The Frazzled Entrepreneur's Balance Beam

Murder by the Numbers

It's not that I want this column to become The Washington Post Light (little pun there), but, as a matter of fact, I begin writing first thing in the morning after prayer, breakfast and paper. It's impossible not to have the morning's news spinning around in the hamster wheels in my mind. First, a front-page article that spelled out some of the fall-out from the credit collapse on the neediest Americans disturbed me. That was followed up by an enlightening "Federal Diary" article by columnist Stephen Barr on a report issued by the IBM Center for the Business of Government. I particularly enjoy Barr's column because he is always balanced and never gets emotionally carried away in his commentary.

The 'top ten' list that the IBM Center has recently published highlights what these experts consider the biggest challenges confronting the US government in the next few years: a critical judgment as 'regime change' looms large on our political horizon. As a person who's married to government contractor, I have the remarkable gift of being able to see the wisdom of the IBM Center's 'top ten' list from the inside. Let me tell you that, from where I sit, they're right on the mark!

There are serious challenges to our future as a nation that are spelled out in this report. The one that I'd like to focus on today is actually the first one on the IBM list (I'm going to assume that they spelled them out in a particular order). Here's the actual page from their report:

It's the first paragraph in particular that should grab our attention: for the IBM Center, 'fiscal sanity' means addressing 'health care and retirement costs.' Tragically, the reality goes far beyond just fiscal sanity.

Although the article cites "rising health costs are pushing state and local budgets into crisis," the truth is that our cultural decision to sacrifice the individual to bottom line has pushed us ever closer to becoming a genocidal nation. The nation was in turmoil when Terri Schaivo's doctors (supported by her husband) wanted to terminate her life support. Yet there's hardly a whisper when, one by one, states are pulling the plug on those whose lives depend on expensive medications by ending their drug subsidies in a misguided effort to reduce health care costs.

As a culture, I think we have a weird concept of reality. The same inhuman phenomena appear predictably whenever entrepreneurs turn their businesses over to the Bean Counters. Individual welfare gets sacrificed to the bottom line. The aged and chronically ill are abandoned and left to die [aids patients are unable to afford life-sustaining medications in California]. Severely injured people have the money they depend on for continuing care wiped out by multi-national corporations [Wal-Mart sued brain-injured Debbie Shrank for the $414,00 she gained in an accident settlement and won].

I've often quoted Hubert Humphrey (paraphrasing Dostoevsky), who said, "The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped." It's past time for us as a society to step down from our self-styled moral high horse and realize the damage that our social and economic theories are doing. What, after all, is the dollar value of a single human life?

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2008 H. Les Brown

Technorati Tags: understanding, bean counters, inhumanity, health care, cost cutting
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Fundamentalism Is Essentially Subversive

Diversity (and, therefore, democracy), as a worldview, suffers from an inherent flaw: it can be subverted and subsequently destroyed by the opposing worldview, which, for the sake of argument, I want to call 'fundamentalism'. Oddly, a diverse worldview has, by definition, to accept as valid the worldview that believes that it is the one and only valid approach, and, that, consequently, is dedicated to the dismantling and ultimate destruction of the worldview that embraces it.

Among the many groups who espouse the monolithic worldview are those we characterize as 'radical, fundamentalist Muslims' like, for example the Al-Qaida or the Taliban in Afghanistan. Inviting these folks into a power-sharing arrangement (as happened with Hamas in Palestinian territories) may very likely result in the dismantling of democratic institutions and the transformation of personal freedoms into something quite unrecognizable.

It seems so simple for us in the West (particularly those of us in the US) to wag our fingers and go 'tsk-tsk' (with a certain air of superiority) at those who use these methods to undermine the rights and freedoms of others — while, at the same time, promoting those same beliefs and attitudes in their own lives. It all begins with an arrogant and self-serving attitude that says, "I am enlightened, and you are ignorant." From there, the step to "You are out of line and you must conform" is incredibly small. Fundamentalism is conceived in hubris and gives birth to black-and-white thinking and behavior.

