The Fords and Daniel Dale

Two: If I do take legal action, the Star’s got nothing to do with it. In fact, if I were a businessman or teacher or anything other than a Toronto Star reporter, I would have served Ford with a libel notice already. I’m cautious because I don’t like being or staying the centre of attention, because I like my life the way it is, because it would be tiresome to listen to Ford’s claims of a vendetta, and because it seems like it would probably be unpleasant to find yourself in a long public spat with a wealthy and generally unrepentant person with good lawyers and a big megaphone.

It's not an easy position Daniel Dale has been put in.

For doing his job, professionally, he's been threatened, insulted and now, accused of being a paedophile.  As Dale himself states, that's the sort of over-the-top association that does not go away; it's like calling a teenage girl a whore.

The Fords can play the victim card all they want, but it is clear who the aggressors are, here - Doug and Rob.  There's no surprise in this; they have an established record of being bullies.  When they get caught or called out for it, they will deny the act of bullying, suggest it was deserved or exaggerated and always try to spin blame away from themselves and towards the person they bullied.

And then they plan revenge.

She made me do it, said Oscar Pistorius.

Dale had it coming, said Rob Ford.

I don't like bullies.  

I have been on the receiving end of bullying in different forms all my life; schoolyard thugs who would physically assault me, passive-aggressive bosses who would find ways to blame me for their oversights and of course, the large swath of political players for whom intimidation is a legitimate technique for forcing actions.

Here are some lessons I've learned about bullying over the years:

1) When you're on the receiving end, it can feel like the bully is functionally fixed on making you and only you miserable.  That's rarely the case.  As we see with the Fords, bullies treat any number of people in the same, demeaning way.  

Bullies act in an entitled, aggressive manner; the world is their sandbox and anything within it is theirs by right.  They're the Alpha Male (or female) - they get to eat the whole cake, it's you who should have learned how to bake.  There's something distinctly colonial about bullies in the way they assert themselves, whether it's in a schoolyard or at City Council.  We all know how colonialism turns out.

2) Bullies feel validated by fear.  It's a sad truism that bullies in one setting are often victims in another, possibly the home; they will bully in turn as a way to feel bigger than someone, because someone else makes them feel so small.  They want you to be afraid, they want that power trip that comes from seeing people cower when they walk by.

3) Bullying is intellectual laziness.  This ties in to the fear thing.  If you can't win an argument, if you don't have the capacity to go toe-to-toe in the realm of ideas or if you you're even weak at activities like, say, pro-social interaction or doing your homework (or reading your briefing material), getting aggressive is a way to change the channel and ignore your own failings.  

The Fords have a lot of failings they're actively choosing not to address - they get more aggressive the more these sins of action and omission pile up.  The more time and energy you put in to marginalizing and stigmatizing your opponents, the less faith you have in the strength of your argument.

4) Sympathy doesn't result in action.  This is one of those counter-intuitive things that is frustrating in the extreme, but true none the less.  People feel bad for victims of bullying, but particularly when they're peers, it takes a monumental cognitive leap to go from willing spectator (because we all naturally want to be on the winning side) to disturbed witness to advocate to interventionist.  Playing the sympathy card is the emotionally correct step to take and, frankly, should be the socially correct card to play, but we're limbic animals first and social creatures second - catalyzing action has to appeal to more reactive instincts.

5) The best way to stop a bully is to stop being a victim. This is one of those easy tropes people fall into - just fight back, and the problem goes away.  That's not always the case and not everyone is able to fight back.  Of course, you don't always need to fight fire with fire - in fact, fighting fire with water is a much more effective strategy (and causes less collateral damage, too).

I am not, by nature, an aggressive person; I enjoy solving problems, not picking fights (which has led to some interesting observations about politics, but that's a different topic altogether).  But bullying is about survival of the fittest; the point is to prove one's dominance by showing how tough one can be (with an easy target) and simply outlasting the competition.  

