==

“If you can’t say something nice, say something mean.”

 

“Being mean is a talent, not a flaw.”

 

“Being kind is easy. Being mean is an art.”

Its not easy being mean

==

Business is infamous for normalizing horrible. Business has always had guys (yes, they are mostly men) who have treated people horribly, acted horribly, did things morally and ethically horrible, and, yet, have been given a ‘pass’ because of, well, uhm, results. Business associated their horribleness with their ‘style to generate the results business desires/needs.” Their horribleness is normalized as “what needs to be done to get good shit done.” What is truly horrible about all this is that it destroys any respect for the institution of business and the institutions, principles, that underly good business.

Which leads me to Trump.

Trump is not only consistently horrible; he has normalized being horrible. While being horrible used to be in the purview of the hallways of business, it has now gone mainstream with Trump. With trump we are trapped between our respect for the institution of the presidency and a man who has no respect for the institution. I’ve competed against asshats like him my entire career. He elevates tertiary benefits implying they are more important than a primary benefit. He attempts to make everything liquid so a pebble seems solid as iron. He relentlessly diminishes and destroys everything around him so that even as a mental midget he stands taller than anything else. He thrives on being mentioned in the same breath as you because it somehow legitimizes his illegitimacy. He is so consistently horrible in his rhetoric it has become a feature of who and what he is.

Which leads me to Trump’s consistency.

Everything is horribly consistent about him. He built a career by making small look big, the minority sound like the majority and show a thread but talk a tapestry. He uses scraps to make a dinner. Truth doesn’t exist in his universe just scraps of information to be wielded like chaff to avoid a missile. I could have just written “zero evidence that any thought was given,” but I will just say T\this is the most vapid, hollow, intellectually empty, business person I believe I have ever encountered. He has no motto, ideology, morals or ethics other than zero-sum and winner takes all. He skates, & always has, on the thin ice of superficial irrelevance & ignorance. He is a horrible person who is horribly consistent.

Which leads me to Trump as a president.

I am a business guy & I think this whole Trump presidency thing is batshit crazy. All of it. The way he views America is not the America I know. With all due respect to anyone who voted for Trump, the whole Trump schtick is batshit crazy. His presidency was one batshit crazy week after another filled with batshit crazy day after batshit crazy day. In fact, its not crazy to think he is batshit crazy. That said. With the sheer amount of shit Trump throws up against the wall it becomes difficult to see anything but, well, shit. That said. There ais no lack of people trying to convince us it isn’t really shit. In other words, he is horrible and they are trying to convince us he is not horrible. That’s batshit crazy.

“This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy.”

Susan Rice

But. As a business guy I will point out two things to show how batshit crazy this whole situation is:

• If he were running a business like this, he would be fired

This is not how businesses are run. No. He is not running the country like a high speed business. He is running it like a transactional manager with poorly thought out plans who just wants to do shit to show he is doing something … and, on top of that, has no clue how to adapt the shit if it goes to shit. Faster paced businesses only run faster because they are willing to plan, go and quickly adapt. Faster paced businesses understand the name of the game is “adapt or die” if they want to go with some speed. But, for the most part, they are not making shit up on the fly and the really big shit has been planned for.

Oh. One other thing about fast paced businesses. Alignment. Unity in vision.

Speed, in business, has a lot to do with gravity and mass. If you want your organization to be successful AND move at a good pace, you remove barnacles and you make sure everyone on the crew knows where you are going and have talked through the intent before you say “let’s go.” And you maybe even show everyone, on some map, where you are trying to get to <this helps everyone adapt because you don’t screw them up stopping them from doing something while adapting if you know they have the same end objective everyone else has>. Trump sees people as barnacles to be scarped off, experts as barnacles to be scraped off, effective policy implementers as barnacles to be scraped off, basically he wants to scrape off everything that ensures value creation. Needless to say, that is a horrible vision.

Anyway. Our larger batshit crazy concern really has nothing to do with the pace.

• Cabal decision making

Yeah. He works in a cabal fashion. It feels like it is a couple of people who have a very dark vision of who and what America should be, maybe a couple of flunkies who want to suck up to the Trumpster because they want something and the circus ringleader himself — the Trumpster. Uhm. How would you feel if you were a senior manager in a company and he pulled shit like this? How would you feel if you were one of his chosen cabinet members? His eventual cabinet was a horrible joke. They were mostly people with no experience and actually didn’t support the mission of their particular purview. But it didn’t really matter how horrible they were, they just did whatever the horrible flunkies encouraging horrible Trump decision-making to do.

“why does he need me … he seems to want to do it all on his own.”

It appears a small band of slightly off-kilter individuals are making decisions for all of us. They are not involving even their senior management let alone the congress — who represent, us, the people — and shooting off orders on what should be done <which inevitably, in this universe, is supposed to reflect what we are supposed to think>.

That is a dictator/cabal and not a “business leader.”

Okay. Let’s be generous and say that this is classic ‘top/down’ management. If it is, top/down works if you are leading a cult or you have a one-person company. If you have an organization of any significant size, let’s say … uhm … 330 million or so … you need some buy in at a number of levels and, even better, some of the lower management levels even contribute to the tactics. That said, if it is ‘top/down’ management, it is just horribly incompetent leadership. If it is a cabal, it is not a democracy.

This is batshit crazy for America and we should never normalize this type of horrible.

Which leads me to the so called “Trump economy.”

What a bunch of horseshit is being thrown around with regard to how ‘good’ the Trump years economy was. Horseshit.

I said this back in 2018 during the Trump presidency:

• Trump’s tariffs will destroy more manufacturing jobs than it creates;
• Kim’s successful nuke tests made him happy to talk and Trump agreeing to a summit is a US concession;
• Pace of job growth has slowed since Obama era;
• The budget deficit is exploding.

They did.

It was.

And it remained so.

It did.

I bring this up circling back to my opening point. Business normalizes horribleness with “results.” The whole Trump/MAGA narrative revolves around “orange man bad ignores great results.”

The more difficult thing is to create a menu of objectives, balance them all out as important, and set about a plan of action to attain them in which you remained positive on almost all fronts and accept the fact you will sacrifice some ‘higher highs’ on some items on the menu for positives on all fronts.

This business management choice is more difficult because anyone with half a brain could pull out one thing on the menu and point out how it could be done better and be doing better. While this isn’t about administration comparisons, I will say this is one topic which the Obama administration didn’t get enough credit for.

“I believe that it is just a matter of time before our party pays a heavy price for President Trump’s reckless spending and shortsighted financial policies, his erratic, destabilizing foreign policy and his disregard for environmental concerns.”

McKean

Just to wrap this last thought up. Reality suggests the United States economy, driven by the current administration, is not only healthy now, but embedding some healthy aspects for the future. This reality is not reflective of the Trump administration reality (either as judged within the administrative years or as a judgement of how and what they did as an impact on the present). The Trump economy was wobbly, at best, and girded by subsidies and government support. In this one case I would suggest the Trump economy wasn’t horrible, but there were going to eventually be horrible consequences for how they maintained that not-horrible economy.

In the end, we can’t let Trump normalize horrible any more than it had already been normalized. You don’t have to be a shitty, horrible, person in order to get good shit done. You don’t have to be a shitty, horrible, amoral, person to ‘beat the system.’ We deserve a non-horrible person leading a country let alone a business. Ponder.

==

“The uninformed must improve their deficit, or die.”

==

“Of course, disinformation,” Quinn said. “I can do that.

I’ll leave out critical events, then I’ll put in false information and twist everything that has happened around into a vague, shadowy history that obscures what really took place.”

Terry Goodkind

==

I almost called this ‘subverting truth.’  I have written about alternative universes before, but what if today’s world, and society, was simply a moshpit of intertwined conflicting narratives. Now. “Conflicting” does not have to be parallel, but rather an intricate mix of shared and unshared aspects – all some dimension of a subverted truth.

Which leads me to the worst subversion.

Rejecting contemporary culture and norms, smirking at reason and science and rational thinking, all wrapped up in the idea that the present situation cannot be improved/rehabilitated/rectified therefore should be destroyed is the worst subverted narrative. It is a weird mix of simplicity and instinct (common sense) narratives suggesting that everything else, or let’s call it reality, is false complexity artfully, falsely, crafted and absent of everyday qualities and it should be destroyed in the interest of attaining something ‘simpler.’ The scapegoats, or the artists of this suggested complex reality, are the ‘intellectual elite’ with evil in their hearts for the everyday person. And this is where the worst subverted narratives reside. In a theme in which ‘culture’ is being destroyed by science and intellectuals/intellectualism – a confused, or intertwined, hatred, if not fear of, science and, inevitably, liberalism (which is tied to intellectualism). This counternarrative is grounded in some faux pragmatism which suggests the human minds, and humanity, as independent forces are doomed by powers of some idealistic imagination/abstract imposed against it. Within this subverted narrative is an irritation with the present ‘progress’ containing a more destructive anger, or despair, at what they perceive as a lack of preservation of ideals, ideas, and tradition, i.e., a vague, shadowy history that obscures what really took place. The subversion goes a bit farther in a weird upside-down narrative in which their own intellectual narrowness is applied toward ‘the other narratives’ where the intellectuals, academia, the experts, are the ones who have the intellectual narrowness and professional dishonesty. In the subverted narratives these are the cowards who cannot face the ‘truths’ of traditions and traditional thinking. I imagine it is a battle between false cultures and identities in which all narratives get squeezed into some simplistic, therefore false, subverted narrative.

