Ok. So what the hell is investing energy in life?

Let’s call it being able to discern between ‘resting’ versus ‘being stagnant.’ And, possibly, add in being able to discern when to use energy and when to not use it. By the way.  All of that translates into making choices.

Anyway. Let me use a quote to begin the discussion.

“As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Ah. Now. Be careful when reading this. Lucy isn’t suggesting people not be original or seek to have some ‘depth.’ Nope. She is suggesting investing energy at the appropriate times is a choice. A choice for when energy invested won’t be wasted.

Look. Haven’t we seen those people who go 110% all the time on everything? And they get tired. And often frustrated. And they often don’t seem to get as far in life as you would expect for all the energy they have invested. While they may debate with me (because they feel like they are making the choice that has to be made, i.e., I am ‘working at being successful in life’), the reality is they aren’t making any real choice.  Anytime you do something 100% of the time you haven’t made the tough choice. Shit. You actually haven’t made any choice at all. The switch is simply flipped into a default mode.

The choice truth? There is a time to rest. And. There is a time for energy.

Oh, and yes, you do have to invest energy in life to get something out of it.

Because being lazy doesn’t get you shit.

In fact.

Being apathetic doesn’t get you shit.

Once again. That doesn’t mean 24/7 energy and pushing and shoving and being passionate and trying to kick ass 172,800 seconds (if I did my math correctly that is the amount of seconds in a day).  It’s about making choices. When and where type choices.

So.

What I am saying is you cannot have enough energy to kick ass every second of every day.

(and if you have someone suggesting you should? … ignore them)

But.

You also cannot be passive every second either.

There is resting (before investing energy).

There is stagnant (before never investing energy).

(former good; latter bad)

And they are significantly different because living a successful (happy) life takes energy. And life is a struggle that takes energy to manage and deal with. And frankly happiness doesn’t always come easily.

By the way. This ‘struggle’ isn’t a day-to-day get-things-done struggle.  I mean it is a mental and physical struggle.

Describing this struggle is interesting. Good ole Winston C. suggested Life is the struggle between energy and indolence:

“Life is a struggle between vitality and decay, energy and indolence”

Winston Churchill

Whew.  Good stuff.

Life is all about either growing or diminishing. You are either active or passive. And life is the struggle within the two. At all times.

Some people would simply suggest that an active life is better than a passive one. Oh. If only the solution were that simple (because it isn’t that one sided).  Sure. Embracing adventure or some activity you are passionate about (or believe will make you better) is important to what makes many of us happy and feel like we are being productive within our life. But it isn’t just about going out and doing a bunch of stuff.  It’s about going out and doing the right stuff. And, to be happiest, the right stuff at the right time.

So be careful.

You may elect to ignore people who tell you to “slow down and take it easy” because you feel like you are being productive and ‘doing.’ But be sure you are aware of what you are doing and how you are investing your energy. Because energy is not limitless.

Life is about balance. Balancing rest and energy. But this is where stagnancy or indolence issue steps up to the plate. Because happiness can be such a struggle and ‘doing nothing’ sometimes seems the easiest thing to do. It isn’t (no matter how it may look or feel at the time).  You HAVE to invest some energy at some point. If not for you then you have to for those around you. Because in the end we see that the energetic displaces the passive. Even if the passive is “good” (intentions or in heart). Because evil is restless.  And energetic.

“In this very real world, good doesn’t drive out evil. Evil doesn’t drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.”

Bill Bernbach

Ok. My fear is when people read this last quote they begin to dedicate all their energies to … well … doing.  With good intentions, but not seeing the forest because of the trees.

Remember. We are not Ever-Ready bunnies who can go and go and go.  Because all that “going” means investing energy.

And the people who you see going 110% all the time? Well.  The reason they do is because they haven’t figured it out.  They haven’t figured out when to rest and when to invest energy. And having already decided mentally that they need to invest energy to win the struggle they just invest.

And invest.  And invest (I would like to point out … with diminishing returns).

Please.  Everyone.  This isn’t about time management.

