Genre

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Slogans Can Save Your Life! (Reminiscence)

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1

One time I took a new job halfway across the country. After I arrived, I discovered no one had told me - apparently because no one knew - how little preparation had been made for the first key, four-month project we would undertake, for which I was primarily responsible. In fact, I didn't discover this myself until the morning of the first day I reported for work, when the project began.

To say I felt overwhelmed would be an understatement. I had no time or opportunity to go to my colleagues and seek their aid, especially their solutions to the problems that had suddenly become urgent... (After all, they had gotten us into this problem to begin with.) I did tell my boss. I didn't expect any advice from him since this was not his field but mine, but I did need his support.

I scambled around to do what had to be done that very morning myself. It should have been a task for a team of two or three, but I cobbled something together, based on past experience working with others in similar situations. Then I had a moment or two to investigate how similar projects at my new place had been managed in the past. There was one key clue there, a part-time temporary employee who had filled in to cover a couple of the gaps.

My boss was surprised this young woman had not been lined up before opening day, and he also put in a good word or two for her good sense and abilities. Thank goodness I reached her immediately by phone. She could report for duty tomorrow morning.

That adequately addressed about half of the project-long difficulties that had become evident about 8:30 a.m. As for the other half, as I broke it to my wife at dinner that night, for the first four months I was going to have to put in some more hours than we had planned. I had been able to move one of the full-timers with an apparently lighter load than anyone else into another gap by assuring him that I would personally take over one of his lesser assignments (in addition to my own routine duties).

What a first day that was! And the work got done, at least as well as it had the last time before they brought me in. That didn't seem good enough, but at least we had avoided lasting damage.

2

This was my first supervisory or leadership position. I'd been looking forward to the new opportunity to make a difference for the better not only in my own work but in the work of a whole group of people. That first day had been an unexpected challenge, and it was troubling too, revealing how more fundamental work than expected would have to be done to get our little team running efficiently and effectively.

Just about every day in that first week or two, I discovered more such basic work that needed to be done. My feeling of being overhelmed didn't lessen, although now, at least the urgency had eased somewhat.

Every morning as I considered all the separate projects that seemed to need doing, I found myself saying to myself, "First things first." Prioritizing seemed not just a key to a good job; it seemed like the only way I could survive. One of the first things to do, I thought, was to lay the groundwork for avoiding repetitions of the crisis of my first day. That involved every member of my group, and it involved the group as a whole too. Where to begin? (Or which "thing" should come "first"?)

In other words, in order to cheer myself on, just about every day I kept reminding myself I didn't need to do in that one day all that should be done eventually (not to mention that I couldn't do it!). Instead, "First things first." That became kind of a slogan.

3

Facing tough challenges was fun, I have to say, and I was actually enjoying myself even when what I had to do was mainly putting out fires and solving crises. In between, I seemed to be actually getting some of the longer-range work done too.

But eventually, I got tired.

Working at top speed 12 or 14 hours a day, even if it was kind of a rush... was exhausting. It could not last.

Also, here my wife and I were living in a new town, with much to explore - right down to which was the nearest tolerable supermarket - and my poor wife was having to face all of it all by herself. She was getting tired too, and besides, she was getting sick of it.

As I tried to find ways to cut back a little, it began to dawn on me that everything that needed doing at work just could not be done in my first five or six months. I shouldn't let myself feel overwhelmed every day, even as I reminded myself to do "First Things First." I had to realize that enough was enough.

Wait a minute, I thought. I should not have one slogan, but two: "First Things First" should be complemented by "Enough Is Enough." They were a pair, like bookends.

4

Those two slogans helped me get through not months, but years of challenging, interesting work, despite continuing surprises and temporary crises. When faced with a volume of challenges I just could not overcome in the foreseeable future, I would begin by reminding myself: "First things first." Then, tired at the end of the day, frustrated at what I didn't get to, I reminded myself of slogan two: "Enough is enough." That did not mean I was fed up or I was giving in. It meant that what I had been able to accomplish was enough, not just enough for one day, but enough to go on just fine. Enough!

But, over time, it began to dawn on me that I also needed a deeper challenge. It was not okay to be satisfied with just making progress, especially when it was merely progress climbing slowly out of a deep hole. It wasn't enough to settle for mediocrity.

Like everybody else, in my little departrment and in our organization as a whole, we should all be aiming higher than that... We should hope, expect, and plan to get better.

...Which led to the third slogan: "Good enough is not good enough."


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Thursday, March 7, 2013

Idealism, Dogmatism and Other Action-Blockers

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1
We've been hearing a lot these days about a whole variety of public issues that need action to address them. "Obstructionists," "the party of No," "dysfunctional government": these are only three of the many catch phrases recently invented to provoke outrage at the apparent inability or unwillingness of our elected representatives to take the relevant actions we need.

What we would seem to need is a government consisting of Pragmatists, those who understand what Count Bismarck apparently said, that "Politics is the art of the possible." A pure pragmatist - if we can conceive of such an individual - has no values, no goals, no ideals... other than the goal of avoiding elements preventing action.  We need more Pragmatists in government.

