The Last Victim

As a species, humans have a desire to be first. We want to be the first to climb a mountain, the first to explore a cave, the first to walk on the moon, the first to be a trillionaire. I want to own the tallest building, the most successful startup, the hottest restaurant. I want to be the fastest, the strongest, the fittest, the best speller, the brightest, the most popular, the prettiest or most handsome and we lavish recognition onto those who achieve first place benchmarks. The World Series, the Superbowl, the World Cup, the Nobel Prize, Miss America, being the winner, being first is so ingrained into our societies that we often don’t even realize the significance of where the motivation for those behavioral activities comes from. Much has been written about these desires.

Taken to an extreme wanting can cross over to needing and psychopathology can come to the forefront. Desire is one thing, for it can be motivational, when properly channeled it can drive advances that benefit all of us, but when desire to be crosses over to must be aberrant thoughts and actions can take over.  I have been in many meetings with C-suite types where the C-level person must be the smartest person in the room, even when they are not, not even close. It is narcissistic on their part when they assume they are the smartest and have all the answers, and some of their thinking is along the lines of, “After all I am in this position of power and you are not! I have been recognized for my achievements and placed into this position, and you have not!” In my experience, somewhat more rare but present is the cognitive dissonance of, “I am paid all this money, so I must be the best and have all the best ideas, for if I am simply average like the rest of you, why am I being paid so much?”

Our psychology is such that we when do achieve success we have a tendency to credit our internal abilities and when we fail, we tend to assign blame to some external force. Again, it is normal pattern of behavior, but when taken to an extreme it is pathological, where one can never accept responsibility for one’s mistakes or failures. This pattern causes certain individuals to go through life collecting injustices, these people are the perpetual victim of wrongs being done to them.  They have a tough time ever being truly happy.

We are at an inflection point. The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused tens of millions in the USA alone to lose jobs and the International Labor Organization (ILO) says globally that number may be 195 million. Many more are now without access to healthcare or health insurance. The growth in the number who are now food insecure is enormous and hunger, as in the Great Depression, now roams freely across the land. Medicare and Social Security were created as a direct result of the documentation of the suffering older Americans were experiencing during that time and afterwards, Americans who had worked their whole lives, but could not live out the remainder of their lives with respect and in dignity.

What do we have to do to have everyone live their lives with respect and in dignity? What would it take to shift our orientation from rewarding our first-place finishers to striving to have last victims? The last victims of hunger, the last victims of a broken healthcare system, the last victims of COVID-19, the last victims of homelessness, the last victims of living in rat infested tenements, the last victims of racism and discrimination, the last victims of war, the last victims of unemployment/underemployment or low paid employment, the last victims of a poor education? There are endless ills that need our attention. But the vast number of issues suggest that it is time for a more radical shift than trying to simply get back to business as usual.  I am reminded of a difference between Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia and wanted admissions to be based on merit, those most deserving would be admitted. Benjamin Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania under the notion that education should be available to all who wanted it, in other words, education should not have any victims, all who want an education should be able to get one. How can we all become more like Benjamin Franklin?

2020

So here we are, the start of a new year. What does 2020 hold in store for us? Shall we make predictions? Predictions are of course problematic because they are often wrong. Experts, both established and those looking to make a name for themselves, need to make predictions that standout from the crowd in order to standout themselves, and the more they standout from what the majority of others say the more often they are wrong. Others who put themselves out as experts, are sometimes making predictions that simply serve their own interests rather than what seems more likely to occur. So rather than me making predictions, I’ll make a list of my hopes and fears for 2020, which seems like it will be a year which will have great impact on all of us. (That is a prediction).

My hope is that 2020 will reconfirm the rule of law as an underlying principle as to how our nation works. My fear is that those who flout established law will get away with it and continue to succeed in bending and breaking those laws, without being checked, to serve their interests and to gather power to themselves.

My hope is that 2020 will usher in a sense of responsibility to ourselves and the future, that significant action must be taken to stem and reverse the degradation of our planet. My fear is that those who see or experience benefit in that degradation will continue to dominate policy and stoke fears about change in order to reap those benefits. It is easier to make money from something if you are willing to destroy/despoil it.

My hope is that 2020 will be the year of the people. People will no longer feel discrimination, or that they have a target painted on their backs. People should feel that they have an equal voice in how they are governed, in how they live their lives and that their vote counts. People will feel in control of themselves and their own future and that they live on an equal playing field with equal opportunity for themselves and their children. My fear is that we will continue our slide to a “moral” society where various groups attempt to impose their “moral” standards on others. Standards which are not necessarily moral, but simply a power grab, an attempt to shape and impose their beliefs on others for profit of one sort or another.

My hope is that 2020 will become a year of resurgent science. That science will be front and center in decision making and policy. We should be guided by facts and figures, by research and tested models that enable prediction (there’s that word) with accuracy. Science is the key to our future and has enabled us to overcome many threats to our existence. My fear is that science will be underfunded and ignored when facts are inconvenient to those with established beliefs. My fear is that for some reason science will be looked down upon and it will be looked down upon by people who would likely be dead if it weren’t for the science that has overcome disease, hunger and greatly extended lifespans.

My hope is that in 2020 education will be greatly expanded, for without education stupefying beliefs and behaviors take hold. My fear is that education will continue to be considered a threat to power, a threat to “coolness”, a threat to a sense of self-worth. Everyone should have access to education and the goal of education should be to increase a sense of self-worth and self-control, not to unnecessarily differentiate or degrade.

My hope is that 2020 will see continued economic expansion. Economic expansion that enables more people to be lifted out of poverty, that enables all to have access to sufficient food, healthcare, housing and education. The goal of an economic expansion should not be to gather exorbitant resources with a few, but to spread society’s wealth so that the vast majority may benefit. Without a strong and vibrant middle-class democracy dies.  My fear is that we have established a “Potemkin economy”, a false-front economy, where the substance that enables long-term economic expansion has been whittled away by a desire for short-term gain.

My hope for 2020 is that long-term grievances among warring factions be resolved. My fear is that it is not in the interests of certain parties to resolve those grievances. Those interests can be political (to stay in power), they can be economic (an arms race benefits arms dealers), they can be religious or fear-based (my god gave me rights and your god is false). And we are more than willing to kill each other over a rock, a speck of dirt, political clout or some other benefit.

My hope for 2020 is that we get away from false equivalency. That there must be two sides to every story. Sometimes there is simply right and wrong, we must stop giving wrong a voice. My fear is that we will excuse right from wrong, by arguing about “who is the judge?”, and “everyone is entitled to their point of view”, when the reality is that various outlets make money by promulgating “wrong” and are very willing to chase that money, society be damned.

My hope for 2020 is that we can have honest conversations about mental health. The spectrum of mental illnesses or mental health issues affect a significant proportion of the population at one-point or another and many are natural expressions of life-events (e.g. depression is natural upon the death of a loved one). Many of these issues can be overcome with treatment or time and should be thought of similarly to fixing a broken bone or overcoming the flu. But certain mental illnesses are malevolent and either resistant to treatment or have no effective treatment available. Those with these malevolent illnesses can not be given access to positions of power, or the ability to influence others who may be susceptible to their illogic. My fear is that we will continue to sweep the discussion of the spectrum of mental illness under the rug because it makes us uncomfortable.

My hope for 2020 is that gun violence will abate. The evidence is clear that guns in fact kill people and access to guns simply leads to more gun deaths. Those with mental health issues have no more likelihood of gun violence than those without mental health issues. My fear is that vested interests, whether that be gun manufacturers or our opponents on the geo-political stage will continue to benefit from the discord in our country over this issue. A weakened USA, weakened by internal strife is the goal of many of our nation-state rivals.

