Facing Life's Certainties with Dignity

For a six year old girl, death is perhaps just the absence of somebody in this world, that there is somebody who will be missed. Of course, even for a child, an encounter with death isn't so selfish: for a child with the gift of faith, there is an expectation that the deceased - especially one so spiritually pragmatic - has simply moved on to a better place.

Death is not simply a change of state. There is much to be learned by the event of death itself. Indeed, a graceful death is a poignant event. I hope that she recognizes how life's other certainty (death) can be faced down with dignity. Not pride, not hubris, not escapism, but the dignity of one who says, "I did what I did. I love who I love. I am who I am. I am ready."

And, perhaps, there is a strong lesson that dignity and poise are conspicuous by their absence in life artificially supported. Prolonging life can be a function of fear. Fear is understandable: none of us really knows what lies beyond. But there is a difference between uncertainty and denial, and denial isn't helpful, especially as it puts pressure on a broader community (e.g., family) to share in the denial of an inevitability experienced by billions of people who have come before. This imposition is outright irresponsible: many lives are subserviated to propogate a falsehood clung to by a few.

This (perhaps tastelessly) puts life's first certainty (taxes) into perspective. A budget deficit in excess of 12% of GDP artificially prolongs a lifestyle. In actual fact, it means that one generation's lifestyle will be borne substantially by another. Such an act lacks not just dignity and poise, but honour. Many future generations will be subserviated to propogate a falsehood.

We each of us bear both of life's certainties: we have a fiduciary obligation to our government, and we must someday meet our maker. If we face these responsibly, neither need be burdensome. May we conduct ourselves honourably in both, not passing a spirit of denial to our children, but teaching them a sense of responsibility.

When Reassurance Meets Reality

In recent months, we've witnessed wealth destruction on a massive scale. In the coming months, there are likely to be a great many bankruptcies and liquidations, both household and commercial. While unfortunate, many are the result of questionable decisions, principally in the form of debt willfully issued by borrowers and underwritten by lenders. This was done in large part because asset values were expected to rise indefinately, while risks to future income streams were not fully appreciated. With unviable (or simply irrelevant) businesses finally called to a reckoning, unemployment is increasing, and deflation is the force du jour. This means cash flows are evaporating and valuations are declining. At the moment, a bottom has not yet been identified, meaning uncertainty prevails, and with it we have unprecedented volatility, an absence of individual economic freedom, and a lack of economic confidence. We have lost our unprecedented propsperty and are in free fall; all we can say with certainty right now is that we're in transition.

In his 31 January column in the Financial Times, Harry Eyres writes: "...if we are wise, we must surely question what it was about our apparent wellness that contributed to and led up to the crisis. Was the crisis really nothing to do with us, with the way we were living - was it an overwhelming catastrophe emanating from outside of us, sent by some angry deity such as Poseidon, the god of earthquakes and tsunamis?"

Might we, through our apparent wellness, have contributed to our current situation? Yes, of course we did, for reasons which go beyond this simple blog entry. One characteristic of our "apparent wellness" is worth calling out: the "we're all winners!" societal norm we adopted is not sustainable. Bankruptcy, while perhaps necessary and healthy for the economy, is not a hallmark of success. Clearly, not everybody is a winner.

Perhaps in addition to creating asset bubbles, we've created a "self-worth" bubble. We've interfered with our societal synapses: the "we're all winners!" messaging has made us into an entitled society. Our "everybody gets a trophy" ceremonies have inflated our perception of what we're truely capable of delivering despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Ditching the trappings of false performance and learning to contend with the reality of limitation will be a systemic shock, but a very positive one that will go a long way to restoring the synapses that created such tremendous human achievement in the first place. Human accomplishments have been bred from many factors, including talent, fortitude and no small amount of luck, but not entitlement. Not once.

It will be interesting to see how our societal psyche comes to grips with economic reality. We no longer have the luxury of maintaining the illusion of entitlement. The issue isn't that any person lacks worth, but that each person must earnestly and honestly accept where his or her talents lie and do not lie. Trophies, slogans, and emotions will not sustainably overcome a shortage of talent in an increasingly competitive global economy. This is not to say that we mustn't encourage risk, only that we need to encourage responsible risk. Anything else is speculative at best, irrational at worst.

And the last thing we need now is another bubble fueled by misplaced confidence in our ability to do things that we simply cannot.

Filtering Bias from Fact

News organizations have long had a reputation for biased reporting. As news outlets become increasingly ideologically polarized, bias has become more acute. To distill the facts of a situation, the consumer has to be skeptical as to the completeness and even the accuracy of any given report. He or she must also be aggressive in seeking out alternative reports to piece together the full set of facts and draw informed conclusions.

