===

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

unitarian minister and slavery abolitionist Theodore Parker

==

“However, even if we accept that citizens are not primarily causally responsible for our poor information environments, it could be argued that they nonetheless have a remedial responsibility to mend them.”

Solmu Anttila

===

James Fell, who is a must read for everyone, recently published a piece called “the moral arc of the universe is bullshit.”  James, being James, suggests the arc of human nature is more “go fuck yourself” rather than any commitment to greater good. Anyone who reads my thinking knows I do not agree. But. And this is a big but. As I wrote years ago, I am constantly disappointed with humans. I have come to the conclusion that while people are inherently kind, and the arc of the moral universe does eventually bend toward justice, the arc doesn’t bend unless an exponentially larger amount of morally just people are involved – than the morally unjust people. I have said, again and again, the morally unjust seem to have an outsized power and outsized effect despite their fewer numbers. The corrupt, morally and behaviorally, simply bludgeon society and civilization with a wanton disregard for chaos and mayhem. They act without norms and rules and regulations, and laws are viewed as simply things that other people do. I do not pretend to understand why they think that way or act the way they do, but it worries me how many people view them as successes. What I would point out to those people, and have, is success in the moment is not reflective of success in the future. From the heights of morally corrupt wealth gains, the falls are many and deep. It would behoove us to point that out and maybe even celebrate the fall more often and more loudly.

Which leads me to the arc of humanity.

“I’m trying to make the case that humanity is worth it.”

John Green

If you step back into United States history, I could argue the westward expansion of pioneers fostered many of the Democratic beliefs and practices. What I mean by that is the problems facing pioneers were unique from their past experiences. In fact, many of the problems, and issues, required solutions difficult to understand to the non-pioneers. I could argue every wagon trail, and every ensuing settlement, became an infant republic. I could even argue basic social democracy was embedded in initial settlements as class distinctions almost seemed meaningless where hard work, teamwork, and speculation not only was the line between death and survival, but also thriving in that it could transform whole poverty-stricken communities, or individuals, into a higher wealth strata. It was a unique type of social equality where, in many situations, resilience and hard work was everyone’s initial wealth. The problem in discussing today’s arc of overall humanity is that there is a myth that all these pioneers were unusually individualistic marked by an independence of thought and action and adventure. The reality was the majority of pioneers understood that it took a village to be successful, if not to survive. There was an acknowledged interdependence, and interconnectedness, which created a bond of community and ultimately prosperity. The true individualistic individuals were few and far between and while, mythically, we empower them with superhuman morals and ethics the majority of the truly individualistic people had what James Fell called a ‘fuck you attitude.’ A few became exorbitantly wealthy and powerful (at the expense of others), but for the most part the majority – through hard work and resilience and a sense of community – bent the arc of morality and progress and prosperity.

Which leads me to the larger lesson: there is a difference between myth and reality.

We celebrate individualism (and so-called grit), but in reality, resilience is found in community bonds. Social cohesiveness is simply stronger than any one individual. I will also add that a community of morally just is always more powerful than the morally unjust. Why? The morally unjust are zero-sum and individualistic. Even in a team they always have an eye out to screw the others to their personal benefit. They are constantly seeking to tear down while communities are constantly seeking to build. And maybe that is where I will end this section. Builders always win in the end. I do not pretend to understand people other than I believe people like to build things.

Which leads me back to human involvement with arcs.

“Consensus reality is gone. We are blessed to live now, in the West, in a strange world without

common sense. As fact grows stranger than fiction, we should embrace the surreal and try harder to imagine more outlandish fictions. We might begin by accepting that we are being lied to all the time, that most of what we hear and see is an illusion, misrepresentation, or performance—and that’s fine. Life has in many ways become a fiction, reality is vanishing under its own representations, we are suffering from collective delusions, we are teetering on the precipice of the real, with a multiverse of fantasies spinning out beneath us.”

Dean Kissick (on contemporary art)

Arcs are patterns. And therein lies possibly humanity’s greatest present challenge. In a truly globalized, interconnected, world we are constantly aware of everything and, yet, incapable of perceiving the patterns, and arc, of the greater whole. This actually doesn’t drive us ‘up’ to engage and macro-ly seek to see patterns, but rather it drives us ‘down’ where ‘vibes’ replace real patterns. I think this is called apophenia (seeing patterns where there are none, overloading the particular with excessive significance, and reframing one’s own disparate observations as generalizable cultural commentary). It is within apophenia where conspiracies thrive. If you cannot ‘see’ a real pattern you create one. I do not pretend to understand conspiracy embracers, but I clearly understand why someone seeks a conspiracy explanation. It is here that I will suggest a conspiracy is not being involved in the arc of humanity – it is simply unhealthy speculation about humanity. Involvement is actually a team sport. So, if you read “we are created equal with inalienable rights which include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as an individual endeavor, you are pursuing something other than being involved in they arc of humanity. You are simply becoming involved in creating chaos where each individual particle never bonds with anyone, or anything, but rather spins out of control in some unbounded space.

Yeah. The arc of humanity is not bent by any one individual. That is a myth. Reality is the arc of humanity can only be bent when a community of people decide to establish a pattern. I imagine I do not even pretend to understand how people do not understand that. Ponder.