If you read my “time according to Lucy” post you know I am skeptical of the whole managing time concept. The closest suggestion I can make to clarify what I am trying to say in this post can maybe be found in the book Power of Full Engagement. The book suggests that instead of trying to manage time we should be conscious of managing our energy.

I am not talking as literally as the book author suggests (they suggest at different points in the day we have more energy than others as well as more motivated to do certain things at certain moments). I don’t think this is about planning your work times around when you expect to have creative energy (like the book suggests).

This is just about investing energy at the right times.

Yes.

Investing energy at the right time in the right place.

This is not about motivation or creative energy or any of that.  This is simply about recognizing ‘influential moments’ (moments that can swing your day or life) and acting upon them by investing energy.

And that, my friends, is a choice.

A choice to invest what energy you have available, no holding back, when the opportunity arises.

Yes. That is a choice.

And not investing energy at some times (when people look at you and worry if you are lazy).

And, yes, that is a choice.

Choices based on understanding the difference between rest and stagnancy.

Maybe that is “the” choice.

Yeah.  Life is a struggle. And a struggle of choices. But mostly it is a struggle of energy. When to invest and when to not invest.

Ponder. Ponder because it matters.

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“Sliding down the slippery slope of mediocrity.”

David Ogilvy

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Turn on television on any given weekend in the United States and you have a very high probability of finding the movie The Replacements at some point. While the movie, at its core, is about taking for granted what you have versus taking advantage of opportunities, tucked within the movie is what I call “the quicksand moment.”

This is the scene where the coach asks the players their greatest fear and the quarterback says “quicksand.”

Businesses get stuck in quicksand all the time. Shit. People do too. What makes it worse is that most times you know how to play the game well, in fact, you may have actually been playing it well at the time so the first thing that goes wrong is just a blip.

“Just one thing” is what you say.

Then another thing happens.

Then another.

You fight back alone and sink.

Or.

Someone notices (usually management) and they help you fight back.

How?

The first response almost every business has to a problem is “more resources”. Oh. That is the first sign you have fallen into quicksand. As Brooks pointed out in the Mythical Man Month, even on projects, our first instinct is to add more people. This only makes everything even slower and more dysfunctional.

If that fails, the second response is usually even more resources.

You sink deeper.

Faster.

On a personal level this comes to fruition in “I’ll stay later or get in early.” You are on the edge of quicksand. You see added resources as “more time.” So, you put in more time. And more time. And this is where fear enters. You know you are trying hard; you know you are doing right things and, yet, it still keeps going wrong.

You are sinking despite all the effort.

And then you can’t breathe.

Organizational quicksand.

Now.

Quicksand and slippery slopes share some similar characteristics.

The first is that you don’t know you are in, or on, them until its too late.

The second is what I call “just this once” behavior.

It is absolutely easy to compromise – in business and in life. “Just this once.” An exception. And then another.

And before you know it you are on that slippery slope.

Regardless. This is a Life and business lesson. So, let’s just call it “truth.” It’s a truth about work, effort, decisions, compromise, lies (or “half-truths”) and almost anything else I can think of.

Slippery slopes are incredibly easy to step onto AND get stuck on. What do I mean?

“Just this once” you say to yourself when you are tired. Whatever the decision or action we are discussing, to you, in the moment … it is mentally “an exception”.

“Just this once” when you are asked a question and you ponder your answer and maybe you embellish a bit.

“Just this once” you say to yourself when you put off that thing you wanted to do. A workout. A chore. A book. A project. A diet. A decision.

“Just this once” you say to yourself when it is a silly rule or what you are doing isn’t really unethical, but its not 100% ethical, it’s just in the margins of “okay to do.”

Before you know it <after some “just this onces“> you have edged on to that slippery slope. Once has become many and, well, many becomes the standard.

Business is funny that way. Its sneaky. It permits you to look at things in a mutually exclusive way so that you don’t really see the accumulation of events and decisions until you have sunk.

Oh.

Quicksand.

Ponder.

“Each moment is a place you’ve never been.”

Mark Strand

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Innovation can embody some seemingly innocuous inspirations. This is also true of social behavior and social dynamics. What I am referring to is that a nonlinear “exaptation” occurs.

