November 2009 Archives
How on earth did Oprah Winfrey--an unlikely media mogul if there ever was one--get so popular, powerful and rich, all at the same time? Ever since she announced at the end of last week that she was walking away from her legendarily popular syndicated talk show in 2011, the airwaves have been abuzz with discussion about what it means, what impact it will have ... and how she managed to get this successful in the first place.
In yesterday's New York Times, columnist David Carr argued that Oprah Winfrey should be studied in every business school in America--not only for the smart moves she made, but also for the mistakes she didn't make. She didn't go public with her company, so she retained control. She didn't lend her name to other people's products. When she decided to add a magazine to her stable, she created her own, with such a clear sense of branding that she put herself on each and every cover. She didn't use her wealth to invest in fields she knew nothing about. Oprah did extend her brand into new shows, from Dr. Phil to Rachel Ray, but her offshoots all had the same feel and market as the mothership. And she didn't try to cash in on every possible profit opportunity, including the success of the books she turned into overnight bestsellers.
Oprah's branding success, according to Vogue editor Anna Wintour, was due to the fact that she steered her business through "personal choices," like a woman who has an enviably clear and innate sense of what looks good on her. Which is undoubtedly true. But that complicates the matter of how one would teach or replicate Oprah's success in b-school.
Oprah Winfrey, after all, gives a whole new meaning to the "Chicago School" of economics. A meaning that would make Milton Friedman, the father of the adage "the purpose of business is to make as much money as possible for shareholders," turn over in his grave. Oprah never allowed shareholders, of course, which simplified the matter. But, still. In an era where the primacy of the bottom line ruled triumphant, Oprah gave away cars, eschewed commissions on products she made popular, and turned down the short-term money that going public or selling the company could have brought. And made $2.3 billion as a result of it.
Scholars could parse all her decisions for wisdom about brand management, risk, leadership, growth strategies, marketing, and internal R&D investment. They might even find places where her success seemed to illustrate well-known models or schools of thought. Someone is probably working on it right now, as a matter of fact. Which is all well and good, because there's certainly a lot of wisdom that can be gleaned from the story of Oprah's successful climb from a local Chicago talk show host to the CEO of her own production company and network, while becoming a seismic cultural force and, arguably, the most powerful and wealthy woman in America.
The trouble is, Oprah's success isn't just the sum of her strategies. The engine that not only drove those particular strategies, but also made them successful, was a deep sense of identity, authenticity, and purpose that can't be imitated or crafted through method. If Oprah has a deep and guiding understanding of her audience, it's not because she's methodically observed them. It's because she's lived their struggles, hopes, joys and sorrows. And those struggles gave her first a connection, and then a purpose, from which all other decisions organically flowed.
In the world of Silicon Valley, it's said there are two types of entrepreneurs: missionaries, and mercenaries. Mercenaries can make a lot of money if they're smart and have good strategies. But missionary entrepreneurs are the ones who change industries and the world--not only because they continue on no matter how hard the going gets, but because they bring to bear an irresistible combination of passion, authenticity and sense of purpose bigger than mere profit or themselves. Success, for them, is as much about impact as it is about profit. Which is, ironically, how many of them become incredibly profitable.
Clearly, Oprah is a missionary entrepreneur. But how do you teach someone to be a successful missionary? Even Polonius' advice to Laertes, "to thine own self be true" is insufficient. If asked, I suspect Oprah would say that first you have to learn who you are, where you came from, how that affects and informs you, and what matters in the world. You also have to care about something bigger than yourself, and imagine a way in which your particular skills could allow you to make a difference in that area. And whether you seek that path out, or stumble upon it along the way, you have to care about making that difference enough that the vision of it keeps you going through the dark, and can act as a compass to steer your decisions along the way.
Add to that some smarts, savvy, and sharp thinking about content, brand management, marketing, and growth, and you have a legend in the making. But those last bits are the only pieces that can be taught. Honest self-knowledge, authenticity, passion and purpose are harder to acquire. Most often, they emerge from battles fought in the midnights of our solitude, if we manage to scrounge up the courage to face what we find there.
But if you can't teach the intuition that emerges from those internal journeys, you can at least teach its importance. Asking "what would Oprah do?" might not be a bad exercise when contemplating tough or tempting business options. It's not a quantifiable model, of course, and the results can't be proven. But it wouldn't be a bad placeholder while encouraging students to explore enough about themselves and the world to develop a true-steering compass and passionate purpose of their own.
Note: I will be offline for the next week, returning Friday, December 4th.
In a democracy, it is said, we get the government we deserve. The same can be said of bestselling guru prescriptives.
Malcolm Gladwell's new book What the Dog Saw, a compilation of some of his favorite New Yorker pieces, has drawn both praise and criticism. Personally, I'm not a big Gladwell fan. Shoot me. I'm told he's an interesting person. And he knows how to tell a good anecdote. But, at the risk of oversimplifying my critique of his work ... he oversimplifies.
The general thesis of Blink, for example, was "trust your gut ... except when you shouldn't." Okay ... but why can you trust your gut sometimes, but not others? What does that tell us about what "gut" instinct really is? And what does that mean in terms of how we process information in the world? And what do we do with that knowledge? The really interesting points are left dangling. Why? I don't know, but I suspect it's because they're complex and not easily summarized ... and might muddy the simple and easily-grasped ideas or conclusions that are a trademark of Gladwell's work.
