Tag Archives: insight

High versus low trust societies

2 Replies

I love when someone adds to my perspective on social media. That’s exactly what happened after I posted Basic assumptions a couple days ago. The post reflected that, “people no longer give each other the benefit of the doubt that intentions are good. This used to be a basic assumption we operated on, the premise that we can start with the belief that everyone is acting in good faith.”

I shared the post on Twitter and Chris Kalaboukis and I had the following conversation thread:

Chris: Reading your post: could we be transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society?

Dave: Yes, that seems like an appropriate conclusion. Is there an author that speaks of this idea?

Chris: Not that I can recall, however, if you look at the attributes of low-trust societies you see a lot of what is happening now.

Dave: So true! The circle of high trust seems to be shrinking and it really seems like a step backwards… tribalism trumps the collective of a greater community.

Chris: It is. It seems that even our institutions are driving us towards more tribalism and division.

Dave: And how do you suppose we correct this course? I honestly don’t have a clue, and see things getting worse before they get better.

Chris: I think that in reality, most people prefer to live in a high-trust society. We need leaders and media who support that vision.

Dave: I think the biggest problem right now is that most leaders do not want to step into a limelight where both social media and news outlets are only interested in focussing on the dirt. It seems everyone is measured by their worst transgressions, regardless of many positive deeds.

Chris: If it bleeds it leads. we’ve never been able to communicate with more people at the same time but the only communication which seems to get through is negative. It’s all about keeping your attention to sell more ads.

Dave: I sound like quite the pessimist, that’s not usually my stance on things, but I do struggle to see a way forward from here.

—–

The idea Chris shared that we could be ‘transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society’ seems insightful and really intrigues me. It isn’t happening at just one level, but many!

• Scam phone calls and emails are perfect examples. We used to operate from a position of trust, but now unknown calls and unsolicited emails are all necessarily met with skepticism.

• Sensationalized news leads with misleading headlines that are more about getting attention and clicks than about providing truthful news. And if the news slant doesn’t match your beliefs, it’s ‘fake news’.

• Sales pitches and advertising promises almost everything under the sun, you aren’t buying a product with a basic function, you are buying a product that is going to change your life or transform how you do ‘X’, or use ‘Y’… your results will surprise you and you’ll be amazed!

• If you are even slightly left wing you are ‘woke’ or ‘Antifa’ in the most derogatory way you can use these words. If you are even slightly right wing you are ‘Alt-right’ and racist. No one gets to sit on a spectrum, you are either viewed as an extreme on one or the other side. And even agreeing on one topic on the other side makes you less trustworthy on your side.

These are but a few ways we’ve become a lower-trust society. Ad hominem and straw man attacks get more attention than sound arguments. A well said lie is easily shared while complex truths are not. Saying a situation is complex and sharing nuance does not make for catchy sound bites, and aren’t going to go viral on TikTok, or Instagram Reels. No, but the snarky personal attack will, as will a one-sided, extreme view that packs a powerful punch.

What’s worse is that moderate voices get shut out. And in general many people feel silenced or would rather not share a view that is even slightly controversial. So the extreme voices get even more airtime and attention.

I feel this often. Writing every day, and sometimes picking controversial topics to discuss, I find myself tiptoeing and treading very carefully. I said in my Twitter conversation with Chris above, “It seems everyone is measured by their worst transgressions, regardless of many positive deeds.” I sometimes wonder what one thing I’m going to say is going to get blown out of proportion? If I write one single inappropriate or strongly biased phrase, will it define me? Will it undermine the 1,500+ posts that I’ve written, and make me out to be something or someone I’m not?

This sounds paranoid, but I wrote one post a few years ago that a friend private messaged me about, then called me and said I’d gone too far with my opinion on a specific point. I totally saw his point, went back and adjusted my post to tone it down… but I feel like that one issue, that one strong and overly biased opinion shared publicly put a rift in our friendship. And that’s someone I respect, not some stranger coming at me, not someone that doesn’t know my true character. My opinion in his eyes is now less trustworthy, and holds less value. That said, I appreciated the feedback, and respect that he took the time to share it privately. That’s rare these days.

The path forward is not easy. We aren’t just swaying slightly towards a less trustworthy society, we are on a full pendulum swing away from a more trustworthy society. Tribalism, nationalism, and extremism are pulling our world apart. Who do you trust? What institutions? Which governments? Who do you consider a neighbour? Who will you break bread with? Who do you believe?

The circles of trust are getting smaller, and the mechanisms to share bias and misinformation are growing. We are devolving into a less trusting society or rather societies, and it’s undermining our sense of community. We need messages of kindness, love, and peace to prevail. We need tolerance, acceptance, and more than anything trustworthy institutions and leaders. We need moderates and centrists to voice compromise and minimize extremist views. We need to rebuild a high trust society… together.

