It Only Takes One to Take a Stand

August 17, 2013 By David Griesing 3 Comments

There was a remarkable photograph in the papers on Thursday, taken as Egyptian troops were leveling the encampment of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo. It depicted a solitary woman standing between a military bulldozer and a wounded man on the ground.

We’ve seen this all before, but it never gets old.

There was a similar confrontation in Tiananmen Square in 1989, with a lone protester blocking a column of Chinese tanks. That picture still speaks to the courage of saying: “Stop.” “No, you cannot do this any longer”—even when no one else is standing with you.

On its anniversary this year, China’s leaders continue to suppress any discussion of the uprising of the human spirit that took place 24 years ago. It is a continuing exercise in “thought control” aimed at ensuring that those who were alive then start to forget, and those who came after never manage to find out. But some of the power in pictures like this is that they won’t go away, and in their permanence will always call to those who can recognize a part of themselves there.

Indeed, I think we linger over images of solitary personal courage because we hope that someday we’ll be up to doing the same. We keep looking because the individuals depicted are standing in for the best part of each of us too. We wonder:

Will I have the courage to seek out the circumstances,

and when those circumstances require it, stand up for what I believe in,

even when there’s no one else is around?

The “thousand words” in these pictures speak about a life force that won’t be pushed down any longer. It caused a woman in Cairo and a man in Beijing to leave the relative safety of their homes behind so they could speak their particular truths to power. It’s what many children do with far greater ease than us grown-ups: the ones who know what’s important to them and don’t fear the consequences of putting themselves on the line.

Maybe we have such children, were such children.

However what experience has taught us over the years is how to protect ourselves from risks & confrontation, to sidestep & keep our heads down. Our experience teaches us almost nothing about taking a stand for what’s essential in our lives and work.

That’s some of what these pictures do.

They help us find the power of a child, when playing an adult’s game.

Habits of Living

April 21, 2013 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

To have been thrust, as we’ve been over the past seven days, onto the streets and into the neighborhoods of Boston, is to be reminded of the web of interconnections that make up a community. We all have that web, which we’ve taken from our earliest memories and experiences into the work we do and the lives we live. It’s the web we find ourselves leaning back into and relying upon during a week like this.

These “ways of seeing the world” or “habits of living” put startling events into a meaningful context so that we can begin to understand them. They tell us when we can count on the authorities trying to protect us. They bring us out to the street to applaud and cheer them because of our relief and their success.

These ways of seeing the world shaped our initial reactions to the carnage that turned a finish line into a triage unit. “Repugnance” a word that Leon Kass has used to describe this kind of disregard for life and community, springs from “a sort of deep moral intuition.” What is acceptable as well as what offends us at the most basic levels, comes from how we saw our parents and cousins, neighbors and teachers respond to what they thought the world should and shouldn’t look like all those years ago. We learned from what we saw them do.

It is where conscience and character first come alive.

So I paid attention to novelist Denis Lehane (who wrote so beautifully about Boston in Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone) when he spoke about how he was trapped at home while the streets outside his home were a blur of sirens and mobilzations. He talked about trying to protect his 4-year old daughter who was alarmed every time she heard the “pop, pop, pop” from that endlessly replayed gun battle from the night before. So while the storyteller in Lehane needed to know what was happening, he kept turning off the screens and squawk boxes to protect her. One of his habits of living was to guard his child from the realities of the world while he still could, despite all the things he so desperately needed to know.

These habits were evident in those who went from on-lookers of the Boston Marathon to rushing towards the explosions to see if they could help. They were evident in the cups of coffee and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches thrust into the hands of responders who hadn’t taken a minute to think about how tired and hungry they were.

These habits were evident in the capabilities that were shared at the most critical moments (“he needs a tourniquet”) or from the journalism teacher who found himself tweeting in the middle of the Watertown shootout and later said “I kept stopping myself, because the world just didn’t need to know about that.” These habits are about discretion and propriety too.

