Tag: Value

Living With Others

Posted on by jabittan
I often think about status and about how we act to try to increase our status. When human beings were evolving and we lived in small tribes of 50 to 250 people, status mattered quite a bit. Higher status people were able to reproduce and pass their genes along, while lower status people were not able to reproduce and pass their genes on. As Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson explain in their book The Elephant In The Brain, we evolved to be status seeking machines, constantly aware of our status relative to others.

 

Today, this drive for status can be dangerous and drive us to act in ways that are more harmful toward ourselves and others than we often realize. Housing is an example that is coming to mind for me right now. Pressures to show our success lead to desires for houses with big common spaces for entertaining, even if we only host a party once every two years, and many people live with mortgages that max them out to afford the extra (and unnecessary) home space. In a race for status and signaling our wealth and importance, we are often willing to strain our finances to move up the social ladder.

 

What is worse, is that status is relative. For me to have more status among my co-workers or a group of friends, other people must necessarily lose status. Someone with more status than me will undoubtedly feel their status diminish if my status rises and begins to equal their status. The work we accomplish, the success we achieve, and the people we are, can fade away when we focus on status, and many of us we have experienced the desire to destroy another person’s life to either maintain or enhance our status.

 

Thich Nhat Hanh thinks this is a problem in his book The Miracle of Mindfulness.  Hanh discusses the ways that meditation can help us live a more mindful and intentional life, and specifically, he writes about the ways that we can improve our relationship and values. Writing more about actual life and death he says, “We can no longer be deluded by the notion that the destruction of other’s lives is necessary for our own survival.”

 

His advice is something we should apply to our selves when we think about and recognize our drive for ever greater status. At a certain point, we have to recognize how much our actions, thoughts, and decisions are driven by status, and we have to find a way to value ourselves outside of our relative status position. By doing this, we can live at ease with others and it will no longer be necessary to tear someone down for us to rise on the social ladder and feel better about ourselves. It is not necessary for us to ruin another person’s reputation and destroy their social status for us to live a full and meaningful life. Just as we should value the other person’s physical life, we should value the other person, and allow them to pursue status while we focus on providing real value to the world.

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.

A Theory of Others

Posted on by jabittan
How much do we value other people, and how much should we value other people? At the core of ethics lies this question, and philosopher Peter Singer addresses it in his book The Most Good You Can Do. Singer refers to Canadian philosopher Richard Keshen’s ideas to build his vision of what ethics look like in an age of reason and tackles questions of how we should think about other people. In his book Singer writes, “At the core of the reasonable person’s ethical life, according to Keshen, is a recognition that others are like us and therefore, in some sense, their lives and their well-being matter as much as our own.”

 

This piece of advice is very similar to the Golden Rule, but with one notable distinction. The Golden Rule puts us at the center, focusing on how we want to be treated, and then expanding outward. Singer’s foundation for an ethical person starts with other people and a recognition that the lives of others are just as important in the world as our own life. It builds on common humanity and pushes past areas where see human ethics frequently fall short such as, tribalism, merit, and perceived responsibility. If we cannot start from a place where we accept that other people’s lives are as valuable as our own, we cannot move forward with truly equitable ethical foundations.

 

Singer’s ethical base also reminds me of childhood developmental studies and Theory of Mind, which focuses on a young child’s early recognition that other children and people have thoughts and feelings. This recognition builds until we are able to perceive, predict, and interpret the thoughts, feelings, and ideas of others. From our own consciousness we can begin approaching other people as if they are rational conscious individuals just like us, even though we can never see their consciousness or prove that they have thoughts just like we do. Ultimately, Theory of Mind, a recognition of conscious thought in other people (often also projected onto other living and even inanimate objects around us) begins to shape the ethical foundation of our life.

 

This seems to be built into Singer’s worldview through recognition and reflection of life and consciousness. On a recent episode of Sam Harris’s podcast, Waking Up, guest Yuval Noah Harari discussed Rousseau who said, “I think, therefore I am,” but he was critical of Rousseau’s fictitious “I,” or the self  created by Rousseau out of nowhere and built on in story. Harari explained that the conclusion Rousseau should have reached is simply, “Thought exists, therefore thought exists.” This view does not diminish the reality of our consciousness, but helps us understand that the “I” discussed by Rousseau is simply the story that thought creates. We know that thought exists so it is not unreasonable to believe that others can think, and if others think and can build their own story to create a fictional “I,” then Singer’s ethical foundation still exists and is perhaps bolstered as we recognize the stories we tell ourselves and  as we accept that our thought is in no way fundamentally different from the conscious thought of others which gives rise to our imaginary “I.” Ultimately, we must realize that we are limited in how we experience the world and that others experience the world in the same way. Increasing our ability to think of others and interpret the stories they create for themselves helps us to further our ethical thinking and behavior.

