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“A poverty of concepts.”

Bernard Williams

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“The systematic hunting down of all settled convictions represents the anti-cultural predicate upon which modern personality is being reorganized.”

Philip Rieff

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Google ‘poverty of concepts’ and you will get ‘about 292,000,000 results (0.21 seconds).’  The problem is almost all 292mm results are discussing, well, poverty. My poverty, today, has to do with thinking and concepts; and ethics I imagine. I added ethics because they are important when it comes to concepts because they offer the guardrails as a concept races down time’s highway. It was Bernard Williams who said ‘our ethical life is too untidy to be captured by any systematic moral theory.’ Well. How about that? Too untidy. That’s an important thought as I share the difference between a poverty of ideas and poverty of concepts. Let’s just say, in my opinion, we have an abundance of ideas and a scarcity of concepts in today’s world; not just on ethics but in business, politics, and, well, everything. Ideas are a dime a dozen. So let me spend a minute discussing the difference between ideas and concepts. Ideas have characteristics of a moment of stillness; of nonmovement. An idea is usually bounded by time and space. On the other hand, a concept is resilient in motion. What I mean by that is that while a concept may have fixed principles, they are fluid not only during their development but within time and space. The concept will always have something that will hold them fast – an idea or some facts at the beginning – but none of those things that hold them fast will impede its successful motion and evolution throughout time and space. Maybe what I’m suggesting is that concepts are ideas that successfully mature. All I really know is that movement is the only constant and ideas always run the risk of not being able to keep up; while concepts thrive in keeping up.

Which leads me to the glut of ideas.

I don’t think I’m the sharpest knife in the drawer and I have dozens of ideas scribbled everywhere. Some business, some random, some debunking existing ideas, just lots of ideas. I bet I have even forgotten more than I’ve written down.  I give away ideas all the time mostly because I know ideas are a dime a dozen and maybe someone can make a buck from my dime. I also share them because I will think of far more ideas than I will ever be able to do. That’s true of the world in general. That’s good and bad. I have worked with startup incubators, large organizations, innovations groups, brand consulting firms, smaller organizations, in almost any industry imaginable and I can promise anyone asking, you don’t really have to work that hard for ideas. Most times the best ideas lie within easy reach if you only look close enough. Uhm. But you also have to understand that most so-called ideas are horrible. Just as ideas come in tall, grande & venti sizes, they also come in horrible, useless or extremely useful categories. Sometimes I refer to them as shallow, dimensionally intriguing or deep. Deep <capturing culture, need versus want & behaviorally insightful – linking people with purpose> is a mandatory for a great idea. Even then you can still end up with a dysfunctional useful idea. Suffice it to say not many people are deep, let alone can GO deep in the thinking. The truth is most of the people excited about their ideas are the people least capable to evaluate those ideas. Why? Well. A poverty of concepts. I have said in the past there is absolutely no excuse for not having ideas for your business. None. Zero. Zilch. I would also suggest there is no excuse for not having concepts.

Which leads me to thick and thin concepts.

In philosophy there are things called “thick concepts” and “thin concepts” (or philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s ‘thick descriptions’ and ‘thin descriptions’). Thick concepts are like: ‘cowardly or generous, has a lot of content and depth; i.e., to say that someone is cowardly is to say something specific, which requires similarly specific backing-up in terms of the person’s actions, reasons and (expressed) thoughts.’ Thin concepts have little or no depth; simply saying that an action is right or good, or that you ought to do it/not do it. The contrast is not just deep versus shallow depth. Thick concepts are those which ‘seem to express a union of fact and value and virtue (or vice).’ A thick concept not only provides description of how the world is, but also motivation to act on the world. It is evaluative and actionable. Thin concepts may be evaluative, but with little depth. If we are told something is the right thing to do, or that we ought to do it, we understand there is something meaningful in play, but thin-ness offers no direction on what it is that is the right thing to do, or what it is that I ought to do. Yeah. This means ethical behavior is found within a thick concept. Anyway. Thin concepts are defined by their poverty of depth. What that means is you can throw out ‘goodness, badness, rightness, wrongness’ as a concept, but, again, they remain thin in that just as you are told nothing when you are told that an action is the right thing to do. In other words, thin concepts are lazy arguments.

Which leads me to shapelessness.

I may have been a bit lazy when I referred to thin concepts as lazy arguments. Thin concepts are actually characterized by shapelessness. The shapelessness hypothesis is the claim that evaluative concepts are ‘shapeless’ with respect to the descriptive, i.e., the descriptions are thin in that good is just good, bad is just bad, and you know it when you see it. In other words, there is no frame for reflective definition. Thick concepts have shape. Or maybe said differently, they offer depth of description to offer a frame so they can receive the appropriate evaluation. And here is where virtue, or ethics, comes in. a thick concept of virtue extends to unfamiliar contexts, not just defined by what came before. It is an understanding a dealing with situations and not a common action implemented. Therein also lies my earlier point. An idea is stagnant to time and space while concepts shift into time and space. This also leads to ethically dealing with different situations, not the situations themselves, is how we distinguish between the characteristics of good versus bad. And that is what makes ethical/virtuous essential to thick concepts because they gains shape through actions. To summarize, it is not learning how to act throughout different situations in a similar way, but rather learning the point of acting in the ways you have been taught to act and continuing to discover what is involved in doing what is right in that time and space.

Which leads me back to poverty of concepts.

A poverty of concepts is exactly the same as poverty itself – it comes with interest charges. What I mean by that is a lack of concept today has a cascading cost. Mostly because I assume you decide, because a lack of a concept, to simply craft a flimsy hanging bridge with seemingly strong planks made of ideas. You cobble together a bridge and the ideas slowly rot away.

The reality is we can never forecast the future. The best we can do is to position ourselves in the best possible way for whatever happens. As Taleb said: ‘preparedness over prediction.’ Therein lies the power of concepts over ideas. Concepts navigate current constraints and future possibilities, always shifting, learning, as it encounters the unforeseeable and unfamiliar situations. Therefore, a poverty of concepts deprives us of the ability to navigate the present as well as the future. Ponder.

—-

“Everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority, but to the excluding majority. You think, oh, I’m glad that’s not me. It’s basically the same in all periods in all societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.”

