Living Knowledge

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One of the best qualities of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything is that it is so well written. This is wonderful for the aspiring chef, for he needs to return to the book often for reference and assurance, and it’s pleasant to find a voice and personality in the text rather than just the data for ingredients and process. But perhaps the best quality of this particular cookbook is that the author pushes his reader to action. 

Often our knowledge becomes darkened because we fail to put things into practice. For when we have totally neglected to practice something, our memory of it will gradually disappear.

—Mark the Ascetic

Okay, this makes sense: we remember what we do by practice. But ever since “Google” became a verb, it’s easier than ever to find what we’ve forgotten. Which leads to the question: In our ever-expanding human knowledge, what’s worth remembering? And especially since time is limited in a way that knowledge is not, what’s worth remembering by practice?

Perhaps the words of a more modern psychologist, Jamie Moran, can help answer this question: “Western rationalism as always mistakenly valued theory over practice, seeing practice as merely the ‘application’ of theory. But practice is a domain on its own, and so the practitioner discovers things, and undergoes things, that the theoretician either could never have imagined or dreamt of, or even if they were partially foreseen, they prove importantly different when they emerge and are encountered on the ground.”

So what is the knowledge that is so important that you’re willing to have it expanded and yourself changed by putting it into practice?

Pixels and Persons

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There’s a difference between knowing someone and knowing about someone. It’s the difference between persons and pixels. 

The Greek word for “person”—prosopon—also means “face”. Before the digital era, if you wanted an image of someone’s face, you had to hire a painter or sculptor to create it. Then came photography and now—digital images, which are essentially visual displays of data.

Digital images are getting better and better, and as a result, the conversation about digital privacy is getting louder. As Seth Godin asserted in a recent podcast episode that inspired this reflection, people don’t like to be surprised by what a stranger could know about them.

But knowing about someone is not the same as knowing a person.

What’s the difference? Being present. Being attentive. Being curious. And the magical reciprocity that happens when while listening deeply to someone else, you get to know yourself again or in a new way, simultaneously affirming the humanity of both yourself and the other person.

We will make the digital images even clearer and the machines even more efficient and the robots even smarter. Because we can. Marketing based on personal information will get even more precise. But as this happens, I hope we will ask ourselves the kinds of questions the Amish ask and avoid falling into an unconscious Faustian pact with technology:

What might I lose from buying a product or service that is done by a machine rather than a person? Is what I might gain worth what I might lose? Where else could I get what I might lose?

If they don’t already, the computers will eventually know more about us than we know about ourselves. But they will never know us, for we are unique and unrepeatable mysteries, always changing and becoming someone different. Of course, we will try to program this into the algorithm, trying to close the gap between a person’s rate of change and the data trail left by that change. But the created thing, no matter how powerful or intelligent it becomes, will never truly know its creator.

Because to know a person truly is to know that you can never truly know that person.

Click here for Seth Godin’s thoughts on digital privacy.

Click here for a short article about the Amish and new technologies.

First Things First

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Ignorance is no excuse. 

This adage usually refers to wrong action, like running a red light because you didn’t know that when you’ve crossed the line, you’ve crossed the line. But ignorance is also no excuse for a lack of action.

If you have a wise quotation to share but can’t think of a creative, memorable way to share it, that doesn’t matter. Just share the quotation. After all, any creative frame you can provide is not that important. It’s the wisdom that matters. So here it is:

Do not say: “I do not know what is right; therefore I am not to blame when I fail to do it.” For if you did all the good about which you do know, what you should do next would then become clear to you, as if you were passing through a house from one room to another. It is not helpful to know what comes later before you have done what comes first…

—Mark the Ascetic

Right action is always the goal. Don’t worry that you don’t know everything. You never will. Just do the good you know to do because humble action will clarify the next step for you.

What we do is more important than what we know.

