Men At Work

December 2, 2018 By David Griesing 1 Comment

What makes your work worthwhile?

Last week economist Edmund Phelps got me thinking about some of the possibilities. Is you mindset at work to expand your capabilities, to become your “better” self by confronting risks on the job for the possibility of even greater rewards—the fuel of entrepreneurs and everyone else who works to advance their own accounts—OR is it to pursue greater security in your life, accumulate more savings, and earn more time away from work? OR maybe instead of working for yourself, you are striving to build solidarity with others through the services you provide: to strengthen the social fabric instead of just your strand of it.

Phelps also argued that competitive, entrepreneurial work produced tremendous success in the economy overall, while efforts to divert that energy into engineering a more secure, equal and just society has not only caused people to derive less satisfaction from their work over the past 50 years but also for the economy in general to stall. Phelps chose the values of rugged individualism over more collective social values when making his argument about pursing a good life through work.

Over the past week while I was mulling over some of your reactions to Phelps’ thesis, I discovered Harry’s Masculinity Report for 2018 on Twitter. In an era where gender roles in the American workplace are clearly in flux, what could “a masculinity report” possibly contribute? Was it a company’s marketing ploy or something more than that? Would it champion the rugged individual at work or somebody else entirely?

Harry’s is an on-line company that has carved out a highly successful niche for itself by selling men high quality razor blades and other shaving products more cheaply than market leaders Schick and Gillette. The write-up I caught said that its Report had:

surveyed 5,000 men ages 18-95 across the US, weighted for race, income, education, sexual orientation, military service, and more. The respondents were asked about their happiness, confidence, emotional stability, motivation, optimism, and sense of being in control. They were then asked how satisfied they are with their careers, relationships, money, work-life balance, physicality, and mental health, and also about the values that matter most to them.

The results showed a clear trend: The strongest predictor of men’s happiness and well-being is their job satisfaction, by a large margin—and the strongest predictor of job satisfaction is whether men feel they are making an impact on their companies’ success.

This measure, the study finds, is influenced by whether men feel they are using their own unique talents at work, whether they are surrounded by a diverse set of perspectives, how easily and often they can chat with co-workers, whether they feel their opinions are valued, and whether they’re inspired by the people they work with.

The Report itself seemed a bit thin after all that build up, but there were still some nuggets in it. The first was their data-supported effort to re-brand their customer base at a time when “how men act” and “what men want” has been broadly criticized. Another take-away came from seeing how Harry’s portrayed “the American man” it discovered in an ad campaign the company launched around the same time that the Report came out. And finally, the Report used some interesting words and phrases to describe the most significant component of male satisfaction.

According to Harry’s polling, American men are happiest when they are working.

Men at work are men at peace: everything else flows down from satisfying employment. Men who have high job satisfaction are more likely to feel optimistic, happy, motivated, emotionally stable, in control and confident. Job Satisfaction is by far the strongest predictor of positivity, being around three times higher than the next strongest predictor in every region and across the US overall…This is not primarily about wealth, but a sense of making a difference, being part of something bigger and more meaningful… Job satisfaction and the dignity of labor fulfills men’s desire to provide and protect.

Polling found that “Health” was the second driver of male positivity, while “Income” was the third.

I was initially dubious when the Report said Income was only important because of men’s desire “to provide [for] and protect” their loved ones. In my experience, many men (as well as women) want to make as much as possible so that they can consume as much as possible–or at least more than their neighbors. But the observation gained some legitimacy from how men described the central role that work plays in their lives. Martin Daubney, one of the Report’s authors, found that self-determination was far more important than making money for the majority of men who identified work as their primary source of self-esteem. He noted how frequently “autonomy – such as being a consultant or self-employed – was associated with increased job satisfaction.” On this point, Harry’s Report is both consistent with and different from Edmund Phelps’ assessment. It acknowledges the self-defining satisfaction of entrepreneurial labor but seems to reject the lure of financial reward beyond its ability “to provide and protect.”

