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“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

H. G. Wells

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“You know, sometimes in life you can get kinda stuck and you feel like you should have changed chapters by now, but you can’t.”

Wish I Was Here <Aidan>

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“Constantly absorbing and commenting on things that have just happened sounds to me like a recipe for feeling powerless. Online, I frequently feel both stuck in the past but presented with a grim projection of the future. There is very little focus on the present, which is a place where we derive agency. We can act now.”

Charlie Warzel

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A lot of life feels like you are stuck between things. Not always stuck stuck, just tucked in between things. I would argue that this sense seems heightened these days. Charlie Warzel posited in this piece it is because we are always stuck in the past. Similarly, I read this piece “can technology reveal too much about the past?” and pondered the thought that if we are stuck in the past, and that past is constantly revealing new bits & pieces, well, that would make it seem like we are constantly stuck in an uncertain, less than solid understanding, of the past.

I noodled this a bit and I think I would phrase it a bit differently in that I believe we all feel stuck because we never attain resolution on things. Social media, life, business, all keep slinging things in front of us and while we may get some things done, we are leaving an increasing number of things in the past unresolved. This asymmetrical ‘completion’ creates an uneasy tension between the past, present and future. Maybe said another way, we are stuck in a continuum of unresolved things.

Which leads me to suggest this means we simultaneously gravitate to that which is stated most declaratively and become increasingly skeptical of the most declarative. This should force some reflectiveness and maybe some recognition of the fallacies of some of our thinking but, circling back to the opening point, we just get stuck and nothing truly gets resolved. Technology, for all its potential and actual good, is simply bad for helping people focus beyond surface skimming. Sadly, this suggests Stacy Horn may be right when she says: “cyberspace does not have the power to make us anything other than what we already are. It is a revealing, not a transforming medium.” While I do not necessarily agree with her in totality, I will agree that human nature is like gravity and if you seek to defy gravity, as ‘cyberspace’ can, it needs to be purposeful. In other words, skimming when faced with an onslaught of information is natural, resolution is dubious as a consequence and while a person may feel like this behavior makes them unstuck, their sense of being stuck only deepens.

Which leads me to in a world where we are simultaneously bombarded with a great deal of stimulation, we learn to focus our attention on what we believe are the important stimuli while filtering out that which we deem less relevant stimuli. This is a brain survival technique to reserve, and preserve, our focus resources, which are actually fairly finite, to apply against all the stimuli that need processing. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this is exactly the situation, we find ourselves, cognitively, in a 24/7 technology world exacerbated by social media and the internet wherein we are constantly battling for our experiential and sensory survival. And while in this survival mode we simplistically dumb everything down to make the gazillion events look similar, and manageable, the unfortunate truth is that no event is actually identical to the previous event. We approximate shit seeking to get out of the inbetween only to find every new data input is not in fact identical to the very similar looking data that came before so, well, nothing truly gets completely resolved.

“Man is a rationalizing animal not a rational one.”

Robert Heinlein

Which leads me to winners and losers.

When you are stuck somewhere in between identifying real winners and losers is difficult. What I mean by difficult is that in this scenario I am outlining, an onslaught of new data daily, a sane human will settle on some vanity metric to point to. Vanity metrics are simplistic heuristics for complex situations. In this world we become heuristic imbeciles defining success and failure. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that success always rests on a fairly fragile balance between the needs of the individual and those of the collective and it would behoove us to understand that balance does not naturally occur in a technologically driven world, it needs to be monitored, calibrated, recalibrated almost on an exhaustingly minute-by-minute basis human by human. This sounds incredibly exhausting if you buy into the thought we are constantly facing unresolved things, but, if you don’t, power moves to anyone who has the most data, about the most people, and can convert it into understandable narratives, who would in effect be the only owners of the main resources that could be converted into things of value (or non-value). I will point out that if data is used the right way, it can actually make us smarter collectively, not just richer personally, but that is a societal winners/losers discussion. That said. The problem is that we are now at a moment where the social contract is being renegotiated involuntarily because while we are stuck ‘somewhere in between’, some dubious characters are crafting ‘the social contract’ which will replace the one we may know and like. I imagine my point here is if you are stuck somewhere in between your ability to picture what the future may, or should, look like is impaired and the world is then simply shaped by the tools, not the humans.

Which leads me back to ruts versus stuck.

• Getting in a rut is sliding down the slippery slope of the everyday grind of Life. You simply fall into a space where day in and day out you are checking shit off your list and justifying the relatively unsatisfying space you are in by showing everyone, and yourself, the list of things you have checked off.
• Getting stuck is a more frustrating Life situation. This is where you know you are not where you want to be and doing things you don’t really want to do and … well … you are stuck. You have shit on your list or at least one thing on your list, which you WANT to do, but day in and day out you look at your list and that little nasty shit of a thing never gets checked. That may sound pedantically trivial, but this relates back to the larger “nothing ever gets resolved” mentally. And what is worse you know you are usually stuck in one of two ways:

Your own head.

In your mind you may not recognize it for a while, but then it hits you: I am not moving.

I am stuck. This sucks.

Others around you.

You may not recognize it for a while because you feel like you are moving, but then it hits you – everyone else is moving faster <or it at least looks like people are>. Life, which often looks blurry in the midst of all the shit you want to do, now looks just a bit clearer, but everyone around you looks blurry. They are moving and you are not.

But here is the worst “stuck.”

When you get stuck between who you are and who you want to be. You know there is a better version of you but you are stuck being the current version of you. it may not be a bad version, it may not even be a sucky version, you just know there is a better version and this is where not having any resolution on anything really sucks – you are never really sure what better version is.

Getting stuck is usually really difficult to get out of. Stuck, more often than not, occurs DESPITE the fact you are doing whatever you can to not permit it to happen.

Anyway. If you google “get unstuck” you will get over 200,000 results in .48 seconds. The majority of those results are about ‘changing attitudes’ or ‘simple techniques to get unstuck’ or even ‘breaking habitual patterns.’  Most likely none of this shit will help you. Mostly because the advice is more about getting out of a rut and not about getting unstuck. But I would also suggest there ain’t a shitload of advice because … well … getting unstuck is difficult, there are no ‘techniques’ and your ‘stuck’ is most likely contextual & situational and is a consequence of a level of lack of resolution that simply checking shit off your to-do list will not solve.

Being stuck is frustrating. Sometimes even maddening. And sometimes it makes you angry.

I don’t have some secret to share about how to get unstuck. All I know is that it sucks, it feels sucky, and you have to sometimes suck it up and be creative in your pursuit of what you want to get unstuck.

In other words, its complex. Oh. The word complex comes from the Latin root plectere: to weave, entwine. In complex systems, many simple parts are irreducibly entwined so when you are stuck inbetween you are actually stuck in a knot of intertwined shit – some good and some bad. But I imagine my point here is that the world itself, technology, politicians, businesses, seem to have a tendency to create a context within which you have to make an extreme effort to craft meaningful resolutions.

You can’t see forward, you can’t look back

There’s nothing that you need, nothing that you lack

And it ain’t gonna last this way

Sunshine/World Party

Which leads me to the thought that society seems to constantly encourage us to dream but then shift those dreams to certainty under the belief in doing so dreams can be ‘attained.’ It seems like we should be encouraging people to not only embrace the liminality between dreams and certainty (possibilities and pragmatism), but we should also be teaching people, in an increasingly uncertain world, the principles necessary to navigate the unpredictability of that uncertain world, i.e., teach how to navigate the wretched hollow of somewhere inbetween. It is with that liminal navigation where we find the pragmatic stepping stones to maybe not get certainty, but enough certainly to make progress against our dreams (possibilities). The internet has created an incredible amplification system extremely ineffective in enhancing people’s ability to focus, to organize thoughts, to be reflective, to sensemake and refine truly meaningful, non superficial, messaging. The declarative is winning over the deliberative and we seem to either gladly embrace a system that doesn’t really encourage deep deliberation and does encourage shallow reaction or we are just lost in the non-resolution of somewhere in between. I imagine part of what I am suggesting is that ‘somewhere inbetween’ fucks with our dreams and our response to that is to attempt to make the dreams concrete believing this not only makes dreams more achievable but more tangible. For some reason I tend to think this devalues the real value of dreaming, but that’s me.

Which leads me to end with a thought from Rob Estreitinho.

As with most philosophical questions, it comes down to either:

1. Are you doing the thing that in principle is right
2. Or are you doing the thing that is most effective

Of course, reality happens somewhere in-between, but that’s the spectrum. And although part of me wants to believe in effective altruism, my spiritual tendencies are more inclined to the former right now. Key words: ‘right now’. This stuff fluctuates.

Meaning: as individuals, we have a degree of control and agency that, in isolation, means little, but collectively, means loads. This is true for voting, sustainable habits, and to an extent our overall sense of wellbeing. Which is another way of saying, as long as you consciously sweep your front door and try and encourage others to do the same, it’s possible you’ll have done enough (or at least far more than most).

While we appear to invest a shitload of energy thinking through the seemingly infinite dimensions of societal foibles and technological hijinks, it can actually be quite freeing to simply admit they are unreformable and irredeemable and the only thing that will get is out of somewhere in-between, and find meaningful resolution, is humans. And lest you think this piece was solely about life, people and society, go back and reread from a business perspective. Businesses can reside in the somewhere inbetween too. And it is just as unhealthy for them. Ponder.

Humans spend 93% of their time indoors. Ok. Actually, they spend 87% indoors and another 5%ish in cars (transportation). The % split is dancing on the head of a pin compared to the astronomically high 90%ish number in the scheme of things.

So. Let’s just say 90% of our time indoors. That seems like a crazy high number to me. That said, let me speculate a bit. Let’s say 300 years ago people spent 50% of their time indoors (I’m trying to find a spot before Industrial Age and maybe during agricultural Age). Let’s say 1000 years ago people spent 25% of their time indoors. You can see where I am going with this. This has to affect us. While all this indoor time certainly doesn’t mean that business (civilization) isn’t extracting the shit of the outside (we don’t need to be outside to actually harm the outside), but it has to effect, well, us, as people, inside (like inside our heads & psyche).

But it’s possible I have a larger point to make.

