Small Talk – the Essential Lubricant

Posted on August 15, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo

 

 

 

 

Small Talk – those polite conversations about unimportant or uncontroversial matters, especially as engaged in on social occasions. Yuck. Talking about unimportant matters? WHO DOES THAT? Why waste my time?

Well, it turns out that those polite conversations are the oil in the gears of life. They are often the encounters that change who we are. We can actually learn things! And, for those who suffer from depression, the act of getting “out of oneself” can be the best tonic.

This post, adapted from a piece written years ago in Psychology Today, will give you perhaps a new way of looking at it.

Do you dread trading niceties with retail clerks and assorted other strangers when you are out in public? Do you go out of your way to avoid neighbors and co-workers so that you do not have to engage in idle chitchat about the weather and other equally inoffensive topics? Does your blood run cold when you receive an invitation to a cocktail party?

If this sounds like you, then you have an aversion to small talk.

Some people hate small talk because they perceive it as a waste of time and as an impediment to a meaningful conversation; others may hate it simply because they are not good at it.

How you feel about small talk depends to some extent on where you are from. Stereotypically, Americans are more tolerant of small talk than people from other places and expect to encounter it in social situations. Scandinavians, on the other hand, are more comfortable with awkward silences than with awkward small talk, and the British TV show Very British Problems devoted an entire episode to the excruciating tactics that many Brits will resort to in an attempt to avoid small talk.

There are also consistent gender differences in how small talk plays out. While everyone likes to talk about the weather, women are far more likely to engage in compliments – about each other’s clothing and appearance, etc. – whereas men are more likely to employ playful insults. In both cases, people are signaling a desire to establish a mutually comfortable level of involvement in the conversation.

Is There a Downside to Small Talk?

Many critiques of small talk refer to a demonstration organized by Duke University Psychologist Dan Ariely as evidence that there might be some real advantages from banishing small talk from our daily lives. See an INC Magazine article about it here: Banning Small Talk From Your Conversations Makes You Happier, Says Science (Ask Any of These 12 Questions for a Change) | Inc.com

Ariely arranged a dinner party for 27 guests with the following rule: No small talk allowed!

All guests were required to arrive at exactly the same time, and the hosts provided index cards with meaningful conversation starters. The guests were required to police their conversations by sounding the alarm and changing direction if they perceived that the conversation was drifting in the direction of small talk. The party turned out to be a rousing success, and those in attendance confirmed that it was one of the most interesting and stimulating social events that they had ever attended.

Small talk haters are also quick to cite a study by psychologist Mathias Mehl and his colleagues, published in Psychological Science in 2010. In Mehl’s study, 79 undergraduate students wore an electronic device that recorded 30 seconds of sound every 12.5 minutes for four days. Afterward, all of the captured conversations were categorized as either small talk or as substantive, meaningful conversation. His participants completed a battery of questionnaires designed to measure happiness and well-being, and it turned out that higher levels of well-being were associated with less small talk and more substantive conversation.

One of the conclusions that many drew from these results was that engaging in small talk diminishes one’s well-being.

However, Mehl repeated the study in 2018 with a much larger sample and a more sophisticated analysis of the data, and this time concluded that small talk does not undermine happiness and that it is associated with more happiness than one usually experiences when one is alone.

In other words, it is better to engage in small talk than to engage in no talk at all. The results of the earlier study apparently reflected the strong positive effect that meaningful conversation has on happiness rather than any negative effects of small talk.

Small Talk as a Social Skill

In recent years, small talk has been belatedly recognized as a beneficial feature of everyday life. For example, studies indicate that people are happier when they talk to others, even if it is just strangers on a subway, and even if it is just small talk.

Remember that the most horrible punishment, short of course of the death penalty, we can inflict on a prisoner is that of solitary confinement.

The problem with many previous discussions of small talk was a framing of the issue as a contest between the benefits of small talk versus the benefits of deeper conversation as if people must be forced to engage in only one or the other.

The trick is to be skillful in the use of both types of talk in your social interactions. Rather than being antagonistic to each other, these different types of talk are strategies that work in tandem to create effective relationships.

Yes, of course, you are bound to be disappointed if all of your conversations are nothing more than superficial loops of chatter about things that no one really cares about; but the skilled conversationalist knows how to use small talk as a social lubricant and as a segue to deeper topics. Think of small talk as a tool that negotiates and defines a relationship. It can be a way of synchronizing the level of intimacy felt by each of the partners in the conversation and a way of signaling friendly intentions while simultaneously minimizing awkward, uncomfortable silences.

The actual topics of small talk do not matter very much; its purpose is not to convey information, but rather to serve as an opening act to warm up the audience for the meaty stuff to follow.

In short, being adept with small talk is an important component of your arsenal of social skills. Knowing when to initiate small talk and also knowing when to move on and escalate the level of discourse beyond mundane topics will make you a popular conversational partner.

And always be careful not to overstep the level of intimacy inherent in a situation, especially when the small talk strays into the realm of personal topics such as health or physical appearance.

 

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Dr Russo’s Review of Cognitive Distortions: How to Think like a Mature Adult

Posted on August 8, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo

 

 

 

 

 

In my practice, as I am sure other therapists do, I have treated many clients who present with clinically significant distress that, if not wholly based on distortive thinking, is largely the result of so-called “monkey mind.”  This is simply when we cognitively distort what has happened to us we literally jump around like excited monkeys in ways which result in clinical distress way out of proportion to what actually occurred (or is occurring).

I begin this little treatise on distortive thinking by examining what the great ancient stoic, Epictetus, had to say. He taught that philosophic inquiry is simply a way of life and not just a theoretical approach to the world. To Epictetus, all external events are beyond our control. Further, he taught that we should calmly, and without passion, accept whatever happens. Individuals are responsible for their own actions, which they can moderate through rigorous self-discipline. This quote, attributed to him, sums it up nicely:

“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.”

Aaron Beck

Within counseling, the seminal theorists Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis seized upon Epictetus as they developed their respective therapeutic techniques: cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT).  

As we go about examining cognitive distortions, keep in mind that both theorists had turned their back on psychoanalytic techniques that saw depression arising from motivational‐affective considerations; in other words, as misdirected anger, swallowed anger, or “bottled up anger.”

In his practice work, Beck found that his clients reported their feelings of depression in ways differing from these psychoanalytical conceptualizations of depression. Like Ellis, Beck found his clients illustrated evidence of irrational thinking that he called systematic distortions.

Therefore, the basic premise of Beck’s Cognitive‐Behavioral Therapy attacks these distortions, and follows the philosophy of Epictetus: It is not a thing that makes us unhappy, but how we view things that make us unhappy. Consequently, if we avoid struggling to change things, and instead change our own interpretations of things, we change how we feel and how we act in the future.

So, then, what is cognition? Cognitions are verbal or pictorial representations, available to the conscious mind, which form according to the interpretations we make about the things that happen to us. These interpretations and assumptions are shaped by a bunch of unconscious presuppositions we make about people and things, based on past experience ‐ and when I say past experience, I mean experiences going all the way back to birth.

When we are infants, we take in the whole world in a rather naive and unthinking fashion. Some term this process as one of “accepting introjected beliefs.” We live with these introjections throughout life (some refer to this as the “appraisal approach” to the world). By way of a simple example, most of us are reluctant to touch a hot stove because of what our mothers and fathers commanded us NOT to do; namely, to touch a hot stove.  We lived with that introjected understanding of stoves for a long time, accepting that they were right. But we never knew for ourselves that they were right! That is, until we accidentally touched a hot stove.

In order to make sense of our world, we recursively form cognitive filters, schemas, or a set of assumptions and expectations of how events will transpire, and what they mean to us. Such expectations can be (and often are) illogical and irrational.  It is as if our accumulated introjections preclude us from making even the simplest of logical leaps of faith.

Albert Ellis – Some call him the Asshole of Therapists

These introjections get in the way and often result in the aforementioned clinical distress. Beck’s therapy seeks to uncover instances where distorted, illogical thoughts and images lead to unwanted or unproductive emotions. We say unproductive emotions, because while these emotions can be either good or bad both can lead to unproductive behaviors.

Beck’s typology of cognitive distortions is somewhat like Ellis’s notion of “irrational beliefs,” which Ellis challenged through the process of disputation.  All distortions represent evidence of our emotions subsuming a logical thought process. We may therefore label them as logical fallacies.

Regardless of the over-riding clinical efficacy of appealing to our clients’ intellectual reasoning abilities (which, by itself, can be problematic), it is helpful to share with clients a list of irrational beliefs, or cognitive distortions, as a starting point in therapy.