In addition to re-branding its customers with this Report, Harry’s also wants to influence American policy makers. After all, this is an era when automation is eliminating many middle class jobs, robotics and artificial intelligence will replace even more of them, and post-industrial parts of America (like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia) are struggling with high unemployment rates among mid-career men as well as the epidemics of addiction that seem to be associated with feelings of uselessness. In this regard, Harry’s Report wants to change the policy-making focus from a negative to a positive one.

When service providers seek to engage men, whether in health, education, community, voluntary activities or any other front of social policy, there is often a temptation to address either the problems men have, at best, or the problems men cause, at worst. Our findings strongly suggest that the values which men aspire to most are traditional, moral frameworks. Men want to think of themselves as honest, reliable, dependable and fair-minded and it is perhaps those traits which agencies should emphasize when they wish to earn the trust and co-operation of male service users. Much previous research into masculinity has negatively focused on the problems men cause, often through the nefarious concept of “toxic masculinity”. This has never been more so than in this post-#MeToo landscape and after every mass shooting or domestic terrorist incident.

Lately, the dialogue has expanded to include the problems men have: such as the male suicide epidemic, depression, anxiety and addiction, while offering scant few solutions.

But Harry’s wanted to progress this dialogue forward, by flipping the telescope and focusing on what gives men a positive outlook. We wanted to find out which American men were the most positive and content, then look at the core values and behavioral attributes that nurture these men’s mental wellbeing. (the emphasis above is mine)

Consistent with Phelps’ predilections in Mass Flourishing, Harry’s Report seems to dictate a jobs-focused approach to addressing our economic problems. Creating new jobs and re-investing in old ones can often tap into a man’s natural motivations to make a positive contribution for himself and for those who are depending on him. This Report makes a powerful argument that every man in America who wants a job should have a job–because a man is a terrible thing to waste.

Consistent with its “accentuate the positive” view of masculinity, Harry’s launched a provocative new advertising campaign earlier this year. A female reviewer writing in GQ had this to say about it:

Selling men razors and shaving accessories often relies on the fact that it’s a rite of passage for men and a symbol of masculinity. That usually means beautiful women, severe cheekbones, and model-grade abdominal muscles [Schick and Gillette again]. Harry’s newly released “A Man Like You” ad doesn’t entirely stray from that tradition, but its statement about manhood feels refreshingly modern. The video follows a boy as he teaches a space alien what it means to be a man: how to walk, dress, and of course, shave. In the process, the kid—who’s got a mysteriously absent maybe-astronaut father—comes to the realization that, actually, “there’s no one way to be a man.” The fact that—spoiler alert for a commercial here—the boy appears to be imagining the alien out of grief or longing for dad adds up to a serious tear-jerker of an ending. Razor advertising has maybe never been softer or sweeter than this.

Harry’s ad is well worth a look because it presents an earnest if unexpected view of what men are growing up to be today.

Philosophers and social scientists talk about human nature, but easily as influential (and maybe even more so) are advertisers, playing with our emotions to make their points about who we are and what we’re like.

We already know about the dangerous side of marketers who are using the data collected from our social media exchanges (Facebook), shopping sprees (Amazon), and information searches (Google) to target us in increasingly precise ways. Harry’s ad is an instance where influencers are using our data to show us our best, or at least our better selves in the course of selling us their products.

Portraying a positive masculinity, their ad feels timely as well as necessary. It simply says: this story about men is real too and overdue for some attention.

This post is adapted from my December 2, 2018 newsletter.

Good Work’s Foundations

September 2, 2018 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

I saw rooms full of models of imagined buildings and cities at the Museum of Modern Art in New York this week. The artist was Bodys Isek Kingelez from central Africa. Pictured above is one of his futuristic building models. They reflect “dreams for his country,” known during his life as the Belgian Congo and later as Zaire. Kingelez said he was envisioning “a more harmonious society” than he saw around him.

Artists are sometimes better at envisioning than the rest of us. It can be even harder for us to bring a better future into our day-to-day work—but when we do, our hopes pull us forward, particularly as we struggle to realize them.

