On The Death of Kobe Bryant

Posted on January 26, 2020 by Dr Joseph Russo

Kobe Bryant’s tragic death today (and that of his lovely daughter) is so startling because it reminds us all (or should) that mortality is real. It comes like a thief in the night. It is the summation of life in one fell swoop. It hangs above us all like the Sword of Damocles. It is useless to deny it and yet … and yet … we spend lifetimes denying it.

I am reminded of Ernest Becker’s book, The Denial of Death. Here is an article about Becker and his work.

Ernest Becker (September 27, 1924 – March 6, 1974) was an American cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary thinker and writer. He wrote several books on human motivation and behavior, most notably the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning work, The Denial of Death.

In it, he argues that …

“the basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death.” (Keen 1973). 

Becker suggested that a significant function of culture is to provide successful ways to engage in death denial.  Becker also noted that the root of evil lies in the selfishness of human beings seeking to protect their own existence in the face of their mortality, which he regarded as an essential aspect of human nature. Recognizing such evil within human beings gave Becker concern about the future of human society.

Becker’s The Birth and Death of Meaning, written in 1962 and revised in 1971, was Becker’s first attempt to explain the human condition. Its title derives from the concept of humankind’s move away from the simple-minded ape into a world of symbols and illusions. Becker argued that it is language that sets human beings apart from other animals, and that through language that self-awareness and freedom from instinctive behavior became possible.

In The Birth and Death of Meaning, Becker sought to reconcile the fundamental human contradiction between mind and body. He described the human being as a creature of meaning, who “unlike any other natural creature, lives in two worlds: The natural and the supernatural, the world of matter and the world of meanings, suspended halfway between the animal and the divine” (Leifer 1997).

In the revised version of The Birth and Death of Meaning published in 1971, he included his understanding of human fear of mortality. He argued that human beings, like all living creatures, have a physical body that is born and dies. The fear of death that humans experience, though, lies not so much in the death of the body but in the death of meaning, for it is meaning that defines the human self and society.

Becker believed that the social sciences erred when trying to model themselves after the natural sciences. He regarded the use of the scientific method as self-defeating, since its goal of controlling the experimental situation removed the human elements that should be the concern of the social sciences. He also argued that there was no universal individual for whom a “science of man” could be constructed. Every personality is formed within a particular culture and the symbols of that culture are incorporated within each person’s identity. Thus, a true understanding of human behavior requires a science of man within society; in other words, it must include the social and cultural environment within which people live.

The Denial of Death emerged out of Becker’s attempt to create this “science of man.” Influenced by Otto Rank’s view that the fear of life and death is a fundamental human motivation, Becker pursued his quest to understand human motivation in the context of mortality. Escape from Evil (1975) developed the social and cultural implications of the concepts explored in the earlier book and functions as an equally important second volume.

Becker’s The Denial of Death was published in 1973. He received the Pulitzer prize for general non-fiction posthumously in 1974, two months after his death.

The basic premise of The Denial of Death is that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of mortality.

Since human beings have a dualistic nature consisting of a physical self and a symbolic self, we can transcend the dilemma of mortality through heroism, a concept involving the symbolic half. Becker describes human pursuit of “immortality projects” (or causa sui), in which an we create or become part of something that we feel will outlast our time on earth. In doing so, we feel that we become heroic and part of something eternal that will never die, compared to the physical body that will eventually die. This gives human beings the belief that our lives have meaning, purpose, and significance in the grand scheme of things.

Still, for Becker, the only suitable source of meaning is transcendent, cosmic energy, divine purpose:

I don’t think one can be a hero in any really elevating sense without some transcendental referent like being a hero for God, or for the creative powers of the universe. The most exalted type of heroism involves feeling that one has lived to some purpose that transcends oneself. This is why religion gives him the validation that nothing else gives him. … When you finally break through your character armor and discover your vulnerability, it becomes impossible to live without massive anxiety unless you find a new power source. And this is where the idea of God comes in.

From this premise, mental illness is most insightfully extrapolated as a difficulty in one’s hero system(s). When someone experiences depression, their causa sui (or heroism project) is failing, and they are being constantly reminded of their mortality and insignificance as a result. Schizophrenia is a step further than depression in which one’s causa sui falls apart, making it impossible to engender sufficient defense mechanisms against their mortality. Thus, schizophrenics must create their own realities in which they are better heroes. Becker argued that the conflict between contradictory immortality projects (particularly in religion) is a wellspring for the violence and misery in the world caused by wars, genocide, racism, nationalism, and so forth, since immortality projects that contradicts one another threaten one’s core beliefs and sense of security.

Becker also made the point that humankind’s traditional “hero-systems,” including religion, or are no longer convincing in the age of reason. Becker never believe that science could solve the human problem. He declared that people need new convincing “illusions” that enable them to feel heroic in the grand scheme of things, a form of symbolic immortality. However, he provided no definitive answer, mainly because he believed that no perfect solution exists. Instead, he hoped that gradual realization of innate human motivations can help to bring about a better world, producing worldviews that offer opportunities for non-destructive heroism.

Kobe Bryant: God rest his soul.

References

Evans, Ron. 1992. The Creative Myth and the Cosmic Hero: Text and Context in Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0820418452.

Kagan, Michael Alan. 1994. Educating Heroes: The Implications of Ernest Becker’s Depth Psychology of Education for Philosophy of Education. Durango, CO: Hollowbrook Publishing. ISBN 978-0893417390.

Keen, Sam. 1974. A conversation with Ernest Becker. Psychology Today (April 1974): 71-80.

Liechty, Daniel. 1995. Transference and Transcendence: Ernest Becker’s Contribution to Psychotherapy. Aronson. ISBN 1568214340.

Liechty, Daniel (ed.). 2002. Death and Denial: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Legacy of Ernest Becker. Praeger. ISBN 0275974200.

Liechty, Daniel (ed.). 2005. The Ernest Becker Reader. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295984708.

Liechty, Daniel. n.d. Biographical Sketch. Ernest Becker and the Science of Man. Retrieved July 22, 2008.

Leifer, Ron. 1997. “The Legacy of Ernest Becker” Psychnews International 2(4).

Leifer, Ron. 1979. “Biography of Ernest Becker” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Volume 18. New York: The Free Press.

Martin, Stephen W. 1996. Decomposing Modernity: Ernest becker’s Images of Humanity at the End of an Age. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. ISBN 0761805362.

Pyszczynski, Tom, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg. 2002. In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror. Washington DC: APA Press. ISBN 1557989540.

Szasz, Thomas. [1961] 1984. The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0060911515.

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Senators Need to Wake Up

Posted on December 20, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

The idea that many citizens woke up Thursday morning thinking that Donald Trump was no longer President – because he had been “impeached” – reveals just how pathetic our civics, government, and American history, education has become. I can tell you that maybe 5% of my students would know what a “Federalist Paper” was or is; hence, it isn’t surprising that so many thought Trump was out on his ass.

Said another way, in the context of common core standards and what the intelligentsia believe our students should be taught, “the race to the bottom is complete.” That any citizen would think he’d been removed is at once sad and incredibly dangerous. We have failed ourselves as a free people when we don’t understand the very processes that protect our liberties.

Still, and as the following article makes crystal clear, even our own senators have forgotten what it should mean to be, well, a senator. This cuts across political parties, by the way.  Both sides have failed us, themselves, and the very office they are supposed to uphold. It is time for them to wake the hell up.

I am capturing this important (and at times, dense) review of what a “trial” in the Senate will mean, not only for my readers but for my own edification as the articles of impeachment are transmitted to the senate. The copyright is owned by National Review and by Mr. Adam White.

