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“Developing the mind is important but developing a conscience is the most precious gift parents can give their children.”

John Gray

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I just finished an ‘education system and society’ project where I had some PTSD revisiting some of the same issues I encountered when discussing my 2009 online education initiative. I begin where I have always began – the objective of education has never changed. It is to create good effective citizens so essential thinking skills are embedded within their eventual professional focus; by developing minds. I have consistently said, and thought, the education system should stop chasing industrial predictions of what the professional world will look like in the future. I am not alone in that thought. Shit. Toffler warned us to not follow that in 1970. That said. That is almost heresy in an industrialized education system, and an increasingly professional skill reductionist societal mindset, where everything seemingly gets reduced to measurement against ‘useful skills that can be professionally applied.’ To be honest at this point it almost feels like schools from kindergarten through university are structured in ways that students end up less developed than they would be if they spent the equivalent amount of time doing something else. This is not a reflection of poor educational intent, but rather how capitalism theory has been dictated upon the theory of education within capitalist societies. Ultimately this is a reductive ‘human capital’ theory, rather than “mind development”, that has made educational systems just feeders of the economy not a civilized society. Simplistic pragmatism has stripped education of the belief that possibilities and potential is found in what many people deem ‘soft skills’ (thinking, situational awareness, ethical decision-making) rather than ‘hard skills’ (pragmatically doing something). I suggest that while it is not a binary discussion it is those thinking & awareness skills which creates higher value for when you have actually learned a specific skill.

Anyway.

Consistently, one of the biggest debates I have with traditional educators (and, frankly, some boomer type people who suggest we need to go back to some basics in education so that “they”, i.e., youth, can learn the things we learned) is the role of the web and whether it can educate properly. I find this all a bit ironic in that these same people focus less on developing thinking minds and focus more on pragmatic thinking minds where online pragmatic youtube skills channels are incredibly effective.

We need to ignore existing paradigms and focus on the best ideas.

Yes. That ‘ignoring existing paradigms’ philosophy sucks if you are in the existing education system but developing a new education model means working backwards from whom you are educating.

Which leads me to the people at The Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University.

1. According to a 2008 Pew report, 97% of American teens aged 12-17 play computer, console, or cell phone games, and three-fourths of these teens play them with others at least some of the time (Lenhart et al. 2008).

2. 93% use the Internet, 61% go online daily, and 51% create content that others can view online (Lenhart et al. 2007).

3. Eleven million students under the age of 18 use MySpace (Owyang 2008).

4. The site myYearbook, a social networking site created specifically for 12- to 17-year-olds, boasts 7 million members (Loten 2008). In short, many, perhaps even most, of the current generation of learners are enmeshed in connective technologies.

5. The environment and culture in which people grow up affect their thought processes and that cognitive processes are far more malleable than previously assumed. Evidence provided by magnetoencephalographic (MEG) imaging suggests that structural rewiring of the brain “can and does occur via experience” (O’Boyle and Gill 1998, 406). Interactive and interpersonal applications of digital technology shape the social and cognitive development of those who use them (Shumar and Renninger 2002). Oblinger (2004) claims that “constant exposure to the Internet and other digital media has shaped how [students] receive information and how they learn” (“Abstract,” 1). Some of these changes include “the development of a new type of multimedia or information literacy” which “parallels other shifts in how we approach learning such as of moving from an environment of being told or authority-based learning to one based on discovery or experiential learning” (“4. How People Learn,” 7).

6. Students “tend toward teamwork, experiential activities . . . and the use of technology. Their strengths include multitasking, goal orientation, . . . and a collaborative style” (“2. Changes in Students,” 1).

7. New societal patterns produce new educational paradigms that too frequently completely discard the old.

8. Students engage their social-connectedness schema in a set of behaviors that I describe as “link, lurk, and lunge”: Students link up with others who have the knowledge they need; they lurk, watching others who know how do to what they want to do; and they lunge, jumping in to try new things often without seeking guidance beforehand (Brown 2000).

9. Students’ social-connectedness schema underlies their ability to create and sustain physical, virtual, and hybrid social networks (Oblinger and Oblinger 2005).

10. Today’s students “do not just think about different things, they actually think differently” (Prensky 2001, 42).

11. Reigeluth (1999) argues, “when a human-activity system (or societal system) changes in significant ways, its subsystems must change in equally significant ways” (16).

12. Education theory must change to accommodate new developments in the way students learn and access information.

Source: This article was originally published in Innovate as: Sontag, M. 2009. A learning theory for 21st-century students. The article is a reprint of the original publisher, The Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University.

While the information is dated, it remains directionally true. So If we use this information and think about an education redesign what kind of outcome can we expect?

Well. Let me use something the Singapore Ministry of Education has written and created.

If you buy into all of this, well, you then begin leaning into the thought that knowledge and skills must be underpinned by values which help define a person’s character. They shape the beliefs, attitudes and actions of a person, and therefore form the core of the framework of competencies.

The middle ring signifies the Social and Emotional Competencies—skills necessary for children to recognize and manage their emotions, develop care and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, as well as to handle challenging situations effectively.

The outer ring of the framework represents the 21st century skills necessary for the globalized world we live in. These are:

• Civic literacy, global awareness and cross-cultural skills
• Critical and inventive thinking
• Information and communication skills

Why do I think this matters?

Well. we are in this weird spot where we are being encourage do think that people who go to an Ivy League school, or an equivalent, are less worthy to not only talk to but listen to. Please note, that is nuts. I am not a huge fan of ‘elite schools’, yet, most of these elite schools are simply the highest forms of vocational training – not thinking. And that is where higher education gets caught between being beneficial and being not. Elite schools train practitioner-based leaders, not thinkers. They foster holders of power, not critics of power or even critics of existing systems that uphold power structures. They have a nasty habit of not encouraging an independent mind or an independent thinker (challenging the systems within which people work) or a mind independent of allegiances to the existing institutional power structure. That is where education’s outcomes get killed in the public perception mindset (and it should). An independent thinker thinks of exploring while the practitioner-trained leader seeks to harvest existing fields, i.e., simply squeezing more out of an existing system.

I believe if we want to change education we should let learning occur through individual pursuit, not always ‘from-the-top’ dictate. I also believe business should be designed this way so it all actually ends up in sinc with a larger ‘optimizing professional potential’ objective. That said. I would argue the biggest obstacle to attempting this youth education redesign is adult’s unhealthy love of symmetry & “well rounded education”. My view is to encourage asymmetrical learning. Why? Emergent learning begets exponential learning, not additive learning. That is my Tedtalk in a nutshell. I will note that in order to achieve this it will take a blend of online and face-to-face (as noted in my 2009 initiative – online supported by face to face – or this 2023 piece on blended learning).

Which leads me to we should stop talking about free college or even college at all.

College is a tactic in developing minds, let’s talk strategies. It was around 1900 that the United States made highly (essentially) universal. Industrialized education or not, it created an entire generation with a strong foundation of knowledge. I could argue this was ‘structural value creation’ for society and business. To me the key to the future of, well, everything, is not college education, but youth education. How do we reinvest our energies and focus on the young – equally – so that there is a foundation of critical thinking and knowledge from which the future can be leveraged from. And while I purposefully put ‘critical thinking’ I’d like to be clear that there needs to be a reemphasis on math and science. We need to ditch the ‘right brain/left brain myth’ <which, in my mind, is where things began to truly unravel at the youth education level because it applied some pseudoscience to an already industrialized education system> and grasp the fact that philosophers and ‘creative thinkers’ are better if they understand math and engineers and plumbers (who really are a version of an engineer) are better if they understand arts. To agree with me you almost have to agree that progress is nonlinear, in other words, ‘new work’ is often unplanned outgrowth of innovative thinking. And, if you do, then it behooves the working population to certainly learn a skill, but having reached that skill bringing to bear a broader scope of knowledge and learning to that skill then simply that skill’s particular knowledge stream. Well. That’s what I think. Ponder.

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“I lived according to the prevailing myth. Everyone lives by myths.

Prettied up they are called truths … basic truths, natural truths, self-evident truths. What I knew or thought a year ago is beside the point. The problem is today. Even if the past was a lie, what am I supposed to replace it with? Another lie? All that’s necessary is to pull the old one out and put a new one in like a circuit board?

Inspector O

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“The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.”

Robert Heinlein

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“If no one knows anything, then why can’t I know something?”

Bruce McTague

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Well. I am sure we have all experienced it. Sitting around with friends, maybe at the corner of the bar, bitching about the world and talking about what we would do to fix it. At that table and at that time we can solve everything that the experts, the leaders, the grand decision makers, seem to struggle solving.

Most of the time, if we are honest with ourselves, we dumb it down to some simplistic surface conclusion which sometimes is partially right.

Most of the time we apply a ‘common sense’ filter which, if we are honest with ourselves, does not really reflect the complexity of reality.

Most of the time, if we are honest with ourselves, more often than not we are wrong.

Its not that we aren’t smart, it just may be we are a little intellectually lazy. Ok. Maybe we just don’t know enough or have enough experience. But … whew … in the moment … in the discussion and debate and obvious commons sense, we could run the world, the country and the biggest business ventures out there. It is a fun moment. And we feel smart and, more importantly, we feel as if we could do whatever it is as well as the person who is doing it. For a moment we look around at all the Harvard MBAs and all the policy experts and all the high falutin’ experts and we are as good and as smart as they are.

Sigh.

But we are not.

It may seem like it. But we are not. Yet, when sitting at the corner of the bar, every Steve, Sarah, Sue and Sam thinks that they are.

I actually believe this belief is driven by a version of the 80/20 guide. Assuming you are fairly worldly, fairly well informed and fairly enlightened, you probably get 80% of it right. And, boy, that 80% feels good. It may even feel “right enough.” But, in general, its just 80% right, i.e., not good enough. And that is the difference between an amateur and a professional or an expert. That 20%.

Sure. Some would argue it is simply the nuance, but in most of the larger more grand problems and issues we face it is that 20% that makes something go incredibly right or incredibly wrong.

Most of us are not capable of that 20%.

