David Griesing | Work Life Reward Author | Philadelphia

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Just Plain Funny #2

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I like a newspaper I can hold in my hands because sometimes the stories across the folds can talk to one another in ways that never seems to happen on a screen. That kind of exchange took place in my newspaper today.

For as long as I’ve been reading it, the Wall Street Journal has a funny, odd or just plain ridiculous story at the bottom of Page One.  At some point, the Page One editor must have decided that stories like this are good antidotes to the calamities, logjams and shenanigans chronicled above.  These daily stories always froth over to the last page of the “news” where they brush up against the beginnings of the “commentary” section on the other side of fold.  It’s here that strangely compatible bedfellows sometimes meet.

Page One’s dollop of the day today was about a long-standing West Point tradition celebrating the graduating cadet, who by academic and other standards, finishes dead last in his class each year. Because of some “informal” information sharing, everyone but The Goat knows who he is on the big day, and when his name is called out from the graduating roster, the cadets erupt into the loudest cheer of the day.

There are two kinds of Goats, according to a disappointingly dry piece in a publication called Failure Magazine.  There are cadets who labor through the muck to the bitter end, and those who take the experience just seriously enough to fall inebriatedly over the finish line. Of course, several of the Good Time Goats were actually pretty smart and went on to make history (Generals Custer and Pickett, for example). Several middling cadets did pretty well too. (Eisenhower reportedly said: “If anybody saw signs of greatness in me while at West Point they kept it to themselves.”) But it’s the ones who always struggled to do their best, while barely making it to the end, who are the real heroes of the story.

Unclear whether to be embarrassed or proud of their accomplishment, most of these Goats eventually seem to settle into being good sports about it. For example: “In my class, no one else can say that they’re the Goat and no one else can say that they’re part of this special lineage that dates back so far,” said good sport Roberto Becarra, Jr. in 2007. Somewhat earlier, the bespeckled Goat (below) seems to have had a similar reaction.

EVEN THOUGH IT’S NAVY NOT ARMY, THIS IMAGE SEEMS ODDLY APPROPRIATE HERE

 

When asked about these persevering Goats by the Journal reporter, James S. Robbins said:

The tradition of the Goat is important because it kind of encapsulates that American spirit of—yeah, you’re going to have the top and they’re going to get recognized and they’re going to get stars by their names and all that other stuff. But, you know what? The guys further down, they have their chance too, and they can succeed too and it’s important to recognize them.

While his insight might have been more penetrating had he been a psychologist or meteorologist instead of an historian, Robbins’ remarks did manage to counterpoint similar observations about the value of “keeping your head up” and “putting one foot in front of the other” on the facing page of the paper, where a Journal writer reviews a new book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called Antifragile.

Taleb’s singular perspective is that theories follow practice instead of the reverse. It’s not “the Soviet/Harvard notion that birds fly because we lecture them how to.” We learn by doing it first, and make up the theories that contain all of our how-to-do-it wisdom later on. It is, as the reviewer notes, “a startling [chicken v. egg] insight,” because what Taleb’s debunking allows is a flat-out celebration of the creativity involved in doggedly keeping at it. The many virtues of trial and error.

Taleb makes up the word “antifragile” to mean not only hardy, but also something that has been improved through repeated failures, becoming more resilient in the process. From this perspective, the persevering Goats are not just plodders: more than a few of them embody the adaptation that is at the beating heart of natural selection. As Taleb’s reviewer notes:

If trial and error is creative, then we should treat failed entrepreneurs with the reverence that we reserve for fallen soldiers.

This is why experience is the best teacher.  It’s why “A” students who master the theory often work for the “B” and “C” students who rightly suspect that the magic lies elsewhere.  It’s why rigidity and too much seriousness is always a bad idea. And it’s why the loudest cheer really should go to somebody who has not only failed most prominently, but also has the spirit to get up and keep trying.

CHARLIE CHAPLIN IN “MODERN TIMES”

 

Not that it’s always so easy.

Time to Push Back!

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Bringing your values into your work means that you understand what your values are, and are prepared to take the positions that your convictions require.

