Recent reporting in the US indicates that we have accepted, as a culture, a “new normal” of half-truths and blatant disregard for facts. Seriously? Yes, unfortunately, this is no lie. I wish I were kidding. Apparently, some will consider this is a virtue, a victory over the rule of law, reason, and unadulterated honest dealings. It isn’t.
Repeated lying, especially the “rinse, wash and reTweet” kind, eventually has its comeuppance. Drawing back the curtain of truth to reveal a squishy, truthy, ambiguous and slightly “magical” land, a universe where you can tell anyone that facts are for people too weak to imagine being a stronger, more confident leader? This has gone too far. The “Emperor’s New Clothes” may fit to a tee, but that’s still the ugliest suit I have ever seen!
But how do you reckon with “charming” liars who tell you what you want to hear, even (especially) if it doesn’t happen to be true? Humans are believed to have a predisposition to “situational” lying. The situation did it to me, make me do it, thus I cannot be held accountable. Who makes up this stuff? Apparently, some of us do, on a regular basis.
Being one’s word has to be more than how we feel in the moment. Sure, we all have occasional lapses, but true strength comes from having the integrity to clean up a misdirection before it turns into a mess.
Speaking of messes, there is tremendous social pressure to “believe” what others tell you, if you wish to be accepted. The need to belong or “affiliate” sometimes overrides the more rational and ethical part of the brain. It is a powerful opiate. This may be explain why there are those who buy into wild conspiracy theories that the rest of us know are not true, or at least such shared beliefs are so implausible (take QAnon for example) that there’s little reason to even check sources. Or how about whether or not Coronavirus was invented in a lab? I guess you’d have to ask the lab managers.
We say an idea is a conspiracy theory when we want to completely discount it and to discredit its speaker. People on both sides of the current US political polarization fall prey to a long list of bat-shit-crazy views, mostly a form of “group think” that is reckless, dangerous and often just sad.
Do we need to start a massive re-education program on critical thinking, the rule of law, and how science and other evidence-based practices can help quell the disinformation channel? Unfortunately, no such luck. It wouldn’t help because there are unexpected benefits of buying into conspiracy theories that seem to outweigh the risk of reputation loss or to being seen as mentally disturbed. Those who entertain and ultimately buy into such theories are now part of our culture, too, pushing rights to free speech to a place that has only recently begun self-correcting.
Further, the tone of discourse on this topic tends to be highly combative, no doubt out of righteous anger and frustration with those who follow those pesky little things called facts, or those (some would say) that think for themselves, not as the media wants them to think. That seems to include both those who lack imagination — and need to assume things are not as they appear — as well as those who apparently have too much of it.
“Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together [skillfully] is success.”
– Henry Ford
For my part, I can no longer gaze upon this world gone mad, where science is just an “alternative” set of facts to the “truth” that others see, and expect it to end well. Even during times of crisis, observing more than one set of facts with dispassion is like some rubber-necking motorist witnessing a slow-motion train wreck. The moral detritus is piling up, and the highways and byways of truth are clogged, choking and sputtering on the accumulating BS, even as the economy (once called the “global casino” by Fritjof Capra, now the title of a titular book on human-caused environmental issues), immune to what people think, has begun to find its “true calling” or higher purpose in several opportunities that deserve our full and unequivocal support. Money doesn’t care. So we have to.
Since this column is about business, I’ll now navigate away from politics to discuss the more important realm of money and meaning, supposedly the reason many of us choose to work in the first place. The political overlay is about context and how we treat each other.
Money & Meaning — what’s the cost/benefit of making a buck?
The purpose of money is not merely to perpetuate itself to make more of it. To many of us, making money is, by itself, devoid of meaning, so we must ascribe to it that which we find meaningful. We make it up. What has meaning for you? What matters most? Second most? I often suggest that any journey include at least three ways of measuring success. This will usually (if done right) reflect cherished values and principles.
If our values allow us to pursue wealth and luxury for its own sake, just to have wealth, or to be wealthy, no matter the means, then that outdated view of capitalism explains the unruly game that gets played in many circles. But what of human relations? Do we wish to stay inside this circle and only trade with those who will uphold a money-focused “ethics free zone,” or would we prefer to find richness, beauty and fulfillment in a wider circle, one that which includes those that may sharply differ from our own worldviews, but are nonetheless interested in mutual respect, dignity, and wholesomeness?
I guess the question reveals my bias … yes, there is a right answer, but maybe it is not so simple.
Now I’d like to use the current US “political theater” to highlight a few salient points. The clogging arteries of “truth and justice” do not end well for anybody, so we are starting to see an expose’ on “the game,” from both a linguistic and humanistic perspective. I’ll add my two cents to the mounting literature, some of it pleading, occasionally moralizing (if there is a choice of taking the “higher road” to a flourishing life, wouldn’t you take it?), because in my view, we simply cannot continue like this, socially distant, for now, but worlds apart. Enough is enough.
Is changing one’s mind a sign of strength or weakness? Yes. I mean, No.
A huge insult in politics is to call someone a “flip-flopper” and yet changing positions (based more on new information, or dawning awareness, not just political convenience) has become part and parcel of rewriting history, an attempt to “reframe” reality, to bend it, as some sort of a revisionist’s dream, stating and restating the world as we wished it were. As if the current position is the only one that matters and nothing that has come before matters? Admittedly, the American public has a short memory span, made even shorter by Twitter and other top-of-the-trees reports and voices that would like to matter. But to neglect recent history in favor of the one preferred by a determined group is just another deception that must be rejected.
Remember the saying, “If we knew better, we’d do better?” Guess what? We know better.
