==

“Resplendent intellect gone mad.”

Mark Twain

==

The unthinkable becomes inevitable, and once inevitable, acceptable.

==

It was Salih Reisoglu who suggested the idea of social intellect:

“Social intellect which is a balanced blend of intelligence social education social experience and social awareness. Being intellectually adult is defined as being educated and experience in social sciences that improve our awareness of the social environment around us both as a political participant and as an economic participant in this society. This intellect means that we have to be aware of a wide range of opinions point of views ideologies and even concepts so that we can actually critically assess the choices that we are being asked to make.”

===

I begin there to discuss the bargain society seems to be making with its intellectual intelligence versus technology. And, yes, I just made them opponents. Why? The relationship between humans and technology is asymmetrical. Technology has become not only greater than the people who created it, but the humans who use it. Yeah. While pundits dance on the head of the “what is intelligence” pin, the everyday world simply believes the computer/smartphone/technology is smarter than they are, can make decisions faster and better than any one person can. I say that because anyone who imagines we can defend and protect ourselves through our own awareness and willpower is simply failing to grasp the depth and dimensions of which technology brings to bear its power. The technology revolution is wreaking havoc on the human mind and, consequently, the world we live in.

Havoc can be created several ways:

• the platform itself makes it that an unconstrained actor will always win.
• As a corollary, technology’s power to reshape human minds resides not in control, but in subtle manipulations where the changes occur in single digit %’s at a time rather than one sweeping 100% shift. Once again, these actors, with these actions, will always win.

The consequence of this havoc is society is polarized and fragmented and overall social intellect is being suffocated. And its only getting worse. Even curiosity stagnates when caged within a tribe <digital echo chambers or filter bubbles>. This is a global societal problem. Intellectually we are shrinking to fit into the narrower dimensions of our worldview. It is no coincidence we are polarized as we coalesce into likeminded groups even while connected to a larger world. Simply by being connected we convince ourselves we are ‘openminded’ and ‘seeing worldview to influence the broadening of our minds” when in reality the technology itself is steering us into smaller and smaller, more distant from broader reality, groups and tribes. We are not getting stupider, its just that our social intellect isn’t optimized, in fact, our intellect is being reduced.

Which leads me to say that simply stating that this barrage of information over stimulates us cognitively is certainly imprecise if not a little lazy.

The most important aspect of our intellectual cognitive condition reflects a fundamental feature of human existence – human beings are in the finite predicament of having fixed limits on their cognitive capacities in the time available to them. Actual human beings in everyday situations do not have potentially infinite memory and computing time that most computers have. This is the cognitive friction within which the social intellect conflict occurs. It is within this combinatorial explosion of multiple proofs, forcing probabilistic thinking rather than black & white binary choicemaking, where we get cognitively stretched. Unable to construct complete theories – to be fair, often many things are just too complex to understand – we lean in on our existing biases which causes us to accept far too many falsehoods (partial truths) and reject far too many truths. Basically, we are attempting to build our social intellect on the fly.

“We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in drydock and reconstruct it there out of the best materials.”

Otto Neurath

To do this we find what is called “the minimal inference condition.” We make decisions, well, not precisely, but often based on what we think is apparently appropriate to what would satisfy our own beliefs (and desires I imagine). Yeah. We adopt convenient, but often unsound, inferences to make ‘logical’ (or what we deem rational) choices. Technology giveth and taketh. I believe it was Marshall McLuhan who explained how it gives and takes away simultaneously. It gives us the simplistic (easy and quick to grasp) yet takes away the depth and nuance and the invisible, unless sought out, that gives the intellectual depth to not only sensemake, but make good choices. It makes the advantages easy to see and the disadvantages more difficult to see. This creates a cognitive asymmetry where an illusion that technology is positively enhancing human progress is shaped. In other words, we don’t see, or ignore, the price we pay for technology. This is a dangerous intellectual bargain.

Which leads me back to Salih Reisoglu and his thinking that social intellect is made up of the intellectually immature versus intellectually mature.

And this is where the bargain gets tricky. Depending on where you stand, individually on the social intellect scale, will be how you make your bargain with technology. So let me spend a minute on that social intellect spectrum. Independent of your age, people who did not have enough of the chance to get a basic education or much of an experience due to a lack of exposure to different environments/cultures/thinking-behind-a-belief skew toward being more intellectually immature. It can get a bit more complicated beyond that. A lot of people get a good education concentrating on a specific skill or topic and become valuable experts in their areas of interest, yet, will have blinders on for what exists outside that specific expertise (and do not have the ability to ‘lateral think’, i.e., use that expertise as foundation for solid thinking outside that expertise). Yeah. I am saying that deep expertise does not necessarily translate into social awareness learning and experience. This means simply being an expert doesn’t mean you have a good relationship with social reality and effective social contribution.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out something Reisoglu emphasizes that that the ratio of the intellectually mature in a society is the primary determinant of how good the political and economic systems of the society develop and function. This is true because the socially intellectual immature remain in some form or fashion ‘innocent’ (I like this word better than ignorant in that it just shows a bit of unexperienced naiveté rather than choiceful stupidity) as a consumer and a voter. While intending to make the best choices they can the reality is due to poor social intellect they just make too many mistakes in their economic and political judgments or are easily misguided by others to make choices that do not really serve their best interest. They simply lack the ability to properly see the correct causality relation between their actions and that consequences of those actions end up opposite what they wanted. This can get a little worse. The reality is not all intellectual mature, socially or intelligence-wise, are good people. Many choose to serve their own interests at the expense of others in society – even playing without rules, being unethical or ignoring the rule of law. To serve their own purpose they will not hesitate to misguide the intellectual immature. If a society is dominated by intellectual immature, the economic and political system is left to the mercy of the few intellectual adults and we have clearly seen globally, the ‘non-good people’, but intellectually mature, can easily discredit the good people and dominate a system. They overpower complex situations by making the intellectually immature crowds believe in the fast, simple, but false promises, which are much easier than explaining complex issues with the less comfortable long-term solutions. Reisoglu points out something which I have said for decades: the primary contributors to the marketer system failures are not primarily the evil characters, but those (of social intellect) innocence who did not have the chance or the motivation to develop themselves and remained intellectual immature throughout their lives.

Which leads me to education.

Our next bargain is now with education. Education, generally speaking, is of no use to society unless it is purposefully designed to better society. And this is where things begin to go awry. The intellectually immature tend to reduce the design while the intellectually mature tend to expand the design. This becomes even more true when that education falls under the construct of social education. Reductionism is actually harmful to society mostly because it doesn’t foster critical and conceptual thinking (which I tend to believe most people believe is important in a complex dynamic world).

This would lead me to suggest that a social education needs to include alternative opinions and point of views, including ideologies, to benefit the overall welfare of the society. This isn’t to ‘indoctrinate’ anyone, but rather what it does is make people more intellectually mature which, as a consequence, means that their decisions are more well-rounded and more rationalized in reality. Therein lies the first, and possibly the biggest, bargain. Exposure to alternative thinking strengthens your belief in what you already believe, not diminishes it. yeah. I purposefully worded it that way to make a point. You are bargaining that the idea, or ideology, or belief, is strong enough to withstand the intellectual rigor found in exploring opposing ideas, ideologies, and beliefs. This bargain is an important one because to build an intellectual framework educational infrastructure society must demand a system of basic education that teaches young people not what to believe in without questioning, but how to think through curiosity with access to complete information. I imagine I believe if an education system fails to create a solid social intellect mental construct far too many people will remain intellectually immature and as a consequence not question answers being offered by who they ‘feel’ are serving their interests. The social intellectually immature will remain comfortable in the little mental playgrounds that they feel comfortable playing in and no others.

As the opening of this piece suggests, social education must go way beyond civic education and must span the basics of the primary social sciences, of politics economics finance, law, and sociology in order to enable every person to understand and to evaluate the dynamics of the system within the society. This social education creates a general social awareness to provide context for comparisons and enhance critical thinking. To be clear. The aim of social education is not, and cannot be, to create an economics or politics or even a sociology expert out of each individual. The objective is to make each person of the society intellectually mature enough to be able to understand and evaluate not only the system, and the choices demanded of the system, but also the experts, so they can make rational choices as consumers and voters. I would suggest not accepting this bargain just makes you easy prey for the charlatans who may seem to serve your interests, but do not.

To be clear because I am talking here about education. Professional expertise is not social education. I could even argue that social intellect is not directly associated with professional expertise. Professional expertise can exist and the individual can still be intellectual immature socially. This is not to suggest that this is healthy for society because if professional experts are social intellectually immature they slow the pace of societal progress, i.e., society and progress is not optimized and, I imagine, you could posit that if the world becomes increasingly complex, that progress drag has a multiplicative negative effect on society over time. Conversely, if we increase the number of professional experts WITH a good social education, THEY will not be able to optimize their potential if the societal system is driven by the socially intellectual immature. It is a looped education challenge to ensure the environment is conducive to fostering social intellectually mature potential. At some point we need to take a good long hard look at the bargain society is willing to make with education (which includes how technology educates).

