DaveShearon

Resilience - It's a Group Thing!

My monthly post is up over at Positive Psychology News Daily.  I take a look at how our individual resilience is partially a function of the groups we are in with an object lesson from a book by an Army lieutenant in heavy fighting in Iraq.  (Photo: "1st Platoon Leadership" by nukeit1)

Scarcity, Production, Self-Determination Theory, and College-for-All!

Thomas Sherman has a three posts (1, 2, 3) up on the topic of how participation by the masses in online systems is mostly destroying old mechanisms such as newspapers without replacing them with new mechanisms. (See here for an analysis of this phenomenon for youtube, twitter, facebook, etc.)  He also argues that mass participation is bendinging online systems (facebook, youtube) to mass tastes.  There's a lot to think about here, including the impact of the long tail.  But the most interesting paragraph to me is:

"Historically, technology has come with utopian promises of change that it has failed to deliver in the hoped for or predicted way. Industrialization and automation were supposed to create abundance and leisure but today some of our greatest social challenges involve scarcity. Our personal lives are marked by over-work, "time famine" and sleep deprivation. In America, many people working full-time or multiple jobs are unable to provide for their family's basic needs."

This is an extraordinarily important point.  How, in a culture that distributes wealth based on contribution (free market) do you handle the fact that technology continues to enable fewer and fewer people to produce more goods than everyone can consume?  The corrollary of this proposition can appear to be that a growing percentage of folks may not have the capacity to contribute sufficiently to "earn" adequate resources for a good life, but there's a fallacy in that apparent corrollary which I will get to below.  What to do?

Some will argue that the government should take care of this through single-payer  health  care, "livable wage" laws, government-owned or mandated public housing, "free" public education, restrictions on layoffs or plant closings, mandated pension systems, etc.  However, there are economic counter-arguments to each of these suggestions, and the real-life experience with them has often been disappointing.  Without trying to re-hash the economic and performance arguments in this area, I would suggest a basis from positive psychology for thinking about this issue:  Self-Determination Theory (SDT).

SDT suggests that humans have three basic psychological needs:  

Autonomy -- the feeling that we are living our lives based on our choices,

Competence -- a sense of being able to do the things that are important to us,

Relatedness -- a feeling of connectedness to those around us, family, friends, community.

Approaches that better allow for individuals to meet these psychological needs will work better for society.  This requires more sophisticated policy thinking than "let government do it."  It also requires a recognition of the strengths of individuals and their ability to create excellence and meaning in jobs that some college-educated law makers, governors, school board members, presidents, etc. have trouble seeing as valuable.  See the work of the Gallup organization on how the strengths of individuals can make them exceptional as bartenders, hotel maids, and Walgreens' stock clerks.  Or see Amy Wiersneski's work on work as a calling for hospital orderlies or administrative assistants in a university. 

The idea that anyone without a college education cannot live a good, happy, fulfilling, meaningful life is just wrong.  Of course, we don't say that.  What we say is that everyone should go to college.  But that's what we mean.  Even when it is said by a popular president, it's just wrong!  College for all?  Not a reasonable goal today.  Good life for all?  Absolutely!  Other people matter!

Elizabeth Wurtzel -- Making a Point and Drawing Flak

Elizabeth Wurtzel has a column entitled "Twleve Years Down the Drain" in the weekend Wall Street Journal (registration required).  She suggest that the insanely long hours of Wall Street lawyers look wasted in light of the collapse in stock market value over the last year.  

The column is interesting, and so are responses in the Journal's "Law Blog."  Ms. Wurtzel is  the author of Prozac Nation and recent law school graduate who is apparently still trying to pass the bar, but has a position at David Boies' firm.  Many of the commenters -- the majority, perhaps -- jump on the "not passed the bar" and "not a member of the club" responses to the post.  Just shows that lawyers don't let logic get in the way of a good argument; like politicians, we will use ad hominem arguments as long as they work -- which is likely to be forever.

Really, I think Miss Wurtzel makes two points.  One, the life of young lawyers in big firms -- and even more experienced lawyers --  can be draining and ultimately unfulfilling for most.  (I'm leaving open the possibility that there are individuals with values heavily focused around materialism, achievement, and power who find such environments as good a fit for their approach to life as any.)  I have made my own comments on this point.