All of us are embarrassed by the smallness of the towns where we grew up, of the communities that looked out for us, or over our shoulders, back then. When we leave our nests thinking we’ve escaped, we bring the ways of making sense of the world and the role we need to play in it along with us. They help us to reach back to our most basic decencies in times that are troubling as well as in all those other times. These habits of living give rise to the responsibilities we all share for the world we inhabit.

As the cameras rolled past the row houses of Watertown, with all their green trash cans out and the trees beginning to bud, we found ourselves thrust into a web of mutual responsibilities. It is where what’s best and truest about life can usually be found.

Putting Fake Spin On Your Own Work

October 23, 2012 By David Griesing 2 Comments

If your readers on Amazon aren’t writing enough glowing reviews about your books, what’s an enterprising author to do?

Well if you’re British crime writer R.J. Ellroy, you start anonymously writing and posting those glowing reviews yourself. And why stop there? While he was busily embellishing his own critical commentary, he also was posting anonymous slash’n’burn lines about authors and books he viewed as competitors—for over 10 years, apparently—until he was outed recently by a fellow author.

Submitting a bogus review in your favor is so common these days that it’s been given a name: Sock-Puppeting. When you’re not getting the reviews you wish you were getting from real people, you “anonymously” give yourself the review you’d like to have.

A few words about Ellroy. He wasn’t a new writer, looking for a fair shake and a couple of kind words (although just starting out would hardly take him off the hook). Instead, he is the author of many highly successful books, some of which have won major book awards. So even successful people can be fakers if, for whatever reason, they still don’t think they’re being held in high enough regard.

How highly regarded did Ellroy want to be? For a glimpse of what he wished others were saying about him, take a look at an excerpt from one of those “anonymous” reviews he posted.

I don’t need to really say anything about the plot of this book. All I will say is that there are paragraphs and chapters that just stopped me dead in my tracks. Some of it was chilling, some of it raced along, some of it was poetic and langorous and had to be read twice and three times to really appreciate the depth of the prose…it really is a magnificent book.

I’ve got to admit. If I read that customer review, I might go out and buy Ellroy’s book. That’s because we often trust what supposedly “regular people” have to say about a book or restaurant or hotel stay more than what the “experts” are telling us. Which, of course, is why Sock-Puppetry is so rampant: it seems so credible, and the puppeteers rarely end up being caught.

There are fines and penalties imposed for writing fake reviews by regulators like the Federal Trade Commission. And if your colleagues already view you with suspicion (some already thought Ellroy was “self-aggrandizing” and “chippy”), they may provide the kind of policing that recently brought Ellroy’s mischief to light. Experts are also getting better at detecting suspicious word and phrasing patterns in on-line reviews through linguistic analysis. But this isn’t principally about being caught. What I’m wondering is: why aren’t all the fake reviewers stopping themselves before they put those socks on their hands?

Because, of course, this not just an isolated instance of an author like Ellroy extolling his “poetic and langorous” prose. It’s faker after faker, with lots of writers being exposed for submitting bogus reviews. And that doesn’t begin to capture all the “non-professional writers” who are anonymously celebrating their own “amazing” products or “kid-glove” services.

While some review-hosting organizations like Expedia are trying to reduce the problem by ensuring that the reviews they post are by “real” consumers, the questions remain. Why is there a near epidemic of fake customer reviews today, and what’s to be done about it?

Why it‘s happening is because in book selling (as in all forms of retail), we’re in a period of rapid market change. Authors simply have less control over their books and their income as the traditional publishing model breaks down. Indeed, every bricks-and-mortar store or restaurant or salon is facing new challenges when a customer’s smart phone can scan for more competitive on-line prices while she’s standing in your store, or be guided to your supposedly “five-star” establishment while she’s walking down the street. In a retail climate like this, the pressure is on to give yourself every advantage you can get.

