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“There is no happiness for people at the expense of other people.”

Anwar Sadat

===

We talk a lot about winning these days. The most used is that horrible mis-quoted Vince Lombardi quote “Winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing” <he actually said “the will to win is everything”>.

I would suggest all the talk is simply a bastardized version of a focus on ‘outcomes’ which is the bane of the business world today.

I would suggest happiness is being tied so tightly to ‘winning’ that its cost, the expense as it were, is suffocating the larger perspective.

This expense can come in a variety of larger perspective forms — character, self-limitation and time.

While this seems like it should be simple, it is not. In fact it is a tricky balance for anyone.

This is actually a discussion on the balance, or proportional, between me <as in the individual> and we <the business, or, how we earn our living>.

Look. I talk a lot about balance in Life and in business.

To be clear. Not “work/life” balance but balance as in good & bad or pragmatic & hopeful or pessimism & optimism. These are the quandaries that seeking success creates from a moral, organizational culture/political and even spiritual perspective. Stuff like that.

Here is a truth not maybe people discuss.

Success should demand some sacrifice.

Uh oh.

If that is true, have you noticed how rare it is that when someone is focused on winning they rarely talk about ‘at what expense’ other than effort?

The fact it is not discussed is a reflection of some decision that ‘the win’ is the only thing that matters and the expense is always worth it <to win>.

This is an incredibly easy trap to fall into.

Why?

I believe it is because most of us really have no clue what we want to do in our lives and with our lives. Yeah. We may have some ‘short horizon priorities’, but anything that resembles a ‘more than minor Life’ is more often than not simply out of our mental framing. This means that it is pretty natural that in a world where pretty much everything seems in flux that we want to have some things that are tangible to measure progress and ‘what is.

And that means ‘winning’ all of a sudden assumes a fairly high priority in one’s Life and in business.

And that means ‘at what expense’ is more often than not relegated to the trashcan because ‘the win’ is all that matters.

It is a downward spiral, or doom loop, to ‘just win.’

Let me be clear.

While I just rationalized how and why this happens … this is fucked up.

===

“People do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can’t live with what they’ve done.”

Adam Johnson

===

It is fucked up because all of a sudden this ‘winning’ thing we are focused on begins to infringe upon our Life purpose or maybe instead of saying purpose – the soul of who and what we are.

You may look at winning as a means to survive, but afterwards – maybe not immediately but at some point – you realize you have to be accountable for what you have done under the guise of ‘surviving.’

I don’t really care how you define ‘life purpose’, but, simplistically, most of us want to reflect upon our lives not only looking at some version of success, but, more importantly, at the quality of the success.

*** note: ‘success’ can be ‘doing something meaningful’ or ‘doing something that meant something to someone else (impact)’

And by ‘quality’ I mean “at what expense did I achieve that success?”

Here’s the truth.

We exist for some finite period of time.

During that time we do things. Some of these things are important. Some of them are unimportant. The important things are supposed to give our lives meaning and happiness.

Which means, well, what if you get them wrong? what if you fuck up the big important things?

Shit.

What happens if you fuck up the unimportant things?

I say that to make the point this is why moments matter. Uhm. This is why all moments matter.

I say that to make the point this is why ‘how you win’ matters.

I say that to make the point this is why ‘at what expense’ becomes maybe the most important question someone can ask when pursuing winning.

Look. Almost everyone asks “what do we need to do to win?, but ‘expense?’ … not so much.

I imagine my real point is that with such a huge emphasis on winning we need to recognize that everything involves sacrifice.

Everything includes some expense.

So despite the fact the answer in today’s world almost always seems to be “win” <at any cost>, the question everyone should actually be asking is ‘at what expense is tolerable?”

And therein lies the issue.

When someone does actually ask that question money, energy & time are the three easiest expenses. Everyone focuses on these because, frankly, to avoid the bigger potential expenses. They are real, but, a lazy expense discussion.

Self-limitation is the next expense that steps up. This one is fraught with peril. Peril in that if you admit you are not capable of doing what must be done you become a, well, loser. We have set some absurd expectations with regard to ‘the sky is the limit’ and ‘if you want to win you need to do whatever it takes.’ The latter avoids a possible truth that ‘whatever it takes’ may actually be beyond your own self limitations/abilities. But nonetheless, in today’s world, limits are for losers. That is absurd.

The last expense is character. Throw in maybe integrity, compassion and possibly dignity <yours and others>.

This is the expense that ‘winners’ tend to avoid discussing because it dangerously nears “nice guys don’t win’ territory. And as we eye this ‘nice guy’ <or ‘play by the rules’> expense we suddenly step onto the slippery slope of moral relativism. We begin justifying our behavior based on other’s behavior. If someone is cheating, or stretching the rules, or … god forbid … simply being slimy soulless cutthroat competitors … well … then we begin to morph into their behavior because they have established the rules to win.

This is just a race to the bottom.

Anyway. This is the expense that almost everyone avoids discussing because it dangerously nears ‘ethics’ or “what is right versus what is wrong’ <which, when it comes to winning, becomes an incredibly uncomfortable discussion>.

And all of this last expense circles how we, each of us, would answer ‘what does it mean to live a good life?’

This is really all about living ethically and conducting business ethically. This is about what you do and how the objectives need to align with a certain moral code <this can get even trickier because not everyone’s moral code is the same>.

It is certainly ethical to pursue money, status and ‘the win.’ But do we have a moral obligation to pursue those things not at the expense of others or by ‘doing the right thing’?

You actions matter.

How you achieve a win matters.

Winning, or achieving outcomes, is desirable, but you should always seek to identify ‘at what expense?” If you do not do this, while you may be able to count a shitload of wins, they may end up looking a little hollower in the end – the expense may be too high.

For, in the end, the expense is that of character. And that is an expense that no win, no number of wins, can ever generate enough to pay the cost. Choose wisely.

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“If I’m sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?”

José Saramago

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“It is my thesis that machines can and do transcend some of the limitations of the designs and in doing so they may be both effective and dangerous.”

Norbert Wiener, 1960

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“As machines learn they may develop unforeseen strategies at rates that baffle their programmers.”

