Words to think by

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.

(Carl Sagan)

Removing barriers to understanding

How do we become motivated to understand?

How do we become interested in understanding ... oh, I dunno, any idea, something, anything?

How do we become interested in learning?

Is that several questions? Perhaps. I think of them as variations on one theme.

The words "persuade" and "influence" are in that pile of Legos I dumped on the floor recently. The question, "How does persuasion work?" is one of the underlying themes of my writing here. It seems to me we often think about persuasion as an additive process. We provide facts, figures, and information. We build a case. Sometimes we try to make the process overwhelmingly additive. We blast information from a fire hose. We try to bury each other under piles of words.

This just occurred to me now, while writing this post: Sometimes persuasion seems more like a process of elimination, a process of removing barriers.

Sometimes (perhaps often?) persuasion occurs when we remove barriers to understanding.

So maybe we should ask ourselves the question this way:

How do we remove barriers to understanding?

Scattering many pieces, dumping my bucket of Legos

When I was a kid I often built things from Lego blocks. I kept my unassembled Legos in a gallon-sized plastic bucket. Whenever I began a new Lego building project, I would sit down and dump the entire bucket of blocks all over the floor in front of me. Scattering a gallon of Legos takes up considerable floor space, but it seemed the easiest way to find the pieces I wanted to assemble. That, and they made a satisfying whoosh, roar, and clatter as they tumbled out.

I knew folks who took a similar approach to assembling large picture puzzles. I have several essay projects that I intend to construct here eventually. Since I consider this blog as a staging area for my other web site, I thought it might be helpful to dump my bucket of Legos here so that we can easily find the building blocks for future essays. So, here we go: (Whoosh! Roar ... clatter)

Vision
Strategy
Tactics

Perception is reality?
Probably not.
But it can be difficult to perceive the difference.

cognitive dissonance
projection
locus of control

social psychology
in-group / out-group
Lord of the Flies

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

self-image
self-esteem

a need to feel competent

No one wakes up in the morning with a plan to be stupid.
We all believe we're doing the right thing at the time we do it.

retroactive justification

Ego

I am right / you are wrong

People who say they are "open-minded" usually are not.
People who say, "My door is always open", often say they are also open-minded.
People who say, "You don't have to like me, you just have to respect me" don't really know how liking or respect actually work.

Dialog

non-violent communication

E-prime

frames
memes

Tipping Point

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
On the Internet, nobody knows if you're a 14 year old boy.
Or a 40 year old man.
Or 40 going on 14.
Nobody knows -- but one often suspects.

authentic
mature
becoming aware
conscious participation
Trying not to participate is a form of participation.

The most basic task of every human is to be human.

How hard can that be?

Paolo Lugari once asked,

"Why do you people make everything so difficult?"

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you.

If you really make them think, they'll hate you.
Everybody thinks those two statements make them look good.

open-minded
open door

Defending a castle of belief
Swimming in a lake of information

Learn
Understand
Profess
Persuade

(No, I wasn't impressed by Freakonomics.)

economic theory
economic reality
Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos

Belief

high-maintenance beliefs
low-maintenance beliefs
habits

values
attitudes
habits
decisions
behaviors

coasting on auto-pilot

Mother Culture
Strict Father

exploitation
abusive relationships

disparity by design

egalitarian
altruism
prosocial behavior
evolutionarily stable strategy

Ants know how to live like ants.
Bees know how to live like bees.
Some fish swim in schools, but they don't attend school to learn how.
Humans evolved as a social species.

Strategic ignorance
Look for a bigger picture.
There's usually a bigger picture.

community
connection
Gaviotas
tribe

Urban Tribes
Ethan Watters

Robin Dunbar

What do the Amish understand that the rest of us do not?

conspicuous reduction
voluntary simplicity
preventing involuntary simplicity

The Fifth Discipline
lessons from the beer game

control
power
influence
steering a sled

rolling snowball

feedback loops

anthropology
psychology
climatology

riverboat gamblers
learn the rules of the game
see the mechanism
then turn the system inside-out

possibility
confidence
imagination
probability

side effects
unintended consequences

There are always consequences.
Be careful what you wish for.

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

middle climber syndrome

Policy makes a poor substitute for sound judgment.


We probably look pretty silly from the point of view of an anthropologist from Mars.

