Had a knew realization upon waking up this morning and seeing a publication on Facebook. Realized that those with power, even if it is on a limited level, will feel the need to exercise that power in order to hang on to it.
As a kid, I learned, from my intuition, to ignore certain people. My problem this morning is that I did not do that. I “listened” to what they were willing to espouse. In the old face to face world you could read the body language and you could walk away upon realizing that the speaker was stuck in a paradigm that would not hold up to reasoned analysis from the outside.
Those people have exercised power in the past, but not beyond the parameters of their paradigm. The internet, though, allows people to stay within their paradigm. Cognitive dissonance will insure that those in the bell curve of intelligence, awareness, understanding, etc., the ones that know what they have been taught by doing the dance of the particular school in which they found themselves, will always find the paradigm they “know”.
Cross examination would remove the barriers, for those who witness the questioning, but maybe not for the person being questioned. All but 1% of people never cross examine themselves in any honest fashion, such that they never defeat cognitive dissonance. After all, one target on everyone’s spectrum of needs is to look after your own interest. Here, though, is one key question that is rarely asked: How far must you go down a path before you see that it leads to the “wants” of someone else in lieu of your “needs” (and the needs of others)?
Too many people believe that they have a right to get their wants regardless of the impact of the needs of others. That will never change in the absence of an inflection moment and those moments are rare if not initiated by a traumatic event. I don’t see the middle 80%, the Bell Curve Folks (BCF), ever getting “it” until they have no choice but to experience it. (Many analogies apply for this behavior, like Lemmings (who literally are born without depth perception).)
For those at “the top”, they should see that such an event will disrupt their wants greatly and thereby move to adjust accordingly. Oh, wait, there is that cognitive dissonance and those with the most leverage are often well removed from the understanding that allowed them to have leverage, since it was done by someone earlier in their path of origination. Ah, it will get down to a face to face at some point and the light of realization might come just before all lights go out.
Well, there’s a brain fart for you!
I just had something revealed to me, at age 70. I saw the trip by the Duke player named Filipowski on TV replay today. If you recall, he was the guy that was “hurt” by fans rushing the court a couple of weeks ago. Seemed then like it was going to be a big injury, but not so much?
Now to yesterday against North Carolina, at the Duke gym. He and a NC guy ended up on the floor, largely because “Filipo” actually knocked them down. Then, when they were getting up Filipo kicked his foot up, like a backhand, and tripped the other guy who got up quicker. Afterward he went on camera and gave a big line of BS.
Take that for what it is, but it illustrated to me an accepted mechanism that a coach tried to teach me when I went out for BBall in 9th grade (1968). The coach actually instructed us to step on another player’s foot when waiting for a rebound, and that we could punch a guy in the ribs with one had while reaching up with the other hand to look like we were blocking a shot. He specifically mentioned that the refs could not see everything. (By the way that guy was eventually removed decades later because of sexually interplay with at least one student, just to show his true depth.)
Get that last none parenthesis line. That is the way that a whole lot of “businessmen” feel about those what might referee life behavior in the business world, especially including government “regulators” but also in house rules and enforcers.
OK, so that is the overview, now I will give you some specifics I experienced in sports and business.
I learned about MY basketball game in the Intramural Building at the University of Michigan beginning in 1971. There were 4 marvelous full sized wooden floor courts next to each other and the level of the game rose from the court furthest from the administrative part of the building constructed for that purpose (with squash and racket ball/hand ball courts under the basketball courts and king sized locker room on the other side of the administrative offices).
I learned there because it was the first time since 6th grade that I did not have a coach who was insisting that I did things his way. Shit, that coach did not have my physicality or mentality as I was both fast and smart. Anyway, I made it to the first court before the start of the second semester and never fell below that in my 4 years.
