The Con Man and Moral Contagion

It's a phenomenon based on an increasingly popular philosophy of life. And it's sadly contagious.

I’ve just read a remarkable book for our time. The title is First Person. It’s about a young author named Kif who’s hired to ghost write the autobiography of a major con man business tycoon in Australia in the early 1990s. The man’s name is Siegfried Heidl, known to his close circle as Ziggy. On the surface, he’s a prominent character in the culture who has been arrested for his outsized, gaudy, outrageous, flashy business endeavors that, it turns out, have bilked and defrauded banks of at least seven hundred million dollars. But deeper down, the man represents an increasingly common philosophy of life. As in the case of every grifter, the con man has first conned himself, and then he corrupts everyone around him with a sort of moral contagion. We see it happen all the time. It even gets played out in the daily news now, in a constant drip of tawdry revelation.

The book begins with the young writer, who is trying to write a first novel, getting hired to work on the other book project instead and commuting from his home on a poor island to labor during the week in Melbourne, where he is to interview this celebrity CEO before his coming trial and imprisonment, take notes, and draft out a book quickly. But the con man doesn’t want to reveal anything about himself at all. And so the writer struggles. He comes to hate this blowhard, authoritarian, CEO/Grifter, and yet gradually begins to become like him in the end. I’ve copied down some sentences throughout the book that you may find fascinating, individually, and then especially in their cumulative epiphanies. The main voice is that of the young writer. No quotation marks are used. When first confronted with this man, he is astonished. Here are the passages he jots down from his early encounters with the man:

He contradicted his own lies with fresh lies, and then he contradicted his contradictions. (110)

Flattery, he said. So obvious, so easy. It’s not foolproof, but it is proof of fools. (115)

Without secrets, how are we to live? he said. (125)

And the more I saw of him, the more I found every smile, every gesture full of falsity, and each day the more frightened of him I grew. (126)

A man of unexpected shadows, in another life he might have risen to be a self-help expert, topping the New York Times bestseller lists and giving overpriced motivational lectures. And who knows what else? Personal branding. Perhaps even fragrance lines. (128)

I think he just lies. Maybe he doesn’t even care about the money and it’s just a game. (136)

And with that, he leaned back, performance done, puddles of arguments drowned in a sea of nonsense. (153)

It couldn’t last, though, I said.

Why not? So much does. (154)

He said that a coward was the most terrifying man, because there was no end to the things he might do to prove both to himself and others that he had courage. (173)

Put a corpse behind a desk and people will see their superior, he told me brightly as he put the phone down from another call to the media. (175)

… and with a seeming pride out of character he told me that for every con man born so too are a thousand fools willing to be deceived. (176)

It was his need in some fundamental way to possess everyone he encountered. At times, he felt more a contagion than a human being. (179)

(Heidl Speaking in the next three quotes):

Look around you, Kif—sickness, war, the poverty that makes people savage, the riches that make them worse. Do you think the evidence of the world is that the good are rewarded? Oh no! They’re punished. They’re beaten and tortured. They have the skin peeled off them and they’re left hanging in trees to die. The evidence of the world is that the world is evil. Cheats and liars win out, Kif. Money wins out. Violence wins out. Evil wins out. (181)

Make your choice: be a fool, lie to yourself that the world is good, and go with the good. But you will lose. … Everyone and everything is destroyed in the end by evil. You can choose good. Or you can be like me and accept the world as it is. (181)

Why deprive myself of anything, that’s what I think. Would you like a car like that? A woman? Money? You would, wouldn’t you? (182)

He went on about how he was just an ordinary man who just happened to see the world a little more clearly than other men. (183)

That was what was so confusing about him—what was genuine? What was fantasy? What was fact? All I knew was that whatever or whoever he was, I was fed up with him. (185)

Exhausted by his unbelievable laziness, his lies, his greed, his selfishness, his lunatic melodramas, I felt my frustrations transform into a wild hatred. (185)