If I'm not a fan of Gladwell, it's because I want to see robust logic behind an argument, depth to its exploration, and acknowledgment of the complexities and contradictions it may entail. Simple, neat answers don't appeal to me, because they don't resonate with what I've experienced in the world. But clearly, I'm an outlier in that regard.
Judging from the sales of not only Gladwell's books, but the plethora of "3 step," "7 habits," "9 insights" and other success-formula books on personal and business improvement, there's an almost ravenous hunger in the world for simple answers on how things work and how to get the game right. And that hunger has only gotten more intense as the world has gotten more complex.
It's an interesting phenomenon. Surely one part of our brain knows that the world, or even the world of business, is more complex than the raft of simple, success-formula books promises. And yet, like a woman who, despite multiple failed affairs, convinces herself that this married man will surely leave his wife, we ... or at least a good number of us ... keep buying the fantasy. We keep being drawn to simple-sounding answers and solutions--to the tune of almost $13 billion a year. Even when, or perhaps because, they don't pan out to be true, as a writer for The Economist pointed out in a recent column.
"The Three Habits ... of Highly Irritating Management Gurus" takes the writers of those "3-step" and "7-habits" books to task on several fronts. First, for repackaging stale ideas as breakthrough insights. Second, for using seemingly "model firm" anecdotes to prove their points without a lot of rigorous research--anecdotes that often prove embarrassingly untrue several years down the road. And third, for ... well, peddling those "three habit" success-formula lists and prescriptives.
But "the most irritating thing of all about management gurus," the author writes, is that "their failures only serve to stoke demand for their services. If management could indeed be reduced to a few simple principles, then we would have no need for management thinkers. But the very fact that it defies easy solutions, leaving managers in a perpetual state of angst, means that there will always be demand for books like Mr. [Stephen] Covey's."
Ironic, but true. If writers come up with list-based solutions, and oversimplified trends or observations, it's because there's a far larger audience for that kind of book than one titled, "Some interesting ideas that might prove useful to think about as you make your way through a very complex world."
But why is that? One would think that we'd rather have a book that offers realistic assessments and thoughts on the tough choices and complexities we face than simple panaceas that sound terrific or comforting but describe a world that bears little resemblance to the mess we generally find ourselves navigating.
If we don't, it's at least in part because humans are just so uncomfortable with ambiguity. There are all kinds of psychological studies on that point. We desperately want there to be a pattern, an orthodoxy, a model, or a formula we can simply implement or follow to find our way back to safe, clear, and happy endings. Even if we're told that real wisdom, strength and growth come from figuring it all out for ourselves, as we go.
What's more, this tendency may be getting stronger in the next generation. I interviewed a business school professor yesterday who told me that she thinks MBA students today have a far lower tolerance for ambiguity than students she taught 20 years ago. She attributed the shift to the fact that many of today's students grew up with tightly scheduled lives and activities, leaving them little experience in exploring the world without structure, expectations, or guidelines. I think another factor may be the pressure they feel to achieve and get the "right" answer.
But whatever the reasons are, if her observation is true, then it's cause for concern. Because there are dangers to oversimplification, as recent events in both our economy and Iraq have painfully reminded us. No matter what we might like to be true, successful leadership in an increasingly complex world is going to depend not on condensing it to simple terms, or finding the right prescriptive formula, but on getting comfortable enough with ambiguity and complexity to see a way through it. One thoughtful, creative and unique step at a time.
The front page of Sunday's New York Times carried an eye-opening story about statements a number of Congressional Representatives--both Republican and Democratic--had entered into the Congressional Record before the House vote on the health care reform bill. The eye-opening bit was that it turned out the statements had been written not by the Representatives themselves, or even by a member of their staffs, but by a couple of lobbyists paid by the biotechnology firm Genentech.
How did the ghost writing come to light? As with many a class cheating scandal, what let the cat out of the bag was that so many of the Representatives used the lobbyists' words whole cloth. And someone (presumably someone at the Times) noticed how, well, similar all the statements were.
The revelation should have been at least highly embarrassing to the Representatives involved. After all, if they'd pulled that stunt in a classroom--lifting someone else's words and presenting them as their own--they'd be slammed for cheating and plagiarism, and probably for violating the school honor code, as well. At the very least, they'd flunk the paper. At some schools, they might find themselves expelled.
Of course, one could argue that we don't hold politicians to the same standard as schoolchildren. After all, most national politicians have speechwriters who craft their public words for them. But, still. There's a line between having a staff person take your ideas and craft them more articulately, and taking a propaganda statement from a private, vested interest ... especially one that, in some of the cases, had given you campaign money ... and parroting it verbatim as your own words. Especially because the statements were submitted into the record at the request of the lobbyists, not because the politicians felt an innate need to add those particular words to the debate. It's duplicitous, because knowing the source changes how you consider the argument.
The staff people interviewed for the article argued that the lobbyists' statements reflected points of view supported by the Representatives in question. But surely, even if they didn't grasp the ethical implications involved, wouldn't those responsible have felt at least a little queasy about how it would look, if discovered? That it would risk the appearance of a member of Congress being little more than a Charlie McCarthy puppet mouthpiece of a lobbying or pharmaceutical firm? Not to mention a copycat puppet, repeating the same exact words as 40 other Representatives?