I then started learning street ball on courts all around Detroit, throughout the 70s. When I left Ann Arbor I ended up being a Melter Foreman making 250 tons of molten steel out of molten pig iron and scrap that my crew and I “cooked” in two adjacent furnaces at the expected rate of one heat every 50 minutes. I was 23 and the shortest guy on the furnace crew has 26 years in the mill, since that was the heart of the mill and the highest paying union position. I was responsible for adding alloys into the furnace and the cooking techniques I employed in order to hit the target grade of steel desired on the daily list.
Here’s the thing, there was a parallel between the Mill and the Basketball that was played on the courts in southwest Detroit, which I discovered by doing the dance in both places without anyone telling me anything, just learning by doing.
In the Mill, you were not allowed to lie, as people were maimed and killed there when honesty was practiced such that a lie would almost insure danger to someone. Turned out the courts in Detroit were largely the same, but I had to learn that it did not stop those who would do things like Filio did in the Duke game yesterday.
I got stiches over my left eye at least 4 times from blind side punches that I never saw coming. I also had a contact broken in the left eye in Detroit and in Chicago from the same kind of, literally, blind sided hit out of nowhere.
The first time that happened was in Detroit, on a court just off Jefferson and actually in River Rouge which was just south of the Detroit border (which was the Rouge River that ran downstream from the original Ford plant.) After I recognized that I couldn’t see very well, I found a piece of the lens on my chest and asked a guy near me if the other piece was on my face. When he found none, I walked back over to the hoop and he asked what I was doing and I told him I could play him with one eye.
There was a life lesson that I renewed to myself in basketball. Turns out later in life I would apply that lesson in various business situations. If you get a blind side hit and don’t go down, everyone who is aware of it changes how they see you.
On that basketball court, I became greatly accepted, and I was the only Euro American guy even in the vicinity of the neighborhood, except cars driving by on Jefferson. One time, after I had been coming there for a couple of weeks, a guy who had not seen me before came down the middle and I got the ball clean and knocked him to the ground when our bodies met. He popped up and squared off facing me and I asked him what his problem was. “You knocked me down!” he said and that is when I told him, “That’s the way we play here.” All the other players jumped right on that and verbally agreed with me such that the guy have up his position. (By the way, in the Mill, as the college boy foreman, I was like a first Lieutenant in Viet Nam, but got accepted there as well by being honest, especially when I made a mistake.)
I ended up leaving the steel mill and going to law school in Detroit. I continued to play basketball, and kept shoes and a ball in my car (which was then a black on black ’76 Firebird Formula). In the worlds in which I practiced law I was then able to also practice the ethics that I learned as a kid, then refined in the steel mill, then really tested in three different “practices” as an Attorney and Counselor. In the end, though, I was merely a Lawyer: Tax Lawyer, Commercial Litigator, International General Counsel.
I will tell you this, the only time I really enjoyed shared honesty in my practice of law was in the middle adventure. That was because the guy that took me on was honest. Neither he nor I ever focused on that, but we ended up sharing the trait for 18 years before I moved on to the General Counsel position.
I understand that this came out because of what I saw on TV. I am not sure that the behavior of the coach way back then, and what I have witnessed on sports and business can ever be changed. In my last position I was still behaving as a lawyer, doing what I knew was right ethically and still preserving all contractual rights of the company in order to limit financial impact from anomaly events.
I got great results, but overrode decisions made ancillary to the solution of the problem. Those whose decisions were ignored finally ended up firing me. In private practice the lawyer fires the client, in house, the lawyer gets fired for the decisions he/she makes. In my tax practice I was let go after I advised a partner that the solicitation of a bonus following a better than expected result with the criminal side of the IRS was expressly precluded by the ethics rules applying in Michigan. The in house goodbye was predicated on a set of decisions about equipment going into a nuclear power plant in Slovakia, and I saved a lot of time and money by acknowledging that our side had the problem, not accusing them of a problem like the guy above wanted to do. Got loose of the problem for less than half of the amount on the Contingency Line item of the books.
Like I said, my boss, then partner, in private practice, exercised honesty at the same rate of application as did I – always. On more than one occasion, once leaving a courtroom and once leaving a judge’s chambers, he asked me, “What did you just do?” I asked him to describe what he saw, then I sorted it all out with him since on both occasions, my instinct had taken over. He quit asking after our first year together.
