“Modern society has no single designer nor an overall, coherent design. There are multiple sources of organizing principles, rules and policies, many of which compete with and contradict one another. The pressures for change are many and varied. Diverse rulemaking groups and institutions pursue their own particular interests, visions, and modes of knowledge development. Coordination and integration among different rulemaking processes, and the agents involved, tends to be weak. We refer to this condition as structural incoherence.”

Tom Burns and Helena Flam

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“What has been lacking in the 20th century is a central cultural thought that would unify all these things – economy, technology, ecology, society, matter, mind, and spirituality.”

Nan Huai-Chin

“But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

1984

I would argue 95+% of issues arise from having a lack of unifying vision, i.e., something that encompasses economy, technology, ecology, society/community, matter, mind, and spirituality. I apply this thought to individuals, governments  (governing forces), society and businesses.  The reality is most people, businesses and even government focus on a part believing fixing that part will attain not only that objective, but (hopefully) all the other parts. Uhm. Hope is not a strategy. Maybe its we have convinced ourselves to ‘do one thing at a time’ to the detriment of having one vision to rule all the parts when we want to focus on the part.’ This is lack of understanding systems thinking, but that is another discussion for another day.

That said. Let me get to a central unifying vision of the future. I have written about civic professionalism in the business world and this is most likely an extension of that thinking in that everyone should have a sense of equilibrium between I & We – a civil mindset – in order to maintain a civil society.  To be clear, Society isn’t a ‘thing’, its people – people organized into groups and groupings, connected and disconnected and, well, sharing and not sharing. Business is the same thing. But let’s get to sharing and shared. Any construct in any of these things I am discussing demands that there is something holding the people together, a sense of community, a sense of fulfilling a vision, or sense of something, that implies ‘together.’ I could argue this is the reason everyone mentally ‘holds’ that suggests why we SHOULD belong to the same community or society. Without that there is little hope of a cohesive and sustainable institution (institution being home, community, business or society). This has evolved, societally, over time as civilization expanded beyond tribes and villages. Most typically we could point to shared religion as what was used to maintain a modicum of social coherence. But with the transition to modern countries and nation states with defined borders and larger populations, it became increasingly important that people share similar cultural touchstones, i.e., self-defined human boundaries within globally accepted geographic boundaries. Some shared collective agreement was needed to ensure peaceful and productive relations between different classes and different culturally backgrounds who now lived side-by-side in broad swaths of geography within one nation. In other words, we needed some agreements in order to have a productive civil society where people could organize and act together in pursuit of shared interests, purposes and objectives. With that vision and vague outlines of collective community spirit, citizens can organize themselves in ways that embrace ‘tribe identities’ and, yet, embrace the collective identity. Interestingly this concept embodies a sense of shared destiny. Maybe that’s my point, a unifying vision enhances the possibilities of a shared desired destiny.

Which leads me to the role of media.

The challenges to attaining a shared vision, and a shared desired destiny, has changed over time. National newspapers, network TV, public Radio, all increased national literacy, shared enough information to raise the general knowledge base of the citizenry and gave them access to a national identity narrative. During that time, it may have stifled dissenting views, but it also permitted a unifying vision to prosper. And while we can debate the positives and negatives of limited media choice, the reality was media had to make choices in what they shared and as with anyone forced to make choices, the extreme, the fringe, the outlandish, were sacrificed so that a moderate and mainstream narrative could be shared. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out mainstream is typically indicative of common beliefs, attitudes, wisdom, an indicative of some basic shared identity and shared ambitions. It’s not that media was wrong at that point; they were just reflective of the average or maybe the median of citizens. Media was neither rigid nor exclusive, but certainly offered a clarity from which every person could begin to craft their own belief system. On the other hand, today’s fragmented media has shattered all of that which makes most of us susceptible to more simplistic ideas like patriotism or nationalism which are frankly simply cheap substitutes for a richer unifying vision. In the end you would like the total media landscape to weave a comfortable blanket in which everyone can wrap themselves in a shared national identity a shared destiny and everyone should feel as equal participants in a democratic society.

Which leads me to the entropy of identity.

There’s a relationship between identity and media. First media has, and does, establish some aspects of peer to peer citizenry. Just as it became harder to tolerate racism as TV shared civil rights intolerance issues are viewed differently when people view others not being treated equally when they believe equal treatment is deserved. This gets a bit trickier in today’s world where identity is barraged with “this is what you should have” or “this is what is being taken from you” messaging. The former feeds into a sense of injustice and the latter feeds into a sense of despair, i.e., things lost. This means a unifying vision is faced with a more fragmented society and one in which shared identities are a bit more difficult to find. I would suggest that our survival and certainly our future thriving is almost dependent upon the need to find some unifying vision where people see themselves and see their future reside. I say survival thinking of the Yeats line from The Second Coming “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” In order to fight entropy our relations with one another will need to be of a much higher quality than what is typical today. Our future society depends on a community spirit and higher levels of collective interest and a healthy shared identity. The future will not be found in some elite group who subtly nudge and shape us, but rather a free, open exchange of ideas, within a shared vision, about how citizens want to shape the conditions for prosperous functional society to thrive.

“That organized social intelligence could shape society.”

John Dewey

 Which leads me to organized social intelligence.

Organized social intelligence is a double-edged sword – it can encourage tighter shapes (entropy), or expansive reshaping (evolving). This is a really important idea to those who seek to shape because whatever they deem is essential to social identity they will seek to strip as much context and interpretation as possible. Circling back to media, media does its own version of this. It simultaneously provides conflicting context analysis analogies and identity memes stripped of context. For example. The MAGA movement appropriated the American flag under the simplistic guise of patriotism, and endlessly covered by television, to such an extent non-MAGA people declined to showcase the flag as much and got trapped in never ending debates over what patriotism is (against a simplistic version). Beyond that example, not only has identity been dumbed down in today’s society, but it is actually creating obstacles to the positive aspects of organized social intelligence. Anyway. I applaud anyone who doesn’t think simplistically and embraces nuance because any unifying vision is only as successful as the coherence of nuances supporting it. That said. The flow of progress always has some directionality and yet is fundamentally open-ended in its potentiality, yet, while things have directionality, if we are not active, if not bold in our desired state, entropy will win. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out entropy is found within the principles of autopoiesis — things degrade and fall apart, and negative entropy, i.e., it is the falling apart which makes life possible. In other words, entropy is a characteristic of Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction. I’m not suggesting entropy inevitably leads to social deconstruction, ok, guess I am, and social destruction fragments organized social intelligence into tighter knit networks.

Which leads me to why people ‘networks’ thrive within a unifying vision.

I could simply say that self-organizing groups, with a shared ambition and shared vision, is the engine for any type of organization let alone an entire nation. It’s easier to say self-organized groups are critical to the success and progress with a unifying vision. That said. The main difference between ecological networks of nature and corporate networks of human society is that in an ecosystem nothing is excluded from the network. Conversely, many segments of a population are excluded from sociological networks. We thought technology would enable no exclusion creating broader social networks, but instead it encouraged self-sealing belief system networks. And maybe to be a little bit more precise we have found the technological divide in the separation between self and other as it enhanced social divides. As a society we seem to be having a number of different conflicts – socioeconomic, geopolitical, cultural, meaning, mattering, spiritual – as well as a fundamental conflict between self and selves. We have lost the ability to cultivate dialog. I believe it was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who said “at its essence dialog involves a collective shift of attention from politeness to conflict, from conflict to inquiry, and from inquiry to generative flow.” Technology, oddly has stunted dialogue while we had always envisioned it would enhance dialog. I would argue the main way it has done so is in how it is fragmented our past so that the past has become a mosh pit of squabbling conflicts unless a shared understanding. This may sound counterintuitive given I am discussing a unifying vision of the future, but the past offers the lily pads of foundational underpinnings from which the future can be defined. In other words, because we typically understand society through the lens of past societies (as well as everything else) if we can’t ‘see’ the past, we cannot see the future. From there that common ‘memory,’ which is important for sensemaking and decision-making, is typically transmitted primarily through popular culture which is primarily transmitted through popular media (social media included). Popular culture is not bad, but it does distort our vision and it certainly challenges any clarity of a unifying vision.