  1. Catastrophizing or Minimizing ‐ weighing an event as too important, or failing to weight it enough.
  2. Dichotomous Thinking ‐ committing the false dichotomy error ‐ framing phenomena as an either/or when there are other options. (Remember here the “genius of AND versus the tyranny of OR”).
  3. Emotional Reasoning ‐ feeling that your negative affect necessarily reflects the way a situation really is.
  4. Fortune Telling ‐ anticipating that events will turn out badly. I see this perhaps more so than any other distortion.
  5. Labeling ‐ this occurs when we infer the character of a person from one behavior, or from a limited set of behaviors. I.e. a person who forgets something one time is “an idiot.” This amounts to “telling a book by its cover” type-thinking.
  6. Mental Filter ‐ we all have mental filters, but this distortion refers to specific situations where we filter out evidence that an event could be other than a negative one for us.
  7. Mind Reading ‐ believing that we can know what a person thinks solely from their behaviors. This one is related strongly to the notion of “projection” onto someone else the feelings that we, ourselves, might have in a similar situation.
  8. Over-generalization ‐ one event is taken to be proof of a series or pattern of events. Basic statistics courses teach us (or SHOULD teach us) that patterns are hard to find in nature. They only appear to be such. We can view them as otherwise.
  9. Personalization ‐ here we are assuming that a person is at fault for some negative external event. Said another way, we take complete responsibility for something that is nowhere near our fault!
  10. Should Statements ‐ statements that begin with “Shoulds” or “Musts” are often punishing demands we make on ourselves. Generally, the assumption that we Must or Should do something is absolutist, and therefore most likely false. The moral here is to “stop shoulding on yourself!”

Ellis, Beck, and other theorists and therapists who employ CBT approaches in their practices, have similar approaches to cognitive distortions. They begin with a laser-like focus upon symptom relief, which in turn, looks to find those cognitive distortions that many clients suffer from.  Beck’s CBT is short-term in nature, as we know, but remember that symptom reduction has been shown by empirical research to be as effective as longer-term help. The idea here is that by focusing on symptoms we can help effect “core” character changes.

Becks’ CBT and Ellis’s REBT have many therapeutic approaches in common.  And while this treatise was not intended to be a detailed review of those therapies, it might be helpful to see how each address the notion of “cognitive distortive thinking.”

In both approaches, the therapist is active, didactic and directive. This means that he or she tells you what he is doing, the reason why he is doing it, and even teaches you how to do it for yourself. For example, if she assigns homework for a client, she tells the client the reasoning behind the homework. This also has the additional benefit of allowing the client to practice new behaviors in the actual environment where they will occur. Keeping a list of cognitive distortions handy can be an example of where the therapist has asked that the client practice how to recognize them.

Dr Joseph V Russo – NOT the asshole of all therapists!

I am an REBT therapist. As such, I often provide clients with a toolkit of self-help techniques. I want my client to, in effect, become a specialist in dealing with his own problems. My therapeutic intent is to help the client become more independent. In other words, I am putting myself out of business by freeing my clients from the need for therapy. I want them to actively prepare for similar events in their lives in the future and be prepared with techniques they can employ themselves.

So, for example, when the client senses that they are suffering from distortive thinking, they will be able to whip out the list of ten cognitive distortions and do the work themselves.

One thing that CBT and REBT therapists (among others) focus upon is the here-and-now, the present, as well as the future. Without question, events in our past have shaped who we are. We need to embrace that fact, but at the same time, we need to look at what we can do now to change our view of life.

We cannot change the past. We can only adjust our view of the present and future events.

Consequently, I approach the therapeutic relationship in a highly collaborative fashion, as opposed to an authoritarian, adversarial or a neutral fashion. In effect, and while I begin as the authority on what we are about to do in therapy, I actively transfer the power of the relationship to the client.

To that end, and like what Beck did, I often set an agenda at the beginning of therapy and then return to that agenda time and time again to gauge progress. Beck set a great example when he outlined these precise steps (in terms of agenda and session structure):

  1. Set an agenda
  2. Review self‐report data
  3. Review presenting problem
  4. Identify problems and set clearly definable and measurable goals
  5. Educate patient on the cognitive model – discuss cognitive distortions
  6. Discuss the patient’s expectations for therapy
  7. Summarize session and assign homework
  8. Elicit feedback from the patient

Let’s focus for a moment on step 5.  Without question, behavioral therapists have many tools at their disposal, including psycho education, relaxation training, coping skills, exposure, and response prevention.  But is cognitive restructuring that most specifically addresses distortive thinking and which can offer the aforementioned symptom relief.

At step 5, I will acquaint my client with the ideas of both Beck and Ellis and talk about how both (but mostly Ellis) seek to focus on the client’s core evaluative beliefs about himself.  Of course, Ellis tended to revert somewhat to the past by explaining how unconscious conflict may exist, based upon past experiences, while Beck tended to eschew this.  He was more concerned with working with observable behaviors, and thereby potentially uncover the distortive thinking.

To that end, I focus more on what is referred to as one’s “automatic thoughts,” which tend to link back to core beliefs. Ellis would have me attack those core beliefs (to the extent they are maladaptive), while Beck would have been simply to try to change them. But when you stop and think about it, BOTH would have the therapist help the client to change those core beliefs.

We all have automatic thoughts – indeed, such automatic thinking helps to keep us alive. The so-called Gift of Fear comes into play here, which while largely unconscious, is what governs our approach to the world. It is when such automatic thinking results in distress that we as therapists are called upon.

Beck (not Becker) did not view automatic thoughts as unconscious in a Freudian sense. He merely saw them as operating without our notice; in a word, “automatic.”

Remember that such thinking arises from the underlying assumptions and rules we have accepted (via introjections) and made up (through experience) about how to do deal with the world. And it is HOW we have previously dealt with the world, for the good or for the bad, that has resulted in our core beliefs (about ourselves and about others around us). They are, almost by definition, highly charged and rigid “takes” on the world. They govern what we do.

Beck and to large extent, Ellis, engaged in what they called cognitive restructuring.  First, you identify the cognitive distortions that appear in those automatic thoughts and which point to the self-defeating core beliefs the client has allowed to set in his or her cognitions. Often this is done through active disputation. I prefer to go about disputation in a somewhat scientific way, through guided discovery, hypothesis testing, supporting through evidence, and looking for alternative theories. Clients are, for the most part, receptive.

Here is an example:

  • Automatic thought: I can’t do this, it is too hard.
  • Assumption: I will fail.
  • Core Belief: Because I am a loser.

I would begin with the statement, “I cannot do this.”  I would work with the client to uncover “real evidence” of their inability to do … whatever.  I simply ask, “What evidence do you have?” And often, there is NO evidence. The statement, “I can’t do this” is not literally true.  Perhaps he’s having trouble because he’s trying to do too much at once.  The core belief is what I then attack, by asking questions around when they have NOT been a loser; by asking for examples of a time when they were successful in resolving a situation to their satisfaction (read: successfully); and by asking, is that what you truly believe about yourself?

In the most general sense, we can discuss cognitive restructuring in the following fashion: Perception and experiencing in general are active processes that involve both inspective and introspective data, in that the clients’ cognitions represent a synthesis of internal (mental filters) and external stimuli (the world about him.)  How people appraise a situation is generally evident in their cognitions (thoughts and visual images). These cognitions constitute their stream of consciousness or phenomenal field, which reflects their configuration of themselves, their past and future, and their world. Alterations in the content of their underlying cognitive structures affect their affective state and behavioral patterns. Through psychological intervention, clients can become aware of their cognitive distortions. Correction of those faulty dysfunctional constructs can lead to clinical improvement.

According to cognitive theory, cognitive dysfunctions are the core of the affective, physical and other associated features of depression.  Apathy and low energy are results of a person’s expectation of failure in all areas. Similarly, paralysis of will stems from a person’s pessimist attitude and feelings of hopelessness.

Take depression – a negative self‐perception whereby people see themselves as inadequate, deprived and worthless.  They experience the world as negative and demanding.  They learn self‐defeating cognitive styles, to expect failure and punishment, and for it to continue for a long time.  The goal of cognitive therapy is to alleviate depression and to prevent its recurrence by helping clients to identify and test negative cognitions, to develop alternative and more flexible schemas, and to rehearse both new cognitive and behavioral responses in the confines of the therapeutic chamber By changing the way people think, the depressive disorder can be alleviated.

The beginnings of Cognitive Restructuring employ several steps:

  1. Didactic aspects. The therapy begins by explaining to the client the theoretical concepts of CBT or REBT, by focusing on the belief that faulty logic leads to emotional pain. Next, the client learns the concept of joint hypothesis formation, and hypothesis testing.  In depression, the relationship between depression and faulty, self-defeating cognitions are stressed, as well as the connection of affect and behavior, and all rationales behind treatment.
  2. Eliciting automatic thoughts. Every psychopathological disorder has its own specific cognitive profile of distorted thought, which provides a framework for specific cognitive intervention. In depression, we see the negative triad: a globalized negative self-view, negative view of current experiences and a negative view of the future.For example, in hypo manic episodes we see inflated views of self, experience and future. In anxiety disorder, we see irrational fear of physical or psychological danger. In panic disorder, we see catastrophic misinterpretation of body and mental experiences.  In phobias, we see irrational fear in specific, avoidable situations. In paranoid personality disorder: negative bias, interference by others. In conversion disorder: concept of motor or sensory abnormality. In obsessive‐compulsive disorder: repeated warning or doubting about safety and repetitive rituals to ward off these threats. In suicidal behavior: hopelessness and deficit in problem solving. In anorexia nervosa, the ear of being fat. In hypochondriasis, the attribution of a serious medical disorder.
  3. Testing automatic thoughts. Acting as a teacher, the therapist helps a client test the validity of her automatic thoughts. The goal is to encourage the client to reject inaccurate or exaggerated thoughts.  As therapists know all too well, clients often blame themselves for things outside their control.
  4. Identifying maladaptive thoughts.  As client and therapist continue to identify automatic thoughts, patterns usually become apparent. The patterns represent rules of maladaptive general assumptions that guide a client’s life.As an example, “To be happy, I must…”  The primary assumption is: “If I am nice, and suffer for others, then bad things won’t happen to me,” with a secondary assumption: “It is my fault when bad things happen to me, because I was not nice enough. Therefore, “Life is unfair, because I am nice and still bad things happen.”You can see how such rules inevitably lead to disappointment, depression, and ultimately, depression.

