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“The coming struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge; not just consumption. Power seekers’ will use this struggle to further their power ambitions. While mass media could have been seen as sweeping generalized manipulation of attitudes and beliefs, technology is using fragmentation to have those with power divide and conquer.”

Alvin Toffler, 1981

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It is too simplistic to suggest any society, or nation, is divided. The reality is that society, and communities, have become fragmented, each isolating into its own cocoon of mindsets, attitudes, beliefs and even performative metrics (proof). If we step back, this is a natural consequence of years of rhetoric and unhealthy narratives. What else would we do after years of businesses suggesting business was a war and the other businesses were out to get us and it was a battle of us versus them, kill or be killed. Or your church is telling you only you will go to heaven and everyone else is designated for hell (or heathens). Or some Cause suggests it is Armageddon if you do not agree with them and if you don’t you are part of the problem. Even issues like climate change, abortion and vaccinations have become battlegrounds of us versus them. And the politicians, well, they are an onslaught of ‘the other party is evil and will destroy this country” or “that country is evil and out to destroy us” or whatever us versus them derivative they can create. Each, individually, divides, and each contribute to fragmentation. There are two main consequences to all this which leads to the creation of smaller groupings, communities, of like minded people:

• –         The more dividing issues occur, the more complex the world seems and the more inept, or unable to contend with, any centralized center of power is, which leads to decentralization (of everything) which only compounds the sense of lack of coherence.
• –         From a whole cloth perspective this cacophony of dividing creates an overall sense that everything is out of control and the world is spiraling downwards into the depths of despair (this is the roots of cultural despair).

But then we get too technology.

Technology, in and of itself, is nothing. Without people, without people generating content, it is a passive tool regenerating itself to its own purposes. Yet. Once humans become involved technology begins to amplify – amplify divides, fragments, communities and tribes. It is within the fragmentation aspect in which we begin to pause on the benefits of technology with regard to society. The fragmentation, the phrasing of ideas, ideologies, values, norms and actual ideological commitments just begin to blur the greater truths associated with each. Fragments get emphasized to strengthens pieces of views all the while blurring larger issues and societal coherence. The extension of technology into our lives has only seemed to accomplish the fact that people everywhere sensing their control over their lives slipping away as the world becomes increasingly complex. With that mindset/belief people begin discerning specific scenarios within which they can find meaning, self identification & success and then go about creating a subsystem, a likeminded community, where desired actions and direction are created, further intensified by a sense of their own survival within the larger system. There is a general feeling of remoteness from the centers of decision making so they create their own decisonmaking centers. These choices are supported by a feeling (which becomes a belief) that those in power don’t care what “people like me think” which only increases an increasing sense how little capacity individuals, alone, feel they have to shape events. Individuals recognize they cannot flex power to manipulate any meaningful levers of control, they end up groping around almost desperately for ways to bring back some order and sense to their lives, and inevitably smaller likeminded communities are forged. What ends up happening is that society becomes an interaction between these likeminded communities and their changing micro boundaries at a community level all trying to exist in a macro larger system attempting to shape boundaries and pull levers itself for the collective good. The consequence of this conflict/tension tends to make the likeminded communities only double down and increase close identification with those within that particular group. This means that society has become fragmented and not divided.

To state again, a major part of the issue is that people have come to believe that whole systems are simply too complex to meet their needs or serve their wants. So, they’ve sought to regain control by turning to subsystems, in likeminded communities, less complex relatable groups, in the hope that their interests can be better served and some control is regained over the distant impersonal forces that intrude upon their daily life. Simplistically, people have simply given up on the distant big structures of power striking a “big is threatening” and “small is effective/beautiful” pose. Technology has simply taken a gentle sloping trend rising towards skepticism and doubt, laced with some conspiracy theories, and exponentially made it a steep climb.

This has become a period of cultural despair and creation of likeminded communities is an active response to fight despair. I say that because this smaller group creation is an adaptive response to the problems of complexity; not an abandonment of responsibility. The creation of likeminded communities should not be equated with indifference nor is it an expression of apathy or cynicism. Development of smaller communities is simply a search for new structures around which to organize scenarios and which the individuals’ micro needs can have macro consequences. I highlight this to make two points:

• –         This is active participation in society, not a passive reaction. These people are not retreating, they are going on the offensive toward things they actively care about. This is important if we attempt to engage with a collective future in mind. As with any self-decentralization if we seek to regain some centralization or, at minimum, coherence, the fragmented communities must be solicited with sincerity, not disdain or a belief they are not ‘smart enough’ to know better.
• –         Technology feeds on active participation. This is more a warning than it is anything else. If a likeminded community ‘feels’ something, the internet will feed that feeling until it hardens into a belief. It will also actively feed other likeminded people into that community. Contrary to opinion, technology can create blindness and will actually encourage people to go blind.

Which leads me to proof in a complex world.

In order to have some legitimacy and just survive within the larger system the likeminded communities construct scenarios, assume responsibilities, and assign analytics to everything they are involved in. In other words, likeminded communities have their own analytics, they have their own narratives and, unfortunately, sometimes they have their own facts. In fact, the larger the macro societal crisis the more likely it will involve a shift at the subgroup level performance criteria that they will attach to their own legitimacy. This expanded use of metrics may dispose people to rethink what has long been taken for granted and decide to shape their own performance criteria themselves. I would be remiss I remiss if I didn’t point out that media plays a role in subgroup performance criteria development. For example, what Fox News cites is important can often become a community criteria. This criteria becomes a measurement for the larger system – even if the larger system may not have the same criteria. So, while the larger system may actually be quite effective in totality, if not the very specific issue at hand, the performance analytics are not aligned and the conflict only creates further dissonance between the groups and the system.

Technology is the ally and the enemy.

Information should be intrinsically beneficial to society and, yet a fragmented flow of information and communication results in increased knowledge AND fragmentation. Technology plays a role in where we go from here, but first, people need to think about the future they desire which, typically, rests on the most fundamental assumptions we make about reality. In the present competitive view of the world, we often think that the most capable are those who are the most competitive, and accordingly that competition creates and secures long-term viability. On a societal level, we have essentially adopted a zero-sum dynamic behind most of the things we do. This separates everything, and everyone, into a binary 0/1, yes/no, good/bad, this way/that way design world (software, algorithms, business individuals and even countries). This current design belief has only made the divide between winners and losers constantly grow and this polarization leads to radicalization (of ideas, opinions, behavior) and, well, society does not benefit. A fragmented society is not one that will effectively build a future good for the collective whole.

We do need technological advances, but our humanity and society must develop at the same speed as technology develops. As our technological ability to impact the world is radically scaling up, our human ethical choices as to how to implement that power must scale up accordingly.

The solution resides in being able to see clearly.

It may be difficult for a likeminded community, from all views within a healthy community, to recognize that humanity – even theirs – is lagging our technology. It may be difficult for a fragmented society, specifcally the smaller communities themselves, to see beyond their loose talk about obsolescence and the rot at the core of our society and institutions and business when the existence of that community may be grounded in some apocalyptic view about every systemic crisis. It would behoove each of these smaller communities to understand it stretches credibility to extend each individual systemic indictment to the entire structure of business, government, justice, and institutions. Every debatable action does not demand some mandate to destroy the entire system and every disappointment or concern about the larger system is not a mandate to shrink away to a smaller community mindset. We need some optimism, not just in humanity, but in the grander systems and institutions. Not blind faith, but optimism. I always recommend reading Rutger Bregman’s Humankind to remind everyone about humanity. I recommend for the ‘We’, those who seek to find solutions to what seems like a dysfunctional society, we need to recognize the difference between fragmentation and divided because the solutions are different for each. Divided is about building bridges and fragmentation is about building coherence. Ponder.