Which leads me to say any unifying vision is less about words then it is about experiences.

Yeah. I experience; therefore I am. This means that moving from thinking to sensing demands having an effective reflective attitude on truth and belief. It is about an orientation and knowledge, but, ultimately, it is about the relationship between the self as an individual and the world as a collective. This means that experiences like stress, threat, increased complexity, urgency, can increase the individual need for certainty, in other words, avoidance of uncertainty. All of the things that I just listed create a cognitive downshift into more survival aspects of our mind and actually inhibit reflective thinking skills. The human mind inherently wants to pull the disparate the many and the diverse into unifying whole or simplistically speaking to achieve some level of simplicity or a general concept to rule which permits the mind to rest and what could be perceived as the center of things. The challenge in that is that once arriving at that general concept and resting space that center can embrace many things into that circle of unity including things that really don’t belong. What’s a bit worse is that adaptability is constrained when there is an individualist mental model and even a unifying vision can become a rigid list of characteristics and things to do.

“She felt a cozy solidarity with the big company of the voluntary dead.”

Dorothy Parker

 Which leads me to end where I began – parts versus the whole.

Without a unifying vision we end up falling back to self, self-interest, and specific plans of action against specific objectives – like economy, technology, ecology, society, matter, mind, and spirituality. And by focusing on the parts, we lose the probability to positively effect the whole. Even worse, the individual parts fly off the center, the centre does not hold, and, well, anarchy is loosed upon the world. and while it may not truly be anarchy it will feel like anarchy and, as noted above, I experience; therefore I am. None of that has to happen if we can only define a unifying vision and we all can envision a shared destiny. From there the future is what we will make of it – together. Ponder.

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“If the world isn’t sane, technology will not solve it.”

Jaron Lanier

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“The new technology mimes the prime procedure of human learning and knowing.”

Marshall McLuhan 1968

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The title of this piece is a play on Kevin Kelly’s book “What Technology Wants.” The alternative title to this piece was I thought a lot of wrong good things.

When technology first arrived on the scene, particularly in terms of ubiquitous networks, social media, emails, anything internet based, I felt like many problems would be solved, civilization would just get smarter, we would make better societal decisions, and the world would just become a better place. I never believed that everything would be solved and we would attain some utopia, but like many of us, I was envisioning a better world because of this ubiquitous technology. And while many things have improved, and certainly foundationally, we still have the opportunity to significantly improve globally and societally, some things have certainly gone wrong. In many cases very wrong. I’m not sure I got the following things wrong, but I certainly overlooked what could affect the arc of the goodness. So, to paraphrase Marshall Mcluhan, let’s now take a quick tour of the walls knocked over by technology.

The first thing I can point to is money. Somehow, I seem to forget that, well, ideas are usually beneficiary agnostic and typically created with a specific benefit in mind that the people who use them will seek to make money from those ideas. So, inevitably what happens is the sincerely good ideas for society that cannot make somebody significant wealth may not completely go away, but they certainly do not end up at the forefront. Therefore, the other ideas, regardless of whether they’re good for society or not, are wielded as tools of gaining wealth. And as we all know wealth is amoral. It does not care how you attain it. I’m not sure that I’m naïve, or was naïve, I think I felt like technology itself, and maybe even ideas, had more power than humans. I think this point alone should remind all of us that the future really is not about technology, the future is in the heads and the minds of humans.

The second thing I got wrong was most likely driven by the fact that I am not a technology person despite the fact I talk about how technology affects society, humans, progress, and economics. I did know the technology would be subverted into economic endeavors. It made sense to me mostly because I felt like many of the tools that were being developed could navigate the efficacy path and actually improve communication, work and information flow. But, as I pointed out in the first thing, as soon as technology enters into the economic sphere money subverts its use towards, well, money. But that’s not the point of the second thing I was wrong about. I thought that the knowledge evenly distributed, and information evenly distributed, would make the intellectual tide rise higher. And as intellectual tide rose we would, generally speaking, have better sensemaking skills, we would make better choices, and some of the better things for society would just become more obvious to more people. I’m not suggesting that I felt or believed that technology would make democracy ubiquitous across the globe, but I did feel regardless of an individual country’s ideology, within those constructs, better decisions and better choices would be made. The world would not be perfect, but it would certainly be better. My lack of understanding of technology itself and algorithms and what we now call artificial intelligence bit me in the ass on this one. Information was never evenly distributed and, in fact, incorrect information tended to be more amplified and distributed. And, worse, I didn’t recognize incorrect information absorbed would become an attractor for technology to actually feed more incorrect information to anyone who initially absorbed the former. And while I’m a student of Alvin Toffler, and I clearly understood his point of view with regard to cognitive overstimulation, I imagine I did not see his point with true clarity until reality struck. The reality that the ubiquitous information machine was just simply too overwhelming for almost everyone’s brains to cognitively to assimilate in any useful way in addition to the fact technology wasn’t going to help us along the way. I never envisioned technology would step in and amplify a significant number of incredibly crazy stuff which created the cloud over the incredibly non crazy smarter stuff which would have made a better society.

The third thing I missed was how innovation relentlessly pursued incremental consumer quasi-improvements and wants instead of actual needs. Yeah. At the core of this is of course making money. That said. I imagine I focused too much on the potential good things rather than the sheer quantity of the less-than-useful versus not-the-best-but-good. Technology innovations tended to be incremental, asymmetrical, and relentless. Their work was not done in giant leaps, but in relentless, small, almost unnoticeable, increments. Platforms were developed to absorb the onslaught of new technological widgets, but even the platforms became overwhelmed. Maybe that is one of my points. If the technologists were incapable of figuring out how to manage technological innovations, what chance did the everyday human have? As a subset in this was how I didn’t envision the speed of obsolescence. What I mean by that is in the race to get things to market even the really good things technology did and offered became obsolete in the blink of an eye. Because most of the technology was actually incremental it became incredibly easy to make them obsolete with other incremental improvements. This had cascading consequences on both business and people. Business, once they had made a financial commitment, their commitment was for the most part unmoving. Their commitments, for the most part, couldn’t easily absorb the new innovations so they simply, pragmatically, accepted where they were as an improvement from where they had been. They had to accept better, but not the best, all the while wallowing in the anxiety that someone, somewhere, was better. As for people, once they learned something, there was something else they had to learn – at speed. There was no time to develop an integrated routine. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out all of this is good things happening, i.e., truly better technology – with some bad consequences. Asymmetrical adoption, inconsistent application, shifting foundational knowledge, it was almost like quicksand of general cognitive stress and anxiety that we were always behind. My point is while technology has wrought a lot of wrong, the underpinnings are still good, i.e., there is a lot of wheat amongst the chaff.

Still. But. I thought a lot wrong about good things happening.

Still. But. I am actually suggesting my thinking wasn’t wrong about technology, it was more about size and speed. What I mean by that is small things are different than when they are large. A tribe is, well, a tribe, but a mega-city is a mega-city – made up of multiple tribes interacting, cultures within cultures and communities within communities. I forgot social dynamics. This isn’t about complexity, or complicated, or even chaos, this is simple social dynamics. Platforms started for small, like-minded groups. They had some set of shared expectations, but when the ‘small community’ grew past their original audiences into wider audiences, and often at exponential pace, money took over some of the internal ‘scale’ aspects and expectations were subverted and no one had any time to say “hold on a second.” Regardless. Any smaller community will be affected by interaction with the larger community – especially if that larger community spans the globe. Any smaller community will be affected even if they rage against the larger machine because, well, the machine has learned to feed off that rage (Liv Boeree).

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“The universe has no single secret. It does not even hold a single nest of secrets to which some one study holds the key.”

Mary Midgley

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Which leads me to what I want from technology (and, hopefully, what we all want).

The only way for “us” to bring about a better future is through some sort of technological humanism.

