Back to the Dark Ages

Following Is extracted from Merriam-Webster’s on line Dictionary. civilized adjective : marked by well-organized laws and rules about how people behave with each other : polite, reasonable, and respectful : pleasant and comfortable Full Definition of CIVILIZED : characteristic of a state of civilization ; especially : characterized by taste, refinement, or restraint See civilized defined for English-language learners » Related to CIVILIZED Synonyms ACCOMPLISHED, CULTIVATED, COUTH, CULTURED, GENTEEL, POLISHED, REFINED Antonyms BARBARIC, BARBAROUS, PHILISTINE, UNCIVILIZED, UNCULTURED, UNGENTEEL, UNPOLISHED, UNREFINED Restraint is the key word in the above definition. We humans have a number of forces combining to move us to action. There are the “animal instincts” inherent in our species, genetic pre-disposition passed down by our ancestors , cultural and familial habits handed down from generation to generation, and our individual brain chemistries and experiences over time. These forces lead us to act in our self- interest. Sometime this self-interest (Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”) aligns with the interest of society as a whole, but often it does not only, not align, but works in opposition to the general good. Over time as societies develop, these forces are brought more and more in line with the well-being of society, through individual restraint or those imposed by government, church, community or family. Men have a natural urge to mate from early teens and women have the ability to bear children even younger. As we have developed, in the more advanced societies we have come to realize that early childbirth limits the potential of a woman, and so we have enacted laws to limit the age for consensual sex and in the West, custom has driven the marriage age for women to the late twenties. Another natural urge is polygamy but laws and customs have enforced monogamy. Slavery has been banned and cruelty is declining either by law or custom as we become more civilized, and our understanding of ourselves and the world around us increases, more and more individual instincts are suppressed and there is an ever increased dependence on one another. In this country, countervailing forces have increasingly pushed back on advancing society and civilization while trying to shift the balance from societal good more to individual drives in the name of freedom. This push is coming from the Right and most strongly from the extreme religious Right. The effort to further increase the equality between the genders is seen as a threat to family structure. The right of women to decide whether to conceive or carry to birth is gradually being eroded state by state. The Right is against setting a minimum wage and some argue that nature within the free market should determine how much labor costs and how wealthy the wealthy and poor the poor. Furthermore, there are movements to totally deregulate the markets, leaving them unencumbered and the social good to chance. The right to carry firearms has been expanded and laws like Stand Your Ground (I have an image of a middle aged white guy with a big belly standing with his legs apart and arms crossed facing down punks, hoods and other scary people) are passed The right is trying to move us back to the “Wild West” days where not society, but each man is responsible for defending himself and his family. The religious fundamentalists are dismissing science and want our children to learn that the world was created in six days some six thousand years ago and politicians representing them are fighting any attempt to save the planet from manmade environmental catastrophes. Recently several states have even tried to legalize discrimination based on one’s religious beliefs. The World is experiencing change at an ever increasing pace. These changes; social, political, technological and environmental are making heads spin. And as with any change, there are risks and people are frightened. Conservatives politicians are stoking the fears and are trying to, not only stem the tide of progress, but move back the clock of civilization. The danger of this move is that as we did a millennium ago, we will slip into a modern version of the “Dark Ages” with its chaos and cruelty. That having been said, I am optimistic. Though the Conservatives are taking advantage of our fears and ignorance, cooler heads will prevail and our societies will continue to progress and we will continue to become ever more civilized, relinquishing more and more of our base urges for the good of all those we share this Blue Planet with.