Fundamentalism — regardless if it's philosophical, religious, political or social — imposes a necessarily static worldview: 'This is the way things always were, the way things are, and the way things must always be.' Only infidels and heretics may disagree. There's no room for evolution in a fundamentalist worldview. There's no room for growth or development. There's no room for freedom of expression or varieties of opinion or worldview. Everything appears fixed, understandable, unchanging, and clear. God no longer moves with a wildness of Spirit, but simply sits passively in a conveniently-sized box allowing His 'servants' to exercise their judgment of approval or condemnation.

Does it matter who instigates a crusade? Whether it's mounted in a family, a faith, a culture or a country, it springs from the same cultural attitudes: 1) power-distance: authority is to be honored and obeyed; 2) individuality: individual freedoms must be sacrificed to the needs of the group; 3) masculinity-femininity: aggressive competition trumps respectful cooperation; 4) uncertainty toleration: dissent or questioning is disallowed; 5) say-or-do: conformity of words hides contrary behavior. Is this what we want in our families? in our businesses? in our society? in our country? in our world? The effects are there for those who have eyes to see: the choice is ours.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2008 H. Les Brown

Technorati Tags: understanding, culture, fundamentalism, radicalism, diversity, democracy, evolution, subversion
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Classifying People Out of Existence

In the world of purposeful change, empathy means taking a whole new look at each of the individuals who make up our environment, not just once, but continually. Like the patterns of a kaleidoscope, our perceptions shift and merge and reappear transformed. At the same time, the frame we use to capture it all and the lens we use to keep it all in focus shift in their own unique patterns. We cannot rightfully claim that we 'know' anything, because neither the knower nor the known remain the same long enough to be fully grasped.

Social groups differ entirely from 'categories' of people. Social groups consist of human individuals who share a common bond: a common origin, a common language, a common worldview, a common experience, a common plight, or a common goal or purpose. 'Categories' of people employ convenient 'tags' that we use to identify people by some criteria that we've imposed on them. Our tragedy derives from our tendency to make the categories more real than the people to whom they apply.

Consider your favorite categories: 'employee', 'customer', 'vendor', 'politician', 'patient', 'client', 'co-worker', 'American', 'Hispanic', 'Black', 'White', 'immigrant', 'gay', 'convict', 'athlete', 'celebrity', 'boss', 'socialite', 'cop', 'soldier', 'patriot', 'illegal', 'terrorist', 'Muslim', 'Evangelical', 'gangster', 'criminal' — need I continue? Any and all of these 'tags' seem very reasonable characterizations of other people (at least until they're applied unfairly to us).

Yet, if we take the life strategy of comprehension seriously, we'll soon realize that slicing and dicing the world up into these convenient little chunks dehumanizes the people to whom they're applied. Each one of these characterizations describes a person exactly like you or me: with hopes and dreams and fears and needs. If we ever want to become the people we aspire to be, we're going to have to use both of these strategies (comprehension and empathy) to counteract our personal — and social — need to dehumanize people and turn them into disposable objects.

We need comprehension to remind us that the categories that we impose on others are mental constructs and do not actually exist in the real world. We need empathy to look at others as selves and mirrors of our own humanity. Failing this, we set our feet firmly on the path that leads to genocide: turning the Other into the 'Foreign' and, from there, into 'Garbage' which we can gas, shoot, incinerate, rape, or deport with impunity. In fact, we can delude ourselves enough actually to believe that we are doing ourselves — and humanity — a service.

When we fail to appreciate the plight of individuals (like those who are currently suffering under racism or our popular fascination with punishing illegal immigrants) in the name of some artificial category (no matter how 'honorable'), we are only dehumanizing ourselves. Individual suffering can never be justified as merely 'collateral damage' whether it's the demise of immigrant communities in the name of legal immigration, the erosion of our civil rights in the name of terrorism, or the ghettoizing of minorities in the name of law and order.