Apparently not.
"This happens all the time," one lobbyist said. "There was nothing nefarious about it."
"We were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record. I asked for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There's not much reason to reinvent the wheel on a Congressional Record entry," one Representative's chief of staff shrugged.
That, to me, was the real eye-opening part of the article. I'm always fascinated when I read statements by people that reveal far more than the speakers intended about the lenses through which they view the world, especially in terms of what's "normal," "fair," or "right."
I had the same reaction when I read the resignation letter of an A.I.G. vice-president in the op-ed section of the Times last winter. The executive in question was part of the infamous London financial products division that is generally credited with doing more to bring down the global economy than any other single group of financial sorcerer's apprentices. But miffed that he was being asked to give back part of his hard-earned $750,000 post-tax bonus, he announced that he was going to give it all away and was resigning, because the request was so unfair.
His lengthy venting and argument made far less of an impression on me than the fact that this man actually thought it was a good idea to send his letter to the Times for publication. It was a fascinating window into the mindset of those whose sense of high-dollar entitlement and low concern for the impact of their risky, short-term profit schemes outside their own bonus goals had caused such immense and widespread damage. To him, $750,000 was the least he deserved for actions he still found no reason to fault. His view of normal had become so warped that he truly didn't see what he had done wrong.
The same seems to have been true of the Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot their Minneapolis, Minnesota, destination by 150 miles because they were so engrossed in a personal computer scheduling task that they forgot to fly the airplane. Speaking to the press right after the incident, the first officer said, confidently, "It was not a serious event, from a safety issue."
Really? One hundred and forty-four passengers were aboard a plane being flown by two pilots who hadn't so much as looked at an instrument in over an hour (or they would have seen the alerts), or talked to a controller, and had no idea where they were, or what their fuel or any other status was, while blazing through airspace off flight plan, and therefore without permission and potentially into other aircraft flight paths, putting an entire national defense system on alert ... and it wasn't a serious event, from a safety perspective?
The FAA clearly saw it differently, revoking the pilots' licenses within days of the incident. But ... wow. How could the pilots themselves not understand the severity of the transgression?
The answer, I think, is the same in all three cases. It's something the pilots I flew with in Africa called "normalized deviance." In terms of bush flying in Africa, what that means is that a normal pilot, even with back-country training in the U.S., would consider a landing on a dirt airstrip that was half covered in water, deteriorating, crooked, and wedged in between ridge lines to be a very hazardous maneuver. But in Africa, most of the airstrips are like that. Most of the time.
At first, new pilots in Africa approach that kind of strip with caution. But humans are amazingly adaptable creatures. After landing on runways like that every day for several months, that "deviant" condition becomes the norm. It no longer generates the hesitation or discomfort it once did. So what pilots consider a "high risk" landing becomes something even further out of the box. The pilots' view of what "normal" is becomes skewed ... with the end result that transport/cargo aircraft in Africa have an accident rate 13 times that of the rest of the world.
It's similar to the "bubble" phenomenon people talk about with politicians: the skewing of "normal" perspectives and reactions by abnormal surroundings. To such an extent, in many cases, that those involved no longer even grasp that their view of "normal" has become warped, or at least detached from that of most other people.
That doesn't excuse the behavior, of course. And not everyone, even in the same circumstances, surrenders all connection with their old sense of right, normal, fair, or safe. But the Northwest pilots had probably spent so much time letting the airplane fly itself that they no longer saw anything wrong with that. The A.I.G. vice-president had been overpaid and judged only on his own financial "kill" rate so long that he'd obviously lost sight of what a "normal" salary was, or any sense of responsibility for how his actions might be connected to real people or harm done in the world. And the relationship between Congress and lobbying firms has evidently grown so cozy over time that the idea of providing an unedited mouthpiece for industry PR departments, even if "only" in the Congressional Record, doesn't even seem to raise much of an eyebrow on Capitol Hill anymore.
If that realization doesn't disturb us overmuch, perhaps it's because we're suffering from a kind of normalized deviance of our own, in terms of our expectations. And that, at least, should disturb us.
(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The movie 2012 opens Friday, predicated on the notion that on December 21, 2012, as the most recent Mayan long-form calendar cycle (5,125.366 years) comes to an end, along with a unique planetary/solar alignment and a high level of solar activity, the world will cataclysmicly end one era and enter another. With earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and all sorts of devastating destruction in the process.
The movie is not the only source of prophetic notions of doom, or at least cataclysmic change, that are gaining increasing play and attention as 2012 approaches. There are books, websites, and even several other movies scheduled for release on the subject with all kinds of angles, from secular and New Age to religious and indigenous folk legend.
Now, even if it were true that the Mayans had predicted some apocalyptic ending of the world at the end of their long calendar cycle (they had several calendars and ways of marking time; that was just one of them), it's a bit odd that we'd grab onto that one particular prophesy and belief system of theirs. After all, the Mayans also believed in human sacrifice, and we don't exactly leap on board that train in attempting to maintain civic and theological order.
But according to Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI), the truth is, the Mayans didn't have any apocalyptic predictions for 2012. "There is NOTHING in ancient Maya records that predicts the end of the world; no apocalypse, no destruction, no cosmic clashes. Nothing," she says.