Which leads me to subversion solutions.

Therein lies the solution dilemma. Salvation can only come through shared understanding, or common sensemaking, and yet the narratives conflict in parts or whole. This real, and sometimes imagined, predicament can only find salvation through some hidden leader who could deliver people to some common ground or common narrative. In other words, this mythical human being is a symbol as a means to verbally reconcile conflicting/contradicting beliefs and have the ability to create a relatively specious harmony out of the conflicting narratives and diverse views of ‘reality.’ Paradoxically, this mythical person conquers the complexity through some fashioned fabulous formula (most often dull simplicity). This myth confuses reality and becomes endowed with a force in and of itself, paradoxically, losing any real meaning while offering meaning to the everyday peoples. From there the concern is that those abstract reconciliations, vague adaptations of reality, inevitably become actualized by society and we are off to the fantasyland reality race.

Which leads me to ‘community imagined.’

Communities, or sense of community, becomes a victim of abstract narratives. To be clear, a community is a real thing. And while I hesitate to say they are crafted, I will say that communities are shaped purposefully – either through choices, behaviors, norms and/or beliefs. Pragmatically, people move to communities. That said. The main appeal of a community is a promise of a safe haven, sort of a destination, for people in a confusing, uncertain, turbulent, world. The community offers something constant, something predictable, something unconfusing.

“Men and women look for groups to which they can belong, certainly and forever, in a world in which all else is moving and shifting, in which nothing else is certain.”

Eric Hobsbawm

As a corollary, if the world is constantly bludgeoning your community narrative, you will invent an ‘identity’ to replace a true community. Yeah. Identities and communities are not the same thing. Simplistically, a community is inclusive and an identity group is exclusive. Anyway. From there we are off to the ‘craft an identity group to belong to’ races.  Now, people may believe they are choosing between identity groups, but their choices are actually grounded in a belief they have no choice but to choose a specific group to which they “belong.” It is this weird conflict of narratives which reflects a fragility of human bonds and that fragility encourages people to twist everything that has happened around into a vague, shadowy history that obscures what really took place. This fragility is the price we pay for having ubiquitous technology combined with the resilient narrative of “we all have the right to pursue our individual goals and the only thing standing in the way of achieving those goals is the individual courage to pursue them.” Yeah. Once again, it is individual power versus collective interest at the core of how we twist everything into a vague shadowy history. And therein lies the main conflict that narratives create to community. It is the uncomfortable paradox that freedom of individual choice almost always denies the individual choice of another. Our way around that is to create a community based on an ‘identity’ which itself is grounded in a simplistic identity-based narrative. This is a community imagined. It is a community crafted out of a simplistic narrative in one based in some form or fashion from the imagination of the individuals within it. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some rituals and commonalities to provide some concrete lily pads but the reality is the abstract community is crafted from subverted truths. In the end society is in a battle between conflicting narratives and conflicting truths. Choose your battles wisely. Ponder.

======================= 

“It’s easy to make a buck.

It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.” 

—–

Tom Brokaw  

============================ 

“In a dream world, everyone is treated with the same amount of respect. But until we reach that goal, I will lend my ear, I will lend my voice to any boy, girl, man or woman who does not feel like they can protect themselves.”

———-

Jennifer Lawrence

===========

Well. When you get to my age you sometimes pause and think “has anything I have done really made a difference.”

I tend to believe it is a reflective thing we naturally do because most of us have invested gobs of energy in some career, gobs of energy outside of the workplace with home & family responsibilities as well as gobs of energy in at least some ‘self fulfillment’ stuff.

We kind of want to assess life in maybe an ROI type way. That ROI idea may sound a little weird, but starting all the way in grade school where they pound into your head you should be involved in extracurricular activities <on top of schoolwork> all the way throughout your career you tend to measure your Life in an “energy-to-achievement” ratio way.

To be clear <part 1>.

We draft resumes being encouraged to espouse “differences we made on a business” wherein we take basic responsibilities, shit we are paid to do, and stretch it out into some dramatic outcome. Our professional lives seem to be driven into some simplistic ‘where I made a difference’ encapsulation which sadly derives it of the true rich & royal hues.

And, yeah, that matters. It matters because it is, more often than not, in those swirling colors where you personally find satisfaction – and meaning.  Yet, almost all of us distill our differences into simplistic black & white terms, or, in other words, we are encouraged to sell ourselves as “I am a good ROI.”

Now.

To be clear <part 2>.

This ‘pause & think’ isn’t about doubting any personal ability, or smarts or even accomplishments. I assume I am not that different than most people my age that I assume I have some ability, some smarts and some accomplishments.

The ‘pause & think’ is more about the ‘degree of.’

Am I really that good?

Am I really that smart?

Are my accomplishments really that good?

You start thinking about whether you have truly made a difference or if your “wins & accomplishments” were simply pedantic grind-it-out every day shit and that your losses were losses that didn’t mean anything anyway. Or, in other words, we are encouraged to think of our lives as “was I a good ROI.”

Now.

If you truly think about that you start thinking about what you have done and ROI.

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

“Hey, if I am going to lose, let me lose doing something.”

Sam Seaborne

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

Ok. I say all that because I received a couple of unexpected messages recently. The kind of messages that makes you pause & think … “maybe I did make a little bit of difference in some corner of the world”:

—————

Hi Bruce! I hope you’re doing well! It’s been a little while since we’ve talked. I just caught up with +++++ and a group of <college> students in Chicago last week. You set such a great example of leadership and teaching young people, including myself, a few years ago. I can only hope to have the same impact on this new group of students. I sincerely hope you’re doing well and I hope to keep in touch!

—————————–

Thank you so much, Bruce. You know I think about the day you pulled me into that little conference room at 151 W. 4th Street to tell me you were bringing me on to +++++++ – a lot. You saved my career that day. I will always be grateful to you for teaching me so much over the course of that year. Thank you for everything.

——————–

I am fairly sure no one gets a lot of these messages so I am fairly sure almost everyone cherishes them. They reflect some “return” on whatever we have invested.

But. You know. It is quite possible I look at ‘making a difference’ and my own personal ROI a little differently than a lot of other people. I know I would love to leave behind a legacy-like idea but, maybe more importantly, I would like to leave behind a legacy of ‘he made a difference’ – however that comes to Life.

That drives me and what I do and say <and write>.

The dilemma with pursuing thinking like this is while it has a high appeal for success <because it means ‘something’>, it is difficult, time consuming, <honestly> has a relatively low chance of success and is not the kind of thinking that really pays the bills. I imagine any life ‘purpose’ decision, combined with the fact you have to sustain and maintain everyday life responsibilities at exactly the same time, makes you ponder this unfortunate dilemma.

I can unequivocally state anyone who makes a conscious decision to ‘want to make a difference’ should make sure they think that decision through. It is not one to be made flippantly and while I shared a couple of notes which makes it all worthwhile to me, mostly you do not get much positive feedback.

That said.

I will offer a thought as you think about the dilemma.

Some guy named John William Atkinson wrote Motivational Determinants of risk-taking Behavior in Psychological Review in 1957. He suggested that if you can choose the grade of complexity <difficulty> of a task most of the decisions are taken in a mid-complexity-level. Too easy tasks or too difficult tasks can neither provoke a strong feeling of satisfaction nor a strong disappointment and vice versa.

Highly motivated people often choose a realistic complexity of tasks whereas low motivated people choose tasks that are finally to easy or too difficult for them.

But. Here is where I think I would sit good ole JW Atkinson down and have a debate. If I set aside the fact bills have to be paid at some point, I would say he doesn’t give ‘appeal of success’ enough emphasis. Especially if the appeal of success is tied to “doing something” or maybe better said ‘doing something that may truly matter.’

Huh? As Sam Seaborne says “if I am gonna lose let me lose doing something.” What I mean is that if you consciously decide to ‘go big and win big <or lose big>’ your satisfaction criteria changes and, therefore, you are willing to plow your way through more complexity and difficulty.