Norbert Wiener, 1960

===

It’s not very insightful to note that algorithms inherently increase efficiency. Similarly, it doesn’t seem that insightful to note Life, people and business, are inherently inefficient <despite all their efforts to be efficient>. I think the insight resides in the fact this creates a recipe for disaster. Disaster in that what is easy, or even useful, is not necessarily good for us.

Anyone who has even researched AI slightly would see that even if AI systems learn from accurate, representative data, there will still be issues if the data reflects underlying biases and inequalities of the system.

Oh. And it does.

Oh. And, yes, I am going to suggest efficiency is a bias and an inequality driver.

Look. We idolize efficiency and we increasingly have tools which offer some sense of efficiency, yet, the attempted ‘flattening’ of natural inefficiency, generally speaking, only creates, well, dysfunction <and, generally speaking, persona dissatisfaction>.

How the hell does that happen? Simplistically an algorithm offers a binary choice – A or B. Yeah. To do so it evaluates a variety of inputs but, inevitably, it has to choose a 0 or a 1, this or that. Not weighted, a choice. And sometimes that choice is a guess. Yeah. A guess. My favorite line in Brian Christian’s fabulous book, The Alignment Problem, is “the computer is alarmingly confident when it guesses.” When you simplify everything down to a black & white ‘this or that’ you can sometimes simply flip a coin. Now. say you are a algorithm and you not only flip a coin, but you flip a coin 6 straight times. Yeah. You can see the possible problem there. Circling back, let’s assume each of those 6 coin flips are driven by efficiency. Yeah. You can see the possible problem there. Let me stretch the efficiency issue out a bit more. Efficiency demands a division of labor, resources and energy. So, if the algorithm is driving all those things toward the ‘most efficient’, well, there are always consequences to a choice.

As a counterpoint, effectiveness, or efficacy, is found in things that are often fairly inefficient <at least in the short term or present>. Effectiveness is the natural enemy to the incrementalization of standardization.

Range:

Development is not linear, and diversions that set you back in the short term frequently become powerful tools in the long term.

More importantly, effectiveness is the natural enemy of efficiency. How? Well. Efficiency arcs toward improvement of structural character, not improvement of market dynamics. Effectiveness is grounded in the external inputs, efficiency from internal outputs. Basically, efficiency strips away systems dynamics and flattens organizational principles.

Risk is quantifiable, uncertainty is not. It’s one thing to say there is a 50-50 chance on something going wrong. It’s another to not know the chances at all.

How does it do that? Algorithms grounded in efficiency minimize the optimal organization ability to expand and contract. the tendency of everyone in business is to contract (under the guise of ‘focus’). The contracting oversimplifies, but makes it mentally manageable and certainly drives an efficiency objective. Yet. Navigating complexity <which is the standard business> demands one actually expand their situational awareness of the moment.

I imagine I am also discussing the human aspect of algorithms. What I mean by that is algorithms are meant to be a tool for people, not a means to absolve responsibility.

And what do I mean by that?

A collection of people can be stupider than an individual (often even stupider), and, an individual can be stupider than a collection of people. The trick is to always to find when one is smarter than the other.

This gets compounded by the fact technology, well crafted, actually makes people stupider. How? It actually lessens our critical thinking by offering easier solutions (knowledge gifted is not the same as knowledge earned). We need to be sure to break the stupid loop. Because the smarter technology gets (algorithms actually iterate based off of interactions), the less smart people get (we do the hard work of thinking less), so we need to actively use technology to make people smarter. We need to amalgamate company wisdom and institutional learning into critical masses it cannot be ignored and demands some interaction. It seems counterintuitive because we are activating algorithms to do the hard work of ‘thinking’ <assessing an overwhelming amount of data> and, yet, we should actually be thinking harder ourselves <people>.

Look. Algorithms can be used for the forces of human behavior team bad (default, easy answers, let tech decide) or forces of human behavior team good (curiosity, expand upon imagination, innovate).

All I know is algorithms are going to play a big role in navigating business efficacy and shaping business.

—

“The future of companies, regardless of size, will be shaped by algorithms.”

Mike Walsh

—

The key word is “shaped.” Ultimately it will be humans who use the shapes.

Anyway. Here is my wish.

I hope we will be “directed to act” by algorithms, but not managed by. The latter demands acceptance of algorithm as qualified to make us to do something behaviorally, the former demands we accept algorithms as something that ‘informs’ our doing. Somewhere in between is the decision of how much we, people, are accountable for thinking. Algorithms inherently encourage us to believe business is not best when it is random. Yet. The best businesses resist the urge to suppress randomness.

Which leads me to temporal convergence and temporal divergence.

Temporal convergence is progressive and affirming. By contrast, “temporal divergence,“ is where we cannot see a path from where we are “now” to achieve the goal-state. Temporal divergence may result from insufficient capability/ capacity to navigate with any confidence toward any goal. Also, one may not know if one is in a state of temporal divergence. The difference between these two things is the difference between survival and death in a business. I bring this up because algorithms, driven by efficiency, are temporal, but you cannot actually see whether they are converging or diverging. Well. At least until it’s too late.

All businesses will exist, in some form or fashion, grounded in algorithms. I am fairly sure that’s a given. What is not given is what role efficiency will play in the future of business. Now, I am not naive, efficiency focus will not go away overnight, but efficiency, relentlessly pursued, is simply a path to commoditization. The challenge will be to not get consumed by efficiency driven algorithms and to realize algorithms do not give answers, but outline options. To realize algorithms don’t define redundancies, but rather define the outlines of systems. And, in the end, realize efficiency is the lazy way out and understand algorithms can make us even lazier so the double hit from the dull axe of efficiency will bludgeon us, individuals and business, into a bloody pulp even as the dashboards scream success. Ponder.