In biology ‘exaptation’ are variations on the usual variations of natural selection. Unlike adaptations, which are changes to an organism that respond to environmental conditions, exaptations are novel, unexpected applications of these new traits. For example, wings evolved as an extension of reptile’s webbed forelimbs wherein evolution was in search of a stronger limb, yet, somewhere along the way the ‘newly winged’ discovered its capacity for flight.

“An organ initially constructed for one purpose may be converted into one for a wholly different purpose.”

Charles Darwin

I say all of that to talk about technology. And I don’t mean anything specifically within technology, just technology itself. I read somewhere years ago that the most profound change brought about by technology will not be some new program, AI or even involve some whizbang software, the most profound change will reside in our generic expectations of technology itself. Through its ubiquity the broader shifts will occur in corollary effects that trickle in, and out, and throughout, everyone – the subtle gradual changes that shift the foundation upon what we know and what we think (about Life and ourselves). Living in our technology-created-“memory palaces” (or information spaces always nudging us) will inevitably engineer a social transformation which, in turn, inevitably cascades into the pragmatic functions of life itself – education, healthcare, business, etc. In other words, maybe technology will offer us ‘exaptations’ of which we cannot envision. And maybe worse is that some of these exaptations we cannot envision, will make our lives easier, but worse.

Norbert Weiner, Alvin Toffler and Marshall McLuhan all invested a lot of energy and brain power thinking about this and even telling us in the 1960’s and 1970’s – but I am not sure we actually listened. We fell in love with all the technology things and widgets and embraced, for the most part, how we adapted. But. What they were warning us about were of exaptation.

Which leads me to effectuation.

A causation approach focuses on a predefined goal and then goes about finding the means to attains the goal. An effectuation approach focuses on the means at hand and then have them coalesce with the intent to achieve some outcomes which inevitably achieve some goals (not all predefined).

Effectuation is most often discussed within business and how entrepreneurs shape performance. I bring it up because I fear someone truly thinking about what I am bringing up will jump to designing a goal and pursuing it (causation). I fear it because in a dynamic environment like technology and society, by the time we attain that goal, the goalposts will have moved – most likely dramatically. The truth is that this technology-society battle we are fighting is currently asymmetrical and technology has the leverage. I am not a fan of the word ‘scale’, but the reality is technology is scaling exponentially AND with velocity, faster than human brains can scale, and attempting to address it solely with causation approaches is doomed to fail. The real conclusion anyone should take is to embrace effectuation. Take what exists and use it, and the skills that developed all those things, to materialize real progress in real time and outcomes occur making predefined goals irrelevant. Its kind of like nudging at scale.

Anyway.

As the saying goes, ‘the street always finds new uses for things,’ and with technological ubiquity in most lives, we should be paying attention to ‘the street always finds exaptation while we are not looking and maybe technology will encourage people to fly when they have no wings and, well, we will crash’.

Yeah. There is a lesson lurking in that bad metaphor I just shared.

Ponder.

“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”

Marshal Fochs

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Ok. Marshal Fochs is a WW1 French military guy and at the core of this thought is that nothing elevates the soul of a human to fire than to have their home threatened.

At the core of THAT thought is believing in that home is half the battle.  Ok. Maybe more than half. It won’t stop a bullet. But enough people with enough passion will equal more than the total bullets in the end.

But let’s take this to a different space – opinions and ideas.

Yeah.  If you want to feel the fire, have your idea or belief or opinion attacked.

But let me take it to an even different space – the passionate opinionated – and how they all seem to have their human soul on fire AND invested in their belief/opinion.

Psychology typically separates passionate and opinionated, but the reality is we face people every fucking day who are passionate about their opinions, in other words, passionate and opinionated. Their passion creates objectivity blindness and, in their passion, they have a nasty habit of turning the conversation upside down where they will argue you are the one being opinionated <yet you are using facts and knowledge> and you are the one being ‘objectively blind’ because you are not open to alternative views. Well. Let’s be clear. Not all alternative views are created equal and some of them are just wacky.

And in defending the wacky <or maybe what they call the “silent majority” which is actually the“1% view”> these passionate people are not only focused on what feels true and right for them <many times under the guise of common sense> BUT ALSO are focused on their opinion just being right. Yeah. This makes them almost obsessive <passionate> not just in their opinion, but in defending it.