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“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions, but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to great titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society – the farmers, mechanics and laborers – who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors for themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.”

Andrew Jackson

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The future is always dependent upon the development of talent. I don’t care if this is business, philanthropy, education, science, humanities or simply society in total, if you want to be better tomorrow than you are today as a civilization, you need to cultivate talent. When society loses its ability to cultivate talent the implications filter across society and all its trappings. First and foremost, the worst consequence is missed potential. Researchers called this “the lost Einsteins” or the talented overlooked (typically found in minorities and poverty/less fortunate) and it costs countries multiplicative-level potential innovation and thinking.

This came to mind when someone tossed out the infamous “merit based” system for talent.

Simplistically, a merit based concept is the eugenics application of talent. A horrible idea. It sure sounds good, but it isn’t. Talent is not a race. It is a tricky concept, one which is not always a measurable thing and even when measured one could argue the highest scoring do not always offer the highest talent. Regardless of your belief, as a society we suck at cultivating talent. We tend to to give the mediocre wealthy disproportionate advantages from the non-mediocre less-than-wealthy. We tend to dismiss the importance of some foundational young age talent optimization stepping stones like daily nutrition, home security and positive support network as integral to future talent optimization. We tend to treat talent as a race meaning that when we assess ‘talent’ we always view those who are ‘ahead’ as the ones who have the most talent. Basically, we tend to not only not cultivate talent, but in some ways don’t even assess the talent well.

And maybe, while this is certainly a societal issue, the core issue is us – people.

What I mean by this is that I sometimes believe one of the hardest things you can learn in your career is that your best is not particularly special, i.e, your ‘talent’ may be a bit closer to average than you feel comfortable with. This is the realization, a Life fact, that your talent, in reality, is matched by a shitload of people. Learning that your best is relatively easily matched by a shitload of people. Basically not understanding that your own talent could have been matched by 1000’s of other people if it had been recognized and cultivated somewhere in the past. Whenever asked about this (because a bunch of people feel uncomfortable when I say this) I bring up the Janis Joplin documentary: Little Girl Blue.

“… at 27 i realized there are a lot of people with talent, the difference is ambition.”

Janis Joplin

Talent is talent.

Smarts are smarts.

And expertise is almost always relative.

At any given point in Life and your career you can look around you and if you are self-aware you will note you are rarely the most talented, rarely the smartest one in the room and rarely the only expert. You realize that even on your best day you may not actually be the best. I imagine that is a tough thing to get your head wrapped around. Okay. Let me say it is a tough thing to wrap your head around.

It’s not that you truly want to be the most talented, the smartest or the most expert, most of us don’t really care, you just want to feel that at some point you are smart, talented and an expert at something.

Which leads me back to cultivating talent.

I would argue if someone cannot recognize their own talent is not that special, they will inevitably suck at cultivating talent. Why? Because you will only seek out the ones who have figured out how to run the ‘talent race’ well up to that point and attempt to capture them – no cultivate, just capture. Cultivating talent is not, and never has been, about just the best of the best. It has always been about maximizing each person’s potential (because everyone has some talent). Cultivating is not comparing the blooming flowers, but rather simply attempt to have all seeds bloom the best they can bloom and planting seeds of talent. Stewarding the transition from generation-to-generation transition is all about cultivating rather than capturing. We have a responsibility to the future to cultivate talent. Ponder.

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“… the economy cannot stop making us consume more and more, and to consume without respite is to change illusions at an accelerating pace which gradually dissolves the illusion of change. We find ourselves alone, unchanged, frozen in the empty space behind the waterfall of gadgets, family cars and paperbacks.”
Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life

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“Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume, the hellish cycle is complete.”
Raoul Vaneigem

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A boatload of people are asking themselves “what is the meaning of all this” these days. I believe we have always done so, sporadically, but now we appear to have an underlying ongoing questioning of everything. This creates an issue. That core issue is “meaning” or “personal meaning” or maybe “is what I am doing going to matter.” This can range from small individual actions, my vote, to massive esoteric thoughts, like a legacy. Suffice it to say meaning/mattering has become a societal issue.

I could argue this meaning issue is a consequence of a variety of things: increased globalization, cynicism of organized religion, consumerism, Taylorism, 24/7 internet and several things that have slowly stripped away some of the vestiges of meaning. The issue has become exacerbated by the fact we are now actively encouraging people to “find your Why.” In other words, we are asking people to stare into the void. By actively asking people there seem to be one of three outcomes; they discover no ‘Why,” they create some ‘Why”, or they actually do have some semblance of a “Why’. 2 out of 3 outcomes are horrible and the third outcome, I am guessing, is a fairly small percentage of people. So, while we have a real societal issue, we are actively encouraging people to pursue things that are most likely fool’s errands. The void will still exist and, well, its human to fill a void (by whatever means may be at hand). It almost becomes a battle between “I & the void.” And therein lies a bit of the issue at hand.

While voids are doomed to be filled, it seems like in today’s society a void, an increasing one, is occurring between individuals and collective good/action. This may be occurring because of extreme individualism which, consequently, has a cost to the collective (individuals owning and consuming shit only creates more bad shit; not just revenue/profit). But ultimately this individualism means that an individual has less meaning (less connectivity to the collective means less opportunity to assess impact) which feeds back into a consumption society in that the individuals consume more to fill that empty space of meaning. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out meaning, while having an infinite value, only truly demands few finite things to fulfill, while consumption is theoretically infinite and the void it attempts to fill is also infinite in that it can never truly offer the highest human value, therefore, people are falling farther and farther into the void.

To be clear. there is a relationship between the void in individual meaning and consumption. No. I do not have proof, research, or any data, but if I were a betting man, I would bet it was so. I would bet it were so because if you attempt to measure your contribution to society by what you have consumed, well, that is a bit wacky and a lot unhealthy. Contribution is a measure of the benefit you have given to society. Consumption is a measure of what you have taken from society. Meaning through consumption is a weird thought because in its emphasis on consumption it is more likely to create division (or divide) simply through the natural dispersion of that consumption and while I do believe some social unification is important, in this case the division is an emphasis on individualism measurement rather than collective measurement (as noted earlier the collective interaction is important to tapping into true meaning).

I am not anti-capitalism nor even anti-consumption/consumerism, but I am anti-void.

Which leads me to how businesses don’t really help this issue.

Simplistically, the consequences of a productivity-focused business world was increased consumption. This translated into actually BEING a customer or consumer was seen as the new success. We made consumption a measure of achievement and, as a consequence, created a society of envy and comparisons in which to be poor means having less than the average; even if the average is quite high and, ultimately, being seen as less than average. Yeah. Consumption has an ugly underbelly – the people who consume less. When society begins to split people by how much they consume, the ‘consumers’ see those who access safety nets as ‘exploiters’ who are simply not industrious enough to be able to consume. To be clear. This is not reality but rather perception and, in this case, this perception becomes a mental reality grounded in a general ignorance of reality. But that ignorance creates a void and, well, we know what happens with voids – they get filled. This warped version of meaning crafted a caste system of, uhm, meaning. A huge swath of business leaders misinterpreted Adam Smith to mean that if we each looked after our own interests some invisible hand would mysteriously arrange things out so that it all worked out for the best for all. We have propagated the rights of the individual and freedom of choice for all, but without restraints, without thought for our neighbors, and it has become license to do whatever you want to win at all costs and mere selfishness. We have forgotten that Smith wrote in a Theory of Moral Sentiments that a stable society was actually based on sympathy and a moral duty to have regard for your fellow human beings. The market is a mechanism for sorting the efficient from the inefficient, but it is not a substitute for responsibility or meaning.