Walking in Someone Else's Shoes

There is an old Native American (I think) proverb that says “don’t judge someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes”. Our human nature, however, is to judge, in particular the poor if we are not one of them. Far from imagining what it would be like in their shoes, we tend to look at their circumstances from our own point of view and assigning our own sets of priorities. We see people making decisions that to us seem incomprehensible and too often attribute them to character flaws; old ladies using their social Security money on slot machines; victims of Katrina wasting the couple hundred or maybe thousand dollars they received on the riverboat casinos; people who barely have enough to eat, smoking; barns and farmhouses in shambles; garbage strewn in the streets; the list goes on. We think “how can they? I would never live like that. I wouldn’t gamble what little money I have away and give up smoking and fix my barn and not allow garbage to accumulate in the street. There has to be something wrong with these people”. We think about what we would like to do in a given situation, but in reality, in that circumstance, most likely we would do something totally different. Given our genes, culture, experience and in particular, circumstance, we put thing in a particular order of importance. Our judgment of others assumes they have the same set of priorities, are in our settings and benefit from our experiences. The fact of the matter is that not only do they not, but our own priorities, settings and experiences are constantly changing. A child is born, we lose a job, win a lottery, become ill, we grow wiser or become more cynical. In reality as we go through life and as our surroundings and experiences change, so do our priorities. Things once thought to be of utmost importance can become trivial. Unfortunately we can never walk in someone else’s shoes. We cannot have an identical makeup or experience and even if we did, we cannot occupy the same space in time. The best we can do is try to imagine what might be important to someone given their set of circumstances. But even that is a poor approximation of a stroll in their shoes. The other day I read a piece in the Huffington Post by Linda Tirado who in the most eloquent way, tries to explain the thought process of a very poor person. From the article I think one can get a peek into their priorities and decisions, which from our perspective may have seemed lousy, but now start to be a little more understandable. Below is a link to that article. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tirado/why-poor-peoples-bad-decisions-make-perfect-sense_b_4326233.html

Leadership

There are a few characteristics of a good leader. Among them are; courage, judgment and experience. To explain this I often used the “scraping of window panes” metaphor. Here the leader is on the inside of a room and there is something going on outside that they need to act on quickly. In front of them is a window with a number of panes all painted opaque. Were they clear, the scene would be apparent and the action obvious. A good leader starts by scraping a bit of the paint off of one pane and gets a glimpse of the scene. That small segment suggests they may want to scrape another bit of a pane at the far end. There is starting to appear a hint of an image. They scrape a bit of another pane, go back to the first and scrape a little more and then, though without a full picture, they see enough to make a decision. In the example above the leader exhibited a characteristic essential to good leadership. First and foremost they were willing to take a risk and make a decision without waiting for all the pieces of the puzzle to be in place. I have seen very capable people continue scraping each pane clear and see the entire scene before taking action. They are afraid of being wrong, whereas the leader above was willing to chance and make the decision. At this point I might add that for different actions there are different degrees of probability that are prudent. A surgeon need a very high probability and would be justified to scrape much of the window clear but most of us are in positions where we can afford to be wrong and often inaction is more consequential than wrong action. Another attribute required to make a decision with minimal scraping is experience. With experience one has seen many scenes outside the window and seeing only a few key pieces can imagine the full picture. People without the experience, though brave, need to clear a larger portion of the window to see the same amount of the scene to make a decision. The third attribute is judgment. As they scrape small segments of a pane and catch a glimpse of the scene, they need to decide where might there be another segment that will most probably lead them quickly to the whole picture. Someone, courageous and experienced but without good judgment, unable to figuring out where the most probable bit of a scene lies that will help form enough of a picture will need to scrape a large portion of many panes. Without the courage, judgment and experience, no matter how bright the individual, they will spend too much time gathering information or if not, see the wrong picture and though in positions of leadership, will not be followed.