Realistically the last time everyone possessed the same skills in a society to participate within a leadership role at 100% equal was maybe several millennia ago when humankind was in the hunter/gatherer era. Once we evolved into larger social groupings, inevitably creating cities and population clusters where some people had to make decisions for the greater good of the whole, some people naturally evolved into governors and governing <leadership> and the expertise needed to assume those responsibilities. And while we can bitch & moan about the ineptness of leadership, in general, leaders decide on the big shit and others decide on the little shit and the world is relatively navigable. But, yeah, that ‘navigable’ aspect is annoyingly more difficult than we want, believe it should be, and in being that way we everyday schmucks get confused and believe we would be smarter, if not as smart, as people in the positions of leadership.

Which leads me to suggest part of the problem is the problems themselves.

As we discuss country issues, we discuss natural contradictions within a complex world <both domestic & international is important> as well as the fact the American people often embrace contradictory goals <just wander through any PewResearch report to confirm that thought>. The reality is most of the things we discuss have multiple objectives and everything being done is an attempt to harness a complex mix of constantly moving parts and pieces to attain those objectives. And. Many of the parts and pieces may appear to contradictory. At the corner of the bar more often than not we ignore the contradictory challenges with more simplistic solutions for what would be great <under the guise of common-sense actions or ‘seems to make sense on the surface’ attitudes>. The solutions we tend to gravitate toward are, well, pretty useless. Patriotism, exceptionalism, nationalism, or all simplistic vague hat stands to place our hats on. And if you are not careful it can all take on a harsh insular ‘past driven’ edge to a much grander ‘future possibilities’ thought. But all of them do not really offer solutions, just an umbrella for everyone to stand under in the monsoon of contradictory issues. To be fair. We all want common sense to solve all problems and we all want to blame someone for the specific problems we see and institutions, government and experts are easy targets because its simpler to suggest they do not have common sense (like we do). Its simpler to blame than to acknowledge some of the problems we suggest are simple are actually just an unfortunate outcome of a very complex systemic issue far beyond any common sense solutioning.

Which leads me to suggest gravitating to the simple, and simplistic, is a natural human instinct.

Complexity brings out the emotional in us everyday schmucks, not the rational. Yeah. I just said that. At the corner of the bar, we more often than not rule our thoughts based on passion supported by some dubious reasoning. The experts reverse the equation ignoring/limiting passionate response <fear, individualism, anger> and basing ideas & solutions on solid reasoning and rational thought <and things called “laws”>. And while we at the corner of the bar sometimes shake our heads wondering what common sense <or lack thereof> created some laws, we accept they are laws (even Laws of Physics which are unfathomable to most of us). Experts tend to use laws as vague outlines within which nearing ‘the law boundary’ is actually a caution rather than a green light. At the corner of the bar most discussions dance on the superficial surface of “it is legal” or “it is not legal” (or its possible versus impossible). But let’s be honest. The neighborhood bar is in … well … the neighborhood. It is where we kibbitz over non neighborhood things. In general, we take a fairly ridiculously narrow view of how the world works. We have ridiculously simplistic and faulty view. If you open up some of your ‘strongly held loose opinions’ you not only realize that most of our social intellect, and the political rhetoric in general, is sadly lacking and even slightly embarrassing and that those of us sitting at the corner of the bar may not be stupid, but there are a shitload of really smart people discussing these topics. Basically, most of us struggle with globalization and nationalism. It’s not that we do not want either or reject one over the other, it is that we struggle to see, feel and understand the balance. One expert called this uneasiness we feel ‘casual collapse.’ It is the seemingly ongoing blurring of many beliefs, rituals, formal requirements and laws that define specific societies and us.   And we feel a little helpless in stopping this ‘casual collapse’ because of that darn thing called ‘the internet’ <the cross-cultural sharing of information and knowledge> and the ubiquity of globalization  Now.  All this is happening without causing any particular larger collapse of anything. It is just a casual collapse of things as they used to be. And it is happening despite any government edicts or programs designed to slow the change <collapse> or older generations tied to some past cultural aspects efforts. It is an inevitable collapse driven by the fact as everyone becomes more knowledgeable about ‘what is happening and what people are thinking’ half way around the world and they begin questioning the status quo conventional thinking where they are.

It becomes a blending of local cultural thinking and a more global perspective. To be honest. It can be equally exciting and uncomfortable. Someone can equally want to hold on tightly to one beloved ritual/thought and grab onto a new ritual/thought. And this is happening in 300 million someones and 8 billion someones simultaneously. As people are exposed to a wider range of alternative goods, services, lifestyles, opinions, rituals and experiences, their tolerance to alternative thinking and behavior grows – as does their interest & attitudes.

Generally speaking, the internet simply accelerates what would have been happening naturally.

I am certainly not suggesting this happens overnight. As trendwatching suggested: “compared to much trend thinking, casual collapse moves at a glacial pace.” That said. Whether we like it or not globalization has forced the world to be at odds with itself. We are not a world of countries and states living in solitude, but rather one in which we overlap, linked and delinked, by varying degrees of history, culture, religion, language, location, ideas and institutions.

This causes a natural reaction against a sense of uniformity.

And therein lies the greater conflict – while economic life takes place on a global platform; human identity remains national and local. Yeah. The identification of local <and nationalism> will always continue and will always create the same angst we feel at the corner of the bar as we watch the zillion TV’s typically sitting in the bar suggesting globalization is infringing upon our corner of the bar.

And even global economic growth infringes upon our national identification.

What do I mean? Economics depends on education and communication which leads directly to conflicts over language and comparisons over education levels. All the while a global economic view encourages everyone to believe the world is their oyster – anyone can aspire to any economic position. The reality is that everyone does not have an equal likelihood of upward economic mobility <locally, nationally or globally> even though each individual has different innate capabilities which SHOULD translate into equal opportunity.

I say that to follow it with at the corner of the bar, we need not worry nor address the balance … we focus on what we need and what we want – not necessarily the greater good. That doesn’t mean we don’t acknowledge, and give a head nod, to other people’s anguish or some aspects of inequities, just that attempting to incorporate it into our bar wisdom is a level of complexity beyond the typical cocktail fed brain.

All that said. The one thing we common everyday schmucks can certainly do really well at the corner of the bar is to analyze the present and embrace some of the past. Unfortunately we suck at envisioning the future. In fact, I could argue that our optimal corner of the bar wisdom is directed toward critiques of past decisions and present issues (as we think they are). But none of our ‘wise solutions’ are likely to be effective in a future yet to be written, in a world that is anything but simple, in a world where society is often uneven, in a world where local societies and communities overlap with a global society, in a world burdened by public institutions seemingly incapable of navigating local and international needs. As a consequence of the overwhelming complexity the minds turn to the tried and true simplistic divide versus unite, us versus them, common sense versus expert sense, because it is easier to solve a part rather than a complex whole.

And that is where most of us at the corner of the bar truly fall short.

…. typical plan ….

The big country and global issues have similar objectives: enriching people, minds, bodies and attitudes. Yeah. A pretty difficult task.

It is a complex task.

It requires the best of everyone, the best of civilizations and the best of leadership & thinking … not emphasizing the differences, but reinforcing the common objective and leaning into the greater messy connectivity from which anything good emerges from.

Look.

A country, a culture, a society is a messy creature.

A country can be kind and generous as well as cruel and coldblooded as they pick their way through the naturally messy, dynamic, always shifting, chaotic world.

The United States clearly has the capacity to influence which future is most likely. However, for anyone to predict the future confidently, would be highly incautious or naïve if not just a simplistic fool.

Globalization is not a simplistic concept.

Nationalism is not a simplistic concept.

Being a president, or any leader of a significant organization, is not a simplistic concept.

All leadership positions demand navigating complexity. That said. Inevitably leading is not just about hope or promising something better, it is a pragmatic pushing of opportunity to the people who need it the most and want it the most <thereby maximizing what opportunities do exist> and removing obstacles to possibilities. The truth is that opportunities and possibilities abound. In fact. There may actually be more opportunity in the world than problems <but you would never know it by watching the TV at the corner of the bar>.

Which leads me to mainstream corner of the bar wisdom.

A hundred and fifty years ago, I could imagine looking up at the stars, knowing It was unknowable to me and I knew I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. But in today’s world where I have no idea how my mobile phone or the internet work <or my car, television, or microwave, or … whatever> everything seems so unknowable and, yet, using them makes amateurish expert wisdom actually seem, uhm, attainable.

In other words. If no one knows anything, then why can’t I know something?

It is that thought which appears to have left the corner of the bar and has now appeared in coffee shops, kitchens, townhalls, school meetings and, well, everywhere. The corner of the bar discussions, which typically have devolved into the simplistic with solutions that skate on the superficial surface of reality, are now mainstream “intelligent common sense” thoughts.

That’s nuts.

And its crazy bad for society and the world.

We should not, and cannot, devolve into a world where there are no experts or believe that experts don’t know more than we do. We need to stop destroying the experts. Simply being an expert doesn’t mean ‘perfection’ – not making mistakes or being wrong <because that would predicate they could actually tell the future>, but they have an exponentially higher chance of solving the most complex issues than any of us everyday schmucks. But let’s be honest. We want people smarter than us – yahoos just sitting at the corner of the bar – making the really important decisions.

Well. I certainly do.

Ponder.

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“The way we got out of the caves and into modern civilisation is through the process of understanding and thinking. Those things were not done by gut instinct. Being an expert does not mean that you are someone with a vested interest in something; it means you spend your life studying something. You’re not necessarily right – but you’re more likely to be right than someone who’s not spent their life studying it.”

Brian Cox

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“And I want to believe that I’ve made the right choice and that I’m on the right path and there’s still time to fix the mistakes that I’ve made. And I guess I want hope.”

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“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”

Margaret Mead

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Let’s talk personal accountability for our behavior. Let me begin in an odd place – government. Almost every person hates government involvement in life, society and communities because, well, while we claim infringement into our lives, the deeper discomfort is someone is forcing us to conform to certain behaviors. No one likes that. That said. In almost every situation we, the people, seem to disregard our role in that involvement. If we did, we may see that our imperfections, in terms of flawed behavior, often demand government to put themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to regulate actions and behaviors. Yeah. If people or business institutions fail to regulate their own behavior, the government will.