Affect versus effect. Affect is a verb and means to influence something. Effect is a noun and means the result. While I believe, over time, spending more time indoors does create an effect, that affect takes time to create the effect(s). Change is layered.

As we run around this crazy world we tend to stare at effects (which are actually simple behaviors of the moment) and drive ourselves nuts on whether Armageddon is upon us in some way.

Kids watching too much tv, addicted to smartphones, even decline in organized religion, are examples of how we stare at our navels worrying over what we see as effects and tying ourselves into knots declaring some affect as the evil doer.

Most of the big change stuff, how we think, molecular, civilization, is slow moving stuff. Driven by some tectonic shift in the nature infrastructure of Life. That doesn’t mean things like smartphone technology can’t create change, because it does, but rather it most likely amplified an effect of a tectonic affect which occurred years ago.

Do I believe a shift from spending more time outdoors to more time indoors created an effect? Sure. And it most likely had cascading consequences – both positively and negatively. That’s the thing between affects and effects. It is often not some simplistic balance sheet entry but rather, because of pace layering, a nature affect ripples out and has multiple, if not infinite, effects.

Do I believe shifting from an agrarian society to an industrial one affected us? Sure.

Do I believe shifting into a world in which knowledge, truth & lies, became available 24/7 affected us? Sure.

Do I believe automation will affect us? Sure.

What I am less sure of are the effects. Well. Some of the older affects allow us to examine the layers, ripples, of consequences. But that said, in general, I am unsure of the effects. And maybe that is what makes science fiction so interesting versus some of the futurist nonsense we see and hear in business. Science fiction makes no claims of effect predictions, simply effect possibilities. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that not all science fiction, or fantasy, is all dystopian – or utopian. They reflect possibilities of both good, and bad, consequences. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out this is how you can assess business ‘futurists.’ The ones who predict anything are charlatans, tricksters, and the ones who are unsure and express possibilities and probabilities pose the most interesting thinking.

Lastly.

Not all affects are created equal in term of their effects. I say that because we often seem to treat all affects in equal terms – especially if one embraces a dystopian view of things. I encourage everyone who has any desire to ponder the consequences of an affect to sit and think through the layers and where it resides. A ‘fad affect’ is just that – a momentary glimpse of nonsense (and, yet, it will have an effect). A ‘nature affect’ is just that – a tectonic shift in the structure of all that stands upon it.

I’ll end with the fact about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is water–covered, and the oceans hold about 96.5 percent of all Earth’s water. If earth’s surface became 82% water covered, that affect would certainly create not just an effect, but cascading effects. Just as if 90% of a workforce was in offices and it shifted to 70% of a workforce was in offices is an affect, with cascading effects. Nothing linear in what I stated, but causal, and it should make everyone spend a bit more time thinking about affects because, well, in the end I am unsure of what any effect will be but I surely would like to be aware of an affect.

** note: to be clear, I am relatively sure I mangled affect versus effect somewhere within this piece, that said, I stand by the thinking.

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“To be in a state of self-control, a person must know: what he/she is supposed to do, what he [or she] is actually doing, what choices he/she has to improve results wherever necessary. If any of these three conditions are not met, a person cannot be held responsible.”

JM Juran

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“As automation and artificial intelligence increasingly replace algorithmic and analytical tasks, the economy of The Conceptual Age will favour workers adept in areas that favour creativity, empathy and meaning (‘human’ concepts that are otherwise difficult to replicate by machine).”

Dr Jason Fox

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There is a lot of bullshit being written about “The 4^th Industrial Revolution” tying it to technology, renewed business moral awareness, inequality, automation, whatever. I wrote this, and that last sentence, in 2018 and still believe it. I hate labels and I hate trying to attach change to anything specific when it is more likely a confluence of factors.  I will say whatever is happening feels like a seismic shift in business ideology. That said. Whenever I scribble something about the Future of Business I keep coming back to Dr Jason Fox’s Conceptual Age idea he discussed with Mike Walsh in a podcast.

It seems to be the axis mundi for, well, everything we talk about. Purpose, distributed leadership organizational models, data/digital, thinking, innovation, etc.

Well crafted conceptual thinking.

In about 2010 I first wrote about something called “deconstruction thinking” wherein I suggested the future business model will reflect more of a “do, deconstruct & re-do” mentality. At the core of a successful deconstruction thinking model is the ability to think conceptually or in terms of concepts not rigid constructs. It was kind of a bastardized  mosh pit of scenario planning, ‘teal’, Toffler ‘polymalleable organizations’ and a desire to see effectiveness emphasized over efficiency.

I believe at the core of any future success is the coalescing of prioritized fragments into a conceptual whole in a timely fashion. This will demand not only critical thinking, but also the ability to envision how that thinking can exist in a future state.

Simplistically, concepts are about networked value creation which can occur structurally or transactionally.

Structural conceptual thinking, implemented as networked value creation, is not that difficult and has been done for decades.

Transactional conceptual thinking, combined with the actual networked value creation, is hard – very difficult. It’s about envisioning opportunities/issues, envisioning resources/ideas/abilities and envisioning how to put it into action. In other words, its difficult.

I continue to believe the future of business (in any industry) will lie in the hands of people who can not only envision THE work (present & future) as concepts in combination with the ability to articulate it in ways that make it tangible enough to be understood and acted upon (this, generally, is an idea Dr. Jason Fox has discussed).

This will demand one to embrace paradox & contradictions and dismiss either/or choices as too simplistic in a more complex conceptual world of thinking. No one should confuse this with speed or ‘faster world.’ It’s not. It is simply about moving parts of which some move fast, some tectonically slow and the majority somewhere in between.

It will take a combination of accessing ‘black box’ output (which demands some level of trust & learning) and judgement and embracing a conceptual framework of synthesizing paradoxical tensions.

The new decision making Concept world, one enabled by technology and the ‘black boxes’ of knowledge computers offer in terms of knowledge, is ultimately a deconstructive thinking world. A world in which it is understood that a stimulus can create desired, and sometimes undesired, responses, and consequences, and success is often more based on reacting & adapting to an initial stimulus than perfecting the initial stimulus. This demands conceptual thinking both to construct a plan of action as well as being able to ‘deconstruct’ and adapt as plans get implemented.

I would argue that over time the black box thinking <the intangible and vague ‘knowing’> becomes more tangible as well as we gain more faith in certain black box thinking applications. Given that belief I would also argue that Concepts, which outlines are vaguer in the beginning, gain substance & tangibleness over time.

I would also point out there is an inherent ‘human’ aspect to this idea.

Even with all the technology noise there is a persistently human future of work looming over the entire conversation. Computers are just not capable of empathy, curiosity & imagination which are the cornerstones to effectiveness. If I were to label the next age I would steal Jason Fox’s “Conceptual Age” more than just Human, or Technology, or IOT or even digital.

Oddly, the biggest challenge to thinking conceptually is NOT ability, but rather efficiency.

What do i mean by that?

The paradox is that business has a need for quality information more than ever, yet, quality information, in the form of data or minds, is readily available if we can sift through what is available. Therefore, theoretically, concepts exist they simply need to be crafted. Which leads me to what Dr. Jason Fox said:  “I worry about the curse of efficiency.” Once again, paradoxically, the conceptual age is all about the effective use of time. That may sound very similar to efficiency and therein lies the greatest enemy of the Conceptual Age.

How people view time. Efficient time or effective time or a greater “efficacy of time.”

The world has, does and will revolve around ideas. Technology will simply distribute, analyze and amplify ideas. In this case, concepts. This may paradoxically seem both time efficient and time inefficient. In other words, we will get the pieces of the concept faster and faster and, yet, coalescing the appropriate pieces into a meaningful concept will take longer & longer.

Will we be patient enough for the Conceptual Age? Regardless. I continue to believe there is a bigger idea found in just the idea of The Conceptual Age. One which captures the nexus of technology & humans & meaning.

What may help us in our Time war is that, conceptually, concept thinking is motivating. Its action in thinking. Instead of linear problem solving it is more like gathering disparate puzzle pieces and arranging them into a cohesive, or coherent, shape. We may be motivated to concept (think) slower.

The challenge to the Conceptual Age (beyond time).

Concepts, at their core, embrace tension or a paradox (not a dilemma). While a dilemma forces an either/or a paradox, and a concept, synergizes all components of tension into an idea/action/product/plan.

The trouble is when organizations are faced with these competing demands, they often tend to choose one or the other, compromise between them, or attempt to reconcile them. This happens for many reasons, but I would suggest the overriding reason is that business people constantly attempt to simplify a complex reality. Most of us embrace it because, well, people have a general tendency to see the world in black and white terms, which is a false dichotomy (Scandinavian Journal of Management).

Even trickier (worse) when you consider what John Dewey said: “there is no such thing as a final settlement because every settlement introduces the conditions of some degree of a new unsettling.” Concepts are never settled. They are always evolving.

————–

“Sureness will always elude you. The detective will always circle around what he wants, never seeing it whole.  We do not go on despite this. We go on because of it.”

Sara Gran

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The Conceptual Age.

The best way I can visualize the Conceptual Age is by leveraging the Swiss Cheese Model , but for concepts and not crisis/accidents.

The Swiss Cheese model highlights accidents occur when hazards align. In my mind, conversely, the optimal concepts can be found when an alignment of ‘organizational depth moving pieces ‘(aspects of business are constantly in motion but at different speeds – fast, medium fast, medium slow, slow & unmoving) is recognized , articulated and acted upon.

Conceptual thinking comes in all sizes (venti, tall, grande), but I will suggest the largest value segments:

Structural

Or

Transactional

———————

Pillars

Or

Opportunistic

The ability to discern these concepts in a timely, actionable framework AND be able to articulate in a way to assemble resources to take advantage may turn out to be the most valuable human resource a business may have. I call it ‘resource’ because it is quite possible in the future this is a human/technology combination. Technology assessing, sifting thru, “information cues” (this does not have to just be data) and highlighting probabilities as they arise with human judgment/assessment of organizational capabilities (mustering resources is accessing mental resources as well as tangible resources). In other words, articulating the varying concepts, defining the definitions, affect the way competing demands are described and how the resulting tensions are dealt with.

Lastly.