The "Real" America

Sarah Palin spoke of the “real America”. The Governor while running for vice president, when visiting a rural area said it was good to be in the real America. I believe in all sincerity she sees the real America as the sum of the white and Christian rural parts of the country. A couple of weeks ago I went to the Registry of Motor Vehicles in an industrial urban city and there I saw, what I think is another real America. There were about one hundred people there of many ethnicities, races and socio-economic groups. There were Puerto Ricans and Latinos from Central and South American and Brazilians, some speaking fluent English others Spanish and Portuguese. There were African Americans and more recent arrivals from Africa. There were people of different European ancestries and people from the Middle East and Asia. There were laborers, students and businessmen in suits. Siting there waiting for my turn, Sarah Palin came to mind and I thought that had she been in this room, she would not have acknowledged this as America. I think one of our fundamental divides is between the urban and the rural. Each with different political interests and cultures and I think, like Sarah Palin, we don’t understand or recognize each other. I live in the suburbs, an area that doesn’t quite fit either the urban or rural, pretty much am isolated from both Sarah Palin’s and the America I saw at the Registry. I was fortunate to have had opportunities to live, though most of it in the suburbs, in my early years in very rural areas and my teenage years in a city. I first became conscious of this divide when I took a train from San Jose to San Francisco fifteen years ago, sharing it with a large variety of people. Based on that refreshing experience, more recently, when I had to go on business to San Francisco, I decided to fly into Oakland and instead of hiring a car, I took a bus to the train station and then a train across the Bay. Though brief, the exposure to the variety of races, ethnicities and cultures was enlightening. I propose that we all take an opportunity to spend time in an environment with people we are not accustomed to being around. Furthermore, when evaluating a politician running for an office where they will represent a diverse group, we should look at their record of time spent with the range of their future constituencies. Whatever you may think about our current president Barak Obama, he would have an impressive record on this dimension having been brought up by grandparents in the rural Midwest, spending time in Hawaii and Indonesia and working in the inner Chicago city. I find it interesting that people on the extreme right make fun of his work as a “community organizer” in the inner city. Better he should have been insulated in the real (business) world. Spending time with different people allows us to recognize their humanity on a more visceral level and become empathetic with their wants and fears. Not having had the firsthand experience, we tend to use our imaginations, with liberals exaggerating the plight and conservatives the lack of dignity. At the start of the first war with Iraq, I went to India on business for a few days. As I was accustomed, I went for an early morning walk and came across a group of squatters (I think they were “Untouchables”) living in shacks on the grounds of what appeared to be a government building of some sort. As I walked past, I saw two young people (I don’t recall if they were two men or a man and woman) squatting on the sidewalk, brushing their teeth and spitting the rinsing water into the gutter. My first reaction was to feel sorry for them, seeing the conditions they lived in. But as I approached them, they were talking and laughing with such gusto that I became jealous of them. I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed so heartily.

A Military Without War

Recently the Senate passed an amendment that reduced funds for the National Science Foundation completely eliminating funding for any political science projects with two exceptions. They would continue funding these if they were shown to advances the military or our economy. This prompted me to get back to a subject I have often pondered and discussed. Is there a benefit to a military, other than fighting a war and how can we exploit it? George Orwell wrote a novel about ongoing battles against an imaginary enemy somewhere “over there”. The ruling government used the threat of an invasion to more easily control its population. More recently, Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate writing for the New York Times, in an interview talked about the economic boom brought about by the Second World War. With tongue in cheek, he suggested we should proclaim an impending invasion from outer space and preparing for it would get us out of these economic doldrums. I think he was only half kidding. So how could we benefit from a military with no war? Conservatives have been reluctant to support government funded development but have shown a willingness to spend large sums of money on defense. With the ever increasing rate of technological innovation and global competition, it is imperative that we stay ahead of the curve. Basic research is not something suitable for private enterprises and in recent years, large companies such as IBM, known for their applied research and development in the past have been shrinking their scientific staff and facilities and looking outside, not only IBM, but outside the US. In the past science and development for the military was also of interest to the private sector. Some examples are: Development in material science of carbon nano-fibers has the promise of stronger and more lightweight armament for the military and lightweight vehicles with lower fuel consumption for the private sector. The military uses lasers for target designation and shooting down enemy missiles and in the private arena lasers are used in hundreds of applications from bar-code scanners and surgery to toys. Space science has always been closely affiliated with the military but has brought about civilian benefits like GPS and weather satellites. Of course there is the internet. As demonstrated by the amendment the Senate just passed, the Republicans, ever suspicious of science, are reluctant to spend on any development that is not of interest to our military particularly that whose aim is of benefit primarily for our poorest citizens who in many of their minds are only “takers”. Since almost anything can be argued to be of significance to the military, with Republican support we should increase the military budget and move more science into defense. A defense department in a non-war setting could be the hub of research and development and as the research is defense related we could more easily keep it within our borders giving an advantage to our industries Another thought, though much more farfetched, is to implement universal service as is the case in Israel and use the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen to work on projects not well suited to the private sector but would be of benefit to our society as a whole. This could serve a number of purposes. The draft could be arranged so that once someone, man or woman, reaches a certain age, if they are not in school, they would need to serve in the military for two or three years. Attending school would not release them from the obligation but only postpone it. The potential benefits, as I see them, are many. The number of idle young would be greatly reduced. Part of the service would include education and training constantly adjusted to the needs of industry as these change. The discipline which unfortunately is too lacking in too many of our homes can be taught and thus better prepare the young for the workplace they will enter upon completion of their service. One of the problems we face that will only increase with the growing income gap is that people are becoming more and more separated and with this separation more suspicious of each other. I found that when I was a new recruit in the army, with everyone wearing the same clothing and haircuts a lot of what we use to prejudge people based on our ignorance or prejudice is greatly reduced. Individuals from different races, religions and classes can come to better know each other and become more empathetic to a wider range of humanity. (This smells a bit of social engineering and I would keep this benefit under wraps.) A lot of our cities are falling apart. This force could be used to clean up vacant lots and demolish abandoned buildings. They could beautify our parks and other recreation areas. Instead of low cost “guest” workers, farm labor could be provided by these soldiers. In fact as part of the preparation for the outside world, I would have rural kids working on inner city projects and city kids on rural ones. The older and better educated individuals could spend time working in facilities providing assistance, including medical, to the poor. There is a strong desire on the part of conservatives to secure our border. A portion of the soldiers could be deployed there. The recent decade has seen an increase in catastrophic climatic events which are expected to not only continue but to increase. The military could be used to build levies and other barriers against the rising sea levels and be deployed to areas that have been hit by tornados, hurricanes, blizzards and tsunamis. Of course a segment of the military population would continue to prepare for battle, whatever form that may take in the future. Our potential enemies would be overwhelmed by the size of our military and may be reluctant to confront us and in the event of an unavoidable conflict, we could easily and quickly shift to a wartime footing. (This could be a selling point for the right.) And finally, with this much of the labor force taken out of the labor market, wages would increase and after completing the service, young people would return to a better place in better shape to contribute to keeping it that way. Also, since the low wage work would be done by the military, there would be less to attract unskilled immigrants. I don’t believe there is a snowball’s chance in hell that any of this could, or for that matter maybe should, be implemented. But such thinking out of the box could encourage others to also do so and contribute to the development of policies to help us succeed in the volatile future.

