This is … Priceless: The Idiocy of “Virtue Signaling”

Posted on May 27, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

Starbucks plans to eliminate plastic straws from its stores by next year. Lyft has committed to “carbon neutrality.” Candy-maker Mondelez says all its wrappers will be recyclable by 2025, and Goldman Sachs has banished paper cups. But there’s scant evidence that these gestures benefit customers, shareholders, employees or the environment.

Consider Starbucks’ decision to ditch plastic straws for recyclable lids, supposedly reducing plastic waste. Turns out, straws are a tiny share of waste, accounting by one estimate for only about 0.025% of the eight million tons of plastic that flow annually into the ocean. But no matter: the new lids contain more plastic than the straws. The lids are ostensibly recyclable—but consumers must separate them from the cups and throw them into recycling bins. Who’s going to do that?

Even the lids that make it into bins will probably end up in landfills. They’re made of polypropylene, which used to be sent to China to recycle. But China recently stopped accepting U.S. waste, complaining it was too dirty. At least that saves the carbon emissions from shipping it across the Pacific. At least we can be happy about that!

Then there are practical concerns. Starbucks in 2008 set a “bold goal” to serve 25% of its beverages in reusable cups by 2015. It later revised the goal down to 5%, in part because it was inefficient for baristas to wash dirty cups while other customers waited. Cleaning mugs also requires water and paper towels, which end up in the trash. Meanwhile, every Starbucks I have been in (for the past, oh I don’t know, 10 years) is absolutely filthy. Dirty windows and sticky tables.

Then there’s Dunkin’ Donuts, which spent nearly a decade (a decade!) devising an alternative to foam cups. Some decomposable cups were too expensive in large volumes, while others, which were manufactured from recycled materials, simply collapsed. Dunkin’ settled on cups made from “ethically sourced paper.” In most places, they can’t be recycled.

The international banking firm of Goldman Sachs last year decided to ban paper cups from its offices and asked employees to bring ceramic mugs instead. Great idea. Earlier this year, the bank announced it would stop carrying throwaway utensils in its cafeterias and replaced plastic soda bottles with aluminum cans in vending machines. Too many employees were throwing the items in the trash rather than recycling.  Perhaps they should have offered good old American-made forks, knives, and spoons.

How many Goldman bankers are willing to wash dishes at the office? Many will instead eat out. As for bottles vs. cans, aluminum production consumes huge amounts of energy and produces masses of CO2. Lest we forget, in the good old days, when things mattered, we made our lunches, placed them in reusable lunch pails, grabbed a bottle of soda, and went off to work. Rinse and repeat.

There are other actions corporations could take that would be more beneficial to the environment—for instance, setting office thermostats a few degrees higher or providing employees paid time-off for tree-planting or highway-cleaning projects.

So why are businesses taking these costly and often counterproductive actions?

They’re trying to show employees, customers and shareholders—including institutional investors with a political agenda—they care about the environment.

And in so doing, many crucial questions go unanswered:

  • How many investors buy shares in a company because of its “sustainable” policies?
  • And how much do office paper-cup purges aggravate employees and reduce productivity?
  • How much do the higher costs of these policies reduce earnings and lower share prices?
  • How many consumers care if the food they buy comes in recyclable packages?
  • How much do higher costs from more expensive materials reduce purchases?
  • How often do businesses bother to undertake cost-benefit analyses before implementing such policies—and how often are they merely following the lead of other companies or bowing to political pressure?

Perhaps the primary reason for such policies is to meet a demand for virtue signaling. Customers want minor inconveniences. It all boils down to feeling good about driving 10 minutes to buy a $5 cup of coffee, so long as they feel bad about it.

Turns out, signaling one’s virtue to the world costs money. How about focusing instead on your business and remind employees of the little lunch pail?

[Borrowed from the WSJ, May 27, 2019. The copyright is theirs.]

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

Burgess Owens says, “I Did Not Earn Slavery Reparations, and I Don’t Want Them”

Posted on May 27, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

The problem with the argument presented below, in an article by Burgess Owens, sadly, is that many Americans today, particularly the past couple of generations haven’t worked for anything and want more.  Less than ½ of Americans pay the taxes needed to run the country.  We rely on dastardly corporations to do that.  The last time I checked, something like 110 million Americans were on some sort of government dole (which, at one time, was considered embarrassing. Not anymore.)  Reparations seem to be happening already.

One other thing that goes unmentioned (particularly by Elizabeth Warren who cannot get her own DNA straight) is the determination of “blackness.” What about those who came to America willingly from the shitholes of Africa? Do they deserve reparations?  For all I know, and it is entirely possible, as a Sicilian I may have black DNA somewhere. Am I due reparations?  What about the millions of Black Americans who are now millionaires? Will there be a means-test? And what government agency will need to be created to monitor all of this?

Why stop there? Per Kamala Harris and the latest crop of “Hate America” loudmouths, we owe reparations to virtually every culture on earth.  For crying out loud, even Canadians were deprived of their manifest destiny when America “forced’ Britain to arbitrarily set the border so far north, out of reach of the fertile Great Plains. Mexico too would otherwise be a nirvana were it not for what America did to it.  Panamanians are due reparations for what we did to them, separating them from the utopia of Columbia so many years ago.  Hawaiians and the Marshall Islanders too.  Hell, I might as well get into this and blame America for “liberating” Sicily from the Nazis and the Mussolini thugs.  Surely Sicily would be better off today were it not what we did to them. (And while we’re conjuring anger, I remind myself to remain pissed off at what the Greeks did to my homeland, Sicily, 3,000 years ago. The only problem is that Greece is broke and cannot be “shook down” like rich America.)

Oh, the humanity.

The idea of reparations as a public policy, in terms of a “power grab,” ranks right up there with Global Warming and the punishment to be inflicted on Americans who want to live the dream.  Anyway, this opinion piece appeared in last week’s Wall Street Journal and I post it here to preserve it for my own reference. It is perhaps the best argument against all this reparations madness that I have read so far.

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I Didn’t Earn Slavery Reparations, and I Don’t Want Them, by Burgess Owens

May 24, 2019 5:13 p.m. ET

My great-great-Grandfather Silas Burgess came to America shackled in the belly of a slave ship. He was sold on an auction block in Charleston, S.C., to the Burgess Plantation. Orphaned by age 8, he was fortunately surrounded by elder slaves who, though physically chained, mentally envisioned themselves as free men. They escaped, taking young Silas with them, making their way to West Texas via the southern route of the Underground Railroad. Silas became a risk-taking entrepreneur and the owner of 102 acres of farmland, which he cultivated and paid off within two years. I proudly carry the name of my first American ancestor—who, like millions of others drawn or brought to our country, struggled past overwhelming obstacles to live the American Dream.

Silas founded the first black church and first black elementary school in his town. He was a proud Republican, a devout Christian, the patriarch of a large family, and a pillar of his community. He was proud and industrious and taught his children to be the same.

Now, because of him, a bunch of Democratic presidential hopefuls want to give me money. Never mind that like Silas, I am an entrepreneur who has lived the American dream—having received a world-class education, built businesses, raised a remarkable family and, unlike most white Americans, earned a Super Bowl ring. Because of work I’ve never done, stripes I’ve never had, under a whip I’ll never know, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Elizabeth Warren and others want to give me free stuff. Never mind that it will be taken from others, who also dreamed, worked and sacrificed to earn it.

I wonder what great-great-Grandpa Silas would think.

At the core of the reparation movement is a divisive and demeaning view of both races. It grants to the white race a wicked superiority, treating them as an oppressive people too powerful for black Americans to overcome. It brands blacks as hapless victims devoid of the ability, which every other culture possesses, to assimilate and progress. Neither label is earned.

The reparations movement conveniently forgets the 150 years of legal, social and economic progress attained by millions of American minorities. It also minimizes the sacrifice that hundreds of thousands of white Americans and a Republican president made laying down their lives to eradicate slavery. I think Grandpa Silas would believe that this historical loss of life alone is payment in full. Every proud, contributing and thankful generation of black Americans since would think the same.

The reparation movement also reinforces a spiritual view of racial relationships that is antithetical to America’s Judeo-Christian foundation. It defies the ideals of forgiveness and second chances and scorns individual accountability. Proponents of reparations act as though black Americans are incapable of carrying their own burdens, while white Americans must bear the sins of those who came before.

The idea of reparations demeans America’s founding ideals. A culturally Marxist idea promoted by socialists, reparations denies the promise granted by an omnipotent God — that we are truly equal and that regardless of race we are capable of overcoming obstacles and past injustices. By indoctrinating others into this cynical ideology, an elitist class of progressives exploits past differences and ensures that they will divide us in the future.

