Raven’s Aerie

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for some time, and recent events have prompted me to finally sit down and do it.

Notice the title?

That’s not praise.

Liberals often joke about throwing conservatives down a deep hole, putting them in camps to protect the rest of society, or even just outright shooting them. There are even dark humor movies where liberals get together and sneakily plan and enact the killing of various conservative figureheads.

Of course, conservatives are just as guilty of this behavior, but when you look at the news–especially the news of recent months–who is it that talks the talk and then actually goes out and shoots people for holding the “wrong” political beliefs?

Who walks into Unitarian churches and spray gunfire, leaving behind notes about how their political opponents must be stopped at any cost? Who blows up entire federal buildings full of people and children with fertilizer-based explosives? Who drag black men behind their trucks, face stomp immigrants until they are dead, beat homosexuals and leave them tied up to die, or who otherwise forms lynch mobs?

You’ll note: it isn’t the liberals.

When’s the last time a group was run out of a town or assaulted for being fundamentalist Christians, instead of, say, homosexual or non-white? How about for being pagan? How many abortion doctors have been shot and free clinics bombed?

Statistically and historically, major and most minor, cases of domestic terrorism are products of right-wing, conservative philosophical adherents. And over the last five months the number of violent acts committed by domestic terrorists claiming the conservative label, stating they were spurred to action at the prompting or warnings of popular conservative talking heads, has spiked: ten incidents (two more since the linked article) in that time, and a telling 40% increase in the membership of right-wing hate groups.

The Department of Homeland Security is on high alert as well, and has been since the election, recently stating “…lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”

These aren’t isolated incidents. There’s a sickness at the heart of conservatism that they simply don’t want to recognize, that they even embrace, that is at its base comprised of viciously Othering people for holding the “wrong” beliefs, for being the “wrong” kind of person, and so forth.

Strangely, they play with this fire and then act surprised (and faultless) when someone ends up burned. They claim to be on the side of righteousness, justice, and good, but why is it that then that it is their side breeding these sorts of violent reactions, that embrace actions and behaviors that even viciously potty-mouthed liberals could not bring themselves to undertake?

That alone — the fact that so many among them are willing to commit these atrocities — should inspire some reflection upon what it is their philosophy is saying and encouraging underneath everything else, and their pride in it.

We are judged for how we treat others throughout the course of our lives, the kindness we have done, and the cruelty. But we are not judged in some unglimpsed afterlife by some divine judiciary. Instead, we are judged in the here-and-now, by the actions we take and in the misery or kindness we pass on to others.

Yet it is not just kindness towards others we must spread, we must see the wholeness of our actions, the context of them. We can not spread kindness to one at the expense of spreading misery to others and call ourselves enlightened.

This thought arose when I wondered if compassion towards those who were cruel was truly the righteous path? It seemed to be right, as compassion is thought of as the basic and undeniably good response. I considered and fought myself and questioned my experience and knowledge.

There is a story of a Zen master who was robbed, and willingly gave all he owned to the robber, who was later arrested. When questioned, the master told the police he had not been robbed, that he had given his possessions to the robber freely.

But, I note, the master did not stop the police from arresting the man and making him serve his sentence.

There is another story where it is said Lord Buddha once killed a man to protect a boat of men, women, and children, because the man was a murderer who planned to kill all the others on the boat.

And yet it was an act of compassion.

And I thought of the story of Jack & the Troll, where a village takes in a man-eating troll because they feel sorry for it and they don’t wish it to starve, nor wish to kill it. They practice kindness and compassion towards the troll while it eats the villagers one-by-one.

Yet the villagers quake at the idea of driving off the troll, at the idea of the terrible things it would say about them–how cruel and horrid they were–if they refused to allow it to eat them.

This is a lesson I learned from Buddhists who thought they were practicing compassion by allowing a vicious man to speak among them, one who taunted and attacked others and behaved in an unruly and cruel fashion. These Buddhists sacrificed the many for the one and called it compassion, yet failed to see how they spread greater misery with their “compassionate” act.

How they gave leave to the robber to rob others.
How they let the murderer on the raft to kill everyone else.
How they allowed the troll to devour the entire village.
How they enabled a vicious man to spread misery.

When our act of believed compassion spreads misery instead, it is not an act of compassion.