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As President Trump’s Impeachment Leaves the House, the Upper Chamber needs to be What the Founders Expected it to Be

We have spent the last several weeks intensely debating the Founders’ view of impeachment. Now that the House has actually impeached the president, it’s time to pay attention to the Founders’ view of the Senate.

We know that a Senate’s trial of impeachments is supposed to be more solemn and impartial than the House’s own impeachment proceedings. Alexander Hamilton stresses this in the now-famous Federalist No. 65. Even House Democrats acknowledged this throughout their process; Chairman Schiff, for example, compared the House’s role to that of a prosecutor’s grand jury, whose job is not to decide whether the accused is actually guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether there is the bare minimum of evidence necessary to charge the accused with a crime. In impeachment, the House’s job is to bring accusations; the Senate’s job is to sit in judgment of the House’s accusations and the official being accused. But how should the Senate actually carry out this constitutional responsibility?

It may seem that the solemn business of an impeachment trial requires the Senate to reconstitute itself temporarily as a different kind of institution — not senators, but judges or jurors — and to conduct itself according to the norms of a court trial, with each member maintaining an open mind as to the facts and issues to be tried. But this takes the analogy to a courtroom too far.

A Senate impeachment trial requires solemn judgment of a degree not often seen in modern Senates. But this tells us more about the modern Senate than it does about the Framers’ expectations for senators.

The Framers did not commit impeachment trials to the Senate because they wanted the Senate to temporarily become a different kind of institution. They committed impeachment trials to the Senate because the Senate itself, as they originally envisioned it, was the institution best suited to carry out the extraordinary work of a such a trial. To carry out the job that the Constitution assigns to them, senators shouldn’t reconceive of themselves as courtroom jurors. They should recommit themselves to the Framers’ original vision of their job in general.

What does this mean in practice? It means that we should not expect senators to carry out their work with the broad impartiality that we demand of jurors. Rather, the impartiality required of them is the quality of character that the Framers expected of them generally: impartial between the institutional interests of the energetic presidency and those of the impassioned House; self-consciously removed from the political passions that inflame politics generally and that burn especially hot in impeachment; well-apprised in advance of the matters at issue in the impeachment dispute, as they ought to be well-versed in all matters of government; and dedicated affirmatively to the constitutional need for steady administration of our government even when the Trump administration, like all administrations, would strongly prefer that the Senate leave it alone.

The Senate as a Court?

Our tendency to analogize senators to jurors, and the Senate to a court, is not accidental. The Constitution gives the Senate “the sole Power to try all Impeachments,” and the Framers’ most eloquent explanation of the Senate’s impeachment power, Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Nos. 65 and 66, defended that provision by reference to the Senate’s “judicial character as a court for the trial of impeachments.”

We must be careful, however, not to take the “court” metaphor too far. Senators do have a judicial character, but they remain senators. The Senate becomes the court in which impeachment is tried, and the senators undertake the trial “on Oath or Affirmation,” but this “court” is a political court of impeachment, not a judicial court of law. Most importantly, when Hamilton spoke of the Senate’s “judicial character,” he wasn’t describing what the Senate becomes on certain special occasions — he was describing what the Constitution needs of the Senate whenever the Senate does its work.

And so I agree that impeachment trials are the Senate’s “awesome responsibility,” obligating the senators to look beyond base partisanship and “make this a moment that demonstrates our constitutional order at its best rather than politics at its worst.”

But I would not go so far as to say that impeachment transforms the Senate into “a different institution.” Instead, impeachment needs senators to be what the Framers meant them to be. The Constitution doesn’t need senators to become a court; it needs them to become, genuinely, the Senate.

“The True Test of a Good Government”

The most consequential word in American constitutionalism is “administration” — not “the administration,” as in the Trump administration or the Obama administration, but “administration” in the sense that the Framers understood it: namely, the actual functioning of government, the administering of the powers that the Constitution entrusts to the people’s representatives. As Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 72, “the administration of government, in its largest sense, comprehends all the operations of the body politic, whether legislative, executive, or judiciary.”

“Administration” is the most consequential word in American constitutionalism for two reasons.

  • First, as Hamilton emphasized repeatedly in the Federalist, “the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.” The Framers, aspiring to create a new Constitution that would replace the ineffectual Articles of Confederation, understood that the resulting document would be judged not by its theoretical elegance but by the fruits — the governance — that it actually produced.

  • Second, “administration” is consequential because of the way that we eventually reinterpreted the term. At some point, surely long ago, the American people came to identify “administration” exclusively with the executive branch. That change facilitated the misimpression of “administration” as something that the president does, while the other parts of government — representatives, senators, judges — are busy doing other things. This misunderstanding of the other institutions’ own constitutional responsibilities profoundly affected the behavior of the courts, the House, and, especially, the Senate.

To be fair, our changed understanding of “administration” was not accidental. Hamilton recognized from the outset, in Federalist No. 72, that “administration” includes first and foremost those activities that fall “peculiarly within the province of the executive department.” (Just two Federalist papers earlier, Hamilton’s famous defense of executive power argued that energy in the executive would promote “the steady administration of the laws.”) But Hamilton and his co-authors emphasized throughout their Federalist essays that the Constitution relied upon other parts of government to play significant roles in administration — and that the Senate’s contributions to administration would be among the most important of all.

Hamilton stressed this point in his discussion of the appointment of Cabinet officers, in Federalist No. 76, recognizing that even good presidents would be tempted to staff the executive branch’s leadership badly, serving personal loyalty or political advantage rather than the public interest. Hamilton argued that the Senate’s power to grant or withhold its “advice and consent” to a presidential appointment “would have a powerful, though in general, a silent operation,” tending “greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from state prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity.”

In that way, Hamilton stressed, the Senate “would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.” Good administration required more than just a government of yes-men, people “personally allied to” the president and “possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.” In domestic policy, good administration was not simply the province of the president; it also required a strong investment of time and effort by a Senate of “independent and public spirited men,” who often would undertake their duty in spite of the president himself.

So too in foreign policy. In Federalist No. 64, John Jay explained that the Senate’s constitutional power to grant or withhold its advice and consent from treaties reflected the Framers’ understanding that our government’s commitments needed to be “cautiously formed and steadily pursued” by “able and honest men” with a real understanding of “our national concerns.” This duty would fall to senators, “who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue, and in whom the people perceive just grounds for confidence.” And, as in domestic policy, it would require those senators to dedicate time and effort to shaping administration even when the president preferred otherwise.

Jay’s and Hamilton’s characterizations of the Senate’s necessary contributions to administration, and their accounts of the personal virtues necessary for senators to make those contributions, echoed James Madison’s own view of what the Senate would be and do. Describing the Senate’s role in Congress’s legislative process, Madison wrote in Federalist No. 63 that legislation needed to be directed by “the cool and deliberate sense of the community,” not by people stirred up by “some irregular passion” or by some artful politician’s “illicit advantage.” This is what would distinguish the Senate from the House: When the House was stirred up by political furies, the Senate would remain the “temperate and respectable body of citizens,” intervening “to suspend the blow mediated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth, can regain their authority over the public mind.”

More fundamentally, Madison described the Senate’s constitutional role, in Federalist No. 62, with a striking phrase: “the senatorial trust.” Here, too, he was marking a contrast between the Senate and the House, one exemplified not just by senators’ longer terms in office, but also by the higher age and citizenship requirements the Constitution placed on them as opposed to representatives. The Constitution required senators to be at least 30 years old, with at least nine years of citizenship, greater than representatives’ 25- and seven-year thresholds, because of “the nature of the senatorial trust.” The constitutional Senate is an institution “requiring greater extent and stability of character,” and thus its senators “should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages.”