The worst bullying I ever experienced in my life was from this kid in highschool who was built like a rhino; he wasn't particularly smart, but he was massive and used his size to his advantage.  In retrospect, I think he had a very difficult life, and in some was as much trouble fitting in at school as I had.  At the time, though, what mattered was that whenever he would see me, this kid would slam my head into a locker, punch me from behind or generally verbally abuse and gesture aggressively at me - in much the same was as the Fords do with Dale.

People who know me well will tell you I have an enormous capacity for patience and what often seems like an endless well of endurance, but in truth I have my limits.  I remember clearly the day that the big bully on the block pushed me past mine; I was walking in to science class and he'd said something offencive and threatening.  In a black mood and feeling an urge to be the winner, for once, I said something smart and sarcastic back.  I turned to go in the door, but was nearly floored by a massive round-house punch to the side of my head, from behind.

Everyone around me expected tears, running away, something other than what happened next.

I turned around with what has since become known as my "angry face" on and looked the kid square in the eye.  I have a rather intense gaze, and it was turned squarely on those two beady eyes buried in the fleshy face of my aggressor.

"You're going to wish you hadn't done that," I said.

With an angry yet controlled voice, I continued into the classroom and told the teacher, in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room, that I had just been assaulted from behind by a coward and would be proceeding to the principal's office to make damned sure justice was served.  It was not what anyone expected - it was instantly clear that despite where the strength lay, despite the culture of teachers putting the class first, the kids second, I was in control of the situation and would not be denied.

As I left the room, the bully tried to apologize, said it was a mistake, he didn't mean it.  He was, suddenly, afraid of consequence.  This was the kind of thing Rob Ford has said when he's been called out for misbehaviour.  Again, I looked the bully in the eye and spoke with a hardened voice: "a little late for that now, isn't it?"

The kid got suspended, which wasn't unusual - it was not a punishment to him.  The thing that changed his behaviour was a clear understanding that he'd crossed my line and that there was no longer anything he could do, not even a sneak-attack from behind, that would make me cower.  He'd lost, I'd won. 

From that point on he never bullied me, nor would dare to bully anyone else if he thought I'd learn about it - for he knew there was someone out there who was smaller but stronger than he was, unafraid to take him down in the name of justice.

Which brings us back around to point #1 - bullies have many victims; the victims will come and go, be it in the schoolyard or in the political arena.  It's the bullies that have staying power, unless someone without power finds the strength to take them down.  When they do so, though, these newly-christened advocates for social justice find themselves mighty; they gain both the power and the responsibility to stop the victimization of others.

It's a David and Goliath kind of thing, or perhaps the Devil and Daniel Webster.  Someone has to take the risk and champion the cause but when they do, they'll find that's just what people have been waiting for someone to do and will join in.

See, much of Ford Nation feels like they've been bullied and neglected by the System themselves - and they're not entirely wrong.  In their minds, Rob Ford is indeed sticking up for the little guy, walking among them, taking them seriously.  The Mayor, stripped of his power by mean-spirited elites is still on their side, and that's what matters.

And it's why Rob Ford could very easily become Mayor again.  Using bully-tactics and insulting his base, throwing schoolyard insults at the man himself will only reinforce the loyalty of Ford Nation to their advocate.

If you think Ford's behaviour is over-the-top now, what do you think it'll be like if and when he has a fresh mandate from a majority of voters?  At this point in the game, who do you think he'll recruit to work on his campaign?  What tactics will he use to get Council to support his ill-conceived approaches to complex societal problems?

I completely respect Daniel Dale's position - he has no interest in the limelight, he has a job t do and just wants to do it well.  The chest-thumping and public performance side isn't his thing; if he sues the Fords, he's simply feeding their egos and giving them more fuel for their fire of social indignation.  He ends up being a focal point, which he doesn't want.

But he's not the only victim here, and many of those who are on the receiving end of Ford's abuse don't have the voice that he does.  There is no one on the landscape right now better positioned to put those bullies in their place and that if Dale doesn't do it, the Fords might not be stopped until it's too late.

