The Peter Principle: What Vic Toews and David Gilmour Have In Common (Updated)

 

There are a lot of other people who are equally good writers.  I don't teach them not because they are not equally good, but because I don't emotionally connect with them as I do with other writers.

 

Doesn't emotionally connect.  How right you are, sir!

In a recent case study of Vic Toews, I discussed a certain personality profile; the tough-minded, aggressive, limited-capacity-for-empathy limbic thinker.  I have also previously discussed how Vic Toews' penchant of shooting from the lip and confabulating justification later is symptomatic of the same cognitive hard-wiring.  The tendency of saying things like "I'm surprised at the reaction people took from my words" instead of "I apologize, what I said was insensitive and inappropriate" equally fits the bill - if you don't see others as people - if you don't emotionally connect with them - it makes no sense to have to debase oneself in apologizing to them.

 

David Gilmour has now provided another example of how this hard-wired (but malleable, thanks to neuroplasticity - we'll get back to that later) reactionary world view plays out and has significant impact within society.

Think about it; he can sell anything to anyone.  There's a thing about sales - a certain personality profile that excels at it, that breathes deep the concept of ABC - always be closing.  Tough, aggressive, confident, dismissive, manipulative - able to force anyone into anything by sheer strength of will.  They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money.  Are you gonna take it?  Are you man enough to take it?

Yet he only feels comfortable teaching what he's passionate about - and he teaches passionately.  He doesn't feel comfortable with other literary folk (too introspective) or other teachers (not as passionate).  He can sell anything to anyone, yes, but, cognitive dissonance caveat, he only sells what he's passionate about - i.e., he understands.  He doesn't understand women, doesn't understand Chinese authors and he doesn't see himself as capable of expanding his perspective, so it's only that which resonates in his gut, that which is familiar that he's able to articulate.  Despite is assertion that he can sell anything to anyone, in the same breath he admits that he can't.   It's a sad delusion, really, but a common one for aggressively confident people.

I've recently delved into two other professors that are passionate, aggressive and have difficulty viewing the world from perspectives beyond their own.  My recent deconstruction of The John Robson hints at someone who is dismissive of youth for not fitting into his world view, although his thoughts on labour and the workforce are outdated.  At a recent Why Should I Care, Economics Prof Michael Hlinka went out of his way to antagonize and condescend those in the audience who didn't hold his fiscally conservative viewpoint.  I'm pretty sure that his goal was to get them riled up to incite an "honest" debate focused on emotional, gut-feelings - just like Alec Baldwin.  At the same time, he did not hesitate to put a talent recruiter on the spot in front of the crowd, pushing her to meet with his students and help them find jobs.  Always be closing, indeed.

Vic Toews, David Gilmour, John Robson, Michael Hlinka - you could add to this mix the Ford brothers, Mike Duffy and a host of others - even my-way-or-the-highway Unionists like Sam Hammond.  Tough-minded, limited in their ability and desire to expand their perspective, antagonistic, sales-oriented, competition-oriented.  What else do they have in common?  These are the kinds of people that force their way to the top and don't believe anything they do in their own self-interest could possibly be wrong.  Therefore, they're the sorts of people driving the policy agenda these days.  Is it any wonder we have so much political heat without much policy light?

What happens when you have a group of competitive, aggressive, dismissive people setting an agenda and figuring they have the tough sales skills to force everyone else in line (the bums need to get jobs) or if not, label them as threats to be removed (tough on crime)?  These folk don't believe in committing sociology and in fact see social programs as impediments to aggressive, competitive success.  That would be fine, if the whole world had the same limbic-driven cognitive makeup as they did - but it doesn't. 

Gilmour is right, though - he doesn't have a racist or sexist bone in his body.  Stigma and bias aren't osteocentric - they're neurological in nature.  The emotional, passionate lens through which Gilmour sees the world is the reason he is dismissive of (and unable to understand) people with different perspectives.  Just as he probably couldn't do a gymnastic routine because he doesn't have the physical flexibility, Gilmour can't walk a mile in the shoes of a female Chinese author because of his functional fixedness.

Here's the rub - the kind of success that's fueling growth in the Knowledge Economy is driven by the exact opposite approach to the one they insist is the only one that ever works.  They're behind the Roger's Curve on this evolved reality.  This isn't to say there isn't a role for these sorts of singular-focused, personally-dismissive and sales-oriented people; whatever Knowledge products and services we come up with still need to be pitched to prospective buyers.  With a bit of social-emotional learning, they could even learn how to really sell to people who don't view the world as they do - a particularly useful skill to have in a globally competitive market where understanding cultural protocols is as important as knowing your product.