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Sometimes I wish I could fly

Like a bird up in the sky

Closer to my home

 

Sometimes I feel like freedom is near

Sometimes I feel like freedom is here

Sometimes I feel like freedom is so near

But we’re so far from home

Van Morrison< Sometimes I feel like a motherless child>

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Both home and freedom are tricky topics to discuss even though they seem like they should be relatively simple. Freedom to one person is an infringement on another’s and home is where I say it is, not what you may suggest it is. That said. Let me try this. Home is where you find true freedom. It is where you can be free to be you and do what you want. I have stated in the past (a) the world is thy ship and not thy home and (b) I am a nomad and ‘home’ to me is wherever I have my books (I did so under the guise of this is what offers me stability). But that was a bit shallow of me to suggest because the truth is home is where your genuine self resides. The ‘you’ that exists without any veneer that the external world demands. My books are, at its shallowest, escapism. It permits me to escape the external world’s demands and maybe, at its best, lets me navigate who I am and who I want to be. But this isn’t about me, this is about self, home and freedom.

In my mind, here is where home and freedom has become a trickier proposition for us – the disparity between who we really like to be and who we are in some situations has widened and increased. Here is what I mean. If we are honest, work (business) has always encouraged some specific characteristics whether they be genuine to who we are at our core or not. Tt encourages some ruthless competitiveness (on occasion at minimum) and identifiable confidence (discernable to others) and certainly a large emphasis, continuously, on results and even each business ‘culture’ demands some aspects just in how they suggest going about the business of doing business (and this varies by business). Its kind of the game, and games, one plays to fit in within a business. They are not always the things we naturally would be, or do, when we have the freedom to relax at home. But then, in addition, there is social media. Social media, for most people, is an asymmetrical ‘non relax’ game. What I mean by that is while someone certainly will have some consistency between a Facebook, Instagram, tiktok, whatever, the truth is that the ‘public game’ is played a bit differently on each platform. Each platform, and each ‘tribe’ you interact with on social media tugs at, and out, a specific part of you. It makes who you are when you are free to relax uneven. And this is where I go back to ‘trickier proposition’ thought. Who we are is being constantly pulled at by the environments within which we reside. And I mean constantly. Work is discussing bringing ‘your whole self’ (which is ludicrous), social media discusses things in a brutally one-dimensional context and even social community discusses community cohesiveness in some very ‘us versus them’ narratives. I would suggest before social media having a ‘self-narrative’ that was a bit easier to narrate was, well, a bit easier and home, as I am discussing it, was a bit easier to have.

In part I think I am discussing a bastardized psychological version of “the mirroring hypothesis.” The mirroring hypothesis is that an organization will correspond to the technical patterns of dependency in the work being performed. In other words, for today’s piece, you will begin to mirror the patterns of dependency your ‘self’ is delivering here, there and everywhere. This is also a derivative of McLuhan’s “we shape the tools and the tools shape us.” Let me be clearer. Your home becomes unrecognizable as you are being reshaped by mirroring everything you are doing everywhere.

All of this to circle back to home is where you can be free to be you and do what you want. Given everything I have just written I imagine I would have to suggest home is not a place, but a space in time. What I mean by that is there are moments (or spaces) in time – they can be shorter or longer – in which you are at home with yourself and you have the freedom to be who you are. This is kind of an important thought (I think) because home can be fleeting and in today’s world it can seem incredibly far away sometimes. The world can make our ‘home’, well, less identifiable if we are not careful. We can even kind of forget what that freedom really is and lose sight of what our home truly is. That is, if we are not careful. And I believe having a home, in some sense, is really really important.

Look. Go online and you will have access to, simultaneously, gobs of pieces on personal branding and exactly at the same time gobs of pieces on loss of sense of self (depression, esteem, purpose, etc.). It is like the former is being offered as a solution to the latter. And its not. Home is the solution. We all need a home. A home in which we know who we are, what we are, and can relax and bit all of it and, at its best, with someone who accepts it all. People will suggest authenticity of self, others will speak of being genuine, heck, Shakespeare suggests “be true to thineself”, all I suggest is home. Find your moments of home and visit home as often as you can. The world demands you leave home and even encourages you to stay away from home, I will not suggest you can never leave your home, the world doesn’t work that way, all I suggest is make sure you have a home and know it is your home. Because, in the end, that is where your truest freedom not only resides but offers your touchstone to freedom when you are away. Ponder.

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“Authenticity will be the buzzword of the twenty-first century. And what is authentic? Anything that is not devised and structured to make a profit. Anything that is not controlled by corporations. Anything that exists for its own sake, that assumes its own shape. But of course nothing in the modern world is allowed to assume its own shape. The modern world is the corporate equivalent of a formal garden, where everything is planted and arranged for effect. Where nothing is untouched, where nothing is authentic. 

“Where, then, will people turn for the rare and desirable experience of authenticity? They will turn to the past.

“The past is unarguably authentic. The past is a world that already existed before all the other shapers of the present day shaped today’s world. The past was here before they were. The past rose and fell before their intrusion and molding and selling. The past is real. It’s authentic. And this will make the past unbelievably attractive.”

Michael Crichton

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

Well.

I am not a past guy and I believe “authentic” is one of those words that is currently being abused in a variety of definition-type ways, but, I would offer a reminder to everyone that if you want something authentic it is actually the past <I will expound on that in a minute>.

Let’s just say that it always surprises me a little when people start bitching about the other people who seem to be yearning for the past. While I am certainly not a past-yearner lets’ see what a past yearner sees:

Everything is uncertain in today’s world.

You have no idea who to trust.

There is a struggle to trust anything.

Facts seem to no longer be black & white

Truth now has an alternative version.

Common sense doesn’t seem common.

Opinions look much like facts & facts get confused with opinions.

Simple, or simplification, doesn’t seem that simple anymore.

Add in that all of those things are occurring in a world in which we are increasingly encouraging people to think of everything as “all or nothing” <a zero-sum world>.

This all drives a lot of people to find any fucking semi-solid lily pad to stand on that they can find. And what seems solid, seems certain, and seems authentic, well, is the past.

Ok. That said. On to my ‘expounding’ comment.

No. We may not remember the past well or correctly. In fact <research> we typically do not remember it correctly <choosing to remember the things we like & discarding the things we don’t want to remember>. Yet, in our minds, how we do remember it is as certain as anything can be in this world.

*** note: Daniel Kahneman discusses this in “the riddle of experience versus memory.”

And, yeah, aspects of this can be skewed into a generational/age thing if you wanted. In a world of increasing uncertainty the young, who have less to hold on to with ragged claws & look forward to ditching a lot of the existing shit so they can develop their own shit, leave the past behind <sometimes flippantly> .