Look. I don’t think I am different than most people. We all want to ‘do something.’ Deep in our heart of hearts we want to know that we have done something that matters. I imagine, in a ‘big impact’ thought kind of way, somewhere in all of us we would like to leave the world a better place than the way we found it <and everyone can define the extent of ‘better place’ in their own minds>.

A friend of mine once pointed out that this ‘go big ideal’ can often simply be making a smaller difference in someone’s life. He is right. And if that is as good as it gets, well, that ain’t bad. But sometimes the desire to ‘do something’ is bigger than individuals or individual moments. That doesn’t make it ‘better’; just bigger. Bigger as in my case I take ‘world’ literally and not figuratively.

That ‘bigger’ matters because Atkinson is suggesting that the size of the ‘do something’ legacy task can often lead to a complexity that increasingly makes it difficult to be successful <but the prize more tantalizing>. I think what he misses is that a desire to make a difference can mentally shake the motivation etch a sketch.

Anyway.

At some point I think we all make some decisions on whether to compromise ‘greater purpose’ versus ‘everyday grind it out needs & responsibilities.’ Day to day responsibilities <not just bills but true responsibility to others who count on you> is a real life factor in whatever you decide to do or not do. It’s not like you have a blank Life sheet and put on it “do something that matters.”

The sheet is never blank.

You have cars, mortgages, children, mates/partners, work obligations, general shit that needs to get done. In fact, if you think about it too much, you will start thinking “holy shit, I want to make a difference but how the hell does it all happen?”

Well.

In the kindest sense you learn to balance or juggle.

In its harshest sense you compromise.

I would argue far too many of us confuse those two things and more of us actually compromise than we juggle. And I fear compromising has left far too many people numb to life or maybe just numb to their dreams. Or maybe, more specifically, numb to ‘doing something.’ or, maybe worse, numb to making a difference.

Me? I think I have always had some fear of that numbness if I end up compromising and avoid it like the plague.

I don’t know. What I DO know is that when you get to my age you focus a lot less on the ‘what did I do’ and ‘what did I not do’ and ‘compromise’, and a lot more on “difference achieved.”

Sure. I, as everyone else, certainly want to be happy. Live. And love. And be loved. Travel. See things. Meet people. Meet more people. Learn. And have offered some value in all that.

But, today, I’m focused on “doing something that matters.”

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

“The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”

Thomas Merton

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

Did I really do something that can leave the world a better place?

Did I really do something that made a difference?

Atkinson is/was probably a shitload smarter than I, but I gotta tell ya … even with all of his complexity & poor likelihood to succeed thinking, well, in my mind if you even have a glimmer of hope of getting to do something big … something really big … something that matters in a big way … something that someone would know really made a difference … I think you gotta go for it. It sure seems like you would want to do something, anything, which lends a voice to those who aspire to greater things themselves.

I mean, what the hell, if, in the end, I am going to lose or look like a loser, I want to know I lost doing something. In my mind I want to work hard at making a difference so that at some point, when all is said and done, there was a bunch of people saying “I wish I had sent Bruce a note.”

‘Cause I don’t need the notes. I just need to know they felt like they should have. In other words. I made a difference.

Just to close off this thought:

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

“You know the Greeks didn’t write obituaries, they only asked one question after a man died, ‘Did he have passion?’”

quote from the movie Serendipity

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

Even at my age making a difference can happen starting today. As I wrote in my obituary post years ago:

An obituary is not about what you can undo from what is done.  You don’t undo. It’s about moving on.

That, my friends, is a big thought.

Because a lot of people want to go back and fix or ‘undo.’

 Once again.

 You can’t. 

But obituaries can be written at any time.  In fact.  Many obituaries are written … well … when they are written … and that means they are written with “what is” as the case and point.  I guess what I am suggesting is that you can choose to unburden yourself from the past at any point. The good, the bad, the indifferent … none really matter.

Write your obituary from today on.

In other words, start making a difference today if you have not already.

In other words, seek to maximize your ROI to the world around you.

==

“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds – but I think of you always in those intervals.”

The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia

==

“Social capital. Connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arises from them.”

Robert Putnam

==

We think we never have enough time. For anything. We constantly feel rushed and forced to ‘do’ rather than explore. Maybe that is true; and maybe it is not. But the consequence is that we don’t think of time as something to be used; we just ‘manage within it.’ Well. Maybe we should explore the spaces between seconds for a bit today. that may seem crazy, but if we average (which means there can often be much more) 30,000 decisions a day, well, the space between seconds can loom just a bit larger. Now. That last point becomes a bit important. There are a shitload of good things swirling around us at any given point, any given space between seconds, but I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge technology has a nasty habit of over-empowering the more nasty parts of society. Or maybe the issue is we never really defined what we thought a better society was nor even offer up a vision to everyone, so that (1) technology overtly created things that would nudge us toward it – space between second by space between second and (b) show a scenario to society at large that they would incrementally nudge themselves toward somewhere within the space between the seconds – within the 30000 decisions they make daily. All that said. Everything is not positively emergent, therefore, spaces between seconds become important (as possible leverage moments).

Which leads me to what’s in the space between seconds.

Cultural norms, or societal norms, dominate the spaces. And if cultural norms provide the micro rules of individual behavior, then social capital is the emergent result of individuals creating cooperative communities. To be clear, not call cooperative activity generates social capital, the most productive cooperative activity is captured in repeated social interactions. Anyway. This is important because norms drive thoughts and thoughts beget actions. Think about something strongly enough and it will influence not only how we think, but how we act. It shapes what we do. Yeah. We become neurologically what we think. If that is true, I imagine we should be asking if we cannot think clearly, what do we become? As we get cognitively bludgeoned the bludgeoners actually impose a version of determinism. The technology, and overstimulation, exploits the natural loopholes in free thought and free will, and begins to shape, well, us. Biologically our brains are always in flux adapting to new information, new stimuli, new circumstances, and new contexts. This begets the question, in a 24/7 world, what if the circumstances and context are always in a flux? Can a brain constantly in flux accommodate a world in flux? Look. The brain, and all the neural circuits, are all subject to change. Feelings, seeing, thinking, learning, remembering, even perceptions, “the brain has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions” (James Olds). And, yet, to adapt, some things must be cast aside.

Which leads me to the power of the spaces within seconds resides in the flux.

Self is not a centralized all powerful entity impervious to time, space, ideas and connectivity. Self is a collection of constantly changing microsociety of ideas within images of what the mind ‘sees’ as well as ideas of what ‘ought to be.’

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don’t suffer anymore.

Thích Nhất Hạnh

That said. It is within the spaces that we actually assess; in real time.

• How am I different today then yesterday?
• Did I make a difference to anybody or anything?
• What could/should I do differently?

Yeah. In the spaces between seconds, we assess growth, impact and improvement/progress. Sure. Its good if we reflectively ask these questions to ourselves to assess how far we have come as well as how far we have to go, but the rubber hits the road in the space between the seconds. The space of microsocieties where larger societies are crafted thread by thread; stitch by stitch.

Which leads me to technology.

We cannot pretend that the space between seconds is too little to matter just as we cannot pretend technology itself doesn’t matter, i.e., it is how we use it that matters. I will suggest it is healthy to ignore the technocrats as, well, an inventor is not the most reliable judge of the value of their invention.

“if the experience of modern society shows us anything, it is that technologies are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning.”

Langdon Winner

But the reality is many of our routines, and lives, follow the paths laid down by technologies. I don’t believe it’s a stretch to suggest that every technology is an expression of human will – in some form or fashion. What I mean by that is through our tools we seek to expand our power and control over circumstances as well as time and space. Well. I bet that sounds complex, if not overly complicated, when applied to spaces between seconds. Well. It is. But life is nothing if not complex or complicated.

We have convinced ourselves we do not have time for complex

And simplifying things is actually destructive – even to micro spaces like those between seconds. Oversimplification is not efficient. It actually demands more time in a variety of ways. The two simplest ways it does so is <1> the time we overinvest attempting to isolate the simplest version of what is anything but simple and <2> the amount of time & energy we have to invest to thwart misguided behavior & reactions to our oversimplification. I would be remiss, because this section is about technology, if I didn’t point out technology’s entire reason for being is to simplify. And it is human nature to take it’s simplification and, well, oversimplify everything. Technology destructs time and space and we embrace this destructive behavior gladly.

We do this destructive behavior because we have convinced ourselves that we all have shorter, and shortened, attention spans.

We do this destructive behavior because we have convinced ourselves in our perceived “never enough time” world we have to simplify everything <to fit everything in>.

We do this destructive behavior because we have convinced ourselves that in a blizzard of nonstop things constantly vying for our attention that the specie between seconds are (a) irrelevant and unimportant and unpowerful, or (b) catastrophic tipping points worthy of everyone’s attention.

We do this destructive behavior because anything micro is easy to not understand.

Anyway.

All I can really say is that if you navigate the spaces between seconds well, you will most likely live a meaningful, and full, life. Ponder.

