Tag: decisions

How Close Together Success and Failure Can Be

Posted on by jabittan
Ta-Nihisi Coats, author of Between the World and Me, reflects on his childhood and how close he was at many points in his life to stumbling down the wrong path. Coats grew up in a rough part of Baltimore and had to make daily decisions that could push his life in the wrong direction or help him stay afloat. As a young black man Coats remembers the challenge of making these daily decisions and describes how these decisions physically manifested in his life. Making the right decision was not always clear, and making the wrong decision (or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time) often resulted in physical harm. The challenge for Coats was that the right and wrong decisions were never clear. Many times the wrong decision led to physical harm and pain, but oftentimes, so did the right decision.

“What was hiding behind the smoke screen of streets and schools?” Coats asked. “And what did it mean that number 2 pencils, conjugations without context, pythagorean theorems, handshakes, and head nods were the difference between life and death, were the curtains drawing down between the world and me?”

Coats described the importance of being tough and understanding how to navigate the streets where he grew up. Even well intentioned children could unintentionally cross the wrong child or the wrong person on the street corner, and even worse, if their parents had issues with dangerous people in the neighborhood, then so did the children. Not shaking hands the right way with the right people and not being able to give the right head nod to the right guys could place ones life at risk, no matter how well one did in school. With such an imminent threat of danger in the streets, the world of number 2 pencils, abstract education principles, and distant payoffs from education were too hazy to be taken seriously. Survival became the main goal, and survival required a set of skills that did not align with the world of education created by the people outside the ghettos.

All of this created a world where Coats and his friends constantly had to walk a fine line between success and failure. The inability to focus in class and build the mental skill set needed to find a good job later in life put their futures in risk, but at the same time, the inability to understand the streets and protect oneself put ones current life at risk. Few could ever navigate this world by shutting out the negative of the social world around them to excel in school, but all were expected to do so, and many would go on to be criticized for not successfully navigating such treacherous terrain from elementary through high school. A wrong step, a few bad grades, an unintentional insult to the wrong person, and success (or even life) could be taken away from Coats and the children he grew up with.

Cory Booker on Cynicism

Posted on by jabittan
Being Cynical is easy. Being Cynical is also dangerous and damaging. Toward the end of his book United Senator Cory Booker reflects on the cynical state of politics and society today, and what it means for individuals and for the nation to be as cynical as we are today. Booker writes, “cynicism about America’s current state of affairs is ultimately a form of surrender; a toxic state of mind that perpetuates the notion that we don’t have the power to make a difference, that things will never change.” When we don’t take action to be involved in our city, when our knowledge of politics (or anything else) is only cursory, and when we fall into a habit of not looking beyond our own perspective, we begin to think everyone is like us, and we accept the easy cynical story. Booker, in United, challenges inaction, challenges cynicism, and challenges the idea that only bad people are involved in how government and society operates.

 

I study Public Administration at the University of Nevada, Reno and it has forced me to focus on the realities of government, which is that there are a limited number of resources available for society, and somehow we must decide who gets what, when, and how. Any time you think about the way the world operates and begin to consider the world, the word ‘should’ undoubtedly pops up, indicating that you are making a judgement statement about your beliefs of the world. I don’t use belief in the religious sense of the word, your opinion and worldview could be shaped and reformed by objective empirical data to a large degree, but ‘should’ indicates political preference, ideology, and what you think would work best for an individual or collection of individuals in a situation. The important thing about the word “should” is that there is almost never 100% clear evidence that the suggestion following it is the only answer. When dealing with limited resources we must make political decisions, meaning that we must write down our “should” and our perspectives influence how we decide what is the most important.

 

Cynicism fails to recognize what is happening when the word “should” is introduced into discussion. It assumes there is an easy answer, and assumes that resources are not constrained and that we do not have to make difficult decisions that undoubtably give some people more resources or access to resources than others. When we allow ourselves to be cynical we are looking at a shell of any given situation and seeing what we want to see. We look for the negative and criticize what is in front of us. Being cynical is not about finding the errors and problems in a given situation and looking for a solution. Instead it is about propping ourselves up and placing ourselves on the right side of a moral divide, in much the same way that we use outrage to feel better about ourselves.