Now I think that was precisely the point of all Heidl’s stories: to make me believe my life was based on illusions—the illusions of goodness, of love, of hope. And persuaded of that, I would betray something fundamental within myself and embrace his world as my real life. (187)

He was crazed, impossible. I was exhausted by him, angered by him, insulted by his continuing idea of me as one more credulous goon who would believe any garbage he spun. (230)

I couldn’t stomach the falseness of it all, the toying with people it involved, the perverse curiosity of placing people in extreme situations to see how they might react. (233)

Nothing about him was real. I yelled at him all that I thought: about his cowardice. His laziness. His lies. His greed. His manipulation. (235)

You’re a monster, I spat.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. (236)

You want to live without enemies, Heidl said, that’s your problem. You think if I am good and kind and don’t speak ill of others I won’t have enemies. But you will, you just don’t know it yet. They’re out there, your enemies, you just haven’t met them. You can seek them out or pretend they don’t exist but they’ll still find you. Trust me. You want to be like a dog everyone likes, but there’s not a dog alive someone doesn’t want to kick or kill. You want everyone to be your friend? Why? Why bother? (256)

I stole the sun, he said. Souls, I stole souls. I ate them whole and no one saw. I am eating the world. I am eating myself. (257)

I want grandeur, he said. To shit grandeur. (257)

All the rules, all the morals, all the mysteries, they didn’t apply. For a short time I flew above them, beyond them. I was the world and the world was me … (259)

Everything they pretended to hold dear, I trampled beneath me. (259)

The world will burn. And why? Because of me … (259)

There was nothing there. His whole life had been a lost search. (267)

He wasn’t evil. That was too grand an idea when his truth was much more mundane. He was just pathetic. (291)

-------

TM Note: The Writer’s Life Itself Later On. Kif becomes a television show writer, then a prominent producer, giving up his literary ambitions for the sake of money. He has become like the man he hated and now, looking back, writes (and in the second passage quotes an old childhood friend, Ray, who was the bodyguard of the con man):

--------

I’m not saying thought that what I did was a con. I am asking the question: what is not? (311)

At the time I wanted to succeed, and I had thought that life was about success. Later I came to a different point of view. Living is about being wrong, as Ray once said. But hopefully getting away with it. To live is to be defeated by ever greater things, and it may be that you learn from your defeats, but mostly you are defeated by what you learn. Perhaps the soul purpose of life, I came to think, is learning to understand the measure of your own particular failure. (311)

I rode out the good years, the golden decades, rode them hard, had fun, made money, and lost most everything else. (319)

You can do that, you know. Lose some fundamental part of yourself. and you cannot have it back. Ever. (319)

In my own humble way, retailing lies as reality, I see I have become just another con man. (320)

First Person: https://amzn.to/2MZosyG

Deep Wisdom

As Socrates suspected and Plato saw well, hardly anything is exactly what it seems. Wisdom often turns things upside down, insight out, and rightside forward. We philosophers continue to be counter-cultural voices seeking to speak the unexpected truth. Admittedly, a lot of what passes for great insight in our time is just enhanced common sense, what anyone who has lived alertly and thought a bit might see and grasp. And of course, there is a lot of counterfeit wisdom that purports to be profound but is merely pandering. But then there are depths available in real philosophical thought that can put anything, and even sometimes everything, into a different frame, a context in which much is reversed and astonishment leads to peace.

This is the uber theme of the epic novel series described at www.TheOasisWithin.com.

Enjoy the Little Things. And, Surprise: It's All Little Things.