The effect on ‘knowledge workers’ and managers. Whenever we speak of ‘thinking conceptually’ there is a belief this is for the ‘intellectual elite’ (the eggheads). It is not. It will affect everyone and it should, if properly embraced, affect everyone in a business.

1. I disagree with many future of work experts. I don’t believe managers will become obsolete in world of automation/AI. Managers are the connective tissue in organizations. In fact. I see managers as integral to any transformation from efficiency to effectiveness. I actually see them as the cornerstone of the Conceptual Age.
2. All jobs will be reshaped by technology and all jobs will play a role in the Conceptual Age (Mike Walsh: design work).
   

In the end.

The Conceptual Age has emerged from not only the emergence of technology in business, but also the challenges to conventional wisdom from science, philosophy and knowledge. I would suggest people, mindful of the of the overarching issues with business (lack of moral leadership, hierarchy control limitations, diminished meaning and engagement in tasks and work) and aided by the easy movement of ideas created by technology, in a larger narrative, the Conceptual Age is seeking a new understanding of a human-centric world. The Conceptual Age will be a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but will be defined by reason, conceptual thinking and, inevitably, how those concepts inspire progress.

I do believe The Conceptual Age is going to be an equal opportunity employer. And I think Concepts are the products with the highest value in the future. To me, this is the future of business. Ponder.

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originally written Fall of 2018

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(1) Why has economic advance become and remained so compelling a goal to all of us as individuals, even though it yields disappointing fruits when most, if not all of us, achieve it?

Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth

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“But, in the end, even pirates understood that true freedom still required governance amongst themselves.”

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“I am making out a case for the sort of person who is in sympathy with the fundamental aims of Socialism, but who in practice always takes flight when Socialism is mentioned. Question a person of this type and you will often get the semi-frivolous answer: ‘I don’t object to Socialism, but I do object to Socialists.’ Logically it is a poor argument, but it carries weight with many people.”

George Orwell

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I find myself in a number of conversations about capitalism in which I have to explain the essence of capitalism is capitalizing. To be clear there are two sides to this capitalizing coin. One side means we are growers and when we are positively capitalizing, we are seeing opportunities and innovations to make the world better and do things that help make life better and capitalize on them.  Literally and figuratively, this is a huge thought and I would argue that falls more on the side where the balance on ‘collective good’ is proportionally higher than self-interest good. The other side of the coin is more a zero-sum aspect. Extracting and exploiting to capitalize on market opportunities. I would argue that is more on the side where the balance is on self-interest good is proportionally higher, if not solely, than collective interest good. I would argue the current business world resides mostly in the latter.

Which leads me to nouns and verbs.

I begin here because what that means is I have changed the discussion from a noun, capitalism, to a verb, capitalizing. This is incredibly important because while many people want to deconstruct capitalism as a system, I want to deconstruct HOW humans do capitalism. In other words, how they choose to capitalize within a system fostering business and innovation. If you believe things can be transformed through capitalism, then maybe you should invest some energy exploring the capitalizing aspect. Well. that’s what I think. I don’t begrudge rich people for being rich, I just crucify the rich over how they have capitalized on their opportunities to gain their rich status. The reality is there should be two main things people should talk about when debating the merits and flaws of capitalism:

1. Individuals who use the system to their objectives

2. Businesses, institutions, who manipulate the system to their objectives

I stated the two things that way to make a point. Capitalizing always has an objective. Capitalizing is using, manipulating, managing, abusing <whatever word you choose> the system to meet that objective. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out to the holier-than-thou Purpose folk that Purpose is an objective <within capitalism> and what really matters is how the business goes about the business of capitalizing, toward that objective, that really matters. As a follow-up to that sentence let’s also note that the individuals doing that how and the institutions modeling themselves to do that how are human beings thinking through the ‘how to capitalize’, i.e., its is not the system we should be redesigning, but rather have your design eyes on the humans working with the system.  What I am fairly confident in saying is that most companies have not come around to the idea that after years of making money from unethical, or hollow behavior, and unsustainable practices, and do not truly believe they have to dramatically change what they are doing to fit the demands of a ‘changing world’. Oh. They may change some of the words around the objectives and they may even make efforts to change the production & process aspects of doing business <digital transformation would be the prime example here> but basically their version of how to capitalize on market opportunities, extracting & exploiting what they need to attain desired growth objectives, will not dramatically change. That said. I imagine my larger point is that capitalism is capitalism, but capitalizing is never just capitalizing. What I just shared matters because capitalism has certainly vastly improved our lives and our means to live, but has also fed a certain human insatiability.

Which leads me to the capitalizing battle between self-interest and collective interest.

“The cold truth is that the individualist creed of everybody for himself and the devil take the hindmost is principally responsible for the distress which Western Civilization finds itself.”

Charles Beard in early 1900’s

Some guy named Sandel wrote “what money can’t buy … the moral limits of markets” after pointing out:

• the more things money can buy the more the lack of it hurts.
• buying and selling can change the way a good is perceived (he used “giving children money as incentive to read a book may make reading a chore rather than a simple pleasure”).

This all leads to an overall attitude that endless <and double digit> growth is essential to maintain and improve our quality of life. While I will not go into the detailed debate about growth, that attitude is simply not true <it is the typical efficiency versus effectiveness argument> with regard to reality. This is a perception/attitude problem.

Today’s capitalism has veered toward an individualistic orientation – a ‘me’ accumulation game. And this is where we inevitably dive into self-interest versus collective interest. It was Tocqueville who suggested America embodied “self-interest rightly understood”. I would argue that over time the tension between individual & collective interests has bifurcated into a warped either/or. What I mean by that is industrialization encouraged I’s (individuals) to begin believing the company <which is actually a profits-sustaining non-human entity> was the “I” and business took that idea and embedded it in a culture of “we are in this together” and encouraged everyone it was a zero-sum game business world. So “I” got warped and then it became a bit of a “business is war” world instead of a 4 Musketeer world < all for one and one for all> society. I am not going to suggest some utopian vision, but we are talking about capitalizing and in a capitalism world in which everyone was capitalizing the right way not only would there be profits for all <not equal, but for all> there would also be no such thing as systemic issues so there would be minimal poverty, no healthcare crisis, no retirement crisis, no senior care crisis, no childcare crisis. What I mean by that is part of capitalizing in a capitalism is the hard decisions and sacrifices that society, business and individuals have to make – not at the sacrifice of profits for Purpose, but rather because the collective good is in the best interest of the self-interest of the individual <ponder that thought for a bit>.

We need to make some of these hard decisions because capitalizing chases dollars, not needs, leading to a moral scarcity with an abundance of purchasable choices (some of need, many of want, and a large percentage with questionable real benefits). Yes. Capitalizing, limited in any morality of collective good, ceases to build some common values into everyday value and everyday lives and, in fact, diminishes little by little what is embedded with time and the system encourages corrosive individualistic orientated behavior where individual behavior is associated with individual advantage. This means in a zero-sum world society gets eroded one person capitalizing at a time. But there is even a worse consequence. The absence of social values makes it a transactional consumption world in which the only regulations/boundaries are ‘fairness consumption guidelines’ not actual control of the market with an eye toward societal needs/values. This means capitalizing is driven by institutions focused on matching ‘hedonic tendencies’ motivated by individual aims. To be clear, this does not mean individuals are immoral (or even amoral), but that in this capitalizing mindset morality is, for the most part, in the hands of the individual and not the one producing things for the individual – buyers choose, but sellers shape through choice architecture (with inordinate power). The issue here then becomes (a) the size of the institutions exhibit hollow moralistic behavior suffocates anything any one individual can choose and (b) historical hollow behavior embedded over time warps an individual’s view of what a moralistic choice is. And even then, I have to point out that the root of all these macro societal issues is that how one individual behaves matters. In fact, it is almost all that matters. So. If that is so, and the individuals have become more ignorant than the system itself, how does a market behave well? I am certainly not suggesting everyone is ignorant, but in an individualistic oriented society, attached to a zero-sum belief, the probability of individuals behaving less than optimal WITHIN the market increases significantly. So maybe rather than work the system, we should work the people.

Which leads me to today’s flawed version of capitalizing.

“Capitalizing” as a verb, has been hijacked by the fact Americans simultaneously lost the vision of a common greater good, the capacity to see the union as larger than the sum of its parts, and, the belief that a common good was what makes America great.  It is not a great leap for me to suggest that it seems like business is an age of cultural, moral and ideological vacuum <beyond making money/profit> which means that society has nothing to fall back on other than, well, money or accumulation to fill that void and, well, money chooses how it wants to live. As a consequence, instead of thinking of the future (with any meaningful thought) nothing exists or matters, but the present. This is a derivative of an individualistic ideology in that a collective cares about the future, but the individual focuses on optimizing/maximizing the present. The materialistic considerations of this existence provide, at best, tepid comfort and at worst, a cold hollow comfort. But that is where the state of ‘capitalizing’ is at the moment.

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‘In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream …’

It’s a ‘death trap,’ a ‘suicide rap.’  I want to guard your dreams and visions.”

Born to Run

Think about this generalization about the ‘winners’ in capitalism – they didn’t get that way from being generous, but via ruthlessness. In unrestrained capitalizing, competition is king, and to outdo your competitors and become the most powerful involves having the cash to invest in things like research and development, expansion, marketing, lobbying etc. as well as cutting corners, paying employees the minimum, maybe some stock manipulation and unethical behavior topped of legions of lawyers to push the absolute limits of what you can get away with to grow. Because if you don’t do it, someone else will and they become the ‘winner’ instead of you. I imagine I am suggesting that the business issue of the day is that there is no such thing as an ethical capitalizer. Yes. I know that is a generalization, but directionally speaking I feel fairly comfortable with that statement.

Which leads me to the verb: capitalizing.

Capitalizing is active, a coherent accumulation of actions. I have purposefully focused on individuals rather than the system, or system changes, because in this case the capitalizing system (the incentives, constructs, feedback loops, etc) is crafted by humans. So. Whatever people make they can unmake.

I admit this is tricky. One could argue we the individuals are stuck in a bigger system we can’t control nor really know how to navigate successfully. Basically, we are a reflection of the system institutions in society that create us or at minimum shape us. But I inevitably turned back to what Donella Meadows asked and limits of growth “How good a human nature does society permit?” to which I add “how good a human nature does business permit” for I believe if business permits the best of human nature, society will inevitably arc toward a better nature itself. That, in a nutshell, is about capitalizing in a capitalism.