My hope for 2020 is that we will have a fair and free election. My fear is that foreign nations will disrupt/influence/rig our election for their own gains.

My hope for 2020 is that my hopes are fulfilled. My fear is that my fears are realized. The reality is that in order to fulfill hopes we must all go out there and make it happen.

The Power of Protest

Perhaps not since the Vietnam war have there been so many marches and demonstrations in the USA, where people have been protesting our government, its policies, practices, and the various actions it has taken. (Full disclosure, I have taken part in more than a few protests and rallies myself.)

The current administration is perceived by many –  if not the majority – as incompetent, divisive, fundamentally corrupt, lawless, operating outside of the constitution, ignoring the checks and balances which define our democracy, imposing needless cruelty, perhaps illegitimate (with Russian fingerprints all over the last election) and certainly not operating in the best interests of the nation, let alone the planet.

In addition to the alleged obstruction crimes that the Mueller Report identified, the president himself is seen by many professional psychologists and psychiatrists as unwell and unstable. One group, Duty to Warn, is working on a Kickstarter-funded movie to document that assertion.  Duty to Warn advocates for the removal of the president under the 25th Amendment stating that he is unfit to serve. The group pointedly states that the Goldwater Rule, imposed by the American Psychiatric Association to prevent its members from diagnosing someone without personally assessing them, does not apply as there is a higher order rule, which is the duty to warn if someone poses an imminent threat to others.

Additionally, Dr. Brandy Lee, psychiatry professor at Yale University and a renowned expert on violence and forensic psychiatry, co-authored a report on the president’s mental state as documented in the Mueller Report from the sworn testimony. In sum: “What the special counsel’s report revealed, through consistent and abundant data, was a pervasive and profound pattern of lack of capacity. This was demonstrated by: lack of basic comprehension (or the ability to take in information and advice without undue influence from false beliefs or emotional need); faulty information processing (or the ability to appreciate and make flexible use of information and advice without false representation); lack of sound decision making (or the ability to consider consequences based on rational, reality-based, and reliable thinking without interference from impulsivity, false beliefs, or fluctuating consistency); and behavior that places oneself or others in danger (such as inciting one’s followers to commit acts of violence and boasting of one’s own repeated violence). These are crucial failures in the basic components of mental capacity test, which in his position constitute a medical emergency that requires a response.”

Psychiatrists often use the term Malignant Narcissism to describe the president’s mental illnesses while Clinical Psychologists and those who work in the employee selection space would often describe him as suffering from the Dark Triad, a trifecta of malevolent mental illnesses. Regardless of which term is used, there are many who are deeply concerned and are raising those concerns publicly. Long term observers of this president, such as Tony Schwartz, the author of The Art of the Deal, have also noted significant cognitive decline and increasingly discuss concerns about dementia in addition to his other issues.

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, has been reluctant to begin impeachment proceedings, worried that it will distract from winning the presidency and the Senate in 2020 and will play into the president’s hands. Lawrence Tribe, the noted Constitutional scholar and Harvard Professor, has proposed and actively advocates a path by which just the House can begin an Impeachment Inquiry and hold a trial, even if removal by the Senate won’t happen given its Republican majority.

The big question is, do all of these protests and actions matter? Can enough citizens of this country raise their voices loud enough and often enough to effect change now, or will change have to wait until the next election in 2020? There is legitimate concern about the level of Russian influence on the outcome of the election, especially given that Congress and the White House are doing little to nothing to protect the election process itself. It has become increasingly clear that various members of Congress and the president’s inner circle have deep financial ties or other connections to either Russia or China.

Michael Shermer, writing in The Moral Arc, cites the work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. These two political science researchers entered into a database all forms of political protest, reforms, and revolutions that have occurred since 1900, both violent and nonviolent. Since 1900, non-violent actions had twice the success rate as violent actions. Non-violent actions are increasingly becoming more effective while violent actions are becoming rarer and when they occur and are largely unsuccessful. In answering the question why this change has occurred, Chenoweth states, “People power.” Non-violent actions have lower barriers to entry, attracting a more diverse group and a larger percent of the population. They are also more representative of the population in terms of “gender, race, age, political party, class and urban-rural distinctions.” Her data showed that non-violent protests that are active and sustained in an ongoing fashion, and which draw about 3.5% of the population, are always successful in meeting their goals for change. And once they hit that 3.5% threshold, involving that significant portion of the population they were always non-violent.

The current population of the USA is 327,000,000 +/-. In order to reach that critical threshold of 3.5%, a cross section of 11,445,000 people would have to engage in ongoing sustained, non-violent political protests. Sounds like a big number, but given the emotions that are running quite high and the level of outrage in the country it sounds quite possible.

Take Hong Kong as an example of what protest can accomplish. This last weekend, on June 16^th, it was estimated that 2 million of Hong Kong’s 7 million people turned out to protest non-violently against an extradition law that would have allowed mainland China to take a citizen from Hong Kong to stand trial in China. Given China’s murky and opaque judicial system Hong Kong citizens were concerned that the law could be used to stifle political dissent and anyone could be snatched at any time. Given the size of this and previous protests the Hong Kong governor, who is approved by China, withdrew the law for consideration at this time. This protest involved much more than 3.5%, but does show the power of protest.

Does this or can these rules-of-thumb of protest apply in the corporate world? About 4,000 Google employees signed a petition demanding “a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.” (NY Times June 1, 2018). The employees were concerned that Google’s AI technology, including its facial recognition work, was going to be used to improve targeting of drone strikes and did not want their work to be used in the killing of people. After the petition Google withdrew from its AI military contracts. So, do the numbers hold up? Alphabet, the parent company of Google employs about 72,000 people. Therefore the 4000 petition signers represented about 5.5% of the workforce, which is above the non-violent and successful change threshold.

These are but a handful of examples but the numbers are somewhat startling and gives a sense that a relatively small percentage of non-violent protesters, who sustain their protest over a period of time, can affect change in the political as well as corporate world.

Visionary Ideas

What motivates an organization or a movement of any kind to persevere, even in the face of adversity? It is when the organization or movement is based on a concept or an idea of what it stands for or potentially can become. This holds true for very small organizations as well as the largest. It holds true for political, human rights, conservation, religious movements etc.

Ideas are powerful. They are more powerful than physical assets, more powerful than territory, more powerful than any one person. Having a powerful idea is a cornerstone that a successful organization or movement needs to be built upon.

The founder of a small family run restaurant has the idea of building a “go-to” restaurant for locals and something the founder can pass on to the next generation. That is a visionary idea, and as contained as it might be, it is powerful for that family. They will fight ferociously and work endlessly for that vision.

The USA Declaration of Independence stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That is a visionary idea, an expansive one, and if fully implemented very powerful. And out of that powerful visionary idea sprang our institutions, our laws, our methods of governance with its checks and balances, all of which were intended to support and nourish the vision.

Taken from that perspective and at the risk of gross oversimplification, you could say that the outcome of WWII was preordained. For the Germans were rallying to and fighting for Hitler and yes, while he did have a vision of a new German and ethnically cleansed World Order, his apparent narcissism and megalomania made him central to that vision and put himself forth as the only one who could accomplish that vision. But the USA and its allies were fighting not for a person, but for an idea, a vision of how they were going to live their lives. A much more potent force.