It is their divisive message that marks the black race as forever broken, as a people whose healing comes only through the guilt, pity, profits and benevolence of the white race. This perception is playing out on our nation’s college campuses, where young white Americans claim privilege due to their skin color and young black Americans, with no apparent shame, accept this demeaning of their own color as truth.

As they repeat this mantra, they seem unaware that this perception was also shared by the 1960s Southern white supremacists of my youth. They have accepted the theory that skin color alone is capable of making one race superior to the other—that through an irremovable white advantage, with no additional effort, values, personal initiative, honesty or education, white Americans will succeed, while black Americans will fail. At its very core this represents the condescending evil of racism.

It certainly does not represent black America’s potential. Despite the Great Society programs that introduced all sorts of perverse, dependency-inducing, and antifamily incentives into the black community some 50 years ago, 40% of black households today live the middle-class American Dream according to the most recent census data, making between $35,000 and $99,999. Many such Black Americans rank among our nation’s most powerful and prestigious. There are tens of thousands of black Americans among our nation’s top 1% of income earners.

The journeys of these Americans to wealth and prominence vary, like those of their white counterparts, but many benefited from having ancestors who embraced the opportunities their country provided and who left behind a legacy of proud, productive, patriotic and successful families. Why should these people be given a handout? Grandpa Silas never believed anyone owed him success. Why should I believe white Americans owe me anything?

Socialist historians have for generations hidden the contributions and success of the black community in America. This has cost us our pride in our past, taken our appreciation for the present, and left us with a lack of vision for our future. The message from our past great black generations is simple: Character cannot be bought and will never allow itself to be diminished by bribery.

Grandpa Silas’s life expectancy was 36. Mine is almost 76. According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by living past 65, my life expectancy may be longer than whites of the same age. Which I guess is good, if reparations advocates are going to make me spend grandpa’s money.

Mr. Owens was a Super Bowl champion with the Oakland Raiders. He is the author of “Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps.” Appeared in the May 25, 2019, print edition of the Wall Street Journal and the Copyright is theirs.

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Net Promoter Scoring: A Useful Primer for MBA Candidates

Posted on May 15, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

Several of my clients have been using NPS, or Net Promoter Scores, in their business analytics for several years.  It has become a fad and is worth reviewing as you enter the working world.

NPS is based on the premise that every one of a company’s customers can be divided into one of three groups. The score is derived from customer responses to a single question asked at the checkout register, from within an email, or by means of a web pop-up online. Usually, it goes like this:

On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend the company’s product or service to a friend?

The survey usually includes a follow-up question asking customers to explain their ratings.

Customers who answer 9 or 10 are “promoters,” or loyal enthusiasts who keep buying. Those who give a score of 0 to 6 are “detractors,” or unhappy customers. Those who answer 7 or 8 are considered “passives,” satisfied but easily wooed by competitors. The results are then multiplied by 100.

The NPS score is determined by subtracting the percentage of customers who are detractors from those who are promoters, with the result falling in a range between -100 to 100. Passives are ignored in the calculation. The goal, of course, is to have a net result of promoters.

In an article, excerpts of which are re-produced below (and which are copyrighted to the Wall Street Journal), authors Safdar and Pacheco write how the NPS system has become something of a fad and that it may not have all that much heft as a predictor (of anything, really).

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By Khadeeja Safdar and Inti Pacheco

May 15, 2019

Best Buy and American Express use it to dole out employee bonuses. Target and Intuit point to it to justify investments. Delta Air Lines and UnitedHealth can’t stop talking about it.  Much of Corporate America is obsessed with its net promoter score, or NPS, a measure of customer satisfaction that has developed a cult-like following among CEOs in recent years. Unlike profits or sales, which are measured and audited, NPS is usually calculated from a one-question survey that companies often administer themselves.

Last year, “net promoter” or “NPS” was cited more than 150 times in earnings conference calls by 50 of the S&P 500, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of transcripts (see methodology below). That’s more than four times as many mentions, and nearly three times as many companies, compared with five years earlier.

Executives pointed to strong or rising NPS as proof that shoppers preferred to pick up orders at Target Corp. stores or that Google’s newest Pixel smartphone was off to a good start. Out of all the mentions the Journal tracked on earnings calls, no executive has ever said the score declined.  Dozens of public companies are reporting the score in securities filings. Last year, “net promoter” was mentioned in 56 proxy filings. Some companies, including American Express Co., Best Buy Co. and Citigroup Inc., list the metric as a criterion for executive compensation, alongside traditional measures such as revenue growth and earnings per share.

The score was introduced in 2003 in a Harvard Business Review article titled “The One Number You Need to Grow.” The Bain & Co. consultant who wrote the article called NPS the “simplest, most intuitive and best predictor of customer behavior” and a “useful predictor of growth.”

Since then, the metric has taken on a life of its own, so much so that the inventor, Fred Reichheld, said he is astonished companies are using NPS to determine bonuses and as a performance indicator. “That’s completely bogus,” Mr. Reichheld, who still consults for Bain, said in an interview. “I had no idea how people would mess with the score to bend it, to make it serve their selfish objectives.”

Management consultants are notorious for pushing ideas to CEOs using jargon and claims of improved business performance. Total quality management, or TQM, which advocated installing quality programs at companies, and business re-engineering process, and BRP, which was a way to restructure companies, gained traction in the 1990s and then faded. NPS has outlived such fads, spawning a cottage industry of consultants and software firms that help businesses implement and boost their score.

Some academics have questioned the whole idea, suggesting that NPS has been oversold. Two 2007 studies analyzing thousands of customer interviews said NPS doesn’t correlate with revenue or predict customer behavior any better than other survey-based metric. A 2015 study examining data on 80,000 customers from hundreds of brands said the score doesn’t explain the way people allocate their money.

“The science behind NPS is bad,” said Timothy Keiningham, a marketing professor at St. John’s University in New York, and one of the co-authors of the three studies. He said the creators of NPS haven’t provided peer-reviewed research to support their original claims of a strong correlation to growth. “When people change their net promoter score, that has almost no relationship to how they divide their spending.”

Some data scientists said the way NPS is calculated, in which one survey metric is subtracted from another, increases the margin of error and requires a larger sample size to get useful results.

“It’s common for companies to track NPS data as if it’s gospel—not knowing that it’s super noisy by design,” said Kim Larsen, who has worked as a data scientist at several companies, including Charles Schwab Corp.

Bain, which now refers to NPS as the “net promoter system,” said some companies are focusing too heavily on the score, but still defended the approach for some practical benefits. It is simple to communicate to employees, provides an easy way to follow up with customers and can be used to benchmark against rivals. The firm also said third-party analyses, including the 2007 studies, of whether NPS correlates with revenue aren’t as good as the analyses conducted internally.

“These are not stupid people. They are running large, successful companies,” said Rob Markey, a Bain partner who helps clients use NPS. “They have demonstrated to their own satisfaction that it’s good.”

Among the first companies to implement NPS were General Electric Co., Intuit Inc. and Charles Schwab Corp., whose leaders were convinced of the benefits after meeting with Mr. Reichheld and other Bain consultants. Now, hundreds of companies are using the score, and many have tweaked the methodology, such as making the numerical scale 1 to 5 or including additional survey questions.

International Business Machines Corp. said it switched from a three-question survey to NPS in 2015. Employees in different departments can see the NPS feedback on their phones. “What it’s become here is a shared truth,” said Kathy McGettrick, vice president of market development and insights at IBM.

Some NPS users in the Journal analysis said the score correlates with revenue growth, though no company would disclose data to prove that point. Several companies said NPS is just one of many metrics they use to make decisions and that it helps them improve products or services.

Intuit, which makes QuickBooks and TurboTax, began asking its customers the NPS question around 2003. Shortly after, CEO Steve Bennett attributed the company’s growth in self-prepared taxes to its net promoter efforts, since feedback had spurred improvements in some products.

Intuit has referred to NPS more than 60 times on earnings calls since the survey was first implemented. The company has used it to explain investments, including its 2007 acquisition of web-hosting company Homestead Technologies and the expansion of the ad budget for its QuickBooks Online service last year.

“We have not intended to imply that NPS is related to, or a driver of, revenue,” said an Intuit spokeswoman, adding that NPS is one of many metrics the company uses. “It allows our teams to gather customer insights so they can make decisions internally to deliver customer benefits.”  Mr. Bennett, who left Intuit at the end of 2007, later went on to serve as CEO of antivirus software maker Symantec, where he asked employees to stop using NPS, according to people familiar with his tenure. In response to the Journal, Mr. Bennett said he came to learn that the score is less meaningful than the open-ended question that can follow the rating.