“No” just doesn’t seem an option in their passionate pursuit of their belief.

Which leads me to strong opinions, loosely held and minding the gap.

Passionate people are relentless and their strength resides mainly in their resolve, not the truth. Therefore, it becomes a battle of attrition where we, seeking to find some resolution and get the hell out of this alternative universe, try to close the gap between the universes.

Which leads me to ‘mind the gap.’ The gap is the gap. The gap exists BECAUSE they have their passionate opinions which don’t completely reside in reality and you have to be mindful that you don’t step across the gap in the attempt to find a resolution. I say that because the moment you step into their universe, even though you may still view it as some warped version of truth, facts, reality, they see it as validation. Remember. Most of us seek win-win, passionate opinionated are zero sum. Their objective blindness is necessary in a ‘win or nothing mindset’.

All that said. It feels like there are more passionate opinionated people today than in the past. There have always been passionate people, heck, passion is often what pushes ideas through skepticism and entropy to actually get good things done as well as obstruct bad things from not getting done. And maybe that is where this whole thing has gone off the rails. The outcome has become more important than the idea. In the past that passionate push allowed the idea, and ideas, to morph a bit as it got forged through the gauntlet. In today’s world it is kill or be killed to a passionate person. We have shifted from sharing knowledge to get somewhere better to simply stating what is better and telling everyone you either get on board or you don’t even deserve to be alive.

I do believe belief is a powerful weapon, tool, energy as a force for good. Alternatively, if you agree with that, you must also accept it can be a force for bad. I end there because it really does sometimes feel like an actual battle, or war, between good and bad. Certainly, the passionate opinionated feel like they are at war. So if you stand for truth, facts and purposefully good knowledge that improves humans and humankind, prepare for battle. Or prepare to die in some alternative universe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The value is found within the threads in individual experiences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unknown

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“You can’t be who you’re going to be and who you used to be at the same time …”

TD Jakes

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Today is the first day of Fall.

……………………………. first day of fall 2016 google ……………….

It is kind of a reminder to everyone that everything is temporary. On another note. I do also sometimes find it slightly strange that death and dying can contain so much beauty.

Anyway.

I kind of find it nice that Life, in the form of seasons, forces us to let go of things. And while we even go kicking and screaming with regard to seasons, Life ignores us … moves on … lets go of the last season … offers us a new season, and once we get over it we are once again shown how beautiful it can be to let shit go.

I kind of find it nice that Life, in the form of seasons, forces us to distinguish what often looks the same from one day to the next. as we keep our heads down to the Life grindstone and each day dawns without any major incident, other than  the same aggravating everyday incidents which inevitably occur, Life ignores our obliviousness … moves on … let’s go of another season … offers a new season … and we get over the fact we actually have to lift our heads up and pay attention for a little, but, we are once again shown how beautiful it is to let some shit go.

“Between the end of that strange summer and the approach of winter, my life went on without change. Each day would dawn without incident and end as it had begun. It rained a lot in September. October had several warm, sweaty days. Aside from the weather, there was hardly anything to distinguish one day from the next.”

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I kind of find it nice that Life, in the form of seasons, forces us to think a little bit about who we want to be … who we are … and provides some real life aspects to show us how difficult it is to be who you used to be and who you are going to be at the exact same time.

Look. I am not a huge Fall person. I am more of a spring person. Heck. I have even suggested we move New Year’s Day to the 1^st day of spring  because I think it would make new year’s less depressing and more hopeful.

But I admit that Fall, even more so than Spring, forces us to face our feelings, thoughts, doubts, dreams and fears with a fairly discerning eye. An eye that views ‘what could be’ with a little more sense of urgency.

Sigh.

Falling leaves can do that to you.

Better seems a little bit harder.

Better seems to have more of a deadline.

I think we all seek a great perhaps of “what I know can be”.

I think we all know what a better world really looks like.

I think we all want to see the beauty that can be found in what is better in everyone.

And maybe it is within Fall and the falling leaves I think we all better grasp that failed plans and failed dreams can beget new plans and new dreams.