Acting on what we hope for is one of good work’s foundations. So are acting out of our aim for both generosity and autonomy on the job. I’ve been thinking about demonstrations of generosity, autonomy and acting on hope this week from teacher/writer Roxanne Gay, actor/rap artist/omnivore Riz Ahmed, and activist/public intellectual Rebecca Solnit, respectively—3 powerful voices with a lot to say about how we spend our time and talent every day.

Generous Judgment

Generosity is about acknowledging the autonomy or self-determination of others (like co-workers, clients/customers, suppliers, members of your business and non-profit communities) in the course of your work.

You probably know comic Louis C.K. Highly acclaimed, his semi-autobiographical cable TV show Louis and stand-up comedy specials have won 6 Emmy awards, a Peabody, and star-struck interviews at places like Fresh Air. To me, his comedy seemed deep, subtle, smart, and self-aware. Until late last year, when he was “outed” by several women who worked with him, it seemed that Louis C.K. could do no wrong. They accused him of pretty egregious conduct that reminded me of apocryphal stories I used to hear about neighborhood “flashers,” only this time much worse, because he was not the sicko stranger in a trench coat. Instead, several in his reluctant audience had tied their careers to his.

As the story came out (on the heels of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Charlie Rose and others), I was surprised by the “not enough” of his public reactions and the suggestions around them that he had previously tried to bully his accusers into silence. Well this week, less than a year after the revelations first surfaced, Louis C.K. returned to a thunderous reaction “on the come-back trail.” The crowd that felt lucky enough to be at a NYC comedy club for his unannounced performance was reportedly ecstatic.

Clearly, Louis C.K. didn’t know how to handle the “world of hurt” around his abusive conduct when it first came out and was similarly clueless when he concluded “that all had been forgotten” and “it is time for everybody to just move on.” In a New York minute, Roxanne Gay told him otherwise.

It might have been easier for Louis if his comeuppance hadn’t been in the New York Times. But she didn’t just excoriate him. She met him like she acknowledged his intelligence, his talent, his fans who might still learn from what she was about to say. Instead of writing him off as a perverted loser, Gay told him what he (along with others who don’t know but need to hear) what should be done by adults who behave this way. It was a gift he may not have deserved, but it was a judgment that was elevated by the light that she brought to it.

“If Louis C.K. doesn’t know what to do when he’s caused this kind of damage, then I’ll try to explain it,” she seems to say—so he can make it right this time, and others like him can learn what they need to do too. Anger followed by patience in that New York minute was an act of generosity. Indeed, it’s a balance that elevates nearly everything that Roxanne Gay does.

While you should read her entire commentary, this is Gay on Louis C.K.’s “comeback road”:

How long should a man like Louis C.K. pay for what he did? At least as long as he worked to silence the women he assaulted and at least as long as he allowed them to doubt themselves and suffer in the wake of his predation and at least as long as the comedy world protected him even though there were very loud whispers about his behavior for decades.

He should pay until he demonstrates some measure of understanding of what he has done wrong and the extent of the harm he has caused. He should attempt to financially compensate his victims for all the work they did not get to do because of his efforts to silence them. He should facilitate their getting the professional opportunities they should have been able to take advantage of all these years. He should finance their mental health care as long as they may need it. He should donate to nonprofit organizations that work with sexual harassment and assault victims. He should publicly admit what he did and why it was wrong without excuses and legalese and deflection. Every perpetrator of sexual harassment and violence should follow suit.

Moral condemnation is easy but describing the “road someone needs to take back” requires a comprehension of the pain that was caused, the actions that would be necessary to alleviate it, as well as the belief that he could act on your advice. Most judgments fail to include these components, but Gay’s has all of them.

The Christian lesson of the crucifixion is infinitely more powerful because it is followed by the resurrection. We’re expert at crucifying people today—at work, and otherwise—but too often seem to be unconcerned about their ability (and ours) to rise afterwards. It’s not about forgiveness but the hard-won path to change.

The last time I wrote about Roxanne Gay on this page was in January.

