Abort Mission

If the path you tread becomes perilous, at what point should you change course?

A recent podcast (maybe freakonomics? I don't remember) was discussing the inherent resistance that many people have to turning back -- declaring failure. I guess it's particularly bad in America, where our national mythology, and therefore our identity, is largely built around the underdog story; the gritty, unlikely hero who triumphs despite terrible odds. Succeeding at "mission impossible." It's the truest American dream to pull yourself up and work yourself to the bone, to finally rise above your own misfortune.

This story doesn't always play well. The example case used in the podcast was that of the challenger space shuttle, that horrible tragedy that shocked much of America back when I was in grade school. Apparently, the person responsible for signing off on the launch that day refused to do so, on account of the extremely low temperatures which he believed to be a danger to the equipment. Of course, NASA went ahead with the launch, marching forward with imprudent determination born from past successes and an unwillingness to choose anything but the course that had been set.

I, too, suffer from this common, and stereotypically masculine problem; getting wrapped up in "the mission," perceiving the unflinching ability to overcome challenges as they arise, as a universal virtue. My wife often chides me for refusing to stop for comforts, even a bathroom, when on a family drive. It is tough for me to change course. I put on optimism glasses whenever I set my sights on something, and regard problems as more trivial than they are. This serves me, as it does for many of us, in that it prevents the worst course of action when confronted by a problem: doing nothing. The deer in headlights.

But there is a better way; a middle road. How about spending time at the beginning, staring down failure, getting comfortable with it, recognizing what kinds of obstacles are deal breakers, and which might be resolved with relative ease.

The best choice is often difficult: making an informed choice, and attaching no stigma or ill regard to a decision to call off the mission, or even to simply change it, should such a choice prove pertinent. Let's call that celebrating a good failure. This is something I've tried to preach as a teacher, even though I've never been so good at it myself, at least under some circumstances.

Now I'd like to turn this insight toward humanity, collectively. We are suffering from a generalized obsession with forward progress despite the obvious evidence that it might not be going very well. We are resting, artificially assured, that the plan in place is the right plan, as we watch our planet slowly slip into disaster. Our food supplies are spoiled by toxic farming practices, our climate is becoming increasingly hostile, and our global culture is accelerating toward unprecedented disparity and unrest.

At the same time, there is much hope, as always. We are connected to one another more than ever. Global empathy is on a steep rise, as rights are being extended to new corners of the human experience. Honesty is on the rise as well -- acceptance of others always reflects acceptance of equal parts of ourselves.

I’d say, looking objectively at our current situation, that it is a good time to change course. For a person considering the capitalist experiment as it began in full form around the time of the French Revolution,   trying to predict likely mechanisms of failure for capitalism, over-consumption, waste, excessive focus on the short term, the tragedy of the commons, and otherwise general environmental disasters would likely have been on the list. Also corruption, poverty, desperation and despotism. It’s not likely that someone could have predicted the food and medical industries encouraging most people in many “developed” countries to become needlessly sick. Many of these other predictions have been made, many times.

No matter. It’s really all water under the bridge, so long as we figure out how to right our course. Survey a bunch of kindergarteners, and they’ll tell you:

“You should bring food to the people who don’t have food!”

“Everyone should live in a comfortable home”

“People should not get sick”

“We should make spaceships to find aliens”

Ok, that last one was actually me. The other ones came from my own 6 year old.

Freedom from civilization

The concept of freedom is deeply embedded in the American story and psychology. We are the ones that fled the oppression of theocracy and monarchy to shape a new existence. Indeed, this sense of autonomy and independence colors much that we do and celebrate.

Lately, though, many Americans have expressed a particularly troubling interpretation of freedom, a binary, absolutist interpretation. The choices are 1) externally mandated, dictated structure on one hand (as is the case with monarchy or other non-participatory society), or 2) absolute freedom from structure (as with the popular understanding of anarchy).

This idea of freedom is used to justify uncompromising opposition to any and all restrictive legislation. For example, many who oppose firearm regulation stand on a platform defined by a resistance to any imposed structure, and thus neglect to engage in a meaningful discussion about the particular issue.