But, wait. What about Quetzacoatal returning and all that? Big sigh from the folks at FAMSI. In a fascinating paper available from the FAMSI website, Dr. Mark Van Stone, who has studied the Mayan culture for over a decade (and can read and write in Mayan hieroglyphs) provides an illuminating and entertaining cataloging of why all the doomsayers are off the mark and includes some great photo exhibits regarding the astronomical events scheduled for 12/21/12. Here's a sample, from his "9 Reasons Why The Mayan Prophecies Should Be Read Very Critically":
Though Aztec, Mixtec, and Maya sources provide us a number of narratives, different versions disagree. For example: the Aztec predict that this Creation will end on a 4-Movement day in a 2-Reed year, if it ends at all. The next possible Aztec end-date will be in 2027. Maya literature does not explicitly predict any end at all, and their so-called "end date" in 2012 is a 4-Ajaw [4-Flower in Aztec cycle] not 4-Movement. Mixtec Creation stories mention 2-Deer in 13-Rabbit, and other dates.
So perhaps in on the 2-Deer day in the 13-Rabbit year, under a 4-Flower Moon, we might have cause to worry -- except that it seems the Mayans never corrected written mistakes (the original, and literal, "carved in stone" approach). And the Aztec official responsible for a lot of how that culture's history was written apparently had a bit of a Machiavellian propaganda minister's streak in him. Which is to say, even what they did say should be taken with a handful of archeological salt.
December 21, 2012 is still a significant day for the Mayans. It's the equivalent of our Gregorian Calendar's December 31, 1999; the turning over of a new millennium and era of timekeeping. So it would be a big celebration. But that's about it. Of course, there were also a slew of predictions about disaster and doom surrounding our own "end of a cycle" mark at the end of 1999. None of which came true, as you may recall.
So why are we so drawn to these apocalyptic notions and prophecies of doom, gloom, and destruction (even if it eventually leads to a shining new era for the select few who are chosen or manage to survive)?
The answer apparently dates back to the very earliest days of human existence. "Apocalypticism," as it is academically known, arises from a deep evolutionary sense or need for social justice, according to Allen Kerkeslager, an associate professor in Religions of the Ancient World at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
"The sense of social justice, fairness in dealing with each other, and a felt need to cooperate with each other was already in place long before our hominid ancestors reached the cognitive ability to reflect on it," Professor Kerkeslager says.
As long as humans lived in the relatively egalitarian hunting and gathering societies that dominated up until about 10,000 years ago, that need was sufficiently met and enforced, because the survival of the group depended on cooperation. But when humans moved into more agrarian societies with land ownership, where a more hierarchical structure evolved, disparities increased. So those who had less had to come up with a way to explain the differences and satisfy their need for an eventual leveling of the scales. Apocalypticism, according to Kerkeslager, fulfilled that need and gave people a way of still believing that the gods were good and fair, even in an unfair world.
"Typically," he explains, "[apocalypticism] involves claims to prophetic authority among the leaders of the movement, an emphasis on visions and other forms of direct experience with the gods, and prophecies of a future transformation of the world that will bring relief to the afflicted members of the apocalyptic group and destruction on their enemies."
Not surprisingly, the phenomenon typically springs up among groups who find themselves in the minority, threatened, or repressed unfairly--at least, in their own view of the world. The Christian Book of Revelation came about under perceived Roman repression of the fledgling faith. The Anabaptists of the 1500s came out of a society stressed by economic disparity between rich and poor. Native American cultures developed apocalyptic narratives in the 1880s and 1890s, when those cultures were in danger of annihilation.
Visions and prophecies have been found in writings dating as far back as 2,000 B.C., according to Kerkeslager, although not all cultures had an equal need for thunder and lightning delivery of justice. In a polytheistic culture like ancient Greece, the need for apocalyptic beliefs was less, because a multitude of warring gods could explain misfortune or disparity. You might simply be the casualty of a power struggle between Hera and Zeus.
But as cultures became monotheistic, the disconnect between a supposedly fair and just God, and an unjust world, became harder to explain away. Hence, Kerkeslager says, apocalyptic notions in the Hebrew Book of Daniel, which was written only three years after a Greek King named Antiochus had begun a brutal repression of the Jews in Jerusalem, including turning the Jewish Temple into a shrine for Zeus. The revolt of Jewish revolutionaries, including the restoration of the temple in 165 B.C. (the same year that the Book of Daniel was written) is the basis for the Jewish holiday of Hannukah. But at the end of the Book of Daniel, the author predicts that an apocalyptic end will come to the repressive Greeks 1,290 days after their desecration of the temple. Unfortunately, as with other apocalyptic prophecies, it didn't happen. So the last line of Daniel changes the date to 1,335 days.
The fact that that date, too, came and went, didn't seem to fluster believers, any more than a failure of the earth to end on January 1, 2000 has stopped people from believing that it might still happen in 2012.
"The stubborn and often surprising ability of apocalyptic groups to ignore or explain away the failures of their prophecies is one of the most well-known features of apocalyptic groups," Kerkeslager says--a phenomenon also known as "motivated reasoning," as I discussed in an earlier piece here.
So with all that knowledge and understanding, can we all breathe easy? Not quite. "The belief in an apocalyptic doomsday is still alive even in the most skeptical societies," Kerkeslager says, "because it is very much a real possibility ... The earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and has sometimes been characterized by global transformations that have indeed had an apocalyptic scope." Some of those events were natural disasters that caused mass extinctions. But many civilizations, he points out, have brought about their own extinction "by practices that exhausted their natural resources and gradually undermined their ability to sustain their own populations." Including, ironically enough, the ancient Mayans.
