The Frazzled Entrepreneur's Balance Beam

Obama Is a Muslim! And I've Just Been Elected Pope!

I really wish I didn't need to be writing this, but that's the life of a coach, I guess! Apparently, middle America is being bombarded by rumor and innuendo in preparation for the upcoming election. The Internet Age is making anonymous slander so much easier now! The Obama thing is just that latest example of how, if nonsense is repeated loudly enough and often enough, people will be inclined to believe it. Once upon a time, it was considered not just bad taste, but morally reprehensible to repeat gossip (of course, that never stopped people, but it was always publicly frowned upon). Today, things are quite different: unfounded slander and gossip get paraded out as the 'real truth that they didn't want you to know. And, of course, you're not paranoid, they really are out to get you!

What's happened to basic honesty and decency? Have the Washington scandals so corroded our capacity for recognizing the facts that what's wrong appears right and what's right appears wrong? Or, in this age of information overlad and future shock, have people's capacity for researching information and applying critical reasoning been so overwhelmed that they no longer function? Recent polls suggest that at least 10% of the American public blieves that Obama is a Muslim, while a much greater percentage of people believe that human-caused global warming is an invention of left-wing terrorist environmentalists in league with Al Qaida and our elected officials in the US government.

Hey, Dude! Take Care of Yourself!

"Take care!" "OK! 'Bye!" And two friends part company. How many times has someone ordered you to 'take care' this past week? You have no idea, because you, like all of us, don't pay any attention to it, do you? 'Take care!' What's the alternative? 'Make a mess of yourself'? I can hear it now, "Hey, Dude! Why don't you run yourself ragged and drive yourself into the ground?" I know: that sounds really stupid. But, if people really meant it when they suggested that you take care of yourself, it'd only be because — to put it bluntly — most times, you don't, do you?

You know what you need to do, don't you? You've read the papers and the magazines. You watch the news. There's not much new about 'taking care' of yourself, is there? What is it they all say? Eat right and exercise. "So how's that working out for you?" as Dr. Phil is so fond of saying. Alright, maybe you do stick to the healthy foods, and maybe your gym membership isn't gathering dust in some drawer somewhere. Is that all there is to 'taking care' of yourself? Hardly. That would be way too easy!

Management by Obfuscation

Isn't that a great word, 'obfuscation'? Unclear about what it means? Here are a couple of definitions for the verb 'to obfuscate':

1. To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand: “A great effort was made . . . to obscure or obfuscate the truth” (Robert Conquest).
2. To render indistinct or dim; darken: The fog obfuscated the shore.

For students of Semitic languages, this verb is close to what we would call the 'causative mode': 'to cause to be unclear'. This is different from merely being unclear or confused. In contrast to fog, smoke, or darkness, human obfuscation is distinctly deliberate. It has, I believe, become the favorite means for people in authority to manipulate the people who are depending on them. This represents a great example of 'mushroom governance': keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em manure.

Sadly, manipulation works — at least over the short term. It represents the triumph of expediency and self-interest over people's best interests and the common good. The OSS (the predecessor of the current CIA) described Adolf Hitler's personality in these terms: "His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

Scrapping the Best-Laid Schemes

I believe that most adults are familiar with the phrase, "the bast-laid schemes of mice and men," though I wonder how many know its origins in the Robbie Burns poem, "Ode to a Mouse." I truly love the whole poem (in its original Scottish dialect), but I'll only quote the last two stanzas here:

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear

In Burns' narrative, he observes a field mouse scamper away in terror as its nest is disturbed. He contrasts the mouse's terror at present events with his own ability to remember his past and to speculate on his own future. The uncertainty of what he imagines causes him a terror that the mouse cannot imagine.

To provide a stark contrast to Burns' glum perspective on his future prospects, I want to turn the scene inside-out for you. With few exceptions, men and women are not mice and even though we can remember the past and dread the future, unlike mice, we have choices. Burns' "Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie" fulfills its destiny just by being what it is, and doing what it does. You and I, on the other hand — well-noted in the "Ode" — have a purpose that includes our responsibility to the future: our own and others'.