A polarized, binary view of freedom doubly misses the mark, by skirting around either side of a third, typically superior option: to participate in designing the structures that govern our interactions. Our country was founded by people dedicated to such an enterprise, and the constitution is revered not only for its elements of liberty, but those that encourage participation. Instead of following that lead, we citizens often behave as if at war with one another, entrenched in some or another extreme position, divorced from the processes of reasonable scrutiny and collaboration.

But this is a manufactured war. The battle lines are created to marginalize meaningful change, which is always rather moderate. It is a play on the psychology of fear to maintain the dominant paradigm.

Here's to hoping that we can step off the battleground and move productively together.

Take Back the Story

A while back I read a very interesting book: "Program or Be Programmed" by Douglas Rushkoff. It coincided with my first foray into computational programming (for engineering tasks), and it was therefore both relevant and eye-opening. In it, Rushkoff argues that we are influenced heavily by programming, and that by learning about the concepts and methods employed in creating such codes, we gain both empowerment and awareness.

The rise of literal programming (i.e. computational or computer-based programming) has coincided with advancements in another kind of programming: media programming. TV shows are literally called "programming" within the industry, and every other kind of information medium-- radio, billboards, internet, magazines, etc.-- is analogous. They are all engineered to deliver "messages" to us, and this engineering is informed by the sciences of sociology, psychology, and biology to maximize their efficacy.

A quick tour of advertisements from the 50's run in parallel with those of today reveals very clearly the advancement of programming sophistication. This, of course, is a dynamic system which plays off of the evolving cultural sensibilities which are both drivers of- and driven by- the messages that permeate our lives.

This kind of messaging is a quite natural element of a market-driven society. Our social structure, based on the notion that pursuit of individual, short term gains collectively drives an emergent prosperity in society as a whole, carries an implicit imperative to utilize any and all tools at our disposal to pursue our individual interests.

There is a cost, however. It's actually visible on every level of this structure, but it's most famously identified at the large-scale corporate level: the externality. This is the idea that if it is possible to outsource the cost of your action, you will increase the net gain from that action. Highly visible on those larger scales (e.g. pollution, sweat shops, climate change), the externality plays out on a small scale as well - with similar costs.

This concept was popularized in 1968 by Garrett Hardin in his "Tragedy of the Commons," and previously, in 1833, by William Lloyd in a pamphlet discussing shared grazing rights. Both interesting reads.

The severity of the consequences outlined by Hardin and Lloyd has reached a peak in today's society. We are in the midst of the most dramatic, ever-increasing sickening of... everything: our personal health, our social health (sense of connection between one another), and our ecological health.

On all of these levels, the trend is pointed toward an inevitable tipping point. The foundations of our civilization are actually in peril. Few will debate this point reasonably.

My proposal (probably not original) is this: let's take control of the messaging; take control of the story. We need to recognize that the media messaging is designed to reinforce the status quo. Our messages should be re-designed from the roots - replacing the mass-produced messages with those that make sense at an individual level, and with a longer timeline in mind.

The number of absurdities that we have come to regard as normal and acceptable is incredible. I hope that we might start to "see" the programming and take control of the message. Our story needs to be more about the space between us -- connections -- and less about the discrete entities (people and things).

It is "the big reveal."
The unfolding of truth. The depths and heights, gradually, unveiling their magnificence. And only through the vivid clouded window of the inner light.
All gratitude for the opportunity. The experience. The only thing of value.

With love,

Me. And all of it.

Economics of Health Care

Have you ever walked into a pharmacy and noticed that you have to pass through isles of candy on the way to the medicine? Often, on the way back to the register, you'll pass more isles full of alcoholic beverages (depending on the state), before you face directly, as you're paying, a wall of cigarettes. The medicinal services now occupy a small corner of most chain pharmacies now.

Seems odd that a pharmacy, whose original purpose was to distribute agents of good health, is principally engaged in distributing illness. How can I trust the pharmacist who chooses to work in such a place with my health?