Well, that’s what came out today. As a guy named Forest once told me, “It’s no good unless you share it.”
I know this has been “discussed” for more than a century, and to a certain extent it goes back to the first time that there was any religion by which humanity tried to answer questions that could not be resolved by their brains.
How can two religions be killing each other willingly and purposefully largely because of the existence of who or what they consider GOD to be?
Seriously, how can this still be going on?
When will the smart people realize that no GOD would allow for such behavior, only humans who gain personal or professional power by the give and take?
Is there any hope for humanity or will the relative herds merely keep stampeding? As with animals in a stampede, certain humans are merely following the ass right in front of them as that is all they can see from their perspective.
This is merely a personal thing as a result of spending a good bit of time in Israel a decade ago.
I negotiated a first time contract for a US company, owned by VC, in Israel more than a decade ago. In fact, I signed the contract as an officer of the company. As a result, among other things, I found a trusted level of give and take with my counterpart on the other side. He once asked me why the US didn’t just make North Korea cease to exist as it was then set up. I told him that because the US was the biggest dog in the pack, it had some obligation to release the hounds only upon a severe “need” of the pack, not a mere “want” of one or more others.
He got that immediately and smiled as I conveyed my appreciation that Israel had a more immediate degree of focus. I can see, in my head, the room in which decisions are being made, today, with more than two languages being shared in a room(s).
When I was studying Metallurgical engineering, the aspect of a “nucleation point” was understood to be a thing to try to control. There is a lot too it in molten metal, and once it’s impact is begun, there may not be a defined path it would cause to be created within what was considered a stable atmosphere of molecules performing in a given way. The nucleation can change the molecular form in peculiar ways – that happens in metallurgy and off we go.
Israel may end up being the nucleation point that forces waves across the entire lattice of the earth. Ask the famous scientist that I see on TV. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) I bet he will have an interesting take of what is going on in the world, a path that will roll on in some way. It would be great if Carl Sagan was still with us.
Anyway, there is at least a small chance that the future of many things will be in play now. Will it reach as far as the super rich entities that could manipulate to a certain extent, at least they always have in the historical path to where we are now. Could that break down, not as a target but as a result, of what must now take place at a high level.
Will this exposure serve to change the World, dramatically?
Covid opened the door, for ALL OF SOCIETY, to a room from which society will never escape. It is funny, perhaps, that the black plague, or some other named medical event, changed society centuries ago.
“What”, you say?
The plague forced those in power to actually tender money to workers. Prior to that time, those outside the ruling class provided services in exchange for a place to live and food to eat that made its way to them from those in control. Those that did not have such status had to steal food, etc. (Just check out those that were shipped to Australia for crimes of stealing food for their family in Ireland, etc.) Anyway, there were not enough mere volunteers to take care of the needs of the Lords, whose land ownership emanated from the King, such that the lords had to pay for services. A new class of laborers was created in the process. (There is more here and history buffs could expand this greatly.)
Now to the present times. The covid separation and segregation of us all revealed, to those who have peculiarities, when compared to what is considered normal and customary by those who run “business” in the world, that they are valuable to the business runners even though they did not naturally fit the rhythm in which the businesses had been happily operating. Once they were off the premises they found they were more comfortable psychologically, and physically, than when they had to be part of the herd in the buildings in which everyone was at a desk or cubical, or a production machine or some other place of gathering. This was also true for the service “industry”, engineering, estimating, and on and on. (Sales had been walking the covid type path anyway.)
The phrase, characterization, categorization of “Neurodivergency” (apparently, I just created that word based upon spell check) has been articulated to a greater number of those folks who might well be entitled to recognition based upon the path(s) that their brain and body tread naturally. What follows here is pure observation on my part, without any thought to applying science to what I have observed – over my entire life.
