About
A Perplexing Story
The Master once hosted a brilliant academic scholar. After sitting him down, Nan-in walked into his kitchen to brew a pot full of tea. When he returned, he began to fill his visitor’s cup. As the liquid approached the top of the cup, the visitor realized that the Master wasn’t stopping. In fact, when the cup was full, the Master just kept pouring. The scholar watched, stunned, as the cup overflowed onto the table and then the floor. Soon, he could no longer restrain himself: “Please stop pouring,” the man pleaded, “No more tea can fit in this cup!” The Master looked at him knowingly, and said this: “Like this cup, you come here full— full, you see, of your own ideas and opinions. Before it can be filled, you must first empty your cup.”
About
As times change, so too do our society and attitudes. This site hopes to examine the many issues surrounding commerce, marketing, business, consumer behavior, behavioral economics, politics, and economics, and how they govern the way people interact with the world around them. It attempts to dissect the conflicting, competing, and complementary aspects of the sociological and psychological, the progressive and conservative, the micro and macro, and the spiritual and material. It will attempt to look contemplatively at better understanding ourselves, the engine of commerce, and how they intersect.
The name of this site, along with being an age-old catchphrase beloved by many-a slick salesman and huckster, is one chosen to reflect an attempt to grapple with the world from an empty cup, with preconceptions wiped clear. I hope to offer provoking thoughts from an intellectually honest and politically-unbiased point of view, which I will try to do with humor, insight, and while synthesizing information from a broad range of disciplines and literature. I welcome your comments, arguments, and challenges for any of the articles you might read.
About the Author
Rahul Kamath is a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He’s into all sorts of things, many of which you can read about here.