Madison also focused on the well-known difference between a senator’s term and a representative’s.

A senator’s six-year term, longer than a representative’s two years or a president’s four, embodied “the necessity of some stable institution in government” to mitigate the risk that congressional elections every two years would bring about a constant flux in legislation and administration — something “inconsistent with every rule of prudence, and every prospect of success.” Here, Madison was focused squarely on the Senate’s contributions to good, steady administration. Constant flux in government personnel would cause flux in legislation and policy — “the mischievous effects of a mutable government,” paralyzing economic growth at home and undermining America’s stature abroad. “No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected, without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability,” Madison wrote. Once again, the Senate’s contribution to good administration, and thus to the Constitution’s vision of good government, was the stability offered by a body of senators — namely, men (and now women) serving longer terms and, the Framers hoped, elected to those terms because of their superior character.

Things Fall Apart

It is easy to read Madison’s centuries-old writings and chuckle at how far today’s Senate seems removed from Madison’s ideal. Today the only salient difference between senators and representatives is not the depth of their virtue but the length of their terms, and we’ve forgotten the whole reason for their longer terms (and greater ages) in the first place.

But if anything, it’s Hamilton’s and Jay’s accounts, focused on the administration of foreign and domestic policy, that seem ever more archaic. Senators are little interested in checking and guiding the administration of foreign policy nowadays, and even less interested in checking and guiding the administration of domestic policy through presidential appointments, unless the president is of the opposite party.

This has been a particular worrisome feature of the last three years, especially with respect to domestic administration. President Trump has staffed his agency leadership with astonishing numbers of “acting” officers lacking the Senate’s advice and consent. It’s no surprise, as Hamilton noted in Federalist No. 76, that a president would prefer to avoid the Senate’s constitutional role. (“I like acting [officials],” Trump told reporters in January 2019. “It gives me more flexibility. Do you understand that? I like acting [officials].”) That natural preference is precisely why constitutional administration relies on the Senate to assert itself against presidential unilateralism. Yet Senate Republicans, understandably keen to continue their laudable success in confirming judges, consciously de-prioritized the Senate’s role in the appointment process, and thus de-prioritized the Senate’s role in ensuring good, stable constitutional administration. “Priority between an assistant secretary of state and a conservative court judge — it’s not a hard choice to make,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told The Weekly Standard in 2017.

As a matter of principle, it ought to be a hard choice, or at least a harder choice, to make. As Justice Thomas observed in a 2017 opinion, the Senate’s constitutional role in the appointment of administration personnel “is not an empty formality,” but rather a crucial protection against “the serious risk for abuse and corruption posed by permitting one person to fill every office in the Government.” Yet senators’ relative lack of interest in executive-branch appointments makes perfect sense if one remembers that they do not see themselves as responsible for the actual administration of government. In an era when the Senate thinks of administration as the president’s job, its near-exclusive focus on judicial appointments is not reasonable, but compelling.

And so we ought to recall Hamilton’s key warning, in Federalist Nos. 68 and 76: “the true test of a good government” is not its aptitude and tendency to produce good judges alone, but “its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration” altogether. And the other way for the Senate to ensure good administration — after legislation, treaties, and appointments — is impeachment.

But that brings us back to the original question: When the Senate is called upon to try an impeachment, how should it conceive of its work?

“Sufficiently Dignified” and “Sufficiently Independent”

To understand the Senate’s proper constitutional role in impeachment, we turn to Hamilton’s now-famous description of Senate impeachment trials in Federalist Nos. 65 and 66. But as we read his description — like so many congressmen did, aloud, in the House’s closing debates on Trump’s impeachment — the great challenge to overcome if we are to understand the Senate’s proper role in an impeachment trial is our modern misunderstanding of the Senate in general.

If we compare Hamilton’s description of a Senate trial to our modern view of the Senate’s day-to-day business, a Senate impeachment trial seems vastly different; it seems to call upon the senators to become something greater than just senators. But if we compare Hamilton’s description of a Senate trial to the Founders’ original view of the Senate’s day-to-day business, the gulf shrinks significantly. And for good reason: The whole point of committing impeachment trials to the Senate was not that senators would then reconceive themselves as judges or jurors, but rather that senators would already be men of a judicial temperament, with deep investment in the quality and stability of administration. In trying impeachments, genuine senators would already be well-suited to the task at hand.

Indeed, when we focus squarely on the task of impeachment itself, strict analogies to judges and juries quickly prove inapt. After all, if the Framers wanted impeachments to be tried by something equivalent to a court, they would have had an option much better than senators available to them: actual judges, such as the members of the Supreme Court. In fact, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 actually considered committing impeachment trials to the Supreme Court. But they declined to do so, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, they were concerned that Supreme Court justices would be too beholden to a president who’d appointed them, or that justices “were too few in number and might be warped or corrupted.”

For another, the substance of impeachment was a matter that called not for a judge’s judgment but a senator’s. As Hamilton observed in Federalist No. 65, the model for impeachment trials was not a court, but Great Britain’s House of Lords.

This institutional choice reflected impeachment’s substance. At the Convention, the delegates deliberately defined impeachment not simply in narrow terms of “treason” and “bribery” because they wanted impeachment to cover (in George Mason’s words) “many great and dangerous offences” that might not qualify strictly as crimes. They rejected impeachment for “maladministration,” because (as Madison put it) it would be a threshold so low that the president would in effect hold his office merely at the “pleasure of the Senate.” They settled instead upon a familiar but still vague term of English practice, “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton emphasized that this constitutional provision framed impeachment in terms of offenses best “denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.” An impeachment proceeding would thus be one that could “never be tied down by such strict rules”; in substance, the Constitution’s provision for impeachment was inherently unfit for “the construction of it by the judges.” In a courtroom trial, judges are bound by rules and juries that “limit the discretion of courts”; in an impeachment trial, by contrast, the trier would “necessarily have” an “awful discretion.” An impeachment trial would require not a judge or a jury, but a different kind of decisionmaker — a body of statesmen who would wield such “awful discretion” wisely, with a proper understanding of the public interest. Which is to say, the Founders’ vision of the Senate.

Of course, one real judge does participate in impeachment trials: the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who presides when the president is the one being impeached. The chief justice’s involvement might suggest that a Senate impeachment trial is quasi-judicial, transforming the Senate into an inherently different institution. But this ignores the fact that in most Senate impeachment trials — i.e., all impeachments involving a judge or federal official other than the president — the chief justice is not involved. The nature of impeachment trials is not defined by his involvement, because he is not an inherent part of such trials.

In fact, the chief justice’s participation in presidential impeachment trials is quite possibly a red herring. Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention do not explain why the Framers included the chief justice only in presidential impeachments. But there seems a rather simple explanation for it: In presidential impeachments, the man presiding over the Senate — namely, the vice president — would have an obvious conflict of interest. A presidential impeachment would require a different officer, and the chief justice was a reasonable choice. In this view, his presence was a pragmatic accommodation, not a hint of impeachment’s fundamental nature.

Still, Hamilton’s account of impeachment did emphasize the necessary “independence” of senators, and so we must grapple with what that independence entails. Here, too, however, Hamilton’s full explanation points to something far less sweeping than the independence and impartiality of judges and juries, who must be independent from politics, and impartial as to the facts that they will hear in the case. On independence, Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 65:

Where else, than in the senate, could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? What other body would be likely to feel confidence enough in its own situation, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the representatives of the people, his accusers? [Emphasis added.]

