June 2009 Archives
A number of years ago, I was seated next to a physician at a dinner party. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned that my mother had had breast cancer."Oh,well, you'll most likely get it, too," he said. For a moment, I sat, stunned, not quite sure what piece of his comment to respond to first. The incorrect conclusion? (among other things, my mother had post-menopausal cancer, which is a different disease, with a far less clear genetic link, than the pre-menopausal version.) The lack of professional approach or tact? The arrogance?
"Well," I managed, after a pause, "I think it's a bit more complex than that."
"Well," he conceded gruffly, "it is multi-factorial."
Indeed. Which presents a challenge to researchers and doctors--and to any of the rest of us who want very much to know which thing to do or food to eat so that we can avoid the misfortune of cancer, heart disease, or other life-threatening diseases. It's a challenge not only because pinning down any particular cause or high-risk behavior is then harder to do, but also because it increases the odds of correlation not equalling causation. Researchers can note that people who eat four rutabagas a day have a lower rate of cancer. But those people might also all live outside cities, drink well water, eat 3 pounds of pasta a week, receive 30 minutes of sunshine a day growing those rutabagas, and sleep at least 7 hours every night. Which factor, or combination of factors, is important for avoiding cancer? Or could the answer be "none of the above"? Maybe the truth is, those people all have good genes. Or good luck.
Clearly, research into links between risk factors and disease is important. The discovery of the link between smoking and lung cancer has saved untold lives by discouraging people from continuing, or taking up, smoking. But sometimes it seems the intensity of our drive to "prove" culprits or preventative factors, no matter how small, has more to do with our psychological needs than any clear medical result.
Take, for example, a piece in last week's Science Times, which cast doubt on previous studies linking a moderate level of drinking with a reduced risk for heart disease, diabetes, and dementia. Critics said that all the studies had been "observational," not "randomized, controlled clinical studies" (in which people would be given alcohol, or not, without knowing which one they were getting, in order to test the impact). "The moderate drinkers [the studies observed] tend to do everything right--they exercise, they don't smoke, they eat right and they drink moderately," complained one critic. "It's very hard to disentangle all of that."
Disregard, for the moment, that the above-mentioned critic is being funded by an alcohol and substance abuse prevention foundation, while the researchers he was criticizing are being funded by a non-profit group supported by the alcohol industry. Looking at it strictly from a "scientific" perspective, there really are problems with getting definitive, quantitative answers about the role a moderate amount of alcohol may play in preventing or causing disease. Consider the blind study requirements: take a group of non-drinkers and surreptitiously feed half of them regular, daily doses of alcohol? And then let them drive home?
And even then ... can you be sure that all the other potential factors or links are normalized in the study group, so that the only differing factor, over a long-term study, is the daily consumption of alcohol? Reading researchers' concerns about all the different studies that are being considered--abstainers may not all abstain for the same reasons, and those reasons may influence their risk for disease; moderate drinkers seem to be "socially advantaged in ways that have nothing to do with their drinking"-- another question began to nag at me. Why are we so fixated on proving this issue, one way or another?
Nobody is proposing that consuming one or two glasses of wine a day will cause or prevent disease at the risk level that smoking or not smoking does. At best, the studies would likely prove that a glass of red wine can (or can't) nudge the odds a little in your favor. Which might make drinkers or teetotalers feel better, depending on the outcome. But my guess is that the amount it nudges the odds, one way or another--given that most diseases are not 100% understood yet, and seem to have multi-factorial causes--would be small.
So why do we care so much about finding out? Scientific curiosity? Maybe. But I suspect that public interest in the subject, at least, is driven equally by a fear of things outside our control. Cancer can hit regardless of what you do? That's too scary to contemplate. It reminds me of my nephew Tyler, who at age four asked his father if he could teach him what he needed to know so that he wouldn't have to die. Interwoven with our curiosity to discover how the world works is, I believe, a hope that those discoveries will ultimately give us some measure of control over it all. Prove to me what works, and even though it takes a lot of effort to eat and drink and exercise and monitor exactly according to formula, I can rest easier at night, knowing my odds of survival are better.
And yet, there may well be an ironic twist to this control-oriented approach. A couple of years ago, I read an article noting that the French, with all their cigarettes, liquor, and rich foods, had the same life expectancy as their higher-strung, more health-and-exercise-fanatic American cousins. The studies weren't randomized, controlled clinical trials (of course), but the researchers posited that the stress Americans accumulate by being so fanatical about their lifestyle habits (and by taking such a higher-stress approach to their work lives) might just negate the benefits of any individually healthy elements.
So maybe proving whether or not that one drink is actually preventing disease (and to what precise percentage degree) is less important than not worrying so much about it in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, the critic's complaint about previous alcohol studies is the best answer, sitting right in front of the researchers' eyes: "exercise, don't smoke, eat right and drink moderately."
Of course, a general prescription of moderation and not worrying overmuch about every last provable detail requires making peace with a certain level of uncertainty and lack of control over our lives. Which is to say, ironic as it sounds, letting go of our need for control might just be the single best thing we can do to gain the very control we seek.
I'm not sure how you'd test that theory objectively and conclusively, of course. But rest assured ... someone out there is working on it.
A NOVA program earlier this week explored the learning and teaching habits of apes ... and how they differ from those of humans. Apes of various kinds are capable of learning quite a bit, including, in the case of one chimpanzee, 3,000 vocabulary words. But apes apparently lack the fundamental drive and ability to intentionally teach subject matter to others in their social groups. Apes (and other animals) learn primarily through observation ... which considerably limits the number of concepts they can be taught, or learn.