My belief is that human nature is inherently being conscious of the collective, but the ‘capitalizing narrative’ suffocates that consciousness. So, I would argue this is the first step is effectively integrating self-interest into collective interest. If you are conscious, aware, of the whole – needs, wants, desires – you have the ability to insert your self-interests within the collective consciousness wherein you, and we, benefit. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, hearkening back to my earlier point #1, there are less than moral people who use this exact same equation to manipulate or exploit the conscious of the collective to solely benefit their individual self-interests in capitalizing. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out, hearkening back to point #2, there are businesses who will actively manage their ’capitalizing’ to suggest they are making the collective better when even if you squint you will never see the truth in that claim. Look. Capitalizing is inherently a void in which individuals and businesses fill because there is no rulebook <substantive ways of doing capitalizing the right way> for everyone other than maybe ethics, dignity, integrity and a number of things which we would like to be common but are actually ‘accepted across a spectrum of behavior’ items.  Vacuums, or voids, are doomed to be filled. This combined with the fact that extreme individualism comes at a cost to the collective (individuals owning and consuming more shit creates more bad shit … not just business revenue). So, the less meaning an individual has the more they will consume to fill that space (even though it isn’t an equal tradeoff). Meaning, while having an infinite value, only demands some finite things to fulfill, while consumption is theoretically infinite and the void it attempts to fill is infinite in that it never can attain the highest value. In fact, that unbalanced tug of war can often lead to creating a sense of meaning despite a massive amount of empty consumption as we pluck out some meaningful out of the numerous meaningless, i.e., we build a casket for humanity with splinters of meaningfulness. I say that because capitalizing demands good human nature in order to craft the consumption/meaningfulness ratio society needs and, yes, I am suggesting capitalizing can effectively ‘distribute’ meaning. If we don’t fix, or address that, it doesn’t matter if we embrace anti-capitalism or anti-growth or anti-anything that exists today. Ponder that.

In the end. The capitalism system is unquestioning. It encourages all individuals, not just the executives, to be equally ignorant, indifferent, relatively oblivious to the meaningful consequences other than what is measured and slow to not only embrace any real changes but even to have the curiosity to explore any. But here is the god news – humans. As humans move across the capitalizing landscape, they inevitably do, well, landscaping. The landscape may want to fight back, but humans being humans relentlessly change the landscape. This has exponential positive dynamics if we look at it in a non-zero-sum game way in that in that scenario we tend to cooperate more (that collective interest thing) and things get better through cooperation, in other words, 1 + 1 = 3 (cooperation also mitigates risks). This is an important thought to end with because the truth is capitalizing is at the core of growth for individuals (it creates the spaces for potential to progress), business (it creates the profits to reinvest and innovate), community & culture (smart expansion) and society (it creates the opportunities for betterment). The question isn’t whether we should be capitalizing, but rather how we elect to capitalize. Capitalizing, cooperation and collective interest. The answer resides somewhere in there. Ponder.

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author’s note: capitalizing effects everything from how an organization should be designed to how an organization defines its vision, from how communities interact, how laws and rules are constructed and even how societies exist, therefore, while this piece tugs at some of the foundational issues the real solutions will reside in the builders – the people who will build the framework for how we work and live.

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“And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank—or the Company—needs—wants—insists—must have—as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time.”

Steinbeck in Grapes of Wrath

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“A constant focus on trying to find ways to trick users into engaging with products rather than giving them a reason to.”

Ed Zitron

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I certainly have a dubious relationship with measurement. I tend to believe business measures more out of fear than anything else. That said. Not measuring anything is stupid. But today I am just talking about how measurement shapes society and how society goes about things and the danger to all of us being measured.

What do I mean?

This leads me, first, to discuss how measurement shapes awareness.

Society is strewn with perception-driven hues. The problem with that is we, the people, are increasingly embracing an increasingly finite view of everything. It was William Blake who said “if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees thro’ narrow chinks in his cavern.” Measurement narrows our sense gating channels that we naturally have so that our perceptions reflect a very small part of the world around us. This is where measurement comes into the picture. We tend to focus in on the small world necessary to achieve whatever particular measurement drives our awareness or drives something important to us. Yes. I am saying that measurement actually creates limitations. Basically, measurement can make a closed system of a naturally open system. Kind of a bounded rationality to bound awareness.

Measurement doesn’t allow the natural leaking of humanness <unpredictable & irrational that leads to innovation and improvements and learning> in that upsets the dream of symmetry, linear and expected. The truth is that this predictability is doomed to fail and there is an inevitable disruption to conventional wisdom if not the status quo in totality. Yeah. The measurement disrupts measurement. Despite the fact conventional approaches within a measured system, most often based on the linear analysis of cause and effect of ‘best practices’, will always fail and, yet, society continues to demand simplistic, more measurable, linear answers and solutions. Rather than embracing the unpredictability of a complex world and positively expecting continuous transformation <in a wide span of change or evolving process> society gets more and more anxious as symmetry is not only attacked, but broken. My point here is that not only is society’s awareness diminishing, but its desire for measurement is encouraging an overall “awareness objective blindness” shaping an increasingly fragile view of life and the world.

Which leads me to the second point that measurement actually shapes reality.

Counting makes things visible and visible things always count. What this eliminates is the fact that every new object clearly seen opens up new versions of perception to us. Instead, measurement is how continuity is built into the system which guides society. This also suggests the invisible really isn’t important. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that money is easily counted therefore money becomes the measure of all things but that is a different piece for a different day.

Measurement is inevitably crafted from history, for a future outcome, and history has an incredibly solid structure of which one component is memory. Institutional misguided purposes may reign, ineffective leadership may encourage chaos, but measurement withstands the all that attempts to destroy the historical structural arc. My point here is that ‘power’ <institutions and people in control> know this and use measurement for the purposes of controlling society/people. Just ponder how this idea trickles down to the existing realities in education, entertainment, sports, social media, business and even communities. For every angst people have about a society gone awry there is very likely a measurement behind it.

Which leads me back to how measurement can hollow out humanity as it shapes humans. Measurement and its methodology, and its cousin methodology, has become a mercenary for hire within society. What measurement also does is dehumanize outcomes and output. What I mean by that is while humans have an impact on what is actually measured, they appear to have little accountability for the impact of their actions in attaining that measurement. Measurements logic is simply the measurement itself. What is astonishing about our measurement systems is how little personal decency or ethics plays a role in the reasoning of measurement. Simply, measurement shapes outcomes not decency. In fact, measurement is detached from the “how” of the objective to be attained. In this measurement world creation may demand an architect or a professor or anyone with an obsession to the detail needed to accumulate what will be measured, but who that architect or professor actually is from an ethical perspective is significantly less important. This society will inevitably find experts in measurement, not experts in morality because the measurement itself IS the logic and reason. And while what I just shared may appear to harsh a critique, at minimum, measurement invariably rewards outcomes over any real common sense or even offers a head nod to proportional application of individual morality or even substantive meaning <the outcome is expected to make workers feel meaning>. In other words, to a point I will come back to later, there is a general lack of value of content over outcome.

The impact on the individual is captured in this thought from Robert Bly: “A person suffers if he or she is constantly being forced into the statistical mentality and away from the road of feeling.”

This is what a measurement society shapes. Suffering forced into a constrained mentality to meet a specific task rather than feeling for the opportunity and possibilities of emergence.

What this means is that it does not really matter whether some technology or ‘thing’ – project, initiative, task – preserves something or destroys something in order to meet a measurement. The measurement is the justification.

Which leads me to how measurement encourages us to ignore ‘content’ in the pursuit of what is measured.

While what should matter is what it is observed to do, what it creates or destroys in order to achieve something, the reality is society cares almost exclusively on the measurement objective. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that a society not wary of promises made to us by the designers or the ones with the material interest in the measurements is doomed to embrace a number of measures, and measurements, that will send us more and more paths hollow of moral and ethical behavior in our pursuit of ‘measurement success.’

The essence of learning whether human, machine or technology is developing the ability to detect, recognize and eventually reproduce patterns – not measurements. The outcomes are an outcome of the patterns. The patterns are important because they are the ‘content’ from which possibilities arise. Measurements minimizes possibilities while patterns offer trampolines for possibilities. This is especially true as systems in which society thrive become more and more complex and more and more interconnected where finite measurement may simultaneously encourage short term success AND failure as in the measured goal is reached at the expense of society’s benefit. Ponder that a bit. If society embraced ‘the content’ and sought out patterns, inevitably people, and networks of people, would stop seeking to meet specific measurements, but rather seek to optimize moments and situations within a construct of a grander positive vision. It is through this vision that the individual activity actually acquires the ability to optimize the gradients of optimal behavior/actions/morality to progress in value creation (for the task or for the organization/business or for society) which may, or may not, meet some specific measurement.

“The purpose of a system is what it does.”

Stafford Beer

Which leads me to the larger crisis of how measurement has infiltrated society.

A measurement crisis occurs when society loses touch with reality, and society, because it has institutionalized a systematically distorted measurement infrastructure. The measuring, as a focus, absolves people of morality and humanity. Regardless of the need for deep structural transformation the reality is measurement ricochets between the system, people’s lives business, social reality and society. All of this measurement tends to address the process of production or service delivery thereby reducing standards for the procedures and practices of business/everything by establishing norms for their social patterns through numbers and measurement and even identifying structure. Quality of actions and behaviors arc toward standardization and measurement of process and not the content. This spawns a society built around obsessive data gathering and metrics which are then used to objectively measure what is called quality and ensure it is being delivered. This is simply a race to mediocrity from not only a process standpoint but also a hollowing out of human, and humanity, substantiveness. This does doesn’t mean measurement has doesn’t have value just that measurement can be structural cages <built by people in power seeking to maintain power over>. The reality is measurements are, fundamentally, structures. Measurement practices enact realities. They serve as lenses and function to represent aspects of the world in order to garner some consensus and thereby shaping individual and collective perceptions of reality. They can also function as technologies and tools to enable the construction of new realities – either functionally or socially. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that measurement is intrinsically related to power and control. Those who have the power to create and institutionalize measures and standards control the culture the behaviors and, overall, society. This is in part because standards and measures are unavoidably normative. They say how things ought to be how practices and products and people should look and behave. This means as a consequence instituting measurement is an act of power because doing so means exercising control over people and things. The truth is people humans are controlled through measures and standards. Generally speaking, we like them. Not only do they help us understand our perceptions of reality but they also help us reflect in terms of our endeavors and their value or maybe what is valued by the system itself. Which leads me to measurement induces reflection. We see ourselves through our measures and standards. We are what we measure. The danger in this is when measurement encourages society to lose touch with reality because it is institutionalized a systematically distorted measurement infrastructure. What I mean by that is measurement becomes addictive to those seeking power, and control, and mathematics – the foundation of any measurement – divorces behavior from the questions of morality and integrity which SHOULD be the at the core of the justification for any behavior – measurable or not. measurement simply becomes the guardian of bad ideas and bad behavior. Measurement simply creates a certain voraciousness without thought.