Lets establish this from the start
- Those characteristics that would cast a person as exhibiting Neurodivergency are, literally well represented by the term “spectrum”, which is applied to them overtly. It turns out that each one of us who comprise humanity has a spectrum of abilities/detriments (which go well beyond those of which “we” are aware). Every such data point type measurement is likely to be measurable as a double edged sword. But, it is not always that each side is as sharp as the opposite such that both cuts are equally impactful.
- On each spectrum choice there is a middle group that would be in the bell curve of any measurement applied to determining a data point for each in the world. Lets just look at them for this discussion. They can operate pretty close to the rhythm of the dance they learned from being taught in a school system that is geared to those middle 80. (It expressly sidelined the lowest 10% aggregate individuals and can’t afford to move anywhere near the speed that the 90th percentile can move.) Those that might have a “quirk” in any part of their approach to life, would end up being taught to moderate it to the extent that they can, in order to be in rhythm with the public dance of school. That dance becomes the dance of work in many instances, in the collective dance of society, but with a different conductor targeting different goals.
- Even “Highly” measured spectrum people, of any ilk of data, say those that are in the 99th percentile of a measurement line item, can overcome some desire they have for the rhythm of the dance, in order to adapt to an overriding rhythm, while maintaining their persona rhythm. The middle 80, though, likely subdue part of their rhythm, though, in order to be in harmony with what is doing on.
Now, here we are:
Covid exposed to a great percentage of the population how they were not “at ease” in the dance of the work space. Now, it is not a universal point of friction that is shared, merely that your individual “problem” was exposed to you as an adult.
Here is what I find encouraging about this all. Everyone is realizing, on some level, that they are an odd ball when compared to others. Even those in a fraternity or sorority (analogy/metaphor?), who grew up in the dance of a certain rhythm, are discovering that they are happy with a different footwork of some kind, which again, would be individually recognized because of the years that had gone by.
The issue now becomes: What can be done for the process such that this awareness of universal uniqueness is respected going forward?
This seems to me like an evolutionary step that is taking place. It is a first step and those have been traditionally resisted such that they have taken decades and centuries to move even a little down the path suddenly exposed. However, in the world today of much higher communication and awareness, perhaps the changes will be exponentially quicker, as have other measurable “things” become by application of digital communication of all kinds!
Kids nowadays will grow up with a greater awareness and acceptance of the “spectrumal” concepts. (another new word) All us old folks will move to the back of the train, or off the tracks on a siding.
Here is what AI says about my piece: “The content explores the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the value of neurodiverse individuals in the workplace and society as a whole. It suggests that society is realizing the importance of embracing and respecting the uniqueness of each individual.”
I made a mistake this morning. I took care of my morning obligations relating to grandchildren, but when I got home, I put on “News” channels in lieu of sports channels. Yep, I got caught up in the world’s problems.
I was a problem solver my whole life, including directly involved in such in furtherance of carrying out 4 distinct careers. I am certain that there is nothing I can do to solve the problems I see on the news, even the ones that are limited to the US.
In my last career I traveled to all continents except Africa and Australia for the express purpose of solving a significant contractual matter that had made its way to the “Contingency” line in the financial report for that undertaking. Long story short, the last notably adventure saw me in a room in Shanghai in which I was the only one who did not speak at least one dialect of the language.
Anyway, I am old now and the problems I focus on are those in my presence and when my mind has to adventure down the path of mistakes leading to the worldwide and national problems, in which I get no direct involvement, my body and brain can’t stand it. As I learned from my dad while he was a foreman in an ingot mold foundry in the 60’s, “Sometimes you just have to ignore certain people.”
So, let me get back to ignoring the world, but excluding when one of the bottom 10% erupt somewhere near me. And, I will also F with anyone else who proposes to impede the life of someone else of less stature. They rarely survive a look from me, but sometimes if it involves a woman or a kid as the object of their bad behavior, then I can’t stop myself from more physical confrontation, at least not to date. This thought emerged when the news talked about 5 distinct manhunts going on today for 5 “multikillers” in 5 varying parts of the country.