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

John F. Kennedy

==

“The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.”

Peter Drucker

What is “making it” in 2024? What I mean by that is in today’s flattened society making it isn’t some title or increased responsibility or even some version of social mobility, its more simply a zero-sum wealth concept. In other words, “I have more than they do” is making it. Please note that accumulation is not linked to competency; it is solely an outcome-based claim and objective.

That said. Years ago, I wrote a piece called the commoditization of competency where I outlined that optics were becoming more important than actual competence. But that issue, while it remains, has taken on some different characteristics in the current environment.

Which leads me to the redefinition of ‘making it.’

In the past a central belief of all Americans, in particular those of lower income and middle class, was that the son and daughter of a blue-collar worker could become a PhD in physics or even the president. At the same time there was a slightly naïve belief an irresponsible child of the most elite family in town could actually make mistakes from which they could never recover. I won’t suggest that both of these beliefs were completely myth because in reality every year we could find examples, within specific lives within specific communities, within which this occurred. Simplistically this is a social mobility and anti-caste narrative (with grains of truth). And while in the present it’s become obvious that both of these things are obviously less true, the larger issue begs the core question of mobility “to what.” And this is the core issue with regard to competence. Because competence is typically what undergirds upward mobility, i.e., one needs to gain significant competence to be able to gain significant upward mobility. But if the societal narrative is to question mobility in general then competence itself gets redefined because there is no longer an objective of getting ahead, but rather the objective is to simply get ‘what you deserve.’ And what you deserve is untethered to competence. While what I just said may sound a bit esoteric, it bears out in today’s world. The reality is in America today social mobility, if defined by more wealth, is alive and well. More people, of every generation, are earning more than their parents did. The issue is that wealth increase doesn’t equate to “upward mobility.” Its just in today’s world you can “make it” simply by getting wealthier. I would be remiss if I didn’t remind everyone of what John Kenneth Galbraith said “the link between intelligence and wealth is specious at best” and that is where upward mobility DOES matter. In the good ole days you actually had to gain competency to gain responsibility and that responsibility had increased wealth attached to it. That equation no longer exists. I can be a dumbass on YouTube spewing random opinions, and misinformation, and still make hundreds of thousands of dollars. There is no link between competency and “making it.”

Which leads me to competence.

In the past there was a solid belief that in the long run competence set limits as to what a person could become. If you wanted to play a professional sport you had to learn how to do that sport better than anybody else. If you didn’t do that, you could certainly be something else, but you could not be that. I use that as an example because in the past we believed this was a truth for all professions. If you wanted to be a lawyer, you went to a law school. If you wanted to go into business, you mastered maths, accounting, and the art of effective quick decisionmaking. We were also taught that the penalty for sliding through life without having mastered any competence was a sentence to mediocrity. This doesn’t mean that we always equated competence with formal education, although education was understood to undergird many of the competencies necessary for true upward mobility, because we understood car mechanics, craftspeople, service providers, and public service people like police and firemen, had certain competencies and always stood high in our value judgments. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who pointed out “I admire people who know how to do things.” My point here is competence was always tied to being able to ‘do something’ with a high level of competence and that competence was valued in and of itself; not assessed a value based on some outcome.

Which leads me to the current competency crisis.

Doing has become a blurry amorphous assessment. What I mean by that is that in today’s short term vanity metrics world we tend to focus on some published measurement or metric. What this means is that we ignore the mechanics to achieve that measurement or metrics as well as we don’t even question whether that measurement or metric is actually valuable. This all matters because somebody could have multiple measurements and metrics posted on their resume and yet they actually have no specific competency. Or their competency is not a specific skill or even be competently smart. For example Einstein was seen as a genius with an extremely high competence in physics and mathematics. Elon Musk, on the other hand, is acknowledged by peers as neither the smartest nor having any specific strength in a skill; his only competence is having a vision. Bill Gates was also a visionary, but he also had incredible competence within the specific industry that he built his vision upon. This isn’t to pick on Elon Musk, this is simply to make a point. The world needs visionaries, but more importantly it needs competency because it is those with the competency who actually do the things to actually make it happen. And it’s probably my generation’s fault, at least in part, in that in the past we used to split people up into doers and thinkers. In doing so we diminished the doers as being lesser versions of thinkers. Ultimately it diminished competency by narrowing competency’s value.

Which leads me to “competency cynical.”

“In an organization which manages by drives, people either neglect their job to get on with the current drive or silently organized for collective sabotage of the drive in order to get their work done. In either event they become deaf to the cry of Wolf. And when the real crisis comes, when all hands should drop everything in pitch in, they treat it as just another case of Management created hysteria. Management by drive is a sure sign of confusion. Is an admission of incompetence. A sign that management does not think. Above all it is a sign that the company does not know what to expect of its managers and that not knowing how to direct them it misdirects them.”

Drucker in 1973

What I mean by this is we have just become cynical with regard to what competent actually is. Yeah. We have not only become cynical of experts, but cynical of the competent. We have, basically, become bad faith, uncharitable, people. Uncharitable in that we give every competent person a bad-faith view detailing out every possible exception to a truth about their competency (and its value) and putting disclaimers on everything, i.e., “it is possible (not probable) something is not true.” Competence dies a death of a thousand caveats. And if competence gets sliced to death, the only thing left alive is a hollow version of ‘making it.’ Making itbecomes more about style (and accumulation), less about substance (competence). I sometimes worry in today’s world where things become less and less concrete and tangible, we are placing our hopes and dreams on some dubious pedestals. Personally, I would feel much more comfortable placing my hopes and dreams on real competence. Ponder.