In an interview, MIT cognitive scientist Rebecca Saxe said that apes don't seem to feel compelled to pass on new or innovative discoveries to others. They rarely cooperate on new innovations, and they also lack a written language with which to store and pass on the discoveries of previous apes or generations. Which, Saxe says, accounts for why humans are able to learn so much more, innovate more creatively, and progress so much further in our technology, civilization, and conceptual understanding than our ape cousins.
How does that relate to geothermal drilling? Because that NOVA program came to mind as I read a New York Times article the next morning about a California company called AltaRock. AltaRock plans to generate geothermal energy by drilling deep into the felsite layer of the California bedrock, some 2-3 miles beneath the earth's surface, and injecting water under high pressure to create fissures in the rock, releasing steam.
The very idea of intentionally destabilizing rock and, by definition, generating small earthquakes in a state known for its unstable underpinnings might seem a bit sketchy, in terms of safe or prudent behavior. But two items in the article gave me additional pause. First and foremost ... that approach to generating geothermal energy has been tried before. Recently. With rather bad results. A company in Basel, Switzerland using the same technique was shut down in 2006 ... almost as soon as it started ... because it generated not only an immediate earthquake measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale (but which packed a greater punch because it was closer to the surface than most natural earthquakes) ... but another 3,500 quakes in the months that followed. The company officials were reportedly surprised at the turn of events, because advocates of the technique said they could successfully set off small quakes without triggering larger ones.
Yet strangely enough, that information didn't manage to find its way into AltaRock's application for the federal permits to use the same technique in California. The Basel incident happened after a U.S. Energy report touting the potential benefits of geothermal energy--the report that got AltaRock venture funding as a company--was printed. But AltaRock knew about it by the time the permits were filed. The company mentioned the 3.4 quake in Basel, among other tremors near drilling sites, in its seismic report. But it didn't mention that the Basel drilling operation had been shut down because of the quake, or any of the subsequent tremors in the area.
Why? AltaRock's story (according to the Times) is that they didn't feel the additional information was relevant. First, because, they weren't convinced there was a link between the drilling and the quakes (although the Swiss government determined that there was, and the Swiss company's insurance company paid out $8 million in claims) and second, because AltaRock said it had improved the technique to prevent a similar problem.
Forgive my skepticism, but I can't help but wonder ... if AltaRock had improved the technique and solved the risk, why wouldn't the company note the Basel incident in their applications, and then explain why their approach was different and safer?
We humans, with our amazing ability to innovate, have often gotten a bit ahead of ourselves in our enthusiasm for new technology. We get so excited about its potential that we tend to gloss over questions about whether or not we really understand what we're playing with. Looking back, for example, at the early nuclear testing (where observers stood a mere six miles away from ground zero with only shaded goggles to protect them), we now shudder at our ignorance of the risks and consequences involved. But at least then we could legitimately plead ignorance. In this case, there is previous experience to draw and learn from.
Clearly, the Swiss engineers didn't understand the dynamics of drilling for steam as well as they thought they did. AltaRock may think they've learned from that example. But they evidently weren't confident enough to take that argument public. Which ought to give more than a few people pause.
Innovation is a double-edged sword. It helps us progress and change life and the world for the better. But innovation is not the holy grail, inherently good without consideration of complexity and consequences. As the NOVA program pointed out, our superior progress comes also from our ability to teach and learn from others' examples and mistakes.
So the good news is, we have an amazing ability to teach, and learn. The bad news is ... just because we have an ability doesn't mean we necessarily use it.
Thinking may be coming back into fashion.
Never mind the fact that we have a President known for his intellectually rigorous abilities and habits. But three times in the past couple of weeks, I've encountered business people discussing Aristotle. Not in an esoteric conversation of culture or literature, either, but as a way to improve every-day life and business decision-making ability.
"We're capable, but not practiced, in the art of thinking," says Phil Terry, CEO of Creative Good, a business consulting company, and the founder of a web-based reading and lecture organization called Reading Odyssey. "We're all endowed with curiosity, but a lot of us, for very good reasons, stop using it after a certain point. After a certain age, we tend to substitute opinions for thinking."
Terry's assessment would resonate with anyone who's spent any amount of time watching cable TV news channels. But even if we recognize the problem, how do we get those dormant curiosity and decision-making skills back in gear?
According to Terry (and Berkshire-Hathaway vice-chariman Charlie Munger, among others), the answer lies in the classics. Why the classics? First, to gather a broad base of knowledge about the "big ideas" across all the major academic disciplines. And second, to develop the ways of thinking and the "habit of wisdom" Aristotle believed were critical to good decision-making.
Munger is apparently well known for his belief that good decision-making--including good investment decision-making--comes from having a "lattice-work of frameworks" with which to approach a subject. If, for example, you can compare how a historian, economist, psychologist and probability theorist would look at a given situation, you can see it more clearly--including angles or weaknesses one discipline alone might miss. And as a result, you're likely to make better decisions about what to do or where to head next.
Of course, "accumulating a broad knowledge base of all the major academic disciplines" isn't exactly a three-hour task you whip out over a long weekend. Fortunately, for anyone so inclined, there's Peter Bevelin. Bevelin, a businessman and investor, wanted to reduce the number of bad decisions he made in his business life. Ddrawn to Munger's approach, he took a year off just to read and study the big ideas in all the major disciplines. Bevelin's book, Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, is the synthesis of the notes he took over that year. It's not easy or quick reading (and copies are a bit hard to find), but it's a far shorter path than doing all the original research yourself.
