[Paul Simon, for anyone who doesn't remember "The Boy in the Bubble" from the Graceland album]
I keep looking at my temporal perspective. I think one of the odd things about being of an age is that your time sense about the recency of events changes. Things that seem like they happened yesterday are a decade or two in the past: e.g., the Clinton Presidency, the first Gulf War, my own move from East to West Coasts.
As a child, something that was "ten years ago" that did not happen in my awareness felt like ancient history. I was born during WWII but have no memory of it. The bits and pieces of being four or five I retain include passing through Penn Station after the war when travelling with my mother, learning of the death of my first dog, and one very incredible snowfall that was "over my head" [head was very close to the ground then...]. The Penn Station memory is very vivid and I'm pretty sure was from 1945 or 1946. The old station was demolished in 1962 or 63 and I had never travelled through it after that post war trip.
What is there is a distinct picture of high ironwork, almost lacy and delicate, and a great expanse of glass letting in light to the open concourse. It's a picture I am glad I have in memory.
Things that people coming of age take for granted didn't exist for most of my life. Makes me aware how someone with a few years can show up as an "old fogey." Things significant in my memory effectively never existed for someone in their twenties. I was a guest panelist for a group of students and mentioned a company I had worked for, one that had been the second biggest in its industry and one point in the Fortune 100 and 8th on the BusinessWeek market capitalization list, and I was met with blank stares. No one even knew the name of it. It was a hard shock about something I experienced as the best decade in my career.
Well, I'm not going to stop remembering, even if I risk being the irrelevant "old fogey." A lot of it is worth remembering. I wish more people did. Maybe we wouldn't keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
Was Durocher Right?
So what he said was "nice guys finish last."
I want to go at this a couple of different ways. One about some not so nice guys I have observed in my career, and one the more personal, because although I am sometimes "not nice," I think I am mostly a "nice guy."
There are three men I am thinking of who I would have to categorize in the "not nice" group. The general description would be something like "savage political infighters who seem to primarily seek their own advantage disregarding any negative impact on the company they work for or the people they work with."
One was a colleague in a place where I worked. He joined the company sometime after I did in a senior role in the same functional area I worked in. I put some effort into building a relationship but found him trying to sabotage my relationships with my client, blocking my access to information and resources, and disparaging my work to colleagues, and lying about it when I asked him about it. Could it be only me? Maybe, but one of the things I did with him was to take him on a float fishing. My guide's comment later was that he thought the guy was a "creep."
He was actually fired just before I left the company. But here's the thing. He had a job within weeks. In fact his resume is a list of positions seldom held more than three years, with some evidence of progressive advancement. As near as I can tell his LinkedIn profile for the time he was at the company where I met him is at least an exaggeration if not an outright fiction.
The other two I didn't know as well, but observing them I can see the same pattern--short stays with various companies, increasing responsibility with each move, and not much gap between employments. How do these guys get jobs? I suspect they lie, and then move on when caught or it doesn't work out, but each time they seem to parley great deals.
Personally I can't do that. I can't inflate the picture I sell of myself. Mostly I don't think anyone is a good as the blowhards seem to think they are, and I'd rather under-promise and over-deliver. Have I cost myself some money and opportunity? Am I too compliant? Too honest? Watching scoundrels make out while you feel like you have to struggle might tend you to thinking like that.
But I'm hardly "finishing last." I may not be wealthy, and we may be facing some belt-tightening as we age, but I think we'll be okay; and if we are not in the 1%, my guess is that we are in the 15% or 20%.
Maybe it is that nice guys just don't finish first because they are not willing to pay the price in integrity.
I want to go at this a couple of different ways. One about some not so nice guys I have observed in my career, and one the more personal, because although I am sometimes "not nice," I think I am mostly a "nice guy."
There are three men I am thinking of who I would have to categorize in the "not nice" group. The general description would be something like "savage political infighters who seem to primarily seek their own advantage disregarding any negative impact on the company they work for or the people they work with."
One was a colleague in a place where I worked. He joined the company sometime after I did in a senior role in the same functional area I worked in. I put some effort into building a relationship but found him trying to sabotage my relationships with my client, blocking my access to information and resources, and disparaging my work to colleagues, and lying about it when I asked him about it. Could it be only me? Maybe, but one of the things I did with him was to take him on a float fishing. My guide's comment later was that he thought the guy was a "creep."