Which leads me to why we should embrace a larger bargaining discussion.

I am a business person who talks about societal issues through a business acumen filter. In almost every business model, interaction and connectivity is seen as a bargaining process between efficiency & effectiveness, pragmatism an& possibilities and intellectual & productivity. This gets exacerbated in a more interdependent world in which the task of calculating a utility function is almost virtually impossible. The truth is that a business is both rational and habitual, both intellectual and emotional, and it only progressing through bargaining on those issues. A business is organized around a central premise in which the form and direction of microactions are conceived to spring from a combination of habits and experiences that allow for thoughtful probabilistic thinking and are open to change. A society is the same. At any given point we will never have enough information, therefore, any decision a society makes will be some bargain. That bargain improves the higher the social intellect of the grander society.

Or as Ernst B. Haas said “a distinction is made between adaptation and learning. The former is defined as the ability to change one’s behavior so as to meet challenges in the form of new demands without having to reevaluate one’s entire program and the reasoning on which that program depends for its legitimacy, while learning is reserved for situations in which an organization is induced to question the basic beliefs underlying the selection of ends.”

A society is simultaneously marked by coherence and breakdown. It is a puzzle in which the demands of the subsystems and the needs of the macro systems need to bargain. Within that bargain resides the paradox of how can society be moving in two different directions at the same time, i.e., toward coherence and towards breakdown?

Both Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson emphasized that prosperity meant little without societal, or social, betterment, and that a proper balance between them had to be maintained. Progress, to them, meant the pursuit of technology and science (and education) in the interest of human betterment as in intellectual and ethical as well as material prosperity. Both men worried about corruption and how their idea of a healthy society could be corrupted. As much as they embraced progress, they considered all innovations as a means to achieving the larger social end. They understood that a healthy society was an unending bargaining process. In their day it was machinery, in today’s world it is now technology attempting to bend the arc of society.

Which leads me to end with this discomforting tidbit from Azeem Azhar’s 6/4/23 newsletter:

• Bye-bye science: India has recently excised evolution, the periodic table, and energy sources, from its school curriculum — setting aside learning that lays the groundwork for scientific comprehension and foster critical thinking. Other topics that have been removed include analysis of democracy, pluralism and political dissent. If this is rolled out across the country, it’s terrible news for India. Investments in human capital – education – are key drivers of shared prosperity in times of technological change. Freedom to think, whether through the scientific method or simply being critical of the system, is an essential enabler of research, entrepreneurship and wealth.

Society’s intellectual bargaining is happening right before our eyes – everywhere. At stake in this bargaining process is, pragmatically, our social intellect – i.e., our choice to be intellectually immature or mature societies – and, possibilities, what kind of future do we want or even need? What kind of bargain are we willing to strike? And, relevant to today, what role do we want technology to play? Ponder.

===

“Much like we cannot let the work of building better futures be contingent on feeling hopeful, we can’t let corporations or those in power control the flow and definition of hope either. No company or politician can hand you hope. We have to build it in and among ourselves as a beginning, not as an end. How does one change the future? How do we get to the tomorrows we want and not the ones we don’t? And a core piece of that question has to do with the way in which insects melt themselves into goo. Must we fully dissolve ourselves and our world in order to get to the futures we want? Do we have to burn it all down, destroy it all, and rebuild from that melted space? Or can we change more gradually, more incrementally, more like the hermit crabs, upgrading slowly as we go?

As Octavia Butler once said, “There’s no single answer that will solve all our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead, there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”

Rose Eveleth

===

“The unicorn is a lonely, solitary creature that symbolizes hope.”

Ally McBeal

===

The world sends out billions of messages, small to large, which puncture our hope. Some of the messages are intended to do so and some are not. Intentions aside, they all do. Because of that grind of stories we seem to face every day, I do believe a lot of people just seem to be more empty these days.

Well.  Certainly less full of hope if they aren’t completely empty.

I say this even to the people who are working hard to find a way to improve the world. I say that because even listening to smartish podcasts where brilliant articulators of issues thrive, more often than not you walk away a bit deflated. A bit discouraged. With a bit of a feeling that the meta issues are so overwhelming, well, what can I do?

In other words.

Hope punctured.

The truth is in today’s world we seem to get caught up in the everyday grind of the story of the day. And, yes, most stories don’t reflect the best version of people or the positive side of emergent issues.  What this means is that it can get fairly easy to step on to the slippery slope leading down to a belief we are in some shithole with no leader or steps to get out of it. And what THAT means <at least to me> is that far too many people are abandoning hope and we desperately need some people to offer us some good ole pragmatic hope.

Why do I feel so strongly about this?

I imagine lack of hope is kind of like entering a personal hell and even deflated, or deflating, hope is kind of like feeling like you are stepping onto the slippery slope into hell. Needless to say. This isn’t good for anyone.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the corollary to that is those of us with hope to give should share it whenever we can to get others out of that hell or at least off the slippery slope.

Which leads me to … uhm … unicorns.

Yeah. Unicorns. I thought about this because a friend of mine, one of the most delightful thinkers I know, and one of the best purveyors of whimsical thinking on serious topics, admitted to a bit of deflated hope.

So, unicorns is the topic today.

Crazy? Sure.  Sounds it.

Hear me out. Hopefully it also makes you think about the people who seem to keep a vision of hope and use it, however they elect to keep that hope at hand, to help them through the days and weeks.

So. This thought is actually grounded in an Ally McBeal episode. The show, in its oft absurd way, showed how sometimes people go to some extreme, if not bizarre, ways to hold on to some light in seemingly dark days. And while the episode was about the holidays, I thought it was pretty relevant to talk about hope.

What do I mean?

Well. I was going to try and write some whizbang words, but instead I found something that someone wrote on their blog <sorry … forgot who> that seemed to create the perfect reason for discussing why seeing unicorns is perfectly acceptable:

==

What has made it challenging for me to write this is the darkness that I experience through the world’s anguish at this time. I am not living in days of light—I am living in days in need of light. I need to remember in this time of darkness that there are many who are seeking light.

I listen to the rantings of politicians who seem far more caught up in ideology and party positioning than they do in honestly meeting the deep challenges of our economy, the needs of our people, and caring for our planet. I witness the kindest of people being too busy to adequately separate their own food waste and recycling from their trash to reduce the build-up of what is becoming our planetary garbage dump. I witness fires and weather destroying lives and property and then reflect on the consequence of our priorities when we are unable to respond adequately. In this season of cold, I see the homeless in our own community seeking shelter from the wet and the winter.

And even, perhaps, more sharply, I returned from Israel more aware than ever of the incredibly wide divide between the humanity we perceive and the inhumanity shown by the actions of the leaders in that troubled region.

Right here at home, I am troubled by the inaction of so many of us who speak words of reconciliation, words of peace, words of promise, yet continue to find enemies who need to be stopped rather than people who need to be invited into the dialogue.

Yes, all that is true, yet I need to remember in this time of darkness that there are many who are seeking light.

==

Anyway. In the Ally McBeal episode I am referencing someone was fired for saying he saw a unicorn. Silly, yet the judge in the episode suggests “there are a lot of lonely people out there, looking for hope in strange places.”

Yeah. In the end the judge decides that those people can keep their unicorns.

You know?

It sounds a little crazy, but you know what? I agree.

Some people need to believe in unicorns. It doesn’t mean they are nuts. People need to find hope however they can and some people just see the unicorn as hope. And, frankly, why should anyone have any say in where a person may look for that hope?

For god’s sake, all people deserve hope and different people just get there in different ways.

And if someone elects to use a unicorn?

Well, geez, it could be worse, couldn’t it?

“who’s to say the ones who dream of unicorns aren’t the lucky ones these days.”

I know … I know … this sounds nuts … but think about it.

Supposedly people who see unicorns share some of the unicorn’s traits as in they may be lonely, but with virtuous hearts. Mythology also suggests that only pure spirits can approach the unicorn.

In the episode the character who saw it said he didn’t get close to the unicorn, but (here is the part that maybe makes you think a little) “but he won’t have another chance if he stops believing in the unicorn.”

Ok.

That is a bigger thought than just a wacky tv show. If we ask all people to stop “believing in unicorns” do people lose any chance of reaching what they hope for? If we ask people to stop ‘believing in unicorns’ are we asking people to abandon Hope?

Whew.

C’mon.

I know all of this sounds crazy <and it even looks crazy as I type it>, but don’t we really want more of these people in today’s world? Don’t we need just a bit more crazy-like hope in today’s crazy world?

In fact, maybe the people who see unicorns are actually the hope for the rest of us. Maybe they are the ones “where goodness reigns.”