We can see right away, I think, that a Pragmatist differs significantly from an Idealist, who is focused on determining and pursuing the best (or even "the best possible," allowing for a certain amount of realism in order to avoid what we call mere "pie in the sky") but with little or no concern about how to achieve this ideal. Pragmatists - in their pursuit of action - must be in touch with reality; they must be Realists. Idealists, on the other hand, often seem to be pursuing an unrealistic end: nothing short of perfection. Is Pragmatism, then, the very opposite of Idealism?

We'll return to this question a bit later.
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Between two conceptual opposites are varying degrees of each contrasting quality along a spectrum, such as the gradations between black and white, between altruism and selfishness, and between time of birth and time of death.

Such a spectrum has one extreme of the first quality at one end and the other extreme quality at the other end.  Midway between (of course) is the spot at which the two qualities exist in exactly equal proportions.

Such as -

                        Blue..................................Green.................................Yellow

or


  Too Hot.......................Just Right...........................Too Cold

or

                        Slavery..............................?....................................Freedom

or

                        Hedonism.........................?......................................Stoicism

or

 Starting Line............The Halfway Mark...............Finish Line

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In some cases, we have no word to identify the point on the spectrum where the two opposites are in equal balance, only words to mark points just shy of or just beyond the mid-point.

Such as:

                       Pleased.............Satisfied...............Dissatisfied............Angry

or

                       Here..................Close........................Far.....................There


or

Pleasure............Comfort.................Discomfort..............Pain


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It is sometimes useful to consider two different spectrums laid out at 90o to each other. In this type of figure, a circle can be drawn around the ends of the spectrums, with the center of this circle being the balance point on each spectrum.   Midway on the one spectrum is exactly midway on the perpendicular spectrum, at the center of the circle thus created.

Imagine, for example, a figure with two spectrums crossing at 90o to each other, such as this one, representing (1) Responsible to Innocent, crossing with (2) Free to Enslaved:






The midpoint (M-1) between Responsible on the first spectrum and Free on the second spectrum lies on the circumference of the circle.  There are three other such midpoints (M-2, M-3, M-4) in the additional three "new" spectrums created in this circular structure.  The same distance from the midpoint to each end of the spectrum is the same in all six continuums:  Free vs Enslaved, Free vs Innocent, Innocent vs Enslaved, and Enslaved vs Responsible.  One would expect to find spectrums crossing the diagram diagonally:  (1) from M-2 midway between Free and Responsible to M-3 midway between Enslaved and Innocent, and (2) from midway M-2 between Innocent and Free to M-4 midway between Responsible and Enslaved.

And this is interesting to contemplate, isn't it? Freedom and Responsibility are indeed related in this way: A person "with a moral conscience," as it used to be common to say, is not absolutely free but constrained by his or her sense of responsibility toward others: i.e. at M-1.  Also, it is an accepted legal principle that a person who is forced to commit a crime is not responsible legally for that crime. Such a person would be positioned at the midpoint (M-3) between Innocence and Bondage (or "enslavement").  This would lie across the circle from M-1.   Such a person would have done something regrettable but would have been forced to do it.

And at the same time, an individual who is free can be (and should be) responsible for how her or his action affect others.  Such an ideal individual we might think of as equally free and responsible.  So, freedom and responsibility are not at opposite extremes of the same single spectrum; they can co-exist in one person.  An individual who is both free and responsible (at M-1), on the other hand, is at the opposite end of a spectrum between an individual (at M-3) who is both responsible ("not innocent") and enslaved ("not free") such as a person who has committed a murder but was forced by another to do it.

Thoughtfully constructing a diagram like this one can therefore lead to insights about the concepts under consideration themselves.

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To return, then, to our question whether Idealism and Pragmatism are exact opposites:

Though the two do contrast, I'd say they are not exact opposites that we could correctly position at opposite ends of a spectrum like those we have been imagining.  The Pragmatist is devoted to action, to what is practical, realistic to do.  The Pragmatist, that is, is not entirely without values, what we might call "ideals"; even the pure Pragmatist is limited to only one ideal, but ideal it is.  So, pragmatism is not the exact opposite of Idealism even though the two concepts do contrast significantly.

So, what is the opposite of Pragmatism, and what is the opposite of Idealism?

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Let's start with Pragmatism: what is its exact opposite?
The central feature of the extreme Pragmatist (or, as I would prefer to say, the pure Pragmatist) is her or his desire to get things done, to deal with the practical details of doing something.  The "less pure" Pragmatist might say her or his central preoccupation is "to move ahead" or "to make progress."  Moving toward what? or What is progress rather than regression? might be the questions of an Idealistic Pragmatist.  To the pure Pragmatist, on the other hand, it is the "moving" part that matters most: Let's get going! she might say.

So, what is it that most directly opposes change?  Opposition to change is as contrary to Pragmatism as anything could be.