Hamilton’s point is clear: An impeachment trial needs to be decided by an institution that does not have an inherent bias for or against either the House or the official being impeached. The Senate served this role, because there is no reason why the Senate would have such an institutional bias.

And even if Hamilton were thinking of impartiality not in terms of the perennial structure of the Senate as an institution, but rather in terms of the partiality that senators might have at a given moment in time toward either the president or the representatives impeaching him, the impartiality necessary for a Senate impeachment trial would fall far short of what we expect of a judge or jury. In a court of law, we expect judges and juries to come to the trial without preconceived views of the facts at issue; we expect them to keep their minds open and to decide the case based on the evidence presented in court. But for impeachment, Hamilton offers no hint that the decisionmaker must approach the case with such a completely open mind as to the facts at issue.

Indeed, it would strain credulity to expect that degree of sweeping independence and impartiality, especially when Hamilton himself describes “the true spirit” of impeachment as “a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men.” Impeachment trials deal with those matters about which senators, deeply invested in the work of government and knowledgeable about affairs of the state, would almost certainly have preconceived notions.

Instead, the impartiality that Hamilton describes in Federalist No. 65 is of a piece with the character that, as described above, the Framers intended for senators to bring to all of their institutional responsibilities. When Hamilton warns that impeachments “will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community,” dividing the public into pro- and anti- contingents mapping easily on to “the pre-existing factions” of a political moment and triggering all the same “animosities, partialities, influence, and interest,” he is telling us that impeachment will look like . . . normal, impassioned politics, only hotter. For Hamilton and his fellow Framers, the passions raised by impeachments were the same passions raised by virtually all aspects of republican government. In impeachment, the passions would be mitigated by the same institution that would help to mitigate them in politics generally: the Senate, for all of the structural and attitudinal reasons described above.

Any lingering ambiguity is dispelled when Hamilton returns to the issue of impeachment one last time, at the end of Federalist No. 77. Concluding his multiple-essay discussion of executive power, Hamilton ends with a reassurance that if the president were to abuse his office, the people would be protected not by a quasi-judicial Senate, but by “the legislative body.”

One genuine distinction between the senators’ work in impeachment and their work on other matters is their oath. Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 of the Constitution specifies a special oath for impeachment trials: “When sitting for that purpose [i.e., trying impeachments], they shall be on Oath or Affirmation.” The Constitution already requires senators (and representatives, and state legislators, and “all executive or judicial Officers”) to “be bound by Oath or Affirmation” in general, though it does not specify the oath’s content. (The first Congress, in the first bill it passed into law, wrote the oath in the broadest possible terms: “I do solemnly swear . . . that I will support the Constitution of the United States.”) What more could the Senate’s impeachment-oath requirement entail?

The best answer might be the simplest one. By specifying that the senators swear an oath without specifying the content of that oath, the Framers intended for the oath to spur senators, with special solemnity, to do what they were always expected to do as senators.

This is what Gouverneur Morris seemed to have in mind when he proposed the oath requirement at the Constitutional Convention. Facing James Madison’s original skepticism of vesting the Senate with the power to try impeachments, Morris replied, according to Madison’s notes, that although the Constitution must avoid the danger of subjecting the presidency to micromanagement by Congress, “there could be no danger that the Senate would say untruly on their oaths that the President was guilty of crimes or facts” (emphasis added). After the delegates voted to commit impeachment trials to the Senate, Morris offered a specific amendment adding that in a Senate trial “every member shall be on oath,” and the delegates adopted it.

To sum all of this up: The Framers committed impeachment trials to the Senate, not to the Supreme Court, because they were a task appropriate for senators, not justices. In doing so, the Framers expected senators to be “sufficiently independent” from both the official being impeached and the House doing the impeaching, and “sufficiently dignified” to carry out such a momentous task in the midst of inevitably momentous political passion. Yet this is less a description of the Senate’s particular role in impeachment than a description of the Senate’s role in governance generally. By inserting the chief justice into presidential impeachments, the Framers did not suggest that they intended for one judge to turn 100 senators into 100 judges; more likely, they simply needed one judge to temporarily replace the one Senate official (i.e., the vice president) with a particular conflict of interest in such impeachments. And the Framers obligated senators to swear an oath in impeachment not to change them into something other than senators, but to inspire them to be the best version of themselves in an impeachment trial.

As Hamilton put it, in Federalist No. 77’s closing lines on impeachment, “What more can an enlightened and reasonable people desire?”

All Eyes on the Upper Chamber

The Senate now faces the awesome responsibility of trying the impeachment of the United States’ 45th president, and senators are surely wondering what that responsibility entails. If they have read this far, past 3,000 words of Framers’ wisdom and this author’s platitudes, then I hope they have a clearer idea of the answer: They need to be senators, in the truest and best sense of that constitutional institution — selected with the hope that they would exhibit the character and temperament of genuine statesmen; vested with six-year terms intended to bolster their fortitude against the people’s political passions; and empowered to invest themselves deeply in their work to produce the good administration that would demonstrate the goodness of the Constitution itself. To the extent that we find it hard to imagine senators living up to this standard in President Trump’s impeachment trial, it is because we long ago lost sight of what the Senate was supposed to be in the first place. This is our failure, not the Framers’.

The preemptive declarations of Senators McConnell and Graham that they will not be “impartial jurors” is an ominous sign that we are embarking on something far short of what the Constitution intended. Let’s hope that the gravity of the moment, before the judgment of history, spurs all senators to take their oath with the integrity that any oath demands. At the same time, as Ramesh Ponnuru notes, we should all take care not to misconstrue the kind of “impartial justice” that a Senate impeachment trial genuinely entails.

But even if McConnell, Graham, or other Republican or Democratic senators fail to live up to their oath, surely other senators will live up to theirs. If this presidential impeachment trial inspires enough senators to vindicate the Framers’ expectations for their institution, and if that in turn helps Americans to begin to rediscover the Senate’s proper and necessary role in American government, then perhaps the last few years’ political nightmare will someday be worth its immense cost.

Adam White — Adam J. White is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and an assistant professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, where he directs the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.

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Going International? Consider These Things

Posted on October 31, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

In my Blog I often write about topics of potential interest to my college business students. This is an example. Much of it is drawn from interviews with members of Australia’s Young Entrepreneur’s Council, which I have followed for years since living Down Under. Solid group of up-and-comers in the business world!

If your business is successful in one geographic area, you may be considering expanding into new markets. While the first step for many local businesses is to go national, you might be at the point where you think you’re ready to expand internationally. Such markets present a tremendous business opportunity, but before making that leap, there are a few important considerations. Here are ten answers to this question:

What is one thing companies should consider before expanding overseas?

  1. What does the local competition look like?

    It’s important to look at the market of whichever country or region you’re thinking of expanding to. First, you should look at whether or not there is a need and a demand for your product or service. Second, you should try to identify if there is existing competition. If your would-be competitor in a foreign market has a very strong hold, it might not be worth it to expand at the moment.

  2. Do I understand the cultural differences?

    Companies must consider the culture of another country. The cultural differences may determine whether or not the business is successful. If the product or service doesn’t add value, then it won’t be a success. Companies should learn and have an understanding about the people in the community and what they value.

