===

“An empty mind is more dangerous than an empty wallet.”
Mac Duke

===

This is about bitcoin and cryptocurrency and its not. It’s actually about the future of financial literacy. Cryptocurrency may just be the final nail in financial literacy. What do I mean? Well. Let me go back in financial literacy’s heyday – bartering. Nothing beats financial literacy learning than tangible give & take. You only had to barter 2 hens for that pound of coffee so many times before you began noticing you had no more coffee, but that other person was selling eggs in the market every week. The next thing about bartering was that it didn’t exactly go away once real currency was being minted. I could still dig up some gold chips and exchange it for money. All of this kind of permitted everyone, young to old, to get a sense for the work-to-market valuation of finances.

                                ** note: bartering also established literacy between cultures. This doesn’t mean it was fair in the beginning (getting a knife for # of buffalo hides that would generate significant income), but over time and hundreds of transactions, and increased awareness of other cultures transactions, good & services, a balance in value was generated.

—

 But then big businesses came along and you and I stopped panning for gold and instead showed up somewhere 9-5 so that someone could give us some gold (money) for the work we did. Financial literacy still remained high because for years people pulled out their wallets and coin purses and handed over hard earned, what little they had, currency for something. They felt the pain of giving away something hard earned. The literacy was grounded, tangibly by the physical act of handing money over, in that emotional underpinning. Paying for something came at a cost (and, yeah, that’s the foundation of financial literacy).

Uhm.

Then credit cards came along and, well, financial literacy took a hit.

Then debit cards came along and financial literacy took its next hit as physical cash and tangibly seeing the ‘loss’ of what you had, and earned, for something you valued disappeared.

Then online banking and scheduled payments came along and financial literacy took another gut punch.

By this time the value of money had become so esoteric it took on some aspects of monopoly money to many people. Sure. You still had financial commitments and your bank account went up and down, but increasingly many people floated through financially sustaining their lives. You can go months without ever having to physically handle money or feeling the actual give & take of an expenditure.

Oh. All the while we see wealthy people claim bankruptcies and, yet, People magazine (that still exists, doesn’t it?) shows pictures of them lounging in some 5-star hotel. Everyday schmucks think “I thought financial literacy was not going bankrupt”, but more importantly we were seeing decreasing consequences for what most people would have deemed incredibly poor financial literacy. Financial literacy took another foundational gut punch.

However, the most insidious aspect of this transactional history was that the millions of transactions which actually underpin the value of currency became, well, unimportant to people. Well. Maybe we just forgot and more & more people thought that monetary “value” was arbitrary. We have gone Geological Ages away from barter to the present “value is what we believe it is.”

And then bitcoin came along. To be clear. Existing cryptocurrency, excepting maybe stablecoin, is not tied to any fiat currency nor is it tied to any ‘standard’ (gold, silver, pork bellies, whatever) nor is it even tied to anything you physically mine. It is tied to, uhm, a game. Sure. A technological game, but a game nonetheless. So not only do people not think of monetary value as grounded in anything but then, given lots of experience playing Candy Crush and earning tokens, people say “what the hell, gamification is as viable as anything else any currency is tied to.” With this we have heard the dying breath of financial literacy. After being tortured for years, it has died.

I’d hate to end with that thought so let me try and say where we go from here to save financial literacy.

Well.

I’ll go to an unexpected place – business. Business has lost its version of value creation. Maybe another way of saying this is business also embraced “perception is reality”, but in a more insidious way – to value. All of a sudden value was ‘experience’ and, well, value became grounded in the esoteric <or, worse, perception>. So even while business had to actually spend money to produce something (mostly through extraction of or from something) they increasingly suggested the value was, well, intangible. I say that because business can regroup and regain what value truly is.

The purpose of business is to create and deliver value in an efficient enough way that it will generate profit after cost. Period. It was in The Origin of Wealth where Eric Beinhocker gave us a fairly constrained definition of creation of economic value:

A pattern of matter, energy, and/or information has economic value if the following three conditions are jointly met:

• 1) Irreversibility: All value-creating economic transformations and transactions are thermodynamically irreversible.

• 2) Entropy: All value-creating economic transformations and transactions reduce entropy locally within the economic system, while increasing entropy globally.

• 3) Fitness: All value-creating economic transformations and transactions produce artifacts and/or actions that are fit for human purposes.

Maybe try these words: value is created through an irreversible process which gives a resource’s ‘order’ greater usefulness to other humans. This suggests not all value is created equal but value is defined nonetheless. I end here because inevitably financial literacy isn’t about finances, but rather value. The future of everyday finance is becoming less and less tangible, farther and farther away from bartering hens for coffee, which behooves us to triple down on value literacy. Ponder.

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

“You can always find an excuse to not stand up for your principles.

But if you don’t risk anything, it doesn’t matter as much.”

Jeff Flake

=========

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour … If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

Charlotte Brontë

=====

“Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principals which direct them.”

 Napoleon Bonaparte

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

Well. While I am not so sure Life really offers us nonstop, limitless opportunities to move forward and make progress toward things we want or like <albeit it does offer us a lot> … what it does do is offer us a relentlessly tantalizing smorgasbord of opportunities to take the easy way out, appealing short cuts and opportunities to circumvent rules & regulations <while no one is looking>.

My point is that Life pretty much says “there is always an easier way and choice if you are willing to set aside your principles just this one time.”

And Life relentlessly whispers this in your ear … moment … after … moment. Relentlessly.

I mention this to everyone because if Life really does this moment after moment <and it really does>, you would be tempted to find an excuse to not stand up for your principles on occasion.

Ah.

“On occasion.”

That sounds so … well … harmless. It was back in September 2010 I wrote “slippery slopes & “just once” where I said this:

It is incredibly easy to compromise … in business and in life.

“Just this once” you say to yourself when you are tired. Whatever the decision or action we are discussing, to you, in the moment … it is mentally “an exception”. And before you know it <after some “just this onces“> you have edged on to that slippery slope.

I think the most interesting thing to think about is this whole idea of principles and slippery slopes. It is interesting because most people think of principles a steadfast, unshakeable and solid. We never think of them as slippery.  And, yet, seemingly harmless momentary exceptions are actually extremely harmful moments in which each exception makes the next exception even easier to do.

In other words. You end up finding an easy excuse to not stand up for your principles.

Part of the problem is that the whole concept of principles has become an incredibly twisted concept in today’s world. In fact, “principles”, in today’s world, can often get placed in that heinous slot with ‘political correctness.’ What I mean by that is the meaning of the word, and phrase, has been subverted into a negative space from its intended space which is, and should be, a positive one.

It seems odd but principles and principled actions are a tricky topic.