Which leads me back to voids and consumption.

An absence of meaning, of any degree or dimension, creates a void. And I would argue a really personal void. The type of void that either keeps you up at night or just nudges away at you fairly persistently. This persistence almost demands you do something about it. and, sure, you can watch Tedtalks, read books, whatever, but at some point, you want something tangible to show some progress against this brain worm chewing away at you. And with businesses constantly saying “buy me to solve X”, well, you jump on the consumption train. After awhile you point out to people how well you have done jumping on the consumption train often enough that the little voice in your head nudging you about ‘meaning & mattering’ gets shouted down just often enough that while you know you have a ‘meaning crisis’, it is no longer a “crisis crisis” to you personally. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that a crisis is a crisis and all crisis demand a response at some point. And maybe that is my point. Maybe we should all, collectively, answer the crisis rather than constantly suggesting each person ‘find their why’ to only have them staring into some abyss. Maybe we should all see if we can address the void together. Ponder.

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“a manner of speaking becomes a manner of thinking”

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“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

Albert Einstein

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Being Erica:

“Change. Sometimes it sneaks up on you. Sometimes it hits you over the head. And sometimes you turn a corner, only to find you’re different in some small way, and the world doesn’t look quite like it used to. So, where do I go from here? No idea.”

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‘We call it a disaster, so nothing can go wrong.’”

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In the past week I told two people “change isn’t that hard” and, twice, received a fairly skeptical look. This is possibly one of the most consistent views I have that varies from the mainstream view. To be fair, maybe 12 years ago I was clearly in the change-is-hard camp. Since then, I have inched my way into the “(most) change really isn’t that hard” camp. Let me explain. Not all change is created equal (yet we far too often lump it all together), and, in fact, I would argue the majority of change is incredibly easy. Shit. I’d argue most of our change just happens and we ignore it (maybe because we don’t want to admit change is kind of naturally occurring). The difficulty is that we MAKE things hard so that it can seem like it is hard. The truth is, left to its own devices, change naturally occurs – individual, community, business, society. Change is almost like gravity. If that is true it would appear if change doesn’t happen, its because something, or someone, is fighting gravity – yeah, like people, us, humans. We are the change constraint.

Which leads me to “will” or having the will to change.

I bring this up because in business we often confuse ‘institutional will’ <the will of the business to adapt to a future state> and ‘individual will’ <the will of people to do the will of the institution>. This is a really important topic when we discuss whether change is hard or not, because in business the institution establishes the frame within which anything happens. They create a mindset and very very often create a very flawed plan of action neither of which tend to dictate how people morph to fit the institution rather than have the institution adapt to meet the shape of its employees. If an employee chafes, or even fights, against the will of the institution, the institution tends to tighten the screws down on behaviors and indoctrinate mindsets. This Institutional Will attitude toward employees matters because institutions inherently create systems of motivated blindness <where people follow orders motivated by what they see as for the good of the institution/business>. It creates some seemingly harmless behaviors which actually obscure key downward leveling aspects of the system. In other words, if you motivate to value the outcome too much than the process or the ‘how’ becomes of less value relevance. This matters, in reference to ‘change is hard’, because many times the institution is dictating the change/behavior it desires and ‘changing’ to meet something designed that isn’t natural to what one would do on their own is a hard thing to accept. But even if the institution isn’t dictating change it is often dictating desired behaviors (buttressed by incentives) which are also not natural to what any sane human being would do on their own – so even without change, current context is slightly painful at minimum.  Most everyone knows formal systems are the weakest links and informal systems the strongest <and most resilient to change>. Most of us also know if you disrupt the rhythm of the informal networks, destroy the informal systems and manage the ‘prediction-recollection’ mindset (intuition mental modeling frameworks), you can reshape the system as a reflection of what the people in the system see as their greatest potential. Read that least sentence and laugh if you want. I did. Its right but it would be naive to think anything over 10% of existing businesses think like that.

• ** note: i have always liked leveraging existing informal networks, and have even suggested in some cases in order to reshape an organization to maximize its potential you have to deconstruct (all the way over to ‘purposefully destroy’ on the spectrum) informal networks. Institutional informal networks are social, economic, functional, but no sane business desires an ongoing battle within an organization of conflicting informal networks so i posit that in some cases purposefully deconstructing some of the informal networks as the way to open the way for new and better informal networks. To end this thought. I sometimes believe we do not talk enough about ‘natural resistance’, or institutional gravity, when talking about change as an accelerated effort to fly.

Which leads me to changing the mindset.

We have convinced ourselves, and businesses, change is hard. The effect, and consequences, are we actually did make changing hard. To unravel the consequence, we need to unravel the belief.

To be clear. Institutions hate to change. People, as individuals, are more receptive. The former does so for a variety of reasons, but just watch as we move into ‘post-pandemic business mode’ and just watch how ‘the institution’ will come up with a variety of reasons, many of them which sound good, to suggest economic recovery would be better if we ‘went back’ to how things had been done pre-pandemic. They will hold on to the construct and grudgingly change some workings within said construct. But. Do not be fooled. This is institutionally driven more so than individually driven or even business driven. And, yes, I just created a hierarchy – institution within which a business conducts itself and individuals who work within a business, but are parts of the institution. As Drucker pointed out: “society is a conserving institution.”

But people, we, you and me, are different.

To be clear. Humans have some obstacles. I believe it was a French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, who developed a psychographic method to establish different socio-cultural groupings <I believe it is called the Sinus Milieu>.  Anyway. Basically, it is a model that challenges us to think about behavior, preferences and cultural practices. The main premise behind the model is called ‘the lock-in principle.’

The principle simply states that if we get used to something, we do not want to change our habits <or attitudes and beliefs> even if we are presented with something new or different that might be better. Simplistically it consistently shows <to a point that it is almost an unequivocal behavioral truth> that habit is stronger than the desire for improvement.

This thought partially explains that while 50somethings actually share the same desires as young people they are reluctant to let go of what they “know.” That said. We change every day. Mostly not in big ways, but we change. It may not be so easy to see if you sit down on a Sunday night and think “how did I change this week”, but it is easier to see if you look back a year. Business is the same. It changes every day. Why? Because business is made up of people. Yeah. We may try and suffocate the change thru processes, meetings, and protocols, but in-between all of that people are people and the business changes.

Which leads me to I believe we make 30,000 decisions a day (the average person).

Asking everyone to change so that all 30000 decisions change is silly if not absurd. And within that 30000 each of us, individually, will hold on to some of them with ragged claws. They are ‘our rituals.’ Our certainty. Our stability. And your will be different than mine and Gem’s will be different than Giles. But still there are thousands of decisions we can we can change. The trick is to match up the change with individual, herd (as Mark Earls the herdmeister would call it), the business itself, the customer and ultimately, the world/society. The change, big or small, syncs up to shift things slightly into the ‘better’ category. That’s kind of the holy grail of change impact.