 

Booker is critical of cynicism, arguing that it takes our power away from us when we need to take more action on our own. Rather than recognize that we can band together to improve the world, cynicism looks at the status quo and assumes that we cannot make a difference. It is the result of what Tyler Cowen calls the “Complacent Class” that does not want to put in the effort and focus needed to make a change in the world. Cynicism allows “should” statements to exist in isolation within the brain, never challenged by new facts, and never actually introduced to the world. When we allow ourselves to be cynical we accept complacency when the world needs action and initiative. Cynicism is self-perpetuating, and fighting it off is a struggle, but if we want to grow individually, and if we want to see the world improve, we must understand that our world view will always be incomplete, that other people will have different motivations and will make mistakes, and that it is only by our actions that we can change the world for the better, even if our actions will be infinitesimally small in the course of history.

Our Environment, Incarceration, and Societal Responsibility

Posted on by jabittan
In my last post, I wrote about Cory Booker’s reactions to meeting inmates at a prison when he was in law school. Having a chance to speak with inmates and ask them about their lives, the environments they grew up and lived in, and how they approached life in jail was very impactful for Booker. He began to look at people in prison as real people, and began to look at them beyond just the negative things they had done. In short, he began to see a more full picture of who the people he met were. Reflecting on the experience Booker wrote, “I could walk out of that place instead of remaining not just because of my own choices but also because of the abundantly privileged environments in which I had lived.” It was where Booker grew up, the support his family provided, and the schools Booker was able to attend that shaped his life and the choices he could make. Throughout his life he has certainly had to make smart decisions and has certainly had to work hard, but because he grew up in a more affluent part of New Jersey and because his family was able to provide for him (both financially and in terms of being role models) Booker saw a true avenue and opportunity to make the right decisions.

 

Many of those who end up in jail do not start out with the same advantages as Booker. It is not to say that we can excuse the crimes and mistakes they have made, but if we truly want to correct behavior, and if we truly want to put an end to crime throughout society, we must think about what we provide for others and what the environment is like where these individuals grow up, work, and live.

 

As Booker left the prison he thought about the people society has left behind and the decisions society has made to lock problems away in prisons. “I walked out of the prison free, and yet I was shackled to what I now knew,” Booker writes, “I was implicated. I couldn’t take my full measure of pride in our greatness as a society if  I was not willing to take responsibility for our failures.” In America we place a lot of responsibility on the individual and we celebrate individual achievement and success to a high degree. We are also quick to point out the moral shortcomings and negative traits in others that lead to failure. Our society is quick to celebrate individual accomplishments and we are able to view ourselves in the success stories of others, taking pride in one person’s accomplishments as a reflection of the potential within our society. When one fails however, we are not quick to latch on to their negative outcome and identify ways that their failure could be attributed to society.

 

Great  wealth is a result of a superior capitalistic society and freedom, when local sports teams win it is a result of community support and fandom, and when a new business opens up it is because our community is so vibrant and wonderful that we attract the interests of those who want to give us more. Failure on the other hand, is a result of an individual being unable to accurately read the economy. Crime stems from personal moral failures. And poverty exists because other people are lazy and don’t want to take jobs. This split in how we all share success but view failure as individual shortcomings is an inaccurate and shortsighted view of society.

 

Booker’s time visiting the prison helped him to see that how society is organized impacts the opportunities that people face. How society supports or abandons people makes it easy for some to make good decisions and generate wealth, and it places others in positions where crime and poverty are hard to avoid. It is hard to take pride in society when we leave behind so many people and focus all our attention instead on a relative few that achieve great success.