Haruki Murakami

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“The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts.”

Walter Lippman

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“Thus the rise of diversity means that, although our political systems are theoretically founded on majority rule, it may be impossible to form a majority even on issues crucial to survival. In turn, this collapse of consensus means that more and more governments are minority governments, based on shifting and uncertain coalitions.”

Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave

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Let me begin by suggesting everyone pick up a copy of Toffler’s book The Third Wave and flip to page 435. There begins a section called “Minority Power” and it outlines the future as seen from 1980. Its, well, futuristic gold. Next. I actually wrote about the minority majority paradox in the 2014 wayback machine where I discussed specific situations in which the minority loudness overwhelmed the majority numbers. Anyway. A shitload of discussions in, and among, communities, and society in general, happen in the gap between what people think, or feel they know, and what they actually do know. That gap is noisy, angry, often misguided, sometimes well intended, and always a hellhole for truth tellers. In the end, it is a moshpit of, well, mostly shit. I say, with some confidence, its shit because, as Dan Williams suggested, “many people are naive realists – that is, they tend to think that they see the reality of whatever they’re opining on objectively, clearly, and comprehensively, with little or no conscious awareness of their own ignorance, or perceptual distortions.” In other words, full of shit. But let me get to today’s point. The minority. The minority is the loudest and often the most full of shit. That doesn’t mean they don’t always have “a” point (emphasis on “a”), just that in order to forward their point they use a lot of loud shit and dubious logic. They do so maybe not just out of ignorance, or being a naïve realist, but because they are in the minority and will use whatever they can to convince a generally uninterested public they represent a majority. And that is the minority majority paradox. The loudest, most earnest, voices get the most airtime and headlines, but actually do not represent the majority’s opinions/views/attitudes/beliefs. The minority majority paradox is actually a subnarrative of the circulation of elites just that in today’s world it is more often than not the dumber version of it. What I mean by that is, presently, the minority is loudly offering obstacles to progress (of ideas, thinking and actual ‘doing’ of necessary things). I thought about this while writing the circulation of elites and listening to the whole political crap spewed day in and day out through media. Basically, in today’s world it is difficult to avoid the sliver who spew an embarrassingly simplistic vocal minority opinion. This is actually a fairly important topic because ultimately it affects what society perceives versus what is reality.

Which leads me to how a minority can suck the energy away from progress.

MAGA is a small, negative force and anti-progress cause. It conflates past threats with future threats and have been a huge waste of national energy, time, focus and opportunity. In other words, it represents lost progress. I say that because progress is always grounded in connectivity and relationships. Relationships that support progress can be especially challenging to achieve and maintain particularly when much of the MAGA narrative is crafted online where time and space is warped. These online spaces produce a “disinhibition effect,” where people are emboldened to craft outlandish narratives behind a screen of anonymity. To be clear. Progress is always a narrative; therefore, one always has to be aware of anti-progress narratives; like MAGA. MAGA’s narrative is not only stuck in the present, but is also grounded/anchored, in the past. This means their narrative loses all vigor and forward velocity and is simply a narrative impoverished of any progress. They are a minority anchor with an inertia-based narrative. That said. The paradox is online spaces also provide important outlets for airing perspectives that run counter to the majority, where anonymity may also provide protective cover. Additionally, digital platforms offer opportunities to expand beyond our face-to-face networks and form new relationships.

Which leads me to small groups with loud voices.

Fox News reaches a sliver of the US [population. This is not to suggest it doesn’t reach a significant segment of the US population just that while 5 million is significant it is only a sliver of the larger 330 million. It gives voice to, well, a minority. No matter how often this sliver claims they represent what America wants and needs; it doesn’t. it just represents what a minority of people feel and think. They are an echo chamber for the MAGA-verse and a prime example of the minority majority paradox. While the minority majority paradox has always occurred the roots of today’s venomous version can be found in changes which began occurring in maybe 1990:

These groups feature movements of highly organized minorities whose objective is to obtain through power what could not be achieved through other means. Pluralism both in society and in polity is to be perceived as a challenge to political processes and political leadership as well as to all the represented groups and individuals of our society. The challenges of the new pluralist institutions require particular attention in terms of: their social responsibility; their community responsibility; political responsibility; individuals’ rights and responsibility; and the newly perceived role and functions of government.

Peter Drucker

This all means that smallish single-cause groups become increasingly dominant in politics/society and, consequently, societal opinions <not truth>.  How the heck do they achieve such power? Oddly, the power resides is in their small numbers. As a minority their strength is derived from their single task or purpose, which are usually related to prevent or to stop rather than to be organized to do something.  Politically these minority groups are increasingly dominating the mass movements of modern politics thought they count only 5% to 10% of the electorate. In contrast, the majority tends to be not well organized, is inert and not committed to a particular purpose and or a unified objective. That said. It can change because when the majority actually kind of gets grumpy, they get focused and organized. Its, well, about power wielded. Now. Majority rule is not always about “supreme power.” If it were, the majority would always tyrannize the minority (Tocqueville). The reality is, a democracy well implemented, ensures the implementation of the popular/majority yet also guarantees the majority will not abuse its power infringing on the rights of the minority; the rights needed to compete fairly with the majority. The problem is ‘compete fairly’ is often framed within an unhealthy, i.e., kind of a “kill or be killed” social competition. This begets a weird tug of war between a righteous “feeling” group and a truly righteous group. Or let’s call it feelings versus facts. The reality is the gap between facts and fiction, feelings and reality, or a lack of quality discourse, is often the largest gap between a minority group and a majority group.

Which leads me to quality dissent.

A healthy society needs quality dissent, where people in communities can critique the status quo, raise awareness of problems, and put forward alternatives. This sort of disagreement can be a source of better community sensemaking because minority views, misguided/untrue beliefs, even conspiracy-like thinking, emerges and can be dealt with. In addition, communities learn to effectively respond to the dissent of others (it becomes a circular way of learning and adapting). Quality dissent ensures the majority concepts do not squeeze out or mask the minority experiences and desires. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out MAGA is quite resistant to quality dissent (as is a small minority of the progressive wing). That said. Without quality dissent a loud irrational minority will always be at odds with a rational passive majority.