Tricky in that while a principles ‘are statements denoting fact or generality which are universally or widely considered to be true and fundamental’ they, in fact, have a great range of meaning. While ‘principles’ most often refers to the elementary, or fundamental, basic proposition of some system or of conduct, it can also be tied to some specific designation, i.e., religion, government, business, education, etc. as well as some specific values <of which could be shared or not shared>.

It would be much nicer if we actually referred to ‘principled behavior’ as an axiom. While axiom is a derivative of ‘principle’ it is more tightly tied to ‘one agreed upon as the basis of truth … a truth so self evident as to be indisputable’.  Principles, in theory, are an axiom unfortunately, in practice; they are more a theorem <a proposition>. I offer this philosophical mumbo jumbo to make the point that principles is a trickier topic an idea than one would think.

I do believe the internet has made this topic trickier in that civil discourse has devolved to such a state that if you were to offer your ‘principles’ to an audience there will inevitably be a negative nasty, and often cruel, backlash suggesting that what you would consider principles are … well … bad.

Principles fall into the horrible trap of “small minds discuss people; average minds discuss events; great minds discuss ideas.” And, yeah, the deterioration of discourse in general aids Life in whispering in your ear that maybe, just maybe, just this once you should find an excuse to not stand up for your principles. This often happens in a twisted way in which we focus labels of “evil thinking” toward  people who do not think like us, or have similar principles, which then seems to provide an open license to anyone who wants to vent  with extreme behavior.

I make that point because … well … all of this makes the moments you really do find an excuse to not stand up for your principles extremely important.  They are important because your principles are your means of integrating what you know, knowledge, and what you feel <moral> which enables you to assess value of individual decisions and choices. In other words, the value assessment provides the signpost for doing what is right or doing what is wrong.

In other words … your principles are applied to Life to organize and control the path of your Life <and as a larger sense … of society>.

In other words … principles affect all systems of law in effect today and, in effect, provide us with the signposts for guidance even above the law.

In other words … principles permit you to focus on what is in my best interest without doing so at the expense of the best interest of society as a whole.

Yeah.

All that sounds good.

But if you have some strong principles you will inevitably worry that if you live by your principles … doing what you believe is right and the right thing to do … in what you perceive is a ‘dog eat dog’ world … you will get chewed up.

You worry that doing the right thing and having principles will actually hinder them in their journey toward their ambition.

Think about what I just wrote.

I suggest you do so because we older folk spend a shitload of time ranting about the altruism focus of the young … that they want to ‘do good’ but don’t want to ‘do work.’

We are missing the point.

In fact, we may be missing something we should be paying attention to.

Most of these young people simply don’t want to compromise their principles. They are not being dreamers nor are they being Pollyannaish with a perspective to the world, in fact they are possibly seeing the world better than we old folk are.

They want to work.

They want to run businesses.

They want to be productive and be part of some company where they can be part of a them doing and making something.

They just don’t want to compromise their principles.

I use the young to make an example but everyone walks this line.

The line?

Your good gets tugged toward the side of bad.

And, yes, the bad gets tugged toward the side of good.

Anyway.

This was a semi-sad post for me to write.

Sad in that it seems like we have forgotten the power of principles … and I sometimes think we believe the system is driving our behavior, and our selective stance with regard to our principles in the moment,  and success.

Sad in that I think we forget the system shouldn’t dictate our use of principles, nor should Life, but rather it is the people who build and make up the system and, therefore, they dictate the definition of principled behavior.

Sad in that I think sometimes we older folk appear to cynically view the system as ‘it is what it is … deal with it … do what you need to do … or you will lose.’

Sad in the younger people view the system as ‘it is what it is … I don’t like it … I will not compromise’ … and they are electing to try and avoid it … and many of us older folk are ignoring them as naïve.

Sad in that … well … how is any of this I just noted, in any way, a successful formula for the future?

Look.

Life makes dealing with your principles a constant struggle. The real point is that you can fulfill your ambition & maintain your principles, you just have to decide to not find an excuse to not stand up for your principles.

To be clear … we can all find an excuse to not stand up for our principles.

To be clear … we can actually stand up for our principles and still sometimes find we are standing up for the wrong things and in the wrong way.

To be clear … this will not be a one-time choice. It will be an ongoing calculation throughout your entire Life, a decision that must be revisited repeatedly, week after week, moment after moment as new decisions unfold.

I say that because in business, even if you gaze into the ‘principle crystal ball’, it is never a one time choice nor is it an unchanging choice. Business is ever changing and the leaders of a business are constantly being challenged and responding in an ever changing way in which your principles are tested in a variety of sometimes seemingly innocuous ways.

Business has a nasty habit of challenging a leader’s character almost more than it does his/her skills.

Business has a nasty habit of challenging your own character almost more than it does your skills.

Therefore, principles and principled behavior needs to constantly be assessed … and judged. In other words. Events demand to be met head on.

In the end, all I can do is leave you with one thought — I am not sure there is a worse feeling than looking back and wishing you had been more principled. Period.

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

“Do you admire men of principle?

That would depend, I suppose, upon what set of principles you’re speaking of.”

Well.

Don’t you find that principles inject an almost moribund inflexibility in the people who subscribe to them?”

The Hollow Men

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

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

“No enterprise can exist for itself alone.

It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others…or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.”

Calvin Coolidge

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“Let’s be honest. There’s not a business anywhere that is without problems. Business is complicated and imperfect. Every business everywhere is staffed with imperfect human beings and exists by providing a product or service to other imperfect human beings.”

Bob Parsons

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

Originally posted in 2017

Let me take a minute and discuss “fraternite” in business.

Just a reminder but “fraternite” is one of the  French values of Liberté, Fraternité and Egalité (“liberty, equality, fraternity/brotherhood” the national motto of France).

Anyway. Business. Inevitably a great organization exhibits both efficient AND effective progress. What typically creates that combination is part discipline, part structure (systems), part leadership, all glued together by “fraternité”. That ‘glue’ is most often discussed in the American business world as ‘a vision’ or maybe ‘a purpose’ or even ‘culture.’ We do so because we Americans hate any kind of lack of specificity. But the truth is that the most common bond of a great organization is a more nebulous concept, i.e., one of “fraternité”.

Or.

“Any man aspires to liberty, to equality, but he cannot achieve it without the assistance of other men, without fraternity.”

Napoleon

Oddly enough, while this sounds like relatively common sense, I kind of feel like business itself needs a revolution to overturn the current thinking to accommodate what should be common sense.

What do I mean? Current business is kind of in a wacky spot. It talks a lot about vision and purpose and culture as if they are “things” — like maybe a lighthouse anyone can see as they bob around the chaotic sea of business life to find a way home. By the way, I would argue that is a very individualistic thought — “I can find my way home” type thought – and not really a team thought <but that could quite easily be debated>.