Creative Autonomy

Autonomy is actively making the most out of what you have, identifying what is important to you, and putting yourself on the line to achieve it. Autonomy is self-determination.

In the limited series The Night Of (on HBO), Riz Ahmed played two roles: the role of a Pakistani student wrongly imprisoned at Riker’s Island for murder and a role beneath his acting that involved you as a viewer in a separate dialogue. You could feel Ahmed’s intelligence, focus and humanity whispering through his role—his interior life giving the 6 episodes counterpoints beyond the writing, directing and acting. (“Whatever he was saying and doing, he was always simultaneously maintaining a second conversation with you about what both of you might be thinking.”)

A profile with that line and additional suggestions about Ahmed’s perspective was this week’s cover story in the New York Times Magazine. You can sense what’s unique about him from the first impressions that Ahmed made on his profiler about his jobs as an actor and musician, pathfinder, role-model and activist.

It’s not that he doesn’t get animated. He does. Talking with Ahmed can be a little like sparring, a little like co-writing a constitution, a little like saving the world in an 11th-hour meeting. He interrupts, then apologizes for interrupting, then interrupts again. He can deliver entirely publishable essays off the top of his head. He pounds the table when talking about global injustices, goes back to edit his sentences minutes after they were spoken, challenges the premises of your sentences before you’re halfway through speaking. This is what happens when you cut your teeth on both prep-school debate teams and late-night freestyle rap battles, as Ahmed has. He is like someone who wants to speak truth to power but now is power — famous enough, at least, to have people listen to his ideas. He is like someone very smart who also cares a lot. He is like someone who doesn’t want to be misunderstood.

Not surprisingly, much of Ahmed’s edge comes from being a Pakistani-Brit, rising from one competitive lower school to another. Along the way, he felt his separateness as a South Asian but always “believed that the flag of Britain should and would obviously include him.” That is, until Al Qaeda’s attack on Twin Towers, which happened the month he matriculated to university and made it even more burdensome to be a Muslim. It was there that he made a critical life choice.

[H]e found himself at Oxford University, just after 9/11 — a brown kid surrounded by the acolytes of seemingly ancient white wealth, who sometimes did have a way of talking to him as if he were a shopkeeper. Rather than retreating into Oxford, he decided to make Oxford come to him. He started organizing parties that celebrated his music and cultural touchstones, parties where he would get on the mic over drum ’n’ bass records. Soon enough, the event he co-founded, “Hit and Run,” moved to Manchester and became one of the city’s leading underground music events.

What could have been angry rejection and a retreat to the company of other South Asian Muslims instead became his invitation for Oxford to join a broader conversation that he was sponsoring. It was a place where he mashed up Pakistani melodies and rhythms with British rap (just as rap was rising to become the most popular music in the world.) As Lena Dunham observed about him, he combined the bravado of someone in the hip-hop world with the intensity of someone who’s mounted a barricade.

Creating this platform was a singular act of personal autonomy (as well as generosity towards others) that has informed Riz Ahmed’s work ever since. He wants to initiate a conversation that’s big enough for him and for everyone else. It’s a theme that shines through every corner of his remarkable story. I hope that you’ll enjoy digging into more of it.

Living Your Vision

Envisioning is living the future that you hope for through your work.

I read Rebecca Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark” traveling to and from New York City. In a nutshell, it’s about living what’s important to you, even though there is no assurance or even likelihood that the better world you’re working for will get any closer as a result. As her title says, it’s hope in the dark.

Americans in particular tend to want more certainty than that. We’re not accustomed to a continuous struggle for a better world or trying to “live our hopes”–particularly when they may never be realized–every day. Instead, we tend to respond to a crisis/problem/challenge, declare victory or defeat, and go home to wait for the next one to demand our attention. Our responses are generally to emergencies that interrupt the normal flow of our lives. We don’t tend to see struggling for what’s important to us as a daily commitment.