Some concluding thoughts which Beck had about depression and his view of how psychopathology occurs in general:

  • Emotional disorders are the results of distorted thinking or an unrealistic appraisal of life events.
  • How an individual structures reality determines his emotional state.
  • A reciprocal relation exits between affect and cognition wherein one reinforces the other, resulting in escalations of emotional and cognitive impairment.
  • Cognitive structures organize and filter incoming data, and are acquired in early development.
  • Too many dissonant distortions lead to maladjustment.
  • Therapy involves learning experiences for the client that allow them to monitor distorted thinking to realize the relation between thoughts, feelings and behavior and to test the validity of automatic thoughts to substitute more realistic cognitions and to learn to identify and later the underlying assumptions that predispose the client to the distorted thoughts in the first place.

Finally, both Beck and Ellis came up with what they saw as the rudiments of so-called Mature Thinking as compared to primitive thinking. They comprise a set of ways of thinking about yourself, the world, and the future, that lead to cognitive, emotional and behavioral success in life.

  • Primitive thinking is non-dimensional and global:  I am the living embodiment of failure
  • Mature thinking is multidimensional and specific: I make mistakes sometimes, but otherwise I can be clever at many things.
  • Primitive thinking is absolutist and moralistic: I am a sinner, and I will end up in hell.
  • Mature thinking is relativistic and non-judgmental: I sometimes let people down, but there is no reason I can’t make amends.
  • Primitive thinking is invariant: I am hopeless
  • Mature thinking is variable: There may be some way…
  • Primitive thinking resorts to “character diagnosis” and labeling: I am a coward
  • Mature thinking examines behaviors and engages in behavior diagnosis: I am behaving like a coward right now.
  • Primitive thinking is irreversible and sees things as immutable: There is simply nothing I can do about this.
  • Mature thinking is reversible, flexible and ameliorative: Let’s see what I can do to fix this…

Hopefully this piece has taught you something about cognitive distortions and how everyone – all of us – suffer them from time to time. The key is to try always to engage in mature thinking. Hard to do! And often it can take a lifetime! But I urge you to try!

© Dr. Joseph V Russo (2023), All Rights Reserved

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Ten Good Reasons to Carry a Paper Notebook

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo
A Paper Notebook - Remember These?

A Paper Notebook – Remember These?

I am harping these days on the carrying of some sort of notebook with you at all times. I can tell you this: Every single one of the great leaders I have worked for, people for whom technology was a wonderful tool, have nevertheless carried a paper notebook. Most of them also adopted the iPad™ and Microsoft’s Surface™ tablet, but they simply never stopped carrying paper. Why? Why bother with paper when you can type into your tablet anything that could otherwise go onto paper? Why be so obviously backward when it seems that everyone around you is tapping away into technology?

Their ages may have had something to do with it. They were, by and large, much older than me and probably far less enamored of technology. But I suspect something more was afoot, and so I (your humble blogger) simply asked them: Why do it? What are YOUR reasons? And here are ten good reasons from several of my former superiors, in their own words:

  1. Taking notes, either on paper or by typing into a tablet, demonstrates a commitment to what is being said.

When my boss gave me an assignment, writing it down immediately showed great respect for what she was saying. The process of committing it to paper, to reducing the assignment to succinct notes, often resulted in a refinement of the assignment, and clarity is always an important thing. It also ensured that I understood precisely what she wanted of me, especially the timeframe for delivery. Taking notes demonstrated that I cared; that I took it seriously. Moreover, it started a written record of the task and hopefully its successful completion.

  1. Take notes when the idea strikes you, not later.

You never know when inspiration will strike! A note about an idea when it first arises gives that idea life. It allows you to work the idea, to form it, to tweak it. You can cross it out, mind-map it to an even greater idea, and give it a ledger. Even cocktail napkins taped into my notebook have served the purpose.

  1. Delegation of duties works best when it is known that an archive of action exists.

When there is an active archive of what was said and to whom an assignment was given, the resulting commitment is that much stronger. Asking a subordinate to confirm back to me their delegated task ran the risk that they would somehow embellish the task or get it altogether wrong. If I am writing it down – in front of them and they in front of me – the commitment is strengthened. There is no better place to put a timestamp on deliverables than in a notebook, a notebook that is with you always and everywhere.

  1. Your Busy Life All in One Place

The notebook is where I carry something about everything that is important to me. I carry information about many things, like insurance policies, roadside assistance contact numbers, active issues for which copies of recent correspondence could be useful, contact information or details, travel itineraries, an expense log, a major event index, and so on and so on. My organization’s mission statement, the tactics for which I am responsible, our strategic initiatives … anything that I want to be able to access quickly, or, for that matter, to constantly review and review again, is all in one place.

  1. Mission Statements (now that you mention it)

Organizational or personal mission statements are the brass ring if you will, that to which we aspire. It makes total sense to have them within reach at all times. Said one of my former bosses:

The mission statement and my company’s credo were selling tools and I cannot count the number of times that I whipped them out in a meeting to underscore a point about why doing business with my company made sense. They were useful props to be sure. I was proud of them.

  1. TooDue Lists

I call them TooDue™ lists and I have several, segregated by personal versus business versus charitable activities. I am not alone:

Despite what others may say, I have long preferred a written task list to a computer or tablet based or cloud-based listing, if for no other reason than the sheer joy of drawing big fat red lines through completed items. It just feels good. That said, cloud-based lists are good too. Take, for example, Todoist, a wonderful program.

  1. Journaling

Many of the men and women I have worked for have made it a nightly practice to journal about their experiences as a manager. They talk about the deals they have worked on, what went right and what not-so-right and made comments about the people with whom they came into contact. Said one,

A journal belongs in every notebook. I would strongly urge you, Joe, to keep a diary, a journal of observations about the day you’ve just enjoyed or endured and quick notes about what made it so. How might you have done the day differently? Who figured into the success of your day and why? Write, write, write.

  1. AccomJournal™

That’s my trademarked name for the part of my paper journal wherein I record my accomplishments. I got the idea after interviewing one of my bosses about a section in their daily planners wherein they recorded the positive achievements of their work.

It is a great place to log your achievements and to detail why those accomplishments actually mattered. Call it a CV Compendium – it makes resume writing infinitely easier. Do it in the moment and include the dollar impact, the organizational benefit, and the impetus for the work. Why did you do it?

  1. Calendars!

Our calendars, our schedules are now almost exclusively computer based. Indeed, one of the rules by which I live my life is the admonition that “Exchange® Governs, always.” In other words, to know where I must be at any given moment, I turn to Outlook and, by way of its links through our organization’s Exchange Server®, I determine what meeting I committed to and where. But think about this for a moment: What if the meeting doesn’t come off as scheduled? No one bothers to go back and un-invite everyone to the meeting. What if you don’t make it to that meeting on time? No one ever goes into their Exchange-based calendars to note that of the 90-minute meeting, they missed the first 30 minutes. Those kinds of notes can be critical! Said one of my bosses:

Yes, the electronic calendar is the metronome by which our lives tick-tock away. Meetings get scheduled and cancelled by way of Outlook and it is without question the calendar of record. But once the day is over, I like having my schedule as a page in my notebook. It is often covered with notes I have made about venue changes made at the last moment, about how so and so did not show up on time (or about how I did not show up on time), about how I might have scheduled the meeting differently, and so forth. I cannot tell you how many times that has come in handy when a lawyer asks me about a particular meeting. It is all about discovery. Never forget that.

  1. It is DIFFERENT.

Carrying a notebook is different. It is a throwback to an earlier time, long before computers and laptops and tablets. Here is what one executive had to say:

It’s a differentiator of the highest order! Nobody does it anymore [carry a notebook around]. Just like the handwritten letter or the handwritten thank you card, a paper-bound notebook is guaranteed to stand out. Having ready access to information by means that does not require an internet connection or this or that many bars of cellular service will make you even that much more indispensable as an employee!

There you have it. I carry a paper notebook; in my case, it is a three-ring binder. Can you think of a reason why I should not?

[This post was originally posted in 2013; updated in 2023.]

© 2023, Dr. Joseph V. Russo, All Rights Reserved

 

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Always Carry a Notebook

Posted on August 1, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo

clipart-com-school-clip_art_image_of_a_yellow_spiral_notebook_and_pencil_0071-0804-0812-1708_smu

 

 

 

 

Roger Ailes wrote a book many years ago entitled, You Are the Message. This was long before he became the head of Fox News and, in fact, long before he developed a taste for blondes. It was after the work he’d done on The Mike Douglas Show for which he’d earned an Emmy®. Anyway, I read the book in 1989, and of all its many quotables, this one stood out:

Always carry a notebook. Take notes selectively. Take notes continuously throughout the day. It helps you to listen more effectively. Keep a notebook or a diary with you at all times and jot down ideas or important bits of information from phone conversations, meetings, etc. Writing improves memory and accumulating notes gives you a quick reference source and cuts down on the number of loose scraps of paper in your office.