==

“National honor is the national property of the highest value.”

James Monroe

===

“Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.”

Peter F. Drucker

===

“Great” is a fairly amorphous thing. It is not seamless and if we are honest ‘great’ is usually reflective of a temporary state (something permanent to aspire to). For example, a business may be ‘great’ and at the same time be a quivering mass of vulnerabilities and in a constant state of work-in-progress. That said. I admit. I am a 100% business guy and I have absolutely fallen into the “seeking results by solving problems” trap on occasion. I begin there to say despite that I know in my heart of hearts that exploiting emergent opportunities is the key to business success, but in the day to day grind, especially if you enjoy solving problems, you can get focused on “boy, I sure had a good day because I solved a lot of problems.”

• Problems reflect tangible almost immediate pleasure and identifiable outcomes.
• Opportunities are less tangible and more hopeful.

Unfortunately, day to day business cannot run solely on hope. And leadership is more often than not defined by providing, or uncovering, or supporting, opportunities to those who seek, and need them, the most. So, happy 4^th of July America and let’s talk opportunities.

Which leads me to politicians and governing opportunities.

My biggest issue with most politicians is a general lack of understanding of business and how it applies to how a government & country can be managed. In fact, I would suggest most politicians are horrible at envisioning opportunities, they simply seek out votes (salving existing problems). Now. I continue to believe a business person with no government experience can never successfully manage a country and a lifetime politician will always struggle to understand the underlying attitudes and behaviors of a successful business. In my mind I believe someone who understands attitudes & behaviors & motivations is one most likely to be a successful governing leader. To be clear. This doesn’t mean understanding anger or frustration, but rather what motivates, inspires and makes people collectively move rather than individually stand and bitch. And, pointedly, it doesn’t mean standing around, or shouting from some podium, blaming someone for all the problems America has and shouting at the top of your lungs saying “I can solve these problems.” Those asshats should seek the opportunities that exist <and there are a shitload> and exploit them. Instead of arguing over problems we should argue over which opportunities represent the best opportunities for the better progress of America, i.e., identify and exploit opportunities.

“We hope. We despair. We hope. We despair. That is what governs us. We have a bipolar system.”

Maira Kalman

Look. There will always be questions. And there will always be ‘problems.’ Making something great is most often found in looking at what is and discovering the opportunities and exploit them. To be clear, opportunities don’t reside in the past.

I can’t bring back jobs, but I can create jobs.

I can’t stop globalization, but I can exploit the local opportunities globalization offers.

I can’t recreate a dying industry or dying skills, but I can create new industries with the skills that exist.

That is how a governing entity can help make America great.

Which leads me to ‘making America great.’

If we, or some leader, creates an environment in which opportunities are exploitable, and exploited by those who are most in need, all the major issues slip away. I often wonder why instead of bitching about what is ‘holding America back from greatness’ we accept some things are great and some things are not and get on with getting on. We may not understand the reason, accept the fact there will always be more questions than answers, and ask the best questions and use the answers to discover the opportunities and exploit them. Accept the fact that even though things may not be going the way you wanted them to go or the way maybe that it should go … well … opportunities exist <if you look>.

The American dream never resides in the past. The founding fathers had a dream of what could be – a future. And the biggest gift they gave us was not any document or law or ruling guidelines; it was the gift of looking forward and not backwards. The gift to shed problems and issues and disagreements by advancing confidently in the direction of what could be.

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“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Henry David Thoreau

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Making America great will never have anything to do with building any walls, or breaking up banks, or free college, or dividing people, or gun control, or any issue we seem to invest far too much energy debating. Making America great will always have to do with seeing the opportunities that exist – not any we have to actually create – and exploiting them.

Crumbling infrastructure? We have an opportunity to build whatever infrastructure we want.

Massive debt? We have an opportunity to cut unnecessary expenses <in the real world this is called “downsizing”>.

Archaic education system? We have an opportunity to throw out the old way and build a completely new way <and this doesn’t mean privatizing education which is not a real solution>.

Manufacturing? Build plants.

I could go on and on. Every supposed “problem” America has represents an opportunity. So maybe instead of running around trying to ‘fix’ all the problems someone should sit down and say “let’s go do something great.”

“Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”

Harry S. Truman

We are the ones who make history and we, people, are the ones who make up greatness. We do this through actions and words. Yeah. Words play a role. What I mean by that is the stories we tell ourselves matter. The stories we tell ourselves about people, events, the past, shape how we interpret and respond to and show up in the present and how we envision the future (possibilities). The stories ultimately become what we become. The words we use to tell ourselves stories matters. We should not deny reality, yet, we should also not deny hope for greatness.

248 years ago a relatively small group of men with really only one thing in common – a vision & the opportunity to build a country – saw opportunity as what would make the fledgling country great. And wrote some really important words down. That didn’t mean there were not problems nor did it mean they ignored problems nor did they get everything right, but they recognized the way out of almost every problem and issue was forward, not by fixing, and therefore they sought out opportunities and sought to exploit the opportunities to the benefit of a better America.

My wish for year 248 is to stop talking about what is wrong and who has done something wrong and instead talk about all the opportunities that exist. That would be a great attitude. Happy 4^th.

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“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.”

Anaïs Nin

I used to think society’s, or civilization’s, journey could be followed left to right, maybe not on a horizontal line, more like a roller coaster, but definitely like a timeline of sorts. I imagine I thought of a bit like continuous improvement, or progress, even if it had some fits and starts.

I do know we certainly talk about it this way. Agriculture revolution, industrial revolution, whatever revolution. Internet 4.0 <implying 1.0 and upwards>. And we relentlessly tie #’s to people to show “growth” on this semi-linear journey.

But I think I was wrong. Heck. I think everyone was wrong.

I actually think the better mapping of society and civilization is viewed like an atom.

Different cultures and people and ‘civilizations’ zooming around like electrons circling the nucleus.

From a grander narrative perspective this seems like I am suggesting who we were is what we are and what we will be. And, yeah, simplistically I imagine I am on some level. And if you buy that, conceptually, because all these electrons zooming around, because culture, and civilization, is made up of billions of ‘ones,’ it may often seem like we lose our ‘center.’

We really don’t.

Honest.

We don’t.

The center is always there. It is solid. It remains, and will always remain, the compass for that which is right. The nucleus holds it all together. However. What circles the center, the billions of ones with different demands and different needs and different likes and dislikes all of which desire different accoutrements for happiness, they never remain still and very often collide with each other.

And exactly the same time there are media channels and advertising and movies and magazines all screaming at the top of their lungs trying to distract us from our center with slivers of less then meaningful distractions. Distractions that make us question our center or maybe what we think is important <which can be very different from our center>.

Let’s face it. some of the people circling the center can be real noisy shits. In addition, the shit that circles our centers can be noisy sonuvabitchs. All so noisy that, well, it can be the only thing you hear.

And therein lies my point.

I disagree with Anais. Society, or civilization, doesn’t lose its center.

It cannot.

Why?

Because the ‘ones’, the billions of electrons themselves, never lose their center.

Because we, the ones, the individuals, don’t lose our center it’s just that sometimes we lose sight of it. Or we just cannot hear it on occasion.

Or maybe we just don’t listen to it hard enough.

Or maybe it whispers to make it more meaningful for us.

I don’t really think it matters.

Because we don’t lose our center. The center is always there, it is within us, as individuals and as a whole. It is the 8 billion <give or take given the few raging assholes in the world whose center is in their ass> and it is within the ones and it is all the same center.

Call it the moral compass.

Call it the good that resides within everyone.

Call it ‘knowing what is right and what is wrong.’

Call it the soul of humanity.

But ever suggesting we lose our center?

C’mon.

We never LOSE it.

We may misplace it on occasion.

We may just not be able to hear it over the cacophony of Life.

But we never lose it.

Which leads me to losing sight of the center.