Caring for the Workforce

Posted on by jabittan
Throughout his book Return on Character Fred Kiel addresses the importance of business leaders maintaining high moral standards and incorporating those standards into their businesses.  Kiel addresses the ways in which leading with strong values can have a positive impact on a companies bottom line.  He explains ways in which many companies fall short in bringing character to the front of their organization, and what benefits they miss out on when they fail to think beyond the numbers.  One of the big points in the book is Kiel’s focus on how the leadership team’s character translates into a happier and more engaged workforce. He writes, “A workforce that feels cared for is more productive than one that feels neglected, and that translates into bottom-line financial results.”

 

Through self-awareness and respect for everyone within a company, meaning everyone from the executive team to the newest employee with the lowest hourly wage, a CEO can begin to understand the human elements of the workplace to see how important it is that everyone feels secure, welcomed, and valued. If someone does not feel this way about their position in the company, Kiel would argue that they would not perform at their best. By thinking about others and trying to show ways that you value everyone as a human being, you can create the sense of caring that Kiel addresses in his quote.  When a leader makes an effort to show their respect and works to treat their employees like human beings then everyone wins. The employees feel as though they contribute in a meaningful way and they are willing to continue to work hard and become more productive.

Mental Complexity

Posted on by jabittan
“The term mental complexity refers to our ability to perceive the subtle nuances that separate similar ideas, issues, and events in the world around us—the gray areas that replace the strictly black-and-white understandings of the world that most of us have when we’er young.” Fred Kiel uses this quote to introduce us to the ways in which he believes great leaders think about the world.  For Kiel, a strong leader needs to have well developed moral ideas, an evolving and profound sense of self-awareness, and an ability to think of others as much as they think of themselves.  By introducing the idea of mental complexity Kiel is able to show how thorough our leaders’ though processes should be. They cannot adhere to simplistic guidelines or principles and they cannot apply blanket statements to all facets of life when so much of what happens in our life takes on a new meaning when you shift your perspective.

 

Kiel quotes psychologist Robert Kegan  and his idea of the self-transforming mind to continue his thoughts on mental complexity, “According to Kegan, the self-transforming mind is continually aware of not knowing everything—of understanding that every worldview is incomplete and that we can never know everything there is to know about anything.” This quote fits with Kiel’s idea of living life in more of a gray are as opposed to living in a dichotomy.  Life in this way can be frustrating and sometimes clouded, but learning to better think through the events and ideas surrounding us will allow us to live more dynamically and open to changes.  Rather than shutting anyone or any event out of our lives we can adjust to situations and people as situations change. Understanding that we all approach the world from our own perspectives and being able to see that we will not all thrive by approaching life from the same angle will give us a better grasp on how to create real progress in not just our own lives, but in the lives of those around us as well. Kiel argues that this is a necessary quality for a strong business leader because so often our leaders are faced with decisions that have many implications and conflicting interests for various groups of people such as shareholders, employees, local communities, and global customers. By thinking dynamically a leader with a strong moral backbone can help navigate these decisions in a way that will add value to the lives of more people than just those in the boardroom.

 

In the United States I think we do a particularly poor job of approaching the world with the type of mindset that Kiel describes.  In our politics we have seen our two major parties diverge from moderate and centrist ideas to become more extreme and more polarized, and I think a big part of this shift has to do with a lack of developing mental complexity in our world views’.  For some reason our country highly values strong and unwavering view points on everything from abortion, taxes, sports teams, and music. We have begun using our preferences for seemingly minor parts of our lives as cornerstone concepts of our identities, and this has pushed us to a place where we understand the world through dichotomies. Rather than living in the black and white and doing our best to think through and understand various points of view, we have tied ourselves to specific though processes on which we lean on to create our identity.  This is dangerous because it limits our ability to see nuances in thought processes, and it creates winners and losers in areas that cannot simply reduced to good or bad. When a leader, political or in business, ties themselves to a set identity and refuses to think of the world through multiple perspectives, they risk alienating others and preventing growth by failing to truly understand the choices available to them.

Leaders and Motivation

Posted on by jabittan
In his book Return on Character, author Fred Kiel address ideas of what motivates business leaders, especially during their climb to become CEO, and once they have reached the highest level of a company. He argues  that those who do not display a purely self-interested worldview and can become fully integrated with themselves bring greater success to the companies they work for.