Solnit argues that treating struggles for justice, fairness, freedom, for greater opportunity, self-determination or a healthier planet as isolated emergencies results in abandoning our victories while they’re still vulnerable and conceding our defeats too quickly. When we’re committed to achieving what’s truly important to us, Solnit argues: “It is always too soon to go home.”

She illustrates her point by recounting a story she wrote several years back about pay equity for women:

[A] cranky guy wrote in that women used to make sixty-two cents to the male dollar and now we made seventy-seven cents, so what were we complaining about? It doesn’t seem like it should be so complicated to acknowledge that seventy-seven cents is better than sixty-six cents and that seventy-seven cents isn’t good enough, but the politics we have is so pathetically bipolar that we only tell this story two ways: either seventy-seven cents is a victory, and victories are points where you shut up and stop fighting; or seventy-seven cents is ugly, so activism accomplishes nothing and what’s the pint of fighting? Both versions are defeatist because they are static. What’s missing from these two ways of telling is an ability to recognize a situation in which you are traveling and have not arrived, in which you have cause both to celebrate and to fight, in which the world is always being made and is never finished. (italics mine)

It is because the struggle is never easy and never done that Solnit quotes the poet John Keats, who called the world with all of its suffering “this vale of soul-making.” While “Hope in the Dark” is mainly Solnit’s call to continuous political activism, her arguments apply equally to declaring what’s important to you though the work that you do, that is, to any kind of acting on your convictions. To borrow the force of her argument, your jobs become “toolboxes to change things,” places “to take up residence and live according to your beliefs,” and, as Keats would say, “vales” where your soul is made because it is where a sense of meaning, purpose and wholeness (as opposed to partial victories or defeats) can be found.

If you’re unfamiliar with Rebecca Solnit, “Hope in the Dark”‘s 100-odd pages would be a splendid introduction. Her “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster” such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina is a beautiful argument that we’re far more and far better than we often think that we are.

Note: This post was adapted from my September 2, 2018 newsletter

Why Voice Your Dissent?

June 5, 2018 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

The pull to go along with the crowd is always present. It’s even more insidious because we’re often unaware of how strongly we’re being pulled. We simply go along with what everyone else is saying and doing.

The urge to belong is elemental. We want to be liked, respected, even protected by the shelter of the wider group. When differences arise, there is an overpowering “strain for consensus,” narrowing what divides us so we can huddle around what we agree on—even when that agreement is vague or represents the lowest common denominator.

We don’t want to be perceived as “different from everyone else,” even when we know (or at least suspect) that the herd is moving in the wrong direction. That’s because raising a dissenting voice has consequences.

Because your dissent challenges a majority’s certainty, group members almost never like it. When you speak your personal truth to the group’s collective power, they’ll ridicule you or paint you as a crank. Even when you change a group member’s private views with your logic and conviction, she’ll rarely acknowledge it publicly and almost never give you credit. Dissenting seems a thankless task.

Dissenters also have to be willing to go it alone, and that takes personal courage. As a result, thinking about his or her dissent, it’s always easier for a potential dissenter to conclude:

the group is unlikely to accept my position anyway, so why bother raising it;
the personal costs to me of speaking up are just too great; or
I just don’t care enough about the group or my point of view to speak my mind.

I’ve certainly used one or more of these excuses many times over.

Dissenters As Troublemakers

I just finished reading Charlan Nemeth’s new book In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business. I picked it up for several reasons.

Troublemakers promised to discuss the impact of dissenter Edward Snowden’s disclosures about government wiretapping, the value to Lincoln and to America of having his principal rivals (a band of dissenters) as his key Cabinet advisors, the “choreography” that Henry Fonda employed in “Twelve Angry Men” to turn his lone dissent into a verdict embraced by all of his fellow jurors, and the colossal failure of groupthink in JFK’s Bay of Pigs fiasco. I picked up her book for the stories she’d be telling, but also because I’ve paid some of the costs of troublemaking over the years and wanted to see whether they were worth it.

I’d like to share with you some of Nemeth’s study-based conclusions about groupthink, consensus, dissent, enabling dissent via diversity or a devil’s advocate, and how the common presumptions about dissenters don’t have to be true.