 

A sustainable culture begins with a healthy, sustainable attitude

What I fear is that some writers are trying to inspire a movement to actively cause a hard collapse

That's the beginning of one of the observations that grabbed my attention in Ran Prieur's recent essay, Beyond Civilized and Primitive. I think he sees something important, something hidden below the tip of an iceberg. Prieur goes on to explore one consequence of actively seeking a hard collapse. He writes about coercion as a strategic mistake, which indirectly suggests one answer to a question I posed a while back:

How would we live if beginnings justify means?

Over the years I've encountered a number of people who tell me (over and over!) that they're working for the greater good, but their consistently demonstrated behaviors look a lot like something else. Their behaviors look like they're trying, first and foremost, to fulfill their own personal wants and needs. A need for attention. A need for approval. A need for affirmation. A need to be "right". A need to have a crowd of followers who provide attention, approval, affirmation, and an award for absolute, universal Truth. (You know, with a capital T. The Truth.)

Thing is, for all the talk about big ideas and grand plans, what I notice, what a lot of folks notice, what we respond to, is consistently demonstrated behavior. Show me, don't tell me.

When I look around and find healthy, mature people who interact in healthy, stable social groups, I don't see a lot of attention-seeking behaviors. I don't see guys jockeying for position in the pack. I don't see competition to be declared smartest. Nor loudest. No one-upping. No tantrums. Nor do I see people who try to drag everyone around them into a black pit of despair. When I see healthy, mature people interact with each other in healthy, stable social groups, I see people who seem to share and appreciate a sense of community. I see people who become energized by mutually supportive, win/win, interactions. I see people who can see beyond themselves.

Of course, some big ideas and grand plans do overlap with attitudes and values that result in real, beneficial pro-social behavior. I'm happy to support those ideas and those plans. I strive to credit folks for imagination and innovation. But I refuse to endorse egotistic behaviors that cause harm to others. I refuse to endorse obnoxious behavior even if it's affiliated with someone's good idea. I refuse, because authentic, sincere prosocial behaviors actually create a healthy society.

Show me, don't tell me.


——

Some additional pieces that may fit:

Beyond Civilized and Primitive, Ran Prieur

Ideas, wrapped in behaviors

Circle of observers

Two questions

Being a good person despite bad outcomes

Tip of the iceberg

To be wise is to see

Arithmetic allegory #4

(links open in a new window or tab)

Some readers may recognize elements of Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" throughout this essay. I'm borrowing rather casually, and I haven't found an online resource that concisely associates Maslow's ideas about individual needs to prosocial behavior. Perhaps you can suggest something?

Misery creates company

Misery loves company.

Often, misery needs company.

Too often, misery creates company.

And that's a problem, don't you think?

 

Show me, don't tell me

Some people like to stand on soapboxes and shout loudly at me. They like to proclaim that they have my best interests at heart.

Personally, I prefer consistently repeated behaviors by people who demonstrate that they have my best interests at heart.

Just sayin'

Good writing, assembling important pieces, elsewhere

He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.
(Douglas Adams)

Most models are wrong, but some are useful.
(George Box, paraphrased)

Ran Prieur seems like someone who views the world from at least three feet to the left of mainstream American culture. Recently he wrote an essay that assembles many of the same pieces I've been (slowly!) fitting together here: Beyond Civilized and Primitive.

I found Prieur's essay intriguing and well worth reading. Overall his assembled puzzle seems to look similar to mine (although he does include a few pieces that aren't part of my outlook). Most importantly to me, Prieur's essay synthesizes an attitude about our future that I consider beneficial. (Some models are useful!)

I've also recently encountered the online publication of Greater Good, a project of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. The latest issue explores the psychology of power and influence in several insightful articles. One of them, in particular, provides some further background to Prieur's essay: Political Primates

There's some good writing, and good reading, out there.

Enjoy.

 

Idealism. Labelism. Bagism.

If it ends with -ism it seems likely to become a problem, for someone, someday.

That's been my observation and experience.

Ideologies. Labels. Imaginary boundaries. Is. Is not! An illusion of information.

We bundle up some things we know believe, slap a label on the bundle, and talk as if everything worth saying can be delivered in a bag with a label. Eventually Later Soon we begin to talk as if only the label matters, as if everything we need to know can be conveyed merely by the label. Sometimes we seem to forget what we put in the bag, we're so busy announcing its label.

I thought about calling that phenomenon “bagism”, but someone else got there first. Same with labelism. Even ismism.

Good grief, what's left?

Well, how about breaking that habit?

 

Ideas, wrapped in behaviors

(Some thoughts under development ... )

Ideas, when they form and float through our minds, are just ideas.

Expressing ideas, the act of communicating, is behavior.