Leaders who operate in a self-interested manner, according to Kiel, are five times less effective, meaning the companies return on the CEO’s salary is five times less, than those who Kiel would describe as virtuoso, or as having strong moral character.  He explains that those who are motivated purely by self-interest are not acknowledging other people and factors that play into their own lives as they pursue greater salaries, clout, and power.  By becoming a fully integrated human, connecting with others, sharing personal passions and drives, understanding and exploring personal motivations outside of salaries and power, and by understanding a full range of human nature, a CEO can bring more to the table and provide more for the company and lives of the employees within the company.

Kiel explains that Adam Smith’s views in The Wealth of Nations are unable to keep up with the complex lives and global economies of the world today. There may be leaders who are able to innovate and create things that better all of humanity, pushing all people forward through their success with an invisible hand, but Kiel believes that the more common result of CEOs and leaders acting in their own self-interest is more often the destruction of the common good as opposed to the elevation of the common good described by Smith.

His explanation as to why we need to be fully connected human beings in the world today lies with the fact that humans are motivated in complex and intertwined ways. CEOs, employees, and consumers are not simply motivated by economic forces. We face a range of emotions that force us to make decisions based on factors beyond price, salary, and the impact our choice will have on our bank account. Kiel’s thesis throughout his book is that leaders who fully accept, explore, and understand not just their own complex set of beliefs and motivations but that of their colleagues, employees, and customers will be more valuable for everyone. Colleagues will benefit from building relationships with an individual they can trust and grow alongside, employees will become more motivated when working for an individual who respects and advocates for them, and consumers will recognize the value of the products, services, and societal position of companies led by globally responsible leadership teams.

Value & Worth

Posted on by jabittan
One of the business books I read in the last year was Bob Berg’s book The Go Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea. The powerful business idea that Berg lays out in his book is summed up in the following quote, “Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.” This quote is told to the story’s protagonist, a young business man named Joe, early on by a successful colleague of his. Joe was struggling to reach his quarterly goals, even though he felt as though he was working harder than he ever had, and his senior colleague was giving him advice about how to become more successful. This simple idea, and lessons from a new mentor, help push Joe in a new direction thanks to a new way of thinking about life, relationships, and business.

I enjoyed Berg’s writing because the lessons he explains in his short book about business can truly be expanded to other areas of ones life. Berg’s quote above shows that in business when you focus on providing a great value to others you increase the overall worth of yourself and the products you offer for those you serve.  He explains in his book that you are allowed to ask for payment or reward, which can be quite significant, but he explains that when the value you provide is greater than the payment you receive, you become indispensable.  Berg in his quote is shifting the idea of setting out to directly build your own self worth and reach success. He shows that one truly becomes successful by thinking of others and looking for ways to provide greater value for those with whom one interacts.  As we build the value we provide to others, we are able to ask for more in payment, and the more we serve and the greater the value we create for all, the more we can ask for in return.

This can play out well in relationship because of the shift of focus from, “What can I get out of this?” to “What can I put into this?”. When we focus on a relationship the way many think that businesses focus on customers, we would try to minimize the relationship and our input into the relationship to maximize our effort and efficiency.  We would measure ourselves relative to others in a game of mental accounting to make sure we were both playing fair in the effort and sacrifice made for our relationship.  But when we think of ourselves in a relationship the way that Berg thinks of a successful business, we are able to change our view and think of how we can put more into the relationship and what more we can do for the other person. We stop our game of mental accounting and in any given situation we think of the other before ourselves. This does not mean that we give up all of our desires to simply give all control to the other person, but it means that we put their happiness as a focus beyond our own, knowing that they will make a grater effort to help us and participate in things we enjoy as well.

Giving and Success

Posted on by jabittan
Bob Berg wrote the book The Go Giver as a story that opens up the importance of relationships and having a positive focus while trying to reach our goals and find the level of success that we desire.  Berg focuses his story on business and sales, but what he writes can be applied to many areas of our life, including areas outside of business.  One of the cornerstones to Berg’s book is a focus on giving and providing value for others that helps one build, in an almost oblique path, toward the success  they want to see.  In one section a character in Berg’s book states, “You can’t go in two directions at once.  Trying to be successful with making  money as your goal is like trying to travel a superhighway at seventy miles an hour with your eyes glued to the rearview mirror.”  Through this quote, Berg is addressing the idea that our goals are not always best served by simply diving in one direction after one idea.

 

For Berg, being a complete human being and thinking of others is of greater importance than anything else, especially when it comes to business. He argues throughout the book that those who reach the greatest level of financial success don’t just wake up and think how can I become super wealthy? Instead, they wake up thinking about how they can solve problems for others and provide greater value for others. By focusing outside of themselves they find solutions to help people, and they do so with the idea of assisting others and doing things that benefit them first, knowing that they will be able to find rewards afterwards.  Often times we seem to think it is impure to want to assist others for our own personal gain. I think, and I suspect that Berg would agree, it is ok if we have a motive related to ourselves in helping others. If we decide to spend the time clearing trash from a street because we don’t want to see it and we know that others will appreciate it, we are still doing a good thing for the community even if we were primarily motivated by our own gain in the end. Where Berg would say this mindset needs to end is when we are setting something up that benefits us far more than it benefits others.  Taking actions and presenting them as though they help all when truly they only marginally benefit anyone other than yourself misses the point, especially if you create an atmosphere around yourself in which your act as though your behaviors truly assist everyone.

