Newfoundland–Problem Solving and Accepting Basic Realities

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. - Soren Kierkegaard

Fortune falls heavily on those for whom she's unexpected. The one always on the lookout easily endures. - Seneca

When my grandfather was alive, he was once asked by a local merchant to build a chimney for him.  The local merchant had a reputation for ripping people off and many people warned my grandfather that if he built the chimney, the merchant would likely find a way to not pay him.

Undeterred, my grandfather built the chimney but when the merchant inspected the work, he created reasons why he wouldn’t pay for my grandfather’s efforts..

When the merchant lit his first fire in the fireplace, the smoke, instead of rising up the chimney, billowed back into the room.  A visual inspection of the chimney revealed nothing obvious that would cause this and the merchant called upon my grandfather to fix the defective chimney.

“Pay me first”, insisted my grandfather, “And I will fix it.”

The merchant reluctantly paid for the chimney, my grandfather climbed up onto the roof and dropped a large beach rock down the flue, breaking the pane of glass he had strategically placed across the chimney about half way down.

Some years later ….

One day when I was young, my uncle’s car battery had died and needed a boost.  My father and my uncle had a single piece of wire (not a set of boosting cables) but as his father before him, my father was not without a solution.

They connected the positive terminals of my uncle’s car and my father’s, pushed the bumpers of the two cars together (they were chrome in those days) and the dead battery was brought back to Life.

How did this work?  Because my father knew that the two vehicles were negatively grounded to the chassis (as they are now) and that pushing the two electricity-conducting chrome bumpers together would provide enough of a connection to accomplish the desired effect of boosting the dead battery.

Two hard-working, honest men, my father and my grandfather, who looked at the problem at-hand, accepted the realities of the situation and then solved the problem in classic, creative Newfoundlander style (Bell Islander style, to be precise).

I try to bring the same level of pragmatic, evidence-based, reality-accepting, problem-solving approach to everything I do.

And that’s why when I look at the current situation of my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, I wonder whether any kind of hope is warranted.

The evidence at first blush says no.  Running massive deficits year-over-year is not a recipe for success and difficult decisions, always punishing one or more groups, are often “talked around” during election time since bad news doesn’t buy votes.

Providing schools to a sparse population spread around the coastline of the 11th largest island in the world seems impossible to do well.  With little money spread over a large area, it not only diminishes equal accessibility of education but potentially the quality of it as compared to other jurisdictions.

Maintaining infrastructure in an environment with so many harsh elements and long distances to cover seems as hope-filled as the dog who hopes to catch its tail.

With the Province at or near the top in nasty health statistics such as heart attack, stroke and diabetes rates, the healthcare system is also strained since, like education, it is difficult to offer high quality services to a few people spread across such a large area.

On top of that, layer on one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, diminished revenue from its primary source of revenue (oil) and have one of the smallest tax bases in the country demand the same level of services as found anywhere in the country and you have a problem.

And that’s just for starters.

Such things are exacerbated by the complexities that politicians and bureaucrats bring to the situation.

Politicians and bureaucrats, typical of any human being, bring a mix of intention and competence to their role.

They range from the intelligent to the idiot …

.... from the public-serving to the self-serving ….

.... from the servant leader to the purely selfish ….

.... from the informed to the misinformed to the uninformed ….

.... from the innocent to the conniving ….

.... from the strategic to the hapless dreamer ….

.... from the tactically astute to the random executor ….

.... from the evidenced-based to the “instinct is better than data” crowd.

And on top of all that, there is another grim reality.

Human beings (voters) are not inspired by reality and in fact, will often avoid anyone who reminds them of it.

Reality rarely buys votes unless it is good news and that is often hard to come by in economies of places such as Newfoundland and Labrador.

However, in such situations, votes can be generated by sharing unsubstantiated dreams of gold-paved streets or pegging bad news (real or perceived) on the other candidate.

We are inspired by hope of a better future, the promise of great things and the belief that all things can be overcome and we run from people who can’t give us this.

And based upon this, politicians sell hope and bright futures without having the foggiest idea of how they will accomplish anything or even if anything can be accomplished at all (and some have no intention of trying to accomplish anything, running for office for their own selfish needs).

Would you vote for someone who told you that we faced gloom and doom with the possibility that our problems can’t be solved at all but if they can be solved, will require phenomenal sacrifice on our part?

Most would not. 

Would you vote for someone who indicates “I have no idea what needs to be fixed or how I would fix it but give me a chance”?

Unlikely.

And so we accept the promises of politicians in blind faith and without evidence and get frustrated when the next round of politicians produces the same result as the last lot that we just threw out.

Meanwhile, politicians discover a few things (or knew them all along):

1. Things like economies pretty much run themselves and cannot be turned on a dime as claimed during elections
2. Economies are not easily turned in a positive direction because of human interaction or desire
3. Economies can be easily turned in a negative direction because of human interaction
4. Reality doesn’t care what you think, especially when evidence is intentionally ignored
5. Things we don’t like have reasons for existing which we unfortunately discover once we are exposed to the history of them
6. Regardless of the state left behind by a departing politician and regardless (mostly) of the competence or incompetence of departing politicians, most find lucrative careers that far exceed the career potential that existed before their political career was launched.

The final point reminds me of the old cartoon showing a doctor and patient having a serious conversation in the doctor’s office.

“I have good news and bad news”, says the doctor.

“What’s the bad news?”, asks the patient nervously.

“You have one month to live”, replies the doctor tersely.

Shocked, the patient exclaims, “If that’s the bad news, what is the good news?”

The doctor smiles.

“See that cute receptionist out front?”, the doctor asks, “I’m having sex with her twice a week.”

News, good and bad, is entirely perspective-based in its definition and impact.

The Bottom Line

I have not found in the last 20+ years, a single politician anywhere, including in Newfoundland and Labrador, who can use an evidence-based position that the Province’s current and future situations are things to be feel comfortable about (with the exception of those who use politics to substantively grow their personal interests).

I have also not found a single politician who even likes to be asked for such things.

Fortunately for politicians, there are very few of us who demand evidenced-based answers and so we can be easily ignored.

I hear lots of rhetoric and shouting about having the answers while becoming angry with people who ask for evidence.

I see lots of finger pointing at the previous administration or the opposite side of the Legislature as the real reason why things are not working well.

I watch politicians who point at those of us who demand data and decry our “negativity” as a means of deflecting questions that are difficult or impossible to answer.  That’s like a car driver suddenly exclaiming to a passenger in a car, “Hang on, the brakes just failed” and having the passenger respond with, “Why do you always have to be so dramatic?”

As my father and grandfather before me, I try to look at the situation at hand, the realities and complexities of the situation and the evidence that describes my reality before coming up with a solution.

If I don’t honestly acknowledge my reality, I have no way of creating a meaningful path to a solution or a better future.

I wish the electorate would do the same because if they did, we might actually start electing politicians who aren’t afraid to campaign on reality instead of fantasy.

Meanwhile, Seneca’s words come back from thousands of years ago in timeless poignancy and appropriateness:  Fortune falls heavily on those for whom she's unexpected. The one always on the lookout easily endures.

I wonder if any politician could refute what I just wrote using evidence and deliver such a refutation in a thoughtful, respectful, evidence-based, solution-focused way.

Because any politician who can do that is the type of politician we need in larger quantities before we reach the tipping point where it won’t matter who we elect.

I think such people are out there (and there are a small minority who have already been elected) but the dirty, muck-raking, being on-call 24/7, thankless world of politics keeps most good people away.

I think we must do more than merely fret and complain about our reality and our future.

I think we must accept realities and demand that politicians speak to us in the language of informed realities and the language of evidenced-based solutions.

I think we must demand that politicians serve us and not their own needs.

There are many things that I think about but what I am more interested in is this.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

News Alerts and the Complexity of #FakeNews

When you're young, you look at television and think, there's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. - Steve Jobs

Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity. - Peter Bergen

A lot of people who are quick to share opinions and slices of their genius have pointed out that the easy way to avoid fake news is to avoid websites like Alex Jones’ with his conspiracy rants, be careful of news feeds from Twitter and Facebook and do other similar “intelligent” things.

It’s simple, they say …. don’t go to the websites in question and you won’t be deluged with fake news.

So imagine my surprise this morning when my Android phone received an alert that the US Marine Corps had invaded CIA Headquarters with the intention of preventing the CIA from overthrowing President Trump.

I don’t hang out on conspiracy websites and I don’t give them the tiniest slice of my brain so my phone wasn’t offering me a snippet of data from some feed that I frequent or subscribe to.