Some of the gems Bevelin has to offer? In a talk on the book I heard him give two weeks ago, he gave one example of how probability theory applies to a company trying to expand its operations. If you have a tool with one part, and that part is 99% reliable, the chance of something going wrong is only 1%. But if you have a Space Shuttle with 2,000 parts, each of which has a reliability factor of 99%, the probability that any one part will fail jumps to 14%. How does that work? That's the point. You have to understand probability theory to know. But understanding how risk expands exponentially with size might influence a company's dicision to expand or how fast it wanted to expand.
But one of the other main points Bevelin made was that wisdom isn't just about knowledge. It's about a way of thinking. Darwin, he said, wasn't particularly brilliant. But he had exceptional thinking habits ... of observing, contemplating, reading, conversing with close confidants and, above all, of ceaselessly challenging even his own assumptions and beliefs.
Which brings us to Aristotle. Wisdom, according to Aristotle, isn't an object anyone acquires. It's a habit; something that emerges from a particular way of processing information and engaging with others and the world. And a habit that's essential for us to develop to make better decisions in business and life. That theme is prevalent not only in Bevelin's book, but also in Terry's Reading Odyssey teleconference-based lecture and discussion groups--which he set up to help curious adults explore and debate classics and "big ideas" from thinkers ranging from Homer, Aristotle and Herodotus to Darwin.
Then, just a week after hearing Bevelin speak, I heard Aristotle's name and that same theme again--this time at an international conference sponsored by the Boston-based Design Management Institute. Tony Golsby-Smith, a business consultant and educator from Australia, argued that while Arisstotle's Posterior Analytics laid the groundwork for quantitative analysis and the modern scientific method, his Rhetoric laid the groundwork for exceptional decision-making and creative innovation. And that business executives therefore ignored Aristotle's "second road" to knowledge at their peril.
What accounts for this new visibility for the classics, wisdom, and learning how to think? I'm not sure. The ideas themselves aren't new. But perhaps, after years of hubris born of steadily rising stock markets, we're suddenly, post-crash, a bit more open to the idea that we might not know all there is to know--and that we might even need to develop new ways of learning what there is to know. The Greeks knew something about that, too. After all, they're the ones who coined the term "hubris." And anyone who paid attention in history and literature class knows that it was almost always followed by a fall.
It's nice to know Tiger Woods is human, after all. Woods and all the other golf pros who, if the rain ever stops, will walk the links of the U.S. Open this weekend, planning each shot with cool, calculating eyes and a seemingly unflappable mask of control.
Looking at any of them squatting down on the green, putter in hand, analyzing the distance and slope from their ball to the hole, it wouldn't appear that they're about to behave in a fundamentally irrational manner. But according to a new study by two professors at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school, they are. Proving, once again, a Nobel Prize-Winning theory of economics.
In 1979, two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, came up with a new theory about how humans make choices when faced with situations where there is risk or an uncertain outcome involved. Until then, models assumed humans made rationally balanced choices when it came to risk and payoff -- especially in financial transactions. Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory argued that humans didn't actually behave that way. In reality, people were far more averse to loss than they were inclined toward gain. So if you offered someone a chance to win or lose money based on the flip of a coin, and they stood to lose $10, you'd have to offer them the chance of winning at least $20 before they'd take the bet. This explains why people will buy insurance ... and also buy a lottery ticket.
What does this have to do with golf? Well, according to an article in the New York Times, Wharton professors Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer studied 1.6 million putts (yes, you read that number right) made by pros on tour and found that golfers were more averse to getting a bogey (one over par) than they were motivated to get a birdie (one below par).
Pope and Schweitzer came to this conclusion after looking at "identical" putts made by the same golfer and discovering that they missed more often if it was for a birdie than if it was for par. The percentage difference -- between .7 and 6.3%--isn't huge (Woods scored 3.6% more misses on birdie shots). But what makes it interesting is how quickly the golfers agreed that their behavior varied, depending on the stakes. Justin Leonard was quoted in the article as saying "When putting for birdie, you realize that, most of the time, it's acceptable to make par."
In other words, they're willing to give up the "win" of a stroke saved. But faced with the prospect of losing a stroke, with the negative label of "bogey" attached to their performance, they focus more, play more aggressively, and don't subconsciously settle for just "getting it close." They go for it ... and they make it more often. They are more motivated to avoid a perceived loss than to gain a perceived reward. Which, although the Times article didn't make any reference to Prospect Theory per se, is exactly what Kahneman and Tversky would have predicted.
Now here's the really irrational part of that, as anyone who plays golf has undoubtedly already figured out. Golf games are won and lost based on the total number of strokes over 18 holes. So a stroke lost is a stroke lost, regardless of what it's labeled on any given hole. And yet, even though the golfers acknowledge this fact, and how counter-productive that makes their mind-set, they can't seem to use that rational information to overcome their irrational responses on the green.
Which may not be rational, but makes perfect, logical sense to any human who's ever avoided staying on the 13th floor, stepped around a black cat, or walked a little more carefully on Friday the 13th. Our minds have a funny way of playing games with us. Even when ... or, maybe even especially when ... we're involved in playing a game.
In 1947, 20th Century-Fox won two Academy Awards for a controversial movie that told the story of a journalist (Gregory Peck) who decided to write a story about anti-semitism by masquerading as a Jew. The movie was called Gentleman's Agreement, and I've been thinking about it a lot, this past week, as the debate has raged about who is to blame for the killing of Dr. George Tiller, in Kansas, and Stephen Tyrone Johns, the security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
On Sunday, NY Times columnist Frank Rich called on prominent television and radio anchors to stem the hyperbole and unfounded fear-based accusations that feed the fire of racial and political hatred. A day earlier, Charles M. Blow had expanded the call to less prominent citizens. In listening, after the fact, to the friends and neighbors of killers tell of instances in which the shooter had expressed violent views, Blow said he always wants to ask them, "And when he said or did that, how did you respond?"
