Dan Erwin

Why I Still Write Blogs

Periodically, I get asked why, at age 86, I’m still writing blogs. Usually the person asking is in their sixties or seventies. It’s a question that just keeps coming up again and again in spite of the fact that 62% of my blog viewers are under age 34, and 55% are using mobile devices—all of which says a lot and is very satisfying for me. But the older age of my questioners makes my answer easy. I just say something along the line of wanting to keep my gray matter working, lest it slow down. Older adults understand that response and seem to be happy with it. There’s truth in that answer. But actually, it’s a brushoff.

To understand why I still write, you’ll first need to understand my life as a child and adolescent. I was the elder of two sons, three years apart, in a profoundly dysfunctional family. My mother was a flaming narcissist and, as my brother said over her grave, “a mean lady.” My father had divorced her two years into my life—a rare act in the 1930s--and then remarried her when he realized my younger brother was on the way. I cannot remember a single week in my entire life before leaving for college when there were not emotional fights and tears. My father actually attempted suicide once. When angry, he broke plates and cups on the floor, then went off hunting with his dogs and a Black buddy, in season and out. Of course, there were significant consequences of all that to my life. To protect myself, I learned to become deceptive, a tool which I have mostly unlearned. My language skills were always the best tools for self-protection. Whenever possible, I retreated to books—books of all kinds—in my search for new language and new ideas. My brother lacked my language competencies. He wasn’t even a good liar—the primary tool for avoiding our mother. Instead, he was the family scapegoat. The two of us had little relationship. Always in trouble, he was sent off to three private schools in his junior high and high school years. Two, out-of-state, before my dad finally shipped him off to the army at age eighteen. The differences between my brother and myself were also instructive. It was one more driver of my language and relational learning. With my background in psychology, I now understand that he was an attachment avoidant and I was a low-level anxious avoidant—a dysfunction that, calculatingly, I worked on changing throughout the first 10 years of my adult life.

What’s obvious, and also profoundly frustrating, is that my mother was my teacher--and an exceptionally capable tutor. Attendance in her school was compulsory and I spent 24 hours a day figuring out how to win the top grades. My best friend recently described that learning as highly reflective. Continually ruminating, I spent all those years attempting to outsmart her. It was language, I kept confirming. It was always the best tool. I worked hard at becoming linguistically effective, eventually escaping, marrying a wonderful woman and moving to another world. It turns out that having someone believe in my failure enabled my success. My friend, also said, laughing, that I would have been a superb Courtier in the Court of Elizabeth the First. I’d be able to manage all the politics and come away rich. My brother, in significant contrast, decided that the best way to manage our mother was to escape. And he spent his years at home attempting to escape her clutches—usually failing. Elizabeth’s henchmen would have tracked him down and murdered him. Essentially that’s what happened. It just took my mother 70 years...

Turning Points and Milestones of Growth-Fostering Relationships

Every person who intends to exert leadership in his personal life, in business or any other vocation—and even in the family--will intentionally focus on personal growth. Research has shown us that effective business leadership growth inevitably requires mentors. Though true, that notion is plainly inadequate. The fact is that all living and all development takes place only with relationships. To put it still more directly, we experience growth because of our connections to other people. I can go through my years since grade school and well into my sixties, and still point to people that changed my life, impacts that would have to be considered as turning points and often milestones. Change that would never have happened without those connections.

 

The underpinnings of growth are inevitably acts of creativity built on relationships. Virginia Woolf puts it this way: Masterpieces (turning points and milestones) are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of thinking in common, of thinking by a body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.  

I still have a lot of memory about my first real growth experience, a phenomenally unique milestone while only in the 7^th grade. I’ll explain later why the experience was so important, why I remember so many details, and what it did for me. To begin, the experience was initiated by a civics teacher, Mr. Fickes, a teacher whom I thought was pretty dumb. I opened my mouth too often and after one episode he chewed me out, telling me I’d be in the “insane asylum by the time I finished high school.” Shortly after that experience, the chair of the social science department, Dr. Arthur, a very impressive intellect, and a delightful woman with sparkling eyes and a Michigan PhD, took seven top students out of the class and created a seminar group on civics for us. Fickes did not return the following year. 