“The world isn’t being destroyed by democrats or republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist — the world is being destroyed by one side believing the other side is destroying the world.”

Which leads me to suggest the MAGA minority just doesn’t teach us a lot.

To be clear, social, and political movements educate communities, albeit not necessarily with the same conclusions or consequences. This is important because understanding the multi-faceted objectives and desires of communities is important if you want to enable progress. It is here I will suggest “center” or “centrist” as a lazy way of thinking about effective pathway to progress building – especially with MAGA in play. We use “center” as a concept to navigating a way inbetween, a way to navigate polarized communities, but it is more than likely to only force us into what is called the “middle ground fallacy” where ‘center’ is some supposed mid-place between two extremes.

“If you say, “All elephants can fly,” and I say, “No elephants can fly,” then we could compromise on, “Some elephants can fly.” Obviously, that is not true.

the middle ground fallacy

So, if MAGA resides in some alternative universe, that would mean finding some wretched place in no man’s land where the center, or the compromise position, absurdly has to accommodate some horrible alternative universe shit. Yeah. The reason MAGA doesn’t really teach us anything that helps with progress is that there is no real middle ground which facilitates progress; it would only compromise progress and compromise some moral integrity. The ‘center position,’ like it or not, shouldn’t involve some of them, and some of their ideas, at all. That may sound horrible, but if the objective is progress, well, then it is the most pragmatic path toward progress and possibilities. Ultimately, MAGA is neither complex or complicated nor does it help us interrogate the truths of progress. It is a minority focused on reductionism and reductionist ideas when the world, let alone the country, should be demanding what the majority wants – progress. Ponder.

“The enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth-persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”

John F. Kennedy

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“What followed then was what invariably follows in the wake of every tortured consciousness. From what it dreads or hates, yet knows or feels to be unescapable, it takes refuge in that which may be hoped for – or at least imagined.”

Theodore Dreiser

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“The road back to hope, to a new sense of place, is through the common spaces of our dreams.”

Teresa Hines

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Search “hope” on my blog and you will get 24 pieces with Hope in its title and 760 pieces with hope somewhere within the piece. I am an unabashed Hope supporter as a proclaimed “cynical optimist.” So when Michele Obama said “hope is making a comeback” I certainly agreed.

Hope never really goes away, it just gets smothered if not suffocated by “realist,” “pragmatic” and the narratives of darkness and despair. The world does everything it can to strip away the value of hope.

The true challenge to hope is that the hopeful are pointed to as the ‘strange ones’ with unrealistic thoughts. It can even be suggested they have impossible thoughts. That’s absurd. Society demands hope and demands the civility to interact with strangers without holding their strangeness, or hope, against them and without forcing them to surrender or their strangeness … or hope. In fact, a healthy society permits people to maintain the traits that have made them hopeful. This means a true community is one with the ability to live with differences let alone let everyone benefit from it.

Which leads me to suggest hope does not come easily and certainly, or rarely, under its own impetus.

Hope demands some negotiated common interests. Hope needs a community which inevitably creates a safe haven of shared worries, shared anxieties, and even some shared unhappiness if not shared cynicism or skepticism. I could even argue those things anchor a community so that a thriving community can build shared hope, shared progress and shared prosperity upon that foundation. Yeah. The road back to hope is through a common space of dreams.

Which leads me to suggest dreams pave the path for hope.

Pragmatic desires undermine hope for progress. What I mean by that is hope for progress is never a matter of evidence nor is it a matter of some tangible objective. It is usually a coalescing of dreams turned into action (or actions). That said. Nothing is easier than to join all the cynics and skeptics together around a question which can be settled, theoretically, empirically. The world does not work that way. It cannot. The entire concept of progress is strewn with uneven bricks of evidence. And even in their unevenness they can offer glimpses of what could be, and what can be. They offer glimpses of hope. In their imperfection they pave the way for Hope. Unfortunately, that unevenness can also suggest a lack of universalism. It can suggest someone can step forward and other cannot (or will not). They suggest someone’s dreams are possible and some others are impossible. That suggestion is wrong. Progress is more a matter of changing direction and rather than thinking of progress as directed to a particular goal we should think of progress as a hopscotch from an uncomfortable situation to a less constrained situation which permits dreams to find a more comfortable space. Universal progress is a vague, if not impossible, objective. And that is where hope gets screwed. The promise of progress is an easier objective; if not easier promise. Its transactional, its pragmatic, and its small. Progress is not finite, it’s not ‘from A to B’, it’s not a straight line. That said. A symptom of lack of progress is a feeling of trauma, an infection, a pain. A symptom of lack of progress is a waning Hope.

Which leads me to Hope demands perspectives on, and from, many things.

Remember, hope is neither linear or transactional. This is important because when in a finite game, where the end is the objective, it is almost impossible to keep broad perspective or see beyond “that is not possible.” Hope demands one embrace at least some aspect of ‘anything is possible.’ As I have said before, moving from impossible to possible is progress. We should make it a vision. A mission. A logic. A technology of the mind. A flag. A war cry. A challenge. A hope. A strength. A bond. A promise. A map. A beginning. A talisman. A tattoo as something you truly believe in something. Anything is possible is actually about progress, not some specific objective or outcome. Anything is possible is at the soul of Hope. And it is making a comeback. Ponder.

==

“how could you be so stupid?”

well you know what. its really not that hard

==

“Stupidity is a force unto itself.”

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To be clear. Stupidity has a gravity, and velocity, greater than intelligence. This occurs mostly because stupidity does not eliminate the fact one can be successful, or have a success, and if that is so, much of success may have stupidity lurking within. I purposefully use ‘lurk’ because stupidity can be stealthy. In fact, it often cloaks itself in ‘intuition’ and ‘common sense.’ Both of which are empirically proven to be highly useless if you seek to make the best decision or even if you seek to be rational. Most people ignore that truth, lean in on their intuition and common sense, and find some dubious reassurance that they did the right thing.

==

“As humans, we tend to search for reassurance in all the wrong places.”