I once worked for a man who took his own spiral-bound, four-subject notebook everywhere. Jokingly, he picked it one time as we were headed out for a coffee break, saying,

“Joe, just in case you say something worth remembering.”

LOL, but his point was that opportunities for brainstorming will present themselves whenever and wherever the mind allows them. Carry a notebook and capture thoughts and ideas.

I came of age in the information revolution. Well, to be fair, BEFORE the information revolution (I am that old). I so wanted to embrace the idea of a personal computer for note taking and of course for word processing. As an accountant, I embraced the spreadsheet immediately. As a manager, I embraced the idea of back-office process improvement through the use of technology. But I always carried a paper notebook. Always.

[this post was originally published in 2013]

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Want to Let Go of Someone Else’s Addiction? The Answer is Detachment.

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo

I wrote this post many years ago when in the midst of training to become a mental health counselor. It is worth another read. 

In my own life I have struggled with a close family member who drinks too much. And that person was once one of the two most important people in my life. It comes up in my practice a lot and it pains me to hear stories similar to my own.

Years ago, the advice I received was to detach as quickly as I could. It wasn’t easy and frankly, it continues to be hard, but it was needed if only to save my marriage and to safeguard my own well-being.

You see, the threat is that you will take on their addiction. The closer the family member, the more likely it is. You will begin to feel the upset that alcohol brings when it has become an addiction. The same is true of drugs. My own daughter struggled with drug addiction until the day she died from an overdose. I had detached but, believe me, to this day I wonder if there was anything else I should have done.

For friends and family of a person dealing with alcohol or drug addiction, detachment can be a difficult concept to grasp. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) stresses the notion of “detaching but with love.” In the end, this is the idea that the family has to let go of their loved one’s problem.

They alone must suffer the consequences. Detachment is a way to give permission to let them experience those consequences. Your duty is to circle the wagons around your own well-being and that of your marriage, job, friends, etc.

The Importance of Detachment

If you’ve dealt with someone’s progressive alcoholism (severe alcohol use disorder) or drug use, it might be hard to imagine finding happiness while the substance misuse continues. This is especially true when you have tried everything possible to keep the situation from growing worse. But this may be a critical mistake; after all, your happiness is YOUR responsibility and cannot be tied to someone else’s idea of what it means to be happy.

The stress and exhaustion associated with caring for someone with an addiction can be overwhelming. It may lead to anxiety, depression, and unhealthy behaviors or unsafe living conditions for your family.

The reality of living with alcoholism or any other addiction often means dealing with one crisis after another. Undoubtedly, you often feel like you’re constantly in rescue mode. Learning to detach relieves you of the responsibility to protect them.

Those who take part in AA long enough come to realize that detachment is important for a family’s emotional well-being. It also helps you understand that there is no way for you to control the addiction. In the end, it is only your own behavior you can control, right?

Kind Nor Unkind

Detachment does not mean you stop loving the person.

“Detachment is neither kind nor unkind. It does not imply judgment or condemnation of the person or situation from which we are detaching. It is simply a means that allows us to separate ourselves from the adverse effects that another person’s alcoholism can have on our lives.”

Avoid Infantilizing

Detachment is also about honoring the addict’s autonomy. Weird as that may seem, honoring someone else’s choices is a starting point. And it is especially true of those closest to us, for whom we feel the immediate pain of choices not of our own making. But if you step in and essentially deny the addict’s autonomy you are rendering them as an infant. This is what we call “infantilizing.” Never good.

Boundaries are important in all aspects of human interaction. It is our way, as human beings, of drawing lines in the sand. “This far and no further,” we might say. Think here of the notion of “tough love,” which parents will know all too well. When dealing with minor children, tough love is our duty in a manner of speaking, for without it, a child will run amok. Love, tough or otherwise, is our way of messaging approval or disapproval of behavior. When you criticize a child, you “lead with love,” don’t you?

With adult alcoholics (or drug abusers) the situation is different. We aren’t their parents. We aren’t their watchdogs. They have autonomy. They have what we call, “agency.” They get to do what they want to do, right?

But that doesn’t mean we must stand silently and in effect message some kind of approval. Not at all.

Detachment demonstrates that you don’t like or approve of their behavior. It is stepping back from all the problems associated with their addiction and stopping any attempts to solve them. You still care, but it is best for everyone involved if you take care of yourself first.

Many times, family members find that they have become too involved with addictive behavior. AA teaches those closest to the addict to “put the focus on ourselves” and not on the addict. Back to that notion of “circling the wagons.”

And the most effective circling is accomplished by these means:

  • Avoid the suffering caused by someone else’s actions.
  • Don’t allow yourself to be abused or misused during recovery.
  • Avoid doing things for them that they can do for themselves (aka, enabling).
  • Don’t use manipulation in an attempt to change their behavior. It won’t work.
  • Don’t cover up their mistakes. This is especially true with alcoholics who engage in abusive behavior, such as physical violence and nasty outbursts.
  • Avoid preventing crises, especially if they’re inevitable. Such crises could be the “wake-up call” they need.

For example, if your family member consistently shows up late for work and such tardiness becomes a habit, detachment teaches you that it’s not your responsibility to cover for them. It also applies to making excuses and trying to fix situations.

By way of another example, let’s say the addict engages in threatening phone calls and (of late) abusive texting and emailing. Detachment teaches us to NOT ENGAGE. You could if you wanted to, simply block them, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Someday they may actually wake up and you will want to know about it. Instead, delete the texts, the emails, the voicemails. Do not respond. Do not engage (except maybe and only maybe by texting back, “I love you and am ignoring this message.”)

By putting the focus back on yourself, by circling the wagons around your home and your marriage and your kids, you protect yourself and others from abusive behavior.

The dirty little secret here is that addicts are like pigs in mud. You know the saying, “don’t wrestle with pigs in the mud. Everyone gets dirty but the pigs love it!” By not engaging, indeed by detaching, you’re taking some of the power away from them so they’re not able to manipulate you.

Ideally, detaching from this person will hopefully help them see how their negative behavior affects everyone around them. As Alcoholics Anonymous teaches:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.

Does It Really Help?

In a word? Yes, it does.

Now, you might be concerned about what happens to your loved one after you detach.  Maybe you think all of the things you did over the years to “help” will have been wasted. Or, you might have fears about what crisis — jail, hospitalization, death, etc. — may be next.

Your concerns are valid and show your love and dedication to a person dealing with addiction. However, you must put yourself and your family—especially if that family includes children—first.

“Detachment helps families look at their situations realistically and objectively, thereby making intelligent decisions possible.”

Know this: You are NOT responsible for another person’s disease or recovery from it. Remember what I said about autonomy. They are responsible.

This is very difficult, and, on the clearheaded side of addiction, you probably know what should or should not happen, but this logic may be lost on the addict. They need to want to change themselves and find the help needed to do that.

Said another way, they need to find their “rock bottom.” And plenty of them do. But they must experience that bottom all by themselves.

Your goal is to be there when they do need you and to be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually strong when they’re ready for recovery. When you learn to detach, you can find relief from much pain, stress, and anxiety, and realize that you deserve to treat yourself right.

This will not happen overnight. It requires time, a lot of patience and love, and support to help you along the way.

As they say in the program, “It’s simple, but it ain’t easy.”

Posted in Addiction, Counseling Concepts, Depression, People (in general), People in general | Comments Off on Want to Let Go of Someone Else’s Addiction? The Answer is Detachment.

Let Us Get Serious About the Common Project

Posted on April 8, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo

I don’t know about you but ever since Nietzsche decreed that God was dead, I have been struck by how people have become their own little universes. Which is to say, they belong to nothing other than themselves (to wit, “me, myself, and I”) and how their lives have come to lack any sense of purpose. At least with God, I have the purpose of serving Him as best I can. Serving just me is rather banal.

Katherine Boyle writes below about we have become a “treatment-resistant-Prozac-Nation.”

I could not agree more.

She goes on to say how the practice of believing in something – anything, that is, other than oneself – can pull us out. And how asking AI (artificial intelligence, by way of something called ChatGPT) will send us the wrong direction.

It is her writing by way of Bari Weiss’s site (which I heartily recommend to my readers).

Let us get serious about purpose. Let us try and get back to a “common project.”

The most memorable business pitch I ever attended began with a young man crying. His company was raising a modest amount of capital to build drones that could protect American troops in battle. The pitch was unremarkable in the first few minutes, until the founder mentioned his family and friends who had served in Iraq. He then stopped speaking, was quiet for a few seconds, and started to sob uncontrollably.

I was in grad school at the time and had been instructed by a female professor never to offer to make men coffee, because women don’t do that anymore. But when he exited the room to compose himself, the rest of us sat in silence for what must have been 30 seconds, until I spoke—to ask if anyone needed a fresh cup. When the founder returned, he did a forceful presentation of the business, even though he left without funding that day.

None of us ever discussed what happened—even immediately after the meeting—until I bumped into the founder almost a decade later, and he alluded to “the worst pitch he ever did.”

“No, no,” I responded. “It was the best.”