Former Minnesota State Senator Norm Coleman, and all the usual assorted wingnuts, claim Al Franken stole the election from him…

Do I really need to spell out the irony? Seriously? Do I?

Moving on, let’s talk about the election “stealing” itself: you know, I expect hot-air full of sound and fury from the nutters of the right wing. They are as always, all accusation and no facts–I know I’ve never seen them let reality get in the way of a good character bashing or policy argument–coupled with a complete lack of historical hindsight or solid moral center.

Keep in mind, these are the same folks who after years of demanding we should “respect the president because he is the president” and calling anyone and everyone who didn’t an unAmerican terrorist-loving traitor for questioning or decrying the Bush administration, its policies, or its intentions, have now flip-flopped that position and abandoned the argument, deciding that they don’t need to “respect the president just because he’s the president” after all.

Well, guess what? If you’re going to claim you have to do something as a point of moral patriotism, then you’d better be willing to do it even when it doesn’t serve your interests any longer.

But, sadly, hypocrisy and the right-wing are no strangers in bed, and this is just another case of them getting freaky between the sheets.

So I expect they don’t get the irony this time around. Still, we at least can comfort ourselves with a rousing good laugh at the irony, understanding full well their bluster and frustration, as well as the karmic justice of it all. It’s rather like listening to the criminal caught selling property stolen from your home try to get himself out of trouble by blustering and yelling the property is his and the cops are thieves for “stealing” it back (of course, the criminal would never use quotemarks–they really believe it is stealing, and that’s wrong…now).

ADDENDUM: I should add that I am hoping the collapse of the powerbase of the neo-con right will open up the right-wing to a new wave of conservatives who choose to abandon the failed, destructive policies and cherished myths of the current right, and who re-embrace morality and rationality instead of divisive lies and power-plays.

*Note: somehow a draft version of this entry was posted to my LiveJournal account. This is the final, actual entry, in case you read the draft.

Accepting the truth that someone who works less hard and is less talented than you can (and will) have success while you fail, and will have it equally to your own chances, despite those significant differences in talent and work, may raise the question of the “value” of talent and work.

So following up on my last post regarding the disconnection between talent/work and success, some may be left wondering if talent and hard work are even at all important in any fashion, since being a lazy, untalented git nets you as equal a chance as the opposite?

Let us begin by noting there is one thing work and talent earn you, whether you have a little or a lot of one or the other or both, and it is a guarantee, though a small comfort: they earn you a chance for success.

As we know, they do not guarantee success; they do not even affect it “fairly”. They don’t increase your odds. Working your ass off won’t increase the chances of your success, only guarantee you the same chance as everyone else (and a lot of someones who worked less hard than you).

Accepting just one of these truths might prove difficult, and let us say we finally accept that is true (moving past “might be” or “could be” and accepting this unfair blow) and realize that working harder will not result in a greater chance for success.

In such a case, we may turn to talent, and cling to the thought skill or talent or quality count for more or count in proportion, for the idea it doesn’t flies in the face of conventional wisdom and we immediately want to reject such a thought outright.

It does so because the idea again attacks a foundational cultural assumption with the counter-intuitive recognition that our basic and fundamental understanding of the system is wrong, for we are convinced that the rational thing is “higher quality will rise, lower quality will sink” and so forth.

Yet, when we examine the reality, we find higher quality is not found more commonly on the high end of success than the low end, and vice versa. Quality does not increase success or a chance for success, even though we feel that it logically should.

Perhaps we accept this even, but faced with the truth that our foundational picture of the world was flawed, having the knowledge revealed to us that isn’t the way it works, we still feel it should be that way. Even when we try to accept it, we flail about desperate to find something to stabilize our world view, to find something that will give us back that sense of control and certainty we had though a stable crutch.

We do this time-and-again because we are raised in a culture of meritocracy, where it is assumed (and taught) that the best rise to the top while the worst sink to the bottom, and the harder you work the more you are rewarded, and that this is simply the natural order of things. And because humans seek patterns, particularly those that allow them to have control (or at least the feeling of it).

One thing we may turn to as a balm against the seeming madness is an idea a couple of my friends brought to light regarding making contacts and getting your name out there — ie: networking — influencing your chances of success, arguing one could increase the odds of “the chance” in your own case in comparison to the level of networking performed.

But maybe we only think it will.

Maybe the magic of networking is another one of those “do this to have a better chance” fantasies that seem rational, but upon actual inspection are debunked as another just-so story along the same lines as talent or work playing a role in your chances.