Kevin Costner's "Yellowstone": "Cruel and Uncaring"

Toward the end of episode eight in the third season of Yellowstone, John Dutton (Kevin Costner) says this to his son, Kayce: “In case you haven’t noticed, it (the world) is cruel and uncaring.” And he adds, “you have to be meaner than evil--and still love your family and still enjoy a sunrise.” I could feel my skin crawling, tingling after his words. I understood my rejection immediately, but it took several days to figure out why my emotions were so strong. And why Dutton’s commitment bothered me so much.

It’s not that the words were out of sync with the storyline of the episode or the series. The entire series has been filled with gripping conflicts between good and evil, between protection of the family and property and the attempts to steal the property from the family. Often dripping with brutality. The stories in all three seasons have shown a high degree of consistency and suspense, interlaced with underlying questions about human reality. (Does this actually happen in our world today?) That’s part of the reason the show has kept my interest at very high levels. Obviously, I’m not the only committed viewer. That final episode set a ratings-record with 5.2 million viewers, claiming cable’s #1 spot, in live, same day. If you include the simulcast and encores, the closer drew 7.5M viewers on premiere night.  And it also set up the viewer for season four, next year.

More than a good show?
What bugged me so much about that narrative is that it’s reflective of the distrust of the world and the people in it, the background, for example, for our current conspiracy spasm. Both consciously and unconsciously, my person and my vocations have often circled around our trust and distrust of the community and the world—and how profoundly repetitious stories with similar distrusting values impact our relationships, vocations and communities. I don’t think of Dutton’s two sentences as merely a means for sharing information. It’s an arousing story in which we viewers have been conditioned to participate. And it appeals to our feelings rather than to our thinking. That’s what makes it so powerful and seductive, creating my intense emotional response.  

Dig into any conspiracy theory and you’ll find believers with shattered views of trust in the world, what Richard Hofstadter famously called "an arena for angry minds."

How to Read What's Not Being Said or Written

In today’s complex world, the more analytical and rhetorical tools you have, the better off. That thinking was confirmed uniquely a couple years ago when I put up a a blog on "reading subtexts.. Surprised by the comments and “thank yous,” I’ve decided to go a bit further into what my discipline of rhetoric calls “close reading.” By “close reading,” I’m referring to both print and spoken messages and to more than just the literal words. As in, “If I’m reading the vice-president correctly, he’ll reject that proposal out of hand.”  

So, when I talk about subtexts, I’m referring to covert meanings, hidden commitments, undiscussables,” or what's not said.  The meanings are not immediately clear, but over time and with context, the listener can understand what’s meant.

For example, a student goes to turn in his paper. After looking through two pages, his teacher asks, “Are you sure you want to turn this in?” The literal text is a question that asks for a yes or no. The meaning of the text is suggested by the actual words, message and action discussed. But the student understands her subtext--that his paper may have some typos, misspelling or syntax problems. By her question, she gives the student the latitude to make his own decision about the paper—or receive a lower grade.

A different tool, beyond that notion of subtext, is what does the meaning of a text do to a person’s thoughts, motives, actions or predispositions? This is the kind of analysis that is usually much more complex. It requires a richer, fuller understanding of the context—the teacher’s past comments about his writing ability.

In this larger context, the student remembers many positive comments his teacher has made about his writing. So her question means that there’s nothing wrong with the paper as such. But given the larger context, he recognizes that she’s reminding him that he’s more capable of original, creative writing. Based on the past, her question asks whether he wants to enhance his writing. So what does he think about redoing the paper, giving further thought, insight and color to his article? In sum, it’s a question about his unusual originality and creativity.

This analytical tool can be even more useful for stories, anecdotes and movies.

I watched a couple of absolutely fascinating movies over the past month. The stories and the acting in both were rich and warm. One about a heterosexual relationship and the other about gay relations. The first, the 2005 “Pride and Prejudice” starred Keira Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen. The second was the BBCs “Man in an Orange Shirt,” with Vanessa Redgrave. Curious, because of their power over me, I watched both of them a couple times...

So What Does an Eight-Year-Old, Third Grader Think of Remote Learning?

The Times had a number of brief statements from kids of different ages regarding school in the covid-19 era. 

My favorite among the entire bunch was this of Lucas Fonte, 8, of Miami. 

Lucas: I want to go to the school. I don’t like working at home. My mom is not a very good teacher. Last year in second grade, when I didn’t understand something my teacher wasn’t there, and my mom didn’t know how to explain it to me.