That company now employs several hundred people and is valued at a couple billion dollars. I was an intern on the sidelines that day, but unlike any meeting I’ve ever witnessed, I remember the details of that one. The chair I squirmed in. The time of day: one p.m. The patterned blouse I stared at when looking down as he sobbed. Because even though that day ended with a rejection email, it was clear that this entrepreneur didn’t care what anyone thought. He knew his calling. His purpose.

Purpose is on the decline these days. A recent Wall Street Journal–NORC poll found that faith, family, and the flag—the constants that used to define our national character—have eroded in importance in the last 25 years. Only 38 percent of poll respondents said patriotism was very important to them, down from 70 percent in 1998. Of religion, 39 percent said it was very important, down from 62 percent.

Beyond God and country, a desire to have children and community involvement plummeted by double digits, too. Meanwhile, the once universal value of “tolerance for others” has declined from 80 percent to 58 percent in the last four years alone. We’re replacing “Love thy neighbor” with “Get off my lawn.” The only “value” that has inflated in recent years is the one that can be easily measured: money.

Pollsters described the findings as “surprising” and “dramatic.” Twitter found them dire, an acknowledgement of America’s great sadness. Some researchers responded with disbelief, saying the poll must have been flawed to yield such swift changes.

But do these plunging red lines really come as such a surprise?

It’s not hard to see why Americans are losing a sense of membership in any kind of mutual enterprise, especially since 2020, when the steepest drops in sentiment occurred. Between global lockdowns, a fentanyl epidemic, school shootings, seemingly inevitable great-power wars, and a looming recession, Americans are losing hope. It’s the sort of poll that if America were your best friend or your child, you’d urge her to seek help.

The decline in traditional values isn’t particularly new. The things that make people feel as though their presence matters, such as civic-mindedness and religious observance, have declined in tandem. From Bowling Alone in the late ’90s to Coming Apart in 2012 to a slew of recent “End of America” essays from every major publication, researchers believe these trends are accelerating further. This decline in civic belief and religiosity predated the mobile internet. We can’t blame the phones this time.

For a while, we tried in vain to replace the default traditional values with something equally noble or even more sophisticated. Classical liberalism, which upheld individual rights and liberty until we started hating half of the individuals in this country. New Atheism had a good run until “trust the science” became a meme. There was meditation. Yoga retreats. Eating clean. Worshipping politics and politicians. Chasing influence.

But it turns out none of those things filled the national void either. Perhaps if they had, we wouldn’t see story after story about teenage depression and midlife crisis depression and deaths of despair. We have become a treatment-resistant Prozac Nation.

Increasingly, the void is being filled with. . . you. A relentless focus on the self that tells us you are enough. When I asked ChatGPT for the origin of the phrase “You are enough,” it told me the saying is so ubiquitous it can’t give me an answer.

I’m not an expert in purpose, but I am in the business of finding it, in determined individuals who have a deep sense of why they’re put on this earth. I meet entrepreneurs at the earliest stage, often when they have only a team and a pipe dream. Sometimes, it’s a new type of satellite or a viral app; other times, trust me, it’s the most boring idea you’ve ever heard.

But if you talk to the most storied investors about what they’re searching for in the people who will build the Disneys or the Apples or the Teslas of the future, they’re not interviewing the person. Often, they’re not even listening to the idea. They’re diving for how deeply—how obsessively—someone believes in something greater than themselves. This sense is so profound that sometimes it makes you uncomfortable. It makes you squirm in your chair. But it makes you feel something.

With this type of purpose—a calling—comes action. Practice. Silicon Valley’s infectious optimism is not because the ideas are all that mind-blowing. Many solid companies have mundane missions: software that helps salespeople sell stuff! Cybersecurity companies that stop phishing attacks! And yet, that practice of building, of doing and believing in something gives people the purpose that pulls them out of the malaise that is modern life.

And maybe that’s the secret of purpose. You don’t need to build a billion-dollar company. You don’t need to employ hundreds of people. You just need to act, and with that action comes purpose—a reason to get out of bed in the morning and build.

For too long, we’ve been told we can be anything, do anything, and that all criticisms of that anything is an attack on our identity and very being. That self-love and self-care are all we need to thrive. And yet, we’ve never seemed more miserable, never been more lost, and never less confident in what we stand for.

Maybe one day the all-knowing AI will tell us the truth:

Find a purpose outside yourself. You are not enough.

© 2023 Bari Weiss

Posted in Counseling Concepts, Depression, General Musings, State of the Nation | 1 Comment

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Posted on March 22, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Mark Manson is the author of a terrific New York Times bestselling book entitled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. In his book, Mr. Manson provides the reader with raw and no-frills advice on how to live your best life and how to stop trying to be “positive” all the time so that we can become better, happier people. For what it’s worth, I have made this into a handout that I give all my clients.

So, here are 25 quotes taken from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. Enjoy!

  1. Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.
  2. To not give a f*ck is to stare down life’s most terrifying and difficult challenges and still act (also see Rule 9).
  3. Not giving a f*ck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different. (Russo: aren’t we all … different?)
  4. If you find yourself consistently giving too many f*cks about trivial shit that bothers you, chances are you don’t have much going on in your real life to give a legitimate f*ck about. And that’s your real problem.
  5. Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another. (Russo: Indeed, life is chaos. Never forget that.)
  6. Problems may be inevitable, but the meaning of each problem is not. We get to control what our problems mean based on how we choose to think about them, the standard by which we choose to measure them.
  7. Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many f*cks in situations where f*cks do not deserve to be given.
  8. This is what “self-improvement” is all about: prioritizing better values, choosing better things to give a f*ck about. Because when you give better f*cks, you get better problems. And when you get better problems, you get a better life.
  9. Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.
  10. A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.
  11. True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
  12. In my life, I have given a f*ck about many people and many things. I have also not given a f*ck about many people and many things. And like the road not taken, it was the f*cks not given that made all the difference.
  13. The fact is people who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes.
  14. You are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a f*ck about, so change is as simple as choosing to give a f*ck about something else. It really is that simple. It just isn’t easy.
  15. If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.
  16. When we force ourselves to stay positive at all times, we deny the existence of our life’s problems. And when we deny our problems, we rob ourselves of the chance to solve them and generate happiness.
  17. Being wrong exposes us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.
  18. Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth. As the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows everything learns nothing. We cannot learn anything without first not knowing something.
  19. We can only be truly successful at something that we’re willing to fail at.
  20. You may salivate at the thought of a problem-free life full of everlasting happiness and eternal compassion, but back here on earth the problems never cease.
  21. It turns out that adversity and failure are actually useful and even necessary for developing strong-minded and successful adults.
  22. Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something. If someone is better than you at something, then it’s likely because she has failed at it more than you have. If someone is worse than you, it’s likely because he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.
  23. Joy doesn’t just sprout out of the ground like daisies and rainbows. Real, serious, lifelong fulfillment and meaning have to be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles.
  24. The key to living a good life is not giving a f*ck about more; it’s giving a f*ck about less, giving a f*ck about only what is true and immediate and important.
  25. What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? (See quote number 1 and read this whole list over!)
Posted in Anxiety, Counseling Concepts, General Musings, Positive Mental Attitude | Comments Off on The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

ESG – The Biggest Ruse of Our Time?

Posted on March 9, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo

 

 

 

 

Is ESG the biggest ruse of our time?

Perhaps.

Next to the COVID lockdowns which, in my opinion, will eventually prove to have permanently damaged an entire generation of young people, I think that it is.

This article is the work of Rupa Subramanya, a reporter for Bari Weiss’ Free Press. It is NOT my work and I claim no authorship. I am posting it here for my own reference and as a continual reminder that things like ESG have gotten way out of hand and may very well undermine the long-term viability of American companies who have stopped focusing on their raison d’être.

To wit, as Milton Friedman, with whose work I was trained in my bachelor’s degree in business many years ago, famously said:

“The business of business is business.”

Indeed – it ought to be, but as you read what is set forth below, increasingly it is not. That is incredibly stupid and potentially disastrous.

She writes:

Do not get Dorian Deome started on the bureaucrats investing his life savings in this trendy, newfangled thing they call environmental, social, governance, or ESG, funds. He blows up. Which is dangerous. Deome suffered a massive heart attack in May 2020 at age 38. He told me:

“My heart literally skips a beat when I think about how my money is used to fund actual racism.”

He meant diversity, inclusion, and equity training programs; racially calibrated corporate boards; the obsession in human resources departments with elevating marginalized voices, often at the expense of white men like Deome—and all the other things that make for ESG compliance.

But he has zero pull when it comes to how his retirement funds are invested. He’s a cog in the machine: Deome lives in Olympia, Washington, and processes unemployment insurance claims for Washington State, for which he is paid about $43,000 yearly. The Department of Retirement Systems decides where to invest the $178 billion it oversees. And Washington, with its Democratic governor and state legislature, loves ESG.

In fact, in 2019, the Washington State Investment Board, which oversees state employees’ pension funds, hired a sustainability officer to “integrate ESG factors and metrics as part of the investment process,” WSIB spokesman Chris Phillips said.

And yes, the money is a big part of this too, at least for Deome. “I definitely am concerned that my retirement savings is never going to really grow,” he said.

Same for Cindy Williams, in Phoenix.

Williams was a lawyer with the Veterans Administration; now she does insurance coding for a private hospital, and she’s worried her federal pension and 401(k) are going to underperform, because both funds are big on ESG.