 

Ultimately, the idea Berg shares in The Go Giver is the idea that we can drive toward huge successes and still be good people if we focus more on providing value to those around us as opposed to looking at the world for the value it can provide to us. When we focus first and foremost on others and helping them, we find ways in which we can grow, and we build relationships that will return something positive to us.  Through these relationships, and through an idea of giving, we find a path toward success that is well rounded and more enjoyable.

Respecting the Well-Being of Others

Posted on by jabittan
Peter Singer focuses on the ideas regarding our interactions with others throughout his book The Most Good You Can Do, and he continually returns to the idea of how we value our life relative to the lives of our family members and the lives of those beyond our family.  Singer argues that the effective altruist movement would not be able to spread if people did not have the ability to empathize with others, and if people could not find ways in which they recognized that all human life holds the same value.

 

Singer references Richard Keshen, a Canadian philosopher, to explain the ways that effective altruists may view other people in the world. “At the core of the reasonable person’s ethical life, according to Keshen, is a recognition that others are like us and therefore, in some sense, their lives and  their well-being matter as much as our own.” Prior to this quote Signer quotes Keshen to explain that a reasonable person is someone who makes decisions and develops beliefs that are backed by evidence which can be defended. Their evidence may still be criticized and challenged by others, but the evidence can be used in a rational way to reach a real conclusion.  The base mindset of a reasonable person is that their thinking is unbiased, and the unbiased nature of their thought means that it is not influenced by personal factors and takes a more objective view of the world.

 

As I write this I am absolutely able to understand the importance of viewing the lives of others as equal in value to our own, but I am conflicted with Keshen’s views of reason and do not feel as though they completely add toward the point he is making.  I question whether or not we are able to take a truly objective view of the world regardless of the reason behind our thinking and regardless of how well we try to live without biases.  While I agree that living with the principal that the lives of all members of society are equal in value, I feel as though there are personal biases that have pushed me in this direction. I have been guided by more than just  rational thought, and I know that I am affected by my biases even if I don’t notice them.
I also wonder if the same argument presented by Keshen in support of effective altruism can be used to demonstrate the differences between the lives of those in society and ultimately used to show the importance of keeping wealth and resources within a close family unit.  I do not argue with Singer’s main point, but I am conflicted with Keshen’s view of a rational person, and I am not sure that his definition helps us truly understand the thought process and identity of an effective altruist.

Creating Value Along an Unpredictable Path

Posted on by jabittan
Colin Wright in his book Considerations shares a bit of excellent advice for those of us who are not 100% clear on our goals.  He states,

 

“Focusing on producing value in everything you do serves as consistency when all other options in the entire world are open to you. You can head in any direction, and pursue any future you want, and though you may pivot many times between ‘here’ and ‘there’, maintaining a focus on value will ensure that no wrong turn is wasted time, and no goal is so nebulous that it’s completely untethered.”

 

This quote really speaks to me because it highlights our unclear paths, gears us toward success with the understanding that we may not have immediate success or always make decisions which helps us reach the success we desire.  What Write focuses on is changing our mindset by focusing on ways in which we can produce value for the world and ourselves.

 

Often times I find myself frustrated because I am not sure exactly what path I want to take in life. Sometimes it seems as though I do not have a clear direction and goal in my career, and it is hard for me to envision success and a landing point for success.  What Wright’s quote shows is that we do not have to have a tangible goal if we are 100% focused on our own growth and providing value to the world. If we focus on value then our efforts will be meaningful and we will develop new connections, learn more about ourselves, and begin to see opportunities for us to develop our own spot in the universe.

 

The quote also shows that success does not have to be immediate for us. It has often been written and repeated that millennials are too entitled and that my generation does not expect to work for their goals, but rather that they expect to be handed a trophy and applauded without putting in years of effort and work. Wright’s quote is a bit of advice that can help combat the pressures and thoughts  that millennials have harbored to create the attitudes of entitlement and the expectations of quick success. Wright shows that we do not have to be successful immediately and he explains that our successes will truly only arise once we have created a habit of focusing on providing value to others. This value production will lead to real, tangible growth for the individuals, and it will prepare us for opportunities to become truly successful. It will not be overnight, but overtime all of our small victories and all of the value we send into the world will build up to create a platform of success for us.