Idiots, cruelty, and kindness

Leave a reply

Sometimes I hear something and I think, ‘I wish I said that’. This video ends that way. It doesn’t start that way, I almost stopped listening, but I’m glad I waited past the comedy to get to the real message.

“Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being.”

And so,

“…the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.”

Prove your intelligence. Be kind.

The enemy of knowledge

2 Replies

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” ~ Stephen Hawking

The illusion of knowledge is more ignorant that just being ignorant. This idea is more relevant today than any time in history. Examples:

1. Every religion starts with the premise that their religion shares true knowledge and all the other religions share illusions. So every devout religious person loves their own illusions, or at the very least believes anyone of a different faith lives in an illusion of ignorance.

2. Anyone who believes in a flat earth, or thinks no one ever landed on the moon lives in an illusion of knowledge. They perceive themselves as more knowledgeable than scientists, experts, and even general employees in the flight and space industry.

3. AI is already generating incredibly persuasive deep fakes and while we used to use a discerning eye to catch a lie, soon we will need to be more discerning to catch the truth. The illusion of knowledge will be more rampant than actual, factual knowledge.

We are moving from an era of knowledge seekers to an era of illusions and ignorance.

The truth is out there… it’s just a lot harder to find, and even harder to defend.

Knowledge, wisdom, and sorrow

2 Replies

I was watching a show on TV and one of the characters said, “With wisdom comes so much sorrow,” and this struck me as a familiar phrase… so I Googled it. What came up in the search was Ecclesiastes 1:18.

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.

This struck me as quite insightful, and made me think about the youth of today. They grow up watching musicians , stars, and influencers showing them a world that seems unattainable. They watch their parents watching and discussing the news which only shows conflict, tragedy, crime, and war. They are cautioned about strangers and parents monitor or are aware of where they are the entire day out of care and concern.

They are constantly knowledgeable of the dangers of the world, of the inequity, and of their stature compared to others including, and especially the famous people they could never be like. And yet, they lack the wisdom to put this all into perspective. So what’s left? Sorrow, emptiness, sadness, and grief.

Happiness is fleeting, it’s temporary, it’s even planned and slotted into blocks of play time and sports. Then some parents put so much pressure on performance at those sports events, or even music practices, that these are not even fun. However done well with supportive parents as well as good coaches and teachers, sports, dance, and music can bring joy. These activities can show the rewards of hard work and effort. They can provide a counterbalance to the exposure to other more negative aspects of a child’s life. Perhaps that’s also what video games do?

Schools can feed both of these perspectives. They can be places where students shine, or they cower. Students can feel restricted or they can feel they have opportunities to own their own learning. The same can be said for their homes.

I’m left wondering, are most kids over-exposed to information and knowledge that does not serve them well? Does this knowledge bring them happiness and joy or grief and sorrow? Do they lack the wisdom to put this knowledge into perspective? I think that can be as true for adults as it is for kids. Maybe that’s why there are so many self-help books.

We need to seek joy, and to share opportunities for others to find it… especially the youth of today who are bombarded with knowledge without the wisdom to put all that information into perspective.

We are all blind

The blind men and an elephant

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable”. So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, “This being is like a thick snake”. For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, “is a wall”. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

How different is my sight compared to a colour blind or fully blind person?

My wife hears notes one off of perfect pitch, and can name notes played on a piano without a reference note. I have a hard time determining if a note is higher or lower than a reference note. My daughters can hear sounds at frequencies that I can’t, and at decibels lower than I can.

Some people are intuitive about other’s feelings. Some people can feel when it’s going to rain, others can smell rain coming. Still others can list ingredients in a dish simply by smell. Our senses vary considerably, as do our observations of events.

In a way we are all blind, or at least we are limited by our senses. We don’t observe the world objectively. Instead we hold tremendous subjective bias. Our upbringing, our beliefs, our politics, our limited senses obscure the world.

We touch the world like the blind men touch the elephant. Partially, and with tremendous bias.

Try to convince someone that is depressed that they only need to look at life though rose coloured glasses. Convince someone with devout faith that there is no omnipotent God. Convince a conspiracy believing flat earth evangelist that the world is round. Try to convince anyone who sees the world completely differently than you of anything you hold on to steadfastly, when they see the world very differently, and you’ll appreciate how blind we really are.

It’s no wonder that so many people fight over ‘subjective truth’ because they think it’s ‘objective Truth’. Try to convince the tail-holding blind man that an elephant is more like a pillar than like rope. You probably won’t. In his experience, he is not wrong. The pillar and the rope perspectives are both true to the observer.

Our own subjectivity makes it easier to see where others are blind, much harder to see where we ourselves are blind. We are blind to our own blindness.