He's in the spotlight already, with all sorts of unwarranted baggage slung around his neck.  People looking to validate Ford may very well see Dale as the embodiment of their villain.  But look at some of Ford's core support; these are people who have been abused by the System, seen gangs threaten their communities and pressure their children into destructive lifestyles.  How many parents want their children to grow up to be the kinds of crooks Ford enjoys the company of?  How many kids aspire to be shot to death because the only push and pull in their lives is towards violence and crime?

They don't like bullies, either.  Part of the reason they like Ford is that he's bullying the bullies.  Like many, they aren't spending time thinking about the inherent danger in this.

Ford is not their champion, he's part of their problem.  Unfortunately there's no one else for them to turn to.

But it doesn't have to be that way.  The only way the cycle gets broken is for someone to break it - that takes leadership.

The choice is yours, Daniel Dale - yours alone.

Syria: The Milgram Experiment

I could go on and on with examples of limbic, reactive, defiant or protective behaviour that goes contrary to the facts.  I don't need to, though, because you see them in the headlines every day.

Case in point?  Syria.

Mostly, however, those who are unmoved by the victims in the Aug. 21 attack - those who are indifferent about our collective obligation to punish the use of chemical weapons - have simply said one thing, over and over: Prove it happened.  "I doubt/deny it happened."

Forget Marxism - Randian objectivism is the major political philosophy at play today.  Couched in "heroic" terminology, the essence of Rand's philosophy is this - self-interest is the only noble pursuit and a fancy justification for "my mind is already made up, don't confuse me with the facts."  She misuses the term axiom (a premise so true that it is universally accepted without controversy) in a way that the laissez-faire crowd has latched on to with pride.

We're back to Syria.  Sitting in a coffee shop or 'round the kitchen table or boardroom table somewhere in North America, how do we really know what's happened in Syria?  It's in our best interest not to get involved in other people's business, even where innocents are being slaughtered - that's a bit too much like committing sociology.

Footage on TV could be faked - or, it could be misrepresented.  There's nothing axiomatic about what we're seeing, right?  I used a fancy word, so my position is validated!

Reports from Doctors Without Borders?  They're pointedly not assigning blame, so that doesn't help us any, does it?

Lots of people are saying Assad bombed his civilians with chemical weapons - Assad agrees chemical weapons were used, but says it was the other guys that did it.  How can we know for sure who's guilty on our side of the pond?

This is where the Milgram experiment comes in:

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.  Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible wit fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

Or as Adalbert Lallier admitted: "I pretended not to have seen, I pretended not to have heard because I didn't want to be responsible."

Here's what'll happen if Obama caves in to "the Russian proposal."  Having already said he hasn't used chemical weapons, Assad's stockpile will be overlooked, moved, made inaccessible and therefore, the existence of them will prove unaxiomatic - you can't believe in what you can't see, right?

Meanwhile, word will spread that the rebels have chemical weapons that they received from Saudi Arabia or whatever.  That's how self-interested players in power operate, after all - present rumour as fact and make your opponents work to prove it's false.  With the Syrian and Russian governments, probably with some nods from China, point to this as evidence that they've been right all along, Western citizens looking for excuses not to get involved will defer to the "authorities" and dismiss the faceless, unelected rebels as deceitful.  The burden of proof, after all, always lies with the weak.

Believing what they want to believe - that there's no reason for them to take any responsibility - more and more Western citizens will demand their governments stay out of the fray.  For his part, though, Assad will have two tools at hand; one, a discredited opposition that he can continue to call out as liars, regardless of the facts and two, ammunition that he needs to escalate his attacks - after all, you have to fight fire with fire, right?

It's a story we've seen before, that we continue to see played out across the world and in our very own backyard.  North Korea?  Not our problem.  Falun Gong?  They're a bit airy-fairy, so you can't take their arguments seriously.  Ethnic violence and systematic abuses faced by Roma-Sinti?  Honestly, can you trust a Gypsy?  Abused and missing First Nations' women?  Drunks, drug-addicts and if anything is being done to them, it's by their own kind, so not our problem.  

If any of this was of real concern, why, the authorities would be doing something about it.

Wake up, people - we are the authorities of our own actions and, in a democratic system, our governments'.  It's not "do unto others as your governments dictate" - it's "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you." 

