WHY DO WE NOT EMBRACE WHAT IS GOOD FOR US?

WHY DO WE NOT EMBRACE WHAT IS GOOD FOR US?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 23, 2010

REFERENCE:

Freud said that we struggle between self-realization and self-defeat. We may blame others for our dark side but the choice is made in the light of day. Smoking is but one of those choices.

There is a long history of smoking tobacco that goes back hundreds of years. In my generation, it was a sign of being grown up for young men. For young women, it was a sign of liberation. My father, a smoker, was aghast to see a woman smoking on the street in the 1940s.

All that changed with WWII, and thereafter, that is, until the last decade or so when the corpses started to pile up like cords of wood, and healthcare insurance costs went through the roof.

For years the American Cancer Society (ACS) stated that smoking was dangerous to our health. Nothing changed.

A decade or so ago, CEOs sat before Congress, all with studies in their hip pockets that confirmed smoking was bad for our health, and lied through their teeth. At the time, there were about 100 million Americans that smoked cigarettes. Today, that number has been reduced to 50 million Americans. What happened?

Many things happened not least of which was the fact that television made dying from smoking public.

The American Medical Association (AMA) and American Cancer Society sponsored research that confirmed the danger, along with a draconian campaign to have Congress pass legislation with a warning on packs of cigarettes, ending television cigarette advertising, and reducing and then essentially eliminating smoking in film and television dramas.

Insurance companies saw soaring medical costs for cigarette smokers. This made it necessary to increase premiums for nonsmokers as well as smokers.

Suddenly, it was no longer cool to be a smoker. The affluent were the first to withdraw from the cancer sticks, and then the middle class reasons of health. Today, the majority of smokers are the poor, the homeless, the working class, the underemployed and the young.

Today, thanks to this AMA/ACS campaign, public places such as shopping malls, restaurants, retail businesses, bars, and corporations have a smoking ban on their premises. Moreover, smoking is not allowed in airport terminals except in cubbyholes away from everyone, and of course, no smoking is allowed on commercial airlines.

Today, 2010, 50 million Americans still smoke and defy the death sentence from the habit, which indicates self-destruction remains a popular choice. This is offered to preface what is to follow.

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AUTHOR WILLIAM L. LIVINGSTON IV WRITES:

Sir James.

We have finally nailed a "universal.” We know what it is and how it behaves. We don't understand why this reaction profile is universal.

The setting:

The audience has a chronic issue with mismatches. Dealing with problems and issues that never get solved. Despair.

The presenters show an actual success model of the same challenge - with the supporting theory. The universal result is that no one in the audience makes a move to understand the success example.

The question for you to answer is why is this result universal?

Here's a ward of sick, dying patients shown a viable cure for what ails them - and they reject it. No comprende.

Thanks


* * *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

We never wander too far from our cage.

You live in a system’s cage with control theory guided by first principles, which apply resolutely and indisputably because they are a function of natural law. Natural law is neither rational nor irrational. It simply is. Defy natural law and entropy accelerates. Death is in the offing. Everything is moving towards entropy but we don’t have to leave our wits in a drawer to have it accelerate, but we do, anyway.

It was the reason I introduced this piece to how the habit of smoking has been derailed if not eliminated by the concerted effort of the AMA/ACS consortium.

* * *

The reaction profile is universal because we are all human, which means we are self-destructive. This cannot be captured in a precise algorithm nor can the trend be reversed with game theory. Science may provide tools for successful modeling and the theory to support it, but neither will change behavior. In the end, it is all about the irrational conundrum of the emotions, which calls for the selling of the idea.

AMA/ACS conducted a surge campaign on cigarette smoking. It had significant impact but fell far short of solving the problem. Next, cigarette packages are to have pictures of horror added to the warnings.

AMA/ACS are selling fear. Thus far fear they have garnered a 50 percent success level as there are still 50 million smokers still smoking and killing themselves. Fear is all about “what, and D4P is all about “why,” which is much more difficult to elicit reaction.

My piece here is not an answer but it might get you thinking in a different way.

* * *

We just had a contentious midterm Congressional election with campaign costs in the neighborhood of $1 billion with politicians dissembling as they crossed their states or communities in an attempt to get elected.

