stocks for you and by your Contract For Difference entitles you the change in value once you sell the stock. Now you think Acompany’s is going to rise in value so you decide to take the risk and buy a hundred stocks with your hundred dollars. After your math class you check the Nasdaq and you see Acompany’s stock value is now $50.10 and you decide that’s enough and you want to sell. Since that’s only a dime on one stock it might seem like a bad deal, but remember you bought a hundred stocks. With you math mind still on you find out that makes ten dollars. You sell the stocks and you now have an available equity(=investment capital/value) of $110.

Now this is a greatly simplified example on trading but if you are interested in earning money during your classes or while making your homework leave a comment and I’ll post some more explanations on capital investment.

3 steps to survive this winter (positive psychology)

December the cold winter is finding its way into our homes, into our lives.
Thanks to positive psychology and practicle ways to achieve succes can help us through this frosty season, and the ones to come.

Here's how to defeat the winter depression that sneaks up on us:

1. Design yourself a beautiful day

Positive psychology divides life satisfaction into three cathegories of which the first is the so called "pleasant life". The pleasant life is the constant experience of positive emotion. Simply 'feeling' happy. Your first assignment is to experience the joyfull emotions in life. So pick a date, somewhere next week, take that day off (or take a saturday) and design your perfect day. Not only when excecuting but also when planning your beautiful day your pleasant life will be enhanced.

2. Strength date

For the second assignment you're going to need a partner (a good friend works too). In this assignment you're in persuit of the "good life". The good life is the second part of the formula for life satisfaction. You'll start with identifying each other's strentghs and weaknesses. This is also a crucial step in finding success. In this assignment we are focussing on your highest strengths. Now once you have found each other's exceptional excel you are going to plan an evening in which both your strengths are used. The application of your greatest strength gives you a certain flow. A feeling that your one with the music, time stops and you just go.Psychologist have found that doing what you're both good at and knowing that of your counterpart is a great strengthener of relationships. If you're having trouble discovering your strengths and weaknesses visit www.authentichappiness.org. This website is a free test to discover your strengths and weaknesses.

3. Gratitude visit

Close your eyes (after you've read number two obviously!). Try and remember someone that is enormously important to you or has changed your life in a good direction. And whom you've never properly thanked. Plus: the person has to be alive. I hope you have such a person. So for the gratitude visit you'll write a 300 word testimonial to that person you've gotten your mind on and you're going to pick up the phone and call this person. Ask if you can visit and don't tell why. Then when you get to wherever you're going to visit you'll read this testimonial to your person of choice. This is a simple but unfortunately rather unconventional activity but has a major and long term impact on this person's third aspect of life satisfaction. This third variable is the meaningful life. The "meaningful life" is also the most important contributor to life satisfaction.

Life Satisfaction = Pleasant Life + Good Life + Meaningful life

These steps were inspired by Professor Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology. For more information about positive psychology see Martin Seligman's speech at TedEd.

Franco-German Revengism, Who started?

When discussing Franco-German relations there is one place that comes up every hostility between these two nations: Alsace Lorraine(FR) or Elzaß-Lothringen(DE). The region has been taken and re-taken and liberated and this way become a major issue in Franco-German history. The region is rich in iron and was therefore of crucial strategic importance in the last five centuries.
I would like to open with a quote:

"History is written by the victors" ~ Latin Proverb

So now we follow the events one by one:
-2013 Alsace and Lorraine are two of the 27 regions of the French Republic.
-1945 After the failure of Unternehmen Nordwind the U.S. 7th army and the French 1st army 'liberated' the full territory of Elzaß-Lothringen from Nazi 'occupation'.
-1940 With the French resignation as the Wehrmacht march into Paris Adolf Hitler installs a civil administration in the region opposed to the military administration over (the rest of) the French republic. Hitler did not previously claim Alsace-Lorraine in his unification of Großdeutschland.
-1919 The treaty of Versailles, signed in the hall of mirrors, 'returns' the region to France because Germany lost the first world war. France is granted the former Reichsland Elzaß-Lothringen of which 86.8% speaks German and only 11,5% French.
-1871 In the treaty of Frankfurt ending the Franco-Prussian war which includes that Reichsland Elzaß-Lothringen is 're-united' with das Deutsches Reich. Furthermore  Wilhelm I crowns himself to Kaiser of his new 'Großdeutsches' Reich in the hall of mirrors in Versailles, France.(Remember back in 1919?) This act sows the seeds of deep hatred among the French population because of this incredible humiliation.

-------This is how far most Franco-German relations go (thus putting the blame on Germany) ------------

-------Disclaimer: this is also where it gets complicated----------------------------------------------------

-1648 The treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, more commonly referred to as the peace of Westphalia marks the end of the thirty-years war. This was a religious conquest between just about ALL of Europe, but specifically the catholic Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom of France. At this time Elzaß-Lothringen was part of the Catholic League, which belonged, in turn, to the Holy Roman Empire. The kingdom of France and the protestant nations won the thirty-years war and so decided the terms of both treaties. This is where somehow without any reason other than imperialism of the notorious Sun King (Louis XIV) Alsace-Lorraine was dubbed French.

------So, *pfff* crisis explained it was France's fault (Lous XIV) but then again not really as it was their cruel ruler that was later guillotined by the French people(1789). WRONG!-----------------------------

-814 Emperor Charles the Great dies after ruling his Carolingian empire that stretched across Europe and the continent is divided amongst his three sons. East of the Rhine is passed on to Louis, West of the Rhône to Charles II and the centre to, guess who... Lothar! Unfortunately Lothar dies the same year and Charles II and Louis fight over the centre strip that was devoted to Lothar containing Alsace-Lorraine. Lothar's Empire has been disputed between Charles(French) and Louis(German-speaking nations) ever since in the many wars that have ravaged trough Europe.

------This means we should blame Charles (which was also Great?) for dying?-----------------------------

From this we can conclude:

"War may sometimes be a necesarry evil. But no matter how necesarry, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn together in peace by killing each other's children."
~ Jimmy Carter 39th U.S. President