During anxious times, those with a weak grasp of their moral compass find it easier to cast ethics aside and do whatever they can get away with in order to succeed. So what’s to be done about this?

Almost everyone writing his first fake review must wonder at some point: “Should I submit it?” It may be a split second of wondering, but it’s a pause that leads to a soul-search in almost all of us whenever we’re presented with an opportunity to improve the odds in our favor in a dishonest way. Sometimes we don’t come up with much when we dive into our souls—but in and of itself that may be the wake-up call that gives us pause. An empty soul search can also plant the seed that it’s a skill (like lots of others) you can acquire.

In my childhood days at the shore, taking those first dives down for the striking shell or scuttling crab, I always came up empty handed. But with practice I learned. Soul-searching is like that. It takes practice to understand what the choices are, and thereafter, how to make them.

You probably won’t be caught if you submit a fake on-line review, despite Ellroy’s experience and that of a few of his fellow sock-puppeteers. But better to refrain from doing so altogether because you’ve made the most out of that pause before you hit “post.”

(This piece appeared as an Op-Ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer on October 14, 2012.)

Source Code

January 23, 2012 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

Another comment from the ether about my prior January posts noted that morality is largely a public matter, and that public views had not sufficiently evolved 30 years ago to judge parental action and inaction when it came to child abuse. In this reader’s opinion, it was unfair to bring 20/20 hindsight from a more enlightened time to pass judgment on these individuals.

“Judging” is part of “learning from terrible mistakes,” because the latter requires acknowledging that “terrible mistakes” have been made. Since we are often reluctant to draw any kind of conclusion from someone else’s behavior—“Who are we to try and stand in their shoes anyway?”—it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to think in a reasonable manner about how things might have gone differently. Because this kind of caution leaves us in a muddle, it makes some judgments necessary.

The intended aim on this page will always be to “learn from” in order to “maybe do better” the next time around. On the other hand, whenever you detect the smugness of a judgment’s moral superiority in these posts, I will count on you to call me out.

There is no question that the extraordinary publicity around the abuse of children over the past 15 years has led to an evolution of public thinking about what Society accepts and what it condemns. In much the same way, the soul-searching after the Holocaust’s horrors were revealed and the Nuremburg trials transfixed the world led to more evolved societal thinking about prejudice, and how one of the paths where prejudice can lead is ethnic cleansing.

There is also no question that a more primitive public morality in a sense “permitted” those who preyed on children or Jews for centuries to follow their demons without interference. Maybe it was because children were viewed as less than fully human or as mere property that they could be secretly exploited. Maybe it was because the Jews had killed Jesus and therefore were “evil” that these societies encouraged or tolerated inquisitions and pogroms and a million acts of violence against them. But whatever Society had to say about such matters at the time, what do we think individual hearts were saying?

Do we really think that individuals in less evolved times failed to appreciate that sexual and ethnic violence against other individuals –family members, neighbors, your seven-year old daughter, the man you bought your bread from—was unacceptable?

On an individual level, did Society have to get around to confirming that certain kinds of violent and predatory behavior were wrong before individual conscience could reach this conclusion on its own?

Hasn’t it always been what your heart is telling you at such times that truly matters?

In this regard, did the Philadelphia parents 30 years ago need Society’s blessing to shine a light into the shadowy corners where a child molester was doing his dirty work? Did they really need to know what all the psychologists and other authorities would be saying 30 years later about the damage he was inflicting on those children to put a stop to it?

At what point does Society’s un-evolved state become just another excuse for not doing what you know in your heart needs to be done?

Nowhere in the West today is ignorance so deep, lives so brutish and short, that hearts have gone cold. There are pockets of alienation, but this is not where most of us live. In addition, most moral decision-making ends up happening in areas where Society has never gotten around to providing us with anything approaching clear guidance.

On basic moral issues, I’m proposing that we have the confidence to look within ourselves, instead of simply looking at what those around us are doing or, more commonly, not doing. That is where the source code for moral decision-making can be found.