I spent the bulk of my career in ad agency account management (although I worked in media, planning, business development, my best friends were in the creative department and was a COO – before I became a business consultant. I mention that because I would rummage around inside the business, operations and people, to seek out what made them tick, how they made money and who they wanted to be (versus who they were). The ideas and creative on the businesses I worked with could make the business feel uncomfortable on occasion not because they were wacky, but because parts of many of them showed a part of them, a better part, of who they wished they could be. Then it simply became a challenge of convincing them that this was the time, and the opportunity, to be it and, frankly, this better version of you (and the product/service you are selling) is what a customer prefers. I saw my job as finding the desired change and figuring out ways to amplify it either thru some initiative, creative, project or idea. I imagine this was my way of encouraging progress rather than achieving some milestone or objective (although I never articulated it that way then).

All that said. Change wasn’t hard.

Sure. I’ve presented hundreds of ideas and thoughts I was unequivocally sure were exactly what was needed and were right for them. Only to find in hindsight, they weren’t. That’s not to say they were 100% wrong or they were boneheaded ideas oblivious to reality, its just that somewhere within the idea was something that didn’t reflect the change they desired or didn’t reflect a fragment of who they wanted to be. And maybe they were wrong to focus on a fragment from stopping doing it, but maybe they were right that the part would affect the whole in ways they didn’t like. But my point is it wasn’t that people didn’t want to change or weren’t willing to change, that it just wasn’t the change that they wanted.

People will find exceptions to what I am saying, and some really good exceptions, but they are missing the forest for the trees.

Businesses change all the time. Maybe not as much, or as fast, as we want. People change all the time, maybe not as much, or as fast, as we want. But we change. And it isn’t really that hard.

People will push back that businesses are mired in status quo. And they may be right, and wrong. I will point out that status quo is not stagnant. Status quo is actually made up of movement. It could be circular doom loop movement or even some less-than-useful movement or the shitty power dynamics that all organizations have, but there is movement and, yes, there is change even within status quo.

People will push back by pointing out ‘being stuck in a rut’ or how businesses do the same things over and over again. and, yes, if you view business (and people also) as running through each day in layers of pacing, some layers do repeat over and over. And sometimes those pieces are really important – good and bad. But. At other levels, other pace layers as it were, brick by brick, day by day, a business is being rebuilt. Small incremental changes, over the course of months and years, amount to huge changes. Some changes are direct impacts, others are indirect, all affect the company – either culturally or even from a productivity stand point – increase inefficiency as well increase effective … depending on how the business manages this change. I imagine I could point out that not all ruts are created equal and not all status quo is bad.

People will push back by pointing out a version of Drucker’s thinking. He stated that society, community and family are all conserving institutions and that business should be organized for constant change (I would note to the consultants suggesting business culture should be ‘familial’ you are simply making change harder, but I digress) and point out that most businesses in today’s world actually act like conserving institutions.

I push back by pointing out that while people make 30000 decisions a day a business makes exponentially more and that conserving is relative and principles, well defined, can shift decisionmaking, in a tectonic way.

Which leads me to the pandemic (and some wishful thinking by some people about change).

It’s possible the pandemic will teach everyone a bunch of these things and there a bunch of people espousing ‘big changes’ because of the pandemic. I am not confident that will happen because, once again, the people are coming out of the woodwork to encourage belief in the wrong things. People will be sorely disappointed if we tell them about some ‘new normal’ (that will never appear as it is described). People will be sorely disappointed if we tell them to go back the way we had been doing things (because it will never appear exactly the same again).

Yeah. The truth is that all of us, within our own 30000 daily decisions, have changed a bit. We view some of those decisions just a bit differently. Many of us have even changed some decisions. Businesses have also. So when we making sweeping generalizations like ‘new normal’ we are missing the opportunity. Change has occurred, change will continue to occur, and the trick is to amplify the good change for the better.

“An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment.”

Peter Drucker

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In the end.

Change isn’t hard. We do it all the time. Business does it all the time. And you know what? Everyone actually wants to change. I do not know one person who does not want to be a bit better tomorrow than they were today. And maybe that is what I miss most about being in advertising. On a really good day I was part of something that helped people be better. It was always some grand things, more often it was a little thing – offered reliability, offered some comfort, offered added value in a miserable day. But. It was something. And it was something that encouraged change in a positive direction.

I would have argued with Drucker. I would have suggested everything is a conserving institution and also built for change. Its wheels within wheels. And the trick is to find what is worth conserving and what is most valuable changing. Because all of us conserve something, and most of those somethings are valuable, maybe even just for sanity sake. But all of us also change things. Shit. All I know is that change isn’t hard and I wish we would stop saying that.

When circumstances are right, unlikely people do extraordinary things. When the weight of the situation is behind them, the push of events and time tend to align and the extraordinary happens. Then it is just a matter of getting swept up in the events which, as a consequence, change the course of the world – immediate world rippling out to community, world and the future. Change, history, context, future all balance on what a human actually cares about. Yeah. Change is simply a byproduct of what we care about and, I imagine, how much we care about it. Ponder.

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“The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true.”

Holly Black

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“The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves.

We live in denial of what we do, even what we think.

We do this because we’re afraid.” 

Richard Bach

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“People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.”

Joe Abercrombie

==

“ You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more. “

Morpheus

===

“Have you ever analyzed things to the degree where you can’t really remember the difference between what’s real and what you’ve created in your head?”

Edie Sedgwick

==

It is a crazy, sometimes scary, world out there at the moment. No, I am not talking about crime or inflation, I am talking about the fact there is a robust alternative universe in America these days; divorced from reality. In this alternative universe, well, let’s just say that it is the reverse of reality. Up is down, they are the victims and you are the enemy of good.

There are some commonalities within this alternative universe.

• Say a lie over and over assuming no one will notice it’s a lie.
• Say a denial over and over despite actual proof.
• Say you don’t remember even when shown over and over again you said it or did it.

This alternative universe is mostly thriving because of politicians. It is politicians, and the special interest groups funding them, that are crafting this odd alternative universe.

Which leads me to how words, or, maybe better said, the adoption of a word frames the alternative universe. It often begins with a truth (word) that is descriptive and actually pejorative to them (the ‘us’) and they actually wield against the ‘them.’ Maybe it’s simply ‘word appropriation’ wherein its’s a warped us versus them in a playground style of “its not me, its you” wherein while ‘us’ has actually done something labeled as ‘traitorous’ or ‘insurrection’ or ‘liar’ or ‘radical’, they simply begin applying that descriptor onto the people who originally used it. Its nuts. And it creates a mosh pit of some false equivalence (which is an alternative universe in and of itself). It may not be grounded in anything they just sling the word back so that in their alternative universe their citizens can say ‘its not us, its them’. Hijacking words is probably the ultimate alternative universe tactic.

Which leads me to I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that having a huge mouthpiece who specializes in word salad (Trump) helps in this rhetoric-confused world because within the word salad is always something to pluck out as worthy of this alternative universe. I would suggest to live in this universe you have to be Truth allergic, but it just takes a bit of suspension of belief to reside here.

Yeah. Trump is at the center of this universe.

Yeah. Two things happened that brought me back into the Trump/politics world.

The first is this Trump moment in a Piers Morgan interview:

This is laughable. He lies like breathing. He even lies about his lies. But somehow in this alternative universe Trump speaks “truth to power.”