But somewhere, a Google bot that gathers my news alerts was fooled by the disturbing rant of a seriously misguided individual and sent me a conspiracy-laden piece of trash as an important news alert.

Normal, balanced, healthy people will look at such an alert and either calmly disregard it or casually saunter over to CNN to see if it is really happening.

Unfortunately, we are not all like that.

There are many who struggle with mental illness, many who fill their head with conspiracist garbage, many who are filled with hatred because of various inadequacies in their own Life and many who live in more than one of these scenarios simultaneously.

A certain percentage of these people are on a hair-trigger, literally, and their first reaction is to reach for whatever is in their gun locker. 

React first, think later.

Some of those people would have Googled the headline and received a lot of hits, thus confirming some internal bias that this must be true, failing to recognize that it was a bunch of conspiracy websites all cross-posting the same article.

If some misguided individual this morning reacted to the alert, confirmed it with a quick Google search (or didn’t bother), grabbed his guns (or hers, but statistically more likely to be his) and went to his equivalent of DEFCON 1, the media would be having a field day analyzing the trigger that started the whole thing.

Of course, a conspiracist might tell me the story was planted by the CIA as a means of dulling our minds to the truth, that a constant “crying wolf” feed will eventually be used against us in some way that only they understand.

I guess we can make anything fit our circumstance, need and beliefs, can’t we?

And while I am not a fan of censorship and I recognize the slippery slope that comes when we censor the obviously wrong stuff (how that is defined is a slippery slope in itself), I wonder how we can do better to prevent such information from being passed off as an alert of legitimate concern.

The Bottom Line

While I don’t believe in censorship in general, I believe there are certain things that shouldn’t be published, including things that promote abuse of children, violence against women, intentional spread of hatred, etc.

Most fake news are opinions cast off as news with an intent to send our brains in specific directions.  Such information and intent to use information in devious ways has been around long before Facebook, Twitter and the like.  On a side note, can you imagine PT Barnum with a Twitter account?

In such cases, the onus is on us to make sure our brain receives and interprets such information and intention correctly. 

However, when emergency preparedness people tell us that we should have mobile phones handy as part of our emergency preparedness strategy and that same device alerts us to something that is potentially problematic (but which isn’t true), then we need better vetting of what our devices receive and push in our direction ….

…. before someone reacts poorly to garbage alerts and creates their own genuine alert or we all refuse to react to something important because we don’t believe it or because CNN hasn’t gotten around to analyzing it because they are too busy running for cover

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS I have friends who work at CIA HQ.  They report that all is well there and that it’s just another day of “getting things done”.  I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing but I will leave that with the conspiracy crowd to figure out.

The real irony here is that if an emergency were really occurring, the mobile phone network would be too overloaded to be used as a means of obtaining important information, as I noted in posts such as Statistics: The Mathematical Theory of Ignorance, but alas I digress.

Kim Jong-Trump

There is a fine balance between paranoia and preparedness.  Understanding the difference can make all the difference. – Harry Tucker

A guest post by Gwynne Dyer, author, historian and independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

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“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, Mr President, but I do say not more than ten or twenty million dead, depending on the breaks.” So said General ‘Buck’ Turgidson, urging the US president to carry out a nuclear first strike, in Stanley Kubrick’s 1963 film ‘Dr Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.’

But nobody in Kubrick’s movie talked like Kim Jong-un (“American bastards would be not very happy with this gift sent on the July 4 anniversary,” he crowed, celebrating North Korea’s first successful test of an ICBM). They didn’t talk like Donald Trump either (“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”)

Kubrick’s film came out the year after the Cuban missile crisis, when the world went to the brink of nuclear war after the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles into Cuba to deter an American invasion. It was a terrifying time, but neither US President John F. Kennedy nor the Soviet leaders used violent language. They stayed calm, and carefully backed away from the brink.

So Kubrick’s fictional leaders had to stay sane too; only his generals and civilian strategic ‘experts’ were crazy. Anything else would have been too implausible even for a wild satire like ‘Strangelove’. Whereas now we live in different times.

Trump may not understand what his own words mean, but he is threatening to attack North Korea if it makes any more threats to the United States. That’s certainly how it will be translated into Korean. And Pyongyang will assume that the US attack will be nuclear, since it would be even crazier to attack a nuclear-armed country like North Korea using only conventional weapons.

Maybe the American and North Korean leaders are just two playground bullies yelling at each other, but even in their more grown-up advisers it sets up the the train of thought best described by strategic theorist Thomas Schelling: “He thinks we think he’ll attack; so he thinks we shall; so he will, so we must.” This is how people can talk themselves into launching a ‘pre-emptive’ or ‘preventive’ nuclear attack.

Is this where the world finds itself at the moment? ‘Fraid so. And although a nuclear war with North Korea at this point wouldn’t even muss America’s hair – the few North Korean ICBMs would probably go astray or be shot down before they reached the US – it could kill many millions of Koreans on both sides of the border.

A million or so Japanese might die as well (that would depend on the fallout), and a few tens of thousands of US soldiers in western Pacific bases (from targeted strikes). Indeed, as the scale of the potential disaster comes home to North Korean strategists, you can see them start to play with the idea of a “limited nuclear war.”

North Korean planners have announced that they are “carefully examining” a plan for a missile attack on the big US base on Guam. In that way they could “signal their resolve” in a crisis by only hitting one isolated American military target. Their hope would be that such a limited attack would not unleash an all-out US nuclear counter-attack that would level North Korea.

‘Limited’ nuclear war typically becomes a favourite topic whenever strategists realise that using their cherished nuclear weapons any other way means unimaginable levels of death and destruction. It has never been credible, because it assumes that people will remain severely rational and unemotional while under attack by nuclear weapons.

Thinking about limited nuclear war, while unrealistic, is evidence that the planners are starting to get really scared about an all-out nuclear war, which is just what you want them to be. Nevertheless, we are entering a particularly dangerous phase of the process, not least because the other two major nuclear powers in the world, China and Russia, both have land borders with North Korea. And neither of them loves or trusts the United States.

What “process” are we talking about here? The process of coming to an accommodation that lets North Korea keep a nuclear deterrent, while reassuring it that it will never have to use those weapons. Because that’s what these North Korean missiles and nuclear warheads are about: deterring an American attack aimed at changing the regime.

They couldn’t be about anything else. North Korea can never have enough missiles to attack the US or its local allies and survive: it would be national suicide. But it can have enough of them to carry out a “revenge from the grave” and impose unacceptable losses on the US if it attacks North Korea. Deterrence, as usual, is the name of the game.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson briefly said that the US was not seeking to change the North Korean regime last week, although he was almost immediately contradicted by President Trump. In the long run, however, that is the unpalatable but acceptable way out of this crisis. In fact, there is no other way out.

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A guest post by Gwynne Dyer, author, historian and independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.  Reproduced with permission from the author.

Reservoir Dogs in the White House

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists. - Ernest Hemingway

A guest post by Gwynne Dyer, an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

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Anthony Zurcher, the BBC’s North America correspondent, nailed it in a report on 27 July. “Where Abraham Lincoln had his famous ‘team of rivals’ in his administration, this is something different,” Zurcher wrote. “Trump White House seems more akin to the final scene in Reservoir Dogs, where everyone is yelling and pointing a gun at someone else, and there's a good chance no one is going to come out unscathed.”

Several walking wounded have limped out of the White House since then, including ex-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, but nobody would call them unscathed. And in has come Anthony Scaramucci, the new communications director, who appears to have escaped from the same Quentin Tarantino movie. Maybe Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink.

Fun fact: Scaramuccia (literally "little skirmisher"), also known as Scaramouche, is a stock character of the Italian commedia dell'arte. He combines the roles of a clownish servant and a masked assassin carrying out his master’s will. He often ends up decapitated.

Things are falling apart in the White House much faster than even the keenest observers of Donald Trump’s behaviour would have predicted, and the important part is not the dysfunction. The United States would work just fine – in fact, rather better – if Trump never managed to turn his tweets into reality. What matters is that he is cutting his links with the Republican Party.

Trump was never a real Republican. As a genuine populist, he is ideology-free. If Barack Obama had fallen under a bus and Trump had chosen to run for the presidency in 2008, he could just as easily have sought the Democratic nomination.

Senior Republicans knew this, and they tried quite hard to stop him from winning the Republican nomination last year. After that they were stuck with him, and he did win the White House for them, so they have been in an uncomfortable partnership ever since. That is now coming to an end.