Which leads me to regulating our own behavior (without laws).

Moulton, in Law and Manners, examined the three great domains of human action.

• the domain of positive law where our actions are prescribed by laws which must be obeyed.
• the domain of free choice which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy
• between those two and the largest and important domain, where neither positive law nor absolute freedom exists. In that domain there is no law which explicitly determines our course of action and yet we feel that we are not free to choose as we would.

I would suggest that last domain could be considered social norms and our behavior within this space outlines the social contract. Moulton called this the domain of obedience to the unenforceable. This is where the person, the individual, enforces laws of behavior on themselves. It’s kind of our ‘do the right thing’ compass and, therefore bounded or constrained by not only our own morals and ethics, but also by what society accepts or defines unacceptable or distasteful. While it would be impossible to construct laws for all circumstances, more importantly, we would not prefer laws to dictate in all circumstances. Consequently, this means most of our life is found in the infinite ‘no-law dictated’ situations where free choice is bounded not by law, and not by ‘I can do’ freedom, but rather ‘should I do’ principles. Yeah. We are expected to dictate our own behavior. Ah. Therein lies the danger to society and to, well, greatness.

Which leads me to greatness.

In Moulton’s mind the real greatness of the nation is measured by people’s behavior in the obedience to the unenforceable domain. It is within that behavioral space in which we can evaluate the extent to which a nation trusts people and the way people actually behave in response to that trust. To be clear. Mere obedience to law does not measure the greatness of a nation, i.e., the law will never tell you the right thing to do, it just outlines the wrong things.

Nor is the behavior under the guise of freedom within the absence of law a proof of greatness. True greatness is found in individual behavior obeying self-imposed law. Circling back to the beginning, what this means is that a society of peoples must assume some responsibility, some accountability, with regard to their actions. What I mean by that is there can be a weird belief that just because someone can do something means they may do it. The problem is between can do and may do there exists the wretched hollow in-between containing duty, fairness, sympathy, empathy, and all the other things that make life not The Hunger Games and creates a healthy social contract. It is within the space in-between can do and may do because it is within that space greatness can be attained and greatness can be lost. This means the participants within a society need to be able to recognize that the increase of their freedom of action brings with it not unfettered choice but the corresponding responsibility, and accountability, of using that freedom. We would wish that society feels the obedience to the unenforceable so strongly that in even the worst moments they all behaved as if when reflective on the behavior we behaved to our better angels. Unfortunately, in a zero-sum world one isn’t encouraged to be an angel, but rather constantly seek some angle.

“It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral.”
Saul Alinsky

And if we play the angles long enough, they become the norms.

Which leads me to the shifting baseline.

Angles, and angling, ultimately shifts the baseline of behavior. The shifting baseline is grounded in the fact that once something is gone, people forget they ever had it and, from a broader perspective, whatever conditions people grow up with are the ones they generally consider normal (normal is defined as any initial environmental context experience which establishes a baseline perspective). This means we tend to take for granted things, i.e., lost things are lost and the existing should be the norm and our baseline for what is right, or even good, shifts accordingly.

This phenomenon, known as “shifting baseline syndrome.”

Fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly researching the drastic reduction in the size of catch off the eastern seaboard of North America, which had declined by 97% since written records began found the fishermen remained strangely unconcerned. He realized that each generation viewed the baseline as whatever they caught at the beginning of their career, regardless of how much smaller it was than the previous generation, leading to what he called “the gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance” of fish populations.

• *** note: accumulation of studies around the world measuring the declines of species and ecosystems indicates that overall, we’ve lost around 90% of nature’s profusion. We live in a “10% world.”

So while that is about fish, it’s not really just about fish.

Shifting baseline syndrome has since been shown to be pervasive everywhere in the world and today I’m suggesting it has to do with norms and in particular the largest domain of behavior the obedience to the unenforceable. Our current path is dismantling an earlier world weakening the mechanisms on which the spirit of society – economic, social cohesion, freedom – permitted progress. Defying existing norms creates a new axis mundus of injustice and exploitation. It is now with the things which had never been formally identified and categorized we’re increasing economic and social difficulties are now big being constructed. It would be remiss if I didn’t point out all of these all of this diminishes the greatness or the potential for of countries and societies. This is a new type of exploitation even different than the notion that marks offered us. This exploitation is not a class construct, but a classless construct. And, yes, pun intended. Regardless. This all creates social negativity compounded by the fact the only way to curb this societal dysfunction is inevitably through laws. Well, a law will never tell anyone the right thing to do, just highlight the most wrong. And, once again, no sane person wants a law to dictate behavior in all circumstances.

Which leads me to renormalizing norms.

Normativity pervades our daily lives, influencing our decisions, behaviors, and societal structures. It encompasses a range of principles, standards, and values that guide human actions and shape our understanding of what’s considered right or wrong, good or bad. Over time, societal norms evolve, reflecting shifts in normative perspectives (cultural, social, and philosophical), i.e., shifting the baseline. Often, we see shifting social norms culminating in the changing of outdated laws to better align with the acceptable, and unacceptable normative behaviors of the day. While it’s ethically significant that norms shift over time and adapt to their context, it’s important to note that these changes often happen slowly. Eventually, changes in norms influence changes in laws if the middle domain if behavior doesn’t accommodate the new norms.  Once again, norms, and acceptable behavior, can be explicit or implicit, originating from various sources like cultural traditions, social institutions, religious beliefs, or philosophical frameworks. But. often, the most important norms are implicit because they are unspoken expectations that people absorb as they experience the world around them. but when these norms loosen up, well, significantly, as in they become untethered to any real manners, we will inevitably shift our baseline. It is happening in the present. We need to re-tether norms to acceptable behavior and make some of them a bit more specific. Make the past vague outlines of what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable, a bit more concrete. We need to be a bit more explicit in order to constrain some behavioral bad actors into a clear unacceptable category and reject a shifting baseline that is shifting downwards into hellish behavior. Ponder.

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“the ends justifies the means”.

motto of the Illuminati

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“Money decides how it wants to live.”

Ryan Gravel, City Designer

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“soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”

John Maynard Keynes

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perfectibilist

<The Century Dictionary>

Noun: One who believes in the perfectibility of human nature in this life; a perfectionist

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Small groups of people, with the thought they are better, smarter, more intelligent, more whatever, have gathered together since the dawn of time. It would be silly to suggest this is always bad because sometimes the scientists, the doctors, the engineers, the geniuses, even the kindhearted, have gathered together to address some of the most critical issues of humankind. And sometimes they get it right (thank god).

But then there is the small group gathering underbelly.

The wealthy seeking to maintain their wealth and power or even just those with power seeking to get a tighter grip on power. Please note I never used the word “intelligence” anywhere in there. While they may deem themselves smarter, more intelligent, and knowing what is best for everyone else, as John Kenneth Galbraith famously noted: “the connection between intelligence and wealth is specious at best.”

Which leads me to the Illuminati.

I bring in the Illuminati, or the Order of the Perfectibilists, for two reasons (1) it is reflective of small groups of people – usually men – with power and money who seek to maintain their power and money … by any means possible & (2) their motto, ‘the ends justify the means.’ To be clear. It is highly typical to have those two things inextricably linked. Power and wealth use any means to maintain their ends, i.e., power and wealth.

• *** note: I also thought about the Illuminati as I finished the horrifying book “Moneyland.” Basically, the wealthy do not need cabals or small ‘societies’ intent on some wacky ideology, they now simply access small groups of financial brokers to do whatever ‘ends that justify the means’ jobs.

Anyway. The Illuminati. In 1776 a group called ‘Perfektibilisten’ was formed in Bavaria. It became famous as the “Ordo Illuminati Bavarensis”, or the Illuminati for short (illuminati means ‘the enlightened ones’ in Latin). Only five people were present at the first meeting of the order, but it grew rapidly and only a few years later it had chapterhouses all over Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Hungary and Switzerland. It soon established a network of agents around Europe that infiltrated courts and other places of power and reported back useful gossip and information to the group leaders. The primary mission of the Illuminati was to establish a New World Order through the use of science, technology and business, while abolishing all monarchical governments and the Vatican. Despite being banned in 1784, today there are fictitious conspiracy urban myths which build on the name ‘Illuminati’ simply because it sounds impressive. In the end, my point is the point. A small group of opportunistic wealthy people who believed they were smarter, more enlightened, than everyone else seeking to maintain their wealth and power by any means possible.

Which leads me to perfectibilist.

Far, far, too often the uber wealthy feel like they are special and ‘better than.’ A perfectibilist as it were.

A perfectibilist is someone who believes that human beings are capable of achieving perfection through education and the improvement of society. The term was first coined by the philosopher and social reformer, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in the late 18th century. Perfectibilists believe that by perfecting the individual, society can be perfected, and that this process can be achieved through the cultivation of reason, morality, and virtue. Ultimately, they believe that human nature is perfectible and that society can be improved through education and rationalism. While perfectibilist was always intended to portray the possibility of human perfection, the order suggested they had attained perfectibilist status therefore were better and could ‘enlighten’ the rest of the world. This is some nutso stuff. That said. Many of the uberwealthy are a bit nutso and absolutely believe they are superior. They believe they are not only the guides to an ideal society, but also they embody what society should aspire to.

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“We live under a system by which the many are exploited by the few”

Harold Laski

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In short, you cannot escape power, regardless of your station in life.

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Which leads me to the inevitableness of the purview of the few.

We are nuts if we don’t think that most decisions of any consequence are in the purview of the few. I don’t mean some deep state or some cabal, but CEOs make big decisions for businesses, politicians make big governing decisions for countries/regions/cities, Union leaders make big decisions for workers and even school boards make big decisions effecting our youth. Democracy doesn’t really mean everyone can make a decision. It simply means we have a voice, but the decisions are in the purview of the few. The danger to democracy always lies in whether the few also see themselves as Perfectibles.

Which leads me to the main tool of the Perfectibilist: math.