Maybe it is within Fall that we are able to see that new realities can lead to needed life changes.

Maybe it is Fall that reminds us even in times of ‘things slipping away’ you can still find abundance.

Maybe it is Fall that reminds us that Life is a healthy mix of duality — life & death and the ebb & flow of growth and regress.

Maybe Fall reminds those who have a view that a happy and fulfilling life should consist only of highs <or, maybe better said, a significantly higher % of highs than lows> and that a positive life should consist only of certainty <shelving fear and doubt to be successful> that happiness & fulfillment also embraces the ebbs in seasons as well as the flows of seasons.

Maybe Fall reminds us that no matter how you plan your day, year, or life, it will have times of … the best, the worst, wisdom, foolishness, belief, incredulity, light, darkness, hope, despair, everything and nothing.

Maybe Fall simply reminds us that time goes on, things come & go and we always have an opportunity to begin again … arise anew after the Fall as it were.

In the end.

Maybe Fall exists just to remind us to think a little.

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“It is pretty to be in love. It’s magical, I’m sure. But it’s also wonderful to stop for ice cream in your prom dress with six other girls. It’s also wonderful to go visit the world with nothing but a bunch of buddies who are really excited about learning. The problem is: we’ve made everything about “the one”.

But maybe “the one” is just you, loving yourself, having fun, and being happy. Maybe instead of looking for our other halves, we should be piecing ourselves together.

Maybe I wasn’t born unfinished. Maybe I am the one who makes myself better.”

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This piece today isn’t about love, it about:

“maybe I wasn’t born unfinished”

When I read that line I stopped. Reread it. And challenged almost everything I have ever written and said about self and sense of self.

I love the thought.

I do think far far too often we find ourselves through others. It is kind of natural because comparisons tend to offer some outlines. It’s not that we shouldn’t look around us and find things we like, and dislike, and assess, but emulate? Yikes. I hesitate. At least a little.

I would much rather we see, think and assess and rather than simply emulate we evaluate who and what we are already. Maybe use the external to invigorate and energize the internal.

And maybe I suggest this because far far too often we think we are a reflection of our experiences rather than a reflection of who we are simply coming to life.

Is this a chicken or egg discussion? Maybe. But in one aspect you can suggest you are built by the external and in another aspect you can be suggesting you are simply blooming as you weather life.

Semantics? Sure. But an important one in my eyes.

Look.

I don’t want this to sound like it is an either or discussion. But I do love the thought of believing you are not born unfinished. I love the thought that everything you need resides within and all you need to do is figure out how to let it out, and shine, and grow.   It is kind of like the latin thought of “luctor et emergo” <I struggle and emerge>.

I do love the thought that maybe it is not who you are that could hold you back from what you could be ,but more often than not the challenge is who you think you are not. Ponder that for a second or two.

I say that because if you focus on the ‘think’ aspect you end up seeking external to validate, or as a corollary the external invalidates <voids, annuls>, that which resides within you and who you are.

That is a very very dangerous Life game.

It is dangerous because instead of piecing yourself together you steal or borrow pieces from others to shape yourself and you become, well, a Frankenstein <maybe not that bad but you get the point>. Or maybe you end up sacrificing parts of yourself to please the external.

All that said. I am sure the reality of a healthy self is somewhere in between. Sometimes uncovering that which exists within and sometimes finding a piece you see and borrowing it as you piece yourself together <although I could argue that any piece you see, and borrow, more often than not is something you already have within and that external piece simply brought your own finished, but unseen, piece to the forefront>.

Anyway.

I am a huge hope guy. I believe the biggest hope of all is the one we all carry within us, a hope we are born with, the one which is a hope to be the best person we can be.

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“I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation.”

Stanislaw Lem

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It is a hope of all that can be and, yet, ‘nothing’ in that it has yet to be.

It is a hopeful contradiction — to live in expectation of something and yet tempered with aspects of nothing. I love the hope found in the thought of being born finished and we don’t need others to piece us together and that each of us is strong enough, and born good enough. The thought that all we have is within us.

I certainly believe, and know, Life is significantly better not lived alone. But what an incredibly empowering thought … “maybe I wasn’t born unfinished and I am the one who makes me better.”