Part of the unwritten deal was that establishment Republicans get senior roles in the Trump White House. Reince Priebus, dismissed last Friday, was the most important of those people. He followed deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh, communications director Mike Dubke, press secretary Sean Spicer and press aide Michael Short, all of whom had already been pushed out.

What’s left are alt-right white nationalists like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, New Yorkers with Democratic leanings like Anthony Scaramucci, Jared Kushner, Dina Powell and Gary Cohn, Trump family members (Donald Jr and Ivanka), ex-businessmen like foreign secretary Rex Tillerson (who may be about to quit), and a triumvirate of generals in high civilian office.

This is a recipe for paralysis, but who cares? Did you really want a White House team that enabled Donald Trump to impose his will (or rather, his whims) on the United States and, to some extent, on the world? Well, no, and neither do senior Republicans – but they do care very much about controlling the White House.

Republicans who think long-term are well aware that the changing demography of the US population is eating away at their core vote. This may be their last chance, with control of both Houses of Congress and (at least in theory) of the presidency, to reshape their image and their policies in ways that will appeal to at least some of the emerging minorities.

They can’t do that if they don’t control the White House, and the only way they could regain control there is for Trump to go and Vice-President Mike Pence (a real Republican) to take over. A successful impeachment could accomplish that.

It would be very hard to engineer such a thing without splitting the Republican Party, even if the current FBI investigation comes up with damning evidence of Trump’s ties with Russia. Nevertheless, the likelihood of an impeachment is rising from almost zero to something quite a bit higher.

It would be a big gamble. The Republicans in Congress couldn’t really get Trump out before November 2018, and the turbulence of an impeachment might cost them their control of Congress in the mid-term elections. In an ideal outcome, however, it would give the Republicans time to go into the the 2020 election with President Pence in charge at the White House and some solid legislative achievements under their belts.

What would Trump do if he faced impeachment? Maybe he would do a kind of plea bargain and resign, but that would be quite out of character. His instinct would be to fight, and he fights mainly by creating diversions. The best diversion is a war, but against whom?

Even Trump would have trouble selling a war against Iran to the American public. Despite all the propaganda, they don’t really feel threatened by Iran. Whereas North Korea says and does things provocative enough to let Trump make a (flimsy) case for attacking it.

If he thought his presidency was at stake, he certainly would.

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A guest post by Gwynne Dyer, an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.  Reproduced with permission from the author.

Things That I Wonder About

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean. – Ryunosuke Satoro

In between selling a large tech company and starting up a Foundation that will “help NPO’s “do good better” through fact-based decision-making and evidence-based outcome assessments” (quoting friend and colleague, Doug P.), I often have other distractions that cross my mind that I feel merit some attention.

As a long-time Wall St. strategy guy, unsolved problems are always a conundrum for me, especially when the problems are significant in impact and are far / wide reaching in society.  Problems in society affect us all at some point, even if we don’t feel the affect directly (or believe we don’t).

However, I can’t tackle all these thoughts, nor should I (no individual is tagged as the “savior” of the world).  That being said, they are worthy of thought and action and so, with the encouragement of very nice colleagues who kindly never lose patience with me when I muse about other concerns in the world, I’m going to occasionally toss some ideas out with the idea that someone else may feel inspired to own some of them.

This is not a typical blog post for me such as can be found in the #1206 series, the Abigail / Gabriel series or any general post.  It is a grab bag of thoughts that pass through my brain in the course of leading a busy Life.

If you want to own one, I would be glad to help!

A subset of my random thoughts this week:

1. How is it that the Newfoundland and Labrador Government can have as its top bureaucrat, Bern Coffey, who, while leading the bureaucratic corps of the Government, was also a lawyer representing a client who was suing a Crown Corporation of the same Government and a few years before, while a clerk of the Government Executive council, led a case against a Government health authority (details here and here)?  While officials claim they are “just finding out”, the truth is that they knew for a while.  Conflict of interest, anyone?
2. By the same token, how is it that Tzeporah Berman can serve as a member of the Alberta Government Oil and Gas advisory team while at the same time, receive compensation for campaigning AGAINST the oil and gas industry in Alberta (details here)?  Conflict of interest, round 2.
3. Premier Ball dismissed Coffey in the first scenario but Premier Notley refuses to dismiss Tzeporah in the second one.  When such appointments with obvious conflict-of-interest are knowingly made, what does this tell us about the leadership skills of the people in the respective situations?  Is it a reflection of poor execution, low intelligence, self-serving motives or an indifference to how things are perceived (or something else)?
4. Are apologies or “sharp corrective action” from politicians acceptable because we believe that someone recognized their own mistake and want it fixed or are we being played as politicians attempt to harvest political points while continuing their inappropriate behavior?  In my companies, you are fully supportive of the organization that pays you or you are not but if you are not, you work to make us better through compromise or you leave.  You can’t play for me and against me at the same time.  Why don’t we demand this of government?
5. How is it in the Newfoundland and Labrador government, a blind trust for a politician can be run by a politician’s husband, wife, daughter, son-in-law or lover?  There is nothing “arms-length” or “blind” about such a set-up.  Who do you think benefits from this arrangement?
6. How is it that Stephen Colbert can refer to the President of the United States as Vladimir Putin’s “cock holster” when a comment such as that, if directed at the previous President, would have required riot squads to be deployed (details here)?  Why is it that the “tolerant left” has no issue when insults are issued against the one that they despise but they are quick to demonstrate in the streets should there even be the possibility that one of their own might be insulted at some point in the future?  One must respect the Office of the President and if one disagrees with the President himself, Colbert’s approach is not the way to express it.  Respect earned is respect given.  Anything else leads to significant problems in society.
7. How is it that very few people care about emergency planning, regardless of the source / scale of the emergency?  Officials routinely warn of difficulties ahead, whether it be in the form of a cyber attack, a nuclear war, climate change-induced natural disasters and a plethora of other things and yet most people would be lucky if they could survive a minor inconvenience that lasted through a weekend.  We have all seen people panic-shop at supermarkets when a storm is forecast.  What if the “storm” came without warning.  I mused about this yesterday in the post Statistics: The Mathematical Theory of Ignorance.
8. How is it that US politicians can claim a triumph in the low unemployment rate when the vast majority of jobs created in recent years are part-time / low-paying jobs with little or no health benefit plans?  When more than 50% of American families have $1000 or less in the bank, over 48 million Americans are on food stamps and over 98 million Americans are not working at all, how can we champion a recovery that benefits a small minority of people?
9. Pursuant to the previous point, personal debt is growing and more than 50% of families have less than $1000 in the bank.  Where is personal freedom and empowerment for these people?
10. If people are happier than ever, why do we have a steady increase in the need for antidepressants?
11. The next time you are in Costco, a supermarket or other place filled with abundance, ask yourself when you last helped someone who couldn’t partake in such abundance.
12. It is estimated that we will work 80,000 hours in our lifetime.  1% of that (800 hours or 20 work-weeks) is a small amount to spend in planning our work Life but we don’t teach kids how to do it.  In fact, if I told someone when I was 20 that I was about to spend 5 months planning my career, I would be told I was insane (even though it’s such a small number in the grand scheme of things).  We teach kids phenomenally more than when I was in school and yet basic skills of Life strategy (including long and short term goal setting), financial strategy, respectful dialog when ideas are polar opposites and the like seem absent from the skill-set of many young people.  We seem to insist that they learn these things the hard way.  Why?  Is it because we don’t know how to either?
13. Many not-for-profits are phenomenally wasteful in how they spend their money and many people who work for them know how to steal from them as a profession but we don’t care.  Why?
14. How is it that people put little or no effort into the things that matter in society but will spend an amazing amount of time watching videos of cats, sharing pictures of their oatmeal or losing their minds over how their favorite TV series ends?

Do these things matter or am I just over-sensitive?

Should we care that these represent symptoms of a society that is not ticking over as well as claimed by politicians or do we ignore them, saving our complaints and intention for action only when we are directly affected as opposed to when our neighbor is being pummeled instead of us?

If they matter, what can we do about them?

The Bottom Line

I’m a big believer in sharing thoughts and encouraging people to dialog about things with an eye towards taking measurable action.  Good intentions and thoughts are worthless without measurable results.

However, we can’t own everything that comes before us, even when it impacts us deeply.  Some of us who work hard to make a difference in the world need others to share the responsibility, especially when many who put little into society want to reap the harvest that comes from a better world.