Two Life-giving Practices

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This is new year’s resolution season, and among the most popular from year to year are those focused on bodily health. On that subject, here’s a morsel of ancient wisdom with perhaps an unexpected twist:

A monk should always act as if he were going to die tomorrow; yet he should treat his body as if it were going to live for many years. The first cuts off the inclination to listlessness, and makes the monk more diligent; the second keeps his body sound and his self-control well balanced. —Evagrius

Evagrius highlights self-control as the key virtue for physical health. This is particularly relevant to those of us who live in affluent societies, where so many of our illnesses are related to abundance. Excess sugar leads to diabetes. Cancer is the unregulated proliferation of cells. While we have developed amazing medicines to treat these illnesses of abundance, we also know that self-control and moderation are among the best treatments and preventative measures. But we struggle to practice these virtues. 

It’s possible that the other half of Evagrius’ advice can help us in this struggle. He asserts that acting as if we were going to die tomorrow cuts off the inclination to listlessness, that depressed condition in which a person lacks energy or enthusiasm. This may not make any sense to many modern people, who might understandably ask how a daily remembrance of death, a practice some might call “morbid”, could cut off an inclination to depression instead of fueling it. 

It works because most people have something worth living for—a person we care about, for example, or a cause for which we’re fighting, or a responsibility we take seriously. When that’s the case, the intentional, momentary remembrance of death can paradoxically be one of the most life-giving practices we can observe. It can intensify our focus on what matters most, motivate us like nothing else could, and as a result free us from a listlessness or depression that we’re tempted to numb with materials and practices that are bad for our bodies, certain types and amounts of foods and drugs being the most obvious. 

If the forgetfulness of what matters most creates the steady drip of a low-grade depression that renders us more susceptible to the self-indulgences that sap our bodily health, the intentional remembrance of death creates a quick splash of high-grade pain—sort of like a cold shower in the morning—that can produce clarity, thankfulness, and urgency for meaningful action.

In this season of resolutions, how could your life change if you pursued your longer-term goals in the light of a daily remembrance of death? Especially if resolutions haven’t worked well for you, perhaps it’s worth an experiment.

Anger, Self-Will, and Leadership

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A neighbor across the street has a customized license plate that reads: BN2SELF. Perhaps it’s a bit uncharitable of me, but I don’t find myself particularly interested in getting to know this person, let alone follow her. 

In one of his texts on guarding the intellect, Saint Isaiah the Solitary writes, “Without anger a man cannot attain purity: he has to feel angry with all that is sown in him by the enemy…He who wishes to acquire [this] anger must uproot all self-will…”

One doesn’t need to believe in God, sin, or the devil to profit from this text.

Isaiah’s statement may come as a surprise to those who expect a monk to be all about peace and serenity. He recognizes our need for anger, with the important caveat that it is directed toward the right target: anything that enters our minds or hearts that undermines our alignment with the greater good. The purity of which Isaiah writes is purity of the mind, the state of being untroubled and undistracted by negative thoughts and desires. All of us have surely experienced the opposite and how that state of mind negatively affects our work and relationships.

But what about uprooting self-will? Some may dismiss this activity as specifically monastic or Christian and irrelevant to others. I’d argue that it’s not. We’ve all seen coaches yelling at their players for doing their own thing instead of following the plan. Self-will undermines both teamwork and community.

This topic also calls to mind Jim Collins’ famous description of a “level five” leader as one with a combination of personal humility and professional will. A great leader subordinates self-will to professional will in service of the company’s mission and vision.

Cutting our self-will paves the way both to the external, public victory of a team in the marketplace and to internal, personal victory on the battlefield of the mind because it helps us subordinate what we want to what we need, and our own good to the greater good. 

Fueling our self-will, on the contrary, turns the crosshairs of anger’s targeting scope toward other people who would thwart us, like the person who cuts us off in traffic, and makes them the enemy instead of the thoughts and desires that undermine our alignment with the greater good. 

To start shifting the crosshairs of anger’s targeting scope to a worthier target, answer this question: To what are you committed that is greater than yourself?

Machine Unlearning

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The assembly line is perhaps the most iconic image of the Industrial Revolution. Situated in a cavernous factory, filled with smoke or the din of whirring metal, sweaty workers attend to their machines, drilling or joining the product as it rolls by, each according to his role.