Reason is math. Or let’s say math is reasonable reasoning to the Perfectibles. They quantify everything; even people. Oh, sure, the Perfectibilist will be clever with regard to the mathification, but we have mathematized humanities, creativity has been mathematized, performance and meaning has been mathematized, well, let’s say that this mathematical obsession has deformed the intangible good (and value structure). Math reduces everything it touches while actually expanding the power and wealth of the ‘few’. And while I will later point out how this absolves the few, the Perfectibles, of any moral restraint, this mathematization only encourages society to strip moral restraints from everyday attitudes and behaviors. The ‘few’ become pseudo-intellectual social philosopher bullies who bludgeon the public with math in order to forge a ‘perfect society.’  The problem is this dull axe of math fundamentally empties society of moral or empathetic stances. When attacked for this hollowness the ‘few’ will stubbornly defend their vision from a stance of pseudo-math as the way to navigate an increasingly, seemingly, unstructured, and uncertain world. Today’s Perfectibilist has been actively indoctrinated in a structured methodology of mathematical measurement. It’s a warped vision of even the warped Taylorism that got us to where we are today. It is almost like we are being led by a morally-illiterate group of people. Illiterate in that they are unable to recognize the necessary relationship between power and morality essential for healthy, meaningful, progress. The truth is mathematical knowledge is actually hampering the actions necessary to create and sustain a substantive healthy society. Why? Well. While we talk endlessly about individual freedom and individual empowerment, there has never before been such pressure for conformity – through math. This math world is simply an illusion. What I mean by that it is a healthy, robust, expansive, intangible world reduced to a simplistic hollowed world of math becomes one in which the Perfectibilist can not only reduce what success is into some number, but reduces the power of a society in order to increase the power they have OVER that society. Yeah. Math is the prison the ‘few’ put society in so they become the wardens.

Which leads me to math’s biggest number: money.

Power and money; money and power. They are inextricably linked. And this is important because, well, it makes you think about who owns the future – the ones with the money, the ones aspiring to have the money, or the ones who do not have the money <and even whether it should matter>. And THAT is important because, well, “money decides how it wants to live.” I believe if we continue on the path we are currently on we run the risk of money determinism, not human determinism. What I mean by that is money becomes the design, and designer, of human society not a tool used by humans to implement the human-designed design of human society. That said. I would be naïve to suggest humans have the power, because they do and they don’t. They do own the future because they can be the architects of fate and the future as well as architects of what money should be, yet, money will always be power until the world, itself, decides to change. Money is power and power is money. That is the world we have today and that is the world we need to deal with.

So, I circle back to who owns the future, who owns the power, who owns the money? And whoever does, can they handle the power and the money they have? Those are important questions because power subverts the intentions of a free market. Today’s marketplace is a system of competing powers (players) each of whom are seeking an advantage, but, the few – the perfectibles – assume the most power in this power game. We should note market advantage is information <knowledge, wisdom>, money buys information (see opening note on Illuminati and information gathering across Europe). I say that because if the world, the market, isn’t sane <power distorts traditional view of sanity> and willing to define its own fate, technology – or any tool – will not solve it and money is simply power to eliminate things that are obstacles to more money and growth. To the Perfectibilist, more is never enough and there are no rules when it comes to maintaining or protecting one’s wealth and power. If you buy into that thought, or thoughts, then we need to become concerned when the institutions of money <people with money> rule the world. We should be concerned because when those people begin to talk about fairness or shared prosperity they do so with a catch. The catch is “as long as it does not infringe upon my pursuit of my money and my wealth.” Without context, that is a fine and dandy thought. But in a zero-sum mindset it suggests HOW I got my money and wealth was fair and equitable and the system of money rewards those who deserve it. The Perfectibles will tend to guide decisions toward their own worldview which is most likely not even close to reality.

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“We’ve made it really easy for good people to do the wrong things.”

Josh Tetrick

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Which leads me to the Few’s go-to philosophy: growth.

The few spends a lot of time telling us that growth is the pathway to increased wealth equality (or better balanced between the Few and the Many). Here’s the rub. Its bullshit. Chasing the limitless is both dangerous and freeing in general, but in a zero-sum world it is just corrosive. The truth is chasing limitless piles of money and limitless growth debases its actual value because then the only value is more and each additional dollar placed on the large stack diminishes in actual value to its owner <it is simply a prize, not prized>. Chasing anything with no limit can be a freeing feeling, but what I would suggest, in this case, is the no limit actually represents a soulless cage. I could go on and on about how zero-sum capitalism attitude begets zero-sum behavior which begets lousy extremes <because ‘winners’ increase probability of more winning not because of skill/better, but because they have, well, more money>. I don’t begrudge people money, but, zero-sum doesn’t create a fair game for all players. Oh. Yeah. “Fair game for all players.” The few, the Perfectibles, have no interest in the fairness of all players. They embrace a zero-sum attitude and only seek to increase the quality of the game players so that their money, growth and power increases (or is maintained).

Which leads me back to “the ends justify the means”

Growth, money and power are the ends. In a Perfectibilist purview let’s call it ‘winning.’ Winning is simply the outcome of any means to achieve that trifecta.  Yeah. Winning justifies the means regardless of the means. The Perfectibilist says “the path to better comes at a cost and one of the costs is if the weak can’t keep up they need to make room for the strong.”

Don’t get me wrong. I like growth and money. But not all growth is the same nor is all money the same. Some money fills your soul and some empties your soul and by soul I mean your inner value compass.

People who are defined solely by money, growth and power can argue this until they are blue in the face. In fact they do. But at what price? And does the end justify the means? And, obviously, WHICH end justifies the means? That is what I mean by emptying your soul or filling your soul. Because in the end (whether that be mid life or at ‘the big finish’) you are judging your actions not by tangible things, but the intangible balance of self-worth (I purposefully chose ‘worth’ because it is some combination of fruits of labor and self-esteem). It is interesting because I have seen a variety of ways people justify how they sell their soul but one word continues to stand up as the face of behavior over & over again:

“winning”

To the Perfectibilists it’s all about winning. Winning at any cost. Or just being able to say “I won.” But (here is the news) winning is not always good.  There IS such a thing as a bad win. Unfortunately, the people who define their soul by winning don’t see that (or they may, but justify their actions based on “we won”). Am I suggesting this aspect should be about fair play? No. Not really. This is about playing by your moral compass; an attitude as it were.

“money”

The thought that everything leads to some magical pot of money that will erase not only all of their problems, but the world’s problems. The Perfectibilists may try to balance it with some philanthropic aspect (typically toward the end of their lives – see Andrew Carnegie as prime example) or balance it with some argument that “their way is the way to a perfect society,” but if we examine their behaviors, we see they are consistently willing to ignore any moral compass within their pursuit for money, growth, and power.

“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.”

William James

There are a variety of ways they justify optimal Perfectibilist, but suffice it to say far and away the number one way is “end justifies the means.” All the while ignoring the carnage left behind.

Which leads me to end where I began: “money decides how it wants to live.”

Ryan Gravel said this years ago and it has stuck in my brain. It has a stark truth to it. But building on that starkness is the inevitability of the desires of the ‘few.’ The Perfectibilists as it were. We may not have the Illuminati now, but we certainly have small groups of people attempting to nudge society, people, communities into ‘living’ the way they believe the world should live. They may exist in some small local community and they may exist in a larger global view. It doesn’t matter. Far, far, too many of them simply seek money, growth and power and the communities, neighborhoods, businesses, society are simply means to attain their ends. Ponder.

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THE NEURAL INVESTMENT

Events speed past us, compelling us to reassess our assumptions — our previous formed images of reality. Research topples older conceptions of man and nature. Ideas come and go at a frenetic rate. (A rate, that, in science at least, has been estimated to be twenty to one hundred times faster than a mere century ago.) Image-laden messages hammer at our senses. Meanwhile, language and art, the codes through which we transfer image-bearing messages to one another, are themselves turning over more rapidly. All this cannot — and does not — leave us unchanged. It accelerates the rate at which the individual must process his imagery if he is to adapt successfully to the churning environment.

Toffler, Future Shock, 1970

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Here is the weird thing. Time is still the same (an hour is still an hour, a day is a day and a minute is a minute) and gravity is still gravity and the relationship between the two, well, remains the same. I won’t suggest there aren’t more things, more stuff, more distractions, then ever, but we – people – manage the same amount of time, the same cognitive skills, and same attention spans that we always have. This becomes a bit important because if we can accept that the world isn’t really going faster, and that there is just more stuff, and the issue is how we, our brains, accommodate all that stuff, then we can begin the hard discussion of the battle of the brain. To be clear this is (a) not an intelligence thing and (b) I’m always a bit surprised workers who work in an office environment don’t understand this issue. What I mean by that is I’ve worked with incredibly smart people who alternatively sucked working in a fast-paced speedy context, like retail, but thrived in a steadier more consistent paced environment. I do not believe that is unique some people thrive in fast paced, assimilating information relatively well and relatively quickly and some people do not. There are intelligent people in both buckets, but in most cases each individual has optimized their neural investment to the context within which they exist AND their cognitive strengths.

Which leads me to the neural investment’s biggest current enemy: technology.