People will dedicate their lives and under certain circumstances sacrifice them for a vision in which they believe. Jim Mattis, the highly respected and outgoing Secretary of Defense in his farewell note to Pentagon staff stated, “I am confident that each of you remains undistracted from our sworn mission to support and defend the Constitution while protecting our way of life.” A clear message of support for and direction to protect the vision of the USA and not any one person.

And while a lawyer may claim that they would “take a bullet” for a particular client, when faced with the reality of prison for crimes committed, that sacrificial commitment to an individual rings hollow. As it turns out, many people are susceptible to and find authoritarians attractive, as they state that they will take care of all of your problems and that they alone can do it (the estimate is up to 30% of the USA population are attracted to authoritarians), but over the long-run belief in and support of a commonly-held and widely supported vision will beat an authoritarian figure. Articulating and getting buy-in to that vision is key.

Each organization out there, no matter your size, industry or location should examine the vision by which it operates. If the vision is not explicit to the organization’s members, consider making it so, for it is hard to buy into a rumored vision. And make it a vision in which each member can feel pride. Commitment and dedication will be the reward the organization can obtain.

Authoritarianism

In the aftermath of WWII there was a great deal of research interest in how the atrocities of that war could have taken place. How could regular German citizens simply follow orders to willingly participate in the Holocaust or simply look the other way and pretend they did not know it was happening? Of course, the behaviors that occurred during WWII were not isolated events in history. Humans have been very capable, both prior to and after that war, of continuing to carry out atrocities. Armenia, Rwanda, Ukraine, Greece, Cambodia, USA, Bosnia, Syria, and many others have all seen their share of death and genocidal attacks carried out by one group who first dehumanizes and then tries to exterminate the other. These are not isolated events and it is not limited to any one geography or culture. It is something dark and deep inside of the human inner core that allows these events to occur over and over. Yet, not all of us succumb and get caught up in these atrocities. Resistance can be found, even though it is often less than successful.

But what exactly are people resisting? What urges affect humanity that must be overcome to prevent a continuing string of atrocities from occurring?

One line of research examined the makeup and prevalence of the Authoritarian personality type as a possible explanation. The Authoritarian personality has “a desire for security, order, power, and status, with a desire for structured lines of authority, a conventional set of values or outlook, a demand for unquestioning obedience, and a tendency to be hostile toward or use as scapegoats individuals of minority or nontraditional groups.”

In the aftermath of WWII, in 1947, Theodor W. Adorno created the “F-Scale” or Fascism Scale.  The characteristics the F-Scale measured included: Conformity to traditional societal norms, submission to authoritarian figures, aggression to “others” who don’t fit the pattern, belief in fundamentalist religious notions, belief in superstitions, tendency towards power and toughness, a rejection of introspection, self-criticism, and tender-mindedness. The F-Scale was widely popular for a time but had some psychometric issues with reliability and faking. Since then others have created scales to measure similar characteristics with better psychometric properties. What is striking about the F-Scale from 1947, is how many of the issues you continue to hear today (similar to “these kids today”, kind of argument that happens over and over with each generation). Here are the original 30 items (http://www.anesi.com/fscale.htm) that made up the F-Scale (on a 6-point strongly agree to strongly disagree scale):

1. Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.
2. A person who has bad manners, habits, and breeding can hardly expect to get along with decent people.
3. If people would talk less and work more, everybody would be better off.
4. The business man and the manufacturer are much more important to society than the artist and the professor.
5. Science has its place, but there are many important things that can never be understood by the human mind.
6. Every person should have complete faith in some supernatural power whose decisions he obeys without question.
7. Young people sometimes get rebellious ideas, but as they grow up they ought to get over them and settle down.
8. What this country needs most, more than laws and political programs, is a few courageous, tireless, devoted leaders in whom the people can put their faith.
9. No sane, normal, decent person could ever think of hurting a close friend or relative.
10. Nobody ever learned anything really important except through suffering.
11. What the youth needs most is strict discipline, rugged determination, and the will to work and fight for family and country.
12. An insult to our honor should always be punished.
13. Sex crimes, such as rape and attacks on children, deserve more than mere imprisonment; such criminals ought to be publicly whipped, or worse.
14. There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel a great love, gratitude, and respect for his parents.
15. Most of our social problems would be solved if we could somehow get rid of the immoral, crooked, and feebleminded people.
16. Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals and ought to be severely punished.
17. When a person has a problem or worry, it is best for him not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.
18. Nowadays more and more people are prying into matters that should remain personal and private.
19. Some people are born with an urge to jump from high places.
20. People can be divided into two distinct classes: the weak and the strong.
21. Some day it will probably be shown that astrology can explain a lot of things.
22. Wars and social troubles may someday be ended by an earthquake or flood that will destroy the whole world.
23. No weakness or difficulty can hold us back if we have enough will power.
24. It is best to use some prewar authorities in Germany to keep order and prevent chaos. [You’ll have to pretend it is 1946 when you answer this one.]
25. Most people don’t realize how much our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret places
26. Human nature being what it is, there will always be war and conflict.
27. Familiarity breeds contempt.
28. Nowadays when so many different kinds of people move around and mix together so much, a person has to protect himself especially carefully against catching an infection or disease from them.
29. The wild sex life of the old Greeks and Romans was tame compared to some of the goings-on in this country, even in places where people might least expect it.
30. The true American way of life is disappearing so fast that force may be necessary to preserve it.

If you complete the F-Scale at the link provided above, your responses will be scored and an interpretation provided. A higher score on the F-Scale was supposed to be predictive of and indicative of the person having fascist anti-democratic leanings and an attraction towards authoritarian figures and political systems. Recent work by political scientist Mathew MacWilliams, implies that somewhere between 18 to 30 percent of Americans fit the definition and that number goes higher when people feel under threat. (There is no reason to assume those numbers would be any different in other countries.) He found from a large sample of likely voters, that a tendency towards authoritarianism predicted support for Trump in the last election more reliably than other any other factors.

The question has been raised repeatedly about why certain groups such as evangelicals, or voters with low income levels would vote for and continue to support Trump, whose personal behaviors and actions are in contrast to either their stated values and whose aid-cutting, tax cuts for the wealthy agenda is so clearly against their personal self-interest or professed morals. What has been less examined is the percent of those people who are attracted to the authoritarian style of leadership or because they are feeling threatened on other fronts are willing to put up with it.

And in reference to how the morally centered religious right puts up with Trump’s atrocities, racism, misogynism, xenophobia and prejudices, a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432-443 by Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967) found that the average churchgoers are more prejudiced than nonchurchgoers; that people with an extrinsic (externally focused) religious orientation are significantly more prejudiced than people with an intrinsic (internally focused) religious orientation; and that people who are indiscriminately proreligious are the most prejudiced of all. Remember religious fundamentalism is often found as a marker of attractiveness to an authoritarian style of leadership.

More recent research on authoritarianism shows that it is not a single personality type, but a set of characteristics that in combination lead to a particular pattern of behavior. Using the Big-5 categorization of personality type Phillip Chen and Carl Palmer (The Prejudiced Personality, Using the Big Five to Predict Susceptibility to Stereotyping Behavior, American Politics Research, Vol 46, Issue 2, pp. 276 – 307, August 4, 2017)   found that people who scored lower on Openness to Experience (an appreciation of things like intellectual complexity, artistic expression, etc.) and higher on Conscientiousness (organization, dependability, and self-reliance) are consistent predictors of authoritarian tendencies. Ryan Perry & Chris Sibley (2012) found similar patterns in an article titled “Big-Five personality prospectively predicts Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism. (Personality and Individual Differences. 52. 3–8. 10.1016).