Regardless. Maybe someone who sees a unicorn somehow just feels safer. And I have no right to not allow someone that right in today’s world. As I noted in my opening, the world appears to be doing its best to puncture our hope so maybe we need to create some thoughts that are ‘unpuncturable.’ Maybe we need the whimsical brilliance just to bring a tad of Teflon to our hopes and thinking and quests.

Here is an odd note to add from me, a pragmatic realist, I don’t know if I can explain it, but knowing that maybe someone out there can actually see a unicorn, well, maybe in a weird way they give me hope.

——————-

And, I’m afraid say it out loud because maybe if life finds out it’ll try to beat it out of them and that will be a shame. Because, we all can use a little hope sometimes, you know. That feeling that everything’s going to be okay and that there’s going to be someone there to help make sure of that.

There are people who can make you believe in things you can’t see.

And I think we miss that these days.

———————-

Look. It’s a hard time for everyone these days, but it is a particularly hard time for Hope & dreams right now. Unfortunately, far too many people are being encouraged to think of hope & dreams as some big, fluffy cloud that is surrounded by rainbows and unicorns. Because of that we tend to dismiss the ‘unicorns’ and tend to focus on the fact real horses, zebras and gazelles are dying.

Yes. We have some really serious issues we need to address and many of those serious larger, meta, issues can look overwhelming and unsolvable. But. To me … no hope = hell. And who wants to live in hell?  What I think I know is, well, hell doesn’t have unicorns. It doesn’t have the whimsical. It doesn’t have brilliant wizards. And maybe, just maybe, we should seek out the hope just a bit more often there. Ponder.

===

One day in 2017, Alexandra Rowland wrote “The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on.” A style of brutal nihilism had become a trend. It was a sort of dystopian darkness where nothing mattered and everything was void of hope. Enough was enough, so she put words to the something she longed for and learned she was far from alone.

“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.”

“No one got everything they wanted, but the American people got what they needed.”

Joe Biden

==

“I should like to ask you to agree for the moment to think of conflict as neither good nor bad; to consider it without ethical prejudgment; to think of it not as warfare, but as the appearance of difference, difference of opinions, of interests. For that is what conflict means—difference. … As conflict is here in the world, as we cannot avoid it, we should, I think, use it. Instead of condemning it, we should set it to work for us.”

Mary Parker Follett

——

This piece isn’t about politics and, yet, it is. We are in a weird world in which:

1. We seem to think if we don’t, or can’t, get everything we want the world is going to crumble before our eyes
2. We seem to think if we don’t, or can’t, get everything we want we have lost, i.e., somehow there was a pathway to getting 100% and the ‘others’ didn’t get it
3. We seem to think about public issues as personal issues, and vice versa, conflating some fairly horrible personal compromise advice and public good compromising.

Yeah. We receive an onslaught of banal personal advice suggesting any compromise screws us individually, as in dreams, desires and some fairly unforgiving beliefs in ‘things.’ Its nuts. And unhealthy.

The suggestion is that if you “compromise with life, you kill your dreams and live your plan B, C and D.”

Once again. That’s nuts.

Rarely, if ever, does anyone get 100% of what they want. And let’s be clear. Rarely, if ever, 100% of what you want is actually the best for 100% of the people. Therein lies the challenge of compromise. Your 100% never represents the best for the 100%. Period.

Which leads me to say we have corrupted the way we think about how collective debates and agreements work.

Simplistically, the corruption has occurred in individualism. Look. I am not suggesting every individual shouldn’t seek out what they want or even what they believe is best for them and what they believe. What I am suggesting that pursuit shouldn’t ignore what the other people in their community, city, state, province, country and maybe even the other 7,999,999,999 people in the world may want and need. That’s the layers of compromise. Yeah. That’s a lot of layers. Yeah. Maybe that’s why getting 100% of what you want is a bit of a fantasy. But in fantasyland there are people screaming ‘winners and losers’ ignoring the fact that, well, no one seems to be winning and shitload of people are thinking they are losing. We have corrupted compromise or at least corrupted the idea of conflict and conflict resolution.

“The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, irreligion, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power; the weaker sort contribute folly, vanity, and idleness; of these I am one. It seems as if it were the season for vain things, when the hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation.”

Montaigne

This corruption of compromise breeds a sense of everything changing, but in an invisible corrosive way. We only see the change in a low level slightly nagging a feel of unease & unhappiness. And because of that, mentally we shift our focus to what is visible and away from the invisible <that which creates the unease> and we fixate on what we think we know rather than unlearning/revising what we know. In other words, we get stuck in the fantasyland of what we want as being the ‘be all and end all.’

Once again. this is nuts.

We want lots of things and the odds of getting all these things is really really low. And you know what? Sometimes what we think we want is not actually what we need nor what we should want. Sometimes the ‘other side’ is suggesting something that is better than what we say ‘we want.’

Which leads me to integration, not compromise.

Technically speaking, what the Biden administration just did was not compromise, it was more like integration. Integration is a Mary Parker Follett idea. Presented as part of a lecture series on the psychological foundations of business management, to the Bureau of Personnel Administration conference group in 1925, Follet argued that conflict, as a natural and inevitable part of life, does not necessarily have to lead to adverse outcomes. Rather, if approached with the right attitude a conflict can present an opportunity for positive or constructive development. Follett suggested there are three ways to respond to conflict:

• Dominance
• Compromise
• Integration

Dominance means victory of one side over the other. This works in the short term, but is unproductive in the long run. Compromise means each party having to give up something for the sake of a meaningful reduction of friction. Far from ideal, compromise often leaves each side, if not each person, unsatisfied – having given up something of value. Finally, integration, the option championed by Follett, means creatively incorporating each persons/groups fundamental desires/interests into the solution.

And that is where I will end. I began with a Biden administration thought and end with, well, “no one got everything they wanted, but the American people got what they needed.” The solution integrated aspects of what everyone brought to the table and if we are really honest, the end product was probably a bit better than either of the side’s solutions going in. And isn’t that the way it is supposed to work? You don’t get everything you want, but you get a lot of what you need. Ponder.

==

Inevitabilities are not scheduled prophecies.

==

I have said increased complexity increases the desire for increased simplicity for years if not decades. It is not a brilliant insight. It is simply an observation based on ‘every force has an equal opposing force’ attached to human desires. I say that because I recently heard the phrase “the great simplification” as in society will enter an era in which simplification will become the currency needed to navigate an increasingly complex world. Without the hyperbole, it is probably true (in some form or fashion). And with that said, therein lies the peril. Simplification does not solve complexity, all it may do is provide lily pads of exploration.

Therein lies the paradox of simplicity. For simplicity to be effective there needs to be complexity and complexity needs simplicity in order to have some progress.

The truth is that increased complexity increases the likelihood of something of a higher level to be created. So, while humans relentlessly pursue simplicity; biology and ecosystems relentlessly thrive on complexity. One almost has to wonder if this is the ultimate conflict in business. As an institution is more is more likely to thrive, the more it embraces complexity, and yet the humans within the institution do everything imaginable to simplify.

Which leads me to suggest maybe the optimal state is ‘complex enough to make business happy.’

“Complex enough” has some positive aspects in that it offers enough reality, but not too much to freeze everyone into indecision. But an incredibly important aspect is diversity because complexity demands a diverse response, which demands diversity within the response group, in order to be successful <complexity is a natural multiplier of both good and bad therefore a structure needs to be established to nudge and constrain complexity to the needs of the institutions>. And, yet, in today’s world everything feels extreme and full of binaries; not a celebration of the robustness of possibilities found in complexity. I am truly astonished by the deeply entrenched deterministic thinking that drives most of today’s narratives.

I am astonished because deterministic thinking is a blinkering force, the very opposite of rationality even though many people who espouse deterministic thinking believe themselves to be the most rational purveyors of ‘common sense.’ Deterministic thinking tends to seed polarization and distrust as people become entrenched in their vision of the future, or the vision of “what is the right thing”, of which neither is conducive to navigating a complex world. It is simplistic thinking which only drains the oil from a high-powered engine.

Which leads me to what I consider two of the foremost simplistic mistakes people will make in a complex world.

The first is I fear a world of decision making by data because what it may lead to is a number of nonsensical results as the outcome you get by plugging numbers into an equation without really thinking through the implications will only be to create nonsensical results. In other words, simplification leads to (harmful) nonsense.

The second is the complex social-economic system is not self-correcting or self-managing; sustained, self-conscious efforts are necessary to deal with the problems and they often must be maintained against strong resistance. To be clear, ‘efforts’ are rarely simple and ‘corrections’ are ongoing, i.e., “not put a plan in place and simply let it work.” Yeah. Social/economic issues demand complex solutions; not simplistic ones.

Ponder.

===

“You give away nice like it doesn’t cost you anything.”

