Ghomeshi Culture II - Enabling the Powerful is Dumb

 

Students were told two years ago that internships at Q were “off limits” due to concerns about inappropriate behaviour by Ghomeshi, a former Western student told the Star.

 

 

As the story grows, the scope of the ugliness continues to expand with it.

 

The message youth, particularly young women are being fed is that to get ahead, you have to hustle, you have to be courting the favour of influencers and you have to be prepared to do what it takes.  This exists within a culture where the people in positions of power are largely men - and no small few of them like being in positions of power and the influence it gives them to get the things they want.

 

After all - it's by aggressively going after what they want that they got ahead, right?  To the victor go the spoils and anyone who'd challenge their fun is, frankly, expendable.  We live in a culture that enables this sort of behaviour. 

 

We have a ridiculously skewed view of "leadership" that essentially translates as "of a position or brand where the rules don't apply to you and, unless you get caught doing something entirely socially unacceptable that can't be spun, you have no restrictions" so long as you produce. 

 

That's not leadership.  That's dominance, that's aggression, that's stubbornness and anti-social behaviour.  It should never, never be the case that good people of whatever gender are discouraged from pursuing good career moves because of fear of predation.  That's leaning in the direction of ISIL, isn't it?  Fall in line and pay homage less you get beheaded or raped?

 

Is that the kind of culture we want?  It's the one we have right now.  It's why good people are languishing, our economy is perilously bereft of innovation and why the emerging mental health crisis is consuming all sectors to the fiscal and social detriment of us all.

 

Don't enable the entitled; empower the grassroots.  That's where we're going wrong - that's where laissez-faire capitalism has always gone wrong.

 

It's not the people that are the problem - it's the culture, stupid.

 

The Lesson of Consciousness

 

 

Out of the Ghomeshi scandal comes a scathing indictment of laissez-faire society:

 

 

And who among us doesn’t have some thinking to do? What exactly are we afraid of? What is that we dread to lose, that is more important than someone else’s dignity? More important than our own dignity? How weak and fragile are we, how needy that we would rather close our eyes to what we can plainly see, than look and speak? How cowardly must we be, to survive?

 

We are all afraid of things. Fear can be our friend – that’s why you run from a tiger, after all. When my daughter has been afraid – of a sport or a spotlight or a test or embarrassment (a common risk of adolescence), I have told her this:  “You can’t be brave if you’re not afraid.”  Unless you know there is a potential loss – unless you see the risk but are prepared to take it, in order to do or be what you want – unless you can feel the fear in your bones but still do what you have to do, you can’t call yourself courageous.

 

To feel fear but act anyway.  To feel desire, but withhold.  To year to react, but to be patient.

 

Such is the stuff of consciousness. 

 

It's a lesson I'm happy to spread around - I'm selfish that way.

New World Capitalism and the Open People

Increasingly the corporate world is concluding that business can’t succeed in a world that’s failing.

There are many narratives emerging in the world.  The negative ones dominate our headlines - corruption, abuse of power, frightening manipulation of the truth, our democratic system, the law, etc.  And of course, war, disease, the Zombie Apocalypse in the form of fundamentalist terrorism.

 

That's the dark winter threatening to overtake us - the collapse of civilization under the weight of its own failings.

 

It's not all storm clouds, though - there is, as always, a silver lining - points of light emerging where you least expect them.

 

What yesterday would have been revolutionaries, trying to burn the system down are today Virtuous Schemers, Hari Seldons of the 21st Century.  Like Irish monks or Islamic scholars of old, they are persevering the best of what came before and experimenting with new ways of thinking, communicating, organizing and thriving.

 

That bastion of stagnation, the bureaucracy, is a petri dish of civic disruption at all levels one finds dedicated, disruptive public servants who view what they do as a calling, but a comfort zone.  They are changing everything in slow fits and spurts, but aided from all corners of the nascent Open Community.