People with these personality characteristics would show more of a willingness to follow an authoritarian leader, even one who is expressing clinical or sub-clinical levels of mental illness, including malevolent narcissism or the Dark Triad, a combination of the often co-morbid factors of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism.

The incidence of the Dark Triad and its relationship to prejudice was examined by Gordon Hodson, Sarah Hogg and Cara MacInnis (Journal of Research in Personality (Volume 43, Issue 4, August 2009, Pages 686-690). They found that the Dark Triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) personality traits were positively related to threat perceptions of those not part of the “in-group” and with an anti-immigrant prejudice, a desire for social dominance and right-wing authoritarianism. It is a short jump to assume that words used to describe others by those so afflicted with this illness would include streams of insults, pejoratives and ominous warnings, none of which would necessarily be based in reality.

It is a relatively new concept to use personality characteristics to predict political orientations or how someone might vote, which leaders they would follow, or their views towards differing societal activities, but Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler, in their extensive research, simultaneously came to the conclusion that the polarization evident in American politics today was largely generated by authoritarian personality type people.

MacWilliams, describes authoritarians as “not supporting a lot of things that are basic to Madisonian democracy”, such as protecting minority rights, or maintaining religious freedom, they would have no issue with separating children from parents in asylum seeking families, as they respond aggressively to outsiders who are cast in the role of “other” or “enemy”. In one study of Republican voters MacWilliams found “that education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing” on their preferred candidate. “Only two variables stood out as statistically significant: authoritarianism, with ‘fear of terrorism’ trailing as a distant second.”

All of these leaves one feeling unease that the USA is traveling down a precarious path. A path that can lead to horrors that must not be repeated and that must be completely and vigorously rejected.   We must turn from the path that has been set upon by those currently in power. How can we begin?

• The coalition that elected Trump is a varied group. But what they seem to have in common is a tendency to find strong-man authoritarianism attractive. The percent who leans that way directly increases with their sense of threat. That sense of threat must be reduced and the inflammatory rhetoric used to increase that sense of threat must be clearly shown to be the hollow canard that it is.
• Some of those who put us on this dangerous path did so because they have felt ignored by those in power and that their future (and the future of their children) is bleak. Coal miners, mid-west farmers, steel workers, fishermen, manufacturing workers, etc., we must not leave carcasses in our path as change comes to our society. And if nothing else our society has been in a state of constant change. We must protect and bring along those who will be most ill-affected by that change.
• From years of research on workers it is very clear that one fundamental that everyone on this planet wants is to feel valued. We must make it clear that we value everyone, giving them a voice and letting them know that will not be forgotten, that they and their children have a positive and exciting future.
• Respect & Dignity are also fundamental characteristics that people desire. Dignity is a relational factor. In other words, whether someone feels that are being treated with dignity is determined by how the see others being treated. If their treatment is perceived to be less they view it as undignified. If no one has electricity, I am not being treated with less dignity if I don’t have electricity. If everyone else has electricity and I don’t, my treatment is less dignified. If I don’t have clean water and others do, that is not dignified treatment. Respect is not a relational factor. I can feel disrespected regardless of how others are being treated. Everyone should be treated with Respect and Dignity.
• We must protect the institutions that our society was built upon, the institutions which up to this point have allowed us to create the most successful human society this planet has seen so far. Checks and balances in our government must be restored. A free press must be protected. We must cherish and protect our planet as there is no planet B. We are caretakers of this world for our children and grandchild, we must pass to them a world in which they can thrive and live healthy lives. We must reassume our leadership position in the world, setting moral standards and leading in education, technology and scientific discovery. We must build bridges to others on this planet not walls to isolate ourselves. We must lead towards global success for everyone. And, the most vulnerable in our society must be protected.
• It is time to define what we are going to be as a society, and not through fear-mongering, who we are going to protect ourselves from. We need to look forward not backwards.

This is just the start of how we begin to change the path we are on, away from the seduction that some feel towards authoritarianism. An authoritarianism which has led to unspeakable horrors time after time throughout history. It is time, more than time, to redefine ourselves in a manner that lets all of us thrive and live life to its fullest potential.

One

Supposed you had an organization that made a product that was extremely valuable to society as a whole. Now suppose there was a problem with this product. The problem was during the manufacture of this product, one individual had to carry out a task, that over the space of six months was lethal to that person. In other words, one-person in the manufacturing process was going to die every six months in order for this organization to keep producing this very valuable product, this would occur even if they did the job just once. No matter what research was carried out, this manufacturing problem could not be fixed, and the price for this organization’s success was one death every six months. Should that organization continue to manufacture that product? What if the organization was ten people? In other words, every six months, in order for that organization of ten to thrive one of them had to volunteer to conduct that lethal manufacturing step so the other nine could continue to do their jobs. One-in-ten, doesn’t sound very good, does it?

What if instead of ten workers, the organization had 100,000. Every six months one of the 100,000 had to volunteer to conduct that lethal step so that the others could continue their work. What if the organization was 10,000,000? What if it was 400,000,000? At what point do the numbers make sense for it to be ok for one person to sacrifice their life every six months? Do the numbers ever make any sense, is it ever justifiable? At any of those organizational sizes that one person who dies is still just as dead, their life cut short, their ability to experience joy, love, other emotions and experiences cut short. Was it worth it to them?  What if instead of volunteering they were unaware that the job was lethal. Does that make a difference?

This dilemma has long been discussed and argued about and has appeared in books and movies. In Star Trek, The Wrath of Khan (1982), as Spock is sacrificing himself to save the ship he and Kirk have this exchange.

“Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” – Spock

“Or the one.”  – Kirk

But in the sequel in 1984, The Search for Spock, when Kirk disobeys orders and puts the ship at risk for Spock to be reborn he justifies his action by saying,

“…the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.” – Kirk

Has Kirk evolved his thinking? When the USA was founded the government was set up to be slow and ponderous, to be deliberative in it’s decision-making. The reason for that was not that the founding fathers wanted to be inefficient, but rather they wanted decisions, and their impacts, to be carefully weighed before implementation. They set up a multi-step system, with three co-equal branches of government each having their roles to play and without too much power being able to be gathered under one branch. The role of the government, as they envisioned it, was not majority rule, but rather the protection of rights for those who may not be well-represented in society or in the legislative bodies creating laws. That drove, for instance, the separation of church and state, so that no one religion could impose it’s will on others simply because they had the most number of adherents.  The needs of the one, outweigh the needs or the desires of the many. The passage in the Declaration of Independence which states that “all men are created equal” is a nod to this. Even if it is just one person who is different than all others, they are equal in the eyes of our founding fathers, each life just as valuable as any other. This of course was aspirational and in practice we have often fallen and still do fall far short of that ideal, but at least the aspiration is there and it is something we should all work towards together.

When attempts are made to deprogram members of cults or adherents to terrorist groups one method is to show that often the leadership does not behave in the manner that they state their members should be behaving. For instance, you show the leaders, who state that personal possessions are evil and should be turned over, wearing expensive watches, driving fancy cars or flying in personal jets, in other words you point out their hypocrisy. And you point it out over and over. Sometimes it works but often people are very good at accepting only the information that comports to what they already believe and reject those facts that contradict beliefs.

We as a country are currently separating children from their parents on our southern border. In some cases parents are told that the children are being taken for showers or baths and then never returned. It is a scene that is eerily and horrifically reminiscent of Nazi’s telling concentration camp victims that they were going for showers as they were led into the gas chambers. It makes my skin crawl and brings tears to my eyes. Scenes of young children crying for their parents are occurring over and over. These are the facts and they are right before our eyes.

