let's THiNK about it

PART 1: grand truthsWe have become really good during our post-structuralist, deconstructionist era of pointing out the flaws in broad concepts of truth or good. Instead, we now champion individuals over collective identity… unless that collective identity is for individuals. So, big generalized broad-brush truths usually give way to individual truths: my truth is not your truth, my good is not your good. And if your truth is not my truth, then is it actually TRUTH? Not in the classical definition of being in accordance with fact or reality.Using "Hot Fuzz" as an example, when we agree upon a single version of the good, it becomes a tribal moral imperative. Yet, the only thing that lets us build massive dense cities and have national goals and interests is, as Yuval Noah Harari says in "Sapiens," is a shared ideology... or some might say, a shared truth, or a shared "good."But shared truths have led to the inquisition and National Socialist Germany and White Supremacy. Philosophers have worked hard to chip away at these "common sense truths" by showing how bias determines outcomes, and we have developed this hard work of deconstructing "truths" or "power" into a social prestige game.And now, we are feeling the effects of this clever ability, as our stability erodes.“The thing about civilization is, it keeps you civil. You get rid of one, you can’t count on the other. People are tribal. The more settled things are, the bigger the tribes can be. The churn comes, and the tribes get small again”Amos Burton in "The Expanse"  So, societally, we are in a conundrum of needing a big truth to keep the small fractious tribes from ripping apart civilization. We can try for "fighting climate change" but so far that has only gained marginal success over 30 years having to battle against individual desire and corporate growth.InterludeI did an art show called “The Idyll” in 2015, where the premise was Science & Math as a religion. The take away is that we don't understand science, yet declare it as truth, outsourcing our belief to others, and championing a set of goals and believing aesthetics of intelligence.PART II: some historyI heard a youtube video where Ray Monk gave a breakdown of the Philosophy of math, but it really looked at notions of truth and objectivity. We walk through Pythagoras, his mystical math cult, the problems with arithmetic, and how geometry became the Ideal Forms according to Plato. And, of course, how our world is a lame shadow compared to the perfect realm, which can be approached through logic and reason.This realm is objective and determines our flawed world, but Aristotle refutes this idea of math as coming "before" reality, saying we apply it to objects in reality, as it is a "property" of the objects. Yet, this is declared "subjective" by Frege, as he says we choose how to apply it.Eventually, Kant comes along with analytical propositions and synthetic propositions. Analytic statements are true by definition, it is necessarily true, such as “all bachelors are male” versus synthetic statements where you pair things that are different. Kant generates another way of knowing: A priori and a posteriori (before or after). But "math" is an odd "synthetic a priori" … there are charts on the website you can find to help explain this. So, all this work, and we are back to a SUBJECTIVE TRUTH, where we filter the world through our 'lens' of truth or math.The reason I find all this important to understand TRUTH is because we are witnessing a pendulum swing of positions: "It is Absolute and Objective." "No, it is Subjective and applied to the world by people." PART III: PragmatismOne fascinating aspect of the TRUTH that we should keep in mind, is almost no one cares what Kant or Plato or Aristotle say about anything. Truth is built mostly on consensus and intersubjectivity. So, while people will argue about God all day and say it is "Truth," it definitionally can't be true if it is arguable.Inconceivable! Vizzini, Princess Bride Yet, this has a precedent: Plato invented this realm of the absolute with perfect FORMS, and over time this attempt to prove an absolute realm as the source of TRUE. This occupied and warped some of the most brilliant thinkers in the world, especially when it got conflated with God. Just look at Hegel or Heidegger. (Honestly, it is just too smart for me.) Rationalism worked to prove that there was the absolute, an all-knower. William James, was a pragmatist, and leaned more into empiricism, pushing back against rationalism. When speaking of the “absolute” or “religious experience” he didn’t deny it existed, he instead offered a metaphor for what it actually does, how it works in reality.He tried to find a middle ground to focus on what works in our daily lives. What good is ivory tower philosophy when it can’t be instrumentalized? What good is Heidegger? At what point have we descended into “vicious intellectualism”? James says we come laden with lots of “common sense” truths… that aren’t true. These are handed off to us by parents and society. But overtime we grow, “grafting” the new truth onto our existing beliefs, assimilating them by rationalizing them.James, also a psychologist, says TRUTH is part of a thought pattern that must be validated and verifiable... and it must be put up for scrutiny. Truth: Must be fact,It must have Relations to provable ideas (such as math), andprove useful to our reality and “lead to useful consequences.”So, while your ideas must work in reality, you don’t get to make up your own truths. Your ideas must be practical, useful, and have utility. And this is key… these ideas you hold, even if not useful, may not be immediately harmful to you, but they are not of the “good.” He says Truths are “good” because we can “ride” on them into the future without being unpleasantly surprised. The benefit of truths is theylead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse. They lead away from excentricity and isolation, from foiled and barren thinking”William James 