It’s time for more people to be concerned about society and where it’s going …

… while it’s still a going concern.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS:You will note that I didn't mention things like privacy, surveillance and the like.  I believe that that fight is over.  You needed to care 25 years ago to have made a difference in regards to that subject.  Do you see what waiting accomplishes?  This is also, as I noted, just a subset of the things that went through my mind this week in the 5% of my brain that I have left over from the projects that consume it.

The Next Major Epidemic in America – The Inability To Express Ideas

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. - John Adams

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. - Mark Twain

As was to be expected last night, the President’s State of the Union address produced mixed opinion.  However, I didn’t see clear lines separating the two sides as I would have expected, especially the line allegedly dividing the left and the right.  (I say allegedly because I often see people arguing for the same idea when they believe they are representing opposite sides to an issue).

The line I saw represented the difference between people willing to give the President a chance or to at least analyze the data / fact side of his proposals before commenting versus those who wanted to hate or trash him simply for the emotional sake of doing so.

I was discussing his speech with a friend of mine and the importance of fact checking his speech without blindly discarding it when a person I have never met tossed this interesting statement into the conversation, claiming that President Trump’s policies will adversely impact women’s health as well as clean air and water.

The statement in itself is fair enough – someone is using their right to express an opinion.

However, as past and current teams who have worked with and for me know, any statement or position provided to me will always be responded to with:

Why do you say / do / recommend / believe this?

How do you know?

In fact, they know that they should have the answers to these questions before presenting any statement or solution to me.

And so in that spirit, I responded with a request for data.

One never knows what one will receive on social media when requesting facts but I will always give a person a chance to explain themselves and their positions.

The person responded by saying that that President chose an EPA Administrator who wants to get rid of the EPA.

Fair enough.  When I again asked for evidence that this was the case and for evidence that women’s health issues would arise from the POTUS’ policies, this person responded that they feared the total elimination of the EPA.

Ok – we’ve already established that this is her fear but she cited the problem itself as evidence to justify the reality of the problem.

So after I requested proof that the EPA would be eliminated (her words), she indicated that no one could predict the future (but she had already done so by predicting the elimination of the EPA) and that asking for data was a ridiculous standard.

When I asked her why asking for data was a ridiculous standard, she fell back on an old trick, turning the debate around so suddenly I was supposedly the one who had made a statement that required supporting evidence.

So now I need to prove she is wrong, even though she hasn’t proven that her large claims have any data or evidence to support them.

But it was the final part of the conversation that caused me to realize that this “discussion” wasn’t really going anywhere useful.

When I pointed out that she had claimed that the EPA was dead (eliminated was her exact word), she responded with a denial that she had ever said such a thing.

When I sent her a screen shot where she contradicted herself by claiming it would be eliminated and that we were now in a circular argument, she vanished.

Meanwhile, someone observing the interaction sent me a private note telling me that perhaps I should stay off social media.

To this person, I ask this question:

Why – so that emotion-laden, rhetoric-armed, fact-less people can roam around, inject themselves into conversations, attempt to whip up hysteria / fear and then vanish when presented with a request for facts or proof that their alleged reality is mine also?

In other words ….

So that opposite sides to every issue will be eliminated by being whipped into silence?

I was curious who this person was and so I looked up her personal persona.

It turns out that this person is the Senior Director of International Compensation and Benefits at Visa (a very credible, respectable organization).  She was educated at Cornell so lack of education is not the issue neither does she represent the “bored unemployed directionless” group that some people suggest represents the bulk of anti-Trump folks.

So she has influence – the question then became “does she use this influence in a useful, effective way?”

In exploring her other public sharings about how happy she was to be marching against President Trump, I came upon this nugget that she shared

And so as I looked at her Facebook posts about all the marches she is participating in, her drive-by argument with me that produced nothing of any benefit to anyone and this cartoon, I realize that she is representative of something that is killing America:

The lack of ability or interest to use facts and data in the form of a compelling discussion that convinces someone else that their position / belief is worthy of exploration with an eye towards convincing someone else to change their position or at least encourage people to find middle ground on something being explored.

After all, that is how we grow, teach, learn and become better as a species and as a society as we seek common ground to make the world a better place.

When instead, we use emotion, fear (and for some, intimidation) only, we are less likely to convince anyone of anything and will produce little of any real, tangible value.

Meanwhile, the things we fear will continue to grow, either in reality or in our mind, since we are not actually offering solutions to problems real or imagined.

As for this person, if a person wonders out loud whether they are creating or destroying today, then I know what kind of person I am dealing with.

It’s a “my way or the highway” person.

The last time I checked, I haven’t discovered too many people who created a better world because they wondered which of two choices was best – creation or destruction.

How about you?

I prefer creation and collaboration towards a solution – perhaps I’m misguided.

The Bottom Line

The noise that surrounds the POTUS is not “his fault”.  America has been forgetting more and more over the years (and across many administrations) that we solve problems by offering a hand instead of a fist, by offering facts instead of emotion, by suggesting a position instead of playing “king of the mountain”, by listening instead of just talking (or shouting) and that respectful, fact-based, collaborative dialog is FAR more likely to produce a better world than merely folding our arms defiantly and telling everyone else they are wrong “just because”.

If we allow current trends to continue, where rhetoric-laden, fear-based shouting carries the day, we may at some point create a world that actually embodies everything that everyone fears.

And if that happens, shouting won’t matter then.

If that happens, we may not have a government that allows the sharing of opinions towards common goals.

In fact, we may not have a government at all.

And by then, people who like to complain can complain all they want.

The rest won’t listen – they will be too busy just surviving.

Is that the best we can create and the best way we can create it?

Is that the best role model we can present for our children as to how a better world gets created?

I don’t think so.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS People protesting against the POTUS’ policies “just because” like to quote people like Hillary Clinton or Nelson Mandela.  Perhaps these two quotes would serve of value to those people.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed. - Nelson Mandela

What we have to do... is to find a way to celebrate our diversity and debate our differences without fracturing our communities. - Hillary Clinton

We need to take the high road together lest we all end up somewhere far less desirable that we want or deserve.

But to deserve better, we must prove it and work together towards it.

Otherwise, we do get what we deserve but it’s often far less than we desire.

Whose fault is that?

Border Security: When Security And Secrecy Legislation Collide

Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then. - Philip K. Dick

Sloppy language leads to sloppy thought, and sloppy thought to sloppy legislation. - Dick Cavett

The #1206 “fiction” series continues …

---

“Look, I simply cannot give up my phone for you”, Joe Salimi exclaimed in frustration, his heart rate increasing quickly.

“Sir, if you do not turn over your laptop and your mobile device, I cannot allow you to enter the country”, the border services agent said firmly but politely.

“I don’t understand this”, Joe said, “My devices have extremely sensitive information on them and I don’t think you have the security classification necessary to look at them.  I’m a Pentagon contractor for bloody sake.”

“My orders are clear, sir”, replied the border services agent calmly, “I have the right to inspect all electronic devices in the possession of people entering the country, I have the right to retain possession of those devices for as long as I see fit and I have the right to deny entry to anyone who does not comply with my request.”

“Well, can I at least call my boss to ask him about it?”, Joe asked.

“No, sir”, replied the border services agent, “No calls are permitted in this area and it wouldn’t matter what your boss said anyway as he doesn’t have jurisdiction in this matter.”

Joe shook his head in frustration, sighed and then passed the border services agent his cell phone and laptop.

The border services agent thanked him and passed the devices to a colleague who connected them to a laptop.

An hour later, Joe was welcomed home by the border services agent and allowed to enter the country with his cell phone and laptop.

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Three Months Later

A group of angry, desperate men sat around a boardroom table.

At the head of the table, the leader of the room could not contain his anger.

“I don’t give a rat’s behind how it happened”, he expostulated, “We have traced the leak of highly classified information back to Joe’s laptop and I want his ass on a platter.”

“I’ve spoken to Joe repeatedly”, Joe’s manager responded, “And he claims that his devices have never been out of his possession.  We have inspected his devices and have not found any instance of compromise on any of them.  We have rerun his background checks and he is completely clean.  So Joe and frankly, all of us, are at a complete loss as to how information known only to his group could have been obtained by someone else.”

“Just f’ing great”, the leader exploded, “How in the hell am I going to explain this to the President?”

There were shrugs around the table as no one claimed to have an answer.

“There is one other thing”, someone offered from the back of the room, “Well, actually two more things.”

“Oh?”, asked the leader in an exasperated tone, “What now?”

“Well”, the person in the back of the room began, “We believe the information has made it to the Chinese through North Korea, likely originating from Iran.  And …..”