“A big challenge with the methodology is that organizations tend to focus on the metric as the objective instead of gaining the insight to learn and act on to improve the customer experience,” he said. “When organizations manage to the metric, they find ways to game the system.”

The results are easy to manipulate, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

On Reddit posts, Best Buy employees share tips and tricks to improve NPS, which the company derives from a random sample of customers. They said they can get better results when they explain to customers how the scoring works or tell them their compensation is connected to the result. Some said they remind only the happiest customers to take the survey.

“When horrible NPS comments would come in, the management would rail at the employees,” said Alan Sabido, a former Best Buy employee who worked at a Las Vegas store for three years until he quit last year. Mr. Sabido recalled an instance when his store team received a bad score because a customer had a poor experience at a different Best Buy location.

NPS took on a greater role after Hubert Joly joined as Best Buy’s chief executive in 2012. The company said it was administering the NPS survey question to customers who bought products as well as those who didn’t. Best Buy also made the metric one of the criteria used to determine bonuses.

Since then, Best Buy has mentioned NPS or net promoter more than 50 times on earnings calls. The company has created a team of employees at its Richfield, Minn., headquarters called “Enterprise NPS” and some of its store workers are also tasked with “driving positive NPS results,” according to job postings.

“We use a number of methods to measure customer satisfaction and NPS is just one of them. We are aware of its limitations but believe it is valuable,” said a Best Buy spokesman. “Our revenue and earnings have increased at the same time we’ve seen NPS improvements.”

When Mr. Joly announced he was stepping aside as CEO in April, Best Buy listed among his accomplishments that NPS grew by three points in the past fiscal year.

In securities filings, Delta Air Lines Inc. has said it measures “customer service performance” as the percentage point improvement in its average NPS. The methodology, the company said, was approved by a board committee and its progress is reported periodically to the board. NPS is also listed as criteria for executive bonuses.

Carol Campbell, Delta’s managing director of customer experience, said most of her work entails using NPS to find opportunities to make investments. The airline added fresh-baked cookies on trans-Atlantic flights, chose to put nine seats in each Boeing 777 row instead of the standard 10 and made enhancements to its app because of NPS.

Delta executives describe NPS as the “true North Star,” she said, though the airline uses other customer metrics as well. “We have been able to statistically correlate our NPS performance with our revenue premium,” she said, referring to how much more Delta is able to charge than a competitor because of its brand.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. has mentioned NPS more times on earnings calls than any other S&P 500 company in the Journal’s analysis. In April, CEO David Wichmann said the insurer’s net promoter scores “continued to advance meaningfully in the first quarter 2019 as we march toward an aggressive target of 70 by 2025.”

“UnitedHealth Group uses NPS as an important measure to understand and continually improve upon the quality of the experience for those we serve,” a spokesman for the company said.

It’s hard for investors to interpret the score because companies don’t typically share response rates, margin of error, or whether results are adjusted for cultural and other biases. Research shows NPS tends to be higher when response rates are lower, and Americans tend to give higher scores than consumers in some countries such as Japan and Korea.

Since so many NPS surveys are sent to customers through emails, web pop-ups and phone calls, it has become harder to elicit a response these days, survey firms said. Email response rates are usually less than 5%, according to some estimates.  Software providers like Medallia and Qualtrics said they help companies get higher response rates. Satmetrix, which originally helped Mr. Reichheld develop the score and is now a division of software-provider NICE, said it sells access to the “world’s best net promoter certification program.” J.D. Power said it signed an agreement with Bain to “become the officially recognized authority for benchmarking the Net Promoter Score.”

METHODOLOGY EMPLOYED BY THE WSJ

To find the number of mentions of the terms “net promoter” or “NPS,” The Wall Street Journal used transcripts of company conference calls discussing quarterly earnings, retrieved from Factiva, a business research tool owned by WSJ publisher Dow Jones & Co. The analysis started with more than 40,000 transcripts for calls held from 2003 through 2018, for 688 existing companies that were members of the S&P 500 index at any point during that period, as indicated by S&P Dow Jones Indices. The Journal analyzed transcripts from companies that are still publicly traded. It excludes 209 companies that were acquired during the period but includes 188 that left the index yet remain public. Nearly 400 transcripts contained at least one of the terms. A paragraph was counted as a single mention if it contained one or more uses of the terms. Portions of the transcripts consisting of questions from analysts were ignored.

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I am sure to get in trouble for this one!

Posted on May 12, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

What follows is Dr. Jordan Peterson’s latest Op-Ed piece in Canada’s National Post. It is copyrighted by both him and the Post. 

We can file this one under: You Have Been Warned: Junk Thought leads to Junk Policy.

Candidly, I can see no flaws in his logic. Can you?

______________________________________________________

The mantra of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity (DIE) perhaps constitutes the primary identifying factor of the tiny minority of radical collectivist ideologues that nonetheless have come to dominate the humanities and social sciences in Western universities (and, increasingly, the HR departments of corporations).

Of these three, equity is the most egregious, self-righteous, historically ignorant and dangerous. “Equity” is a term designed to signal “equality,” in some manner, and is a term designed to appeal to the natural human tendency toward fairness, but it does not mean the classic equality of the West, which is equality before the law and equality of opportunity.

Equality before the law means that each citizen will be treated fairly by the criminal justice and judicial systems regardless of their status — and that the state recognizes that each individual has an intrinsic value which serves as a limit to state power, and which the polity must respect. There is likely no more fundamental presumption grounding our culture.

Equality of opportunity is a doctrine of openness predicated on the fact that talent is widely distributed although comparatively rare. This should come as no surprise to anyone, given that some people are much better at doing a given task than others and, because of that, it is in everyone’s selfish interest to allow such talent to come to the fore so that we can all benefit. This means that no one should be arbitrarily denied the possibility of their contribution for reasons unrelated to the task at hand. This is also a fundamental principle of Western culture, particularly in its free-market guise.

“Equity” is a whole different ballgame. It is based on the idea that the only certain measure of “equality” is outcome—educational, social, and occupational. The equity-pushers axiomatically assume that if all positions at every level of hierarchy in every organization are not occupied by a proportion of the population that is precisely equivalent to that proportion in the general population then systematic prejudice (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) must be at play. This assumption has as its corollary the idea that there are perpetrators (the “privileged,” for current or historical reasons) who are unfair beneficiaries of the system or outright perpetrators of prejudice and who must be identified, limited and punished.

RussoNote™: To my mind, this stems from jealousy. Pure and simple – jealousy. I wonder to what extent such jealousy arises in response to the flagrant and, at times, stupid uses of the wealth accumulated by the so-called 1%.

As I have written before, they have an “optics problem.”  For example, if global warming is real, then we have a moral duty to cease all carbon use NOW.  If it took 100 years to accumulate the posited deadly accumulations of carbon, then we must start NOW.  We cannot wait another day.

Well, maybe.

Instead, the 1% continue in their profligate ways.  I was reading today about “Drake,” a Canadian rapper who has been warning us for years about how our (read: American) wastes of energy and the “ceaseless pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will kill us all.” 

Well, maybe.  

Today he unveiled his $100M dollar jet, a Boeing 767 that undoubtedly has been retrofitted somehow to run on vegetable oil.  Of course, because he is black and oppressed and somehow “woke” to the dangers posed by white men, he will avoid scrutiny.  Jealousy it turns out is reserved for. and is to be aimed at, white men.

Anyway, back to Dr. Peterson…

There is simply no excuse for this doctrine. First, it suffers from the oversimplification typical of ideological thinkers: that one cause (prejudice) is sufficient explanation for a very complex phenomenon (that of inequality, which is a far deeper problem than can be laid at the feet of inefficient social organization). Second, it is impossible to implement, as there are simply too many organizations, strata of positions, and identities of the identity group sort to possibly treat in the “equitable” manner demanded by the ideologues. Finally, it is being forcibly instituted by individuals for whom the hypothesis that the West is a singularly oppressive patriarchy is an unshakeable axiom, and who will fight tooth and nail any idea that threatens that absolute article of faith, no matter how absurd the arguments that constitute that fight are destined to become. It is my fervent hope, and optimistic belief, that the doctrine of equity contains within it so many intrinsic contradictions that it will fatally undermine the ideology of the radical left.