==

Anyway. We have always had the ability to be easily stupid, but I think the world has made it easier to be stupid. What I mean by that is if you view the world superficially, or skim on the surface of things, because you cannot discern the important from the unimportant in the onslaught of shit around you, well, the odds of you being stupid increases. And the penalties for stupidity become a bit less discernible too. Uhm. Despite the fact the penalties for being stupid can be fairly extreme. But circling back to feeling like the penalties do not exists, why? Well. For the most part we have unimaginable opportunities, freedoms and privileges – which we take for granted. Not too long ago (maybe a century) a stupid person had none of those things and the penalties for stupidity were pretty harsh – socially, hierarchical, economically. For the most part we have unimaginable life-conditions, i.e., shorter work hours, vaca­tions, health system support, unemployment benefits and an abundance of affordable goods & services. The penalties for our stupidity have a safety net. That doesn’t mean you can’t slip through the net and completely squash yourself 30 floors below, but mostly your stupidity will only cause you to fall a couple floors AND get caught up in the net. Uncomfortable, but no squashed. And maybe that’s my point. The world is a safer place which makes it hard to not do stupid things. In fact, well, its easier to be stupid than ever. Ponder.

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“even a camel will drink poisoned water if it thinks it is dying of thirst”

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“This is what I want to make clear today. A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the Internet, should never run our government or command our military. He says he wants to make America great again, but, more and more, it seems his real message is Make America Hate Again.”

Hilary Clinton

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One of the things I have been most consistently amazed by with regard to Trump is how often he suggests America is a shithole country. In fact. His whole premise for being a president is grounded on convincing everyone the country is in a shithole and he is the only one able to ‘un-shithole’ the country. The deeper the shithole you are convinced we are in, the deeper you will go on your solution. As someone brilliant once said, “extreme conditions demand extreme responses.” A shithole is an extreme condition. Trump is an extreme response. If you live in the fantasyland universe of America is in a shithole,” you will be a Trump supporter. But his whole schtick is to suck everyone into the shithole belief system, using a stream of lies and half-truths. Trump’s message, dumbed down for America, is simple: Make America great again and, uhm, this only works if enough people believe America is in enough of a shithole that it isn’t great now. I shared his image in 2015 to show he is a master at creating shithole perceptions:

These perceptions have some psychological roots. You look around at the relative carnage of the day seeing your plans in disarray and hopes & dreams nowhere in close proximity to your current reality and you think to yourself “how the hell did we get into this shithole.” That is where conviction comes into play. You, or we, are not really in a shithole, you just have had what you thought would happen or should be happening, well, not happen. And you have some threads of belief that exactly the same thing will happen again tomorrow AND is happening to everyone. Your conviction of ‘something better beyond the horizon’ is a little blurrier than it was the day before. Now. To be clear. Decades ago globalization, tied to multinational companies and institutions seeking to make larger profits through lowering costs, hollowed out a shitload of manufacturing jobs and businesses. That is a reality which has certainly created a halo of attitudes, perceptions, and some individual realities. Let me add small groups of people are desperately in worse shape, some people are in good shape, but have not improved, most people are doing fine, but hearing all the talk about the top 1% and feel entitled to some of what they got. That is reality. We have a higher standard of living than any country of any size in world. Our inflation is lower and our economy better, low unemployment, low overall violence <with isolated pockets which people distort to a larger view>. We have an incredible history of assimilating immigrants and, uhm, if immigration was truly an existential threat to “a great America” one would think that we would have done something about it sometimes in the past 20-ish years that the Right has been highlighting ‘invasions’ (usually every 2 years during an election cycle). To be clear. The US immigration system needs both structural and policy improvements, but immigration is not an existential issue.

Regardless. America is not a shithole country, and generally speaking we are in an economic boom (of which a significant swath of people are benefiting from) and we are actually investing in a better economic infrastructure now (which ensures not actually becoming a shithole country).

This may be the greatest example of the gap between perception and reality I have seen in my lifetime.

We ‘see’ something and then extrapolate it out in our minds to being a larger systemic issue. And maybe that is Trump’s most egregious asshole superpower. He distorts “the one” into “the many.” He implies an isolated situation is indicative of the greater whole. And he does it with such hyperbole <and lies> even if most people do not believe it, it elevates whatever perception you may already have a little higher <therefore, he drags more people closer to believing we are in a shithole, i.e., not great>. I imagine the fear Trump should have is that if he drives his dystopian view of who and what America is so far down into some wretched dark hole that people will only see darkness and enough people will sit up, look around or out the window and say “shit, it isn’t that bad or dark.” Oops. Not a shithole.

• ** “The America I live in is imperfect, but compared to the rest of the world, I think we’re doing okay.” Colin Cowherd

Which leads me to how Trump, and inevitably MAGA, perverts the idea of progress.

Trump looks at progress in terms of individuals seeking individual satisfaction in combination with an encouraging an attitude of individual escape from individually suffered discomfort. That thought is a derivative of something that Zygmunt Bauman suggested “progress no longer refers to forward drive and that society, rather than chase after a target spinning along ahead of us, instead seeks to make progress under the guise of ‘a lucky escape imperative’.” In other words it inspires the urge to run away from something, a crisis or a shithole disaster, that someone is suggesting is breathing down our necks. Let me be clear. Progress is not running away from something, but rather it is running towards something. That toward something should be a desired dream of a distant goal – one which progress should, could, and would eventually bring those of us seeking it, a better world not only for us, but one that serves all human needs. It should be the pursuit of shared improvement rather than just individual survival. And maybe that is where I will end because that is where the Trump vision begins. It doesn’t begin with any shared improvement, but rather individual fears. The Trump vision is grounded on the thought nations have lost influence on the course of not only its own affairs, but the affairs of all people which means that it has lost influence on guiding the world toward a ‘better destination’ and has lost the ability to mount a defense against all varieties of fear. The Trump vision encourages us all to believe this, therefore, it encourages us to dwell on your individual fear that you live in a shithole. It suggests your worry is not only an immediate worry, but a long-term worry, i.e., even if in your own life it doesn’t feel like a shithole, the shithole seems imminent. From there they offer no real solutions for progress and prosperity, just dubious tactics to salve your individual worry. Trump a black hole of no solutions. Shit. Trump IS a shithole asking people to live in his shithole view. But those who do see themselves in the shithole worldview, well, they are camels. And even a camel will drink poisoned water if it thinks it is dying of thirst. Ponder.

