Myths of the Veritas: Many Pains for Many Paths

22 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by petersironwood in America, creativity, management, politics, psychology, Uncategorized, Veritas

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Bohm Dialogue, Democracy, dialogue, discussion, leadership, truth

Many Paths awoke in a start and saw that all around her, there was a rosy glow. Why? Her heart raced when a fire-image crept into her mind. She scrambled up and peered outside. Ah. The rosy glow was merely from an unusually beautiful sunrise. She smiled at herself, happy that the alarm had been false. She looked down at her right hand and noticed the studded club in her hand. She had no recollection of having grabbed it.

Many Paths, suddenly shook her head. She shocked herself to realize that there was a small part of her that was actually sorry it hadn’t been an emergency of some sort.

{Translator’s Note}: The Veritas were apparently all taught from earliest years to acknowledge seemingly contradictory feelings and then, when conditions permitted, to track down what was going on. It was considered very important not to be living with contradictions of any kind. Factual contradictions, value contradictions, and even emotional contradictions needed to be sorted.

Failure to resolve or at least understand such conflicts was thought to almost certainly cause problems. From a contradiction of facts, anything can be “proven.” A contradiction of values can lead to vacillation — which is inefficient — as well as breaking trust with others. The Veritas considered the breaking of trust to be a very serious crime. Their whole society, like any free society, was based on trust. Breaking that trust is tantamount to attempting to destroy society.

A contradiction in feelings did not mean that the tribe member needed to decide which feeling was “correct.” Though they apparently did not have a modern knowledge of anatomy, they were well aware that many parts of our body have muscles arranged in antagonistic pairs. Often feelings are arranged the same way. They considered it important to understand the origins of feelings and then to choose which one to act on based on probable outcomes.

Many Paths quickly realized that a true emergency, a visible enemy, even a necessary evacuation would allow her to do something. And, doing something, anything, would be more pleasant than this incessant waiting. And there were the mutterings. As the days wore on, people looked at her differently. She did not hear any open questioning of her leadership, but when she drew near, she could tell that conversations fell silent or switched to “pleasant” topics. If she were leading them in active battle, they would consider her a more active leader, and she herself would feel as though she was somehow “helping” her tribe reconnect. And, she especially missed Shadow Walker and Tu-Swift. Not knowing whether they were dead or alive or wounded somewhere — these led to extremely unpleasant images and feelings.

She prepared herself for her day and let it be known that she wished to have a council fire and dialogue that evening. Rather than pretend that everything was wonderful and that her leadership was unquestioned, she thought it better to encourage others to share their ideas about what else might be done.

Original Artwork by Pierce Morgan

The rosy glow of the morning gave way to a sweltering day of hazy sunshine. After her own chores were done, she decided to walk among the people and pitch in with their chores and discover what was on their minds individually. She noticed Stone Chipper and his son, Horse Viewer headed back toward the river where Horse Viewer had been the first among the Veritas to see a person standing atop a horse. She thought it worthwhile to quiz them gently when they were back at the precise place where Horse Viewer had first seen those Who Steal Children. Sometimes, people can recall that which first escaped them when they are once again in similar circumstances. Anyway, it would be cool near the creek and Many Paths knew there was a small nearby lake with Pickerel and Arrowhead. She judged it was likely too early to gather the Pickerel seeds but the Arrowhead tubers could be harvested any time.

They walked in silence for a time. At last they neared the creek and Many Paths said, “Horse Viewer, can you show me where you stood when you first saw the man on the horse?”

A large, radiant smile lit the small boy’s face. He loped over to a spot near the outlet to the lake. He turned back to the adults, jumped up and down a few times. “Right here! Here’s the spot! I was looking across to there.”

Many Paths strode up to him quickly. “Can you do me a favor, Horse Viewer? Can you close your eyes, please?” The boy complied as Many Path continued, “Now, can you picture anything else?”

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“Well,” said the boy without opening his eyes, “there was a kind of rope or strap coming from the mouth of the horse to the hands of the man who stood atop the horse. Although…he didn’t really stand on the horse. He stood on something on the side of the horse. And, the man…the man was wearing a black, hairy mask on the lower part of his face. The man … the man kicked the horse. I think he kicked the horse with his heel into the side of the horse. That’s all I remember.” The boy opened his eyes and stared at Many Paths.

“Thank you, Horse Viewer. Your memory is good. Can you think of anything else?”

The boy closed his eyes again, but opened them soon. “No, not really. Except…I couldn’t really see the man very well, but he was … stiff?”

Many Paths glanced at Stone Chipper and back to the boy. “What do you mean by ‘stiff’?”

Horse Viewer frowned. “I mean. He was riding so fast! He should have been scared or happy or … something… but his face was blank and his body was … stiff … as though he felt neither joy nor fear in riding such a wondrous beast.”

Many Paths nodded. “You are a good observer, Horse Viewer. If you think of anything else, let me or your father know.” Now, help find some good stones for arrowheads. We may need many more soon. Meanwhile, I will also be gathering arrowheads. She smiled and gestured toward the margin of the lake.

Stone Chipper said, “Many Paths. I also have something to say.”

“Yes? What is it?”

Stone Chipper looked at Many Paths and said, “I want you to know that I think you are a good leader.” He paused. “I do not think it’s your fault we were attacked at feast. And I don’t think it’s your fault that our search party has not yet returned. And we all of us thought sending a small search party was most appropriate. I don’t think it made sense to send a larger party. We don’t know yet what we are dealing with. As my son said, these people are not … they are not Veritas … and we do not yet know how they think or what other weapons they may have. They lie. We know that much from Friend of Squirrel. To pretend to trade in peace and then attack? They are not good people, I think. They are a great danger to us all. This is not the time for rash action. When you chip a stone properly, you must turn it this way and that. You must chip carefully or you will break the stone so that nothing good is left. I have made such a mistake of too much haste myself. Then, I must start over. We don’t want to break the tribe. That’s all. That’s what I think.”

Many Paths sighed, nodded, and smiled grimly at Stone Chipper. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. She took both his hands in hers, looked in his eyes and said, “you are a fine maker of arrowheads, sir, and you are raising a good son. We will see how long it takes me to gather arrowheads and we may or may not walk back to the Center Place together. But for now I take your leave.” She then strode to the side of the lake. She removed her moccasins, and began wading into the cold, refreshing water.

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By late afternoon, Stone Chipper and Horse Viewer had gathered a heavy bag full of stones to be chipped. Likewise, Many Paths had a large number of Arrowhead tubers. They decided to return together to the Center Place. They had not gone far though when they came across Trunk of Tree who seemed to have been waiting for them though he seemed surprised to see the three of them together.

“Hello, Many Paths! Have the three of you been collecting stones?”

Stone Chipper answered, “Well, I have along with Horse Viewer, as you now call him. Many Paths has been gathering for tonight’s feast.”

“Oh. Interesting. Gathering food. May I talk with you privately, Many Paths?”

She glanced at Stone Chipper who shrugged. Many Paths, said, “Yes. What is on your mind.” Trunk of Tree looked back at Many Paths but said nothing until the other two were well down the path and out of earshot.

“Many Paths, you know I support you totally, right?”

“Well, thank you Trunk of Tree. I do appreciate that.”

Trunk of Tree, chewed on his lip for a moment. “Well, yes. The thing is, some of the braves grow impatient. They wish to send out a larger party. They say you are afraid to do that because you’re afraid to find out that Shadow Walker is dead. And Tu-Swift. As long as we all stay here, we will never know and you can pretend they are still alive.”

Many Paths drew back. “What? I — no, I do not think either of them are dead, but if they are, I will get over it. I do not counsel sending more people out until we learn more from those who went to discover more about this enemy. I am not afraid of finding out they are dead. I appreciate your support, but …. “

Trunk of Tree stopped in his tracks and turned toward Many Paths, laying his thick hands upon her upper arms and turning her toward him. “If you truly appreciate my support, why not show it?”

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Many Paths frowned. “I just said that I appreciated your support. You puzzle me.”

“Many Paths, you are beautiful, but unused to the ways of men. I can show you those ways and you will be a better leader for it. I like you. You know I do. But it is time to acknowledge that Shadow Walker and Tu-Swift are not coming back. You need a family. I can provide that family, if you favor me. Let’s just try a handful of kisses and see how we like it. If either of us doesn’t like it, you can find someone else. But meanwhile….” Trunk of Tree tightened his grip on her arms and drew his body close. He closed his eyes and attempted to plant a kiss on her mouth. She quickly raised both hands above her head and brought them down quickly on the thick forearms of Trunk of Tree. She thus escaped his grip, but only momentarily. “NO!” she screamed. “We talked about this already. I am for Shadow Walker. He’s only been gone a short while. He will return. He’s your friend, or so we both thought. What is with you? I thought you were supporting me! Trying to force a kiss is not supporting me!”

“I know! I know! I’m sorry. You’re just so beautiful. It is hard to resist.”

“Trunk of Tree, you are strong. You can do difficult things. So you can leave me alone. I do not want to complicate…it would be such an absurdly bad idea. What do you think would happen?”

“I think you should raise children with me! I am strong and I could be leader but I would listen to you for advice. We could lead this way together. Strength of body and strength of mind together! No-one would then question us!”

Many Paths lidded her eyes, set her jaw and looked at him with dagger eyes. “I want people to question me! These are difficult times. I want everyone’s input, but I do not in any way want to raise a family with you. Indeed, I don’t wish to have children now! For what possible purpose? So that they can be stolen away by the horrible People Who Steal Children? If you object to the way I am handling things, then bring it up at the Dialogue after dinner and quit trying to force yourself on me. No. No. NO!” Trunk of Tree again tried to kiss her and this time Many Paths swung her elbow across his nose, breaking it.

Original Artwork by Pierce Morgan

Trunk of Tree had now grown angry and felt for a moment like breaking every gone in her body. But he saw that Stone Chipper must have heard their argument and quickly head back down the path toward them. Horse Viewer was close behind. Trunk of Tree grimaced and placed what he thought was a bland, pleasant smile upon his face. “Oh, hello, Stone Chipper. Sorry, we got a little excited at the prospect of killing the People Who Steal Children.”

Many Paths slowly shook her head and looked at Trunk of Tree with great disappointment. “We’re done talking, Stone Chipper. It’s time to go back now so that we can feast on some Arrowheads.” She spun on her heel and begin striding down the path. Stone Chipper looked sternly at Trunk of Tree and let him pass so that he could keep an eye on him.

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Original Artwork by Zoe Colier

After a wonderful feast, capped off with herbal tea, most of the tribe gathered for another Dialogue. Many Paths began.