The second is the likelihood Trump will regain his twitter account now that “free speech” Musk is running the twitter insane asylum. It is not difficult to envision Trump using Twitter as his toxic brain waste dump, creating the cray cray twitterverse which embodies the alternative universe. Not far behind I can easily envision returning to the television where a panel of journalists/news anchors simply laugh out loud over a preposterous trump tweet lie … and move on. Yeah. The alternative universe is so absurd and he has normalized lying to such an extent they don’t even bother to respond or comment — just laugh at the absurdity of it all.

And all the while, as they laugh and dismiss, the people in this alternative lap it up as truth (where everyone on TV laughing is lying).

• Black is white.
• Up is down.
• In is out.

In this alternative world Trump creates an alternate truth and somehow, we are actually letting it become real and, to some people, it is a real universe. This cannot be normalized nor can it be accepted. The Trump shit show has to be publicly reviewed as constant bullshit and not a viable reality.

Which leads me to the fact Trump is a pathological liar. Shit. Even the heinous Piers Morgan thinks so.

Let me be clear. Trump and his merry band of liars, are now taking the perception business to a whole new level of absurdity. Let us be very clear on some basic Truths:

• Alternative facts live only in an alternative universe.
• Perception is not reality.

As someone who has dabbled in marketing professionally, “perception is reality” truly galls me. It is an ugly lie. And it is even uglier because in an untrained, inexperienced mind, or a misguided lack of moral individual, it can be used to defraud people – unintentionally or intentionally.

Perception is perception.

Reality is reality.

And perception is reality only, and ONLY, if you permit it to be so.

The alternative universe can only last as long as this alternative universe can stave off the real universe. Just as alternative facts can only last as long as the real facts can get their shit together and get in the game. I would note that Trump’s alternative universe, while grounded in lies, is fertilized in aimless rambling about anything that happens to pop into his brain and is convenient for him to say at the time. He is not typically deliberate about his lying, he is simply authentically living in his own alternative universe and explaining that universe to us. The universe itself may be one bigly lie, but his explanations are truth about the universe TO that universe.

Trump is a rambling, bombastic, amoral narcissist. He’s never pretended to be anything else. What you see is what you get. His integrity resides solely on authentically communicating the big Lie <although … in his mind … in his universe … it is the big Truth>. Oddly this seems to mean, at least to a lot of everyday people, that an authentic liar has more integrity than a calculated communicator. He is genuine in that his perception is actually his reality <just ponder that scary thought for a moment>.

It is bizarre. Fucking bizarre. Trump and his merry band of liars use a variety of truth-blurring techniques <i call it “chaff”>. Their objective appears to not only be to control by creating doubts about what is real and what isn’t, but also to create an alternative universe in which whatever he does actually looks like it makes sense. They stave off reality with a formidable capability to manufacture stories wholesale for the alternative universe population, independent of reality. When forcefully challenged they can “build the wall” into existence via mass disinformation. Through narratives of ‘reality manufacturing’ they can maintain their universe and empower the cray cray to be crazy.

To be clear. Perception is not reality and trying to create a universe based on perceptions is a hollow world. but it gets difficult when a president, from day one to, well, ad finitum, to constantly be trying to convince us reality is not reality, perceptions are what he and his merry band of liars say are truth, alternative facts exist and there is some alternative universe that he, and they, can only see <but its good>.

This is nuts, scary, and dangerous. Trump was a historically dishonest presidential candidate, a historical dishonest president and his merry band of surrogates <liars> have displayed a persistent commitment to lying – needless lying or necessary lying. And it becomes even more dangerous because Trump and his cult play on what some people “feel.” Trump anchors his alternative universe on some warped perceptions, some attitudes, and therefore those who elect to follow will follow the pied piper <allegiance to him above all> and not to any ideology, values or principles <not even the US Constitution … because he becomes the sole arbiter of what the Constitution “means to say to us”>. Trump is not a normal phenomenon and his alternative universe of false perceptions and alternative facts should not be normalized by something as simplistic a “politicians have always lied” and “we can never trust the media” mostly because, at least in the case of Trump and this alternative universe, it’s a false equivalence (and alternative universes are not equivalent – one is real, one is not).

Look. Politics has always had a tenuous relationship with truth, but even in that environment there are limits. As Jonathan Last wrote in the conservative paper The Weekly Standard: “you can obfuscate, you can misrepresent, you can shade the truth to a ridiculous degree, or play dumb and pretend not to know things you absolutely do know. But you can’t peddle affirmative, provable falsehoods.”

Here is the surprising truth to add.

Journalism has always had a good relationship with truth, but even in that environment there have been missteps which create a false narrative that journalism, as a whole, is dishonest. The majority of journalists are not dishonest, every viable publication in existence has a standard of honesty and proof and, while they may tend to a more liberal skewed perspective, truth is truth and facts are facts and they treat both with reverence <because their existence relies on that>. I would note that the belief I just wrote does not exist in the Trump cult alternative universe; there, journalists are evil.

Which leads me to a world with a thriving alternative universe is not a place for cowards.

“Trust nobody?

That is the plight of fools and cowards.

You will slowly suffocate with every breath you take.

To trust is to live.”

Words matter. Definitions matter.

While the Trump cult claims the right/power to define “America” they do so while also claiming to be “strangers in their own land.” See how that works to empower an entire agenda? And how media reporting on disaffected rightwing Americans plays into those definitional assumptions? In this line of narrative, the default assumption in this alternative universe is “this is your America and everyone else is taking it away from you.” If we accept that, as a consequence we automatically are painted as unamerican or “hate America” simply by not agreeing with their definition or even their alternative universe (where their up is actually down). Our truth (reality) are lies to them; and their ‘truth’ is a lie to reality (and us). So, while TV people laugh, we should not. society cannot thrive living in alternative universes with alternative citizens YET with the same objective (a better America) and the same flag on their ID. With an entire universe of fools, it is not a place, and time, for cowards. Ponder.

—

“Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

—

There is a difference between the future of work (a combination of productivity, mattering/impact and the business vision) and the future of business (a combination of globalization, geopolitics and business’ responsibility to people, society and the earth, i.e., its role in shaping capitalism). This doesn’t mean they aren’t related, but I do worry that those focusing solely on the future of work are simply making an incredibly flawed way of doing business more effective at being flawed. That said. When asked about the future of business I do begin on a pragmatic level and how a business should work because work itself has a feedback loop relationship with the future design of business. Almost everyone now agrees with what every thinker suggested in the 1980’s and early 1990’s that ‘agility’ is the key to business success.

Which leads me to fluidity and flow.

The reality of the future of work is a bit simpler than we tend to make it. It centers on two key features of agility; fluidity and flow.