This takes time, but is easy to do because technology makes it easier to access different sources of news and perspective. But while the demand side of news has never been so democratic, it’s also never been so easily distorted. As consumers, we can choose to seek the comfort of “reinforcement” under the aegis of seeking “truth” by subscribing solely to ideologically aligned sources of news/information/opinion. We can just as easily choose to completely ignore outlets that are unaligned with our worldview. Consider how this could impact our interpretation of the current state of global economics: depending who you listen to, either capitalism has completely collapsed, or it’s time to buy equities. Exclusive focus on one perspective or another because it reinforces your opinions or satiates your fears puts you at risk to miss the complete picture.

There are many important lessons to teach our children in all of this. Three stand out.

One is that it is important to teach our children to look for the “story behind the story:” what is the motivation behind the choice of facts that are presented in any story by any news organization. Some years ago, a major US airline on the brink of bankruptcy was seeking concessions from its unionized workforce. In every story covering the situation, one US newspaper always made sure to point out that the labor union’s own investment bankers were advising the union to accept the terms, while another US newspaper always mentioned the executive compensation packages. Each was an important piece of data in the full picture, yet one newspaper had a completely different worldview than the other. The point is to understand the motivation behind what it is that each news source elects to include – and exclude. Filtering through this requires time, patience and balance.

Another is that our children have to expect that the people with whom they interact may not be working from the same set of data (and I use that term loosely) in any given situation. Whether engaging in debate, negotiation or just casual conversation, the fundamental facts may be highly suspect. There is no doubt that in the history of time, challenging "facts" has led to all kinds of breakthroughs and revelations. Less dramatically, challenging facts and assumptions was a contributing factor as to why many people elected not to invest with Madoff, or not to invest in opaque securities.

Finally, while our children need to be open-minded to new facts and opinions and need to be ready to acknowledge when they’re wrong, they also need to have the courage of their own convictions in any given situation. As John Kenneth Galbraith said, “The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.” It’s easy to get carried away by momentum and emotion. Precious few had a good year in the markets in 2008, but for those who did it wasn’t entirely accidental. Many (such as John Paulson) identified the signs and implications of a deteriorating credit market and found plenty of willing counterparties for their positions. (Granted, the signs were there for a long time and getting the timing right always requires luck, but taking the positions in the first place was no accident.) Sustaining contrarian thinking in the face of overwhelming conventional enthusiasm is difficult. It requires one to have fundamental objectivity – and tremendous inner confidence in the integrity of one’s objectivity.

The best way to prepare our children for whatever lies ahead is not to impart ideological dogma, but critical thinking and critical analysis. If we do this honestly, of course, we’ll quickly realize that we each have our own biases. We must be willing to acknowledge that we each have our own motivations and so shall our children. Learning to distinguish between the two within ourselves is no easy task.

It also gives us an opportunity to return the repetitive questioning, challenging them with "why? why? why?" with each answer they give.

Unstructured Time

There's a series of children's books written in the 1970s called Frog and Toad designed to help young people learn how to read. One of them - Frog and Toad Together - contains a short story called "A List." In it, Toad makes a list of all the things he has to do by the end of the day: wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, and so forth. He then follows this script as his daily plan, never straying from it. As his day progresses, he scratches off items from the list.

Then a strong wind blows the list out of his hands.

Enter Frog. Toad immediately reaches out to Frog to chase after his list, because "running after my list is not one of the things I wrote on my list of things to do." Frog is unable to recover the list.

Despondent that he has lost his list, Toad does nothing. Frog writes a new list for Toad with a single entry, "go to bed." This Toad does, and he completes his day.

In addition to helping young people learn to read, it offers insight into very common workplace behaviours: Toad is a contract employee, Frog is his manager.

Toad does only as he is told to do, nothing more and nothing less. He isn't engaged in solving problems, he's simply performing tasks. Additional tasks that come his way that are pertinent to the problem he's working on are deflected to other people. (As an aside, if he works for a firm that supplies contract employees, those additional tasks would increase revenue for his firm.) And, of course, the loss of his task order left him idle and helpless rather than liberated to engage in more creative pursuits.

Frog, meanwhile, doesn't redirect Toad's energies in any meaningful way (nor does he furlough him, although that would be a bit of a stretch.) His priority is to restore order to his team.

There are some interesting lessons in this. Our children's lives are increasingly structured for them. They follow fixed routines of school, athletics and activities, which limits the times during which they can complete homework (a surprising volume of which is assigned to them in the very early stages of their academic careers). Because their daily lives are mapped out for them, they're constantly being told exactly what to do from minute to minute, which means they don't learn how to make best use of time. So it's valuable for a child to learn how to deal with - indeed, capitalize on - unstructured time, precisely because their lives are so highly structured in the first place.

