Alpha Mind Blog

When I started the Alpha Mind blog over three years ago, my goal was to have a podcast join the blog within a few months. In reality, my service to the church and some other constraints kept me from launching the podcast.

Now, I find myself ready to do it, and am counting down the 4 weeks until launch.

I’m not just counting, though. I’m making preliminary and somewhat experimental episodes. There will be 4 of them, numbered from -3 (minus 3) up to 0 (zero). After that, of course, comes Ep. 1 and the real launch of the podcast.

Episode -3 is about the Galveston Flood of 1900, and about how the city got its present seawall, but got it a bit late, after 6 to 8 thousand people died in the 1900 hurricane.

The episode also mentions the Pig War, the last armed conflict between the U.S.A and Great Britain, and without doubt the jolliest, happiest, shiniest war in American history.

And amid all that compulsive story-telling, there really is a how-to lesson in being a thought leader, which goes something like this:

If you’re going to influence people, and they’re going to make important decisions, it helps to be right. History will be nicer to you that way.

Seth Godin in an unusually arch rant about an editor’s work on his manuscript:

Just got some work back from a new copyeditor hired by my publisher. She did a flawless job. She also wrecked my work. Totally wrecked it.

By sanding off every edge, removing every idiom, making each and every fact literally correct, she made it boring and dry and mechanical.

It reminds me of Kathy Sierra’s excellent post—one of her classics, I think—called “Keep the sharp edges!” Kathy’s post focuses mostly on how committees are incapable of producing the remarkable, because groupthink is naturally a process by which rough edges and sharp corners are sanded smooth. In product markets, she goes on to say, product become more and more alike through this process.

Seth is writing about a single person’s effect on his work, but he acknowledges it’s a matter of corporate (i.e. shared) responsibility.

I need to be really clear. She’s not at fault. She did exactly what she was supposed to do. The fault lies in the job description, not the job.

When I buy a book by Seth Godin, I want it to sound like Seth Godin, not like Seth strained through several layers of bleached muslin.

It’s a lesson that is hard-won in my own life. I’m a reasonably facile writer, but a long period of my life, my first 30 years in fact, was one great writer’s block. What broke me out of it was to learn that while knowing proper English is a very good thing, when one writes, propriety had better not be the goal, you need to go for effectiveness.

I can be more concrete. I used to fuss over poetry manuscripts, because I couldn’t find a way to say what I wanted to say in a way that was both stylistically powerful and grammatically perfect. The revelation for me was when I was listening for the zillionth time to “Fun Fun Fun” by the beach boys. And I suddenly realized that the first two lines are both abominable English and a work of rare genius.

Let me remind you.

Well she got her daddy’s car and she cruised to the hamburger stand now.

See she forgot all about the library like she told her old man now.

That second line is purt-near unparseable. It’s also perfect, absolutely perfect. A gem, a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It captures the late 50s in a drop of clearest amber.

A dear friend of mine in Berkeley recently pointed out that I’m the only person she’s heard use the word “bodacious” since 1982 or so. I think she might have meant it as a criticism. I can only smile. I don’t use the word often, but when I think about excising it from my vocabulary, the prospect strikes me much the same as if somebody at Coke pointed out they could use a tiny bit less syrup in the drink and nobody would notice. Brand dilution.

Dowsing for clients: Seth, B. L. Ochman, and my business card

Seth Godin has everything to do with why I spent almost 50 hours creating my latest business card.

In case you went and looked at that post but didn’t read B.L. Ochman’s comment, I’ll repeat it here:

…when I had my own PR firm, in another life, I used to do something very similar to your new card. But frankly, i think there are more simple ways to make the point.

B. L. misses something important: My card is not just a way for me to tell something, but, and just as importantly, to learn.

When somebody phones me on the basis of that card, I know they’re already, in a very important way, a qualified prospect. They’re somebody I’ll be able to work with.

That card puts me on probation before I ever even talk to the prospect. And if I’ve passed that probation, the prospect has as well. Lots of people will toss that card, seeing me as a weirdo. The ones who call will be see me as their kind of weirdo. And in working together, that will make all the difference.

I’m dowsing not for clients but for the kind of clients I want to work for. If I don’t find them, I’ll just keep writing what I want to write, record some podcasts and preach the gospel, and earn the right to do those things by digging ditches if that’s what it takes.

A fine, quick lesson in persuasion from Andrew Cline at Rhetorica. Worth checking out even if only to learn the spiffy word “enthymeme.” Say it over and over. What a great word!