——–

“We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

Charles Bukowski

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“What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward toward the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

==

We make about 30,000 decisions a day. Every single one of us. That said. The weight of those 30000 decisions varies from person to person. This isn’t to suggest 30000 decisions is EVER weightless, just that the weight will vary by person and by situation and by role.  For example. If you are a single mother with a minimum wage job or a president of a company with 400 employees almost every single decision, all 30000, tend to be scrutinized and weighed daily. And, yes, I just put those two side by side to make a point. That said. While I do believe far too many of us get chewed up by trivialities, it is also true that context, your situation, can make the trivial seem overly, well, not trivial. And, in fact, a context can make the trivial actually quite non-trivial. Deciding between a brand bread and a generic bread to save 10 cents, do you approve a trip or do you not approve a trip, all seem trivial amongst the 30000 decisions in the day and, yet, they demand some attention and demand some energy and they certainly demand inevitable consequences.
Which leads me to business and the burden of 30,000.

The reality is the majority of us suck in establishing a vision for the future and, yet, businesses will constantly point to something on the horizon – whether it is real or not. And regardless of whether they are being truthful or not, it is actually helpful. Helpful because we make 30,000 decisions on a daily basis and even a shitty vision of the future is better than nuthin’. This is where I do believe there is a difference between people who are in a leadership position and people who are not. While I’ve always argued that anybody in any given situation can lead, the reality is throughout a day some people do make more leadership type decisions than others. Therein lies the thought behind my first X and Y Axis. Some people feel the decisions more than others.

What I mean by that is that if you are in a nontraditional leadership position many of the decisions that you make are just simply by rote. You have some specific responsibilities, you have some specific skills, and there are some specific rules or guidelines within which you take action. At the end of the day, despite the fact that you have made 30,000 decisions, for the most part there is a weight limit. You may be tired, you may question some of the decisions, you may stress out over some of the decisions, but for the most part you made 30,000 decisions that did not look significantly different than the 30000,decisions you made the day before and the 30,000 decisions you will make in the future. And then there are people in leadership positions. They will feel their 30,000 decisions differently. Some if not many of those decisions just simply carry more weight and by weight, I mean consequences. At the end of their day the weight of their 30,000 decisions is heavy. But more consequentially on any given day the weight of those 30,000 decisions does not really have a ceiling. On any given day the weight of any,one individual decision or even a group of decisions within the 30,000 will weigh so heavily upon a person, or maybe even a small group of persons, that it almost becomes suffocating if not too much of a burden to carry. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, seeing as I began with a single mother with a minimum wage job, on any given day a person, in some context, will feel a similar burden and weight. But this is about business today. My only point here is that while we all may make 30,000 decisions a day, the weight of those 30,000 decisions on a daily basis can vary significantly.

A respected business friend sent me a message after I had posted a podcast that I had been on and he said “I wake up on Monday morning feeling like Rembrandt, usually by Friday evening I’m more of a Jackson Pollack.”

This is where I will point out that sometimes there is a reverse relationship in weight. Possibilities simply weigh less than pragmatism. I believe hope always weighs less than reality. But the point he was making is valid. Every day you begin with a Rembrandt, a beautifully constructed piece of art where the layers of the paint shape the narrative pleasant to the eye, and by the end of each day 30,000 decisions later and 30,000 decisions times 400 (if you have that many employees) that Rembrandt has become a Jackson Pollock. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out both are extremely valuable and have value, they just look very different. I won’t argue whether a Rembrandt is more beautiful or more valuable than a Jackson Pollock, but one certainly has a different design than the other. I would suggest in that metaphor that the weight of 30,000 decisions is often like gravity. Rarely did the 30,000 decisions drive you higher than the possibilities you begin with on a daily basis. All they really can do is either maintain or bring your Rembrandt somewhat closer to a Jackson Pollock.

In the end. We all make decisions,. We all make lots of decisions. We all carry a different weight from those decisions. Ponder.

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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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‘To work in the world, one needs to know how the world works.”

Zygmunt Baumann

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I’ve written about framing in a variety of ways. Navigating invented boundaries to framing is 90% of success. Today I will suggest the more uncertain, the more confusing, the world is, the more we will craft a frame that “explains” it all to us. This is a different frame, and framing, than I have explained in the past. In this framing instead of crafting a frame to provide clarity of reality, we instead craft a frame to explain what we believe is reality.

Which leads me to the framing effect.

Framing effects occur when people give different answers to structurally similar problems depending on their “frame” (Kahneman). This self-crafted frame is crafted by our biases, intuitions and “common-sense” beliefs despite how bad intuitions tend to be and how non common commonsense is and how misguided our beliefs often are. Regardless, this creates an effect where our frame makes certain logic more palatable and that affects the reasoning. We converge on our own thinking. This convergence only increases in a group dynamic. So, while the fact we frame may have all the appearances, to ourself, that we are reasoning, the truth is the decisions are almost foretold. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention LLMs here. An LLM, in today’s world, is an imprecise, precise looking, frame. We ask it a question and the computer, having gobbled up more information and knowledge than any individual human is capable of, spits out a response. We ask; it answers. And its here I bring up one of my favorite nerdiest books: The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian. It was here I saw the thought “the computer is extremely confident when it guesses.” Sometimes, not always, we ask; and it guesses an answer. But it doesn’t tell us it guessed nor does it offer any thoughts on how confident it may actually be with its answer. The good news is a new tool call Thermometer has been developed to frame some confidence levels for us. My fear is that the crappy answer machine train will be way down the tracks before Thermometer, or anything like it, is commonly used. LLM digression aside, we are our own LLM. Ponder that.

Which leads me to expectations.

Frames establish order and order creates expectations creates expectancies if not expectations. And in doing that we attain what Stuart Hall called a breach of our expectancies. In other words, we naturally order our world and anything that represents symbolic challenges makes us feel uncomfortable. Media has a significant role in this. Not only does media record resistance, but often they normalize it by placing it within an acceptable framework of meanings and symbols (even suggesting it is the majority while it is a minority view). By repositioning and recontextualizing things within society it subverts conventional thinking and legitimizes new thinking through something called “the false obviousness of everyday practice (Althusser).” I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this is framing (orderliness) to encourage disorder.  The reality is that this disorder coheres into a meaningful whole. It creates a new internal structure for a subculture creating an orderliness where in each part, and person, is organically related to other parts, and peoples, and it is through the fit between them that the members themselves make sense of the world. Within these people can see their core values held and reflected. The frames, and framing, offer society coded exchanges of reciprocal messages.