How different is a life where we touch a single part of an elephant and call that part an elephant compared to a life where we take in all the other perspectives and create a composite view… while being careful not to listen to the blind man standing in elephant dung because his view is simply not as valid. We need to be open to other views, while also being careful of those that throw dung around. Just because we are all blind, doesn’t mean that all of our views are equal.

Copernicus, Newton, Einstein; These men saw more of the elephant than most. They convinced others who could not see like they could see. But in our day-to-day lives we do not meet such people. We don’t discuss such deep topics. We mull around in the dark, sharing small parts of the elephant we are aware of, and believing we see the entire animal. Blind to our own blindness.

No vs Know

Sharing some wisdom from George Couros and his mom, who always told him ‘it never hurts to ask, because the dreams you have are sometimes just a question away’. Here is the quote, and I really love it:

“It’s better to hear ‘no’ than to never know.”

When people meet me, they don’t often know that I’m an introvert. I used to spend hours living in my own head, and I still go there too often. Solitude is my friend, and I’d rather hang out with one friend, maybe 2, but I tune out crowds and would rather be alone than be in a group.

As a kid, and early into adulthood, I would build scenarios in my head about what could happen, but I wouldn’t speak up. I’d turn down opportunities that would have been great. And I’d not ask a simple question that could have opened doors for me, or provided my with opportunities. I’m still learning how to ask for help rather than doing a lot of work myself.

It’s not even that I fear the ‘no’, it’s the idea of asking that holds me back. So, maybe that’s why I love this so much… because I can think of many times in my life that hearing ‘no’ would have been better than not knowing.

Blog posts from the past

I have been writing daily since July 2019, but I have had a blog since 2006. Yesterday I had a Facebook memory that was a blog post I wrote in 2010, while on vacation in Vietnam.

The Trap is a post that looks at tourist traps that hook you into buying souvenirs, and then equates this to some of the trappings we find in school like the textbook and resources that become the only thing that is taught. Re-reading my post yesterday, I was brought back in time to my adventures, and it made me think about how enriching travel is. We really expand our horizons and see things from different perspectives when we travel to foreign lands. The post shared a link to an earlier post, Bubble Wrap, that starts off, “After a month in China, I’ve come to realize that North Americans live in a bubble wrapped world,” and looks at how we try to (over) protect kids.

Being exposed to different places and cultures really expands and enriches our perspective. Visiting our writing from years ago allows us to see the influence that these experiences have given us. I miss traveling and feel like there is so much of the world still to explore… and to feed me creative things to write about. I don’t see a lot of travel in my near future, but I think I’ll do a little reflection on some of travel I have done, and revisit some memories that are still present, but slowly starting to fade. I haven’t revisited a lot of my past writing in a while either, so I think I’ll do that too.

Read Fiction

It was probably the January semester, 1989 that I took a Rural Extension course on Leadership, at the University of Guelph, when I met Professor Al Laozon. He was my first prof to have us call him by his first name. The first prof to have us sit in a circle, despite there being about 24-26 of us in the class. He listened as much as he talked. And he quickly became a friend.

Al had us read The Tao of Leadership, which to this day is still one of my favourite books, and one that I call my ‘Leadership Bible’.

And while his class was one of my more memorable courses at university, it was his office hours chats that I most enjoy and remember. They were filled with insights and wisdom, but also with the things friends talk about, like our childhoods and stories of family members.

Yesterday I wrote a post about my struggles with going through the motions of my healthy living routines with low energy and effort. It helps me to share these things ‘out loud’ and I was able to push my workout harder than I have in weeks as a result. But another benefit of sharing is getting insights from readers, and Al was kind enough to share a comment. With respect to mediation I said,

“I’ve missed more meditations in the last 6 weeks than I’ve missed for the rest of the year. When I do meditate, it’s more like I am am having a quiet moment to think about random things. I can’t seem to focus on my breath any more than I could when I started my daily meditation routine almost 3 years ago.”

And to this Al said,

“Our routines, like life in general, ebbs and flows of its own accord. Be patient. I have had a meditation practise since 1991 and some days are good and other days, well the monkeys are running amok in the “store” despite my desire for them to quiet themselves. Somedays you just go with it.“

I also said, about listening to audiobooks,

“I’m an avid audio book listener, and I usually get through almost a book a week unless I am reading something that’s really long, then it could be two weeks. But I just took three weeks to listen to a 5-hour long book, and didn’t feel I got as much out of it as I had hoped.” And later added, “I’ll start a fictional novel even though I usually wait for the holidays to choose a book that I’m not learning from.”

To which Al commented,

“As for reading fiction, there is much to be learned from fiction. As I have often said, novelists often have more insight into humans and their behaviour than do the best of social scientists. Do not deprive yourself of that which can offer insight, nor dismiss it as simple entertainment or distraction. The arts offer much in terms of insights into our collective journey. After all, there is no greater means of learning than a good story, be it true or fabrication. I recently wrote elsewhere that science offers us knowledge, but the arts offer us truth. I will take truth any day over knowledge.”