We like to believe that our writing, our speaking, our conversations, we like to believe we deal only with ideas. But to me that seems incomplete. It seems to me we often react to the behaviors that we perceive as much or even more than the ideas wrapped in those behaviors.

Words matter. Words matter because words create consequences. Communicating with words is a behavior.

And behaviors create consequences.

 

See also:
Show me, don't tell me
and
A sustainable culture begins with a healthy, sustainable attitude

 

Amusing Ourselves to Death

I've mentioned this book several times recently in comments elsewhere. It occurred to me that I should mention it at my own web site, too:

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by Neil Postman

If TV news and talk radio leave you feeling something other than well-informed, Postman's little book might explain why.

web log, with explosions and funny hats

Occasionally I'm reminded that the concept, "blog", came from "web log", a log of interesting web sites. Pointing out other people's worthy efforts can be one way to support them. Here are two worthy efforts that I support by pointing and clicking:

Trinifar writes clear and concise, yet detailed, essays about sustainability concepts. Trinifar's writing path takes up where mine leaves off. The essay title, “Learning to think about the future”, would have made a good subtitle for my site. (Darn, too late, I guess.)

“Learning to think about the future” would also be a good subtitle for this video about climate change. The science teacher who began this YouTube effort a few months ago has refined his message. He sets an excellent example of clear and careful thinking about a challenging topic. He delivers an urgent and serious message, punctuated with explosions and funny hats.

(click to open this video in a new window or tab)
“While we debate ...
we're running the experiment ...
and we're in the test tube.”

As far as thinking about future posts at this blog, here are a couple of topics that have rattled around inside my head recently:

soap and water; and
What does it mean to “just” get along?

 

Circle of observers (rough draft)

Picture a group of people, a dozen or more, standing in a circle, looking outward. They stand shoulder to shoulder, backs to the center, facing away from each other.

Many of them have telescopes, some have binoculars. They all have clipboards and notebooks and lots of pens and pencils in the pockets of their white coats.

They look outward at the universe and declare proudly, "From here we can see everything!"

To the folks outside the circle, however, that comment seems kind of odd. From outside the circle it's easy to see something that's hidden from the proud observers.

From outside the circle, we can see inside the circle. We can observe the observers. We can see their blind spot.

To be wise is to see ... more. To be wise is to see ... that something is missing. To be wise is to see ... that there's probably more to see.

Within the circle of observers, to be wise is to turn around.

 

Are we ready yet?

Some things only become visible when we become ready to see them.

To be wise is to see.

Water. Weather. War.

Why?

What are we ready to see?

Is that an iceberg ahead?

What's the worst that could happen? (a video)

Here's an example of someone who uses water to put out a fire:


(video will open in a new window or tab)

This is an excellent illustration of a way to make a wise, prudent decision when the stakes are high and the consequences are severe.

 

How do you put out a fire?

I've noticed some people like to advocate "fighting fire with fire". Their contribution to conversation is to declare, with absolute confidence,

Ya gotta fight fire with fire!

Thing is, most firefighters I know use water.

 

Two questions

Lately I've been watching multiple debates, arguments, shouting matches, and iceberg-tip snowball fights as they sprawl across various blogs. The topics that triggered these noisy brawls vary somewhat, but the pattern of escalation of all the conflicts looks the same to me.

Although it shouldn't surprise me anymore, I confess I still find it remarkable how much effort some people can expend in trying to justify rude and counterproductive behaviors.

I've been trying to find a concise way to describe what I see below the surface of these icebergs. Today it occurred to me that two simple questions could reveal a lot — if anyone cared to ask them:

What are the effects of my own behavior?

How should I behave if I care about the answer?

 

The Rule of 150, minus three

About ten years ago I began working with a small tiny Internet company. Did you notice that I say "with" -- not "for"? I was an employee, not a temp, not a consultant, but we were a small group and we worked with each other.

When I began I was the eighth person in the group. They began as five, tightly knit as the saying goes, working closely with each other to manage and sell bandwidth on a small fiber optic network. Changes in the telecommunication industry and the emerging Internet phenomenon steered the little company toward a path of sudden growth.

At the beginning it was a perfect fit for me. They were doing, or were about to do, exactly what I wanted for my career. It was exciting. It was perfect. It was fun. We didn't worry much about job titles or job descriptions or hierarchy. We did what needed to be done, and we had fun doing it. One day I was chatting with one of our Vice President of Sales, and I told him:

"Some days I feel like the janitor. But some days I feel like a Vice President."

"Me, too!" he said. "Me, too."