What Rand described as consciousness - being aware of something - is really just awareness.  True consciousness is the realization you can do something about it.

There's only one way to get ahead of these avoidable tragedies that we all wear by our inaction as much as our action; that's to own up to our responsibility to society, both here and abroad.  

Syria is as good a place to start as any.

UPDATE: I've been asked about what I would like to see us do, so in broad brushstrokes, here you go.

We (the West or just Canada if no one else is ready to pony up) should get in on the ground in the hot zones.  The goal wouldn't be to threaten one side or the other, but to put ourselves in the line of fire - with the risks and responsibilities that entails.  If we place our troops around the civilians with a mandate to protect themselves and those behind them, it forces aggressors to decide how committed they are to killing their own people.  If Assad kills Canadians/Western troops in the process, they are essentially declaring war on all of us.  Either way, he's forced to own the consequences of his actions.

Canadians can help out with mediation on the diplomatic side, but if aggressive defence is called for, we are skilled at that, too.  Is it interventionist?  Absolutely.  If we believe in protecting the innocent, intervention is called for.

Suconscious Motivators to be Mindful Of:

 

To answer the author's question at the bottom, I was aware of all ten.  There's nothing particularly special about that fact - I have simply been motivated to understand how this mind stuff works.  You can do the same, if that's a choice you make.

 

10 Truths About the Unconscious You

The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind. ~ Auden

What if I told you that your unconscious mind actually controls your conscious mind?

 

Not exactly what you had in mind, now is it?

 

In my studies of neuroscience and neuro-practices, I've learned truths about our unconscious minds that literally blew me away. Many of the beliefs I'd been taught for decades became little more than urban myth.

 

I want to share some of these powerful truths with you. The more we understand about our minds, the easier it becomes to step into our full potential. Our minds are designed for each and every one of us to create BIG potential!

 

Today I'm sharing a list of 10 truths that IMO we all should know. Over the next few weeks, I'll post more about each truth and how it impacts our business and personal worlds. So here goes!

Your Unconscious Mind(UM):

1) Processes all of the data inputs from our five senses.

That's now around 11M bits/second, which is a lot of info to handle. More than any supercomputer out there can manage. Your UM uses deletion, distortion and generalization to manage all that data. We'll talk more about this process on Wednesday.

2) Is the master of your conscious mind.

In fact, your conscious mind only gets involved in data processing and responses when the unconscious mind calls upon it. That's when the UM decides it needs logical input to analyze something that's new and different, that doesn't fit the known patterns. Until then, your unconscious rules.

3) Is symbolic.

Your UM stores all of your memories in symbols and images - not in text or paragraph form. That's one reason why visual is a stronger communication/memory system than simple text.

4) Enjoys serving you, but needs clear direction.

Your UM is programmed to serve you. It runs all of your body's systems, instinctually responds to danger and more. It's designed to serve you but it also needs very clear direction. That's where we humans sometimes get in trouble.

5) Does not process negatives.

That's right - your UM does not hear that negation or negative. When you talk or think about what you do not want to happen, it's the same as telling your UM to go out and get that very thing. That's why it's so important to say what you want.

6) Takes everything personally.

Since perception is all about our own unique meta programs and processes that are used to analyze, store and respond to information - everything is personal to your UM. Each of us has to consciously strive for objectivity, stepping beyond our unique programs and perspectives to see various viewpoints.

7) Controls and maintains all perceptions.

Our initial perceptions are formed in early childhood. Between the ages of 0-7, every single thing that happens in our world becomes a truth to our UM. We then build on those initial perceptions and they become like fly paper - attracting more experiences that match the perception to make it true.

8) Works on the principle of least effort.

Our minds want to use the least resources possible to manage inputs, run our bodies and more. The smaller the effort, the more mental capacity we have for emergency processing - like when that woolly mammoth charges us or when all heck breaks loose in our business.

9) Maintains instincts and generates habits.

The more we can respond out of habit or instinct, the less energy our UM has to use. We create habit after habit to allow our minds to have excess capacity for those all important moments. The challenge is that those instincts and habits often get in the way of our own best path.