"No [one] is an island; no [one] stands alone; each [one]'s joy is joy to me; each [one]'s grief is my own. We need one another, so I will defend each [one] as my brother, each [one] as my friend."

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2008 H. Les Brown

Technorati Tags: comprehension, empathy, categories, dehumanizing, immigrants, illegal, racism, genocide
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Humanity, the Holocaust, and Global Warming

I generally spend some quiet time reading the Post while having my morning oatmeal, wondering if anything I'm going to read today will provide me with some inspiring thoughts. Two articles stood out for me this morning, but I thought they had nothing in common: 160 square miles of Antarctic ice broke off the iceshelf, and extensive Nazi records from the Holocaust era were released for the first time last year, allowing survivors at long last to learn the fate of family and friends. What's the connection? Trust me: there is one.

The connection is named Stanley Milgram. His ground-breaking work on obedience and torture showed that even good people can forsake their moral principles — and even their humanity — when they've been goaded by (perceived) authority figures and the stakes are gradually raised.

Do you see the connection yet? No matter how unthinkable, people will willingly pursue destructive policies (even self-destructive policies) so long as those policies are promoted by people in power. When Craig and I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington for the first time several years ago, what I found most deeply disturbing (besides the extent of the Holocaust) was that the erosion of human rights took place so gradually that even the prospect of the existence of the death camps was only mildly disturbing to the population.

The underlying mechanism is the same for global warming. It's still only mildly disturbing that a chunk of ice six times the size of Manhattan has broken off from the Antarctic (where, incidentally, the effects of global warming are not yet being strongly felt). Once again, as we gradually approach the unthinkable, we're allowing authority to downplay science and obedience to trump prudence. In the 1930's, there was no general outcry against the gradual marginalization of Jewish individuals in Europe (and it's starting again in some areas) and now we're thinking that probably, someday, something should be done "in case" our behavior is changing our planet's climate.

How long can we continue with 'business as usual' until the consequences of our behavior catch up with us? Will there ever be a Nuremberg Trial for the perpetrators of the climatic collapse of our biosphere? Or, will they be long gone and unreachable by the time the full impact of their policies and decisions come down upon us? Finally, the deepest and most unsettling questions must focus on our own complicity. As Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men [and women] to do nothing." Need we prove this saying true yet again?

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2008 H. Les Brown

Technorati Tags: mindfulness, Holocaust, global warming, Stanley Milgram, authority, obedience, responsibility
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Iraq and the US People in Power

Four thousand US dead. That's a really high price to pay to defend the indefensible. We get to reflect on our basic prejudices every time we hit a 'nice round number'. Yet, even given these opportunities, people generally are allergic to looking under the surface 'blame game' that passes the buck for this Iraq fiasco to the people in power. I thought (pardon me) that it was we who are the 'people in power.'

What is 'under the surface?' It's our culture that makes it seem as though going to war to solve disagreements is a viable option. It's our culture that makes us think that other cultures who disagree with our approach are weak and stupid. As Americans, we don't have to think about these things, we just 'know' that they're true.

You can't have read anything that I've written on the subject of understanding as a life strategy without having been exposed to social scientist and author, Geert Hofstede. The cultural approach that varies on a scale from competition to cooperation he calls the 'masculinity / femininity' scale. The US is somewhere close to the extreme on the masculinity (competition) scale. It's all about win-lose, who's the strongest, who can dominate (beat up) whom. Cowboy diplomacy? That's about it! And the rest of the Western world — who seems to have emerged from the stone age — looks at us in 'shock and awe.'

To them, our competitive culture is over the line into the obscene. We revel in and celebrate violence. It's in our art, our music, our films. Of course, to anyone reading these words who's infected by the competitive virus, my thoughts are those of a wimpy, spineless pacifist. Nothing could be further from the truth. It takes no courage to be a bully. Anybody can wield a club. It takes a whole  person, consisting of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength to create cooperation out of conflict.