Forgiveness, The Recipe for Happiness

Sometimes there are quotations that come up my daily work that strike a responsive chord with me. Often, they're articles in the paper that grab my attention. Sometimes, they arrive from other random sources. This morning's stimulus was a quote from author Carlos Castaneda. He wrote, "Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it — what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone." The disease is hubris (an exaggerated sense of self-importance), the symptoms are anger, frustration, and discontent, and the cure is simple (but very profound): forgiveness.

Forgiveness isn't easy: It takes guts, humility and deep self-awareness  Being able to release a hurt means that we've reached a level of spiritual maturity where we're able to accept that there's only one thing that we need to know about God: that we're not him (her)! If you can accept that God (however you define God) is in charge, and that you're not, then you've set out on a spiritual journey. No one can manage actually to 'let go and let God' and still think of him- or herself as the manager of the universe. Faith, in my book, is grounded in the acceptance that things are as they are for a reason — whether or not I'm aware of what that reason is.

Watching Out for The Little Guy

There's a lot to learn from David Ignatius' column in the Washington Post today that was entitled, "Failing Airlines, Failing Government."  Discussing the current crisis in air travel, he hearkens back to the controversy over airline deregulation in 1978, saying, "most airlines were opposed, arguing that the air transport system was a kind of public utility and that although competition might cut prices, it would erode service and forestall capital spending for new, more efficient planes." Does this sound familiar? As Ignatius points out, "the critics' worst fears have been realized." Now, why should you care?

The answer is that you don't need to care about the condition of the airline industry in the US unless, of course, you fly, or you have a problem with being taken advantage of as an individual having little recourse against market giants. We've had almost three decades of "free market economy," under the libertarian ideals that embody the principle that "the best government is no government at all." In the meantime, we've had the Savings and Loan scandal, Enron (et. al), the housing and mortgage crash, deferred maintenance on much of the nation's infrastructure, an energy crisis, a collapsing dollar, global warming, a failure to save or rebuild one of the country's largest cities (New Orleans), etc., etc., etc.

Right-wing free-market economists and libertarians are correct when they point the finger of blame at government. However, we have exactly the government that we deserve. They're exactly wrong when their criticism insists that we have too much government. The problem in the US, as I see it, is that we don't have enough government and the government we do have has misplaced priorities. The results that we're seeing in this country today are directly attributable to what's been called, "The tyranny of the majority." Mob psychology puts crowd control right in the hands of those with the wherewithal to pay for it. Some wags have rightly quipped that we have the best government that money can buy.

I firmly believe that one of the primary roles of government is to protect (and empower) its weakest citizens. If that means increased government regulation and oversight, then that's what it means. One of our most egregious errors is to think of our weakest citizens as 'the other guys.' We have a real tendency to forget that, without much of a nudge, any of us could be 'the other guy.' Have you forgotten that regardless of what majority you may belong to, you also belong to one or more minorities? I usually feel very good when the majority groups I belong to prevail. I can feel even more upset when the minority groups I belong to are set upon. Like it or not, the government remains the only power that safeguards the minority groups I belong to from being oppressed (or eliminated) by the majorities.

Should I be upset when my privileges are curtailed by the government in order to protect some minority group? I think not, anymore than I should be upset when some majority group has its privileges curtailed in order to protect one of the minority groups I belong to. Isn't that how the 'win-win' paradigm works? What about 'activist judges'? Does it make sense to become upset when the judiciary makes an unpopular ruling that protects the rights of a minority group? I don't think so! If the legislative branch is charged with establishing the will of the majority and the executive branch is charged with carrying out that will, then only the judiciary is left to safeguard the role of government in defending the rights of minorities.

When you think about 'watching out for the little guy,' I suggest that you put your heart into it. After all, it's only a matter of time until the 'little guy' will be you!

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

Technorati Tags: understanding, democracy, minorities, government, legislature, executive, judicial, deregulation, airlines
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Is the US Being Governed by Ouzelum Birds?

Frankly, I'm getting tired of having to write about the global climate situation from the perspective of economic expediency. It feels like I'm beating a dying — if not dead — horse. I can imagine those who agree with me responding with, "Yeah, we know that, how about moving on?" while those who disagree will read the first few sentences (if they can get beyond the title) and then moving along to other things in silent — or not-so-silent — disgust. Yet, since I get a lot of my inspiration from the news of the day, it feels as though climate change and our (lack of) response to it has become too important a topic to leave alone. We're getting more information almost daily and, for the most part, the news is not good.

