assumptions and exhaustion
some thoughts
When I taught strategy, I had certain steps I advocated as essential for success. One is, you won’t be surprised to know if you have read any prior column, to identify as clearly as possible what I envision as an endstate or outcome of my efforts, whether it’s to lose 50 pounds, get to the doctor’s office, or go on holiday. I also like to push myself to ask how any action or specific method will achieve that outcome. Tying a dog to a post, then beating him with a newspaper is highly unlikely to lead to a housebroken puppy; providing treats as you walk step by step through the various components of the process of learning to go outside to do his/her “thing” instead of on the kitchen floor is a perfect example. Psychologists (and the incomparable Susan the Incomparable Puppy Whisperer featured in her local central Pennsylvania newspaper just this week) will verify that positive incentives work infinitely better than negatives.
At least as important as anything else about orchestrating actions to achieve an outcome is clarifying my assumptions about the context where I am operating. This means asking myself what I think is going on, how do others view things similarly or differently from me, and why do I think others might differ from me on something; these are minimum questions I need answer as I pursue a project big or small.
This amazing clarification would help everyone as we are truly talking past each other on virtually everything these days.
We are in a world assuming everyone thinks exactly as we do. (Surely they do, right?)
Danger Danger Danger Danger. We most definitely are not all thinking the same way about the starting point for our decisions or the operating environment we are in or much of anything else right now. Threats, outcomes, who to trust, who not to trust, motives involved, and so forth are all places were assumptions diverge wildly.
Additionally, some assumptions are demonstrably correct while others are equally false. That matters if one values accuracy but in today’s world holding assumptions seems more important than validating them as factual. But people are also clinging to utterly false assumptions because they need to or fear surrendering their beliefs or simply don’t bother to check among a raft of reasons.
Clarifying assumptions doesn’t guarantee you’ll be successful in what you seek but avoiding that step is almost invariably central to failure. Clarifying helps you determine whether you have any chance of success while showing you where your interlocutor starts with her or his basic beliefs. Not all problems seem soluable, but without knowing what you or anyone is thinking, solving any of these challenges is infinitely harder.
The assumption currently in vogue in some quarters is that anyone presented with new, accurate facts will encourage those holding false assumptions to change them. I don’t think we can be sure this is valid at all. What we are seeing is that assumption about a cause and effect is not necessarily true. This has probably always been true but it’s more relevant because the nature of the differences in assumptions seems so much more profound. Israel versus Palestinians or Iranians, China versus Taiwan on the latter’s existence as a different country, Democrats versus Republicans about the country’s future or the nature of the two candidates or the legitimacy of an election. The list of fundamentally divergent assumptions appears endless right now.
If you are negotiating with others, you need recognize and identify why the absolute drop dead item you can’t move them from is so crucial. Israelis know that whole segments of the world seek to erase their country from the map so they feel vulnerable. That is an assumption which is demonstrably true and widespread. Is there a manner by which Israelis do not feel under interminable threat against their very existence?
Hard to find these days. And the other major challenges, whether at home of afar, seem equally tough.
Does this mean that no strategies can reconcile these differences? Not necessarily but I am more discouraged than ever. Why?
Contemporary societies revolve around information, almost invariably provided on the web. The web, however, is the ultimate free market for ideas. The free market, after all, is unfettered except for those who choose to accept (buy) or reject (not buy) a commodity. The free market doesn’t necessarily mean a market with unerringly healthy products, in this case information. That is a problem. This means we have no traditional “arbiter” or “authority” in the ways we have in the past, whether it’s on validity or absurdity. Information freely exists and is accessible to anyone able to access the web (this definitely constrains billions of people due to government firewalls in communist societies or financial priorities in places where poverty places a premium on spending for other goods). People talk about the wild Wild West but that is the World Wide Web.
The result is that nonsense flies around the globe instantaneously with no correctives except perhaps the supply and demand on that information.
China seeks a web that is automatically more constrained. In this era of weirdo ideas, such as the 2016 election rubbish that led some guy from North Carolina to drive to D.C. to “save children” he read that Hilary Clinton had locked in a basement beneath a pizza parlour. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? That is weird so China’s suggestion seems to ahve some merit.
Until we consider that China’s desires to constrain information are way more political (not partisan but political; there is a great difference between the two) than what we are comfortable seeing. China wants to assure the CCP retains power so it will limit criticisms, use of religion and a range of other aspects of public discourse we find foundational. So, the China caution is that how to address this supply and demand of rubbish is a double edged problem.
Over the past almost nine years, we have heard about “alternate” facts which is Orwellian, of course. How can they be facts and alternate at the same time?
In the United States and western democracies, the frustration that institutions have “failed” exacerbates this willingness to hear alternate versions of assumptions. In this country, additionally, we have always sought to prevent the concentration of knowledge, like the accumulation of power, in single sources is also leading many to assume that traditional sources of information must be afflicted with evil intentions. Americans do not like the concentration of power in a single person or body; this year’s election will test that proposition.
I see little evidence we can reverse these trends on radically splitting assumptions in the short term, thus reinforcing my unease that divisions only grow deeper across western societies. No single vote nor political movement can cure the problem at once nbecause it’s become so deeply ingrained in people’s belief systems: the “other side” is wrong, regardless how ludicrous some of anyone’s assumptions may be (drinking bleach will end a Covid infection is in this category).
The hope is that constant exposure to those with assumptions different from our own can wear down resistence over the course of time. That is a hope rather than a guarantee but each step that prevents such exposure from eliciting serious conversations retards the process further.
Hope without action behind it is not a strategy, so what steps might help?
We should embrace small steps to stop retarding any possibility of understanding the other side. Memes, jokes, internet sub chats circulating self-righteous attacks on the other side (all of which I sadly confess I engage in at times) are these retarding steps. We all must think about our own assumptions and why we are so sure we are correct but others wrong. We need converse with those who challenge us rather than throwing out the messages they send in exasperation.
If we are going to see medium to long-term reconciliation of assumptions—and that assumes people want that ameliorated condition, then it takes ever bit the same amount of work as any job or any political campaign for election. The chasm between assumptions is proving wide and as deep as the Marianas Trench in the western Pacific so the steps will take time and repeated, repeated, repeated effort.
We alone made this distrust and diversion happen so it’s our job, if we accept it, to work towards re-proaching each other as a step to fix it. Some assumptions are not worth changing (no, mushrooms or eggplant are not part of my diet and you can’t make me eat them) but the basics characteristics of religion, ethnicity, gender, or freckles are immutables that we can learn to tolerate, if not embrace, if we learn they are not actually kryptonite. To do so, however, definitely requires a willingness to focus on changing ourselves and our own behavior instead of invariably deeming others the root of the problem. That can be at the nation-state or family level and everything in between.
Just a thought as I am personally exhausted by the clashing assumptions and refusal to consider the implications of these clashes long term. It’s easy to focus assumptions on everyone but the one person over whom each of us has any power. I don’t think I need prolong why the action of believing or rejecting assumptions has consequences.
The Chinese phrase, ascribed to Lao Tzi, is that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Rebuttals? Questions? Comments? I welcome any of them as I do not have all of the answers. I appreciate your time on this turgid subject but assumptions are most fundamental to so much in life.
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The sun found us again this morning. It was a pretty walk around Eastport where the speedwell is attracting lots of pollinators these days. Bring them on!
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Be well and be safe. FIN