Value-centered living and working means being connected to your most basic power source. By determining your motivations, values are the source of tremendous personal power. When you are wired this way, it is no longer possible to “keep quiet” when something offensive is happening around you. You not only feel complicit (because you know better) but also motivated (because you are able to do something about it).

Moreover, where people of principle are concerned, there is tremendous strength in numbers—and the good news is that you don’t need too many others to raise their voices with you. In a quiet room, those who speak up can always be heard, and a couple of voices can drive the conversation.

America today is far more quiet than it should be, not about politics certainly, but about how we should be living and working. Among others, Charles Murray recently said that those with knowledge and conviction need to determine whether to “engage themselves and their children in the rest of America or whether they should isolate themselves from it.”  It becomes a lowest common denominator community when the unacceptable is tolerated. Freedom has its limits, and those who know better need to raise their voices and push back.

The common denominator went a bit lower this week.  I think we collectively crossed an unacceptable line. One of New York City’s key sources of information, the New York Post, put a picture of a man about to be killed by an oncoming train on Tuesday’s cover.

Too many eyes have already looked at the Post’s so-called “photo journalism,” and I won’t give it any more play by putting it up here.  But not nearly enough of us have looked into the face of Ki Suk Han who died this week at a station on 49th Street, and perhaps we should.

SERIM HAN HOLDING A PICTURE OF HER HUSBAND ON WEDNESDAY
Photo by Berbeto Matthews/AP

 

My last post was about what could be called “altruism tourists.” It also featured a picture taken in NYC, that time of a policeman giving a homeless man a pair of boots he had bought for him on a cold night. A woman with her cell phone was nearby and in a flash the picture reached millions.  In that post, I wondered whether viewers actually learned something from this gracious act or merely enjoyed a brief “feel-good” sensation, their vicarious dose of generosity for the day.

This time a picture is also about the rest of us.

Much ink has been spent this week talking about the ethical obligation of a photographer (“to document or to assist?”) given the tragic circumstances presented in that subway station.  The consensus among experts on “the ethics of visual journalism” is, not surprisingly, that “you’re a human being before you’re a journalist,” with an obligation to help if you’re in a position to do so. The photographer here said he was too far away to help Mr. Han. Ok, perhaps he was, but….

But what happens in a situation like this: in the split seconds between deciding to help or deciding to take your picture? What are your motivations? Are they driven by the value you place on human life or on what your picture is likely to bring you from a tabloid like the Post?

Which, of course, is where we all “get in the picture,” I think. A picture like this has a value that can compete with the value of a human life only because we want to see it.

Still, in the largely quiet room around this issue there is power to influence what’s happening, not just complicity in the way things are.

If there were less of an appetite for shock or revulsion, if we acted more like adults and less like children, if we were not so tethered to the temporary sensation—and knowledgeable voices were actually raised to say so—we’d be a lot better off.

Just someone or two of us saying so would be that powerful.

It’s a visual age. There will be lots more pictures to talk about. They too have incredible power. Look again at the image of Serim Han holding the picture of her husband and try to tell me that they don’t.

Nice, But What’s the Conversion Rate?

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There was a story in the Times this week about a policeman who came upon a barefoot man lying outside on a cold night and bought him a pair of boots.  I know about this for several reasons including multiple, near-simultaneous postings of the story on my Facebook page, and because several additional friends and family members sent it to me.

There’s no question that what happened here embodies acting on your values through your work. It was heartening that so many people I know were touched by the story. It was also noteworthy for its rarity.

Not that these things don’t happen all the time (they do) but because most Good Samaritans (in my experience anyway) prefer not to be noticed, and they usually get away with it because there’s not a tourist with a camera eager to capture their kind act (as there was here). What happened between the New York City cop and the homeless man was a rarity because we got a chance to see it—and millions of us looked. (You can read the Times story and see the now famous picture here).

My question is:  how many of the millions who thought this story was “wonderful” actually learned something from Officer DePrimo? About what he did and we could do too. Or about his modesty (since I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’ve never seen his face).