But the fun didn't last. We bought into the idea that bigger is always better, so we tried to get bigger. We tried to get bigger even faster than everybody else was trying to get bigger. In just months I went from one of eight, sharing offices with real doors that we didn't need to be closed and sharing jazz CDs and janitorial outlooks with vice presidents, to one cubicle gopher among hundreds. I had quickly become just another one of the seven hundred strangers scattered throughout three buildings, surrounded by acres of parking lots.

Late one afternoon I was chatting with a couple of close colleagues from "the good old days". The three of us lamented that we didn't know anybody anymore. Our little company had become BIG. And bigger just didn't seem better, after all.

My friends left for the day, but I stayed and pulled out a company phone directory. I began counting the names of the people I actually knew. Not just names I vaguely recognized, but people I knew. There were a lot more unknown names than known ones. I scanned quickly until I came to a name I knew, and then I found myself pausing to reminisce. Eventually I came to the end of the list. I remember the number clearly:

147

Out of almost 700 people working for the company (notice I say "for", not "with"), out of 700, I knew exactly 147. I put away the phone list and went home. By the next day I had forgotten this depressing counting exercise.

Things went downhill from there. Three years later the rollercoaster was coasting to a bumpy stop. Even though most of them were strangers, I felt bad for the hundreds of people whose jobs were shed in a series of increasingly painful lay-offs; people whose lives were hurt by the decisions of strangers they didn't know either. I was fortunate to exit with some degree of dignity and grace. Not with a golden parachute. Not as a dot.com millionaire. But I got off the ride with only minor damage to my psyche.

That left me with plenty of time to catch up on some reading. During one trip to the library I noticed a book called The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. I remembered that one of my two closest colleagues had been intrigued by it, so I checked it out.

I'm fond of saying that most models are wrong, but some are useful. The Tipping Point is useful. Malcolm Gladwell applies the epidemiological concept of a tipping point to fads and fashions and social changes in modern life. In the middle of it he describes "The Rule of 150". Drawing on scientific research, business operation of the unusual company that made Goretex, and leadership insight from military history and agrarian villages, Gladwell describes how we humans work best in social groups limited to a maximum of 150 people.

Not 150 thousand. Not 150 million. Just one hundred fifty. Larger groups tend to fragment and organizations tend to fall apart at the seams if they don't account for that limit. Things fall apart when we don't observe the Rule of 150.

Gladwell describes a simple exercise to illustrate the Rule of 150 to readers. Open a phone book and count the number of last names you recognize.

Open a phone book. Count the names you recognize.

Well, I had a flashback, of course. A visual image popped into my mind so suddenly that it startled me. Years had passed. I had totally forgotten my depressing scan of my former employer's phone list. But when I read those instructions I could see the number 147 scribbled in the margin of an old phone directory.

For me that was a more than an exercise. I knew from unpleasant personal experience what the Rule of 150 meant. Things fall apart when we ignore the Rule of 150.

There's more to The Tipping Point besides the Rule of 150. There's more I could write about it, but this is not a book review.

Most models are wrong, but some are useful. The Tipping Point presents a useful model. The Rule of 150 is important. In fact, I suspect The Rule of 150 will turn out to be absolutely crucial if we are to make a successful transition to a sustainable human culture.

--

A primatologist who writes at the blog, The Primate Diaries, contributes a related perspective on cities full of strangers and wonders, Who's your neighbor?

The Tipping Point, at Gladwell's web site

A few books I've mentioned elsewhere

In the course of commenting at other blogs and web sites I've mentioned some books that I have not yet listed here. For the sake of posterity and future reference I thought I should consolidate them in this quick list.

Disclaimer: I mention these because I have found them useful. Other than that, what passes for a running joke around here is my oft-repeated assertion that I don't do book reviews.

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell.
This little book really deserves a post of its own. Someday it will get what it deserves.

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement In the World Came Into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming, by Paul Hawken
Never judge a book by its cover ... only by its subtitle. This is a new one from Paul Hawken, an influential thinker in the sustainability field. The subtitle suggests to me that he might address an issue mentioned in another book:

The Cultural Creatives, by Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson
The authors describe a large group of Americans, tens of millions, characterized by a kind of counter-cultural creativity and the feeling that they're totally alone in their views. For me it was worth skimming for tidbits like that, but some portions of the book didn't grab me. Their work does complement the work of others, though, such as Hawken.

Urban Tribes, by Ethan Watters
Another mixed bag. It's really two books in one cover. I found much value in the first half, which is about an unexpected phenomenon that the author discovered while trying to write the second half.

