[Opinion] The Promise of the Computer Leaves Some People Behind

Access to the means of production in an increasingly computerized global economy is THE social justice issue of our time if indeed the computers ate—and will continue to eat—all of our jobs.

There is an issue with the fact that rural areas in the United States (and worldwide) have limited access to the wonders of the Internet and computer based development, because of the fact that their geographical location is not urban.

There is an issue with the fact that a student who would love to move back to their hometown of 20,000 people can’t because the computerized opportunities they were trained to take advantage of, don’t exist in rural areas.

There is an issue when the only response from the increasingly dense urban populations to the increasingly sparse rural populations is “Well…move to the city.” Or even worse “Well, you chose to live in the country.”

Yes, people have a right to move around and live where they can, and they have a right to experience the consequences that come from making those decisions. The most iconic image of post-modern film history is that one outside the window of Deckard’s car in Bladerunner as he escapes the populated, polluted, oppressive—but full of opportunity—city, to go live in the vast, open, country. It is telling that fiction gets this dichotomy righter than lived fact.

Considerations of access, of course bring to mind the question of who will pay for such changes? The choices before us are either hard, difficult, and without obvious answers as to the outcomes of any of them:

The fact of the matter is, Universal Basic Income to everyone is not economically feasible in a country of 320 million individualists.

More calls for higher tax rates will only economically stifle entrepreneurship and further the gap emotionally between the “haves” in the city and the “have-nots” in the rural areas.

So, if we really believe that the role of government is to be a safety net, then what greater net should government be providing, than the net of advocacy, pressure, and even protection around access to the computerized means of production, via high speed cable that goes past “the last mile”?

If we don’t believe that such advocacy and protection is the work of good government, then the truly fortunate few should be creating businesses, entrepreneurial opportunities, and using every means at their creative disposal to make sure that the rural populations—which are increasingly poor, increasingly white, and increasingly politically hostile to the new order of computers because they are finally experiencing the end of the Industrial era—have the means to make a living.

And another app for doing something that our mothers used to do, won’t really bring that kind of meaning through job growth to those rural populations. Nor will it bring anything but pennies in the form of “sharing” or “gig” economic structures that cannot support the needs of children, families, or communities where education levels are low, and hope is fleeting.

If we believe that education is way out, and that not increasing access, but that instead increasing skills, e.g. teaching everyone to code, is the way to go, then we need to reform the education system from K-12 in truly, deeply, profoundly, radical ways.

And the enterprising few need to leave the cities, head to the country, and be prepared to really dig in for ten to twenty years into reforming an educational system that is simultaneously perceived as the “only place to get a good job” and also seen as “the last best hope for our children.” And the enterprising few must do it while also showing a modest profit.

However, we do have another, more comfortable choice: We can collectively decide that the rural areas don’t matter. That geography is a state of mind rather than a physical place. We can decide that “those country people” are irrelevant. We can decide that the urban poor need and deserve more attention than the seemingly spread out rural poor. We can decide—when we look at all—to continue to use the language of the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th century to try to resolve and acutely 21^st century problem.

We can make such decisions and continue to support policies, and politicians, of all stripes who engage in such decision making.

And all the reformation of education, the gradual migration toward denser and denser urban areas (and the concomitant spread of those areas outward), and the increase in computerization and automation, is guaranteed to lead to more cries of income inequality, racism, sexism, and calls for the acquisition of capital to made harder for the fortunate few, rather than easier.

Which will create more conflict, not less.

[Opinion] Self-Determination and Autonomy

As individuals continue to publicly engage in the completion of their own narrative arcs of conflict, personalized and individualized to them, external third parties have to determine at what point is it wiser to shut down their self-determination and deny their autonomy.

Self-determination basically says that parties in a conflict have a right to determine the outcome of that conflict with minimal influence from an outside, third party. Self-determination works really well when all parties in a conflict are on the same page and are talking to each other about the same thing. Self-determination doesn’t work so well when all parties in the conflict are pursuing their own ends selfishly.

Autonomy says that parties in a conflict have a right to make their own decisions, and to experience their own consequences. Consequences are an interesting element of discussions and debates around autonomy, because they come from a toxic mixture of responsiveness and reactiveness. Plus, there’s the interesting shift of responsibility around consequences: One party would rather not experience them; the other party would rather that they did.