Regardless. Fraternity is more like “everyone not only knowing what they need to do to keep the ship afloat but actually pitching in whether needed or not because they love the ship itself.” That may sound like some wacky nuance, but I have to warn people that revolutions can kind of gain some momentum off of some fairly wacky things on occasion. By the way, this thought is a more nebulous “I feel this way” aspect of organizational culture and, as noted many times, if it cannot be measured or indexed or scored.

** note: most older leaders into today’s business just don’t like that kind of shit – things they cannot measure or score.

Anyway. Not to beat this metaphor to death, but I do believe we need a semi-revolution in the way business organizations are created and run and managed. I think we may need that revolution because “fraternité” as a core principle just ain’t the way business is run today. And, yes, it should be viewed as a “core” principle because … uhm … when discipline falls apart, when structure falls apart, when leadership falls apart what keeps you on the battlefield and fighting is … yeah … “fraternité.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people talk about a “community” or “company team” or some other nice sounding platitude which sounds a lot like “fraternité”, but its mostly lip service. Its lip service because fraternité is a ‘collective’ thought and most businesses reward and incentivize individuals.

Anyway. On a bigger organizational level I worry about how an idea like this is getting suffocated by generational issues <younger people desire something and older people think they know the best> and maybe an outcome-is-the-only-thing-that-matters worldview versus a belief business should incorporate altruistic aspects. Both of those conflicts are HUGE issues. I have written about in 1200+ word thought pieces on both of these but, on the former, the best piece I can share is from Corporate Rebels “Cut The Crap: The Made-Up Nonsense About Generations At Work” which states all people want meaning at work (regardless of age or generational label).

I actually believe we need some revolutionary thinking on the latter. To me we have a bunch of people who look at business and turn away to non-profit because … well … I fear that they only believe they can change the world through more altruistic pursuits and not traditional business. And, yes, they are important and good pursuits but, from a larger perspective, business drives the world. Business makes shit that makes lives easier and healthier and impacts the home and life in ways that it is difficult to imagine let alone outline in a few words <and the business office/working groups creates behavioral cues which ripple out into culture>.

Somehow … someway … we need to insert the ‘believers of principles and principled behavior’ into the business world with all of their ambition and hope and remind them, empower them and enable them that they can change the world.

That they can make the world a better place. They can make society and people and lives better. And they can do it in and through business, not just altruistic career opportunities. If we do that, and do that well, I tend to believe we will build more organizations driven at its core by a sense of “fraternité” rather than a bunch of documents setting out some guiding or shared values, vision and purpose which everyone says “okay … let’s do that.”

What I do know is that … well … read the following quote:

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“I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.”

Alan Greenspan

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

I do believe we need to be drawing some lines in business. And I don’t mean company handbook type lines or even some well-crafted ‘lines’ in “how we conduct our business” or “who we are” but maybe they are more lines with regard to some unwritten principles.

I say that because when you can gather a group of people together who share a strong set of principles they will walk straight into a hail of bullets to not only survive, but to get good shit done.

==========

“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

Oscar Wilde

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Now. Business absolutely makes dealing with your principles a constant struggle. It can kind of suffocate your principles in between the pragmatic aspects of getting shit done <discipline & structure> and how that shit is designed to meet specific objectives/results and the faux burden of some vision or grander purpose which “you know is important to us therefore it should be important to you”, i.e., extrinsic importance not intrinsic importance. Frankly, when suffocated by these bookends you don’t have a lot of elbow room for any type of true, intangible, unsolicited camaraderie.

The fraternité is more forced than natural. Obviously, when it is not natural it is not as strong.

In the end.

Fraternité in business. I believe we have forgotten this. And while I do believe many of us have forgotten how to draw lines with regard to our principles I tend to believe business, in general, has simply decided to just draw lines <in a box in fact> and say “there you go”, i.e., there are your principles and rules for camaraderie.

That is kind of whack.

Look. I can honestly tell you that being a senior leader in a business and organization you like <you do not have to love> may be one of the greatest experiences anyone can ever have. What makes that experience truly great is when you are fortunate enough to foster something intangible, something that really cannot be measured, and something which doesn’t earn you some performance bonus at the end of the year … it is when you stumble upon the sense of fraternité.

I am sure some organizational guru will send me a link to “steps to build a fraternité organization” and … well … good for them. I tend to believe this is one of those intangible things that is created less by some “how to” guide or some formula and more by simple good intentions combined with some good discipline, construct and leadership. To steal another word from the motto, by creating a fraternité organization you inevitably create liberté for the organization to be the best version of what it can be.

This is what I thought about today and “liberty, equality, fraternity <brotherhood>”. With that I imagine I should end with where I began … no enterprise can exist for itself alone. That is the foundation for a fraternité organization. Ponder.

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

“What I fear I avoid.

What I fear I pretend does not exist.

What I fear is quietly killing me.

Would there were a festival for my fears, a ritual burning of what is coward in me, what is lost in me.

Let the light in before it is too late. “

 Jeanette Winterson from “The Green Man”

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

“Autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go.”

Unknown

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

Well <part 1>.

I just read a an article in one of those local papers you can pick up at Healthy Grocery stores which attempted to discuss how this time of the year <October/November/December> is the season of ‘decay and death’ … and how it was a potent time to connect with the dead <and highlighted several celebrations around the world which do just that>.

This thought was combined with the thought we human folk balk at connecting with death because it … well … seems morbid to do so.

and summer regrets

               getting rid

       of winter wishes

summer and i

=======

Well <part 2>.

I balk at the whole concept of ‘decay & death’ as well as the ‘morbid‘ thought.

Simplistically, seasons remind of us the cycle of Life <not death> and that death, in and of itself a sad event, contains at its very core the very simple concept that without Death, there is no Life. This was immortalized in pop culture by Blood Sweat & Tears in their absolutely fabulous song “and when I die”:

====

And when I die and when I’m dead, dead and gone,
there’ll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.

I’m not scared of dying and I don’t really care.
If it’s peace you find in dying, well, then let the time be near.
If it’s peace you find in dying, when dying time is here,
just bundle up my coffin cause it’s cold way down there,
I hear that’s it’s cold way down there, yeah, crazy cold way down there.
And when I die and when I’m gone,
there’ll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.

====

While each Life is a stepping stone for every future generation each death represents a stepping stone for … well … the future.

I don’t need any Eastern religion wisdom to remind me of this, I think we all know this.

Now, I will admit that connecting with this thought is much much easier for us when we remove any personalized death and accept it as simply a turning of generations. Therefore, one of the reasons we do not celebrate death is because it can get too personal. And if that is a reason it sure as hell is a good one.