Johnny Carson captured this nonsense in a five-minute video waxing as a politician hooked up to a lie detector machine. The video is hilarious because every time Carson-the-politician makes a statement a foghorn notes the lie with a blast. A retired U.S. Army Colonel, who I emailed this video, responded with this:

“Jim,

“Fun video thanks for sending.

”I think that one of the great frustrations the American people suffer from is the seeming impossibility or arriving at truth where political issues are concerned. I also think that this is to a significant degree a self induced problem in the sense that, while realizing that most political issues are anything but absolute, we refuse to accept the truth that "special interests" are "bad" only when they support what we disagree with.

Ted”

* * *

Colonel Ted has captured the essence of “what.”

* * *

LIFE IN THE COCOON

Few of us wander too far from our cognitive dissonance, the shelter where we turn experience and information around to serve us even when it doesn’t. We cherry pick what we read, see or experience to fit what we think already, magnifying the fact that our thinking is skin deep.

Cognitive dissonance is amenable to information that is consistent with information already there, or what we choose to believe is true. If information cannot pass through our perceptive filter and match our knowledge base, it is rejected, or turned around to mean the opposite of what was intended.

A smoker, I know, points to Aunt Sally who is nearly one hundred and has smoked since she was twelve. This is proof, he says, that the dangers of smoking are poppycock. We both know a man who is fifty, and has smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes since a teenager. He has had his cancerous cheek and jawbone removed, and is close to losing an eye. He has had to submit to extensive plastic surgery. Yet this smoker refuses to see this has anything to do with smoking.

* * *

Clever people write books with eye-catching titles in an attempt to break through this cognitive dissonance. Take Author Matt Taibbi’s title: “GRIFTOPIA: BUBBLE MACHINES, VAMPIRES SQUIDS, AND THE LONG CON THAT IS BREAKING AMERICA” (2010).

Taibbi implies America’s ruling class is quintessentially a grifter class, or a con artist class obtaining money illicitly. It is a stretch and far from the truth, but it has shock value as an alternative to fear tactics. This author knows the value of shock as entertainment for the frustrated reader who is looking for answers beyond his own conduct. The reader is told “what” is true, but not “why” he should change. It works. It sells books, but it doesn’t change behavior.

* * *

Then there is Umair Haque’s title: “THE NEW CAPITALIST MANIFESTO: Building a Disruptively Better Business” (2010). He paints a bleak picture of Wall Street and corpocracy with a set of “what” measures to rectify the situation, along with a three-tier crisis typology. The author implies we are at Level III and still acting as if at Level I Crisis. So, along with “what” there is a pinch of fear. This, too, changes nothing. Chicken Little has sounded that alarm too many times. As for the East, especially North Korea, it becomes bellicose every time it is disrespected. Only today North Korea bombed a South Korea island. Why is beyond our cognitive dissonance.

* * *

Scores of books feed our anger and angst but mitigate nothing. They are “what” books when our dilemma is “why.” They give us a vocabulary and a narrative to salve our consciences but fail to get inside our behavior. There is no point in painting Wall Street with a broad brush of guilty and Main Street with a broad brush of innocent because they share a common toxic culture. Nothing will change that until the system changes, and we are the system, and we are damaged.

* * *

We live in an age of complexity. Complexity is not synonymous with uncertainty. There are unintended consequences to presidential cautionary interventions and congressional irresponsible dithering with the system. They both can lead to disaster.

We tend to overestimate the likelihood of outcomes we favor, while underestimating the likelihood of outcomes we don’t want. We suffer from unbridled optimism, which seldom has a basis in fact, and are periodically blindsided because of this.

This is not cognitive dissonance. This is optimal bliss. The tobacco company CEOs before Congress lied through their teeth because they wanted to believe this aggravation would blow over. They chose not to believe their own research, and hoped for the best. The BP executives were of a similar mind with the oilrig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010.

* * *

THE AGE OF “WHAT” WITH A NEED FOR AN AGE OF “WHY”

The evidence is palpable, sociological. It defines the times. President Barak Obama is a mirror image of the electorate. People were looking for “The Audacity of Hope” in a time of despair. Hope is passive; courage is active. The expectations of hope in a time of crisis are dashed when the vehicle is optimal bliss for a debtor nation. Now we have “The Mendacity of Hope” (2010) by Obama supporter Roger Hodge, who feels betrayed.