In a world of increasing uncertainty the old, well, they hang on with ragged claws to the only thing they know to be true, certain & authentic. i.e., the past.

But, suffice it to say, how we view the past goes beyond age <although age can exacerbate the issue>.

There is seeing and … well … seeing. And there is a vast difference between the two. Frederick Franck in “Zen Seeing/Zen Drawing” argues:

“The glaring contrast between seeing and looking-at the world around us is immense; it is fateful. Everything in our society seems to conspire against our inborn human gift of seeing. We have become addicted to merely looking-at things and beings. The more we regress from seeing to looking at the world — through the ever-more-perfected machinery of viewfinders, TV tubes, VCRs, microscopes, spectroscopes — the less we see. The less we see, the more numbed we become to the joy and the pain of being alive, and the further estranged we become from ourselves and all others.”

Well.

That is a discouraging thought. He is basically suggesting that once we get on the slippery slope of ‘not seeing’ we very quickly enter, and stay, in this miserable abyss of blindness.

He may be right. But I would rather believe he is not. I would prefer to believe seeing, really seeing, is a discriminating decision made by you and not the world around you. I would like to believe if we chose we could see the past with open eyes, open mind, open heart, with open to unapologetic attention.

This is about not really looking for something in particular just being ready and receptive to whatever happens around you and in front of you. And by not seeking anything in particular <because that inhibits true seeing> you end up, as someone wrote somewhere ‘… by your own eyes you will see, and there will be a conclusion.’ What that means is you don’t see based on your own ideas <or belief system>, but rather you see based on … well … what you see.

Hey. I am not suggesting this is easy. I am simply suggesting that you can do it if you elect to. If it helps, we partially have evolution to blame on why I can say what I am saying to you:

…. evolution’s problem-solving left us modern humans with two kinds of attention: vigilance, which allows us to have a quick and life-saving fight-or-flight response to an immediate threat, be it a leaping lion or a deranged boss, and selective attention, which unconsciously curates the few stimuli to attend to amidst the flurry bombarding us, enabling us to block out everything except what we’re interested in ingesting. (Selective attention, of course, can mutate to dangerous degrees, producing such cultural atrocities as the filter bubble.)

Ah. The ‘filter bubble.’

the filter bubble — by definition, it’s populated by the things that most compel you to click. But it’s also a real problem: the set of things we’re likely to click on (sex, gossip, things that are highly personally relevant) isn’t the same as the set of things we need to know. – Eli Pariser

Evolution and Life experience has created this filter bubble for each of us. And, by the way, each of our filter bubbles are different <because our Life experiences have been different in creating it>.

This filter bubble idea also suggests that you can manage, if not actually change your filter bubble.

Yup. You can change the way you see things.

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

“To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

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I love that one thought: ‘allow things to come to it.’ Allow what you see to come to your eye and ultimately your mind. In other words, seeing is in the mind; not in the eyes. Mentally we need to stop focusing on a specific destination, but rather watch during the journey.

All that said.

While the past may be authentic it may not be truthful <or a reflection of truth>. There are certainly some problems with the past ‘truth.’  We are really sure about how we remember the past “… to some extent he is saying all the correct things. But he is not correct.”

 And maybe that is the most important is lesson that lies within.

We say all the correct things … but aren’t really correct. Context and perspective is needed to share “real & absolute truth” and Truth, with regard to the past, is the sum of accurate information; not just some of the accurate information.

Now.

More research.

Just to make everyone feel better, beyond evolution, there is a real reason we do this. It is called ‘adaptive ignorance.’ This is no excuse and this ‘adaptive ignorance’ gets driven by an out of whack barometer of what is important <kind of> to us crazy people, but at least there is a psychological reason:

This adaptive ignorance is there for a reason — we celebrate it as “concentration” and welcome its way of easing our cognitive overload by allowing us to conserve our precious mental resources only for the stimuli of immediate and vital importance, and to dismiss or entirely miss all else.

Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that. But while this might make us more efficient in our goal-oriented day-to-day, it also makes us inhabit a largely unlived — and unremembered — life, day in and day out.

Not only does Life make ‘seeing’ difficult, our minds do. Our minds adapt more and more <which ultimately constrains seeing> because of a couple of things:

• • productivity <just getting shit done or out of the way or solved>

  • the ways we learn to see the world

All this adaptation <or I imagine we can call it ‘coping’> creates something researchers call ‘search images.’ These are things all of us employ when we need to narrow our attention in a goal-oriented task. Unfortunately, this is only helpful or even possible if we know what to look for.

And that, my friends, is ultimately the point about seeing — and really seeing.

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

“… more is missed by not looking than not knowing.”

Thomas McCrae

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We don’t see because we don’t “look.” What a shame. Because by not looking … really looking … we miss seeing some really valuable things, like, what is authentic.

We all need truth goggles. Because we all want to hear what we all want to hear & see what we want to see & remember what we want to remember.

But all truth, even “the past,” takes a discerning mind.

Because what happens when the past says all the correct things, but is not correct? <i.e., you have a misguided view of what is true>

Truth takes work.

Shit.

Seeing things as they truly are takes work.

And that which appears authentic is often not what it appears to be. Just think about this whenever someone seems to be longing for the past. They are partially correct and partially not correct. Be careful with what you believe you see.

===

“Change does not take place by trying coercion, or persuasion, or by insight, interpretation, or any other such means. Rather, change can occur when the patient [or client] abandons, at least for the moment, what he [or she] would like to become and attempts to be what he [or she] is.”

Arnold Bessier

===

This is a companion piece to my thinking on “we are all a bit purposefully ignorant.” That said. Let’s be clear. For the majority of things, no person ever gets to know the whole of a truth. If you don’t believe me, just think about how time has effected many of the ‘truths’ you have held throughout your lifetime. Shit. Even experiences you had, things you knew to be ‘true’, can often take on a different narrative once you know everything that occurred before, who was involved, what was involved, and the consequences that followed. Things that seemed self-evident take a back seat to things you thought were trivial at that time. Shit. This is even true about honesty (and lying). You may discover you have become a liar not because of you intentionally lied, but rather because of things you did not know that become known.  I say all of this to suggest history, and beliefs, are not truly fixed but defined, and redefined, as time breaks down their construct. Well. That is true if you let it be true.