But death itself?

While death is something we dislike, facing seasons remain something we must face year in and year out. It is a constant affirmation of the turning of time and that some things we may have gained will most likely be inevitably lost in the natural turn of time.

And, yes, as we near January 1st, I am reminded that Winter is the time of Life’s strategic retreat and conservation of what gives it all life.

It is not death. And it is not decay.

It is Life’s thoughtful way to insure its existence and survival.

It is the time of incubation and rest and restoration for all things to come in the following year.

I could also suggest that winter is a time of reflection and, well, comfort. In winter’s dark nights the stars are at their clearest and we have the opportunity to see them as the sparks of potential and wishes and dreams and Life. Uhm. And dreaming is never a bad thing particularly during the ‘ebb tide of seasonal Life.’

I will not argue that as Life recedes in autumn and rests in winter we do, at least emotionally, get closer to connecting with death, but I do balk at thinking of autumn & winter as ‘things associated with death.’

I would argue it actually does a nice job of reminding us we need to let go of things. and, sure, maybe we connect with ‘the dead’ better at this time because it reminds us to celebrate what we had and embrace letting go.

And that is the thing about winter, it demands to not only be felt but also that you meet it on its terms. Even better Winter demands us to let go of things we most typically hold onto with ragged claws.

You cannot refuse its existence and you cannot ignore what was because what is … is … well … is starkly different. Where Life was once obvious it is now starkly absent.

I would note that all Eastern mysticism and ‘being in touch with the universe’ and the ‘natural ebb of the earth’ and all that stuff, at its core, just suggests that we pay attention. In other words, pay attention to whatever energy seasons give us and more often than not that energy it gives us is … uhm … just good ole fashioned thinking. It gives us the energy to think about our lives, lives lost and lives yet to be lived.

Acknowledgement of all of that increases your overall connection not just with ‘the universe’, but rather to the eternal pattern of life and invests a sense of energy into pretty much everything <yourself and Life>.

And just as Death breaks things down to the bare essence, winter does the same.

And maybe that is the connection.

When things are at their barest, when we are drawn closer to endings rather than beginnings, we inevitably ponder the ‘great perhaps.’

Back in September I wrote this on the first day of Fall:

I think we all seek a great perhaps of “what I know can be”. I think we all know what a better world really looks like. I think we all want to see the beauty that can be found in what is better in everyone.

And maybe it is within Fall and the falling leaves we begin to better grasp that failed plans and failed dreams can beget new plans and new dreams. And maybe it is within Winter where , in ts barest of bare essences, we are forced to begin envisioning what could be in plans and dreams because it is left to us standing in the bare environment around us.

What I do know about all seasons is that they are markers of Time and, poetically speaking, Time is always hungry for many of the things we dearly want to endure and do.

This makes Time both beautiful and doomed. Yeah. Time is beautiful and doomed. And that is where I really believe the whole ‘morbid time of the year’ goes astray.

for it seems all of Fall’s stars

                       have fallen

and often summer and i

run through the last warm days

through the cool grass

       gathering stars caught in people’s dreams

with the intent

           to toss them to Winter

through windows of dawn.

Summer & i

======

We, especially in the West, hunger for time.

Conversely, time itself <to us Western folk> has a hunger and its hunger is for ‘things.’

It is a nasty emptiness waiting to be filled.

Well.

If there is one thing humans are fucking great at, it is filling time and stuffing whatever we can into any emptiness we can find.

Death and dying makes us reflect. It forces us to do so. Just as the bare often starkness of Winter does.

And it makes us reflect on what ‘stuff’ we have crammed into whatever Time we have had.

Oh. Maybe what it really forces us to do is reflect upon time. and that is where death truly makes us feel uncomfortable, not any morbid feeling, but rather it’s just that we have been indoctrinated to focus on living, living life to its fullest, not wasting any time, to do lists that never get completed and just doing shit <just do it!>.

Nowhere in that list of shit I just shared does death have a place. In fact. Death represents the exact opposite of everything society & our culture almost demands we think about 24/7.

And when forced to face death, or feel a need to connect, we are much less likely to celebrate but rather assess … assess our ‘doing mantra’ versus ‘stop.’

Look.

Most of us don’t purposefully ignore connecting with death and those who have passed away because of sadness <because if it were we would be more likely to actually do it because the opposite of sadness is reflecting upon the inevitable happiness>, but rather because death and past lives force us to reflect upon our ‘doing accomplishment’ <as well as it forces us to stop … which compounds the feeling of ‘shit, I haven’t done enough and I am not doing anything now’>.

Yeah.

If you can get beyond the ‘doing’ aspect, inherently death is more about sadness <loss of something or someone or time> more so than morbidity. Conquer the sadness and you have conquered death.

And all of this is just not that difficult <if you are willing to actually think about it>.

Several cultures do celebrate the autumnal solstice as the time life & death is closest. I would argue it is less a celebration but rather recognition of that which came before, and that which is dying, so that what will be will come forth.

Generations beget generations just as falls beget springs.

Death begets life.

This doesn’t mean we should celebrate impending death but rather recognize, even in sadness, life & beauty resides in the future.

Fall is of beautiful dying.

Winter is of starkness of death.

Spring is of rebirth from death.

This doesn’t mean you can find beautiful things to enjoy throughout any season.  Seasons simply remind us of the fact time does not stand still and no matter how hard we try and fill up the emptiness time offers us day in and day out … leaves fall, winter comes and spring arises.

I believe it is the Celtic wheel of the year describes this time of the year as Samhain — “the veil between the worlds is thin.” Just as several other cultures, they use his time to reflect upon “that which was.” In my pea like brain it is a celebration of navel gazing. It is an intentional event to purposefully explore the valuable relationship not only between Life and Death but the past and the future.

Listen to the cry of falling leaves,

            but winter breaks the silence

and warms us with words

of how to change it all

      before the Fall completely ends.

So, So

Look.

I don’t believe we do not celebrate death and dying because we think it is morbid. I tend to believe we do not traditionally do so because we, as in Western civilization versus Eastern, don’t celebrate reflection.

We treat reflection more as  a personal thing and not a larger more public event and celebration.

Should we celebrate reflection? Shit. I don’t know. But understanding that seasons can offer us enlightening thoughts about how we actually think about death & Life & holding on & letting go is surely not a bad thing.

As for Fall and Winter? I do not think of death and decay. I actually think of flowers.

Huh?

I credit Mark Strand for making me think Winter is the time to bring flowers into your Life as he describes Winter in his poem called Blizzard of One:

“A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that …”

Mark Strand <Blizzard of One>

Every funeral deserves flowers. Every Winter deserves thoughts of Life. Ponder.