It was an echo of one of the most memorable lines in Gentleman's Agreement, when a newly-returned Jewish war veteran, played by John Garfield, is listening to Dorothy McGuire (who plays Peck's WASP girlfriend) defend her position as not anti-semitic. She tells a story of a dinner party where someone told a joke in which a Jewish person was ridiculed.
"I was ill. I was sick with rage and shame. I despised him," she tells Garfield.
"What did you do when he told the joke?" he responds. "What did you say when he finished?"
"I wanted to yell at him," McGuire answers. "I wanted to get up and leave. I wanted to say to everyone at that table, 'why do we sit here and take it when he's attacking everything that we believe in? Why don't we call him on it?'"
"And what did you do?" Garfield presses.
"I just sat there," McGuire replies. "I felt ashamed. We all just sat there."
"Yeah," Garfield concludes. "And then you left. A man at a dinner table told a joke, and the nice people didn't laugh. They even despised him for it. But they let it pass."
That interchange, and the articles calling for more vigilance against hateful thoughts and beliefs, spark two questions in my mind. First, why don't more of us stand up and do something when we hear ignorant, racist, or bigotry-tinged speech, ideas, or warning signs, as Blow exhorts us to do? And second ... even if all of us "did" something at the dinner parties and motorcycle gatherings around America ... would it really stop an extremist nut-job from pulling the trigger?
The first is easier to answer. The reason more of us don't stand up and do the "right thing," as Blow advocates, is that there are consequences for doing that. When I was in the 4th grade, the "cool" kids in class were tormenting an awkward boy one day, ripping his coloring paper and taunting him. Filled with righteous indignation, I walked over and gave him my clean coloring paper, taking his tattered sheet for myself, while shooting dagger looks at his tormentors. I was ostracized by all the cool kids for the rest of the year.
There's tremendous social pressure, even as adults, to not rock the boat, especially against the tide of a group's opinions. At the small, community social level, it generates awkward moments, at best. Nobody is likely to reward you for your gallantry. And that's the mild end of the consequence spectrum. Gentleman's Agreement was a fictional movie. But the circumstances and consequences surrounding it were real. The film was controversial, and the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee ended up investigating several people associated with it. Was the actors' involvement in the film a factor? Or was their involvement in the film influenced by their political and ethical beliefs? I don't know enough to say. But two of the actors, Anne Revere (who played Peck's mother in the film) and John Garfield, refused to testify and were blacklisted. Revere didn't appear in another film for 20 years. Garfield was blacklisted and was called to testify against his wife a year later. Shortly before his appearance date, he died of a heart attack ... at the age of 39.
Most of us don't have that kind of courage, let alone the courage of the protesters in Tehran or Tiananmen Square. Or, at least, not close at hand. Or perhaps we just don't have enough skin in the game to generate that kind of courage.
But what about the second question? Even if we all decided to be brave, and speak up, and make a fuss ... would it stop an extremist from a heinous act of violence? Surely a joke at a party isn't going to change the world, or the actions of a lunatic, one way or another. But therein lies the real point of Gentleman's Agreement: the joke does matter. Back then, the "gentleman's agreement" referred to the passive, social acceptance of anti-semitism. Perhaps the equivalent today would be the acceptance of raucous politicized accusations.
But every time any loaded joke--subtle or raucous--goes unanswered, the joke-teller, as well as anyone else of similar mind in the room, is spared re-examination of their knee-jerk reactions to a person or group of people, and receives tacit approval for the stereotype, slam, or slur. It becomes one more millimeter okay to think that way, and it reinforces the notion of that person or group as "other." Which makes it easier to think about or conduct violence against them.
Now, 99.99% of the population would never carry a political, racial, gender, or ethnic joke or slam beyond the righteous feeling of solidarity that comes with witty or even loud rhetoric in a like-minded group (and that goes for left as well as right-minded groups). But somewhere out there, the nut-jobs are listening. And in the roar of that crowd, they hear the potential adulation of a hero.
When I was 7 or 8 years old, my older sister convinced me that my mother wanted new wallpaper in my parents' bedroom, but that my dad wouldn't let her have it. But, my sister told me, if I did something about it, so she'd have to get new wallpaper, my mom would be thrilled. So I went into my parents' bedroom and tore a big, circular piece of wallpaper off the center of the wall. I would never have done such a thing unprovoked. But I thought my mother was going to see me as a hero. I had images of her hugging me, all smiles and gratitude. I truly did.
Needless to say, that's not exactly the way things played out. But the point is ... while I wouldn't consider myself a nut-job (at least on most days) ... I had illusions, or delusions, of hero status, based on my belief that there was a receptive audience for my actions. Actions I never would have taken without that fantasy.
Yes, the rabble-rousers on television and radio hold a match to a tinder-box, and fan the flames for fun and profit. And yes, because they are so visible, they could have the greatest impact on putting out those same flames of dangerous intolerance. But to focus only on them is to ignore how the kindling got so dry and ignitable in the first place. The rabble-rousers of the world couldn't have much effect if there wasn't willing rabble to rouse. The layers are many, and run deep. And they run from hateful words and actions to subtle acquiescence of actions or words on the part of others. The line from that acquiescence to violence is not immediate or direct, but it's traceable.