PART I : RageSnyder brings up feeling “rage” … lonely rage while lying in a hospital bed. Before COVID hit, he was in 3 hospitals and each one misdiagnosed him, or flat out ignored his desperate efforts to show them paperwork for previous hospital visits.A bit about Snyder:  Snyder is a historian at Yale specializing in Russia, Germany, and Eastern Europe, and he has a brilliant way of spotting the patterns that lead to authoritarian, facist movements, and breaking them down into clear lessons. A book you should buy right now is “On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century.” My intro to him was “The Road to Unfreedom.”  He shows how the anti-communist, nationalist, fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyn set up a playbook for how to take over the government and disassociate the populace from “truth” and relieve them of their freedoms. It is what Trump tried to do in America.“Our politics are too much about the curse of pain and too little about the blessings of liberty.” Timothy Snyder Snyder predicted the Trump coup attempt in October. How? He has studied this stuff and the signs were there. But he asserts it isn’t that history repeats itself, because that sounds like a "politics of inevitability" and we know people can change, but patterns emerge, and if we see them they can be counteracted.So, to find that this amazing, brilliant man nearly died of something as simple as a burst appendix, due to systematic incompetence… well, RAGE is justified.Snyder talks of the motivating quality of rage, and he makes this insightful point: RAGE, while allowing you to see yourself and to motivate you, should not lead you, but as Aristotle says, “one should only take it to be a comrade in arms.”Health, to be healthy, is in many ways a matter of being together. Moving from the “solidarity” of friends and family, back into “solitude”... but from that solidarity, you can return to a solitude of tranquility. From here he found another emotion: “empathy.”PART II HEALTHCARE as a HUMAN RIGHT“The virus is not human, but a measure of humanity.”The COVID pandemic… the handling was botched, in an all too predictable way.  Snyder says it was “dealing out pain and death rather than security and health” and it granted “profit for a few rather than prosperity for many.” What is alarming is that smaller, poorer countries handled the pandemic better than us.We, the USofA, repeatedly fail in our “measure of humanity”.  consider our other problems:  opioid deaths, prisons, suicides, newborn deaths, and now mass graves for the elderly. Once again, other smaller, poorer countries do better than us. Here, in the “land of the free” we are increasingly unable to pursue our values or desires. While our government, along with commercial medicine and insurance, tout “freedom” and “choice” what we find is that our choice is very limited, and the costs exorbitant. We are becoming powerless, losing our ability to make meaningful decisions that could allow us to remain free and healthy. Snyder warns, this is the path where Democracy becomes oligarchy.  “When money becomes the only goal, values disappear.” There is a condition that has been created, where a President can lie about a virus and because we are isolated (we have outsourced our news to major, distant networks) and have nowhere to turn (no local news or doctors we can trust), we are confused when presented with lies from the highest positions acting out of self-interest.Without access to truth, or at least consistent facts, we become powerless, not knowing how to react or to whom we can rely. In our isolated, vulnerable state, we are also unfree. If we look at the history of tyrants and unfreedom, we see that RIGHTS are dismissed from citizens and hoarded for the ruling class. Snyder says, To maintain a Right, it must be FORCED upon the ruling class to validate it. The slide into unfreedom starts with a lack of truth. And, suddenly, the professed truth of “all men are created equal” is not legitimate, and we look for the real values that drive change: money and prestige. Knowing our lives may depend on status and wealth, because preferential treatment is the only way to get good care, this leads us to feel anxious and disenfranchised, precarious, and of course, it makes racism very dangerous.This has turned health (and health care) in our country a privilege. PART IIIThe SYSTEM“We pay a huge premium for the privilege of dying younger.” While Snyder points out several flaws of doctors and nurses, he doesn’t necessarily blame them. They are caught in a system, a machine of protocols getting between the patient and the doctor. This is because health care is competitive.The doctors and nurses seem to hate the logic of the corporate system too, but to push back, just like in any corporate job, is to risk your own survival.  