Society is an abstract idea grounded in concrete norms, principles and beliefs. The problem is that the world has become less and less concrete and more and more abstract. This creates a societal shift in which structures that bound some individual choices, institutions and guard the valuable repetitions of routines and patterns of acceptable behavior struggle to maintain their shape long enough to let society gain some shape and structure. The cacophony of the world, and some of the tools bludgeoning society, deconstruct time and space so nothing can settle. Open societies have always been vulnerable to those in power (hands of fate), but in today’s world, a globalized world with a myriad of conflicting ‘hands of power’, many of the past certainties just can’t be obtained. So society and social life retracts not to some ‘center’, but rather to safety (they are often not the same). People hide within tribes, live behind walls, carry guns, and start embracing a number of activities and habits which simply increase the sense of disorder in the world through the paradox that the individual feels they are building order. The problem is all of these actions and activities are a function of the fact that a sense of fear is embedded within, stifling our ‘center,’ and, simultaneously, permeating daily routines, attitudes and mindsets. Circling back to fate, this gives us a sense fate will always strike without warning and is indifferent to not only us, but the order and certainty we are trying to construct for ourselves individually. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that infinite progress becomes unattainable in this situation as we substitute an uninterrupted game of finite objectives and tactics and our dreams get smaller and smaller. This all gets compounded by a governing elite which encourages us to believe there is no possibility of existential security through larger collective actions and shared interests. Instead, they encourage everyone to focus on individual survival, i.e., everyone for themselves, all cloaked in self-responsibility and individual expression. All this does is increase fragmentation and continue to tear apart the basic principles of collective action and shared interests and that tears apart our natural, human, center. Paradoxically, this creates some significant issues for governance. By encouraging all of this, society no longer believes they can be protected by the state or, at minimum, they are unlikely to trust the protection offered by those governing. As a consequence, the citizenry will encourage lashing out with military force or simplistic things like tariffs or isolationism as a reflection of an acceptance that there are certain forces that they cannot control and even worse there are no longer any hopes to be able to subdue the forces which could infringe upon individual survival. This is a negative mindset, negative against globalization, negativity against collective interest, negative against interdependence, basically negative against anything that optimizes or maximizes potential progress and prosperity and certainly negative against our ‘center.’ This is a world of despair. As Oscar Wilde said: “a map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out and seeing a better country, sets sail.” Progress always resides in the chase of utopias never the realization. A utopia is always simply just an image of another universe different from the existing universe we know, or know of. What does this have to do with a quest for center? Well. The center of our being, collectively and individually, relentlessly anticipates a universe originated entirely through human imagination and human betterment. If you seek to leave a universe of grindingly monotonous life, you must imagine another world. It is at our center in which this imagination resides. Ponder.

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“Trump depicts a zero-sum world in which gains for any other nation — friend or foe — automatically represent a loss for the United States. His agenda, therefore, is designed to immiserate our neighbors and partners. In the end, history and basic economic theory tell us, it will immiserate us, as well. The bad news — and it is awful — is thus that we now have a president whose foreign policy agenda essentially amounts to burning the U.S.-led international order to the ground and hoping that America can collect the lion’s share of the ashes. The good news, such as it is, is that in unveiling this agenda so brazenly and early, Trump has also fully dispelled any illusions about his presidency and the dangers it poses.”

Hal Brands

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It feels like the United States is going to get fooled into thinking an election is about one thing versus another. Televised debates often contribute to that tomfoolery or malarkey as our existing octogenarian president would say. Watching two octogenarians bludgeon each other shouldn’t fool us into believing that there aren’t two visions at stake at the moment. Let me state this up front. The election is about the MAGA Vision versus basically anything else. I state it that way because I personally would vote for an empty chair before I would vote for Trump. Would I prefer voting for say Gina Raimondo, secretary of Commerce, or Pete Buttigieg, secretary of Transportation, or Jennifer Granholm, secretary of energy, Gavin Newsom, Governor of the 5^th largest economy in the world, Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, or even Wes Moore. Sure. I would prefer voting for any one of them. But that’s not my choice. My choice is anything else other than Trump and the MAGA vision.

Trump represents the MAGA Vision and a MAGA administration with absurd MAGA policies and whoever or whatever resides in the opposite chair will not. Period.

Anyone in that chair will have ideas and aspects of policies that I do not support, but they will unequivocally not support the MAGA vision of policies or the MAGA vision of America. I also believe we are fooling ourselves into believing that we should be judging this election like we have judged elections in the past. I am an unequivocal moderate. While I may have disagreed with aspects and policies of a Mitt Romney, a John McCain, or even the Dumber Bush, I never felt like their vision, which was basically a traditional Republican vision, was an existential threat to the future of the United States – and by existential I mean economically as well as ideologically. And while I’m relatively sure the United States has had a president who was amoral, a pathological liar, racist, in the past, we have never had one who has also embraced something like the MAGA vision. As a corollary, we know for a fact that we have had an out of touch, too old octogenarian, as a president, but who still embraced a vision for the United States which may not have guaranteed our prosperity and progress, but certainly didn’t threaten our position in the world. This election is about MAGA versus anything else.

Which leads me to Trump derangement syndrome.

It has been suggested by many of my acquaintances or people who glance against some of my thoughts and writings that I have Trump derangement syndrome. I do not. I recognize Trump for exactly who he is. He is an amoral, narcissistic, sociopathic liar, who has a transactional view of business and life and offers a shitload of bad, dull axe (non-nuanced), ideas. That is who he is; no more no less. My issue resides in the MAGA vision of which he is the standard bearer. So, if I have any derangement syndrome, it would be with regard to the MAGA vision and policies that are associated with it. As I stated upfront, I don’t believe this election is between two octogenarians and we are choosing the least worst option of 80 year olds. I believe this election is a choice between two visions: the MAGA vision versus another vision. And if I am deranged about anything it would be that I stand opposed to everything about the MAGA vision. This admittedly suggests that I will embrace some policies and thoughts that I am not a huge fan of because I oppose, unequivocally, the MAGA Vision. Yeah. I will. And I will live with some bad policies. But getting back to Trump. I absolutely struggle to say anything positive about Trump. But more importantly I struggle to say anything positive about Trump Administration policies and results. I have said it before and I will say it again, Trump is a dull axe thinker, a 1 trick pony and has only one gear. The Trump Administration policies mirrored Trump. They were a dull axe, a 1 trick pony, and had only one gear. Suffice it to say the world is significantly more complex than that. I certainly understand the appeal of the simple and the simplistic, the problem is it’s not particularly effective when applied against a complex system. The MAGA vision does not serve the United States well in the present and certainly does not position the United States well for the future. Call me deranged, but that seems like a relatively sane reason to not support Trump nor a MAGA administration.

Which leads me to the direction of the country.

We should always be assessing a country and its governance based on progress, prosperity, and security. Let me address security first because it is actually subservient to prosperity and progress. What I mean by that is most people or politicians discuss security by (usually) shouting quite loudly in terms of military and military power This is wrong. Maybe I should say it’s misguided. Military power is used as a tool to maintain a country’s prosperity and progress. You only use the military power to either buttress the system which enables the progress and prosperity or to protect it. We may suggest that military power is used to maintain ‘safety,’ but in most situations even safety is subservient to progress and prosperity. Therefore, I speak of security in terms of securing the networks, connectivity, and inherent globalization which enables America’s prosperity and progress. Which leads me to progress and prosperity. Because America’s progress and prosperity, whether we like to believe it or not, is actually dependent in some form or fashion with connection to the rest of the world. That doesn’t mean that in isolation the United States can’t survive economically and allow its citizenry to be able to maintain a certain lifestyle, however, if optimal progress and increased prosperity is the objective we are dependent upon the rest of the world to achieve that. Therefore, security becomes intertwined with that dependence. And this is where there is an incredibly stark difference between the MAGA vision and the other vision. The MAGA vision doesn’t even recognize the importance of allies economically. It maintains an illusion that prosperity and progress can be attained by United States alone with a zero-sum view. No sane economist, no sane geopolitics expert, no sane business person, truly believes that. That doesn’t mean the United States doesn’t need to maintain strong pillars of economic independence in order to build prosperity and progress. Those pillars of independence make the United States secure from disruptions globally as well as increase the prosperity and progress because we can export our independence to other people who are in some form or fashion dependent upon that. Therefore, progress and prosperity becomes a relatively intricate web of independence, interdependence and dependence with economic and political allies. Allies would also include countries with common interests despite the fact we may not be aligned with them with regard to democratic values. But they are not our enemies. We have a mutual interest in progress and prosperity where our desire is security of the system which enables that progress and prosperity. The MAGA vision does not embrace any of that nuance nor does it embrace any aspect of interdependence or even a glimpse of dependence upon anybody else. They seek to bludgeon anybody who we are dependent upon even at the expense of our own prosperity and progress. The other vision is the exact opposite of the MAGA vision. It embraces the nuance of progress and prosperity in the present and building for the future.

Which leads me to the delusional opposition.