To make that case — ultimately a case for restraint and more considered progress – we should build an optimistic story of how humanity would use technology to solve problems and thrive and that it can be integral in bringing in about visions of a fairer, more equitable future. I don’t believe technology is “the savior”, but I still believe technology can be integral to a better future.

“Survival now would seem to depend upon the extension of consciousness itself as environment.” Marshall McLuhan 1972

Yeah. I’m writing this and I’m not a technologist, but certainly of a generation that was technological optimistic, curious and ready to implement, with best intentions and some pretty good tactical objectives, some amazing things.

I tend to believe, at that time, most people thought technology was created to solve problems and in solving those problems society and the world would just become better. That didn’t exactly happen and I would argue that somewhere along the way society’s natural inclination for dystopian thinking overcame any quasi-utopian futuristic objectives, i.e., we focused on the bad consequences rather than the good consequences, so that all technology was seen as having a negative effect. As usual, a healthy future is found somewhere in between.

To be clear (part 1). I always, unequivocally, thought move fast and break things was only the harbinger of some unforeseen, but inevitable, doom. To be clear (part 2). I don’t think we are residing in a world of doom, but we certainly haven’t attained the drastically improved society of people living in harmony that many of us envisioned would occur. Part of the issue, as I have noted a number of times in the past, is that many of us were confident a better society would simply emerge. We were wrong. Not that the good parts of society do not exist, but maybe because technology had a nasty habit of over-empowering the more nasty parts of society. Or maybe we never really defined what we thought a better society was nor even offer up a vision to everyone, so that (1) technology overtly created things that would nudge us toward it and (b) show a scenario to society at large that they would incrementally nudge themselves toward somewhere within the 30000 decisions they make daily. This mistake was we treated everything as positively emergent. And in that space, I was wrong. Horribly wrong (a pragmatic business lesson lurks within there).

All that said. I imagine one of my larger points would be that rather than dwelling in the despair and the dystopian view of technology, maybe more of us should take a step back and remember the technology can offer all the positive benefits that we dreamed of at the very very beginning. Technology has never lost its ability to create a better society. Technology has never lost its ability to ensure a smarter, more intelligent, more critical thinking, public. Technology remains an incredibly useful and powerful tool to enable a better society. I say all that despite all the negative things that technology has wrought.

Let’s be clear though. The future does not really reside in technology. The future resides in humans. Decide what we want society to be, what we want civilization to be, how to be able to make people better thinkers, better sensemakers, better choicemakers, is a human choice. I am not suggesting a one worldview. I am not suggesting some global government. All I’m suggesting is that humans can decide what a good human should be. And then we design technology to enable that.

Even with all I have said today, while some technology has created some problems, we clearly are very dependent on the advantages and benefits it has provided. I imagine tucked in all the issues is a truth that the solutions technology provides outweigh the problems it has created. That doesn’t mean we should only focus on the benefits nor does it mean we should focus only on the problems, just that we should maintain some perspective.

Personally, I believe we society people and technology are in the liminal space – possibly the space defined by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock. What I mean by that is all the shock aspects that he outlined are exploding in this time in space that we live in. Or as Czech president Vaclav Havel said:

“It is as if something were crumbling, decaying and exhausting itself – while something else still indistinct were rising from the rubble.”

With that I will end with Marshall McLuhan.

“Perhaps the terrifying thing about the new media for most of us is their inevitable evocation of irrational response. The irrational has become the major dimension of experience in our world. And yet this is a mere byproduct of the instantaneous character in communication. It can be broad under rational control. It is the perfection of the means which has so far defeated the end, and removed the time necessary for assimilation and reflection. We are now compelled to develop new techniques of perception and judgment, new ways of reading the languages of our environment with its multiplicity of cultures and disciplines. In these needs are not just desperate remedies but roads to unimagined cultural enrichment.”

Ah. “Roads to unimagined cultural enrichment.”

I imagine I purposefully end on an optimistic note because in the end I believe technology has the means to offer more good than bad. Ponder.

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“What happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough?  It becomes your entire history. “

Louise Erdrich

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There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

H. L. Mencken

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Is the nature of civilization speed or is it consideration? Is it efficiency or effectiveness? With a societal mindset that believes speed is essential for survival, if not thriving, in today’s world, what is the role of slow, observation, and consideration?

The reality is a conscious decision to move slowly, or move slower, or even stop on occasion, is not in contradiction to speed. Think festina lente.

The reality is speed and efficiency are not, themselves, signs of intelligence or capability. They do not carry with them any moral value and they don’t necessarily make any social contribution to civilization. Efficiency and speed are certainly useful, but they are not in themselves manifestations of civilization. In fact one could argue the main effect of our efficiency idolatry has been to discourage consideration, if not to make it actually impossible. And while there certainly can be arguments for speed (we need to grow fast enough to meet the needs of a growing population AND grow alternative ways to fulfill those needs rather than extracting & exploiting the world the population is dependent upon for Life), speed also runs the risk of sacrificing some important reflection and consideration aspects.

Why is this important?

Well. In an interconnected world where dependencies are often 6 degrees of separation away, the concept of a united civilization, or at least one in which we recognize the interdependence, is not that farfetched so maybe, just maybe, if we begin thinking about this as ‘global civilization’ maybe it gains some additional importance. Look. I am not suggesting a “global government”, just a recognition that civilization is not bounded by some specific culture or border, but rather a collective effort of 8 billionish people.

Before you reject this idea, whether we like it or not on an individual level, we have reached a point where local connections between separate societies, nations and cultures have become embedded in a global interconnection world. Events that happen in any part of the globe have its direct or indirect influence on people’s actions everywhere.

Some people suggest this the emergence of new world civilization. I believe that is aspirational thinking and a concept of some distant future, but this is when speed and consideration step back into the discussion. I certainly can’t project the future but I can certainly see without consideration, and only speed, our existing social process and social configuration will only continue to fragment and increase conflict as disparate objectives collide at faster, less considered, speeds. The probability of multiple socio-communities living and ‘thriving’ by themselves and being incorporated into a cohesive, let alone united, world system grows less and less. It demands consideration to enhance the probabilities of incorporating social bodies into a useful social configuration.

Which leads me to the concept of time and space.

At the core of this is measured time versus experienced time. Measured time gives a false sense of order to a more frenzied speed driven civilization, in other words, it allows giving order to complicated picture of changing world. this is important because it offers attributive features on a social level to civilization thereby giving an appearance of consideration – done at speed. The issue with this is that social time and space are connected with human activity, social relations and, ultimately, social configuration. The constant speed, without any true consideration, drives how human lives should be lived and, consequently, reflect into people’s consciousness. My point is that speed becomes the conscious default and consideration is an afterthought (or put in the ‘reflective’ bin) and civilization does not benefit.

Society really needs to get a grip on social relations and its relations with time and space because all of it is related to work, communities and technology.  Technology determinism is a very dangerous path to travel in that it emphasizes speed and deemphasizes consideration, hence squeezing both time and space. Reckless application of technology to people’s lives, social relations, and what society values, or not values, transfers much of civilization’s values to something that actually has no values and, well, I seriously doubt good results.

Which brings me back to the opening: is the future of civilization speed or consideration? while much of what happens in today’s technological world occurs independent of human awareness, humans are still accountable for much of the system itself – you have a responsibility to reflect upon your actions/thoughts even if technology may have encouraged the action/thought.  This responsibility is important because the reality is people in today’s complex society have little choice, but to be more knowledgeable than in the past – who had fewer occasions for facing new problems or adapting to radically unfamiliar circumstances. We simply face more things that demand more consideration than we tend to give them. We need to, well, consider more and more often. I am not suggesting speed is not important to the nature of civilization, in fact, I think it is an important feature. I am just suggesting that consideration is possibly more important to civilization because it impacts trajectories, of not velocity, of the speed which inevitably not only effects the impact but where the hell we end up. Ponder.

• –         * note: I am not smart enough to have come up with this thought and question. I had written it down from somewhere but I cannot locate the source. So, thanks to whoever wrote this, said this and thought this. It is an important question.

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“I’ve been injected with false hope so many fucking times I’ve lost count”

via concealthefeeling

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“We all suffer from dreams.”