He was actually fired just before I left the company. But here's the thing. He had a job within weeks. In fact his resume is a list of positions seldom held more than three years, with some evidence of progressive advancement. As near as I can tell his LinkedIn profile for the time he was at the company where I met him is at least an exaggeration if not an outright fiction.
The other two I didn't know as well, but observing them I can see the same pattern--short stays with various companies, increasing responsibility with each move, and not much gap between employments. How do these guys get jobs? I suspect they lie, and then move on when caught or it doesn't work out, but each time they seem to parley great deals.
Personally I can't do that. I can't inflate the picture I sell of myself. Mostly I don't think anyone is a good as the blowhards seem to think they are, and I'd rather under-promise and over-deliver. Have I cost myself some money and opportunity? Am I too compliant? Too honest? Watching scoundrels make out while you feel like you have to struggle might tend you to thinking like that.
But I'm hardly "finishing last." I may not be wealthy, and we may be facing some belt-tightening as we age, but I think we'll be okay; and if we are not in the 1%, my guess is that we are in the 15% or 20%.
Maybe it is that nice guys just don't finish first because they are not willing to pay the price in integrity.
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Cancer Card
This may not sit well with some of you who read this regularly.
The latest note on the Penn State mess is that Joe Paterno is "battling cancer." Sorry, Joe, but don't expect that to work for you. Men don't get sympathy when they play the cancer card. Doesn't happen.
In 2010 a little over 32,000 men died from prostate cancer, while there were over 217,000 new cases. A comparable statistic for breast cancer in women in 2007 was 40,000 deaths and 178,000 new cases. Not incomparable numbers. But here's the rub.
It seems to me that a lot more attention is paid to the latter. Yes, I know there are some issues about the level of social investment in women's health care and that some of that gets caught up on the ideological battles about Roe v. Wade. But there is no "Race for the Cure' for prostate cancer, no "wear pink for the cure." And operationally, experientially, I have seen where one gender gets to play the card but the other does not.
A group I was in was doing a radical reorganization and some jobs were going to be lost. There were say about a dozen or so women in the group and three men. All of the women were found jobs that they did not have to compete for, and much was made of "poor So-and-So," who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and how something had to be found for her. One of the men, an African-American, was given a brand new "diversity" job which he left as soon as he found something else (can you spell "let's avoid a law suit?"), and the other two were left to scramble. I suppose it could be written down to "turn about is fair play" given the ways women have been treated in the workplace in the past and even today, but it seemed pretty off to me at the time. Still does.
A few years later after my own diagnosis of cancer and just as I was beginning treatment, I was laid off. I never brought it up. First, I knew it would make no difference in the instance, but I also knew that men don't get to play the cancer card.
All that said, I should say that I don't think anyone should. Many things can kill us. Many diseases can give us a death sentence, but then so can life itself ultimately. Yes, people deserve sympathy and care and support when they face that risk. But one form of disease is no more deserving of that attention than another, and frankly I'm getting a little tired of the way one does.
I don't know how helpful it is that we demonize cancer anyway. It's your own cells gone haywire and I'll bet it turns out that the aging of tissue has a lot to do with it. I don't think it will ever be completely eradicated, just as (thankfully) I don't think we will ever extend life indefinitely. Doesn't mean we shouldn't fight for our well-being. Just let's not make one life-threatening disease a poster child while ignoring others simply because of the groups they affect.
I'm a cancer survivor now--almost 8 years--but I don't think it should really be a big deal. My treatment has had some impact on my lifestyle, but I'm not 40 or 25 or 17 anymore either. It is what it is. That's all.
The latest note on the Penn State mess is that Joe Paterno is "battling cancer." Sorry, Joe, but don't expect that to work for you. Men don't get sympathy when they play the cancer card. Doesn't happen.
In 2010 a little over 32,000 men died from prostate cancer, while there were over 217,000 new cases. A comparable statistic for breast cancer in women in 2007 was 40,000 deaths and 178,000 new cases. Not incomparable numbers. But here's the rub.
It seems to me that a lot more attention is paid to the latter. Yes, I know there are some issues about the level of social investment in women's health care and that some of that gets caught up on the ideological battles about Roe v. Wade. But there is no "Race for the Cure' for prostate cancer, no "wear pink for the cure." And operationally, experientially, I have seen where one gender gets to play the card but the other does not.
A group I was in was doing a radical reorganization and some jobs were going to be lost. There were say about a dozen or so women in the group and three men. All of the women were found jobs that they did not have to compete for, and much was made of "poor So-and-So," who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and how something had to be found for her. One of the men, an African-American, was given a brand new "diversity" job which he left as soon as he found something else (can you spell "let's avoid a law suit?"), and the other two were left to scramble. I suppose it could be written down to "turn about is fair play" given the ways women have been treated in the workplace in the past and even today, but it seemed pretty off to me at the time. Still does.
