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The Giving Part of Taking Other People’s Pictures

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It’s harder than ever to maintain, and then safeguard, our zones of privacy.
 
I’ve been thinking about it in terms of pictures that other people take of us or that we take of them—sometimes when those other people are friends, sometimes when they’re strangers, and sometimes when its companies or authorities who are taking them for their own purposes.
 
In these photographs, what is the line between a fair exchange (with mutual benefits) and an unwelcomed intrusion?
 
What exactly are we “taking” when we take a picture of somebody?
 
(When shown their photographs, tribal people often complain that the camera has somehow stolen their souls.)
 
Is there, or should there be, a “give” as well as a “take” with photography?
 
Two encounters this week sharpened that last question for me.
 
A close colleague of mine in counseling work stopped by unannounced with some cookies to end our just concluded school year on a celebratory note. We’d been meeting with our kids on Zoom and hadn’t seen one another in person for months. She was so glad to see me that she wanted to take my picture before leaving, but I waved her gesture off. I’d stopped mowing the lawn when I saw her heading my way and felt that my sweaty appearance would have made a poor souvenir (even though she clearly felt otherwise). “What just happened?” I wondered afterwards.
 
My second encounter came by way of reminiscence.
 
Three years ago this week, I had been in New Orleans and was remembering that unbelievably rich and flavorful time, eager to go back and dig in even deeper. Part of my return trip would be taking in a “second line” street parade, because every week of the year at least one of them takes place somewhere in the City.

A “second line” street parade photo by Aeisha Palmer, May 20, 2007

As you can imagine, these parades (which are sponsored by New Orlean’s “social aid and pleasure clubs”) are a kind of paradise for professional and amateur photographers.  While following a random NOLA thread last week, I came across a story about “the etiquette of making photos” of the performers at these parades. This story also speculated about the “taking and giving” boundaries of photographing other people. For example:
 
Are there different rules for friends than there are for strangers?
 
Several years ago, Susan Sontag explored these boundaries and expectations in a series of essays for the New York Review of Books, later published in her own book, On Photography. Sontag focused on the “acquisitive” nature of cameras, how they “take something” from whoever or whatever is being photographed, a sentiment that’s similar to those tribal member fears about having their essences stolen. She wrote:

To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.

Sontag also commented on the vicarious nature of picture taking. 

Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, [or at least] for giving the appearance of participation.

The way she saw it, we may not be marching in (or even watching) the parade, “but somehow we feel that we are” if we can capture a picture of it for savoring now and later on. Instead of “being in the moment,” we’re counting on the triggering nature of these pictures to approximate the real experience we’ve missed by “capturing enough of it” to still feel satisfied. 
 
Of course, there are consequences on both sides to this kind of “taking.” A drive to accumulate photographic experiences can not only rob us of more direct engagement with other people and places (say, the actual smells and sounds of the parade, or the conversations we might otherwise be having with spectators and participants), it also raises questions about the boundaries that can be crossed when we’re driven by a kind of hunger to “take” more and more of them without ever realizing the impacts that we’re having by doing so. To our camera’s subjects, it can feel like violation.
 
As I’ve become more thoughtful about these impacts, it’s meant thinking through my picture-taking drive in advance.
 
What is gained and what can be lost when I’m taking somebody’s picture? What is (or should be) the etiquette around photographing others? These are questions that seem impossible to ignore since cameras are literally everywhere today, devouring what they see through their lenses.  As a result, going through some Q&A with myself by way of preparation—whether I’m likely to be the photographer or the photographed—increasingly seems like a good idea. 
 
For instance, what if strangers “who would make me a great picture” are performing in public or, even more commonly, just being themselves in a public place when I happen upon them with my camera? 
 
My most indelible experience of the latter happened at the Damascus Gate, which leads to the “Arab Quarter” in Jerusalem’s Old City. In arcs along the honey-colored steps that sweep down to that massive archway, Palestinian women, many in traditional clothes, were gathering and talking in a highly animated fashion against the backdrop of ancient battlements, but as soon as I pointed my camera in their direction to take “my perfect shot,” they raised their hands, almost as one, and shielded their faces from me. Was that ever sobering! I didn’t know whether they were protecting their souls or simply their modesty and privacy from another invasive tourist.
 
In the story about picture taking at parades in New Orleans, one photographer who is drawn by their similarly incredible visuals observed:

You really have to be present and aware and know when the right time is to take a photo. Photography can be an extractive thing, exploitative, especially now when so many people have cameras. 

To her, knowing when to shoot and when to refrain from picture taking is about reading the situation, 

a vibe. You know when somebody wants you to take their photo, and you know when somebody doesn’t.

Another regular parade photographer elaborated on her comments:

If you carry yourself the right way . . . people putting on that parade see you know how to handle yourself and will give you a beautiful shot.

I’ve also found that performers want you to portray them in the best light and will help you “to light the scene” when you make eye contact and invite them to do so. On the other hand, they will also tell you (if you’re paying attention) when the lighting is off and you should just back off.

Here’s one where I got it right, at least about “working the scene together.” 

Because everybody wants to look their best while being photographed, the same rules usually apply when the subjects aren’t part of a performance but simply out in public, being interesting by being themselves. For the would-be photographer, it’s about initiating a conversation and establishing at least a brief connection before asking: can I take your picture? If they don’t feel “looked down upon” by your interest, they’ll often agree. But as with those “on stage,” these preliminaries can also result in: “No, I’d rather that you didn’t right now,” a phrase that’s hard to hear when “a great picture” is right there in front of you if only you could “take it.”
 