Of course, there'd be more opportunities for action if we mixed our social groups more than we typically do. Most of us seek out and socialize with like-minded souls who reinforce our views. Which is a whole 'nother subject. But most of us also can recall moments when someone around us made some hurtfully ignorant comment, joke, or slam against a politician, group, race or individual. To respond quietly but forcefully requires knowing something more detailed about the subject, which takes diligence and effort. It also takes the patience and willingness to engage. And it requires the courage to create a socially awkward situation and be labeled whatever it is we might be labeled -- sympathizer, idiot, or humor-less party-pooper--if only to prevent an assumption of group agreement and reinforcement of whatever ignorance or fever might accompany it.
It's a tall order. Always has been. If it were otherwise, Gentleman's Agreement never would have been made.
A friend of mine who runs a management and innovation consulting business recently told me that almost all of his clients were responding to the recession by making drastic cuts in budgets and personnel, including innovation, R&D, product development and marketing efforts. "The problem with that," he said, "is that when the economy recovers, it's going to take them another two years to ramp up again. They won't even have the right personnel or teams in place anymore. They'll be way behind."
So if it's going to set them so far back, why do executives make those decisions? Why do senior managers tend to have such a potentially limiting focus on improving the bottom line numbers in the next quarter, the post-recession world be damned? Clearly, the pressures of unhappy stockholders is a big factor, at least for public companies. But I came across a more intriguing explanation in a recent "Financial Page" piece by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker magazine.
Surowiecki explains the choice as stemming from a difference between risk and uncertainty. Quoting the economist Frank Knight, he says that risk "describes a situation where you have a sense of the range and likelihood of possible outcomes. Uncertainty describes a situation where it's not even clear what might happen, let alone how likely the possible outcomes are." Risk is an everyday part of business. But a deep recession ups the ante of unknowns so high that instead of calculated risks, managers are faced with actual uncertainty. And like sailors facing a dark, unpredictable storm, the typical response is to batten down the hatches, reef the sails, and just try to ride it out.
Not every sailor chooses that option, of course--especially during a race. More than one race has been won by a gambler captain who's actually let sail out during a storm wind, taking advantage not only of the strong wind, but the fact that every other competitor has pulled in their sails, to gain an unassailable edge. Not surprisingly, the same has been true in business, as well. Surowiecki lists numerous companies who have let out their sails in tough times and emerged dominant after the market started to recover, starting with Kellogg cereals in the Great Depression.
So if the evidence is so strong that the industry leaders, post-recession, come from the ranks of those who didn't trim the sails in the storm, why don't more companies follow in their footsteps? Ah. Probably because more than one race has also been lost by a gambler captain who's let out sail in a storm wind ... and ended up capsizing rather ignominiously for their bold, courageous effort. Swing for the fences and you may just end up striking out.
We forget that sometimes, in our canonization of the innovative heroes of America. Or ... maybe we don't forget it. Perhaps the reason we give such great lip service to taking innovative risks but don't, as a market whole, tend to follow suit ... especially in tough economic times ... is precisely because we understand quite clearly the risks involved. As the saying goes, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Playing it safe may not win the race, but it's less likely to end up with you going down in flames.
On the other hand, as the former CEO of Continental Airlines once said, if you're in the pizza business and you just keep cutting one topping after another, pretty soon, all you have is crust. And it's hard to sell crust.
It's also hard to get people excited about making crust. "Think very conservatively, safely, and predictably" is not nearly as zippy or persuasive a slogan--or as likely to inspire employees to commit hearts and souls to the effort--as Apple's slightly more dramatic "Think Different!" campaign. What if pitcher Tug McGraw of the 1973 Amazin' Mets had tried to rally the team with "You know, we can get through this season without too much embarrassment," instead of his iconic "You gotta believe!" Now, granted, the Mets didn't win the 1973 World Series. But they went from last place to within one game of a World Series Championship in the span of a couple of months. Which isn't exactly going down in flames.
Vision alone doesn't guarantee success, of course. Christopher Buckley's new book (Losing Mum and Pup) recounts how the vision of his acclaimed father William F. Buckley, Jr. for a more perfect Christmas Eve mooring once led to the running aground of the sailboat, with the loss of Christmas tree, presents and all good cheer. It's a cautionary, if highly entertaining, tale.
But there's a lot of ground in between battening down the hatches and voluntarily taking on a Christmas Eve gale. The captain I'd most want to crew for would be one who kept one eye on conserving the ship, but kept the other one ... crafty, conspiratorial and twinkling ... focused on how we might just outsmart that storm by concentrating on one or two particular strengths we had, or could develop, and taking advantage of the wind. Someone who wasn't content with survival as an end in and of itself, but had a passionate vision of something worth surviving for--and a clever vision of how to get there ahead of the rest of the pack.
It's said a picture is worth a thousand words, driving home an entire story with instant, lasting impact. But which thousand, what story, and with what impact?
It's a question that has been asked a lot, lately, as the debate has raged--even within the electronic pages of this very website--over President Obama's decision not to release more of the infamous "torture photos." But an article about a photo exhibition that just closed at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris this past week made me think about the subject from yet another angle.
"Controversies: A Legal and Ethical History of Photography" (headed next to South America) focuses not on insider policy-making or accountability from photographs of dramatic events and people ... although a photograph from Abu Ghraib is included in the exhibition. It looks at the mixed and complex issues involved in how a wider public views images. Why is one photograph controversial and another not? If a photographer is in a disaster zone, is it inhuman to photograph the carnage instead of trying to help? In viewing riveting images, when are we seeking a better understanding of the world--or having our understanding of important world events expanded--and when are we being voyeurs?