10) Is programmed to constantly seek more and more.

This is why there is always more and more to discover, why we never stop learning and expanding. It's the function of our UM to expand and as such, so does mankind.

___

I'd love to know how many of the above truths you knew before you read this post. I had inklings of a few but didn't really know the reality! How about you?

 

Check back over the next few weeks. I'll be sharing about individual truths on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Murder, Mind and the Social Matrix

“He said, ‘It can’t be real.  They have pretty good special effects these days.’  I said to him ‘look at the video.’ I asked him if I could send the link and he said he wouldn’t be needing that.”

Renville said the officer went further, saying “does it make any sense to commit a murder and record it?”

At that point Renville said “I am not saying it’s logical but it needs to be investigated.”

First, a thanks to Warren Kinsella for posting this story (not gonna lie, I mine a lot of interesting stuff from his site).

This story speaks to a theme I have raised here time and again; people are not instinctively in control of their actions and more often than they realize, confabulate explanations for things they have done.

Is it logical to kick a police car when a camera is filming you?  Is it logical to deny saying something that has previously been recorded?  Is it logical to think you can hide behind an online pseudonym in this day and age where you can peel back layers to find pretty much anything you want?  Does it make sense to blab about breaking the law in an age of information sharing?

None of these things are logical, yet each one has been done and exposed on the grand stage.  And they’re still being done.  Some of the brightest strategic minds in the country are still painting themselves into corners, confabulating to themselves that it doesn’t matter, memories are short and they can spin themselves out of anything.

Why?

Why would police officers, charged with keeping the peace and serving the interests of justice, automatically assume a horrific story was just that and not pursue the matter further?  Why would our immigration minister suggest violence against minorities in Europe can’t be as bad as all that, despite the evidence and history that say otherwise?  Why would micromanagers continue to stifle employees despite the evidence that doing so negatively impacts the bottom line and encourages turnover?  Why would an organization committed to ending discrimination hyper-target a specific group and marginalize them?  From the other end of the spectrum – what causes people to confabulate delusions of conspiracy theories?

You might feel that none of these scenarios are connected; they are.  In each and every case, you have individuals making choices.  Each individual makes decisions using variations on the same hardware – their brains – that are impacted by genetic, biological and environmental factors.

Our brains are complex machines, wired into other complex machines (our bodies) which in turn are gears in an even grander machine – society.  Internal and external factors have significant impact on how our brains function cognitively; a lack of sleep or food impacts thought, external stress or joy can impact emotional content in thought, substances like caffeine or alcohol, or anti-depressants or stimulants, can equally impact what goes on in our noggins. 

Think of your car – what happens if you don’t wash it?  Rust.  What happens if you get your suspension out of alignment and don’t get it fixed?  What if the battery dies out, or you run out of gas?  What happens if a car that hasn’t been kept in good shape loses control on a busy highway?  The function of the machine and of the system of which it is a part is thrown out of equilibrium.  Better yet, think of the body; if you hurt one leg and are limping, that can impact your other leg, your spine and as such, your whole physical well-being  Our brains are part of that body.  Who we self-identify as; unique individuals, personalities, souls – are all products of this machine. 

If you think I’m stretching here, you’re in the same place as the police officers that didn’t take Renville seriously.  They were tired, they get lots of crank calls – they had established mental models that triggered a Pavolovian response when they registered an unfathomable possibility.  It doesn’t make sense to me, they said, so it can’t have happened.  Despite the ongoing reality of murder and the established reality of narcissists recording themselves performing criminal acts, the one officer decided to follow the cognitive path of least resistance – we can fake death, ergo this must be a faked death.

But it wasn’t fake, was it?   

I could go on and on with examples of limbic, reactive, defiant or protective behaviour that goes contrary to the facts.  I don’t need to, though, because you see them in the headlines every day.

Society is facing multiple challenges – the economy, jobs, healthcare costs, growing public resentment, an erosion of democracy and the rise of militant ethnocentrism.  Each one of these problems can be traced back to individuals who are unconsciously responding to stimuli and then confabulating justifications for their behaviour.  Which brings us back that fringe issue people talk about wanting to solve but really have no idea how to approach – the very reason that they aren’t treating it seriously, just like the officer who took Renville’s call.