So perhaps the Mayans did leave us a prophecy or warning worth heeding. Just not the one everyone's talking about. But in director Roland Emmerich's defense, I have to admit that it would be a lot harder to make a blockbuster action-adventure-thriller out of recycling your grocery bags and developing renewable energy sources than something that results in an aircraft carrier on a tidal wave wiping out the White House. Which is something spinners of apocalyptic tales figured out long before there were aircraft carriers, movies, or really cool special effects.
There's been a certain poignancy to Veteran's Day, in recent times, as the very last keepers of exactly what November 11th means close their aging eyes and leave us. At last count this year, there were perhaps five veterans of WWI still living. Add those too young to fight, and there are still only a handful who remember the end of the war and all that era contained and meant. The living memory of World War II is not quite so close to extinction, but it, too, is slipping away. The youngest WWII veterans ... assuming an age of 17 at the end of the war ... are now 81. There might be one or two who slipped in younger, but if the living memory of the war were a language, it would be classified as "moribund," meaning it had only a few elderly speakers left, according to the UNESCO "Atlas of World Languages in Danger of Disappearing."
We feel the ache and pressure, as time grows short, to try to preserve as much of the wisdom and as many of the memories from those veterans as we can, sensing that when the last of them leave us, we will be bereft of something important; a part of our heritage, story and learning that will leave us the poorer for its loss. There's even a Veterans History Project, organized by the Library of Congress, that's trying to collect as many veterans' stories as possible before time runs out.
Our parents' and great-great-grandparents' memories, after all, tell us not only of the world before our time, but of who we are and where we came from. They give us our pride, our shame, our sense of grounding and roots, and a sense of continuity that is a unique part of our personal narrative and identity. But what about the language those ancestors spoke? Is that an important part of the picture, as well? And does it need to be kept "alive" in the same sense that we want their stories remembered and retold?
It's a relevant question, because experts expect 90% of the world's approximately 7,000 languages will become extinct in the next 100 years as cultures mesh and isolated tribes die out. And the answer may well depend on where you sit when you view the question.
Some in the linguistic community are responding to the accelerating pace of language loss by scrambling to create a language database similar to the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project. Fifty internationally-renowned linguists are gathering at the University of Utah this week to take the first steps in trying to catalogue some of the world's endangered, seriously endangered, or moribund languages before they become extinct. They hope that the databases they help to create (and help direct funding to support) will provide the equivalent of DNA material that can be used to reconstruct languages, with all their cultural clues and connections, even after the last person with a spoken knowledge of them dies.
"The wisdom of humanity is coded in language," says Lyle Campbell, director of the university's Center for American Indian Languages. "Once a language dies, the knowledge dies with it."
But not all linguists agree. In a recent World Affairs article, John McWhorter, a linguist and lecturer in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, asked "would it be inherently evil if there were not 6,000 spoken languages but one? We must consider the question in its pure, logical essence, apart from particular associations with English and its history."
McWhorter's argument, which is long, asserts that while the death of a language is an artistic loss, our attachment to diverse languages itself is a bit perverse, given that he believes they grew up as a function of diverse geographical dispersion of people. Language, he believes, is not inherently linked to culture. And that as a matter of practicality in an increasingly global world, the use and existence of fewer languages is not only less work, in terms of learning and maintenance, but actually an advantage.
More than one aspiring national government, especially in its nascent stages, would have agreed with McWhorter on that last point. But not because language is separate from culture. On the contrary, efforts to stamp out regional languages and instill one, unified national language are undertaken because language is so inextricable and central to culture. So just as regional or tribal languages are seen as a threat to national loyalty and identity, a national language doesn't just make trade and communication easier. It also helps build another, unified, "national" identity, instead.
Unfortunately, that strategy doesn't always work. Or, at least, not without a cost. Pamela Serota Cote, whose doctoral research at the University of San Francisco focused on Breton language and identity, argues that looking at language as only a practical tool or as an outside connaisseur, as McWhorter does, misses the central importance of language to personal narrative and identity.
"We understand things, events, ourselves and others through a process of interpretation, which occurs in language," she argues. "The diversity of our languages represents the richness of our expressiveness of Being. This is how language, culture and identity intersect; it is also why the loss of a language is such a concern and why minority language rights is such an emotionally charged issue in countries around the world. Because language discloses cultural and historical meaning, the loss of language is a loss of that link to the past. Without a link to the past, people in a culture lose a sense of place, purpose and path; one must know where one came from to know where one is going. The loss of language undermines a people's sense of identity and belonging, which uproots the entire community in the end. Yes, they may become incorporated into the dominant language and culture that has subsumed them, but they have lost their heritage along the way."If the last living members of a community or culture who speak a particular dialect or language die, there are no descendants to be uprooted, of course. And, perhaps, there is nothing to be done about that. Serota Cote acknowledges for a language to be revived, there has to be a population left to learn it, and a strong desire among the young people to revive that connection with their heritage.