“As you know, we all agreed to send out a small search party both to find and return Tu-Swift and also to find out more about the People Who Steal Children. They have not yet returned. I am hopeful they will return soon with knowledge and with Tu-Swift. But I also understand that it is frustrating for the rest of us to feel as though we are doing nothing. Let us together once again contemplate what else we might do.”

Everyone was silent for a time. At last, Trunk of Tree spoke. “I know I speak for many who are afraid to speak for themselves. We believe the search party is dead or captured. We have learned nothing about these People Who Stand on Horses. We can stay here and do nothing. Or we can go and seek our revenge. I am strong and a warrior. I do not like sitting here like women simply gathering food and waiting to be attacked. I think it is time to consider a new leader.”

She Who Saves Many Lives spoke next. “And who might that leader be?”

Silence.

Trunk of Tree spoke then. “If no-one else will step up, I will do it. I will find these People Who Stand on Horses and will kill them all.”

Stone Chipper spoke next. “It is not true that we are simply gathering food and doing nothing else. Just today, I gathered many more stones that I can chip for more arrowhead and spearheads. It will take some time, but not a time overly long. And meanwhile, we all know that we have made it more difficult in many ways and in many places for People Who Stand on Horses to attack us. And, now we are all wary. They fooled us before. They pretended to come in peace. We will not be fooled twice. I, for one, stand with Many Paths.”

There was a general murmur of assent.

After much talk of many paths and Many Paths, She Who Saves Many Lives spoke again. “I am very curious, Trunk of Tree. Just this morning, I heard you also support Many Paths. Now you speak against her. What made you change your mind?”

“I thought about it more. That’s all!” Trunk of Tree said.

His voice held too much anger to signal thinking so She Who Saves Many Lives persisted in her questions. “Does your change have anything to do with your falling down and breaking your nose?”

Trunk of Tree burst out angrily, “I never said I fell! I…I mean.… I don’t know how I broke my nose. It doesn’t matter!”

She Who Saves Many Lives laughed gently. “I find that a bit hard to believe. I am a woman who has seen many winters. No doubt, I may sometimes now find that a fly has bitten me when I did not notice. But even I would be quite sure to know when and how I broke my nose. If you do not wish to speak the truth in our deliberations, then, do not speak at all.”

“WHAT?! All right. You want to know the truth? Many Paths broke my nose!”

She Who Saves Many Lives smiled slightly. “Really? And why was that?”

Trunk of Tree blushed scarlet. “She tricked me. She got mad because I told her the truth: that Shadow Walker and Tu-Swift are dead. She didn’t like that.”

She Who Saves Many Lives spoke even more softly. “Have you seen the bodies?”

Trunk of Tree grumbled. “NO. Of course not. But why aren’t they back? Everyone knows they’re dead!”

She Who Saves Many Lives spoke again, “I do not think they are dead. What do you think, Many Paths?”

“I feel very strongly that neither of them are dead. But…I do feel that both Tu-Swift and Shadow Walker have been injured. I do not know for sure, but that is how I feel. I know it sounds a little odd, but when I touch the Rings, I feel as though I can connect with both of them. I feel as though they are alive. But that is not proof. I would suggest that we think about other defensive measures.

“I think we should all sleep a sound sleep tonight and we can discuss tomorrow whether we want a new leader. As for me, I cannot for certain foresee the future. I do not believe any leader may guarantee what will happen. Not She Who Saves Many Lives. Not Trunk of Tree. Not me. No-one. So, I have to ask myself what does it mean when someone claims that they know what they do not know?”

A-OC raised another question. “Is it true what Trunk of Tree said? Did you break his nose?”

Many Paths glanced at She Who Saves Many Lives. “It is true that I broke his nose. Yes. It is not true that I tricked him or that I broke his nose because he said my love and my brother were both dead. Saying this did not make me angry because I believe he is simply wrong. And, one day, we will know the truth of their destiny.”

P-OC next spoke, “Then why did you break his nose?”

Many Paths stared at Trunk of Tree. “Trunk of Tree: you and I worked together on many things. We are friends, I think. Why don’t you tell the tribe why you think I broke your nose?”

Trunk of Tree shut his lips together tightly and folded his arms across his chest. “I will tell you what I think. I think I should be leader. I am strong and decisive. I will lead you to a victorious … victory. I will … we will steal all their things and be richer. That’s what I think and it doesn’t matter why I broke my nose. Let’s vote tomorrow morning as Many Paths suggests. Or does she perhaps want to suggest another twenty things we should think about instead?”

Trunk of Tree stomped off. The rest of the tribe looked back to Many Paths.

Many Paths looked at each person and spoke softly. “So be it. We shall vote in the morning. Peace be to all.” She raised her voice and cupped her hands aside her mouth as she added, “And peace to you, Trunk of Tree.”

Stone Chipper added in a loud whisper, “Or, as we may now call him, ‘Trunk of Tree with Broken Branch’.”

Original Artwork by Pierce Morgan

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Books by the Author. All are available on Amazon in both paperback and ebook.

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on the ‘mental game’ for all sports: strategy, tactics, and self-talk with examples from golf, tennis, softball, etc.

Turing’s Nightmares describes various possible scenarios of the future of technology — especially robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

Fit in Bits suggests many ways to work more fun and exercise into daily activities such as traveling, sitting in meetings, shopping, playing with kids, etc.

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences and then relates them to contemporary issues and events.

Website with earlier stories, essays, and poems.

Essays on America: Wimbledon

15 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, politics, psychology, Uncategorized

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Corruption, Democracy, dishonesty, fascism, innovation, life, politics, truth

Wimbledon.

An amazing venue. An amazing tournament.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

This year, in particular, offered up a host of amazing matches; e.g., Federer vs. Nadal; Federer vs. Djokovic; Serena Williams vs. Simon Halep; all the matches of Coco Gauff. And many more. The quality of tennis keeps improving. And not by accident. It’s due to fair competition.

In match after match, not only in the finals, players threw themselves into the fray to run, perceive, plan, hit, decide, and use their emotional energy in positive ways. What makes this, and every sports event, wonderful is that it is a fair contest. And because it is a fair contest, people train hard, push hard, try their damnedest to win.

The opponents make each other better. And, then, after they have trained as hard as they can train, they play as hard as they can play and we watch the drama that reveals the limits of human performance.

Imagine instead that the outcome were to be predetermined by those in power. Because someone bribes the dictator, or is otherwise connected by favors or blood, the winner is chosen by the dictator. Then, everything is “show” to make it fall into place the way the the dictator wants. Maybe some of the competitors would be drugged. Maybe some of them would meet with accidents. Maybe the line calls could consistently shade one way.

Would fans even get any joy in watching? I suppose some might. After all, I do enjoy watching 007 movies, Star Trek, etc. even though I already know which side will win. But then, why bother with a tournament? Why not just make a fictional movie about tennis and the dictator’s favorite tennis player?

Who would want to enter such tournaments if they knew that the outcome depended on your connections to the dictator rather than on their skill and strategy? Who would bother to train hard for the event? Who would even be attracted to the sport in the first place?

If you were a top quality athlete, if some sports were “open and fair” and other sports were predetermined by the dictator, which one would you want to play in?

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Of course, in a dictatorship, it isn’t just sports that are corrupted. Every aspect of life is corrupted. You can poison the food and water and get away with it — if the dictator likes you. You can run your company into the ground and be bailed out if you are aligned with the wishes of the dictator. Government officials will be advanced according to how corrupt they are rather than how well they do their jobs. You can be a brilliant academic, but if your views do not align with what the dictator thinks will protect and expand his own power, you’ll be passed over for promotion. That’s the best case scenario. You could find yourself in a prison camp.

And under these circumstances, why should people try hard to discover and disseminate the truth? Why should anyone make the best possible product if the dictator might jail you because you are competing with the dictator’s son-in-law?

Under dictatorship, everything in life decays into a moldy shadow of what it should be. Creativity is stifled. Your brilliant discovery won’t be approved by the dictator because the dictator didn’t know about it ahead of time (by definition). On the other hand, the dictator might “prescribe” findings and discoveries such as the existence of phlogiston. Experimental results will be manipulated and the population will begin to believe in a reality that is less and less aligned with the actual facts.

Do you think this is an exaggeration? It isn’t. But don’t take my word for it. Read about writers, film makers, singers, movie stars, athletes that were not in “favor” with Stalin or Mao.

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Do you, like most workers, take pride in doing a good job? Why bother if the dictator can brush away your team’s product in order to promote the competitive product made by the dictator’s daughter, say? Absolute power is an addictive drug and a dictator will never voluntarily give up power. They insist on more. Of course, no-one can know everything and the worst kind of dictator is the impulsive/cover-up kind. They don’t bother to understand a situation but make snap judgements. Then, everyone is required to scramble to pretend the snap judgment was actually a good — no, a great decision.

The lies and mediocrity will proliferate. In many cases, cruelty will be extracted from “enemies of the people” intentionally. Beyond that, there will be almost no incentive for government to be effective under a dictatorship. Do you think the Bureau of Motor Vehicles is inefficient now? You haven’t seen anything like the inefficiency of a dictatorial state! But if things stay on the current trajectory, you will.

Once honesty becomes replaced with loyal lying, everything crumbles. Everything.

Your body only stays healthy and alive because it sends all sorts of communication signals. If your body “lies” to itself and sends false signals, you will soon find yourself in terrible health or worse.

It is the same with a nation. If public officials lie, it destroys government in and of itself — and it also encourages the rest of the population to lie, cheat, and steal.

Game. Set. Match.

Author page on Amazon.

Essays on America: Labelism

11 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by petersironwood in America, politics, psychology, Uncategorized

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advertising, corporations, Democracy, essay, freedom, lying, media, politics

Essays on America: Labelism

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This is a post about racism. But, it’s also a post about misogyny. It’s a post about homophobia. But it’s also a post about Trumpism and the “base.” (BTW, if any of these terms makes you not want to read the article, then you definitely should read it).

Because all of the ideas associated with these terms are in some way linked to one particular term: labelism. What is labelism? It is treating the label of a thing as if that label equaled the thing labeled. Let’s take an example. Call me Ishmael. (My real name’s “John” but you can call me “Ishmael”). But I’m guessing that that really bothers some of you. Why? Because my name is “John.” Let’s come back to that.

When I was a very young kid, I recall my mother telling me that we were going to visit one of her friends, Mrs. Fox. Immediately the image of a woman who was also a fox sprang into my imagination. She had a human hairdo popular back then with straight hair at the top and many curls below ear level. But her snout was distinctly vulpine. Her eyes were also fox-like, but it was made up and she was wearing lipstick! I must have had a wide-eyed and glazed look when I said back to my mom, “We’re going to see … Mrs…..FOX?!”