It's also important that our children recognize the difference between performing tasks and solving problems. We can map out a series of steps that we need to take to accomplish a goal, but that series of steps is only as relevant as our current understanding of the problem space. If the problem space changes, we have to change with it if we're going to accomplish our goal. We also have to recognize this and make these changes independently and not constantly look for instruction from others. Sounds obvious, but we see it all the time at work, particularly in the Information Technology space, which is increasingly long on service-level agreements and short on results.

This is all a bit out of reach for a 6 year old, but it makes the story a lot more interesting when we read it together. But she does come up with some very creative things when she's left to her own devices.

Antiquity and Youth

Antique shows, flea markets and eBay have done big trade in nostalgia and collectables in recent years. Until recently, there has been a market for just about anything from toys to cookware that could bring back memories of the halcyon days of one's youth.

These things have some characteristics in common. To survive that long (and be available for sale somewhere), those items have to be of durable construction. To still be usable (and not simply very large paperweights) they have to be of simple technology. To be held in value, they have to be of recognized quality. To have staying power beyond a single generation, they have to be of timeless identity, and not products of fads.

This doesn’t describe the over-engineered, cheaply produced, pop culture dominated world in which our children are immersed today. We don’t build for durability, we build for consumption. We don’t define value systems, we define marketing messages. And we believe we improve everything by adding a battery.

Our creations today are infused with situational context: you need the right operating system, the right power source, the right hardware, and watch the right television shows if you are to get any use out of the things we create. Quality has become relative to context, not absolute to a standard. And, of course, today’s context will be tomorrow’s obsolescence. This means that the stuff we make today is “quality” more by matter of opinion or limited experience of the consumer than it is by fact. It also means that this stuff has a built-in expiration date of usefulness. It’s hard to imagine that 30 years hence our children will be ecstatic to discover a Hanna Montana DVD. It’s hard to imagine they’ll remember what either is.

There are some things – furniture, musical instruments, even houses – that are functional and timeless. They represent craftsmanship and values of those who came before us. If we are fortunate enough to have something like this in our care, we are aware that it is in our possession not so much to be consumed as to be taken care of for another generation.

This is, of course, a subtle lesson that "it isn't all about us" after all. But there is also something to be said for sustainable consumption. If we don't teach our children to value "sustainability" in ordinary things, how will they learn to apply it to their relationships with one another?

"Partnershipping" is a Perfectly Cromulent Word

In the The Simpsons, the Springfield city motto is: "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." In the episode Lisa the Iconoclast, elementary school teacher Edna Krabappel challenges the legitimacy of the word "embiggens," only to be swiftly dismissed by another teacher: "it's a perfectly cromulent word."

The other night, my daughter's school held a curriculum night, intended to give parents direct visibility into the people, process and content of the school. During an address to the parents, faculty and staff, the superintendent used the word "partnershipping." Not "partnering," but "partnershipping."

It's a perfectly cromulent word.

I feel embiggened.

The Real versus The Contrived

Stealing away for a few final days of summer at a place with a lot of outdoor activities (swimming, canoeing/kayaking, hiking, etc.) makes clear how far removed we are from the world around us. We go to great lengths to recreate natural experiences artificially, and we add layers to insulate us from the world around us.

This disconnect from the world is a Faustian exchange as it denies us the full experience of life. There is simply no comparison between swimming in a spring-fed lake and taking a chemical bath in a pool. Nor is there between the experience of canoeing and powerboating. Gliding over the water under your own power, a wake the only footprint of your presence, lets you pause to witness first-hand the intricacies of life. By comparison, repeatedly going in circles through the water at full engine-assisted throttle not only ignores nature, it creates an exhaust “leave behind” that scars the waterscape. Even perambulating has surprising upside. A short hike on a footpath is a form of time-travel: taking a trail trodden for over a century gives exposure to all kind of “postcards” left by those who came before, the thoughtful time-capsules that document history and change of a place.

The real world is never that far away, and it’s great fun when we’re fully exposed to it. But breaking free to find it takes concerted effort. We’ve contrived our own world to insulate us from the real one. We’re completely insulated from it in our day-to-day. That contrived world, as sensory-encompassing as it may be with sounds, imagery, priorities, urgency and so forth, is of comically limited depth: no artificial system is as resilient as even the most primitive ecosystem.

As parents, we have an obligation to make the real world accessible to our children. From a young age, they build points of reference that are resilient to an ever-expanding plasticine layer. As they mature, these sustainable connections will enable them to recognize and appreciate the difference between the real and the contrived.