But in Brittany, which was gathered into France only after the Revolution, the language became endangered not because of low population numbers, but because national edicts mandated that French be the only language spoken or learned. Finally, in the late 1970s, a movement sprung up to revive the Breton language, which bears far more resemblance to the tongue of Brittany's Celtic settlers than French. Language immersion schools now teach the language to children wishing to learn Breton as well as French, and other cultural revival efforts in Breton music and dance have accompanied the language movement.
The result has been remarkable, even though only a tiny percentage of Bretons actually go through the language schools. The Bretons have not revolted against French rule. But the shame at being Breton has receded, much as the African-American "Roots" movement reduced the shame at being black by offering a narrative story and pride that the children of subsumed slaves had lacked. A high rate of alcoholism and depression has receded and, as Serota Cote observed, "every Breton I spoke with who has learned the language as an adult said they feel now that they have been able to close the gap and heal those past wounds of shame. Many described finally discovering their roots by learning the language. One Breton said that the language 'completes the whole.'"
The challenge of melding and balancing past and present; tribal roots and unified national identity is one many nations struggle with. Too much tribal loyalty can breed division, but too much focus on an unified whole can destroy not only colors in the cultural fabric of a country, but an important sense of identity and narrative continuity among its diverse citizens. And language, like family or cultural memories, can play an important role in that narrative.
Sometimes language dies because an entire population dies out. That's still a loss, just as every plant and animal that becomes extinct is a loss to the richness of the planet's tapestry of existence. But in cases where the language wanes not because of physical extinction, but because of cultural subsumption, the loss of a language is a far more personal tragedy ... at least to those within that culture. For someone inside a lost or dying culture, a language can be like the memories of our grandparents--not required, or even convenient, for efficiency of operation in a modern, globalized world, but essential for our sense of roots, security, identity, pride, continuity and wholeness.
Life moves on. World War I is a distant memory, even for the elderly. Many Americans don't even know the real origins of "Veteran's Day." But imagine, for a moment, if we'd lost more than just the memory of the day's origins. Imagine if, along with losing those who remembered the world when Armistice Day was first celebrated, or even what the experience of WWII meant, we were also losing the language through which those memories had been lived and recorded. Chances are that any arguments about the accidental origins of that language, or its obscure use in the commercial world, would suddenly seem far less important to us than keeping that link with our heritage and past alive. No matter what anyone on the outside thought.
(Photos: Kevin/Flickr and pardeshi/Flickr)
(Photos: Kevin/Flickr and pardeshi/Flickr)
There's been a lot of discussion, this week, about whether President Obama has fulfilled enough promises or expectations of change since his election a year ago. "I voted for him, and I really thought everything would be different," one disappointed voter from Iowa said in a televised interview. It would be easy to dismiss the expectations of such voters as unrealistic or naive, but we often expect more from big watershed events, and in more sweeping, immediate fashion, than life dishes out. Consider, for example, another important anniversary coming up on Monday: the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
On November 9, 1989, after weeks of protest and slow chiseling away of the East German Politburo's power, the East German government announced that henceforth, East Berliners could travel freely to the west. Faced with massive crowds at the border checkpoints, the guards opened the gates, and people streamed through. A party erupted on top of the wall, and people started hacking away at it with hammers and picks.
It was a celebration and global party; the end of an era that had brought incalculable pain to millions of Germans separated from family members and death to thousands, over the years, who had tried to cross over to the west anyway. I wrote about some of the sacrifices, and the lingering legacy of the Wall, in an essay on this site last May, after a German artist released an exhibit sparked by the anniversary of the Wall's demise.
Given all the damage and fear it caused, the fall of the Wall was truly an historical watershed moment to cheer. But then the celebration and festivities ended, and the real work of reunification began.In the moment of celebration, it seemed all good. The rift was healed; the country would be united again. Cue the trumpets and national anthem. Roll credits. If the story had been a Hollywood movie, it actually would have ended there, because the morning after is always messier and less satisfying than the triumphant night. Every screenwriter worth their salt knows that.
There were, of course, some things that did change immediately. People could travel back and forth across the border. Restrictions ended. But national, economic, and social integration and change proved far more challenging than perhaps even anyone in 1989 would have predicted.
Many in the West resented the tax they had to pay to upgrade the infrastructure, buildings, and resources in the east. And "Ossies" (Easterners, from the German word "Ost" for East) found themselves in a no-man's land between cultures. They were suddenly without the social security of the Russian/East German state system, but were still often considered second-class citizens by their western counterparts. Their knowledge of Russian and German didn't help them in an economic world where English had become the common language. For all the celebration on November 9th, change brought with it a disruption of the world they'd known ... and gave rise to fear.
In 2004, 15 years after the Wall came down, I spent some time in the eastern German village of Krausnick, in the Spreewald, or Spree Forest. Krausnik was founded in 1004, so it had seen a lot of changes. It has also seen a lot of battles. In 1945, more than 30,000 German soldiers and 10,000 civilians from the area were caught by the advancing Russian army and slaughtered over the course of a week. Looking at some of the dilapidated houses and crumbling stone walls in the area, I could imagine the Russian soldiers advancing over the land, and the terror that sight must have bred.
One would think, after a massacre so terrible, that the Russians would have been hated forever. But when I visited, there was still a memorial in the center of the village celebrating the Red Army heroes who had died there "in the war against Fascism, 1941-1945." The same soldiers, mind you, who had killed so many of the local people. And as I watched, a couple of older villagers carefully cleaned the memorial and planted new flowers in front of it. The Russians had been gone for 15 years. And still the villagers preserved the memorial with loving care.