“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”

John Lennon

==

“Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”

Aristotle

====

“Life in freedom is not easy, and democracy is not perfect.”

John F. Kennedy

===

Today USA chooses a new president. I sat down this morning not really sure what to write. So, what I did is go back to see what I wrote on election day 2016. I am going to republish it after I share some quick thoughts on the difference between 2016 and 2024 (the repost will remind us of some similarities).

This is a weird election and weird time. The democrats are clearly focused on the future while the MAGA movement is a weird mix of past nostalgia and ‘fixing’ what they perceived to be as ‘broken.’ Through all the crazy shit Trump is spewing, the closing theme seems to be “fixing what is broken.” It’s a bit of a head scratcher because the economy is rocking, the fundamentals of prosperity and growth are solid, crime is down, the immigration issues are solvable (if congress would do their job), inflation is back to acceptable levels (and, frankly, Trump year levels) and, frankly, it’s the democrats who would like to ‘fix’ some things (most notably abortion rights). But Trump pounds away on trying to convince people that America is a shithole country (although his words are “a garbage can for the world”). Its weird. The “fixing” revolves around nostalgia (“fix progress so we can go back to a better past”) and a non-existent reality. What I just said resides the biggest difference between 2016 and 2024. In 2016 the government could have been quite fairly blamed for ignoring some fundamental issues. It certainly wasn’t a shithole country, but it could certainly have focused on some obstacles, and flaws, to the progress toward ‘great’ better. That cannot be said now. The Biden administration has done a stellar job of addressing fundamentals that tap into present greatness and future greatness. Anyway. But there is a troubling aspect which shifts the election from simply weird to a bit dangerous. Today a small group of leaders, supported by a significantly sized minority of citizens (think maybe 36% of adults), has rejected the idea that all people are created equal and seeks to destroy our democracy in order to install themselves into permanent power. To be clear, the citizens may not feel that they are doing so but the leaders absolutely do. Anyway. Prior to the civil war, Abraham Lincoln suggested Americans rededicate themselves to the ‘unfinished work’ and making America great. In his words:

“take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

All that said, here are my words I shared on election day 2016. Some seem a bit naive in reflection and some seem a bit prescient upon reflection. But. The truth remains the truth, we the people have the power and one person cannot dictate our future unless we permit them.

===

So. Today USA chooses a new president. I sat down this morning not really sure what to write.

I do know that America is bigger and stronger than any one person.

I do know that even if Trump is elected, someone who I believe is a narcissist and incompetent, it will not be a disaster for the country.

I do know that even if Clinton is elected, someone who I believe will be an unspectacular but pragmatically extremely competent president, it will not be a disaster for the country.

Yes.

This election feels a little bit bigger than many of the others in the past. I imagine it feels that way because the contrast between the two candidates in terms of true qualifications are so stark not because the objectives are so stark. And maybe even more so because it seems like the moralistic/ethical contrast may be even more stark.

That said. Despite what everyone may have been hearing for months on end through media, traditional and social, this election is truly not about change versus status quo. Why do I say that? Well. Because every president wants to change shit and these two are no different. In fact. The so-called status quo candidate is running on a platform that incorporates more detailed change then the so-called change candidate. But, in the end, while the new president elected certainly does matter it only matters in terms of tone & broader perspectives.

I think it is helpful to remind people <and congress> of this. It’s because I love our country more than I do my personal points of view that I know the institution of who and what we are as a country is larger than 1 person and 1 point of view. It is larger than any individual “I think” or “this must be” because the country ceases to exist if we remain so far apart that we can agree on nothing which inevitably means we either do nothing or do something so banal it will never show an ROI.

So, where I agree with either candidate … I will support them.  If they try to reach consensus, I will support them. Where I disagree with them I will continue to disagree and will work to make sure they know I disagree <and if enough people agree with me then they become a one term president>.

That is the way democracy and freedom works.

The people will speak today.

If they vote my way, fine.

If not, then the majority/plurality has spoken and that is what a democracy is.

In our country you do not have to win 90%, or even 50%, just a large enough plurality

That I know as a certainty. Just as I know as a certainty that presidents are one among many and disasters <unless they involve some nuclear button> are not fatal but rather “inefficient decisions.”

And maybe that is where I hope we, as a country, come out of this election. Maybe a little more interested in listening, a little less reliant on hyperbole and a lot more certain with regard to the value of some compromise over individual opinions.

I do know another thing for certain.

When a citizenry loses the one thing that had been in abundant supply in their lives – the unshakable belief that tomorrow will not be significantly different from today – that creates a sense of uncertainty <which, rarely discussed, is at the core of everything happening in our country attitude and the election>.

Not only is uncertainty a bitch to a general population, but uncertainty makes people feel poorer <even when they are not>, more divided <even when they are not>, less safe <even though they are not> and less hopeful with regard to the future <even when they should see signs of hope>.