Levi laughed. “It doesn’t cost me anything. It’s not like smiling at strangers exhausts my overall supply.”

“Well, it does mine.”

“I’m not you. Making people happy makes me feel good. If anything, it gives me more energy for the people I care about.”

Cath and Levi in Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

===

“If you were a great talent, but not a nice person, we had no hesitation in saying ‘No.’ Life is too short to sacrifice so much of it, to living with a bastard.”

Bill Bernbach

===

Not only has the world become a bit nastier it sometimes feels like if you are not nasty there is something wrong with you. You aren’t strong. You aren’t a leader. You aren’t confident. Well. That’s not only nuts its also a pretty unhealthy way of thinking about life.

Which leads me to say that we all know that the world is often not kind and what can happen. Yet. We make our own world. As Milton said:

“The mind is its own place, and in itself,

Can make heaven of hell, a hell of Heaven”

Now. I will admit that kindness and niceness needs to get a bit tougher (and, yes, I believe you can be tough and be kind and nice). What I mean by that is it seems like there is something unique to our era that encourages the tricksters and cheaters to not only have confidence but be confidently nasty. They thrive in fantasylands of myths and tales willing the narratives to take the form of reality; even when they are not. and when you point out the magical thinking or fantasylands, they get nasty.

I say that to make a point about increased nastiness and tough niceness.

There is increased nastiness in the world because there is an increase in cheaters try to convince us of some alternative reality. They have to be nasty in order to shut down, well, reality. Ponder.

There needs to be increased tough niceness to battle the nasty cheaters and charlatans. Kill them with kindness AND reality. I say that because people really don’t like nastiness. Yeah. they may find it entertaining in the short term, but in the long term everyone is much much more comfortable when a citizenry is kind and nice to each other.

It doesn’t always happen in the moment but over time reality is kind of unforgiving in pointing out that if you are the kind of person who wants something badly enough to be nasty, you will inevitably discover that the price they have paid for it is too high.

Which leads me to suggest this is an individual and society issue.

The individual part is easy to see – be nice rather than nasty and you will be more consistently surrounded by people who actually like being with you. For the society aspect I will lean in on Peter Drucker and his 1999 book The New Realities. He believed the disappearance of the belief in salvation by society would create an environment in which would likely be anti-society … and that salvation could only be achieved outside society … only in and through the person (selfishness & individual zero-sum thinking) and even perhaps through withdrawal from society (to small likeminded tribes). A Bruce translation. Let’s call this the growth of a “me” generation or “what’s in it for me” philosophy.

He may have meant it in a slightly different way, but that is how his idea came to life. In addition, society tends to offer 2 important pillars: experts to help make sense of things and some basic common sensemaking beliefs. So once society had been deconstructed experts were deconstructed as well as some important common sensemaking beliefs. It deconstructs collective societal values. Which leads to valuing the individual (beliefs and wealth) over the collective; or at least proportionally the individual became significantly more important than the collective.

It became easy to be nasty and it became easier to find charlatans and cheaters who nastily espoused our grievances.

Which leads me to suggest that the increased nastiness is a reflection that society is sick.

There are unresolved problems of attending to the common good and we are increasingly unable to address the problems of society. The issue is exacerbated by the fact that as businesses fail at their commitment to society the government began establishing huge bureaucracies to attempt to address the issues and have failed to measure up to the problem. The lack of success of government in solving social problems is not solely the government’s fault or incompetence. It is more a reflection of lack of alignment between people’s attitudes & behavior, i.e., if we cannot agree on what is the right thing to do, we will never be supportive of government’s efforts – even if they are the right thing to do.

Personally, I think we are becoming nastier because we are unhappy we are not being nice and doing kind things as a shared societal responsibility <including businesses>.

Maybe that s my point.

If society is sick, and being nasty is a symptom of that sickness, maybe being nice and kind is the cure. Ponder.

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“Globalization makes it impossible for modern societies to collapse in isolation, as did Easter Island and the Greenland Norse in the past. Any society in turmoil today, no matter how remote … can cause trouble for prosperous societies on other continents and is also subject to their influence (whether helpful or destabilizing). For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. But we also are the first to enjoy the opportunity of learning quickly from developments in societies anywhere else in the world today, and from what has unfolded in societies at any time in the past.“

Jared Diamond

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 “At this moment we all face a choice. We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration. Or we can retreat into a world sharply divided, and ultimately in conflict, along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion.”

September 20, 2016, Barack Obama told the UN General Assembly

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“I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first. As long as I hold this office, I will defend America’s interest above all else. ”

September 19. 2018 Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly

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‘Washington, D.C. is now the epicenter of instability in the world.  What it means is something that our friends and allies around the world have taken for granted for 70 years is no longer something that they can take for granted.”

Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution

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• Authors note: critique of globalization shouldn’t lead to nationalism, protectionism or isolationism, the dull axe narratives which suggest that are wrong. The leading voices of nationalism foster dull thinking which encourages a country, United States in particular, to retreat from a trade battle that is theirs to win should they elect to stay engaged. Just to get it out of the way upfront. I imagine some people would call me a ‘globalist’ <albeit that sounds like a bad name to be called simply for believing that a globalized economy benefits all>. But I would be naive to not see that a reordering of the globalized economy has begun. While globalization has always had its warts, America has always led, guided, and benefited from its central role in the web of global economics.  Nationalist/protectionist voices have shredded that web with loose rhetoric and offering only instability & uncertainty as well as a slightly warped view <and selling of> of “sovereignty.”

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Globalization is not a new phenomenon. It has existed, and benefited, countries for centuries. Paradoxically, cooperation is necessary to maximize one’s own benefit. In a zero-sum game your growth potential has an additive cap. In a cooperation world your growth potential is either multiplicative or exponential in terms of a cap. Globalization is, was, and will always be, a flawed cooperation world. By ‘flawed’ I mean there will always be competing interests, but, it will always be underpinned by an understanding cooperation benefits all.

That said. Watch closely. Before our eyes, the world is both coming together and growing apart as never before. The unwinding of the existing globalisation system is going to happen, despite huge investments having been made IN the existing system. With national security (rather than merely commercial resilience or economic competition) becoming a decisionmaking driver, the unwinding is happening faster than one would have imagined. The decades (and tens of billions of dollars) Western firms have invested in capacity in China, as well as the depth of the supply chain and expertise that has emerged there, are make breaking it up a challenge but businesses are motivated and governments interested in facilitating the changes.

Which leads me to suggest globalization isn’t just about trade.

In a globalized world of globalized values and globalized trade, and a globalized economy held together increasingly by multinational companies doing business everywhere it is silly to reduce everything into “Western values.” The world is dotted with dictatorships, autocratic regimes and thuggish governance all of whom participate in the global economy. That said. Globalization, at least from an American perspective, has never been solely about economics. The foundation of an Americanized globalization incorporates some version of diplomacy and democracy. Whether we like it or not they are intertwined <for good and for bad>.

But. Let’s be clear. Once Great Britain ceded its spot as the ‘leader of globalization’ in the early 1900’s … America has owned that spot and it behooves America to champion its type of doing business, i.e., champion the environmental contexts within which business and communities can thrive, because it creates a sense of resilience to the structure of that globalization. Its not pure, but threaded with some important things. It also has had an impact in some strange places. We have even seen the President of China even use some of the words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

“No country should view its development path on its own. Development is of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Which leads me to “transactional politics.”

Globalization has certainly benefited the ordinary American as well as contributed some expenses to the benefit. And, yet, viewed on a transaction by transaction basis globalization can look fairly crappy to the every working person.

The problem is, well, there are a couple of problems:

1. whether you have a crappy view of it or not, globalization is now a fact of life and
2. if you have a crappy view of it, well, it is most likely a wrong view.

Trade, particularly free trade, isn’t a zero-sum game. When NAFTA took effect in 1994, trade between the United States and Mexico was only $50 billion each way since then U.S. exports to Mexico have nearly quintupled to $250 billionish which supports 3 million U.S. jobs. Imports to the United States from Mexico are close to $300 billion and those, too, support millions of American jobs. The world is now totally interdependent. This is why any attempt by the United States to retreat from the world’s interconnectedness will:

• instigate a global economic disaster and
• make it even crappier for the everyday working person.

We cannot go back.

It may not feel like where we are is great or that maybe we aren’t getting “the best deal”, but we are not get a “raw deal” and the road which got us to where we are today just doesn’t exist anymore. But globalization isn’t really being challenged by the past nor by economy or jobs or any real practical thing it is actually being challenged by trust … or lack of trust <which needs to exist in order to enlighten and diminish ignorance on a topic>.

As it seems with almost everything these days there is no trust. The public opinion has a lack of trust in any institution which is associated with globalization <banks, financial institutions, governments, foreign policy experts, etc.>.

