Genuineness

There are, perhaps paradoxically, a number of ways for a person to be authentic. They can show themselves to others as they really are, for example, or the way they present themselves to others can be real, for another. Of course, when written out this way, they appear to be the same, but when someone requests authenticity from another person, "I want you to show yourself to me as you really are," and "I want the you that I'm seeing to be real" can be very different.

And I think that many people don't really understand the difference between the two of them, leading others to engage in deception in the name of authenticity. I had a friend, some time back, who appeared to wear her emotions on her sleeves, in full view of everyone, yet was convinced that she was adept at hiding them. Her open responses to things that she didn't approve of or found unusual lead to people putting in quite a bit of work to convince her that the persons they presented as were authentic, even if, the moment she was out of sight and earshot, they became someone completely different.

Authenticity and judgement do not mix when there are consequences involved. If I need or desire a person to be a certain way, and they need something from me, I cannot hope to ask them to be authentic with much real hope of success. I am likely to communicate what I want from them, and they are likely to be attentive to the signs that I am doing so.

In this sense, perhaps the best practice in cultivating authenticity and letting people who they are is to surround oneself with people who need nothing from you, such that there is no punishment for failing to live up to standards.

Joining the Bandwagon

Some Black Americans Buying Guns: 'I'd Rather Go To Trial Than Go To The Cemetery'

I don't believe in the supernatural. As far as I am concerned there are no deities, spirits, ghosts or devils in the world. While my discounting of gods worries some people, my lack of belief in demons concerns others. "Satan's greatest trick," they tell me, "Is convincing people that he doesn't exist." To which I've started replying, "His greatest trick would be convincing people that he's their next door neighbor." The person who believes that evil is all around him is much more of a concern than the person who doesn't believe in evil at all.

When I speak to Europeans, they'll sometimes express wonder that our streets aren't constantly awash in blood, because of the high number of firearms in private hands (which is different than the firearms ownership rate, a distinction lost on many people) and a general America propensity for violence. When they ask why Americans don't see that, I answer "Of course 'we' do... why do you think there are so many guns?"

The general lack of social trust in the United States becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it can be difficult to appear trustworthy to those one does not trust. As people take steps to defend themselves, those steps are often seen as threatening. Likewise, as people turn inwards and seek to maintain what they have, the people who depended on them being more outward-looking are forced to do the same, and the spiral accelerates.

Pair this with a general despair of positive outcomes, and it's not that far to the quote at the top of this post. Attending one's own trial may be better than one's own funeral, but neither is an outcome to be hoped for. As other outcomes appear to be remote or closed off, defending oneself against assault or murder charges becomes a bright spot in comparison. That's usually en indicator that something isn't working the way we profess to want it to.

Of course, a lot of people don't believe that profession... which is one of the reasons for all the guns...

Relitigation

In February 1965, two of America's most towering public intellectuals faced off at the University of Cambridge in England. They were there to debate the proposition: "The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro."
Reimagining The James Baldwin And William F. Buckley Debate

Last week, Khalil Muhammad and David Frum reprised the debate, under the title: "The American Dream Is Still at the Expense of African Americans." I haven't watched the video yet. I'm not sure that I will, to be honest. But I do find the idea of the debate, and having it again, to be interesting. But I think that what I would want to see are two people from other groups having the same discussion.

Because I think that, for instance, a Native American and a Pakistani American could bring different perspectives to whether or not the American Dream comes at the expense of the American Negro/African Americans. And because they wouldn't be arguing it from the point of view of being a "combatant" in the White/Black conversation on race in the United States, it would have to be less about experience and more about a neutral view of the situation.

Come to think of it, I would even liked to have seen Mr. Frum argue in favor of the proposition and Dr. Muhammad argue against it. because this, too, would have been less about the direct experience of being White or Black in America, and more about understanding the "other side," as it were.