Mike Masnick asks: Is Copyright Law Killing The Documentary? The answer is in this video on YouTube. Titled “Eyes On the Fair Use of the Prize,” it tells how an outstanding documentary from the 1980s has been effectively disappeared by copyright burdens:

Winer asks why the world is so quiet after Bill Moyers’ interview with Rev Jeremiah Wright.

A while back I said I’d like to see Dave do some longer, DaveNet-style posts. Today’s piece is what I had in mind. Kinda mellow, it’s the side of DW that really cares about what happens to the world, and says so with a minimum of snark.

One of these first days I plan to sit down and write about why Andrew Cline’s Rhetorica is at the top of my blogroll. For today, I’ll settle for pointing you to his very brief comment about the state of journalism today

I’ll also add LisaNova’s take on the subject (pretty close to Andrew’s):

Lisa’s YouTube Channel.
YouTube.

Andrew Cline’s post title is wonderful. Captures the absurdity of what David Gregory said.

Even Andrew, sharp as he is, mentioned nothing about how politicians contribute to polarization. At least not the first time around. As I was starting to blog this, though, I went back & found he’d updated the post and made nearly the point I was going to make.

For him, though, the press is even responsible for how politicos polarize:

Various of the structural biases of journalism encourage them to view the actions of political actors as mere tactics aimed at winning rather than as possibly also sincere efforts to solve problems.

One way that polarization occurs: Political actors begin to believe this master narrative. So the actions of political opponents become mere tactics and the motives of political opponents become evil attempts to ruin rather than to build (or fix).

To give him credit, Cline also mentions our political system as a contributor to the problem. He could go farther, and mention how [$2 word alert!] adversarialism is built into most aspects of our culture.

For instance, the legal system isn’t usually what’s meant when people mention the political system. But it’s fully adversarial. Two sides lawyer up and duke it out in court.

Andrew is part of a wave of awareness that there are alternatives. His blog does a tremendous service in analyzing how we are taught to think, (an issue I deal with too). But the awareness progresses on other fronts. Take, for example, the innovation of family courts assigning a law guardian to look after the interests of children when their parents are facing off in a divorce.

As Andrew says, "Are there two sides to every story? Yes, if you stop counting at two."

There’s no need to stop counting.

The first casualty in the war over water? Was it the guy in Sydney, or the truth?

Truth is the first casualty of war.

My fine Aussie friend Lee Hopkins has a slogan with which he ends the episodes of his podcast. “Communicate with passion!” he chirps.

Okay, Lee, I’m about to do just that.

Lee grabbed me with his short post this week, “There will be more blood shed yet.”

I knew that Lee would be paying attention. For many months he’s been noticing, out loud, Australian politicians’ state of denial over dwindling water supplies.

Is Australia’s drought part of a natural cycle or a symptom of AGW (anthropogenic global warming)? We can’t know for sure, but if warming continues and freak weather gets freakier, history’s verdict will most likely be that we, not unassisted nature, caused it.

Lee didn’t mention AGW, but as to violence, he is surely right. It has only begun.

Under nearly every scenario in which global warming kills people, we would be desperately naïve to think that all of those people will die without a fuss or a fight.

Climate change denial is the first act of the next great war (and I mean really great, war by comparison to which USA-on-Iraq is a mere mugging.) It’s a murdering of truth and a murdering of many, many people, of whom those already born probably make up only a small minority. Real skepticism is a fine thing and I respect it and practice it. But only a few points I’ve ever heard made by AGW deniers are honest skepticism; the greatest bulk by far are outright lies.

Being myself a skeptic, I even doubt whether Sydney’s lawn-watering killing is the first such event caused by climate change, if indeed that is what it is. But my best guess is that future history books will name it just that way. (In both respects: related to AGW, and the first murder thus related.)

Truth is also the last casualty of war.

Besides several hundred blog posts, my reading this week included Praise of Folly, by Desiderius Erasmus. This led me to read some literature about the man. I had known little about him except that he influenced the King James Bible. And that Luther called him “an eel whom only Christ can catch.”

In that literature, what struck me most is how little respect Erasmus gets in the Christian world.

The reason, I think, is that he simply refused to participate, on either side, in the Protestant schism.

Here’s what the online Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about him. I’ve emphasized the sentences I think are crucial.