Many of our most senior leaders today are awash in vast oceans of hypocrisy and they want the American public to believe them as they use us simply as a means for political and financial gain. Groups that traditionally proclaim themselves as “pro-family” are strangely quiet on this issue and their hypocrisy grows, as they look to cling to power and influence. This is not what the USA is supposed to be, it is not who I am. We are supposed to be protecting the vulnerable, not inflicting suffering upon them. Each and every one of the children and each and every one of their parents should be protected and they should not be separated. They are not numbers, they are not statistics, they are not pawns in some evil conception of political maneuvering. The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many and one separated child is one too many.

Privacy, Persuasion and Fundamental Rights

Perhaps, not surprisingly, it started with a lie. In 1957, James Vicary, on a hot summer day, in a Fort Lee, NJ movie theater, claimed to have run an experiment where he said he inserted frames into a movie and flashed on the screen the words “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coca Cola”. He claimed this subliminal (meaning literally below threshold) advertising resulted in huge increases in the sales of popcorn (up 58%) and Coca Cola (up 18%).  Vicary stated that subliminal communication was so powerful and had such potentially dangerous uses that he suggested warning the public when subliminal techniques were in use, and even seemed to think that some sort of governmental regulation might be needed.

Congress held hearings, legislation was proposed, but not passed. The public felt they were being manipulated. Norman Cousins, editor of The Saturday Review, warned his readers about subliminal communications. Among the uses his article warned about was the potential to manipulate voting patterns for political candidates and influence the outcome of an election.

On the fifth anniversary of his “experiment”, Vicary admitted that it was a hoax, a ruse and that his goal was to revive his failing consulting practice (Advertising Age, Sept 17, 1962). Apparently, his thinking was it did not matter if his findings were real or not, just that his potential clients believed that they were real. By this time, he was the director of survey research for Dun & Bradstreet as he attempted to resurrect his career as a psychologist.  Some question whether the insertion of the words ever took place.

So, is subliminal perception and its ability to influence people pure bunk? Thijs Verwijmeren, et.al.  (Journal of Consumer Psychology, April 2011) came to a conclusion that subliminal advertising can have some limited effect, but it is not all that powerful. Subliminal ads, for instance, can’t make you do something you don’t want to do. Others question the very concept. If something can’t be perceived, because it is subliminal, how can it possibly affect behavior? The notion is that you can affect the subconscious mind without the conscious mind being aware of the affect. Regardless of the efficacy of this particular technique, the temptation to influence people, to change their behaviors continues, through various other avenues and methods.

Classical economic theory states that humans are rational thinkers and make decisions that are in their best economic interest after considering all the facts. Much economic policy over the years has been based on this concept and of course it is wrong, for humans are anything but cool, rational thinkers as they work through their decisions. We all take short-cuts in our decision-making using bias, heuristics or rules-of-thumb to get through the day (these are decisions or judgements we make without necessarily being conscious we are making them). Without them the number of decisions you would be required to make would simply paralyze you. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two psychologists, drove those points home with a substantial body of research that gave rise to the field of Behavioral Economics. One cornerstone of their work was their definition and description of System 1 and System 2 type of thinking that humans use to make decisions.

System 1 thinking is automatic decision-making. It is quick and easy, requiring little to no effort when making a decision or passing judgement. System 1 thinking speeds decision-making and allows you to make thousands of unthinking decisions each and every day. The path you will drive to work, what you are likely to order in your morning coffee, do you put butter or cream cheese on your English muffin are all quick, ponderless, System 1 decisions you make. System 2 is when you use deliberative thought in order to make a decision. For instance, if you are ordering a new PC or Mac, if you are like most people, you methodically work through your options and the associated costs, prior to making a decision on what equipment to buy and how to configure it. You may check with friends and read reviews, part of your decision may be based on brand loyalty or a “coolness” factor that you perhaps can’t quite articulate, or one of our many human biases, such as WYSIATI, which stands for “What you see is all there is”, may come into play. Meaning you choose from the options before you and tend not to look for less obvious or unseen options. And you can be assured that the manufacturers of these devices are doing their best to influence your decision.

The speed limit sign says “30 MPH”, the sign on the escalator says “Stand Right, Walk Left”, in the parking garage there are signs that say “small cars only”, the express checkout line at the grocery store says “8 items or less”. We are informed that in order to enroll our kindergarten-aged child into school that we have to show proof of vaccination. All around us, every day there are attempts to influence our behavior, to modify what we are doing or to inform us what is allowable and what is not. While not perfectly so, these rules tend to be imposed when your behavior has the potential to negatively impact others around you, either directly or indirectly. The reason you are not trained to drive with a “use your best judgement on what your speed should be”, is 1. You may not be familiar with the road you are on, 2. If left to their own devices, some people’s judgement (especially younger or inexperienced drivers) might not be that good, 3. There is a tremendous potential for harm occurring to others if you make a poor decision. So, a sign is posted that informs you what is an appropriate speed for that road (and there are consequences to violating that sign’s speed limit). Your child’s ability to spread disease and contribute to epidemics (not in a good way) is the reason for the vaccination (and it does not matter if what you personally believe about vaccinations and autism goes against all the known science – no vaccination, no school – another penalty).

Writing in Scientific American (March 30, 2018), Marcello Lenca and Effy Vayena, describe Cognitive Liberty as “the freedom to control one’s own cognitive dimension (including preferences, choices and beliefs) and to be protected from manipulative strategies that are designed to bypass one’s cognitive defenses.” This was written in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal where, in an attempt to influence the last presidential election, at least 87 million Facebook users, unbeknown to them, were targeted for customized digital ads and other manipulative information in a manner that “circumvents user’s awareness of such influence”. And that is the key difference between a speed limit sign, a vaccination requirement and subliminally trying to get you to drink more Coca Cola.  One approach is direct and in-your-face, it is transparent, while the other tries to influence you without you realizing you are being influenced. They continue, “most of the current online ecosystem, is an arm’s race to the unconscious mind: notifications, microtargeted ads, autoplay plugins, are all strategies to induce addictive behavior, hence to manipulate”.

The Cambridge Analytica CEO in an undercover interview with Channel 4 News in the UK stated, that it did not matter whether something was real and factual, just that people believed that it was. People, of course, are more inclined to believe information that supports their existing viewpoint, whether it is real or not. Remember Pizzagate – the falsehood spread by certain websites that specialize in spreading falsehoods and the alt-right during the election, that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring in the basement of a Pizza Parlor, except she wasn’t and the accused Pizza Parlor did not even have a basement. But never-the-less, a true believer went to that Pizza Parlor with his gun and started firing in a System 1 thinking pattern. He never paused to consider the information he was receiving in a rational manner. The shooter viewed himself as a “good guy with a gun” going to stop bad people, except it was all a delusion meant to influence behavior. A delusion that was crafted by the inappropriate use of big data to find people’s fears, to manipulate them and to capitalize on them. So here you have potentially deadly consequences to falsehoods spread on social media, for which there is no penalty.

It wasn’t the first time and it certainly won’t be the last time that occurs.  And to underscore that this wasn’t some accident, during the last presidential election you also had Republican operatives making statements on TV interviews such as “we are not going to let facts determine the outcome of this election”, or we are presenting “alternative facts”, in other words just like James Vicary’s “Drink Coca Cola” ruse, it did not matter whether it was real or not, just that a population critical to your success, potential customers or in the case of an election, potential voters, believed that it was real.  And because of that orientation and the lack of regulation or penalties around it, the spread of disinformation, enabled by social media and Russia attacking our democracy, reached unprecedented levels.