It is an unfortunate system of employees caring, while getting over worked and gagged by red tape. Henri Bergeson came up with the notion of “the mechanical encrusted up on the living" to explain humor or laughter, but I would also apply it at dark scales to rage: To no longer be recognized as human, to be reduced to a cog, is the darkest humor: it is beyond tragedy.The solution?Snyder offers anecdotes of Austrian healthcare, where doctors are attentive and holistic, and probably too chatty and prying, because they are treating a person as much as a symptom. To return to smaller systems of doctors and caretakers, where it is a calling instead of a churning bureaucracy hamstringing medical workers from exercising their own judgment... it would provide relief for both doctors and patients. PART IV: Politics and SocietySnyder brings up that America, after WWII, helped Japan and Germany establish Health as a protected Right… and now their citizens are healthy than ours.In America, we seem to have a death wish. As a culture We work through the pain, we deny solidarity in order to be a “self-made man” who “stands on his own 2 feet.” To admit Weakness somehow makes you lesser, which leads to a silent epidemic of opioid addiction. Opioids cloud our mind, not letting us properly connect w others, isolating us and reducing our empathy. This manifests politically: the best predictor for Trump votes comes from the degree to which the community is wracked by opioid abuse. Paired with Sandel's stats on the undereducated voting for trump, we find Trump garnered “votes of desperation” easily relatable to “deaths of despair.” Snyder speaks of the small town farmers, and the demolishing of the American dream, saying “The welfare state, meant to compliment the solitude of ambition with the solidarity of support, has been taken apart.”“The downward spiral from pain to desperation, and from pride to resentment, is something politicians like Mr. Trump understand and accelerate.” Timothy Snyder When we are sick, undereducated, unemployed… we don’t see a future, and “in the land of opportunity” where all you have to do is “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”... it is hard to see how you fit in society or are valued at all. From this dark place along comes a politician peddling pain and feeding your rage. This politician extends a hand of faux-solidarity: “you are one of us, hate with us, break with us, your pain is useful.” And this works on the right and left. To combat it, we need the stability of health, so that people know they can make decisions from virtues beyond rage, fear, hopelessness, and survival. And we must push for truth in all things. “Since the truth sets you free, the people who oppress you resist the truth.”Timothy Snyder 

Gut Decisions“The core of the managerial mystique is decision-making prowess” Robert JackallSo, if decisions were easy, they would be made by someone else, so it is only the big money, big risk decisions that are looked at to determine your prowess. 1,000’s of jobs and the future of the division are on the line. How do you make the call? By your gut.The rules of a manager are :“(1) Avoid making any decisions if at all possible; and(2) if a decision has to be made, involve as many people as you can so that, if things go south, you’re able to point in as many directions as possible.”You have heard of that moral dilemma thought experiment developed by Utilitarians, such as Peter Singer: the trolley experiment?In the corporate version, no one takes action: 5 people are hit by the trolley and then everyone blames everyone else for not jumping. Another great day at the office dodging responsibility. So, your primary GUT DECISION for your survival in company: Who is going to get blamed? BLAME TIME For managers, to be BLAMED is to be injured verbally in public. And since we know that “image is crucial” this is a serious threat. The wise manager knows it has nothing to do with facts or the merits of a case, but is a socially construed manifestation born largely of being in the Wrong place, at the Wrong time.As Jackall says: “Bureaucracy expands the freedom of those on top by giving them the power to restrict the freedom of those beneath.” ON THE FAST TRACK The goal here is to outrun your mistakes! Jump up the ladder, then when the person who replaces you inherits your screw-ups, you blame it on them and fire them.A manager can defer costs for short-term profits or gains. This sets up what Jackal calls “probationary crucibles” in which managers are tested under extreme pressures, reshaping them to make decisions for short-term expediency, for their own survival. In the end, the games played for a manager to “look good” and “meet the numbers” actually cost the company: it is a parasitic relationship that drains the company rather than keeping it healthy.There is a natural selfishness… people want to make the system work for themselves. And when they get to the top, they can’t criticize the system that got them there.Manager in Moral MazesFlexibility, & Dexterity with Symbols As you climb, the rules of the game are, you never publicly criticize or disagree with one another or the company policy. You just wear an agreeable face and use ambiguous language. But when blame time shows up, everyone has already built defenses and set up scapegoats. Jackall says the higher you go in the corporate world, the better you need to be with manipulating symbols without becoming attached or identified with them. Thus “truth” takes a backseat for the imperative of appearances, which champions adroit talk requiring moral flexibility and dexterity with symbols.And what happens when there is definitive proof of your mistakes? You say you were in accordance with the rules at the time, claiming that risk is