Which leads me to beliefs, and history, can be pretty resilient.

We have a tendency to have a self-sealing logic <Chris Argyris> with regard to our beliefs. Self sealing is when we find information that confirms our beliefs and ignore some ‘truths’ which could challenge our beliefs. In other words, once we settle in on a belief, especially if we view it as a ‘governing belief’, we seal it off from additional information.

To be fair. Most people like stability with regard to their beliefs. And this means beliefs kind of seem to gain some strength the longer they are perceived to have lasted. In addition. The more uncertain the world becomes, or we believe it becomes, the more likely we will latch onto even some conspiracy theories (or dubiously grounded theories) to moor our belief world. These ‘governing beliefs’ become kind of like the color filter which hues everything you see from that point on. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out superficial beliefs are relatively easy to change, but governing beliefs can be stubborn motherfuckers. They gain some emotional “I care about this belief” aspects and caring is not only the engine to do something, but also the glue to hold on to something.

Obviously, the problem with self-sealing beliefs is new information should shed some of the boundaries around existing beliefs.

“Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment.”

Marshall McLuhan

Now. We have access to new information all the time, but the truth is that the brain is an inherently limited storage unit <and computer>. We rarely know as much about a given topic as everyone else in a room put together, and even if we do, our perspective is partial and biased in a variety of ways. That ‘room together’ thought is important because research has shown that human connectivity <dialogue and interaction> is the most powerful tool in shaping, and reshaping, our beliefs. It is within interaction, exposure to new ideas and thinking as well as the discussion of new ideas and thinking, which can reshape what we have in our brain. Alternatively, as Jaron Lanier has pointed out, more people can make us more stupid. Depending on who your ‘connectivity’ is with, you can easily fall into pack behavior, identity signaling and a variety of ‘I have found my tribe’ characteristics. It is a version of “group sealing beliefs” which only feed into conformation bias for ‘self sealing logic’ and ‘self-sealing beliefs’. It’s a vicious loop to get trapped in if you are not careful. Oh. And most people are not careful. Why? Well. Its easier to wander around the world with self-sealing beliefs, find other with similar beliefs, and scratch your head <or get irritated> when someone doesn’t see what is obvious to you.

All that said. I imagine my point is almost everyone’s belief systems do some shapeshifting within a contextual environment wherein we get influenced by other mindsets, i.e., beliefs, attitudes which effect ours at times in our Life.

“Defensive routines are thoughts and actions used to protect individuals’, groups’, and organizations’ usual way of dealing with reality.”

Chris Argyris

Look. We all need beliefs. They shape who we are, how we think and even what we do. We couldn’t really survive without any beliefs. At the same time, beliefs are constraints <constraints can be good and bad>. Those constraints can make us both more efficient and effective while, at exactly the same time, make us less efficient and less effective. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that beliefs wielded like a dull axe guarantees a dull person. That said. The interesting thing I don’t believe people think about enough is that governing beliefs are typically grounded in some ‘needs.’ What I mean by that is as we need things, not just want, we craft a belief system around how to get them and filter ‘stories’ as we get them. Our beliefs assess reality in terms of filing away reality and assessing the ‘non-knowable’ stuff as it moves into reality. This is partially why governing beliefs can be so damn stubborn – they shape the reality we ‘see’.

Which leads me back to ‘obvious.’

Earlier I mentioned something about ‘obvious to you, but they don’t see it.’ I cannot remember where I read this, but, “the obvious is not obvious.” What I believe they meant by that is your belief system crafts your ‘obvious’. That means someone else is using their own belief system to craft their own ‘obvious.’ Uhm. The probability that your obvious perfectly matches someone else’s is fairly low. Obvious has shiftable dimensions and yet we tend to think of it as a whole concrete thing.

Shit. We think of stories as concrete things and the truth is most stories we accept as simply constructs of things we believe. Our belief structure is, well, constructed. It’s a narrative constructed of a tapestry of stories. I mention stories because that means self-sealing beliefs are constructed by stories we tell ourselves. Now. We may claim these stories are real and these stories are truth, but, well, for the most part they are stories OF stories which we like to tell ourselves so we can justify our ‘self-sealing beliefs.’ Ponder that for a moment or two.

I think I’ll end there to state – “you set a thief to catch a thief.” You tell a story to kill a story. In today’s world far too many of the self-sealing beliefs are unhealthy and I think we need to become better ‘healthy storytellers’ to help reshape some of the more unhealthy ‘self-sealed belief stories’ in existence. To be honest, I am not sure self sealed logic or beliefs is a good thing. I know why we do it, I am not sure we should do it. My sense is self-sealing beliefs can quickly become dogmatic thinking and in a dynamic world in which the world itself reshapes almost on a minute-by-minute basis, it would seem like our belief systems should be a bit more malleable. But, hey, that’s me.

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“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

Albert Einstein.

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“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active. The conditions upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.”

John Philpot Curran

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On page 5 of The Cluetrain Manifesto tucked down at the bottom of the page you will see these words written by Christopher Locke: “As would soon become obvious, the Net was a powerful multiplier for intellectual capital.” Not long after he follows it with its uncomfortable partner, “voice”, in that the other thing the Net did was give voice to anyone, intellectual or not.

And therein lies the wretched hollow we live in within this world of 24/7 internet access.

And therein lies our eternal vigilance – our vigilant pursuit of information.

I suggest vigilance because no matter how siloed your ‘tribe’ is there is no way that you will ever know everything that everyone knows even in your tribe/group/connections/etc. Just think about that for a second. And I choose a second because if everyone in your circle googles something they will get over a million responses in one second and the odds they will choose different things than you to read has an extremely high probability. You cannot chase all the information available and even if you have some excellent parameters on how you filter your intake you will not know as much about any individual topic as someone you are talking with.

To maintain some sanity, we are all a bit purposefully ignorant.

Technically, purposeful ignorance occurs when a person knows the truth, but chooses to ignore it, or the person refuses to abandon false beliefs and pursue the development of further knowledge.