In Becoming Attached, Robert Karen looks through the lens of attachment theory at the psychosocial effects of the Industrial Revolution on individuals and their relationships. Beginning with a description of the centrality of the family unit in preindustrial society, Karen explores the roots of many of the pressures we experience in society today: the pressure to compete and win (along with an emphasis on ambition and the fear of failure), to make your place in the world, to produce more and faster, and to keep moving until you achieve those goals.

Without falling prey to a naive, romantic nostalgia for the past, Karen makes a compelling case that in some ways we have quite naturally become harder and colder—more out of touch with our emotional needs—as we began to go out of the home to work in environments that lacked the familiar connections of preindustrial society. The modern emphasis on emotional intelligence in the workplace is just one response to the loss of the familiar closeness of the cottage industry. 

These are not new ideas, and they bring us back to the tension between love and power, community and technology, depicted so aptly in the symbolism of Tolkien’s ring of power or in the Star Wars story. It seems that the exponential rise of the machine and the power it puts in our hands has made it more and more difficult to cultivate community. John Bowlby, the pioneer of attachment theory, added mobility to the list of enemies of community: “In days gone by, people stuck around, they saw a lot of each other. But this business of moving every five years from one place to another is exceedingly destructive.”

As Thomas Wolfe wrote, you can’t go home again. We can’t turn back the clock to the pre-industrial days, so what can we do? Maybe the way forward is a focus not on the home as the unifying principle, nor on the workplace, but on the neighborhood. Perhaps we can create neighborhoods that are more integrated with businesses, where at least some of the people who live physically close to each other can go to work together. If better neighborhoods are a solution to the disintegration, fragmentation, and pressure that so many people experience, let’s ask: what makes a neighborhood good?

Lose a Little

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Can the advice of a 4th century desert monk be relevant to someone in the 21st century marketplace? At first, the following bit of practical advice from Evagrius Ponticus doesn’t seem to make much business sense:

When buying or selling you can hardly avoid sin. So in either case, be sure you lose a little in the transaction. If possible it is best to place such business in the hands of someone you trust.

from Asceticism and Stillness in the Solitary Life

You’re probably not going to read something like this in business school. Doesn’t it make good business sense not to compromise on profit margins? Doesn’t “lose a little” feel like allowing someone to take advantage of you?

But there’s at least one way to understand this advice that doesn’t mean compromising on principles:

Generosity.

When you decide intentionally to “lose a little” in the form of a gift you freely give, whether during the transaction or after it, the benefits are numerous.

First and most literally from the saying, generosity helps you avoid sin. If that word doesn’t make any sense to you or if you find it offensive for some reason, skip this short paragraph. There are other benefits. But for those who do attach importance to the concept of sin: the most obvious one from which generosity can help protect us is greed.

Second, generosity can be an expression of thankfulness, without which a certain depth of happiness may not be possible.

Third, generosity is an opportunity to do good not just for ourselves but for others. Why not use sales revenue as an opportunity to give to the charities or non-profits of your choice? 

Fourth, generosity builds relationships. It delights the person with whom you are transacting. Chick-fil-A does this to me all the time. I’ve lost track of the number of chicken sandwiches I’ve received as outright gifts or in exchange for my feedback about their products and service. 

Sometimes, giving away a product or service—whether your own or someone else’s—can even generate more business. If they like it, they may decide to buy it. This can be a mere sales tactic, of course, but if it’s an act of real generosity, you don’t lose your reward even if more business doesn’t come from it.

Finally, a true gift signals to the other person that there’s a bigger, more important motivation for you than profit. What that is will differ from person to person or from company to company, but in this age of cultural fragmentation, we’re all looking for the others who have the same values we ourselves hold.

Maybe that old monk’s advice is still relevant. You can always try it and see for yourself.