I’m going to miss my friends, I liked taking the bus and lunch time. Sometimes they’d give us Doritos or ice cream, stuff my mom wouldn’t pack.

I don’t like doing things on virtual school, like dividing. It’s super hard to understand on virtual school. Last year the teacher would go through all the kids and ask them a question so the other kids, we all had to sit there waiting for our turn. It’s really boring... 

Gaining Clarity from Adversity

Though not used commonly, clarity is a fairly well-known term. Singers use the word to describe a voice that is clear and pure, like a single sound from the violin that has little vibrato, sweet--and piercing. I’ve always been nuts about operatic sopranos, especially a voice like Kathleen Battle, a voice with a great deal of clarity. In contrast, a voice with a lot of overtones, like Jessye Norman’s, is considered a rich voice, a voice that can evoke a lot of emotions. These two singers tend to sing very different music. On the other side of the street, Kim Petras has a voice with a lot of clarity—practically no overtones. Piercing, and not. . . especially sweet.

Clarity is also a term that’s used to highlight weaknesses in business planning, priorities or processes. It reveals individuals’ and institutions’ true values.

The Covid pandemic has provided us with a great deal of clarity, both destructive and constructive. The pandemic has revealed that much business has been working without a sufficient net. Just-in-time processes, for example, have left many businesses without resilience. The government has also allowed social safety nets like health-care and, in some states, unemployment, to fray. It leaves those who are vulnerable and at the margins to suffer disproportionately. In contrast, the public has begun to appreciate the role of ordinary health care workers—low-paid workers who are under the radar most of the time, but are absolutely necessary in times of adversity like this.  

The pandemic has also shed light on our decision-making processes—revealing a great deal of unrecognized bias. It has held up a mirror to the difficulty of making good decisions when there is no data. Or when data has been politically impacted—rejecting the role of good science. Constructively, many people are learning the importance of good data, and even becoming more familiar with data modeling—like curves that are supposed to flatten.

Shaking up the way we think
Covid-19, like the Bubonic Plague, is shaking up the way people think. That Black Death powerfully marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. By the beginning of the 14^th century, Italy had several prosperous city states. Venice, Genoa, and Amalfi had trading networks and outposts throughout the Mediterranean and as far away as the Black Sea and Russia. Other Italian cities, like Bologna and Florence, welcomed peasants fleeing feudal lords to find freedom inside their city walls. They became artisans and developed a middle-class, much of which was portrayed fairly accurately in the second television series on Medici: the Magnificent. 

“Setting” Boundaries Versus “Negotiating” Boundaries

Is there a substantial difference? Or are they just two words for the same thing? And does it really matter? Prior to the 1950s, they would have been just two words for the same thing. That is, if anyone ever used the term “negotiating” boundaries. The practice of “negotiating” boundaries comes primarily out of the 1980s with the flattening of business hierarchies and the strong orientation to women’s rights. With the exception of sales negotiation, it was rare to talk about negotiating relationships until the mid-1980s. And since then there has been tons of research and some training solely in the practice of negotiating interpersonal boundaries. In simple terms, setting boundaries is one individual determining boundaries for others. Negotiating boundaries is two or more creating a workable agreement on the boundaries between them.

So, there’s a significant difference between setting and negotiating boundaries. Major business leaders as well as many community leaders recognize these differences even without distinguishing between the two terms. But, ask the right questions and they can clarify immediately. I’ve learned, sadly, that these same professionals are typically incapable of using the negotiation competence in their family. Shifting competencies from one context to another without training is highly problematic—even for top business school grads. Similarly, lower level bureaucrats, patriarchal families, pastors, the Roman and Evangelical churches, small and medium-sized privately held owner-firms lack insight to the distinctions and sometimes have a lot of resistance on their hands as a result of their ignorance.

Creating still more difficulty, my psychologist colleagues have no rhetorical format for negotiation. Common formats provide the means for improving, changing or even rejecting former ways of communicating. Without a common format, they’re always attempting to reinvent the wheel, a strategy which readily results in failure or limited success. They talk a good talk about “setting boundaries,” but lack awareness of the extensive implications of differing boundaries. This is surprising, because the counseling profession knows that ignoring or flagrantly setting boundaries is one of the major causes of family breakdown. And there are plenty of other people and organizations in the dark and looking at abject failure because of their ignorance and unwillingness to operate on the basis of negotiating boundaries.