Looking back, it was inevitable he would be elected. Like us, he is not a president who likes to be the bearer of bad news. And like us, he echoes our preference for hyperbole. Unfortunately, hyperbole is a trait ill suited for the times. He entered the White House at a bad time, economically, politically, and militarily, a time when truth telling was in order, and sacrifice should have been on the menu, as it was with FDR. He has suffered the erosion of the public’s trust because he is a “what” president in a time of “why.”

He likes the fame of being president. This is obvious as if the presidency were a televised drama of playacting. A president is on television a good deal, but he seems to enjoy being on center stage more than anyone had estimated.

This is not a play. This is real, and his political instincts appear weak. He surrounded himself with Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner from Wall Street as his economic adviser and secretary of treasury respectively, choosing people who could undo the harm of the mortgage crisis with the very people who had caused the crisis.

African Americans expected he would be a president with the common touch, but he has turned out to be clearly an elitist more comfortable with other elitists than with the general public.

Much attention has been given to his focus on healthcare instead of jobs. The evidence seems to indicate that he believed the stimulus package would correct the jobs problem as it appears he views wealth is created by banks and money firms from the top down, when a capitalistic economy creates jobs by people making things. If people don’t make things, banks and money firms evaporate.

Continuing the “what” of this presidency, he dissociates himself from the business of governance. We saw this when he turned healthcare legislation over to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi showing his distaste for the everyday business of governing.

* * *

WHY A SUCCESSFUL MODEL AND SUPPORTING THEORY FAILS TO TAKE HOLD

It is question of leadership. I will continue on the president as all leaders key off of him.

Obama’s visions appear grand but his explanations prove inadequate. He justified healthcare as a basic right and then said the program would help balance the budget. It is one thing to explain an idea and quite another to float its plausibility.

Millions are unemployed, the war in Afghanistan goes badly, the G-20 Group has ignored most of his recommendations, the Democratic party suffered the loss of the House of Representatives, and seats in the Senate, and yet he claims to have accomplished 70 percent of what he hoped in his first two years. I had people use that kind of math on me when I was an executive so I know the drill. It is cognitive dissonance personified.

The president has come to represent the platonic face of us. He is poetically humble and practically haughty. He is tall, straight, faultless in dress and manner, always smiling but never warm. He talks down to voters while trying to show empathy in town meetings. He has two distinct registers, one talking to clever people like himself, and then talking to the rest of us. To the former he is technocrat, to the latter the regular guy.

From the beginning, there has been a miscalculation. He claims to invite compromise and consensus building while creating polarity. His conciliatory manner of holding himself above politics has somehow generated insurgent movements below politics, and given rise to the Nancy Pelosi theatre.

* * *

WE CANNOT CHANGE OUR STRIPES

A zebra is not a horse. Nor can a zebra change its stripes. We Americans are not Europeans. We are still a work in progress working our way through our chaotic, reactionary, fad driven, superficial, and narcissistic ways. We are a discarding society with a mindset of unlimited resources, and surreal optimism. Despite it all, we always expect to land on our feet.

This is my way of saying we are Obama, and Obama is us. We cannot change our stripes. We must understand him to understand ourselves. There is a mismatch here in understanding, as there is a mismatch with DESIGN FOR PREVENTION. A stretch? I don’t think so.

Throughout our history, we have gotten the presidents we deserve. Each is a calibration of the mind of the times. My reason for this elaborate presentation is based on this thesis.

* * *

Aristocratic FDR had the common touch, guiding us through the Great Depression and WWII. He knew us, and for it was elected four times, dying shortly after being reelected for a fourth term on April 12, 1945. I remember the day because my family was in mourning as if we had lost a blood relative. Providence gave us the president we needed and providence has always done so.

FDR spoke to us not as the elitist from whence he came but from a sense of common man: These are quotations that inspired the nation in its deepest dread:

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself” (First Inaugural Address – call to courage)

* * *

“One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment. If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.” (Call to action: National Recovery Act, setting up the WPA, CCC and other programs during the Great Depression)

* * *

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” (Call to war)


* * *

“This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.” (WWII generation: call to responsibility)

* * *

“Never have we had so little time to do so much.” (Mobilizing for war in 1942 – call to action now!)