This is where simplistic nationalism steps in.  It is a pretty straightforward anti-globalization ‘do not trust institutions’ stance.

Nationalism believes that the interests of the working class have been sacrificed in favor of the big corporations that have been encouraged to invest around the world and thereby deprive American workers of their jobs. They typically compound this argument by stating large-scale immigration has weakened the bargaining power of American workers and served to lower their wages.

This attacks globalization on three fronts:

1. globalization has forgotten the working person
2. globalization has depressed the working income therefore creating inequality, and
3. globalization has cost me ‘the job I deserve’.

All of that is false in some form or fashion (pieces of it may be true). Globalization certainly puts stress on labor, but inequality is driven first and foremost by advances in technology and second by globalization that has exposed U.S. workers to competition from hundreds of millions of people in other countries. Stepping back from globalization will not bring jobs back to the United States in sectors such as manufacturing and coal simply by renegotiating existing trade deals, such as NAFTA, or relaxing environmental rules. But more importantly is that the U.S. manufacturing sector has in fact expanded since the 2008 recession, even as manufacturing employment has decreased. The problem is that the new on-shored work is being performed in highly automated factories.

Regardless. Anti-globalisation rhetoric centers on economic protectionism <some call it nationalism>:

“It is the consequence of a leadership class that worships globalism over Americanism … Our politicians took away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families.”

These voices warn against “the false song of globalism” criticizing a growing world economic interdependency that they argue hurt American workers.

Well. They are right and wrong. Wrong in that it is because of the elite or bad political decisions, but right n that globalization does affect a nation. Mostly, globalization exposes you to competition. It is almost, metaphorically, like you are an elite team winning a large % of your games and then you step out of your conference and get smoked by another team. My answer isn’t to not schedule the other team, nor is it to change the rules so that it makes it harder for them to win, it is for me to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to win.

I absolutely agree much more needs to be done to improve the lives of workers impacted by globalization. But the idea that protectionism is the answer is wrong.

Free trade (with governing policy augmentation) has long presented advantages and disadvantages to Americans. It has been linked to outsourcing as manufacturing jobs have shifted to countries with lower wages. But it has also contributed to significantly cheaper consumer goods for American consumers and opened up new markets to US exporters <which creates jobs>. I, clearly, support managed free trade, but say ‘reject globalization at your own risk.’

Which leads me to responsibility.

While globalization certainly has its pluses and minuses the biggest concern is responsibility.

“The world is always at fault. China is at fault. Japan is at fault, Germany is at fault and even U.K’s Brexit is at fault too. Everyone is out to cheat America of our lunch. America is one great nation that is willing to consume more than we can produce for export. We don’t blame ourselves for our deficit balance problem with every nation. It’s obviously China’s fault. It’s definitely Russia’s fault. It’s my dog’s fault that it barks at me when I went out of the house this morning.

Why is everyone’s fault and not ours.”

Nationalist policies that attempt to raise American workers by depriving developing nations of the trade they need to grow is not a path toward long term success. We need to recognize how globalization benefits millions, by reducing the price of goods throughout the world, reducing economic instability and increasing overall prosperity globally & domestically.

We need reign in some of the predatory aspects of capitalism like cutting out tax breaks for companies shipping jobs overseas and offer support and help transition the ‘losers’ left behind to adapt to fill changing industries. Coal and steel jobs ARE NEVER coming back we need help workers transition to more viable industries. And we CAN solve this problem. Undo the tax and accounting rules and laws that reward short term profit taking over long-term DOMESTIC investment. Roll back the trade deals and tariffs that make it more profitable for companies to move jobs and wages offshore. Reward companies that reward American workers with good jobs, pay, and benefits, and punish companies that don’t. Level the playing field for American workers by implementing taxes/tariffs on goods and services from foreign countries. And just as importantly, revitalize the unions by installing oversight to ensure they serve their member’s best interests and not the bosses and criminal elements, so that collective bargaining is once again effective. I would note what I am, fundamentally, suggesting is free trade and the ‘invisible hand’ is an unhealthy myth. The market, globalization included, needs to be constrained and nudged into shapes conducive to the greater good and away from a winner-take-all endgame.

Which leads me to facing reality.

We need to accept that the rest of the world is doing their own manufacturing & business and are gradually increasing their own standard of living. Today’s version of globalization is forcing a re-balancing which will, obviously, create some winners and some losers. But in a global economy the winners don’t win as easily and the losers don’t lose as much as they could have.  That doesn’t mean losses as in slower overall growth or slower wage increase doesn’t hurt, but globalization tends to curb economic exploitation which is what offers the ‘larger than normal’ economic surges in an individual country.

Globalization, and economic interconnectedness, is here to stay. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be constantly pointing America’s compass in the right direction and aligning a cohesive plan with the intent of insuring the best interests of all citizens.

Let me end with one of the most misquoted Obama thoughts of all time:

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Obama

Globalization has created some ‘losers’ which does create bitterness. That is reality. It is a reality that these things have been happening for decades if not centuries with regard to globalization and its pursuit of maximization of the world and its resources. And in its pursuit of maximization some things, people in particular, get minimized. And that is where nationalism and protectionism thrives – minimizing the issues to feed the bitterness and questions about globalization. Yeah. Who would have ever thought that today, with the internet and a variety of other global access resources, we would actually be making things smaller; smaller as in cocooned thinking or gathering up small groups of likeminded people. Maybe social media is maximizing the minimized mind. here is what I would say. Globalization has the potential to maximize the mind and the economies everywhere. The only false song of globalization is that, left to its own devices, it will solve everything. Nothing can solve everything. Globalization, as a tool, can HELP US solve some of the greatest problems we have including the bitterness of people left behind. Ponder.

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“The United States has a very deep, profound interest in a rising China to be a responsible global stakeholder, to contribute to our shared prosperity and security. But we also know that with a rising power comes a rising sense of ambition, and we will welcome China’s active participation in global affairs so long as it is responsible and transparent.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 2011

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“China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.”
Charles de Gaulle

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• ** note: just as I was finishing this piece Noah Smith published a piece, A DemTech Economic Agenda: Ten Steps Towards Collective Resilience, which basically states all the essential points to support what I am saying. If you must choose whether you read my piece, or Noah’s, read his.

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America is what America is and, in this case, what it is, is afraid of China. No matter where you turn someone is claiming China is going to war with US, replace the dollar with the yuan as global currency, spy on every American thru TikTok (albeit no one has clarified what they may do with that spying) and basically making America a third world country. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this is an extension of America’s predilection to address everything as either Spinal Tap 11 or, well, zero. China is currently the 11.

Should we be concerned? Sure. Should we be complacent? No. Should we view this as a competition? Yes. Should we consider this a war? No (in my opinion). China is clearly a geopolitical and economic competitor that could pose a threat to American economic interests, but the issue is in the nuance. While it is a competition, we cannot neglect the importance of constructive engagement with China because, well, globalization isn’t going to just go away. It is important to approach the U.S.-China relationship with an understanding in a connected world. There has to be a commitment to nuance. And that nuance needs to extend to rhetoric. US does some things exceptionally well and some others not as exceptionally. The challenge will be to ensure the exceptional things do not lose their competitive edge. And, yes, it is now a competition. An economic power with 20% of the world’s population, China has the ability to reshape the international system and when Xi Jinping says China should “lead in the reform of the global governance system” it suggests ambition. What I will say, without fear, is that an enormously ambitious China is peaking now and a competitive confrontation is upon us.

Before I specifically address the fear of China let me state three underlying beliefs.

1. fundamentally labor and building costs remain higher in the United States than they do either in China or the majority of alternative sources. This is due to a higher standard of living and a cost of living therefore is not easily solvable and maintain ‘lowest prices available’ for consumption or ‘lowest costs’ for creation.
2. we need to discern between creation and consumption. Manufacturing in terms of sourcing is different than markets within which we can sell things.
3. the asymmetry of the US China relationship finally reminded us of an old lesson we had forgotten. Don’t be (over)reliant on a single source for anything. As Toffler once said “if you don’t have a strategy, you are a part of someone else’s strategy.” We didn’t have a strategy except a maniacal blind objective of the pursuit of money (profits and revenue) wherein businesses pursued fragile ‘efficient’ mechanisms of creation and consumption.

Which leads me to looking at this as seeking potential.

The existing situation is a reflection of past behaviors in seeking potential. What I mean by that is as the world became increasingly better at globalization, i.e., ability to distribute creation/manufacturing became more efficient and more markets became open, business, as businesses do, sought potential sales, revenues, margins, and profits. In other words, they sought potential. To be clear, this is business potential not country potential. Business does not prioritize country other than as a criteria for its existence, not its potential. So, by the 2000’s most businesses had fallen into a comfortable balance sheet position wherein their manufacturing is sourced out of the United States and China had a disproportionate hold on both key manufacturing as well as offered a massive user market. Because it was a balance sheet friendly choice, it became a given. And once it became a given, businesses had a propensity to simply build upon that premise to make as much as possible in China. What I am suggesting is that China gained a disproportionate hold on global manufacturing simply by the inevitable gravity of China as the world’s “plant” and US (and some others) as the world’s innovation research hub. To be clear, balance sheets can blind many businesses to potential risks. The good news it is correctible blindness.