Bernard Cornwell

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Well. I am unequivocally a hope guy.

I believe leaders should be dealers of hope.

I believe hope is stronger than … well … pretty much anything.

I believe no one should be empty of hope.

I believe everyone deserves someone to give them hope when hopelessness seems the only thing available.

That said.

While, technically, false hope is a simple definition, realistically, there are a couple kinds of false hope.

Ok. Actually a shitload of derivatives of false hope.

In my words there would be, on one end of the spectrum, the more heinous version of ‘offering a fantasy unrealistic thought’ all the way over to the other bookend of ‘grasping for some glimmer of a semi-impossible reality.”

And then everything in between.

Hope, in even a false way, has many dimensions. And within any and all dimensions I would suggest even a sliver of hope has an exponential value beyond its mere size. It is quite possible that is where false hope becomes a little dangerous – that exponential value beyond its actual size.

Even with a glimmer, hope can shine so bright it can blind you to the relentless onslaught of truths and realities. The truths which are more likely to showcase the horizon you are not only gonna be stuck looking at, but visiting at some point <which is not the horizon you had actually hoped for>. But false hope is maybe even slightly more dangerous than that <if anything could be more dangerous than be blinded by reality>.

It actually is more likely to blind you on the important little shit than the meaningless bigger shit. False hope inevitably drives someone to focus on the bigger more audacious, and less likely, objective. This translates into the fact that same someone is more likely to overlook the smaller more important shit that would actually have increased the odds of attaining the hopeful objective.

How does that most often happen?

You are more likely to make some smaller, more impactful, poor choices and decisions hanging on to the sliver of false hope like it is a security blanket from the dangers of the reality you know must be out there.

By the way. That is the main difference between real hope and false hope – in the nuts & bolts aspects.

Real hope. Real hope, which truly has aspects of reality embedded within, actually permits you to navigate reality’s obstacles as you pursue the real hope of something. The real truth is that real hope does not blind, it actually opens your eyes. That said. Contrary to belief the most dangerous false hope is not the one which is complete fantasy it is the type that actually has some reality embedded.

Yeah. False hope is not always some fantasy.

Yeah. False hope is not always something with “no knowable chance of coming to fruition.”

Yeah. As I stated in the beginning someone who purposefully propagates a true fantasy, something so unrealistic, well, that really isn’t false hope that is propagating a lie. And exploiting a lie is a heinous act <but that is NOT false hope>.

So, to be clear, false hope can be propagated not as some false promise or lie, but rather in a weird ‘well intended way.’ Say, for example, someone has been elevated to a position who is unqualified and untested … but has some tested competency. They sit down at their new desk with all the intentions to succeed and all the words to suggest everyone should believe they will figure it out and succeed.

Well. Let’s say they have strong well intended hope that they will do the job and deliver what they promise.

That is a trickier version of false hope. It is propagated from someone who quite possibly has some false beliefs with regard to their own capabilities, but true belief in a good objective.

Uhm. But what if they do figure it out?

Well. They have delivered on hopes therefore, in some weird equation of Life, a false hope has becomes a real hope delivered.

Look. My point is hope is hope.

And unless someone is lying just to get everyone’s unrealistic hopes up, any hope is better than no hope. You can either not have hope, or have false hope, or real hope <albeit ‘real’ and ‘hope’ is a tenuous relationship>.

To be clear … all actions should be determined by reason, logic and practicality within a construct of strategic hope. That is the main Hope equation.

But hope is, well, hope. And it is hope for a reason. You want something better and at exactly the same time you are not omniscient nor a future prognosticator therefore any and all hoe is fraught with some potential falseness an some potential truth.

Hope, in and of itself, is and has always been an abstract concept.

Fortune, luck, hard work & preparation can guide someone toward hope or away from hope.  Hope is never, and I mean NEVER, representative of certainty. Therefore to accept any hope, false of true, you have to accept the existence of possibilities – good and bad.

To me, in my pea like brain, all false hope implies is that the odds are against you and success is slim, yet, people believe they can overcome any and all obstacles. And, in that point, is where I could argue that false hope is as good as any hope out there.

For in that statement if that is what makes someone get out of bed in the morning and go out and try to do something good or even just try, well, that’s not false that is real.

Having led people I do not use hope flippantly even though I believe in hope as a leadership responsibility.

I do believe people want truth.

I do believe people want to feel safe.

I do believe people want someone to accept some of the burden of the bigger more visionary aspects of Life.

I do believe people want to contribute, personally, within progress toward a specific hope for something better.

I do believe Hope, false or true, is hope.

And we all deserve hope.

===========

“People aren’t interested in the truth.

They’re interested in what keeps them safe.

They’re interested in being looked after. They’re interested in a tale being spun… Mighty men have moments of great despair that common people do not want to know about.”

Melina Marchetta

=====

originally published December 2016

===

“What people don’t understand doesn’t exist.”

Jan Carlzon

——–

“Chance favors the connected mind.”

Steven Johnson

===

Ok. We chase a lot of things in business in search of ‘advantage’. We sometimes chase them so blindly and relentlessly we don’t even recognize the rabbit hole we have started running down. Differentiation is one of those rabbit holes.

Now. I have a warped perspective <it includes rabbit holes> with regard to differentiation and differentiating in the business world. I think it’s a shit objective. Ok. It CAN be a shithole objective. But suffice it to say I believe chasing differentiation is … well … yes … often a rabbit hole.

To be clear. I don’t dislike differentiation and I believe a well differentiated sustainable idea can dominate a market. But. Chasing differentiation seems to take on some fairly absurd efforts to attain the objective. In addition. I worry about differentiation as an objective because it points people in the wrong direction. If I were to kill this whole differentiation thing, I would begin by saying “define, define, define.” Define yourself with such a clear distinctive thought that permits you stand up and say ‘here is who I am.’

Here is the deal. Sometimes you may look similar to someone else. But more often you will look like ,well, you. And in a sometimes complex fragmented world where everyone is shouting how different they are <and people are becoming more & more cynical> distinctness can win. And more often than not you will also be, well, different. In addition. In today’s world about the only sustainable differentiation isn’t a thing, it is knowledge, thinking & what you have done with what you learn.

Regardless. The meaningless rabbit hole. In our blind pursuit of differentiation we can make some fairly absurd decisions with regard to thoughtless specialization, nuanced differentiation and niche definition. In our blind pursuit of differentiation we can gleefully land on some ‘spot’ and declare differentiation victory only to have it all negated because of lack of alignment throughout all aspects of operations. Attempted, or false/meaningless, differentiation is useless and distracting and a rabbit hole.

Bottom line on differentiation is the reckless pursuit of it encourages us to lie to ourselves, i.e., convince ourselves of ‘true difference’ when it is simply meaningless differentiation. And therein lies the worst of the rabbit hole. Pretending to not see the truth, or maybe <to be kinder>, to pretend it is what it isn’t.

—————

“… the person who pretends to not see the truth is committing something much worse than a mortal sin, which can only ruin one’s soul – but instead committing us all to lifetimes of pain.

The truth is not just something we bring to light to amuse ourselves; the truth is the axis munid, the dead center of the earth. When it’s out of place nothing is right; everyone is in the wrong place; no light can penetrate. Happiness evades us and we spread pain and misery wherever we go. Each person, above all others, has an obligation to recognize the truth and stand by it.”

Jacque Silette

—————-

That last point is semi-important because many business people simply ignore truth as they pursue this elusive <and debatably poor objective> thing called differentiation. Far <far> too many business people embrace acceptable doubt and the possibility that a stupid belief might have something going for it in the pursuit of ‘differentiation’ all the while completely ignoring something that makes you distinct <but possibly not different>, or, let’s call it ‘an obvious and rational truth.’ People ignore it because they believe it will get you nowhere.

Trust me. These are the meetings and discussions in which I often sit dumbfounded and silent and thinking ‘wow … the rabbit hole just gained a whole new crowd of loons.’

—-

“…I was calm on the outside but thinking all the time.”