Imagine for a moment what would actually have to be done for true equity across identity groups to manifest itself. Let’s start, first, with the most egregious offenders: the most clearly sex-typed jobs. The first thing we could do to begin this process is to rank-order the offenders by degree of systemic oppression. We could use the U.S. labor statistics for that. (We could conduct the gender disequity analysis for both genders, but have all been compelled to admit on pain of mobbing and subsequent reputation destruction that the oppression has flowed one way, historically (that is, from men to women) so in the beginning we could ignore those disciplines where women have a clear advantage. We can therefore concentrate work primarily on the employment categories that favor men.)

The most likely solution — and the one most likely to be attractive to those who believe in such sexism — would be to establish strict quota systems

These aren’t the prime C-Suite positions (CEOs, COOs, CFOs, etc.) that make up the bulk of the complaints of male domination. They are jobs such as (above 99%) vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians; carpenters and joiners; electricians and electrical fitters; metal working production and maintenance fitters; plumbers; mobile machine, forklift and large goods vehicle drivers; those in the electrical and electronic trades; glaziers; construction workers; and painters (above 95%). This is a partial list. The highest proportion of females (97.5%) — just as a single point of contrast — are to be found among nursery nurses and assistants.

Now it doesn’t seem like mere imagination on my part that all the noise about “patriarchal domination” is not directed at the fact that far more men than women occupy what are essentially trade positions. Nor does it seem unreasonable to point out that these are not particularly high-status jobs, although they may pay comparative well. It is also obvious that none of these occupations and their hierarchies, in isolation, can be thoughtfully considered the kind of oppressive patriarchy supposed to constitute the “West,” and aimed at the domination and exclusion of women. By contrast, the trade occupations are composed of cadres of working men, with difficult and admirable jobs, who keep the staggeringly complex, reliable and essentially miraculous infrastructure of our society functioning through rain and snow and heat and gloom of night and who should be credited gratefully with exactly that.

Let’s assume for a moment that we should aim at equity, nonetheless, and then actually think through what policies would inevitably have to be put in place to establish such a goal. We might begin by eliminating pay scales that differ (hypothetically) by gender. This would mean introducing legislation requiring companies to rank-order their sex representation at each level of the company hierarchy, adjust that to 50:50, and then adjust the pay differential by gender at every rank, so that the desired equity was achieved. Companies could be monitored over a five-year period for improvement. Failure to meet the appropriate targets would be necessarily met with fines for discrimination. In the extreme, it might be necessary to introduce staggered layoffs of men so that the gender equity requirements could be met.

Then there are the much broader social policy implications. We could start by addressing the hypothetical problems with college, university and trade school training. Many companies, compelled to move rapidly toward gender equilibrium, will object (and validly) that there are simply not enough qualified female candidates to go around. Changing this would mean implementing radical and rapid changes in the post-secondary education system, implemented in a manner both immediate and draconian — justified by the obvious “fact” that the reason the pipeline problem exists is the absolutely pervasive sexism that characterizes all the programs that train such workers (and the catastrophic and prejudicial failure of the education system that is thereby implied).

The most likely solution — and the one most likely to be attractive to those who believe in such sexism — would be to establish strict quota systems in the relevant institutions to invite and incentivize more female participants, once again in proportion to the disequilibria in enrollment rates. If quotas are not enough, then a system of scholarship or, more radically (and perhaps more fairly) women could be simply paid to enroll in education systems where their sex is badly under-represented. Alternatively, perhaps, men could be asked to pay higher rates of tuition, in some proportion to their over-representation, and the excess used to subsidize the costs of under-represented females.

That’s not going to be good enough, however. The sex differences revealed in the workforce clearly manifest themselves early in life. Variability in toy preference by sex, for example (a reflection of the comparative male preoccupation with things, and female with people) appears very early in life. These differences reflect or shape the later broader social outcomes. Other factors matter, as well. There is some evidence that the same proportion of boys and girls excel, for example, at math in junior high school. However, the high math-skills girls also tend to be verbally gifted, and that is not equally true for the boys. This means that high math-skills girls have a wider range of occupational choice, given their broader range of abilities, and that comparatively fewer of them therefore enter the STEM fields. It is also worth noting that countries that have pushed the laudable doctrines of equality of opportunity most assiduously (that would be the Scandinavian states) have the lowest rates of STEM enrolment among females in the world, as it turns out that freed females, so to speak, given free choice, do not often voluntarily become engineers and mathematicians and physicists.

It is also clear that educational practices in the K-12 system must be radically restructured. At the kindergarten and early elementary school level, the government might fund the production of books of fiction featuring characters defined by their sex pursuing nonstandard occupations. This would mean something akin to a ban on novels representing women as nurses, secretaries, etc. and a preponderance of fictional works portraying women as front-line soldiers, heavy equipment operators, bricklayers, etc. Males should be portrayed pursuing currently-female dominated pursuits such as nursing or secretarial work. Perhaps, as well, works of history might be revised (“revised”) so that the sex-typing characteristic of the past could be downplayed and minimized, and the rare exceptions to the general trends highlighted. (Don’t laugh. The Soviets and the Maoists did precisely that.)  We already see something of this sort occurring with attempts to restructure the university curriculum so that the works of “dead white men” are replaced by whatever the ideologues regard as fair reparation.

The interest that might tempt a given boy or girl toward a particular career has been engendered, so to speak, purely as a consequence of socialization pressure (or so goes the doctrine). Thus whatever desire expressed by a given student that might run contrary to the new equity doctrines (such as claims for strong proclivity toward traditionally gendered roles) should be most firmly discouraged, first to combat the internalized misogyny which is a necessary concomitant of the oppressive patriarchy and second to disavow students, their parents, and society at the larger level from the notion than any truly individual desire exists.

If we regard differential sexual representation as proof of systemic oppression, as the theory of social construction demands, then we are failing in our social and individual responsibility to social justice to delay implementing such policies immediately, and with full force.

Every year that passes with little to no movement on the front of sexual equity is indicative of a serious moral failure. And we can’t end there. Sexual inequality is only one small part of the problem. After concentrating on sexual equity, it will be high time to consider the same set of actions implemented for equity by race and ethnicity. And then we will be equally obliged, morally, to concentrate on the other places where systemic prejudice is apparently self-evident: social class, age, attractiveness, disability, temperament — even perhaps education and intelligence.

Are we really up for these large-scale interventions? Could we pause, for a moment, and imagine the magnitude of the bureaucratic structures that would have to be formulated to bring them about? Could we consider the rules and accusations and punishments that would accompany them, and envision the psychological makeup of the people who would be willing to occupy such positions? Do we really believe that they are necessary and, even more naively, that they would solve more problems than they would cause?

And what are we to make of the fact that women granted equality of opportunity appear to choose, freely (assuming such free choice exists) to work part-time more frequently, to move for career purposes less often, to work inside rather than outside, to pick safer occupations, and to choose education pathways, often dealing with people, that are associated with less lucrative careers—as the aforementioned and oh-so-troublesome data from hyper-egalitarian Norway and Sweden and their like so clearly indicate? Are we to assume that women in such places aren’t making the “right” choices, because they are fouling up the equity doctrine, and to apply the substantive force that would be necessary to correct them?

Or would it just be simpler to note the insane complexity and internal contradictions and impossibility and danger of the pursuit of this appallingly simple-minded dual insistence (1) that the West is a hotbed of patriarchal oppression and (2) that all indications of inequality of outcome are proof positive of the oppression so claimed?

The truth of the matter is that there is no excuse for the equity doctrine. Its proponents virtually never attend to or discuss the occupational areas where the largest sex differences exist. They don’t care at all that there are multiple well-documented reasons for unequal outcomes in occupational choice and pay in addition to whatever role counterproductive and genuine prejudice still plays. They don’t think through the policy implications or, if they do, are still apparently willing to grant to themselves the bureaucratic power to implement by force the changes theoretically necessary to balance the scales, despite being aware of the magnitude of such actions. They haven’t contended at all (to note this vitally important point once again) with the data indicating that free women make different occupational choices than free men, and that there are economic consequences to those choices that may be regarded as perfectly acceptable by the women, who could well be choosing time over money (a far-from-unreasonable trade-off).

Instead they use the doctrine of equity as a moral weapon, in service of their fundamental claim: men—particularly Western men—unjustly and cruelly dominate, historically and currently (ignoring all the biological reasons for sexual differences in outcome; ignoring the reality of fundamental cooperation that most truly characterizes healthy male-female relations now and in the past). In consequence, all inequalities of outcome must be regarded as unjust, and used as proof of the central contention — that is, the idea of patriarchal Western oppression that is the central dogma of the radical left.