This, to me, feels like one of the most stark examples of how our economic system is failing to serve the public good. These sorts of counter-examples pop up anywhere that basic human needs are regulated (in any part) by monetary economies with any amount of "free market" forces allowed to play out.

Perhaps health should be managed by the people, all of us, rather than by industry.

Distinction

Evidence 1: I heard this great story on radiolab the other day. It was about how it is entirely possible that members of ancient cultures, despite the same physical capacity as modern people, could not identify the color blue. Apparently such a distinction had no inherent value for them (no blue food, enemies, art, etc.).

Evidence 2: There was a decade in there when I got really into drawing copies of nature photos (originally my ADD coping strategy for college lectures). One if the discoveries I made, which drastically improved the quality of the drawings was that there are no real lines in nature; that separations are all gradations with various degrees of severity. If you draw harsh lines on the edges of anything, it ceases to look realistic.

Evidence 3: They say babies are born unable to distinguish anything from themselves. The separations that define ”this” and ”that” are not immediately apparent. Gradually, as necessities and interests develop, one thing or another becomes important, and children learn to identify the particular thing. Some learning occurs when a distinction dawns on a person, and previously fluid concepts become discrete, at which point new conceptual manipulations become possible.

Conclusion/hypothesis: Separations are artificial constructs of the human mind. We (everything) are all one, maybe.

If this is true, then what of those elegant manipulations? Are they commonly accepted because they reflect some objective reality, or merely because we develop in a shared society, with reference frames overlapping?

Contributing member of society

I had begun to lose faith in humanity.   

Having spent some weeks frequenting an urban hospital that serves a diverse population, I had encountered a shocking number of people who function on an astoundingly low level. I've always argued that very few people are utterly hopeless. I've had numerous debates with conservative friends and family wherein I take the side of those whose livelihood depends on social safety nets (don't we all rely on the security inherent to our social contract to some degree?). But over the past month it started to dawn on me that there is a pretty substantial population of legitimately dependent, utterly un-self-aware people in this country, simply going through the motions, however distasteful, however physically uncomfortable.

I wondered:
Is this a local phenomenon?
Is this a recent thing?
Have there always been large chucks of society that are essentially on autopilot?

A few thoughts emerged from some discussion and pondering. Initially, it didn't seem possible that this has always been the case, as we have been through some tough times as a species, and I'm sure we didn't, and couldn't, lug around such dead weight through that. So did this just crop up, or is it instead a new manifestation of something that has been around but maybe not an issue in the past, when environmental/social circumstances would have provided a productive outlet for these tendencies?

Maybe, I wondered, freeing most people from the burden of decision-making is adaptive in the long run? Maybe that human ballast functions as a keel at times, rather than our modern result: dragging anchor-like.

I like that explanation. So I'll run with it for a bit...

The problem, then, is that the default actions of the choiceless many are only recently dysfunctional. The unstated barking orders of our modern times are destructive; the culture/paradigm of the impoverished among us is polluted with toxic expectations and norms.

I have seen the other end of the spectrum, where folks are brought into a high functioning culture. It would be easy to attribute their functionality to good breeding, but the same proportion of adherents exist there, only they adhere to policies and practices that work better, and their families work hard to ensure that this is so. They live in "bubbles" of high-functioning humanity, buffeted against the din of the dominant American paradigm.

And here I'm unfairly casting, as nearly all people (myself included) exhibit the behavior patterns I'm referring to as ”adherence,” as opposed to independent decision-making. Truth is, the analysis required to thoughtfully make choices is taxing. Perpetually questioning the paradigm is exhausting. So it is that we all benefit from immersion into a functioning culture that sets default settings which keep us healthy and well.


Let the goal be to immerse our people in cultural habits that promote health, opportunity, and happiness. Let us enrich our world and provide fall-back protocols that carry us through trying times. May we fold more of the masses into the security and empowerment of well-being.

Grass-roots can only grow in reasonably rich soil. Let's rid ourselves of the toxic...