Beware the common sense reply


Pliny the Younger once sought the advice of the Emperor Trajan about a Jewish sect called "Christiani". 

These Christians were not showing proper respect for the Emperor and other gods but were placing a long dead person called "Christ" above all. 

Apart from that they were quite decent folk who did not commit adultery, fraud or theft. 

Pliny however had never actually sought first hand information about the sect or its members.

He had garnered his information only his officers who in turn had gathered their information from anonymous sources.

Trajan's reply to Pliny's query was brief. 

Find out who is not obeying the law but do not persecute them. Those who had disobeyed the law but showed a degree of contriteness should be freed. Those who who demonstrate any sign of repentance  were to be punished. 

He ended his reply with "Anonymous accusations shall not be introduced into the proceedings. They set a bad precedent and are not in the spirit of our age."

Trajan's reply was thus common sense for any good leader.

- Find out the facts before you take action
- Match the solution to the seriousness of the problem.
- Don't listen to anonymous accusations.

Trajan's reply was in fact so logical, that one wonders why Pliny had not though of it himself.

Perhaps Trajan was subtly telling Pliny to wake up to himself do the the job that he had been assigned. Perhaps he also figured out that Pliny was doing a bit of apple polishing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lifting above the shoulders

Image
Exercises which involve lifting weights above your shoulders present a risk to your shoulder joint. Injuries can be acute, such as a tear or dislocation or chronic such as a rotator cuff injury or frozen shoulder. But lifting objects above your shoulders is requirement of daily living. We need shoulder strength and mobility to stay functional and active. Strong muscles supporting the shoulder joint can also protect the ligaments and bones of the upper body. Exercise selection and progression are important. For seniors, unsupervised use of overhead pressing with barbells may present a higher risk. Alternatives are dumbbells, shoulder press machines, medicine balls, sandbags and kettlebells. All of these exercise tools help keep your shoulder joint aligned in the neutral position to reduce the risk of injury due to repetitive overloaded inflammation of your shoulder joint. I prefer kettlebell presses as the lift starts from the centre line and the movement is vertical. This is a safer op
Read more

Workout: Swings, snatches and double long cycles

Image
Once again, I only had 30 minutes to exercise (plus 15 minutes to warm up). After that it was back to work. So I had to make the workout count. Here is the workout (using 16 kg kettlebells): Round Alternating swings Right hand snatches Left hand snatches Double long cycles 1 30 20 20 5 clean presses 2 30 20 20 6 clean push presses 3 30 20 20 7 clean jerks Note how I changed both the number and style of the overhead press. Such variations can reduce the tedium of exercising. I intended to increase the number of long cycle repeats to 10, but unfortunately ran out of time. 
Read more

(Tabata) timers and note taking apps to enhance resistance training

Image
  Strength/resistance training is essential for good health and longevity. A loss of skeletal muscle mass leads to immobility and loss of independence and is linked to a decline in our immuno-resiliance, increased susceptibility to infections and chronic inflammatory diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancers. Two key concepts in strength training are intensity and recovery. One consequence of an intense workout is delirium. Delirium is a disturbance in our mental abilities.  Intensity Intensity is a measure of how hard we work during an exercise. Intensity is a function of the load, the number of repetitions and the length of the workout. As we age, we may have difficulty increasing the load, but we can still continue to maintain and develop strength by increasing the number of repetitions and the length of the workout. Recovery Recovery is the period that our muscles are give to rest in between each set or in between each workout. For this discussion, we foc
Read more