 

Some of the best ideas and most powerful voices for collaboration and shared solutions aren't coming from politicians or leaders of the not-for-profit or even religious sector, but from every day folk uninhibited by old standards of success.  These community catalysts are the Open People - they could be your neighbour, or your colleague, or your employer.  And that's a good thing.

 

It can look awfully bleak, our future - like the only way out is through fire and brimstone.  Such is not the case.

 

But then, it never is, is it?

New Revelations: We Are Not Free

You're all puppets, tangled in strings.

 

I had strings, but now I'm free.  There are no strings on me.

Experimentation on or manipulation of users through tweaks to the newsfeed is a controversial topic for many, ever since Facebook admitted earlier this year that a team of researchers had modified the newsfeeds of users to change the emotional content of what they saw in order to determine whether good or bad news could trigger a kind of “emotional contagion,” and make them feel a certain way.

 

Freedom of association.  Freedom of speech.  What about freedom to form your won thoughts without the manipulation of others?

 

Makes me laugh, too.

 

All sales is manipulation; all marketing is sales.  Theoretically, building trust and demonstrating competence and quality are the sorts of manipulation being used, but who are we kidding?  When winning comes first, the quality of the product is a secondary issue.  Rapid development, quantity and elimination of threats is what comes first.

 

Protectionist trade, fear-mongering politics, marketing attack-ads, shiny baubles - these are the sorts of manipulations we're kinda familiar with.

 

Some are aware of the steeper degree to which we're manipulated; controlled choices, power-aisles, loud music and salty peanuts.  This is perhaps no different than what boys and girls do to attract partners.

 

We've gone way, way beyond high-level intervention like this now, though.  Manipulation has become a science.  While there are still the aggressive alphas using the traditional tricks of dominance, threat and oppression, we're seeing a new host of social checks and balances coming in to play on this one.

 

The smart sellers are going down to the neurochemical level, going into the private head spaces of the nation and implanting seeds as frightening, perhaps, as they are effective.

 

Worried about social engineering?  That's so 1984.  It's all about neuromarketing today.

 

How can we mentally prepare ourselves to weather this particular storm?

 

There is a way, but it's not easy - and it starts with recognizing we're not as consciously in control as we'd like to think we are.

 

The truth will set you free.

 

Is the Lid Off?

 

i. Will the external investigators limit the scope of their enquiry to complaints related to Jian? What if employees come forward with complaints about other CBC on-air persons? ii. Has the CBC entered into contractual arrangements involving financial compensation for employees who have departed the corporation due to workplace harassment or improprieties on the part of high-profile on-air personalities including but not limited to Jian? iii. If so, how much money have taxpayers spent on making amends for such workplace improprieties and have any offending employees maintained their positions, if not Jian?

 

 

This is about the CBC, of course, in light of the snowballing scandal around Jian Ghomeshi - one which has found life in no small part due to social media.

 

There's precedent for this, isn't there?  We're hearing more and more stories like this as watering holes shrink in the media, in business, and in government.  Those struggling to make a living and used to being told which improprieties they have to put up with from those at the top are no longer sharpening their knives so as to become those at the top.  Even some of those in positions of power, aware that the world isn't so siloed and opaque as once it was are starting to open up about their misgivings as a defense mechanism.

 

Altruism is selfishness that plans ahead.  Morality is something nurtured within, not imposed from without.

 

Those who have found success the old-fashioned way will tell us this is all window dressing, a tempted in a teapot, a fad that will quickly pass as people move on and the status quo resumes.

 

Social evolution suggests otherwise.  But hey, if you're so confident, what need have you to think ahead, eh?

 

Rant: It's The Culture, Stupid!

 

 

 

People are strange when you're a stranger Faces look ugly when you're alone Women seem wicked when you're unwanted Streets are uneven when you're down

 

 

For those who enjoy my writing when I'm feeling testy, buckle in.

 

What do Rob Ford, Jian Ghomeshi, Chris Mazza, Dean del Mastro, Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy, etc. have in common?