If everything is already clear, settled, fixed, - well - change would not only be unnecessary: it would be downright bad.  The exact opposite of Pragmatism, then, is Dogmatism! 

And also: we will have to acknowledge from our own experience, I believe, that nothing prevents progress - or possibly even change of any kind - more surely than a person who believes that he or she knows - the Dogmatist often says, "all of us" know - what's right or true or even ideal, so trying out something new and different, non-traditional, and especially contradictory to preconceived convictions... is just plain wrong. 

The Dogmatist would say the Idealist should stop striving for an ideal not revealed in Dogma, and the Pragmatist should stop taking actions toward someone's "ideals."  On the other hand, the Pragmatist frequently finds himself or herself fighting precisely such obstacles to action as preconceived attitudes, values, taboos, and beliefs that emerge from tradition rather than experience.
So, we can imagine a spectrum with Pragmatism at one extreme and Dogmatism at the other end:

                               Pragmatism..........(M)..........Dogmatism.

Nothing blocks action more effectively than Dogma - whether it is the dogmatic opposition to more taxes or to same-sex marriage, opposition to trust in even the most democratic and balanced of governments, or opposition to war or to capital punishment.
 5

By the way, we have seen that Idealism is significantly different from Pragmatism, since the pure Idealist does not consider how the ideal can be achieved, pondering only what the ideal is.  But we have also imagined a Pragmatist trying to find ways to make progress toward something better, an individual whom we called an "Idealistic Pragmatist."  Such an individual is mostly pragmatic, but also cares about the purpose of the action she or he is facilitating.

Likewise, we might imagine someone similar who cares about taking action moving us toward some goal but who cares less about how such "progress" will be made.  "Just get it done" might be the attitude of such a Pragmatic Idealist.

But what is the relationship between Idealism and Dogmatism?  Are dogmas the same as ideals ("dogmas" just being a pejorative term for "ideals")?

No.  Far from opposing change, the Idealist - who recognizes that perfection is never fully achieved - is always seeking change.  On the other hand, a key feature of dogmatism is resistance to change:  we already know the one real truth, the dogmatist seems to say, so why pursue change which can only make things worse!

Although in this important respect the dogmatist is significantly different from the Idealist, neither is primarily committed to figuring out how to take action.  On the other hand, the Idealist is glad to have the ideal actually pursued, and we could imagine someone as a Pragmatic Idealist.

But we could not imagine a Dogmatic Pragmatist; the concept is self-contradictory.  But we do recognize that an Idealist may be wholly committed to her or his ideas supported not by experience or by actions taken (as in the trial and error method that most pragmatists use), but by tradition, preconceived ideas, or faith alone.  Such an individual might be thought of as a Dogmatic Idealist.

6

If Idealism is neither the same thing nor the exact opposite of Dogmatism, what is Idealism's opposite.

What is most important for an Idealist, of course, is perfection of one sort or another or in one area or another.  What if an individual does not believe that achieving perfection is possible and therefore is not worth pursuing?  In fact, such an individual might think ideals themselves are not even worth thinking about.  Such a person, we might want to say, is Cynical.

I think, then, we can conceive another spectrum transecting that contrasting Pragmatism and Dogmatism; this one has at one end Idealism and at the other end its opposite Cynicism.

                      Idealism.......................(M).....................Cynicism.

The four ends of the two spectrums at right angles to each other would look therefore like this:



7

So what's the difference between a Pragmatic Idealist and an Idealistic Pragmatist?

...And should we care?

To the latter question: Probably not, unless it may affect how we vote in one election or another.  As to the first question: a Pragmatic Idealist cares about taking real, concrete actions toward her or his ideals but cares even more about learning and educating about what the ideal (in a particular issue) is.  An Idealistic Pragmatist, on the other hand, has less interest in the details of Idealists' discussions about what the ideals are, and is more impatient to get on with the effort to make progress in that direction.

But that's a subtle distinction, and it's often difficult to determine in real life.  But just think how great it would be to have to decide which of these two - either the Pragmatic Idealist or the Idealistic Pragmatist - should lead us at any particular time!  Both Pragmatic Idealists and Idealistic Pragmatists care about long-range goals and basic values, and both recognize the importance of making progress in the right direction sooner rather later.  Half a loaf is indeed better than none... but only if you get the right half!


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And a final two questions are likewise relatively unimportant in the bigger picture:  What is the difference between a Dogmatic Idealist and an Idealistic Dogmatist? and does it matter?

A person who values preconceived ideals and values above all else, but cares (secondarily) that the the preconceptions are unquestionably true would be an Idealistic Dogmatist.  And a person who thinks what is of primary importance is to understand and to convince others that her or his ideals are true, but who also feels (secondarily) that those ideals are already well-known to "us all" would be a Dogmatic Idealist.  But does such a subtle distinction matter?

No.  It doesn't really matter; both are bad... 


At least they are bad for our country today, when as a nation we can't get anything done because we lack enough leaders who could be placed on our chart somewhere between Idealism and Pragmatism. 






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