===========

“I see a lot of people in unstimulating relationships. If people were a little less scared of ending things they’d get more out of life.  You meet the right person at the right time and they fulfill a certain something in your life. You fulfill something in theirs.

But there’s a time limit to that. “

Laura Marling

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“When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.”

Sigmund Freud

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So. Unstimulating relationships. This is actually about business and about ‘time limits.’

As a business manager you end up grasping a couple of truths about your employees and their relationship with what they do, their work, their careers and the company.

The first truth is that many of the employees are just doing their job. They are in a relatively unstimulating relationship with their job & career and they are kind of okay with that.

As a manager you genuinely try and make the relationship a little more simulating for them and, if you are truly genuine, while the these employees may never get as passionate or interested as you would like they appreciate you caring enough to try and, on occasion, will try harder for you and the company. This doesn’t mean they don’t care about their work and, in fact, if you highlight the contribution and impact their efforts make, they will care, just not find work particularly stimulating. I mention this as a first truth to acknowledge, which some organizational development people do not, that to some people a job is a job – no more and no less.

The second truth is that there are some employees who are actively seeking stimulated relationship with their jobs, careers and the company. If they are in an unstimulating relationship, suffice it to say, they will make you miserable out of their own miserableness.

As a manager you genuinely try and keep these employees stimulated. If you do it well, these people kill it. They are absolute monster achieving workers/thinkers/doers in the work place. Get it wrong with these employees and … well … most leave to find some stimulating relationship.

Understanding these two truths is surprisingly like getting a pail of cold water thrown in your face.

Well. At least it was for me.

I am not sure it was the same for others, but this may have been one of the most difficult things for me to understand, and deal with, when I moved from managing a group <where you get to hire everyone and try to have them match your attitude> to managing a company, multiple groups, departments and a bunch of people you do not hire yourself.

I, personally, struggled to understand how anyone could come into work each day, be relatively unstimulated and not only do good work, but actually want to come in and do good work every day.

But a lot of people do just that.

It took me awhile.

But I got it. At the same time I also understood that you never really let the unstimulated group of employees remain completely unstimulated.

You kind of never really let them completely start doing their work by rote or like robots. Mostly you just try to give them some positive stimulation on occasion like, as I noted earlier, encourage them to see how they contribute and their impact <this is different than incentivizing or trying to ‘game’ their behavior>.

Anyway.

The reality is that being an employee is a dance. You have a dance partner and sometimes there is a song you hate and do not dance, sometimes there is a song you hate and you are asked <or told> to dance and sometimes there is a good song and you will dance no matter what.

That is a fairly metaphoric example of a stimulating workplace.

But I will point out something I purposefully did. I suggested the bad song is playing in two of the three scenarios.

Yeah.

And that is still a stimulating relationship.

Go figure.

For some reason we seem to think people need to love their jobs all the time <or the significant majority of the time> or inject passion into what we do.

That is, frankly, a little nuts.

Mostly we should be seeking to have employees be proud of what they do <even if they don’t actually love what they do> and, as a manager, be wise enough to know what to overlook.

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“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

William James

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Work is called work, and not ‘play, for a reason.

It’s work.

And sometimes work takes some … well … work.

I could actually argue that the ‘working at work’ can be stimulating if you view it correctly.

But that really doesn’t sound logical enough to invest energy in.

And maybe that is the key to understanding this whole ‘unstimulating relationship” thing – logic.

I can truthfully say that behind closed doors senior managers talk far too much about “logical” ways to stimulate employees and tap into some mysterious passion muscle we absurdly believe every employee has within <to be focused on our business and their work within our business>.

Once again … that is kind of nuts.

To be clear. I do believe everyone has a passion muscle within, but to think it can randomly be directed toward ‘work’ <which, I will remind everyone, is called ‘work’ because it is work … and not play or relaxation or ‘fun’> is the nuts part.

Logically we should just accept the fact that many employees have mentally come to grips with a job in which they are not in an overly stimulated relationship with.

That doesn’t mean they don’t want to do a good job nor does it mean they will not care it just means that their job is more a paycheck and not a career.

All that said, let me close with where I started … “time limits.”

All employees have limits in an unstimulating relationship – all: the ones who live with being unstimulated and the ones who actively seek stimulation. I am fairly sure most employees don’t create tangible definable limits they more often probably fall into the “I will know when it is time.” 

All business managers should recognize that all employees have ‘time limits’ when it comes to anything unstimulating. What that means is you cannot get away with being an uninvolved, uninterested, un-energy creating manager for too long. I don’t mean to imply many managers do that, but I will note that creating stimulation and seeking to energize a stimulating relationship between your employees and your business is hard work.

It isn’t about some motto or slogan.

It isn’t about donuts in the mornings and fun team meetings on Fridays.

It is about finding ways to show employees that their work is respected, their contributions are valued and that there are opportunities to grow as a person <intellectually, skills or responsibilities>. Yeah. I just offered that up as a solution to stimulate relationships and nowhere in that was any activity or initiative. All I outlined was possible destinations – mind, body or leadership.

Nothing stimulates an employee business relationship more than being a business that suggest they will enable an individual to ‘be more than they are today’ if they have the time and interest. In my mind businesses with an unstimulated relationship with their employees may be doing ‘things’ but they are just going through the motions , maybe using too much logic, to create some false stimulation.

Here is the truth. Show people where they can go and tell them you believe in them and a shitload will be stimulated, all on their own, to engage in the relationship with their job and work. Ponder.

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

Anwar Sadat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is a truth not maybe people discuss.

Success should demand some sacrifice.

Uh oh.

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

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

This is an incredibly easy trap to fall into.

Why?

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

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

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

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

Let me be clear.

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

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

Adam Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the truth.

We exist for some finite period of time.

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

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

Shit.

What happens if you fuck up the unimportant things?

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

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

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

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

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

Everything includes some expense.

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

And therein lies the issue.

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

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

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

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

This is just a race to the bottom.

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

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

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

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

You actions matter.

How you achieve a win matters.

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

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

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

José Saramago

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“We are all joined in a circle of stories.”
Linda Joy Myers

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“Stories are like spiders, with all their long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.”
Neil Gaiman

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In ‘the experience economy’ or ‘experience as value’ world far too many people are simply laying out ‘experience’ as some amorphous wonderful blob of ‘do it well’. Sure. Sometimes it is “customer experience”, sometimes user experience, but more often than not someone stands up in front of a big screen and suggest “experience is the new value.”

*** note: experience is an extension of product value, not value in and of itself. It is an expansion of proof. If the experience doesn’t add value to the product itself, i.e., just be entertainment, it creates unmatched anticipation-to-expectation reality in usage.