Our technology, once again, is much more advanced than the social structures we surround it with, at least at first.  Partly that is due to pace of innovation being quite a bit faster than the pace of social structure change. But this is nothing new. For instance, when we, as a species, starting writing down our stories, our gurus at that time were those who could read. They assumed a special elevated status within society and because of their skill set they were the bearers of the “word” and able to manipulate and persuade the masses, for who could argue with someone about a text that you could not read? The priests of today are those who can create and harness the technology that can influence the masses and those who can build smart systems to enable that to happen more effectively.  In a special section on AI appearing in The Economist (March 31^st-April 6^th, 2018), it was estimated that for each capable AI tech person in a company today, the value of that company increases by 5 to 10 million dollars, so it is no wonder that sophisticated AI talent today draw 6- and 7- figure salaries.

Sander van der Linden in Psychological Weapons of Mass Persuasion, (Scientific American, April 10^th 2018), quotes a study covering 3.5 million people which “found that psychologically tailored advertising, i.e. matching the content of a persuasive message to an individual’s broad psychographic profile, resulted in 40% more clicks and 50% more online purchases than mismatched or unpersonalized messages”.  We have come a long way, with the help of our technology, from flashing “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coca Cola” on a screen. And more importantly he states that these messages when carried over into a political environment can have the ability to either suppress voting for the candidate these messages are targeted against or can swing some potential voters to switch candidates. When elections are often decided by a percentage point or two, that small effect can have a large impact. In addition to the USA presidential election, it now appears that Britain’s EU exit vote was influenced using the same techniques.

So yes, we are at risk, in an unregulated, wild-west of a technology world, elections can be affected, Cognitive Liberty, our very democracy can be undermined, autocrats/dictators or would-be tin-pot dictators with effective social media disinformation and targeted voting campaigns can be voted in. What can we do?

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, stated in a recent townhall meeting in Chicago that “privacy is a human right”.  That aligns him with his predecessor, Steve Jobs, who in 2010 stated, “”Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English and repeatedly.” “I believe people are smart and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data.”

The European Union has just enacted GDPR or General Data Protection Regulations, which does align with the sentiments of both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. In a nutshell, among the GDPR requirements are that individuals give permission for their data to be collected, be informed regarding what data is being collected, how it will be used, how and for how long it will be stored, and at any time they can see what data you have on them and they can demand that they be erased from your systems. There are many other requirements as well and violations result in large fines. In an editorial, The Economist recently called for the USA to adopt the EU data protection regulations.

But in addition to protecting the data we can work towards making people savvier about what they see on social media and how to determine reality from delusion or disinformation. For instance, some possibilities include (and I am sure if a group put their minds to it, many more possibilities would emerge):

• Transparency can be increased, for instance, just like restaurants in NYC get cleanliness ratings, social media sites can get ratings regarding the veracity of the information they carry. Is the information verified in any fashion or is it just put out there?
• Sites that label themselves as news, or TV stations that label themselves as news should adhere to certain news worthy standards in order to keep that designation. Each program should be clearly labeled as meeting “news standards” or should be clearly labeled “opinion” not just at the start of the show, but the whole time the show is on.
• News organizations used to adhere to a separation of church and state. Meaning the news side of the business should not be influenced by the business side of the business. To achieve a certain news rating this standard would have to be met.
• One method towards getting people to become better consumers of information is to educate them on how humans consume information and make decisions. It is a first step towards taking them out of System 1 thinking when appropriate and having them activate System 2 thinking.
• Penalties can be implemented for knowingly spreading false information.

Social media now has the power to cause great harm to others and to our society. As the saying goes with great power comes great responsibility, but so far social media has not proven itself capably of operating in that responsible fashion. We are in a variation of the “Tragedy of the Commons” moment when it comes to social media. The tragedy of the commons describes a situation where individuals acting independently put their own self-interest above a common interest in a shared resource. Because each is only concerned about their own interest, they each use the resource until it is despoiled and of no use to anyone. Collective action is needed to save the resource so it can be used by all to mutual benefit. While originally the concept of the commons was based on shared unregulated grazing ground over the years it has morphed to mean “any shared and unregulated resource such as atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, or even an office refrigerator”. While social media is an unlimited resource, it too will be despoiled if it is only used by individuals for their own self-interest without regard to the harm it is causing others and to society.

 

Outrage Fatigue

These statements are my personal views and not necessarily the views of any other person at my company.

With another mass murder of children, this time at the Parkland, Florida high school and the response of this administration and many of those in Congress, I have reach the limits of my ability to be polite and to regard other points of view as legitimate. Weapons, designed for warfare and our military, capable of inflicting mass murder within a few seconds simply have no place in society. This should not be a Republican issue or a Democratic issue, this is simply a common-sense and decency issue. The removal of these weapons from our society should have happened a long time ago. The evidence is incontrovertible. Societies with more guns have more gun crime. Period. Households with guns have higher incidences of death, injuries or suicides then households without guns. The idea that you are an exception to that finding is a fantasy. The idea that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun is a fantasy. It is a fantasy, based on a mythology that has been perpetrated upon the American people, by people who have a financial stake in the perpetuation of that hero myth and by those who wish to see our society fall apart. It is more than time to take the gloves off and to stand up for what is right, for the hopes and aspirations of America, for the dreams that America once represented to the world, for what America is supposed to stand for.

Every day in the news we see continue evidence of a Trump administration whose malevolence is moderated only by its complete and sheer incompetence. If the administration had more competent bureaucrats, the speed at which they are damaging people, damaging our institutions, damaging our democracy, damaging our world standing and damaging our planet would be greatly magnified. Luckily the most competent people want nothing to do with this administration and are staying away. I am not the first one to make that statement.

The sheer volume, day-after-day of horrendous news, and the absolute stupidity of the decisions being made, the self-dealing, the self-enrichment, the refusal to deal with Russia that has all but declared open warfare on us, the attempt to decimate the free press and our legal and judicial institutions, the wanton elimination of regulation, the repudiation of science, the refusal to recognize climate change and global warming as a threat (and to work towards mitigating the threat), the repudiation of diplomacy, the repudiation of morality and justice, the embrace of neo-Nazi’s and the extreme right-wing, the kowtowing to the NRA, it simply boggles the imagination, and day after day those of us who care deeply about our country and this planet are feeling more and more outrage fatigue. How much longer can it go on before permanent damage is done? Trump and his ilk have become more than tiresome.

Those who work in this administration seemingly fall into one of four buckets. 1. they are drawn to power and are willing to do anything to be within the inner ring of power, to advance their own agendas, and/or enrich themselves, even if it means abandoning all their previously held principles; 2. some are simply racist, xenophobic/anti-immigrant, misogynist, anti-LGBTQ rights, or anti-Semitic and this administration’s views align with their own; 3. a few seem to see themselves as guardians, hoping to moderate this abomination of an administration and safeguard our democracy. The short-lived CEO panels, which were disbanded, seemingly fell into this latter category; or 4. they are career people who were in place well before this administration and see themselves as being there well after they are gone.