Multitasking is Like Plate Spinning

The place where I worked used our product engineers as the hub for satisfying a customer’s needs. They were the sales people that took the orders, engineers who designed the product, project managers and customer service representatives, communicating with the customer throughout the process. Most of the projects did not warrant full time attention so the ability to multitask was a necessary attribute. Having filled that role in the past, recognizing the value of the skill and being head of the organization I would often talk to our product engineers about skills required to effectively multitask. In these discussions I used the analogy of the circus act where a person spins plates sitting on top of tall sticks. As they puts more and more plates on more sticks the plates start to wobble and the performer has to run around giving the sticks a tweak to keep the plates spinning. In these discussions there are a few points I highlight. The level of skill is determined not by how well the plates spin but how many they can keep spinning. No one will come to see only one plate spinning perfectly. To spin many plates successfully requires two main things. You need to see all the plates. In their job as product engineers this vision can be achieved through reports, formal inquiries or just a casual question as people’s paths cross in the hallway. The second and more difficult is to understand how much the plates can wobble without falling. This skill is developed through experience. To truly know how much a plate can wobble before it fall, unfortunately one needs to have dropped a few. Young people tend to undervalue experience thinking that they can do anything strictly based on their intelligence, diligence and desire. In some endeavors where failure is not part of the learning process, I guess that may indeed be the case. (Now I’m starting to sound like an old man.) The plates in our workplace took many forms. Interviewing the customer to determine their need is one. Asking too few questions may lead to an underperforming or overpriced product. Asking too many may annoy the customer pushing them beyond their ability to answer. Either of these would chase the customer away and the plate will fall. Overworking a design limits the number of plates one can spin and not giving it enough attention can sacrifice performance or increase the manufacturing difficulty and cost. In either case the plate will fall. Responding to a customer’s inquiry in an instant can lead to great inefficiency whereas too slowly will lead to dissatisfaction. In all of these the plate falls if the customer doesn’t come back or the product costs more to make than we are getting paid to make it. To reduce the chance of irritating the customers, especially when a less experienced individual is managing the project, we used a second and more experienced set of eyes that can recognize a plate about to fall and catch it before it hit the ground. This person focuses not an every plate of every performer but focuses on the most critical ones and ones that are most likely to fall. The challenge is to allow a number of plates to fall, providing the learning experience to the newer person and catching the plate before it hit the ground, not alienating the customer. Invariably plates would occasionally hit the ground and shatter allowing both the novice and master to advance their skills.