But the kinds of behaviours we're rewarding with management positions - competitive, confident and sales-oriented - are victims of the Peter Principle.  The abilities which get them to the top are the same reason they both fail to adapt to the times and yet find ways to blame others (like youth who just aren't tough or realistic enough, urbanites who drink lates, foreign workers and welfare bums) for ensuing problems.

Don't give up on these folk yet, though - we are always too quick to ape their approach and demand someone throw the bums out.  That selection of the socially fittest model doesn't really work in society; see Syria for an example of how it can go spectacularly wrong.  There's a better way.

As a lover of literature, I'm sure Gilmour will be familiar with the traditional heroic journey of the penultimate man of strength, ego and arrogance brought low, forced to redeem their position through acts of altruism and the development of empathy and humility.  If not, they should go watch Thor to see how that journey plays out.

Here's where the neuroplasticity comes in.  You actually can teach old dogs new tricks; old bones can learn to flex in new ways.  These A-type players can strengthen their overall mental fitness if they're motivated the right way by their peers.  With a better sense of how their aggressive sales acumen fits in the bigger picture, these folk can find all the things they want (affluence and influence) by playing the specialized roles they excel at - reacting to threats and identifying and exploiting opportunities for the good of the whole. 

We truly do need emotionally-driven people like Gilmour in our society; it's the healthy tension between emotion and reason that propels society forward.  But just as we teach our kids to think before they act, you want to ensure its Executive Function, not Reactive Function that's in the driver's seat.  In a diverse society with disparate needs and perspective to be mined, we want leaders with the ability to understand, build consensus and drive collaboration in charge.

So you see, Gilmour does make a valid point, if we're willing to apply it broadly.  We shouldn't expect everyone to be all things to all people; just as he's incapable of teaching that which is beyond his comprehension but perfectly capable of representing the macho writers he prefers (like Ernest Hemingway), we shouldn't expect A-type personalities with a "with us or against us" approach to be capable of leading diverse, complex societies.

After all, if you can't emotionally connect with people, you'll have a hell of a time leading them.


"The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.  They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care.  Either case is a failure of leadership."

 - Colin Powell

Punishing Evil vs Promoting virtue

 

"There are two ways of trying to create a good life," Boehm states. "One is by punishing evil, and the other is by actively promoting virtue."

A tad simplistic, but a pretty good explanation of the political divide.

Purpose and Innovation: Communication ROI

 

Other questions may be "silly" in the sense that they rest on a conceptual confusion ("Are mountains divisible by zero?"), or because they aren't fruitful to pursue ("Are there any mountains exactly 1,942 feet high?"), but we typically make conceptual and empirical progress by asking questions, evaluating possible answers, testing them empirically when it's possible to do so and analyzing our successes and failures – not by delimiting the set of questions considered fair game. It matters that we ask the right questions, but we learn which those are as we go.

 

 

My four year-old loves to ask why.  He wants to know why he should brush his teeth, why he can't play games instead of going to bed, why some people speak different languages than he does.  His curiosity isn't malicious - he simply seeks the purpose of things so that he can understand them.  When he has understanding (teeth left unbrushed rot and make you sick, without sleep people get cranky and can't function, different people from different places learn different things that they bring with them wherever they move), the world makes rational sense to him. 

 

In the world of business and policy, you must always be able to answer the "so what" question to justify a course of action, an expense or an idea.  Without a clear purpose in place, activity is just spinning wheels.  If you can't explain what a project is for, nobody will support it.  If, however, you have a clear purpose, the "why" question from others can inspire you to find alternative routes to get where you're going. 

 

We demand our media provide us with pay-offs; stories must have narrative arcs that lead somewhere, justifying our emotional and attentive investment.  Jokes need punchlines; elevator-pitches need goals; even blog posts have to go somewhere, lest the reader stop tuning in.  Every religion has an end-game and a rationale for its required behaviour, be it right action and thought, donation or opposition to a viewpoint.  When there isn't a clear purpose for something (an accidental death, a devastating storm, an action of our own) we feel compelled to confabulate a meaning to make sense of it.