Our Chief Executive just toured Iowa City and reported that, "The good news is that the people in Iowa are tough-minded people." That's the good news? He reassured them that they'll "come back better." Like the City of New Orleans, perhaps? When natural disasters wreak havoc, there's not really any such thing as 'good news' — at least not for the people affected.

I want to ask one modest question. I want to know what it's going to cost in clean-up, repairs, alternative housing and assistance, and lost income and revenue from these floods? I keep going back in my mind to the vitriol that poured out of the members of the US Chamber of Commerce in their weekly newsletter and commentary when the subject of global climate change came up. It seems, according to most of these irate members, that scientists and environmentalists are deliberately trying to wreak the US economy. They want to stop — ore even reverse — the human causes of global warming. Of course we know that all of this talk is merely the liberals' way of ruining everything. . . . Or do we?

On the other side of the page from the Commander-in-Chief's comments on the good news in Iowa, there's an article about an 162-page study that was just published by NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: another hotbed of liberalism) in which we learn that the Southwestern US is likely to face even more intense droughts, while more frequent heavy downpours will affect other parts of the country (like Iowa). To quote the report, extreme weather events "are among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate." Of course, the report also had the bad taste to link these climatic changes to human activities, particularly the release of greenhouse gasses.

Pardon me for asking, but doesn't the fact that 1.2 million acres of corn are under water (to say nothing of the soybean crop), which represents almost 10% of the yield of the entire state of Iowa, have any economic impact? Isn't agribusiness also significant in the nation's commercial interests? So why are so many people focusing on the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while not saying anything about the cost to the economy of the natural disasters that this activity is generating? The connection seems perfectly clear, yet, even if it isn't perfectly clear, isn't it worth the risk to take proactive measures just in case the connection is there?

As a citizen and as a business man, I'm both apalled and astounded at the depth of our nation's denial. When will our NIMBY ('Not In My Back Yard') attitudes change, when the flood waters or sand dunes are lapping at our back doors? When we can no longer afford to put food on our tables? When the number of bicycles overtake the number of cars on our highways? Or, perhaps, it'll be when we're all out of business because nobody can afford our goods and services. We seem to be a nation led by ouzelum birds: those are fabulous birds that fly backwards and thus do not know where they're going, but like to know where they've been.

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

Technorati Tags: anticipation, climate, NOAA, Iowa, flooding, economy, disaster, drought, denial
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The Single Biggest Threat to Our Survival

Whatever could it be? Could it be thermonuclear war? Could it be unrestrained population growth? Could it be global warming? Could it be collision with a comet or an asteroid? Could it be terrorism? Of course, it could be any or all of these things. On the other hand, I don't think so. While all of these possibilities are lurking in the shadows, there's one that's not even on the list that's hitting us today: right here and right now. And, nobody's talking about it.

In my estimation, the greatest threat to our survival is 'expediency' — taking advantage of current conditions without regard for future consequences. I do my best to do a thorough job with the morning newspaper (in my case, it just happens to be The Washington Post) not just for curiosity's sake, nor even so that I can converse intelligently on world affairs, but particularly so that I can see the trends that are playing themselves out, particularly here in the US. Wherever I turn, I see either expediency or the results of expediency.

This headline first grabbed my attention: "Iowa Flooding Could Be an Act of Man, Experts Say." The article goes on to explain how farming practices over the past century, but particularly recently in response to the rise in demand for crop-based ethanol, have created a situation where 500-year floods have occurred twice in 15 years. Of course, the demand for ethanol itself is a result of the expedient use of fossil fuels and the consequent neglect of the research necessary to develop large-scale, economical renewable energy sources. Of course, the unusual rainfall that triggered the flooding could also be a result of climate change but, as the article didn't fail to mention, that's not a 'provable' connection. Assuming that climate change due to global warming is a fact, our expedient use of fossil fuels is behind that one, too.

So, accepting that our expedient use of fossil fuels contributes greatly to these natural disasters, and noting that the global run on fossil fuels continues to escalate, forcing the price of oil ever higher, what do our leaders propose? Drilling for more oil in protected environments! Behold the error cascade: a small number of relatively insignificant expediencies that, over time, increase exponentially until, ultimately, they blossom into a full-scale disaster. A perfect example of an error cascade can be found in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986. Now, however, expediency is threatening a disaster of global proportions.