And somewhere in all those tough questions, a realization that the photographer or publisher doesn't, in the end, control how the public or world will interpret or react to a given photo. Alex Gibney (who has written some powerful posts--well worth reading--about the abuses and torture he discovered at Bagram prison in Afghanistan) took issue recently with Philip Gourevitch, the New Yorker writer whose articles and book about the Rwanda genocide brought the horror home to America, for arguing in a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece that while releasing the first round of photos from Abu Ghraib was important, releasing more would be counter-productive.
Gourevitch's point was that while the initial photos were important, because they proved the abuses were taking place, more photos of the lower-level individuals inflicting the abuse ran the danger of not only angering the Muslim world, but also distracting attention from the now-really-important issue. Which isn't whether the abuses took place, but who, far higher up on the chain of command, issued the orders that allowed them to happen? No corporal or captain is involved in making policy, or abuses a prisoner if those above them, who do make the policy, issues orders against it. But the photos are so riveting, they might obscure that non-visual, and more complex, part of the story.
Gibney disagrees, arguing that editors will use discretion with the photos, and that we need to see all the photos to see how widespread the abuses and breakdown of command were, so we can hold those responsible accountable. Of Gourevitch's more nuanced argument, he says, "one can get hung up on the duality of semioticians until, one day, you wake up and nothing means anything anymore."
As it happens, I majored in semiotics. And while I never want to read another Foucault essay--which is to say, I'm with Gibney on the arcane nature of some theorists in the field--semiotics at its core is actually quite practical. And quite relevant to the discussion. At its core, semiotics says that no matter what message I send out into the world, whether in image or print, or spoken word ... I do not control how it is interpreted. And it will be interpreted quite differently by different people, depending on their backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences.
Gibney wants the pictures released to achieve a particular goal he believes they will achieve. Gourevitch--who has some experience in trying to present horror in a compelling way to the world---is less convinced that the photos will achieve the goal that those who want them released hope they will. The public, and the world, will react in uncontrollable ways to the photos. Which is one of the points of the "Controversies" exhibit. The public may not view the photos and make the link to demanding accountability from the commanders and politicians who set the policy. They may remain riveted on the photos as voyeuristic passers-by view a car wreck, or demand the particular people pictured be punished, instead. The general public, even here in the States, is funny that way.
But the Times article on the exhibition raised one other important point, as well. Not only can stark, shocking images divert the public's attention to a detail, rather than a complex, systemic problem that led to that captured moment in time ... graphic photos can sometimes detract, rather than attract, attention to a horror. Writer Michael Kimmelman talks about Susan Sonntag's reaction to seeing photos of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. "A part of my feelings started to tighten; something went dead," Sonntag said. "To see something," Kimmelman concludes, "is to face the prospect of becoming inured to it."
I think that's true. And I think those of us who have been in conflict zones, or have seen tragedy come alive before our eyes, have to remember that what is bearable--and even critically important--to us, having seen it unfold in person, can--in too large a dose--be too much for someone far away, who has no context or relief in which to place the pieces we want to show them. And so, the reaction can often be to shut down. To become numb. To turn away. What do we do with all those photos of bashed-in children's heads from Rwanda? Or those horrible images of rape and abuse by our own soldiers? Yet another photo? And another? We go numb.
It's a survival mechanism. Soldiers learn to deal with too much death the same way. In much the same way as, having lost 25 friends over the years to airplane crashes (a liability that comes with the territory of having worked in the high-risk end of the industry), I no longer feel grief or horror when one of those dreaded phone calls come. "Who is it this time?" I ask, as I feel my emotions shut down and pull back somewhere safer inside me, until I can find a way to process the unprocessable. Our psyches have safety valves in them that shut down when we are faced with more than we can handle.
Which is all just to say that, among the vast complexities that come with how we photograph humans, and how we distribute those images ... it's important to think about not only how the international public will actually interpret what they see ... but also how they will react to it. And if the goal is to focus people on the fact that a very complex horror did occur, and generate an emotional and political reaction that heads resolution in a productive direction ... nuance, context, and semiotics matter. Like cayenne pepper in a recipe, a certain amount of graphic intensity may be essential to make a point, but too much can lead to a reaction very different than what the creator intended.
On the cover of the next issue of ESPN magazine (which hits newsstands today) is a photo of a young, tousled-hair 17-year-old, standing tall aboard a sailboat. His name is Zac Sunderland and, as we speak, he's on the home stretch of a quest--as his very slick and hyper-marketing-sensitive website (clicking on it brought up a pop-up ad for his to-be-released DVD, book and other support possibilities) puts it--"to be the youngest person in history to sail around the world alone." It is a quest, the site goes on to say (just in case we might not intuitively get the significance of the effort), that is "akin to climbing Mt. Everest, or sledding across the Arctic. ... The danger and difficulty cannot be underestimated [sic]."
Not, certainly, by the folks marketing the effort. Which is not to say that sailing solo around the world is easy. Just read the travails of an earlier 16-year-old named Robin Lee Graham who took 5 years to accomplish the feat aboard a boat called Dove in 1965. (A trip, I might note, Graham would not have completed if not for the pushing of his father and National Geographic, who both had a lot riding on his completion of the journey.) Sailing around the world by yourself is also not without merit. If you survive it, it's sure to be extraordinarily educational. And if you have your eyes and mind open along the way, it could make you a better person. It will most certainly be an adventure. So I'm all for young Zac's taking a year to explore the world. It's the hype I have issues with. For a couple of reasons.