According to the Urban Dictionary willful ignorance is: “the practice or act of intentional and blatant avoidance, disregard or disagreement with facts, empirical evidence and well-founded arguments because they oppose or contradict your own existing personal beliefs.”

But, to me, there are four levels of purposeful ignorance:

• accepted ignorance: I have an attitude, perception or belief and I go about my life doing nothing to engage my thinking and expand what I know <unlearning avoidance is what I call this>

• confirmed ignorance: with the intent to show everyone that I am not ignorant I actually proactively engage in news & opinion offerors … uhm … but I only do so with those who have the same attitudes, perceptions and beliefs that I do <learning how to better articulate what I already think is what I call this>.

• ignorant ignorance: I actively engage with people who have different views and maybe even have some discussions and give the impression I am open minded, but even while nodding my head sagely I am simply building additional walls around what I already believe and think <listening without listening is what I call this>

• selective ignorance: I only have so much time in a day and so much brain space and I will actively attempt to be smart on some things at the expense of being ignorant on others

The third of those three is the most heinous type of ignorance. You actually have the opportunity to learn and you choose to not learn diddleysquat. It is heinous to me because there are gobs of well-intended people who are smart, but just don’t actively engage in learning new shit because, well, they prioritize other shit. In other words, they have time, but don’t learn. Useless dangerous people.

So. Let me get to the ‘selective ignorant.’

The truth is almost every single one of us have moments of purposeful ignorance. At its worst it is a conscious choice to be ignorant rather than challenge our own thinking and acknowledge a truth about reality. At its best we have simply bucketed some things in our minds as ‘decided’ in order to short cut some things and invest energy in others <and we all do the latter>.

And I even give some people a break on this topic.

Psychological research tells us that some people are cognitively complex while others prefer cognitive simplicity, in other words, some people are open to experience while other are closed minded.  Some people are cognitively flexible while others are cognitively rigid.

I could suggest that those who are cognitively simple, closed minded and/or rigid are much more likely to engage in the ‘accepted ignorance’ level of purposeful ignorance that I noted earlier, but they are not stupid people by any stretch of the imagination. They most certainly have the ability to be ‘smart’ <or broader in thinking>, they are simply people who would rather be comfortably ignorant rather than ‘intellectually smart’.

In addition, Urban Dictionary suggests that some people are “cognitive misers”, i.e., they do not to examine things intellectually if they don’t feel they have to. Let’s call them lazy.

And another valid reason is, well, conformity. While this sounds ‘sheeplike’, it is not always. We all engage in some aspects of conformity because it helps us not only fit in, but provide us with some daily stability which permits us to engage our energy elsewhere. That is why a shitload of people tend to believe what those around them believe because questioning those beliefs would lead to conflict, possibly rejection and, well, energy investment.

And, look, there are some nice benefits to conforming. Conformists have the greater potential to find a mate, or mates, to climb the social ladder of “success,” to have others speak well of them and to enjoy the benefits of a social support system.

And, with all that said, you know what? I can live with that.

As much as a curious, always seeking truth, person like me finds purposeful ignorance to be an egregious and utter lack of responsibility to living Life to its fullest and being engaged in Life, in general, I accept that there are some acceptable versions of purposeful ignorance <and, yet, I will do anything I can to break thru to these people and engage in some thoughtful thinking>.

I absolutely believe that learning and unlearning, is a lifelong process and ultimately leads to a fuller, richer Life <and society> I will participate in learning/unlearning through my own discussions and I will engage with anyone, anywhere, on any topic, at any time. But I am clearly in the fourth group, albeit grudgingly so.

Let me end by saying I am an “anti-ignorance optimist.” I understand that deeply ingrained purposeful ignorance is incredibly difficult to change, but I also never, ever, underestimate people’s capacity for change. I will continue to be interested in the views of others, even where I disagree with them, and I will always be interested in understanding why others act and think in the way that they do.

I think this is a healthy way to approach things because, to me, this is the ultimate negotiation of ‘what will be.’ In other words, how we, as people, achieve the best possible outcomes for ourselves and society. Yeah. 99% of the time better thinking will lead to better doing.

“The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which it may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little.”

Sigmund Freud

Anyway. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that anyone can change the world – even if it is only the small part of the big world that you can control. And maybe the point of this rambling post isn’t that anyone can change the world just by thinking and speaking the truth, they need to be able to close the deal. While we are all a bit purposefully ignorant that’s no excuse for not attempting to change whatever ignorance exists. Maybe it is within our vigilance we can make a dent in ignorance and nudge the world toward a better place.  What I do know is one who seeks vitality against decay, one who struggles against indolence with relentless energy, one who understands the journey to enlightenment is one that never ends, is the one who never has stagnant ignorance. And maybe that is what we should all purposefully attempt – a lack of stagnant ignorance. Ponder.

“Life is a struggle between vitality and decay, energy and indolence”

Winston Churchill

Ok. So what the hell is investing energy in life?

Let’s call it being able to discern between ‘resting’ versus ‘being stagnant.’ And, possibly, add in being able to discern when to use energy and when to not use it. By the way.  All of that translates into making choices.

Anyway. Let me use a quote to begin the discussion.

“As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Ah. Now. Be careful when reading this. Lucy isn’t suggesting people not be original or seek to have some ‘depth.’ Nope. She is suggesting investing energy at the appropriate times is a choice. A choice for when energy invested won’t be wasted.

Look. Haven’t we seen those people who go 110% all the time on everything? And they get tired. And often frustrated. And they often don’t seem to get as far in life as you would expect for all the energy they have invested. While they may debate with me (because they feel like they are making the choice that has to be made, i.e., I am ‘working at being successful in life’), the reality is they aren’t making any real choice.  Anytime you do something 100% of the time you haven’t made the tough choice. Shit. You actually haven’t made any choice at all. The switch is simply flipped into a default mode.

The choice truth? There is a time to rest. And. There is a time for energy.

Oh, and yes, you do have to invest energy in life to get something out of it.

Because being lazy doesn’t get you shit.

In fact.

Being apathetic doesn’t get you shit.

Once again. That doesn’t mean 24/7 energy and pushing and shoving and being passionate and trying to kick ass 172,800 seconds (if I did my math correctly that is the amount of seconds in a day).  It’s about making choices. When and where type choices.