“…the holy men sat in an atmosphere reeking of antiquity, so thick with the dust of ages that you can’t see through it–nor can they.”

Gertrude Bell

This means societies, or maybe more distressingly, people with ideologies, intoxicated by a particular theory of how things should be will usually spawn a system of false measures. They will use measurement to trick people into not only doing things but actually believing that is what ‘reality’ is supposed to be. Measurement instruments and techniques will be built that appear to deal in realities, but instead deal and what is wished for and desired by the institution <or people in power> itself thereby simply becoming control mechanisms. The measurements are used as truncated representations of the complex dynamic world so that people can take them as sufficient understanding of reality when they are in fact insufficient and often misleading. This is worse than flying blind. It is flying blind when you think you are seeing clearly. In harsh terms this suggests designing people through the engineering or building of behavior and mindsets – through measurement. It suggests that the growth processes of individuals, functionally and psychologically, and society in totality, as things of manipulation to be worked on and shaped just as you would the needs and the objectives of a business.

Harshly, this treats society under the guise of “if you do not measure it, you cannot monetize it and if you cannot monetize something then you cannot technically see if an economic investment has worked.” This summarizes the main problem facing, well, everything with regard to investment in anything <including humans and humanity> that everything is required demonstrate that money is well spent.

“Man is a rationalizing animal not a rational one.”

Robert Heinlein

Which leads me to why measurement is so appealing.

It constrains time into a finitely recognizable space. Or maybe differently said it creates a finite space into which we can cram recognizable things. Yes. It’s a comfort zone.

So, yes, time is now a space. Technology, through digital destruction of normal physical presence means that culture is now organized temporally. Social media feeds’ transition from chronological to algorithmic sorting was a manipulation of time and relevance, now primarily determined by someone else, is now the main criteria for occupying valuable real estate in your attention field. And while recency, the freshest information gets priority, plays a role this is where measurement steps in. All information, however significant, must eventually be pushed aside to make room for the new but measurement actually defines significance <even if it is not significant>. This means we tend to jump onto the first informational life raft that can contribute to attaining the measurement objective when feel like we are we drowning in all this information <which is almost all the time>. Technology, as Marshall McLuhan suggested, was an extension of the body. But the corollary is that the body can only extend so far and technology can also demand the amputation of something, in this case, several functions – mental as well as tasks – simply to survive in this environment or, as a corollary, to thrive in whatever measurement zone that exists.

This doesn’t mean we, as individuals, cannot control the rearrangement of functions, but we would be lying to ourselves if we didn’t note the rearrangement arises from the environment/context itself all driven by some measurement we have agreed to. I say this because typical measurement in society actually constrains the ability to rearrange despite whatever ‘instructions’ the environment may provide.

Which leads me to end with the point remains that not only does measurement shape society, but there will be people who actively seek to construct that shaping.

To be clear. There is no political message lurking in that sentence. Societal signals are apolitical and non-ideological therefore measurements are more about simply managing awareness and shaping reality based on, mostly, whatever warped view we may have on what is needed for, or what we perceive is the best for, the future <all based on a very finite view as noted at the beginning of this piece>.

Our society is so deeply shaped by metrics we actually have begun not only navigating everything by measurement, but defining success by the metrics, i.e., we signal and then measure against that signal. The most likes, the most sales, the most growth, the most things, the most followed, all define how we score each other as well as what we do. I would also note that not only do they shape, but they help define the pace and cadence of how we navigate life. Metrics can speed up, slow down, and simplify not only decisions, but decision-making — all of which are the building blocks for shaping society. The metrics create the definitions for all of this and definitions are simple yet central reflections of society so, yes, measurements are de facto definitions. And in this danger lurks. Measurements, just as designed systems tend to be, are constructed from an assumption of correctness. They are built backwards from this assumption. The danger lurks within the fact that the structure, whatever it may be, to meet the measurement goals is unable to assimilate any anomalies or emergent aspects, no matter how positive they could contribute towards an unmeasured success, because they would not assist in reaching the measurement objective. Yeah. This also means that imagination is sacrificed at the altar of a solid stone construct of measurement.

We use ranking and scores to orient ourselves, but performance metrics are also a filter through which we experience the world and our position within it. They are a measuring stick that we use to evaluate and judge ourselves and others. To be clear. We are doing this not because we, society, is stupid but rather more out of survival instincts. Almost everyone perceives the world becoming more and more complex and uncertain therefore our natural tendency is to embrace measurements as they encourage a perception of some level of certainty. They are grips to hold onto. The danger is that much of that measurement is not only ‘future flawed’ <not a particularly useful contributor to a better future>, but superficial therefore the meaning we give to the world is filtered through a massive measured popularity contest in which everyone participates, but the prize is unclear. Ponder because we are the ones being measured and there is someone deciding what should be measured and not all measurement will shape the society we want.

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“We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears.”

François de La Rochefoucauld

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In an era when we appear to be facing an increasingly uncertain and complex economic future, in this wacky business world in which technology seems to becoming the new ‘labor’ for business productivity <please note I am not suggesting technology is reducing ‘people jobs’ because it is not … simply shifting them>, the one certainty is that we have become the outcome business generation.

I say that to begin a business rant about how I believe our future resides in having every young person finding the skills to be successful <and generate results>, but also to develop their own character <and resilience to manage their generation’s version of business> AND have them reshape the current business world.

I say that because we are an increasingly outcome oriented world and focus.

In fact it may be the sole ‘go to’ focus and criteria for success. At least that is the current business environment and current business leadership focus.

How did we get to this place?

How did we create this misguided direction young people focus on <and business>?

How did we come so far down this path seemingly on misperceptions?

Let me suggest 3 things on how we got to this outcome generation business model:

–          Fear <performance according to>

–          Boomers <older people> – beliefs & attitudes

–          Boomers <older people>- perceptions

First. Fear.

Businesses are promising hope and a full business future to everyone and anyone interviewing and showing interest in walking thru their doors. But. Once in? It becomes performance based on fear. What I mean by that is business institutions , as soon as they put you in a position with some responsibilities will immediately tie you to some accountability for outcomes, therefore, creating a fear of not generating outcome & results. At least that is the inevitable leadership message.

Someone can put a positive spin on ‘we believe in business success’ or ‘results are the ultimate measure of effective skills’ or even ‘your ability to meet the outcome objectives despite such obstacles shows real character’, but, in the end it comes down to fear management.

Second. This beliefs and attitudes thing.

We current older folk grew up in a business environment in which the typical overly successful ambitious individual was always one who always seemed to desire what was just out of reach and go to almost any length to get what they thought they deserved often believing they were not only above everyone else, but also above the common rules <and in some cases … above law itself or some bent version of law>.

That was an attitude and a belief. A broad playing field of ‘do whatever it takes’ mentality.

That was a belief in results & outcome as proof of success. And it has bled into how we older folk think about how to live our lives in general. Shit. Even “the Secret” has embraced outcome <therefore we have gobs of people in the midst of life convinced the Secret to Life can be found in focusing on outcomes>.

Anyway.

Because we know this ‘secret’, i.e., this attitude/belief inevitably created a misperception among older folk that the current generation feels they deserve the same ‘outcome success’ but without the work <when the reality is they don’t want what we have>.

Well.

Not exactly.

Of course when in business you want business success. And the young are certainly willing to work for it, but they would just prefer getting it differently.

Regardless.

My generation’s <older> management style has beget its own uncomfortable outcome. A younger generation basically unhappy <or constantly chafing more so than usual in past generations> which, in my opinion, has fed into some fairly dismal employee engagement numbers.

I also believe that it’s possible to become so focused on the process of reaching our old folk business goals, our desired <or demanded> outcomes, that we not only lose sight of some of the other important things, in other words, ‘objective blindness.’

We forget that ‘outcomes’ are not the end all be all.

We forget ‘winning’ in business can come in different sizes and shapes.

Of course, making some sacrifices to achieve results is expected. There is always a price to pay to get where you want to go.

But let’s be clear. Young people are NOT taking for granted all the ‘good things’ we have going for us now, but rather they are challenging the journey we took to get the ‘good things’ and outcomes. They not only second guess our ability to balance ‘whatever it takes’, but they second guess our moral compass. And they are certainly second guessing ‘do what it takes to win’ mentality.

They also certainly second guess our obsession with time.

Why?

Maybe they have watched us older folk for so long endlessly obsessing and endlessly cycling through some constantly changing to-do list or watching us spending gobs of time simply arranging and rearranging a schedule <not doing … just planning on doing> or watching us wishing throughout the day <out loud most of the time> that ‘if there were only more time’ only to find out that at the end of the day … well … you were at the end of the day.

Frankly.

Old people are stubbornly holding on to the past attitudes and it is negatively affecting our future. Not only are we creating an outcome skewed generation, but also one driven by fear <of not generating outcomes or else> and ultimately they are becoming increasingly disengaged <they just don’t want to play our game>.

By the way, this outcome mentality the older generation has, and is implementing even now, is impacting kids even before they get to the workplace <which will inevitably bleed into work>.  Here is an example:

Five students were shadowed during a year of high school. The students attended a high school where 95% of its graduates attend college. The students in this book were forced to cheat, act different, etc. in the pursuit of high grades. The author of the study mainly addresses the “force” as coming from the inadequately structured school system, family, and in the end, America itself.