When autonomy and self-determination are combined, sometimes parties in conflict feel as though they have a responsibility to administer consequences. This doesn’t come about without making a judgment about the other party, their motives, their autonomy, and without taking away their own self-determination.

Equal and opposite reactions apply mostly to physics experiments, and mathematical equations, but break down in the world of reality when they bump up against autonomous, self-determining, human actors. Neither is physics a worthwhile explanation (or justification) for dealing out consequences to another party in judgement. When this happens, human nature—deeply flawed, deeply evil, deeply selfish—takes over. And tools from social media applications to projectile weapons, become the means for one party to deal out consequences in judgment.

The thing is though, for as many justifications (or explanations) that are provided for engaging in judgmental behavior, using tools immediately at your disposal, there is little requisite increase in wisdom. And even if there were an increase, to paraphrase from Gandalf, “even the wisest among us cannot see all ends.”

No one can predict change in a party in conflict.

Just like no one can predict continuity.

Hindsight and confirmation bias trap both parties in a cycle of vicious violence, where peace takes a back seat, to reaffirming threatened identities, and maintaining a laser-like focus on the outcome of the conflict narrative that fits the worldview that doesn’t force change at all.

HIT Piece 7.05.2016

I’ve been disappointed before by finding out people’s secrets.

You know, the stuff that doesn’t wind up in public, or even on social media these days, but that often determines where people’s hearts—morals, mindset, and spiritual bent—really are.

The disappointment is palpable and is gut wrenching. But it is not surprising.

I am surprised only in that I am still searching for a moral man…

And that I might be foolish—and naïve—for doing so.

HIT Piece 5.10.2016

Seers.

Psychics.

Prognosticators.

All of them are false, phony, fallible, and human.

Trust me.

Nobody knows anything about how tomorrow—whether literally tomorrow or five years from now—is going to happen.

But the socially sanctioned comfort provided by either breathlessly predicting Armageddon or predicting Paradise outweighs the reality of individual people who relentlessly do the work, every day, regardless of what the external circumstances are—and no matter how personally Apocalyptic their worldview and frame may be.

Gradualism, eating the elephant one bit at a time, taking the time to focus: These are not flashy traits, and they don’t make for a raucous Twitter feed, a stunning reality show, or brilliant social media newsfeed. But a personal lifetime that matters, is made up not of repeated, breathless predictions, but instead of plodding, professional, daily work.

There will always be predictors (currently backed up by Big Data) and with computer algorithms and artificial intelligence on the horizon, the gap between prediction and failure of a specific prediction to come to pass (or the accuracy of the prediction coming to pass) will get smaller and smaller—probably narrowing down to a statistical meaningless difference. This will be most helpful with weather patterns and mathematical constructs—less so with people.

But the work, the plodding, professional, unsexy, work is what will matter.

And in the end, there will still be people whose life work, life focus, and lifetime professionalism will defy all the predictions of seers, psychics, and updated, Big Data bloated, statistical prognosticators, and will still be unpredictable, surprising, and ultimately, delightful.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] Haters

The critic who has never produced anything…other than criticism.

The dilettante who has never done the hard work of going deeper…except in going deeper into dabbling.

The professional noticer who only notices the negatives…and begrudgingly gives space to the positives.

The Internet troll or commenter who takes perverse pleasure in commenting negatively…but who’s own personal life is in shambles.

There have always been critics, dilettantes, gossips, trolls, and commenters whose only job in the tribe is to maintain the status quo by determining who’s “in” who’s “out” and whether it makes a difference or not. And in a world where the masses mattered and the opinions of a few people could make or break the launch of your product, this function served a golden purpose: separating the wheat from the chaff.

The world has moved on though (as it always does) and the role of the critic, the dilettante, the professional noticer, the troll, the gossip, and the commenter, have to shift from curating for the masses, to curating for the small group. The function of social curation is never going to stop, but the audience that used to applaud public curation has moved on (as it also always does). This is reflected in the increasing ubiquity of trolling and the decline of constructive criticism.

And when the performer is conducting a show, the professional noticer, and the impolite troll are lumped into the general category of “haters.”