I see more and more emergence of the bottom 10%, though, and realize that what might have been an education moment in the past will now quickly become life or death for the bad guy. I realize that I have to spot that status before he tries it on me, so I can end his dance and not just be a passerby. Alright, I will stay away from the news.
To the parents who would indoctrinate their kids to adhere to the paradigm in which the parents were raised and are familiar. In the long run, if your kid is relatively intelligent, you are merely slowing down their development in order to make your life easier to understand.
Understanding, though, is always limited to the body of “knowledge” that is understood. For instance, the understanding of white men, at the level that has been empowered by those in control of the franchise that has worked its way to a level of high influence if not control, has largely controlled what knowledge should be considered as the US has moved down its path of evolution.
Now, in Florida for example, there is an overt movement to assure that the knowledge upon which children will form understandings, and opinions, is expressly limited to that knowledge that satisfies the white male perspective. As with any caste system, those at the top have decided this is “good” for society. Their reason(s) for such a concept is the perpetuation of the paradigm that has been formed over centuries, including in European countries before being birthed here.
Here’s the thing: before the printing press, and the increased spread of literacy, all knowledge emanated from the Ruling Body of the place of residence. That ruling body included a religion of some form that was sanctioned by the physical ruler.
Those two entities worked in common to assure that each continued so that the other could continue as well. See the creation of the Church of England by its Ruler as the most prominent example of this connection. The First Amendment of the Constitution expressly recognizes this potential union and provides the rationale to assure that it never applied in the US.
Once literacy spread to the “common” man, instead of merely those empowered and sanctioned by those in power, the knowledge that leaked out was without censorship. Now, take us past newspapers, radio, TV, etc. all the way to the internet, and knowledge is leaking out to even those that are “way low” on the spectrum by which “success” is measured by the person caught up in the dance.
If kids are limited to what they understand, by restriction of exposure to “non-like” ideas, then when they emerge from the cocoon created by such maneuvers, they will be steps behind those that were not so restricted. So parents, unless you want your kid to have to greatly adjust their understanding of the world once they get loose of you, allow them to fully share the experiences of others who are “out” there, even if that means learning about shit you never did.
To the parents who would indoctrinate their kids to adhere to the paradigm in which the parents were raised and are familiar. In the long run, if your kid is relatively intelligent, you are merely slowing down their development in order to make your life easier to understand.
Understanding, though, is always limited to the body of “knowledge” that is understood. For instance, the understanding of white men, at the level that has been empowered by those in control of the franchise that has worked its way to a level of high influence if not control, has largely controlled what knowledge should be considered as the US has moved down its path of evolution.
Now, in Florida for example, there is an overt movement to assure that the knowledge upon which children will form understandings, and opinions, is expressly limited to that knowledge that satisfies the white male perspective. As with any caste system, those at the top have decided this is “good” for society. Their reason(s) for such a concept is the perpetuation of the paradigm that has been formed over centuries, including in European countries before being birthed here.
Here’s the thing: before the printing press, and the increased spread of literacy, all knowledge emanated from the Ruling Body of the place of residence. That ruling body included a religion of some form that was sanctioned by the physical ruler.
Those two entities worked in common to assure that each continued so that the other could continue as well. See the creation of the Church of England by its Ruler as the most prominent example of this connection. The First Amendment of the Constitution expressly recognizes this potential union and provides the rationale to assure that it never applied in the US.
Once literacy spread to the “common” man, instead of merely those empowered and sanctioned by those in power, the knowledge that leaked out was without censorship. Now, take us past newspapers, radio, TV, etc. all the way to the internet, and knowledge is leaking out to even those that are “way low” on the spectrum by which “success” is measured by the person caught up in the dance.
If kids are limited to what they understand, by restriction of exposure to “non-like” ideas, then when they emerge from the cocoon created by such maneuvers, they will be steps behind those that were not so restricted. So parents, unless you want your kid to have to greatly adjust their understanding of the world once they get loose of you, allow them to fully share the experiences of others who are “out” there, even if that means learning about shit you never did.