In looking for some insight from students regarding how school can be better a few of the students had some respectable suggestions such as fostering student engagement by allowing students to pursue topics that actually interested them and connected to other courses as well.

Ok. On the more positive side … we can also impact our children in good ways:

In a classic experiment, the psychologist J. Philippe Rushton gave 140 elementary- and middle-school-age children tokens for winning a game, which they could keep entirely or donate some to a child in poverty. They first watched a teacher figure play the game either selfishly or generously, and then preach to them the value of taking, giving or neither. The adult’s influence was significant: Actions spoke louder than words. When the adult behaved selfishly, children followed suit. The words didn’t make much difference — children gave fewer tokens after observing the adult’s selfish actions, regardless of whether the adult verbally advocated selfishness or generosity. When the adult acted generously, students gave the same amount whether generosity was preached or not — they donated 85 percent more than the norm in both cases. When the adult preached selfishness, even after the adult acted generously, the students still gave 49 percent more than the norm. Children learn generosity not by listening to what their role models say, but by observing what they do.

Suffice it it say this outcome mentality focus is affecting our youth’s education. Our school systems are increasingly not really places that foster learning <which has a disturbing ironic side to it> mainly because it is being built as a reflection of America’s own stressed out, materialistic, and results <test scores> culture. Schools are so worried about their outcomes, mostly because it is tied to funding, they have begin gaming student outcomes <or gaming the students so they achieve desired outcomes> and the real valuable student outcomes, like good citizens well trained for a variety of possible careers, is being ignored.

Third. This overarching perception about younger people by us older business folk.

Let’s call this attitudes towards work and work ethic. The perceived decline in work ethic is perhaps one of the major contributors of generational conflicts

In the workplace older employees complain that younger workers are uncommitted to their jobs and work only the required hours and little more.

Conversely, Boomers may be workaholics and reportedly started the trend <the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Office of Diversity, 2006> coming in on the heels of those before who have been characterized as the most hardworking generation <Jenkins, 2007>. Regardless … the prevailing stereotype is that younger workers do not work as hard as older workers do:

<note: while this specific research is slightly dated I am using it because it is the best written reflection of more recent research I have reviewed>

Whether the younger generations do not work as hard as previous ones is debatable.

A cross sectional comparison of 27 to 40 year olds versus 41 to 65 year olds in 1974 and 1999 indicated that both age groups felt that it was less important that a worker feel a sense of pride in one’s work in 1999 than in 1974. In both age groups, work values among managers declined between 1974 and 1999 (Smola & Sutton, 2002). Both age groups were also less likely in 1999 to indicate that they believed that how a person did his or her job was indicative of this individual’s worth. In 1999, both age groups were also less likely to believe that work should be an important part of life or working hard made one a better person (Smola & Sutton, 2002). Furthermore, older employees had a less idealized view of work than younger workers did.

Indeed, it was postulated that after witnessing the lack of employer loyalty toward employees, the latter consequently developed a less idealized view of work. Other sources of evidence do not support the claim that there is a decline in work ethics among younger generations.

For instance, Tang and Tzeng (1992) found that as age increased, reported work ethic decreased, indicating that younger workers reported higher work ethics than older workers.

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Once again, I tend to believe most issues in today’s workplace have nothing to do with young people or any skills they may or may not have, it is more about the older folk and their attitudes and behavior and perceptions. And because of that, circling back to the beginning of this piece, we promise one thing and manage to another.

Look.

We’ve all been the givers and receivers of broken promises. In life and in business no one can say that they haven’t let someone down. But this ‘promise one thing manage to another’ is important. And I don’t even believe most older managers even recognize they are breaking promises.

And it not only bleeds into the work place attitudes & culture, but it bleeds the organization of its lifeblood.

Work ethic is a tricky thing to discuss.

Research has shown that work ethic varies with education level, whether a person works full-time or part-time, income level and marital status.  The lower the level of education of an employee, the higher their work ethic has been found to be. People with full-time jobs were found to be less likely to endorse a protestant work ethic than people with part-time jobs; and people with low incomes and those who were married tended to report stronger protestant work ethic (Tang and Tzeng, 1992).

The perception of how hard one works may also be associated with how individuals themselves approach tasks as well.  For instance, boomers have often been characterized as being process-oriented, while younger generations, as being results-focused, irrespective of where and when the task is done.

While younger workers focus on high productivity, they may be happier with the flexibility of completing a task at their own pace and managing their own time, as long as they get the job done right and by the deadline.

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So … while we wring our hands and bitch & moan about ‘these young people today’ with other older business folk, if we could keep our pie holes shut for a minute or two and listen … REALLY listen, we could hear the dismay and despairs of the fall of their dreams.

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

“From where you are you can hear their dreams. The dismays and despairs and flight and fall and big seas of their dreams.”

Dylan Thomas

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

We older folk <managers & leaders & parents> are so focused on outcome that we are losing sight of our future generation aspirations, hopes & dreams. Even on a practical sense of those words.

If you look at the typical path of life for most people, maybe about 90% of the journey is spent working toward achieving various goals and only maybe10% in the actual results <and I am most likely skewing the results number high>.

Yet.

In the business world we invest 90% of our energy focused on result analysis <and rewards & such> and only 10% on the journey. And … please … please don’t tell me this doesn’t affect how the young perceive how things should be done <or that it is ‘good lessons for them to learn’>.

Because we are teaching them not only the wrong lessons but also ones they do not believe in. and the risks are high <for our future> By the way … our outcome focus also further widens the gap between the haves and the have nots … for different reasons:

–           outcome orientation for middle/upper class means ‘do whatever it takes’ to achieve outcome type attitudes … that includes bending the rules, cheating & plagiarism <at its worst> or simple manipulation of the system to my benefit at its best …

–          outcome orientation for lower middle/lower class means ‘give up’ <lose hope> because (a) they do not have the resources to compete with middle/upper and (b) they have an inherently lower probability of attaining the success middle/upper does so why put the energy in <and put the energy elsewhere instead>.

But that is a separate rant.

Anyway.

Research is loud and clear. If you don’t model values <or something other than outcome>, verbalizing, even enthusiastically or passionately, may not help in the short run. And in the long run verbalizing is less effective than doing while saying nothing at all.

People often believe that character causes action … well … when it comes to producing a young moral business generation we need to remember that action also shapes character. Our behavior, this relentless pursuit of outcome & results, builds or unbuilds the next business generation.

In the end.

This ends up being a large complex issue of changing attitudes & behaviors … of older business people not younger business people. Or maybe even on a larger scale … older people and not younger people.

This also ends up meaning some troubling self reflection.

Maybe all of us older folk need to take a step back and as the psychologist Karl Weick says:

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

“How can I know who I am until I see what I do? How can I know what I value until I see where I go?”

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

Maybe the better question is:

“how often do I make promises on hope … and manage behavior by fear?”

We created this outcome generation and some of us cannot wait to ‘unmake it’ so that young people don’t live in constant fear of “am I generating outcomes” and instead build businesses of substance & value beyond simple transactions & outcomes. Ponder.

====

“If you think the worst and get the worst, you suffer twice.”

Loretta LaRoche

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“We all have one foot in a fairytale, and the other in the abyss.”

Paulo Coelho

====

“Awfulizing and catastrophizing,” I believe is a phrase Loretta LaRoche coined in a Tedtalk. The idea is that our inner dialogue has a nasty habit of elevating events, spanning the truly inconsequential to the truly consequential, to stress inducing drama levels. Inevitably this increases negative feelings and diminishes not only positive feelings but, maybe more importantly, positive events.

Which leads me to today’s world.

If you are not careful, especially if you are active on social media, to think everything is awful and each individual event is a catastrophe of epic proportions.

I am not suggesting this is easy. There are real issues and some really awful events, but even the most simplistic looking things are challenging to think through because of their dimensions. The headlines capture the ‘catastrophe’, but while events may seem fairly awful and unsettling, we have to weave our way through the things that are a bit more difficult to see and some of the underlying truths.

It is only then that we can get clear sight of the present and reality. This is important because if we only see things as awful or a catastrophe not only will our attitudes be driven by that, but also our solutions. At its worst people will throw up their hands and give up. This translates into thoughts like “we are so divided, why not just split the country up so likeminded people can live together.” I think even the person who brought it up realized it wasn’t really a solution, but it is also a sign of the depth of awfulizing and catastrophizing seeping into the general gestalt of society. While I have sought to discuss this gestalt feeling as a ‘lost grand narrative’ the truth is there is an asymmetry between minority opinions/power and majority opinions/power. The majority opinion (wants) feels like everything is awful because the minority opinions are using disproportionate power to put their opinions into control actions for the whole. This asymmetry is like living in a liminal space – a transition as it were.

Which leads me to say that every transition has its own singular issues.

Every situation has its own singular issues. And, let’s be clear, every one of those situations has singular problems. We should all recognize that in the overall life cycle of societal problems and opportunities, practical and possibilities, hope & despair, heroes & villains, will appear in different forms – all with the intent to either further our ambitions or steal our ambitions.

This is not cynical, this is … uhm … reality

And within that reality someone has to navigate pragmatism and idealism mostly by assessing the problems, or obstacles, to your ambition.

Harping on whatever you view as awful or a catastrophe doesn’t really get you anywhere.

They are what they are.

Which leads me to say I could also argue that arguing over idealistic ideas and vision without admitting some pragmatism and practicality doesn’t really get you anywhere.

In fact, I could argue if you don’t everything will feel awful and most things will appear to be a catastrophe. It is not a binary discussion nor are pragmatism and possibilities, idealism and practical, are mutually exclusive.

====

“Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.”

John Galsworthy

===

Look. We all hate cynicism, but far too often we confuse it with pragmatism and practicality. I would also suggest we all get tired of pragmatism because, well, far too often it sounds small.

But I would also point out that we all not only get tired, but absolutely unequivocally hate, false hope and unrealized idealism mainly because it forces us into an awfulizing & catastrophizing mindset. This happens because “large” unrealized equals zero, nothing, nada. People don’t like a zero, nothing, nada no matter how large the zero, nothing, nada is.

Neither option, looked upon in isolation, is attractive or likeable.