necessary to make money, while you personally avoid risk by hiding in a bureaucracy. As Jackalll saysYou socialize the risks and harms of the corporate industry, while privatizing the benefits.THE BUREAUCRATIC ETHICJackall shows the contrast from the original protestant ethic: an ideology of self-confident, frugality, and independence. It championed stewardship responsibilities, where your word was your bond. But it also signaled success as God’s favor, and that was used to explain away the misery of the poor and unlucky.What has happened is that bureaucracy“breaks apart substance from appearance, action from responsibility, and language from meaning.”Robert JackallWith survival tied to such a fickle, mercurial fate corporate bureaucracy erodes internal, and external, morality. It generates its own rules and moral standards, primarily through social context: what is fashionable becomes true, since everyone is looking at each other for moral cues, but to rise in the ranks the only virtue to be found is self-interest masked as company loyalty.2008 The Great RecessionJackal has a 2009 essay added to Moral Mazes. It proves his 1988 book prophetic. Corporate Culture and Bureaucratic ethics expanded into a societal consciousness of short-term profits with super shady logic, yet everyone was doing it so it became conscionable. And it broke our economy.This is an egregious example of “socializing risk and privatizing profit.” It proves the protective power of bureaucracy, and encourages future recklessness.

Part I: Protestant Work EthicMax Weber has a phrase: “secular ascetism” where you subjugate your impulses to God’s will, through “restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling”. This entangles religious values (hard work, self-reliance, frugality) with work values and success, but over time the religious trappings slipped, opening up to conspicuous wealth and consumer culture. So, while frugality disappeared, self-reliance, gumption, and a foggy notion that morality is linked to success/wealth remained in the workplace. Yet, also the workplace was becoming industrialized through Taylorism, supercharging bureaucracy. This new bureaucratic structure took those once human/religious virtues and built them into the workplace through regularized time-schedules, work procedures, and administrative hierarchies.We don’t need to know your character, we have spreadsheets. This system of bureaucratic industry spread into government and private sector, needing clerks, technicians, and myriad levels of managers to maintain it. A new class emerged: the big salaried man completely dependent and devoted to the corporation. (So much for self-reliance or dedication to God or even family.) As Jackall points out, is not just being IN the organization, but OF the organization. PART I: Pyramid PoliticsCorporations centralize authority in the CEO (the King) while decentralizing it through Presidents, VP’s, District and Regional Managers. Reporting becomes a “web of commitments'' tying people to goals and reinforcing fealty relationships.To issue a command from the top triggers a cascade of downward pressure to achieve an improbable task, especially when bound by a bureaucratic system. Hence a willingness to sacrifice or bend rules to achieve the King’s whims is championed as “loyalty,” and CEO’s tend to promote those who have the “capacity for creative problem solving” … which is usually shady.But you must be loyal in the right order: The rule is, you should be loyal to your boss directly above you. Equally, part of your job is to protect your boss from embarrassing themselves or the company. “symbolically reinforce at every turn his own subordination and his willing acceptance of the obligations of his fealty.”Robert Jackall Credit and the Kingdetails are pushed down and credit is pulled upBosses give vague instructions, purportedly to encourage subordinates autonomy. But really it is a cover your ass method, 1) because they don’t understand the details, or 2) they need a fall guy and deniability.Credit or praise is a currency, not to be casually bestowed, it is to be used at the boss’s prudence.This type of sagacity is especially egregious around the CEO where managers engage in irrational budget expenditures to appease a perceived preference, a wish, a whim. Jackall talks of repainting a whole building to impress a CEO, or dropping $10k on a custom made book… and the justification is, if you don’t appease the capricious king or queen today, your head could be on a pike tomorrow. One tool in a CEO’s chest is the “shake up” where they reorganize the whole company. This does a number of things: it reorganizes existing fealty or alliances, breaking up plots or troublesome dissenters. It also hides mistakes, as now no one is sure where the blame should land when things go badly. And it makes the Board and Wall street think you are aggressive. Meanwhile, it promotes anxiousness and stress throughout your company, often reinforcing the perception of needing to cater to the CEO's capricious moods, lest you be fired.PART II: Success and FailureStriving for success is a moral imperative in America. Once you become a manager, you have proven competency, and beyond and it becomes much more about social factors, where you must align yourself with the “style and ethos of the corporation.” So… if you want to rise, you have to re-make yourself into what they company desires by staying attuned to social cues. This is known as Self-rationalization or self-streamlining, and it sounds a bit sociopathic, but