As we all are (or should be) aware, changing a culture is all about changing our personal attitudes and behaviors within each of our social groups, one person at a time. We can't vote in a new culture or impose it from outside. What opportunities will you have today to work at cooperation instead of conflict?

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2008 H. Les Brown

Technorati Tags: 4000 dead, war, conflict, cooperation, culture, understanding, masculinity, femininity, Iraq
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Blog Talk Radio in the Washington Post

I've been scouring the daily news for articles that get my creative juices flowing and, not surprisingly, there was a particularly relevant one today in the Washington Post Style section: the column by Howard Kurtz entitled, "With Blog Talk Radio, the Commentary Universe Expands" [note: free sign-in to the Post is required]. Of course, for some time now, I've had my own weekly internet radio show on Blog Talk Radio: The Frazzled Entrepreneur Program. The current week's program is always available to readers of The Balance Beam just by clicking on the player in the left-hand column (follow the pointing finger).

The "mass media" is more available now to more people than ever before. You don't have to be an Edward R. Morrow or Walter Cronkite to find an audience for what you believe is important. Of course, the vast difference between the media of the past and the future is the quality of the message. Once upon a time, the Fourth Estate saw its role as a sacred trust: the decision-making process of an entire democracy rested in the hands of journalists. Now, it seems as though much of driving force devolves to the need to express oneself at any cost.

I believe that the mission of the Frazzled Entrepreneur (and, by extension, The Balance Beam) lies in its potential for people to use our information to extricate themselves from the sense of being overwhelmed by all that's in front of them to do. Here's an insight for today: the price of success is having to do more than is humanly possible to accomplish. How well you can manage that feat goes a long way toward determining both your future success and your health and well-being. Think about it.

Meanwhile, if you missed Kathleen Gage last Thursday on my Blog Talk Radio show, you still have time: click here to listen to her interview right now. And, you won't want to miss Dr. Joe Capista, Amazon best-selling author of What Can a Dentist Teach You About Business, Life, and Success? Dr. Joe will be my guest this Thursday evening at 8:00 pm (Eastern Time). Click here to be taken straight to this program. What's your commitment to yourself and creating the life for yourself that you've always wanted? If that's your objective, then you owe it to yourself to spend some of your personal resources to make sure that you attain it. It's your choice.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2008 H. Les Brown

Technorati Tags: Kathleen Gage, Dr. Joe Capista, Blog Talk Radio, The Frazzled Entrepreneur Program, overwhelmed
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I Shall Not Wholly Die

Христос Воскрес! Воистину Воскрес!

Easter morning at my Ukrainian grandmother's house always began the same way: "Christ is risen! He is truly risen!" In her small Ukrainian community in Cohoes, NY, the greeting was heard everywhere and all through the day — even among strangers on the street. Breakfast began with blessed hardboiled egg, passed from family member to family member, a symbol of new life emerging from the tomb (the shell). Easter breakfast was an odd mixture of Christian and Jewish tradition with horseradish reminiscent of the Passover meal and traditional home-made Easter bread, hearkening back to the emergence from the days of unleavened bread.

They're all gone now; all but my brother and me and four other cousins we rarely see. Grandma's kitchen table — if it still exists — is surrounded only by shades and memories. This morning's scrambled eggs were good, but just not the same. The Easter bread only a sharp memory. Time passes; memories only pass when we do, but, chances are, they remain still: a permanent imprint on the fabric of the universe. "Non omnis moriar," wrote the Roman poet, Horace, "I shall not wholly die."

What's it all about, then? What's the great secret of life that preserved the Pharaohs intact into the 21st century, preserved the children of Abraham through the Sea of Reeds and the Holocaust, preserved the Christ through of the tomb and Christians through various and sundry persecutions, and preserved an ancient custom through its passing from generation to generation and kept it alive and well in my memory? It's but one simple thought: one attitude, so simple it's almost — but not quite — obvious: trust or, as the ancient writers spoke about it, hope.