A recent study by Japanese researchers suggests that looking at pictures of kittens and puppies relaxes us and improves our concentration for other things later on.  Was this tourist snapshot more or less like that: a post-card to share with friends so that they could have some of the warm and fuzzy that we’re enjoying too?

ARE YOU FEELING IT?

 

During this season of giving, it seems worth asking:  What was the conversion rate on this Good Samaritan advertisement?

Which of us onlookers went on to buy?

 

What Good is My English Degree?

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What kind of job are you going to get with an English degree (or a degree in History, Classics, Religion, Music, Art History, Anthropology, Philosophy or French)? You’re wondering. Maybe your parents are too.

Or then again: you studied the humanities and now you’re 10 or 15 or 25 years out of school. But every workday, you feel like you need a crash course in technology, social media, marketing, engineering and accounting? Why does what you studied seem to have so little value? Why do all these other things seem so important?

What you learned by studying the humanities does have value—tremendous value.  But there are many reasons you might not think so, and a brief look at some of them might be helpful before discussing how the humanities can bring the greatest value to your job today.

The Industrial Revolution kicked off an explosion of technological advancement that has only accelerated in our lifetimes. (It’s x amount of memory on that chip today, twice as much tomorrow, and so on.)  At the same time, advances in science created an experiment-based way of explaining the world that clashed with—and has now largely overtaken—a faith- or story-based worldview, at least in so-called “advanced societies.” (It’s less church attendance and more individualized spirituality, when faith remains a part of our lives at all.)

In their upward trajectory, technology and science were also vastly improving our standard of living. At the same time that questions of meaning and purpose became more personalized, many of us were also feeling that we no longer needed the humanities to improve the quality of our lives.  Technology and science were attending to our material comfort along with our wellbeing.

Or so we thought.

Several writers have lamented the sidelining of the humanities. For example, Anthony Kronman has argued that as the arts have lost their prominence in our schools, we have almost lost the ability to develop an important dimension in our lives.

Where education used to mean exposure to a canon of Western thought to help students determine “how I should live my life,” that canon has increasingly come under attack. Some viewed it as propaganda from a group of white, Eurocentric oppressors, while others challenged these texts for presenting “subjective” interpretations of reality instead of the “objective” (and therefore more reliable) view that science and technology provides.

Book Burning

So in the face of this powerful onslaught, where is the value in your English degree?

Its value is to give you something that science and technology never can: a personal story that gives your life as well as your work both meaning and purpose. Despite our human flaws and ultimate mortality, the story you’re writing recounts how you can make a difference for yourself and others in your community by what you chose to do everyday. Through the humanities, you have lifelong access to role models and ideas that help you to live a good and fulfilling life.

It is the insight gained from these stories that business needs the most today.

In his “How to Avoid a Bonfire of the Humanities,” Michael S. Malone notes that since the best products and services aim at meeting real human needs and making our lives better, the best way to bring them to market is with stories that resonate in people’s lives.

Given the dominance of science and technology and its associated impacts today, fewer people know how to find what’s meaningful on their own, and fewer still can deliver it to them. Asked what made his company special, Steve Jobs said: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.”

Think about it. It’s not what the product is that makes you buy it, or how you use it, but why it makes your life better. (Simon Sinek’s much-viewed TED talk is about just this point.)  Your humanities degree has economic value precisely because it enables you to understand “the why.”

Where the English major is needed is at the intersection between the company and its customers.  Having studied “humanity,” you have the ability to focus your company on meeting basic human needs in ways that neither science nor technology ever can. It is a priceless perspective that is needed in marketing, sales, and customer service, but also at every stage of product development and design. Again: Apple ads, Apple stores, and Apple products satisfy Apple customers as much as they do because of Apple’s English majors.

Malone concludes his “Bonfires” article by noting that in the future the market advantage will go to companies like this:

that can effectively employ imagination, metaphor, and most of all, storytelling. And not just creative writing, but every discipline in the humanities, from the classics to rhetoric to philosophy.  Twenty-first century storytelling: multimedia, mass customizable, portable and scalable, drawing upon the myths and archetypes of the ancient world, on ethics, and upon a deep understanding of human nature and even religious faith.