A Clockwork Orange

———-

Our relentless pursuit of differentiating most often than not leads to an unimportant product feature <not what customers consider valuable>

–——-

“Differentiation is a unique quality, perceived or real, of a good or service that distinguish it from a competing good or service…”

Your Dictionary.com

——–

Look. I fully realize that the need to be distinctive and competitive are the reasons why the company needs to think about differentiation.  However, differentiation can take on so many faces there is no reason you should end up chasing down some rabbit hole for some elusive ‘this is what you MUST seek’ objective as defined by one expert <only to have another expert state unequivocally you need to chase another completely different shiny object>.

Suffice it to say, I can almost guarantee whenever someone brings up differentiation it is more often than not simply code for “please enter this rabbit hole.”

Next. The perfection rabbit hole. On a parallel course is a similar group chasing perfection often ending up in the same rabbit hole as the differentiators <can get awful crowded in that business rabbit hole>. The pursuit of perfection is an insidious rabbit hole. Its stench seeps into the darkest corners of an organization. And while the stench is enough to make anyone’s stomach heave most organizations have people with no real ability and yet strive to maintain an aura of ability under the guise of ‘seeking perfection for the good of the organization.’

More good employees are actually LED into the perfection rabbit hole than employees who actually CHOOSE to dive into the perfection rabbit hole. That said. Organizations are built over this particular rabbit hole. Every organization. It is the unfortunate burden of every organization to deal with the pursuit of perfection.

————–

“Just because you took longer than others doesn’t mean you failed.”

Hassann

—————

Maybe that is my biggest point about rabbit holes and business. Some of the things we seek most in business, whether it be differentiation or perfection or whatever silly thing you have decided will better your business, always seem to take longer than what you want. We get impatient. And if we get really thoughtful about this whole impatience we would realize that our aggravation is with Life and not any inability within ourselves <or even in assessment the foolish pursuit of this un-real reality objective>.

Note:

we SHOULD be more thoughtful about this more often … mostly because if we do not far too many of the wrong people get fired <the right ones> and too many of the wrong people <the wrong ones> get praised and encouraged to maintain the ‘pursuit’ for the good f the organization.

Regardless. Life does not suffer fools lightly. Life is oblivious to your impatience <and relatively indifferent to you in general>. And Life bleeds into any and every organization.

How does Life deal with the fools and silly impatient people? Rabbit holes. It gives us rabbit holes to chase after silly things and dive into in our relentless pursuit of attaining “it” and waste our lives wandering aimlessly within.

But here is where Business and personal Life diverge.

In personal Life you are responsible for the stupid choices you make. Choose to enter a rabbit hole and the issue is all yours to own. In business you can actually get shoved into a rabbit hole whether you want to or not.

All I can tell you is that when I hear someone leading a discussion about ‘how are we different’ and ‘what’s our differentiation?” I start swiveling my head around scanning for rabbit holes.

All I can tell you is that when I hear someone in the hallway espousing the need to pursue perfection I start swiveling my head around scanning for rabbit holes.

 All I can tell you is that when I am in a meeting and someone is discussing both differentiation and perfection I don’t swivel my head, I just sigh, because I know I am already in a rabbit hole.

That is business … and rabbit holes. Ponder.

==

“Stop looking for happiness in the same place you lost it.”

via creatingaquietmind

==

“Well I guess it’s only life,

It’s only natural we all spend a little while going down the rabbit hole. “

The Shins

==

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.”

Lynda Barry

==

Ok. We chase a lot of things in Life. We sometimes chase them so blindly and relentlessly we don’t even recognize the rabbit hole we have started running down. Happiness is one of those rabbit holes.

Whoa !

WTF.

Happiness is a rabbit hole?

Well. Suffice it to say happiness is a tricky thing.

Having it is awesome.

Seeking it is … well … a rabbit hole.

The search injects us with most of our everyday stress which means most of our stress has nothing to do with what we have, but rather what we don’t have <seeking what we want in other words>.

And while wanting a new car or some shirt or the cool new phone is a tangible ‘want’ <and not even close to sending you down a rabbit hole>; happiness is much more elusive. In fact. Much more elusive than you would imagine <or want>.

First. Our brains struggle to remember happiness in a realistic way. Semi-happy moments in the past take on a Life of their own and become exponentially happier in the memory. Yeah. Happiness has a wary relationship with reality.

Second. Our brains relentlessly tug at and tease out the minutiae found in unhappy moments. This, ultimately, translates into the fact we cannot seem to forget unhappiness and inevitably, because of that, do anything – include some absolutely absurd things – we can to avoid it.

Therein lies the rabbit hole. Life is not meant to be avoided.

Shit.

Life cannot be avoided <whether you try to or not>.

What do I mean? While we seek to control our own destiny and write our own fates … others grab our Life while we aren’t looking and write whole chapters for us that we can only look at and say “WTF” just before the inevitable ‘not written by us’ happens.

———

“Life is like a library owned by the author.  In it are a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick

————

And all that ‘not written by us’ stuff keeps on getting in the way of what we want to write about happiness for our Life as well as it gets in the way of erasing the unhappy shit. This particular rabbit hole, this relentless pursuit of happiness, makes Life particularly difficult.

———-

“It hasn’t been easy, and it never will be. After all, every day is also a chance to slide back into the darkness. To live in ourselves and our regrets, instead of this moment. To run away from those that would help us and let self-hatred drive us back into isolation, despair, and destruction.

Nick Spencer

——

Every day is not easy and actively pursuing happiness shoves our happy ass in a slippery sloped rabbit hole faster than you can blink an eye.

Ok. As a corollary to chasing happiness, lets maybe call this the other rail on the tracks down into the frickin’ rabbit hole, is chasing simplicity <often believing this ‘elusive simplicity’ will lead to happiness>.

Is this a paradox in Life? Shit. I don’t know, but I do know the more we seek simplicity the more complex things tend to get and … uhm … the less happy we become.

Whew. Boy oh boy, talk about the slippery slope leading down to the rabbit hole of self-hell. Seeking simplicity is it.

Simplicity entices you day by day and even hour by hour. And each day you do not attain simplicity the more and more you look at it as some type of failure and you try harder and harder for something I am fairly sure you just cannot attain. Or if you can attain it … well … it doesn’t come from a book or some formula or even some sage advice from a friend, it is something more earned by living and attempting and finding.

Simplicity seems so simple and yet it inevitably takes much much longer to master than you feel it is supposed to.

Simplicity seems so damn easy that we, well, get impatient when it doesn’t happen.

Let me state that differently. We get impatient with Life. Uh oh. It’s not like we can dictate the pace & flow of Life <I will come back to this>.

The next problem?

Even if you actually DO attain some simplicity you are aggravated it took so frickin’ long. This is compounded by the fact that simplicity is one of those weird things that as soon as you attain it you start hearing other people say “geez … why did it take you so long to figure THAT out?”

————–

“Just because you took longer than others doesn’t mean you failed.”

Hassann

—————

<I use this quote to close the rabbit holes business post too>

And maybe that is my biggest point about rabbit holes and Life and reality.

Some of the things we seek most in Life, whether it be happiness or simplicity or whatever silly thing you have decided will better your Life, always seem to take longer than what you want. And we get impatient.

And if we get really thoughtful about this whole impatience … we would realize that our aggravation is with Life and not any inability within ourselves <or even in assessment the foolish pursuit of this non-real reality objective>.

Life does not suffer fools lightly. Life is oblivious to your impatience <and relatively indifferent to you in general>.

How does Life deal with the fools and silly impatient people?

Rabbit holes.

Life gives us rabbit holes to chase after silly things and dive into in our relentless pursuit of attaining “it” and waste our lives wandering aimlessly within this hole with slippery walls and minimal handholds to help us climb out of it.

Well. That summarizes reality … and rabbit holes. Ponder.

=====

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days.

Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling… “

Aldous Huxley

=====

Life truths.

Hard and lightly.

Haste with patience.

Forward diagonally.

Happy and sad.

Success and failure.

Right and wrong.

Thinking and doing.

Dreams and hard work.

Whew. This means that the truly great things in Life may be a coin you can put in your pocket — a coin made up of two sides and two faces.