A few years later after my own diagnosis of cancer and just as I was beginning treatment, I was laid off. I never brought it up. First, I knew it would make no difference in the instance, but I also knew that men don't get to play the cancer card.
All that said, I should say that I don't think anyone should. Many things can kill us. Many diseases can give us a death sentence, but then so can life itself ultimately. Yes, people deserve sympathy and care and support when they face that risk. But one form of disease is no more deserving of that attention than another, and frankly I'm getting a little tired of the way one does.
I don't know how helpful it is that we demonize cancer anyway. It's your own cells gone haywire and I'll bet it turns out that the aging of tissue has a lot to do with it. I don't think it will ever be completely eradicated, just as (thankfully) I don't think we will ever extend life indefinitely. Doesn't mean we shouldn't fight for our well-being. Just let's not make one life-threatening disease a poster child while ignoring others simply because of the groups they affect.
I'm a cancer survivor now--almost 8 years--but I don't think it should really be a big deal. My treatment has had some impact on my lifestyle, but I'm not 40 or 25 or 17 anymore either. It is what it is. That's all.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Religion Redux Redux
As an unchurched Unitarian-Universalist I sometimes think about going back. There's a new congregation not far from us and we've even talked about visiting but never have.
There isn't a lot of glue in the denomination. There's no threat of eternal damnation. There's no promise of life hereafter in the sky, although what had originally distinguished Universalism and gave it its name was the belief in universal salvation. Not sure it ever meant what more fundamentalist denominations mean when they use the word, but there it is.
So there's no doctrinal drivers. There's a great effort to be inclusive however. Alas it doesn't quite work the way that some would have liked it to. The U-U church is predominantly white middle and maybe a little above middle-class. One urban church I belonged to wanted to recruit an African-American minister to be more attractive to members of the African-American community. At the time there were four in the whole denomination out of some few hundreds. They found one, hired him in a contentious process and then a few years later he left to become a Gestalt therapist. without changing the church's diversity more than a bit. So you could say even U-Us have a tough time practicing what they preach.
In the last church I was a member of there were a lot conversations about "community," and it seemed that "community" was something that was wanted. The same had been true in the previous U-U church I had been in, but both and the previous one tended to be riven from time to time around some issue that it seemed people could not be communal about. Sometimes it was politics. Yes, Virginia, there are politically conservative Unitarians. Sometimes the minister was not to some folks' liking. Sometimes it was an issue like the selection of an African-American minister. My wife belonged to one because she had found a "community" she could connect to, but left it rather quickly when her circumstances changed.
I've come to think that about the only glue that holds U-U congregations together is just that--community. And, interestingly, it is part of the glue that holds any congregation of any denomination together. A line is drawn around the periphery. Outside of that line is "them," and inside of it is "us." It is a yearning to be with someone like us, to validate ourselves by having others around us who agree with our beliefs and values. Quite human. But it also become the source of the contentions when it shows up that the agreement is not quite so thoroughly consonant as aspired to.
Given that beliefs and values can be radically different in a family (I've recently discovered that I am not the only Dad or brother with an immediate family member with oppositie social and political views), how can we expected a community of people drawn together in a church not to have differences?
And I guess what I want to ask is "why would we want that?" Its the differences we encounter that strike the growing edge and keep us vital. U-Us do try to be inclusive and welcoming of diversity, but I think fall short of even modest success. I end up wondering what the point is.
There isn't a lot of glue in the denomination. There's no threat of eternal damnation. There's no promise of life hereafter in the sky, although what had originally distinguished Universalism and gave it its name was the belief in universal salvation. Not sure it ever meant what more fundamentalist denominations mean when they use the word, but there it is.
So there's no doctrinal drivers. There's a great effort to be inclusive however. Alas it doesn't quite work the way that some would have liked it to. The U-U church is predominantly white middle and maybe a little above middle-class. One urban church I belonged to wanted to recruit an African-American minister to be more attractive to members of the African-American community. At the time there were four in the whole denomination out of some few hundreds. They found one, hired him in a contentious process and then a few years later he left to become a Gestalt therapist. without changing the church's diversity more than a bit. So you could say even U-Us have a tough time practicing what they preach.