* * *

“We can afford all that we need, but we cannot afford all that we want.” (Policy of rationing WWII – call to sacrifice)


* * *

Now, President Dwight David Eisenhower, in contrast, “the political general with the best press in America,” as Ernie Pyle put it, was president during the booming 1950s and only had to smile a lot, and do nothing, which he did with panache. He was the right president for the times. He and the American psyche had a Janus relationship.
* * *

That is not the case with President Obama, but yet he is a reflection of the American psyche and we of him, which I have attempted to show in this missive. Think of yourself as you read about the president:

(1) Disconnected with the electorate through an inability to relate to, converse with, or identify with its vernacular;

(2) Ignorant of his cognitive dissonance and indifferent to the cognitive dissonance of the American people;

(3) Out of touch with people who work for a living, run a small business, or are struggling to get an education at second and third tier colleges and universities;

(4) Given to saying “I want to make one thing perfectly clear” when what follows is as clear as mud;

(5) Seeks perfection when the American people have no such luxury;

(6) Is committed to his legacy at the expense of his legitimacy;

(7) Surrendered to Republicans at home and to generals abroad in Afghanistan and Iraq;

(8) Has failed to level with the American people that the presidency is a steep learning curve, and therefore has failed to ask for help or sacrifice

(9) Has unwittingly fed the culture wars, political polarity, and gridlock in Congress;

(10) Expects the nation to come to understand his syntax and semantics without him understanding the public’s ability to process information.

* * *

We are a divided people, looking for scapegoats and easy answers when there are none. We must pray President Obama will turn the corner, right the ship, set the keel on course, and all the other clichés because if he doesn’t we will not find our way, as we are connected.

* * *

This is prelude to the “why” that you have asked me to consider. Only today the headlines in the St. Petersburg Times screamed: “UNPREPARED” FOR OIL SPILL: An investigation finds neither BP nor the government had solid data or disaster plans (Front page: November 23, 2010).

DESIGN FOR PREVENTION couldn’t be timelier but I sense that just as President Obama has to make some adjustments so does this book:

(1) D4P lacks intimacy with the reader. Yes, it covers the sins of organization but it doesn’t give the reader a sense that it is speaking to him, directly;

(2) D4P celebrates giants of the evolutionary progression towards testing, detecting, analyzing and resolving systemic perturbations, but again, at the expense of the reader rather than engaging the reader to take action. D4P does little to motivate action;

(3) CEOs should read this, many of whom are engineers, and like engineers in general have a gear head mentality, that is, mechanistic mindset, while these problems are primarily motivational and behavioral and therefore irrational;

(4) D4P has a platform and policy, indeed, a strategic plan for implementation but in a language comfortable to the writer but not necessarily to the reader;

(5) D4P should be required reading for policy makers with an A, B, C format with vivid examples from experience and history;

(6) There is a hyperbole to D4P with an absoluteness, which however true the case may be, turns the reader off, or destroys the rapport and credibility of what is being proffered. It is best to error in understatement;

(7) D4P provides a vocabulary for the engineer or technician on the rig, but more as a statement of purpose rather than as explanation as to how to persuade the boss man to do the right thing;

(8) D4P contains all the information to protect lives, secure operations, and to maximize operational and therefore economic success, but it does so with the emphasis on how to avoid or finesse litigates should things go awry.

(9) D4P has been blessed by this delay and may profit mightily now from it.

* * *

My world is one of OD psychology. I have never been on an oilrig, never dealt with oilrig engineers nor have I had any contact with oil company executives except in relation to oil refineries, and that goes back to my Nalco days as a field chemical engineer.

As I’ve said repeatedly, D4P speaks to me. D4P has pealed back the façade of organizational intransigence to reveal the organization naked and anachronistic. D4P’s boldness in describing institutional infallibility and management authority, as well as the implacable sins of culture persisting in the practice of business as usual despite its incompetence could not be more poignant or relevant to the needs of our times.

The comments above have been made to fill the void of silence that has greeted so many of the copies of D4P I have sent to my readers. I suspect that my comments speak for them, as they have been unwilling or unable to speak for themselves.

In point of fact, then, I think you are correct. We have a problem. AMA/ACS were able to make inroads into cancerous cigarette smoking, but they had unlimited resources. D4P does not. That is the challenge.

This, for whatever value it may have, is offered in friendship.

Be always well,

Jim

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