Technology is now all encompassing and ever present. No decision or action or very, very, few can be executed without the tools it provides. This obviously affects the cognition of everyone who uses these tools and will certainly impact individuals, groups, communities, at all levels – psychologically to behaviorally – with human consequences. This is a looped relationship where systems impact humans and humans impact systems. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that humans, even when they are making errors, impact systems. The consequence of all of this is that we are constantly being pushed to the limits of our knowledge and our cognitive potential. Let’s be really clear on this. Technologies target is clear. We may talk about productivity, we may talk about efficiency, but its real target is our brains – intelligence both individually and collectively as a group. I call this a battle of and for the brain. Technology is either purposefully, or just as a consequence, altering the cognition of humans who are often unaware of the attempt. Or, to be generous, we minimize what we believe the effect which only encourages us to react too slowly or just inadequately. We are in a psychological, social, technological, battle whether we accept it or not. We can no longer ignore this important battle. Purposeful or just simply as a byproduct, technology’s actions are manipulating our cognition mechanisms and, in most situations, it weakens it, influences it, and at its worst destroys it. And because this particular piece is about humans this means that we the people need a higher level of discipline. We need to be cognitively aware of our limits as well as better recognize the biased presentation of a reality often digitally altered intended to favor the interests of the one providing the manipulation. We need to increase our cognitive resilience to avoid the exploitation of cognitive biases the increased likelihood of cognitive errors the increased manipulation of our perceptions the increased likelihood of how our attention spans can be overwhelmed or steered and the increased cognitive stress induced. All of the things I just suggested have predictable consequences on our mental acuity or social relations and our motivations as well as the efficiency of communities, society, and organizations. Toffler called it neural investment I’m suggesting that we recognize the cognitive aspects AND make informed decisions on our neural investment. This will be a challenge because this neural investment spans an array of cognitive paradoxes:

• the decision/indecision dichotomy
• cognitive errors and biases
• perceptions and illusions
• influence and manipulation
• psychology and behavior
• the sense of the interaction between users and systems
• autonomy, ethics and motivation in the loss thereof, i.e., despair
• morality and the clash of values

Once again when we talk about neural investment, we are speaking of not only the single person, but including the entire sociotechnological system. From one to many, when technology stresses us, it stresses our ability to solve complex problems which are typically dependent on how information is represented, understood, and developed. Whether we like it or not we must take into account the strengths, limitations, vulnerabilities, and diversity of everyone involved in decision making, i.e., everything in life. This has become admittedly more difficult over time as ‘the enemy’ has grown stronger. As technology has matured the design of it has taken into account the differences and characteristics of users in order to encourage spontaneous use as well as addictive use. Technology has become more knowledgeable with regard to how it can manipulate for greater integration of human users within the system. Objectives have gone from simply facilitating the user experience to instigating, or even dictating, how people behave. It seems like the technology world has basically settled on encouraging the use of digital tools that disrupt, with the intent to affect, all levels of our cognitive processes. They have an influence over our psychological, relationship, motivational, dimensions even sowing doubt or consolidating certainties within our mental decision-making trees consistently targeting individual cognitive abilities directly. Technology is relentless with regard to altering our perceptions, reality and behavior. Worse, once it senses a shift it attacks it. It will seek perception and augmenting and even mental modification and with that we either learn to defend our brains or lose.

Which leads me to experiences memories and attention.

Our neural investment is grounded in our formed images of reality and our formed images of reality are typically grounded in experiences. This does not necessarily mean things that we have actually encountered and done, although those things do create deeper memories, but it could be words we’ve encountered, pictures we’ve encountered and opinions we’ve encountered. All of those things subconsciously gather together in certain parts of our brains and create some memories. Many of those memories are not causal, but actually a concoction of disparate experiences which coalesce into some memory. I worded it that way to suggest that sometimes memories are not exactly the most exact things. And they absolutely are not true reflections of reality, but they are the best that we have. And from those memories we find value. What I mean by that is those memories are valued by our brain therefore when we bring these memories to the forefront either when we’re ready to make a decision or reflect upon the present situation; they represent value. That value drives our attention. The sobering thought to end that discussion is, and this may sound odd when discussing very personal experiences and memories, garbage in & garbage out. Effective neural investment is an attempt to manage the garbage in so that what comes out is just a bit less garbagey.

I bring all that up because when we do talk about Neural Investment or being cognitively overloaded it doesn’t mean that we stop and don’t make decisions. In fact, we make over 30,000 decisions on a daily basis. My point here is that because there are so many of them, and because we do need to invest some brainpower even on the most instinctive choices, we lean in on our memories and apply them to our attention, assess what we elect to pay attention to and make choices. I hesitate to say this, but as a generalization this would suggest that we don’t really adapt successfully to a churning environment. In fact, what it appears we do is take our square peg memories which we have associated value to, use them, and what we discern we need to pay attention to, and put that square peg memory into any shape sized hole that our attention has pointed us to. Effective neural investment won’t completely change that but maybe we could make some inroads on becoming a little less laissez-faire with regard to our attention, experiences and memories.

Which leads me to leaning into attention, experiences, and reshaping memories.

All the speedy looking and feeling stuff only encourages us to grab onto whatever shiny object looks appealing and make more important decisions based on our memory banks. Neither is particularly healthy or helpful.  Unfortunately, we have a collective shortsightedness grounded in “living in the now,” but in order to maintain a thriving life it demands a long view. You need short term results without being shortsighted. You need a long-term view while ‘being’ in the short term. Stealing from Stewart Brand’s “how buildings learn,” I call this ‘navigating the long now.’

Let me explain. Our brains almost demand a long view in order to, well, survive and thrive. Our brains are our personal ‘civilizations’ we exist within a larger civilization system constructed in layers in which there is a very strong, but flexible structure built to absorb shocks and, in most cases, incorporate them. Instead of breaking under stress, like something brittle, the system yields as if it were malleable and yet parts move so slowly, they seem like they are unchanging. So, when it comes to reshaping our memories, or at least how our memories are shaped, we should be thinking:

• Fast learns, slow remembers.
• Fast proposes, slow disposes.
• Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous.
• Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and occasional revolution.
• Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy.
• Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.

All durable dynamic systems, including our brains, have this sort of structure; it is what makes them adaptable and robust.  Navigating the long now leverages longevity to optimize value in the Now through what we pay attention to and, as a result, what experiences we have. I suggest all of that because if your ‘experiences’ are shaped by short term, your memories are a bit more fragile and brittle (and certainly of less deep value) and therefore the memories you lean in on when making choices are, well, more brittle and fragile. If we begin to become a bit more thoughtful with regard to what we pay attention to, to how we engage with our experiences, the memories created will exhibit more robust value from which, when tapped, will make future decisions more robust and resilient.

Which leads me to, for some reason, open-source coding.

Open-source coding is an example of a collective group of people taking on a challenge and an issue so that each individual would benefit. The first significant community developed software movement took the intellectual Commons approach. That approach was fairly common in the academic and scientific communities where self-organized collaborative communities of scientists had come together through private networks to pool their brain power or share insights around a particular science or math problem. The Apache Web Server has its roots in this form of open sourcing. I won’t go into detail on Apache, but I recommend everybody reading about its origins. Interestingly. Meta/Facebook is currently doing something similar with Llama. But the real point of intellectual Commons is shared intelligence with the intent to create the best common product possible for the individual. I imagine my second point is that you don’t need a PhD or actually have any credentials and you can contribute. The point is if we could combine our time and collaborate, we can create something better for our brains that almost anybody could effectively manage their neural investment. But to me one of the most interesting points about intellectual Commons and open-source coding is that because of its collaborative construct the coordination and direction is representative of emergent behavior, i.e., it shapes itself to the issues at hand, based on whoever shows up and who actually wanted to write code. And maybe within that is buried my most important point. Neural investment is not just an individual choice; it’s a collective choice. The battle for the brain may be fought day to day within the cognitive constraints of an individual brain, but it’s actually gonna be won through the collective brain. Within our collective imagination and our collective intellectual there’s a solution. We may not have it today but it exists. But, once again, people need to be purposeful because, stated or not, technology is pretty purposeful. It purposefully exploits, often degrades, or even destroys, how someone builds their reality, their mental self-confidence, their trust in processes and systems, and the approaches required for the efficient and effective functioning of communities and societies.

But lets be honest. Technology is not going away. Inevitably we will simply have to make a bargain with technology as it gives & gives and ‘takes.’ This bargain is going to lead to a cognitive battle with technology which will demand a neural investment simply to survive. Ponder.

A house and its arguments mold to each other.

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“It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.” Bill Bernbach

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Bernbach is right; and wrong. From a broad perspective, this is true. But when you get down to the nuts & bolts of it, people are constantly changing and the environment in which a person exists (stuff, time, space, society, community, etc.) exerts changes upon the ‘unchanging person.’

Which leads me to buildings.

When I say buildings, I mean Stewart Brand’s “How Buildings Learn.” There is a lot to be learned when thinking about buildings and people; at least from Brand’s viewpoint. Almost no buildings adapt well because they’re actually designed not to adapt. This doesn’t mean they don’t, just not in obvious ways; just like people.

• Buildings, when built, would prefer to remain just as they are and hold out against the times; just like most people.
• When we deal with buildings, we deal with decisions taken long ago for remote reasons.; just like people.
• All buildings adapt anyway, in good ways and not as good ways, because the usages in and around them are changing constantly; just like people.
• The fact is buildings are constantly impacted by 3 forces: technology, money, and fashion; just like people.

The truth is businesses have integrity and maintain some sustainable values (discussed later on) and enduring value; just like people. That integrity and sustaining aspects, in combination with the adaptation features, can be found in Brand’s layers of buildings (which certainly reflect aspects of the individual):

• Site. this is the geographical setting of the location, the defined lot whose boundaries and context outlast generations of buildings. Site is eternal. Sure. The foundation and load bearing elements are perilous and expensive to change so people typically don’t, but they can. Sites are unmoveable.

Personally, this is where we have elected to stand, live or build our careers.

• Skin. Surfaces now change every 20 years or so to keep up with the fashion or technology or for repair. Recent focus on energy costs has led to reengineered skins that are airtight and better insulated.

Personally, this is what we choose our appearance to be and what we deem important to how we are viewed.

• Services are the working guts of a building: communications wiring, electrical wiring, plumbing, sprinkler system, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning and any moving parts like elevators and escalators. They wear out or become obsolete every 7 to 15 years.

Personally, these are the things we have chosen to incorporate into our lives in terms of ongoing maintenance.

• Space. Plans and where walls, ceilings, floors, and doors go.

Personally, this is how we use our time (time is our space).

• Stuff. Chairs, tables, phones, pictures, rugs, kitchen appliances, lamps, even hair brushes, all the things that twitch around daily to monthly. Furniture is called ‘mobilia’ in Italian for good reason.

Personally, this is the ‘stuff’ (the shiny objects, widgets, technology, useful things) we use and bring into our lives.

The dynamics of the tug of war between sustaining and changing are clearly dominated by the slow parts with the speeding aspects often simply following along. As Brand suggests: ‘slow constraints quick; slow controls quick.’ Buildings, or people, this is generally true. Unchanging is still changing. To be clear. In our current view of the world as a madcap, speedy, chaotic place, we ignore almost everything I just shared.