In this time & place this uncertainty has been compounded by the fact we don’t trust anyone on anything <media included>, don’t trust anyone to do what they are supposed to do <government included>, and don’t even trust what was done when they actually do what they were supposed to do <anyone associated with any institution>. All of that leads to a pessimistic citizenry.

All of this suggestive pessimism has not been helped by, well, anyone <with maybe the exception of the president and his wife who offer a more optimist view>. Yeah. Political hyperbole for as far back as I can remember <let’s say a dozen years +> has created this wretched hollow in which society & citizenry is forced to live in. a wretched place where no one does anything right and is stupid or dishonest or corrupt.

Most sane people know that thought is not true. But even the sanest of us struggle to discern the good from the bad. Both Bernie and Trump raged against a “rigged system” and stirred up angry crowds. At any given point all candidates have also raged against the media, against Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump <depending on your view>, against “globalists”, against the government itself, against the democratic process and, well, against a vast host of other villains. All this has served to do is to create anger where there may not have been any and encourage an embers of potential anger to flame.

I read somewhere that the success Trump is having is because the American democracy isn’t working for most Americans and he reminds them, and us, of that.

I do not agree.

I believe most of us are just uncertain whether democracy is working for us or not. Yeah. In an environment in which truth is difficult to discern and pessimisms and guilt before innocence is encouraged 99% of us are just, well, uncertain.

I do have some certainty to offer anyone reading this.

First.

The world will not end, the country will not implode, regardless of which candidate we elect.

Second.

In a country of 350 million or so no matter what you do and how good a decision is made, there will be winners & losers associated with every decision <and I will admit I wish our politicians would have the kahones to stand up and point out the losers are still valued rather than celebrate only the winners>.

In a country of 350 million or so the American democracy is working, but it is always a work in progress therefore everyone will feel at some point that it isn’t working for them and that means at any given point anyone will look around and think someone is benefiting when they are not <this occurs even if that person is not officially in the ‘loser’ category associated with a decision>.

Third.

Good stuff does not come easy … to anyone. But that doesn’t mean that good stuff doesn’t happen. I say that and I will remind everyone once again, and I wish someone in some fucking paper or news network would point it out at the top of their lungs> in our democracy American people are perpetually dissatisfied. Always dissatisfied. We always feel like we are not doing as well as we should or, looking around, that we <as in individuals> are being left behind while someone else is doing better <benefitting>.

Anyway.

It is election day.

And we are all uncertain and uneasy and anxious.

It does not matter who you support – everyone is uncertain and uneasy.

And that is where we will be tomorrow too. And the day after and, well, you get it.

It isn’t trust or lack of trust. It isn’t anger or rigged or any of the other fabulous labels being thrown around.

It is uncertainty.

It is uncertainty about the direction of the country.

And, at a more basic level, it is uncertainty that the people we choose to elect us will do their job.

And, at an even more basic level, it is an uncertainty that even if we <you & i> work hard, do what is right and fulfill our own responsibilities and duties we will receive ‘fair value’ for our efforts.

In the end.

I am certain we will end the day with a new president.

I am also certain that tomorrow a significant majority of the country will awake just as uncertain about the everyday Life shit as they were today. And maybe that is what we should demand of the new president and of the leaders we elect to represent us <senators & representatives>.

Stop creating uncertainty and offer us some more certainty.

We Americans are pretty resilient <if not a little whiney along the way>. We can deal with bad shit as long as you give us some certainty. But if I am uncertain as to what is really good and what is really bad that uncertainty gives us candidates like Trump and creates what people feel is anger and drives up distrust for anyone.

Which leads me to end with Certainty.

Beyond all the policies & tactics & taxes & trade deals and transparency & honesty & all that crap it sure would be nice if creating certainty was high on the next president’s agenda. As I stated earlier ‘and maybe that is where I hope we, as a country, come out of this election. Maybe a little more interested in listening, a little less reliant on hyperbole and a lot more certain with regard to the value of some compromise over individual opinions.’ And if we do that? Maybe we will be a little more certain <and happier>.

===

Election day 2024.

It is a crappy feeling this feeling that an election can existentially steer a country in a radical turn. The truth is progress is not made to make radical turns but rather in arcs, nudges and slow-ish movement. Countries are not meant to be wrenched into new directions. Having steered 300+ people organizations into new directions I find it absurd to believe anyone can believe steering 300 million people in a new direction as easy or symmetrical or healthy if done radically. Anyway. I dislike this feeling.

And while I believe we, the people, can make a better future, I believe we will find out today whether that is so. Ponder.

==

“that’s the same thing as having an affair”

==

The closing arguments in the presidential campaign is a contrast in a number of things, but mostly it has become a contrast between respectful and disrespectful. One campaign has unequivocally stated that no matter who you vote for you will be listened to and represented and the other has, well, referred to ‘other voters’ as the enemy within. The heinous parts are tucked within the definition of ‘enemy.’ Because in this case the enemy is grounded in some 1800’s version of what a traditional marriage should be about – women subservient to men. Yeah. Reminder. Its 2024 not 1824.

Which leads me to a Harris-Walz campaign ad voiced by actor Julia Roberts which encourages women to vote for Vice President Harris in the presidential election, even if their husbands are backing former President Trump.