GROUP THINK

People automatically follow the majority as much as 70% of the time, even when the majority is wrong. People do so because the group “works on you” to conform in blatant as well as subtle ways. Moreover, the remaining 30% are not unscathed by group pressure. In one study, even though the minority disagreed with the group, many reported that the majority was “probably correct” because the group must know something that they didn’t know.

CONSENSUS

Consensus changes our thinking in ways that are narrow and controlled, whereas dissent broadens and opens our thinking. Nevertheless, because of an ever-present “strain for consensus,” when most group members know the majority’s views up front, studies repeatedly show that group members want to find out more about why the majority holds its views so they are more comfortable supporting them rather than exploring grounds for disagreement when they have that choice. On this point, Nemeth writes: “Simply knowing the majority position is enough to shape and bias the search for information. We don’t just follow the majority position; we willingly search for information that corroborates it.” Other studies indicate that people are careful to share with other group members ONLY the information they hold in common while withholding information where they might differ—a result that further narrows and controls consensus’ views.

DISSENT

Even one dissenter in a group makes a profound difference in the range of issues the group considers and the creative ways that it goes about processing them. Notwithstanding the likelihood of hostile reactions, a dissenter has the floor and can argue his position because he is the focus of attention and communication. There is no question that he needs to be courageous in order to do so, but his courage can also be contagious, increasing the likelihood that other members of the group will speak up even if they don’t agree with everything he’s saying. “In witnessing dissent,” Nemeth writes, “they seem to be reminded that their actions should mirror their beliefs” and that it’s a mistake to follow the majority blindly.”

EFFECTIVE DISSENT

Research shows that a necessary requirement for effective dissent is consistency. Backsliding as well as compromise undermines it in the absence of new information. In other words, the dissenter needs to hold her ground. Group members rarely admit publically that they changed their minds because of a dissenter, but they are often persuaded privately, which liberates them to consider not only the dissenter’s opinion but also other opposing views. Writes Nemeth: “I believe that part of the reason dissent opens the mind is that it makes us question our positions. Faced with an alternative conception of reality and a different way of thinking, we are brought closer to the kind of thinking we do when developing a position rather than defending or changing one.” In other words, dissent operates like a mental re-set, allowing us to reconsider what we know and believe to be true.

DIVERGENT THINKING

The most durable problem solving considers as many issues, obstacles, perspectives and opportunities as possible before reaching a conclusion, while groupthink and the pull of consensus tend to be both shallow and brittle. Dissent also changes more minds and hearts than is publically evident, which means that when we speak up, we’re having more impact than we know. One place where the impact of a dissent is clear is at the Supreme Court. From studying the high court’s opinions with and without a dissent, a strong dissenting opinion nearly always produces more “integrative complexity” in the majority’s reasoning than is evident in its unanimous opnions. The majority is not only more aware of differing views but is far more likely to respond to them in reasonable and creative ways. The same divergent thinking is unleashed in nearly every group where even a lone dissenter presents her consistent opposition to the group’s consensus.

DEVIL’S ADVOCATES AND GROUP DIVERSITY

Nemeth also challenges efforts to take “the sharp edge” off dissent with a devil’s advocate and politically correct notions that “diversity within a group” is all you need to produce divergent thinking. She calls devil’s advocates offering dissenting viewpoints “pretend dissent” which group majorities almost uniformly disregard because of the lack of conviction behind them. Assuming that a group with gender, race or sexual-preference diversity will produce divergent thinking is similarly misguided. Divergent thinking is only enhanced when group members have “opinion diversity” based on their different skills, knowledge and backgrounds AND are willing to speak up when what they know and believe to be true is challenged by the majority.