The humanities have been undervalued and shunted aside, but what they have given us is more essential in the best jobs than ever.  Far from putting you at a disadvantage in the workforce, they give you a powerful advantage.  And the places where you should want to be working know it.

Woody Guthrie on Work

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There’s been a lot written and said about Woody Guthrie lately. But even so, there’s nothing better than hearing the man in his own words.

My life bridges Woody’s time (1912-1967) and ours. I remember his voice “blowin’ in the wind” of the folk music and protest songs I grew up on. But it’s not so much his rhythms that have stayed with me, as what he kept saying—every single chance he got—about how hard it can be to work in America, and how much the men and women doing all that work deserve encouragement.

That’s never been truer than it is today.

We’ve also been hearing a lot from Woody because a comprehensive catalog of his songs just came out. It was his music more than anyone’s that captured the Depression-era exodus from Dust Bowl to California. Even if you don’t know his name, you know “This Land is Your Land,” the song that has become our unofficial national anthem. Woody’s best known for that kind of simple everyman wordplay paired with a catchy melody you’ll still be humming tomorrow.

 In his writings, like Bound for Glory and Born to Win–and in all that singing and strumming—Woody celebrated the men and women who go to work everyday in that unforgiving part of our country we often sweep under the rug. It’s the 47% that were grist in the recent presidential campaign, the half of America almost no one champions anymore. It is their blood, sweat and tears that pushes the nation forward. They’re the folks Woody Guthrie wrote about.

 

I worked in your town

I worked in your farm

My hands is blistered

From the elbows down.

I sing the songs of the people that do all of the little jobs and the mean and dirty hard work in the world and of their wants and their hopes and their plans for a decent life.

For I’ll take your words and use them not to rip you down, but to squeeze you up against the wall in ways that will put new life in your old pots

         Your old pans,

         And new grease, honey, in your old washy dishrag.

I’m out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, you can take pride in yourself and in your work.

I write what I see

I write what I’ve seen

I write things that I just hope to see

Somewhere farther along.

An uncle of mine taught me to play the guitar and I got to going out a couple of nights a week to the cow ranches around to play for the square dances.  I made up new words to old tunes and sung them everywhere I’d go.  I had to give my pictures away to get anybody to hang them on their wall, but for singing a song, or a few songs at a country dance, they paid me as high as three dollars a night. A picture—you buy it once, and it bothers you for forty years; but with a song, you sing it out, and it soaks in people’s ears and they all jump up and down and sing it with you, and then when you quit singing it, it’s gone, and you get a job singing it again.  On top of that, you can sing out what you think.  You can tell tales of all kinds to put your ideas across to the other fellow.

And there on the Texas plains right in the dead center of the dust bowl, with the oil boom over and the wheat blowed out and the hard-working people just stumbling about, bothered with mortgages, debts, bills, sickness, worries of every blowing kind, I seen there was plenty to make up songs about.

Some people liked me, hated me, walked with me, walked over me, jeered me, cheered me, rooted me and hooted me, and before long I was invited in and booted out of every public place of entertainment in that country. But I decided that songs was a music and a language of all tongues.

I never did make up many songs about the cow trails or the moon skipping through the sky, but at first it was funny songs of what all’s wrong, and how it turned out good or bad.  Then I got a little braver and made up songs telling what I thought was wrong and how to make it right, songs that said what everybody in that country was thinking.

As through your life you ramble

Yes, as through your life you roam

You won’t ever see an outlaw drive a family from their home.

Now we stood in the rain and cackled like chickens, absolutely lost and buffaloed.  Never before had I had anything quite so damn silly happen to me.  Our clothes were on crooked and twisted; shoes full of mud and gravel. Hair soaking wet, and water running down our faces.  It was a funny sight to see human beings in any such shape.  Wet as we could get, muddy as the ground, we danced up and down through puddles, ran around in wide circles and laughed our heads off.  There is a stage of hard luck that turns into fun, and a stage of poverty that turns into pride, and a place in laughing that turns into fight.

 

This Thursday, Woody’s son Arlo will be singing “Alice’s Restaurant” on the radio, like he’s been doing as long as I can remember. His dad is all over it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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