• Fluidity

Toffler stated in 1985, “[business] must execute its current activities to survive today’s challenges and adapt those activities to survive tomorrow’s.” That is fluidity; bring to bear resources (people & material) to survive and thrive. Most businesses struggle with this because of command & control, silos, centralized management and lack of ability to not only share resources easily but shift the most appropriate people (from one department) to the optimal team. But it goes a bit deeper than that. Fluidity is an inherent attribute of progress and to the connectivity necessary for collective impact. What I mean by that is fluidity is about conversations, connections and creation not just of an individual, but individuals in action together. This is an important concept because it represents what is necessary in the present for the temporary results of a unique combination of circumstances presenting a unique set of problems/opportunities and requiring an original solution that represents work/labor ‘applied effectively’ AND edges into what is necessary for the future. What I mean by that is no temporary situation can be viewed in isolation, but rather each temporary situation merges with those that precede and those that follow, all simultaneously but maybe not equally, so fluidity is shaped by the former and shaping the conditions of the latter. Labor is then a continuous fluid activity with fleeting opportunities and unforeseen events. Since labor is a fluid phenomenon, its conduct requires flexibility of thought and fluidity in behaviors/actions. Successful labor depends in large part on diligence and the ability to adapt — to proactively shape changing events to the advantage of the business, and its vision, as well as to react quickly to constantly changing conditions. This can sound exhausting, but the cadence of labor fluctuates from periods of intense activity to periods limited to information gathering, reflection, or capability development. This means fluidity is found in the competitive rhythm, i.e., conflict, between entropy (or desire to replicate and standardize) and emergent, i.e., the intentional fluid organizing to optimize events to suit the purpose of the business (and the individuals). I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this is fluidity between self-interest (impact) and collective interest (impact) and generated value which leads me to Flow.

—

“If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

—

• Flow

Flow is fluidity working in sync, but when I speak of Flow, I typically mean it in terms similar to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests as in terms of state of mind, people energy, for optimal performance.  Flow has several states, but let’s say that the desired business objective (which fluid labor makes possible) is, the continuous, smooth flow of value from the business (collective labor) to the market. So, Flow is the people mindset that creates the intrinsic energy for that effort. Oddly many people think of this as ‘labor at scale’ when it really is simply ‘a system in flow’ and, worse, many businesses believe incentives, gamification and ‘motivational efforts’ are how to attain this. Economics, and individual meaning, almost always arises from flow and achieving an organizational flow state is when the flow state is attained by & of the people. The tricky part is that the system, the whole, is made up of layers and nested systems with their own pacing. This thought is kind of important. Flow can be asymmetrical and it can also contain a variety of speeds (see: Pace layering). I often refer to organizational flow as ‘cadence.’ What I mean by that is a business tends to have a rhythm when it is in flow which is a reflection of the combined individual worker pacing. Flow is actually when all layers of the organization find synchronicity – not same speed or pace. Flow at an individual level is almost irrelevant if it isn’t multiplicative to the energy of the system as a whole. In fact, I could argue individual flow can hamper organizational collective ‘flow’ if the individual self-interest is not in the greater system interest. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that often existing business ‘rules’, including incentives & performance metrics, encourage a belief in individual flow over collective flow. My point here is that organizational Flow is individual labor at a collective level. Which leads me to commitment to the Future.

• commitment to contribute to the future

==============

They say it all breaks down to keeping your feet on the ground

My sole intention is keeping my head in the clouds

They say that I can’t last a day in the real world

I say you wouldn’t survive one night in mine

Asking Alexandria

—

This is where a business decides how they want to conduct business so that their business has a role in shaping the future. This is when a business should do some soul searching on their commitment to aligning the individual employee, the company, the community, society and, ultimately, the world. This is functional, emotional and aspirational. I have said for decades that the ultimate aim for any business is “better”: better moment, better outcome, better day, better life, better world (pick your better or combination of better). To be clear (part 1). A business cannot claim to aim to make the world a better place no matter how bad the business might be for people or society, a commitment is a complete commitment or, at minimum, a commitment to progress, i.e., becoming better. To be clear (part 2). I, personally, believe Purpose is establishing too simplistic a cage for a business to successfully exist within. I believe, as someone who thinks about the future of business, a business should purposefully decide what they want their commitment to the Future is. I have unequivocally stated that all business should have the same commitment, the purpose of business is to benefit people, but as long as a business decides to make a commitment that embraces that concept in some way, the business world should do fine. For example, an airline, or all airlines for that matter**, could commit to “social connectivity,” i.e., breaking down barriers that divide and unite humanity.

• ** I do not believe a business gains differentiation off their commitment or even “Purpose,” differentiation and distinction is gained by “How” they develop strategies and execute toward the commitment.

Once the commitment has been established a business can hunker down on the “hows” which can be environment, gender equality, social responsibility, a cause, or all of them. My main thought is this permits businesses to be flawed, as in their ‘hows’ do not have to be perfect, just showing progress (better today than yesterday), as long as their commitment remains, well, a commitment. Which leads me to how to make sure progress occurs in a business. Well. Suffice it to say, 99% of the best businesses have figured out how to successfully keep their feet in the clouds and their head on the ground. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it looks like I got it twisted around, but I did not.

• Good businesses are always walking with the future in mind.

Always traveling toward possibilities, always seeking ‘what’s next’, possibilities drive movement. Feet in the clouds.

• Good businesses are always closely listening, and thinking, to the drumbeat of the feet of what is happening around them, i.e., the possibilities.

Ear to the ground, so while possibilities are driving movement and progress, pragmatism, or reality of what can be done, insures everyone in the business is keeping their head in the game today; but smartly and with fluidity. Head on the ground.

I have called it mastering pragmatism & possibilities, but it is the ability to have your feet in the clouds and head on the ground. I believe this shifts a mindset from being destination-based, or solely pragmatic based, to a more fluid & flow-based mentality in which the business is driven by movement (possibilities) but pragmatically adapts to possibilities (opportunities). Maybe most importantly, because I am discussing a commitment to the future, while you may identify what commitment to contribution to the future you want to commit to, strategy and execution will be based less on “what will the world look like in future?”, because you have actually elected to shape the future, and more on “how do I best align with the unfolding present?”

I tend to believe if more people thought about it this way businesses would have more hope and more achievable possibilities than they could ever imagine. I tend to believe the future of business would be better in terms of a more positive contribution to the individual, society, productivity, and general meaning in the world (not at the expense of profit or growth).

If we are honest, the way business is being conducted presently, embodied in feet on the ground & head in the clouds, doesn’t really seem to be working that well.

Businesses seem to be more woefully stagnant <albeit ‘talking’ change> and have more despair and lack of hope with regard to their possibilities than ever. And, yet, they are desperately implementing “change initiatives” and organizational changes all of which, in my mind, are simply rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. That isn’t to say the best organizational practitioners won’t enhance fluidity and flow and possibly even edge into a ‘commitment to the future’ space, but I am in the ‘future of business’ business. I struggle to believe optimizing humanity can occur, in any business, until the business itself decides what commitment it wants to make TO humanity. In other words, with a commitment to contribute to the future, the business is simply clinging to wisps of straw. Ponder.

===

“Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Earlier today I reshared my thoughts on the lack of civility in political rhetoric and how that fosters an environment of violence – either unacted upon violent thoughts or actual violent actions. I even wrote ‘the politics of resentment’. Which leads me to Trump. Violence has always bubbled below the surface in America, but where I lay a large burden of the blame on Trump is for using it as a tool of “America Greatness”, i.e., the violence is done by patriots passionate about their great America. It really was not that long ago that in 2015 and 2016 the Trump cult was being shaped with violence.

It seemed like just another day and another violent Trump rally. The incidents kept piling up.

Chicago protest fights. A Black Lives Matters protester was sucker-punched by a white bystander at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A young black woman was surrounded and shoved aggressively by a number of individuals at a rally in Louisville, Kentucky. A black protester was tackled, then punched and kicked by a group of men as he curled up on the ground in Birmingham, Alabama. Immigration activists were shoved and stripped of their signs by a crowd in Richmond, Virginia. A Latino protester was knocked down and kicked by a Trump supporter in Miami.