  3. Am I currently a domestic market leader?

    We are a software development company based in the U.S. with an office in India. A lot of my friends and connections have asked me to serve clients in India, but I always have refused. We still have a lot of potential to grow in the U.S. market and drive profit and value. Once we reach a certain level here, we can probably go overseas. I would rather be a leader in one market than lagging in multiple.

  4. Am I prepared for the costs of logistics, tariffs, and returns?

    For product companies, there are a whole bunch of potential issues that arise when going international. There are different tax laws, import tariffs, increased logistics expenses, and more expenses that can potentially erode or even eliminate your profit margins. Returns can also be extremely expensive to process. These costs need to be understood very well up front before you do the expansion.

  5. Can I provide support across time zones? 

    Depending on where you’re located, time zones may differ drastically from the country you’re targeting. When you’re making deals with clients, promoting products or hiring for tech support, keep the time difference between locations in mind.
     
  6. What is the cost and availability of translation services? 

    Before expanding overseas, you need to consider the cost and availability of translation services. For instance, your marketing materials, website, and the product itself will need to be translated and localized. Also, if you’re attending business meetings in a particular country, you may need a translator to go along with you.
     
  7. Do I have enough capital for expansion? 

    It’s an exciting endeavor to expand globally, but you need to make sure your business has enough capital to do so. It takes a lot of money and resources to move your business to international heights and you don’t want to risk dipping into other funds to support growth. Look over your financial statements and assess if now is the right time to move overseas.
     
  8. Do I have contacts overseas? 

    Before expanding overseas, consider if you have contacts in that particular country. If you do, you can turn to those relevant industry leaders to answer questions you have as well as connect you with helpful resources. If you don’t have any contacts in a particular country, consider reaching out to your network to see if you can get an introduction.
     
  9. Am I familiar with the rules and regulations? 

    Different countries vary in their regulations and expectations for companies. European countries tend to have more labor unions, for example, while India and China have fewer. You want to abide by the rules and avoid potential investigations on a global scale or irregular product quality on the other side of the scale. Educate yourself and your employees, and follow legislative updates.

  10. Is there a valid business reason to expand? 

    Ensure that there is a real business justification for expanding your offerings to an overseas market. Often, business owners select a region that they like or have some personal connection with instead of selecting objectively better locations to expand to. Do a cost-benefit analysis of different expansion areas to select the area with the highest potential return.
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RELAX: Climate predictions are wildly wrong and probably always will be

Posted on October 10, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

Scare tactics used by the Global Warmists, including threats to jail anyone who does not agree with them, are simply a function of jealousy and what the Aussies would call, “the tallest poppy syndrome.”

Since climate activists seem unwilling to get a job and to, instead, spend their days protesting, I can only conclude that they are jealous of what the rest of have and therefore want to dismantle a system that allowed us to enjoy what Plato called “the good life.”

Put even more succinctly, “Global Warming is the biggest power grab in history.”  Notice how very few of them work locally to ensure that their own backyards are clean and neat and “Eco-friendly,” choosing instead to jet around the world protesting all that we have and which demonstrably has made their lives possible.

We have been here before. It is worth recounting the many times these people and their predecessors have conjured up visions of a dead planet.

Recently, The Competitive Enterprise Institute published, “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-Apocalyptic Predictions.” Such spectacularly wrong predictions were made by respected scientists and government officials. Their answer then, and the Warmist’s answer for today, is to raise taxes, imposes more governmental restrictions, and to form ever more powerful institutions at the global level.

I guess we were lucky:

Stanford University biologist Dr. Paul Erhlich warned in 1969: “The trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead. We must realize that unless we’re extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.” 1989 came and went and we are still here.

It is snowing hard this morning in Wyoming, yet…

In 2000, Dr. David Viner, a British research scientist predicted that, “in a few years winter snowfall would become a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Children are in my front yard this morning throwing snowballs.

Put away your snorkels …

In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned that “major European cities would soon be beneath rising seas and that Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020.” They aren’t breathing water and Britain, as it will always be, is still there.

Like James Bond, I will take my predictions (like my Scotch), “on the rocks” …

In 2008, Al Gore predicted that “the polar ice cap will be gone in a mere 10 years. Piling on, the USA’s Department of Energy said that the “Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.” Nope. Didn’t happen. Still lots of ice for my Scotch.

Chaos is as chaos does …

In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.” 500 days. That’s about a year and a half. 2014, 2015 and part of 2016, came and went and the chaos didn’t materialize. Kerry and his ilk still own private jets.

Not only are we still here, but we are fatter and flabbier than ever…

In 1970, Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, predicted that, “by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. … By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” They aren’t, we aren’t, and the world enjoys solid productions of food.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

Kenneth Watt’s 1970 prediction was, “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” 2000 came and went and, well, you are beginning to understand what I mean. So much for “no more snow.”

Such predictions of the weather (remember that our weather bureau has a tough time predicting the weather for tomorrow, let alone 20 years from now) also required the concomitant predictions of what we won’t have in order to stay alive. Take for example…

Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver would be gone before 1990. Kenneth Watt said, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate … that there won’t be any more crude oil.” Today, reserves of oil have never been higher.

This is nothing new …

  • In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior predicted that American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years.
  • In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight.
  • In 1974, the U.S. Geological Survey said that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.

As of Jan. 1, 2017, there were about 2,459 trillion cubic feet of dry natural gas in the United States. That’s enough to last us for nearly a century. The United States is the largest producer of natural gas worldwide.

Bottom line? You can relax. Today’s wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as bad as yesteryear’s.

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

Can anyone MAKE you feel something? A commentary on sticks, stones, and how words will never hurt me

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

Let us not forget the power of language to shape our experiences. When teaching, I am ever-mindful of the words I use to explain a certain topic or to keep the class on schedule. I want the learning experience to be one that invites learning and doesn’t shut anyone down. That said, I also must remember that my students are responsible for their own reactions and responses to what I say.

Remember Aretha Franklin’s lyric, “You make me feel like a natural woman…”? I always loved the music but took exception (at the time, an uninformed, visceral exception) to the notion that anyone can make me feel something I don’t myself choose to feel. Since then, I have come to the informed conclusion that no one can “make” me feel anything.

Recently, a client of mine was describing a difficult conversation with an employee, one in which there were strong feelings on both sides. “He made me feel terrible,” my client said.

There’s nothing abnormal about that utterance — we say things like it all the time. For example, we might say, She makes me so frustrated, or, you’re making me really unhappy.

Without question, such statements serve a useful purpose–particularly when we’re able to express them in the moment–because they clarify and reveal our emotional state. Anytime we can articulate our feelings regarding another person, rather than require them to guess, communication becomes far more accurate, effective, and at times, fun.

But! The idea that someone can “make” you feel is also fraught with a kind of fatal flaw, one that often makes communication more difficult. Saying that someone else “makes us feel” an emotion suggests that they are responsible for our emotional state. Can you see how that is  highly problematic? When another person’s statements and behavior trigger an emotional response in us, it is inaccurate to presume that the other person is the responsible party and that we are some sort of innocent bystander.

We aren’t.

You are not a passive recipient of the data through which we interpret and make sense of the world. We are actors in absolutely every stage of the process of gathering, interpreting, and responding to those inputs, which inputs include other people’s utterances and behaviors. It is up to us, personally, to take those inputs, process them, and then take responsibility for how we respond.  

This process is nicely set forth in the so-called Ladder of Inference, developed by Dr. Chris Argyris, a longtime professor at Harvard Business School, who built on the work of linguist (and U.S. Senator) S.I. Hayakawa and philosopher Alford Korzybski.