“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want. And no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the ad as a woman on screen meets up with her husband after casting her ballot for Harris. The voter winks at a fellow female voter as her husband asks if she made the “right choice.”

Suffice it to say, MAGA world has not responded well. In fact, some have suggested that a wife lying about her vote is as bad as an affair. Yeah. Ponder that one as a closing argument.

“If I found out Emma was going to the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair”

Fox News host Jesse Watters

==

“I think it’s so gross. I think it’s so nauseating where this wife is wearing the American hat, she’s coming in with her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go you know and have a nice life and provide to the family, and then she lies to him saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m gonna vote for Trump,’ and then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth”

Charlie Kirk

To be clear. They are suggesting a husband is working hard to afford his wife’s lifestyle and her action undermines him. Ponder that just a bit.

Look. I am sure there are politically split households, but in the Trump era it is just difficult for me to envision. It is quite conceivable that someone could have voted for Romney in the same household where someone voted for Obama, but Trump is so divisive, and not normal, that it seems like a bridge too far. But I believe that is something that particular couple needs to navigate, not me. Regardless. The idea that a woman, a wife or partner, simply has to do anything let alone vote some way simply because the man does is a horrible thought. Oh. And a horrible closing argument to the majority of a 2024 population.

“Listen to this twit make Donald Trump’s closing argument. Women, you know what to do. #VoteKamala.”

==

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

Plato

==

“Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design.”

Stephen Gardiner

==

This began as conversations with a number of people about technology and technology companies. But what I quickly found myself doing in conversation after conversation is shifting away from technology, specifically, and just speaking about people. What I mean by that is that we have a tendency to speak of humans in a dehumanizing way with regard to technology, i.e., some nebulous good actors and bad actors. If we strip away the word ‘actors,’ at its core we’re basically speaking of people and, therefore, discussions around technology or society or business or almost any facet of a community and civilization should revolve around what makes a person do what they do. I don’t disagree that we need some fairly heroic efforts to address our technology driven future, but maybe instead of heroic we should simply speak of behavioral values.

Which leads me to technology and the future.

That said. I do agree heroic efforts are needed to bend the arc of technology. I believe people, left to their own devices, would design a nice tech future. And while technology may be an opposing force, I would argue its business’s objectives that drive the future off course. I say that because I am less worried about ttechnology and more worried about business. Fix business and technology stuff, as well as the people stuff, will follow (in my mind). I worry a bit about bad actors, maybe a bit less than most people, because I see good actors stepping up to the plate and fighting the bad actors. If you haven’t listened to this podcast Kevin Scott  , at the end he offers up his view on this (and I have stated that view for several years so I agree). It’s a good listen in general although I find he, as do most tech people, talk about rural in a very tech-centric siloed way (and I have other views about how tech could help the rural splits). Regardless. The ‘good actors’ will be the ones who recognize:

• it is a humancentric world where the optimal future is found in technology as an augmentor
• there will be uneven distribution of benefits from technology and we should seek to mitigate that
• it should be a learning-oriented future

Which leads me to who the good actors will be.

Sometimes the problem in today’s world is that it’s not particularly easy to be identify the good actors versus the bad actors especially as there is an increasing level of self-identified rebels (all proposing they are rebels for the good of people). The rebels are rarely hesitant about specifying which things, including values, they reject. The problem is everybody feels like they are rebel these days. What that means is that every one, every citizen, will at some point have some aspects of their life ridiculed by argumentative rebels. And when everyone becomes a rebel, the entire narrative will fundamentally get mired into the mud of hypocrisy. What I mean by that is a fundamental cause of disaffection is the contradiction between what any particular community, or class of people, says it believes; and what it does. These contradictions create confusion and that confusion takes on some fairly ugly hues which ultimately contaminates our view of society. The contamination is captured n some seeming hypocrisy. We may say we believe in mobility, but not for some people. We may say we believe in a Christian ethic, but not in business. Across the country we preach morality and yet certain people don’t have to play by those rules. We support altruistic endeavors, but we vilify anyone who works for it. We proclaim ourselves to be nonviolent people driven by hope and aspirations, but we insist that each person be allowed to have his or her own gun and fear ultimately drives the fundamental desire to own a gun. We preach the virtue of loyalty and business, yet we see the people who do this often reach the age of retirement spiritually empty and economically unprepared. We view success in society grounded in a creed of accumulation, but ultimately, we discover that this brings neither happiness nor stability. This creates a constant state of contradictions and hypocrisy within which good actors and bad actors battle.

Which leads me to rebels as good and bad.

So, our rebels tend to be good and bad. But maybe we should judge the rebellious a little differently accepting that the majority of life and progress is found in between the contradictions. What I mean by that is the progress typically resides in the gray. And while responsibility demands black and white, and the solutions demand a proper assumption of responsibility in the attention to the problems requiring change, the solutions are not simple nor simplistic. The true heroic rebels and the good people are those who showcase a willingness to challenge the patterns, which is not about change in particular, for it is within navigating the patterns and challenging them which instigates the change where it is needed. I would argue the truth is the rebellious shouldn’t focus on some generic set of values, but rather an increased emphasis upon the most vital of values: responsibility. And the true test of the good rebellious resides somewhere in a future where the responsibility to affect the patterns is not exciting, but merely hard work. Yeah. Less flashy victories just simply the performance over the long haul that determines the value of the rebellion and the rebellious.