It’s not that she’s against the asset managers who handle her company’s pension fund investing in green energy. “I have no objection to saving the planet,” said Williams, who is 62 and lives with her mother in a retirement community. “I just don’t want to lose my money. They’re more concerned about their idea of improving the world than they are with whether it actually improves my life.”

In 2022, eight of the top ten actively managed ESG funds in the United States fared worse than the S&P 500’s 14.8% decline—compounding long-percolating fears that ESG is a ruse.

When those fears first emerged, there were just a few voices willing to stick their necks out: Chamath Palihapitiya, a prominent venture capitalist, took to CNBC in February 2020 to call it a “complete fraud”; Tariq Fancy, who used to oversee ESG investing at BlackRock, the powerful asset management firm, published a blog post in August 2021 arguing ESG was just a label the firm slapped on funds to charge higher fees. But they were outliers.

Over the past several months, however, the momentum has picked up. Now a growing cadre of executives, lawyers, and Republican officials has taken to lashing out against what it views as social justice parading as a serious investment strategy. The backlash reflects a growing sense that millions of Americans—those who do not subscribe to the new orthodoxy around DEI, the climate, and “stakeholder capitalism”—feel ignored by, and even at war with, the institutions charged with protecting their interests.

A Form of Extortion

Former attorney general William Barr, who served under Donald Trump, told me ESG is “a form of extortion” that is forcing “companies to take particular actions whether or not those actions are in the financial interests of shareholders.”

What is most disturbing about ESG, Barr told me, is the way it’s being implemented.

“It’s completely non-transparent,” he explained. “And that, to me—that’s the worst. That is affecting a lot of decisions in corporate America in a non-transparent way, because of the political predilections, or the policy predilections, of a small group of people who are not using their own money but leveraging off other people’s money.”

It started in the early aughts.

“The actual birthdate of ESG investing will be hard to pin down,” Terrence Keeley, a former managing director at BlackRock, told me.

At the time, it was just some activist investors who wanted to talk about “long-term value investing,” Keeley said.

That meant thinking about rising sea levels, rising temperatures, disappearing species, and climate refugees to assess the financial risks—and opportunities—that came with all that.

The challenge was getting other people to pay attention.

Former attorney general Bill Barr says of ESG: “It’s completely non-transparent and that, to me—that’s the worst.”

Enter Paul Clements-Hunt.

Clements-Hunt had been a tabloid journalist in London before pivoting to environmental consulting in Bangkok, before making his way, in 2000, to the United Nations’ Environment Programme Finance Initiative in Geneva.

His goal was to spur big, wide-ranging action on climate change by incentivizing the people with the most money—the asset managers, the people in charge of the biggest pension funds, and the sovereign wealth funds and stock exchanges—to take seriously the dangers on our horizon.

“Our standpoint was this is not about ethics,” Clements-Hunt told me. “Our standpoint was investors should look at new risks, and while understanding those risks, they then begin to appreciate new market opportunities as well, whether that’s in clean energy or water or sanitation or biodiversity protection,” he said. “It was really a fundamental business approach, and it was removed from morals.”

In the early years—in 2001, 2002, and 2003 the focus was not just on the environment but occupational safety. Eventually, that morphed into “governance”; later they threw in “social,” as in social issues. It was kind of a catchall.

The question was how to package it—make it stick in people’s minds.

One day in the spring of 2004, Clements-Hunt recalled in a Medium post, his colleagues and he were in his office when they coined the three-letter acronym that they hoped would click with investors. That would lend the movement a hint of cool.

In June 2004, the United Nations published a report called “Who Cares Wins” that introduced “ESG” to the world.

For years, no one in finance paid attention. Most people in New York, London, Shanghai, and Hong Kong had no idea what ESG meant.

Then came the 2008 financial crisis. The credibility of banks evaporated. Suddenly, so-called sustainable investing sounded like a good idea. “I think they saw that to regain trust, they had to be more active in what became the ESG space,” Clements-Hunt told me.

By 2012, asset managers had funneled $4 trillion into the ESG space. Over the next several years, that figure would jump at a clip of roughly $1 trillion per year.

Then, in June 2017, the new president, Donald Trump, pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords, arguing it hurt American business. Believing Washington, DC, had turned its back on the environment, Democrats across the country picked up the baton. Suddenly, governors and controllers overseeing multibillion-dollar pension funds in blue states viewed themselves as the country’s last best hope to “save the planet,” and they made it clear to asset managers that they wanted their money invested only in pro-ESG companies.

“The mandate they gave them was basically, ‘We’re not going to do business with you unless you adopt a firm, wide commitment to events and goals like the Paris Climate Accord, and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and diversity, equity, and inclusion standards,” Vivek Ramaswamy, the head of Strive Asset Management in Columbus, Ohio, told me. Strive portrays itself as the anti-ESG asset manager—its website says the company seeks “to restore the voices of everyday citizens by leading companies to focus on excellence over politics.”

It was around this time—late 2017, early 2018—that “ESG” started to become a thing, with the number of Google searches for “ESG” starting to tick up.

The rise of ESG also coincided with a reassessment, at the highest echelons of corporate America, of the meaning of capitalism. In August 2019, the Business Roundtable, a group of the nation’s leading CEOs, issued a statement signaling a shift away from traditional “shareholder capitalism”—which focuses on the bottom line—to “stakeholder capitalism,” which considers the interests not only of investors but those of the wider world. The statement endorsed diversity and inclusion and called for “embracing sustainable practices.”

By 2021, asset managers around the globe had plowed $18.4 trillion into “ESG-related” investments. And by 2026, asset managers are expected to invest nearly $34 trillion in ESG funds globally.

As Paul Clements-Hunt told me, ESG is now “baked into the DNA” of the global financial services industry, and countless companies are scrambling to burnish their ESG scores.

Who has the best score? That’s complicated, given that there’s little consensus about how a company lands a good or bad ESG record, and as a result there are many conflicting ESG rankings.

Insider Monkey, a financial information website, says the best ESG company is Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Investor’s Business Daily insists Columbus, Ohio–based Worthington Industries, which builds the propane tanks in barbecues, is number one. Most ESG rankings have a thing for Apple, even though it’s been accused of relying on slave labor to build its iPhones in China.

Just as ESG was taking off, the skeptics started popping up—including Tariq Fancy.

For 15 years, Fancy ping-ponged around the world—from Merrill Lynch in New York to Credit Suisse in Silicon Valley, to a social media marketing company in Shanghai. He made boatloads. After watching a friend die of cancer, he moved home to Toronto and launched a nonprofit that helps poor kids learn. That piqued the interest of BlackRock executives, who, in 2018, offered him a job: Chief Investment Officer for Sustainable Investing.

BlackRock, of course, is not just another Wall Street titan. Being one of the Big Three asset managers, along with Vanguard and State Street, it oversees more than $10 trillion in other people’s money. It is invested in thousands of companies around the world. (That includes major stakes in Apple, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, Disney, and almost every major energy company.) It is more valuable than the economies of Germany and Japan—combined. When BlackRock says it cares about environmental, social, and governance issues, CEO Larry Fink announced in his 2019 letter to the CEOs of every company BlackRock invests in—that is felt in boardrooms in every major city on Earth.

In the months leading up to Fink’s announcement, BlackRock built its ESG team—bringing on board, among others, Tariq Fancy.

But by the end of his first year at BlackRock, in 2019, Fancy was having doubts about ESG. That came to a head while he was on a BlackRock jet flying from Zurich to Madrid to attend a conference.

“I had a disagreement with some folks from the sales team, who, it was obvious to me, viewed the mechanics of how the funds work as irrelevant,” Fancy said. What they cared about, he said, was selling as many of these funds as possible. He called ESG “green paint on the existing system.”

He was not alone.

Carson Block, founder of San Francisco-based Muddy Waters Research, which conducts research into publicly held companies, said: “ESG investing, from the fund managers to the managements of the companies themselves, is almost entirely a giant grift.”

All ESG does, Block said, is repackage existing funds.

“ESG is just bullshit tweaks at the margins.”

Indeed, between 2019 and mid-2022, at least 65 funds were “repackaged” into ESG funds with an eye toward drawing more investors and charging higher fees.

It’s unclear what a company must do for it to be part of an ESG fund. Broadly, it should strive for decarbonization, especially if it’s in the energy and utilities sector. Its board should include at least one woman, one member of a racial minority, and one representative from the LGBTQ+ community. (ESG enthusiasts are at pains to show that diversity equals higher margins.) It should definitely not invest in Russia.

But there’s a lack of concrete proposals, benchmarks, and numbers.

“It’s important to understand the multiple ways that environmental, social, and governmental factors can create value, but when it comes to inspiring those around you, what will you really be talking about?” a 2019 McKinsey report asked unironically. “Surprisingly, that depends.”

Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, said in an email:

“ESG is a scam, an idea that was born in sanctimony, nurtured in hypocrisy, and sold with sophistry. The inhabitants of this space are either useful idiots, who think that they are making a difference to society when they are, in fact, just pushing problems behind curtains, or feckless knaves, who use it to make money. The only healthy endgame for ESG is another acronym: RIP. And it will not be a moment too soon.”

The big question looming over ESG is whether it’s legal, given that asset managers like BlackRock have a fiduciary duty to maximize investment return.