Riots

Posted on by jabittan
I am in a program for a Masters in Public Administration at the University of Nevada, Reno and the program has helped me better understand and view the choices we have decided to make as a society. Before entering the program I approached politics the way I approached most sciences, believing that there was a single best way, or a single answer to the great questions of how should society organize itself and how we decide who gets what, when, and why. My program has helped me see to what extent our society is built on choices, and how much subjectivity goes into the choices we make. As I read back through the sections I highlighted from Cory Booker’s United, which I read before starting the program, I see how my change in thinking about these questions impacts the way I think about the political questions Booker raises.
Booker quotes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his book to say, “I think America must see riots do not develop out of thin air,” he said. “Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots … social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”
Dr. King’s quote shows the decisions our country had made up to the 1960s and how they led to a situation where riots regarding racial tensions erupted. Society had chosen to organize itself in a way that limited the rights and freedoms of some and protected the status of others. Inequity led to social unrest. Society’s decisions led to its problems.
Our country today faces similar racial tensions, but they are not well understood and racial tensions today are downplayed by those who do not feel the effects of discrimination directly. Our country has decided to continue arresting minority populations at higher levels than white people, and we have decided to segregate ourselves (based on economic mobility) and create neighborhoods of deep poverty. Some of these decisions can be understood by looking at human nature and the tribal tendencies and reactions that we all share, but ultimately we should recognize that intentional or not, it is our decisions that make the world we live in.
As a society, we could decide to criticize those who riot and those who challenge social order and speak out against perceived injustices. This does not just apply to racial minorities who riot, but to those who find such displeasure with the system. We should evaluate the choices we are making and try to better understand what choices on our end create the situation that we dislike socially. Perceived inequities are real to the people who experience them, even if they do not seem to be legitimate to others, and likely do result from real actions taken by real people.
I would argue, and I think Booker would agree, that we must look at those that we condemn and better understand the forces that push them toward riot or despair. From this point we can better understand how our actions fit in with the world that has created challenges and obstacles for so many people. During this process we need to be aware of our own values and judgements, recognizing that the choices we make could be the result of our own prejudice.

Lasting Imprints

Posted on by jabittan
“What we do or fail to do—to one another, for one another, or with one another—leaves a lasting imprint beyond what we can imagine.” Cory Booker includes this early on in his book United as he reflects on the lessons he learned from family and the connections he sees between all people. We often fall into a world where we think primarily of ourselves and we do not consider those around us. If we do consider those around us, we usually only think about those we are the closest to, our family and close friends, and we do not see how we are connected with those we have never met. Remembering that our lives are deeply connected with everyone, including those who came before us and those who will come after us, helps us remember just how important our actions are.

 

No matter what we do, our actions will always be infinitesimally small in the history and course of the entire world, but we always have an opportunity to improve someone’s day or to help establish a world that we would be proud to live in. Despite the limited impact of our actions on world affairs, the simplest gesture can still be important in the life of another person. What Booker is explaining in his quote, is that we can never predict how our actions will truly impact those around us and those who are connected to us, and we can never predict the value that our tiny action will have on the world. By believing that our tiny actions can be of value in the world and shape the planet in the direction we want, we can begin to approach the world in a more deliberate sense.

 

Booker’s quote is interesting because he directly refers to the impact of what we do not do. Do we fail to stand up for justice? Do we fail to acknowledge the value of another human being? Do we restrain ourselves from lashing out at others when we feel threatened? Thinking about what we do not do, not just the actions we perform, helps us value our decisions even more strongly. Recognizing the times when it is appropriate for us to show restraint and to honor another person builds self control in a respectful manner. Being aware of times when we want to move toward passiveness and inaction helps us confront fear and develop the courage to stand up and act during challenging times that require our effort.

 

Booker’s ideas align with Ryan Holiday’s book, The Obstacle is the Way and a quote he shares from Leroy Percy, “A man’s job is to make the world a better place to life in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal…” We cannot predict what impact our actions will have, but we can make sure they are moving people in the right direction and helping us make a difference in the world.

 

What Booker and Holiday truly encourage is to consider our actions more deeply. To think beyond how out actions benefit us right now, and to ask ourselves, what impact do out actions have on the lives of those around us, on the lives of those beyond out community, and on the lives of future generations? When we build this sense of awareness into our actions we can begin to make the world a better place, and we can begin to also recognize the things that have helped us and allowed us to become the people we are today.

Privilege, Opportunity, Character, Honor

Posted on by jabittan
United is Senator Cory Booker’s story of his time living in Newark, New Jersey and the start of his venture into politics. The son of IBM business executives who overcame racial obstacles to find success in the business world, Booker grew up keenly aware of the challenges that people face on their journey through life, and he received down to Earth advice and support from his parents. Booker’s parents, despite their wealth and success in the business world, always remembered the struggle and fight of those who came before them to create the opportunities they enjoyed, and they made sure Booker understood the ways in which he had benefitted from the actions and decisions of others.

 

In his book he shares a quick message from his parents, “Privileges and opportunities say nothing of character and honor, they would tell me. Only actions do.” His parents taught him that social position and that a person’s socioeconomic situation at birth are not what define them, but rather actions are what make us who we are and who others understand us to be. For Booker’s parents, character is enacted in our actions, and honor is demonstrated by the way we live.