Which leads me to optimism.

In a world which encourages dystopian thinking and dystopian views, optimism is often the most ridiculed of values. I will confess that throughout my life I have generally been optimistic. I often refer to myself as a cynical optimist. That said. Part of optimism is a belief that it is not illogical to trust, at any given moment, that you will survive. I find it reasonable to think of optimism in that kind of framework. It may seem naïve and uncomfortable to many people to entertain the thought of optimism, but I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest that I am impressed by the power of optimism throughout history. Simultaneously, it is fair to suggest at any given point we will go into some kind of collapse and when we do all the dystopian thinkers can say I told you so. But. Up until the “I told you so” moment, millions of  businesses will have been started, millions of people will have hugged each other, millions of people will have economically improved, and millions of people will just simply be better today than they were the day before. It is with that thought I believe cautious optimism should be the foundation of mindsets, attitudes, and beliefs. I’m certainly not suggesting that we shouldn’t be mindful of the problems that we have, but the truth is we have been living with those problems for decades and in general they shouldn’t  terrify us – and I think a lot more people would benefit by taking a moment and recognizing this. Look. We make progress, never as fast as we want, but the truth is the integration of opportunity is always in progress even if not always recognized. On balance I think cautious optimism is not misplaced. I think we should all have reasonable hopes that not only our own personal lives will get better, but that our communities and our countries will get better also. But in the end if you’re looking for good actors versus bad actors, I remain relatively convinced that the acceptance of responsibility will not only differentiate the productive from the unproductive, but the good actor from the bad actor. The people who organize their lives well, will probably do so around the concept of responsibility. And maybe that is where I am. The good actors are responsible. Ponder.

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“I’m the opposite of a Nazi!”

Donald Trump, reassuring us that he is definitely, totally, absolutely not a Nazi.

==

Fascism: a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

At the core of fascism is loyalty to tribe, ethnic identity, religion, tradition, or, in a word, nation.

==

a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

==

Nazi : a harshly domineering, dictatorial, or intolerant person

==

So. Kinda feels like if you have to tell people you are not something, you have an issue. Just the fact anyone would have to explain, let alone a presidential candidate, that “I am not a nazi” means that some people may actually be thinking you are one. Uhm. That seems bad if you want to be a president. It makes it a bit difficult to simply bucket it into the “other side being hyperbolic” category. Anyhoo.

Let’s be clear. One can be a fascist, and apply fascist rhetoric, and not be a nazi, but if one is a nazi, they are fascist. Trump wallows in the wretched hollow in-between.

In that in-between he fosters a lot of fascist like shit. Once again, he could absolutely spew fascist rhetoric and not be a nazi. Social scientists have pointed out for decades that not all fascist movements are the same nor created equal. It’s an idea that morphs to the user and to the context, but for the most part it is a counterrevolutionary reaction to the rise of Marxism, socialism, or liberalism. For Hannah Arendt, it was totalitarianism. For others it is seen as a contingent process (a counterreaction to socialism and/or liberalism. Is it an ideology? Is it more a style of leadership? Is it a political method? All I really know is whatever it is, it is always captured in rhetoric. And that means we end up debating words and meanings.

Which leads me to Trump (“the opposite of a nazi”).

We are continuously encouraged to not believe what Trump says, but if we can’t trust what a president says, how do we attain common understanding? (answer: we don’t. ever.). That becomes a bigly problem because his aggressive rhetoric never ends; it doesn’t even pause. If Trump is elected next week, it will continue all day, every day, for four more years. And it will be in front of you, in the news, on your screen, on social media, every day, for four more years. And THAT means we will debate all day, every day, what is fascist and what is not. Lets be honest. We just can’t tune it out. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to simply tune out the firehose of invective. When a presidential candidate says things like this, it is newsworthy. When the President says things like this, it is definitely newsworthy.

The roots of Trumpism is grounded in something real – mass disillusionment with liberal democracy (or just government writ large). I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the roots of fascism reside in mass disillusionment. From there we shift to charismatic leadership as a facet of fascism. It’s a mass political movement led by a charismatic leader. Now. Bernie Sanders is charismatic, but no one would say he’s a fascist. Heck. Some movements are authoritarian, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re fascist. Here is where context matters – “what is it about the context today that shares something from a previous context, in terms of how we understand fascism back then?” And that’s where there’s a major debate, right? The goalposts constantly move so we reformulate, and we say, “these are things that constitute fascism.” To be clear (once again). Trump thrives in the wretched hollows within this goalpost shifting.

Which leads me back to the beginning: we are publicly, honestly, discussing fascism.