In a new communications world, in the midst of the fourth mightiest revolution in human history, the artist, the impresario, the performer putting on the show, has the power to shun the haters and their attempts to culturally curate through shaming. This is a hugely unremarked upon power shift, that has implications beyond communication in the digital realm:

What if it didn’t matter what the person in the other cubicle over thinks of you when you resolve that conflict?

What if it didn’t matter if you showed your humanity at work by treating people like people rather than like objects?

What if it didn’t matter how much revenue you made in dollars, but instead it mattered how much goodwill you could engender in the people who matter?

What if laboring emotionally was rewarded financially rather than looked upon as an outlier, or a spillover effect?

What if the statements and pronouncements of the critic, the dilettante, the professional noticer, the troll, the gossip, and the commenter couldn’t hurt your business because it’s really not for them, never has been for them, and never will be for them—and that was ok?

What if not scaling because you don’t have to please everyone at mass anymore, just a few hundred thousand people, really was the way to create engines of economic, cultural, and social growth?

What if the critic, the dilettante, the professional noticer, the troll, the gossip, and the commenter had to add something to the world and be vulnerable themselves, instead of trying to recapture an element of lost power that was an illusion in the first place?

What if you could hug your “haters,” but shun their shame, and grow from that emotionally, spiritually, and financially?

What if in every communication scenario, we started calling people’s bluffs, and having them really stand up, take responsibility and accountability, and encourage creativity from the challenge of saying “this is who I am, this is what I’m making” and let the work be on the line, rather than letting their inner selves be on the line?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What Are Your Core Values?

There are values.

There are beliefs.

There are principles.

Values are what we are willing to put our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honors on the line to defend, protect, and advocate for. Values are based typically in a moral or ethical code, or standard of behavior, sometimes enforced by society and culture, but much of the time determined privately by individuals.

Beliefs are what we really think, down deep, past the words that come out of our mouths. Beliefs are a core part of the stories that we tell ourselves about the values that we have. Beliefs are about trust, faith, and the confidence in something (typically values) that will come to reality.

Principles are the combination of values and beliefs. Principles serve as the fundamental truths that are the foundation of a chain of reasoning that leads to a set of manifested behaviors that shape our realities. Principles are bedrock, they are eternal, and they sound like positions when we articulate them.

But they are not positions (which are often about personal (and sometimes public) identity or maintaining “face”) nor are they about interests (which are often flexible, negotiable, situational, and impersonal).

There is little productive talk about values using anything but position-based language, designed to inflame people, rather than unite them. There is even less productive debate about beliefs using anything other than language designed to conjure up images of religion, rather than relationship. In both cases, the use of persuasive, argumentative, anchoring language is designed to separate people from each other (which is easy), rather than to engender deeper introspection (which is hard). And too often in our public language, at work, at school, in social media, and other places, we use the language of principles to talk about positions—or even worse–to justify behavior based in mere interests.

Don’t let people fool you. There’s plenty of hard, emotional work in introspectively determining what your values are, articulating to others what your beliefs are, and in figuring out how both of those are walked out in your lived principles.

But there’s no glamour. There’s low (or no) pay. And there’s often no audience. But it’s when there’s no glamour, pay, or audience to put on a show for, that we discover what really lives at our core.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] How We Talk About What Matters…

There’s no other way to sell peace to a conflict comfortable public, than for a peace builder to be champion and a linchpin.

There are two ways to become a champion:

Only talk about what matters.
Constantly iterate and reiterate your minimal viable product, which in this case turns out to be your words and your perspective. This strategy does not eliminate having principles (they are bedrock and don’t change) it does however eliminate meaningless discussion, advocacy, and negotiation around principles.

By only talking about what matters (and constantly iterating and reiterating on the how) you are opening up yourself to doing the hard, champion level work, of actually negotiation with others of good conscience and moral fiber around positions.

You are also opening yourself up to the ideas and possibilities that knowing other people’s interests (not values (which equate with principles) or positions) but interests: the “what” and the “why” underneath the how.

When you do this intentionally and deliberately over a long enough period of time, drip-by-drip, you begin to persuade people of the value of what you are selling (a perspective, process, service, or product of peace) and begin to move them away from the resistance to it.

This moving, this drip-by-drip, is how you become a peace building linchpin: A person who, if they were gone, we all would have to invent.

A person who broke the mold, even before they walked into the room and convinced you.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] No More Looking…Just Leap…

Looking before you leap is the message of the world.