 

The quote from Booker’s parents reminds me of three quotes that I recently wrote about. In his book, Come Back Frayed, Colin Write states, “We show with our actions what our priorities are. Time unclaimed, time traded for something else, is one’s priorities in practice.” His idea of actions aligns perfectly with the message from Booker’s parents. Having privilege and opportunity means nothing if our actions are not in alignment with the message we try to present to other people. We may be able to fool ourselves by telling others about our character and about what we want to do, but ultimately, our actions reveal what is truly important for us and demonstrate our true character.

 

On opportunity Ryan Holiday writes, “If you think it’s simply enough to take advantage of the opportunities  that arise in your life, you will fall short of greatness. Anyone sentient can do that. What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster.” The idea in Holiday’s quote stretch beyond the lesson of Booker’s parents, but still connect through the idea of actions and opportunity. Booker’s parents did not simply accept the status quo in their pursuit of career success and the lifestyle they wanted, but instead they made deliberate decisions to drive toward the future they wanted. The opportunities they experienced were open to many, but they put forth true effort and lived in a way that made the most of the opportunities presented to them.
The final quote that comes to mind from Booker’s parents also comes from Ryan Holiday’s book, The Obstacle is the Way, and is a quote he uses to express the importance of our actions:

 

“The great psychologist Viktor Frankle, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell you. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s your job to answer with your actions.
    In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well.
    Right action—unselfish, dedicated, masterful, creative—that is the answer to that question.”

 

What builds our character and our honor, in the eyes of Viktor Frankle is not the outcomes of our lives that we often drive toward, money, nice things, a powerful career, but rather the actions we take to reach those end goals. The opportunities and privileges we are born with are nothing if we cannot make unselfish and creative decisions that we can act on in dedicated and masterful ways. Through action that is beyond ourselves and designed to put others first we can show that our honor and character are priorities in our life, and we can use the opportunities we experience to build something greater than ourselves and the situation we are born into.

Things Will Go Wrong

Posted on by jabittan
The importance of anticipation and preparation for challenges is one of the items that author Ryan Holiday writes about in his book, The obstacle is the Way. In true stoic fashion, Holiday encourages us to step back and anticipate what challenges we might face along our path, and plan ways in which we could overcome our obstacles or the challenges ahead of us. Holiday also highlights the importance of understanding that our plans will not always go the way we want, and that it is important to handle negativity and failure in a calm and objective manner. Setting up this idea he writes, “the only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.”

 

No matter what, our plans to do not take place in a vacuum and we are always dependent on other for our success. The more people we involve in our plans, the more opportunities for things to go wrong, but at the same time the more people included, the further we can go. What Holiday explains in his writing is that we should expect situations and demands to change, meaning that our actions and endpoints will also change. Our plans may seem extraordinary, but they may not always be realistic given the actors and expectations we have, and we should be willing to adjust accordingly in reaction to the real world around us.

 

When our plans completely crash, Holiday offers additional advice. “And in the case where nothing could be done, the stoics would use it as an important practice to do something the rest of us too often fail to do: manage expectations. Because sometimes the only answer to “What if . . . “ is, it will suck but we’ll be ok.” When we fail to reach our goals and when our plans do not work out the tempting thing to do is blame someone else and make excuses for why things went wrong. Holiday instead encourages us to move forward and understand that we are still ok. Rather than letting ourselves be wrecked because a plan failed, be it as small as the rout we plan to take to the movie or as large as our plan to get a new job, we should recognize that nothing has truly affected us, and it is simply our mind that decides whether we are impacted at all.

Our Actions are the Answer

Posted on by jabittan
In writing about our ability to turn obstacles into opportunities for growth and our ability to always strive toward new goals, author Ryan Holiday turns to an Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl for a unique perspective. In his book, The Obstacle is the Way, Holiday writes,

 

“The great psychologist Viktor Frankle, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell you. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s your job to answer with your actions.
    In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well.
    Right action—unselfish, dedicated, masterful, creative—that is the answer to that question.”

 

Holiday is explaining in this quote that each moment of each day, our present decisions and actions, define the life we live. How we respond to the world around us, what we choose to do with our time, and the perspectives we adopt are all part of what creates our purpose and reality. We build our own meaning, and it is established in the actions of our lives.