The role of power
Although I’ve never heard anyone make the distinction between setting and negotiating, it’s time to start using the rhetoric much more carefully. Why? Because, the distinctions are primarily about power: who’s got it and what are the most effective ways to use it.

In business organizations power is traditionally viewed from three perspectives: vested, expert and network. Simply put, vested power is the legitimate power given to an individual to run teams, projects or disciplines within an organization. Expert is the power conferred on an individual who has the necessary knowledge others require for success. And network power is that of a person who knows a terrific amount of people who are capable of providing the necessary support and insight which individuals or groups require to succeed. Obviously simplistic, but occasionally useful clarity.

However, as a result of the unique work of the French academic, Michel Foucault, we understand that power is a lot more complex than the above little model. Foucault emphasizes that where there is power, there is also resistance. So, it’s all the more important to understand that successful power has much more to do, for example, with how a person or an organization chooses to organize ideas, make comparisons, and locate new ideas, often metaphorically, within highly respected old ideas. To an obvious degree, knowing what to say, how to say it, and what not to say in a given culture can be powerful negotiation strategies. That kind of expertise is usually necessary for successful boundary negotiation, which at its core is a matter of interaction around “I’ll do this if you’ll do that.” Simple relationships can sometimes be negotiated in three minutes, while major organizations or nations may take ten to twenty years to negotiate their differences in order to achieve mutual goals...

What Is Your Brain Doing While You Sleep?

It bugs me that the latest Time magazine (August 17/24) from which I plagiarized the above title is only interested in issues of physiology. Especially, when the far more interesting, useful and cutting-edge issues are about something else: the unconscious mind. By 1964 I was depending on that so-called black box (the unconscious) every Thursday, Friday or Saturday night.

As a young church minister in the reformed tradition, I had to write two new, creative sermons nearly every weekend. My church included many university faculty and engineers from the local technology firms, who brought high expectations with them to worship.

Thankfully, I learned just a couple years after seminary graduation (1962) that if I went to sleep on Thursday or Friday with a sermon or a creative idea half-finished, or needed some new ideas or anecdotes, I’d have everything I needed when I woke up the next morning. Or if I was just playing around with some creative ideas during the day, there was a high chance that the idea would be complete--or at least zinging some new pointers my way--when I woke up the next morning. At first, if it was an unfinished sermon, I’d go to bed very tired and worried—and toss and turn much of the night. But once I figured out that my unconscious was going to be working all night, I just went to bed—and slept easily. It was years later that I realized that I was actually priming my night brain during the day. I rested easy, because that thinking process rarely failed. So, I made a practice of leaving pad and pencil out on the kitchen table to jot down my new ideas first thing, and not lose the thinking that had been gained over the night. Forty-five years later I still use the model for my thinking and writing, and it works even better. Sometimes my night brain is so busy that I need to take a nap during the day.

When I shared my insight on how my brain worked in those early years, some understood and agreed instantly, while others...

"How the Pandemic Defeated America"

How did the writer of the title article headlined in this post ever slip by? I read the Atlantic faithfully, but somehow I missed Ed Yong.

The essay is easily the most original, insightful, profoundly creative article on the subject you'll find. What's most unusual is his historical/cultural orientation to the question of how we got where we are today. And then how to deal with this pandemic and the others that will follow.

Here are four paragraph bits as examples:

Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered. While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer.

A sluggish response by a government denuded of expertise allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold. Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness. Racist policies that have endured since the days of ...

Is It Just Possible That Trump and Trumpism Have Been Good for Us?

I suggested to one of my daughters just yesterday that Trump has actually been good for us, an idea that has crossed my mind over the last six months. Actually, it's an approach that any rhetorical critic understands: to argue against a case, you have to understand the opposing case in spades. And it's especially helpful if the opposing case can be clarified by experience and behaviors on the ground. In my comments to my daughter I explained (poorly) why Trump just might have been helpful to the nation. 

So it's fascinating to see an opinion article by Nicholas Kristof in today's Times making the same point. But he does a far better job of arguing the case.

Our nation is a mess, but overlapping catastrophes have also created conditions that may finally let us extricate ourselves from the mire. The grim awareness of national failures — on the coronavirus, racism, health care and jobs — may be a necessary prelude to fixing our country...