At that time I said this version of America is not the America I know, the America I want nor is it America anywhere near great. While I remain steadfast on the latter two, on the first I was wrong. I now know the Trump America and it is violent.

It makes me angry.

It disturbs me.

Just to remind everyone, one of the most disturbing moments, one which truly made me angry, was angry as I watched a protest in Chicago devolve into what could only look like a riot to the entire world.

Another reminder. A Republican, at that time, said: “Tonight the seeds of division that Donald Trump has been sowing this whole campaign finally bore fruit, and it was ugly.”

I am angry because Mr. Trump knew what he is doing. He was playing with fire. Playing it as close to the fire as he could without getting burned <or burning down the house> because in his own pea like mind he has decided that this warped version of passion will energize change and ‘winning.’

Just as he has shown a complete disdain for a ‘good win’ versus a ‘bad win’ he also shows no signs that he understands the difference between ‘bad passion’ and ‘good passion.’

That is the sign of an incompetent ignorant lazy leader.

I am angry.

I am not angry at America or its people or even most of Trump’s followers; I am angry at a person who wants to be the emperor who has no clothes. He offers only platitudes of ‘deals & wins’ as solutions to any issue he is asked about and, worse, simplistically twists the “us versus them” narrative into “we good people & they bad/evil people” platitudes.

He skates on the slippery superficial surface of emotion and an enhanced feeling of irrelevance <or being marginalized> from a minority of the populace who has now found a voice.

I remain angry even to this day.

And I get even angrier because Trump, to this day, assumes no, none, nada, whatever version of “zero” you want to apply here … responsibility for anything.

It is never his problem. It is never his issue. It is never anything but ‘the bad people’ <media, people who do not agree, Muslims/Islam, Mexicans, immigrants, stupid elite, etc.>. It is never him.

This despite the fact he is the common denominator.

And this also means, to Mr. Tump, he is never responsible for his words.

We are all responsible for the words we say. Everyone.

That said.

It most likely took me far too long to understand this, but while freedom of speech is an equal freedom for all & everyone, the responsibility tied to that freedom is not equal. Responsibility increases upwards. The larger the forum, the more impact as a leader I have, the larger the actual managerial/actionable responsibility the leader has AND the larger the responsibility to the speech portion of my freedom I have.

Trump acts, and has always acted, like he has no more responsibility with regard to what he says than the guy sitting at the end of the bar after a 10 hour day drinking his 5th draft beer with his buddies bitching about the world.

======== Trump supporter ==========

A leader has a responsibility to listen to his/her people but any good leader knows you don’t incite latent negative emotion within an organization … you show you listen, unite and give specifics on how the organization will progress from that point on.

Lastly.

I am angry because I have run across these faux business leaders in business and they are the worst of the worst. They are hollow of anything. And blanket their hollowness with superficiality or faux emotion. And, most importantly, they make nothing great.

Trump is particularly skilled at manipulating his version of the public to his own ends. And, in that, he doesn’t even recognize his divisiveness <which is frightening for someone who was leader of the free world>. I believe he doesn’t recognize the divisiveness because he lives in an alternative universe in which everyone else is wrong and the problem and protestors never have a valid reason and anyone not in ‘his crowd’ must be unpatriotic.

Mr. Trump, assuming he actually desired to be a president, never understood all citizens are his crowd. You either decide to try and unite by listening and convincing them of your path to ‘greatness’ or I imagine you just let them rot somewhere as you, and your followers, shun them. And, well, that’s what he did. And by shunning them, while fostering a violent attitude, he gave implicit permission to be violent as long as it was targeted to those he shunned.

I cannot remember in my 60something lifetime anything like this.

And, yeah, I am still angry.

And, if I am honest, a little nervous certainly unsettled and, well, maybe a little scared.

This feeling did not come easily.

And I know exactly when it happened. It was a March morning in 2016 when I discussed my anger at Trump’s lack of assuming responsibility after the Chicago rally incident and it happened as I said “I have never seen this before in my lifetime.”

Because I do know where I have seen it before. This is the divisiveness of dictators and autocrats. I hesitated to use examples from the past, but the names came very very close to crossing my lips. It was an uncomfortable feeling to be that close to comparing Trump to some of the worst of the worst leaders from past history. And what got me that close to uttering the examples is that instead of making a call for discussion and debate he insists on calling for silence and authoritarianism <absurdly under the guise of ‘freedom of speech’>. To be clear, I no longer hesitate to draw these comparisons. To be clear, as he harkens back to the ‘good ole days’ he even seems to encourages violence <under the guise of “we are so weak and need to be strong again”>.

This is bully logic.

Trump disavows violence and yet encourages it. He encourages a consistent ‘strong message’ <however you, the followers, would like to deliver that message to ‘them’> of silencing dissent, silencing debate, silencing real solutions, silencing critics and silencing competitors. And he fills their silent space with bombastic platitudes of deals & wins and divisive rhetoric.

While he’s narcissistic, self-absorbed, power hungry/crazy and driven by either greed or ‘winning by any measure” I almost think we are seeing a public case study example of the Dunning–Kruger effect.

This is a cognitive bias in which a relatively unskilled person suffers illusory superiority. This translates into mistakenly assessing their ability and believing their skills, and themselves, to be significantly better than what it actually is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately. When Trump looks in the mirror he sees only something superior to everyone else … maybe even superior to America itself.

Anyway.

I am not a huge follower of politics but it seems to me that consistent violence at the scale of 2016 was rare in American politics, but now it has almost become the norm.

And I am still angry at Mr. Trump.

Angry at his overall lack or personal responsibility. Angry at his disdain for the power of words. Angry at his lack of understanding of freedom of speech as it pertains to leadership. Angry at his lack of desire to try and convert dissenters, but rather silence or eject/reject dissenters.

Angry at his hollowness <because I want a leader who is full of a robust vision beyond deals & wins>.

And, mostly, I am angry at what he has done to America.

He never had any interest in making America great, he simply encouraged us to hate.

And hate is the foundation for violence. Ponder because this is important.

===========

“We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

—-

Barack Obama on January 12^th 2011

===========================

<written June 14, 2017 the day Republican politicians were shot on a softball field – but relevant today>

On a day which we are faced with someone who decided to take a gun and shoot politicians, and appear to target politicians, I am reminded of several things.

The first thing is the rhetoric.

The rhetoric of the citizenry, but mostly the rhetoric of our elected leaders. I say that because words have repercussions.

Yes.

I do believe in personal responsibility and choices are made by individuals.

But I also believe leaders lead with words <because most of us cannot view their actions>.

And if our elected leaders treat their words as if we will not remember them forever.

And if our elected leaders treat each other as if they are truly enemies <and even use that word on occasion>.

And if our elected leaders treat each other as if the opposite’s behavior is unfathomable behavior for sane, moral people.

And if our elected officials treat each other with verbal hyperbole as the standard rhetoric discourse … and the highest of the elected leaders, the president, tosses out the word ‘unity’ on occasion but 99% of the time does nothing verbally or behavior wise to unite … well … the electors will be tempted to do as leaders do.

We need to calm our rhetoric. We need to remind ourselves what we teach our children — that you don’t always get what you want and that most progress is made in mutual effort.

We all need to be speaking more calmly and acting more civilly, but we should be demanding our elected leaders do so. I get angry with how they act and what they say because it suggests to people that is behavior we should all embrace — and it is not.  Stop, and stop it now.