In some alternative universe there are no electable democratic candidates, America is largely center-right, the left has become so radical it mirrors some communist state, America is in a shithole downward spiral, Trump is in full command of his faculties, and that MAGA represents the majority of the country. This is the delusion the MAGA vision needs the world to perceive in order to have the MAGA vision make sense. As I remind everybody, while we focus on the sheer numbers that Trump received approximately 70 million votes in 2020, that represents about 28% of all the adults in the United States. Let me say that again. 28% of all adults in the United States. MAGA, and the MAGA vision is a minority view. Most democratic officials are pretty popular and the country, as a whole, is more center left leaning, moderate, on most issues and quite accepting of liberal leaning attitudes. More importantly, the country is not a shithole, in fact the reality is the United States economy is healthy, healthier than the majority of countries in the world, and in the process of building resilient economic progress and prosperity under the current administration. If we ignore the blaring headlines about culture and values and identity wars, the reality is nobody is coming to steal guns, nobody is stopping anybody from having their own religious views, no one is trying to indoctrinate our youth, and we should all just keep our eye on the most important ball which is progress and prosperity. Until somebody can show me some real ideas within the MAGA Vision or what could be construed as the existing current Republican Party, the only ideas that I can see for progress and prosperity in the present and the future reside within the Democratic Party. And in fact, if you strip away all the MAGA rhetoric about the Democrats, the democrat party are the ones who support the ideas and the basic ideological thinking that the majority of Americans like. As the election looms, I frankly do not care who is at the top of the ticket as long as whomever is there continues to enable the best ideas for our progress, prosperity, and security of those.

Which leads me to how MAGA perverts the idea of progress.

MAGA 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 said. He suggested that 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 MAGA vision begins. It doesn’t begin with any shared improvement, but rather individual fears. The MAGA vision suggests that 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 MAGA vision encourages us all to believe this, therefore, it encourages us to dwell on your individual fear. It suggests your worry is not only an immediate worry, but a long term worry. From there they offer no real solutions for progress and prosperity, just dubious tactics to salve your individual worry. MAGA is a black hole of no solutions. I would also suggest that the real solutions are offered somewhere within the non-MAGA vision. In other words, any administration embracing ‘anything else other than the MAGA vision.”

For years I have heard people say “I don’t vote for a person, I vote for policies.” Well. It’s come-to-jesus time on that thought. Ponder.

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We are swimmers

Caught in the tide

Pitch black river

Shadows and light

Into the night

Beautiful swimmers

Losing the fight

A constant river

Shadows and light

Into the night

Zero 7, Swimmers

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“why should I be angry? It won’t change how you feel.”

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My anger at the world coils inside of me. It’s a directionless seething, there’s no name or face to aim at.”

The Sky So Heavy by Claire Zorn

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Anger is energy and energy is something to be ‘applied.’ In other words, the energy of anger needs to be used.

Which leads me to what you do when angered and how you treat others when angry.

Maybe they are the same, but I am going to treat them differently.

Desire defines what we think we need. And often defines how we act. When we don’t get what we ‘desire’ (or expect – they can be interchangeable) it sometimes can take us to places we never thought we would ever go. And it sometimes fuels us to do some amazing things as well as some amazing stupid things. Yup. sometimes we suppress it. But in the end you either face up to your actions, and how you want to act, or you will have to face the fact you are an angry person.

This desire thing has two faces: anger and disappointment. And anger and disappointment actually take up space. So much that sometime they can, without words, take up almost entire rooms. What do I mean? They can squeeze the space in a room so much you cannot breathe.

Which leads me to the fact anger squeezes conversations.

Conversations are the smallest units of change. In this case, conversations are what solves anger (as well as fuels anger). Unfortunately, anger is a problem to, and with, conversations. Everyday life is full of conversations of depth every day, some bringing a depth of joy, some bringing a depth of chaos, some bringing a depth of grief, some of anger, some of disappointment. All these conversations reflect the depth and breadth of, well, life. The deeper the authenticity, the genuineness, the integrity of conversations the deeper the meaning of conversations and, as a consequence, life.  This is where the weight of kindness and unkindness shove each other. This is where guilt and contrition reside. This is where the condemning and uncondemning words and thoughts battle. This is where brute force and gentleness face each other. This is where actions have consequences. This is where learning occurs and all those action’s consequences can be redirected.

Which leads me to anger can be a gift.

Anger is a self imposed trial and therein lies its gift. Far too often we wield anger against someone, yet, rarely will it ever change how the other person feels. Anger is always about yourself not the other person. And here is where anger offers its greatest, and most tricky, gift. Anger gifts you the ability to find something where nothing exists (if you permit it to do so). You cannot carry anger, frustration, disappointment or resentment into the future. And it is rarely useful in the present. Anger is a black hole. A black hole where nothing exists – there is no past, present nor future in anger. It would be silly of me to suggest that no one should ever feel anger because it is a human thing to do.  But maybe we should think of ‘anger as a black hole.’ Think about it because after anger there is typically a need for some type of forgiveness to fill the hole and move on. Maybe the mistake many of us make is to believe that we can leave the anger behind. You cannot. It leaves a hole. And holes need to be mended (or filled). I don’t have an answer of how one would ever fill up a black hole enough to ensure that which has no past, present or future ends up having some meaning. Maybe it is simply the awareness of this that permits us to be better people.

In the end.

Anger gains you nothing and costs you much, but it is always a learning experience.

I scribbled this on a random piece of paper: “I cannot be angry with you. Anger would be a waste of the moments we have and would make us weak in the face of the things yet to do.” Therein lies the gift paradox. Anger wastes moments and, yet, it offers learning moments. I imagine all I can offer is navigate the moments wisely. Ponder.

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The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

Vladimir Lenin

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“No one is walking in saying, ‘Great, I’d love to pay full price’.”

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One of the things that drives me nuts is when people say how much better the economy was during the Trump Administration. It’s not really true, it was good, not quite as good as under Obama administration, certainly not bad, not really comparably as good as current economy, but that’s a post for a different day (and I encourage everyone to research economists like Noah Smith, Tyler Cowen or Justin Wolfers to read their thoughts).

Today I’m addressing the comparison elephant in the room: inflation.

Inflation is not the economy. It seems like the majority of people are judging the economy solely on what they perceive is inflation. Inflation perception may seem like an odd term. Heck. Inflation itself is an oddish thing. Economists define it in a nuanced way, people define it in a simplistic way, news defines it whatever way its own political winds blow way, and reality is somewhere in between. But where people think of inflation the most is with prices they pay (not causes).

So let me speak a little bit about pricing during the Trump administration years. Similar to the Obama administration years, in the Trump years corporate America scanned about their competition and tried to figure out how to be able to charge the highest possible competitive price and generate the highest profits. It’s kind of standard operating pricing procedure weighing “how much can I charge and still create significant demand.” That doesn’t mean that many of these same companies were year in year out doing things like conjoint testing (testing variables that affect the price that could be charged versus the demand increase or decrease, i.e., price sensitivity). Businesses are always trying to figure out how to have higher prices. That said, generally speaking, changing prices sends a shiver down the spine of every business as they worry about the demand effect. So, the natural arc of pricing is to establish your price within a competitive environment, watch your competition pricing, and establish a demand for your product or service based on that price. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that I’ve sat in endless meetings where business people wistfully spoke of charging significantly more than they currently were charging.

Which leads me to the Trump Administration years.

Business institutions had less and less wistful conversations. Not because they actually raised their prices, but because the Trump Administration went out of their way to cut corporate taxes, offer incentivized subsidies to keep cost of goods affordable, and did a variety of things which enabled businesses to increase their profits, not their sales, without ever having to raise their price one penny. Let me reiterate that the Trump Administration also did everything they could possibly do to subsidize everything (things that effected cost of goods) to keep inflationary pricing down. The consequence of this was soaring federal level deficits, but for the most part the everyday schmuck like you and I didn’t really care because prices remained fairly stable and the headlines didn’t look any different than they had always looked in the past – pointing out day after day the soaring corporate profits. We all felt like the system was rigged, the corporations were gouging us, but we didn’t really see it at the shelf or in our pocketbooks. So, we just hated business, but didn’t hate the economy.

Which leads me to the pandemic.