Here is the thing. The most important thing (in my mind). The fact we are even having the discussion. One of the characteristics of Trump and Trumpism, and even MAGA, is that it always explores the ‘lines’ of things. It edges into the unacceptable, the illegal, the gray areas of norms. It creates just a bit of plausible deniability and just a smidge of acceptability. So, in the end, how do we judge because it is a nuanced thought. So, let’s offer a nuanced thought and a non-nuanced thought to end this Trump and fascism debate:

1. Nuanced – “the enemy within.” Fascism is grounded in a an unequivocal “us versus them” narrative where “them” is defined by “us” and while someone may self-identify as an “us,” you are not admitted to the “us club” unless the “us elite” (authoritarian/totalitarian inner circle) accept you. I am fairly sure Trump WOULD have been a Nazi (as long as he could be a leader), but I don’t think he is one, he is simply a stupid narcissistic bully, i.e., an authoritarian. In fact I don’t know anyone who’s a liberal who doesn’t think “Donald Trump is an authoritarian, perhaps, fascist leader.” I would be surprised if it hasn’t crossed the mind of every sane person. Suffice it to say if someone is considering it, you just may be.

2. Non-nuanced – consistent signaling. Every leader attempts to craft lasting relationships with people grounded in the ability to send the right signals at the right time, i.e., the ability to show not tell (although “showing” the right words offers through lines). A leader’s vision is just a big ball of signals. In fact that’s what the vast majority of human relationships consist of. Trump’s superpower is consistent signaling while getting the external world to view his often heinous signals in a one-off manner. My point here is if someone sends out a bunch of signals, over and over and over again, it just may be that the signals are indicative of a larger truth.

Ponder.

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“Oh, you need me.”

==

On the horrible Bill Maher show he recently had on a horrible guest who espoused the idea of democrats demonizing men and the “male crisis.” First. I find it rich that some right wing nutjob is harping on the fragility of men. Whatever happened to self-reliance and “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps?” Second. A pernicious aspect of this whole male crisis narrative is how they strawman the argument with “toxic masculinity.” What I mean by that is the Right falsely suggests that all men, and masculinity, is broad stroked as ‘toxic’ by “the Left.’ Its nuts, absurd, and creates a false narrative. As a man myself let me be clear, you can be masculine without being toxic. Toxic simply means being a dick. You can be masculine without being a dick. To be clear, as a man myself, all men will be dicks on occasion, but to be toxic you have to be a dick consistently and almost all the time. Selectively being a dick is just being a guy.

Which leads me to what exactly is this “male crisis” we are speaking of.

A lot of men are losing their positions as breadwinners or just losing out on having dominant positions in society. That doesn’t necessarily have to do with men, it just may be a reflection of progress. So before I get to men, specifically, let’s talk progress from a macro perspective. In a complex society where there is progress there will always be some who benefit more than others. Those who may have been marginalized in the past will find opportunities in the wave of progress to get ahead and those who have benefited in the past will no longer have as easy an access to the benefits. Its not exactly a zero-sum game, but it may feel like it. Its actually just asymmetry which is a characteristic of complexity. Society, and economies, are rarely characterized by one similar progress characteristic. There will always be at least one component, or one industry, which will be underperforming versus others. That’s how it works. In this particular case, some men may be underperforming in this wave of progress, or may just feel like they are underperforming, and this creates a multitude of issues – which is being labeled a “crisis” (an absurdity in and of itself).

Which leads me to the male issue.

I cannot remember who the social philosopher was, but someone suggested the core issue is “need.” In order to find meaning, all humans, including men, need to feel two things: they are contributing and their contributions are needed in some way. Simplistically, we humans need to feel needed in some form or fashion. The “needed” creates a sense of connection to other people and the community and the larger society. In its most feminine framing this is ‘nurturing,’ but in the male crisis that is a toxic word (because it is mainly associated with women for some reason). We should note social anthropologist Margaret Mead once said “every known human society has rested on the learned nurturing behavior of men. This behavior being learned is rather fragile and can disappear quickly in circumstances that no longer teach it effectively.” Being needed and nurturing have a symbiotic relationship and it is silly to not discuss the fact men are nurturing beings and at the core of masculinity is giving more than you get, i.e., contribution. And maybe within all that is an actual, real, issue.  Maybe we are not signaling strongly enough to young men how much they are needed for a healthy family, healthy community, healthy society and that their contributions matter.

While I may, personally, think its slightly absurd that we need to do this, or coddle male egos this way, it may be extremely fair that we need to vocalize, just a bit more and a bit more loudly, how much men are needed for a healthy economy and healthy community and healthy society. Maybe we need to be just a bit more specific that it’s not just that we need people, but we need men.

Ponder.

 ===

“She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.”

—

Terry Pratchett

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Teddy Roosevelt, in 1904:

“… we, the people, can preserve our liberty and our greatness in time of peace only by ourselves exercising the virtues of honesty, of self-restraint, and of fair dealing between man and man.”

Freedom has to be earned by the exercise of restraint, and its bounty could only be harvested by diligent labor.”

===========

Labor, as in ‘work’, is one of those topics of which it is almost getting absurd to think about. Between work-from-home, quiet quitting, trophy generation, Purpose, and, well, at least a dozen other things I could argue we are losing sight of what work is all about – diligent labor.

And by diligent, I mean a combination of invested energy and invested ‘what to care about’ focus <maybe craftmanship in some form or fashion>. But we seem to be having an existential crisis over competing extremisms. This is where I toss in Kierkegaard who suggested “the crowd is untruth.” I find the ‘crowd’ tends to institutionalize good ideas so they lose any valuable nuance in combination with the ‘crowd’ has an unhealthy relationship with binaries and extreme.  It almost seems like with everyone engaged everywhere in suggesting how to make things easier, an alternative group has stepped in only to make them difficult again.