“Men in bits of paper whirling in the cold wind

That blows before and after time.

TS Eliot

Which leads me to shaping.

Shaping is a version of framing, shaping is the active use a of a frame to craft a desired outcome, and how things are framed drives perceptions, attitudes, behaviors and even decisions. The problem with most framing is that in seeking understanding (or some cognitive engagement) they create a sense of ‘identical problems’ (“I have seen this before”) when, at best, you have only seen a version of this problem before. A frame tends to unite seemingly random things. Within a frame even beliefs are united. Usually in a neat fashion. Unfortunately, uniting demands dimension, perspective and inexactness which offers some uneven edges that makes thinking richer and more interesting than some smooth filed down concise recap. Shaped frames tend to emphasize ‘reciprocal messaging’ and reciprocal messaging actually restricts the addition of additional messages and stories therefore it smooths down communal thinking. Basically, frames can make reciprocal messaging an echo chamber where stories and myths thrive. I say that because restriction is often cloaked in “honing a good story.” Unfortunately, reality is always a little uneven and less restricted. That said. Effective consistency is certainly a way to ensure some things are not seen and, yet, remain connected in some way. Ponder that.

Which leads me to contagion.

The contagion rate is the fraction of the time that an encounter between an “infective” and a person effectively convinces the susceptible people enough of the story to spread it further. Many encounters may be needed before a particular person is “infected” with a narrative. Now. Contagion may seem like an odd concept when tied to framing, but hear me out. Technology has reshaped how we frame things. And technology has certainly reshaped contagion. To be clear. It is a bit naive to suggest this is a new issue. Certainly, technology has amplified some issues, but our crappiest beliefs (narrative) have thrived as narratives for quite some time. While we may never be able to explain why some narratives “go viral” and significantly influence thinking while other narratives do not, we would be wise to add some analysis of what crappy thinking clusters tend to embed self-activity thinking.

Narratives are major vectors of rapid change in culture, in social ‘vibes’, and ultimately in behavior. Spreading narratives, often many parallel narratives around a common theme, have been creating cultural change long before social media. The only difference may be, well, the framework of the model, because there is a higher contagion rate for narratives due to social media automatically directing narratives to clusters with likely interest in them (let’s call this “directed infection”). That said. An effective frame in a contagion also heightens the removal rate, the rate of forgetting or the simple decay of memories (this is actually cue-dependent forgetting). The removal rate increases because there are declining cues for the memory, i.e., a story seems less connected, less apt, or even superficially contrary to current theories and prejudices. Contagions and framing have a symbiotic relationship.

Which leads me to narratives and frames.

Narrative is a word used to describe ‘the accumulated wisdom around the best frame through which to contextualize and think about things/events.’  Narrative is the filter through which sensemaking is distilled. It is the glue that connects disparate events together to create an understandable whole. The fundamental objective of any of these attempts is to create an indelible narrative imprint increasing the value of the narrative itself. What I mean by the narrative itself is crafted typically by those in power attempting to keep their power through substories, i.e., subgroups enhance that narrative without which those in power would not be able to keep their power. Basically, they use these narratives, frames, to fuel the narrative itself; the ones they desire. This is impoartant because what seems a single society, and a meta narrative, is usually divided by multiple mesa populations with their own mesa narratives. So long as they speak the same language, figuratively not literally, they enjoy the same signals, pursue similar goals, accept the same rules and regulations, there is mesa social cohesion in a meta society. But let communication fail or let a gap of misunderstanding develop among mesa communities so that the signals, symbols, words or phrases, no longer carry a universal meaning, a gap appears where an entire narrative, or frame, can slip into and vanish. Frames create a social construct which creates ‘order.’ The rules and regulations create the boundaries of what could be called law and order which preserves a degree of order essential for the survival of the society as a whole. This ‘order’ is more social identity than it is anything else. ‘This long order are the rules that protect an individual from the depredations of others and represents a concerted defense to protect an individual from the depredations of others. All of these things happen within a larger construct of which is framed by the individual need for satisfaction through identity stimulation and security’ (Robert Ardrey). Yeah. Its actually a bit surprising, but security ranks lowest among our needs and identity highest (there is research, I just lost it). To know who you are; to achieve identity in the eyes of your social community; to sense a fulfillment of and from that identity, all meet a need.  We abhor anonymity and effective framing insures a place of identity.

Which leads me to clarity (and transparency).

Frames expose evidence; real or fantasy. People love evidence. The pursuit of evidence and explanations and clarity creates an intense pleasure when we ‘find’ it. We are encouraged to believe the transparency a frame offers enables not only truth, but encourages a feeling of “how right we are.” I believe it was Georg Simmel who said “transparency prohibits fantasy from incorporating its possibilities; no reality can compensate us for their loss because fantasy is self activity that cannot be replaced in the long run by obtaining and enjoying (reality).” He is right. We may be delusional, but we like fantasy thinking because it offers the easy evidence we require. In fact. Transparency is not the holy grail, it is, in fact, lack of definition. That may sound a bit nuts but the lack of definition enables us to fit in our own little fantasies. And this is where we go back to frames. Within the frames we craft for ourselves we enable a periphery of things within which change and pleasure and possibilities to thrive. Rather than create the concise clarity within which common sensemaking can occur we enable our self-activity, self-thinking, a home to cozy up to a fire of fantasy-like thinking. I have also written a number of things on our love of fantasy thinking, but the difference here is that even with logical framing, we easily delude ourselves. So, use your frames wisely. Ponder.

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“Just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”

Madeleine L’Engle

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There are a shitload of things that happen in the world, and to us specifically, of which we will never understand. In fact, the probability of never understanding something is higher than the probability of understanding.

Which leads me to probabilities.