Yeah. Life is usually a combination of opposites fighting a tug of war moment to moment. I bet no one told you that when you were growing up.

Far too often we are told the secret to life is one thing.

Far too often someone is not telling is the truth <or maybe they don’t really know the secret to life?>.

Th truth is Life <and business also> is a wonderful, maddening blob of inconsistency.

The only way to survive , and not be totally boring, inept or a hermit, is to steal a little of something from both sides and do your best to proportion it all out in the end.

Proportional?

I need some sadness to recognize true joy <only I certainly don’t want to dwell on sadness nor walk around as Happy the Clown every minute of the day>.

I want a leader who is energetic and demanding and cajoling, pushing, shoving, pulling, inspiring people toward a horizon < but I want the moments of idle strength and compassion intertwined>.

I want to work hard … so hard the muscles, brain and/or physical, are strained and hurt … and get to maybe get a glimpse of one of my dreams on occasion <so I can dream a little when not working hard>.

I want people to play hard and play to win <in any endeavor> … but do so with grace in victory & loss, with sportsmanship & fairness and respect for the game.

I want, well, it doesn’t matter what I want. Pick your ‘hard-lightly’ Life combination. I guarantee you will find the most interesting people, most interesting experiences, most interesting moments, most interesting anythings are a reflection of this ying-yang combination. Life is meant to be lived, and experienced, hard & lightly.

Now. By the way.

Just because Life is meant to be lived this way doesn’t mean it is easy to actually live it that way. Living hard, or living lightly, is not only addictive, but also often generates a sense of ‘lostness’ when shelved for a bit.

Why lostness?

Well. It is mostly fear that we will not refind or regain it therefore we hesitate to ever let it go from the way we currently live our Life.

So what do we do? We ‘take a break.’

We ‘get away from it all.’ In other words instead of seeking some ‘how we actually live’ balance in our lives we just step away from the way we live our Life by simply not going lightly <if we typically go hard> or not going go hard <if we typically go lightly> and we don’t do anything other than how we live our Life so, ultimately, we just choose to do nothing to ‘recharge.’

I would suggest that you don’t need to ‘take a break’ to recharge, but rather if you seek the proportional ‘yang’ to your ‘ying’, well, you will find additional purpose as well as your ‘ying’ takes on an entirely new image n your eyes & mind.

• *** note: proportional versus balance: I purposefully use proportional rather than balance because on an individual, person to person, basis it is rarely a 50/50 split – even over time. everyone customizes their life between hard & lightly as is appropriate to their personality, ambition and life desires. once again, this is rarely 50/50 and everyone should just seek what their optimal proportional mix is.

Regardless, just approaching Life one way means you miss out on what is most interesting in life – going hard & lightly.

Aw shit. Look. All I really know if that if you can figure out how to go hard and tread lightly at the same time, you will most likely be successful in business & in Life. You will most likely be appreciated, respected, sometimes liked and certainly not hated. I know … I know … the ‘tread lightly’ part is really really hard if you like to live Life going hard.

But.

As I just told someone go hard for the things you want and dreams you seek to reach toward and if you continue to do these things for you, knowing that your moral compass is set correctly and that your instincts with regard to ‘what is right’ versus ‘what is wrong’ are good, you will be happier and the people around you will rarely be disappointed.

Ponder.

=======

“We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.”

Ransom Riggs

====

“The best way to expose our ignorance is to hold on to biased ideas and opinions, because we fear giving the upper hand to the other side.”

Charles F. Glassman

====

Business is a tricky combination of adapting and consistency.

Suffice it to say discerning what to keep and build some consistency, and what to change or adapt, is, well, the key to creating a successful business.

Letting go of shit is difficult. We all know that.

But. Knowing when to hold on to something is just as difficult.

Simplistically:

<1> many organizations are burdened with older employees who tend to hold on based on their experience, and

<2> many organizations are burdened with younger employees who tend to let go of existing ideas and opinions based on their lack of experience.

Both sides are stubborn, fearing to give the other the upper hand.

And that is where business really needs to get its shit together. This whole ‘upper hand’ thing.

Because success isn’t about compromise it is more often about good ideas winning no matter where and when and who they come from.

When someone or a generation feels like they have the power, or run the risk of losing power, they do stupid things. Obviously, the business pays the price, not the person doing the stupid things. That is why adapting and selecting what to be consistent about should be about anything but power. It should be about creating a culture & organization in which old & new is debated and ‘the good of the organization & business’ decides what to hold on to and what to let go of.

Far too often the power structure in a business <and this can be one individual wielding an inordinate amount of power or an age group/cohort fighting for their space> holds the ‘fairy tale’ success formula, uhm, until the price for believing them becomes too high.

Sigh.

Unfortunately that moment is often too late to ‘fix’ what has gone wrong.

Regardless. A business’ success, and flaws, is typically driven by a couple attitudinal things  <a> a general feeling that you could be doing better and <b> the virtue of the participants.

Doing better.

There is gobs of pressure put on a business both internally and externally. Internally <be successful or be fired> and externally <the market is brutal on any business which does not show growth>. Even if the business has been steadily improving someone will be hammering away on either how terrible things are or how much better it can, and should, be.

Virtue of participants.

A business, in order to function efficiently and effectively, is dependent upon the virtue of the participants. A lack of virtue engenders wasteful transactions, wasteful actions and breeds an overall monitoring cost which can paralyze an organization from any movement or adaptation.

Both of those things I just shared are power. They both have the power to do good, and bad, for a business. What I mean is that the price for believing, disproportionately, in doing better is virtue-driven – that can make the price too high to meet simple ‘doing better’ objectives.

Power, ultimately, resides in, and will always, identifying what should remain consistent and when & where to adapt. All of that is organizationally driven and not individually driven. And yet … it is the individual who must assess all actions & behavior with the intent to always seek when ‘the price in believing something becomes too high.’

In the end I would simply note that the strongest most powerful thing you can do for a business is to understand that doing better with virtue can work.

This is not a fairy tale.

Just know there are no shortcuts and it isn’t easy — you have to work for it.

You have to find ways <just having it as objective will not work>. You have to somehow do something, sometimes anything on occasion, all the while keeping your head on straight and go do something that saves … well … the business <which is kind of like saving the world>.

—

“Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.”

Billie Holiday

—

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is about turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin pie.

Uhm.

Or how about a Bucket of Balls?

Yup. Turkey testicles.

—–

Have a ball at Timothy O’Toole’s Pub in Chicago.

This casual sports bar has made a tradition of serving up crispy, deep-fried turkey testicles during the holiday season. The meaty nuggets are ordered by the bucket and are accompanied by ranch, barbecue or buffalo dipping sauce. The balls have become so beloved that the bar holds an annual Black Wednesday (that’s the day-before-Thanksgiving) turkey testicle-eating contest where the winner takes home a frozen turkey.

—–

Sigh. Only Americans could create a bucket of balls for a Thanksgiving tradition.

Anyway. The first Thanksgiving was more like five deer and some birds, a shitload of shellfish, twigs, acorns and, well, no pie.

In fact, the feast the Wampanoag Indians and Pilgrims ate in 1621 was, ducks, maybe a swan <gulp>, shellfish <thin clams or mussels>, nuts <anything they could mash>, no sugar <so no stuffing or cranberries or, well, pie>. We know the colonists regularly consumed ducks, geese and swans. And, instead of bread-based stuffing, herbs & onions or nuts might have been added to the birds for extra flavor.

Turkey or no turkey, the first Thanksgiving’s attendees almost certainly got their fill of meat.

Fairly bland, but at least the Pilgrims & Indians weren’t killing each other <like many families do on Thanksgiving, uhm, I note that so noone thinks killing each other around the Thanksgiving table is actually a tradition>.

Anyway. I cook a turducken every thanksgiving. It is this fabulous creation of layered turkey, duck and chicken with a spicy stuffing mix. It is an, admittedly, exorbitant excessive culinary delight.

And as I gaze at it I thought of all the years in the past as I lived a nomad life away from any family, my own or anyone’s, and I think of the solo trips to islands and far off countries and … well … luxuries many people have never had the opportunity to enjoy.