I would suggest thinking about buildings, and people, in this pacing way is practical, pragmatic, and enhances thinking of possibilities. The pacing clearly defines how a building relates to people and how people relate to the world around them. Levels of accountability match pace levels as an adaptive building has to allow slippage between the differently paced systems of site, structure, skin, services, space, plan, and stuff. Lack of accountability, or recognition of, to the different paces means the slow systems block the flow of the quick ones and the quick ones tear up the slow ones with their constant change. When working this way its supposed to make the ‘unchanging’ parts adapt just enough and the changing parts are tied to progress, rather than uselessness.

Which leads me to the pursuit of success, thriving, admiration and taking care of one’s own.

Gallup conducted research in the early 2000’s to determine the conditions that create loyal and productive employees which, in turn, create higher performing companies. The study identified 12 core elements that need to be present to create a ‘highly engaged employee.’ About half the elements deal with management style and the other half have to do with an employee’s sense of belonging. As the study stated: “a uniquely human twist occurs after the basic needs are fulfilled. The employee searches for meaning in her vocation. For reasons that transcend the physical needs fulfilled by earning a living, she looks for contribution to a higher purpose. Something within her looks for something in which to believe.” It is always more rewarding, in totality, to work with and for someone who is trying to make a difference rather than just try to sell more stuff. That decisions for ‘something to believe in’ is unchanging, yet, what thriving means can change (or adapt, i.e., has some emergent characteristics). That said. That sense of thriving demands some sense of shared, sustainable, values. Let’s call it ‘values integrity.’ And that is where the changing person is having some issues.

“Our motivation/focus/attention/behaviour will naturally gravitate to things that provide the richest sense of progress.”

Dr Jason Fox

A decline in shared values undermines our ability to address our greatest challenges. A fragmentation of individual values hinders our ability to common sense making. It’s like we have forgotten the collective action on behalf of the public good has actually been necessary for our survival up to this point as well as general societal thriving and progress. We have forgotten by doing things together that we can achieve remarkable success AND have a sense of shared admiration. I will not suggest we have become more selfish but I would suggest we’ve become more irresponsible even while believing we have increased our responsibility itself. It’s possible we have misconstrued what true sacrifice is as the larger narrative bludgeons us with a belief that maybe we are sacrificing more than ever. I will say that we are encouraged to embrace short-term thinking and too short a sense of history both of which dimmish the larger sense of collective good and heighten the sense of importance of ‘saving the self Life’ which, in turn, encourages us to cocoon ourselves in individual values. A well-functioning system must be rooted in something deeper than some unchanging person dedicated to oneself. To be clear. In today’s world the unchanged desires of thriving, admiration, taking care of one’s own, has become grounded in some fairly unhealthy thinking:

• We have forgotten long term investment and delayed gratification and embraced short term gratification and ‘get it now while you can’
• We have accepted an extreme loss of confidence in our institutions and the authority of the leaders across society; instead embracing individual opinions speaking in confidence.
• We’ve shifted from a healthy skepticism to cynical suspicion of everything and everyone.

All of that makes an unhealthy unchanging person almost incapable of adapting to (a) a changing world and (b) progress.

Which leads me to the real values crisis.

Unchanging and adapting is a nuanced discussion especially when it comes to values. But the discussion of values is imperative when we discuss what should be unchanging with regard to an individual in a world swirling with different layers of things affecting that individual’s behaviors and encouraging some unhealthy change. It was Dov Seidman in the book How who suggested that there are two competing kinds of values that drive business, government, leadership, individual behavior, and relationships. He calls them situational values and sustainable values.

• Situational values involve calculations about what is available in the here and now. They’re all about exploiting short-term opportunities rather than consistently living the principles that create long term success. They are all about what we can and cannot do in any given situation.
• Sustainable values are focused on what we should and should not do in all situations. As such they literally sustain relationships over the long term. Sustainable values are the values that connect us deeply as humans such as transparency integrity honesty truth shared responsibility and hope. They are all therefore all about how not how much.

“Situational values push us toward added toward the strategy of becoming too big to fail.

Sustainable values inspire us to pursue the strategy of becoming too sustainable to fail by building enduring relationships. What makes an institution sustainable is not the scale and size it reaches, but how it does its business and how it relates to its employees, customers, suppliers, the environment, society, and future generations.”

Dov Siedman

The point here is while the world has clearly drifted from sustainable to situational values, the unchanging person somehow keeps a grip, albeit tenuous on occasion, on sustainable values. This is important because sustainable values, and sustainable thinking, lead to not only creating sustainable work, but building a sustainable society (by any definition of sustainable). Sustainable values offer the individual flexibility of intellect and of will to successfully thrive, gain admiration, and ‘take care of his own.’ And maybe that is my pointy. We have inverted the overall importance of unchanging and change. In other words, we are unchanging on the wrong things and changing on the wrong things and emphasizing change over unchange. That said. Many things have changed, many things are changing, even ‘the unchanging man,’ but it’s a bit more complex, and complicated, than just an “unchanging man.”

Which leads me to speed and opposing forces.

Living in today’s world one could easily believe everything is moving faster and as such if you are not running fast enough you are falling behind. This has an insidious effect because buried somewhere in our brains is the ‘survival of the fittest’ belief in that if you are behind, you will be the first eaten. Metaphorically, this is a mindset which creates anxiety and some unhealthy other beliefs. We compensate in a variety of ways of which if we were just a bit more reflective would actually identify some interesting things to ground ourselves in.

The first is that the more we think things are fast the more we will seek out some slow, or even unmoving, components in our lives. This becomes important because not all slow and unmoving parts are created equal and if we choose them well, well, we ground ourselves in sustainable values and a mental construct which provides some framework within which we can adapt and move stuff in and out of. Yeah. Just like; ’how buildings learn.’ If we view ourselves as houses, we learn, adapt, absorb ‘stuff’, all without losing the solid architecture.

The speed swirls around the house from light winds to hurricanes and we stand. Speed expends its energy on us externally while, internally, if we have invested in a solid structure, stand on a considered site, and have thoughtfully crafted our space, we not only withstand the efforts of speed, but absorb the changes and aspects we purposefully select with which to adapt.

The second is, well, festina lente. If we become reflective about speed and the illusion of the benefits of ‘moving fast’, most likely festina lente comes into sight – ‘make haste slowly.’ Once we get past a fear-of-missing-out or maybe accept that grabbing onto the newest shiny object doesn’t appear to be benefiting our personal progress, we begin to grasp the concept of ‘slow down to speed up.’ We begin to ground ourselves is more solid decision-making, more solid conceptual & critical thinking and more solid energy against things that actually have progress as an outcome.

In the end.

There are surely some speedy things happening in the world and there are surely some times when things happen speedier than others, but nature is nature and culture is culture and self is self and, well, they are all purposefully constructed to be just a bit slower in pace and more contemplative of change. Not unchanging, but just a bit more thoughtful about whether to run or not, when to be speedier and when not, and when to change, and when to not. In the end, let me circle back to the beginning quote: a house and its arguments mold to each other. We people, houses of values and beliefs and attitudes and what we seek important to ‘hold on to,’ argue with ourselves constantly with regard to what we want to change what we don’t. What we argue about, how we argue, molds our house to us. Ponder.

“When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you aren’t saying ‘no’ to yourself.”

Paulo Coelho

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This is ‘not about saying ‘Yes” when you really should say ‘No’.

Nor is this about saying ‘No’ when you really mean to say ‘Yes”.

Heck.

This isn’t even about compromising. This is simply about saying ‘Yes” and ‘No’ and the fact it has seemed to have mysteriously disappeared in today’s business <if not in many of Life’s every day conversations>. To be clear. Haven’t you noticed how often a portion of a business discussion is succinctly brought to a close with a nice definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response, yet, somehow that part of the discussion is somehow not concluded?

For some reason even if you do actually deign to take the simplicity high road and answer with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, well, the other person just keeps on talking. Or maybe if they want to show they have actually been listening they may say something like “are you sure?” or “wouldn’t you like me to explain?” or some other attempt to continue that particular discussion. And if you are in a group? Oh my. Forget it. You may as well keep the yes or the no in your pocket.

So.

What has happened to ‘yes’ and ‘no’?

Where have they gone in business?

Why have they lost their power to end a discussion?

Look. We tend to overcomplicate things in business. We seem to bundle up yes or no things into some conglomeration of an extended decision tree — all of which we assume must be discussed in its totality.

That said. Life would be much easier if we simply looked at each ‘yes” or ‘no’ decision in a meeting or discussion as preparation for the next opportunity or decision in a continuum of decisions. Treat the moment as mutually exclusive instead of mutually inclusive. What that ultimately suggests is maybe we shouldn’t dwell in the moment and linger upon the righteousness of the particular one syllable statement when someone makes it.

I am not suggesting that it isn’t important to be thoughtful about your decisions, but maybe we could seek to avoid becoming a victim of paralysis by analysis and ongoing discussion, when it really is not necessary, more often.

Oh.

Speaking of the ‘not necessary’ thing. I sense part of the reason yes and no are disappearing is because we believe it is necessary to discuss everything.

That leads me to yes and no and something called ‘fast and frugal decision-making.’

Two guys wrote a book suggesting that asking, at most, three ‘Yes/No’ questions is a fast and frugal strategy for making a decision < “Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart” by Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter Todd and the ABC Research Group>.

And, in fact, they actually call this theory ‘fast and frugal heuristics.’ I will net it down for you <albeit I will probably mangle some of their really smart thinking and logic>:

–          Traditional decision making theory is unrealistic <irrational> for humans <our minds are just not capable of practically applying theory>,

–          We tend to overcomplicate because we have been trained to do so,

–          We tend to overcomplicate for fear of ‘wrong decision’ rather than delight of ‘right decision’,

–          Most decisions can be made within three naturally course correcting ‘yes or no’ decision making answers.

Well. Before I share my own thoughts

About fast & frugal decision making:

It is fast because it does not involve much computation, and it is frugal because it only searches for some of the available information. Its simplicity raises the suspicion that it might be highly inaccurate, compared to standard statistical classification methods that process and combine all available predictors. Yet it is actually more accurate than some rather complex statistical classification methods (Breiman et al., 1993). This suggests that fast and frugal decision making can be as accurate as strategies that use all available information and expensive computation forms. Fast and frugal heuristics for making decisions capture how real minds make decisions under constraints of limited time and knowledge. 