The person paused for a moment before the leader yelled, “And?”

“Well”, the person said hesitatingly, “The press has found out.”

The room exploded in arguments as the reality of their situation crashed down upon them.

---

Somewhere in the Middle East

In a hot, stuffy room somewhere in the Middle East, three men discussed the events of the day.

“So where are we?”, their leader asked.

“Well”, began the taller of his colleagues, “In an effort to secure the border, American authorities still require people entering the country to turn over their electronic devices for inspection.  Our brothers inside their border security service have been able to glean quite a bit of information as a result, information that commands quite good money on the black market.  Russia, China and North Korea are paying a lot of money from what we have been able to obtain so far. Beyond classified information there is also sensitive business information of interest to business competitors around the world.”

“Very good”, their leader replied.

“Yes and no”, the shorter of the colleagues responded, “There is talk that their legislation will be amended such that people of a certain security level or higher will soon be exempt from this search.”

“Oh great”, the taller of the colleagues responded, “Our sources of information will dry up when this happens.”

“Not so”, replied the shorter man, “Once this happens, our brothers within those higher security ranks will then be able to pass through border services without being checked, which in turn will enable us to get information in and out of the country undetected.  That is is ultimately our hope in the first place.”

“So you see”, replied the leader, “Either way we win. Rather than sit down and build a comprehensive strategy to defeat us, the Americans have proceeded from one knee-jerk response to another, each one creating loopholes for us as a result of a lack of careful consideration on their part regarding the situation at-hand.  Their citizens continue to be burdened as a result and continue to grow more and more agitated with their government, with larger scale unrest an ever increasing possibility.  At the same time, their country bleeds money in an effort to stop us.  We are still winning.”

The other two men nodded silently in agreement.

To be continued.

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© 2017 – Harry Tucker – All Rights Reserved

Blog Post Background / Supporting Data

This musing was sparked by a news item over the weekend where a NASA employee with a high security clearance was forced to reveal the contents of his mobile device to a border services agent with a lower security clearance rating.  The story is here - Border Agent Demands NASA Scientist Unlock Phone Before Entering the Country.

While it could be argued that even with a lower security clearance, border service agents are completely secure, they are in fact only human beings and they themselves can be compromised as noted here (using TSA in this example, but the example stands as a warning) - TSA Fails to ID 73 Airport Employees With Links to Terrorism.

Human beings are always the weakest link and no amount of vetting is perfect nor is incessant legislation a solution.

The more layers of security and legislation we layer onto border security, the more complexity and loopholes we create.

In the end, we will spend billions of dollars more on security and the need for ever-diminishing privacy will continue to prevail.  The ideas of perfect security and total freedom / privacy cannot co-exist, after all.  One has to defer to the other at some point – the one that loses is determined by which of the two we deem to be the highest priority.

And when highly classified material is exposed, who do we blame – the person who had it in their possession when it was obtained or the legislators who created the complexity that allowed the compromise to take place?

Securing our national borders is critical.

Securing classified data is equally critical.

And just as security and freedom / privacy dance for priority in a complex dichotomy, so too does securing our borders and our classified data.

And with anything of this complexity, there is always someone out there waiting to exploit the loopholes.

As I said, human beings are always the weakest link.

When legislators understand this, perhaps they will take the time to look more strategically at things and take fewer knee-jerk reactions that technically don’t actually solve anything but which add additional burden on the average law-abiding citizen who has nothing to do with any of this.  Meanwhile, those whose behavior we are trying to predict and prevent still have an opportunity to execute their intention.

The tail is wagging the dog with this problem.

The big question is – what is the alternative?

And does it serve to someone’s advantage to actually NOT solve this problem while promoting the problem as larger than it really is?

After all, in the last ten years, over 280,000 Americans have died through gun violence but guns are not banned.

Over 300,000 Americans have died in the last ten years in motor vehicle accidents but motor vehicles are not banned.

Over 4.5 million Americans have died in the last ten years from smoking-related illness but cigarettes are not banned.

Meanwhile, foreign-born terrorists accounted for 3,024 deaths on American soil from 1975 through 2015. But 2,983 of those deaths came on 9/11 alone, with the remaining 41 deaths resulting from terrorism on US soil in that 40-year period.

All that being said, the latter attracts a lot of time, energy and money to prevent.

Why?

I don’t know what the answer is.

Do you?

Series Origin

This series, a departure from my usual musings, is inspired as a result of conversations with former senior advisors to multiple Presidents of the United States, senior officers in the US Military and other interesting folks as well as my own professional background as a Wall St. / Fortune 25 strategy advisor and large-scale technology architect.

While this musing is just “fiction” (note the quotes) and a departure from my musings on technology, strategy, politics and society, as a strategy guy, I do everything for a reason and with a measurable outcome in mind. :-)

This “fictional” musing is a continuation of the #1206 series noted here.

Being Drawn Into Anger? Understand the Downside First

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. – Aristotle

When anger rises, think of the consequences. – Confucius

With the final remnants of the most recent snowfall behind us, I took some time from a crazy schedule today to conduct some business with my local bank branch.  While the snowmelt is upon us, the parking lot was still snow-covered and so with no visible parking spot lines visible, I parked next to the line of vehicles and proceeded towards the door.

As I approached the door of the bank, a man approached me and said “Hey a-hole”.

I turned to see who was speaking and he said “Yeah, you f*ing a-hole, do you know how to f*ing park inside a f*ing parking space?”

I indicated that the parking lot was snow covered, that actual parking spaces could not be easily located and so I had parked next to the line of cars where in fact, none of the cars were likely in “official” parking spaces.

“Well aren’t you a f*ing stupid a-hole”, he replied and he advanced towards me with a string of foul-mouthed phrases.

I replied as I maintained space between us that if he could have politely pointed out an actual parking space, I would have been happy to park in said space.  I also indicated that I didn’t appreciate being spoken to as I was being addressed and that calmly speaking to people is an easier, better way to address problems, whether real or perceived.

He told me that he was trying to teach me a lesson (using colorful metaphors as he told me this), I ignored him, recorded his plate # in case it mattered later and went into the bank.  As I left him, he continued his litany of profanity behind me.

Technically the odds were stacked against him.  I stand at 6’3”, I’m physically active and I have a martial arts background.  He was perhaps 10-15 years older and was grossly out of shape and so his best option should something physical ensue was the bottle of Windex he was using to clean his windshield.

He was taking a  big chance.  If I had a temper easily tipped over the edge, if I was being treated for issues such as anger management, if I was having a bad day or if I was one of those people who liked finding trouble when it was presented to me, his day (and mine) may have ended differently.

That’s the problem with unrestrained, unnecessary anger - things can get out of hand quickly and the results can be problematic or even catastrophic.

As one person present noted during the incident, my being calm and speaking to him calmly and respectfully seemed to anger him more until he seemed ready to lose control altogether.  They also pointed out to me that he was parked in the one spot that was cleared of snow, a parking spot designated for drivers with disabilities, but he had no such tag that allowed him to park in that spot.  Righteousness, when applied inconsistently, can create complexity.  Let he who is without sin …. well …. you know.

What he doesn’t realize is that by walking away from him, I may have saved his Life or mine.  I doubt if he would thank me though – he likely would have found something else to be angry over or may have been angered by the fact that he could not induce me into a more complex situation (there are people in the world who intentionally create drama for too many reasons to discuss here).

As an aside, the woman in front of me inside the bank, who later left with him when she had finished her business, seemed genuinely nice and gentle with bank staff.  I hope for her sake that she doesn’t suffer abuse at the hands of this individual although statistics suggest otherwise.

Anger is never the answer.

However ….

People writing op-eds in Berkeley newspapers this week indicated that the violent, damaging riots on campus in the last week were justified, even if people were hurt and private property was destroyed.

Russia and the US continue to believe that continued sabre rattling and troop build-ups in Europe will produce what they desire (whatever that is).

People tearing each other up in the streets and in social media over differences of political color are not solving any problems either but they continue to do it unabated just in case a solution manifests by accident.

The list goes on.

That’s the problem with anger – it converts us into irrational, illogical animals who are focused on power, superiority and winning at any cost, having lost sight of the potential downside should things escalate beyond the point which we anticipated and for which we are not prepared to handle.

We must also be careful when others attempt to induce us into “battle mode”.  A person induced into becoming angry is vulnerable to being manipulated, controlled or directed, allowing that person to become an agent for someone else’s agenda.

And when that happens, nobody wins.

