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Saturday, March 28, 2020

Birthday 2020 Thoughts


Once again, my friends you have surprise me with your outpouring of well wishes. Every year I unabashedly look forward to this outpouring of friendship because it gives me an excuse to recall those faces and names of friends who have reached out allows me to replay our times together.

There is a  great mix of people that appear on my timeline on Facebook and elsewhere: from my professional life, from my volleyball coaching life, from my Gradual School life, from my undergraduate school life, from my high school life, and even some from  my grade school life. We shall leave the time period unspecified for the protection of the innocent. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your friendship means so much to me, it gives me strength and hope; it also gives me a chance to revisit memories created at another time and another place, when we were all younger, more idealistic, and much more innocent. For some of us of course, it meant that we had more hair that was of our natural colors, while for others it meant that they had more hair.

A friend’s Facebook posts stated that this particular birthday has got to be one of the most memorable birthdays because of the circumstances. I had to think about it and realized that he was correct and incorrect all at the same time. It was memorable because of the circumstances of which we were living. But each marking of our sojourn through space and time is memorable because of friends who care enough in these troubled times to reach out through social media to give us that little ego boosting touch of humanity. It gives us that unexpected spark, that extra burst of life in our daily routine.

My birthday ended in the most 2020 way. I had a Webex meeting with the people that I first met on the campus of University of Illinois, at Allen Hall. We were all freshmen together and we have remained in touch 40 years later. Meeting on Webex was unique, we should all be quite familiar with the environs presented by the virtual meeting, but some were better at the technology than others. We were all able to call in, some of us managed to not lock ourselves out of our laptops.

We raised many toasts, we talked of our lives and things. We all managed to stay awake beyond the dreaded 9 PM snooze attack, even though some of us were struggling; and we spoke as if forty years had not elapsed. Those of the things I will remember forever.

Peace My friends and Be Well

Friday, March 27, 2020

Book Review: Rebel Talent By Francesca Gino


I started this book because I had heard the author being interviewed on The Hidden Brain program on NPR. The topic seemed interesting and she told a great story.

As it is, I am not unhappy about buying the book, nor am I unhappy reading it. Francesca Gino is a great story teller, she is able to extract the lessons she wanted from the stories and her descriptions of the stories are excellent. Her firsthand stories of her teaching business executives at Harvard, her and her husbands venture in to the world of improv comedy, and most interestingly, her apprenticeship at the Osteria Francescana with Chef Massimo Bottura captured my full attention. In fact, it is her continuous reference back to the chef and the restaurant that kept me interested.

Her stories throughout the book, whether it is her tour of the Pixar facilities and the retelling of “Sully” Sullenberger story were well done and she is a very capable yarn spinner, and she is quite adept at focusing the stories into her main points about being a rebel in the button down world of today’s business.

The book is split into eight chapters and she lays out the landscape of what being a rebel means in today’s world. The main points that she emphasizes: having an eye for the new and the novel, having a different perspective that is well considered and consciously rational, the importance of diversity, being authentic in your actions, and being actively engaged, are actually gospel in today’s church of the innovative management. I don’t think anyone would argue with her conclusions.
That is precisely the problem: the points that she attributes to the qualities of a rebel has been covered ad nauseum in other business books. It seems that every important point she brings up are familiar to me. It means that either I have read too many of these kinds of books or she is treading old ground. It is probably a combination of both, but I was actually a bit disappointed that there is not more substance to the secret of being the rebel.

Having said that, it must be pointed out that the title is still apt: the status quo in American business is still at a point where all the points that the writer made are not the norm, that senior management are clinging to their old ways by reflex and familiarity. The behavior that she is promoting can indeed be seen rebellious. It is just that all this has been said before. If this book does play a role as catalyst in changing the status quo of American business and management. Then I am all for it.

In the end, I enjoyed the read, the author has a nice style, and when she talks about Osteria Francescana, I am fully riveted, because that is a world that I am unfamiliar, and I learned. I just wish that she had more original points to make.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Observations-Rugged Individualism in the time of COVID-19

I was watching television in fascinated horror as CBS News interviewed a bunch of young people who are enjoying life on the beaches of Florida in the days leading up to shelter-in-place, but after the orders from the CDC and WHO to observe social distancing. They were doing what young people at beaches do: having a lot of fun and sun;  a lot of drinking; a lot flaunting their youth; and assiduously practicing their privilege to disobey the rules of civil society. The interviewer asked them whether they knew about social distancing, the threat of the coronavirus, and whether they knew that what they are doing can threaten the health of  everyone gathered as well as themselves. Their responses was about what one would expect from a bunch of young people: self-absorbed, lacking in self-awareness, and self-centered. The backlash was immediate and harsh.