I am not bound by the Goldwater Rule (which prohibits psychiatric diagnosis without personally seeing a patient) for I am not a clinician. (The American Psychoanalytic Association has lifted the Goldwater Rule, the American Psychiatric Association has left it in place and I am a member of neither). I see no patients, but in addition to being the CEO of an organizational consulting company, I teach leadership in an MBA program, and let me be very clear Donald Trump would fail my class. In fact, in addition to his actions being a clear and present danger to the United States, he is a very clear example of how not to lead (and also how not to negotiate) and any of my students would be able to point-by-point describe why this is so.  Now I don’t think the fault is all under his control for I am quite convinced that his mental state has quite a bit to do with it.

Some psychiatrists and psychologists call Trump’s pattern of behavior Malevolent Narcissism, that is narcissism taken to a level that includes psychopathic tendencies and malevolent means that it causes harm to others. Others would use the term the Dark Triad which are a series of illnesses that are often co-morbid, meaning they tend to occur together. The Dark Triad consists of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Why do I think he is a clear and present danger to the United States? Let me take just one of those illnesses, the psychopathy as an example. Psychopaths have been shown to have a weaker or non-existent connection between the emotional center of the brain (the amygdala) and the centers of higher thought processes (the pre-frontal cortex).  Now not all psychopaths fall into a life of crime, but an unusually high percentage of those in prison would be diagnosed as psychopaths (utilizing the Hare checklist). What characteristics of a psychopath lead them to prison? Here are some common characteristics that psychopaths exhibit.

(WARNING: Just because you know someone who has some of these characteristics does not make them a psychopath. A clinician would say that these traits must rise to a level where they interfere with day-to-day functioning to be pathological).

• Exploitive, opportunistic, can be successful in life, but often that success is short-lived
• Take credit for others successes, but blame others for failures
• They can be charismatic and persuasive
• Pay a lot of attention to their appearance, with a desire to look attractive
• Aggression, racism, bullying is often evident
• Assertiveness, dominance, self-importance, self-aggrandizement
• Limited self-control, higher risk taking, short-duration marriages and multiple spouses or multiple affairs
• Low scores on honesty and humility with high scores on greediness
• Psychopaths are notorious for a lack of emotion and empathy, the ability to understand right from wrong or to understand the emotions that someone else is feeling
• And, those with these traits generally lack self-awareness – the ability to see how their behavior is perceived by others.

With no ability to determine right from wrong, no inherent morality, throw in a lack of self-control and a good dose of greediness and it becomes easy to see how this illness can lead to a life of crime.  It is sometimes difficult for a non-clinical person to really understand a phrase like “no ability to determine right from wrong”. It is not that they choose not to, it is that the psychopath literally can’t. If faced with a clearly moral choice and a clearly immoral choice (and no external clues, or intellectual experience with a similar choice) the psychopath would simply be unable to pick the morally correct thing to do. It just does not compute to them. Psychopaths can be quite smart, or not, but those who are smart can be even more of a danger. As Warren Buffet states when he picks people to work for him (paraphrased), “they have to have integrity and intelligence, and if the don’t have the first the second one will kill you”.

Now, I know quite a few people (clinicians and other psychologists) who feel that we should not label our current president as mentally ill. Some of them feel that mental illness has enough stigma already and to use that as a reason to remove the president would be to simply increase that stigma. Their feeling is that he should be removed for the actions he takes and not his mental state. Those of you who are old enough to remember, just before Nixon resigned, his mental state and his drinking was such that the defense secretary told the military not to carry out any orders for a military or nuclear strike without the approval of the defense secretary, which was unconstitutional, but may have saved us from a nuclear holocaust. Nothing like a good war to take the nation’s mind off of impeachment, in a Wag-the-Dog fashion.

A good portion of people have at some point in their lives short-term mental illness from which they recover. For instance, it is quite normal to be depressed at the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or from some other traumatic event. It can be like having the flu, it can knock you down for a period of time. And at any point in time 6% of the population is suffering from some level of depression. Depression becomes problematic when there is no recovery after a period of time and it interferes ongoing with day-to-day life.  Today most people can recover from depression or anxiety (also 6% incidence), with proper treatment.

The question though, should someone, the most powerful person on this planet, someone who can, at the push of a button, destroy this planet, (as much as I throw-up into my mouth when I think about that), be held to the same standard as anybody on the street? Are the risks simply too high?  To me the answer is “yes” the risks are too high. This current president represents a danger to us all, a danger to our children, a danger to our grandchildren, a danger to life on earth. I am not being dramatic. Clearly a full mental evaluation is in order for a mentally healthy person would simply not act in the manner of this current president.

With incident after incident, with each news cycle bringing more absurdity and each absurdity generating outrage, outrage fatigue sets in easily. My father, though he usually did not want to talk about it, at times told me stories about how during WWII in France and in Germany the level of fatigue he felt was unbearable. But he persevered, because the alternative was even more unbearable.

 

Define Yourself, Define the Organization, Define the World

Having a mission, a sense of purpose about one’s activities has almost always proven to be a path towards generating higher levels of personal pride. Whether that pride is about your activities, your beliefs, an organization you work for, or some other facet of your day-to-day life.

Having a higher purpose mission is one way in which we define ourselves.  A nurse or doctor is helping the sick and maintaining health, a teaching is preparing the next generation, while students are preparing to take their places in our societies, a police officer is bringing safety and security to our neighborhoods, a firefighter is saving lives and property, a sanitation worker is keeping our cities and towns clean and livable, a craftsperson revels in the quality of their work. The list is potentially endless and each person, no matter their role in our society strives to define their place, their sense of purpose. Those who achieve a positive sense of purpose, I would argue, end up not only scoring higher on pride scales, but also in general life happiness.

Those who struggle with a sense of purpose to their lives, struggle on many other fronts as well. The good news is that people can change how they define themselves, their sense of purpose, over time. Someone who is struggling with that sense of purpose, either on their own or with assistance, can achieve a renewed sense of purpose and live a more fulfilling life.

A body of research has now shown that if you can encourage people to think along the lines of how they define themselves, it is more likely to lead to them taking action congruent with that definition, than if they think about just the action specifically. Christopher Bryan, a psychologist at Stanford University, has conducted a series of experiments on a variety of topics that makes this point. For instance, getting someone into the mindset that they are a voter, a participant in our democracy, increases the likelihood that they will vote over simply getting a commitment from a similar person to vote in next week’s election. Likewise getting someone to define themselves as a person who recycles, increases that behavior over simply asking people to engage in and getting them to commit to recycling activities.

Now we know that “nudging” a voter or recycler to engage in those activities also increases the likelihood of action being taken. An example of a voting nudge would be to as specifically as possible get someone to plan out how they will actually cast that ballot. So for instance, planning out how will they get to the polling station, which if any identification is required and locating that identification, or obtaining it ahead of time, determining what time of day they will vote, putting it on their calendar, arranging for childcare if necessary, etc. In other words helping the person visualize and plan out each step necessary to successfully carry out the behavior is more likely to result in the behavior being carried out. As it turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, getting them to define themselves as a voter in the first place has additional benefit, increasing the likelihood of a vote taking place.

In the organizational world, if you want to change the trajectory that an organization is on, it can be very important to change the actual behaviors that people engage in. In other words, for example, if you are trying to improve quality, and all you do is try to change attitudes towards quality, hoping that the old behaviors that led to quality problems will resolve themselves, what tends to happen is that the old behaviors override the attitudinal changes you are working upon and the old behaviors reinforce the old attitudes. That approach is like pushing a large boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down time after time. Rather, it is more effective to begin with some of the behaviors that are causing the poor quality to emerge, change them by showing, teaching, modifying, measuring etc. the specific behaviors, while at the same time working to modify the attitudes around what is acceptable quality.