That issue is cognitive function, reactive vs proactive thinking – mental health.  When we truly get what mental health, cognitive function and innovation are about, we can nurture the balance between thoughtfulness and action – but we can only get there if we’re doing it consciously.

Lead By Example

Long before provincial bureaucrats invented a name for it, she treated home-care recipients this way. Long before Matthews made it a central goal of her health transformation plan, Mburu followed the golden rule.

It's a beautiful story that shows how leadership can come from any level.  Title doesn't matter - what matters is commitment and follow-through.

It's such a simple, powerful, universal concept - do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Not, do unto them solely that which is profitable to you, nor do unto them what fits within a prescribed mandate.  Real leadership must go further.

I know political leaders that have gone into campaign offices and folded flyers with volunteers.  I know MPPs who have served meals at food banks.  At the same time, I know people off the street who have gone out of their way to help a stranger or even done simple things like leave inspirational messages on the seats of Bixi bikes.  It's not about the credit - it's about doing the right thing simply because it needs to be done.

Lead by example.  There is no power greater than that.

Balancing On The Edge: Minding Your Surroundings and the Will to Act

"No citizen has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training... What a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable."

– Socrates

CONTENTS:

There Is No Sword
Colouring Outside the Lines
Playing with Fire
The Politics of Perception
Sharpening the Blade
Healthy Body, Healthy Mind
Conclusion

There Is No Sword

Back in 2001/02, I spent a year teaching ESL in Korea with my now-wife.  We lived in the city of Naju, tucked way in the South-Western province of Jeollanamdo.  It’s a nice little city with pockets of gorgeous pre-war neighborhoods, speckled amongst forests of high rise complexes.  Naju is famous for its sweet pears; you’ve probably seen or tried one without even knowing it.

Before we left for the long flight to Korea, I determined that if I was to live for a full year in an East Asian country, I was going to learn how to use a sword, properly.  I’ve always been fascinated by swords and sword culture.  It’s a more elegant weapon, after all, from a more civilized age.  With the help of our school’s principle, we found a local Kumdo (Korean equivalent to Kendo) school.  Despite the language barrier, the Gwanjangnim, or master of the school remains the single greatest teacher I have ever had.

Like all sports, kumdo is about discipline, both physical and mental.  You repeat an act (for example, swinging your sword in an arc over your head while jumping forward, then swinging and stepping back in tandem) again and again with little nudges from your instructor towards the perfect stance.  We would do this hundreds, sometimes thousands of times a session, building up muscle memory until the movement of the sword, the pull of the breeze on its blade and the strain in your muscles was internalized.  With time, you didn’t need to think about what the sword, the stick in your hand, was doing – the physics of its motion had become instinctual.  In short, there was no sword – there was only the wielder.

People sometimes chuckle when I tell them I’m teaching my three-year-old son how to use a sword.  Or, they give me a slightly worried look.  To the average person, the sword is equated with violence; isn’t teaching a three-year-old to kick ass a somewhat irresponsible thing to do?  Not at all.  To me, the sword isn’t about combat, about controlling opponents through martial threat.  It’s about self-control.  From random, foam-sword whacking play to subtle shifts in gripping style, situational awareness and behaviour anticipation, my kid is circling towards an understanding of one of the basic lessons of strategy.  Through discipline, all things are possible.    

Colouring Outside the Lines

Flash back many, many years to my days in early elementary school.  Picture a young CCE, sitting at a desk, looking at a paper, hand scrawling contentedly with a coloured crayon.  Over my shoulder stands a somewhat exacerbated teacher.  She’s not happy with me; on the paper is a picture that has been coloured rather excessively outside the lines.  She’s even less content because I’m trying to explain to her why I should be colouring outside the lines – after all, the page doesn’t end where the line does.

Think about art for a second; music conveys emotion, as can a painting.  An abstract piece can communicate a concept that words alone can’t.  Escher was a master of this; his work conveys non-realities that simply cannot exist within the framework of real-world physics.  Fiction, science-fiction, the rambling inventions of a child all present non-realities that, when considered with an open mind, can inform innovations that change our world.  Art, in a very real sense, is the science of colouring outside the box.