Which leads me to exploring potential.

Potential is neither simple nor absolute, but rather within pace layers and pace layering. What is the real potential? And where is the real change? What is a real threat and what is a real opportunity? Those are the questions that we should be asking and asking without fear; seeking direction from the answers we discover. While a common topic within this fear driven conversation is that power is shifting away from the West and from the United States. I have to question is it really shifting power or is it just simply power flexing. The true perceptions of any perceived change or even power flexing typically depends on where one stands. But the entire fear rhetoric creates a siege mentality and this happens when we’re not really sure whether some of the things we’re discussing pose real threats or are they simply perceived ones mixed up combined with a lack of nuance from a political standpoint. In addition, the lack of nuance encourages a zero sum fear winner-take-all attitude lacking the natural proportionality of a globalized economy. What I do know is that is that the uneasiness is grounded in losing what you have.

Which leads me to fear always fills absence.

The current situation demands we at least acknowledge the political policy dynamics. Objectively speaking, viewing substance over rhetoric, the Trump Administration retreated from the global role that the United States typically had in the global interconnectedness. This had repercussions. Some welcomed it, some people became uncomfortable with it, but the truth is in the current moment there is no substitute the leadership that America has offered to the globalized world that exists today. This does not mean that American policies haven’t offered up the possibility that some of the deeds that were implemented may not have been evil, but they weren’t necessarily good. This becomes important because many because many times within the fear-driven dialog much of the citizenry struggles to see how the United States could be anything but benevolent or “good” in a good versus bad binary world. The reality is most American citizens need to stay need to take a step back and under that some of the images and verbiage that get transmitted simultaneously into homes around the world can trigger can trigger opposing perceptions. Where homes in the United States may applaud some behavior there will be other areas in the world that will consider dangerous if not misguided. And where Americans may see consistency other countries may actually see inconsistency. For example, the war in Ukraine it is difficult for any American to think that American involvement in the Ukraine Russia war is not the right thing to do. However what makes it righter then the lack of involvement that America has elected to do in several of the African conflicts which actually involve more people more lives And even pass even possibly more of the global future. Inactions send signals.

That said, we have now veered into a paranoia driven world in which it seems like it’s a one on one combat between China and the United States for control of the world.

First. No one country will control the world. One country can influence the world, but it will never control the world.

Second. From any objective view the United States which has treaties and trade agreements with over 150 countries around the world has disproportionate power than China which I believe only has seven alliances, the majority of which are with very small economies. In addition to that China surrounded by a number of countries and large economies that have no interest in losing their own power to China. I bring that up because while we like to talk about United States versus China there are a number of buffer zones between the two and I’m not speaking just of military engagements, but of economic engagement.

Which leads me to engaging (not in an America First way).

It’s quite possible instead of fear, we should view relationships as opportunistic and transactional. I believe this would be a healthy attitude because believing that the United States use of international institutions, military power, and economic resources to run the world in order to maintain United States dominance is a prescription for disaster. The reality is the United States is made up of 330 million people in a world of almost 8 billion. This does not mean that the United States does not have disproportional power within that larger context, almost kind of like the Intel inside a computer, but to suggest America’s interests can be solely pursued within a global system and have all the results it desires is simply wishful thinking. It seems like the question now should be how to organize to protect ourselves from other countries which desire to undercut the things that are most important to us which would include economic as well as human values. What I am suggesting is that simply pursuing a weakened them and strengthen us initiative is a reflection of an inability to conceive that this could cover up any structural weaknesses that the United States has is as well as assumes that this is but this is actually the best thing for the United States. What I mean by that is that the world really isn’t a zero-sum game that doesn’t mean that it may not be disproportional in terms of who wins and who loses but it is not a zero-sum game. That is important because that would mean that the best American policy for America is actually to seek out the ultimate triumph of a balance, or proportionality, of economic prosperity globally as well as some most important ideals associated with freedom and democracy. But it is hubris to state that United States can defy the economic laws of gravity. What I mean by that is that in order to seek out the best triumph for the United States, within the triumph of global economic prosperity, the United States has to get its economic engine working properly because if you do not maintain your own economic health, it is impossible to fully optimize economic potential. The United States is still the repository of the greatest assets to feed future progress.

Which leads me to why fear should be tempered.

China has a number of countries that it considers allies or partners, although the exact definition and nature of these relationships may vary. Some of China’s closest allies and partners include:

1. Russia: China and Russia have a long-standing strategic partnership, and the two countries have cooperated on issues such as energy, defense, and foreign policy.
2. Pakistan: China and Pakistan have a close relationship that includes military and economic cooperation. China has invested heavily in infrastructure projects in Pakistan, and the two countries have also worked closely on regional security issues.
3. North Korea: China and North Korea have a longstanding relationship that dates back to the Korean War. While their relationship has been strained at times, China remains North Korea’s largest trading partner and a key ally.
4. Iran: China has developed closer ties with Iran in recent years, particularly in the areas of energy and trade.
5. ASEAN countries: China has sought to build stronger ties with its Southeast Asian neighbors through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with which China has established a strategic partnership.
6. African countries: China has also developed close economic and diplomatic ties with a number of African countries, particularly through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which seeks to promote infrastructure development and trade along the historic Silk Road.

“One simple question we should ask is which country—China or the United States—is swimming in the same direction as the majority of the other 191?”
Kishore Mahbubani

I began with China to point out its partnerships, in a cooperative economy, are relatively limited, or, let’s just say its capped. On the other hand, the United States has a number of allies and partners around the world spanning from strategic alliances to transactional relationships – with almost every country in the world. lately, in what appears to be a new interest in reshaping alliances and the economic sub-structure, the United States has deepened relationships in the Pacific Rim, southeast Asia and other countries which constrain China’s ability to expand its role globally.

Which leads me to what I think will happen (so we stop fearing).

One reasonable prediction is the era of global value chains will not come to an end. Offshore manufacturing and global supply chains are just how companies know how to produce stuff now, meaning that — barring a very catastrophic war — we will not go back to an era of largely self-contained national manufacturing economies. That said. I think the manufacturing construct will reshape itself into new blocks becoming less reliant on (a) China and (b) sole source creators. China will obviously attempt to build a block. But, referring back to China’s limited partnerships, China will be limited in how and what they make and own in the creation and who they can rely on for raw materials and other low-value goods. To be clear. There will be struggles over the resources of some neutral countries, including poor countries, and this could turn into some ugly proxy struggles. Interestingly, you can also see how America is attempting to build its own block. The most interesting aspect of America’s version is how ‘pod-like’ the thinking is. What I mean by that is while America benefits in the thinking construct it permits EU and other alliances tap into different creation resources in different ways; all the while optimizing the consumption market size. So, if Americans can finally pull their heads out of their asses and recognize that their country doesn’t dominate the world the way it used to, there’s a chance to create a non-China economic block that preserves lots of the efficiencies of the old globalized system while serving U.S. national security needs. That bloc would not only include America’s formal allies or developed democracies, but also include lots of developing countries – particularly in southeast asi like Bangladesh, Vietnam and Singapore – that would like to hedge against Chinese power and secure access to developed world markets.

“The world needs an international economic system that works for our wage-earners, works for our industries, works for our climate, works for our national security, and works for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries. That means replacing the idea of free markets alone with targeted and necessary investments in places that private markets are ill-suited to address on their own.

It means returning to the core belief we first championed 80 years ago: that America should be at the heart of a vibrant, international financial system that enables partners around the world to reduce poverty and enhance shared prosperity. And that a functioning social safety net for the world’s most vulnerable countries is essential to our own core interests.”

Jake Sullivan

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Which leads me to possibilities rather than fear.

China has a grand strategy. China has ambitions. USA has a grand strategy. USA has ambitions. Heck. The EU has a grand strategy and ambitions. But they are not on equal footing in a global economy. Currently it is asymmetrical and for the foreseeable future, based mostly on China’s grand strategy, it appears like it will remain asymmetrical. But even if it does become more proportional (China does have 3x the population of the USA) it shouldn’t create fear, it should create a competitive vision of potential and possibilities. Which leads me to end where I began. Fear generates misguided decision-making and potential is wasted. Period. The key to United States prosperity is international cooperation. And here’s the deal. The key to China prosperity is international prosperity. This doesn’t mean China doesn’t have a long term strategy, and ambition, to displace USA as the central player in the global economy just that these two things are not mutually exclusive. That said. While China seeks to become self-sufficient the US should be developing a coalition of interconnected productive prosperity. Instead of a self-sufficient USA it should be a shared prosperity and a self-sufficient coalition of countries. Why? The tide rises higher with a shared prosperity – there will be larger efficiencies and effectiveness and wealth generation. That doesn’t mean US couldn’t stand alone standing upon its own resources, but, why? It only offers a finite path where a coalition offers more possibilities AND maintains a competitive advantage against China.