 

People are hard-wired to ask why, to seek purpose.  There's evidence that this drive to find reason is what sparked the move towards collaborative organization (society) in the first place.   This instinct to question is essential for communication; it gives us cause to engage proactively with others and find answers to our queries.  Without purpose, there is no justification for foresight, planning or action.  The inclination to seek purpose ignites the need to question, which leads to communication and collaboration on responses.  When differing opinions rub up against each other, questioning bridges the gap and allows for innovative solutions to emerge.

 

Without questions, there would be no discovery or innovation.  If nobody had ever bothered to ask why people get sick, society would never have developed medicine.  If nobody had questioned established medicine, the great innovations we've seen in the health care industry would never have happened.  From Copernicus to Galileo to Einstein, it was the people who sought to understand purpose that have revolutionized our collective understanding of the world.  Every bit of progress we've had, really, stems from someone asking "what makes that happen?" or "why do we do things this way?" and "how could we do it differently to achieve the same goal more effectively?"

 

When we stop asking why and revert to reaction, communication dies and progress grinds to a halt.  Instead of seeking solutions, we react to problems with an even more ingrained fight-or-flight instinct.  We're seeing that happen now in Canadian politics.  Queen's Park has been in a deadlock since the election because all Parties were committed to individual positions rather than seeking collaborative solutions; they were justifying why, rather than asking why.  Federally, the Harper government is so opposed to alternative viewpoints that they are actively stifling information, trying to remove the fuel that fosters questioning. 

 

In Toronto, poor Rob Ford refuses to question any of his positions and has tripped over one rake after the other as a result.  In perhaps the most infamous example, his response to gun crime was "kick the bums out" rather than asking what led people to commit such crimes in the first place.  It's the same sort of thinking that has fueled the notion of segregation throughout history; when you don't value the act of questioning (because you think you have all the answers) you react by trying to remove threats rather than ask questions and find solutions to them.

 

We're in a reactive mood, these days, a temperament that's being fueled by belligerent politics.  Innovation isn't what it could be and solutions feel much harder to come by.  Collectively, we're kicking the big challenges down the field, hoping someone else will do the proactive heavy lifting for us.  Instead of begrudging our lot and pointing fingers of blame, we would be much better served by asking why we're in this rut and collaboratively, start asking questions about how we can move forward once again.  It's facetious to expect a solution return if we aren't willing to make a communication investment.

 

 

What Happens When We Don't Think Before We React:

“I didn’t mean to cause such an alarm and I apologize if I did,” you said in a statement sent to this newspaper. “I just want women to be safe.”

Responsibility is a conscious choice - one that few of us make instinctively.  How can we focus so exclusively on individual ownership when we still have so much work to do on ownership of individual action? 

 

Eyes on the Brain

A neurobiologist explores the amazing capacity of the brain to rewire itself at any age.

by Susan R. Barry, Ph.D.

What the Brain Tells the Eye.

 

Do we see what we want to see?

 

 

Published on August 30, 2012 by Susan R. Barry, Ph.D. in Eyes on the Brain

 

 

Have you ever picked up a gallon milk bottle that you thought was full when it was empty instead? You realize your mistake as soon as you begin to lift the bottle because your hand and bottle fly over your head. Your brain assumed that the bottle was heavier than it was and thus instructed your muscles to exert more force than was necessary. Before we make any voluntary movement, a great deal of planning, which is largely unconscious, takes place in our brain.

 

The same is true for perception. Since our eyes sense what is around us, it’s easy to think that our visual system is quiescent unless stimulated by something from the outside. However, what we see is governed to a large extent by what we expect to see. As with our movements, our brain sets us up in advance for what we will see.

 

This idea came home to me one morning when I glanced out my kitchen window at the bird feeder outside. Small woodland birds, such as nuthatches, juncos , and chickadees, were the usual visitors to the feeder. But on this day, I happened to glance up from the kitchen sink and saw five enormous wild turkeys, one male and four females, looking in on me. The male was so tall, he practically looked me in the eye. Despite their large size and distinctive appearance, it took me a full second to figure out what I was seeing. Had I glanced outside and seen the usual juncos and chickadees, I would have recognized and distinguished these birds, despite their small size, in much less time.                  

 

So why did it take so long to see the big wild turkeys? Because I didn’t expect to see them. What we see depends to a large extent upon what we anticipate seeing. The first area of our visual cortex to receive input from our eyes is called the primary visual cortex. It was once thought that neurons in this area respond almost exclusively to stimuli coming from the eyes. But we now know that the activity of these neurons is affected by “higher” brain centers which are involved in prediction and planning.