Whenever you know in advance that taking pictures could be uncomfortable for those being photographed, one New Orleans parade regular talked about the need to deepen his relationship with those he wants to photograph before showing up with his camera. Because he takes pictures at NOLA’s legendary funeral parades, he brings club members photos that he’s taken of the deceased on prior occasions so that colleagues and family “have a record of that person’s street style.” It’s his sign of respect at what is, after all, a time for grieving a loss as well as celebrating a life.

We go and we shoot funerals and [then] it’s not a voyeuristic thing. You’re doing what you do within the context of the community

—a community that you’ve already made yourself at least “an honorary member of” through your empathy and generosity. 
 
Then, what you’re giving tends to balance what you’ll be taking.

I didn’t give them glasses of lemonade or anything, but I did ask these two (whom I didn’t know) whether I could take their picture when they walked past my house and both agreed. I had to hope that they were old enough to consent to be photographed.

So what about my cookie-bearing friend who showed up unannounced this week? 
 
Should I have relaxed “my best foot forward” enough to permit one sweaty shot when she so clearly wanted a memento of our reunion after so many months apart?  
 
Yes, probably. 
 
But I’ve become so defensive about cameras taking my picture on every city street, whenever I ring somebody’s doorbell or face my laptop screen that sometimes it’s hard to recognize when “putting down my guard” is actually relationship building and for my own good instead of some kind of robbery.
 
Where zones of personal privacy are concerned, this is a tricky time to navigate either taking pictures of somebody or being captured by one.
 
It’s one more reason to try and rehearse my camera-related transactions before I find myself, once again, in the middle of one. 
 

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(If you’re interested in a photo essay I posted after my last visit to New Orleans, here it is, from May, 2018. Another post, with photos taken at the Mummers Parade in January, 2019, can be found here. Taking pictures has always been a way that I recharge for work, although I’m still in the process of learning its complicated rules.)

This post was adapted from my May 30, 2021 newsletter. Newsletters are delivered to subscribers’ in-boxes every Sunday morning and occasionally I post the content from one of them here. You can subscribe by leaving your email address in the column to the right.

Higher Winds Are Coming

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(illustration by Monica Aichele)

The near future is like a 10-day weather report. It follows the trend lines and makes predictions, which will come true except for all of those times when the unexpected happens. 

I’m in the process of re-building the backyard after loosing 1½ big trees in the middle of it and experiencing the damage to boxwoods and other valued neighbors that came with that. The rebuilding includes a brand new linden tree that will need a four-by-three foot hole to inhabit (after I finish this) and various plugs for the hedgerows. So these days, I’m regularly hoping to minimize any more damage as the yard recovers its good appearance.

But it’s also a fool’s errand of plans and defenses because gale-force winds regularly whipping down from Philadelphia’s high points in the northwest felled those earlier trees, while countervailing wind-blasts sweep up from the Carolina coast whenever there’s a Nor’easter. The latter can sound like a freight train just outside the bedroom window as they funnel between the house and our 200-year old tulip poplar. 

More trees will surely be lost.

While my inclination is to be defensive (and plant replacements, like the linden, in strategic places), I’m aspiring to a more dynamic point of view that recognizes not only the deaths of the living things that shape this place but also its broader evolution as the climate changes and more that’s unplanned starts to happen. I’m aiming for a healthier and saner recognition that this is a landscape in motion, that less shade and more sun might mean more vegetables, that some former residents (like the rabbits) might return with the carrots, and that I can change and grow with the confusion.

Coincidentally, while I’ve been trying to live my short term forecasts outside, I’ve also been reading one: Fareed Zakaria’s Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, which came out last October, barely six months into our tribulations with Covid-19.

You might know Zakaria as a charismatic CNN host and columnist for the Washington Post, who also happens to have a PhD in government from Harvard. In other words, he’s one of those “experts” who have attracted a great deal of skepticism over the past decade–particularly when they’re telling us what’s coming next. But hold on, while nine of his ten lessons toe a fairly predictable Center-Left path into tomorrowland, they are introduced by a rule-of-thumb that effectively qualifies all of the lessons that follow. Zakaria’s First Lesson is for all of us to “Buckle Up,” because what’s coming for certain is much more chaos and unpredictability (just like the novel coronovirus), and we can’t simply fortify or plan our ways out of it. We’ll have to learn how to go with, and even take advantage of the future’s chaotic flows.

Great, you say, more Confusion, Incompetence and Internal Divisions. More Infections, Killer Storms, Droughts and Wildfires.  More Mass Shootings, Desperate Migrations and Habitat Destruction. More Genocides, Famines, Despots and Mindless Consumption. Altogether, a seemingly unhappy picture. And just like the weather reports I’m watching, More Unpredictability for the green half acre that I’m trying to care for. But in both spheres, there’s a way to keep our heads above water, and maybe, even to thrive. 

That doesn’t mean that Zakaria’s other Lessons are unsatisfying—in fact, they’re often excellent—particularly Lesson Two (“What Matters Is Not the Quantity of Government But the Quality”) and Lesson Ten (“Sometimes the Greatest Realists Are the Idealists”). But, without question, his most valuable advice is to “Buckle Up” for the chaos coming our way.

Zakaria frames this pivotal lesson by way of analogy from the tech world. Some years ago, technologist Jared Cohen observed that all computer networks suffer from a “trilemma.”  They can have two of the following qualities but never all three. Those qualities are openness, speed and security. For example, if they are “open” and “fast” they are, by their very nature, “insecure.”