Opinions concerning Erasmus will vary greatly. No one has defended him without reserve, his defects of character being too striking to make this possible. His vanity and egotism were boundless… he lacked straightforward speech and decision in just those moments when both were necessary. His religious ideal was entirely humanistic[:] reform of the Church on the basis of her traditional constitution, the introduction of humanistic “enlightenment” into ecclesiastical doctrine, without, however, breaking with Rome. … Devoid of any power of practical initiative he was constitutionally unfitted for a more active part in the violent religious movements of his day…

I believe what is actually meant here is that Erasmus’ profound pacifism was A Bad Thing. And make no mistake, Erasmus consistently opposed not only war, but the schism which would necessarily bring war with it.

Luther was spiteful, malevolent, and fond of violence. He took joy in the burning of synagogues and Anabaptists. (Erasmus opposed the killing of heretics.) Johann Eck, who opposed Luther after the publication of the 95 theses, was spiteful, malevolent, and fond of violence. His purpose in “debating” Luther was not to sort truth from falsehood, but to find some way of painting Luther into the heretic’s corner, where the full bludgeon of papal authority could be used against him.

For the occurrence of schism instead of reformation, Eck was as responsible as Luther was.

Meanwhile, Erasmus disagreed with Luther but refused to condemn him.

And while the motivations of Luther and Eck dominated both sides in the schism…

while Catholic and Lutheran vilified and killed each other…

while both sides gleefully murdered anyone who dared to live by true Christian convictions…

Erasmus simply tried to stay out of harm’s way long enough to finish a few scholarly projects, including a trustworthy translation of scripture.

The author of the quoted article believes, perhaps, that this desire demonstrates bad character. That Luther and Eck were true solid men and Erasmus wasn’t.

Even in reconciliation, the lying goes on.

The Catholic Encyclopedia was originally published in the seven years up to 1914. Yes, it’s old, and Catholic-Protestant reconciliation hadn’t gone very far in that day. But even now, when the two sides seek as much common ground as they can, who in this movement of unity is singing the praises of Erasmus?

After a bitter war, when the two sides reconcile, they still assume that what matters is the two sides. Catholic-Protestant reconciliation tends to riff on the theme “of course the other side was right in their way, from their point of view.” The two opposing points of view are now reconciled, but also validated.

Which is a great lie.

A better reconciliation would be of both sides to the truth. To the truth that they should never have been sides at war. The truth which would say “we were both wrong and Erasmus has chosen the better part.”

I’m reminded of an account I read some years ago of an early 20^th-century event. Some still-living veterans from both sides of the civil war got together and shook hands and adulated each other for their equal valor.

And there wasn’t a black face in the crowd. None had been invited.

War, born of lies, leads to a lying form of peace. One which says “My!, weren’t we both brave and principled, even if our principles were different!” Not a truthful peace, which would say, “In our thirst for a paltry mastery, we made pawns, we made non-persons, we made carrion of countless other souls whom God loves. May He forgive us. May we learn a better way and teach it to our children.”

In each such lying peace, the smiles and hugs and mutual congratulations are only dirt overlying the seeds of the next war.

The deniers of AGW count on a lying peace, even if the worst scenarios come about. They count on a forgiveness arising out of humanity’s perversity. Humanity’s way of paying attention to the power-wielders on the “sides” of a war, and ignoring the simply dead who never wanted to take a side but wanted to simply live.

Paying attention to global warming isn’t about saving the planet. The planet is a big wet rock. It will do fine even if we leave fewer than ten species to squirm their way out of the deuterordial soup.

No, it’s not about the planet.

It’s about all those other species.

But more…

it’s about our own species, the one that, rightfully, is dearest to us.

It’s about our great-grandchildren.

But more yet…

it’s about war, which God hates and we should, too…

And it’s about saving our souls.

A bit more about that code of ethics thing (see my last post).

One of the reasons it’s dangerous to ascribe motives to another person is that it’s really hard for any of us to understand motives, our own or anyone else’s.

Let’s go down that path, tricky as it is, and talk about the motivations that might have been at work last week as the House of Representatives considered the Free Flow of Information Act.

To cut to the chase: before passing the bill, the house watered down the protections afforded journalists who shield their sources.

Declan McCullagh has laid out the steps by which the language was modified as the bill was considered. The crucial point here (and how this relates to my last post on Citizen Journalism Ethics) is that the bill managed to exclude most bloggers from its protections. Here’s the final language:

The term “covered person” means a person who regularly gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, or publishes news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public for a substantial portion of the person’s livelihood or for substantial financial gain and includes a supervisor, employer, parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such covered person.

In other words, not I nor (probably) you.

Why does money make a difference? Why should those who get paid to do journalism be afforded protection that you and I don’t have?

Now perhaps I’m going to shock you by suggesting there may have been a perfectly good and sound motive at work here. Plenty of others have mentioned the crasser motives that may be at work (read the comments to Declan’s post.)