On our good days we do our best to walk the tight rope. We sit down and assess what we have, assess what we could have, assess resources, money, whatever, and figure out, pragmatically, how to get going doing what needs to be done so it doesn’t feel awful or a catastrophe.

We know we may not always get it right and we may not always get done whatever is needed to get done to alleviate the problems, or all the problems, that exist in the here and now. But I would point out that, realistically, you can never alleviate all problems and that problems exist, contextually, no matter if an idealist or a realist, a pragmatist or a ‘possibilities driven’, a hope or a practical mindset steps in. You take a stand against “awful” and realize the only constant is that problems existed to be addressed, exist to address and will exist to address all to eventually be solved ONLY if both idealism & pragmatism and possibilities & the practical are embraced. The idealism is the spark of possibilities and imagination while the pragmatism stops you from simply being a ‘dreamer’ or wasting resources tilting at windmills.

==========

“Maybe we feel empty because we leave pieces of ourselves in everything we used to love.”

R. M. Drake

Which leads me to catalyst for good.

There is a huge chasm between awful and good and life, itself, is simultaneously wonderfully good and horribly bad. And even while I believe the arc of life bends toward the good, I also believe that arc is only enabled by people. Life, society, business, kindness, even hate, is fueled by catalysts. The transformation, managing the liminal space, of anything is dependent upon specific catalysts – or let’s call them enzymes. These enzymes are catalysts that remove barriers, speed things up just a bit (or a lot) and unlock the embedded potential for, well, good … not awful. The beauty of catalysts is that they do their work without diminishing themselves meaning that their process, their work, can be repeated again and again. This is the heartbeat of being a catalyst for good. The other beauty of being a catalyst is that the goodness binds so that it can choose its own path even without you having to tag along. Good, in and of itself, is a traveling enzyme and the binding process, once again, repeats itself over and over. The transformation, the arc of good as it were, happens bit by bit. An additional consequence is a sense of belonging. While you may have been the catalyst for good that enzyme is shareable to a point where good belongs to everyone. It makes it easy to stay in good, rather than the awful, and cultivates paths easier for others to travel and easier for everyone to embrace. I believe the future is always defined by the value you, or people, bring to others. Good is additive, awful is subtractive. So maybe instead of awfulizing and catastrophizing, if we believe in unifying around good, we can see the future we desire and begin shaping it not by accepting the awful, but purposefully making it less awful. Ponder.

With all the noise and headlines about “the new normal” or “there is no going back to the normal I would remind everyone that Normalcy is functional. That doesn’t sound flashy nor does it sound defendable or even worthy of defending. In fact. It almost sounds like we should be hungrily scanning about for some ‘new normal.’

That said. “Normal” may not be greatly functional nor does it means there isn’t any dysfunctionality but, in general, it is a mix of good and bad and average in which the majority of people accept it as just part of what Life is supposed to be like. In other words. Everything just seems like it is in its place. So. For the most part most people do not see any reason to raise their voices complaining nor do they sing out loud praises. It is what it is and, well, silence about it seems the order of the day.

That’s why when someone starts yelling about shit most of us just find it annoying, and ignore it. And that’s why when the everyday normal gets shaken like an etch-a-sketch we not only find it annoying but uncomfortable.

Note: To be clear. Normal can mask a shitload of issues – good & bad. Inequality, the net positives of globalization & the negatives. The net positives of regulations & the negative of overregulation. The maddening underbelly of individual responsibility (the narrative that if everyone works hard they will be successful).

Regardless. This is where normal enters into a danger zone and its good aspects get threatened. The shouting veers into the conspiracies, the fringe and the wacky almost suggesting the normal is the abnormal and the abnormal should be considered normal. All of a sudden, in its silence, normal becomes complicit to the abnormal and, worse, normal becomes the “them” in an us-versus-them narrative.

Look.

I know a shitload of people will suggest that ‘normal’ is defined by the individual and how they view life but, in general, at one end of the  ‘how to live your life’ spectrum is wacko eccentric person and the other end is bland milquetoast-boring-to-tears person.

Most of us reside somewhere in the middle of all that.

I tend to believe the problem is in how we most often have this discussion. When we talk about living a ‘normal’ life it almost seems destined for some boredom or stagnancy or even “rut-like features” and certainly when you decide to sit back with some self-reflection, uhm …, it will most likely be generously dipped in some disappointment. On the other hand, it seems like choosing to live an ‘anything but normal’ life it almost seems destined for some sanity challenges and certainly some self-reflection generously dipped in some discouragement.

Yikes. So your choice is either disappointment, or discouragement, all wrapped up in a feeling of some injustice occurring.

Yeah. All of a sudden normal is painted in a broad brush of injustice. And it is within that ‘injustice’ in which normal’s silence is damned because the angry, the ones who see conspiracies somewhere (in the cracks of normal) which create their sense of injustice – are loud. They shout. They can be rough around the edges supported by some slick few who egg them on. And they are not silent.

The unsilent slip into the cracks of good normal and pry open some of the bad normal and take advantage. They use slivers of truth (injustice), tack on a fact or two and all of a sudden they hold up a new new normal for people to consider. And, if you are not paying attention (or if normal remains silent), all of a sudden the lone loud voice is deemed worthy of consideration.

This is not only crazy, it dangerous.

Yeah. Sometimes the shit you do may be out of the mainstream, but 99% of the time it is not unacceptable to everyone. It is just is not the normal everyday 100% of the time shit people see or hear.

Whether you like it or not … suggesting ‘normal’ is completely self-defined is … well … stupid.

Yes. You should have your own way of seeing the world and the life you’re living.

Yes. You should feel it is normal <as long as it is not a ‘statement’ but rather a natural extension of your ‘self’>.

Yes. You should accept the idea that other people may feel differently about your version of normal.

All that said here is where I think normal and abnormal go into conflict.

Yes. You should understand that normal is actually defined by some standard operating procedures of the people, society & culture as a whole.

And, no, I am not suggesting some of the wacky crap society thrusts upon an individual <society tells me how I should be stuff>, but rather the fact cultures, civilizations in a broader perspective, define some accepted rules of behavior – some “what I should do” stuff.

Let’s call them ‘core life action basics.’ These are some normal principles which everyone should do and think in a normal day and a normal life.

Here is what I believe.

The good news for people who balk at ‘normal.’ The great thing about culture is it tends to give an individual a lot of room to expand upon these things. You can go about your life wearing whatever clothes you want and saying a bunch of different words as personal expression beyond the core. I call that ‘window dressing stuff.’ In other words, I can dress up my core ‘normality crap’ in pretty much anything I want and express it with almost any words I want.

The trouble occurs mostly around the fact that some individuals infringe upon the core, change the core and sometimes do things which do not meet what most people would accept as accepted normal behavior.

Here is not just a Life truth, but a civilization truth: a culture cannot permit that ‘abnormal normal’ to become normalized simply because they are shouting about some claimed injustice. While we often suggest it takes courage to express yourself in some ‘not-so-normal’ ways it actually takes even more courage to defend core normality. In other words. Sometimes normal demands NOT being silent.

When it comes to this topic the bravest people in the world are not the ones who stand out through self-expression of self-identity, even if that identity is ‘not the normal’, but rather the people who unflinchingly defend normal core beliefs, principles & behaviors and unflinchingly express these ‘normal’ ideas.

I imagine the problem is that those people are not interesting enough to make splashy headlines nor are they boring enough to be masticated for being milquetoast. And, yet, they were the bravest of us all. They chose to be normal & defend the good found within normal and fought relentlessly for both.

In the end.

Normalcy is silent at the moment. Why should it speak? It is what it is. Yet. In a world in which many of the advocates for abnormal, the fringe, the conspiracies, the “new normal”, are shouting at the top of their lungs, can normal remain silent? Can normal AFFORD to be silent? I do not believe it can.

Yes. Some things do need to be fixed. Yes. Some things need to be designed better (how we work, how society interacts, how globalization works, etc). But to suggest that ‘normal’ is bad in & of itself is wrong. Normal offers, well, sanity, some consistency, threads of functionality. Maybe we just need to be optimizing normal and not seeking some ‘new normal.’

Anyway.

We need not always shout, but, normal needs to defend itself. It is time for normal to start fighting back. It is time for normal to not be silent.

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

Author’s note:

My pinned tweet, almost from day one I returned to twitter in 2016, is “In this time, at this place, I will be defined”.

At that moment I felt like we were at a ‘tide in the affairs of men’ and being silent was not an option. My view has not changed at all; however, my attention has been drawn toward, well, normalcy. While I believe Trump is malignant to democracy, freedom and being enlightened (he espouses ignorance) his greater malignancy is toward normal. He seems to thrive on suggesting normal, everything that exists within it presently, is bad and ‘normal’ should be defined through isolationism and a 1950’s lens. Tack on a pandemic in which “how one normally lives & works a normal day” has been unbundled and Normal’s narrative has been jumbled. I say all that because maybe “I will be defined” by how I best define what is a good normal and what we should be doing to fix the bad normal.

Ponder that.

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

“You’ve got to do what’s right, or what you think is right.

And you’ve got to make tough decisions.

And you’ve got to be willing to take on your friends when you disagree with them.”

Antonio Villaraigosa

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“Government should make tough decisions in the larger national interests, even if it upsets the people.”

Sharad Pawar

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For years the debate around women’s reproductive rights has always seemed to be focused on Planned Parenthood. In my mind it was easier for the anti-abortion people to have a “specific murderer” for which they could point to in a slightly warped ‘pro-life’ stance. Year after year planned parenthood was demonized to talk about abortion. Year after year women’s reproductive rights were dumbed down to a variety of simplistic soundbites culminating in “murder.” Of course it is not right. The medical community does not kill people, even babies, because it would go against an oath they sign up for when they become doctors. Therein lies the ‘big lie’ in murder – viability, as accepted by the medical community, is usually somewhere between 21 and 24 weeks <viability means the life within the woman can exist outside the mother as a human being>. Anything before is not “murder”, in a physical sense, and the medical community knows this. Now. If a religious person seeks to suggest it may be ‘murdering a soul’, well, that is a religious stance – a viable stance depending on where you stand – but the Constitution clearly states a separation between church and state as well as freedom to worship what you want <which means what you worship should not dictate what i worship>. I don’t begrudge any person their faith and the beliefs that go along with that particular faith, what I balk at is when that faith infringes upon my life in some way. And I imagine women seeking reproductive rights feel that way also.