There are four rungs on this Ladder:

  1. From all observable data, you select specific data to focus upon.
  2. You interpret this data and invest it with meaning; hence, inferring what the other person meant.
  3. You develop theories and beliefs that explain your interpretation.
  4. You take action on the basis of your theories and beliefs.

Consider the following when an interpersonal interaction is triggering an emotional reaction:

  1. Our brains determine which of the other person’s statements and behavior to focus on, while at the same time ignoring a huge amount of other data points. The choices (yes, choices) we make regarding what to pay attention to, and what to ignore, are profoundly influenced by our cognitive biases. One example of such biases is the “Halo Effect,” whereby we project angel-like traits onto the other person and ignore their devil-like tendencies. Or, the “Fundamental Attribution Error,” whereby we selectively attend to data that renders the other person as completely at fault.
  2. We then interpret the other person’s statements and behavior in order to render it meaningful. There are many possible interpretations; the ones we assign to this data are derived from our mental models. Mental models are the “lenses” through which we view the world. If your lens is cloudy, you are apt to see yourself as a victim.
  3. Within a few nanoseconds, we arrive at theories and beliefs regarding the other person’s motives and intentions. These are our interpretations. Such interpretations are informed by our mental models and subjective memories of past experiences with this person and others. These interpretations are what we might call a “conceptual framework” upon which we arrive at a choice of responses or, worse, reactions.
  4. Finally, we act. We react. We respond. But please note that our emotional responses are actions regardless of whether or not we express them outwardly. Emotions are physiological events, starting with the release of neurotransmitters in our brain that trigger a cascade of bodily reactions: changes in our heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, hearing, and vision, etc. These internal responses, reflections of an emotional state, result in external expressions, both large and small, and include facial expressions and body language, to our manner of speaking, to the actual content of our statements.

Can you see how each of us – individually – are responsible for how we respond to another person?

When we say, “You make me feel…” we’re shirking that responsibility and larding it onto the other person. At that moment we’re acting like a victim.

Go to your own personal “App Store”

What is needed is a kind of software re-set, an update to the applications residing in our minds. Various theorists refer to such brain software as “mindsets.” Which one would you rather have loaded into your head?

The Victim Mindset? This is to say, “I view myself as separate and disconnected from situations as they occur. Circumstances and events happen to me. I believe there is nothing I can do to affect the situation.”

Or …

The Responsible Mindset? This mindset says, “I view myself as an integral factor in all situations. Every situation occurs and unfolds as it does in some measure as a direct outcome of my actions, non-actions and interpretations. I believe there is always something I can do to affect the situation.”

Stanford professor Jeff Pfeffer had this to say:

Responsibility entails feeling powerful and believing one has some obligation to make the world a better place. The responsibility mindset is simply seeing oneself as an actor affecting what goes on, rather than being in a more passive role of having things happen to oneself…

In the end, it is all about which mindset to employ. You are either a victim or not. I choose not to be a victim. I choose to recognize my role and my responsibility in all interactions, both effective ones and the ineffective ones.

It is all about how you choose to see what is going on. No one can make you feel what you don’t want to feel.

PS: in searching for the graphic to use with this post, I found it hard to find the old proverb. Our world, especially in this day and age of #MeToo, is filled with the anger of words and how overly sensitive we have all become. I see this as a sad commentary. It can only lead to no good. You are responsible for your responses. You can choose to reject the words. No one else needs to do it for you.

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Developing a Positive Mental Attitude: Hoping for the Best, Expecting the Worst, and Winding Up Somewhere in Between

Posted on September 29, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

Grumpiness is its own reward, said no one ever.  In fact, there is considerable evidence that a persistently sour attitude can shorten your life. When you stop to think about it, of course it would! The body is not built to sustain that constant flow of cortisol that stress and the expectation of stress will bring with it. Looking for silver linings, the hallmark of the Pollyanna People among us, is associated with a far more meaningful and longer life.

But how the hell are you supposed to get to positivity when everything around you is inherently bad?

For starters, check your extreme language. Not “everything” is bad. Not even close. In fact, I would argue that everything is far close to “good” than bad. After all, that you can read this post and that you are breathing is all the evidence we need.

In this post I will review some coping skills and strategies for developing a positive mental attitude (PMA). I’ll start with a review of the 1952 worldwide bestseller, The Power of Positive Thinking, by Normal Vincent Peale.

From a decidedly Christian viewpoint, Peale begins by stating ten rules for “overcoming inadequacy attitudes and learning to practice faith.” I think they’re worth a review, no matter the religious under- (and over-) tones.

  1. Picture yourself as succeeding. He wrote that in 1952 and since then there has been considerable research into the so-called Laws of Attraction. Simply put, these Laws codify an inherent ability to attract into our lives whatever we are focusing on. It is the Law of Attraction which uses the power of the mind to translate whatever is in our thoughts and materialize them into reality. In basic terms, all thoughts turn into things eventually. If you focus on negative doom and gloom you will remain under that cloud. If you focus on positive thoughts and have goals that you aim to achieve you will find a way to achieve them with massive action.
  2. Think a positive thought to drown out a negative thought. This is the root of mental discipline. Believe me, you have that discipline within you. It is what keeps us moving and breathing and believing that there is something better around the next curve. Think this: “everything that is, could be otherwise.”
  3. Minimize obstacles. In so many ways, we are our own worst enemies, constantly putting up or giving too much power to obstacles. Remember the words of Epictetus: “Man is not troubled by things, but by his view of things.” Obstacles are road-bumps, with power that only we can give them. Candidly, I see obstacles as simple facets of the mind.
  4. Do not attempt to copy others. And, while you’re at it, quit Facebook. Ours is very much a comparison culture, made only worse by the silly and inane ways that people make themselves look good through various posts on social media. This encourages a kind of “false mirror,” which is to say that we begin to think if we aren’t as good looking or as successful as what people purport to be on Facebook, then we aren’t good enough. You are you. End of story. Just be yourself and stop copying others (although I will have much to say about the power of mimicry in other posts).
  5. Repeat “If God be for us, who can be against us?” ten times every day. Don’t believe in a God, fine. Skip this one. But before you do, consider this: If we are inherently bad and evil, then how did we get this far? Something has to be propelling us forward. Anyway, the point of the phrase is that each of us has inherent worth, vested in us by a God, and if He thinks highly of us, what does it matter if no one else does?
  6. Work with a counselor. I love this one not because I am a counselor, but because it invites us to seek out our blind spots, spots which only a disinterested person can be in a position to point out. And a possible blind spot is inherent negativity.
  7. Repeat “I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me” ten times every day. Not a fan of the Christian God, fine. See point 5. In the meantime, fashion a similar mantra; perhaps, “I can do all things for which life itself has given me strength.” Something like that. The point is this: You are stronger than you might otherwise believe. That you made it this far is testament to your underlying will to power.
  8. Develop a strong self-respect. As Carl Jung is known to have said, avail yourself of the alms of your own kindness. After all, you would do the same for others. Why not yourself? You’re worth it. And you’re certainly not worth self-disrespect.
  9. Affirm that you are in God’s hands. Ah, yes, the God-thing again. See point 5. The point here is that you can relax, for as a bumper sticker I once saw said, “nothing is under [your] control.” Relax. Let go. Stop the white-knuckling of life. Go with the flow.
  10. Believe that you receive power from God. Who else? If you believe you get it from … you … then you are already a positive person, albeit rather egocentric. Positivity in life is a kind of “thank you” to someone or some thing bigger than you.

Peale spends a lot of time in his book on the value of a peaceful mind, which he believed could be achieved through inspirational reading, clearing one’s mind, and visualization. In other words, don’t read Facebook posts when you could be reading an inspirational story.