What else is in today's news? Oh, yes: there's always Iraq. The rush to war after the disasters of September 11, 2001 (another error cascade, incidentally), based on lies and manipulated 'facts' and innuendo sent our troops into a country that was never a direct threat to the West and which, of course, has large resources of (need I say it?) oil. The expediency continues.

And then, there's the 600% increase in foreclosures in the greater Washington DC area, joining San Francisco, Phoenix, and South Florida. It has been fascinating to read about the growth and nurturing of the real estate bubble and the investment opportunities that depended on it. Once again, we experience a prime example of economic expediency at the expense of homeowners and taxpayers, especially those who are least able to bear the cost.

"It's only a little indiscretion," you say. "It doesn't really hurt anybody." "The companies can afford it." "We've always done it this way, and it's always worked. We can't afford to change now." And, as they say, the beat goes on. And, as I say, the error cascade grows ever closer to the 'catastrophe point' (that point beyond which there will be a sudden, irreversible change). It's like floating on a rubber raft in the Niagara river, complaining that paddling would take too much effort. While, meanwhile, you're drifting ever closer to the edge of the falls. Still waters run deep — until, at least, they reach the edge of the falls. But, by then, paddling becomes useless.

'Lulled into a false sense of security,' we continue to make the expedient choices rather than the difficult, but effective, ones. We can maintain our sense of security only so long, then, someday, we'll wake up and realize where we're headed. T. S. Elliot predicted the sound that people will make at that moment of realization in the famous last stanza of his poem, "Hollow Men."

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

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

Technorati Tags: anticipation, expediency, catastrophe, disaster, error cascade, fossil fuels
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Which of Your Life 'Options' Isn't Optional?

'You always have options,' or so suggests the popular saying. Count me in among those who insist that humankind possesses free will. We can choose among the broad variety of possibilities that we're confronted with from moment to moment. No decision is absolutely irrevocable except, perhaps, the choice to end one's own life, but even that one is not so much a matter of a lack of free will, it's a matter of a lack of time. Our range of choices is not absolute: we cannot choose to do or to become anything we want, because every choice exists within a context of possibilities. However, within the range of the personally possible, we can freely choose.

For every option we face in life, there are only three possible choices. Many people falsely believe that there are only two: to opt 'for' a choice or 'against' it. However, as the existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, pointed out in one of his most his famous sayings, "Not to choose is a choice," albeit, in Sartre's view, an 'inauthentic' one. Since we have been given the power of free choice, we do an injustice to our own humanity not to exercise it: an injustice the results of which we are condemned by our own actions to endure.

Take, for example, the case of exercising our free choice as citizens of a democratic society. We have the freedom to accept or reject each person running for office (so long as we do not vote for more people than there are seats to fill). We also have the the third choice: not to vote at all. If we were to do that, we'd forfeit the right to complain (although many non-voters do it regardless, although inauthentically). If you're going to let others make your choices for you, then you have to accept what choices the others have made for you.

Is there a choice that's always the right one? Is there an option that's not really optional, and, if there is such a thing, what is it? I suspect that Sartre was very cognizant of this one: we always have the choice whether or not to live authentic lives, but it is never right to choose inauthenticity over authenticity. In other words, it's never right to choose to do the wrong thing for you. We often make mistakes, but these can be corrected. We can even make choices that take us down the wrong road; these can be rectified. What can't be fixed is choosing to live in utter disregard for your own best interests.

This is where discerning your destiny and purpose comes in. You've been given a destiny and purpose along with your unique share of humanity's genetic material. You exist within a specific spatiotemporal context not entirely of your own choosing. The totality of your potential to self-actualize within the limits of your identity defines your destiny here and now, although the choices you make today will further narrow and shape it continually. Choosing to align yourself with your destiny is not only a smart move, it's really your only authentic choice. It's what we call your 'fundamental option' and it circumscribes  what 'success' will mean for you, and whether or not you ever make the contribution to humanity for which you were born. Yes, it's that serious.

