Think tactic, please, just think tactic!

I find that a lot of times – especially in public outreach – people just don’t think tactic! For example, say I was delivering a speech about a new product I was creating and what great impact it would have, and I said “maybe it’ll work, if…if…if…and then hopefully…”. That’s actually extremely common, if you just but listen! It’s at the ellipsis people will go on long tangents that might make the lack of assertiveness unapparent, but to those who listen it’s a great confidence destroyer.

Another example – imagine creating an organization, and moving the date of the first meeting because of scheduling conflict after telling prospect members the original date. Or posting on a Facebook group, and a week later reminding others of the post by commenting, rather than creating a new post altogether so all members get a notification!

Where’s the sense in that? Too much we focus on our side of the story, where we might be rather not confident in an idea, rather flexible with schedules, rather thinking about convenience. But what about the recipient, like the investor, the prospect member, the Facebook group user? In order to think tactically, we need to think about the other person, not ourselves.

One last example – convincing someone of an argument. If they disagree with you, and you might be fully hostile in your mind, don’t be hostile with your tongue. Try being diplomatic! Likewise, beyond just empathizing, talk from their side of the story to bring them to your own (rather than just thinking it). I hope that made sense, as I certainly wasn’t thinking about any readers when writing today….

Speaking of, this reminds me of Dale Carnegie’s book How to win Friends and Influence People. 

Juggling the golden rule

“You should desire for others what you desire for yourself and hate for others what you hate for yourself. Do not oppress as you do not like to be oppressed. Do good to others as you would like good to be done to you. Regard bad for yourself whatever you regard bad for others. Accept that (treatment) from others which you would like others to accept from you… Do not say to others what you do not like to be said to you” — Ali ibn Ali Talib (4th caliph of Islam, son in law of the Prophet Muhammad)

Ali didn’t come up with this concept – it’s been around for thousands of years. The Prophet said it too, but I liked Ali’s version of the quote since it was a bit longer and more elaborate. I’ve always had a rather skeptical view of the golden rule, which I suspect many have but never speak out loud.

It does have a fair amount of disparage from intellectual celebrities. George Bernard Shaw, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Popper, and Bertrand Russell aren’t fans of the novel concept. The argument they make is simple and rather convincing; it goes something like this:

“Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may be different” — Bernard Shaw (British playwright)

Alright, fair enough. What if I were a masochist? Clearly, the golden rule has its issues. Its fundamental premise, seemingly, is a rather naïve sort of kindness. It’s a selfish, indiscriminate, and degrading treatment of others. Kindness comes out of how you think others should be catered to, how you think one person should be treated versus another, and how you think morality should play it all. So much for humility.

“There’s only one rule that I know of, babies…you’ve got to be kind” — Kurt Vonnegut (American author)

The golden rule, arguably, relies on this arrogant idea that’s all about you. It requires you to judge others – to decide what’s best for them. That sounds familiar: I know what’s better for you better than you know yourself. Just looking at history, we know that works. Kindness doesn’t take into account the receiver; it’s all about the sender. The sender decides how to give off kindness and in what shape or form. The sender is the one who makes the game and the rules to that game. This is the sort of arrogance people try to avoid. It’s one danger to believe you’re at the center of the world, and a whole other story to believe you’re the benevolent center of the world. All of a sudden, no one’s opinion of themselves count – how dignifying.  You, your egocentric self, know them better than they know themselves. Sounds suspicious.

So let’s forget about this archaic law. Let’s deal with empathy, okay? Instead of treating others the way you would want to treat yourself, why not treat others the way they’d want to be treated? That would make the world mighty better. All of a sudden, the judging goes. A true call to empathy and compassion might save us all. Empathy leads to real understanding, not an artificial one. Empathy is taking your shoes off and going into someone else’s. It’s taking off the lens you view the world and putting on someone else’s. The golden rule, on the other hand, is never bothering to do just that, right?

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” — Atticus Finch (in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird)

I treat that with similar suspicion though. Can one really remove their bias and see it from another point of view, while using your own conscience and your own mind? Claiming you can doesn’t sound honest to me, and I’m tired of those ‘truly objective’ individuals that float around. When you take your skin off and put someone else’s on, what you’re really doing is putting someone else’s skin on top of yours and walking around. You’re just  seeing someone else’s view from your own viewpoint. You’re looking at a lens with another lens, pretending the first isn’t there at all.