Beyond Trick or Treat

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In the folktale Stone Soup, a hungry travel-worn boy comes to a big house and asks the old woman who lives there for something to eat. The old lady says she has nothing to give him. Little does she know that this is a “trick or treat” scenario. The boy replies that if she gives him a stone, he can make soup from that stone. The old lady had never heard of something so bizarre—“Make soup from a stone? Fancy that.”—so she complies with the boy’s request. When the pot of water comes to a boil, she comments, “This soup is cooking fast.” The boy says it would cook even faster with some onions. The old lady throws in a few onions from her garden and soon says, “This soup smells good.” The boy replies that it would smell even better with some carrots. 

Unlike the old lady, you probably get the picture now and don’t need the play-by-play account of every ingredient thrown into the pot. You might dislike the boy because he’s a trickster. On the other hand, you might find the story delightful, especially if you feel compassion for the hungry lad who wasn’t given any food by the resident of the big house, or if you think the old lady had a trick coming to her for lying. Regardless of what you think of the folktale, if we strip away “trick or treat” from the plot, we’re left with some powerful ideas:

First is the power of curiosity. It’s the special gift of innocence and childhood, usually dulled by time and experience, and hardened into a protective skepticism. Both curiosity and skepticism are rooted in the fact that there’s so much we don’t know, but curiosity is open to discovery in a way the other isn’t. The old lady could have been skeptical instead of curious. If she had, she might have seen the boy’s trick and shut the door on him. She would have saved herself a few onions and carrots, but she would have deprived herself of something greater.

Once the boy suggests they eat the soup, the old lady says, “Stop! This soup is indeed fit for a king. Now I will set a table fit for a king.” And she takes out her best dishes and tablecloth for their meal. This illustrates another powerful idea: that giving transforms the giver. The soup was not just to the boy’s benefit. It elevated the old lady to a nobler mindset. Generosity, even on the smallest scale, is a quality of kings and queens.

Another powerful idea is that generosity connects us to others. It establishes a relationship, whether we’re on the giving or the receiving end. The boy and the old lady were strangers but ended up sitting down at a table with each other, which reminds me of a beautiful initiative of my alma mater. Without generosity to bring them together, the boy and the old lady would have remained alone.

One last insight from the folktale is that even the smallest gift can make a big difference. That’s good news since no one has unlimited resources. We can’t always give as much as we want to every worthy cause. But if we’re open to being surprised, if we’re open to wonder and curiosity, this attitude can help us open our hands and cast something small—something we can afford to give—into the proverbial pot. And if enough people throw in their onions, carrots, beef bones, salt, pepper, butter, and barley, something magical might happen: we all just might be able to enjoy a bowl of soup fit for a king.

The Dependency Paradox

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Independence can be deadly.

Yet even with poignant stories like that of Chris McCandless, it’s easy to get caught up in a perpetual pursuit of independence—especially if you’re an American who hears this siren song every 4th of July. Since there is no wax with which to stop our ears from hearing this enticement, let’s turn to other voices for protective balance.

Stephen Covey described a journey from dependence to independence to interdependence. This tracks with the natural course of human development, which anyone who has worked with adolescents knows. Covey returns to an appreciation of dependence in the form of interdependence. While this linear progression makes sense, integrating an insight from attachment theory adds another dimension to it. 

In their book Attached, Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller describe what is known in the field of attachment research as the dependency paradox: “The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.” This reality reaches all the way back to our experience of childhood, as the classic “strange situation” experiments show. Incorporating this understanding into Covey’s progression transforms it from a journey of abstract ideas to something as easy to understand as a baby’s first steps.

Although Attached is essentially a practical guide for the relationship with one’s “significant other,” the significance of the dependency paradox reaches far beyond that particular kind of relationship. It applies to every interpersonal context—in any work-related relationship, on any team—but not just in the obvious way that if you’re not functionally dependable, you’ll be fired. It explains why emotional intelligence’s emphasis on a relationally safe workplace is so important. If we really want our coworkers to innovate, excel, and grow, they need to have a secure relational base with us.