The premise is that much of human reasoning and decision making can be modeled by fast and frugal heuristics that make inferences with limited time and knowledge. These heuristics do not involve much computation, and do not compute probabilities and utilities. They are models of bounded rationality.

By the way. I really like that overall thought — ‘models of bounded rationality.’ Seems like we could use a shitload more of that in today’s workplace.

Ok. They also note <in a very candid and slightly funny way> decision making theory, when applied in practical circumstances, is actually irrational. Irrational in that the human mind actually cannot accommodate the mental gymnastics to meet the theoretical computations necessary to make ‘the most effective decision:’

The fascination with what is optimal in thought and behavior does reflect a certain sense of beauty and morality. Cognitive scientists, economists, and biologists have often chased after the same beautiful dreams by building elaborate models endowing organisms with unlimited abilities to know, memorize, and compute. These heavenly dreams, however, tend to evaporate when they encounter the physical and psychological realities of the waking world. Mere mortal humans cannot hope to live up to these dreams, and instead appear irrational and dysfunctional when measured against their fantastic standards.

In addition. Most decision making theory doesn’t incorporate any time constraints. In other words: ‘this is the theory, apply it, deadlines be damned, it takes the time it needs to apply it correctly.’

Well. That all sounds not very practical <the theory stuff>. And the fast & frugal sounds so simple it almost sounds not very practical.

Yet. I actually sense most of us with any amount of business experience instinctively agrees <mostly> with a fast & frugal decision making process albeit we may apply it in a variety of succinct ‘time frugal’ methods  which are most likely not as tight as the three yes/no idea.

So why the heck don’t we do it anymore if we instinctively think it is right?

Let me try this and I will use myself to explain. Two main reasons:

1.     We have taken theory literally.

Everyone in business these days has been steeped in training over the years to question everything. It doesn’t matter your seniority or experience, if you don’t agree, you question. Heck. Even if you agree you question.

Even worse? We treat every decision equally. I say that to be kind to those who simply cannot discern what may actually be worth discussing <or discerning the important from the unimportant> . Doesn’t matter what the reason is, we seem to discuss … every … single … decision. What that means is that even if you do decide to assess the discussion and say ‘yes’ … and that’s it <in your mind>, someone will question it or simply want to discuss it.

By the way. Collaboration exponentially exacerbates this issue. In a groupthink collaborative scenario there will ALWAYS be at least one person who will disagree, want to discuss, decline to move on <add in whatever ‘d’ word you would like to in this space> and it will all happen in the name of ‘positive collaboration.’ The net result? Negative progress <translation: no forward movement and often backwards movement>.

Look. I won’t argue with all the decision making theory models. Smarter people than I have invested gobs of time and research thinking all that shit through. I will suggest in the business world, i.e., the practical world, we need to become better at not over thinking <or over questioning> and we need to become better at not treating each decision as equal to another <so possibly we need to be better at training how to discern the difference between decisions>.

Oh. That last thought.

That sounds simple and practical but we have actually been trained to do the opposite. This attitude would take a major shift in attitude. In other words — this would be very very hard to do.

2.       Skepticism

For some reason we have become quite skeptical in the work place. And by this I mean there seems to be an overall sense of ‘they aren’t really saying what they mean’ or in the questioning-everything environment maybe it is ‘what do they really mean by that?”

Well. If I was using a shitload of words I could possibly allow some skepticism, but this is about one syllable responses – yes … no. I frankly don’t see a lot of ambiguity or space to misconstrue what is actually being said. However. A respected friend made me think about this more as we discussed the topic.

Therefore rather than be hypothetical I will address this from my point of view on what everyone should know when I say yes or no:

–          I am not being lazy. I am perfectly aware that saying a simple yes or no will most likely be jarring in a discussion environment. Suffice it to say that if I have reached a point where I believe a yes or no is appropriate I fully understand the situation and the thinking behind whatever we are discussing. I have gathered enough information either prior to the discussion, within the discussion to that point or in my head from past experiences and knowledge to assess and decide.  Most likely I have decided that in the scheme of things our time would be better spent discussing another decision rather than this one.

In other words I have been anything but lazy. Oh. And even if I have not been lazy and I have misread the discussion up to this point I imagine everything can be course corrected as we move on or … I have forfeited my right to move it along that path.

–          I mean it. I promise. I mean it. You don’t have to explain anything else or question motives or discuss what has been agreed upon any more.

Accept it.

I mean it.

And let’s move on.

I imagine the few words of explanation I just shared will not resolve a global work place skepticism attitude but, what the heck, ‘one small step possibly begets one giant leap for workplace mankind.’

Anyway. Suffice it to say saying yes or no is good and we should be doing it more often in the work place.

I know that sounds so silly you may be wondering why I typed it, but sometimes the most simple things are overlooked.

Ok. A couple last thoughts.

This yes or no thing. You just have to have a clear sense of  objectives, commitments and priorities.  If you don’t have a handle on all that then a yes or no will not only truly be lazy thinking it may actually be a misguided response. That is what makes this tricky. And it’s often easier for everyone <and I mean everyone> to discuss things <so everyone can discuss, and re-discuss, the objectives, commitments and priorities — until your head explodes>.

Yeah. I know. All that ‘over-discussion’ sounds a little wacky in a semi chaotic time constrained business world, but I imagine discussion leads to being more well-liked <and some perception of ‘team player’ and such>.

But we all need to keep in mind. Each day in the workplace we are forced to examine millions of little decisions that inevitably make up what business is all about while we, ourselves, make something like 30,000 decisions in a day. This constant scrutiny of hundreds of possible outcomes for every decision you make will drive you nuts. And the constant discussion will use up more time than is useful.

In the end <here is what I believe>.

Business needs to be more diligent with regard to the importance of good decision-making.

While business is certainly ultimately the sum of the decisions made … it makes sense to recognize it is often not as difficult as we often make it. Each decision is not business altering nor life threatening. In fact … most are not. In addition … most decisions are just not that complicated or complex.

In fact <simplistically> I would argue all things basically come down to one basic decision between two choices – ‘Yes” or ‘No’. Ponder.

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“I’ve never enjoyed being fully present, a muted reality has been the landscape I’ve preferred and mainly inhabited forever. Sure, feeling is good, but not too much.”
Mark Lanegan

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“Numbness keeps us from becoming.”

Glennon Doyle Melton

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While ‘increasingly short attention spans’ is a bullshit narrative it is not bullshit to say it is becoming more difficult to figure out what to pay attention to. While the internet has offered the joys of any and all knowledge at your fingertips, it has also offered the despair of being bludgeoned with a steady hailstorm of any and all knowledge (real knowledge, false knowledge, made up knowledge). This bludgeoning has either numbed us or forced us to hide our attention in smaller spaces where we only see the things we want to see.  So. Cognitively we are overloaded (and I only believe it is increasing). McLuhan outlined the issue maybe the best – ‘we ratio.’  We always ratio our attention and technology has simply re-ratioed things for us. In the process of ratioing us we are getting squeezed and, well, being suffocated.  In fact, I believe every one of us runs into a very complex Big Squeeze only amplified by technology. Ok. Let me be a bit more specific. Technology is an equal opportunity distributor of any and all content – true, untrue, useful, useless, and everything in-between. As we get squeezed by all of this we become, well, numb. This isn’t an excuse for people to be derelict in their duty to sift through the garbage to find the non garbage. It is simply a point. People are pattern seeking and within all this stuff it becomes next to impossible to discern real patterns – it is easy to become numb. This gets even trickier because AI systems are designed to recognise patterns, but, contrary to human beings, they do not understand the meaning of these patterns. So we get presented with patterns that, well, don’t exactly align with the meaning, or meaning in general, with what we understand as humans. Faced with enough of that we become numb.

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“Feeling must have rendered her numb.”

Mary Lawson

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‘.. striking a balance between humans and machines … on one side biased and arbitrary human organizations and on the other, soulless technocracy based on unfeeling machines. There is a path.”

Mike Walsh

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I would suggest we do not talk enough about overstimulation, how we numb ourselves to certain things (as a personal defense mechanism and not under some lazy reason) and the fact that the sheer amount of information we are bombarded with forces us to ‘self-ratio’ what we take in and what we assess and how we do both.

Which leads me to how we start parsing out segments & aspects of what could be construed as part of the ‘overstimulation totality.” Here is the deal. Overstimulation, while we want to blame technology, is the combination of the medium, words, pictures, movement, symbols, associations, tone of voice, etc. received in totality. Individual elements, while interesting to debate, have no real meaning on their own. It is the totality in which we begin to re-ratio our attention, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and thoughts. This is compounded by the fact technology is so pervasive it is impossible to turn off – either directly (our own use/input stimuli) or indirectly (we are interacting with people who have extended their senses to link with technology). Reality gets distorted in both the incoming stimulation and the outgoing beliefs (conclusions). This is important because many worthy ideas have been sacrificed at the altar of overstimulation. This makes me a bit uncomfortable to write, but maybe numb is a natural state for many people within the current context.

• In 1964 Marshal McLuhan (Understanding media: Extensions of Man) suggested the idea of numbness associated with the advent of a pervasive technology/media. The idea that as media propagated and became an extension of people it would impact our ‘ratio of things.’ In other words, we would have to choose to reorder what we thought about, how we thought about things and what we would do. Ultimately, should technology infringe too far as part of ‘extension’ we would purposefully numb ourselves simply as part of survival (cognitively, attention, default, etc.).

• In 1970 Alvin Toffler suggested the advent of technology and the rapid changes it would inject into our lives would inevitably create a sense of overstimulation. In other words, so much would be occurring in a finite amount of time we would cognitively go into overload.

What hath technology wrought? Numbness. I am not suggesting it is the sole culprit, but it has amplified less visible issues to visible, small issues to big issues, big issues to existential issues, and our brains have a cognitive issue with all of that. Here is what I believe (and have some research proof):

• The world is not any less, or more, linear (causal relationships exist).
• The world is not moving faster (a minute is still a minute)
• Attention spans have not decreased.
• People have not become stupider.
• Curiosity has not diminished.
• Purposeful ignorance has not increased.