The second thing I am reminded of is one of the best speeches President Obama ever made.

To share my thoughts I will borrow <steal> liberally from a NY Times article written by Helene Cooper and Jeff Zelenyjan. The article was Obama Calls for a New Era of Civility in U.S. Politics and it shares the speech Obama gave on January 12^th 2011 in Tucson after the shooting of a US Congresswoman and the deaths of 6 other people.

Apparently Obama wrote much of the speech himself the day before. I suggest everyone read the speech, but today I will share highlights because it is a nice reminder on a day on which we need some reminders.

President Obama offered the nation’s condolences to the victims of the shootings, calling on Americans to draw a lesson from the lives of the fallen and the actions of the heroes, and to usher in a new era of civility in their honor. Obama directly confronted the political debate that erupted after the rampage, urging people of all beliefs not to use the tragedy to turn on one another. He did not cast blame on Republicans or Democrats, but asked people to “sharpen our instincts for empathy.”

It was one of the more powerful presentation of words & thoughts I have ever heard urging Americans “to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully” and to “remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,” he said, “it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

He eulogizing the six people who died and asked for prayers for the wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who the authorities said was the target of an assassination attempt.

He warned against “simple explanations” and spoke of the unknowability of the thoughts that “lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.”

He suggested that the events should force individuals to look inward, but also that they should prompt a collective response against reflexive ideological and social conflict.

While the tone and content were distinctly nonpolitical, there were clear political ramifications to the speech, giving Mr. Obama a chance, for an evening at least, to try to occupy a space outside of partisanship or agenda:

“If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost,” Mr. Obama said. “Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.”

“If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse,” Mr. Obama said, “let us remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not — but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”

In the end.

No, I do not believe we will learn anything from today’s event <or the other shooting events that cost people’s lives today> but maybe, just maybe, we can start talking to each other like we don’t want to shoot the other person if given an opportunity. That is a good start.

==

“Sometimes, the hand that feeds you is also holding you captive.”

Ben Irvine

==

“Beneath the incessant parade of images, nothing.”

Magnificent Ruin

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We are all captive of something. And often that ‘something’ is tangible, yet has the ultimate value of nothing. That is why progress can be elusive and self identity can become a bit of a tug of war between the “I compass” and the external world. That said, today is actually about being captive of something specific – nothing. I will define ‘nothing’ as things that (a) don’t really have an impact beyond individual satisfaction and (b) don’t really contribute to personal meaning beyond productivity.

The sheer numbers of data, wealth, images, memes, production of stuff, that bludgeon us and our senses on a daily basis only suggest we measure our lives by accumulating some of those things – theoretically by choosing one we give them the meaning of something – rather than what we actually may choose to be measured by absent of these choices. In doing so we become occupants of a space designed by the system, captives of nothing. Yet, this nothing is defined, or bounded, by what is deemed ‘reason’, common sense or, at minimum, reasonable. Yes. The world convinces us it is reasonable to be measured by things with a ‘nothing value.’ And by defining these numbers, or these ‘somethings’, as a measure it will invariably constrain focus toward the present (the now) with critique centered on either the past (kind of a warped assessment versus ‘then’) or against others within the Now defined space (competition within the present). I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that if your concern is having “something” at the end of life, judging oneself, consistently, in the present doesn’t guarantee that.

“Everything seems simpler than it truly is, when you are not the one working on it”

Look. The truth is results in Life are tricky things. This is why gamification was/is so appealing. But we know from research that finite progress (milestones, sprints, etc.) are a doom loop of chasing things in which people get trained to chase output instead of outcomes and items instead of impact. People inherently gain greater satisfaction if they show progress – better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today – so why don’t more people do so?

Well, first, what the emphasis on this type of measurement does is to heighten the discomfort of the alternative; the plausible but not certain, the probabilities of not the prediction of. The plausible does not usually equate to “is”, i.e., some certainty, and it is within the wretched hollow in-between where we become captive to nothingness. This is where “if you cannot measure it, how do you know you were successful” falls. So we twist ourselves into pretzels turning thoughts of plausibility into images of possibility, then images of probability, ultimately shaping/morph itself into a perception of “is”. We move the uncertainty ball into the certainty space not because we actually believe it will make our lives meaningful, but rather because we fear the absence of certainty found in plausibility and probability. Second is that, well, absence of a pursuit of these things, you worry you may actually end up with nothing. Yeah. The truth is while business and society use “somethings” to make us captive of what are actually ‘nothings’, nothing is personal. What I mean by that is even though we may not view the world in a zero-sum way we fear having nothing at the end of the race. We show up to our meeting with Death with no answers for ‘did you have a successful life.’ By becoming a captive to a fear of nothing we jump onboard the ‘something train’ and hope even if we don’t do anything meaningful (however that could actually be assessed) we will have something; rather than nothing. And maybe that is the weird (awful) thing. In our successful pursuit of these things, we actually still end up with nothing. I tend to believe far too many people are currently captives of nothing. My reasoning? Well. I tend to believe we are having an existential “meaning”, or “how do I matter”, societal crisis and what I have just written could very well be part of the reason why. Ponder.

“A lie can fly halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on.”

Winston Churchill

I am sure we have all heard versions of this quote before.

And chuckle.

But have you ever wondered why we actually take this kind of sad and sobering thought at face value – kind of as an, uhm, truth? Is it because the world has become overwhelmingly cynical and simply live in a  constant state of belief that everyone lies and it sucks?

What a sad, sobering, thought. But is it really true?

I imagine many of us would think about this and a part of us, maybe even a large part of us, agrees.

We believe somewhere inside us that all people lie.

And what may be worse?

Even when we hear ‘the truth’? We doubt.

And even more worse? The more emphatic someone states their belief in the truth; the more we disbelieve.

It’s kind of crazy if you think about it.

It seems often the “absolute truth” leads to some confusion on our part.

Confused on ‘how can they be so sure’?

And the conclusion of confusion is “someone has lied.”

What a downward spiral we have encountered in discussing truth.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you. “

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I tend to think all of us a re a bit cynical of people who are too assured in their beliefs, or a belief, but regardless, truth is tricky.

It is not absolute. The beauty in truth is that it creates boundaries. Or maybe more playfully it creates fences which, within, you can find comfort to play with others and be free to say and do some things without thought (let’s call that default thinking) and do some things by challenging some of the truth assumptions.

All of what I just wrote assumes we discuss ‘truth’ because within those boundaries are some shades of gray.

Truth is complex because most truth is combinatorial.

There is one simple ugly enemy to truth because of the shades of gay and the combinatorial characteristics.

The ugly enemy is doubt.

It is because of doubt in truth that a lie can sweep its way around the world while good ole truth is stuck behind dealing with doubt.

A lie is unhindered by the burden of proof. It flies free of such weight.

While truth carries the burden of debate, discussion and understanding.

Now. Let’s be clear. Debate is good. It clarifies. It communicates. It clears the mind of clutter.

But, oddly, nowadays truth’s slowness (in debate and discussion) only enhances an implication of ‘non-true’ and slows down even more with the weight of added burden.

Do we ever wonder why truth takes eons to get around the world while a lie circles endlessly?

Not when you think about it this way.

Sadly, if I am actually right about something for once, I guess the way you can tell a lie from a truth now is that the first is always the lie and the last is always the truth.

In the end the turtle wins I guess. Ponder. This feels important.