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Mom giggled and said, “That’s just her name. She’s not a four-legged fox with a tail!” I think that my mother must have imagined something similar to my image because she then burst out laughing. I don’t think I was totally convinced by Mom’s reassurance, but I was at least willing to go see for myself what this “Mrs. Fox” really looked like.

Now, in fairness to my younger self, there were many examples of cartoon animals and books that equated the name with animal. The Three Little Pigs. Donald Duck. Mickey Mouse. And they all exhibited the same hopes and fears that I did.

It seems to me that people differ quite a bit in terms of how much “reality” they attribute to a label. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve seen microwave popcorn on the shelves with the word “Butter” prominently displayed, but when you read the ingredients, there is no butter in it whatsoever. Similarly, some marketing genius came up the idea of naming a perfume “Unscented.” So, if I go to the store and buy cat litter that says, “Unscented” it is actually perfumed with a perfume whose name is “Unscented.” (Get “Fragrance Free” instead, although I suppose eventually that will also be a lie).

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How did I discover that the popcorn had no butter? I read the fine print. I looked at the ingredients. Right now, we are lucky because Americans earlier put the pressure on until it was legally required to list ingredients. (For what it’s worth, the popcorn’s good; besides that, it probably wouldn’t work to put butter in microwave popcorn. But why lie?).

As I argue elsewhere, listing every ingredient wasn’t necessary hundreds of years ago. People would buy their bread at a local baker and if they put crappy ingredients in it, everyone in town would know. But now? Most of us buy stuff from people we don’t know and are never going to meet. And, the trail of responsibility is very complex indeed. Today’s supply chains lower costs but make quality hard to pin down and very hard to pin down responsibility for bad behavior.

How did I discover that “Unscented” is a scent? Initially, I think someone told me and I think it was my daughter-in-law or my daughter. And then, I confirmed it with my own sense of smell. By the way, the manufacturers of cat litter are masters of perfumery because they make one brand that actually manages to smell much worse that cat poo or cat urine or both combined. It is vile. Now, that takes genius.

If you think facebook gets a bit nasty on occasion, you should really try twitter. Anyway, I ran across a tweet today that got me thinking along these lines of labelism. The tweeter basically said that she “wasn’t a racist but” (a phrase highly correlated with the very next thing being a racist comment). She wasn’t a racist, so she claimed, but it didn’t make sense to pick a black actor for Ariel because they don’t look anything alike.

Okay, then. Let’s first just get one thing out of the way. Ariel is a cartoon character. The Actor is a real person. People are quite different from cartoon characters. And, they look noticeably different, regardless of color. But much more importantly, the person would not be anything like Ariel either. The person would have lungs, a heart, a brain, 720 different muscles, have weight, be real, could move on her own, etc.

On the other hand, characters in novels, plays, movies and cartoons — if they are well done — are like real people in terms of their internal lives. It is all a fiction, of course, as well as magic. (It’s no accident that Disney called his extravaganza theme park “The Magic Kingdom.”) Fiction is magic in that it allows you to vicariously experience another person’s choices, actions, sensory inputs, relationships, self-talk, and even internal conflicts. The words are used as cues or clues and you yourself imagine the actions, sights, sounds, and smells. You generate the feelings with your brain. The book doesn’t have a brain. The movie doesn’t have a brain.

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When you watch a movie, you see a person and hear a voice. The most important thing is what is going on in the actor and whether they can hint at what is happening internally through their motions, expressions, and voice. That is what is important about good fiction: what goes on inside.

What could possibly be more racist than to think a POC could not feel inside what a white person was thinking? Or, what could be more racist than to think a POC could not show that set of feelings through their actions and voice in a highly competent, artistic, & inspired fashion?

Now, let us set aside the really important part of the story process and just focus on the external factors. Two complete human forms typically share a myriad of surface characteristics. Most people have bilateral symmetry, ten toes, ten fingers, one head, the same set of 720 muscles and so on. Our fingers share the same joints, fingernails, etc. And yet — out of that sea of similarity, the “I’m not a racist but” tweeter claims that because the actor is black, she “doesn’t look anything like [emphasis added]” the form of the cartoon character. So, the “I’m not a racist but” tweeter thinks skin color counts — but none of the other 1000 physical characteristics that nearly all of us share count at all. Hmmm. So, for the “I’m not a racist, but” tweeter, skin color is the only marker of a person’s physique that makes any difference.

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Human beings are vastly complex. Our life — the very life we feel right now — goes back in unbroken lineage 4.5 billion years. Our bodies contain 70 trillion cells. By contrast, the (already considerable) population of earth is only 7 billion. To pick out one characteristic as being the only one that counts?

The tendency to confuse label with substance persists into adulthood for all of us. For instance, in Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational, he cites studies in which adults, e.g., prefer dentists, whose name starts with “D” and will give preference to someone with the same name they have, even though the name sharing is coincidence. We also have the option to be on the look out for it for labelism. Watching out for it and then looking into things more deeply is the first step to minimizing it in your thinking.

Because there are others who are well aware of this tendency to confuse the thing with the label and all too happy to use that confusion to make a profit at your expense. In the examples above, consumer products companies are following the letter of the law (all the while lobbying to rescind even those protections) but at the same time, spending millions to mislabel their products and mislead you. “All Natural Juice Drink”! Doesn’t that sound wonderful? The one I looked at had less than 5% juice. There’s nothing about it that’s “natural.” It’s basically water and corn syrup. And, indeed, at this point, the actual ingredients are listed. So, if and only if, you take the time to look at that government-mandated information, you will see what’s really going on. Large corporations are not satisfied with only misleading the people who won’t bother to read the ingredients. They want to right to fool everyone.

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Sadly, this manipulation of labels to confuse the unwary to do things in the interests of the very rich rather than their own interests is not limited to their consumer products. The very wealthy who essentially own and/or run the corporations want to be able to control elections. So, they brought a law-suit under the label “Citizens United” all the way to the Supreme Court. (This was hardly “citizens united”!! It was brought on behalf of some of the richest and most powerful people in American).

Applying nice-sound labels to things that are “bad” is just one type of trick. Another common trick is to label something negatively in order to get you to dislike it. Why do people want to manipulate you into disliking somebody? Basically, they do it to get you to put your anger on them for your troubles rather than the people truly responsible.

The word “label” implies a word. But let’s look more deeply (or at least more pragmatically) at the basic concept of playing on your labelism so that you act against your interest. Corporations use music and pictures to impact your psyche in the same way. When they tell you (as currently required) about the deadly side-effects of a drug, they play calm idyllic music. Nice music. Music that makes you feel there is nothing to worry about. And sweet pictures. Pictures of flowers, and rainbows, and family fun, and romance. How could anything possibly go wrong? But those pictures do not logically flow from taking the drug. Nor does joyful music start playing in your life.

You may or may not experience this after taking that new drug. After all, it’s just a picture, not a promise. But your brain treats it as a promise. And they know that.

We just accept it now. After all, it’s just “business as usual.” But why is it “business as usual”? Who benefits from the rules that now exist? And what if, someday in the future, Americans become so accepting of this manipulation of feeling through labels, images, & sounds that they did not even notice that this was going on in politics? What if we were not just being manipulated by big moneyed interests into buying cat litter, popcorn, and drugs? What if corporations were also spending their billions to buy elections in order to make the rules of the game even more favorable to them?

We can only imagine.

It happened before. Don’t let it happen again.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/how-supreme-court-turned-corporations-people-200-year-saga/

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Metaphors We Live By and Die By

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Democracy, elections, Feedback, government, life, metaphor, politics, programming, thinking

Metaphors We Live By and Die By

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I love metaphors.I always have. I admit it. I think youngster does, at least until they are exposed to poetry in English class. I was lucky to have an awesome English teacher who deepened rather than destroyed my natural love of metaphors. There are plenty in my own poems. but in this post, I am not focusing on metaphors for poetry so much as metaphors that we use in our thinking. Metaphors impact the way we approach situations at work and at home. I was influenced to see this by two main sources. First, Lakoff & Johnson’s book, Metaphors we Live By was first published in 1980. This book greatly influenced, among other things, our IBM Research team’s study of human-computer interaction. At this point in the history of human-computer interaction and user experience, researchers and practitioners began to explore how various metaphors (e.g.,desktop, trash can, windows, drag and drop) could be used to help users understand the capabilities of computers and how to invoke them. (See, e.g., Carroll, J. and Thomas, J.C. (1982). Metaphor and the cognitive representation of computer systems. IEEE Transactions on Man, Systems, and Cybernetics., SMC-12 (2), pp. 107-116).

Consider the error messages “Illegal Syntax” and “User Error.” They both put the responsibility for an undesirable state of affairs squarely on the shoulders of the user. “Hey you! User! You did something dastardly! You used illegal syntax.”

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Generally, the term “illegal” implies that you did something that was against the law. It usually implies you did something unethical too. Gerry Weinberg, one of the pioneers of UX/HCI (a keynote speaker at the Gaithersburg Conference), pointed out that the “legal” syntax of languages often has arbitrary restrictions. It might be more accurate to have an error message that says, “Our programmers were unable to take the time to allow dates to be entered in European or Chinese format. Please enter dates as MM/DD/YYYY as in 08/04/1961 for August 4th, 1961.” This longer message tells the user what was “wrong” with their input and how to correct it as well as conveying the very real truth that the limitation is with the software, not with the user. Similarly, what is called “User Error” actually comes up as a message when the user does something that seemed reasonable to the user and would most likely be interpretable by another human being but was not anticipated or could not be dealt with by the programming team. Suppose it said instead, “Software error. We did not anticipate this kind of input so we can’t deal with it.” Or, in many cases, a more honest message might be: “Software error. We knew people would want to do this, but we didn’t have budget to program properly.”

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At the same time I was thinking about metaphors and Human Factors in Computing Systems, I was also conducting therapy as a Fellow at the Institute for Rational Living. I was learning and supervising cognitive behavioral therapy under the direction of Albert Ellis. Here I observed how people used metaphors to help make sense of their lives and make decisions about their lives. For example, as pointed out by Lakoff & Johnson, people often viewed romantic love as a sickness! It is also common to view romantic love as a journey over which you have little or no control. It is understandable why it sometimes feels that way, but such a metaphor is not empowering. It does little to lead you to make reasonable decisions about love or about those whom you love. Think instead of love as a collaborative work of art.