At that time I never thought anything about the ‘luxury’ or any sense of extravagance.

At that time, in my mind, I deserved the break.

I say this gazing at my turducken when I know people in other countries … shit … in cities in my own country … will never know this luxury adorning my dining room table.

Am I altruistic?

Shit no.

I tend to believe I am simply gaining some perspective on what I used to consider, well, I deserved. And it makes me reflect upon people and how they think about ‘what I deserve.’ And as I begin discussing ‘what I deserve’ I will hearken back to the original Thanksgivings and the fact the original pilgrims were not called pilgrims.

—

“Those who were members of the Separatist Church Movement referred to themselves as ‘Saints.’ About 60 others who came over in the Mayflower with them were called ‘Strangers.’ But they all knew how to have fun and enjoy life. They made and drank a lot of beer, hard cider and something like today’s brandy.
Occasionally there was drunkenness and fighting.”

So. The original thanksgiving was a celebration for the harvest. in other words, for work. It was kind of the first Labor Day.

It was not indulgence, it was not extravagance, it was a celebration of real output <not income>.

I would suggest it was an understanding of balance. And an understanding of the Life value proposition – work & what I deserve.

Look.

That is a hard thing to understand.

It seems like it should be easy, but it is not.

—

“The hardest choice in life is usually between what you want, and what you deserve.”

Rashida Rowe

—

Society makes it tough. Particularly today’s society. “Society”, as it was back then, were the Pilgrims as a small tight knit group of people with similar attitudes honed by similar hardships. They had a common interest in success and outcome from hard work. All those things make it easier to not only understand the balance, but share the balance.

Today?

Today it is difficult.

Society makes it difficult.

Society has a nasty tendency to complicate our understanding the ‘deserve’ balance.

Everywhere you turn there is the message screaming at us that we need to give ourselves a break and have a treat:

==

Girlfriend, put your feet up and enjoy a mani-pedi.

You deserve it!

<note: …. always with an exclamation point>

–

Hey mom! Following an afternoon with your crazy kids, you deserve a stop at the mall to treat yourself to new shoes or that designer handbag or, well, whatever you want!

<note: …. always with an exclamation point>

–

Life got you down? Retail therapy! You deserve it.

<note: …. always with an exclamation point>

==

While I focused on women <because there is an inherent underlying capitalism theme that women are being too hard on themselves — juggling the duties of being mothers, wives, professionals — all at once and should spend money to solve that> the fact is that all of us are encouraged, because we demand too much of ourselves, to ‘stop punishing ourselves’ and go out and indulge ourselves in some way as therapy.

Ok.

First.

I am all for breaks.

But in the good ole days Thanksgiving was but one indulgent break from 365 day toil. That is a well deserved break.

In comparison. Today?

Weekly pampering?

Monthly reward for work well done?

Daily indulgence of something to break the day up?

Where is the number?

What is the number?

How much do we truly need and doesn’t more of it actually:

<a> make us expect more (answer: yes), and

<b> create the impression we are sacrificing more in our everyday toil (answer: yes).

Secondly.

Uhm.

Instead of “punishing ourselves” by plowing through life we reward ourselves with making purchases that sit on a credit card <called ‘debt’> or spend money on some intangible indulgence which depletes four wallet size <and savings size> which could be used to actually accumulate something that could actually bring us closer to whatever our vision is.

Look.

Before everyone gets defensive about how many indulgences are required to get you through the week, consider the source of your belief that you need some indulgent break every week.

Were you really raised to believe some continuous indulgence <under the guise of ‘reward’> is a basic part of human life?

Or was the idea planted by some marketing genius promoting therapeutic benefits of whatever indulgent behavior they want to sell you?

Let me caveat this a bit by acknowledging life can be a grind and that the way work is conducted, for the most part, certainly makes us seek something better or some off-ramps on occasion and certainly encourages us to think we desrve better <or something more than what we are getting>.

That said.

We all should use every opportunity to better ourselves. And this includes thinking about what we truly deserve.

But what we deserve is, and should always be, balanced by our understanding of ‘effort.’ And effort should be all about making every minute count.

Let me be clear.

I love the American ambitious ‘you can do anything’ culture <although it has been warped a bit by the “hustle culture”>.

And I dislike it at exactly the same time.

Why?

Because it is a constant struggle.

All of us get tugged by ambition <work hard> and at exactly the same time get tugged by fairness <value for my work as part of everyone else’s work>

No.

I am not suggesting you cannot have and do both.

Yes.

I am suggesting it gets tough to balance.

One is driven by individualism <what I deserve and I want a good happy Life>.

One is driven by collectivism or some version of pluralism <I would like everyone around me to live a good happy Life>.

It is natural to focus and put a heavier emphasis on the “I” portion, especially at first because you typically have nothing <or little> and you believe you need ‘something’ before you start worrying about fairness or general Life happiness of others.

So. The true struggle occurs once you … well … have.

You have invested the effort, you have worked and focused and did and all of a sudden you have entered into the “I deserve” mentality <zone>.

That is actually a byproduct of ambition. Ambition, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Unfortunately it brings some baggage along with it. It’s almost like you go on this ambition trip without any bags and when you get off the train you have a bag you carry off. The bag is a metaphor for tangible shit you have accumulated <which reflects your effort in your eyes as well as the eyes of those who look>, but it also contains mental shit. Self value, self-actualization and self-esteem. And it is the mental aspect which builds up the ‘deserve equation.’

We almost consider it as an aspect of winning … as in ‘winning in Life.’

I played the game.

I put in the effort.

I deserve the trophy.

And maybe that is where we get it wrong <sometimes>.

Playing the game versus winning.

Life, in general, is not measured by how many wins you have <or awards you get> it is about how you play the game. It really shouldn’t be about “winning in Life” it really should be “Life played well.”

Unfortunately, that is not part of the USA DNA.

We are an ambitious group of people who like to have, and measure, progress.

We are a group of people where ambition is not a negative word, it is indicative of a positive spirit. It is indicative of an underlying competitiveness which resides in the souls of 99% of Americans. I am not suggesting it is the only characteristic within us .just that it is always there and always suggesting ‘keep going.’

—

“The problem in France is that ambition is not a compliment.

It’s almost a bad word. ‘Ha, look, he’s ambitious.’

So that’s a very difficult situation for an athlete: As soon as you try to be ambitious you have people mocking you.

For instance, we would never have made the war in Iraq. On the other hand, we may never win anything.”

Bouin

—

This is not about slamming USA.

Shit. This is not about slamming your own ambition.

This is not an indictment of a ‘can do’ spirit or an indictment of ambition.

This is simply a reflective moment on how we think about what we deserve on Thanksgiving.

We deserve more than a ‘bucket of balls’ on Thanksgiving.

We deserve a sense of success for effort. Not anything truly tangible, but a sense.

We deserve a good sense and a good feeling for playing the game well, and with effort.

If we figure that out, I tend to believe all the rest will simply fall in place. Ponder. And Happy Thanksgiving.

====

“All men dream: but not equally.

Those who dream in the dark recesses of the night awake in the day to find all was vanity.

But the dreamers of day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, and make it possible.”

T.E. Lawrence

———–

“On stormy nights they both dreamt intensively, violently – they often drowned.”

Heat and Light by Ellen Van Neerven

====

“What use is idealism when the ideals are false ones?”

Byron

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Hope, optimism, dreaming, even idealism, seems out of vogue these days. “Be realistic,” “nothing is going to change” is the war cry of the general masses or, at minimum, the cynical few. This is the real crisis we face. For the truth is more often than we like to admit our idealistic visions and dreams actually come to fruition, in some form or fashion, in the real world. and what that means is less idealism and less dreaming creates a reduced chance of real progress.

I will say its weird, at least to me, in that how we view people, who is essential and who will be valued <not the same>, is often also the way we view some idealistic thinking and dreams. Ideals and dreams are essential and of value <although not all are created equal>. Now. I am going to focus on business, but the lessons within are also ones of society too. Just ponder it all as you read along.