We know the left can go too far. The Soviets taught us that. The Maoists and the Khmer Rouge taught us that. The North Koreans, and the Cubans, and the Venezuelans continue to teach us in the same manner. We don’t know when and where the “going too far” begins. But I’m willing to stake my claim on the equity doctrine. In a word, it’s inexcusable, both morally and practically. It should be roundly rejected (at whatever reasonable personal cost that might be incurred) by anyone who takes the idea of the excessive left seriously, who is concerned in any genuine sense with the increasingly destructive polarization of our political discourse, and who wants to stand up and be counted when the radicals come knocking—or pounding—at the door.

Jordan Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist and the author of the multi-million copy bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. His blog and podcasts can be found at www.jordanbpeterson.com.

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(Slapping my Forehead) Why Didn’t I Think of This?

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

And here ladies and gentlemen, we have a whole new therapy – marrying yourself. Why didn’t I think of this? After all, who is the best person you know, the only one in the world who puts up with you? Answer: You. Who do you routinely manipulate into saying yes, when yes means no? Answer: You.

Moreover, who, when you cheat on you, can be discarded like so much garbage? Answer: No one. You have only yourself to blame (chuckles). Who is it who brings you your coffee in the morning without expectation of reward? Answer: You. You do it because you love you. And who do you kiss under the Mistletoe? Answer: You, of course.

Oh boy, with the advent of Facebook Love, a new service, you can take you to new heights of self-referential love and accumulate an infinite number of Likes (or, is it now “Loves”?).

Hey, you even can make love to yourself because, well, it’s you.

After sex:

You: Was it good for you?

You: Yes, I need a cigarette.

You: But … I you/I don’t even smoke!

You: Shut up.

Every morning when you look in the mirror, you can say, without hesitation, “Good morning, I love you.”

Narcissus never had it so good.

But!

There is a pearl of wisdom in this pablum. If one is not secure in who they are – indeed, if one doesn’t love themselves – how can they expect anyone else to be secure and in love?

Pablum in the sense that Mrs. And Mrs. Denton (see below) have forgotten that marriage is a sacrament, that the root of that word is “sacrifice,” and that the rewards of managing to stay in a relationship with another person vastly outweigh its costs. But, having been married three times (including once, so far, to herself), she hasn’t been very good at that.

And, too, it is the height of self-centeredness and it worries me. Or, I should say, it only confirms what I think will be the case within the next five years: That dog lovers will ask the state to legitimize marrying their dog. 

Mrs. and Mrs. Melissa Denton, the subject of the story about to be told, would be well within their/its/her rights to file a joint tax return come April 15, 2020, with absolutely no compunction.

_________________________________________________________

Writing in The Telegraph, a 42-year-old British woman chortled that the best day of her life came last June — the day she married herself. Honest to God, this is a true story. The name has NOT been changed to protect the innocent:

Melissa Denton, a two-time divorcee with two children, writes, “The idea to marry me came to me in January last year, when I was at work one day. Three weeks before, on Christmas Eve, I had received a text message from my boyfriend of five and a half years: ‘I can’t do this anymore, it’s over,’ it said … It was devastating and left me in a funk, unable to eat, sleep or smile.”

Seizing upon the idea of marrying herself, Denton recalls a TV interview with Sophie Tanner, who had married herself in May 2015. Denton writes, “I was so down, and knew that I needed to learn to love myself before I would be able to attract the right people into my life. For years, I had poured myself into relationship after relationship, losing myself in the process. It was time to put ‘me’ first – a way to affirm that I can be happy on my own and to move on from the relationship.”

Denton bought a ring and set the wedding date. She admits her colleagues thought she was crazy, but she had previously shaved her head to raise money for a cancer charity and later dyed her hair pink and wore a nose ring. So what could be wrong with a union of one person to herself?

Denton writes that her children, Ruby, 15, and Jasper, 11, were initially skeptical but came around, as did her family, but her brother did not bring his son to the wedding because he thought it would confuse him. She writes, “I’m hoping his opinion has now changed.”

Denton’s mother was initially against the idea, but Denton notes, “She soon came around. At the end of the day, she told me she was really proud.”

The wedding featured “a DJ, live band, karaoke and a huge vegan feast.” (Meanwhile, starving children in Africa go wanting).

Denton writes, “For the first time in my adult life, I was single and happy – the experience was empowering. Rather than wasting my time, energy and love on someone else, I was putting myself first.”

Denton explains, “My potted and relentless history with men started at 16, when my father died in a car accident.” She segues to her two failed marriages, then adds, “Relationships only got more difficult from there, as I bounced from one man to the next with little time in between to heal or become independent. I often transferred emotions from my last relationship into the next, all the way until that awful Christmas Eve text.”

She describes the wedding: “The atmosphere at the wedding was amazing, and everyone was celebrating, including a couple of ex-boyfriends and some former in-laws. It was just like any other wedding – just without a groom. I walked down the aisle, in a pink dress, with a big smile – towards no-one. A friend gave me away and another officiated. I repeated the vows and put the ring on myself, and we passed a paper plate around the 130-person congregation for everyone to sign in lieu of a register, as it’s not a legal procedure. It was the best day of my life.”

Get this: Denton concludes that now that she is fulfilled, she is “ready for a new challenge – and to start cheating on myself – so I applied to go on First Dates. I didn’t consider that for some people it might be a bit too mad. Instead, I planned to joke that I was married, but a bit bored.”

She’s committed to the idea of marrying herself, though: “Some people don’t understand it – but to me, it made absolute sense and that’s why I’m going to renew my vows at a similar ceremony every year, even if I am in a relationship. I have even bought four wedding dresses that can be used in the future. It is a way to center and value myself, as well as remember that I can receive love that is equal, not one-sided.”

And there’s this: “Being Mrs. Denton has taught me to be happy in my own company and skin, to not put pressure on myself to look or act in a certain way. Confidence is the most attractive thing a person can have, and the marriage has given me that. My marriage to myself might not have come with a wedding night or honeymoon, but the plans for the future are far more exciting.”

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Something Freud got REALLY Right

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

The APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the “DSM”) has been around for 50+ years. I have the first edition in my library, and it is maybe 80 pages long. The most recent version is something on the order of 950 pages. Turns out, mental disorders are a growth industry. And within it are oodles are possible labels just ripe for the picking.

Labels are dangerous things. In our culture, we toss them around like so much spaghetti, just to see what sticks. Racist, homophobe, narcissist, liar, sexist … you name it. In the end, the labels attach and can ruin a life. Gone is any sort of aforethought and due process, and our main-stream media comfort themselves with the notion of “absence of malice” as their defense. But malice is precisely the intent, when you stop to think about it. What else could it be?

I am a conservative for the very reason embodied in the definition of the word: cautious about change or innovation. It used to be that the DSM was reserved for practicing professionals and those whose immense training gave them a certain license to peruse the DSM in support of hypotheses regarding a patient’s presenting problem. Yes, the insurance industry got a hold of it and demanded diagnoses to support claims, but even they are cautious in protecting ensuing diagnoses from inadvertent disclosure. The professional in the helping profession has a duty to approach the DSM with caution and considerable forethought.

Consider, if you will, the term (the “label”) narcissist. Google Trends tells us that usage of the term has been rising for the past ten years as lay-persons, bent on applying the “right” label, seek out pop-psychological explanations for other people’s behaviors. The DSM has become an adjunct for feeling good about who we are by diminishing others through labels.

No one could possible enjoy being known as a narcissist, at least not in the casually insulting way that the term is used. But the conservative in me wants to go to a mountain top and scream, “Wait just a minute! Narcissistic needs are normal and universal! We are, ALL OF US, narcissistic to the core.” It is only when the extremes of narcissistic behavior get in the way of everyday functioning that the professional begins to formulate a hypothesis around possible explanations.

Remember this: Everyone needs to be praised by parents during critical childhood developmental periods.  Later, everyone has a need to be appreciated by their friends and lovers.  We call this “validation” and it is critical to human functioning.

Freud Got It Right

In 1914, Sigmund Freud documented, through considerable observation and testing, that infants pass through a stage of what he called “primary narcissism.” Piaget, a contemporary of Siggy-Baby, called it “ego centrism.” Both saw it as an evolutionary stepping stone: the self-centered frame of mind in which they cannot understand that other people are fully separate beings and not mere extensions of themselves. In other words, primary narcissism is a normal and entirely expected step along the path to becoming a fully functioning adult. 

Freud saw what the DSM calls Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as an exaggeration of healthy narcissism. This may be true, by the way, of nearly all the DSM “disorders” – exaggerations of otherwise healthy behavior. Karen Horney, a latter-day Freudian, saw such narcissistic extremes as a consequence of particular parenting styles; to wit, if parents excessively overvalued or undervalued their children, she said, they would then grow up perpetually craving abnormal amounts of praise or validation. I think here of a (former) friend of ours who, as a young girl growing up was treated as a princess (to an extreme) and grew up expecting the world to treat her that way.