An important part of his writing is this: The mind controls how the body feels; thus, letting go of negative energy and emotions will result in far better physical health. Now, let’s not be naïve – you can still get a cold or even cancer and be the most positive person in the world. But even then, a positive mental attitude is prescribed.

Happiness is a choice. It is created by choice, by personal power, and not from the outside. Worrying and overall negativity only inhibits your shot at happiness.

Letting go of anger is crucial. I invite my clients to imagine a life where anger washes over you. Hard to do, I know, but the alternative is worse: Living in anger means you will act from a position of anger and that only makes things worse.

It helps to have people around you who actually like you. Sounds basic, and it is, but I am surprised how often we keep “life-sucking people” around us. And in order to increase your “following,” here are some tips: remember names, praise others generously, become a people person, and resolve problems calmly as soon as they appear. When we do so, people are more likely to want to be around us, which can make us happier, which makes us even easier to be around, and even happier—an upward spiral of positive emotions that fuel health and well-being.

So, in summary:

  1. Strengthen the Positive Neural Pathways in Your Brain to Develop a More Positive Attitude. Spend more time thinking about positive things, for example by memorizing and recalling lists of positive words. When you force your brain to work with positive information, you activate these regions of your brain and make this information accessible in your daily life. So later, when you’re trying to have a positive attitude, you may be able to generate positive thoughts, memories, and emotions more easily.
  2. Look for Silver Linings. People with a negative attitude are really good at one thing—finding the downside of any situation, person, or thing. People with a positive attitude do the opposite—they can always find the upside. Really, these two perspectives are just two sides of the same coin. It’s all about what you pay attention to. So if you want to change your perspective, you can apply your canny ability to find the bad to develop your ability to find the good. Ask yourself: What could you learn? What opportunities might arise? What can you appreciate about this? Could the situation have been worse? Then use these questions to get yourself to start finding the good things instead of always focusing on the bad things.
  3. Practice Random Acts of Kindness. To develop a positive attitude, we do have to make an effort to be kinder to others. Sometimes it’s easy to be kind—for example, when we feel like others deserve it—and sometimes it’s harder. So start with easy kindness and go from there. Being kinder can be easy if you engage in random acts of kindness. A random act of kindness could be anything from telling a co-worker you like her necklace, to congratulating a friend on an important achievement, to bringing a cup of soup to a family member who has the flu. These acts are small and unsolicited, but they show that you care—a significant part of what it means to be a positive person.
  4. Smile, Laugh, and Enjoy Life. A positive attitude is made up of more than thinking and acting in positive ways. It’s a feeling that others can detect in you when you don’t take life too seriously. Maybe you smile big when someone tells you there’s food stuck in your teeth. Or you laugh when things don’t go your way. You have made the decision to enjoy your life, regardless of what life throws at you. Deciding to enjoy life more is a key step in developing a positive attitude.

The main thing is this: Always hope for the best, and expect the worst, and you are guaranteed to wind up somewhere in between.

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The Curse of Indecisiveness

Posted on September 21, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo
See the source image

Borrowed from Forbes and the Young Entrepreneur’s Council – their copyrights, not mine.

The ability to make decisions is one of the biggest reasons people are drawn toward entrepreneurship. Followers are often at the whim of others who may not be as capable as they are. Leaders don’t have to suffer on account of someone else’s bad choices. They make their own decisions. Anyone who has ever worked under ineffective management can vouch for how special that is. However, nothing is free. The gift of being able to decide comes with the price of having to decide.

Why Are People Indecisive?

When you work for someone else, it’s easy to complain about their bad decisions. You may marvel at how your boss made the wrong choice when the right one was clear as day. However, in their shoes, it may be difficult to make a decision at all. It’s easy to know what’s right when you have no liability. As decision makers, leaders put something at stake every time that they pick a way forward. That makes choosing scary. If a leader makes enough bad calls, the consequences may lead them to fear the risk that accompanies every choice that they make. In short, the reason that some leaders are stricken with indecisiveness is that they are afraid.

Why Is Indecisiveness Futile?

There is no way to escape the risk that entrepreneurs face. On the contrary, it’s important not to dodge risk but instead to confront it. As a leader, you cannot avoid making decisions. That’s because not making business decisions is a decision in and of itself. The difference is that you have control when you make your own choices. Indecisiveness entails letting decisions, and their accompanying consequences, be determined for you. Having choices made for you is often fine if you work for someone else. However, no company runs itself. As an entrepreneur, if you don’t take the wheel of your business, it will crash.

How To Decide – Begin with the End in Mind

If something doesn’t help you reach your objectives, then don’t do it.

Envision success. In order to make a decision, you need to know what outcome you want to create. Start by considering what goals you have. Then, use your expertise to determine what steps are most likely to lead toward those results. If something doesn’t help you reach your objectives, then don’t do it. Of course, if something actively leads you away from where you want to be, then it’s not even worth considering. However, pouring your resources into paths that neither lead to nor away from your ambitions means you’ll have fewer resources to pursue your dreams in the future. As a result, it’s important to always make your own choices and ensure that they actively work in your favor.

Entrepreneurship is competitive. If you aren’t willing to prioritize your business, then you’ll lose to someone who is. That’s why it’s important to apply this relentless pursuit of your goals to other areas of life, as well. If you spend your time on hobbies that don’t help your business grow, then decide to put them on hold. If you are surrounded by people who don’t support your ambitions, then decide to distance yourself from them. You cannot succeed with half measures. Again, if you won’t remain decisive and dedicated when facing the tough choices, you’ll be eclipsed by those who will.

Entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of being indecisive. They must accept the consequences of their actions, whether positive or negative. As a result, leaders are able to enjoy unparalleled freedom and control over their professional lives. The power to choose means that entrepreneurs can steer their companies toward where they want them to be. Entrepreneurs must always confront and conquer the curse of indecisiveness. However, in doing so, they can enjoy the immense rewards that come from making their own decisions.

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SHOULDING All Over Yourself?

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

Are You SHOULDING All Over Yourself?

My clients often ask me, “should I be doing this?” One client several days ago reported that he should not be working overtime, as it takes away from valuable family time. Another client said that her daily workouts were no longer as enjoyable, “because I am constantly thinking of what I should be doing.”

These clients are “shoulding” all over themselves. Said another way, they are distancing themselves from who they truly are, or want to be. Moreover, the implication is that whatever you “should” be doing is the “right” thing to be doing, and that what you are doing is the “wrong” thing.

Working overtime, provided it is in the interest of providing for one’s family, is not wrong. It is a choice and, if it is made in consultation with your partner, is – by definition – the better thing to be doing. Better or worse, not right or wrong.  Besides, in the larger scheme of things, right and wrong are quite always relative.

It’s almost as if the angel on one shoulder is getting shouted down by the devil on the other. When one has the upper hand over the other, we are unbalanced. We are giving far too much weight to self-judgment and criticism.

I should be nicer, or I should smile more, or I should work harder. I shouldn’t be so critical, or I shouldn’t eat so much, or I shouldn’t be so lazy.

No wonder we aren’t even close to being happy. The devil out-shouts the angel.

The problem is that you end up engaging in conditional self-love: Worthy of his own love and acceptance if and only if he behaves perfectly all the time. Conditional.

Here’s the deal: You aren’t perfect and never will be.

And if you are forever chasing perfection, you will be like a guinea pig on a wheel: round and round she goes.

Tell the devil to shut up while you are working out, or working overtime, or … whatever. Remind it that you have made a choice and that’s that.