Zakaria describes the analogous “trilemma” that confronts our post-pandemic future. We live in a world where: 

Everyone is connected, but no one is in control. In other words, the world we live in is open, fast—and thus, almost by definition, unstable.

It would be hard to bring stability to anything so dynamic and open… [On the other hand,] a fast and stable one will tend to be closed, like China. If the system is open and stable [his third permutation], it will likely be sluggish rather than dynamic. Think of the nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires: vast, open, diverse—and decaying.

Like the digital tech platforms that impact so much of our lives in the West today, living and working are inherently unstable because we have not made the kinds of investments or prepared ourselves adequately for the kind of future that is the necessary consequence of our “fast” and “open” societies.
 
Zakaria provides several examples that speak to our hoping for the best when we should be preparing ourselves for the worst. He starts, of course, with the current pandemic that epidemiologists and others (like Bill Gates) have been warning us about since SARS, MERS, and Ebola a decade or so ago and Zika more recently. What follows are three more alarm bells that are going off today but we’re largely ignoring, and there are many more instances where we’re neither investing nor preparing to live in an increasingly chaotic future. 
 
MEAT. As a meatlover, this is a calamity that I actively try not to think about, but Zakaria skirts the better-known concerns (like animal cruelty, an unsustainable carbon footprint) to continue his focus on epidemiology. He describes the role that factory livestock farms will almost certainly be playing in global health because we want to get meat to our tables quickly (as “fast”) and with as little government monitoring of safety (or interference with “fast” and “open”) as possible. In light of the research that’s been done, Zakaria argues that not one but two frightening realities loom over our mass production of cattle, chickens and pigs:

These massive [livestock] operations serve as petri dishes for powerful viruses. ‘Selection for specific genes in farmed animals (for desirable traits like large chicken breasts) has made these animals almost genetically identical.’ Vox’s Sigal Samuel explains. ‘That means that a virus can easily spread from animal to animal without encountering any genetic variants that might stop it in its tracks. As it rips through a flock or herd, the virus can grow even more virulent.’ The lack of genetic diversity removes the ‘immunological firebreaks,’ Samuel quotes the biologist Rob Wallace: ‘Factory farms are the best way to select for the most dangerous pathogens possible.’

[And as if that’s not enough]… Factory farms are also ground zero for new, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, as animals are bombarded with antibiotics that kill most bacteria but leave those that survive highly potent. Johns Hopkins professor Robert Lawrence calls antibiotic-resistant bacteria ‘the biggest human risk of factory farms.’

We’re now aware of the virulence of Covid-19, can easily imagine worse viruses being “selected” in factory livestock farms, as well as the mistakes and “human errors” that could lead to widespread public exposure. We’ve also read stories about bacteria in hospitals that are demonstrating their resilience to our stock of antibiotics. Despite the horrific cost in lives that seems likely, few people even know about the time bomb that’s ticking in these production facilities. While we’re all interested “in getting back to normal” after Covid-19, an even less healthy and increasingly unstable future seems far more likely. 
 
BIO-WEAPONS. We all know something about the groundbreaking research into messenger RNA that’s behind some of the coronavirus vaccines and the selective editing of human DNA using CRISPR technology that portends the “editing out” of genetic diseases before a child is born or the fabication of “designer babies,” but the likelihood of bioweapons has largely been confined to the sphere of science fiction in our imaginations. Given the widespread use of these innovations in global laboratories today, that’s an irresponsible mistake. And, as Zakaria notes, he’s been worried about this one for awhile:

I have always considered bioterror to be the most important under-discussed danger facing us….And yet…the main international forum for preventing it, the Biological Weapon Convention, is an afterthought. As [scholar Toby] Ord notes [in his book called The Precipice,], ‘this global convention to protect humanity has just four employees, and a smaller budget than the average McDonald’s.’

Zakaria is not an alarmist. Instead, he wants to show us some of the rarely discussed problems (he discusses several others too) so we can either address them before it’s too late or get ourselves more ready than we are today for the even more unstable world we’re sure to be living in when we fail to do so. I’ll break down the last quotation fromTen Lessons into three sentences because each one of them has its own implications for our post-pandemic future.

The costs of prevention and preparation are minuscule compared to the economic losses caused by an ineffective response to a crisis. 

More fundamentally, building in resilience creates stability of the most important kind, emotional stability.

Human beings will not embrace openness and change for long if they constantly fear that they will be wiped out in the next calamity.

In his “Buckle Up” Lesson, Zakaria refers to a ground-breaking idea from another scholar: Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s notion of becoming “antifragile,” which he outlined in his highly influential 2012 book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. The “emotional stability” in an unstable world that Zakaria is talking about will likely require more from us than greater resilience. We’ll need to foster a mindset like Taleb’s that sees instability not as an insurmountable threat to our current “fragility” or merely something to fortify ourselves against. Instead, to be “antifragile” is to learn how to play offense instead of defense. It’s having the agency to be creative and gain strength from the chaos and crises that are sure to come. 
 
In Antifragile, Taleb describes the objective like this:

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile [which fears, to the point of paralysis, both risks and uncertainty]. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.

Taleb also captures his concept’s beauty when he writes later in the book:

Trial and error is freedom. 

Difficulty is what wakes up the genius.  

I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.

As in the diagram above, to be antifragile is to be enabled (instead of disabled or merely hunkered down) as we face an increasingly unstable world: to incorporate the chaos, turning it into a creative force.
 