 

They're all individuals.  They've all come from positions of privilege.  Each has engaged in socially unacceptable behaviour, and largely gotten away with it - despite there always being people who knew they were engaging in inappropriate behavior.

 

Each one was enabled by folk who saw the personal advantage in looking the other way at bad stuff so as to benefit from the good stuff which largely was about profit and political wins.

 

What about Michael Zehaf Bibeau, Sammy Yatim, Ashley Smith, etc?

 

These were individuals who's lives unraveled without appropriate interventions, largely because folk like this have no money nor political power and, as a result, are seen as societal problems to be swept under the carpet or kicked down the field.  It was their own responsibility to get their act together, right?  And yet they didn't, and ended up losing their lives and scarring the nation in the process.

 

What of all the people in Community Housing, angry and helpless at the poor state of their lives but without resources or confidence or brand to do anything much about it?  Or the marginalized youth enticed by crime because it offers them community, money and power in ways the rest of society actively denies, unless they "hustle"?  Or those who are enticed by radicalism because they're angry and have no internal mechanisms for self-regulation?

 

Of course, you can't talk about any of these groups without talking about the folk with money and power who like it that way, who find it convenient to reference the wonders of a laissez-faire capitalist system that embraces the Horatio Alger myth.  There is zero responsibility for those who have been successful (or had success handed to them) to do anything empowering for others; that's a bit too much like rewarding failure.

 

People have to want to succeed under the current model, and hey, it's the job of those at the top to make it hard for others to compete with them, like the card game asshole, because that's how you make sure the toughest players rise to the top, right?

 

Yet when this model produces criminals at the top who cause harm to others (with the support of enablers) and does nothing to stop criminals at other levels (because there's insufficient intervention on the way up) we ended up with increased polarization, marginalization, need for crime/punishment intervention, which costs losts, leads to increased marginalization and polarization, and it just spirals from there.

 

The comfortable elite look at their stats and say "hey, my spreadsheet says jobs are recovering and the economy is moving, so it's business as usual."  Meanwhile, underground economies grow; there are more and more begging on subways or practicing the little cons we're more used to seeing on the streets and transportation grid in countries like Ecuador or Bolivia.  There are more undisclosed deals around housing repairs, property sales, etc., that are untaxed, unregulated and potentially dangerous.

 

This is to say nothing of the growing underground labour market - people unable to get jobs the old-fashioned way have no choice but to find cash where they can, sometimes from employers content to work off the grid.

 

That means less tax dollars, less safety, more bitterness.

 

I've written about all this before - slowly, painfully, the dots are starting to connect for the people with clout enough to do something about it.

 

The race is on - not between us and competitors, but between our own entrenched belief that responsibility is someone else's problem and the burning platform of our ignorance.

 

We are not strangers, we are not silos, we are not independent.  We are part of a greater whole - until we recognize that and act accordingly, the cancer of social decline will spread.

 

Forget the nuts and bolts of the economy; focus instead on the organic connectivity of our societal system and the environments we create that are fuelling illness.

 

It's the culture, stupid.

 

Fracking with the Opposition

 

If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded.

 

At the recent Toronto Global Forum, some Big Oil folk were talking about how to better engaged with people and, you know, the aboriginal population.  I made some suggestions about getting away from their surgery-offering mentality and start thinking about communities from a well-being perspective. 

 

It may be that, with trust built and mutual understanding established, these executives can focus on the low-risk of their delivery models.  Or, communities and companies may come up with alternative solutions.

 

The key point I made was not to assume your "opposition" was anti-money or anti-development; unless those executives would be comfortable having a massive pipeline run right through their living room, they should be able to see this as a human issue.

 

They can take my advice and go the behavioural economics route - or, they can take Berman's advice and start a war.  Those always end up being cheaper in the long run, don't they?

 

Remember, folks, that in the days of the Internet, everyone's dirt is up for grabs - just look at what's happening to Jian Ghomeshi. 

 

You can't take personal risk out of war, so be damned sure you're prepared to live with the consequences if you're going all in.