Which leads me to end with getting out of our own way.

“.. brings into question how serious Washington is about leading the world. Washington’s dysfunction also helps its autocratic adversaries in the global contest over ideology.”

Christopher Chivvis

You can tell the ‘fear’ proposed by political leaders, particularly on the Republican side, is simply performative politics and rhetoric because from a pragmatic standpoint Washington continues to get in the way of actually placing United States in a position to lead the competition with China. It’s an absurd kabuki dance of fact and fiction. I will say, objectively speaking, the words and actions of the Biden administration have been surprisingly forward thinking. Many of the things I have noted in this piece America is actually either doing or discussing. So maybe we should stop fearing and start embracing the changes that are being implemented by ‘the experts.’ Ponder.

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“Before beginning a hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.”

Winnie the Pooh

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“I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it’s inside a frame.”

Abbas Kiarostami

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“The difference between successful executives and unsuccessful ones is not the quality of their decision making. Each one probably makes good decisions 60% of the time and bad ones 40% of the time—and maybe it’s even 55% to 45%. The difference is, the successful executive is faster to recognize the bad decisions and adjust, whereas failing executives often dig in and try to convince people that they were right.”

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Framing, frames, frameworks, models, all are attempts at offering some level of constraint to a discussion. At their best they can put a border around something so there is some clarity, at their worst they squeeze out substance, reduce something meaningful into something meaningless, and offer a misguided solution.

That said. Successful framing is 90% of success.

That statement is my version of ‘teaching people to learn’ not by telling, but maybe nudging them into a different learning space or, let’s just say, ‘some space.’ Maybe what I am saying is we don’t need to teach people how to learn, but rather remove the obstacles to learning and put them in spaces within which they can, well, learn. I do not know one person in the entire world who does not like to learn things. This means we don’t need to teach people to learn, and it certainly means we should stop telling people what they need to learn <implying they are stupid or learned the wrong thing>, but rather get out of their way and tell them to learn what they want and maybe give a little nudge on occasion to expand the learning space. What I just shared is partially my point of view as well as an example of framing. Learning is a positive thing (that’s framing) and the most effective learning is self-directed within a defined space (that’s a frame).

Which leads me to the space itself and framing.

Far too often we permit framing to be defined as some nebulous idea. And in doing so we talk about framing a shitload, but never really seem to get around to doing everything that needs to be done <implementing it in an effective way>. This doesn’t mean most framing people are not truly trying hard to bring about what they have framed. It’s just that their attempts get trapped in the wretched hollow between ‘ideology’ <conceptual shit> and the practical <which is by no mean easy or simple>.

And it gets even more complicated if someone can only envision what is <the current system> which leads to framing only tweaks & improvements. The best framing people not only see the system that exists, but also envisions a system that does not exist and creates a frame within which people can see the possibilities of all. That said. Outlining the outlines of an existing system is extremely valuable.

Inevitably successful framing is a reflection of several things all embodied in a process of information, education, dialogue, and ultimately, the insights generated from the process which will drive the choices. This sounds reasonable, but it ignores the world in which framing must occur.

Which leads me to larger context and frames.

The internet has eroded a sense of belonging to a large single community of humanity. I say that because society is a frame. The technology has relentlessly pried apart society, and civilization (as well as civilized thinking) so common sensemaking has less value than “I think opinions.” We have moved way beyond healthy skepticism of expert opinions to a more simplistic ‘whatever I believe is reality’ world. yeah. everyone has conflated ‘what I think’ with reality thereby encouraging everyone to not discus/debate but rather retreat to “I am happy with my opinions’ space. What this means is that while in today’s media and internet world we have far more choices than ever we see much less common information. The consequences of this less common information is that common sense making shared thinking is much less likely.

Which leads me to framing and dealing with this new reality.

Depending on the audiences and their needs, you want to “frame” the issue in terms of their interests. The proper framing of an issue helps shape the issue in such a way that it resonates with the audience and generates the “listening traction” in order to expand an audience’s existing framing. This is where both heroes and villains have an equal opportunity. Most framers, or thoughtful people, use some model – a 2×2, an X & Y axis, a 3-dimensional box – in order to help some confusing information seem, well, less confusing. Beware the model and beware the framing within the frame and beware the variables chosen. Yeah. User beware for heroes and villains use the same tools. That said. I, personally, don’t believe in focusing on fewer messages or fewer data points. I do believe you should be choiceful with regard to both, but I imagine this comes back to my opening point – learning. Framing is about opening minds, not filling minds. At this point many people would shift into the importance of stories to ‘engage emotionally’ beyond rationally, but I will not. Framing is different than storytelling. The truth is a story is a cage. What I mean by that is once a story has engaged with people it imprisons not only the ongoing narratives but minds and thought-making frameworks. Frames, on the other hand, are not cages. They are simply constructs within which there is freedom of thought and choicemaking.

Which leads me to framing is not just about a good plan nor is it just about effective adaptation … it is about having the flexibility to accommodate the unforeseen.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

A framework creates a layer between what you know, and do not know, and what you should know.

That said. As noted earlier, framing simply sets the stage for the discussion, a framework is simply a way to make sense of what you have framed, and a plan is something to be executed from all of that – and as you gain knowledge, know more, the framing changes, the input into the framework changes and, therefore, the plan should change. True framing is reflexive, we learn through questioning and discussion and trial and error and success. We learn from action and reflective observation. Frameworks shouldn’t constrain thinking/ideas, but rather promote growth of knowledge and progress.

I imagine I should point out this means because the world is increasingly complex this makes framing complex.

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Vague sucks and, yet, I would argue the majority of people only really have some vague outline of how the world works, how effective or ineffective a leader is and any specific relationship between cause & affect. This vaguery exists because it takes a lot of work to parse the details, and the appropriate details, and the ‘right’ details to make the outlines less vague and more tangible.

Is this work valuable ? sure.

Is this work necessary to increase some certainty in Life? Sure.

But the majority of people have shit to do <other than this type of work>. That is neither good nor bad … it just is what it is. A lot of pseudo intellectuals and smartish pundits bitch & moan and gnash their teeth over this, but they would lead a significantly less stressful life if they just accepted it and instead focus on effective framing. Why? In this ‘vague outline’ people inevitably create a vague/semi solid outline belief, i.e., “I think” realities. From there they look around on occasion and question that outline. The questions raised either support the outline or raise doubts and more questions. This is their frame.

All the while this is happening more information barrages the outline. In this barrage is a confusing mix of real, fake and quasi truths. All these confusing things do in the people’s minds is, contrary to belief, not confuse, but rather make the person more dismissive of the incoming confusion and steadier in whatever vague outline they may have constructed. The frame becomes a bit more solid.

Once again. This is neither good nor bad … it just is what it is. But at some point, the questions gain some gravitas. This can happen several ways but let me point out two:

• The questions themselves coalesce into some easy to understand ‘blob’ from which people who have a vague outline decide “my vague outline is wrong <or sucks>.”
• Someone weaves a narrative using the doubts & questions into a relatively succinct, believable and non-hyperbolic driven framing of an outline which people look at, scratch their heads, go “hmmmmmmmmm …” and decide this vague outline will replace the one they had in place, i.e., the frames and frameworks morph.

The first never happens fast enough to people who just cannot understand how and why some people have decided to live with some vague outline that just seems ‘not really a smart outline’ to them.

The second is not as easy as it appears. It isn’t as easy because problems are rarely as clear as we would like them to be and a narrative never lives without the context of all the barrage of real, fake and quasi truths impacting and denting and solidifying a vague outline that already exists.

In other words … everything has to do with everything else.

I imagine I have two points today.

First. We humans have come to accept a certain amount of uncertainty with regard to our lives and our decisions.

This uncertainty is also built into the vague outlines we tend to construct for ourselves. What this means is that the construct of our beliefs and thoughts and ideas may be certain to us and, yet, its silhouette accommodates some uncertainty. Within this framework the majority of people have enough shit to do that they slot their thinking. In one slot they place unequivocal certainty type thoughts. In another slot they place the “I will always be uncertain about this shit and thank God there is someone else at some higher pay grade than I who can be certain about it.” and, lastly, we slot all the shit in which we have formed some vague outline which accommodates a certain degree of uncertainty.

My point here is we tend to make this a binary discussion where the reality lies in a more complex mix of vagueness & clarity, certainty & uncertainty in which all can reside quite comfortably within the proper frame.

Second. Certainty, in and of itself, has degrees; it is not a simple black or white binary.