Even before antifragile became a concept, I found the sense of swashbuckling opportunism that’s embedded in such an outlook easier to admire in others than to live by myself. It’s hard to be constantly alive to the unexpected while also taking advantage of it. It seemed to be for pickpockets, pirates, Robin Hood’s merry band: people living on the edge of civilization, surviving by making the most out of whatever opportunity presented itself. But I’ve started to learn that an outsider’s perspective like this may be exactly what’s required in the increasingly unstable world that lies ahead. It’s time to step up my game.
 
Perhaps as a result, during the first and second waves of the pandemic last summer, I found some sobering consolation in two very wise people, each of whom had a helpful slant on the perspective we’ll need moving forward. It seems today that they complement both Zakaria and Taleb quite nicely. 
 
In a July post I quoted the heroic Barry Lopez, wondering out loud:

How much natural resilience and willingness to rely upon one another has our freedom, wealth and belief in progress [that is, have our “fast” and “open” societies] allowed us to forget, but that we’ll need to remember if we’re to adapt and survive in this increasingly ‘throttled’ world?

He reminds us that we all have what’s necessary within us, only having to remember what we’ve managed to forget.

In an earlier post last May, as the early pandemic chaos compounded and I’d begun to lose perspective, I looked to Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron. With true hope, she says, there is always fear that whatever you long for won’t come to pass. Accepting that your hope is always bound up with your fear—so that you’re as curious about your fear as you are about your hope—can liberate you from your own constraints. What I needed was to face my worst fears more directly, to temper them against that present reality, and then bind them up with my hopes again.

Once again, it’s time to be more curious about our fears and not hide from them. 

It’s time to “remember” our natural resilience and willingness to rely upon one another as the challenges compound. 

It’s time to realize that things will not be “getting back to normal,” indeed that they can’t get back to normal in a world that’s as “fast” and as “open” as ours is today.

For the chaos and crisis that surely lies ahead, it’s time to prepare ourselves so that we’re enabled instead of disabled, so we become more resourceful instead of more depleted in the face of what’s sure to come.

This post was adapted from my April 4, 2021 newsletter. Newsletters are delivered to subscribers’ in-boxes every Sunday morning and occasionally I post the content from one of them here. You can subscribe by leaving your email address in the column to the right.
 

The Spark of Getting Out of Your Head & Into Somebody Else’s

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There are many voices urging us to bridge the divides in our society, but not nearly as many explaining why it would be good for us too if we learned how to bridge them.

Luckily, recent research in neuroscience has been proving that Perspective Taking—or making the conscious effort to stand in the shoes of people who are different from us—activates regions in our brains that make us more innovative and creative overall. In other words, Perspective Taking is not just a one way street.  It also produces reciprocal benefits for whoever’s making the effort.

I’ve talked here several times about how toxic it is to “civic friendship” when we no longer bother to understand where “those other people” are coming from or what we still might have in common with them. Democracy relies on civility and common purpose in spite of our occasional differences, and yet we rarely hesitate before writing off fellow citizens who disagree with us about immigration or climate change or voting. Without even thinking, we ask ourselves: How can they be so wrong when we’re so right?

After the last presidential election, I waded into these turgid waters with two posts. They argued in favor of so-called Blue State Americans shutting down their knee-jerk reactions, shovling their class prejudices about “rednecks” and similar demonizations to the side, and being curious enough about where Red State Americans are actually coming from to make an effort to understand them. Not to agree with, but simply to consider the different priorities that are motivating them. These posts were “Stop the Steal” Throws a Match on a Dry Forrest and Healing a Divided Country Requires Understanding Others.

Now, research is telling us about the rewards that are available when you make the effort to see your life or work from somebody else’s point of view. Whenever you encourage yourself to  “stand in someone else’s shoes” out of curiosity or an acknowledgement of your biases, brain science is proving that your fields of imagination will expand, making you more creative and innovative in all of the interactions that follow.

Part of it is going deeper than appearances and ferreting out information that challenges your preconceptions. For example, Niccolo Machievelli (who’s often described as a “classical realist”) wanted to discover everything he could about his opponents before he was facing off against them. 500 years ago, he wrote:

“Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.”

A deeper understanding of others applies to more than political adversaries, of course. It can be your customers and clients, the co-worker who’s always challenging you at meetings, the regulator who suddenly shows up in the workplace, the protestor who’s in your office parking lot. The more you know about where “these other people” are coming from, the more effective you can be when interacting with them. (What “hot buttons’’ of mine are they pushing and how do I turn them off? What are our shared objectives, where is our common ground?) By asking and answering such questions, you can gain a broader perspective along with the new options that it affords.

When I was still practicing law, Fran and I co-wrote an article about perspective taking, although we didn’t call it that back then. We titled the piece: “Why Didn’t My Attorney Call Me Back (and How Do Clients Feel About That)?”  

Sure, lawyers are busy—shuttling from one crisis to another—but being unresponsive to your other paying customers says loudly and clearly, “my time is more important than your time,” and it’s one of the legal profession’s most persistent complaints. On the other hand, understanding client irritation to the point of changing the way you practice makes your work more valued by others, more profitable to you, and ultimately more satisfying too because perspective taking literally “hacks” your job. Once you understand a need that you failed to appreciate before, it forces you to become more innovative and creative in meeting it, leavening other aspects of your work at the same time. 