There have been reports of other young people all around the world doing the same things, so those Florida revelers are not alone. Indeed, I’m sure that American youth does not have a monopoly on entitlement, selfishness, and self-absorption. I do believe that there is an exclusively American attitude and brashness that stems from the myth of the rugged individual that is the hallmark of American identity. It is the origination of the idea of American exception, of the entitlement mindset, of how we feel the government fits into our culture and how our society should function.
The mythology of the American rugged individualism is ingrained throughout our culture, throughout our society, and throughout our core beliefs. We worship at the altar of the lone hero, who is always right, matched up against the vast majority, who are always wrong. We worship the mythological self-made man who succeeds, alone, through pulled up bootstraps.

This mythology is propagated through our entertainment media: John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and many others have made the lone gunman character the hallmark of their acting careers, the Die Hard franchises, the action adventure films, as well as the entire comic superhero genre is a tableau of the lone hero, succeeding because they are left to their ingenuity and individualism.
It is a mythology because the entire background of these stories of the lone hero, fictional or non-fictional, are ignored. We ignore, whether through deliberate myopia, or through the blurring of the background details by the deliverer of the message; the role that community, society, and the infrastructure of people who enables the smooth and efficient functioning of society. The existence of the invisible background detracts from the theme of the mythology, because the reality does not fit into the desired narrative.

Quite simply, this invisibility allows the individual to make their claim to be the lone hero, to exercise their unencumbered freedom without regard to the others around them. The narrative is that these lone heroes are what stands between us and a society of groupthink which threatens to subjugate individual rights.

It is extremely Randian in its unreality, and just as silly.

The irony is that without society, without community, and without basic support infrastructure, these individuals would not have the wherewithal to exercise their rugged individualism.
Returning at the situation at hand, these people on the Florida beaches are demonstrating their rugged individualism by exercising their right to do as they wish, without consideration for the health of the people around them, whether they are family, friends, or strangers. In a broad sense, they are living the rugged individual lifestyle, with an unrealistic disregard for the community and society that surrounds them, support them, and enable them to be who they want to be, yet they ignore that fact and steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the existence of their immense support infrastructure.
In yet another ironic twist, we have seen people shower effusive praise and appreciation for those who had previously blended into the invisible background. We have seen people not only acknowledge the vast importance of the massed powers of the society, indeed we have seen them show deference and gratitude to those who were once considered a drag on the noble quest of the rugged individual. Whereas we had shown our appreciation for the police, fire fighters, emergency room doctors, nurses, and EMTs previously; we are seeing the less appreciated workers in our invisible background for what they are: the true foundation of civil society. It is as if suddenly the once adulators of the rugged individual discovered, much to their surprise, that there is good in mass action, even as they consistently looked past them. They pretend that the individuals who are willing to work together did exist, that the people who are the base of where we all stand on to do our work do not exists. In other words, they think they hit a home run because they were put on second base by the masses who don’t perform saliently heroic things, just necessary non-heroic things. Yet, when our society is in crisis, we realize how much they contribute to our society. It is only then that we, quite belatedly, realize how fundamental they are to our society.

Unfortunately, that is the way of our society: we don't appreciate what we don't see. There is a Chinese proverb: referring to someone who is hugging the feet of the Buddha at the very last minute. It applies to those people who cram for a test at the last moment rather than studying when they have ample time. It applies to this case because we heap praise on those that we have ignored throughout our daily existence.

In kind or non-pressure environments, we embrace the idea of the rugged individual, we lionize them, and we hold them up as the standard of excellence. In wicked or challenging environments, i.e. in times of crisis; we rely on the system, the collective whole, to pull us out of crisis. We realize that the rugged individual alone is not enough to overcome massive challenges.  Are we schizophrenic, depending on the nature of our immediate surrounding environment? Are we hypocrites? Are we two faced?

I would not be so harsh. I would, instead, say that we are living in a pluralistic society, so we have an infinitely number of possible solutions which allows us to prosper regardless of the environment. The environmental conditions vary continuously through different sets of challenges with varying difficulties. Adhering to a single mindset, both the rugged individual mindset or the groupthink mindset are recipes for disaster because there is no room for the uncertain, there is no room for adjustments, we have made the commitment to a deterministic reality.

The Spring breakers, through their youthful hubris, and a dedicated belief in the rugged individualism that they have swallowed from childhood gave them the cachet to respond to possible disaster by catering to their lone hero fantasy, that the fate of the collective whole does not depend on them, and that their fate does not depend on the collective whole. They are the rugged individual, and rugged individual always win.