The truth is that not all experiences are created equal, competing on experiences is a race to the bottom (or a commodity in which you can charge less and less for) and any experience value truly resides on the experience within the experience.

Let me explain. If you want to find real value, the stuff that drives up experience value, begin identifying the experiences within the experience. A simple trip to the coffee shop becomes an order, an eavesdropped conversation, a thought on how that related to something you may have heard the night before, what your roommate would think of it, the conversation you are having in your head if you talked with them, how that makes you feel, and then your amazement that all that happened to you in an unexpected moment on a bland expected transactional experience you were doing.

The value is found within the threads in individual experiences.

While we like to think not everyone “sees the things no one else does” the truth is everyone sees the experiences within the experience.

In different terms it is actually an ability to take advantage of the ‘now’. An ability to expand experienced time – in a good way. Conceptually this is adding dimension to a linear, or horizontal, time continuum. I bring that up because many businesses map out ‘customer journeys’ <which can be a helpful tool> and, yet, that linearity can make you miss the experience within, which is expandable, and reflects essential parts to value. The best example I have of this is when I speak with UI/UX people and suggest ‘frictionless’ can actually diminish value and that purposeful friction moments can actually expand value.

But. To be clear, many of these experiences are unplanned. They simply intersect with a standard continuum of experiences representing added value. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that many experiences within the experience is a reflection of the fact one person’s experience is intersecting with another’s experience <or a number of them> creating an expandable moment as it shoves multiple experiences into a time space planned for one essential experience.

Yeah. In those moments, at its simplest, experience goes vertical and, at its most complex, it becomes a spinning helix of multiple experiences. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out this is also where ‘stories’ occur, not in the grand experience but rather in the experience within the experience – the moments that become stories to the one who experienced it.

Anyway. All of that can seem overwhelming and create some uncertainty on how to optimize this whole “experience economy” thing being thrown around. All you really have to do is craft an experience that has experience opportunities nested within and then make sure you get credit when someone triggers a nested experience. You will not always get it right, but I can guarantee you will get it righter than someone who simply says “its all about the experience.”

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“NFT stands for non-fungible token.  Physical money and cryptocurrencies are “fungible,” meaning they can be traded or exchanged for one another. They’re also equal in value — one dollar is always worth another dollar; one Bitcoin is always equal to another Bitcoin.  NFTs are different. Each has a digital signature that makes it impossible for NFTs to be exchanged for or equal to one another (hence, non-fungible).”

(Forbes)

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I am not here today to argue whether NFTs are a thing or a non-thing, I am here today to discuss why they are being discussed as a thing or non-thing. Let me begin by suggesting the NFT is an imaginative transformation of existing art.

I say that because imaginative transformations do not take place in a vacuum. In my mind, NFTs are an unintended consequence of the decay of tangible value in people’s minds and the increase in intangible value. This decay has flattened value to a point where people question everything. I say that to point out things like NFTs are nonlinear outcomes of a variety of things and shouldn’t be judged solely on, well, they just shouldn’t be judged solely. They are a thing of things and to explain, or assess, an NFT one has to dive into the sometimes-difficult unseen stimulus which created the unforeseen elevation of NFTs to some status as a possible vehicle of real value <however you would like to define value>.

In addition. Things like NFTs are simply a new version of a “memory palace” <information spaces: stories turned into architecture or abstract concepts transformed into imaginary houses/palaces: Jonathon Spence: The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci>. Information spaces are vehicles in which we communicate narratives and stories. To be clear. These narratives are communicated with an intent in mind – create a mindset or create a value. In this case the stories <the NFTs> outpaced the existing media therefore created one of its own. This story should remind us all that an NFT is simply the interface between the medium and the message.

Anyway. It is quite possible that in the flattening out of society, and thinking, in society (generally speaking) that value and art have also flattened. A classic piece of literature or a Van Gogh has been bludgeoned by anti-intellectualism, or simplistic discussions of capitalism, to a place where the common person has flattened its narratives, stories and inevitably its value. And then along comes NFTs, and even the ‘metaverse’, in which there is a new dimensionality being offered which ‘unflattens’ value, art and thinking to a new generation. They are both “information spaces” in which to create stories. Aw heck. I don’t know. I am speaking in possibilities and the truth is NFTs may simply be the Netscape of our time. But the bottom line is we, society and people, get the narratives we deserve. Empty (or intangible) value just may be the narrative of the day. What I do know is that the exploratory spatial dimensionality of technology has always been of incredible importance in terms of value offered/value received. I also know that art, architecture, anything creative, has always been dominated by a sub culture which inspires a new innovation and mainstream plucks out the things it believes it can market and profit from to a larger audience. This has certainly changed from the past in its scope but, generally speaking, the Long Tail concept is still the Long Tail concept and a subculture which can identify a market has the potential to stay in existence for a healthy lifetime.

In the end.

You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. The rise of NFTs isn’t interesting in and of itself, it’s interesting in unintended consequences. What value eggs will it break along the way?

Within its ‘digital scarcity value’ looms a larger issue with consequences way beyond the NFT itself. Its not its ‘intangibility’ per se, its just that in the past anything intangible which has gained value has typically been an extension of historical tangible value. For example, a dollar, or fiat currency, has centuries of established exchange value as well as centuries before of value grounded in tangible ‘gold’ as a standard. In other words, the foundation of value, if you scan far enough back, has its roots in something tangible. But in a world where we have convinced a generation that ‘experience’, in and of itself, is value or ‘perception has value’, it is easy to see how a ‘non-fungible asset’ could simply be seen as ‘having value.’ We have flattened the dimensionality of real value to a point where value simply becomes ‘in the eye of the beholder’ untethered from anything tangible. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the similarities to ‘truth is in the eye of the beholder’ attitudes sweeping across the world. It reminds me of the thought “if no one is an expert, why can’t I be one.”

Look. I have no idea whether NFTs will become a real ‘thing’, but what I do know is a real thing is our understanding of what value is. To be clear, I say the same thing about Bitcoin. But. If I were a ‘fungible’ product, I would be eyeing ‘non-fungible’ value with some fear – not skepticism. If ‘non-fungible’ convinces people it represents real value, we have stepped onto the slippery slope of untethered value. Someone smarter than I will have to tell you whether this is good or bad, but it certainly feels like it has some basic bad consequences to a goods & service exchange economic world and certainly to capitalism economies. But that’s me.

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obfuscate

This is the word to use when evasion is achieved by clouding the issue.

Creating a smoke-screen.

prevaricate, evade, dodge

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“When shrouded meanings and grim intentions are nicely polished up and pokerfaced personae are generously palming off their fantasy constructs, caution is the watchword, since rimpling water on the well of truth swiftly obscures our vision and perception.