We tell our children to “be careful.” We reprimand and lecture people on “their tone.” And we subtly and nonverbally sanction those who get out of line, get off the train, or go in a different direction.

This tendency to caution people before they act on a different choice, shows the power of social proofing—we do what other people do because they do it—and it reinforces the negative tendency of bystander behavior—standing around when something goes wrong—and being unable to innovate when external factors demand a change. Stagnation, bystander behavior, and social proofing work in all organizations, whether they are small (four or fewer people) or large (nation-states).

Look before you leap.

The question on Leap Day is not: “What happens if I do leap?”

The question isn’t even: “What happens if I don’t leap?”

The question is: “Do I have the courage to leap?”

Having the courage to make a change, take an action, do something generous, collaborative, or outrageous, and to do in spite of the dominant culture of your organization is the essence of Leap Day. This courage has nothing to do with looking (you’ve already spent an inordinate amount of time looking already) and has everything to do with stepping out and saying: “I made this.”

There are always two objections to leaping:

What will happen if I am rejected? The answer to that question is: “So what.” Rejection—emotionally, psychologically, socially, or even materially—hurts, and human beings go out of their way to avoid it. Rejection comes in the form of refusing to acknowledge the difficulty of the action, criticizing the process and the outcome, and reacting rather than responding. The power in taking a “so what” stance, comes from knowing that the leap is the correct thing to do, and then doing it while saying to the people who reject the leap: “It’s ok. It’s not for you.”

What will happen if I am accepted? The answer to that question is: “Leap again.” Acceptance—emotionally, psychologically, socially, or even materially—feels safe, and human beings are driven to seek and establish safety at all costs. Safety comes in the form of acceptance, relief that the response to the process, or choice, wasn’t “that bad,” and with a feeling of calm. The power in “leaping again” comes from looking ahead, rather than resting, and in agitating to go deeper into relationship, rather than reaction.

This Leap Day, you’ve hid long enough, looking for a way past, a way over, or a way out.

Leap.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Creations of Commerce

By now, you already know that “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” are recent marketing creations, designed to get you to buy more, spend more, have more stress, engage in more consumption and to confuse “tradition” with moving money out of your possession and onto the bottom line revenues of brands.

We didn’t get here by accident though.

The human need to persuade, convince and to sell—and idea, a process, a service, a product—is so strongly embedded in human biology, psychology and even our spiritual DNA, that we have welcomed this change, from over 50,000 years of “not enough” to the last 100 years of “too much.”

We want to be sold and persuaded; but, we want to be persuaded and sold on the things that have meaning and mattering. This is why, even before commercial brands and corporations, there were empires, governments, and tribes. And, at a level even deeper than that, there are religions and belief systems that have toppled powerfully persuasive empires.

Which brings us to the reason for the season.

Meaning and mattering doesn’t come from buying one more item, no matter what the commercials tell you. Meaning and mattering doesn’t come from consuming one more meal, though the commercials will tell you this as well (it’s no surprise that gluttony and Thanksgiving have become closer commercial bedfellows in the last 20 years). Meaning and mattering doesn’t come from throwing away abandon and forgetting the old year and old mistakes and making resolutions that won’t be kept, because they’re too hard, too overwhelming, and too meaningless.

Meaning and mattering comes from remembering (and acting on) three core principles this holiday season:

Thanksgiving is a time for being grateful and seeking silence from the noise that doesn’t matter more so than for being gluttonous.
Christmas is a time for seeking redemption, giving the gift of forgiveness and seeking reconciliation with those who have harmed us, more than it is a Saturnalian bacchanal of commercialized shopping, glorious getting and begrudging giving.
New Years is a time for seeking resolution and closing the circle on gratefulness, remembering what we have gained in the previous year and looking forward with excitement to a new set of experiences, rather than a drunken brawl and a hangover riddled future.

Meaning and mattering.

Let’s focus on that this holiday season, rather than on the latest deal from the largest corporation.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Absorption

This Thanksgiving, let us be grateful for the moments of silence, inside and around the moments of noise.

The most important voices, and the most attention, go to family on this day. And while there may be things left unsaid, conflicts left unaddressed and fights left unkindled, today is the day of absorbing less of the noise that doesn’t matter and more absorbing of the silence that does matter.

Have a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving.

-Peace Be With You All-