Today, it conveys to me "Suit up and show up." Everybody seems to be so enthusiastic about The Secret (and, in fact, it's a very special reminder of what's really important, but, it's no secret). There are only three things I need to remember to make this day (this hour, this minute, this lifetime) a total success: 1) accept the past as it is without remorse or regret but with forgiveness as having been exactly as it should have been; 2) trust that the future is unfolding as it should under the wings of a benevolent Destiny; and 3) engage in the present with the courage of my convictions, keeping my side of the street clean and celebrating every step forward as a victory. Accept, trust, engage, succeed. Христос Воскрес!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Technorati Tags: Easter, Resurrection, acceptance, trust, engagement, faith, hope, love, success, tradition
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Pain Hurts

I was reviewing some notes that I was assembling to offer to people who sign up for my monthly e-Newsletter, and I had a chance to go over the section that deals with coping with adversity. It really struck me how deeply ingrained our fear — and even hatred — of pain has become. Of course, we come by it naturally, because, if you're like me, you were probably subject to corporal punishment as a kid. The connection becomes hardwired: 'pain' = 'bad'.

Everything we (in our culture) experience thereafter reinforces that connection: suffering, tragedies, disasters, loss, grief, and anything else that hurts elicits sympathy: "It's too bad you had to go through all that." What it brings up in us (or at least in me) is a mixture of shame ('I must have been bad') and fear ('This will never end'). We'll do almost anything to stop the pain: take drugs, drink alcohol, escape into any other kind of alternate reality that will bring us oblivion. Does it matter that much if it's physical or mental pain?

I was a priest for many years, and I can't divorce myself from my liturgical connection to Easter, especially at the end of Holy Week, into what we called the Sacred Triduum: Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. It's a stark reminder to Christians of the inextricable link between life and pain and, from the Christian perspective, that God hurts. There's another lesson that I think too many people leave inside the church: that pain is both a messenger and the price we pay for going to the next level.

We Westerners are all caught up in our maudlin grieving process. The Eastern mind sees the reality differently. Instead of black and purple vestments for Good Friday, Eastern Christians wear gold. To bring it down to the vernacular: no pain, no gain. The Eastern peoples tend to focus on the goal, rather than wallow in the misery that precedes it. Pain isn't 'bad'. It isn't anything at all but a feeling. It sends us a message that something important is happening. And, if we have the courage to face it and move through it, we find growth.

As Nietzsche said, "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger." Did you see the article in the paper about Melissa Stockwell, the wounded Iraq veteran who is fulfilling her dream to become a star athlete? Would she ever have accomplished that if she'd never be wounded?

I was privileged to have  internet marketing expert Kathleen Gage on my Frazzled Entrepreneur internet radio program Thursday night. I asked her what her greatest achievement was. She said it was having the courage to meet the challenges involved in creating her business and pressing forward. However we see it, however we define it, on the other side of the pain is always a Resurrection. Which side is more deserving of our focus?

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Technorati Tags: pain, suffering, Easter, Resurrection, courage, message,
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Our Daily Bread and Whine

I struggle with the dichotomy I experience between how the human face of our planet turns ever more toward a preoccupation with the here and now. As we become more sophisticated, our focus shifts to the issues that are right in front of our faces: and I embrace the wisdom that counsels 'one day at a time.' Wait for it . . . here it comes . . . BUT there's more than one way to focus on the present: one enriches, the other impoverishes. Guess which one appears easier (less challenging) and enjoys great popularity? Humanity toys with a bankruptcy that has nothing to do with the global markets.

The mass of humanity cowers in self-conscious oblivion, hunkered down, defensive, fearful. No one coaches us that when we're on the tightrope, don't look down! And then we wonder why we lose our balance?

That's a far cry from the kind of focus that actually works: essentially what the Buddhists mean by 'mindfulness'. That practice develops a sense of being present, not in isolation, but connected to all there is. Even while on the tightrope, we comprehend that we're one with it and one with the air and the sky and the ground.