we probably all do it to a certain extent: Such a manager “dispassionately takes stock of himself, treating himself as an object, as a commodity. He analyses his strengths and weaknesses and decides what he needs to change in order to survive and flourish in his organization. And then he systematically undertakes a program to reconstruct his image ...” (p.59) Appearance: indeed, the clothes do make the man. Self-Control: Control all emotion behind a mask of amiable blandness, never lose your temper, never reveal a secret.Be a Team Player: Convictions of any sort are suspect:“To me, a person can have any beliefs they want, as long as they leave them at home.” Managers want team player who will agree with consensus, even though they personally disagree. “Someone who is talking team play is out to squash dissent… The troublemaker is often a creative person, but creative people don’t get ahead. Dependable team players do. In fact, bosses don’t want to hear the truth.”Style: Be witty, charming, affable, articulate, with an indefinable sophistication when you give reports and mingle.PART III: Social PerformanceSo, I know it’s hard to believe that being a chameleon good at team play with some lucky connections is all it takes: you have to hit your numbers most of the time. But even if you are hitting your numbers all the time, but lacking the right personality or team play, you will never rise. When there is no longer an objective standard for success, it isn’t your performance that breaks you, it is other people. Managers realize, more than most, that there is a capriciousness to their advancement, often based on organizational contingency, luck and timing. And that is internal to the company, but there are also external factors that disrupt the workplace and market. Managers are very very aware of the ‘optics’ - it might actually be the key point to survival - and they realize the only thing they can do to better ensure their fate is to be seen working hard, putting in the hours (even though productivity may not help), and better streamlining yourself, wearing the right masks, practicing the vocabularies of discourse, knowing the right people, and subtly self-promoting. 

Part IWe all know we are addicted to our phones, but can it really be a bad thing to think all the time? Yes, it can. The stories we tell ourselves trigger a little a dopamine buzz, activating part of the DMN (Default Network Mode), which means we increasingly live in our own head listening to our own stories. The problem becomes compounded when the PCC (posterior cingulate cortex) is activated, since it often signals thoughts of obsessive control, rumination, induced morality, guilt, and depression.All of these activities close off our ability to to see reality, increasingly letting us spin in a world of our own making.I had done earlier research on the "observer effect" where we literally lose the ability to observe ourselves (self-perception) when our attention was highly active or we were doing a novel task. Equally, meditation and mindfulness practice have been shown to reduce PCC activity in the brain, allowing us to reduce the narrativizing tendency of the brain.You are subject to sorrow, fear, jealousy, anger, and inconsistency. That’s the real reason you should admit that you are not wise.”~ Marcus Aurelius Part IIWhat does this mean in realistic terms?People who play the psychology test, The Ultimatum Game, often get angry or disgusted at the perceived unfairness of offers. Often blowing up just to prove a point, even though they are playing against a computer. This righteousness doesn't hurt the computer, but it does hurt the subject, proving that we will hurt ourselves to prove a point.Meditation or mindfulness practitioners seem to be able to de-couple or distance themselves from the negative emotions, taking them less personally, and thus reducing stress through empathizing with the other position. As well, they see little reward in hurting the other side, even if it is a computer.This research shows that our cultural norms, our common sense and beliefs, may be harmful to us and others, and to engage in empathy without taking things personally points towards a universal human ethic.Part IIIRyan Holiday put out a podcast that considers our addiction to thinking as a negative, harmful tendency that might be making us stupid and miserable. When we assign our role as a smart thinker, then we form opinions, not letting ourselves be open to new ideas or other people. As well, we do a disservice to those around us but thinking for them and not allowing them to take the exciting journey the world offers.We need to remain open, and empathetic, moving out of the Nietzsche stage of a camel, hording knowledge, on to the lion, slaying our values, and embody the child creator. Which is so much more fun.0:57 Dopamine and Daydreaming2:35 Give your ego a break3:26 You made your own story, and you are sticking with it4:40 Hurting yourself for the principle of the thing6:16 How do you halt your self-destruction?8:30 Your cup is already full 

Ryder takes a walk, and ends up musing about his neighbor's Xmas decorations, the lack of participation, and if that means anything. Expecting a conspiracy he researches the use of Xmas lights and a short history leading back to the White House and Thomas Edison.Eventually he discusses the movement of all things from physical to virtual space. Pulling form the classic text "The Sacred and Profane" by Mircea Eliade, the question is raised that our portal to both is now the same.