So.

What I am saying is you cannot have enough energy to kick ass every second of every day.

(and if you have someone suggesting you should? … ignore them)

But.

You also cannot be passive every second either.

There is resting (before investing energy).

There is stagnant (before never investing energy).

(former good; latter bad)

And they are significantly different because living a successful (happy) life takes energy. And life is a struggle that takes energy to manage and deal with. And frankly happiness doesn’t always come easily.

By the way. This ‘struggle’ isn’t a day-to-day get-things-done struggle.  I mean it is a mental and physical struggle.

Describing this struggle is interesting. Good ole Winston C. suggested Life is the struggle between energy and indolence:

“Life is a struggle between vitality and decay, energy and indolence”

Winston Churchill

Whew.  Good stuff.

Life is all about either growing or diminishing. You are either active or passive. And life is the struggle within the two. At all times.

Some people would simply suggest that an active life is better than a passive one. Oh. If only the solution were that simple (because it isn’t that one sided).  Sure. Embracing adventure or some activity you are passionate about (or believe will make you better) is important to what makes many of us happy and feel like we are being productive within our life. But it isn’t just about going out and doing a bunch of stuff.  It’s about going out and doing the right stuff. And, to be happiest, the right stuff at the right time.

So be careful.

You may elect to ignore people who tell you to “slow down and take it easy” because you feel like you are being productive and ‘doing.’ But be sure you are aware of what you are doing and how you are investing your energy. Because energy is not limitless.

Life is about balance. Balancing rest and energy. But this is where stagnancy or indolence issue steps up to the plate. Because happiness can be such a struggle and ‘doing nothing’ sometimes seems the easiest thing to do. It isn’t (no matter how it may look or feel at the time).  You HAVE to invest some energy at some point. If not for you then you have to for those around you. Because in the end we see that the energetic displaces the passive. Even if the passive is “good” (intentions or in heart). Because evil is restless.  And energetic.

“In this very real world, good doesn’t drive out evil. Evil doesn’t drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.”

Bill Bernbach

Ok. My fear is when people read this last quote they begin to dedicate all their energies to … well … doing.  With good intentions, but not seeing the forest because of the trees.

Remember. We are not Ever-Ready bunnies who can go and go and go.  Because all that “going” means investing energy.

And the people who you see going 110% all the time? Well.  The reason they do is because they haven’t figured it out.  They haven’t figured out when to rest and when to invest energy. And having already decided mentally that they need to invest energy to win the struggle they just invest.

And invest.  And invest (I would like to point out … with diminishing returns).

Please.  Everyone.  This isn’t about time management.

If you read my “time according to Lucy” post you know I am skeptical of the whole managing time concept. The closest suggestion I can make to clarify what I am trying to say in this post can maybe be found in the book Power of Full Engagement. The book suggests that instead of trying to manage time we should be conscious of managing our energy.

I am not talking as literally as the book author suggests (they suggest at different points in the day we have more energy than others as well as more motivated to do certain things at certain moments). I don’t think this is about planning your work times around when you expect to have creative energy (like the book suggests).

This is just about investing energy at the right times.

Yes.

Investing energy at the right time in the right place.

This is not about motivation or creative energy or any of that.  This is simply about recognizing ‘influential moments’ (moments that can swing your day or life) and acting upon them by investing energy.

And that, my friends, is a choice.

A choice to invest what energy you have available, no holding back, when the opportunity arises.

Yes. That is a choice.

And not investing energy at some times (when people look at you and worry if you are lazy).

And, yes, that is a choice.

Choices based on understanding the difference between rest and stagnancy.

Maybe that is “the” choice.

Yeah.  Life is a struggle. And a struggle of choices. But mostly it is a struggle of energy. When to invest and when to not invest.

Ponder. Ponder because it matters.

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“Sliding down the slippery slope of mediocrity.”

David Ogilvy

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Turn on television on any given weekend in the United States and you have a very high probability of finding the movie The Replacements at some point. While the movie, at its core, is about taking for granted what you have versus taking advantage of opportunities, tucked within the movie is what I call “the quicksand moment.”

This is the scene where the coach asks the players their greatest fear and the quarterback says “quicksand.”

Businesses get stuck in quicksand all the time. Shit. People do too. What makes it worse is that most times you know how to play the game well, in fact, you may have actually been playing it well at the time so the first thing that goes wrong is just a blip.

“Just one thing” is what you say.

Then another thing happens.

Then another.

You fight back alone and sink.

Or.

Someone notices (usually management) and they help you fight back.

How?

The first response almost every business has to a problem is “more resources”. Oh. That is the first sign you have fallen into quicksand. As Brooks pointed out in the Mythical Man Month, even on projects, our first instinct is to add more people. This only makes everything even slower and more dysfunctional.

If that fails, the second response is usually even more resources.

You sink deeper.

Faster.

On a personal level this comes to fruition in “I’ll stay later or get in early.” You are on the edge of quicksand. You see added resources as “more time.” So, you put in more time. And more time. And this is where fear enters. You know you are trying hard; you know you are doing right things and, yet, it still keeps going wrong.

You are sinking despite all the effort.

And then you can’t breathe.

Organizational quicksand.

Now.

Quicksand and slippery slopes share some similar characteristics.

The first is that you don’t know you are in, or on, them until its too late.

The second is what I call “just this once” behavior.

It is absolutely easy to compromise – in business and in life. “Just this once.” An exception. And then another.

And before you know it you are on that slippery slope.

Regardless. This is a Life and business lesson. So, let’s just call it “truth.” It’s a truth about work, effort, decisions, compromise, lies (or “half-truths”) and almost anything else I can think of.

Slippery slopes are incredibly easy to step onto AND get stuck on. What do I mean?

“Just this once” you say to yourself when you are tired. Whatever the decision or action we are discussing, to you, in the moment … it is mentally “an exception”.

“Just this once” when you are asked a question and you ponder your answer and maybe you embellish a bit.

“Just this once” you say to yourself when you put off that thing you wanted to do. A workout. A chore. A book. A project. A diet. A decision.

“Just this once” you say to yourself when it is a silly rule or what you are doing isn’t really unethical, but its not 100% ethical, it’s just in the margins of “okay to do.”