I once had a mediation gig in Kuwait. It was a very entrenched dispute that had gone completely off the rails. Every day, for nearly 3 weeks, the parties agreed to put their differences aside and declared a new day. This was inefficient, at best (although at that point it was the all they could do to show a willingness to restart talks without losing face). Later we did manage to talk about the past and learn from it, and go on to finish the project, but even with strained relations, business leaders must reject the tendency to cast aside all prior results and plans in favor of a “new day.” The enterprise’s history and team’s core values must inform decisions starting today. What’s the hype versus what’s the hope for a shared future? That’s a conversation worth having!
Lying certainly can have an upside (some claim that such manipulation is good for your career), buffer our relationships, provide excuses for someone to temporarily feel safe with their own truth. We often lie to ourselves, and who hasn’t tried to get away with a so-called white lie here and there? That doesn’t necessarily make you a liar or a bad person. Not knowing how people lie and twist the truth could set you up for being blinded when someone else does it, but that isn’t an endorsement of crime as a way to catch criminals either. Learn how to handle your own fluctuating emotions and need for ego gratification without taking others prisoner. This is what responsible adults do.
Energy Conservation Starts at Home
The corporate mindset of the media made a big deal about Bill Clinton’s affair(s) because they could. We see this ‘smear job’ (tongue in cheek) of attack-and-defend tying up a huge amount of energy in the political sandbox — nothing more than drama born of win-lose thinking — energy that could instead be used for getting on with the real work of improving the sandbox.
What is presently just a distraction begging for you to take the bait (yet again), the monkey chatter in the leaves of the tree (Twitter still has a lot of it, as does all social media, even if they’re recently growing something akin to a backbone) versus the more important question, “what about the trunk?” What do we wish to grow? How will we grow?
The Wizard of Oz invited us to not be distracted by the man behind the curtain. Why do such illusions often seem so real, and why do we keep falling into the trap of getting hooked by the drama of opposition or of adversarial alliances? It is one of the oldest distraction techniques on earth. Sun Tzu‘s “Art of War” was published before any of us were even born, and yet it continues to play on our humanity, our vulnerability, our darker tendencies? Its called shadow. We all have one.
How to rise out of that conundrum and into the light? Be sure not to get caught up in fear. The antidote to fear, a similar experience in the body, is excitement and audacious assertiveness (“a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks”), but doing so skillfully and respectfully. Why? Because we can’t easily minimize or eliminate fear, thus better to maximize our audacity … with integrity, honesty, and skillful presentation to the right people, asking until … [we reach our goals], acting as if we have nothing to lose (because we don’t, in that context), building confidence in our better offer, building character, and honing our core selves.
Even if democracy takes a serious body slam among the way, at least we’ll be better humans, worn smoother around the edges by the friction caused by our respectful audaciousness.
I’m writing all this in hopes of ensuring that this situation, longer-term, doesn’t drift into an unrecoverable lose-lose dynamic for all us stakeholders. Short of believing in miracles, we seem to be heading down the road of fewer options than normal. A 2-party system is becoming a no-party system. Narrowing our choices because we’re uninterested in booting and using the part of the brain that involves reason, reflection, or funny little things called facts must not become our de facto plan. That’s worse than having no plan.
3M’s — Manipulation, Misleading, and Masquerading
A recent transaction with someone in West Africa supported the value of American politics admitting that they liked the “all action, no talk” approach. That is hardly what we want to teach others, and behavior role models are what we Americans (and others in the developed world) offer, by silent default, unless refuted, or cast out. I cannot condone such mindless and corrupt reasoning, so let’s talk about these three M’s and then define the higher road.
M1: Manipulation: “I know you are but what am I?” is the childish ploy of turning the table on the schoolyard, employed regularly by master manipulators. Point-by-point comebacks that set the record straight are rare but necessary. This is the art of war and getting one’s message across. “Crooked Hillary” and Lying Ted Cruz are examples of manipulation in the last election that became memes (spread on their own) cannot displace facts to the contrary.
M2: Misleading information about elections being hacked or corrupt just don’t line up with the facts. Spreading an effective lie (so that it travels well enough to “infect” millions of others, as thought-viruses often do) is still lying. Our ability to survive and thrive as a nation depends on regaining our sense of what is real. It may take a long time to get over this past “race to the bottom” with so-called fake news, hyper-partisanship, and polarized “enemy stance” … mutually assured destruction, but it must be carried in the minds and hearts of every American, even as the “tribal warfare” unfolds. Things have gotten far too bad and it is far too late for cynicism.
The US has been in the de facto leader on many fronts (though lagging behind in some areas, such as protecting the environment) for decades. More recently, we began “exporting” an unfortunate byproduct of our bipartisan politics: the belief that action is more important than truth. That if you act strong and appear to be decisive (even if resultant policy decisions are entirely wrong-headed) somehow that is more important than the nuance and care required to live according to one’s principles?
If greed is all that matters, and the end justifies the means, then take everything, leave nothing but a trail of betrayal and scorched earth, and be sure to never apologize, admit one’s mistakes, or learn anything. That sort of self-reflection is for the weak. What kind of leadership is this, exactly?
M3: Masquerading: Instead of masquerading for effect, or playing the role seemingly required of us by party, church, the boss, spouses, etc., how about if we show up as our authentic selves? I know this sounds simplistic, even somewhat outrageous to suggest, but as written above, and in a business plan recently, “Audacity has to outpace fear.”
Stand up, Put people in their place, Set boundaries
The race to the bottom has finally arrived. We made it! So now what? Instead of planning another attack on democracy, or on each other, what we can and must do is uphold our respective areas of mutual respect, set the tone, but don’t be “nice” about it, be real.
The meek may yet inherit the earth, but will they want it? And would they have the nerve to step up to the podium and accept it?
Thanks for listening/reading. Respectful rebuttals are encouraged.
Daniel