First, call me old-school, but I think a 16 or 17-year-old should be a kid, not a commodity.
Second, the claim and goal of "youngest" is a dangerous bar that leads to lower and lower bars. If Zac succeeds, he will break the record not by years, but by months. There's another slightly younger sailor in his wake, trying to beat him to the title. And also as we speak, a 15-year-old New Zealand girl is preparing to set out to break Zac's record both in age, and in a non-stop version of the challenge. Fifteen. We don't even let 15-year-olds drive. And with good reason. What's next? The 7-year-old Jessica Dubroff tragedy comes to mind ... where an attempt to set a "record" for the youngest pilot to cross the country ended in a fatal crash that killed 3 people.
And yes, the media is complicit in hyping these stories. Andy Warhol's famous line, about how in the years to come everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, was not just an idle observation about the future. It was a disdainful comment about how the media would focus on someone with laser-like intensity, and then turn the lights and focus astonishingly quickly to the next great thing. Except, with the frenetic pace of media "cycles" today, that 15 minutes might have to be readjusted to something more like 15 seconds.
Which makes the headline in an online Los Angeles Times story about Zac's progress all the more curious: "Sunderland on home stretch, bound for fame." Really? I'm not so sure. Perhaps, since he clearly has very dedicated marketing and merchandising people behind him, his operation will be able to give the trip a slightly longer-lasting imprint. But unless he starts a reality TV show about his life on a boat, the public will move on almost embarrassingly quickly. Don't believe me? Quick: What's the name of the American who won the gold medal in the Decathalon in the 2008 Bejing Olympics, earning the games' highest honor and title of the World's Greatest Athlete?
Right. I couldn't have come up with it, either, if I hadn't read a story in Tuesday's New York Times about how Bryan Clay's life is going, post-gold-medal. Clay, who's on track to become the first person in history to win three Decathalon medals (he won a silver in Athens), has enough sponsorship to allow him to train full-time. But his following on Twitter amounts to a grand total of 1,197 followers, and he's not sure where his gold-medal is in his modest 3-bedroom house (which he's lived in for a while, renovated himself with his wife, and which they share with their two small children). "It was a dream come true," Clay says about winning the gold. But "It doesn't change who you are or what it takes to get through day-to-day life."
It's a sentiment echoed by Dan O'Brien, who ... quick quiz, remember what made him famous? No? Join the club ... won the 1996 Olympic Gold Medal in the Decathalon in Atlanta. The Times article quotes O'Brien as saying that when he won the gold medal,
"I really thought I would wake up the next day and feel different. ... But the hype of the Olympics goes away, they ask you onto the Dave Letterman show and the Jay Leno show only once, and it subsides. You still have to figure out: How am I going to make a living the rest of my life?"
Welcome to the real world. Even Bruce Jenner, the Decathalon Gold Medal winner who really did achieve some level of more lasting notoriety, is better known today (at least among the younger set) for his reality show, "Keeping up with the Kardashians." Life goes on. Disconcertingly fast.
And yet, I found myself really liking this Clay guy, who doesn't have DVDs or merchandise for sale on his website -- just a foundation dedicated to helping high school students in need further their education. And who has gone out to the track, day after day, sweating and grunting and pushing himself to the limit--for more than 10 years in a row, now--in search of an extraordinarily difficult goal that probably won't have a big cash-in associated with it. While still getting excited about a new tomato discovered by one of his kids in the back yard garden.
No question--whether it's sailing around the world or going after the toughest Olympic Gold Medal there is--a lust for fame generally isn't enough to get you through it. Even if there's a good chance for a huge payoff at the end (which, occasionally, there is). You have to really want the mountain, somewhere deep inside yourself, to keep pushing when every muscle hurts, the winds are bad, and the goal recedes into a distant haze beyond the pain or fear.
And that's good, because no matter what the goal, outcome, or hype, the fame that arises from most accomplishments rarely lasts. Ironically, the moments and people we remember best are often those who don't even succeed. Remember Julie Moss, the woman in the then-little-heard-of 1981 Hawaii Ironman Triathalon who was leading by a large margin until the last mile, when she hit such a wall that her legs collapsed underneath her? Unwilling to accept assistance, she literally crawled to a second-place finish ... and in the process, brought the sport of Triathalon racing onto the mainstream world stage, where it has stayed ever since. Or Dan Jansen, the speed skater who valiantly tried ...and failed ... to win a medal for his sister the day she died? Those moments, for anyone who witnessed them, are etched in our memories forever.
Why is that? I'd like to think that something in a from-the-guts effort when the prize and victory are lost speaks to a quality we realize is more important than fame or the easy happiness of winning. It's not giving up even when our hearts are breaking ... which is something all of us, athlete or not, know the value of. Sometimes all too well.
We admire our heroes for their achievements. But we seem to remember them most clearly, and longest, when they exhibit the kind of strength for which there are no medals, records, or sponsorship deals. The kind we all hope we will find, when our own moments of testing come.
To hear Matthew Crawford tell it, he's discovered a grand new truth of life. And that is: contrary to conventional belief, there is great nobility--far greater, even, than can be found in the white-collar world--in the more fundamental trades in life. The kind of work publicized in shows like "Dirty Jobs." And the kind that Crawford himself, despite his PhD education, has chosen: that of a motorcycle mechanic.
Crawford's book Shop Class as Soulcraft was released last week, and an excerpt was published in last week's New York Times Sunday magazine. And given our collective horror at the excesses of the white-collar denizens of Wall Street, whose hubris and disregard for consequences contributed to bringing down a global economy, Crawford's argument seems particularly sound and appealing at the moment.