In other words, your discovery that others see your priorities differently leads you—through a more creative application of your problem solving skills—to a broader perspective on your work than you had to begin with. In a burst of discovery, you’ve realized that you’re not the only one who is right all the time.

Today, brain science is providing us with a view of the neurological processes behind Perspective Taking. While there are technical descriptions of the brain’s functional areas in the following quotation, the gist of it should still be pretty clear. 

When we are trying to solve a problem, the frontoparietal attention network activates, meaning that areas at the front and the side of your brain are at work. However, when we take the perspective of another person, we engage a different network, often called the “mentalizing,” or theory-of-mind, network. This has two key components: the temporoparietal junction, located just above and behind the ear, and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which lies just behind the middle of your forehead. These areas help us understand what others know, want, need or find important.

Importantly, the “mentalizing” network partially overlaps with the so-called default mode network. This term was initially chosen because researchers at Washington University in St. Louis discovered that this network became active when people took a break from active problem-solving. After years of research, we now know that this network is activated during exploration, imagination, innovation, thinking outside the box, and engaging in mental time travel by thinking back to the past or imagining possible futures. For those reasons, we often call it the “exploration” network. Thus, perspective taking engages both the mentalizing and exploration networks, perhaps because getting inside someone else’s head requires getting outside our own.

To summarize: the Attention network (or rational problem solving) plus the Mentalizing network (trying to understand others) in our brains also activates our Exploration network (thinking outside the box). Obviously, this is a richer and potentially more fruitful mix of brain power than relying upon the problem-solving function alone.

The description of brain coordination above was provided in an article called “Perspective Taking: A Brain Hack That Can Help You Make Better Decisions.” It was one of several offerings this week in the KnowledgeWharton newsletter from Penn’s Wharton School of Business. Intriguingly, the authors’ lab at Penn was “investigat[ing] what happens when we turn the [Exploration or thinking outside the box] network up or down” by improving perspective taking. Does it make people in the workforce more innovative and creative overall?

Their answer was a pretty emphatic “Yes.” .

What the Penn researchers concluded was that “practice makes perfect” when their study participants combined both perspective taking with problem solving and started appreciating the work-related benefits that follow. As neuroscientists, they might also describe their findings this way: our neural pathways become more fluid when we traverse them more frequently because of the advantages that we feel we are gaining by doing so. 

In the course of their research, these neuroscientists also developed several exercises that improved the brain’s fluidity and the creativity and innovation that it unlocked. 

They asked study participants to reflect on recent perspective taking and share the experience with colleagues. In a second study, they asked them to visualize future applications of perspective taking, paying attention to the details and writing them down beforehand. Other “muscle building” exercises for the brain included having more conversations with total strangers, trying out new things (like learning a new language or playing a new instrument), and reading novels that transport you into the minds of different characters. 

By encouraging exercises like these, the researchers were taking advantage of the fact that: 

the human brain is nature’s greatest statistical pattern learning device. This means that the more you exercise perspective taking (whether remembered, imagined or real), the more it will be reinforced. Over time, perspective taking is likely to become more automatic.

In sum, as you start to experience the value of this way of mental processing—by inviting the perspectives of others into your problem solving—you’re likely to keep repeating it. 
 
Wishing to share their Eureka Moment more widely, the Penn researchers also developed something that they call The Nano Tool so that the rest of us can become more creative and innovative at work and outside of it. Despite the fact that its name conjures (for me, at least) a headset with beeping electrodes and matted hair, it’s actually more of “a hand-out” with additional exercises that can be used to activate more “problem-solving through perspective taking.” It’s well-worth checking out.
 
Finally, while perspective taking provides the kind of problem-solving boost that business school types are always eager to promote, I can easily envision some of its most transformative applications in our collective considerations of politics, race, class, religion and other social dividers. We might quickly discover that we’ll be benefiting ourselves at the same time that we’re strengthening our social bonds.

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Post-script:

Along with you I suspect, I’m finding the transition period between a hard year and what I’m hoping will be an easier one a bit of a challenge. As my mother used to say, I’m feeling “betwixt and between” or “at 6’s and 7’s.” Anyway, I saw the picture below after the devastating floods in Australia recently, and thought it seemed an apt metaphor for today, but I’m not sure why. (Maybe I’ve just taken on Wally’s perspective.) If you have any ideas about why this picture of dogs in crates being rescued seems right for these times, feel free to send them along.

This post was adapted from my March 28, 2021 newsletter. Newsletters are delivered to subscribers’ in-boxes every Sunday morning and occasionally I post the content from one of them here. You can subscribe too by leaving your email address in the column to the right.

How Toxic Is Masculinity for Men?

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Social isolation has reduced the space between us and where we fall short, providing some particularly uncomfortable close-ups. That includes the part of masculinity that’s depressing and harmful to men before it’s toxic to anybody else.

Elderbrook is the stage name of the English musician, songwriter, producer and singer behind a remarkable 4-minute music video that has, over the past year, invited millions of us to consider the emotional isolation of men who show up for a group therapy session because they know they have a problem (but not what to do about it) until somebody in the group finds the courage to break their isolation. 

Elderbrook wrote the mesmerizing music and vocalizes the lyrics, which are about the absence of companionship when something bad is happening to you, that is, when someone who’s not there when you need them might have helped “in keeping me sober.”  For the flow and rhythm of the interactions between the ensemble of characters, Elderbrook’s voice is accompanied by an electronic music collective called Rudimental, which is a big deal in Britain but mostly under the radar here. 