Instead of theoretical, conjoint-like, testing, every business was faced with market reality and a real market test. Supply chains were disrupted, commodities – costs of goods – that were essential to their production and resources needed for services became limited or asymmetrically supplied and more costly, and consequently prices changed – most typically upwards. Oh. And everything was passed along to the buyers. What this meant in practical terms, to a business, was the sellers were able to test the market pricing (elasticity) without being blamed. They could see in real time how demand was affected by disruptions and price changes. Rightfully so everybody pointed their fingers at the pandemic, but businesses didn’t really lose a lot of sleep because they maintained their profits, for the most part adapted to the changing demand, and tried to keep their profit heads above the water. Then the pandemic ended. And businesses sat around conference rooms failing moral gut check after moral gut check. And what was that moral gut check? What to do with my pricing now that my cost of goods has decreased. This isn’t to suggest that some industries and businesses were still affected by some of the ripple effect consequences of the pandemic with regard to the cost of the goods they needed to be able to craft the products they offered to the market. But for the most part the pandemic encouraged businesses to create a more resilient production model to make their cost of the goods more stable. In addition, the corporate tax cuts stayed in place … despite the current administration wanting to increase them (government is government and nothing changed there). Many of the tariffs were removed which should have eased pricing to the buyers, but many of the businesses failed to pass along the cost savings. In addition to that the pandemic market had shown many of the businesses the price elasticity and inelasticity of their products and services. For example. My geographic market prior to the pandemic. It would not be rare to see that you could buy a two-liter bottle of Coke or Pepsi on promotion for $1 (actually 99cents) and the everyday price was always below $2 (maybe $1.99, maybe $1.89.) During the pandemic of course all prices went crazy. Coke and Pepsi’s two-liter bottle prices soared above $2 every day (usually $2.99 everyday). Uhm. Post pandemic the everyday price for a two-liter bottle is now $2.50, or above, and promotions never drop below $1.25 per 2 liter. The demand has remained exactly the same and Coke and Pepsi are getting, at minimum, $0.25 gravy, at maximum, $1.00 gouging, on every single two-liter bottle purchased. Just to complete the math on this. If they sell 1 million 2-liter bottles, they make anywhere from $250,000-$1,000,000 additional profit. Uhm. And they sell billions. Anyway. This isn’t to just pick on Coke and Pepsi, Coke and Pepsi are indicative of business. The problem is most people aren’t thinking about this the way I just finished describing it. All they see is what groceries are costing them every single day, without promotion, a dollar more per 2-liter bottle. And as they wander the supermarkets, they see the same thing. In some industries the prices have certainly decreased and, generally speaking, the majority of the pandemic pricing has decreased aligned with the realities of whatever their cost of goods increased or decreased. But when you go to the supermarket you don’t focus on the prices that lowered closer to prepandemic, you focus in on the prices of the goods that you want that you’re tired of paying pandemic pricing for. And I word it that way because that’s not inflation. That’s pandemic pricing in non-pandemic time.

“The reality is that business and investment spending are the true leading indicators of the economy and the stock market. If you want to know where the stock market is headed, forget about consumer spending and retail sales figures. Look to business spending, price inflation, interest rates, and productivity gains.”

Mark Skousen

And that’s the economic gut check on the moral gut check businesses failed. I am certainly not suggesting that the Trump Administration is to be blamed for the current pricing. They didn’t plan the pandemic and the pandemic certainly affected all businesses in terms of their supply chains and cost of goods. And just as well I can’t blame the Biden administration for not doing anything about what I’m calling pandemic pricing, which is confused with inflation, because governments are not in the business of dictating pricing that people pay. Suffice it to say, no administration would ever change the prices people pay.

“I believe that it is just a matter of time before our party pays a heavy price for President Trump’s reckless spending and shortsighted financial policies, his erratic, destabilizing foreign policy and his disregard for environmental concerns.”

McKean

But, in the end, I opened discussing what drove me nuts (the Trump administration wasn’t as great as many people think it was). Inflation in Trump times was no better than prior administrations and unless you have a crystal ball there is no way to know whether inflation would be the same, lower, or higher if the Trump administration were in place now. That said, I will suggest that the likelihood a new Trump administration would lower inflation is next to nil. Any objective observer would struggle to imagine what policies the Trump administration would have in place that would lower inflation now or even what policies would be in place that would make the economy any better now.

At this time, I tend to believe the biggest culprit is institutional pricing, not real inflation. But that’s me. Ponder.

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“But the brain does much more than just recollect it inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes, it generates abstractions. The simplest thought like the concept of the number one has an elaborate logical underpinning. “

Carl Sagan

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“We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopedia knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts, which have to be filed in the brain as in the columns of a dictionary, enabling their owner to respond to the various stimuli from the outside world. This form of culture really is harmful, particularly for the proletariat. It serves only to create maladjusted people, people who believe they are superior to the rest of humanity because they have memorized a certain number of facts and dates and who rattle them off at every opportunity, so turning them almost into a barrier between themselves and others.”

Antonio Gramsci

Velvet curtain of culture.

Iron curtain of ideology.

Samuel Huntington

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This is a slightly different discussion about speed and speedy stuff. Farnam Street did a topnotch job outlining speed versus velocity, and I wrote an entire series on velocity, but today I am focused on speedy looking less-than-important stuff and more important slower-speed human nature, in other words, meaningful cultural movement versus superficial culture movements.

Which leads me to most culture is inertia disguised in speedy clothing.

Most culture is misidentified by 24/7 culture scam artists posing as futurists, trend spotters, and social influencers, i.e., people who monetarily benefit from hype and, most specifically, ‘speed hype’

• ·       ** speed hype is typically captured in the ubiquitous phrase “the world is moving faster than ever.” It’s not.

Most businesses, with good intentions, get caught up in the speedy inertia wheel of doom. So, let’s talk culture in two ways:

1.       culture of human whims.

2.       culture of human nature.

The former is about cultural shifts, or shifting, (some big, some small) and the latter is about foundational movement (the inevitable cadence that always exists). Ultimately, this becomes a battle between whims and nature. Sure. Sometimes a whim is a reflection of some deeper human truth and has some enduring nature, but for the most part whims are whims, fads are fads, and things that look good in the ‘shift phase’ look pretty stupid in a rearview mirror. But within the battle of whims and nature the word ‘culture’ is wielded like a dull axe. To be clear, as Dick Hebdige, author of The Meaning of Style, said “culture is a notoriously ambiguous concept.” Personally, I believe we shouldn’t be landing on one definition but rather, well, “the best thing about definitions, like $100 bills, is to have plenty of them” (Robert Ardrey). That said. Simplistically, culture is the elements of human nature that make up the experiences of a group. Yeah. Culture is the work of whole peoples and their interactions. It moves at the pace of language, experiences, and stories. To be clear. Events, religion, ideologies feed into language, experiences and stories, but those things are not culture, but rather stimulus of culture.  Regardless, all this means cultural truths are tied to the rhythms of human nature/biology and connectivity between peoples – the cadence of humanity. I know businesses prefer talking about profitability, objectives, and KPIs, or even what culture they may ‘have,’ but the more a business can tap into the cadence of nature and humanity, its cultural truths, the more enduring the business idea will be. I would suggest that it is through culture that we make sense of our lives so when a business taps into the movement of culture, people’s lives tend to move with it.

Which leads me to inertia or, in other words, irrelevance.

Forever is a long, long time.

And has a way of changing things.

The Fox and the Hound

We accept inertia, irrelevance, far too easily/comfortably. Why do I think irrelevance is accepted? To be fair it’s easy to confuse the irrelevant as being relevant in today’s speedy FOMO world. First. Let me point out that speed can look an awful lot like inertia. So, if you think running in the hamster wheel of hype is doing a lot of ‘important things’, you are wrong, but ‘feels’ like good shit is happening. You are more likely just doing a lot of things and the business is never really moving or gaining value. Second. A misguided understanding of value. This misunderstanding is most often discovered in opportunities missed. If you emphasize the speedy stuff, or just speed alone, as offering the highest value, you will inevitably miss out the slower moving opportunities which offer foundational, and sustainable, value. Mistaking all that speedy stuff for culture is transactional value versus enduring value and, in most cases, I would argue a business is leaving dollars on the table.

Which leads me to how to navigate offering relevant value.

First. Slow down (the world is not moving so fast you will miss anything significant). Second. I would suggest find the relevant cultural movement. To be fair, it is tricky to find the natural, biological, cadence tucked in human nature. The problem is we have a collective shortsightedness grounded in “living in the now,” but in order to maintain a thriving business you need short term results without being shortsighted and you need a long-term view while ‘being’ in the short term. I have found Stewart Brand’s pace layering an invaluable tool for thinking about how brands can ‘navigate the long now.’ In other words, ground a business in culture in terms of human insights, not popular relevant(?) culture.

Let me explain. Remember. Cultural insights are grounded in human nature. These things have a bit of timelessness to them. In pace layering terms they are the slow moving truths that people gather around, or, as James Carse said: “a culture is not anything persons do, but anything they do with each other.”

These things are easy to overlook because they are the things that hold us all together when it seems like the world is moving too fast for us (while technology is shouting at us to go faster). If a business leans into these cultural truths, human psychological truths, they construct a strong but flexible structure built to absorb shocks and, in most cases, incorporate them. Instead of breaking under stress, like something brittle, the business accommodates what the world throws at us and yet its cultural truths move so slowly, they seem like they are unchanging.

Fast learns, slow remembers.

Fast proposes, slow disposes.

Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous.

Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy.

Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.