 

 

When the brain can predict what will be seen, it can prime the appropriate circuits in the primary visual cortex and other regions, allowing us to interpret visual stimuli more quickly. So, when I looked out the kitchen window that morning, my brain may have readied the circuits in my visual cortex for what I expected to see – the usual small birds at the feeder. The image of turkeys threw my visual system into a momentary state of confusion. Some circuits had to be suppressed and others activated in order for me to make sense of the surprising view outside my kitchen window.

Don't Be Afraid of The Other

The other aspect is that the Sikhs were targeted by the apparent “White Power” sicko, ex-soldier Wade Michael Page, because they are identifiably “different” — not because there is any reason to be upset at what Sikhs do, or represent.

Peter Worthington writes a heart-felt piece, heart-breaking in its simple honesty.  We don't let people buy and uses bombs or landmines because they serve one purpose - to kill people in quantity.  Gun rights activists aren't crying foul over this fact.  Well, assault rifles are just that - rifles designed to assault multiple parties.  By the same token, we don't allow people to walk around streets with swords strapped to their hips - again, because those swords would serve one purpose - duels, revenge, combat.  Handguns serve the same purpose - they are designed to kill people.

Make the argument that more people with guns will lead to less violence due to a leveling of the playing field.  But then provide one example in history that backs that assertion up.  You can't; the history of weapons is the history of increasingly powerful violence.  As weapons have broadened their scope from killing one to killing millions, we use them less because the risks are less.  The more firepower you have, the more powerful you feel - and the more strongly you feel the need to defend that power.  It's psychological; if you walk around with a gun, the temptation to use it either assertively or defensively multiplies.  The same rule applies to office politics or political attack ads; if you go looking for a fight, you're sure to find one.  It's that simple.

This is a world you'll never understand. And you always fear what you don't understand.

But there's a much deeper message in Worthington's piece, one of understanding.  We fear the unknown - we're programmed to.  It's a genetic fail safe that protects us from threats that emerge from the darkness faster than we can consciously process them.  Truly, that's all that instinct is; the triggering of pre-programmed or learned experiential biases that kick in an immediate, reactive response.  With aggression comes threat and with threat, the need for rapid response.  You will get anxious about public displays of gay behaviour for the same reason a you would be suspicious of a man in a turban or a woman wearing a veil - a hormone called cortisol.  This is the same hormone that will make you feel uncomfortable in the presence of a leper or burn victim; your limbic brain is perceiving something it registers as a threat and preparing your body for a fight-or-flight response.  It's no different from being afraid of the dark.

As we learn to populate the dark with knowledge rather than confabulation, it loses its terror.  The exact same truth applies to people.  I've been around the world, literally, exploring the ways in which people are similar and different.  Like many others, I've studied language, culture, history, geography, even neurochemistry to figure out where the commonalities lie.  I've spent nights with street people in Lima, Peru, watching them exhibit the most basic tenet of society - altruism.  I've laughed at the way in which an Arab Moroccan university professor stigmatized Italians in the same way an Italian grape grower stigmatized Moroccans.  Kids in small town Korea or post-war Sarajevo or downtown Toronto all want the same things from life; to have opportunity, to be happy, to be loved, to leave something behind.  We all feel the same way - what changes is the Way in which we express those feelings.  To me, there are no monsters in society; just behaviour, what causes it and how that behaviour can be influenced.

If I could have one wish, it would be for every person on earth to have the opportunity to be a stranger in a strange land and experience first-hand the kinship that connects all of us.  Homo sapiens are one species; there is far more that binds us together than there is separating us and where the differences lie, so to does opportunity.  Back to guns - where did gunpowder come from?  Thinking of China - where did pasta noodles come from?  What does the First Nations medicine wheel have to contribute to Western approaches to medicine?  Why is it that cultural groups from around the world land on the same metaphors, symbols like the tree of life, fire, the snake, the pyramid?  These aren't externally imposed things - they're internally derived.

JFK hit the nail on the head: "For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal."

We can continue to focus on killing or dominating each other over personal fears, or we can learn to move forward together in understanding.  If we limit ourselves to looking through the lens of one political or cultural tribe, or even as one nation pitted against others, we are blinding ourselves to our shared birthright as human beings.  The true enemy we share is not external troubles, but internal fears.

When understanding is achieved, violence becomes unnecessary; threats cease to hold power over you and instead become opportunities to be seized. 

Fear can be overcome, but only by doing so consciously.