The gifted director who visualized the narrative is Luke Davies, the choreography (that fits this assortment of clueless blokes to a tee) is by Jacob Holme, and the lead actor is Michael Socha, who is pictured above and plays his part throughout with a non-comprehending beauty. All of these elements come together in a mix of throb, gut-punch and whimsy that speak with terrific economy to how utterly alone men can be and what needs to happen before we do something about it.

I found it jaw-dropping.

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Here’s how the video opens:

You’re about to enter some kind of group dynamic where you’re expected to contribute—a meeting, a book group, a seminar room with limited students—and a big part of you “would just rather not today.” 

They’ll want me to open up, show who I am, know what I’m talking about, have something to say, share.

Call it performance anxiety, because all things considered, on most days I’d rather not.

And because it’s a group therapy room for just men, it’s even harder.

You come to deal with whatever’s been going on with drugs, alcohol, depression or just being messed-up, and it can get pretty personal. 

I don’t want to look at the stain in my drawers let alone his drawers!

Maybe they’ll want me to make some gesture at taking care of one of my fellow losers. Or maybe, one of them will want to start doing that [shi~ver] to me.

They always said, “you’re not good with emotions,” that you keep what’s hurting you at bay or push it down.

Yeah, it is pretty thin ice. I might fall through and keep falling, so I hold on to the brittle however angry or irritable I get when it’s tested, or beat myself up with only a beer for sympathy, so I suppose they’re right. 

What good is anybody in here for that?

And besides, they’ll be holding a pretty sad safety net. 

So the first thing I’ve got to do is get it up to walk in the room with the rest of ’em instead of bolting for the stairs. 

Today, it’s a long hesitation but I decide to step in anyway, and suddenly I find myself in a silence of furtive eyes, waiting for the so-called therapy to start and the first shoes to drop.

The boss starts canvassing for volunteers. “Who wants to go first? Do you Kevin? Michael?”

Then I hear some background music and, against all odds, it’s my feet that want to start talking.

I stand up like the prototype man, like Popeye—making arm muscles with both hands next to my shoulders to show how strong I either am or not, while shuffling a bit tentatively.

And then I’m off.

+ + +

Here’s your link to the “Something About You” music video. Watch it now if you can. Then think about it for a minute or two and maybe watch it again. 

I can’t get over it, and maybe you’ll feel the same—particularly that part when two men make cautious eye contact and start to approach one another, and maybe you’re feeling some of the anxiety our culture has taught us that something “forbidden” or at least “not quite right” is about to happen. 

Call it Taboo. Call it an acknowledgement of vulnerability. Call it one of many insights in a startling stream of them.

After he wrote and recorded “Something About You,” Elderbrook sent it out to film directors to get bids on content for the video. The request mentioned the summery nature of the track, but Luke Davies (who went on to win the bid) also heard a melancholy sadness, and “after listening to the song for an hour and a half” came up with the inspiration for a men’s self-help group (as he recounted in an interview after the music video went viral).  Never really imagining that Elberbrook and his team would go for any of it, Davies had always wanted to make a short film that included line dancing “as a kind of metaphor for something else,” so he built dancing into his bid as well. And then there was this final association: 

I always think of cowboys and for me, cowboys are an archetypal symbol for men. I think of Clint Eastwood and all these Hollywood archetypal superheroes before there were superheroes.

True creativity is always a leap into the dark, and Elderbrook ended up loving where Davies wanted to take his song. 
 
Interestingly, after the performers were hired and the “cowboy” rehearsals had begun, Davies dropped on the actors that there would not only be line dancing but also “slow dancing,” and, for all the obvious reasons, he was worried about their reactions. This is how he describes what happened next, and (given the theme) the reality in that room was pretty magical in its own right. 

The whole day, without a doubt, was one of the most satisfying and enjoyable shoots of my life. I gotta admit, all the dancing was so much fun to do, especially the slow dancing on rehearsal day, because the actors had no idea it was going to be a part of the music video.

They knew there was going to be line dancing but I hadn’t told them they were going to be slow dancing. And these guys had only met each other a couple hours ago. I was like ‘right, ok so everyone stand in the middle of the room, here are your partners, now I just want you to sort of hug each other’. They hugged each other for about a minute. And once we had done that and got the awkwardness out of the way, we just started slow dancing for a bit.

And what was weird is that I thought that people might be funky or not take it seriously and be embarrassed but straight away, people were just so emotional leaning into each other and it was quite romantic and funny seeing a bunch of blokes slow dancing.

You can see how well it turned out, but in some ways the story behind this little film was just beginning. The choreographers posted a how-to-do-the-line-dance instructional video on You Tube shortly after  “Someone Like You” began to attract attention, and it beautifully reinforced the overall simplicity of the message: This isn’t so hard to do. And then, all of a sudden, there were young men dancing to it in a “Together is Stronger” challenge on TikTok. 
 
Because men who let their guards down together really do become stronger.

Negative emotions eat away at you when they don’t get out, and men often have a harder time than women getting them out. No one denies it. It’s society’s, your parent’s, your own advice to “just suck it up,” to put your negative feelings behind you or bury them deep inside instead of working (even dancing) your way through them.  
 
For example, depression is a self-aggression of trapped emotions that tends to reinforce its isolation at every turn—with booze, drugs and even deeper withdrawals. Ultimately, the answer is putting the pain into words. (If you’re interested in the deep scholarship behind this, I’d recommend Dr. Judith Herman’s landmark Trauma and Recovery.) Unfortunately, there haven’t been many translators–between the medical community and the rest of us–who have talked about men’s particularly constricted side of it, at least in vivid voices that make both the problem and its possible solutions come alive.
 