People can have vague outlines AND have questions with regard to their outlines and not want to ditch the outline. “How can you still believe that?” may be one of the most misguided and unenlightened questions that has ever existed. It completely misses the point in that it assumes ignorance, stupidity or some negative trait in order to hold on to some vague outline. A vague outline is a choice. No more and no less. We question choices all the time and, yet, remain with the original choice despite some fairly extensive doubts. I say this because it is silly to point out doubts and questions as a reason to ditch a vague outline.

In the end.

The truth is that we all live with some vague outlines albeit your vague outline may actually be one of my non-vague outlines, and vice versa. And when they are in conflict then … well … there is conflict. And this is where framing is 90% of success.

Life is an uncertain adventure in a diffuse landscape whose borders are constantly shifting.

While we tend to simplistically state ‘people don’t like to change,’ the reality is life is restless and “frames” are always shifting in some form or fashion. Effective framing accommodates both what exists and some of what is shifting. Vague outlines are both good and bad. Good in that they offer opportunities to expand existing mindsets, beliefs, and attitudes. Bad because if attacked most people will retreat into reduced frames of “I think-isms” realities. Once again, framing is how to effectively navigate those issues. So, yeah, framing is 90% of success. Ponder.

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“ … today’s soldiers receive awards for valor. But valor was taken for granted in the old armies, in the monk ranks. It was virtue that was sought.

Maybe a soldier makes an act of sacrifice for his parents. Maybe he dedicates his life to the perfection of archery. Maybe he spent all of his off duty hours writing the nine million names of Buddha.

Or maybe performed great feats for the cause of truth.

In these cases he would be rewarded with a medallion from a general.”

discussion on Tibetan warrior monks versus todays warriors

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Ok. While this is Memorial Day this is actually about business.

Before I begin.

I have huge respect for people who serve in the military. I sometimes believe a lot of that respect is driven by how my military friends discuss courage, honor and valor versus the non-military people which has given me a glimpse of what society values versus what a soldier values.

Regardless.

I do not doubt that a soldier finds pride in a chest full of awards & medals. But I also tend to believe they are more proud of simply wearing the uniform – unadorned. My point is that the uniform is a reflection of a personal choice and a collective impact – which is the true reward.

But that really isn’t the point of this quote.

While I tend to believe we give too much lip service to how much we appreciate those who choose to serve and too little heartfelt gratitude and respect for those who choose to serve I wonder how society would view today’s military if they were rewarded with medallions based on virtuistic behavior and not just awards for valor <thereby showing people that choosing to serve is deeper than simply picking up a gun and showing courage>.

Or how about this?

I wonder how society would view today’s leaders, business and government, if they were rewarded with medallions based on virtue and virtuistic behavior.

Yikes.

No bonuses for results <because that is expected> and awards only for things beyond ‘job responsibility performance.’

Imagine if these would be awards that were a measure of their character and not just of their behavior <or talents>.

Imagine rewards for ‘maybe performed great feats for the cause of truth.’

Okay.

That was funny, wasn’t it?

Could you see THAT happening in today’s business world? <no>

And even if we did do it I imagine, using my most cynical perspective, that most people would still find ‘something wrong’ with even that.

Sigh.

But here is what I truly liked about the thought. Virtue is not defined in some religious way nor is it defined by ‘what is honesty’ or ethics or anything like that, it is defined by enlightenment of self. Defined by honing an additional craft.

Defined by broadening the mind by focusing the mind.

Defined by thoughtful purpose and not by numbers, deadlines and bonuses.

What a thought.

No milestones and fake deadlines.

No quarterly goals.

Yes to expecting everyone to do their job.

Yes to expecting success.

Yeah.

I know.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work that way.

Now.

How about if we did this in management?

Maybe we could assume that as you work your way up you show your ‘valor’ in the doing and meeting the expectations. And once you have proven you can excel at the expectations & responsibilities of your job then your compensation rewards get shifted to values; not valor. Maybe people get rewarded for learning new skills and topics completely unassociated with their job.

This may sound crazy.

But think about it.

In today’s business world we have become business people who no longer punch a clock, but rather punch a goal/deadline/task. There is nothing deeper, from an individual aspect (to business at least), than checking the boxes and getting a check.

Sure. From the top down the good organizations are trying to instill some culture and pride and sense of purpose. But those efforts seem a little ass backwards or maybe trying to do something ‘counter to the system.’ What I mean by that is if everyone is being measured by doing and in task completion <even when exceptional is tagged to it> than the system is saying act one way and think one way while the organization may be suggesting “hey, we should also think this way.”

To be clear.

I am an organizational vision guy.

I am an organizational culture guy.

I am an organizational “dynamic beyond our own purpose” guy.

But my pea-like brain is telling me I am doing so and thinking so in conflict with a general business attitude focused on something else.

Look.

I know I can’t run a business solely giving out medallions for virtuosity and ignoring ‘valor.’

But maybe my point is that we should be doing a better job of reshaping a business culture wherein virtuosity and valor at least have a peer relationship with all the deadline/milestone/KPI mumbo jumbo.

Anyway.

I have to tell you as I end this thought that having a business in which the employees ‘maybe performed great feats for the cause of truth’ sounds like it would be a fucking awesome business to lead.

I have to tell you as I end this thought that having a military that rewarded virtue as often as it did courage sounds like it would be a fucking awesome military to lead.

Ponder.

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“Technological optimism means to practice the ability to recognize bad surprises early enough to do something about them.’

Edward Tenner

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Last week I found myself straddling the technology world and, well, the real world as I sat in a living room in “blue collar America’ discussing the fears of AI.

They all see the headlines of pauses and civilization Armageddon driven by AI and what comes to mind is The Terminator and robots with sentient awareness making decisions on their own. So when I brought up superintelligence and singularity all I got were puzzled looks. Why? Well. “I already think the computer is not only superintelligent but certainly more intelligent than I am.” And with that we get a good dose of everyday reality.

Which leads to the problem with all the discussion surrounding AI and superintelligence and whether technology is intelligent at all.

The technological experts and business consultants gnash their teeth and pound upon tables arguing over what is, or isn’t, technology intelligence and whether in the future technology will be smarter than a human being and, yet, if you were to sit with a normal everyday human being – who works typically nine to five – they would say they already believed that the computer is more intelligent than they are. Among the technology elite the Turing test is discussed as supposed to be the measurement for whether a computer or technology can mimic a human being. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that test occurs with some of the most brilliant minds in existence. The non-brilliant ordinarily smart person already admits his or her computer knows more than they do, can think faster than they do, and can come up with better answers than they can. While 100% of the everyday people I was speaking to that day feels that way, if I were a betting man, I would guess maybe 75% of people already feel this way. my point here is that the technology experts are debating over theory while the real world is attempting to reckon with technology that already exists.

Which leads me to fear.

All the technology experts and business consultants who dominate the headlines with everything that we should fear about the future of Technology and the future of AI is their fear based on some future state that may or may not occur. The problem is that state already occurs to the everyday person so the future fear the technology experts speak about only increases the common everyday persons existing fears that an already smart machine is going to not only be smarter still, but will begin running the world. Once again, my point here is that the everyday person’s future state fear is different than the experts future state fear and the dissonance between the two only exacerbates overall fear. Anyway. I would argue that if technology experts wouldn’t constantly talk about fear, the normal everyday smart person would just enjoy the benefits of the existing AI and technology. That doesn’t mean that we should allow people to be blissfully unaware of some of the negative consequences that AI can apply to a society. But it does suggest rather than encouraging fear we should just be encouraging awareness of the subtle manipulations and encouraging curiosity and exploration of the learning benefits technology offers. Should we be concerned about deepfakes? Sure. Should we be more aware of how algorithms feed confirmation bias? Absolutely. But ChatGPT is not going to destroy humanity <as Grady Booch says an LLM is architecturally incapable of reasoning> and both of the questions I just asked circle around human responses, not technology stimulus. Generally speaking, technology prompts, or should prompt, us to think just a little bit harder, explore just a little bit more and question with sincerity. I would argue that actually doesn’t destroy civilizations and societies, but enlightens them.

Which leads me back to what I always say: technology is nothing without humans.

The moment we turn it off or tune it out, technology has no effect on us. When two people sit in a café and talk it is between humans, not technology. The meeting rooms where people gather and debate and discuss things is between humans, not technology. My point here is that when we do choose to turn it on, and tune in, technology is simply a tool to either learn, not learn, share or gather information and knowledge. It is a distributor of the best and worst of humans – together or within each of us individually. It is, as Jaron Lanier has stated a number of times, a social connection tool. Nothing more, nothing less. I imagine if we were to fear anything it would be to fear that we are not good enough, smart enough, aware enough, to manage the tool we have been provided. But that means we shouldn’t fear the tool, but rather the user. Ponder.