This morning, I was talking to my wife about a new connection on LinkedIn with a man who has long worked with Merrill Lynch. It led me to reflect on the unusual fact that, years ago, over a three year period, I had done 43 talks for that company, in the midst of what would be their Golden Age of iconic prosperity and reputation, under the guidance of then legendary Co-CEOs Dave Komansky and Dan Tully. I said to my wife, “It makes me remember the email I got from Tully’s Chief of Staff, when I had requested a testimonial from Tully for the back of my book If Aristotle Ran General Motors. He said that Dan got lots of requests for blurbs, and could agree only to a small few, but that he, the Chief of Staff, was the one who normally did the reading and blurbing, given how busy Tully was with the business of the company. But he wanted me to know that Tully was so impressed with what I do as a philosopher that he said he would read the book himself and write the testimonial, which ended up on the back cover of the hardback and the front cover of the paper edition. Here’s the part the publisher chose to excerpt and use:

“If Aristotle Ran General Motors goes to the heart of what makes people and organizations successful … Tom Morris’ message is a guide to the highest level of excellence in your company and your career.”

Daniel Tully, Chairman, Merrill Lynch

I told my wife the story as I shaved and then said, “That’s a little thing I’m really proud of, that Tully wanted to read the book and that he personally chose to write such a nice testimonial.” My wife said, “Well, that’s not such a little thing.” I replied, “But it’s the sort of thing that never gets onto a resume. It's a tiny little fact that almost no one knows but that means a lot to me.” I was thinking that it would never appear in an official bio or on a Wikipedia page, and yet it brought me great satisfaction. She said, “The little things that really matter are like: Do you enjoy letting someone in front of you in a line?” I said, “Yes, I do.” She said, "Good." And then I said, “But it’s also fine to enjoy stuff like the Tully thing.” And then I pondered it all some more.

It’s nice to be recognized as the Number One Salesman this year in your company. It’s something to be proud of and relish. But what makes it great is not the fact that you beat lots of other people, who are all now a bit disappointed, but rather the focal thing is all the hard work you put into the job to make possible the success you had. You feel great. But: Why should we ever celebrate or relish being the person who is keeping other people from having that feeling? It’s the little things you did persistently, and maybe relentlessly, that added up and that are worth enjoying and celebrating. The big result? Maybe there’s a way in which it’s an illusory, or true but misleading, side effect of all the stuff that really matters.

None of us needs to be King of the Hill. What we need is to discover our talents, develop those talents, and deploy them into the world for the good of others as well as ourselves. A certain level of income, or status, or a widespread public recognition may or may not come along with that. But even if it does, it’s never the core of what’s to be relished or celebrated. We get it backwards or upside down when we seek and fixate on the seemingly big things, which, after all are merely the cumulative effect of the little things, with a dash of luck or providence added in, factors that we never control and so can never take credit for. So maybe the big things are really in a sense little, and the little things are really big. And if so, then that wouldn’t be the first time that life shows us a deep paradox that’s the portal to great wisdom.

A little conversation produced a big insight which, in the grand scheme of things, as I put it out here for a few good people to read, is really just a little thing after all.

Free or Oppressed. A Book for Our Time.

On this Fourth of July, I did two things to celebrate. I pondered all who have worked and suffered to make America what it's capable of being, often at great risk to their lives. And I read a book my grand daughter recommended, A Night Divided, a wonderful novel about a 12 year old girl and her brother trying to escape East Berlin weeks after the wall went up. Yep, it's a book where there's a wall that appears suddenly. And guess what? A family is separated. Published three years ago, it's a prescient and gripping tale that vividly portrays what it's like to live in an authoritarian society, early on in the oppression. I harbor no illusions that we don't have a lot of people around us right now who would volunteer in a heartbeat for a New American Stasi, the secret police always needed to impose and maintain an iron grip on the populace who have come under the heavy hand of political imprisonment in the proclaimed name of freedom and through a torrent of lies. If you have friends flirting with authoritarianism, please recommend they read this book. It will also steel your own commitment to true American values. Click on the picture above or the link below for Amazon's page on it.

A Night Divided

A Great Summer Read

Let me recommend an ideal summer read, the new book by one of my favorite authors, Wiley Cash, a transporting story entitled The Last Ballad.