But there are several major flaws with Crawford's case, as he presents it. First, he looks at his own personal--and limited--experience in both the white-collar and blue-collar worlds and draws far-reaching conclusions as if there were no other possible experience beyond his own.
Second, Crawford overlooks the fact that he doesn't just work with his hands, in a "trade." He works for himself. Some of his satisfaction in his work, and the lessons and ethics that accompany it, come from being an entrepreneur with a huge degree of control over his work and standards, and a direct link and responsibility to a product and a customer, instead of being just a cog in a very big wheel. Many of his rants against the white-collar world would be more accurately directed toward any job that's a cog in a bureaucratic machine, where efficiency tops quality and the worker has no control. Factory work comes to mind as an example of that just as easily as middle-management. Likewise, many of the satisfactions he derives from his work would be well understood by entrepreneurs of many stripes and colors. (A career track, it's important to note, that only about 10% of the population has the desire or personality to pursue.)
Further, many of Crawford's complaints about the white-collar world would be applicable only to bad white-collar jobs, and bad white-collar managers. There is no mention of white-collar professionals who lose sleep at night trying to make sure they get their jobs right, or exhaust their brains trying to figure out the cause of a problem, or feel elation at finally cracking the code on some important stumbling block or flaw. At the end of the day, I was left with an impression of someone writing through a lens warped by both an idealized view of manual labor, and a need to justify his own life choices, without a view to other perspectives on the subject.
Which is not to say Crawford doesn't have any points at all.
Our idealized image about the nobility of "real work" is not a new phenomenon. America has had a love affair with people--and particularly men--who do physical labor for a long time. And, yes, many in the white-collar class have harbored a trace of envy for the satisfaction they imagine comes with more visibly consequential work. Not to mention the satisfaction of being your own boss. Hence the mythic fascination with, and idealization of, the American Cowboy.
America also has a very rich history of respect for the craftsman. There is an art form to creating something with your hands, carefully and with great skill, whether it's furniture, pottery, sculpture, woodwork, glasswork, music, or restoration of any antique, whether mechanical or artistic in nature.
As for the importance and satisfaction of working with your hands in terms of the lessons it imparts ... I offer Thomas Jefferson's ideal vision of the "gentleman farmer." It's not a new idea that a balance between the world of ideas and the world of practical, tangible work creates a more well-rounded citizen. Most of us--even the most hardened city intellectuals--also understand the satisfaction that comes with a tangible, measurable, complete-able task, and the relief that can come from immersion in a less complicated and ephemeral activity. They might not work on motorcycles, but most of the people I know who work in the world of ideas find relief in their spare time through some kind of physical endeavor: home renovation, cooking, gardening, or sports. And I don't think it's coincidence.
Are there just as many mechanics who spent their weekends perusing the pages of great literature or discussing intellectually challenging ideas for balance? For sure, there are some. A few years ago, I was up in Alaska researching a story about the diminishing salmon industry in the town of Yakutat--a community of 800 souls whose roads stopped a mile outside of town. Nothing from the outside world made it to Yakutat except by barge or airplane, One afternoon, I went for a ride to an outlying barrier island with one of the local commercial fishermen. We were zipping across the bay in an outboard-powered dory when out of the blue, salt water spraying in his face, the fisherman turned and asked me, "Do you ever read John McPhee's stuff?" "You mean the New Yorker writer?" I asked. "Yeah," he said, nodding. "I really like his work."
But in my own heady, idealistic days of imagining the nobility of cowboys, adventurers, and all things "real," I, too, left the academic world I'd grown up in for the far more tangible world of manual labor and physical challenge. In my case, it wasn't motorcycles. It was airplanes, and the restoration of old airplanes ... although a lot of the pilots I knew also owned and worked on motorcycles, so I'm pretty versed in that field, as well. I spent the better part of 15 years immersed in the world of blue-collar mechanics. And when I look back on all the things that time of my life taught me, I find that it's not nearly as simple or clean-cut as Matthew Crawford presents.
Is there satisfaction and learning that comes from tangible involvement with something that has immediate, real-world consequences? Absolutely. Get something wrong on an airplane, and the pilot doesn't just pull over to the side of the road. He or she comes out of the sky. The lessons are graphic, visceral, and unforgettable. And so, often, are the rewards. I've seen a pile of scrap metal transformed into a living, breathing aircraft that lifts effortlessly off the ground as if reborn. I've watched craftsmen ply their trade, skill and artistry in ways that left me silent in wonder. I've known people who live by a very rock-solid code of giving a friend in need the shirt off their back.
But I've also found many people as disgruntled about their lot as in any white-collar job. I've found disconcertingly narrow, parochial, and uninformed views of the world beyond the shop or airport. I've watched the same people who'd give a friend the shirt off their back utter horrifying racial or ethnic epithets against people they'd never even met.
In the end, we're probably all at risk of distortion when we idealize anything. Real life is rarely, if ever, that unidimensional or simple. As for the type of work that's most "noble," I think I side with William Allan Neilson, the president of Smith College from 1917 - 1939. I don't even know for sure that he's the one who said this particular line. But my grandmother, who went to Smith but then became crippled and a single mother in the Depression and ended up doing a lot of different jobs to keep food on the table, used to quote him as saying, "It is the worker who ennobles the job, not the job that ennobles the worker." Soulcraft, in other words, is not just the province of shop class. It is found anywhere we choose to practice it.
Lane Wallace