But maybe “the one” is just you.

What a fucking beautiful thought.

I wish I had written it.

Just this week I received a horrible text from an acquaintance suggesting an American congresswoman, who is Muslim, should be more outraged about what is happening in her country <not America>, than what is happening here. The text was absurd, loathsome, and not particularly surprising in today’s world. It reminded me of a piece I wrote in 2010 when America was all wrapped up in an argument over whether a mosque should be built near 9/11’s Ground Zero. Here is what I wrote:

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9/11 bucks the trend of the sometimes American trait of historical amnesia.

In general, we are a forward-looking people who don’t dwell on the past. But 9/11 remains an emotional moment of our generation (probably because it happened right here in front of us).

Anyway.

This mosque and ground zero thing is getting little nuts.

First. The main question is should the mosque be permitted to be built where requested.

Yes. Of course it should.

That would be a freedom of religion constitutional thing. Heck. It’s an American thing. Back off that one and, well, the dam bursts on the whole democracy concept.

Second. The next question is should it be built at ground zero.

Well, no, it probably shouldn’t.

For all the reasons you may be able to come up with about solidarity and Muslims role in the fabric of America I can come up with a longer list of “why does it have to be there of all places” reasons.

Yes. You can.

No. You shouldn’t.

But.

This is where we get to see politicians at their worst. Their absolutely frickin’ worst.

Politicians are baiting our short term memory by making the building of the Islamic center near ground zero an issue.

It is a sorry exercise in political exploitation.

The fact is the Constitution will not permit the government treat one religion differently from another.

But. That aside.

More importantly is politicians are trying to confuse us by confusing terrorism with the entire Muslim religion.

USA TODAY:

the Islamic center, described by proponents, including its imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, as a rebuke to radical Islam. Opponents — including prominent Republicans such as Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, and many 9/11 victims’ family members — call the planned mosque an insensitive intrusion on sacred ground.

President Obama last week said Muslims have a right to build a mosque near the site because of the nation’s freedom of religion but said he wouldn’t comment on the wisdom of doing so.

Gingrich accused Obama of “pandering to radical Islam. … Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.”

Obama? Right on all aspects.

Gingrich? His ignorance or lack of ability to use meaningful and appropriate analogies is astoundingly and stunningly shallow. Especially for one with enough power to dig deep into the American psyche.

If he wanted to compare radical fundamentalist Islam to the KKK? Sure. Go right frickin’ ahead.

But.

He is stirring up Americanism in the worst possible way.

** note: shame on his parents for naming him after a newt and shame on Gnewt for not understanding his responsibility to truth

Ok. Here are some facts.

Over the past decade, dozens of mosques have been built without nasty battles. There are at least 1,500 in America now as compared with about 1,200 in 2000.

Even in the few communities where protesters have targeted Islam specifically, they’ve often been outnumbered by interfaith groups and individuals defending mosques and freedom of religion.

Much of this whole brouhaha is rooted in ignorance and fear.

If politicians (who are supposed to fairly represent the population and attempt to tell us the truth to guide us) would clearly separate al-Qaeda and radical Islamists from the peaceful millions who follow the Muslim faith, we would not be guided by ignorance (or the seemingly ignorant).

Instead the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero has created a convenient rallying point for those who instead want to preach Islamic hatred. Small groups using whatever means possible (and the internet empowers and amplifies splinter divisive groups in unimaginable ways) have leapt at the chance to exploit the opposition to the discussed NYC ground zero mosque.

“Ordinary Americans who don’t have a lot of information (about Islam) are bombarded with this,” says Ingrid Mattson president of the Islamic Society of North America. “It makes them anxious and uncertain.” Responsible people “need to provide information and outreach.”

I bolded that last sentence and say “right on sister.”

Because it is reprehensible for people claiming national leadership to stir the pot with stunning ignorance.

Now.

Here is the tricky part.

The Mayor of New York City reminds us to remember that Muslims were among those murdered, and “that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values … if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.”

He is correct.

And what he states is exactly what makes America so unique in its Constitution and makeup.

But.