OUR PRESUMPTIONS ABOUT DISSENTERS ARE WRONG

Nemeth wants to give dissenters “a better name.” Instead of seeing them as objects of ridicule or hostile parties, she’d prefer us to see them as not necessarly angry, argumentative, ego-driven or obstacles to the group’s moving forward. It’s where recalling the dissent voiced by the real Edward Snowden and the fictional Henry Fonda resonates. Both were tenaciously consistent and consistently earnest in their dissent. Neither raised his voice, appeared holier-than-thou or ever lost sight of what they wished to accomplish. They weren’t negative for the sake of being negative. Even when dissenters sound like voices “crying in the wilderness,” the consistent and courageous ones don’t want to offend. Instead they want to wake the others in the group out of their sleepwalking, whether that group is a jury room or the American people. When dissenters have good intentions and treat others with respect, it is hard (and hardly ever necessary) to offend.

These are some of the main points in Troublemakers, and I recommend it both for the nuance of Nemeth’s arguments and for her well-chosen stories. The benefits to group decision making are clear from her analysis. What Troublemakers doesn’t answer is why individuals “care enough” to take up the lonely mantle of dissent in the first place.

Why Voice Your Dissent?

Voicing your dissent begins with a realization about what you know and believe given your group’s deliberations. Nemeth acknowledges the power that comes from recognizing them—and how you never want to lose them—without elaborating on the deeper motivations behind your convictions. Knowing what you know and believing what you believe seems to be a form of recognition tied to personal identity, but again, Nemeth delves no deeper here.

She does talk about the courage that you need in order to dissent. While Nemeth doesn’t say, courage for her might be similar to Aristotle’s concept of courage, which is the motivation you have between acting recklessly and being afraid to act. In other words, you find your courage where feelings of recklessness and fear of acting balance one another. It’s about finding that happy medium.

Courage is easier to find in some situations, and becomes more reliable when you learn how to find it when you need it. You learn how to be courageous by being courageous, and one way is by being a dissenter when what you know and believe is challenged.

In a short essay several years ago, Gordon Marino argued that boxing is another way to find that balance, a surprising argument until you think about it. Being in a boxing match provides you with measurable doses of fear while helping you manage your reckless impulses in real time.

While Aristotle is able to define courage, the study and practice of boxing can enable us to not only comprehend courage, but [also] ‘to have and use’ it. By getting into the ring with our fears, we will be less likely to succumb to trepidation when doing the right thing demands taking a hit.

Other “jobs” provide opportunities for courage if we recognize the opportunities and act on them. It can be as close as the next community meeting where what you know and believe to be true is called into question by the group’s evolving consensus.

It is not just “knowing what you know or believing what you believe,” but also having the courage to declare it. It is caring enough about yourself to demonstrate who you are—the ever-present impulse to be “true” to yourself. Of course, the basic human desire to express your convictions in order to help the group is the other essential motivation behind dissent. It’s for me but also for you.

The motivations behind dissent are the same motivations that drive all good work.

Notes to readers: Much of the content in this post also appeared in the June 3, 2018 newsletter.

One Way That Conviction Works

July 1, 2017 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

As a kid, I loved Otis Redding’s songs, especially “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” I still can’t say too much about that voice, those arrangements. Listen for yourself. Silk degrees.

After his groundbreaking performance at the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival (“resplendent in a teal-green silk suit”), Redding hosted a bash at his Big O Ranch in Georgia. The local newspapers crowed: “Otis is having a royal barbeque.” He was all of 25.

But it was less upbeat for some in his guests. The Black Power movement was on the rise and many of Redding’s inner music circle were white, like R&B producer Jerry Wexler. “People were talking a lot of trash,” Wexler recalled. “What is whitey doing here?” For his part, Redding wanted everyone he loved to be around him as he moved from his mostly African American fan base and into pop’s mainstream. Redding did what he could to un-ruffle feathers across the divide he was straddling, but his guests could still recall the tensions decades later (from a new book about Redding by Jonathan Gould).

I grew up at a time when you could hear what people were calling “soul music” on the same radio station (WAVZ) as the Beatles and Glen Campbell. (Today, it’s hard to imagine that kind of musical or audience diversity at any point “on the dial.”) But back then it was possible to think that the venues where you could see these performers would have the radio’s audience. That wasn’t even close to being true.