It’s a beautifully written book full of love and keen insight. Reading it, for me, was a little like hearing Dizzie Gillespie play horn, or watching Robin Williams be funny, or letting a Stevie Ray Vaughn guitar solo wash over me. I don’t know if I’ve ever enjoyed another person’s book as much. It’s based on a true story about a cotton mill strike in1929 in Gastonia, North Carolina. But it’s really about the rich and the poor, black and white, love and friendship and oppression and rage and hope. It's about work and respect and class. But it’s also about nature, in intimate ways. I can’t think of a book that could do more good in our fraught political time than this look at the working poor in all their flaws and glory. A young mother of small kids in a two room shack is the hero of the story. You will love her and root for her. Do yourself an immense favor and go read this wonderful book, which I think richly deserves the National Book Award for fiction.

Click here: The Last Ballad.

The Living Mosaic

Imagine a living mosaic of stunning hues and shapes where many of the tiles, noting their neighbor's differences, sought to destroy those other bits of color. Great beauty would be lost.

This image came to me when I ran across a statement from the Dalai Lama this morning: "In today’s interconnected and globalized world, it’s now commonplace for people of different world views, faiths and races to live side by side. It’s a matter of great urgency, therefore, that we find ways to cooperate with one another in a spirit of mutual acceptance and respect."

It's all about living the four transcendental ideals: Truth. Beauty. Goodness. Unity.

"And what about love?" you may ask. There it is. I answer.

TBGU were first pondered in the book If Aristotle Ran General Motors, which is really not about Aristotle or a car company. They're just placeholders for all the great thinkers and all the places we work where we need a sense of fulfillment and happiness to boost us. It turns out that Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity are the foundations for this, in any context.

For more, see, If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business

A Short Manifesto for Wisdom and Virtue

TRUTH, BEAUTY, GOODNESS, UNITY.

We don't depend on others to bring these four transcendental ideals into action, day to day. We do it ourselves, wherever we are and whatever we're trying to accomplish. We lead the way. We seek to elevate our activities with them, and inspire others to embody them. We realize that the best ideas can make their difference only in us and through us. When we fail, we adjust and persist. We respect and nurture the intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual dimensions of everyone around us and in everything we do. We know it matters. And we care. We make the world a little better whenever we get this right.

Doing Your Best

"Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority." - Jane Austen's Emma, in the eponymous novel.

The concept of negligent superiority brilliantly captures an all too common phenomenon to be seen among the lavishly gifted, talented, and connected. But as the twentieth century philosopher Wittgenstein once opined, to rest on one's laurels is as dangerous as falling asleep in the snow. Those frozen in their sense of superiority do not flow on to further success.

But modest endowments put to great use can accomplish much. In fact, it's the negligence of superiority that allows for many others with lesser gifts to prevail by doing their best. My wife's parents told her when she was young that the grades she brought home didn't matter nearly as much as the fact that she did her best. It's really both a reassuring and a daunting concept, but it does carry promises and hope. So, in all that you do, do your best.

Think Small. Aim Low. Set Modest Goals.

Think Small. Aim Low. Set Modest Goals.

Has any motivational speaker in history said those things? Probably not. And they constitute amazingly good advice.

At age 58 I had never done the famous exercise called Bench Press. I started small, at 85 pounds, because I saw a guy about my age or older doing it with that weight. Pretty soon I was lifting 100 pounds, then 120 and even 150. The day I hit 200 was amazing. When I first tried 240 I was over 60 and it felt like I had a truck on me. My workout partner was yelling “It’s moving! It’s going up!” I thought I was stuck. I was using a Smith Machine that has the bar in a slot and you don’t have to use any small muscles to balance the load. I eventually made it to benching 315 pounds. If you had asked me at any point along the way if that was my goal, I would have thought it absurd.

Now I do free weight bench, where I have to balance the bar. So I had to back up, a lot. I did days at 140, days going up to 190, and recently 200 and even 230. But today, I had my personal best on free weight bench of 250, at age 66. Again, I could never have set that as a goal. I started small. I aimed low, so as not to hurt myself. I set modest goals along the way.