There is nothing wrong with speaking to, and about, experiences. But experiences can't really be debated. People tend to start arguing side points. When Mr. Frum noted that "when you tell people that they are powerless, that America is against them, that they are not part of the country, you don't teach action. You teach passivity," he makes a good point. But it's a point that's completely unrelated to whether or not "The American Dream Is Still at the Expense of African Americans." Likewise, Dr. Muhammad's contention that "[Frum] gives far too much credit to the American system as he explains it," doesn't get us to whether the proposition is true or not. But it's quite likely that both men were speaking from their sincere experiences. And while those experiences are always valid for the people who have them, and may be interesting for others, speaking of them in the context of what should be a factual question tends to lead to "feel-checking" (evaluating whether people are justified in feeling a certain way about things based on some factual standard), and that's not helpful in a situation like this. Having debate participants avoid arguing their own experiences makes for a more objective and more useful debate. One that I think would be interesting to see.

Estimated

I was on a video call Wednesday, when there was a "boom!" and the power went down. It came back up after a moment, was live for a couple of minutes, then flicker, flicker... and blackout. Again.

"Well, so much for cooking dinner," I said to myself, and prepared to go out. Before I left, I checked Puget Sound Energy's outage map. Sure enough, the neighborhood was in red. Cause: Under Investigation. Estimate for restoration, 7 pm, a little more than two hours out. At 6:25, while still away from the apartment, I checked again. Still under investigation, still estimated for 7. I get to the off-ramp nearest my place about an hour later. The traffic lights are out. And if those lights are blacked out, that means the apartment is still blacked out. Sure enough, home is dark when I arrive. New ETA: 9 pm, but the cause had been updated to "trees/vegetation." I checked again right about 9. At 8:50, the estimate had been pushed to 11 pm. I was starting to notice a pattern. Sure enough, an update at 10:40 pushed the ETA to 1 am. The power actually came back on at 11:30. (A remarkable number of things in my apartment make noise when they start receiving power...)

I've done three years of support escalations, and I understand what it's like to have angry customers wanting immediate answers. And so I understand the impulse to have something available for people, even if it turns out to be unreliable. It's a hard spot for a company to be in, because one can't please all of the customers all of the time. This is where flexibility comes into the picture, because PSE's problem was that it had one way to communicate with the public, and that one-size-fits-all communication winds up being a very poor fit for some. This is the sort of thing that customer profiling would be excellent for. While I'm the sort to be okay with "We have no idea how long this will take from this point, but past outages lasted an average of X," other people may actually prefer the rolling ETAs, even if the data turns out to be inaccurate.

But I expect that companies don't see as immediate profit potential in incident communication styles as they do in buying habits. It is, however, worth noting that the two can be linked. I'm honestly considering moving, simply due to the impression that PSE has difficulty keeping the lights on in even mildly inclement weather. I might have to, in order to communicate to PSE that I'm not confident in them.

Unhived

Seen on LinkedIn this morning: "If you ask a Black person today (or any decent human) on your Zoom/conference call how they're doing, just know they're not doing well."

Blow that. I'm a Black person, and I'm doing just as well today as I was this time last week. Perhaps that makes me an indecent human being. Fine, I'll cop to that. But I'm not into performative Blackness, especially when that seems to entail not understanding how the world I live in works.

What happened to Breonna Taylor shouldn't have happened to anyone. Many people find the lack of charges against any of the officers in her shooting to be another in a long series of miscarriages of justice. And maybe they're right. But to not be doing well because of that is to have one's sense of well-being tied to actions and decisions that one has no control over. That's a recipe for misery and stress, because the fact that one has come to depend on another for one's well-being does not, in and of itself, give that other person a felt obligation to nurture that well-being. In other words, when the grand jury was deliberating whether to indict Officers Cosgrove, Hankinson and Mattingly, and on what specific charges, the well-being of the Black community in the United States was not on their list of considerations. And yes, I understand that granting the grand jury the benefit of the doubt, but not investigating further (trust without verification, if you will), allows them to act with deliberate malice. And so while I find it unwise to be upset about this, it is neither unethical nor impermissible.

I am doing well, because that's my priority, and I take exclusive responsibility for it. People should be allowed to do that without having their ethnic, ethical or species bona fides questioned.