In the last church I was a member of there were a lot conversations about "community," and it seemed that "community" was something that was wanted. The same had been true in the previous U-U church I had been in, but both and the previous one tended to be riven from time to time around some issue that it seemed people could not be communal about. Sometimes it was politics. Yes, Virginia, there are politically conservative Unitarians. Sometimes the minister was not to some folks' liking. Sometimes it was an issue like the selection of an African-American minister. My wife belonged to one because she had found a "community" she could connect to, but left it rather quickly when her circumstances changed.
I've come to think that about the only glue that holds U-U congregations together is just that--community. And, interestingly, it is part of the glue that holds any congregation of any denomination together. A line is drawn around the periphery. Outside of that line is "them," and inside of it is "us." It is a yearning to be with someone like us, to validate ourselves by having others around us who agree with our beliefs and values. Quite human. But it also become the source of the contentions when it shows up that the agreement is not quite so thoroughly consonant as aspired to.
Given that beliefs and values can be radically different in a family (I've recently discovered that I am not the only Dad or brother with an immediate family member with oppositie social and political views), how can we expected a community of people drawn together in a church not to have differences?
And I guess what I want to ask is "why would we want that?" Its the differences we encounter that strike the growing edge and keep us vital. U-Us do try to be inclusive and welcoming of diversity, but I think fall short of even modest success. I end up wondering what the point is.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Religion Redux
I was thinking about a couple of things the other day. One was about my relationship with the churches I attended after I discovered Unitarianism, or more correctly Unitarian-Universalism. The other was about the relationship of religion to our culture. This may end up being two separate pieces.
The latter item first.
When someone said to me "this is a Christian nation," it started me thinking. In a very real sense it is but not quite in the way he was suggesting, as in "Christian" to the exclusion of all others. People who propose this idea seem to me are in denial of quite a bit and captive of their very narrow view of history. Most are unaware that the "under God" phrase was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in the fifties as a defense against godless Communism. The Pledge itself is an artifact of the nineteenth century, composed in 1892 and formally adopted in 1942. "In God We Trust," coined in the Civil War era, was formally adopted as the official motto in 1956. Seems we adopt these things in time of war, hot or otherwise. reminiscent of the German "Gott mit uns," a motto used by their military that actually has a long imperial history going back to the Romans and Byzantines, and even the Hebrew "Immanuel."
The latest version of this kind of reactive cleaving to religious ritual or symbol in time of war is the now apparently mandatory singing of "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch of baseball games--a practice initiated after 9/11. I think I am as patriotic as the next person. I've studied the work of our founders, read their own words about what they were doing. I love this country, and I hate the mistakes she makes in my name. I've always wondered why we think singing anthems at professional sporting events makes us more patriotic or American. Though I do like that the practice compells hockey fans to have to listen to "Oh Canada."
The founding fathers were religious men but they were close enough historically to the religious wars and atrocities of England and the religious persecutions that drove many to settle here that they had the wisdom to avoid the idea of a state religion, although some states had established churches that both shaped their laws and were sometimes supported by taxation. The illegality of birth control in Connecticut until the sixties or seventies was an artifact of this.
Christianity does appear to have become the "state religion" of capitalism, however.
It works like this. Calvinist doctrine--the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts were Calvinist--says that there are those who are "elect" and those who are not; those who will receive salvation and those who won't; and that only God knows who they are. A kind of a cosmic lottery. Now very quickly those people who were successful Calvinists started to think that their success was evidence of their "election." Obviously if God makes me a success, I must be favored in his eyes.
They also had a little thing about having some kind of conversion experience to be covenanted with God and the church community. When people stopped having those so much they decided that there could be a "half-way covenant." If you were the child of someone who had had the conversion experience, you could be a full member. Member or not, elect or not, you were still expected to attend church regularly.
Anyway the apparent beliefs of the successful capitalist Calvinist merchants live on today in the apparent unflinching support of the wealthy by some not very well off believers of an unnamed political persuasion. In another forum one posted a lengthy justification that CEOs deserved their rewards because they obviously have talent and abilities beyond those of the mere lazy mortals who work for them. That view of executive compensation is as detached from reality as the Calvinist burghers' belief that they were elect was detached from doctrine.
Shock yourself. Pick out a half dozen or so publicly traded large companies and go look at the 10-K statements posted on the SEC website, Edgar. Look at the executive compensation and severance provisions. The basis for the numbers you will see are the decisions of crony boards based on surveys of "comparable" companies, usually selected to be larger and more successful. The result is a continuous ratcheting up of all executive compensation that has absolutely nothing to do with competence or performance. It is an adult version of "but Johnny's mother lets him do it."