Davies, the director, was aware of all that because he saw the problem in men from his own family and suspected that it had to exist everywhere.

There is basically a group of people that needs our help and support [but isn’t getting it]. The bigger idea that we’re exploring is masculinity and within that, the unrealistic standards I think society sets for men. You only need to look at mental illness, depression and suicide numbers among young men to see how much of an issue it is and I think part of that has to do with the fact that men find it difficult on the whole to talk feelings. 

Some people have seen [the video] as like an attack on toxic masculinity, which for me it’s never been about. I know toxic masculinity exists and I do think it needs to be discouraged but at the same time, I think people who are most guilty of it are also kind of the victims of this idea of not being able to talk about emotions and being vulnerable.

In other words, men can be as toxic to themselves as they can be to others, and maybe that’s the root of the problem.

Elderbrook and Davies have told at least part of this story about men and their feelings brilliantly, economically and interactively. They’ve shone a light.  And who would have thought that they’d do so by inviting us to slow dance.

This post was adapted from my March 21, 2021 newsletter. Newsletters are delivered to subscribers’ in-boxes every Sunday morning and occasionally I post the content from one of them here. You can subscribe too by leaving your email address in the column to the right.

Economics Takes a Leading Role in the Biodiversity Story

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Someone starts telling a story so that those who are listening can start imagining.
 
We need stories that challenge us with new ways to find political consensus, to confront climate change, to learn from the triumphs as well as the shortcomings of our common past.
 
Without the liberation of stories like that, we can be paralyzed when confronting the hostility of our politics, the inevitability of a rapidly degrading earth, and the unfinished work of our imperfect but often noble forebears. 
 
And sometimes, as with this particular story, no less than Prince Charles, Boris Johnson and David Attenborough were invited to play bit parts on the story’s opening night (more about that below).
 
These very different men stood front and center for a few minutes because this story had already invited them into it. When a storyline is bold and surprising, curiosity often finds famous listeners before it blossoms into broader engagement and we’re sharing it with those that we care about too. 
 
A report presented earlier this month begins to tell such a story, skillfully deploying economic theory to get our juices flowing in new directions.
 
– It admits what we already know: that humanity is taking more from the earth—extracting more of its minerals, fishing more from its seas, destroying more of its diversity, undermining more of its climate patterns, polluting more of its habitats—than the earth can replenish, correct or restore on its own.
 
– It wonders out loud—in a flight of real-world imagination—about what might happen if we treated Nature’s systems and productive capacity not as “free” for the taking (as we still do almost everywhere today) but as “economic assets” that we must start “investing in” (like we invest in the homes where we live) and managing, as we would any “portfolio.” We’d utilize concepts like “asset value” that acknowledge not only the price that a natural asset commands in the marketplace (its so-called “use value”), but also its “intrinsic value” as part of an ecosystem “that is greater than the sum of its productivities” and contributions.  Similarly, we’d account for the “depreciation” of these assets so we could understand their diminishing value to us and their systems as we continue to rely upon them.
 
– It’s a story that begins to tie “the regeneration of the biosphere…to the sustainability of the human enterprise” (or our economic activities on this planet) in a way that’s never been told before.
 
– It’s a story whose drama comes from the uncertainty of our survival because, given the current rate of Nature’s depletion and imbalance, the Earth will be unable to sustain life as we know it into the foreseeable future.
 
This story, formally presented earlier this month by the U.K.’s Treasury Department, was written by Cambridge University professor Partha Dasgupta and is called The Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity. You can read an abridged version of it (around 80 pages) or his full Review (at 600 pages) by downloading them here. 

The Dasgupta Review begins with the simple observation that: “We are all asset managers.” Professor Dasgupta then describes how we all must learn to manage Nature’s limited and deeply-troubled portfolio of assets in ways that an economist might:

Nature’s goods and services are the foundations of our economies. They include the provisioning services that supply the goods we harvest and extract (food, water, fibres, timber, medicines) and cultural services, such as the gardens, parks and coastlines we visit for pleasure, even emotional sustenance and recuperation. But Nature’s processes also maintain a genetic library, preserve and regenerate soil, control floods, filter pollutants, assimilate waste, pollinate crops, maintain the hydrological cycle, regulate climate, and fulfil many other functions besides. Without those regulating and maintenance services, life as we know it would not be possible.

Biodiversity is a characteristic of ecosystems. It enables ecosystems to flourish and supply [this] wide variety of services… [J]ust as diversity within a portfolio of financial assets reduces risk and uncertainty, so biodiversity increases Nature’s resilience to shocks, and thereby reduces risks to the ecosystem services on which we rely.

As breathtaking a view of “a new world” as Tolkein’s (in fantasy) or Asimov’s (in science fiction), Dasgupta’s storytelling perspective invites us to imagine how governments, businesses, and individuals whose work depends on the vibrancy of Nature’s goods and services, along with the rest of us who enjoy the quality of our lives on this planet, can begin (at last) to sustain “the economic value” of the Earth’s biodiversity for everyone’s benefit. As surprising as it might seem, there has never been anything quite like The Review before.
 