Part IIn a reaction to the previous podcast, step 23, my wife and I discussed the problem of tyrants, or mini-tyrants, who practice repressive tactics based on fear, coercion, and cronyism, and how reducing guilt and shame may not be helpful in combatting them.People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.”Carl JungThe notion that is hard to fathom is that they are getting their rewards from somewhere, either their base or at home. Typically, shame or guilt socially would ameliorate their behavior, but when being shamed becomes a badge of honor, these tactics no longer work, and we must consider where they are receiving their rewards from to continue their behavior.And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.”Jordan PetersonPart IIConsidering how irrationality and groupthink produce a culture, then promote one of their own, we must consider how this culture of nonsensical “Common sense” is perpetuated.If you ain’t first, you’re lastRicky BobbyLooking at Antonio Gramsci‘s work, a neo-marxist, we can see that the Cultural Hegemony (or cultural hierarchy) works to keep the bourgeoise (or capitalist ruling class) in power by aligning the Base (the working masses) with an ideology that reinforces their irrational allegiance to a system that keeps them in chains. He discusses a Superstructure of intellectuals (law, philosophy, education) as Shapers, who shape culture and the Base, while the Base maintains the Shapers, creating a loop.However, cultural “common sense” is refuting many ideas from intellectual circles (the Shapers). This maintains the existing cultural hegemony, in part because both the workers and people in power are raised in a society that educates them with blind-spots and bias, creating an inability (at worst) or reluctance (at best) to be genuinely critical of the institutions surrounding them.“Thank you sir, may I have another.”How this manifests is multi-faceted, and considering the power/politics games involved we can only point out a few things to keep in mind:leaders use their position to remind you of hierarchy, and your role to followleaders use economic coercion for alignmentleadership is performative, utilizing clichés or truisms while ignoring other “truths”decisions are made to seem impersonal: it is the way the world works, like gravity or hurricanesbearing the burden of hard decisions evokes sympathy or honor, yet is a justification for “making the big bucks.”All cruelty springs from weakness”SenecaPart IIIIf the mini-tyrant or leader is a singular individual, without the polis/oikos split from the Greek city/state, and he/she takes work criticism as personal criticism, then we have a leadership problem that turns reactionary, or self-saving (contractive) rather than open collaborative, organizational, or rational.When all recourse to discourse, guilt, and shame are exhausted, we turn to the judicial branch, which tends to favor those in power due in part to the financial burden of the legal realm. This is a failure on multiple levels.So, do we continue to fight on ideological principle? It is good to know you are in the right, but you will be battered for your principles. Is it easier to just give in rather than destroy your job and home life with the stress and pain? It is a “free country” so we can vote with our feet and leave, but this seems to be giving up the “good fight” when your society has somehow internalized and thrived on a dark morality.3:14 Stop cornering people into a "join us or die" irrationality5:21 Acting out to get your itch scratched7:09 Man up and punch a girl, Ricky Bobby!9:32 A banjo in the hand is worth 2 in the bush!12:22 Speaking out against common sense14:30 Leadership Tactics: economic coercion, cherry-picking truisms, injustice is a natural law

Moving through the psychology of guilt vs Shame, and onto the societal implications of a shame-based or guilt-based culture, invoking Max Weber's "Protestant Work Ethic" as roots for our meritocracy, Hannah Arendt and Timothy Snyder's texts on the Nazi occupations and how people not only obeyed in advance, but used words to distance themselves from reality. This is linked to the American South, and the desire to avert shame or guilt of self through cultural constructions that benefit some while shaming others. https://letusthinkaboutit.com/step-22-guilt-shame--group-think/2:48 Social pressure uses Shame/Guilt to normalize behaviors, which is better than more laws.5:01 Protestant Ideals: "Your Wee wee is from the devil"7:23 Down with the Hierarchy! Don't obey him, obey me!10:03 Shame leads to Rage: "it is not people that have passions, but passions that have people." 11:58 groupthink belief machine16:06 "Their ideology ruined their relationship with reality"18:02 Driven into toxic social groups through guilt, shame and a lack of forgiveness, people offer unwavering loyalty for guilt absolution.20:44  Guilt and shame isolate people, for acceptance they pledge loyalty to toxic tribes.