The Bottom Line

Intentionally creating a hostile situation or allowing someone to draw us into one invites us into a potential escalation that may have unforeseen, irrevocable effects that hurt a lot of innocent people.

Unless your Life is in trouble, count to ten first and keep talking (not shouting).  It matters - you may save a relationship, a business or a Life in doing so.

As for the owner of plate R*R-5*0, you owe me a deep debt of gratitude.

But don’t push your luck – some day, someone may give you the trouble you seek and will speak to you with their fists (or a weapon) instead of trying to calm you down.

And if that happens, everyone loses.

Demand and give respect – stay calm in the face of anxiety and anger.  Fact-filled, respectful dialog solves most problems.

That is the only way we will solve the problems that the world faces today.

If you believe you have another way and can prove it works, I’m all ears.

But don’t shout at me – I am tone-deaf to the ignorant.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS It is always interesting to observe the reaction of an aggressive individual who expects their target to cower in fear or to respond in anger.  When neither happens, it often freezes them in place or causes them to get even more angry.  In my many years in NYC, we assume that the other person we are interacting with is either crazier than we are or has a gun (or both), providing additional impetus to keep our wits about us.

After the Candlelight Vigils and Demonstrations … Then What?

Action expresses priorities. - Mahatma Gandhi

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. - Andrew Jackson

Some years ago, a former colleague of mine set up a 10km walkathon to show women in Africa that we in the west felt their pain when it came to the fact that they had to walk 10km to get clean water.

I thought this was a great cause and so I asked what the walkathon was producing.  Was it raising money to drill a well closer to a village so that women wouldn’t have to walk as far to get clean water?  Was it raising awareness so that other people would be inspired to take action to help people get better access to clean water?

“Nope”, the coordinator replied proudly, “The sole purpose is so that the women in that village know that we stand in support of their struggle.”

“Ok”, I responded, “but you are only promoting this on Facebook with no funds raised, no large-scale media attention or anything else.  So you are counting on these women in a remote village in the most destitute, desolate part of Africa to:

1. Have electricity

2. Have Internet access

3. Have a Facebook account

4. Know that you are doing this and to go to the right place in Facebook at the right time to witness your statement of camaraderie

5. Care what an overly well-fed white guy in Canada does once to feel good, after which he climbs back into his SUV, goes home and gorges himself on more food in one meal than they will see in a week.”

Meanwhile, the women in Africa still need to walk the same distance to obtain clean water.

“But I will feel good about it”, was his response.

Well, if that’s all there is to making a difference in the world, then I have a recommendation:

Let’s all take 5 minutes tomorrow to think good thoughts or say a prayer for everyone, congratulate ourselves and God for optimizing our contribution to the world and then go about living a life focused on our own needs instead of actually fixing the things around us.

Let’s not forget to tell everyone else about how good it felt also, preferably in an awesome display of social media prowess.

Or if that’s too much effort:

Spread some feel-good or feel-bad stuff on social media (truth, respect and relevance don’t matter) from the safety of a coffee shop (or perhaps while watching the Kardashians or some other mindless thing on TV), trash people whose opinions are different than yours, “Like” a bunch of things that resonate with your personal biases and then spend the rest of the day bragging about it.

Both are equally effective techniques, aren’t they?

They are but not in the way you would like to believe.

Meanwhile …

Tonight, Calgary and other cities across Canada will be having candlelight vigils to remember the people massacred in the mosque in Quebec City on January 29, 2017.

Throughout America, people are protesting their President on the streets and spreading hysteria through social media, throwing facts, truths, collaboration, respect and an eye towards solutions out the window in an attempt to create a viral contagion of their own fear, ignorance, hatred or personal agenda. (Note: This is not to suggest that President Trump hasn't done his own share of things out of potential fear or ignorance. However, meeting fear or ignorance with same plays to the people who enjoy such tactics and NO ONE wins from the escalation that ensues).

But what will these events really produce?

Will they stop future violence?

Will they somehow cause their President to be removed from office or cause him to suddenly start seeing their way as “the right way”?

Hardly.

We are emotional beings and it is normal, natural (and sometimes healthy) to express these emotions.

However, when the expressions of grief, love, sharing, caring and outrage have been expressed, it’s time to ask what we need to do next to prevent a repeat of whatever it is we are assembling for.

Because if we are unwilling to take truth-based, respectful, goal-inspired, collaborative action, then we must be prepared to fill our days with more vigils and demonstrations as well as more angst, anger, worry and anxiety (or comfort sharing, even though such sharing will not prevent future acts of hatred).

Because emotion expressed without action taken doesn’t change reality.

Reality couldn’t care less about what you think or want.

It is created by what you do (or not do).

The Bottom Line

John F Kennedy once said, “There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.”

Too many people today allow their feelings and opinions to be defined by blind, lazy, hateful sharing on social medial designed to prey upon their emotions and to manipulate them into acting on behalf of the needs and intentions of others or to diminish them, convincing them that they can’t make a difference.

Politicians also exploit such emotional tactics to recruit their minions to do their dirty work for them while the politicians smugly wait on the sidelines and harvest the result.

Meanwhile, the change that is needed remains unrealized, waiting for more people with courage to do more than give lip service to what they believe is important in standing up to ignorance, intimidation, hatred and lies with a focus on truly creating a better world.

Explore whether the inaction or hate-filled sharing of others has made a demonstrable difference and you will discover that despite all their efforts, the things that they are complaining about continue unabated (or grow in intensity,frequency and impact).  If you want specific examples, explore what things like Occupy Wall Street really accomplished.

By their example, you will discover what you need to do to really make a difference in the world.

Otherwise you are just offering lip service as others do.

And of all the shortages we have in the world, lip service is not one of them.

If you don’t have the courage to take positive action, if your words don’t inspire others to take positive action or if you prefer to spread hatred and negativity, then you are in for a long, painful, frustrating experience on Earth.

And if all you have to offer is negativity, intimidation and problem creation, it could be argued that you are contributing to what is wrong on this planet instead of the unlimited potential that collaborative, respectful, fact-filled, compassionate, passionate human beings can create.

Which group of people do you wish to belong to – the problem creators or the solution creators?

Be sure to choose wisely (as measured by your actions), otherwise your time spent on Earth not only doesn’t live up to your potential and responsibility but it will be pretty miserable also.

Is that the way you really want to live?

Is this the example you would like to establish for your children, your family, your colleagues and your friends?

Are you sure?

It’s fine to initially express emotion but then ask yourself what your actions and not your mouth (or the dark recesses of your brain)  have to say about making a measurable difference.

Create a great day because merely having one is too passive an experience and waiting for someone else to create it is too frustrating, anxiety-ridden and random in manifestation.

If you need a boost of courage, there are others who are waiting to help you.

They and the world are waiting for you.

What are you waiting for?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Related Posts:

• Lip Service–The Solution to Everything
• Thoughts Without Action–The World’s Greatest Threat

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Addendum – Sad Realities of Respect and Results

It is an unfortunate reality that many people do not want respectful dialog and get quite upset when someone suggests that their actions of anger and hatred do not produce positive results.  For some, the mere request for respectful, fact-filled dialog produce hateful responses as the one that occurred as a comment in the blog post Facts – What a Pain in the You-Know-What.

In an interaction I had with a long-time friend a couple of weeks ago, he kept insisting on calling people he didn’t like “a moron” under the guise of demanding respectful dialog and solutions.  In my requests of him to explain how his children would view his behavior, whether or not such behavior provided a good role model for them and how he would respond if people kept calling him a moron, he kept responding with “what Donald Trump would do and what kind of role model Donald Trump is”.  Multiple requests to ignore what Donald Trump would do and to reply with what he would do and what kind of role model he offers to his kids were repeatedly deflected by himself and his colleagues.

If we wish to see change, we must be the change we wish to see (Gandhi).  Unfortunately, too many are too blind to see beyond their own hypocrisy and lack of authenticity.

Facts – What a Pain in the You-Know-What

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. - Mark Twain

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. - John Adams

I took a break from a phenomenally hectic schedule this morning to skim the social media world and once again I was reminded “Why did I do that?”.

In skimming the world of the interesting, the dull, the respectful, the disrespectful, the intellectual and the ignorant, I happened to make an observation along the lines of “For the women who are protesting all the bad things that they know President Elect Trump will do to them, why can’t they put the same energy into all of the areas that we know for certain where women are not being treated respectfully (or live in fear of their Life)?”.

Seems like a fair enough question to me – why don’t we put our effort into EVERYTHING that we are aware of that challenges a woman’s rights to equality and safety?