Or, save them some of your cool aide.
A current discussion on Sports Network, which subject matter provides great analogy for what takes place in everyday life on a street. And add street can be Wall Street call my Main St or a street across the tracks. Anyway, the coach of the Celtics is suspended for a year and there it is widely anticipated that more details will come out because they’ve been released by the team.
A host suggested that the details at the team released come presuming they did release them, should’ve stayed in house unless the team was going to terminate his contract because of it. However, what they that analysis doesn’t get is that things in this world have changed dramatically in the last five years compared to the last 45 years such that many people who were not involved never confronted this before. Thus, this move by the team is actually quite hey way of determining what the expectations are now regardless of what they should have been quote then”.
The same analysis applies, again in sports, with the manner in which the NBA commissioner handled the owner in phoenix. The commissioner stated, perhaps surreptitiously, that all of his authority is limited by express terms established in the creation of the league documentation. He did not articulate that expressly, but his language set out the restrictions he faced without reference to specific clauses for which he knows the application and any court adjustments that might be attached to such language. Thus, he did what he could and was honest about it. Society and the personality of the offender controlled the rest. There was no smoking gun evidence here that would require a certain majority percentage of the other owners (which can always be met by a unanimous vote since the offender would likely be forced to abstain in the vote. ,
So, for those who don’t swim in the deep end of the contract pool, those are two examples of how contracts control a certain situation. Sports again, provides an illustration, but this same type of stuff takes place in the “private sector”. Sports are all subject to a special exemption at some level in order to do what they do relative to regulations that have sprung up to control bad business behavior in the US.
One last thought: bad behavior by prosecutors has shown a proliferation of wrongful convictions while the prosecution withheld evidence it had but didn’t want to use, to the defense, in matters which were relevant and pertinent to the defense of the individual eventually convicted, and now being release some 20+ years later. That is why in the contracts there is a mechanism that is put in place, but that mechanism will continue to evolve as it is applied more often and nooks and crannies are found! Adam Silver danced a dance that fit within the rhythm of the language of the contract, as are the Celtics. It’s like a doc taking blood pressure, heartbeat, etc. before diagnosing a condition.
(Unreviewed, just thrown up on the page)
This song (Youtubed Below) was written in 1979 when Bob Geldolf read on a telex machine about the shooting at a school by a 16-year-old girl who lived across the street from the school. No kids were killed, though 8 were wounded. Two adults were killed.
Geldolf has done a lot of truly marvelous things for humanity, organizing Live Aid and other events to address hunger in Africa.
The version below is from a Merv Griffin show in 1981 and Geldolf was already tired of beating his head against the wall of gun law resistance in the US.
It is now FORTY YEARS LATER and we have even more craziness taking place.
I write this not for my generation or those that are even within 30 years of me, but for those whose life is ingrained with the internet. You have access to truth about how laws are controlled by big money going to politicians who only care about being re-elected.
My generation witnessed the passing of the Civil Rights Laws in ’64 and how the passing of laws did not result in any immediate real progress for the everyday black person, especially not one remote from a progressive state or city. That’s because the big money had no interest in it. It took decades for the people in the middle 80% of society to begin to understand what had not really changed. They had to learn and for that it took education, and that learning had to happened by acquiring a new level of awareness.
LGBT acceptance has shown that the process can be accelerated when everyone who is in the middle 80 ends up knowing someone who is thus qualified and also knows that they are just like everybody else on many data points.
Well, now we all are learning that the bad behavior with guns is something that the middle 80% is not interested in supporting – by ignoring it in favor of the paradigm in which the middle 80 were raised, which did not included a lot of awareness. As with LGBT, once the middle 80 see that the expansive availability of guns, has nothing to do with a “well armed militia” is not warranted, the pendulum will swing in the congress, because the vote wanted will be that vote.
Well, that is what NeighborDaveSays.
The song below is not the same reason, but everyone of the lower 10% has some reason that does not meet the standards of review society would apply.
NeighborDaveSays Blog 