What I will say is that the consequences of numbness veer widely between an inability to say “yes or no” to a steadfast “yes or no.” On one end we retreat and on the other end we become dogmatic. That is the polarization of numbness. Yeah. Even numbness has consequences. Ponder.

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“The modern spirit is a hesitant one.  Spontaneity has given way to cautious legalisms, and the age of heroes has been superseded by a cult of specialization.

We have no more giants; only obedient ants.”

Roger Lowenstein

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Doing the right thing is a basic innate instinct.

We are all born with it.

We all embrace it.

We all actually enjoy doing it.

And, yet, it seems like more and more we are hesitating to do it. Where it once was a spontaneous unthinking everyday behavior, it is now becoming a more conscious decision making process.

Society has created this situation.

This is not an individual behavior driven situation <although the individual can certainly make a choice to go against society>. As I said upfront, left to our own devices most people will do the right thing.

How can I be sure of this?

Well. Attitudes with regard to desire to do the right thing have not changed. The attitude today remains the same as it did yesterday and the day before. In other words the spirit of goodness remains, but something is making the spirit hesitate.

Now.

To be clear. Today I am discussing ‘hesitation.’

This isn’t about not knowing what the right thing to do is nor is it about the choice itself. This is all about the moment before the moment. The moment in which your instinct kicks in, you can almost feel yourself moving or getting ready to speak and, yet, you hesitate.

Why do I think we hesitate <when our instincts tell us otherwise>?

Suffice it to say we have become a maniacally litigious society combined with a relentlessly unforgiving society.

Individual words, a slip of the tongue as it were, can lead to a law suit, being fired or even having your entire character destroyed online. In other words, society is screwing us up.

Shit.

Who wouldn’t hesitate knowing that?

This hesitation costs us, as individuals and as a culture, an exorbitant cost. It diminishes not only the random act of kindness but, in the business workplace, diminishes ethical behavior. And it diminishes in a slightly insidious way.

Insidious?

Yeah.

It’s not that in our hesitation we decide to do the wrong thing, but rather in our silence the ‘less than the right things’ steps in and assumes control.

Oh.

Please note that I purposefully say ‘diminish.’

I am certainly not going to suggest that this societal driven hesitation eliminates doing the right thing. That would be silly.

That would suggest the spirit to do the right thing, to be good, can actually be extinguished. I do not believe that is possible.

Spirit can be dampened, it can be smothered, it can be diminished, but it cannot be expunged from who and what we are as humans.

Now. Maybe even worse than the diminishing effect?

It creates ants … not giants.

Ok.

Maybe worse?

It creates situations in which deserving giants receive undeserved criticism and are cut down in the attempt to make them ant sized so the ants can assume more power than they deserve.

My point today?

We should all be giants.

All of us.

Giants of the spirit of what is right and doing what is right and kindness and generosity and integrity. And we should be giants every day, every hour and every minute. And we should have the right to feel like a giant when doing so.

Society is stealing our opportunity to our rightful place as a giant.

I believe we are in an age of heroes where society encourages less than heroic everyday behavior.

I believe we are in an age of giants where society encourages us to be ants.

I believe the modern spirit is not naturally a hesitant one.

I believe we are in an age where doing the right thing should be demanded … in Life & in business.

I believe we are in an age where we should be seeking to eliminate divisiveness, eliminate restrictions on ‘right behavior’ and eliminate the … well … hesitation of the spirit to do the right things.

Ponder.

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“Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”

not really said by Plato

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“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Howard Zinn

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• Pretz: concept of intrinsic worth of an individual, without regard to their birth, sex, religion or race. The poorest laborer was worthy of the respect of the most royal.

• Paratge: describes a range of moral qualities to which the whole community should aspire – generosity, kindness, honesty, sincerity, courage and tolerance.

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

There is a pernicious narrative that being kind just opens you up to being taken advantage of. In other words, people are not really kind because they have a “what’s in it for me” attitude. This is pernicious because it is a double-edged sword. It encourages kind people to believe that kindness isn’t valued. It encourages all people to believe that kindness is more likely to be penalized than rewarded. This triply sucks because, well, most people are kind. And they prefer to be kind.

So. Generally speaking, I am an optimist (maybe really a skeptical optimist), believe we should do more utopian thinking and believe, for the most part, humans are kind and like to coexist in a healthy collaborative way. That said. I get a little concerned that we, far too many people, do not believe people are kind. Simplistically there is a general impression that if you are kind, or nice, you are not tough — or tough enough to assume the challenges in everyday life let alone the more difficult responsibilities

At this attitude’s worst dimension, it breeds a belief ‘assholes win,’ therefore, ‘be an asshole.’  At this attitude’s slightly less worse dimension it suggests “the toughest fighters get shit done when it’s tough to get shit done.”

Now. Aspects of that latter point are true, but it seems like everyone forgets to add onto that thought “but that doesn’t mean you need to be so at the expense of kindness.”

While we could debate whether I am exactly right on what I am now going to share, the reality is that one of the most important attributes of a good person is actually “ability to make the tough decision without losing sight of kindness.” I imagine my point is that if you make the bold choice to incorporate kindness from day one <which no one seems to be pragmatically encouraging young people to do so> it just becomes something you do without thinking about it. Your life is inextricably bound to kindness and while I have no statistics to support my next point my guess is that “outcomes” are equally distributed to those bound to kindness and those not (in other words, the choice doesn’t change the overall distribution of success). So, kindness ‘success’ is captured in the fact you are just as likely to succeed on outcomes AND you can value the effort you invested in whatever outcome there is (and, I imagine, you will be more liked and respected).

Deciding to be successful and be kind is a choice**. And a big choice given the kind of shit the world tried to teach you far too often these days. Assuming responsibility for kindness … well … impacts everything. It is one of those ‘ripple affect’ type choices – with benefits in the present and in the future.

• ** note: to be clear, I believe kindness and kind acts are actually things that should be considered success, but in today’s world I am arguing that kindness does not mean you have to sacrifice the more materialistic definitions of society success.

Yeah. I do tend to believe you can affect your kindness by consciously deciding that kindness can win and that kindness does not diminish effectiveness in the pursuit of some specific outcome. The truth is that Kindness wins if you simply believe it can get injected into discrete moments of now.

Here is where I offer the unfortunate truth about kindness – you have to do something, or actually be consistently kind, to actually be kind. What I am talking about is make choices. Choose to be kind and act with kindness. In fact. In today’s world you almost have to defiantly choose to choose to be kind. As a corollary, you also have to choose to live in defiance of all that is not kind. I mean this attitudinally as well as behaviorally.**

• ** note: I almost think it is tougher for us to be consistently attitudinally kind in a world consistently attempting to tell you (a) people are not inherently kind and (b) you are weak mentally in elevating kindness

Look. Kindness doesn’t mean being a spineless jellyfish. I am not suggesting you shouldn’t call someone a jackass if they truly are a jackass, or be harshly constructively critical if that is what will get through to someone or even make the hard call where people get pissed. Sometimes life/business demands you to portray some jerk-like qualities. It does so not because it encourages you to actually be a jerk, or a jack ass, but inertia is incredibly difficult to address and, yes, sometimes you have to kick some ass to get everyone moving.

So maybe you need to selectively be a jack ass.

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“Got to mind the delicate social nuances when you inform some poor fellow that he’s a dumb motherfucker.”

Locke Lamora

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And, yet, you can be a jack ass without sacrificing kindness. What I am suggesting is if you carry kindness with you … and offer kindness as a thread of all that you do … well … kindness can win and does win.  Yeah. You can win the right way instead of just winning.

I will tell you one thing that I know for sure. There is a small sense of satisfaction; let’s call it “added value”, in everything you do if kindness is injected into the decisions and behavior. Once again, I am not suggesting being kind is a transaction. It is not. It is simply making the world better moment by moment, maybe making someone’s life just a bit better in a moment, and the reward isn’t anything to you; just that maybe the world became just a bit, if not fractionally, better. Ok. So maybe it is a transaction; a transaction with the world.

Anyway. Here is some harsh truth.

While kindness really does matter, unfortunately, in this world in which far too many people believe being kind is weak, you have to purposefully choose, or at least be self-aware, to be kind.

And therein lies my point. To get something good for all of us sometimes we have to do something that may feel a bit uncomfortable for the self. We are not machines and we need to have a sense of direction, but progress toward that direction relies on some belief that not only other humans are good, but it is just a bit easier to see the dark hearts that may seek to subvert our progress. Said another way, being kind needs some trust in humankind and a belief in kindness threaded through a society, a collection of individuals, who would like to be better tomorrow than today and recognize, collectively, we have a better chance in achieving this if we inject some kindness. That ‘trust’ does not demand proof that everyone is kind in their heart of hearts, just a steadfast belief. To be clear. Society can make this tough. But remember. We is made up of I’s, and I’s create the We. Society is not only an outlet for our individual contributions, but also a reflection of our collective contributions and beliefs. It is a place to give to as well as to receive. So maybe we should seek to create just a bit more of our world where there are fewer places for unkindness believers to hide. Maybe we should think of being kind as, well, being a good “samaritan.” Yeah. Perhaps our moments of kindness rescue strangers in ways they will never forget and, as a consequence, are just a bit more kind on occasion.

So why talk about kindness today?

I thought about this recently due to a conversation I had with a kindness kindred spirit. For just a moment in a busy day, in a business discussion, we took some time to talk about moments where we experienced kindness around the world. I would suggest that these little moments are important in a world generally mired in dystopian thinking, some misguided hopes, and relentless zero sum thinking. Those words matter because kindness and hope are inextricably linked. For what is hope without kindness embedded within it? It isn’t hope; it’s achievements, it’s outcomes, it’s outputs. It’s things, not dreams. Those are the sorts of things, as I pointed out earlier, that are often bereft of kindness. Kindness increases the value of hope. Maybe hope resides in paratge or maybe we should embrace what Alexandra Rowland suggests and maybe we kindness people just need to become punks. Ponder.

Alexandra Rowland

“We’ve all been mean and petty and cruel, but we’ve also been soft and forgiving and kind. Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.”