It was Mary Parker Follett who discussed, in Community is a Process, idealism and realism meeting “in the actual.”

The actual is complex. Shit. “Actual” could simply be complexity itself. Business demands navigating complexity BY AND THROUGH a combination of idealism and realism. We can talk about sensemaking and choice making and embracing uncertainty, but the weapons we wield as we wander through complexity is idealism and realism. Sure. We also focus on greed and profit when the truth is the motives of business are numerous and complex. We want profit and yet we work for self-development, working together, service, completion, progress, esteem, craftsmanship, creation, etc. This is another extrapolation of Mary Parker Follett’s “law of the situation” where each situation has its own order and own complex mix of motives. Idealism, realism and ‘in the actual’ are all part of the weave of complexity of which any group of people working together as well as any individual ‘doing’ will interact with their own weave of motives. Simply saying it is ‘greed’ or ‘just a paycheck’ is lazy. Work is more complex and people are more complex and even the connection between idealism and realism is complex.

And maybe that is why I now suggest an ideology of incrementalism is fraught with peril. While on the positive side it offers potential consistent positive progress on the downside it can be representative of putting off important things until it’s too late to do anything about them. Incrementalism is the worst of both idealism and realism. It sacrifices the best of both while promising the best of nothing.

“The remarkable monotony of the proposed solutions throughout our recorded history testifies to the elemental simplicity of the matter. Generally speaking, they always amount to seeking shelter from action’s calamities in an activity where one man, isolated from all others, remains master of his doings from beginning to end”

Hannah Arendt

Ok. I believe every business has an ambition. In fact. I believe every business has different ambitions all at the same time – money, morals, size, Purpose, etc. that ambition can come in any size but it will always own some combination of idealism and realism. That specials sauce combination is theirs and they hope to attain it or aspire to reach it. it is their ‘hope’ of what can be.

To me.

All hope to me should be grounded in some sense of idealism and reality.

I, frankly, don’t understand when people suggest you cannot have both.

I, frankly, don’t understand when people suggest you cannot have both idealism and realism.

I, frankly, don’t understand when people suggest you shouldn’t have aspects of both hope & pragmatism, possibilities and pragmatism and idealism & realism.

We should want both AND demand both. It is reaching for the stars and reaching realistically. It is keeping your feet in the clouds and, yet, head on the ground.

But that’s how I think.

I think you can be both idealistic and realistic.

I think it is possible to offer a sense of a difficult path forward without creating a larger sense of ‘doom or Armageddon’ to create the sense of urgency which we often deem necessary in order to inspire real action.

And, inevitably, that is what this is all about.

How to inspire people not just to inspire, but to take action?

How to inspire larger ideas and larger actions and the smaller steps inbetween?

This is a tightrope all business people walk.

The difficulty on this tightrope is that there will always be people debating, and criticizing, while you walk on this tight rope. They will argue whether the ambition is big enough. They will argue whether the ambition isn’t small enough. They will argue we need more radical change. They will argue we need less radical change. Shit. They will argue we need no change moving forward, but rather reverse some of the changes made.

And you know what?

Some of that, in all of that, is right. Some of the past is awful and some of the decisions we will make for the future, and in the future, will be awful. Conversely, some of all of that will, well, not be awful.

To suggest that there are easy answers or that the steps forward are clear and simple is stupid. Stupid and foolish.

Just to be clear. Within the “Idealism and Realism” debate can be found the constructive decision which any leader tries to find their own course in leading. We debate all of this shit in our own heads and then we debate it in conference rooms and boardrooms every week. This debate, simplistically, are the doubts that reside between idealism and realism.

We are responsible for past decisions and, yet, try to unburden ourselves so that we can make progress.

Simplistically, just because I <maybe> made an awful decision in the past doesn’t mean I will make an awful decision in the future.

Simplistically, just because I maybe offer a hopeful idealistic decision for the future doesn’t mean it is a realistic decision for now.

Simplistically, just because I try and slow everybody down on some idealistic discussion shouldn’t suggest I am any more ‘canny or wise’ than everybody else let alone the person who offers the idealistic hope that people may gravitate toward — it just suggests that maybe I am trying to balance it all with reality <and maybe incorporate the fact that, pragmatically, I would like to incorporate some possibilities for people today & tomorrow>.

I will suggest, no, I will tell you the harsh truth getting good shit done within ANY size ambition is hard.

Getting shit done means balancing overreach and under reach.

Balancing possibilities and pragmatism.

Balancing idealism and realism.

Balancing the practical and the hope.

Balancing what people think they want and what they need.

Balancing the majority and the minority.

Balancing what is good for one and good for all.

Anything less than that is oversimplification.

Oh. Shit. And then there is context. One can never lose sight of context.

You have to balance the idea, the hopefulness of ‘what could be’, against pragmatically where you have been <what has happened if not what has just happened> as well as where you are.

It is incredibly simplistic to suggest any past decision should be compared to a decision you will make. Just as it would be incredibly simplistic to judge a business leader if they were to take over a large company which was truly heading into a shithole versus a company which had some problems but was, in general, businesswise healthy.

Every transition has its own singular issues. Every situation has its own singular issues. Every business has its own singular issues. And, let’s be clear, every one of those situations has singular problems.

We should all recognize that in the overall life cycle of business problems and opportunities, practical and possibilities, hope & despair, heroes & villains, will appear in different forms – all with the intent to either further our ambitions or steal our ambitions and crush our ideals.

This is not cynical, this is … uhm … reality.

I would suggest reality is navigating idealism and reality mostly by assessing the problems, or obstacles, to your ambition.

Harping on whatever those problems are doesn’t really get you anywhere.

They are what they are.

I could also argue that arguing over idealistic ideas and vision without admitting some pragmatic realism doesn’t really get you anywhere. It is not a binary discussion nor are pragmatism and possibilities, idealism and practical, mutually exclusive.

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“Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.”

John Galsworthy

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Look. We all hate cynicism, but far too often we confuse it with pragmatism and practicality. I would also suggest we all get tired of pragmatism because, well, far too often it sounds small. But I would also point out that we all not only get tired, but absolutely unequivocally hate, unrealized idealism. “Large” unrealized equals zero, nothing, nada. People don’t like a zero, nothing, nada no matter how large the zero, nothing, nada is.

Neither option, looked upon in isolation, is attractive or likeable.

And you know what? We all know in our heads this is a tightrope. We sit down and assess what we have, assess what we could have, assess resources, money, whatever, and figures out, pragmatically, how to get going doing the business of doing business – that desires to attain that ambition.

We may not always get it right and we may not always get done whatever is needed to get done to alleviate the problems, or all the problems, that exist in the here and now. But I would point out that, realistically, you can never alleviate all problems and that problems exist, contextually, no matter if you are idealist or realist, pragmatist or a ‘possibilities driven’, hope or practical person. The only constant is that problems existed to be addressed, exist to address and will exist to address all to eventually be solved ONLY if both idealism & pragmatism and possibilities & the practical are embraced.

Not accepting that as a business truth is foolish.

Not accepting that as a business truth is, in fact, lazy thinking.

Any business ambition demands both idealism and pragmatism. The idealism is the spark of possibilities and imagination while the realism stops you from simply being a ‘dreamer’ or wasting resources tilting at windmills.

Maybe, just maybe, we should be sitting back and thinking about how you can both be idealistic and realistic.

In the end.

I hate almost all binaries but choosing between realism and idealism is the most distasteful to me.

Every business deserves both idealism & realism, possibilities & pragmatism and grander hopes of individual significance. Every business deserves to think, and believe, it can matter – in its family, neighborhood, community, city, state, country or global. Whatever their ‘mattering ambition’ is they deserve the intrinsic motivation found in that ambition – while grounded in some realism.

Once again, let me say, maybe, just maybe, we should stop embracing just idealism, or just realism, and see that optimizing the combination is the path to optimizing the future. And while I typically dislike optimizing (it often feels like compromising) maybe, just maybe, in this case, we should all go into the optimizing “in the actual” through idealism, realism and dreaming. Ponder.