And now a new additional potential step that can help insure success, work at the very beginning to have people join your quality journey and sign onto defining their mission their sense of purpose to create high quality.  So:

 

1. Change the mindset, the definition of purpose/mission
   • Think of these as nouns – I am a voter, I am a recycler, I am a quality fiend
2. Change the behaviors
   • Think of these as verbs – I vote, I recycle
3. Change the attitudes
   • Think of these as outcomes, as mindsets and behaviors change attitudes will often follow.

Now how can we scale this up? Say our existence on this planet was faced with a challenge. The planet is warming and this will have all sorts of negative consequences. There is climate change and increased instability in the atmosphere (due to increases in atmospheric energy), there are changes coming in ocean salinity which can change ocean current patterns with which we are familiar as well as change the ocean’s habitability to current life forms, the artic permafrost is melting which has the potential to place unimaginable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, as well as allowing long dormant bacteria and viruses to reemerge. Rising sea levels threaten coastal locations as well as numerous islands. The list of other really negative consequences to global warming is long, including threatening humanity’s very existence.

Our ability to take action on a global scale up to this point has been limited. Even though the United States is currently the only nation on the planet – think about it,  the only nation on the planet, that has walked away from a treaty that is a first attempt to wrestle this problem to the ground. Previous attempts in the USA have focused on changing behaviors and while that is extremely important, it is not perhaps where we should have started.

Ever wonder why school kids are so concerned, so impassioned about climate change, even when their parents may take on a less concerned, or less action oriented stance? They may feel, “after all, what can one person do” or they may not believe the science. But the kids have a different mindset. They think about themselves as stewards of the planet and the creatures that live upon it. Changing to this steward mindset among the majority of adults can be a beneficial first step to getting people and organizations to change behaviors. The only question is it too late?

The potential of applying mindset/mission/purpose definitions to all kinds of problems is there and the potential benefits are great. The motivation and/or resources to do so may be lacking.

The Forecaster’s Dilemma

Most of us spend a good deal of time making forecasts or predictions along the lines of “if I do X, the outcome will be Y”. What activities or set of behaviors will make me lose weight, get my child accepted into college, will set me up for a comfortable retirement, will keep the dog from barking in the middle of the night, will get me that promotion or raise…and on and on. Whole industries have sprung up to help people, to guide them (or fleece them) as they struggle with these decisions.

Organizational leaders continually search for insight into which decisions, or even more challenging which set of decisions will lead to organizational success. What products do we bring to market, do we grow organically or through acquisition, do we hire or reorganize, what will be most effective in generating sales or increased profit, what goals are in fact the right goals to be chasing…and on and on. Whole industries have sprung up to help organizations, to guide them, (or fleece them) as they struggle with these decisions.

When the National Weather Service (NWS) sees a set of conditions, they issue various kinds of warnings. For instance, a Heat Advisory is issued when temperatures are significantly above normal and the humidity is high. Along with a Heat Advisory often comes a suggestion, that older people should stay indoors, as the prediction is that older people are more susceptible to ill effects from high heat and humidity and are more at risk. Invariably the emergency rooms fill with older people who fall ill during a heat wave. In 2006, professors at Kent State University looked into this and found that while 90% of the older people knew the dangers associated with high heat and humidity, the older people who ignored the advice did so either because they 1. did not consider themselves old, or 2. thought that they belonged to a special class, were an exception, whereby the general rule did not apply in their particular circumstance.

So, the obvious solution for the NWS is to get more specific, right? Tell people that if you are older than 65 you should stay in the air conditioning during the weather event. So, what do the forecastors say when lots of 64-year old’s get ill or 66-year old’s do not? The more specific the prediction, if X is done, Y will be the outcome, the less accurate the prediction will be, but the more general the prediction the more likely it will be subject to various interpretations by different people.

Most people want perfect knowledge, with absolute answers, if you do X, Y will happen. But scientists know the dilemma they are facing, and the scientific method is to talk about tendencies and confidence limits, building error into the answers and knowing that as specificity gets higher the likelihood of being accurate in all circumstances gets lower. Science is about the preponderance of evidence, not any one study. Giving undue credence to specificity is a natural human bias and specificity itself is very attractive. Scott Highhouse, at Bowling Green University, ran a series of experiments looking at what kind of descriptions people give more credence to. Those with more specificity, more detail, were inherently thought to be more accurate. For instance, which outcome do you feel is more likely? 1. New York City will flood again. Or 2.  New York City will flood again, due to global warming and the more frequent occurrence of severe weather, such as super storm Sandy.  You are invariably drawn to number two, even though a simple Venn diagram will show that number two is a subset of number one and hence mathematically is less likely to happen. (And you are drawn to number two even though I told you the answer prior to showing you the statements. It is a very powerful effect.)

Smoking causes lung cancer, except I can find the individual who smoked their whole life and did not get cancer, or I can find someone who never smoked and got it. People, even while knowing the overall likelihood of getting lung cancer is much higher in smokers than non-smokers, will hang onto the notion that they are an exception to the rule, for that is how they deal with the cognitive dissonance that their smoking causes (attitudes usually follow behaviors). Smokers who have trouble quitting will tend to assume that they belong to that exceptional group, the lifelong smokers who don’t get lung cancer. Do they really feel that way, or deep down inside do they recognize that they are likely not exceptional and the odds are against them? If people did not have that built in bias, that somehow, they would beat the odds, lotteries and gambling would not be as successful as they are.

The older people who ignored the National Weather Service advice also had a definitional problem. Defining old. Definitional problems are very common. In 2008, Jeff Jolton and I looked at how various groups defined ethics within an organization. What we found is that the definition of what is ethical behavior or unethical behavior varied by occupation and level. Blue collar workers tended to define ethics as personal treatment and was relationship driven. Benefit cuts, layoffs, schedule changes, who got promotions or training opportunities would fall into that definition of ethics. As you moved into professional occupations within the organization ethics was defined more by walking the talk, the organization doing what they said they were going to do. In managerial occupations ethics tended to be defined by contractual obligations, either being fulfilled or not, and at the higher levels the definition zeroed in on violations of the law. So, when an organization in their values statement says, “We will do our work with the highest degree of ethics and integrity”, (and many of them say something like that), what does it mean to a typical employee?

In American today there is a great divide, and a corresponding need for people of differing political points of view to talk to each other to get past the profound challenges we are currently facing (many of them of our own making). The challenges defined above, the Forecaster’s Dilemma, about how differently people can view the same circumstance makes getting past our challenges more difficult.

For instance, would a racist (or other assorted bigoted types) know they are racist (or homophobic, or misogynist, or xenophobic etc.)? The short answer is likely to be somewhat unsatisfying. Perhaps, perhaps not. Those today, who march under Nazi banners, or along with white supremacist flags or a confederate flag certainly know what they are doing, for it is not an unconscious act. But all of the issues above can come into play. Racism, misogyny, xenophobia etc. are not binary conditions, they exist along a continuum. What is racist to one person is not racist to another, so there is a definitional problem. Remember Archie Bunker? He would sit there in his lounge chair blithely unawares that he was racist, misogynist (even though occasionally, Edith put him in his place), and xenophobic. There are a lot of Archie Bunkers out there.  And there is the exceptionalism problem, that somehow the definition of racism or other characteristic simply doesn’t apply because of special circumstance.

Can we forecast which set of behaviors we can undertake to make us a more cohesive, less divided society? A society which respects and values each of us regardless of our individually unique backgrounds? I do know one thing. If we don’t try, we are guaranteed to fail.