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The “Love is a collaborative work of art” metaphor encourages you to realize that you must collaborate with your partner to make a relationship work over time. You can’t really collaborate very well unless you communicate. It also encourages you to realize that work is involved. It encourages you to realize that it is a creative endeavor. While you can certainly learn from the successes and mistakes of others, in the end, your relationship is unique. It will take creativity to make your relationship work. It puts the responsibility for the relationship on you and your partner, not on forces beyond your control.

It isn’t only love about which people often use inappropriate metaphors. For example, when it comes to overcoming addiction, overeating, under-exercising, people often use sin as their over-arching metaphor. “I was bad last night. I had two pieces of pumpkin pie.” “I was horrible all week. I had those evil donuts every morning.” The metaphor that “eating is evil” is inaccurate. After all, you have to eat to live. Furthermore, that metaphor doesn’t lead to any solutions except to try harder to be “good.” Worse than that, if often subverts a person’s efforts. “I didn’t want to have any ice cream but I did. Oh, well, the night is blown. I may as well eat the whole quart.” (Now that I’ve sinned, I may as well enjoy it). Weight is best thought of in purely physical terms. If you ingest more calories than you burn you will gain weight. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. That’s it! That’s all there is. Making it about good and evil does not help and, in my experience, is completely counter-productive.

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Speaking of counter-productive metaphors, I have been annoyed and concerned for decades that the media have largely (though not wholly) reported on political matters as they report on sporting events. During election season, you will hear relatively little about the candidates, their positions, their backgrounds or their ethics. You will hear a lot about strategy and where they stand in the polls. Often you will literally hear nothing more than a sound bite per day about major candidates. Then, pundits will unendingly discuss and debate how this or that sound bite will work or not work with various voter groups. No matter how outrageous, unethical, or disgusting a candidate’s behavior is, the media will spend most of their coverage on how it will affect the “score.”

Metaphors have consequences.

We now find ourselves in an extremely weird position, at least in America. One candidate has “won” the “World Series” of elections (American Presidency). Many of the people who voted for him think of themselves as his “fans” and “supporters.” They believe their guy “won” so they want to continue to support “their team.” After all, imagine that you are a Yankees fan and the Yankees won the World Series. You get to have bragging rights until the next World Series. If one of the Yankees turns out to be a tax evader, you’re still going to be a Yankees fan. If one of the Yankee pitchers turns out to have cheated during the games, say, by putting illegal substances on the baseball, you’ll still be a Yankees fan. Another Yankee might be a wife beater. But, hey, they won the World Series! So you’re still a loyal Yankees fan.

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Here’s the thing. It doesn’t make a whole lot of real difference in your life who won the World Series. It doesn’t matter materially to your kids. It doesn’t matter materially to your grandkids. Don’t get me wrong. It will make some difference in how you feel. You and your whole family might be happy they won. But it won’t make the air you breathe cleaner or dirtier. It won’t make the water you and your family drink pure or contaminated with carcinogenic toxins. It won’t make or break the economy. Having the Yankees or Boston Red Sox win the World Series will have zero impact on global climate change. Even if Chicago wins the World Series, it won’t start an atomic war. If the Phillies win, it won’t mean you will lose your health care. Stay loyal to those Yankees! Or to the Green Bay Packers. Or to Manchester United. Or to the India National Cricket Team. Or whoever your favorite team is. Why not?

Politics though, regardless of how it is reported by the news media, is vastly and vitally different from a sporting event! Who is in office can have a huge influence on what happens in the lives of people. In the case of an American President, who is in office can have a huge influence on the lives of people around the globe, not only today and tomorrow, but also for decades to come.

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Collectively, those Americans who voted (about 137.5 million) in the last Presidential election hired someone for a job. (Actually, nearly 63 million voted to hire him while nearly 66 million voted to hire Hilary Clinton). POTUS is an important job and how that person does that job impacts your life in a very real way. It impacts the lives of your friends and your family. It impacts the lives of people around the world. Every action that person takes, every speech they give, every statement they tweet has an impact. You or I might send out a nasty tweet about people. But our nasty tweets are very unlikely to cause someone to construct and send pipe bombs to the people we tweeted about. We have hired someone to do a very important job. It isn’t a sporting event.

Imagine instead of rooting for your favorite sports team that you hired a guy to take care of your kids. To you, that is certainly an important job. After you hire him, you discover that the person you hired lied to get the job. He lies to you every single day. He steals from you! Not only that. Every day, he trashes your house a little more. He has parties at your house and the people he invites include known criminals. Worst of all, this guy you hired is a child molester! That’s obviously a nightmare scenario. What makes it worse is that many people knew that the person you hired was a crook and a child molester.

What do you do when there is a mountain of evidence that he is lying to you; stealing from you; trashing your house; consorting with known criminals; and is a child molester?

Do you keep him on to watch your kids anyway out of a sense of loyalty?

Do you feel so guilty about hiring him that you insist to all your friends and relatives that this guy is doing a great job? (Because, after all, that’s what he keeps saying).

Do you keep him on until he is convicted in a court of law?

Of course you don’t! You fire him immediately.

You have the power to choose the metaphors you use. You don’t have to stick with a metaphor just because it was the first one to occur to you.

Metaphors have consequences. Whether in your personal life, work life, or political life, choose your metaphors with care. Don’t latch on to one simply because it’s the one the mainstream media discovered rakes in the most ad revenue.

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Buggy Whips to Fingertips

26 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

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computers, Democracy, Dictatorship, experiment, Feedback, HCI, human factors, Human-Computer Interaction, politics, programming, UX

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My degrees are in psychology. I have also been fascinated by computers. One main reason I went into HCI/UX/Human Factors was that I saw computers as devices that would amplify collective human intelligence. Thereby, with a mixture of people and computers, we would be able to solve such complex problems as world hunger, overpopulation, disease, global climate change, wars, and so on. I definitely saw myself as most interested in the people side though I thought comparing and contrasting computers and people shed new light on the people side. If you only have one type of computational mechanism; viz., us, then it’s hard to know how much of what happens in trying to solve a problem is because of our common human heritage and hardware and how much is intrinsic to the problem.

This interest in the novel light that computing could shine on human intellect was what initially drew me to computers, but I later saw them as fascinating in their own right as well as being extremely important tools for a psychologist. For example, I used a PDP-8 to run experiments on the psychology of aging and to analyze the data. Only when I joined IBM did I begin to change my focus from how computers could be useful tools for psychologists, but how psychology could be useful tools for improving computers (or at least the actual performance of the computer in doing useful work when used by a person).

Although I took a number of programming courses, I only ever became an amateur programmer. My main method for programming some task was to think about how I would do it and then step by step, make the computer do it. This process has many limitations, a few of which are obvious even to me. For example, when doing my dissertation work, I had the computer register the time whenever any one of five subjects made a response. While sitting in the computer room (while the subjects were in their booths), I was sitting and reading something while the disk kept buzzing next to me: Bz-b-bz-bz. Bz-b-bz-bz. Bz-b-bz-bz.

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I had used my “What would John do?” method of programming. If I saw a long number and had to go write it down, I would want to do it immediately, and then be ready for the next number. But this was insane for the computer! The computer could “remember” hundreds of these numbers and then write them out to the disk en masse. Anyone who had gone through even an introductory programming course would approach the problem differently than I had — at least until the computer used its disk buzzing to wake me up to its modus operandi which are really quite different from mine.

Like every other human, I make mistakes all the time in every sort of endeavor. For example, I like to play tennis and I like to hit a serve that’s hard to return. So, I am typically trying to serve to a particular spot. I’m not dead on accurate. I might miss long or wide by a couple inches or hit the net. But I will not (or at least haven’t yet) turned around and sailed the ball out of the court behind me. Nor have I ever yet struck the ball straight down at my feet. Nor, have I tossed the ball sideways into the screen and then swung anyway (!), and accidentally let go and flung the racquet across the net. But if you have ever programmed a computer, you know any of these behaviors might be possible based on the slightest error you can imagine.

It is ironic because most people think people are unreliable while computer are reliable. Well, it’s not that simple. Most people are pretty reliable most of the time and especially when they are acting within their bailiwick. Yes, they slip up and make mistakes but they are usually (not always) both understandable and fixable. A computer can do anything. The hardware is typically reliable but can still fail. Much more likely is that there are differences between what the programmer thought she or he was telling the computer and what the programmer actually told it to do. But wait! There’s more! Even more likely is that the intent of the programmer solves only a small part of the overall problem, solves the wrong problem, or actually makes the situation worse. That is not — or at least not solely — the fault of the programmer (more likely, the fault of an entire bureaucratic process).

This kind of weird and catastrophic error appeared in the program that ran my dissertation experiment at Michigan. Worse, it was a different weird and catastrophic error that appeared every time I ran the program! Often, the program would run correctly for five minutes or fifty minutes and then – BANG – unrecoverable error.

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The program was in FORTRAN 2. Someone had added some useful macro functions for doing experiments. For instance, there were a number of initializations for the displays. We had five displays so these functions all had the form FUNCTION1(2) which applied the function1 to the second display. To make it even more convenient, if you wanted to do the same thing to all five displays (which was always the case for me), you could simply pass it the argument (7) and the macro code would apply it to all five displays. So, I had a list of about 5-6 commands of that form: Function1(7), Function2(7), Function3(7) etc. Having initialized the displays, the next thing on my agenda was to initialize the array that held the timing information. Since I wanted to do this for all five of the arrays, it seemed as easy as rolling off a cliff to use the (7) convention and thereby apply it to all five reaction time arrays. In more modern version of FORTRAN, they won’t allow you to do that (you will get a compile time error). But back when Joy to the World by Three Dog Night topped the charts, there was no error message at compile time. Secretly, of course, you just know that compiler was snickering as it thought: “Oh, you want to write some time stamp into the seventh element of a five element array? Fine. The customer is always right. Be my guest. Good luck with that.” This is the computer trying to “serve” and instead smashing the ball directly into the ground.

Yet, keep in mind that there are some (not all) very rich and powerful people out there who sincerely wish that “people” could just be more like computers and do precisely as they’re told, always, and without question. And, when I say there are “people” they want to control like a computer, I mean you. That is exactly what they want. For you to do what they insist you do. They are about to get away with it – and if they do, there will be no Joy to the World – not for a very long time. Because if someone else lays out all the choices for you, you are not living your life at all. You are a tool in their life.