Gaviotas, by Alan Weisman
Weisman describes an extraordinary village, Gaviotas, that really ought to be utterly ordinary. For 95% of human history, it was utterly ordinary. I had the great good fortune to meet Paolo Lugari, founder of Gaviotas. Like the village, Lugari is extraordinary, but we really ought to make people like him utterly ordinary.

Beyond Civilization, by Daniel Quinn
Some folks have trouble "getting" this one. I recommend reading it along with Urban Tribes and Gaviotas. These three pieces connect very neatly, and the examples in the other two help to make this one more understandable.


More pieces assembled at BluePuzzle.org/books ...

Enough rolling rocks

In Greek mythology a guy named Sisyphus was condemned to roll a great big rock up a hill, over and over. Every time he made some progress rolling that rock up the hill, the rock would roll back to the bottom, and Sisyphus would start pushing the rock all over again. He was forced to. That was his punishment.

I have met Sisyphus. In fact, I see him often. I see Sisyphus among would-be activists who seek social change. And I see Sisyphus among the many folks who seek to prevent any social change at any social cost.

I have met Sisyphus. In fact, I have been Sisyphus.

I have spent more than enough of my time rolling great big rocks up great big hills, only to watch them roll down again. I know the frustration, and I know the pain of crushed fingers and crushed toes and crushed ego when those rocks escape and roll downhill.

Often I would ask myself, after a lot of cursing, but before starting over again, "Why am I doing this?"

Usually that was just a different way to say, "Darn, this sucks."

Eventually, however, after many tiring trips partway up a hill, after crushed fingers, crushed toes, and crushed ego, someone else asked me similar questions, but in a different way, a way that led to an insight.

"Why are you doing THIS? Why are you not doing something else? What is it about this rock that makes you think it's worth so much frustration? What will happen if you actually get this thing up to the top? Will you be happy then? What's your real goal here?"

Answering those questions helped me to realize that I was really trying to accomplish something else. Answering those questions helped me to see that rolling the rock up the hill was not my real goal, that getting the rock to the top of the hill wouldn't make me happy. All I really wanted was a little decorative landscaping on the other side of the hill. The rock seemed like a good idea at first, before I discovered how difficult it was to move. Somehow I just got caught up in the challenge of rolling the rock, even though it wasted my time and wasted my effort and made me tired and angry.

Sisyphus was forced to keep rolling his rock. Sisyphus was being punished by others. He wasn't allowed to stop.

But I could stop. I did stop. When I remembered that all I really wanted was decorative landscaping, it became obvious that the rock was a great big distraction. And then it became easier to let the rock go and to concentrate my effort on what I really wanted.

I encounter many otherwise nice people who become angry, tired, and surly, because they're frustrated by the rocks they're trying to roll uphill. If I suggest to any of those folks that they might consider stopping, they look at me as if I'm crazy. They look at me as if I've just arrived from another planet. "You're not from around here, are you?!" they snap. "Rolling rocks up hills is what we do here."

Habit. Culture. Cultural habits. Habitual culture. "This is what we do! How can we possibly stop?!"

But really, how often do we need another rock on a hilltop? How often do we recall why we started trying to move heavy objects in the first place? Do we even know what we're really trying to accomplish?

It worries me to see so much effort wasted on painful, unnecessary tasks. It saddens me to see so many nice people turn bitter, cynical, and unhelpful in the process. It saddens me to see people burn out this way.

As a culture, as a nation, as a company, as individuals, have we asked ourselves what we really want to accomplish? Why do we believe that rolling heavy rocks uphill will work?

It's surprising, no, it's amazing, how often asking ourselves those questions leads to different methods, different solutions, and even new and different goals.

Sometimes, of course, what we really want is still difficult to achieve, more difficult than decorative landscaping. But isn't it a better use of our time to concentrate on our real goals, difficult as they may be, than to waste our time and effort on distractions, than to persist in habits that accomplish nothing except to make us unhappy?

Suppose we stop rolling rocks out of habit. Suppose we try to figure out what rolling those rocks was supposed to accomplish. Suppose we find another way to accomplish that goal.

--

Related pieces:

"You're not from around here, are you?! Rolling rocks up hills is what we do here."

Escaping a deceptive trap

Why are we doing THIS?


 

Culture is pervasive

That's part of what makes it "culture" in the first place, don't you think?


Culture: the things we do, and the stories we tell about doing them.

More at BluePuzzle.org ...