Anyway. I will admit.

I don’t really ‘get’ why there is so much animus toward Planned Parenthood other than the fact a minority-sized group of people have demonized them for one specific aspect of the services they provide.

Yeah.

I fully understand the anti-abortion viewpoint and I certainly respect it. But there seems to be a level of hate towards Planned Parenthood that almost stuns me on occasion.

But what really stuns me?

I also don’t really ‘get’ why men are dictating women’s health decisions.

Anyway.

I don’t want to get into a pro choice/anti abortion debate with anyone.

But I do not believe it is healthy for America to continuously, year after year, fight over this issue. Not only is it unhealthy from a divisive rhetoric standpoint … it is an expensive debate.

Expensive?

Despite the fact that abortion is/was legal every year every state seems to be fighting abortion.

Alabama $1.7 million in attorney fees and costs for anti abortion. One year.

Wisconsin $1.8 million in attorney fees and costs for anti-abortion. One year.

Texas $1 million … just in their own attorney fees defending anti-abortion restrictions. One year.

Indiana <when Pence was governor> over $1.4 million in attorney fees and costs for anti-abortion. One year.

North Carolina spent millions <too many over the years to count>.

In one year add in the dozens of $150,000 cases where states pay individual health clinic reparations.

There are no published numbers for how much money the people who actually defend what is already legal are spending, but let’s assume it is millions of dollars and with yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court to dismantle a federal reproductive right standard we can assume any number I am suggesting now will balloon to astounding heights.

Well.

What a waste.

What a waste of money and time and energy.

It’s not like that money has no better purpose <education, infrastructure, community growth>.

It’s not like that time has no better purpose < education, infrastructure, community growth>.

This is just not a good thing. And while it is a particularly not good thing for women, its not good for the country.

So.

I have a proposal for America.

Let’s solve it.

Solve it once and for all.

Sure. The supreme court did but, well, for god’s sake that’s just 5 people. The people should be able to have their say … every single one <whether you are a registered voter or not>.

Let’s have a one time vote.

Set aside one week in … well … let’s say August <I don’t really care when I just chose that month>.

And America votes.

And once the vote is in … it is done.

And maybe to really make sure it is ‘a done discussion’, i.e., to make it truly a convincing decision, let’s make it 60.1% as the standard the vote needs to meet.

Yeah.

I sit down Planned Parenthood and all pro choice people on one side of the table and all the anti-abortion people on the other side and say “I respect your views but once the vote is in you just shut up and live with what the majority of people have decided.”

Sure.

Someone is gonna be pissed … and maybe you say to them … okay … if the vote ends up less than 2/3rds one way than we can have another vote in … well … lets say 2 years from now.

But until then you just shut up and let’s get on with getting on <and let’s make sure the vote offers some additional “rules & guidelines”, exception/viability weeks/etc, so we don’t go back into the whole “fringe arguments doom loop”>.

Oh.

About that “every single person “vote thing I mentioned.

What I really meant was ONLY women vote <I can hear gobs of self righteous white men yelling now>.

It is a woman’s body.

Let the women of America choose.

I am no politician but it seems to me given all the time & money & energy we have invested arguing over abortion rights and planned parenthood that investing in a one-time vote just for women and let them direct the final decision once and for all <and stop having old white men shouting out absurd thoughts with regard to a woman’s body & choice> seems reasonable.

Personally I feel I have no right to be involved in a woman’s choice unless I am personally involved and even then my involvement should be in dialogue and support of a women’s choice. I want a woman to be able to make a choice and if I have been involved in the creation of the potential human I wouldn’t mind participating in the decision — but — ultimately it is a woman’s body and a woman’s choice.

Personally I don’t really see how anyone can argue with that <but I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer>.

Personally I don’t see how having this discussion on an ongoing basis is good for America. I am a business person and about the only business learning I can offer in this very personal decision is that not making a clear decision and living with that murky decision is possibly one of the worst things an organization can do. I have seen how it bogs a good organization down.

The hard decisions & choices are … well … hard.

But in business, once decisions are made … they are made, in order to have progress you need to move on.

It is time to move on from this discussion as a society and not as a decision by 9 people or even some elected officials who I believe we can all agree more often than not do not have our collective best interests in mind.

We should end it now.

Let the women vote and let the women have what the women deserve – to make the choice.

=======

Just a note on everyone beating the crap out of Planned Parenthood.

Whatever we decide everyone should be aware of these facts:

According to a Guttmacher Institute survey in 2011, 69% of abortions are paid for entirely out of pocket. Another 15.6% report using Medicaid, while 7.3% used a non-Medicaid source of coverage (although this 2011 survey did not indicate the type of coverage–employer-sponsored or non-group, etc.). 8.6% reported not knowing whether they used third party coverage.

There is no easy way to cut Planned Parenthood out of the health-care ecosystem without causing a health crisis. Without this vital resource for reproductive health, all Americans who need safety-net medical services would suffer—patients who get care from Planned Parenthood, yes, but also those who rely on FQHCs, where quality of care would crumble under a wave of patients with nowhere else to go. 

Planned Parenthood clinics make up 6 percent of the 10,700 safety-net family planning providers in the U.S., but they serve 32 percent of all patients who rely on the free or low-cost birth control these providers offer. FQHCs, meanwhile, serve a disproportionately low slice of this patient population: just 30 percent, even though more than half of all safety-net family planning providers are FQHCs. According to the new Guttmacher analysis, each FQHC site that currently offers contraceptive services marks an average of 320 patients who use those services every year. The average Planned Parenthood takes on 2,950 contraceptive clients, more than nine times the FQHC load. 

There is no conceivable way that the patients who get their free or subsidized birth control from Planned Parenthood could continue getting the care they need if Planned Parenthood clinics were forced to close or cut back on their contraceptive services. In 27 states, FQHC sites would have to double the size of their current roster of contraceptive patients; in nine of those, the average FQHC would have to triple its contraceptive client load. Women living in the 13 percent of U.S. counties with at least one Planned Parenthood but no contraceptive-providing FQHCs at all would have to travel unnecessarily long distances just to get basic care, burdening other communities’ health centers with surges of new patients.

 ============

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“I’m not saying I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.”
Tupac Shakur

===

“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature’s laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping it’s dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.”
Tupac Shakur

====

Today, June 16^th, is Tupac’s birthday.

Which leads me to discuss embedded racism.

There is probably no better tangible example of embedded racism than the term and activism surrounding ‘Black Lives Matter.’

Just use that phrase and there is a visceral pushback response <mostly from white people>. What about all people? Don’t all lives matter is the kind of strawman argument.

Its either ignorance or purposeful ignorance but that ignorance contains some essence of embedded racism in order to even be a ‘thing’ to say.

Of course, all lives do matter.

As a logical extension, black lives matter as well.

That is sort of the point of the entire idea.

Black people have the right to stand up and point out that a certain issue exists <a complex one which often gets lost under a simplistic banner>, black people have a particular disproportionate lethality issue with police and black people have a particular disproportionate issue with opportunity and second chances. I believe it is fair for people to continue to suggest Black Lives Matter as long as white people <mostly male> make up the bulk of the power structure that may not overtly suggest black lives don’t matter but through their power have created a system in which black lives certainly appear to matter less. So the point of Black Lives Matter is maybe we white folk should accept the burden of responsibility and maybe elevate the importance of black lives within a general belief that all lives matter.

I have a hard time disagreeing with black people on that. Any of that.

Which leads me to a discussion on ‘progress.’

Because if you accept that we will always be a work in progress than saying things like ‘but it is so much better today than it was’ is not acceptable <this is also a ‘go to’ white person statement>.

Racism has always existed and in some extent.  And while it certainly exists now and there are some vocal aspects to racism today as a country, we have struggled with this since day one. And if you believe African Americans are more divisive today with regard to the issue <often blaming a black president for creating a divisive environment> I would like to point out that one of Tupac Shakur’s most popular songs addresses all of these same issues … in 1998: Tupac “Changes“

Just take a moment and think about how crazy some of his lyrics are <saying a black president is about as unbelievable as pigs flying>.

At that moment and time, he sang those lyrics he couldn’t conceive the possibility it could ever happen <too bad he couldn’t see the day>. And you know what? I can hear a bunch of white people shouting at me “see!! This is proof we do not have racism and that we aren’t like in 1998!!!”

That’s bullshit.

The song is as relevant today as it was then.

Look. Have we made progress? Absolutely. Have we achieved what we should achieve? Absolutely not. Do I view progress through a “white perspective” and therefore judge progress as “I have improved”? Absolutely. If I were black and 60 years old and assessed ‘progress’ and the fact I had been stopped on streets throughout my life, saw blacks systematically fail in a white privileged system, watch how many white kids get second chances for mistakes black kids never get, and had to listen to white people pat themselves on the back for ‘making progress’? Whew. I am not sure I wouldn’t be pissed.

Only an idiot denies the existence of racism, and embedded aspects within the system, but there are very few people who are conscious enough of what needs to take place as we progress and have the courage to consciously address it.

Frankly, I struggle to believe white people, and black people, in America are prepared to let go of their cultural identities and begin forging a new reality in which all are equal within every situation and at any time & place.

Well. Not yet.

I do believe blacks have earned the right to be angry <not the right to act inauspiciously upon that anger though>.

And I do believe the burden white people <mostly male because they own the power structure> have to earn the right to NOT have blacks angry at them.

Let me say that again.

Whites have to earn the right for blacks to not be angry with them.

This means whites need to do something about embedded racism as well as actually acknowledge it <not argue about it>.

And in saying that … well … looking around it sure seem like most of us white folk want black people to be angry at us every time as we stand on some pedestal and shout “all lives matter … not just black lives.’ It shows a lack of awareness to the real issues at hand and a lack of awareness to who is at fault in addition to lack of awareness with regard to who is truly the victim here. Or, as an acquaintance of mine suggested, “its some absurd attempt at an ideological Switzerland.”

It is hard to suggest racism doesn’t exist in USA and is embedded in its various structures. And I believe that to deny it simply cripples society in some fairly insidious ways.

I just wanted to say this on Tupac’s birthday.