It isn’t even really a good system for them. Willing collaborations yield insights and creativity and productivity. It is precisely what has taken us from buggy whips to fingertips in an astoundingly short time. Society and technology and learning progressed at a snail’s pace in Medieval times. I don’t mean those really speedy thoroughbred racing snails either; I’m referring to the garden variety garden snail. A politician who has competition will want to show some sort of real progress. But a dictator? Maybe if they are particularly partial to scientific advancement or the fine arts, they might throw a few dollars that way. And some have. But many have not. What they typically put time, energy and thought into is war and the weapons of war.

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Now, instead of, or at least in addition to, having computers help provide a coordinating infrastructure of knowledge so that human beings can collaborate and solve more interesting problems as I had initially hoped a half century ago, computers and social media are being used to trick people into denying the validity of their own experience and existence. How do we debug this situation before it’s too late? I sometimes think that part of the problem is that we have tried to jam seven elements of serious social and technological change into an array that can only hold five elements. But maybe that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that people are at their best when they are free to be people and at their worst when they are made to pretend that they are machines.

Anti-Pattern: Taking Credit & Spreading Blame.

27 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

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Anti-Pattern, bully, Business, collaboration, competition, Democracy, fascism, innovation, learning, pattern language, politics

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Think back to the worst boss you ever had or ever observed. Maybe one stands out immediately. Or, maybe you had two so it’s hard to say which was worse. If you have been very lucky and had reasonable bosses throughout your life, then, maybe you can think back to a very nasty teacher. In either case, I’m hoping you can think of someone who was not only strict, but pig-headed, arbitrary, unfair, and liked to demean employees (or students) in front of everyone. Not only that, they would take credit for the work of others and blame others when they had actually made the mistake themselves.

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These are the sorts of people who practice the Anti-Patterns that I’ve been writing about lately. And it occurs to me that most people have had some experience with something similar to fascism in its mildest form: having an “intolerable” boss or teacher. It’s a very mild cousin, but it is a cousin.

The major difference is that if you have a horrible boss: a bully, a liar, a person who uses their position to hide their incompetence and blame it on others, it bothers you at work and you may lie awake thinking about it, but you do have other things in your life. You don’t have to have it affect your personal life; it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have fun playing a sport or dancing or singing. But actually living under fascism is a 24×7 business. Your bosses now are in charge of everything in your life that they want to bother with being in charge of. In the post below, I describe another one of the Anti-Life Anti-Patterns that they will tend to use: Taking Credit and Spreading Blame.

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Taking Credit and Spreading Blame.

The basic idea of this Anti-Pattern is simple. The “boss” controls information into and out of their group. They are in a position to present the work of the group to higher management. The workers under the boss, in some corporate cultures will have little recourse when they are mistreated or their actions are misrepresented. If someone comes up with a good idea, for example, it may be ridiculed by a boss who knows less. Let’s say, for instance, a member of a research group at a camera/film company comes up with the idea of an electronic camera, the boss may well call the idea ridiculous. If it later turns out that the camera/film company goes out of business due to competition from electronic camera companies, the boss who originally pooh-poohed the idea will now claim that they were all in favor but that they had asked the employee who originally thought of it to look into it. That employee had come back with such a negative assessment of the market, that they had all convinced the boss not to pursue it. This is an example of “Spreading the Blame.”

On the other hand, if the boss had decided to pursue it and it had made the company successful, that kind of boss would lead everyone to believe that it had been their idea all along. They might even go so far as to discredit, transfer, or fire the employee who had actually thought of it. One might be tempted to think the “truth would out” and it might, but the boss has more control over how the group and the individuals within it are perceived than the employees do.

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In an organization without any form of checks and balances, a tyrannical boss may gain a stellar reputation among higher management by the use of this tactic. This may result in promotions and an ever-expanding scope of power with which to ruin people’s lives. If you can convince the people above you that you never make a mistake yourself because you convincingly blame others; and you manage to take credit for everything that happens in your organization (and possibly even credit for some of what happens even in neighboring organizations) then you will gain more control over the information flow.

Ultimately, the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization suffers when Anti-Patterns such as Taking Credit and Spreading Blame are employed. People will begin to see little reason to work hard or imaginatively since the boss will take the credit. People who gain pleasure from friendly and collegial interactions will work somewhere else if they possibly can. Similarly, people who are primarily motivated at work by the work itself and doing it well will tend not to thrive under such a boss and will also go work somewhere else as soon as the opportunity arises. However, people who like to be told what to do, and enjoy power themselves, might collaborate with a boss who uses Anti-Patterns because the employee may feel as though helping the boss is the best way to open a promotion for themselves as well.

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What “Anti-Patterns” have you observed in a boss, petty bureaucrat, teacher?

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Anti-Pattern: Cascading Betrayal

23 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, sports, Uncategorized

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authoritarianism, Business, competition, Democracy, ethics, Facism, life, pattern language, politics, religion, Totalitarianism

Cascading Betrayal

A very interesting little book that I recommend is Jane Jacobs’s Systems of Survival. In it she argues that there are two systems of ethics and morality: an older one, the “Guardian Syndrome” whose values include: Shun trading; exert prowess; be obedient and disciplined; adhering to tradition, respecting hierarchy, being loyal, deceiving for the sake of the task, making rich use of leisure; being ostentatious; and taking vengeance. Most of us might recognize these from history and stories about the Middle Ages in Europe but many other kingdoms and empires of earlier times also valued such things more than most of us do today. On the other hand, a newer system of values has been developing since the Renaissance. In the “Commerce Syndrome,” people tend to value things such as shunning force, competing, being efficient, being open to inventiveness and novelty, being honest, collaborating easily with strangers and aliens, dissenting for the sake of the task, respecting contracts, investing for productive purposes.

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In modern societies worldwide, both systems are at play and they can often be in conflict. For instance, you have friends that you feel loyalty to (Guardian Syndrome) and you work for a corporation which asks you to sign a contract that says you will not steal from the corporation and that you will report anyone who does (Commerce Syndrome). You observe your good friend taking supplies from the company storeroom for personal use. You ask the friend to return the goods but they say, “Oh, come on. The company makes billions. They can afford it. It’s just our little secret.” You can’t dissuade your friend. Now, the conflict in values causes you a conflict. Do you “betray” your friend and honor your contract? Or do you betray your contract and collude with your friend?

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Within American society (the one I happen to be most familiar with), these values are not evenly distributed. For instance, Silicon Valley seems quite centered on the “Commerce Syndrome” while small towns, sports teams, and the Catholic Church, for example, seem more centered on the “Guardian Syndrome.”

People whose values are almost totally aligned with the “Guardian Syndrome” will tend to stay loyal to their boss, leader, team, political party, even when the boss, leader, team or political party does something stupid, cruel, unethical, or illegal. For a time, people in positions of great power can keep their power through, for example, the dispensing of favors, defining agreed upon untruths, or taking vengeance on the disloyal.

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Such a system is always somewhat fragile as demonstrated by the constant stream of rebellions, crusades, and wars in the Middle Ages. A state or organization based purely on the “Guardian Syndrome” is even more difficult today. If one tries to keep to a pure “Guardian System” in the midst of a highly interconnected and interdependent world, it will fail sooner and more spectacularly.

One issue is that it is no longer possible for people not to be exposed to the actual truth. Lying to a populace in which only 1% of the population could read and write was fairly easy. Trying to do it in the computerized and recorded world of today is nearly impossible. Some people will remain loyal and refuse to call out the Emperor for having no clothes. But someone will. And, it will be caught on tape. And, the tape will be shown to vast numbers of other people who have no loyalty to the Emperor. They will all see he’s naked and have no compunction about saying so.

As a result, a modern “Emperor” will find it difficult to keep all but the most fanatic fans from dismissing his attempts to control through politics and pageantry. The Medieval mechanisms of dispensing favors and wreaking havoc via vengeance will largely prove ineffective. Once such an Emperor begins to lose power, more and more people will begin to realize that they are much better off to “play by the rules” of the Commerce Syndrome. As a result, people who might have stayed loyal to the death to the Emperor will instead begin to defect. As more and more people defect, this will further weaken the Emperor’s power base and make it more likely for even more people to defect.

Naturally, the Emperor will attempt to use whatever power they have left to prevent defections, but in our modern interdependent and interconnected world, this is increasingly difficult. Most modern countries — and their leaders — realize that material prosperity in the 21st Century depends on many of the values of the Commerce Syndrome. A society that tries to remain “closed” like North Korea, for instance, will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to invention, comfort, prosperity, and the happiness of its citizens. What little resources such a country does have will be increasingly funneled toward weapons of war, security, police, prisons, and the suppression of truth. While these measures may serve to consolidate the power of a modern emperor in the short term, in the long term, too many people will have too little physical comforts to feel much loyalty to the emperor. Support will continue to erode and eventually everyone will see beneath the invisible clothes. An early signal of such a collapse will be a cascade of betrayals.

By contrast, in a modern state, loyalty is earned through such virtues as fairness, competence, innovation, and collaboration. In other words, people dispense loyalty on the basis of what people do, not because of what they promise to do and not on the basis of some bogus claim to royalty based on how and where they were born. Cascading betrayal is typically a symptom of an attempt to revert to an earlier state of human social evolution. It is another descriptive short-hand Anti-Pattern. It can be avoided by allowing feelings of loyalty to grow naturally from watching someone in a role of power make and keep promises over time and by watching them do what is in the best interest of the State; not by watching them take actions which mainly enrich the emperor.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival

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Anti-Pattern: Gratuitous Push Down

11 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

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authoritarianism, Business, collaboration, competition, cooperation, cruelty, Democracy, fascism, Pattern Langauge, politics, teamwork

Anti-Pattern: Gratuitous Push Down

Prolog/Acknowledgement/History:

This is the first of a planned series of “Anti-Patterns.” These are things to avoid. “Anti-Patterns” is admittedly a kind of odd name. Anyway, I simply mean that while the Patterns are something to be used in many cases to enhance collaboration and cooperation, these Anti-Patterns should never be used. While I think the focus of improving teamwork and collaboration should be on using the Patterns; I do think it is worth pointing out some of the Anti-Patterns to avoid. While forcing the behavior you want on others may result in coercion or obedience, they are antithetical to real teamwork or cooperation.

Of course, some people feel that coercion and obedience are enough. There are at least two major issues with trying to control a world through coercion and obedience.