But do not tell it to leave. You need to have it around from time to time.

No, you shouldn’t eat that extra quart of ice cream. You hear The Devil on Your Shoulder and then YOU make the choice not to eat it, because – on balance – the angel has reminded you of your larger goals.

Avoid spending all your time trying to be the right person and do the right things. Instead, make the better choices and stay convicted of the choice YOU make. And if that choice turns out to be a mistake, so what? Learn from it and make the better choice next time.

I promise my clients this:

By enjoying the life the way YOU are living it, and by letting go of the idea that you have to be somehow perfect (impossible, anyway), life gets a lot easier and a lot-more-fun.

Stop shoulding all over yourself.

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Parenting Our Parents: And Other Acts of Self-Soothing

Posted on September 8, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

So very often – more often than one would like to believe – my clients present with anger toward their parents. It can happen at any age and usually we grow out of it. If our parents die before that time, then the bereavement at their loss is compounded. It is a part of the human condition, I suppose, but it seems to have become almost-pathological in this day and age of helicopter parenting. Parents are gripped by the notion that life, such as it is, will intervene to murder their children and that they must be forever present (yes, well into the child’s adulthood). The problem is that children never learn to“self-soothe.”

What psychiatrists and psychologists know about this is that as babies we need our parents to comfort us as we encounter the world for the first time(s). However, parents must also know when to intervene and when NOT to intervene.

Oddly enough, the first pop-baby-docs (well before your time, thankfully) thought that parents should NEVER intervene and should let the child cry itself to a place of comfort (self-soothing). The problem with this approach was that it ran counter to instinct: Parents have an instinctual urge to help the child through the rough spots.

Modern baby docs have adopted the more reasonable position that a balance must be struck. Indeed there ARE times when the parent must intervene and let the child know that everything will be alright. The key (as with almost everything in life) is BALANCE. Too much soothing and the baby never learns to self-soothe. Too little soothing and the child develops what we call “attachment issues.” In other words, it learns that it must fend for itself and that no one – including parents – can be relied upon. We see this latter position with orphan children and it is sad to watch. 

This balancing act continues through childhood and right up to the present. Parents must learn to gradually release the child to fend for itself. It is the only way that a child can learn to encounter the world on their own (which they will need to do the day after they turn 18, the legal age of adulthood). Various childhood development theorists have called this the “gradual release of responsibility” model. It is wisdom, pure and simple. If you stop to think about it, such releasing of responsibility (including the development of skills around self-soothing) are absolutely essential for a functional society. Parents will not be around forever and the child/teenager/adult must learn to fend for itself. Otherwise, we become a society of enmeshment and co-dependency, and that would not be good. Instead of being mad at mom or dad for not responding (in other words, throwing a temper-tantrum), remind yourself that she or he will not be around forever and to enjoy the contact that you do have.

Self-soothing is a skill and if not learned during the developmental years, most certainly CAN be learned at any age. It is simply a matter of taking what we know about the world, applying it to the present situation, and using that knowledge to remind ourselves that things are never as bad as they seem. Remember this: For every bad, there is a worse. Or, if you want to know what the great Stoics said about this 3,000 years ago:

“Man is not disturbed by things, but rather, his view of things.”

The inverse is also true: For every good, there is a better. This is to remind us that we can always do better, always strive for something more. This is why our Founding Fathers coined the term, “Pursuit of Happiness.” Happiness is always just one more step away. If you stop and think about this, it is incredibly true.

You have a choice in every interaction with yourself, your dad or mom, your boss … the world … whether to react or to respond.

  • Reaction is usually a function of infancy temper-tantrum-throwing; that is, we are reacting with anger (read: we are not getting our way in the moment).
  • Responding is usually a function of contemplation over time; that is, we know (from experience and maturity) that taking time will usually result in a less-emotional reaction to whatever event has befuddled us. Responding means considering how things could be otherwise.

There is a video that I play for all my classes and which speaks to this very notion. Take a look at it here: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=this+is+water&&view=detail&mid=F25F36FED69B169368CEF25F36FED69B169368CE&rvsmid=9A0F7ABB94311EC00BDA9A0F7ABB94311EC00BDA&FORM=VDRVRV

As adults, we are in charge of our emotions. Period, Full Stop. This is one reason why people who commit crimes are held personally responsible for their actions, and not society as a whole. Think about that: If we said to every murderer, “it’s okay, society did this to you, go and have a nice day,” chances are the perpetrator would simply go and do it again. They were given a built-in excuse. We wouldn’t last very long if that logic were employed.

In the moment, YOU can choose to react or respond. YOU can choose to burst out with emotion, OR to take your time and develop a thoughtful response. And that “response” can be a choice to do nothing at all about what happened. It’s all about “calculation.” Those who are most adept at negotiating with the world are highly calculating. It is not a bad thing; after all, in that process they are retaining their personal agency, their personal power.

Anger toward our parents is well-placed. It is normal. They did a lot of things incorrectly. Your kids will be mad at you, I guarantee it. The choice now is what to do about it. I would argue that it informs the kind of man or woman you will choose to marry, and what kind of parent YOU will be. Moreover, it could inform (if you choose to let it) how you view your parent(s): As a well-meaning but flawed human being (aren’t we all).

I personally believe that as time goes on, we become parents to our parents. We become the bigger person. We employ empathy and forgiveness. We let them have their lives just as they are letting us have our own.

In the end, reaction versus response is all about self-soothing, about finding the time to contemplate and discern. As a baby, you don’t know how to do it. As an adult, provided you aren’t in prison for murdering your neighbor, well, you should know how to do it!

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Tearing Down Statues: The Height of Self-Centered Thinking

Posted on August 31, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

Our youth have decided that various memorials to past events are offensive and are demanding that they be torn down. Nothing new – the Soviets did it in their attempt to re-write the past. Now American youth are doing it. Only a matter of time before the “wretched refuse” of Liberty gets under their skin. Even now, there is a move afoot to rename George Washington University inasmuch as he held slaves and cannot be touted as a moral man.

There is a part of me that would rather not put up any statues at all. You know, save the money, and all that. Naming buildings after politicians, alive or dead, has always struck me as self-referential and a waste of taxpayer funds. Still, we do it and every time I cross an MLK boulevard somewhere I am want to pause and reflect on what King had to say and what he stood for. There is now an Obama middle school in Los Angeles and while I wasn’t a fan of the President, I appreciate that he was a hero to some. Certainly the way I feel when I fly through Reagan National in Washington D.C.

Peggy Noonan writes:

Keeping names and statues serves as “a stimulus to modesty.” It reminds us how hard it has been to reach the more advanced position we hold today. It reminds us that even we, “with our more enlightened ideals, are human beings, with the same imperfections as our predecessors, bedeviled by the same tendency to overestimate ourselves.”

Shouldn’t we remember that we are no more able to see things in a perfect light than our ancestors were? The impulse to tear down “destroys the bridge of sympathy between the present and the past” and “invites a swaggering pride that weakens the power of moral imagination itself.”

Such memorials are like “thorns in our side,” reminding us “that others in the past, with human shortcomings like ours, have not always lived up to the better angels of their nature, and that we shall fail to do so as well. They remind us our moral achievements are hard-won and never entirely secure.”

What will be the moral achievements of our youth? Will they sit around in a stoned stupor, in their rocking chairs someday and reminisce about how they tore down the Statue of Liberty? “What was that, Grandpa?” “Oh, it was a stupid gift from France that white nationalists thought was worth keeping, but we-showed-them.”

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