The blowback from this observation tells me that I was wrong for daring to believe that all women who face difficulty should be defended and for that I apologize.

I was accosted by three people I have known for a long time, citing a lot of interesting “facts” to prove that in fact, I’m completely out of touch.

For example ….

Did you know that Trump is going to revoke all rights for woman in the US, subjecting them to second-class (or lower if that’s possible) citizenship?

Did you know that he will also do the same for all gay people and reverse all the gains the LGBTQ community has made over the years?

Did you ALSO know that he will receive a cash payment of $1 Billion from Vladimir Putin for every Baltic state that America allows Russia to take unchallenged?

I didn’t know these things and for that, I must apologize again.  I appear to be the last person on Earth to know these things.  It is difficult, after all, to live a normal, busy, productive, non-paranoid, non-conspiracy-laden, contributing Life and not be in-the-know regarding everything that everyone might do just because someone says they will do it.  I could digress into a conversation regarding projection from a psychiatrist viewpoint but alas much has been written about this by people much smarter and informed on the subject than I.

When I asked for sources to be cited (I’m a data guy, after all), then the “discussion” turned towards my ignorance of facts and that my demands for data were always inappropriate.

One person who I demanded data of insisted that he couldn’t predict the future.  When I replied that predicting a new version of the Iran Contra deal (cash for Baltic state invasion) was in fact a prediction, the conversation devolved into me being an idiot because I dared to even ask such questions without accepting everyone’s claims at face value.

I always thought great claims demanded great evidence, but again, I’m wrong and for that, I apologize again for believing that I was entitled to an opinion and for not asking for permission to share it with anyone who might disagree or be offended by it.

Data Matters

As a strategy guy, data matters to me.  People in my field use a blend of data, past performance, models and yes, emotions and biases in predicting things as best as we can.

However, no matter how strong our emotions and biases are, if we can’t find data to use, most of us have to wait before we jump up and down in elation or cower in fear just because someone or something doesn’t appear to be in alignment with our desires, interests, values, characters and/or morals.

We also believe in the checks and balances in place in the system to prevent people from going over the top and violating rights and freedoms that we hold sacred.

If someone deviates from that in a way that we consider unacceptable, we believe the system will take care of it.  If the system doesn’t want or choose to address such behavioral aberrations, we have a MUCH larger problem than just the paranoid anticipation of what one man might do.

And so as I reflected on the conversation, it occurs to me that respectful, fact-based, minimally-biased (there is not such thing as nonbiased) conversation doesn’t appear to exist much in society any more.

Why is this?

I believe it is because we don’t teach such skills, assuming that such abilities will naturally evolve in the members of our society.

However, since we are the products of our environment, the likelihood of such abilities evolving without being taught are slim to none. In fact, such people would be seen as the exception and not the norm and we all know how people who stand out make us feel.

If you don’t believe me, try saying something factual (in a loaded space, e.g.politics) on social media and let me know how that experiment goes.

However, if you want to read a great book on evidence-based, minimally-biased dialog, how to create such a dialog and how to defend against someone who abhors such dialog, I highly recommend the book How To Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass - A Critical Thinker's Guide to Asking the Right Questions.

It is brilliant, insightful and witty (and, shudder, fact-based).  If it were embraced by more people, society would be better equipped to solve the problems in the world. 

On a side note, I know that if the author, Dr. DiCarlo, were present during my argument this morning, he would have loved how I handled it and would have praised my responses.

How do I know this?

I just know – you’re an idiot if you don’t agree with me.

Calm down – I’m kidding (someone is already writing a response to me, having been offended by what I just said and unwilling to see how my thoughts unfold).

The Bottom Line

It is ok to not know everything in the world. 

But before we champion something as a truth, we should know that it is in fact true.  If we use truth as a hammer, we should at least know that we can back up our claims with verifiable data (and even then, there are more persuasive techniques than hammering people).

There’s an old “Newfie” joke (I’m from Newfoundland, don’t get offended by the term on my behalf) that goes this way:

How do you keep a Newfoundlander in suspense?

I will tell him tomorrow.

There is another joke that goes the same way.

How do you make the bully, the manipulator and the ignorant angry?

Ask them for data to backup their claims or the hammer that they are using.

Humble, normal, balanced people will acknowledge their mistakes, apologize if necessary, adjust their behavior where appropriate and the world is a little better as a result.

Others fall to the lowest form of dialog and debate, using the personal attack against someone else because they have nothing else to offer in backing up their claims and assertions.

The funny thing is that such people believe that those of us who demand data are a pain in the ass.

The reality is that these people are the real pain in the ass, creating a world where problem elimination, solution finding, collaboration and the like play second fiddle to promoting fear, disrespect, intimidation and the like under the guise of “making the world better”.

Buy Dr. DiCarlo’s book.  You will not be disappointed and will be equipped to make your world and the world of others a better place.

In fact, you’re an idiot if you don’t buy it and absolutely love it.

Just kidding.

Or maybe I’m not.

I guess it depends on what type of dialog you like to participate in – the problem solving kind or the problem creating kind.

Create a great day!  Make a positive difference – it matters.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Irony: It is ironic that the people who claim to be defending the rights and freedoms of others are often in fact the people who deny that right in others.  It is also ironic that the people who claim to be upholding the highest of moral and ethical standards are in fact guilty of things themselves.  One of my most vocal critics today was investigated for violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a fact that if revealed would prompt an immediate liable suit (even though it's a fact and not a rumor).

It's an interesting concept that we allow facts to slide when criticizing others but we demand the highest standards of others when defending our own truths. I wonder if these people put as much energy into their careers, families, friends, hobbies, service to others and knowledge acquisition as they do spreading rumor, conjecture and fear.  We must also be careful to avoid being hypocritical as in the case of Meryl Streep who applauded Roman Polanski (who plead guilty to unlawful sex with a minor and fled the country to avoid incarceration) for his Oscar win while denouncing Donald Trump as a man who has no respect for women.

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Author note: I am NOT a Trump supporter. If I have wound you up convincing you that I am pro-Trump, save your breath before sending me hate mail. However, I prefer to see what he will create and would participate in using the checks and balances in the system to stop him if he screws up. I don't have the time nor the interest to waste my brain wondering what he might do and spread hatred and fear to support such unproductive exercises.

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PS A few years back before oil prices went into the toilet, myself and a number of other colleagues sent messages to Provincial Governments in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador cautioning them to adjust budget expectations because oil was about to fall precipitously.  We provided projections of $75 a barrel or lower, provided data and cited sources from within the energy and financial sectors.  We were told to stop fear mongering and in response, we asked for data to refute our warning.  We never heard back from them and when their economies went into the toilet, we were not surprised to hear them announce how surprised they were by the turn of events in the energy sector.

Last week, a Minister in the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador shared some intentions with me and I asked what data supported their intentions.  I didn’t say that their intentions were right or wrong but was curious what data they used.  The reply was that if people like me were as smart as we claimed (I never claimed anything) then there would be no need for the government to have to solve problems in the first place.

I see – I guess I owe the people of Newfoundland and Labrador an apology also since I am now responsible for the economic disaster in progress out there.

I’m now feeling very guilty and inadequate – maybe I should submit to those who appear to know better.

Unfortunately, they shout louder but not more intelligently.

The Bottom Bottom Line

Being caught off guard by a surprise event is forgivable.

Lying or insulting people because data suggests something politically or publicly unsavory and unpopular is about to happen (or not happen) is not forgivable.

That’s the problem with data.

It doesn’t care about how you feel about it and ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

It only makes the problem worse or creates a problem if we project using emotion or bias in absence of data

And once we know a problem exists (or we create one), WE become the larger problem if we choose not to do our best to address it as strategically, factually, respectfully and collaboratively as we can.

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Take a Valium

Gwynne Dyer wrote a great article urging everyone to calm down regarding President Elect Trump.  It can be found here - Everybody Take a Valium.

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Trump, WikiLeaks and Russia

A guest post by Gwynne Dyer, an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

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When a Fox News reporter asked Donald Trump about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange back in 2010, just after Assange had released a huge cache of secret US diplomatic cables, the reality TV star had no doubts: “I think it's disgraceful, I think there should be like the death penalty or something.”

Circumstances change, however, and smart people with big brains know when it’s time to switch sides.  It was WikilLeaks, once again, that revealed the hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee that did such damage to Hillary Clinton’s campaign last summer. But Trump now readily accepts Assange’s word that he didn’t get those emails from the Russians.