(“Trompe le pied/wrong foot.”)”

Erik Pevernagie

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So. There is possibly nothing more aggravating in business than someone not answering “the” question. To be clear on what I am speaking about. The person answers a question just not the one you asked.

I am not going to argue that some questions are not easy to answer. I won’t even argue that we get asked questions we don’t know the answers to, but the situation dictates we make something up <yes … that happens in business>. But abandoning the question completely is complete bullshit.

But you know what?

I think the main reason it is so aggravating is because it is truly a reflection of intentions. There is even a book called The Anthropology of Intentions by a professor, Alessandro Duranti, who kind of tackles this whole discussion of intentions and words. He offers us the thought of ‘intentional discourse’ wherein an individual filters words through their beliefs & desires and their plans & goals to guide the discourse <regardless of whether the rest of the people want it guided that way>. In other words, using another phrase he offers us, by engaging in an intentional continuum people ponder their use of words through self-interest motivations <some good & some bad>.

By the way I am fairly sure I mangled his academic masterpiece, but you get the point.

Ah. “You get the point.” I share that again because while we sit there aggravated at someone who completely avoided answering the question asked we almost always also sit there wanting to invest a little of our own energy trying to assess why they did it. Because, in our aggravated minds, in its most simplistic viewing, avoiding the question is solely about shifting attention – away from something and toward something else.

…………… question deflection …………

Sure. It could be something as simple as steering you away from their lack of knowledge and steering you toward something they may actually know. But, in most cases, a full abandonment of a specific question is complete & utter deflection.

In the intelligence community they call this effort to shift attention as deflection or misdirection. Magicians do something similar getting people to focus on one thing and away from the trick itself. Completely avoiding the question is the business version of a distract-the-audience approach. It is this weird moment in which someone pretends to answer the question by actually answering some other question that magically appeared to replace the question really asked. It’s almost like entering an alternative universe for a while.

Sadly, aggravated or not, the more practiced the deception <the more practiced the business magician is> the more likely you hesitate to step in <and the more you get aggravated as you hesitate> and correspondingly … the more many of these people actually believe deception works.

It is maddening.

Worse? If they are good at it, when someone responds to a question by not addressing the points of the question, thereby avoiding the issue itself, it doesn’t create unrelated discussion to the issue … it simply avoids the issue in totality.

Well. I am fairly sure we have all sat there in a meeting and watched something like this unfolding right before our eyes. The visceral response, the aggravation, we have to this ‘answer evasion’ situation is most likely found in the revelation it is occurring (watching it unfold before our eyes). Philosophically, we can see that through some internal conviction to retain something they feel like they should own <their reputation, their title, their perceived intelligence, their whatever> they justify evading the question.

Conviction. Yeah. I just used ‘internal conviction.’ This means their intentions reflect they are more important than not only the question itself … but you. You are not even dignified with an answer.

It is irksome <at its least worst>.

It is loathsome <at its most worst>.

Look. I give a partial pass to the asshats you can see who have some answer they want to give everyone, regardless of what question is asked, and blurt it out when given the opportunity. They haven’t deflected the question they just ignored it as unimportant to what they want to say and have been planning to say no matter what has been said up to that point. It’s the ones you know heard the question and just ignored it. Or avoided it. Or just didn’t answer it despite the fact they heard every word, every syllable and every intention from the question giver. In other words, they intentionally do not answer the question.

<envision a deep sigh here>

I want people to face questions head on. And what makes this even more aggravating is that you know these people are quite capable of taking things head on.

How do I know that? These are the same people who will attack, or ‘aggressively question’, the intentions of the question giver themselves. It is a common tactic for the answer avoiders. The natural instinct is to ‘defend’; to answer the attack. Fuck that. I want to say “just answer the fucking question asked.”

How else do I know these people are quite capable of taking questions head on? These are the same people who will attack, or ‘aggressively question’, the question itself. This is not a deflection tactic. This is a ‘turn the question back on itself’ tactic. And, once again, your natural instinct is to defend or, well, answer the question you are asked.  Aggravating. I want to say “just answer the fucking question asked, you shithead.”

And maybe what makes this ‘not answering the question asked’ so maddening is that we, most sane pragmatic business people, tend to sit back <after saying “WTF”> and try and unravel why it happened and what the hell just happened. Unless you are in an interview scenario <in which you always have an opportunity, one-to-one, to hunker down and hammer out a clear answer> you are most likely in a room with other people and the non-answer has sent at least some of the people careening down a completely different road.

That makes it even MORE aggravating.

One intentional non answer to a question can completely derail a meeting or a discussion. That is intentional discourse. Or how about the other phrase from that academic’s book: engaging in an intentional continuum.

Oh. One last way you know these asshats are intentionally not answering the question is when they cleverly decline to answer the question with the infamous head fake answer: “I don’t know the answer to that question. I’ll work on finding the information for you and then get back to you with an answer” <and they have no intention of ever getting back to you>.

Yeah. You know … sure as shit … they have no plans to work on it and will never ‘get back to you’ unless you call them on it. They are intentionally refusing to answer the question assuming the conversation will move on and, in a laundry list of other shit to do, that this one will either never make the list or be so low on the list they can stiff arm you on answering based on “working on things more important.”

Its bullshit. You know its bullshit. They know its bullshit.

Well.

Fuck you.

Fuck you and the non-answering horse you rode in on.

In my mind a good well-articulated question demands some accountability. The one given the question is now accountable for the answer. They may try and deflect and they may just answer a completely different question, but a question asked exists, it does not disappear. You cannot get away from it.

Let me share a graphic example of why accountability remains whether the question dodger likes it or not.

You open your front door in the morning and there is a nice pile of dog shit squarely in the middle of your front door opening. You either clean it up or you avoid it. The question dodger never acknowledges the pile and steps over it moving on to something else. The shit stays at the front door and over time the smell increases and the flies crowd around. A good question unanswered is just like that. And a question dodger cannot avoid the smell in the end.

All that said. My message to the asshats who completely do not answer the question asked:  You will be accountable to the question and to cleaning up the mess … now … or later <and quit aggravating me by not answering the question, you shithead>.

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Author note:

When I reread this, which took me less than a ½ hour to write, I was a little surprised by how … well … aggravated the tone was.

Some ‘fucks’ and ‘asshats’.

I left it as is because as a 50something business guy who has always attempted to take on what needs to be taken on regardless of how painful it may have been <and career wise possibly less than prudent> I get a little angry about how the business world has become incredibly unkind to the risk takers & truth tellers and seems to reward the less-than-competent and ‘political maneuverers’ more often than it should. That’s my excuse for why I let this one stand as it does.