Which leads me to fluidity and flow.

The reality of meaningful diligent labor is a bit simpler than we tend to make it. I will suggest two primary aspects of meaningful labor is fluidity and flow. Simplistically, they represent direction of energy for diligence.

• Fluidity

Fluidity is an inherent attribute of progress and, in particular, to the connectivity necessary for collective impact. Diligence becomes an important concept because it captures the attention necessary for the temporary situations of a unique combination of circumstances which present a unique set of problems/opportunities which requires an original solution that represents work/labor ‘applied effectively’. Nevertheless, no temporary situation can be viewed in isolation, but rather each temporary situation merges with those that precede and those that follow all simultaneously, but maybe not equally, shaped by the former and shaping the conditions of the latter. I belabor that point because labor is then a continuous, fluidity of activity replete with fleeting opportunities and unforeseen events. Since labor is a fluid phenomenon, it requires flexibility of thought and adaptability in behaviors/actions. Circling back to the opening, this may include creating new rules. I state that because many rules are constraints and fluidity often demands new rules. Anyway. Successful labor depends in large part on diligence and the ability to adapt — to proactively shape changing events to our advantage as well as to react quickly to constantly changing conditions. This can sound exhausting, but the cadence of labor in fluidity fluctuates from periods of intense activity to periods of information gathering and reflection. This actually means diligent labor is found in the competitive rhythm, i.e., conflict, between entropy (or desire to replicate and standardize) and emergent fluid organizing intent to optimize events to suit the purpose of the business (and the individuals). In addition, this is fluidity between self-interest (impact) and collective interest (impact) and generated value. This fluidity feeds diligent labor at an individual level. That is, well, work.

• Flow

Flow is fluidity working in sync. Flow has a number of states, but let’s say that the desired business objective (which diligent labor makes possible) is, the continuous, smooth flow of value from the business (collective labor) to the market. Oddly many people think of this as ‘labor at scale’ when it really is simply ‘a system in flow state’. Economics, and individual meaning, almost always arises from flow. Simplistically:

• The whole is the part. The part is the whole. Flow is all.

• People are imperfect. Business is made up of people. The imperfections are what makes flow in business perfect.

• The system, the whole, is made up of layers and nested systems with their own pacing and flow accommodates all paces.

The last point above is very important. Flow can be asymmetrical and it can also contain a variety of speeds. I often refer to organizational flow as ‘cadence.’ What I mean by that is a business tends to have a rhythm when it is in flow which is a reflection of the combined individual ‘diligent laborer’ pacing. Flow is actually when all layers of the organization find synchronicity – not same speed or pace. Flow at an individual level is almost irrelevant if it isn’t multiplicative to the energy of the system as a whole. In fact, I could argue individual flow can hamper organizational collective ‘flow’ if the individual self-interest is not in the greater system interest. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that often existing business ‘rules’, including incentives & performance metrics, encourage a belief in individual flow over collective flow. My point here is that organizational flow is diligent labor at a collective level. Obviously, this is an even higher level of diligence – above that of simple self interest and what is right for me.

Which leads me to a thought from Samuel Brealey: “There are still idiots out there who know so little so confidently. Which is bad for all of us.” This is exponentially true surrounding any discussion of diligent labor and “the future of work”. Its almost like we do not want to speak of work AS labor as well as  go out of our way to discuss ‘diligent’ as “success is always a reflection of hard work”. What I mean by that is we seem to dislike admitting work is work and that just working hard, alone, is often not the ‘secret’ to success.

=

“Navigating mystery humbles us, reminds us with every step that we don’t know everything, are not, in fact, the masters of all.”

Martin Shaw

=

The truth is, in my opinion, found in Carse’s finite versus infinite games. Far too many people conflate finite and infinite while attempting to discuss labor/work, diligence and outcomes/achievements. What Carse neglected to share with us is there are vapid bottomless pit infinite games and then there are enlightening infinite games, i.e., not all infinite games are created equal. The sooner you can recognize what is finite and what is infinite in labor, the sooner you can be more diligent in how you apply your labor and the sooner both fluidity and flow can be optimized (or functionally applied). And, yes, diligent labor is not just about ‘work applied’, but also functionally attaining some progress or meaning. Not that I need to remind you, but it was Victor Frankl who said “The ultimate meaning in life is ‘to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment’.” Regardless. Much of the discussion about work and labor these days, if you are not careful, is an infinite suckhole of mental masturbation. We must be, well, diligent in our discussions of what is meaningful labor. This is important. Its important because freeing business potential, freedom to be the best it can be, is a bounty which could only be harvested by diligent labor. I end with that thought because I would bet you will not hear one ‘future of work pundit’ say anything like that. And maybe that is why you should think about what I just wrote.

==

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

==

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

Hilary Clinton

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

Abbas Kiarostami

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

Zygmunt Baumann

===

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

Which leads me to the framing effect.

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

Which leads me to expectations.

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

“Men in bits of paper whirling in the cold wind

That blows before and after time.

TS Eliot

Which leads me to shaping.

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

Which leads me to contagion.

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

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

Which leads me to narratives and frames.

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

Which leads me to clarity (and transparency).

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