In our minds, the more probable, the more likely there is an explanation. In the good old days, we didn’t speak of probabilities, we would sit down and pragmatically think about the likelihood of shit happening – both good shit and bad shit. And, yeah, most times when probabilities are being discussed these days “crisis” is tossed around and when ‘crisis’ enters the narrative we inevitably seek explanations – relentlessly seek explanations. Let me be clear. Crisis is never good. That said. There is certainly bad crisis, i.e., “the bottom has dropped out from under our feet and we are 5,000 feet up”, but then there is also good crisis, i.e., “holy shit, they loved it and we have an order for a 1,000,000 sock puppets but we only have a 1000 capability sock puppet manufacturing capacity.” Both are certainly a crisis just that one focuses on survivable and the other on thriveable. I share that to suggest explanation importance is relative.

Look. Explanations in Life are tricky things. This is why gamification was/is so appealing. But we know from research that finite progress (milestones, sprints, etc.) are a doom loop of chasing things in which people get trained to chase output instead of outcomes, items instead of impact, explanations instead of learning/understanding. People inherently gain greater satisfaction if they show progress – better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today – so why don’t more people do so? Well. Progress can be a fuzzy thing with fuzzy explanations. Because of that we emphasize measurement which, unfortunately, heightens discomfort of the alternative; the plausible but not certain, the probabilities of, not the prediction of. The plausible does not usually equate to “is” and it is within the wretched hollow in-between where we become captive to nothingness where no explanations reside. This is where “there must be an explanation” falls. So, we twist ourselves into pretzels turning thoughts of plausibility into images of possibility, then images of probability, ultimately shaping/morph itself into a perception of “is.” We move the uncertainty ball into the certainty space, one explanation at a time, not because we actually believe it will make our lives meaningful, but rather because we fear the absence of certainty. Second is that, well, absence of a pursuit of explanations, you worry you may actually end up with nothing and knowing nothing about why you have nothing. Yeah. The truth is while business and society use “somethings” to make us captive of what are actually ‘nothings’, nothing is personal. What I mean by that is even though we may not view the world in a zero-sum way we fear having nothing at the end of the race. We show up to our meeting with Death with no explanation for what we did in our Life. Please note I am suggesting even in death we will reflect more on our ‘doings’ than on impact. That means we become a captive to a fear of nothing explained so we jump onboard the ‘something train’ and hope even if we don’t do anything meaningful (however that could actually be assessed) we will have something; rather than nothing. We make all of our ‘somethings’ explainable. Ponder.

Which leads me to end with an important reminder.

Preciseness, and rationalizing, explanations are mediated truths which deprive us of the ambiguity which is the engine of imagination. The enemy of imagination, and imagination revolutionaries, is certainly pragmatism, finiteness, and rationalization, uhm, explaining and explanations. To be clear, I tend to agree with “doesn’t mean an explanation doesn’t exist,” it’s just that our pursuit of ‘an’ explanation is reductionary rationalization rather than expansive imagination. Imagination has become ‘something to do,’ i.e., a pragmatic thing to do with a pragmatic objective. Imagination has been replaced by innovation pipelines, blue sky thinking workshops, and any number of constructed tasks to be deployed with a specific objective in mind. Everything. Imagination must be ‘explained.’ They become singular expressions of imaginative imagination when imagination should be embodied within an infinite thought and the pursuit of infiniteness. Yeah. Sometimes unexplained. Yeah. That’s a problem in today’s milestone/KPI/achievement obsessed world, but the essence of the imagination is located precisely in its improbability and imprecise explanations. In a probabilistic, finite-driven, rationalizing, world that is a challenge. That is why we need imagination revolutionaries who hold imagination high as the idea, and ideal, around which an imagination revolution can occur and a better future can not only be envisioned, but constructed. We need imagination revolutionaries who can embrace the idea that what we do not understand may have explanations, but those explanations will be beautiful, and plausible, in their impreciseness. Yeah. The power actually lies in the lack of definition. Ponder.

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“My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know, we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.”

Martha Beck

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It just seems nutty to me talking about a recession. Nutty because we have a healthy labor participation rate, unemployment is less than 6% (which historically we would be applauding), the overall growth is well over 2% and estimated to remain at 2% or above. It’s nutty to me because inflation continues to ease while corporate profits remain at an astounding high. The implication to that would be is there some room, if corporations had it in their good hearts, to actually lower some prices and still maintain some healthy profits. That eases some price point pain for people (and they spend more and the economy grows and, well, …   yeah …). It’s a bit nutty to me because while people will point to sell offs in the stock markets the reality would be is the majority of the businesses seeing a sell off just reported positive earnings and positive growth. It’s just that their earnings and growth weren’t ‘enough’ for an insatiable market (and , yeah, the share valuation was a bit nutty in the first place). It’s nutty to me because I envision what it would be like facing this when we had free (money when interest rates were at zero). That would have been bad. The reality would be is that we actually have some flexibility to be able to address some of the market concerns. It’s nutty to me because the fundamentals of the US economy are about as solid as they have been in almost two decades. And generally speaking it’s nutty to me because it’s almost like we are asking to be in a recession. What I mean by that is while we talked about the nuttiness of the ‘vibecession’ and how a healthy economy was being portrayed as imminently going to become bad, we now appear to be seizing upon individual data points to give us the reason to believe we deserve to be in a recession. That is nuts.

That said.

America has a nutty view in that it is always on the lookout for not only something better, but for the worse to happen. And while we always talk about our thirst for hope what we really want is to hurt people we hate. So while we drone on and on about unemployment and not enough growth what we want is an enemy and something (or someone) to lead us to victory against that enemy. It is a nutty version of purpose. Instead of finding ways to help people the general narrative is to attempt to inflict damage. This nutty malleability of truth disorients not only the general narrative, but people. It’s crept into the world TikTok video by TikTok video, Instagram by Instagram, and YouTube video by YouTube video. There can be hours and hours of memes and videos demonstrating the arc of good things and truth, but it won’t matter because all someone has to do is go on TV and deny it and point to some nebulous bad thing somewhere over the horizon. A history of proof can be erased in a moment. But the truly nutty thing is all of these things simply paralyze us. We not only don’t know what to believe, but we’re not really sure which ideas we should align ourselves with. We aren’t really sure what positions we should take and we, well, don’t do anything (or the natural things which would enhance the probability of good things happening). And into this vacuum steps people who want power. Which forces me to circle back to the concept of inflicting damage. If you pursue power in today’s environment, your pathway to power isn’t to offer hope, but rather to inflict damage on the enemy.