First, no-one is that smart. No one person or even small group can know enough to make the best choices. The inevitable result of top-down control with autocratic powers with no checks and balances is that the group insulates itself from what is really happening. No-one wants to tell the King that they have no clothes. In the Anti-Pattern world which values “obedience,” the messenger will be shot unless the news is quite excellent indeed. As a result, every dictatorship spirals more and more out of touch with reality as time goes on. In the middle ages, knowledge and situations often changed slowly so an Empire as vast as that of the Romans might last hundreds of years. In the middle of the 20th century, a dictatorship might last a decade before it makes decisions on completely out-of-date information about what works. Now, it will be even less. A dictatorship can still take more time to completely disintegrate into chaos, foreign invasion, or anarchy; particularly, if it starts with a lot of resources already in place. But eventually, when no money is spent on public education or basic research; when people are appointed and promoted on the basis of how they were born or who they know rather than their abilities and experience, people who succeed in such organizations are the ones who are most capable of lies and deceit. There is little time and not motivation left over for learning what is really going on. Eventually, dictatorships fail, and they will do so even more quickly if they begin with basically flawed doctrines that are already “out of date” when the administration begins.

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The second fundamental flaw with authoritarian dictatorships that demand obedience is that people will never be motivated to do their best and in many cases, behind the back of the dictator, where they can’t be seen, they will do actual damage and sabotage. The more the dictator tries to “crack down” and make sure everyone is “pulling their weight,” the more insidious becomes the sabotage.

The third fundamental problem with authoritarianism coercion, as opposed to cooperative democracy, is that administering cruelty and mediocrity necessarily dehumanizes the “successful” people in a dictatorship. They become nastier and nastier people. It’s inevitable. And they will become less and less capable of giving and receiving love, not only from strangers, but even from their own family.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas in June, 2018

Related Patterns: Anti-Pattern: Power Trumps Good.

Abstract:

In dictatorships of any size, people at the top have absolute power. In order to rationalize the inhuman behavior toward others that they exhibit, they rationalize that everyone is like them (mean and egocentric); the dictator believes they are just better at it. In other words, they live in a world limited by their own concepts to one composed only of zero-sum games. Whatever one person loses, they gain and vice versa. They do mean things to others, not only to gain some real benefit, but just because they can. Such acts are meant to demean, dispirit, harm, enslave or kill others. Such acts are antithetical to actual teamwork and collaboration. And, let’s not forget that they are also unethical.

Context:

I believe that every person has some mixture of behaving so as to maximize their own interests and maximizing for the “greater good.” Normally, as people mature, they begin to gain confidence in themselves and their ability to deal with the world including dealing with other people. Humans are intrinsically very social animals. In societies, there develops a basic sense of trust in others. Of course, in every society, that trust is sometimes betrayed. But most people have enough confidence in themselves and in the society that they live in so as to believe that when trust is betrayed, they can recover. In a few cases, people have so little confidence in themselves and/or have such bad experiences with trusting others that they will do anything to avoid cooperation. Instead, they want power. They want to dictate the terms of every situation. If someone trusts them, they will simply exploit that trust. They don’t view this as “wrong” or “unethical” because they don’t really believe in ethics. They believe everyone is out to get whatever they can for themselves, regardless of the cost to others. All the social “niceties” are basically viewed as a scam to “trick people” into trusting so that you can scam them better.

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Often this type of psychopathic personality will also have poor impulse control and run afoul of the law on multiple occasions. They cause a lot of pain and suffering to the victims of their crimes, and some to everyone they come in contact with. Generally, they become incarcerated early and their influence on the larger society is minimal. Sometimes, however, they are capable of “kissing up” or at least “holding their tongues” when interacting with those who have power over them. People such as their managers, bosses, and parents may not see their gratuitous push-downs. The people who work for them; or their students or children will see them for what they are. They may be clever enough to avoid adverse consequences to themselves by directing all of their gratuitous cruelty to people who have no power to push back. These are the coaches who molest children; petty dictators; bosses who publicly berate employees; Hollywood directors who insist on sexual favors and so on.

In order to dramatize and illustrate this Anti-Pattern, I have characterized the behavior as being related to particular people and the way that they have often been brought up. In reality, of course, everyone’s behavior has multiple determinants, only one of which is their character. The situation also has a huge effect. For example, for most people, there is some tendency to use the Gratuitous Push Down occasionally. It is not uncommon for an older sibling or upper classmate to use such a ploy.

Situations do make a difference. When people suffer no consequences of any severity, they are much more likely to employ this Anti-Pattern. When people are removed from the consequences to others, it is also easier for most to use this Anti-Pattern. Most people would not, for example, walk over to a troop of Girl Scouts selling cookies and scream at them to go away and never come back. The would-be miscreant would be embarrassed to act like this in public. They might, however, very well vote for an ordinance to make selling Girl Scout cookies illegal even though there were no real consequences for the person casting the vote. That’s what makes it “gratuitous.” They are denying someone else the achievement of that someone else even though it doesn’t really cost the other person anything.

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Problem:

When people have no desire for “true” cooperation but instead view each transaction as an opportunity to gain for themselves at the expense of others, this tends to decrease social capital within the society. Such people will often show their true colors by using the Anti-Pattern: Gratuitous Push Down. The true psychopath feels immediate pleasure in doing this, but also feels that they will gain more later because the person that they have demeaned, assaulted, insulted, stolen from, raped, etc. will have less power in the future as a consequence of their act (and in their minds, less power for others automatically means more power for them).

Such mean-spirited behavior will tend to destroy social capital in a society generally, but it will also have much more specific and localized effects. For one thing, eventually everyone the psychopath comes in contact with will realize that such a person, whatever they say, is in it for their own gain and has no honor; their word means nothing. Because people come to trust the psychopath less and less, the psychopath sees this as vindication for their stance of treating everything as a zero-sum game. In reality, it is the major cause. Having never experienced unconditional love or even a win/win solution, they forever fail to see their own role in creating this “micro-climate” of mistrust around them. What they experience becomes increasingly confrontational until it destroys them and many nearby.

Any kind of gratuitous push-down tends to send waves of mistrust and negativity throughout the environment. A person insulted or humiliated is more likely to exhibit similar behavior with others. Similarly, people who experience child abuse or sexual abuse are more likely to wreak these behaviors on others.

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Forces:

Normally people trust more than mistrust others.

Mutual trust typically leads to good outcomes for all parties.

Having trust rewarded with good outcomes tends to improve the chances of future trust.

People who grow up with constant demeaning and criticism will tend not to trust others.

Some of these people will become true psychopaths who view others only in terms of tools to be used for one’s own gain, typically by making “agreements” and then breaking them.

True psychopaths will often say or do mean things, not because there is an immediate material gain, but “just because they can.”

A person who uses the Anti-Pattern: Gratuitous Push Down will tend to generate a self-fulfilling prophesy because eventually more and more people will not deem them trustworthy.

People who do not trust others, but have minimal power themselves will sometimes look for a “powerful” leader to tell them what to do. In return, they expect to be able to use the Gratuitous Push Down on others who are “below” them in status due to age, race, place in a hierarchy or gender.

When people making decisions suffer no real consequences regardless of result and when they are “distanced” from the bad consequences others feel, they are generally more likely to use this Anti-Pattern.

Solution:

There are (at least) four known solutions to help avoid this Anti-Pattern. 1) Watch for signs of the Gratuitous Push Down and do not promote, elect, select or choose someone who does this to be put in a position of power. 2) Make sure that anyone who uses Gratuitous Push Down is as close as possible to the impact that they are causing. 3) Insure that the perpetrator’s behavior is made public as widely as possible and do not let them get away with lying about their behavior. 4) Remove such a person from power as soon as possible. You do not want a Minister, Judge, Boss, Coach, Teacher, Lab Head, Director, etc. to use Gratuitous Push Down. Replace them with a cooperative person who cares about others.

Examples:

A coach molests boys in the shower and then makes them feel too guilty and vulnerable to say anything.

2. A Director has a choice of many actors for a particular role. Instead of simply choosing the best actor for the role, they insist on sexual favors for the one that is promised the actual role. (Of course, they could still promise the role to multiple actors, extort sexual favors and then deny the role to all of them). Again, they will tend to arrange things so that no-one can verify their behavior. And, they will say anything and do anything to lower the credibility of the person making the accusation.

3. A research manager suggests to a new researcher that they do a particular project for their first year. The new researcher expresses some doubts to the manager but the manager insists. Then, the new researcher works on the project for a year and then presents the work to higher management. Higher management dismisses the work as being not very original and of no practical value. As soon as this is obvious, the research manager says quite forcefully, “I told you this was a bad idea that we never should have pursued!”

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4. A kid walks across a field and deviates toward every anthill he sees and then kicks it apart. Or, a kid likes to pull the wings off insects. Or, a kid gets a slingshot and likes to kill songbirds just for the hell of it. One might question whether cruelty to animals is in the same category as cruelty to people. Regardless, the research shows this kind of cruelty to animals is correlated with being cruel to people (See references).

Resulting Context:

When the Anti-Pattern Gratuitous Push Down is used, it immediately makes the person so pushed feel bad. But it also may have longer term effects on their behavior. It increases the chances that they themselves us the Gratuitous Push Down. But there are additional possibilities, almost all of them negative. The person may try to avoid the situation. The boy in example 1 may quit wrestling to avoid the coach. The actor in example 2 may give up on their Hollywood dreams. The researcher in example 3 may go work for another company. In other cases, the person may secretly vow to get more power for themselves so that they can be the one doing mean and humiliating things to others. The researcher may decide, for instance, that politics is more important than science, fake results, document assignments, kiss up, and otherwise maneuver themselves into a position of power. Once they are head of the lab 15 years later, they might finagle things until their first year research manager is fired in the most humiliating way that they can manage.

Regardless of precisely how an individual reacts, the use of Gratuitous Push Down poisons the organization in which it occurs. Whether it is a wrestling team, a movie cast, a research organization or an entire nation, when there are gratuitous cruelties going around, people’s attention is diverted from the actual tasks at hand. Wrestlers are not focused on wrestling. Actors are not focused on the quality of their performance. Researchers are not focused on doing the best possible research. There is this other vector of motivation: petty power struggles.

Of course, the negative effects above are the extrinsic and instrumental aspects of gratuitous cruelty. There is also an intrinsic and experiential aspect of gratuitous cruelty. It denigrates and devalues human experience for both the person who performs cruelly and the person on whom it is performed.

References:

http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/129343/the-link-between-animal-cruelty-and-antisocial-personality-disorders/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201611/the-psychology-animal-torture

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233706971_Children_Who_Are_Cruel_to_Animals_A_Review_of_Research_and_Implications_for_Developmental_Psychopathology

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The Day From Hell: Why Does Anyone Care?

05 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

anarchy, Business, collaboration, competition, cooperation, Democracy, pattern language, politics, Rule of Law, sports, teamwork

The Day From Hell: Why Does Anyone Care?