I find that people often waste much their resources because they're not very clear about their destiny, or what purpose their lives are meant to fulfill. It's all about taking responsibility for yourself: refusing to 'opt out' and to allow the rest of the world to make your choices for you. It's also all about being intensely true to yourself and your life's purpose. If "a mind is a terrible thing to waste," then wasting a life has got to be a crime against humanity. Can you identify and explain your fundamental option? Do you review and renew it on a daily basis? And, incidentally, is it big enough for you?

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

Technorati Tags: discernment, fundamental option, destiny, purpose, choice, authenticity, integrity, potential, success
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A Moral Gymnast in a Paraplegic World

For maybe the twentieth time, I'm going to quote the famous architect, Le Corbusier, who said, "God is in the details" (how his quote ever got twisted around to say, 'the devil is in the details,' I'll never know). Several years ago, the city of New York proved the truth of this statement by focusing its law enforcement on the little laws. When they did that, they caught many of the big bad guys (and gals). It seems that, if someone is a scofflaw in big ways, they're also scofflaws in little ways. The crime rate plummeted in New York City when the police started paying attention to the details.

In many ways, I am among the very fortunate very few: I have received an exceptional education. For almost fifteen years (1963 to 1977), I followed an intensive liberal arts program leading me to master's degrees in philosophy and theology. One of my specializations during both high school and college was ethics and moral theology. On the masthead of one of my websites I have the phrase, "Confessions of a moral gymnast." I didn't go through all those years of studies to learn the 'rules,' or even to learn 'right from wrong.' What I learned was a set of principles that empowered me to make ethical decisions.

It's been said that we live in a world of moral ambiguity. The term 'ambiguous' seems to infer that there's no real distinction between right behavior and wrong. Perhaps, as people are fond of saying, 'it's all what you make of it.' Or, perhaps not. In fact, what many people uncritically believe to be ethically ambiguous situations generally prove to be situations where there's a conflict of moral values. In that (relatively frequent) situation, people often lack the tools to resolve conflicts of values and they fall back on one of two positions: either a) they fall back into a simplistic legalism ("It's not illegal!") or, b) they simply do whatever it is they wanted to do in the first place ("It 'felt' like the right thing to do!").

Let me propose a very simple example of what I mean. Has this ever happened to you? Someone asks you about the temperature outside, and you recall that, when you last outside, it was 85°, so you say, "It's 85." A few minutes later, you spot an exterior thermometer that's reading 92°, so you say, "Oops! I lied, it's 92." How, I wonder, did a 'lie' (a deliberate falsification of the facts intended to deceive someone who had a right to the information) somehow become synonymous with an honest mistake? The only similarity between a 'lie' and a 'mistake' is that they both convey erroneous information. Yet, a 'lie' has ethical implications, while a 'mistake' does not.

If people can't discern the difference between a formal error and an ethical lapse, how are they ever going to be able to live lives of integrity? This isn't just hypothetical hair-splitting; this is Enron, this is Jack Abrahamoff, this is 9/11, this is the Viet Nam War, this is the Second World War. This is big stuff. If the man or woman in the street can't tell the difference between a lie and a mistake, what makes you think that, when he or she rises to a level of trust, that they're going to be able to do any better? How many executives and government officials have you met who have a degree in ethics? And yet, their decisions can have far-reaching and even severe implications.

People can evolve in the complexity and sophistication of their moral decision-making in the same way as they develop physically, mentally, or emotionally. Lawrence Kohlberg suggested a theory of moral development that moved by stages from an externally referential system (based on the fear of punishment or on conformance to laws or societal norms), to one that was based exclusively on personal core values. The highest levels of ethical behavior — rooted in a spiritual and deeply-considered integrity — derive only from deep self-awareness and the wisdom to discern genuine moral value. This doesn't come naturally and it doesn't come easily. It takes application and determination.

What does your model of ethical development look like? Have you ever taken the opportunity to examine your core values and to put them into written statements? What are you actively involved in that both assists and challenges you in your moral growth? Do your mentors and coaches encourage you to take nothing for granted, to explore the most profound depths of your personality and to move ever closer on a daily basis to living entirely in your integrity? Are you willing to take the risk to become a luminary for others, or are you content to sit in your chair like a moral paraplegic for the rest of your life? One way or another: choose.

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

Technorati Tags: discernment, ethics, morality, values, ambiguity, Kohlberg, core, evolution
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