The severances are obscene. Typically a multiple of annual compensation including bonuses, with accelerated vesting in stock and stock options, they state that they will be awarded even if termination is for cause (i.e., non-performance). Under these deals a CEO would practically have to be convicted of child-abduction to not get their payout.
So, yes, the religion of our Calvinist forebears lives on in statements like "Capitalism, God's way of sorting rich and poor."
Here's what I consider the highest irony. These are the same people fond of hurling the "Socialist" label around, but if you read the Gnostic Gospels you get a very different picture of Jesus and the early church than theirs. Helping the poor was the focus of the early church. Communal activities and meals were the rule.
Would be nice if indeed the nation was truly "Christian."
The latter item first.
When someone said to me "this is a Christian nation," it started me thinking. In a very real sense it is but not quite in the way he was suggesting, as in "Christian" to the exclusion of all others. People who propose this idea seem to me are in denial of quite a bit and captive of their very narrow view of history. Most are unaware that the "under God" phrase was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in the fifties as a defense against godless Communism. The Pledge itself is an artifact of the nineteenth century, composed in 1892 and formally adopted in 1942. "In God We Trust," coined in the Civil War era, was formally adopted as the official motto in 1956. Seems we adopt these things in time of war, hot or otherwise. reminiscent of the German "Gott mit uns," a motto used by their military that actually has a long imperial history going back to the Romans and Byzantines, and even the Hebrew "Immanuel."
The latest version of this kind of reactive cleaving to religious ritual or symbol in time of war is the now apparently mandatory singing of "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch of baseball games--a practice initiated after 9/11. I think I am as patriotic as the next person. I've studied the work of our founders, read their own words about what they were doing. I love this country, and I hate the mistakes she makes in my name. I've always wondered why we think singing anthems at professional sporting events makes us more patriotic or American. Though I do like that the practice compells hockey fans to have to listen to "Oh Canada."
The founding fathers were religious men but they were close enough historically to the religious wars and atrocities of England and the religious persecutions that drove many to settle here that they had the wisdom to avoid the idea of a state religion, although some states had established churches that both shaped their laws and were sometimes supported by taxation. The illegality of birth control in Connecticut until the sixties or seventies was an artifact of this.
Christianity does appear to have become the "state religion" of capitalism, however.
It works like this. Calvinist doctrine--the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts were Calvinist--says that there are those who are "elect" and those who are not; those who will receive salvation and those who won't; and that only God knows who they are. A kind of a cosmic lottery. Now very quickly those people who were successful Calvinists started to think that their success was evidence of their "election." Obviously if God makes me a success, I must be favored in his eyes.
They also had a little thing about having some kind of conversion experience to be covenanted with God and the church community. When people stopped having those so much they decided that there could be a "half-way covenant." If you were the child of someone who had had the conversion experience, you could be a full member. Member or not, elect or not, you were still expected to attend church regularly.
Anyway the apparent beliefs of the successful capitalist Calvinist merchants live on today in the apparent unflinching support of the wealthy by some not very well off believers of an unnamed political persuasion. In another forum one posted a lengthy justification that CEOs deserved their rewards because they obviously have talent and abilities beyond those of the mere lazy mortals who work for them. That view of executive compensation is as detached from reality as the Calvinist burghers' belief that they were elect was detached from doctrine.
Shock yourself. Pick out a half dozen or so publicly traded large companies and go look at the 10-K statements posted on the SEC website, Edgar. Look at the executive compensation and severance provisions. The basis for the numbers you will see are the decisions of crony boards based on surveys of "comparable" companies, usually selected to be larger and more successful. The result is a continuous ratcheting up of all executive compensation that has absolutely nothing to do with competence or performance. It is an adult version of "but Johnny's mother lets him do it."
The severances are obscene. Typically a multiple of annual compensation including bonuses, with accelerated vesting in stock and stock options, they state that they will be awarded even if termination is for cause (i.e., non-performance). Under these deals a CEO would practically have to be convicted of child-abduction to not get their payout.
So, yes, the religion of our Calvinist forebears lives on in statements like "Capitalism, God's way of sorting rich and poor."
Here's what I consider the highest irony. These are the same people fond of hurling the "Socialist" label around, but if you read the Gnostic Gospels you get a very different picture of Jesus and the early church than theirs. Helping the poor was the focus of the early church. Communal activities and meals were the rule.
Would be nice if indeed the nation was truly "Christian."
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