When we're truly mindful, we remain in the present moment, but not of it. We're aware that the future we crave emerges from the choices we make today. And, what's more, we carry into that future all the strengths, knowledge, skills and experience that derive from the choices we made in the past. Rather than fearing time, we immerse ourselves deeply into it.

The Greeks had a word for this immersion: ανεμνησις (anemnesis), which means 'remembrance', but not the way we think of it. We think of taking our present-time minds back to the past; the ancients realized that remembrance brings the past to life in the present. In the Passover Seder, we hear that "We were slaves in the land of Egypt" — not our ancestors: but we. In the Christian liturgy, we pronounce "This is my body; this is the cup of my blood" — not someone else's: but mine, like a parent staring into the eyes of the child in their arms.

We've all heard the words of George Santayana: "Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it." He recognized that learning is experiential, and if the past no longer lives in us, we remain bereft of it. If we exist as a people without a past, then, as a people, we lack a future, as well. But, it's the season of Passover, of the Last Supper, of the Passion and the Passing. It's the season of mindfulness and ανεμνησις. The season of Spring has come. Rejoice and be glad in it all.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Technorati Tags: mindfulness, anemnesis, past, present, future, remembrance, last supper
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The US Chamber of Horrors

When I moved my business to this town, I joined the Chamber of Commerce. It granted me, among the benefits of membership, access to the US national Chamber of Commerce. Every week or so, they've been sending me newsy little e-mails. All politics is local and, in my opinion, so is all commerce. Naturally, my interest in the national Chamber has been . . . shall I say . . . marginal. That changed last week. They published an article by the national president, Tom Donohue, about the Chamber's response to the question of global warming.

The Chamber president obviously chose his words carefully. He acknowledged that most of the civilized world had accepted as fact that human activity contributes to global warming. He suggested that the business community should examine what strategies they might adopt to alleviate some of the impact that we're having on our planet's climate. He closed by inviting members to join in the online dialog. That invitation aroused my curiosity.

As I sat reading the 'dialog' (new posts appearing every other second), my jaw dropped and my stomach began to churn. Can you say, 'incredulous'? I knew you could! The level of narrow-mindedness, short-sightedness and just plain vitriol was nauseating! You'd think that the poor man had plagiarized Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" [a 1729 essay in which he sarcastically suggested in the face of English callousness toward starvation in Ireland that the Irish eat their own children]. Click here and see the comments I'm talking about (and, while you're there, see if you can locate my response).

I wonder what's behind all that emotionalism. The issue of human-caused global warming has to be jangling some sort of raw nerve in people who find it necessary to vent that much energy. You know, when we react powerfully, it's not the outward issue that's the trigger; it's always the inward one. The energy source can't be fear of confronting the challenge of global warming: humans tend historically to rise to such challenges. Likewise, the source can't be the conviction that their opponents are wrong: people don't usually wreak havoc on others just because they happen to disagree. No, it has to be something else. They must be feeling attacked.

I can only speculate about what lies behind all this. Could it be a deepening worry about the future? An attempt vehemently to deny responsibility, blame, or guilt by association? Perhaps they fear losing their dreams of fortune and fame (and to hell with the hindmost). Do they sense the spectral fingers of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren pointing accusingly at them from a future struggling to survive?

Of all the psychic defense mechanisms, denial has to be the strongest and most prevalent among us. It also proves the most effective, because it allows 'good' people to turn their energies away from eradicating problems and toward eradicating the reputations of people with whom they disagree. Years ago on a Dublin street, an old gent was walking alongside me as we passed a street preacher ranting at no one in particular (he was largely ignored). Even today, I can hear the old fellow muttering, "Lamentable!" sighed he, "Downright lamentable!"

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Technorati Tags: global warming, chamber of commerce, Tom Donohue, ignorance, denial, greed
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