Yeah. The nuts bringing up the recession aren’t bringing up recession to solve it, but rather to blame someone and inflict damage on them. That’s nuts.

I find the recession discussion a bit nutty with stable household income, high(ish) consumer spending, and good business investment data. This isn’t to suggest if you have a 401k you may not want to look at it for a bit, but I think the recession talk is a bit nuts. But maybe I’m nuts. Ponder.

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“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.”

Kahlil Gibran

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“In his pursuit of the dream, he was being constantly subjected to tests of his persistence and courage…”

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

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We often discuss focus in terms of the present, but what about focus and the future? To be clear. I most likely have a different view on focus. I see focus as a 6 lane highway in which you are always moving forward. The center line is the moments of clarity (crisis, emotional investment situations, when things feel ‘the rightest’). The remainder of the time you’re staying on task (your horizon point) somewhere on the highway focusing on what is relevant to your survival and your progress.

In my mind today’s world seems less about focusing than it is active versus passive engagement with information.

• Passive engagement means flickering focus on fragments of interest/relevance or ignoring what is unimportant to your task (and, yes, you can miss some things but they don’t really impede your progress).
• Active engagement is seeking things to focus on to enhance your progress on the task (but you pick these things on the move because stagnant means getting run over).

That said. Engagement is focus. Ok. Its about focus. Returning to that highway, the 6 lanes matter because I think to forge your way thru a chaotic world you will get bludgeoned to death if you treat it like a straight-line gauntlet (note: you die in gauntlets). You actually have to be, well, ‘serpentine’ in interacting with information. You have to focus while moving so you don’t get overwhelmed by information. The key here is in the pursuit of progress, or ‘the dream’, you are advancing. That may seem like an odd way to discuss focus, but let me suggest we could learn a lot from young people about focus. Watch one play Call of Duty. Their ability to focus in a multidimensional way WHILE always moving forward shows a dimensional sense of focus we could all aspire to.

“Why are we so full of restraint?

Why do we not give in all directions?

Is it fear of losing ourselves?

Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.”

Henry Miller

Which leads me to focus and structural corruption.

Suffice it to say most people enter an occupation with a variety of aspirations aside from receiving a paycheck, and then discover that work is structured so most of those aspirations will be unmet, in fact, they cannot be met.

Suffice it to say most people enter into almost everything in life with a variety of aspirations aside from focusing on achieving some result, and then discover that life is structured so most of those aspirations will be unmet, in fact, they cannot be met.

This simplistic suggestion is the foundation for why people are disillusioned with work, life and the systems undergirding everything. This is, at its core, structural corruption. Oh. Structural corruption doesn’t materialize out of nothing.

“It begins with a private but clearly stated agreement within a small group to cut corners, to find ways of doing things that appear to be in its favor but fail to account for their broader implications. The behavior then spreads to the wider workforce that hasn’t been party to the original consensus, but which now views the practices that have resulted as standard operating procedure. Often years pass before it becomes clear that the breadth of the original agreement to engage in questionable conduct exposes the entire organization to compromise and reputation loss.”

See. that’s the problem with focusing on short term objectives. Short term objectives accept structural corruption, forces constrain systemic compromise, and tamps down the highest potential in the results. That means you can focus on the short term to your heart’s desire and I can guarantee you will never attain the highest possible outcomes (let alone attain aspirations). Focusing on advancing toward ‘what will be’ sees beyond structural corruption and envisions new ways of doing things and thinking about things. That is What I would call “advancing focus”.

Which leads me to advancing.

“Advancing” takes work, demands resilience and focus. Shit. Reshaping structural corruption takes work, demands resilience and focus. Why?

“Anyone who believes that we’re just going to leap into some sort of glorious new age is very unrealistic … far-reaching turmoil can be expected, as individuals and institutions either adapt to, or resist, change.”

Alvin Toffler 1990

To be clear leaders and governing elite talk about leaps all the time. The problem is that most of the ‘elites’ “attack everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.” The consequence of this is for people to retreat rather than advance. Yeah. Self and community become the last defensive outpost on the barren battlefield of certainty, security, and safety. The battlefield air is further sapped of oxygen by the feeling the pursuit of a wealth is how the war is waged where nothing is measured by the quality, quantity, and ethics of productive labor but rather fealty to the amoral forces of global capitalism. This all creates a sense of quote do it yourself end quote individualism and a zero-sum attitude making any real safety elusive and fragile. And this is where I circle back to structural corruption. Because structural corruption has even seeped into the pores of what we view as a community. The seduction of a community in today’s world is a sheltered vision of the future dominated by the present because it is only within the present where individuals in the community can actually see and feel the cozy tranquility of certainty security in whatever freedom they may believe is accessible to them. The truth is the most promising kind of unity is one which is achieved and achieved daily by collaboration, debate, negotiation, and compromise between a variety of values, desires, preferences, chosen ways of life, and self-identifications. This suggests that unity is an outcome of coherence and not a given condition of similar collective interests. Structural corruption subverts the best of community and shapes it into a simplistic desire for defense against an uncertain unsafe world. This means two things about advancing.

• Advancing demands focus and work. In addition, advancing rarely incorporates retreating from the world. That is where focus comes in. The world offers an infinite amount of challenges and people only have finite energy. Active advancing is inextricably tied to effective focus.
• To advance is in some way to refuse to play the game by whatever rules the system suggests is a moral/ethical crime, i.e., against norms not just laws. The system encourages people to not see the game is not played the same way anymore. What I mean by that is it is no longer played between the bigger and the smaller, but between the quicker and the slower. Those who were able to accelerate faster and gain velocity are the ones who actually catch the power needed to be able to beat structural corruption.

This is where mass and gravity step in. To defy structural gravity in any meaningful way, a mass of coherent communities need to collectively fly, but that’s another piece for another day. Today let’s encourage focusing on advancing toward what will be.

So, I hesitated to end with this thought because Antonio Gramsci was a renowned Marxist, but the thought seems relevant: “the way to overcome cultural hegemony is by creating a new culture that is not based on the values of the ruling class.” And maybe that’s what it takes to advance towards what will be – a new way of thinking and a new culture. Ponder.