All these years later, and miles apart, but Al is still my teacher, advisor, and wise friend, sharing insights I need to hear.

Usually I only ‘let myself’ read fiction on holiday breaks. But I’ve been drawn a lot more to fiction in the last couple years. It started a couple Christmas breaks ago when I received some free ebooks from Audible and I listened to a science fiction novel and got hooked into an epic series. Then I listened to a couple books that I never would have selected for myself, just because they were free… and I loved them. But reading fiction outside the holidays always came with a little self-imposed guilt.

Not anymore. Al’s words have given me permission to indulge guilt free. I will choose more fiction. Let me know if you have a favourite you’d like to share.

“Science offers us knowledge, but the arts offer us truth. I will take truth any day over knowledge.” ~ Al Lauzon

The surprise discovery

We were 16 or 17 years old and avid fisherman. Living in North York, a suburb north of Toronto, we didn’t get out fishing too often, but we tried to go as often as we could. I remember skipping school one day and taking the bus to a river to fish. I caught a beautiful brown trout, and wanted to take it home, but had to release it because I couldn’t come home from school with a fish.

We loved to catch bass and we were good at it. My friend Dino had a cottage on a lake called Bass Lake in Orillia, and when we would go there we’d catch 20-30 bass in a weekend, and we knew that was more than any of the other fishermen on the lake.

Either Dino or my other fishing friend, Gus, discovered Mussleman Lake just a 30-35 drive from our houses, and we had a new favourite spot to go to, close to home. We would bass fish in the shallows of this small, but deep lake every weekend that we could get there. Sometimes we’d just wade through the water for hours, waist deep with our shoes on. Other time’s we’d rent an aluminum row boat to paddle around the lake. And we caught a lot of bass!

I remember once, Gus had a big one on his line and just before he could get it, it snapped his line. A while later I caught a nice 4-pounder and we kept that one for dinner. Back home, I was cleaning the fish in my back yard and we found 2 crawfish and Gus’s lure in the belly of my fish.

We went back to Mussleman Lake a lot. And we caught a lot of bass. There was one day when we were in a rented aluminum boat and we had paddled to the upwind-side of the lake, to look for calmer water, since the wind was making the shallows choppy and the conditions were not favourable for bass. After unsuccessfully fishing the calmer, but still choppy, side for a while we thought maybe the fish had gone deeper to avoid the rougher water. We decided to use the wind to our advantage and troll across the middle of the lake. We each cast our lures behind the boat and Dino rowed slowly, with the wind helping to speed us up, keeping our lines taught, as they followed behind the boat.

Then Dino’s line snagged something. He stopped rowing and started pulling his line in. But it was really stuck. As he reeled in, our boat slowly went backwards, pulling us towards the snag. “I think it’s a log.” Dino said, before saying, “Actually, I think it’s a fish.” Then, “No, it’s a log.”

Then the log dislodged and started coming to the surface. “It’s coming up, careful not to snap you line,” I said. At this point Gus and I had reeled our lines in and were standing near the middle of this little boat. Dino was in the back, rod curved from the tension of dragging this big log from the depths of the lake. It was almost at the surface when it moved sideways. Then a fat, approximately 4-foot long pike surfaced with a huge splash of its tail.

This scared Gus, and he stepped back flailing his arms. He knocked me over and a box of cookies saved me from getting stitches. I fell backwards and my head landed on the cookies, crushing them against the hard aluminum bench. The fish splashed and flailed a couple more times and broke Dino’s line. We were shocked. We had no idea there were pike in this small lake, and certainly no idea that there were any fish that big to be caught.

The game had changed. No longer did we head to this lake to fish for bass in the shallows. We went to Canadian Tire and bought ourselves higher poundage fishing line, longer metal leaders to prevent the pike’s sharp teeth from cutting our line, and lures that sank deeper that the ones we used for bass in the shallows.

And then, after many trips of only ever catching bass at this lake, we started catching pike. A lot of pike. There were some unsuccessful days, but they usually ended with us in the shallows catching a bass or two. I find it so interesting that it took this little trip across the windy lake for us to learn what to look for. But once we knew what to look for, well that’s all we needed to find them… seek and ye shall find.

I understand, but I don’t

I understand that atoms are made up mostly of empty space, but I don’t understand how solids can feel solid when they are made up of atoms that are mostly just empty space?

I understand that we are all made of stardust, but I don’t understand how every atom that I’m made of has come from different parts of the universe?

I understand that our cells don’t live longer than 10 years, and that every cell that I was born with has been replaced at least 5 times, but I don’t understand how that’s possible and I’m still me?

I understand that the more I learn, the more there is to marvel at, and the more that I don’t really understand.