Before you know it <after some “just this onces“> you have edged on to that slippery slope. Once has become many and, well, many becomes the standard.

Business is funny that way. Its sneaky. It permits you to look at things in a mutually exclusive way so that you don’t really see the accumulation of events and decisions until you have sunk.

Oh.

Quicksand.

Ponder.

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“I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”

Geronimo

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This is about Geronimo and it’s not. Geronimo was a Chiricahua Apache who, after his family was murdered by Mexican troops, pretty much dedicated himself to revenge as a warrior. Ok. At the same time he dedicated himself as what we would call “anti-establishment” in today’s world. He just wanted to be left alone on lands he believed was his tribes, to live with people he loved, and live a life he loved. My point is it is difficult to talk about Geronimo and some fairly heinous actions without at the same time acknowledging the context, the environment, within which he did those things.

But let’s cut to the chase.

Geronimo was 79 (maybe) when he died of pneumonia after spending the last 23 years of his life as a prisoner of war. He spent years at war which, if examined, was actually spent mostly not fighting or engaging with his enemies, but rather seeking freedom from his enemies. I point that out to finally get to his last words “I should never have surrendered but fought until I was the last man alive.”

The world is not really a very welcoming place for ideas that don’t conform. And if you happen to be the owner of one of those ideas you have a variety of choices, but suffice it to say they inevitably reside in one of two places – conform or fight. Now. I’d be silly to not point out either is a viable choice. Despite the fact ‘conform’ has a variety of negative definitions the truth is, like Geronimo attempted when he surrendered, it can give you an opportunity to fight the system from within the system. Not an easy task but certainly offers a possible path to your objective. Conform does not necessarily mean submit. However, this is where it gets tricky. The system will often try and convert your surrender, ‘the conform decision’, to submission. And that is where things go awry. And that is how someone like Geronimo, on his death bed, can state “I should have fought.”

To be clear, there is no political message in what I am communicating today <it seems like everyone always wants to read something into everything> this is solely about ideas, mindsets and beliefs – and regrets I imagine.

Not everything (not many things in fact) that you believe or an idea you have is worth dying for. Yet. Many more of those same things can make you feel like it would have been better to die for them.

To be clear. I am speaking metaphorically here.

There are clearly some things when you surrender you end up surrendering a part of your soul at exactly the same time. Business is infamous for this exchange. You surrender an idea and sometime in the future you will find out you had surrendered more than you had bargained for. I point this out to defend some people who fight too long, and too hard, for their ideas and beliefs. While I sometimes think they are being absurdly stubborn I can also clearly see the possible costs of surrender and, well, I think I would fight until I was the last person standing too.

The choice is not clear cut.

Not every surrender costs you more than your idea. But costs lurk over the horizon so when you do surrender, and conform, you can never be exactly sure what all the costs will end up being.

Here is about the only wisdom I can share on this. Those who you surrender to typically have a history. Leopards don’t change their spots, animals always carry fleas and businesses are consistent. Assess well and choose wisely if you decide to surrender, or, be the last person alive over an idea or belief.

“Each moment is a place you’ve never been.”

Mark Strand

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Innovation can embody some seemingly innocuous inspirations. This is also true of social behavior and social dynamics. What I am referring to is that a nonlinear “exaptation” occurs.

In biology ‘exaptation’ are variations on the usual variations of natural selection. Unlike adaptations, which are changes to an organism that respond to environmental conditions, exaptations are novel, unexpected applications of these new traits. For example, wings evolved as an extension of reptile’s webbed forelimbs wherein evolution was in search of a stronger limb, yet, somewhere along the way the ‘newly winged’ discovered its capacity for flight.

“An organ initially constructed for one purpose may be converted into one for a wholly different purpose.”

Charles Darwin

I say all of that to talk about technology. And I don’t mean anything specifically within technology, just technology itself. I read somewhere years ago that the most profound change brought about by technology will not be some new program, AI or even involve some whizbang software, the most profound change will reside in our generic expectations of technology itself. Through its ubiquity the broader shifts will occur in corollary effects that trickle in, and out, and throughout, everyone – the subtle gradual changes that shift the foundation upon what we know and what we think (about Life and ourselves). Living in our technology-created-“memory palaces” (or information spaces always nudging us) will inevitably engineer a social transformation which, in turn, inevitably cascades into the pragmatic functions of life itself – education, healthcare, business, etc. In other words, maybe technology will offer us ‘exaptations’ of which we cannot envision. And maybe worse is that some of these exaptations we cannot envision, will make our lives easier, but worse.

Norbert Weiner, Alvin Toffler and Marshall McLuhan all invested a lot of energy and brain power thinking about this and even telling us in the 1960’s and 1970’s – but I am not sure we actually listened. We fell in love with all the technology things and widgets and embraced, for the most part, how we adapted. But. What they were warning us about were of exaptation.

Which leads me to effectuation.

A causation approach focuses on a predefined goal and then goes about finding the means to attains the goal. An effectuation approach focuses on the means at hand and then have them coalesce with the intent to achieve some outcomes which inevitably achieve some goals (not all predefined).

Effectuation is most often discussed within business and how entrepreneurs shape performance. I bring it up because I fear someone truly thinking about what I am bringing up will jump to designing a goal and pursuing it (causation). I fear it because in a dynamic environment like technology and society, by the time we attain that goal, the goalposts will have moved – most likely dramatically. The truth is that this technology-society battle we are fighting is currently asymmetrical and technology has the leverage. I am not a fan of the word ‘scale’, but the reality is technology is scaling exponentially AND with velocity, faster than human brains can scale, and attempting to address it solely with causation approaches is doomed to fail. The real conclusion anyone should take is to embrace effectuation. Take what exists and use it, and the skills that developed all those things, to materialize real progress in real time and outcomes occur making predefined goals irrelevant. Its kind of like nudging at scale.

Anyway.

As the saying goes, ‘the street always finds new uses for things,’ and with technological ubiquity in most lives, we should be paying attention to ‘the street always finds exaptation while we are not looking and maybe technology will encourage people to fly when they have no wings and, well, we will crash’.

Yeah. There is a lesson lurking in that bad metaphor I just shared.

Ponder.