Otto Kernberg, another latter-day Freudian, saw narcissism in grown-ups as a kind of false front, or a way of protecting one’s ego – a persona if you will.  He said that people with narcissistic personalities derive the validation they need from themselves as much as from others, propping themselves up artificially, which leaves them with no effective way to internally support their own self-esteem.

So, what happens is this: the person suffering from such a disorder looks at the world as a place in which he or she may be paramount in importance; in other words, a world where one’s grandiose sense of self-importance is to be rewarded without commensurate achievements to justify such belief. Why not? Their parents thought they were the apple of everyone’s eye. So should you.

Types of Narcissism – Vulnerable and Malignant

As you trade in labels, so should you know that narcissism doesn’t come in just one flavor. The DSM suggests that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is actually comprised of two types – one positive and the other negative. This helps us to remember that there is “normal” narcissism and “pathological” narcissism. We might see these as “pro-social” versus “anti-social.” In the words of Dr. Loren Soeiro, “the typical grandiose narcissist who has become such a familiar American trope may be overshadowing a less well-known, but equally difficult, personality type: the vulnerable narcissist.”

He writes, further, that…

…inherent in the current perception of narcissism is a quality of being in it for oneself, and often misusing or exploiting relationships for one’s own benefit.  This best characterizes the antisocial narcissist — often, an extremely difficult, self-centered individual who expects excessive gratification from others in his or her life.  By contrast, pro-social (positive) narcissists derive credit from positive accomplishments.  They strive to do good deeds — often in public — and to make other people happy with them.  In this way, they derive the validation that they, too, desperately need.  If there are pro-social narcissists in your life, you may know them by how much fun they are to be around (and by the way they take deep satisfaction in your reaction to them).  They want to be liked — sometimes, too much.  They want to be known and appreciated by everyone in their lives, and their intentions are, overall, quite benign.  Far from showing a lack of empathy, as in the person with traditional narcissistic personality disorder, these people use their empathy to tune in to what pleases you, and in doing so, they find validation.

His words allow me to “differentially diagnose” (a fancy term for getting it right) someone in the throes of vulnerability versus those truly out for just themselves, everyone else be damned.

The pathological (or malignant) narcissist cannot do anything for your benefit. Period. She cannot recognize or even identify with your feelings and needs. She works hard to render you “one down” so that she remains “one up.” She cannot form long lasting relationships, aside from, say, her husband who works hard to stay out of the line of fire. She becomes overtly aggressive when threatened, and labels anyone as racist who doesn’t agree with her. She is not limited by the truth (in other words, she tells convenient lies) and becomes full of rage when caught in a lie. Mom and Dad, who attended to their “little princess,” are dead and unable to prop up her fragile sense of self (hubby tries but because he may be a narcissist himself, struggles with empathy).

What To Do, What.To.Do

In the end, relationships, like neighbors, are best managed with strong fences. We might otherwise call such fences “healthy boundaries.” Even in the most intimate of relationships, boundaries are crucial for healthy functioning. It is a kind of “Don’t Tread on Me” approach to living. I see it as entirely normal and, quite frankly, quite needed in this age of social media. (#DeleteFacebook).

While we may have some degree of empathy for the vulnerable narcissist – those who are deeply self-absorbed and who maintain an undeserved sense of themselves – they too will demand ever more attention that they get. They will tell you of their constant victimhood and the fact the world, seriously flawed as it is, has not risen to recognize their inherent brilliance. Good fences (boundaries) are needed for them too.

It is the malignant narcissist who deserves a special kind of fence: A very high fence, ringed with shards of glass and razor wire. Keep them out of your life (your yard, as it were) and work to minimize contact in the world around you. Kill them with kindness when you do encounter them and above all, give them no ready reason to scream “racist” or whatever term they conjure up to bolster their own failing sense of worth.

As labels go, they are truly deserving of the term “dangerous.” They prioritize themselves over everyone else and are not good people to hang around with. They are “life sucking” in the truest sense of the word, kinda like Dracula.

Freud had it right: Childhood normalcy (in this case, an abiding sense of self-centrism) usually remits when society works to grind off the rough edges. But the truly malignant will make it through the planer.

Be careful out there.   

References

Abby.  (2018, May 29).  Vulnerable narcissism: The less obvious narcissist.  Retrieved from https://www.thrivetalk.com/vulnerable-narcissism/

David, L, “Narcissism (Kernberg),” in Learning Theories, December 4, 2015, https://www.learning-theories.com/narcissism-kernberg.html

Freeman, R.  (2017, February 22).  How to tell you’re dealing with a malignant narcissist.  Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neurosagacity/201702/how-tell-youre-dealing-malignant-narcissist

Freud, S. (1991). On Narcissism. In Sandler, J., Person, E. S., & Fonagy, P. (Eds.), Freud’s “On Narcissism:” An Introduction (IPA Contemporary Freud: Turning Points & Critical Issues). New Haven: Yale University Press.

Google Trends / Explore. (n.d.).  Interest in the search term “narcissist” over time, worldwide, since 2004.  Retrieved from https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=narcissist

Greenberg, E. (2018, April 14). White knights & black knights: Pro-social & anti-social NPD. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-narcissism/201804/white-knights-black-knights-pro-social-anti-social-npd

Hammond, C.  (2017, October 9).  The secret façade of the vulnerable narcissist.  Retrieved from https://pro.psychcentral.com/exhausted-woman/2016/11/the-secret-facade-of-the-vulnerable-narcissist/

Horney, K. (1950, reprinted 1991). Neurosis and human growth (2nd edition). New York: W.W. Norton

Kernberg, O. F. (1985). Borderline conditions and pathological narcissism. Rowman & Littlefield.

Kernberg, O. F. (1989). The narcissistic personality disorder and the differential diagnosis of antisocial behavior. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 12(3), 553-570.

Konrath, S., Ho, Meng-Han., & Zarins, S. (2016). The strategic helper: Narcissism and prosocial motives and behaviors. Current Psychology, 35(2), pp. 182-194.

Ni, P. (2016, January 10).  Seven signs of a covert introvert narcissist.  Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/communication-success/201601/7-signs-covert-introvert-narcissist

Soeiro, L. (2019).  Types of Narcisists. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/i-hear-you/201904/the-four-types-narcissist-how-spot-each-one

Torres, A. (2018, March 19). Do You Have A Covert Narcissist In Your Life?  Retrieved from https://medium.com/the-mission/do-you-have-a-covert-narcissist-in-your-life-843348ea694b

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Negative Thinking: A Most Dangerous Addiction

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

Why we can’t stop thinking about the things that make us feel the worst. Six ideas for letting go.

I have borrowed this piece from something I saw at Psychology Today. It is their work, but I have edited it somewhat for my audience.

Have you ever noticed how much time you spend thinking about negative or painful situations, ruminating and replaying what’s not working in your life?  It’s not just you.  The last statistic I read claimed 80% of our thoughts are negative and 95%, repetitive. Strangely, the more negative an experience, the more we return to it.  Like vultures to a carcass, we’re drawn to what hurts.  As the Buddhist saying goes, we want happiness and yet we chase our suffering.  Why?  What’s at the root of our mind’s addiction to suffering, why do we compulsively cling to our pain, and how can we shift this unwise and unhelpful habit of ours?

We return to our suffering because, fundamentally, we’re trying to make the negative experience come out a different way.  Our mental replays are attempts to re-script what we don’t want into a new reality.  If we can just understand our pain more clearly, spend more time with it, we’ll be able to figure it out, in other words, make it go away.  If we can know the cause, who’s to blame and what needs to be done about it, we’ll be okay. 

We hold onto our pain, paradoxically to figure out how to let it go.

With pain or any sort of negative experience, comes a host of uncomfortable feelings.  In response to the feelings we don’t want to feel, our mind takes control and steers us in a more familiar direction.  Over and again the mind restructures and reframes the contents of our pain to avoid directly feeling it.  The mind will always choose thinking about pain over experiencing it directly.

So too, we counter-intuitively cling to suffering as a way of taking care of ourselves.

Continually thinking about what hurts helps us feel that our pain matters, that it didn’t happen for no reason, and that it won’t be forgotten.  Our ruminations award our suffering importance and value, which it doesn’t always receive from those it wants it from. To stop revisiting our pain can feel like abandoning it, moving on before it’s been truly heard or taken care of.