But what if… what if the legislators used money as a proxy for something else? For example, a code of ethics?

I’ll clarify. Much as they love to make laws which restrict people’s freedoms, legislators also have some grasp of the notion that those who self-police don’t need to be policed by others.

But how can we identify those who self-police? Well, generally it’s done by seeing that they belong to a group which collectively self-polices. And in the case of journalism, that would be professional journalists, who have a code of ethics, and not bloggers, who don’t.

That journalists might often ignore their own codes of ethics is not to the point. The legislators must operate under the assumption that the codes are largely observed, even if not universally. If they’d believed that such professional codes were worthless, they’d have been much more likely to treat professionals as they’ve treated bloggers.

Now comes the question that has to do with thoughcraft: If the House had meant ”professionals should be protected because they have a code of ethics which protects the rest of us from their behaving like scoundrels,” why didn’t they say so?

Well, indeed, some of them might have said so in their discussions; I haven’t read the record and just now I don’t intend to. But it’s just possible that that was what they meant even if they didn’t say so. And they didn’t say so because they knew, deep down, that to talk about journalistic ethics would open cans of worms none of them wanted to deal with.

Now what I am confident of is that there must have been some mention of bloggers in those discussions. And what I’m equally confident of is that the question of a code of ethics would have been very unlikely to come up at those moments.

Why? Because a code of ethics for bloggers is about as unthinkable among Representatives as it is among bloggers.

Here’s a snippet from chapter 10 of Thoughtcraft:

We are taught what to think by all the ways in which the community signals to us which ideas are in favor and which are not. Signaling may be very overt (”How dare you say that!?”) or less so, as when one’s statements are based on assumptions the group doesn’t share, and are consistently met with non-understanding. In many persons, these signals result in various thoughts being either “thinkable” or “unthinkable” in the context of the group.

Many of the reasons bloggers rejected the Bloggers’ Code of Conduct were intuitive. So much so, in fact, that non-bloggers, such as U.S. Representatives, might grasp them intuitively. So that, instead of explicitly naming the missing code of ethics as the reason for not protecting bloggers, the lawmakers instead chose a proxy—money, which makes a professional—which satisfied them. And which did so without opening the can of worms that lay in the question “So do journalists actually abide by a code of ethics?”

The important elements in the environment in which an idea vies for territory are these: the idea itself; other ideas; the idea’s originator; human receivers of the idea; the social groups to which the human agents belong, and the resources needed for the idea’s realization. An idea itself cannot take control of resources; it requires human decisions to allocate resources to an idea.

From the point of view of any idea, other ideas may be friend or foe or simply background; that is, may abet, impede, or be neutral toward the idea in its quest for territory. The conscious mind cannot process many ideas at one time, and conscious thought takes place using symbols and actions, in ways very similar to those by which interpersonal communication takes place. Our dreams are like films—we hear music in our heads, we think through problems using sentences or mathematical formulae, which we most often speak ourselves through internally. We have limited capacity to process thought in these ways; they must usually be processed serially, one at a time.

Thus ideas, even those involved in reverie, which by definition do not vie for any territory beyond the originating thinker, nevertheless compete for the time of the single mind.

For this reason, thoughts are neutral one toward another only in a very limited sense, in that each thought in a sense understands that the thinker must, at times, think unrelated thoughts. As an army on the march must at times eat and rest, expansive thought must at times give way to the demands of maintenance, making the maintenance thought neutral toward the expansive thought.

Expansive thought tends to be aggressive, however, so that it may at times regard maintenance as a competitor. Writers, artists, software engineers, and business executives frequently skip meals and their mental equivalents. Even in the non-obsessive, certain thoughts may take obsessive control, aggressively crowding out other thoughts.
An important action in the idea’s quest for territory is the co-optation of other ideas, which is the turning of neutral ideas into allies.

The groups to which persons belong have an important role to play in an idea’s realization. It is important to remember that these groups are not always properly called organizations, since in many cases they are scarcely or not at all organized. One’s language group, for example, cannot be called an organization, but is a group which affects how one thinks.

Certain groups have a formally defined role toward an idea; for example, work groups exist to formulate new ideas, such as “innovation round tables” in business, or any formal organization at a time when it needs to make a decision. In these cases, the idea may be at the heart of the group’s purpose, and yet the group may be dysfunctional in helping even good ideas come to realization, which is to say, dysfunctional in terms of the group’s stated purpose. These dysfunctions, and their corrections, are discussed in the chapter on realization environments.