Tariq Fancy has his doubts. So does Dorian Deome, in Olympia.

“Pension funds hold $40 trillion in assets across the United States,” Jed Rubenfeld, a former Yale Law School professor who now advises Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive Asset Management, told me. “And they’re very important. They’re people’s retirement money. That’s what they’re going to live off when they get older and can’t work anymore. And pension funds are under a special legal duty to not do anything with pensioners’ and retirees’ money other than use it to try to increase financial benefits.”

Red states are pushing back.

In an August 2022 letter from 19 Republican state attorneys general to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, the attorneys general hinted they might sue BlackRock: “The time has come for BlackRock to come clean on whether it actually values our states’ most valuable stakeholders, our current and future retirees, or risk losses even more significant than those caused by BlackRock’s quixotic climate agenda.”

Last week, congressional Republicans passed a resolution that would overturn a Department of Labor rule allowing pension funds to consider climate change and other factors when choosing companies to invest in. President Biden has promised to veto the resolution. Republicans lack the votes to overturn a veto, but they promise this is just the beginning.

They are fueled, in no small part, by a growing chorus of critics who insist ESG funds make for bad investing.

Nor do those funds generally achieve their goals. On the contrary, a 2021 Columbia University and London School of Economics study showed that 147 American companies that were part of ESG funds had worse compliance records when it came to labor and environmental rules than companies in 2,428 non-ESG portfolios.

“It’s clear to me now that my work at BlackRock only made matters worse by leading the world into a dangerous mirage, an oasis in the middle of the desert that is burning valuable time,” Fancy said in his August 2021 blog post. “We will eventually come to regret this decision.”

So far, none of the state attorneys general have sued anyone. For starters, many Republicans oppose state governments mucking around in their business. And it’s unclear whether there are any grounds for a lawsuit.

Which hints at the real problem, Fancy and Terrence Keeley say: ESG doesn’t do much.

If state attorneys general could point to investments or policies that combat climate change at the expense of investor returns, they’d have a case. But how do you show that?

Better to create the impression of sweeping change—and burnish your brand—than do anything that might change the world and get you in legal trouble.

In October, BlackRock issued a statement clarifying its position on ESG. “We do not dictate how clients should invest,” the statement informed readers. “We offer a wide array of choice.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, for his part, is riding the anti-ESG wave. In February, the self-styled anti-woke investor launched his long shot bid for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Dorian Deome likes Ramaswamy but sees his White House bid as a way to hawk books. He’s into Joe Rogan. He’s an observant Catholic. The politicians—he thinks they’re mostly a joke. Like ESG.

Understand he’s all for saving the Earth from the climate apocalypse and correcting historical wrongs.

But this didn’t feel like that, he said.

After his heart attack, he spent several weeks in the hospital. He watched the George Floyd protests from his hospital bed, and he scrolled through all the tweets and retweets and videos about America’s racial reckoning, and it felt angry and vindictive.

His doctor diagnosed him with permanent advanced heart failure. He had his doubts Deome would make it to 50. He definitely didn’t think he’d live to 65, when Deome would normally collect his retirement savings. Deome could cash in now—Washington State offers “medical retirement”—but he’d get a lot less. The big thing for him was ESG, and what the state was doing with his money.

So, he was going to fight it the only way he could—tweet angrily, be a voice in the wilderness.

“There are other people in the agency who have mortgages, ambitions, careers,” he said, referring to the Employment Security Department, where he worked. He didn’t have those goals. Nor did he have a family, or a girlfriend or kids. His father died in 2021 after a brief battle with Lewy body dementia, and his mother lived nearby, but really it was Deome versus the world, and the world was pushing in on him.

“I also have a bit of ‘damn the torpedoes’ in me,” he said. “In China, they call them nail houses. You can bulldoze all the houses around it, but you can’t get the owner to sell it. I’m one of those nail houses.”

Rupa Subramanya is a reporter for The Free Press

Posted in Business, State of the Nation | Comments Off on ESG – The Biggest Ruse of Our Time?

A Chinese Spy Balloon Over My House

Posted on February 5, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo

 

 

 

What’s that in the sky?

(aren’t weather balloons supposed to look like, well … weather balloons?)

By Walter Kirn (on the floating intruder Montanans weren’t supposed to notice)

As I prepare to do our annual tax return, this piece reminds me how very little we get back in terms of value-for-money. I had thought I was paying for a defense department (plus some other things) that would protect us. Of course, with huge deficits and an insurmountable national debt, it is clear now that none of us are paying for anything, not even remotely approaching everything).

And then I wondered: Had the balloon strayed over Texas, how long would it have lasted?

Anyway, this is Kirn’s work, not mine, and is posted here for my enjoyment and that of the few people who read my Blog.

He writes …

Last week, when Montanans looked up at the sky — the fabled “big sky” that gives our state its nickname and remains clear and blue and well worth gazing at—they saw something odd. Some people reported the distant silver sphere to the authorities, it being a tradition in a state that was pacified by vigilantes back in the days of the frontier mining camps to keep an eye peeled for signs of brewing trouble.

It’s lucky that this tradition lingers because the glinting orb, as we all know now, was an enormous Chinese spy balloon hanging above the missile silos and bases that are spread out across the northern plains and help form our nation’s nuclear deterrent.

We weren’t supposed to notice the floating intruder. According to Bloomberg, the federal government was already aware of the balloon, and had been for several days, but they wished to keep the matter on the “downlow” so as not to disrupt a coming meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and high Chinese officials.

Too bad for the bigwigs. They miscalculated, perhaps because they dwell in cities, where people tend to stare into their phones rather than idly admiring the heavens, spotting anomalous aircraft now and then.

Once eagle-eyed Montanans had seen the balloon and Americans came to discover that the country’s military elite was allowing a giant bag of gas hooked to a payload of surveillance gear to bob along unmolested above our nukes and, as it just happened, my house, a minor national panic followed.

My phone lit up with texts from distant friends and my Twitter feed with comments and questions that ranged from the serious to the tensely humorous.

Were my fellow Montanans planning to take up arms against this violator of our airspace? Weren’t we famously cranky and given to self-defense? And what about Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base, which, according to the Pentagon, maintains some 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos?

As the balloon peered down upon my state, its intentions uncertain and its presence a bit humiliating, the stereotypes about Montana flowed. Much mention was made of the hit TV show, Yellowstone, which lately has spun off a couple of other shows set deep in the state’s romantic, roaring past. In all of them, Montanans are portrayed as quick to anger, intensely self-sufficient, instinctively hostile to rich and fancy outsiders. In other words, not the sort of people to sink back into their Instagram accounts when confronted with giant airborne trespassers.

I’ll admit it, the comments—and the balloon itself, hovering so smugly out of range of the dusty hunting rifle I own—put me in a touchy mood. For though I was proud we’d spotted the damn thing and raised an alarm that sounded across the continent (neighboring Canada hadn’t made a peep during the craft’s stealthy transit through its time zones), I’d just about had it with all the public attention recently paid to Montana.

Just a few weeks back, I sat down with my morning coffee, opened up the paper and learned that I now live in a quasi-fascist state. Well, by golly, it said so in the paper.

The paper wasn’t a local publication but one from a couple thousand miles away, the New York Times, whose glossy Sunday magazine included a lengthy, illustrated feature with the five-alarm headline How Montana Took a Hard Right Turn Toward Christian Nationalism. To illustrate the state’s alleged swerve toward neo-fascist theocratic rule—a dire development I’d somehow missed—the story included a scary gothic photo, heavily filtered to bring out its dark tones, of a ghostly white cross on a bare hillside reflected in a passing rearview mirror. It also included, of course, a Yellowstone reference and Kevin Costner’s name—right up top, where the search engines would see them.

Since moving to small-town Montana from New York City over 30 years ago, I’d lived through at least a couple of cycles of ominous national coverage of my state. Without going into the details, let me assure you that this article was bunk, as exaggerated as the photo.

But fiction is fact where Montana is concerned, particularly on the country’s coasts, where tales are told about the country’s interior that the country’s interior lacks the clout to counter, much as our guns lack the range to bring down aircraft. Despite our legendary swagger, Montanans are largely helpless against the country’s more powerful forces. The missiles on our prairies aren’t missiles we asked for, just missiles that formidable others wished to plant here. They make us a target, but we don’t control them.

Do I sound defensive? Perhaps I am.

I live in a state with zero big-league sports teams, not a single Fortune 500 corporation, and no national media influence to speak of—unless you count made-up shows about fake ranchers slugging it out in scripted brawls. I’m one of about a million residents, all of whom, no matter their circumstances, are up against the myth-making machines of cities and states of imperial wealth and numbers. And imperial attitudes, dare I say, which emerge in their basic, perennial story about us: those folks from the steppes and mountains are growing restless, including the ones who’ve just moved there to go skiing, who appear to be worse than the ones already living there, who we’ve always found unsettling enough.

When the spy balloon floated across America, the rest of the country got a taste, perhaps, of Montana’s stoic colonial impotence. For days, we could point, but we weren’t allowed to shoot —great-power diplomacy prevented it. Americans may think we’re tough, as Montanans may think they’re tough, but it seems that we’re tough in the way that actors in westerns are, only with the permission of the director, only symbolically. Down went the balloon on Saturday to much applause, but the spectacle was pure cinema by then, like a fistfight on Yellowstone that draws fake blood.