Second, she argues that the work itself was without value because it did not create any lasting value for society.  That, as some of the commenters point out, is a tougher call.  Just because an effort failed does not mean that it was either unworthy, or that it may not have had a long-term beneficial effect. 

For example, the field of education reform has seen lots of effort seemingly disappear into what Bill Bennet called "the Blob" without any noticeable effect.  Yet, many individuals continue to work to make schools a better place for students and adults and a better institution for society.  Who knows the effects of ripples from prior efforts working through the complex non-linear system of our society as it attempts to educate children for adulthood?  Deeming an effort rendered in pursuit of a good cause "valueless" strikes me as an extreme example of unfounded pride.

Of course, the question is whether working to help companies make profits is has equivalent value to working to improve education.  Again, I find it a bit weird to argue that the lives and jobs that we hope to educate students for are of less worth than the effort to educate them.  As one commenter to the article wrote:

"Just because all things come to an end doesn’t mean that your efforts in the meantime were wasted. In the 8 years I’ve been in biglaw, I’ve kept companies healthy and thriving, and kept my own finances healthy and thriving in the meantime. (Not to mention all the “real people” I helped doing pro bono work, and the hundreds of thousands I’ve contributed in taxes.)"

So, yes, many attorneys in large firms making megabucks might well re-consider whether the balance of their efforts is working well for them, their colleagues, their families, and their communities.  That's different from questioning the value of what they do.  In fact, reaffirming that value, finding purpose and meaning in it, may be critical to achieving more fruitful approach to "BigLaw."

Good Things from Bad Times

The current issue of "Foreign Policy" has articles from a number of thinkers on how bad times might lead to good things, a theme I hit on in my March  post on Positive Psychology News Daily. 

Barry Schwartz makes the same point I did, that some may re-evaluate priorities and find more happiness as a result of choosing not to pursue materialism.  He emphasizes the body of research that suggests we are not always good at knowing what will make us happy.

Howard Gardner suggests that a focus on personalized education through computer technology might improve public education, though he predicts Sweden or Singapore will beat us to it.  From the MCLE world, I'm in agreement that personalized education has a lot to offer.  We already accredit distance learning, and my Commission has a proposal under discussion that would increase the minimum, required engagement factor for such programs.  We also have a proposal to allow CLE credit for one-on-one coaching.  I'm not as enthusiastic about this possibility as Dr. Gardner.  I remember Chris Peterson's summation on the most important findings of Positive Psychology to date:  "Other people matter."  I think individually-tailored, computer-delivered education could help education -- both K-12 and continuing professiona -- but it will not eliminate the value of people learning together in classrooms or workshops.

Finally, Jamais Cascio discusses "resilience" in business and financial systems in contrast to "sustainability", which he sees as fixed rigidity.  His principles of resilience for systems actually align pretty closely with Positive Psychology principles for personal resilience.  I'll just hit three of them; take a look at the article for the rest and see how you think they match up to personal resilience.

"Redundancy: Backup, backup, backup. Never leave yourself with just one path of escape or rescue." -- Positive Psychology: Hope Theory includes the concept of multiple pathways to a goal.

"Collaboration: We are all in this together. Take advantage of collaborative technologies, especially those offering shared communication and information."  -- Positive Psychology:  Other people matter.  Also, Relationships a a key component of the foundation for the good life.

"Transparency: Don't hide your systems -- transparency makes it easier to figure out where a problem may lie. Share your plans and preparations, and listen when people point out flaws."  Positive Psychology: We tend to focus on strengths as an andidote to an overwhelming cultural bias toward negativity and weakness, but that doesn't mean positive psychology ignores weakness.  I appreciate the editorial assistance in my writing at PPND.  And Chris Peterson tells the story of a friend encouraging him to lose weight.  When he suggested maybe she should just focus on his good qualities, she replied, "Do you want a cheerleader or a friend?" 

Tweenbots -- what do they say to you?

Tweenbots -- small, smiling, simple, and on a mission they do not have the capcity to accomplish alone in New York City.  What do the results suggest about our missions?  What about others and their missions, even those who come into our lives briefly?