I truly believe in my heart of hearts that if the Muslim people who are building the ground zero mosque cared about improving Islam’s image, they would have taken their mosque elsewhere.

If they cared about cultural sensitivities, reciprocity or freedom of religion, then they wouldn’t be trying to build a mosque at Ground Zero.

I do feel (not strongly but there is certainly a twinge) that the idea to build this mosque at this location borders on being stupid and offensive.

Okay.

Maybe better said it is needlessly provocative or, at the very best, entirely needlessly thoughtless.

So.

All that said.

Shame on our politicians for not taking the high road. We elect them to be better than this.

Shame on Americans for not understanding freedom of religion (regardless of how they may actually feel about the decision).

Shame on Islam leaders for putting everyone in this position with what I would consider either a very naïve point of view or an altogether thoughtless decision.

I will end this almost exactly with what I said about freedom of speech.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Freedom is a privilege.

Freedom carries with it responsibility.

I would step up and say “yes, you have the right to build the mosque.”

And then I would hope an American Muslim would step up right behind me and say “the responsible thing would be to build it elsewhere.”

THAT is America.

Ponder that this 9/11.

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“Her sentences were icebergs, with just the tip of her thought coming out of her mouth, and the rest kept up in her head.”

Gregory Galloway

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“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ok. I can honestly say that I have few friends who I know the full thinking, i.e., everything they truly think, about a thought.

Very few.

This includes even my best friends.

Uhm.

I don’t think this is unusual.

More often we only see the tip of the iceberg.

Some words to open a thought.

A sentence or two which offer a preface to a bigger story.

The rest is kept up in their heads.

The ones we know the best may give us some cues, assuming we are paying attention enough, as to where to go next.

The ones we know the least may give us only the tip of the iceberg thinking we may not deserve the rest or maybe the rest is none of our business.

Not to mix metaphors <but I will> but people are like books we peruse at a bookstore. We scan the covers, maybe read the back and sometimes even open it up and read the inside sleeve to get a sense of what is inside. 90% of the time that is what we end up knowing about the book.

<kind of the same as an iceberg … just inside instead>

Now.

In business this is a little different.

In business, assuming you ever want to get some decisions and get something done, far more often you are exposed to a full iceberg, with regard to a thought, because business demands it. About the only way you can ever get an idea from insight to real action is to figure out a way to lift the bottom of the iceberg up & out from the ocean of ignorance and into the conference room light. And even then the business world does everything it can to encourage you to only show “what is important” … as in … “just show me the tops of the icebergs … that is all I have time for”. The misguided assumption being (1) that is all that really matters & (2) if you are good enough you will show the tip of the iceberg well enough we will get a sense of what is under the water>.

That last thought is kind of bullshit and why this iceberg metaphor is so appropriate. The majority of any idea and thought is found below water, not above, and 99% of the time what is above water gives very little indication of what is truly below the water.

Compounding this issue is, well, more often than not if you bring an iceberg into a meeting you will have to discuss the fact there are a bunch of other icebergs, also with tips people can see and bottoms one can only imagine, floating around the iceberg you are discussing.

The shallowest of people in the room will scan the tips floating around and assess that way.

The more thoughtful want to know at least something about the parts they cannot obviously see.

The most thoughtful are interested in everything they cannot see even if it takes a lot of time and it is less than simple.

All that said.

I could argue that in Life or in business what is important is the part most often not seen or heard.

I could argue that in Life or in business what we actually do is spend a shitload of time focused solely on the tips of icebergs.

I could argue that the latter point is the foolish consistency of the hobgoblin of foolish little minds.

To be clear, you cannot chase all icebergs. Attitudinally you would benefit by always being curious with regard to what you can’t see, but behaviorally there is just not enough time to chase down everything beneath the surface if you ever want to get anything done. All this to say chasing icebergs is not easy.

Look.

I could conclude my thought today pounding away on the importance of using curiosity to avoid bad business decisions, but I will not.

Instead I will use a personal thought to make a business point.

If you think about the moments you took a moment and stopped after hearing a sentence from a friend, the tip of an iceberg as it were, and followed up with some curiosity with regard the rest of the thought that you assume was kept in the mind and how much you were rewarded in terms of enlightenment by doing so, well, I kind of think that makes my point. It is typically a rewarding effort in terms of your friendship and connection.