Returning to Michael J. Sandel's "The Tyranny of Merit" we tackle how the college system establishes a sorting machine based on credentials. Sandel shows how the attempt at equal opportunity through education and standardized testing has allowed the wealthy to, once again, rise to the top and form a hereditary aristocracy.  However, the winners feel that they deserve their success due to the  struggles and challenges to achieve,  lending them little pity and much hubris and disdain as they look down on those less fortunate. As we discuss the genesis of the SAT and how it has been gamed, we also look at college entrance scandals, and how the process is traumatic for the winners and the losers of this increasingly expensive credentialization. Even those who do manage to rise, though statistically small, must deform themselves and their values to gain the dignity offered through a diploma. In Part IV, we look at Sandel's suggestions to balance out the tyranny of merit coupled with wealth by reintroducing luck, or chance, to humble the winners while taking pressure off of them to play the soul crushing game of resume stuffing. He also looks at alternatives to education for knowledge, civic, and moral discourse, while asking us to reconsider how we value labor. https://thewilltodiy.com/step-21-tyranny-of-merit-pt-2/2:08 Merit: earning what you deserve4:56 Intelligence over the Protestant Hereditary Aristocracy7:38 We can only be proud if you have an Ivy League Degree9:36 The richer you are, the better your SAT 11:14 Educational Sorting has created a Meritocratic arms race17:00 College is the training ground for moral flexibility18:53 Do we value upward mobility? 20:00 Meritocracy has reverted back to wealth23:40 We spend less on technical training than on prisons   

Michael J. Sandel, a Harvard philosophy professor, questions the assumption that by working hard and playing by the rules you deserve what you earn. This "meritocratic" notion of justice is observably increasing inequality and fostering a winner/loser culture that led to the populist backlash of Trump and Brexit. https://thewilltodiy.com/step-20-tyranny-of-merit-pt-1/Part I: What is Meritocracy and why is the commonly held belief that it is a good thing wrong? COVID has shown us a lot about how our society works, yet over the last 40 or 50 years, our politics and system of merit has set up a dynamic of the "worthy" as "smart" and the underclass as "dumb", assigning virtue and morality through position and advancement. Part II: The merit of the market. Our economy of working hard and getting rewarded has failed over half the country. As GDP has tripled, the lower-half of workers have not seen a wage increase in 60 years, allowing all of the economic growth to be concentrated at the top. Equally, we look at Hedge fund managers and "Breaking Bad" to consider what the market actually values more than virtue, morality, or humanity. Part III: Luck egalitarianism and distributive justice. How do we develop a society where people are compensated by more than the market, where they have a civic and psychological wage of prestige? If you think this is not important for a society, look at the "Deaths of Despair" wherein under-educated middle-aged men's self-inflicted deaths have tripled since 1990. Michael Young wrote a satirical dystopian story about the shifting of "equality" from birth or wealth to ability or talent. He foresaw that a society based on merit would morally condemn those left behind even more brutally than a class system. Part IV: In conclusion Sandel offers the story of Henry Aaron, where to escape prejudice and poverty he hits homeruns. So we are tempted to applaud merit, but Sandel sys this is a mistake. We should not applaud a system that requires hitting homeruns to escape from a life of poverty and injustice. 5:32 -Boomerang CEO9:13 Max Weber: the forunate needs to know he desereves his fortune10:33 Obama: The right thing, the smart thing13:10 Our biggest bias: the uneducated17:01 The finance industry: extracting rent from the real economy20:07  workers wages have remained stagnant, while the economy has tripled24:14  Moral Markets, Breaking Bad32:41 Deaths of despair34:43 Michael Young: the dark side of merit35:50 Talent over prejudice: The mistake of meritocracy  36:56 The prison that deforms you so you can squeeze through the bars