Impact of Empathy on Policy

I was watching Bill Maher’s show the other day where they were talking about Rob Portman’s recent change in position on gay marriage. It seems that his son came out of “the closet” announcing his homosexuality two years ago. Rachel Maddow, one of his guests, made a comment which struck a chord. She said something to the effect that since Republicans change positions when things strike close to home, maybe they should have poor sons and thus have more empathy with the poor. One of the things I have often pondered and have written about is the difference between conservative and progressive views and the notion of empathy may help me understand this difference. The human race has organized itself into various groups ranging from family to tribe, village, region, nation and species. There are other intersecting groupings such as religion, ethnicity, race, gender, occupation and I am sure there are still others I have not thought to mention. If the more closely we align ourselves with a group, the more we want policies favoring that group. The question then is how the value we place on membership in these groups is distributed. At the extremes are the individualists giving primacy to themselves and the globalists the human race. The Buddhists, and to some extent native Americans and some animists take it a step further and feel that we are connected to all things, even inanimate objects. Conservatives espouse individualism and place a higher value on groupings closer to the self and thus individual freedoms, family cohesion, local and regional institutions and their protection become paramount. The value of a nation becomes less important because of its separation from the individual and its diversity. All the overt enthusiastic patriotism and flag waving may just be to cover the guilt from the low value given the national citizenship, (as Shakespeare once said “the lady doeth protest too much”) and the patriotism is more focused on the military and security aspects and tends to be ethnic and not inclusive. To that point, Sarah Palin, while running for VP, talked about being glad to visit a “real America” when she was in some rural community. In her mind, the bowls of Newark NJ belong to some foreign nation, certainly not to her America. People living in rural areas tend to be conservative and in general are isolated from diversity. They tend to have a fear, distrust and misunderstanding of the “others”, be they the other by virtue of race, religion, intellect or culture. They are in favor of States Rights and local control which they can easily see and touch and distrustful of the strangers in a distant place. (You can’t get too much more distant than the UN) Progressives, on the other hand, placing greater value on society and identifying more with the human race as a whole, see the downtrodden, other races and ethnicities as part of their group and are less sympathetic to individual wants. They tend to speak more of American exceptionalism in terms of its ability to assimilate immigrants and care for the needy rather than its military and economic might, considering the latter to be the consequence of the former. Their patriotism though it may be deeply felt, tends to be less demonstrative. Protection of the environment and therefore our species, a global quest, is strongly advocated by progressives. City dwellers by nature of their diversity tend to look more to the federal government rather than the state which often has more of a rural lean. So I think that the degree of empathy may be determined by the relative priority given to the various groupings and to a great extent the resulting empathy drives policy. Though conservatives tend to place more value on groupings closer to the individual and progressives closer to the species, looking at Democrats and Republicans through this lens, one can see significant outliers. On the Republican side, true free marketers really are globalists with a large acceptance criterion, whereas members of unions support Democrats giving high priority to a very narrowly defined grouping. In fact the largest group that placed value only on a single factor was the now defunct Soviet Communists. In trying to “unite the workers of the World”, they gave minimal value to family and nation, none to the individual and made religious organizations illegal. So, is there hope? I heard of a phenomenon called the “Aunt Susy Syndrome”(?) which says that as we become more mobile, we bring into our circle of friend and relatives individuals (Aunt Susys) from unfamiliar groups. Through this interaction we note the similarity and humanity which contradicts the lore of bigotry and gradually come to like Aunt Susy and in so doing, others of her ilk become much less scary and we start expanding our circle or forming a new one to include her kind. If policies are indeed influenced by empathy, which I think they are, they should benefit an ever expanding range of our population as time goes by.