Stewart Brand

Business walks a variety of paths every day. But today rather than looking at as terrain and paths let’s think of these paths in concentric layers. I, personally, believe everyone should think about Stewart Brand’s pace layering and from a larger perspective, societally, I believe we could all use a good lesson in navigating the long now rather than focus solely on the now (and the short term). Societally we certainly have a collective shortsightedness grounded in “living in the now,” which I would argue isn’t particularly good for any of us. But for a business that is the kiss of death. An enduring, thriving, business demands a long view and I believe that long view is found within a cultural insight. Here is the harsh truth. Most businesses skate on the superficial surface of irrelevance because they ignore cultural truths. For the most part brands are ignoring these truths for temporary happiness. Far too many brands view fads, fashion, much of social media as cultural truths and, for the most part, they are not. Cultural truths are grounded in human insights – psychological, behavioral – which power our hopes and dreams and anger and happiness and, most importantly, connection with other humans. Today’s brands see ‘culture’ in the fleeting outside world of fads and fashion and style and useless gadgets-of-the-moment which are just the momentary mindless, the irrelevant, clothed in a veneer of connectivity.

Remember. Culture is not static, its transitory. Culture is a process (that which is acquired) as well as a product (that which has been acquired). Culture is both backward looking as well as future looking (nostalgic or memory grounded as well as utopian or dream looking). Culture is a refraction, not a reflection. Culture is a macro narrative made up of micro-narratives (sub cultures).

Which leads me to infinite movement.

Business is addicted to finite stuff. Projects, initiatives, weekly goals, all rolled up n KPIs. Business loves to isolate things and ‘make them perfect’ while espousing infinite value. Look. Forever, infinite, is about time and it isn’t. What I mean is we associate forever with time and, yet, it is timeless so time is almost irrelevant to ‘infinite.’ What is relevant to forever (or let’s call it ‘the long now’’) is constancy and adaptation. Please note I never said “control.”

“We control nothing, but we influence everything.”

Brian Klass

Ah. Control. Now, being the type of outcome-oriented people we are; we actually try and apply some measurement to infinite progress (yes, measuring that sounds like an oxymoron) and all it does is increase the perception of speed and encourage inertia. We look like we’re filling up time with important things, we feel like we are filling up time with important things, we even sit around conference room tables pointing at numbers that look important, but for the most part none of those things are contributing, in any significant way, to the constancy and adaptation which is the key to navigating the layers of pace every culture and business exists upon. In fact, all of those things are just attempts to take snapshots of all the blurry unimportant things speeding by. Yeah. The numbers are an attempt to convince you that the unimportant is important.

So we measure meaningless stuff and hold on to old things, including thinking, for too long. Businesses get caught in the wretched hollow in between shiny fast moving meaningless shit and the old thinking which only increases burden on a daily basis and the people gravitating to either side of FOMO or stability. Therein lies inertia. Therein lies path dependence.

Here is the crazy thing. The whole idea of infinite far too often tethers us to our past or inertia which is not very productive. Maybe worse is as we grow away from infiniteness, we grow closer to the understanding of finiteness, measurement by measurement, fad by fad, widget by widget. Paradoxically as we focus on all the shit speeding around, all the whims and fads, we reduce nature to silly things we convince ourselves are important.

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“Let me tell you a truth … no matter what choice you make, it doesn’t define you.

Not forever. People can make bad choices and change their minds and hearts and do good things later; just as people can make good choices and then turn around and walk a bad path. No choice we make lasts our whole life. If there’s ever a choice you’ve made that you no longer agree with, you can make another choice.”

Jonathan Maberry

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Which leads me to paced learning.

Rather than discussing fast or slow, let’s discuss pacing – and learning. The reality is that organizations learn. That may sound a little odd because organizations are made up of people and we typically talk about learning in individualistic ways. However, organizations and the systems are implemented by people and in turn influence people’s mindsets, attitudes, and actual behaviors. So, when I say that organizations learn what I mean by that is that they encase their learning in programs and standard operating procedures that the people within the organization routinely execute. That is the system. The problem with this is that all of these programs and procedures typically generate inertia. And this inertia inevitably increases as the organization brings in new people and reward conformity to the system and its ‘learned implementation.’  This is done over and over and over again embedding past learning in the present (and future). As the successes accumulate the organization doubles down on the existing system emphasizing efficiency. The consequences of this are inevitable – the system itself becomes complacent, people learning slows, and inertia sets in. To be clear. Inertia and complacency is a double whammy to a business. It slows culture down and human nature (natural adaptation) down. So how should organizations learn? Well. As William Starbuck said “organizations must unlearn.” Unlearn is an awkward way of saying that systems must be systemically dismantled piece by piece and iteratively rebuilt. And what that means is that the people within the organization need to be self-aware enough in order to be able to influence not only organizational systems, but organizational learning. This is where hierarchy comes in. In most businesses organizations are constructed in a hierarchy. What this means is that the higher up the manager is the more likely they are to dominate organizational learning as well as organizational implementation. This means that most managers invest the majority of their energy in terms of learning the existing system and not unlearning aspects of the system, i.e., trying different things and innovation. It may sound odd, but past learning inhibits new learning. The only way to create space for new learning is to be able to discard some old learning, i.e., unlearn.

Which leads me to human nature (human movement).

Nature is never still. Nothing, in nature, is ever infinite other than possibly adaptability. This truth includes humans and human nature. Adaptability is a complex coherence of faster and slower moving aspects (static and dynamic). Typically, the aspects seek an optimal equilibrium situation through reactions and interactions (connectivity) where all become stable in a coherent sense enabling movement. In fact, maybe that defines infinite and progress. What I mean by that is optimal is only attainable in a temporary state (finite) therefore the pursuit is always infinite. This means true ‘achievement’ is not possible therefore progress is the only reality-based construct. Anyway. I would suggest the most interesting systems are dynamic in that they are non equilibrium systems that form order from actively dissipating entropy. Ah. Entropy (and its relationship to paces and pace layering). I would argue that entropy increases as the total surface of what is exposed to external stimuli is decreased. This decrease surface connectivity creates an overall increase of entropy. To be clear. “Surface” is a complex weave of whims and human nature at speed. Discerning between the two is important because if the ‘external stimuli’ you elect to expose yourself to are ‘whims’ that will only increase entropy (that is the paradox of speed). This doesn’t mean that there can’t be constant re-formation of order; just that there is an increased likelihood of entropy. I believe it was physical chemist Ilya Prigogine who viewed the paradox of evolution as one of an engine running down and the other of a living world unfolding toward increasing order and complexity. In his theory, the second law of thermodynamics – which is the law of ever-increasing entropy or disorder – is still valid, but the relationship between entropy and disorder is different. At bifurcation points states of greater order may emerge spontaneously without contradicting the second law of thermodynamics. The total entropy of the system keeps increasing, but this increase in entropy is not uniform or symmetrical. In the living world order and disorder are always created simultaneously. What this means is that there are always islands of order in all seas of disorder and their role is to maintain and increase their order. And therein lies another thought, one in which that speed, inertia, and cultural movement will always have aspects of order and disorder. Well. That thought will make every business uncomfortable.

“Strategy’s endgame is to spark movement. But as an intermediary measure, feeling moved by the process is an indicator you’re doing it right. Because if you’re doing it right, you do embody new people. New messages. New audiences. A new tone of voice. Strong vicarious vibes. And by doing so, things get raw. Raw precedes real. And real is something that provokes a response.”

Rob Estreinho

Which leads me to cultural movement.

Let’s say this is about experience versus experiencing. I tend to believe most people are misguided when they focus on experiences, and selling experiences, rather than focusing on experiencing (which is more about human nature). Here’s what I mean. Experiences are an outcome of experiencing, and experiencing is a complex culmination of connections:

1.       Connection to human nature.

In other words, the biology which creates the comfortable or the purposefully uncomfortable cadence that seems natural to us (note: this is actually embodied in a number of cultural cues)

2.       Connection to context and environment.

This Is the environment which expands or reduces potential.

3.       Connection to other humans.

In fact, human nature experiencing is autopoiesis. Autopoiesis means self-making. It is the main characteristic of life in that it is self-maintenance due to the natural internal networking of the system itself. It constantly maintains itself within the boundary of its own making. But it also implies that a living system is the totality of all of its mutual interactions, i.e., connections (as listed above). Through connections multiple mini transformations continuously take place and, yet, at its core the system/human/human nature maintains its individuality. Is this apparent contradiction between adaptation and constancy which actually explains a healthy system. I say all of that to suggest all living systems need some constancy and yet still need some change through adaptation. I say that to suggest human nature, culture, is constancy constantly, slowly, adapting.

Which leads me to end with the fact most people discuss culture incorrectly.

Human nature is at the core of culture. Whims and fads are simply temporary features of human nature’s more systemic rhythms. The reality of culture is that it is not a particular speedy thing. With that in mind, rather than giving so much attention to speedy stuff, maybe we should invest just a bit more energy focusing on the less speedy stuff. I seriously doubt we will miss out on anything truly meaningful in the process. Ponder.

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“It is misleading to argue that cultural circulation has been democratized. The means of circulation are algorithmic, and they are not subject to democratic accountability or control. Hyperconnectivity has in fact further concentrated power over the means of circulation in the hands of the giant platforms that design and control the architectures of visibility.”