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I oversleep. The alarm did not go off and it feels late. I glance at my watch and sure enough, I’m late. I grab my iPhone to see whether I forgot to set it. Nothing works. I cannot even turn it on or reboot it. I’ll have to deal with it later. I will be late for my tennis match or have to skip breakfast. I decide to compromise and just grab a protein shake out of the fridge. Something’s wrong. It’s not cold. In fact, the refrigerator is not cold at all. Nor did the light go on when I opened the door. I try the kitchen lights. Nothing. Power is off throughout the house. I’m sure the bill was paid on time. I’ll deal after tennis.

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I arrive at the court for my doubles match. The other three are already there. John says, “You’re late. We’ve decided we’re playing you.”

“What? Very funny. Yeah, I’m good but not that good.”

“No, it’s not a joke. We’re tired of losing. The three of us will stand you.” John’s face is deadpan. I look at the others and there is no sign of japery anywhere.

“Well…that makes no sense whatever. Sorry I’m late. My phone alarm isn’t working. In fact, my phone isn’t working at all. But I’m sure this isn’t April First. How about if Tom and I take you two on?”

“No. We’ve decided we’ll take you on.”

I think that sounds crazy but whatever. I’ll call their bluff. At least I’ll get a lot of exercise! “Fine,” I say, “let’s just warm up for a few minutes.”

“No. No warm-up. We’re already warmed up,” explains Tom.

“OK, fine. Just go ahead and serve.”

“No, you have first serve,” says Larry.

I quickly unsheathe my racquet and walk to the baseline, one ball in each pocket and one in my left hand. I position myself near the middle. It looks really weird to look across the net and see all three of them positioned there. “First in?” I query.

“No,” they sing out in unison. “Serve it in.”

“What is this joke, guys?”

“No joke. Just serve.”

“Fine.” I think to myself, I will play along till the joke gets old. Since I’m not warmed up, I just hit an easy serve into the middle of the box to start the point.

“OUT!” shouts Tom, who generally makes fair calls.

“WHAT?! That was in the middle of the box! It wasn’t even close to the line! Enough’s enough.”

“Our call,” says Larry.

“Yeah, it’s your call, but come on. You all know that was well in.”

Our debate, if you can call it that, is interrupted by screaming tires and a loud crash coming from the nearby street. “What the hell was that?”

No-one reacts or answers my question. Larry says, “Second serve.”

I shake my head. “Guys. We should go up there and see if anyone needs to call 911. I mean, it would have to be one of you. My phone doesn’t work.”

Don, still with a bland, blank look on his face says, “None of the phones work. That was just a car crash. Probably intentional. Let’s just play.”

I know I am not dreaming. But what is going on? “You seriously think someone crashed their car on purpose? What is with you guys this morning?”

“Yeah,” says Larry. “It’s been going on all morning. Let’s just play. Second serve. Wait. Tom! Come over here. I want to play deuce court.”

“No way,” says Tom. “I’m already here.”

Larry wields his racquet above his head and charges at Tom. In seconds, they are both bleeding profusely and keep swinging at each other. Don joins in the fray. They are completely oblivious to my shouts so I pick up my stuff and head for the clubhouse to call for help. Maybe someone put some kind of drug in the water? Just then, another screech of breaks, squeal of tires and a loud crash. Another car crash?

red and yellow hatchback axa crash tests

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By now, I am jogging through the parking lot toward the front desk at the tennis club. Something is terribly wrong. It all looks wrong. Then, I notice that virtually none of the cars are parked inside the white lines meant to indicate parking spaces. Some appear to have been left in the drive. Several are on the grass and one is in the flower bed near the gym. Many of the cars have smashed windshields.

Collaboration? Cooperation? Teamwork? Who cares?

I am very grateful for readers and commenters on my blog. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been cataloging “best practices” in collaboration and teamwork in the form of Patterns. I think it may be time to “take stock” and make it clear why I am doing this, in case it isn’t obvious.

I don’t “own” these Patterns. I don’t get any money from people using them. Why should I care whether people do a good job or a horrible job at collaborating? And, isn’t life all about competition anyway?

There was a time, not so long ago, that I really didn’t think it would be necessary to “explain” why it was important to cooperate. There was a time, not so long ago, when I thought most people knew that life was not all about competition. But lately, so-called “civil society” has been so rife with uncivil words and actions, at least in the “United” States, that I think it’s time to re-iterate why cooperation is vital. I also want to point out that, while there is certainly competition in life, there is also cooperation.

Why all of life is not competition.

In the natural life of animals and plants, there are, for some species, some specific times and places for competition. That is true. And, some of those competitions can be pretty fierce; e.g., antler-smashing bucks competing for mates. And, you could say that the rabbit eats a plant and that the coyote eats the rabbit. But there are far more ways that plants and animals cooperate.

adult and cub tiger on snowfield near bare trees

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First, plants and animals participate in the recycling of material. Generally, plants gain energy from sunlight, and put some of that energy into compounds that are high energy and fit for consumption by some animals. In the process, plants also take carbon dioxide out of the air and replace it with oxygen. Animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Animals eliminate “wastes” from their food and that “waste” replenishes nitrogen and minerals into the soil. Plants use the nitrogen and minerals. And, when animals and plants die, their bodies further enrich the soil for plants.

Cooperation within the great tree of life doesn’t stop there, however. Flowering plants often cooperate with each other and with bees to flower so that there is a more or less a constant supply of pollen. Sucker fish take parasites off large fish. Butterflies collaborate with flowering plants. Rabbits collaborate with berry bushes. When there is danger, many animals and birds cry in such a way as to warn others.

Let’s move on to consider what cooperation means for human beings. A single human being, however smart, will die soon after birth without the aid of more adult human beings. Apart from providing physical needs for the infant such as food and water, older humans immediately begin teaching the infant and then the child much of what he or she needs to know in order to survive. People have typically hunted, gathered, and prepared food in cooperative groups. People build shelters together. Cooperation among human beings has become more wide-spread and more complex over time. Most of the people in the so-called civilized world now rely on complex supply chains for food, water, clothing, electricity, security and learning. Dancing, playing music, playing sports, business, government — all of these activities depend on cooperation.

photography of people stacking hands together

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Cooperation and competition in sports.

Right now, the French Open tennis tournament is going on in Paris. The competitive spirit of the players is amazing! In some of the matches, shot after shot looks like a sure winner – only to be returned with another difficult-to-return shot. The players push themselves mentally and physically to the very limit and sometimes beyond. They are indeed fierce competitors.

But guess what? They follow the rules. And they show sportsmanship. No-one arranges to secretly injure another player or sabotage their racquet. The players cooperate to compete. After many of the most savage hard fought contests, the contestants often fall in each other’s arms.

In life, there is both competition and cooperation. In a world of 7 billion people, cooperation is more important than ever. In a world that relies on international supply chains and agreements and laws, cooperation is more important than ever before. In a world with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, cooperation trumps competition. The natural world has never been a zero-sum game; it has never been a fixed pie. Look around! Life has covered the planet largely through cooperation. To solve problems such as global climate change and the plastification of our oceans, we need widespread and effective cooperation more than ever. Of course, there is a role for competition as well. But competition is only fruitful within the bounds of cooperative frameworks. If we try to run this world under a non-cooperative and purely competitive framework, we will guarantee our own extinction. I had thought that was obvious to everyone, but apparently it isn’t.

That’s why I’m trying to catalog best practices in collaboration and teamwork.

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Examples of cooperation:

http://nectunt.bifi.es/to-learn-more-overview/cooperation-in-animals-ants-case/

https://listverse.com/2015/02/23/10-amazing-cooperations-between-different-animal-species/

http://vetsci.co.uk/2011/05/16/cooperation-between-species/#

https://epdf.tips/making-democracy-work-civic-traditions-in-modern-italy.html

Putnam, Robert D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-0304-6.

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Anti-Pattern: Power Trumps Good

09 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Anti-Pattern, Balance of Powers, Corruption, Democracy, Impeachment, learning, pattern language, politics

Anti-Pattern: Power Trumps Good

Drawing courtesy of Pierce Morgan

Prolog/Acknowledgement:

Sometimes, learning works quite well when it’s based on negative examples. We learn what not to do. Negative examples, however, may also prove problematic for at least two reasons.

First, when one has to make decisions quickly, as in sports, having an image or rule about what not to do can actually make it more likely that you do the exact thing you are trying to avoid! My least favorite thing to hear on the golf tee is someone familiar with the course pointing out the rather large obvious lake lying before us – a lake that the tee shot must carry. “Well, you can see that there’s a giant lake right in front of you. Be sure not to hit it in the lake. No. You don’t want to go into that lake. Believe me, I’ve hit the lake a hundred times. Don’t go in the lake.” Of course, as pointed out in The Winning Weekend Warrior, before even beginning your pre-shot routine, you need to turn this into a positive image. Pick a very specific spot on the green where you will be landing the ball.

Some readers may remember the ancient vector graphics video game, Asteroids, in which the user controls the image of a tiny rocket ship which must shoot the asteroids to break them up while at the same time avoiding being hit by one of the asteroids. I discovered that it was much more effective for me to find paths and steer my ship through the paths than it was to “look out for the asteroids.” That latter method got me staring at the asteroid as it smashed into my wavering, wobbling ship.

Second, and aside from the psychological effect of putting a negative in your head, the other problem with negative examples is that it may not be obvious what to do even if you are able to understand and avoid what not to do. You may hear, at various points, a thousand different things not to do while trying to hit a golf ball; e.g., don’t look up so soon; don’t let your foot slip; don’t swing so hard; don’t be so tense; etc. Put them all together — and there are still a thousand wrong ways to swing the golf club!

Despite these potential cautions, I decided to try blogging about an Anti-Pattern: something to be avoided while trying to foster teamwork and collaboration. My aim, in the course of the discussion, is to clarify what one should do instead as well as point out the many and varied problems that can arise from letting Power Trumps Good. Of course, hopefully, the Patterns already suggested comprise a large set of positive best practices to foster effective teamwork and collaboration. By the way, in addition to avoiding Power Trumps Good, the Anti-Patterns mentioned in the link below, in my opinion, are to be avoided, not only for software development but any time you are trying to be productive in a collaborative way.

Author, reviewer and revision dates:

Created by John C. Thomas May, 2018.

Abstract:

For various reasons, cultures throughout history have found it practical to award and assign specific powers to particular people. When this is done, it sometimes happens that people in power, instead of fulfilling their duty to do what is best for all within their purview, they simply do what is best for themselves or a small group. This is considered an Anti-Pattern in that it is bad for that individual, for the institution they have a duty to, and for the society as a whole. In order to prevent such corruption, specific preventative and curative counter-measures must be undertaken such as “Balance of Powers” or “Removal from Office.”