Judging is inherent in the human condition, and there’s no use trying to get rid of it. The sender of kindness, pretending they can, is lying to themself just as they are lying to the receiver. Empathy, at the deepest and truest level, isn’t realistic. We need to stop pretending.

The golden rule, then, isn’t perfect. But it calls on people to be true to themselves. You can’t expect to know how others want to be treated. But you have a reference point – how you’d like to be treated. And we all want to be understood – so we’d treat the other with an attempt to understand. And though the egocentricity remains it’s fine. You are only being honest to the flawed human condition. It’s only a recognition that you cannot fully understand someone else, so you use the only frame of reference you have: your shoes, your lens, your skin. The beginning to understanding others, then, is understanding you can’t really understand at all. And Socrates says it best:

“I know nothing”

A Radical Expriment in Empathy

A wonderful Ted Talk by Sam Richards at TEDxPSU about empathy.

Altruism…is it real?

Concerning altruism, there are many perspectives on whether or not we can be purely altruistic. There are many stances we could take, and many lenses we could look through. Let’s see what they are, what they signify, and why they are misleading.

An evolutionary lens, for example, would suggest that our genes encourage altruism so that we get things in return, so that we reproduce. In other words, organisms can be, while the roots of it, in our genes, are selfish. That is the view of Dr. Richard Dawkins, hence the book title The Selfish Gene. Dawkin’s argument is fairly satisfying in the scientific community.

We could also take a more philosophical lens, in that to treat others selflessly we’d have to be happy doing it, right? Should someone want to save another person’s life, and attempts to do so, they satisfied their desire, thus being selfish in the end.  This at first may seem to be irrefutable, it did to me at least for a number of years. But there are counter arguments: someone may not think about the fact that they want to be altruistic. After all, impulsiveness is a given in the human condition. However, if we are altruistic impulsively, would that still be considered altruism? That is another question that is debated.

What we know from egoism is that we are only altruistic to get altruism back. This is similar to the evolutionary view, except on the scope of organisms along with individual genes. This, perhaps, is too pessimistic. Certainly, could holding the door open for a stranger be an act of kindness done solely in the hopes that one day the stranger will see you, and will open the door for you? It simply doesn’t make sense. Additionally, such a thinking process wouldn’t be all that logical, considering someone who thought this way would probably have to be. Statistically, not everyone could possibly have a net “gain” in altruism, there would always be winners and losers, if you will. And certainly, the nice people don’t always win.

Perhaps a more psychological approach, one less dealing with evolution. Studies, such as one I found in The Atlantic Monthly, show that newborns begin life with some sense of selflessness. It is interesting to support arguments like these with evidence from the psychology of newborns, I’ll write soon on the lack of self awareness in babies and it’s significance in the study of artificial intelligence. The fact that newborns are surprised by the lack of sharing in a movie, and that most do willingly share is astonishing, and it does support half of the evolutionary perspective.

I think that much of the debate comes from the lack of a proper definition of altruism. Philosophers, psychologists, and economists alike (yes, economists play a role) only spend time on studying how altruism works, without actually defining the word. Perhaps we can see it’s dictionary definition, and then dissect it:

Merriam Webster defines altruism as “unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.”

Unselfish is defined as: “having or showing more concern for other people than for yourself.”

Concern, in the context, means: “a feeling of being interested in and caring about a person or thing.”

In other words, altruism is being more interested and devoted to the welfare of others than to yourself. But that still isn’t very clear, and that’s where philosophers, psychologists, and economists need to step up. Should we take the philosophical view that altruism is only impulsive, we must decide if it can still be altruistic. After all, “it’s possible that babies are more likely to be altruistic than older people, because they think less about it” (from The Atlantic Monthly article). However, this could be like saying I did a good deed even though I didn’t know it was a good deed.

Should we take the egoist perspective, as economists unfortunately do, we must assume that humans act “altruistically” out of self interest. Although the traditional arguments of egoism don’t stand, one might say that people act for the welfare of others solely to satisfy some sort of “sense duty” they have,  according to this literary magazine. Alternatively, one might also argue people act benevolently to satisfy some sort of deity or obey inherent natural laws (heaven or hell, karma, etc). That is another possibility. But once again, could one still be altruistic while maintaining a shed of selfishness, as long as that selfishness is the very thing leading to the altruism?  And if we all act out of this inherent self-interest, maybe there is no such thing as self-interest at all.

These are serious issues with debating altruism, and we can’t move forward in this debate until we agree on the questions I posed. Otherwise, we’re simply beating around the bush and arguing over different things without realizing it.