As the Sixties wound down and the Seventies got started, I went with a friend to see the Temptations at the Oakdale Theater. It had gently elevated seating-in-the-round, with a tent overhead and open to the summer breezes down below. Sitting almost anywhere gave you an immediate 360, so it took no time at all to discover that we were the only white boys in the house. As the Temps got going—“Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “I Wish It Would Rain”—maybe the audience was just as surprised to see us, but before long it seemed that everyone had switched to pretending that we just weren’t there. I’d never been a minority before, and it almost felt like I was crashing somebody else’s party. But the next couple of times, there was no doubt about that at all.

Five or so years later, a college friend went with me to see Patti Labelle (and her group Labelle) at Assumption College. I was thinking a good-girls-from-parochial-schools kind of environment. Moreover, Labelle had Top 40 hits with lyrics like “Gichie, Gichie, ya ya dada/Gichie, Gichie, ya ya here…” that they sang in costumes straight out of “Star Trek.” It would be fun, but hardly high-risk entertainment. Still as I settled in, it gradually dawned that once again I was one of only two white boys in the house.

But who cared? Patti was on fire as the set got going, and my second memory of the night was her telling us that fans always brought her drugs after a performance (figuring she had to be “on something” to deliver like that), but what she wished they’d bring her was a good hamburger, “because working this hard makes you so damn hungry.”

Everyone laughed, and the girls slid into a Gil Scott-Heron number called “The Revolution Will Not be Televised.” It’s an angry song, with some spoken word delivery that foreshadows rap. It’s also long, building in momentum and rage as it goes along. A minute or so in, Patti had the room in her hand. But just then, people starting turning around and looking our way, talking loud, leaning over—what are you doing here?—as we clutched our armrests in the middle of a long row. This’ll be just like shooting fish in a barrel, I thought.

And Patti thought so too because she put “Everybody settle down” into the song’s narrative a couple of times, and when no one did, she stopped the music altogether, which left some of the outcries hanging in the air above us. I don’t remember what she said next—maybe “we’re all in this fight together”—and tempers began to cool as the house lights came up. With all eyes looking from Patti to us she said: “Everyone is welcome here,” and that was the heartpounding end of it.

More than a decade later and this time in Philly, I either hadn’t learned or didn’t want to because I was making a beeline for The Rib Crib, a take-out joint one neighborhood away. It was a Friday night, the middle of summer, there’d be a big crowd on a main street, the place was practically “an institution,” and Fran would be with me: what could go wrong?

This time it was Charlie Gray who came to our rescue. Once inside, we were packed like sardines, the only “out-of-towners,” and the crowd in front of and behind us started getting rowdy about whether we belonged. “What are you doing here?” “Go back where you came from.” It was already loud in The Crib but our being there took everything up a notch and Charlie noticed.

Technically, we weren’t the only white people this time. Our shoulders were touching autographed pictures on the wall: Charlie with Al Martino, Charlie with Frank Rizzo, Charlie with Sylvester Stallone, so we recognized Charlie as he tried to break through the crowd towards us. A booming voice preceded his big heart, telling everybody just how welcome we were, how honored he was to have us, what could he do to make us more comfortable, maybe some sweet potato pie on the house, and just like that everyone went back to looking forward to their ribs.

Otis, Patti and Charlie tapped into their power and declared what they stood for when something important to them was at stake. They already knew what to say and how to act because surely they also knew already what it was like to be “different” in a suddenly hostile place.

Your experiences clarify what you value most; how you’ve lived and worked determines your priorities. And it’s with both in mind that you’re able to care for yourself and others the next time around. That’s why Patti and Charlie never hesitated when it came to standing up for me.

I loved great food and music enough to put my pride (and maybe my safety) in the hands of strangers. But it was always about more than the risk. By stepping outside my lines, maybe, hopefully, I would gain enough clarity and power to find my generosity too.

Men At Work

Good Work’s Foundations

Why Voice Your Dissent?

One Way That Conviction Works

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