We can spend our lives skating along the icy surface of irrelevance focused on the tips of icebergs or we can decide to dive down and see the larger portions of thoughts, ideas and minds hidden from sight.

That is your choice. Choose wisely.

“It’s always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it’s the victim of violence who is “really” inciting it.”
Christopher Hitchens

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Conflate and false equivalence are possibly two of the most underused (when used properly) and most important linguistic tools available to us today. In a world seemingly devoid of nuance and unnecessarily gifted with simplistic “this versus that” narratives these two tools are what is needed to combat that shit.

I thought of this when I saw Fateme’s list of words (which I agree with) on LinkedIn.

Authentic gets conflated with genuine. Empower is a false equivalence to responsibility. Hustle is a false equivalence and conflates with ambition. You get it. The list gets mangled in simplistic ways ignoring the important nuances that make them truly meaningful.

Anyway.

The reason I call these two words/phrases linguistic tools is because they can be used to disrupt patterns of misguided narratives. Misguided narratives blends shit together into simplistic spaces where simple minds thrive.

Conflate is a sharp tool to use instead of saying “you have incorrectly mixed together two different things” <to the ‘simple’ folk, one word versus 8 is sharper>.  False equivalence is less against mixing shit together but rather when people mistakenly compare two things as equal in value. You can use both, or either, when someone is saying something that doesn’t coincide <conform exactly – which summarizes almost everything in Life>, but you get on tricky ground when someone suggests the things ‘correspond’ <they have comparable elements>. Why is this tricky? Because correspond can very quickly get you into the ‘correlate’ space <a reciprocity without sameness> and all of a sudden someone can try and convince you authenticity correlates to genuine <they are only in the same galaxy> or hyperbole <stretching the truth> correlates closely to ‘lying’ <they are only different planets in the same solar system>. But even the examples I just shared can not be agreed upon in today’s society. Why? In my opinion its laziness or a lack of mental acuity to understand that the distinctions, and nuances, are not only real and important, but meaningful.

Regardless.

Comparisons shouldn’t be flippantly vague or purposefully misused. Comparisons aren’t “unorganized phenomenon” <Noam Chomsky>, but for the purpose of clarity they should be systematic and organized. They are not. So conflate and false equivalence should be used as a battering ram against poor quality comparison relationships. Why? Because understanding, the really important understanding, is found in nuance. If we are aware of the relevant nuances, we can shape our thoughts <mindset, beliefs, attitudes, opinions> in a much more effective way.

But let me be clear, we use these words to combat what I call an oversimplification crisis.

In a world, and society, divided by more less-informed opinions than possibly any time in history, people are leaning in on oversimplification. They do so in order to skate on the superficial surface of truthiness. This skating permits them to throw just enough things into the same bucket so bad things don’t look bad and good things look less good. In other words, this oversimplification exploits our innate desire to feed a “both sides” narrative of any given topic or discussion. The horrible situation this puts us in is, while there truly may be two sides to some issue, each side may not be equidistant from the mean. Pseudoscience is not equal to real science and lies are not equal to ‘spin’ and equating them can be done by conflating the pseudo with actual or by making a false equivalence between selective fact usage and no facts.

What I do know is:

• politicians, and political conversations, tend to thrive on false comparisons

• business tends to thrive with conflating things

• and “both sides” is a sweeping generalization to cloak the fact some shit is equivalent to a ton of shit

Look. I have written almost 3000 pieces on my site and I have actually used ‘conflate’ in only 6 pieces <albeit one was called “thought viruses”>. I use it only to combat oversimplification, thought viruses and ‘both sidism’. I have used ‘false equivalence’ even fewer pieces and, yet, will not hesitate to use it to shut down some stupid oversimplified comparative shit.

In the end.

Conflate and false equivalence are really not linguistic tools in today’s world, they are linguistic weapons which are necessary to kill superficial narratives. Even better, they tend to put a full stop on stupid.

Wield your ‘conflate’ and ‘false equivalence’ well, the world needs less stupid.