Playing with Fire

It wasn’t until I’d reached highschool that I was diagnosed with ADHD; suddenly, my penchant for almost anti-authoritarian behaviour and creative inclinations made sense.  I wasn’t a “difficult child” – I simply had a biological proclivity for thinking outside the box.   In an educational system that was designed to build standardized responses to standardized tests and develop a standardized set of skills to apply in a standardized labour market, I was an outlier.  My natural programming led me to be anything but standard.

Outliers are outliers because they lie at the periphery of social thought.  Most people gravitate towards the centre, towards traditional modalities of thinking.  The best students tend to be the ones who absorb information quickly and repeat tasks with relative ease.  The best communicators are the ones that deliver simple, easy-to-digest messages in pithy slug lines.  The populist approach to message sharing might be simplistic, but it’s also the most effective.

Put it a slightly different way; knowledge is a spectrum, like a rainbow.  Populists will consciously or unconsciously pick one or two colours and build their messaging around those hues, to the exclusion of others.  A communicator, on the other hand, is like an artist; seeing the whole palette, they try different combinations, attempting to reproduce the white light of understanding.

This lesson (the need to focus or crystalize one’s message with laser-like intensity) has been drummed into me throughout my formal and informal educational experience.  People are busy, they don’t have time, they’ve got lots of things on their mind.  If you want to get through the data smog, you get one shot – so make it short, sweet and interesting.  facts tell, but stories sell.  You’ve got a small window of opportunity to make your pitch and close the deal; you don’t want to miss it by going beyond the core elements of your message.

Stop. 

Look at the computer screen in front of you, not as notepad, but as a window.  Through your computer, you can see many things; other places, the future, the past.  It’s like an endless rabbit whole tunneling deep into the Wonderland of the possible.  Now, take a moment and sit back; look at the world around your computer screen, the world of the real.  A desk, a coffee cup, a wrapper that you should throw out, a pile of sticky notes.  Maybe there’s a conversation happening beside you where something interested is being discussed. 

Then, when you leave your home, office or coffee shop, do the same thing; see your trajectory, your schedule, your destination as your personal window to the world.  Establish the things that are relevant to you; the people directly in your path, the streetlight, the weather, the calls coming in on your phone and making sure your dinner plans are set.  Once you’ve done this, look beyond your window to the world you don’t take in; a homeless person on a corner, a cracked window on a store, a plastic bag, blowing in the breeze.     

The Politics of Perception

There’s an old maxim that you don’t know how many babies there are in the world until you have one yourself.  I certainly experienced this; it wasn’t until I started pushing a stroller that I saw how many other parents with babies there were on the streets, in the malls, on the subway.  I also never realized how restrictive society is for strollers and wheelchairs.  The TTC is anything but stroller/wheelchair friendly.  There are countless buildings with no ramps and narrow aisles.  Our social infrastructure, really, isn’t designed with the wheel-bound in mind.  None of this ever occurred to me, because it wasn’t part of my reality – accessibility challenges weren’t part of the view from my window.  Now, ask yourself this; how many urban planners, architectural designers and workplace managers have lived experience of disability either physical or mental?

While we’re thinking about this, let’s look at the Rob Ford/Tim Hudak push for more subways come hell or high water.  Or, look at the Federal Tory insistence on a tough-on-crime bill that the experts have said is hopelessly flawed.  Ford, Hudak and Harper are all populist politicians – they feed pithy catch phrases to the public and more broadly, have an accept-no-compromise position when it comes to policy.  The theory is, if they are tough enough, if they go over the heads of their opponents, they will get what they want.  Now, with a majority government, the Federal Tories finally see their window of opportunity to re-engineer Canada in their image.