To experience the dependency paradox to a greater degree, here are three of the five principles of effective communication from Attached:

  1. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Being honest about your feelings, even if it makes you temporarily vulnerable, is a prerequisite for an emotionally healthier relationship.
  2. Focus on your needs. But with an important caveat: those needs must take the other’s well being into consideration, as well. If you’re not working toward a win-win scenario, this becomes merely selfish.
  3. Don’t blame. Very few things can shut down communication faster. You can minimize the chance of defensiveness and retaliation by avoiding blame and not initiating difficult conversations when you’re angry.

Independence is attractive because freedom is a basic human need, but it gets dangerous when it cuts us off from awareness of our other needs. 

Independence is like reaching the top of a mountain. Most pictures of mountain climbers feature a solitary person on a peak with a breathtaking view. But as you reach for the sky, remember that the mountaintop of independence is no place to stay. While it may be gratifying and even necessary to summit, it’s cold and harsh and supports no life. Life is below the tree line, helping others climb up.

The image of one of those trees further down the mountain is a much more helpful image for those who want to reach for the sky. The further your roots grow down into the humble ground, the higher your branches will reach toward the glorious sun.

Humble Inquiry

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Charlie Brown’s teacher is everywhere. There are lots of people who claim to have answers—and who are quite eager to share them with you. The minority on the other end of the spectrum, who have far more questions and who exercise reserve in asking them, can be paradoxically powerful problem-solvers.

We assume that telling has more value than asking. In Humble Inquiry, Edgar H. Schein challenges this assumption. He writes: “We are biased towards telling instead of asking because we live in a pragmatic, problem-solving culture in which knowing things and telling others what we know is valued. We also live in a structured society in which building relationships is not as important as task accomplishment.” While these cultural forces are significant, there are still more powerful forces of human nature at work. “Having to ask is a sign of weakness or ignorance, so we avoid it as much as possible,” Schein writes. After all, who wants to project weakness or ignorance? A saber-toothed tiger in the next cubicle might see it and pounce over the partition. 

Sadly, there is a high price to pay when leaders, managers, or others in positions of authority value telling over asking. Schein reports that “in many accidents and disasters, a common finding is that lower ranking employees had information that would have prevented or lessened the consequences of the accident, but either it was not passed up to higher levels, or it was ignored, or it was overridden.” Why does this happen? Although most senior managers assert that they are receptive to input from their subordinates, those same subordinates often report that they don’t feel safe bringing troublesome news to their supervisors or that lack of response or acknowledgement from those bosses led them to conclude that their contribution wasn’t valued.

Although it is not always easy to develop or maintain, a habit of humble inquiry is a simple and effective solution to this problem. Schein writes, “Asking temporarily empowers the other person in the conversation and temporarily makes me vulnerable.” At the core of humble inquiry is a paradoxical dynamic of power: in that moment in a relationship when we let go of our own power (or the power we think we have), and empower the other person for that moment, the relationship receives power and strength that lasts beyond that moment. 

If you want to build a habit of humble inquiry, here are three practices inspired by Schein’s work—three “A”s, if that helps you remember them—that can help:

  1. Assume nothing. Telling, as opposed to asking, puts the other person down, implying that he or she does not already know what I’m about to tell him or her.
  2. Allow curiosity to lead you. Here’s a link to a reflection by one of my mentors on the importance of curiosity.
  3. Access your ignorance. This may sound a bit harsh, but it’s a reality that we don’t know everything. And as the knowledge-producing capacity and speed of technology increases, accessing our ignorance will become more and more necessary.

The result of humble inquiry are relationships with a higher level of trust and interdependency. These relationships develop when we are willing to invest respectful attention in others, which goes beyond the functionality of a task-oriented relationship to the place of a vulnerability inspired by true courage. 

And if we go beyond the intellectual virtue of humble inquiry, we arrive at the spiritual virtues of silence and listening, traits that bring to mind an altogether different sort of teacher than Charlie Brown’s:

It is reported that in the early days of his move to the desert, Evagrius visited an old desert father, perhaps Macarius of Egypt, and asked him, “Tell me some piece of advice by which I might be able to save my soul.” The reply was, “If you wish to save your soul, do not speak before you are asked a question.”