Well into the 1970’s, we almost universally believed that human ingenuity could free us from Nature’s constraints and limitations. They were the days of “the Green Revolution” which brought rapidly increasing crop yields to smaller and smaller plots of land. They were the days when concerns about “over-population” (such as those voiced by Paul Ehrlich—a contributor to The Review) seemed grotesquely exaggerated. Until quite recently, we’ve acted like the Earth’s ability to fuel our continued “economic growth” and improve our living standards would be inexhaustible as long as human genius helped it along. Today, as we approach the environmental brink, we’re not only confronting our hubris but also beginning to storyboard our way out of the dead-end street where we currently find ourselves.
 
Even the abridged version of The Review will familiarize you with Dasgupta’s artistry when he identifies Nature’s asset classes and how they impact one another, how the planet’s stakeholders need to “re-invest” some of their profits into portfolio replenishment, and how all of us need to learn more about Nature’s “webs of interrelatedness” so that we’ll be more personally invested in managing these assets in our backyards and beyond them. 
 
The Review is too rich in detail to summarize here and I hope you’ll to read it. But if you need more encouragement, an hour-long video-introduction to its findings, an overview teed up by the forenamed personalities, might convince you.

Why limit your exposure to Britian’s royals by watching another episode of The Crown? For example, I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d heard the real Prince Charles talk about anything important, but he puts himself garumphingly behind the findings of The Review in this film clip. Then, in a startling juxtaposition, there’s a wild-haired Boris Johnson putting his government behind proposals that have easily-imagined economic consequences for his voters (much like an American president announcing “exciting new taxes”), but here he is doing precisely that. And if you need even more convincing, the beloved naturalist David Attenborough writes the introduction to The Review itself. 
 
As a storytelling exercise, here are perhaps the keys to how we can start imagining and then protecting the Earth’s biodiversity. In his video remarks, Professor Dasgupta says the Review’s contributions include:

[a new] grammar for understanding our engagements with Nature, how we transform what we take from and return to it, why and how in recent decades we have disrupted Nature’s processes to the detriment of our own and of our descendant’s future, and what we can do to change that direction. 

What then is to be done to direct humanity to a sustainable mode of living, to reducing the gap between what we demand of Nature and what Nature is able to supply on a sustainable basis? It requires that we reduce our demand and help to increase Nature’s supply. It will require measured but transformative change for the task is to so change individual incentives that they direct the choice of our actions to actions that align with the common good.

This will require an implementation effort that easily dwarfs the Marshall Plan after World War II. Sometimes, the scale of The Review’s efforts to marry economic with environmental dynamics can take your breath away. 
 
While economic incentives will be utilized locally to sustain the planet, an international equivalent of the WTO or World Bank will also need to be created to address (say) far-flung extraction practices in the Arctic and Antarctic, in the seas beyond territorial boundaries, and in places like the Earth’s rainforests, all of whose economic benefits are continental if not global in nature. As a piece in the New York Times observed when The Review came out: 

International arrangements are needed to manage certain environments that the whole planet relies on, the report says. It asks leaders to explore a system of payments to nations for conserving critical ecosystems like tropical rain forests, which store carbon, regulate climate and nurture biodiversity. Fees could [also] be collected for the use of ecosystems outside of national boundaries, such as for fishing the high seas, and international cooperation could prohibit fishing [and other kinds of resource extraction] in ecologically sensitive areas.

New governance bodies that will monitor and value global assets while also collecting and re-distributing asset-related payments and fees in a kind of global clearing house are difficult–but still necessary–to start imaging, particularly at a time when competition among nations instead of international cooperation is on the rise.
 
The Review’s recommendations are also built upon a staggering number of economic checks and balances that will need to be administered locally. 
 
A little more than a year ago, because I was unable to wrap my mind around a global model of this complexity without a “grammar” like Professor Dasgupta’s, I tried to imagine how economic incentives might support biodiversity closer to home. I looked at current research on lobster trapping in the Northeastern U.S., how the harvest impacts migrating whales, and whether the lobstermen could be reimbursed for changing their harmful trapping practices by monetizing the whales’ broader ecological value. A 2019 post called Valuing Nature in Ways the World Can Understand was my attempt to comprehend the economics of sustainability in a situation that had a smaller number of stakeholders and far fewer asset variables. 
 
By contrast, the story told inThe Review is both top-down and bottom-up, envisioning at its horizons a dizzying array of parts that will eventually move in a synchronized fashion, but Professor Dasgupta ends his narrative with the same dilemma that probably led me to my post about lobsters and whales. We will never protect the Earth’s biodiversity until we understand the value of protecting it much closer to where we live and work. As he astutely notes, that’s because no international or local enforcement system can protect the diversity of life on this planet. That’s our job.

[U]ltimately, we each have to serve as judge and jury for our own actions. And that cannot happen unless we develop an affection for Nature and its processes. As that affection can flourish only if we each develop an appreciation of Nature’s workings, [my] monograph ends with a plea that our education systems should introduce Nature studies from the earliest stages of our lives, and revisit them in the years we spend in secondary and tertiary education. The conclusion we should draw from this is unmistakable: if we care about our common future and the common future of our descendants, we should all in part be[come] naturalists.

It’s a point that bears repeating. We will only treat the natural diversity that’s around us like an asset when we’ve gained “an affection” for it. Some of us gain that affection naturally but most of us—particularly in the developed world–have to learn it. A story like this one about imagination and survival invites us, both elegantly and engagingly, to do just that.

This post was adapted from my February 21, 2021 newsletter. Newsletters are delivered to subscribers’ in-boxes every Sunday morning and occasionally I post the content from one of them here. You can subscribe too by leaving your email address in the column to the right.

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