Context:

Groups across many contemporary cultures and throughout history have found it useful to have some people in specific roles and these roles sometimes include the power to make decisions. This is not the only possible method. One can insist on consensus for every decision. However, consensus-based decision making can become quite inefficient, slow, and contentious. In much of Medieval Europe, a widespread mythology held that royalty was beyond question and reproach; that their powers came from God. The monarch sometimes bestowed lesser rights, powers, and responsibilities on others. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence set forth quite a different view:

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 to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

In this view (influenced by European intellectuals but also quite likely by the practices and philosophy of the Iroquois Nation – see Forgotten Founders) rights do not come from government. They are considered natural rights. The power of the government does not come from God. The power of the government comes from the people governed. This is a crucial change. Power is not, in the fundamental view of America, absolute and it certainly does not come from above; it comes from the people governed. People in governmental positions of power, whether elected or selected, are not above the law. Indeed, they swear to uphold the law. Their power is limited and temporary. Later in this Anti-Pattern, we will see why this is crucial.

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Power can trump good in other spheres besides government. In our capitalistic society, we have often chosen to put property rights above human rights. In order to accomplish many sorts of complex work that takes place over long periods of time, several fundamental elements must be brought together: a place to do the work; competent labor to do the work; tools to allow the work to be done more efficiently; money or capital to pay for the place, the workers’ labors, and the tools. Most typically, the capital is required before any actual goods or services are provided. It is possible to imagine many ways to organize such work and many ways have been effectively tried. But most commonly, in the United States, the people who provide the capital choose various leaders who have power to decide many things about the work practices, the work process, the workers, and the workplace. This is not logically necessary, but it is common. (For example, in a frontier town, people spontaneously organized themselves into a “bucket brigade” to transport water from a source and use it to try to douse a fire).

Whenever a person finds themselves in a position of power, whether it is because of a capitalistic endeavor, a government office, a volunteer, effort, or even by virtue of being a parent, babysitter, or older sibling, it is sometimes tempting to use that power to make decisions that are good for one’s self as opposed to what is good for the organizational role that one has been entrusted with. For example, a boss may push for an inefficient process that will require them to hire many more people thus giving them more power (even though it will lose money for the organization whose interests they are supposed to be looking out for). A US government official might make “deals” with foreign dignitaries, not because it is good for the country, but because it is good for them. A volunteer in charge of decorations for a party might pay twice the going rate for balloons to his brother-in-law in order to get a good deal later on wedding decorations. A babysitter might find it conducive to studying homework by putting the kids to bed earlier than the parents requested and before the kids wanted to go to bed.

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In the worst-case scenarios, people use their positions of power to hurt someone out of vengeance, or to sexually or physically abuse someone just because they can. A person in power always has some sort of duty, often even a solemnly sworn duty, to do what’s best for some other entity. Whether it be a mayor, a councilman, a US Senator, a CEO, a supervisor, a teacher, a movie producer — there is always some entity on whose behalf that person is supposed to be working. They are not meant to use their power on their own behalf and particularly not when their interests are counter to the interests of the body for whom they are supposedly using their power. Lord Acton famously said that “…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Problem:

A person in power who abuses that power will inevitably (and by definition) do things that are ineffective, inefficient, and unethical with respect to the goals that it is his or her duty to work toward reaching. This weakens the organization and corrupts anyone who goes along with the charade of doing good while doing bad. People tend to lose faith in the corrupted organizations, not just in the corrupting individuals.

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Forces:

For purely practical reasons, it is often efficient to invest one person or a small group of people with special powers.

People who have the power to make a class of decisions may often be chosen because they have particular experiences or skills in making that class of decisions.

Most human beings take their responsibilities seriously most of the time.

It is tempting to use power to do what’s best for one’s self, one’s family, or one’s political faction as opposed to doing what’s best for the organization for which one has sworn to make decisions.

When people find out that someone has abused their power, they are necessarily upset and will try to prevent further abuses.

When someone knows that they have abused their power, they will try to use their power to cover up that abuse.

Among secondary abuses of power, lying about what is done and the reasons for what is done will be foremost.

When people in power “get away with” abusing their power, they will tend to do it again in a more and more outrageous fashion.

When people in an organization come to know that the person in charge makes decisions on the basis of what they perceive to be best for them, they either leave the organization or “go along” in which case, they will no longer try to do or argue for what is best for the organization as a whole, but only what will be approved by the authority figure.

When a power abuser ends up surrounded by sycophants who only them them what they want to hear, they may come to believe the lies they tell. In any case, a power abuser almost always ends up “disconnected” from reality. No-one whom the abuser puts stock in will speak “truth to power.”

Solution:

Institutions must fight against the tendency of people in power to misuse that power. There are a number of specific methods. For example, in the United States, people in the Federal Government who abuse their power can be impeached; that is, they can be removed from office. In many cases, there are limits to the length of time someone can hold an office or at least until they are again chosen.

Most companies move their executives around to different positions. Partly this is to reduce their ability to abuse power. Many companies have alternative channels of communication to help stem power corruption; e.g., IBM has an “Open Door” policy which basically means that an employee may go outside their normal hierarchy of control if they believe someone above them is doing something illegal, unethical, or clearly counter-productive. Many organizations, both governmental and non-governmental have policies to protect “whistle blowers.” The United States Constitution was written to ensure a “balance of power.” The three main branches of government: Executive, Congressional, and Judicial have separate powers and the ability to check each other’s power. In addition, in truly democratic countries, there is a “Free Press” which acts as a kind of limit on potential abuses of power by finding out and reporting on such abuses.

Examples:

At one point in IBM’s history, the executives in charge of any one branch of the company had a lot of power over that particular branch. This made it tempting for the executive in charge to maximize profits for their part of the company rather than for the company as a whole. For example, the person in charge of very large computers might wish to extend their product line to medium and even to very small computers in order to enhance their overall revenue. This might increase revenue for that part of the company (as well as that executive’s power, prestige, and bonus) but lower overall revenue and particularly lower it for those parts of the company who were supposed to make medium-sized or small computers. IBM therefore had a “non-concurrence” process. All executives were required to share their plans with other executives. If the plan seemed problematic for some other part of IBM, that other part of IBM could “non-concur” with the proposed plan and the Central Management Committee would have final say on each of the plans. This is another example of “checks and balances” on absolute power.

2. Within the Federal Government, there is an Office of Government Ethics. The purpose is to have an agency not under the power of those in charge to be able to make independent determinations of the ethics of various situations. However, the Director of that office, Walter Shaub, resigned in July of 2017 because the White House refused to follow the same rules that other White Houses have followed for the past four decades. https://www.npr.org/2017/07/06/535781749/ethics-office-director-walter-shaub-resigns-saying-rules-need-to-be-tougher

3. Ultimately, when people feel that power has been misused for personal gain or to benefit a small group at the expense of a much larger group, some kind of chaotic change seems inevitable. For example, The Magna Carta was designed to balance power between King John and some rebellious Barons. It seemed to work for awhile, but soon Kings came to repudiate it and various wars and bloodshed resulted. It would seem that anyone in power (at least anyone with even a passing knowledge of history) would realize that misusing power is ultimately a bad idea, even for the power abuser. But apparently, the process of surrounding oneself only with those who are afraid to speak truth to power eventually makes the person or coterie “in charge” too divorced from reality to make good decisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

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Resulting Context:

If the abuse of power goes unchecked, the entire purpose and structure of an organization becomes corrupted much as untreated cancer can over-run an entire human body and end up killing it. Power abuse, as described above, has a negative effect on the one doing the abuse. It tends to make them disconnected from reality. As their decisions become worse and worse and more and more blatantly self-serving, people will tend to leave positions around the power-monger whether actually resigning from positions or mentally “giving up.” Those who stay will tend to be the least capable and most cowardly. This in turn, means that qualities such as being ethical, knowledgeable, effective, efficient, reflective, and generous will not be rewarded while qualities such as being sycophantic, duplicitous, and weak-willed will be rewarded. As a result, those with ethical standards or even simple competence to do a good job will tend to avoid working near the center of corruption.

In the Anti-Pattern Power Trumps Good, the word “Good” has many meanings. Those in power will tend to make decisions that are not for the common good, but only for personal gain or the gain of a small group. In this sense, “power trumps good.” But other “good” things even without much ethical content such as being effective and efficient tend to suffer as well. Orders are carried out without much question even if those orders are contradictory, plainly stupid, and when they are not actually producing anything “good” even for those in power. Not only is the system that arises from power abuse ineffective and inefficient in getting things done; it is also mean-spirited. It fosters cruelty, exploitation, dishonestly, and ignorance. People in such a system often feel trapped and feel bad about themselves. They are often subject to abuse from above and they then transmit this abuse to those below them in the hierarchy. Those people, in turn, promulgate more cruelty to others below them in the hierarchy as well as to their family members and pets. Such people seldom take it upon themselves to learn more or to improve their skills. They are typically too worried about keeping their position to “waste time” in any intellectual pursuits.

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Related Patterns:

Reality Check.

References:

Johansen, B. (1982), Forgotten Founders: How the American Indian Helped Shape Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Commons Press.

Thomas, J. C. (2012). Patterns for emergent global intelligence. In Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience By Design J. Carroll (Ed.), New York: Springer.

Thomas, J. C. (2001). An HCI Agenda for the Next Millennium: Emergent Global Intelligence. In R. Earnshaw, R. Guedj, A. van Dam, and J. Vince (Eds.), Frontiers of human-centered computing, online communities, and virtual environments. London: Springer-Verlag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton

Thomas, J. C. (2015). The Winning Weekend Warrior: How to Succeed at golf, tennis, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, volleyball, business, life, etc. CreateSpace. http://tinyurl.com/ng2heq3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern

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Note to readers and followers: I am planning to end the current project of best practices in collaboration and teamwork around the end of June. If anyone would like to suggest a Pattern to be added, now would be a good time! Even if you don’t have a specific Pattern, any comments or suggestions are welcome. You might also enjoy some of my books which are all available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/author/truthtable

petersironwood

~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

Tag Archives: Democracy

Myths of the Veritas: Many Pains for Many Paths

Essays on America: Wimbledon

Essays on America: Labelism

Metaphors We Live By and Die By

Buggy Whips to Fingertips

Anti-Pattern: Taking Credit & Spreading Blame.

Anti-Pattern: Cascading Betrayal

Anti-Pattern: Gratuitous Push Down

The Day From Hell: Why Does Anyone Care?

Anti-Pattern: Power Trumps Good