For if networking actually does more than provide us yet another magic pill, what of all the politicians who were just like every other politician, who talked the talk, and knew the flock, who networked, and yet who still didn’t make it? There are vastly more of them than there are successful politicians who did all the same things.

Oh, but maybe they didn’t do enough…
No! Hard work does not affect your chances!

Oh, but maybe they weren’t as skillful…
No! Skill does not affect your chances!

But can networking really increase the chances of success?

In the absence of hard data, let us assume networking–unlike either hard work or talent–really will increase your chances of success. And so a relief descends upon us, we have a way to move forward again, to affect our own destiny, to weight the odds of the Fates.

Or do we? Have we asked yet by how much it affects our chances, and does how much matter?

What is the actual influence of networking?

Obviously, we HOPE it is significant, but we must also be careful to understand that any potential increase isn’t necessarily a meaningful increase.

But a chance is a chance! Right? And a better chance is a better chance!(?)

Again, the way we wish the world worked is not actually the way the world works. To understand this, check out the following post on Overcoming Bias, which also describes this issue: But There’s Still A Chance, Right? Read it? OK.

“How much of a chance” becomes an important factor in our consideration because we must also avoid falling into the trap of using the “Well, yeah, but that means there’s a chance, right?” argument as a response to minuscule (and meaningless) increases in the odds.

It is a truism that we fail to correctly deal appropriately with such increases mainly because of our natural inability to work with insignificant numbers, since the ability to abstract those numbers into meaningful plans of action or shades of difference breaks down (given those reasons Elizer outlines at OB). Worse, this effect is bolstered by our continuing desire to (feel as though we) have control (or could gain control) over outcomes given our desires for particular outcomes or assurances.

But, for example, if the chance of winning the lottery is .0001% and we increase that to .0002%, have our odds “improved”? Or say, not the lottery, but the “lottery” of publication or artistic recognition or political influence or other successes that depend on foggy markets and the behaviors of others. Have we really improved our odds?

Technically, yes, even though we functionally and meaningfully have not. And this is the difference we must be careful of…so let’s make it even more ridiculous: let’s say we increase the chance by .000000000000000000000000001% instead?

Increasing the chance? Again, technically, yes (oh hope and joy!); functionally, no (sigh dour reality).

Keep in mind the idea of meaningful improvements, that some improvements are functionally meaningless, and that we overvalue their importance or impact on the outcome. So, even if you’ve increased the probability of being successful by a whopping 1%, it’s still a crapshoot. You haven’t significantly affected the odds in your favor, and you are overvaluing the impact you did have on the odds.

Of course, maybe networking increases your chances significantly and meaningfully. Maybe networking increases the odds of success by 20% or even 50%!

That’s possible, but I doubt it. And I don’t doubt it just because “I would want it to. Hmpf!” I doubt it because networking relies on a black box: you put yourself in and hope whatever goes on in there puts a successful you out on the other end. But you’re neither privy to nor can affect the conditions and events taking place inside the black box since networking is, ultimately, about finding the right people at the right time to say the right thing to.

And for the most part, all three of those are unknowns.

I also doubt it because of thousands of potential politicians we pointed out above who are no different from one another–who work no less hard, who are no less smart, who network no less successfully–who fail annually, despite doing everything right and networking their hearts out.

Because their success ends up relying on a damnable black box: were they in the right place at the right time with the right person? And how would you know if you were? You wouldn’t. You don’t.

The pisser is that networking hard and brilliant and wide isn’t a very good solution. You could network for five years without success, making hundreds and thousands of contacts, and your friend across the way can network for five minutes and find that one contact that makes the black box work. Admittedly, your chances possibly “improve” with every contact, by virtue of weeding out contact points that fail and getting another chance to test a new set of contact points (person, moment, impression), but some may find it disheartening that there is no formulaic increase (”I have thirty contacts, so my odds have improved by X amount!”).

Still, hard work, talent, networking, all these magic rituals we perform ostensibly to increase our odds–this begging the intercession of invisible divine powers–do have at least one solid, measurable, visible effect: they get you the chance–not “a better chance” or “a better chance in proportion”–but THE chance, because if you don’t try at all you have a guarantee of failure since you never even tried.

That’s the value.
Now, whether that’s ENOUGH value?