When I asked about it, several people told me that, in truth, they actually missed the Russians, because at least then, you had security. You didn't have to worry about losing your job or not being able to pay your rent. All you had to do was keep your head down and your nose clean. It was nice, they acknowledged, to not have to wait 20 years for a bad car. But you had new burdens of figuring out how to pay for that car, now.
Twenty years after the Berlin Wall fell, Germany is still struggling to fulfill the promise of that event. And that's a change that, at least in theory, everyone in Germany wanted. Imagine if the country had been deeply split on the basic premise of reunification?
Consider the events of July 2, 1964. On that date, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Its passage was the result of years of effort and struggle, and the signing of that Act separated American history into "before" and "after." As with the Berlin Wall, some things changed immediately. On July 3, 1964, discriminating against a person on the basis of the color of his or her skin was suddenly illegal. But life did not change with the stroke of a pen. Four years later, not only had glorious change not triumphantly come to pass, but both Martin Luther King--who had been present at the signing ceremony--and Robert Kennedy, one of the Cvil Rights movement's heroes ... were dead at the hands of assassins.
Change--especially nationwide change--is a slow-moving train. Power shifted with the Civil Rights Act, and the wheels of change were set in motion. But a year later, a black person--especially in the South--might not have noticed that much tangible difference in their life. Forty-five years later, we still fight some of those battles, as the events of the past year have certainly illustrated.
Symbolically, many things can change in a day. A law is passed, a wall comes down, a couple gets married, or a person is elected President. The event that initiates the change is called a watershed, because it marks the moment and place where the course of things turn in a new direction. But even in the best of circumstances, it takes a while after that event for any visible shift to become evident. Especially in a deep, complex, and layered environment where all the currents aren't headed in the same direction.
It's a point worth remembering. Too often, we look to those big, symbolic events as magical tonics that will change everything overnight--maybe because we were fed so many "and then they lived happily ever after" endings. More than one person has imagined that when they got married (or became a parent, or got that new job, or that new ... fill in the blank) they'd magically become happy ... only to discover that it takes a lot of work, patience, and time to make the promise of that symbolic change anything close to real.
The truth is, even events as big as the demise of the Berlin Wall don't change a country or the world overnight. They just make a new kind of change possible. Even if the journey turns out to be longer, rockier, and more complex than we wished or imagined ... or a Hollywood screenwriter would have written it.
Photo Credit: Flickr User antaldaniel, wikimedia commons
Photo Credit: Flickr User antaldaniel, wikimedia commons
In the extensive coverage surrounding the 40th running of the New York City marathon this past weekend, more than one piece questioned whether marathon races had lost their elite edge. An op-ed piece in the New York Times on Saturday bemoaned the change in coverage from the pure, rarefied competition between the elite runners to human-interest stories about less professional athletes who competed. Cameron Stracher, who wrote the piece, argued that the long lag in U.S. marathon champions was due, at least in significant part, to this shift in coverage and "narrative," which lessened the public's excitement and inspiration to reach for the top levels in the sport. "As the running boom matured," Stracher wrote, "the story line shifted from the race itself to the race as 'event.' ... The marathon may be an event, but at its heart it is a race--a competition among highly trained athletes."
A similar theme ran through an article that ran a few days earlier, under the title "Plodders Have a Place, But Is It in a Marathon?" A number of elite runners are apparently irritated at the slow runners and runner/walkers who, they believe, have watered down the significance of running, or finishing, a marathon. "It used to be that running a marathon was worth something," the cross-country coach at the college of New Rochelle was quoted as saying. "There used to be a pride in saying you ran a marathon, but not anymore."
On the other hand, marathon organizers argue that the increasing participation levels and appeal of marathons, driven by those amateur runners, is what's kept the sport healthy and alive.
Ah, the dilemma of exclusiveness.
If I'm vaguely amused by the complaints, it's because they mirror so closely a debate that's raged for decades--sometimes unwittingly--in the pilot community. In the very early days, flying an airplane really did take an excessive level of both risk-taking and talent. So to be a pilot was to be part of a very exclusive club. You suffered greatly to get there, but then you got to wear your wings with immense pride.
It's still a hefty effort to get a pilot's license, but the difficulty has decreased significantly over time. First came electrical systems and more reliable engines. Then came the advent of the tricycle gear airplane design, which made takeoffs and landings far easier and safer than they were with the old, skittish tail wheel designs. But the advent of the nose wheel airplane also prompted grumbling among the "old" set about how now anybody could be a pilot.
It's still a hefty effort to get a pilot's license, but the difficulty has decreased significantly over time. First came electrical systems and more reliable engines. Then came the advent of the tricycle gear airplane design, which made takeoffs and landings far easier and safer than they were with the old, skittish tail wheel designs. But the advent of the nose wheel airplane also prompted grumbling among the "old" set about how now anybody could be a pilot.
The club was becoming less exclusive. On the other hand, it was also becoming a booming industry. The explosion of general aviation in the 1950s and 1960s was due in no small part to the fact that so many more people felt capable of becoming part of it. Industry advocates have long dreamed of creating airplanes and systems safe and easy enough that every person in America could become a pilot and have access to a small airplane, because it would transform both the size of the industry, and the size of the support it receives. One would think that pilots, who depend on that support, would echo this sentiment. But even today, there's resistance among a lot of pilots at the thought of flying becoming, well ... pedestrian. After all, if everyone can do something, it's not such a point of pride that I can.