Trump has been having a problem with the main US intelligence agencies, which unanimously insist that the Russians did indeed hack the DNC’s emails, and that they passed them to WikiLeaks (through an intermediary) in order to damage Clinton’s presidential election campaign. “Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” as the joint intelligence report put it.

So Trump was very happy to be able to reply (in a tweet, of course) that “Assange... said Russians did not give him the info!” After all, what motive could Assange have for lying about it?

Well, there is the fact that Assange has been living in one room in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the past four years, in order to avoid being extradited to the United States on espionage charges that could get him up to 45 years in prison. Donald Trump is the one person who could make all that trouble go away, once he becomes the president, so doing him a favour now might be a wise move on Assange’s part.

Assange would not even have to lie outright, because the Russians would obviously never give him the emails directly. There would have to be one or more persons in between, because WikiLeaks is not in the business of taking leaks from governments. Assange might have strong suspicions about who originally hacked the DNC, but he did not necessarily go all out to confirm them.

Moreover, as Trump points out, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation  are the same organisations that cooked up the evidence for Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” so that President George W. Bush could invade Iraq.

Nevertheless, the US intelligence agencies are probably right to blame their Russian counterparts for the hacks that caused the Clinton campaign such problems. President Vladimir Putin has been quite open about preferring Trump to Clinton, and the leaks definitely gave a boost to Trump’s election campaign in late July and August.

On the other hand, that happened so long before the actual vote in November that it’s impossible to say if it had any effect on the outcome.

The event that probably did give Trump his very narrow margin of victory (100,000 votes spread between three key swing states) was FBI director James Comey’s bizarre decision to declare that Hillary Clinton was facing another investigation only eleven days before the vote.

It’s all might-have-beens, and the only reason it has become controversial is Trump’s extremely thin skin. He is questioning the intelligence services’ conclusions about Russian interference because he believes (wrongly) that they undermine the validity of his election victory. But his strong sympathy for the Russian position, though driven by perceived personal interests, is a refreshing break from the usual Washington paranoia.

He said it himself (in another tweet): “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only stupid people or fools would think that it is bad. We have enough problems around the world without yet another one.”

This is a perfectly reasonable statement. Trump’s views on China give cause for alarm, but his desire for a reconciliation with Russia makes more sense than the reflex hostility that both Hillary Clinton and the US intelligence services bring to the relationship. Vladimir Putin is a player, and sometimes he plays rough, but his recent meddling in the American election is far less than the massive US interference in Russian elections in the 1990s.

In seeking a rapprochement with Moscow, Trump should not make the mistake of accepting Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Changing borders by force (even if most of the local population approves of it) has been banned by international law for more than half a century, and we should not start making exceptions to that rule now.

But while the United States never accepted the old Soviet Union’s illegal annexation of the Baltic states in 1940, it did not let that stand in the way of improving the US-Soviet relationship as the Cold War drew to an end.

There is much that the United States and Russia could usefully cooperate on now, starting with putting an end to the war in Syria. On this issue, at least, Trump is right and Obama, Clinton and the spooks are wrong.

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A guest post by Gwynne Dyer, an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.  Reproduced with permission from the author.

The US Election–A Warning For America

The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action. - Felix Adler

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example. - George Bernard Shaw

I remember as a kid taking high school physics that I was fascinated by vector analysis, the notion of netting out multiple forces with different directions and vector quantities such as displacement, velocity, force and acceleration to find out what ultimate direction and other vector quantities an object being acted upon by these forces would exhibit.  (Who knows – maybe they teach this in kindergarten now)

And now as I watch people continue to triumph or melt down down over the election result, my memories turn back to my old physics days, about how a result is the net effect of many of forces coming to bear at a single place and point in time.

But first a background story that caused my old physics days to come to mind.

A long-time friend of more than 25 years recently said goodbye to me because he couldn’t live with the notion that people couldn’t have differences of opinion.

He and I were both immigrants to America.

We both found significant success in America.

But here we diverged a little.

I embraced the nation, being grateful every day that it accepted me as one of its own and that I had equal opportunity to thrive and seize success if I wanted it.  When the Star Spangled Banner would play at an event, my eyes would tear up in gratitude to be afforded such opportunity that few in the world dared to hope for.

The nation wasn’t perfect but there were many places in the world that were MUCH worse.

Our differences of opinion were significant although not immediately apparent to me until recently.

I believe a nation’s flag is sacred and while its protection and respectful treatment is not enshrined under law, I believe that to smear the flag is the ultimate insult to a nation.

He believes that burning the flag is a useful form of protest (although he can’t explain how or why).

I believe that our armed forces, law enforcement and first responders in general need to be honored every day for the incredible, unselfish sacrifices they make so that we can go about our business and reach for our dreams.

He believes that the armed forces are an embarrassing example of a primal, degenerate nature that don’t deserve our respect and therefore should not be honored in any way.

I believe in the notion that if we spread any kind of information, it should be authenticated, validated, shared respectfully and built around making the world a better place.

He believes that any information is useful, including false or misleading information, if it accomplishes the objective.  He also believes that if this hurts people, then so be it – the ends justify the means.

We have many differences as is usually healthy amongst friends.

However, I drew the line recently when he began promoting pro-hatred rhetoric proven to be lies because he was so disappointed that Hillary Clinton had lost.  All was fair in terms of overthrowing the hateful person (in his eyes) that had become the President-elect.

“This man”, he said through his actions, “is an embarrassment to morals and ethics in America.  Look at how he treats others including ……” and he listed off a pile of stories that have already been established to not be true.

Feeling a little weary of this series of lectures, I asked him “If you believe so strongly about morals and ethics, why are you cheating on your wife?”

What followed was a blistering attack against me followed by the ever mature, ever useful (not) unfriending.

I am not judging him for cheating on his wife with someone much younger.

When my end-of-days arrives, I will have many things to atone for in my own Life as is true for most of us.

But what I do take umbrage over is when someone lectures others on morals, values and character while reserving the right to be none of the things they expect of others.

And that’s when I got to thinking about vectors in high school physics.

As I have noted in older blog posts:

Trump, for better or for worse, was elected fairly in the greatest democratic process on Earth (despite all its shortcomings).  That is something to be championed and not complained about.  As I noted in the past, Americans complaining about their President-elect fail to recognize that the winner is not an aberration of their society but is in fact a product of it.  Given that, who else could win other than someone who represents a natural evolution of their society?  If someone doesn’t like the result of the election, rather than examine the winner, we must examine the system that produced the winner.

Many, many complementary and opposing forces, created over generations, have come together to create the system we have now and the President we have elected.

If we don’t like the election process that was used, the process as it was executed (including by the media and in social media) and the result that it produced, it behooves us to look at the many forces that went into creating and using all three. 

When an object (or a President) is propelled in a certain direction in a certain way, it is not merely the actions of the object but the forces (or vector quantities) in place at that moment that propel the object.

The forces aren’t created spontaneously or from thin air.

They come from our actions.

Too often the things we claim to not like are merely the symptoms of a more complex problem or are projections based on our own biases and fears.  Knowing the difference between targeting the core issue versus the symptoms means the difference between finding a solution or immersing one’s self in insanity or an endless litany of complaining and/or feelings of victimhood.

The President-elect is not the problem.

We are.

The Bottom Line

The President-elect is the net effect of the thoughts, words and actions of all of us, both present and in our past.  It’s not only what we do but what we promote or condone in others – the end result being the net effect of what we do and what we allow over time.

If don’t like how he was created or what he is, we need to look less at him and more into the forces that have created him and propelled him into the position that he is in.

Such an analysis, while complex, difficult, painful and potentially embarrassing, will produce far more results than chanting slogans of hurt feelings in the streets of America or constantly sharing in social media how “I can’t stop crying” or “I’m leaving America”.

When we become cognizant of our thoughts, words and deeds, it occurs to us that the enemy may not be the person or process we don’t like.

It may be ourselves.

And for this reason, perhaps when we seek a better world without, that we begin by creating a better world within and in doing so, we enable our actions, not our desires, dreams or hypocritical standards, to create the world we believe we are capable of producing and that we claim to be entitled to.

We will always create the world we deserve, in business, in politics and in Life.

But a better world starts with what we believe we or the people around us deserve and then we take actions to create that which others deserve.

What do you and the people around you deserve?

Are you / they experiencing what you believe you / they deserve?

Is there a gap and if so, what are you doing about it?

If there is no gap, how do you know?

Be the change you wish to see while there is still time to create it

In service and servanthood,

Harry