 

For Holiday, this means that the obstacles we face and how we react to those obstacles is all part of the meaning of life. Will we react positively and overcome our challenges, or will we be defeated and complain about the difficulties we see in our own lives but not in the lives of others? Will we build upon a solid foundation of meaningful action, or narrowly act in our own self-interest for our own desires? Recognizing that our life is not defined by the things we have or the lifestyle we pursue can help us see that we are truly defined by how we interact with the world around us. In each moment we decide how we will act, and we can decide whether those actions will be shaped to fit our own desires, or whether they will help us move toward greater ends. There is no ultimate truth that establishes the ends toward which we strive. It is up to each of us to decide what a truly meaningful existence will entail, and our actions and decisions will reflect the reality of what we find important and meaningful.

Courage

Posted on by jabittan
In the book The Obstacle is the Way Author Ryan holiday has a great quote about courage and action reading, “We talk a lot about courage as a society, but we forget at its most basic level it’s really just taking action — whether that’s approaching someone you’re intimidated by or deciding to finally crack a book on a subject you need to learn.” I enjoy this quote because it is not just a trite saying that we use in situations where we know we need to take action to do something, or where we know we should take a risk and put ourselves out into the world.  The quote from Holiday shows that we can have courage by simply deciding to act, especially in challenging situations.

 

When I think about taking action on things I often dream about, I don’t always think about courage, in fact, courage is probably the last thing I think about. I consider whether or not someone will ever respond  to an email or phone call and I usually procrastinate on reaching out to someone for as long as possible before finally putting words down in an email or punching the numbers into my phone. When I think about courage in Holiday’s view, I better understand what is going through my mind during those moments, and I think I may be better able to adjust in those moments simply by saying that I had courage to act, rather than criticizing myself for having delayed action for so long.

 

Holiday is definitely correct in his reflection on the way society thinks about courage. We currently love superhero movies (at least I do and I’m going to assume anyone reading this is like me and enjoys them as well) and our idea of courage is displayed and possibly shaped through the story of the heroes in our movies. The courage to stand up against a bully, fight a foe in a glorious battle, and speak out against injustice are the forms of courage we are familiar with and can identify in real life people like firefighters and veterans. The problem with this courage is that it is in many ways out of reach for most people. Looking at courage as Holiday does shifts the way we use the word, and makes courage more accessible to more people in their daily lives.

 

Simply speaking with someone you have been avoiding or that is not part of your group is an act of courage. Emailing someone with decision making power and letting them know that you have a great idea or observation is an act of courage. Even a decision to step away from a comfortable night of television to be involved in a class, art project, or community event is an act of courage that we should recognize. These examples are just actions pulled from the perspective Holiday illuminated, but I’m sure there are more acts of courage running through your mind. Ultimately the thing to remember is that courage does not have to be something defined by heroism, but rather by simple action, by the decision to do something, even if it is small, and the fortitude to cary out that action.

Determining Good or Bad

Posted on by jabittan
What makes a situation good or bad? In his book, The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday follows the stoic logic of Marcus Aurelius to explain that our perceptions and opinions are how we determine whether any given situation is good or bad. How we decide to interpret any event shapes our actions, and we can move in directions that will be either beneficial or detrimental for us and our community, but it is always our choice based on our interpretations of the world around us. Holiday writes, “In fact, if we have our wits fully about us, we can step back and remember that situations, by themselves, cannot be good or bad. This is something — a judgment — that we, as humans beings, bring to them with our perceptions.”
It is obvious that the most horrific human experiences and sufferings in our species’ history are bad situations, but when we look at the daily experiences of our lives, we rarely face any challenges or obstacles that are inherently bad. We will face points of incredible bad luck and experience stretches of good luck, but it is ultimately our decision and perception that determines what we think of our luck. A flat tire when we are already late for work could be a very bad situation, but if we can take hold of our emotions then we can recognize that the tire on our car has no direct contact with the faculties of our mind, and therefore has no direct control over our thoughts. Allowing a random situation to take hold of our mind and shape our perception is an act of abandoning what makes us human.  If instead we ask ourselves how we have truly been harmed, and if we recognize that our lives are truly never made better or worse by nearly any situation, then we can grow and adapt.
When Holiday writes of using obstacles to find our direction, he is writing about building the ability in our mind to recognize that it is our reactions to obstacles that shapes the path of our lives. Obstacles present opportunities to grow, but in the moment it is never easy or encouraging to have our path obstructed by challenges. However, self-awareness and reflection on our thoughts can help us see the best ways to move forward. When we choose not to become angry and dejected over situations, we give our minds the power to be creative and resilient. Through greater perspective we recognize that nothing truly changes our lives besides our own mindset.