But at least we proud Montanans kept our honor. We spied on the lurking villain, we called the sheriff, we warned our neighbors, we did what we could do. I suspect we’ll continue in this role, watchful vigilantes of the skies. There’s trouble afoot – you can feel it everywhere, particularly if you dwell near nuclear missiles, particularly if you live where there’s no cover—and someone has to stand lookout on the hill.

Posted in General Musings, State of the Nation | 2 Comments

Seriously, it is Time to Get Serious

Posted on January 17, 2023 by Dr Joseph Russo

This piece, written by Katherine Boyle for Bari Weiss’s Free Press site, caught my eye and my indignation. It reminded me of my sense of a foreboding future back in the mid-2000s as this thing called Facebook emerged on the scene (driven by metrosexual “wunderkind” Jeff Zuckerberg) and its roots in college pranking, sexual utility comparison, and ranking of girls in a dorm (“faces” were compared and then ranked, hence “Face” book, which ought to please the “body positive” idealogues; we couldn’t see the girls’ bodies, only their faces). Fast forward, then, to the pranks of Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”) and nearly everyone’s fascination with crypto-everything. It was of course, a fraud, just like (to me) Facebook is a complete fraud.

Anyway, I am posting it here for my reference and the enjoyment of my readers. It isn’t my work and to that end, I would encourage everyone to take a subscription to Bari’s Free Press site. Journalism (nee’ reporting) isn’t dead … yet.

She writes…

The biggest technology story of this past year involves a fraud perpetrated by a boy. Or so the press would have us believe.

Just months before Sam Bankman-Fried’s unraveling, Fortune Magazine referred to the billionaire as a “trading wunderkind” a latter-day Warren Buffett only with a “goofy facade” and a penchant for fidget spinners. Even after his downfall and subsequent arrest in the Bahamas, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and Axios all referred to Bankman-Fried, or SBF, as a disgraced “crypto wunderkind.”

Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times illustrated his boyishness best when interviewing him at the Times’ DealBook Summit last November. “When you read the stories,” Sorkin said, “it sounds like a bunch of kids who were all on Adderall having a sleepover party.”

SBF’s fate will now be decided by the Southern District of New York, but his media charade of aw-shucks interviews and congressional testimony laced with brogrammer idioms built a public persona that we’ve largely come to accept: SBF is just a kid. Indeed, he’s so young that his law school professor parents were involved in his business and political dealings. (In this, they embody the helicopter style of child-rearing favored by nearly the entire Boomer elite.)

The reality, of course, is that SBF is a grown-ass, 30-year-old man. He is twelve years older than many of the men and women we sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Twelve years older than the “adults” we encourage to swallow hundreds of thousands of dollars in college debt before even declaring a major. And, if we’re serious about the math, SBF is a mere eight years away from the half-life of the average adult American man, who boasts a provisional life expectancy of only 76 years, according to the CDC. At 38, SBF would have already lived most of his life on Earth.

Perhaps you’ve given little thought to SBF or FTX beyond: WTF!? In which case I applaud your rich social life and sense of restraint.

But the reason this iteration of the time-tested financial fraud plotline matters so much is not because SBF is an exception to the rule of how our culture infantilizes millennials. It’s that he is the rule.

The tens of millions of Americans that are, like me, millennials, or members of the generation just younger (Gen Z), have been treated as hapless children our entire lives. We have been coded as “young” in business, in politics, and in culture. All of which is why we shouldn’t be surprised that millennials are the most childless and least home-owning generation in modern American history. One can’t play house with a spouse or have their own children when they’ve moved back into mom’s, as 17 percent of millennials have.

Aside from the technology sector—which prizes outliers, disagreeableness, creativity and encourages people in their twenties to take on the founder title and to build things that they own—most other sectors of American life are geriatric.

The question is why.

There are many theories—and many would-be culprits. Some believe it’s the fault of the Boomers, who have relentlessly coddled their children, perhaps subconsciously, because they don’t want to pass the baton. Others put the blame on the young, who are either too lazy, too demoralized, or too neurotic to have beaten down the doors of power to demand their turn.

Then again, life expectancy is growing among the healthy and elite in industrialized nations, so perhaps this is all just progress and 70 is the new 40. But one can take little solace in the growing life expectancy of the last 200 years when comparing ourselves to more productive generations that didn’t waste decades on extended adolescence.

Every Independence Day, we’re reminded that on July 4, 1776, the most famous founders of this country were in their early 20s (Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr) and early 30s (Thomas Jefferson). Even grandfatherly George Washington was a mere 44. These days much of our political class, from Bill Clinton (elected president 30 years ago at age 46) to financial leaders like Warren Buffett (92), and Bill Gates (67) who launched Microsoft 48 years ago, are still dominant three and four decades after seizing the reins of power. CEOs of companies listed on the S&P 500 are getting older and staying in their jobs longer, with the average CEO now 58 years old and staying in his or her role 10.8 years versus 7.2 a decade ago. And our political culture looks even more gray: Twenty-five percent of Congress is now over the age of 70 giving us the oldest Congress of any in American history.

The Boomer ascendancy in America and industrialized nations has left us with a global gerontocracy and a languishing generation waiting in the wings. Not only does extended adolescence—what psychologist Erik Erikson first referred to as a “psychosocial moratorium” or the interim years between childhood and adulthood— affect the public life of younger generations, but their private lives as well.

In 1990, the average age of first marriage in the U.S. was 23 for women and 26 for men, up from 20 for women and 22 for men in 1960. By 2021, that number had risen to 28.6 years for women and 30.4 years for men, according to the Census Bureau, with 44 percent of U.S. women between the ages of 25 and 44 expected to be single in 2030. Delayed adulthood has had disastrous consequences for procreation in industrialized nations and is at the root of declining fertility and all-but-certain population collapse in dozens of countries, many of which expect the halving of their populations by the end of the century.

“Twenty-five is the new 18,” said The Scientific American in 2017, pointing to research that extended adolescence is a byproduct of affluence and progress in society. Which is why the finiteness of a mid-thirties half-life is such a surprise to those in their 20s and 30s. It runs counter to every meme and piece of advice young people receive about building a career, a family, a company and in turn, a country.

The prevailing wisdom in Western nations is that the ages of 18-29 are a time for extreme exploration—the collecting of memories, friends, partners and most importantly, self-identity. A full twelve years of you! Self-discovery aided by platforms built for broadcasting photos of artisanal cocktails and brunch. And with no expectation for leadership because there will be time for that, a generation can absolve oneself of responsibility for their actions. (Tragically, that was never true for half of the population, which is why we have a generation of extremely accomplished older women, who weren’t really aware how difficult it is to become pregnant at 39.)

The charitable view of extended adolescence is that it emerged as a dominant feature of 21st century life because there were no real alternatives to it. The Great Recession and a cataclysmic real-estate bubble made it impossible for young people to follow their parents’ trajectory of marriage by 30, children, and home ownership. Even worse for the highly credentialed, those well-paying careers promised to the ever-growing managerial class didn’t materialize as widely as promised, resulting in a dearth of real economic power that set back this cohort by a decade.

Rather than holding leaders accountable for poor political and economic policies, the culture compensated with some particularly potent memes: indulge in experiences, go to grad school, or perhaps see the world with increasingly cheap air travel. The price of air travel declined by more than 50 percent from 1980 to 2019, and the number of passport holders in the U.S. shot up from 16 percent of total population to 42 percent in the last two decades, democratizing jet setting and experiential spending in ways previous generations couldn’t fathom. All the while the substantial things in life that compound with time—family formation and homeownership—declined at a rapid pace in the 2010s.

In many ways, the emergence of extended adolescence was designed both to coddle the young and to conceal an obvious fact: that the usual leadership turnover across institutions is no longer happening. That the old are quite happy to continue delaying aging and the finality it brings, while the young dither away their prime years with convenient excuses and even better TikTok videos.

So, in 2023, here we are: in a tri-polar geopolitical order led by septuagenarians and octogenarians. Xi Jinping, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have little in common, but all three are entering their 70s and 80s, orchestrating the final acts of their political careers and frankly, their lives. That we are beholden to the decisions of leaders whose worldviews were shaped by the wars, famines, and innovations of a bygone world, pre-Internet and before widespread mass education, is in part why our political culture feels so stale. That the gerontocracy is a global phenomenon and not just an American quirk should concern us: younger generations who are native to technological strength, modern science and emerging cultural ailments are still sidelined and pursuing status markers they should have achieved a decade ago.

Will we see the American public demand a passing of the torch? Or will we arrive at the opposite conclusion? That we need real experts for these precarious times. That leadership must come from the seasoned and the gray. Anthony Fauci (82) isn’t retiring, he says. Age is relative, don’t you know. And the sins of SBF will lead to even more extreme skepticism of ambitious young founders and leaders, who will be lumped in with a fraudster because of their age. Rather than blame the man for his maleficence, we’ll hear experts clamor for more “adults in the room.”

If you still believe you’re a child at 30, there may be a hot crypto exchange in the Bahamas looking for a buyer.

 

Posted in General Musings, Helicopter Parenting, People in general, State of the Nation, Victimhood | Comments Off on Seriously, it is Time to Get Serious