Pain is also profoundly intertwined with our sense of identity.  We remind ourselves of our pain as a way of keeping alive our personal narrative, our story of me, what’s happened to me, and my life.  We’re deeply attached to our stories of suffering; you could say we love our pain.  As a result, we’re reluctant to let it go, to stop bringing it back into the present moment even when it’s no longer useful or active.  To do so would be to lose touch with who we believe we fundamentally are, what makes “us” us.

If we didn’t keep reminding ourselves of our story, we might forget who we are in our minds, and then what?  Who would we be and what would life look like if we didn’t relate from an already formed idea of who we are?

At an existential level, returning to our suffering allows us to feel a primal sense of I-ness, to feel that we exist. We experience ourselves as a distinct self when we’re thinking about a problem.  With a problem in its craw, the mind can feel alive and working, and because we imagine ourselves to be synonymous with mind, our sense of self is also alive and strong in this process.  It is through the process of thinking that we create a sense of self; we literally think ourselves into existence.

To give up ruminating over problems feels threatening at a primal level.  How would we know that we were here if we didn’t keep engaging the mind in problems, the very activity that allows the mind to feel itself?  How would we know who we are if not through the mind by which we know ourselves to be?  What would happen if we stopped remembering and reestablishing who we are all the time?  Without an agenda of what needs to be fixed, we literally lose our separateness from life.

Our addiction to suffering is at some level driven by a desire to feel better.  But regardless, the result is that it makes us feel worse and causes us to suffer more even than we actually need to.  What can be done then to break this addiction to pain?

Solutions

  1. Awareness.  The key to breaking any habit is awareness.  Start noticing those moments when you’re actively choosing to revisit your pain, to literally direct your attention back to what could bother you. Become conscious of your tendency to insert moments of peace with morsels of suffering. Noticing that you are doing this to yourself.
  2. Acknowledge that you’re caught. When you notice that you’re down the rabbit hole in your story of suffering, Velcro’d to it, take a moment and acknowledge that you’re there, that you’re caught.  Say it out loud, “Wow, I’m really caught.”  “I’m really doing this to myself right now,” or whatever words fit.  Stop for a moment and with kindness, be with yourself exactly where you are, acknowledge the truth of feeling powerless or stuck inside your pain story.
  3. Inquire. Ask your mind (without judgment) what it’s hoping to accomplish in luring your attention back to your suffering.  Is it to figure out your problem, make it come out a different way, make your pain feel heard?  Do you need to remember the pain to protect you from it happening again? Is it scary to just feel good? Does remembering your problem ground you? Get curious about your mind’s intentions: does the rehashing and ruminating lead you to peace?  Does it make you feel better?  Eventually, you will discover that trying to get to peace with the mind is like trying to open a lock with a banana; it’s simply the wrong tool.  The next time you return to the scene of your pain you can remind yourself that more thinking doesn’t actually work, and you will know this from your own experience, your own inquiry. Failure is a great teacher here.
  4. Shift your focus from thinking about the problem to feeling it. Sense where and how in your body, in what sensations you are experiencing this pain story.  You can place your hand on your heart as you do this and offer yourself some sweet words, perhaps even a prayer of healing for this suffering.  Unhook from your head story and drop into a body-felt experience.
  5. Say “no” or “stop” out loud. We can learn to just say “no” to our mind’s inclinations just as we say no to a child who’s doing something that will harm her.  Sometimes a wiser and more evolved part of us must step in and put a stop to the harmful behavior the mind is engaged in.  Say “no” or “stop” out loud so you can hear and experience it directly through your senses, rather than as just another thought inside the negative-addicted mind.

Ask yourself, what’s at risk if you let go of your pain?  Investigate what feels dangerous about living without reminding yourself of what’s happened to you and what’s still wrong.  Make the active choice to not fill your now with the past.  Be bold: create a new identity that’s not pieced together from your personal narrative, but always fresh and endlessly changing.  In the process, you will discover that you can be entirely well and happy at this moment without having to go back and make anything that came before it different.

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Hobbies – the “Why” of My Interests

Posted on April 13, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

I have some new subscribers to the Blog and for them, and all the others (including moi), I wanted to explain my hobbies. They are somewhat odd in this day and age … in fact, I get the impression that hobbies in general are oddities to a lot of people for whom Facebook is the principal means of enjoyment. I quit Facebook a long time ago, in favor of other “time sucks” that have ended up giving me far more pleasure.

Model Railroading

I have a large layout. It isn’t as large as some that I know about (upwards of 50′ x 50′), nor it is as sophisticated as others (built by master modelers). At nine-by-nine, it is a good size and allows me to indulge my life-long interest in railroading. I still get a buzz when I hear a massive Union Pacific freight train rumbling through Laramie: the whistle, the clickity-clack, the wonderment at the places it’s been.

Mine is an O-Scale layout, which differentiates it from the smaller HO-scale and N-Scale layouts of my youth. It is not as large as the so-called G-Scale, which many people run in their gardens (hence, “G” scale). But given that I have loads of rolling stock in O-Scale, it was the way to go.

It is populated with engines and cars made by Mike’s Train House (MTH) based in Columbia, Maryland, with a few locos and cars made by the Lionel Corporation. Both companies seem to be doing well at a time when the hobby is “age challenged.” You see, as a baby boomer, I can remember well the many Christmases when getting a model railroad engine from under the tree was the highlight of my year. Not so much now. Most of us are older and there aren’t a whole lot of new, younger hobbyists coming on-line. But MTH and Lionel seem to know that and have adjusted their business models accordingly.

So, beyond the obvious, why is this my main hobby? Well, because it allow me to escape and to get into the Flow. There is a method to my madness.

In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one’s sense of space and time.

Named by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1975, and the subject of his book of the same name, the concept has been widely referred to across a variety of fields (and is particularly well recognized in occupational therapy), though the concept has existed for thousands of years under other names, notably in some Eastern religions, for example Buddhism.

You know when you’re in Flow. For runners, it is known as the “runner’s high.” Rock climbers also get into a Flow, particularly when highly technical maneuvers are required on the rock face. I experience it when running trains; especially when trying mightily not to crash them into one-another.

By the way, you can see my trains in action at my YouTube channel.

Typewriters

This one’s a little harder to explain. Maybe it’s my Italian Heritage. In 1575, an Italian print-maker, Francesco Rampazetto, invented the scrittura tattile, a machine to impress letters in papers. Later, another wop, Agostino Fantoni developed a particular typewriter to enable his blind sister to write. Still another Italian, Pellegrino Turri invented a machine similar to today’s typewriter. He also invented carbon paper to provide the ink for his machine!

In 1823, one more Italian, Pietro Conti di Cilavegna, got in the game and invented a new model of typewriter, the tachigrafo, also known as tachitipo. Doesn’t that look suspiciously like “touch type”?

The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874, but did not become common in offices until after the mid-1880’s. The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence. It was widely used by professional writers, in offices, and for business correspondence in private homes. By the way, and because of the way the keys on typewriter were prone to smash together when certain letter combinations occurred, early manufacturers decided to separate commonly used letters to avoid that smashing together. It is why we, still today, have the so-called QWERTY keyboards!

In my youth, one had to take a typing course. And early in my business career, typewriters were still in wide use. I can recall how they had evolved, from the manual typewriter to the more-sophisticated electrics and quasi-word-processor machines. I still have the last typewriter I bought in the early 1980s.

But then came the Macintosh and its keyboard. Then, the IBM PC and its keyboard. And Word for Windows and Word for Macintosh. And the rest is history.

Not quite, however. Turns out that I am not alone in venerating the typewriter. No less than Tom Hanks is a respected collector of these machines and is renowned for his ability to price valuable collection pieces. Moreover, I read somewhere that Vlad Putin, dictator of Russia, has decreed that all of his personal correspondence is to be produced on typewriters. (I guess he saw what almost happened to Hillary Clinton and decided to avoid inadvertent disclosure).

There is something magical about a typewriter. The clickity-clack, similar to that on the railroad, completes a kind of eye-to-hand-to-paper kinesthetic motion that, for me, allows for comprehension and retention not entirely possible with a computer. It slows me down, too, and forces me to think about what I am writing or about to write. And it enforces clarity.

I have something like 20 typewriters in my collection, ranging from a 1930’s Olivetti to a
1975 Smith Corona Coronet Super-12 electric. I also have the Brother Charger 11 I used in high school.

Typewriter ribbons are hard to come by these days, and so I am getting better and better at “rolling my own.” For this, I follow innumerable blogs and various YouTube videos about the hobby. Again, it is all about Flow and being “taken away” to an earlier time.