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“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”

André Gide

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Ok. I am always wary of those who come out blazing by claiming to speak “the truth” mostly because I believe rarely are things black & white or that truth is easy. This wariness of mine means I am optimistically cynical.

This can sometimes be construed as a contrarian <with some clear pragmatic boundaries>, but, it is not. Truth is hard and having a fact, or even some facts, on your side doesn’t guarantee you are holding the Truth card.

All this leads me to say that in today’s world I see too much lazy thinking <or possibly lazy sloppy communication>. This is most typically fund in people quick to select the facts they want to use and ignore others and then pontificate on “the truth.”

Anyway. My inherent cynicism makes me question everything upfront <or maybe one would hope as I have become older I can judge what to question and what to accept upfront>. I actually believe this is good use of cynicism. Instead of cynicism dragging things down it is used to structurally build UP, brick by brick, fact by fact, the truth.

In old times <like really really old> this questioning would be a version of Socratic questioning <but I am not as smart as good ole Socrates>. Socratic questioning focuses on the importance of questioning in learning <Socrates actually thought that questioning was the only real form of teaching>. Simplistically, Socratic questioning highlights the difference between systematic and fragmented thinking.

It teaches us to dig beneath the surface of ideas.

It teaches us the value of developing questioning minds in cultivating deep learning.

So. I imagine my point is that questioning <a version of conflict> actually helps us get closer to the truth. In a way, despite the fact ‘debating’ sounds glamorous, it is actually what I would call ‘the grinding of truth.’ You grind your way through the fragments until you have uncovered the truth.

The art of Socratic questioning is tightly aligned to the idea of critical thinking mostly because it ties the art of questioning to excellence of thought. To summarize this thought “Socratic” means a systematic approach in the interest in assessing truth or plausibility of things.

Both critical thinking and Socratic questioning share a common end — seeking meaning and truth.

Critical thinking provides the conceptual tools for understanding how the mind functions in its pursuit of meaning and truth.

Socratic questioning employs those tools in framing questions essential to the pursuit of meaning and truth.

The beauty of critical thinking skills is that it establishes an additional level of thinking to our thinking, an inner voice of reason, that monitors, assesses, and reforms our ideas/opinions/thoughts <in a more rational direction> and affects our feelings and actions. Socratic discussion cultivates that inner voice through an explicit focus on using the “outer voice” with directed, disciplined questioning. This becomes important because everyone has biases and some heauristic thinkng embedded so introducuing external/outer voice increases the likelihood you will not be blinded by your bias or beliefs.

So. What this means is that a shitload of the people adamantly stating ‘the truth’ (and we seem to hear a lot of these people on radio shows and talk shows and “advocates” of some special interest) are actually lying.

Ok. That lying thought. Maybe I could better say that they aren’t stating truth, but rather opinion under the guise of truth <and duping a significant amount of people along the way>. Yeah. Some of them are quite crafty in that they will sprinkle a fact or two into their opinion in the attempt to buttress up the opinion. Now, most are smart enough to know they are cherry-picking a fact or tow and assembling them in a way that looks impenetrable (but its actually flimsy), but they have made a choice. A choice to state truth when it is simply opinion <and shame on them for that … particularly if they do it under the ‘freedom of speech’ heading as well as if they have some ability to impact people>.

The truth behind the truth is that it does come with choice.

Try this on for size.

With awareness of some truths comes choice, and, with choice, freedom or chaos or crisis. This comes from 19th Century philosopher G. W. F. Hegel.

Discarding an absolute notion of truth, he saw today’s “truth” merely as a passing “bloom” in an evolving process of new “blooms”.

<let’s just call these stupid blooms … ‘ideas’>

Ideas and truth advance, he believed, only as ideas come into conflict.

This occurs when a counter idea <the antithesis> arises to challenge the status quo <the thesis>. It was this “conflict” or “crisis” which brought about the “higher idea” <the synthesis>.

Now.

Let me be clear.

The Hegelian Dialectic is more of an observation of the way thought systems evolve than it is a suggestion on how systems themselves evolve <so crisis is not an action, but part of thought>. Think of it as maybe a Plato would – someone states a belief or ‘perceived truth’ and the debate is the ‘crisis’ – or when an antithesis point of view is articulated- of which synthesis occurs and, hopefully, truth emerges. I invested some energy explaining that so no one starts running around being crazy trying to drive “crisis” into every frickin’ conversation we have.

That said. Marx and Darwin applied this notion to the social and biological realm. Marx and Communism stood on a pillar of crisis <just called revolution>. The higher social order could only arise from the “crisis” of conflict—the proletariat arising to battle the bourgeoisie. Darwin and Neo-Darwinian theory see the higher biological order arising only from a life and death struggle—survival of the fittest.

So. What this suggests is that truth can only arise from crisis <or in a dialectic world> through debate and discussion.

I know I do not dislike this thought.

As long as we don’t start thinking there is something “magical” in a crisis and see the debate as the synthesis necessary to cultivate truth this is not only healthy but creates some healthy truths.

Anyway.

Crisis is a big word. And easily misunderstood <at least by someone with a pea like brain like me>. I don’t believe we need crisis to create change. Simply some conflict. Simply some debate for god’s sake.

Maybe some questioning of people who state “the truth.”

<then that debate within conflicting point of views could be construed as a ‘crisis’ and Hegel can sleep at night>

All that said I imagine a legitimate concern one could have in reading this is that I am suggesting never ending debate. Or maybe even “unresolved conflict” because diametrically opposed opinions are locked in “absolute truths” and are unwilling to accept anything otherwise.

In other words, we never leave “crisis” mode.

I am not. That is bad. And useless. And dangerous.

But.

The entire idea of “thought” to ‘crisis in debate’ to ‘a clearer truth’ is a viable thought. And maybe that is the immost important truth – it is really really rare to reach an unequivocal truth, we more often simply have a clearer view of truth as it exists within a context, time and place.

So when someone states “absolute truth’ without debate or discussion I think its kinda nuts. Heck. I often think its nuts even after debate or discussion.

Oh.

One last important thought <a REALLY important one in this entire discussion>.

We are as much at fault as the “liar” if we remain silent when facing lies, partial truths or opinions masking as truth.

Silence is the death of debate.

The death of the search for truth. No questioning = no truth.

Think about that the next time you hear something that sounds … well … wrong.

And you remain silent. Your silence is killing truth.

Anyway.

Optimistically cynical in pursuit of truth.  Maybe Dill said it best:

——

“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”

=

Dill, To Kill a Mockingbird

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Do not remain silent in the search as an optimistically cynical view of truth.