Not ironically, this is the approach that Mike Harris took in governing Ontario.  He went into government with his parameters set – he knew exactly what he wanted to do and was going to do it.  While there is something to be admired in tenacity, there’s this thing that happens when you put blinders on – you limit your ability to see around corners and react to changes in your environment.  Blackouts, tainted water and protestor shootings were not part of the Harris plan; all could have been avoided if he had took the time to look around, to think outside the box.  Or, as I tell my son in his sword lessons, always mind your surroundings.

Extrapolate that concept for a second.  Look past the window of the immediate, see what lies beyond.  I have written elsewhere about why Capitalism is in trouble, what emerging problems Stephen Harper is failing to notice, why the 1% foment the revolutions that see them hanged and why our stigma around mental health is leading us to solve the wrong social problems, to our own detriment.  There are emerging challenges and emerging opportunities that are constantly being missed because collectively, we are thinking inside the box.  At the same time, the outliers of society are mulling solutions to problems most haven’t thought of and therefore, can’t be bothered to consider.  There are more pressing things to attend to.

Sharpening the Blade

This has all been an interesting, convoluted philosophical exercise; fun stuff to consider, but where’s the practical relevance?  Where do these arguments bear fruit?

Here’s where: philosophy is a product of the mind, which is a biological expression of cerebral function.  Out-of-the-box, creative function is a neurological process.  Focused, exclusionary “blinders on” thinking is a neurological process.  Information sharing is about switching on and utilizing certain parts of your brain.  Thought is physical.

I mentioned I have ADHD – that means, biologically, I am not designed to do repetitive tasks, to wait my turn, to engage in goal-oriented behaviour.  I was very capable of drawing outside the lines as a kid, but it was pulling teeth to get me to stick inside the lines.  Related to this, I had a stutter – too many ideas were rolling around in my head, all rushing to get out through the small window of my mouth.  When I did speak, I tended to be long-winded.

None of this is a problem for me now.  I have trained myself (to no small extend through the intense discipline and focus of martial arts) to straddle both worlds.  Today, I can think inside and outside the box; I have the capacity to focus on narrow messages or engage in wide-ranging conversations.  With effort, I notice what rests within my window and what lies beyond it.  My world is a much more interesting place.  Thanks to this strengthened balance between reactive and proactive responses, my opportunities are only as limited as I allow them to be.  My plans are both immediate and far-reaching.  Tell me that doesn’t provide an advantage.

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

Nothing new here – a healthy body results in better concentration, confidence, better sleep and therefore, better cognitive function, etc.  The reasons why come as no surprise when we stop to consider them.  As mentioned, our mental functions are physical functions, just like riding a bike or watching the world go by. 

It just so happens the reverse is also true.  Look at the connection between obesity and mental health, addiction and mental health, road rage, poor planning, inappropriate behaviour, so on and so forth – and what goes on inside your grey matter.  We literally think the world we react to.

Remember the Socrates quote about what a shame it is for us not to grasp the fullness of what our bodies are capable of?  Makes sense, doesn’t it?  If our minds are part of our bodies (which is now well-established), how many of us can truly say we have fully harnessed our cognitive potential?

“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.”

“Perceive that which cannot be seen with the eye… It is difficult to understand the universe if you only study one planet.”

 - Miyamoto Musashi

The world we interact with is like a sword held unconsciously in our clumsy hands; we wield it poorly, unless we have trained ourselves to do so.  Put another way; our awareness is like a candle in the dark – lots of energy wasted but providing little in the way of illumination.  When we learn to extend our consciousness beyond ourselves – to think outside the box – our environment becomes an extension or who we are.  At the same time, we become an extension of it.

In seeing the world beyond our window, we identify not only our own track, but the terrain on which it rests and potential obstacles along the Way.  We also see alternative routes; after all, there is more than one way to the top of the mountain. 

Conculsion

Seeing the spectrum of reality is helpful, but useless if it is not focused into activity.  Like driving, perception of speed, weather, surrounding traffic and one’s one mind all serves one purpose – to help us reach our destination. 

Minding your surroundings; the will to act.  Perceiving all things, but do nothing that is of no use.  Think before you speak; work with purpose.

We all tend to hover around one end of the spectrum or the other, but the way forward lies in the balance of each.  With map firmly in hand, our window of opportunity is now.