So, those are my two hobbies. At least, the main ones. I also dabble in other things, but these two take most of my free time. The value of a hobby cannot be measured. And it need not be an expensive one. Here’s what the richest man in the world has to say about it:

“I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies. But I have hobbies. I couldn’t exist without them.” — Bill Gates

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Civics and US Constitutional Provisions 101: Benefiting Those Who “Matter” while Penalizing Those Who Do Not

Posted on March 20, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

The end-result of an educational system that has focused on what I believe to be the wrong things for the past 50 years (really and truly, for the last 25 years or so) is a near-complete collapse of understanding of our basic system of government.

When I poll my students – graduate and under-graduate alike – about the basic provisions of our Constitution, I am shocked at what they do not know. Oh, things like the First Amendment and Free Speech are somewhat understood at a base level, although the limits imposed by government on peaceable assembly are not (it’s part of the first amendment, by the way, and seemingly misunderstood by Representative Maxine Waters who urges her supporters to “get in the face of anyone and everyone who supports President Trump”). They also seem to misunderstand the part about free exercise of religion, believing that Government can and should get involved in that exercise. Think here of laws that go against many religious beliefs.

Some of what we are talking about – strike that – ALL of what we are talking about these days is how the Constitution seems to be getting in the way of the popular will. Ignoring for the moment that “popular will” was at the core of an entire Civil War in the 1860s (southern states wanted their “will” respected and slavery protected), the idea that our Constitution is somehow working against the people is mind-boggling.

Within the past couple of weeks, we have heard from a number of congressional leaders and presidential candidates on the subject of “packing the Supreme Court” simply because recent decisions haven’t gone their way. This week, the target is the Electoral College.

Working toward the putative goal of disabling or outright eliminating the Electoral College is the action of a number of states, most recently Colorado, to sign on to something called the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.” So, while the Electoral College abolitionists are unlikely to get a supermajority of three-fourths of states to agree to pass a constitutional amendment, the far greater danger is that of this “compact.” It instructs its signatories to ignore their voters and grant their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. It goes into effect once states representing 270 electoral votes have signed.

Very troubling.

Where to begin my response?

How about with the basics? (some of this comes from a WSJ Editorial on March 20, 2019).

Like the Supreme Court, the Electoral College sometimes frustrates the will of political majorities. That makes it an easy target in this populist age. But while “majority rule” has always been an appealing slogan, it’s an insufficient principle for structuring an electoral system in the U.S.

Presidential elections often do not produce popular majorities. Remember, in 2016 neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump won 50%. (Trump got 46% and Clinton 48%). Even so, “plurality rules” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Our Founding Fathers knew that in the absence of something like an Electoral College, the winner’s vote share would likely be significantly smaller than is common today. Having lived through the parliamentary system of England, they wanted something that worked to “thin the herd,” if you will and bolster a two-party approach. Without an Electoral College, third-party candidates who can’t realistically win a majority in any particular state would have a greater incentive to enter the race, thus spreading all votes among more candidates. We would end up with a “winner” who might have a very small percentage of the total vote.

To wit, what if a Republican was elected with a third of the vote in an election featuring five formidable candidates? Would those who oppose the Electoral College by happy with that result? I doubt it. And such a “free-for-all plebiscite” would hurt the system’s legitimacy. Think about that for a moment.

Think about Australia with its 14 political parties, all of which have seats in the Parliament. Makes for interesting and somewhat plodding government but remember that Australia has 24 million people and an economy and military strength about 1/10th the USA. In other words, it doesn’t really matter and isn’t comparable to what we in the USA want or need (or what our allies want or need us to have).

For us, the Electoral College has the effect of narrowing the field to two serious contenders, as voters decide not to waste their vote on candidates who have no chance to win.

Back to the Founders for a moment: They designed the Electoral College to help ensure that states with diverse preferences could cohere under a single federal government. Anyone who thinks this concern is irrelevant today hasn’t been paying attention to the current polarization in American politics. The Electoral College helps check that polarization by forcing presidential candidates to campaign in competitive states across the country, instead of spending all their time trying to motivate turnout in populous partisan strongholds.

In a popular-vote contest in 2020, for example, the Democratic candidate might ignore the economically dislocated areas that Mr. Trump won and focus on urban centers along the coasts. In other words, a vast number of citizens “wouldn’t matter.” For his part, Mr. Trump might campaign more in upstate New York or Texas but ignore urban voters.

And here is an important result of the Electoral College idea, and one which is vastly misunderstood by our young people (and not just a few of our “old” people). It memorialized the responsibility of vote counting as a state-based endeavor, so that the people of each state had a far more reasonable certainty of having their cote “count.” This also contributes to political stability. Individual states tend to get the votes counted far faster.  

Put in charge of vote counting, the Federal Government alone would be hard-pressed to deliver a result in the same amount of time. More than that, think here of the uncertainty that could/would result from a nationwide recount for President amid countless regional irregularities—as happened in North Carolina and Florida in 2018. This would make the hanging chad debacle of Florida 2000 (Bush v. Gore) look positively tame.

The interstate compact is likely unconstitutional. And any attempt to eliminate the Electoral College or to pack the Supreme Court, would surely result in more polarization, not less. But if any of those were successful, the result would be an injection of more, not less, corrosive uncertainty into American elections in pursuit of a hyper-populist system that goes against the structure of the Constitution that has protected liberty for 230 years.

We must be careful … very careful.

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The Dermaclip Tax

Posted on March 19, 2019 by Dr Joseph Russo

Yesterday, I posted and discussed ever-so-briefly a chart of inflated costs for various things over the course of the past two decades. Health care costs had accelerated almost as fast as a college education (well over 200%) in the years since 1999. Technology comprises maybe half of that rise, and for that we should be grateful and willing to pay. But the other half? To my mind, it is properly laid at the feet of lawyers who sue for the occasional broken toenail (or so it seems). Sloppy medical care will always happen. Always. We must remain vigilant as consumers.

Anyway, there are other reasons for the rise in the cost of health care. One of them is written about today and I wanted to grab this article and post it here for future reference. It was written by Ross Marchand is the director of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

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The American people – and just about all our elected officials – frequently and justifiably complain about the high cost of health care. But unless Congress acts, a tax increase on medical devices will take effect Jan. 1 and needlessly raise those costs even higher.

The 2.3 percent tax on medical devices was signed into law by President Obama and took effect in 2013. Fortunately, Congress passed legislation in 2015 and again in 2017 to temporarily suspend the tax. However, without further congressional action the tax will kick back in at the beginning of 2020.

Because the tax is only 2.3 percent it may sound like an insignificant amount. It’s not. Some medical devices are very expensive – for example, an MRI machine can cost up to $3 million. The 2.3 percent tax on that would amount to $69,000 – a cost that must be paid by someone.

Fortunately, patients may get a reprieve. Senators Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. (a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination) recently introduced a bipartisan bill permanently repealing the tax on medical devices.

Repealing the tax would make health care and health insurance that much less problematic (and arguably somewhat more affordable) for all Americans. While it doesn’t go anywhere near far enough, the repeal deserves support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

One reason you haven’t heard more objections to this tax is that most Americans don’t even know it exists.

A Pacific Research Institute scholar notes that the tax has been “priced into the costs of the product” and “has been applied inconsistently across products due to exemptions and short-term suspensions, which create difficulties for firms to plan and manage the tax; and, subjects some medical devices to double taxation.”

Of course, repealing this tax is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s needed to reform America’s dysfunctional health care system. But piecemeal changes can resuscitate the push for wider reforms. Just because lawmakers can’t agree on everything needed to improve our health care system doesn’t mean they shouldn’t agree on anything.

Patients in need of health care would hardly be the only victims of a medical device tax. During the original implementation of the tax from 2013 to 2015, more than 20,000 industry jobs were lost as companies faced nearly $30 billion in lower sales.

For medical device manufacturers big and small, stagnant sales led to less research into innovative products that can save lives. With fewer products sold, reduced access for patients and less innovation, new technologies were prevented from coming to market. Everyone suffered as a result.

In addition, gray areas abound in the Internal Revenue Service’s tax guidelines for the medical device tax, leading to uncertainty for the manufacturers of new cutting-edge products.

For example, the recently-invented Dermaclip™ is an alternative to stitches that can heal wounds more quickly and less painfully than conventional sutures. The rise of such easier-to-apply “skin closure devices” may lead to consumers being able to purchase and use them on their own, complicating the IRS’s exemption to the tax for any product “generally purchased by the general public at retail for individual use.”

By repealing the medical device tax, lawmakers can jumpstart health care innovation in the U.S. With a lighter touch from Uncle Sam, patients can see improved services at a lower price.

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