But I would caution marathon elitists to be careful what they wish for. Familiarity is critical to engagement, engagement is critical to audience, and audience is critical to sponsorship and publicity. Stracher argues that stories of great Yankee baseball rivalries, focused only on the playing field, is what inspires people to want to play ball. I disagree. I think the fact that people do play ball, in sandlots and schoolyards and on the streets of New York, is why there is such an audience for watching the best of the best battle it out.
For years, the sponsors of air racing--the fastest sport on earth, where pilots fly almost 500 miles an hour only 40 feet off the ground, in 90-degree bank angles--have struggled to figure out why they can't get more than a tiny audience to watch. Why is it that NASCAR races, which have many of the same elements, but less speed and risk, are so much more popular? Answer: because almost everybody owns a car. Hardly anyone (less than 0.1% of the population) owns an airplane. Millions of people can imagine themselves zooming around a NASCAR track. Very few can identify with a race pilot's world.
By the same token--as more and more people have taken up running and long-distance running, more people can imagine themselves sprinting across that finish line and can identify with the pains, injuries, and disappointments of a marathon champion. That there are now many more wannabes is actually a good thing, in terms of the long-term survival and health of the running and marathon industry.
But there's also something else at play, which Stracher alludes to when he notes how "the running boom matured." Everything is new only once. Back in the days of the barnstormers, when aviation itself was new and few people had been exposed to it, flying had a romantic appeal to the public that it will never have again. Pilots today are not held up as high as the heroes of old, when few people had even experienced flight.
Familiarity may bring engagement, but it also famously breeds contempt. Or at least a tempering of the initial romantic ideas and breathless excitement it once generated. Just like any human romance, if our interaction with something continues on long enough, it matures from a passionate love affair into something more like a marriage. Not that we can't still get weak in the knees from time to time, but movements, like relationships, change and mature. And that's okay, because maturation brings other benefits.
Back in the 1970s, running as a popular sport was a brand-new and exciting wave. Running shoes themselves were a a radical new concept. And those leading the charge inspired an entire nation to get off its duff and hit the streets. That's impressive. So now it's a mature sport, with many more participants. That's known as success. So, OK. Maybe that also means it's not quite as exclusive or exciting as it once was to run a marathon at all.
But running it in 2:09 is still an Olympic feat. Nothing takes away from that. And with six American men finishing in the top ten in Sunday's race, it's hard to argue that the changes in the sport and how we write about it have killed our competitiveness. Whatever the reason for the dearth of U.S. male champions between 1982 and Sunday's victory by American Meb Keflezighi, it's obviously more complex than that.
But running it in 2:09 is still an Olympic feat. Nothing takes away from that. And with six American men finishing in the top ten in Sunday's race, it's hard to argue that the changes in the sport and how we write about it have killed our competitiveness. Whatever the reason for the dearth of U.S. male champions between 1982 and Sunday's victory by American Meb Keflezighi, it's obviously more complex than that.
As for the complaints about the slower participants ... there's clearly some line that has to be drawn at the end, so the timers and volunteers who operate a marathon can go home. But I'd hesitate to make broad statements about what's going on at the back of the pack. The saying about being kind to strangers you meet, because you know not what burdens they carry, comes to mind.
I sat next to a man named Donald Arthur at a Bronx Rotary Club dinner last spring who had completed more than 30 marathons, en route to his goal of completing a marathon in every state. He'd only started participating in marathons recently, after a heart transplant gave him life and the ability to exercise again. He wasn't young, and even with his new heart, he couldn't run the 26 miles. Given his age and health, it was amazing he could finish a 26-mile course at all. But his zeal for the races was electric, even if he experienced them differently than the top competitors. For Donald, a marathon is a competition not against other humans, but against fate, death, and limits; a chance to prove and celebrate, over and over, that he is fully alive again.
I asked him what his favorite marathon was, and his eyes lit up like Rockefeller Center at Christmastime. "Oh, New York!" he exclaimed. "I mean, the one outside of Denver was so beautiful, to be in the midst of those hills and nature all around you like that. But New York has all those people, cheering you on! I wave at them, and they wave back, and it's like nothing else." Donald has time to wave, of course, because he's not trying to break a six-minute mile. Does Donald Arthur's participation diminish the New York Marathon? I don't think so. He's just experiencing and running a different race, against a different opponent, back there at the back of the pack.
A marathon is a race, to be sure. But is it an elite event only for "highly trained athletes?" I don't think that's written in the definition or rules anywhere. The original marathoner, after all, was a Greek soldier simply trying to deliver a message. And I'm not sure there's anything wrong with a marathon meaning different things to different people. It's almost inevitable, with 40,000 participants.
Perhaps the best way to view today's city marathons is as a more efficient version of the multiple levels in other sports: Little League, sandlot and stickball games, NCAA leagues, pick-up Saturday games, semi-pro leagues, farm teams and the Major Leagues all wrapped up into one. No wonder they're such a party. And for those who still yearn for something more rarefied; the excitement of watching only the best of the best compete without anyone else in the backfield, running still offers its own equivalent of the World Series. It's a small, highly exclusive club known as the Olympics.
(Photo: Martineric/Flickr)