What we easily forget is that thinking small, aiming low, and setting modest goals gets you in the game, in any dimension of life. As you acquire skill and strength you can then step it up. But if I had been told today that I could go to the gym only if I was willing to try 250, I could have stayed at home. Honest. By aiming only for a modest goal today I positioned myself for much more.

Consider the immense benefits of thinking small, and adjusting along the way.

A Blessing

I'm halfway through the editing of my next novel, The Mysterious Village, and just came across this passage that expresses wishes and blessings that I want for us all. In the midst of travel across the desert, and at a special Oasis, Walid is in the presence of a mysterious lady who seems to have special knowledge not available to most. He asks about the future. She's reassuring but elusive. And this happens.

She reached out her right hand and spread her fingers wide, pointing her palm toward Walid but not touching him or even coming close to him. She spoke several words in a language he didn’t know or understand, and in a strange tone, both softly and quickly, with her eyes closed. And then she opened her eyes wide and said, “May you and your friends be richly blessed as you move on deeply into the adventures that now await you. May a firm faith and a resilient hope be with you and in you at all times. May you persist with courage and prevail through any difficulties you’re called upon to face. And may you then be able somehow to share the story of your journey with future generations. Great blessings will go with you and be on you, enduring blessings to you and your friends and all who learn of you, my golden young man of the kingdom. We are blessed to have you with us for this short time, Prince Walid.”

For information on the series in which this will appear, early summer, go to www.TheOasisWithin.com.

The Novel, Little Women

I just read a wonderful book that I want to recommend to you all, one that I might never have tried, were it not for an upcoming Masterpiece Theater series scheduled to begin in May on PBS. And it has reconfirmed my view that some of the best reading business people can do is not to be found in business books.

In an age of dystopian novels, and stories about deeply damaged and disturbed people doing awful things, it's a breath of fresh air to read a book about good people growing to be even better. And that's exactly what I've been writing in my own recent Egyptian novels, swimming hard against the contemporary tide with all my might. For a long time, we've heard that it's much easier to write about evil than good. But I've not found that to be true, and I would suppose that neither did the author Louisa May Alcott, as she composed her glorious epic story, Little Women. I just read the beautiful Puffin edition designed by family friend Anna Bond, founder of the wonderful Rifle Paper Company.

In the world of business, we need to understand the people around us. What motivates them? What bothers them? What are their ambitions, and their secret sufferings? How can we best deal with the various personalities of our colleagues and clients? Sometimes, a good novel can provide perspectives on these issues like nothing else. I came away from Little Women refreshed, energized, inspired, and wiser than when I began to read it.

Do yourself a favor. Get yourself a copy and read the 777 pages of this book (No worries: Big Print) for its deep wisdom, homey ethos, and incredibly inspiring philosophy. Just click the link below, or visit your local library. Some of the best philosophers of the nineteenth century were women who wrote novels, not philosophical treatises, and taught us a lot more about life than their male counterparts of the era. You'll love this book.

Little Women: https://amzn.to/2qzIjuj

Zuckerberg and Frankenstein

Facebook. I think there's a parallel. Victor Frankenstein was a brilliant scientist and technologist of his era. He had an audacious goal and attained it, without ever thinking through the possible consequences of his work. He created a monster he couldn't control and walked away from giving the needed guidance and direction, allowing it to do damage, create havoc, and actually end people's lives. He woke up to his responsibilities too late, and finally pursued the monster in a fruitless effort to stop him.

It's almost like the Law of Unintended Consequences had come to life, and it was eight feet tall.

It sounds like a familiar scenario that may be playing out once again in our time, doesn't it? And close by, on social media. Dial "F" for Facebook, or Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley's prescient tale can be found here: https://amzn.to/2kg9okV

The Importance of Philosophy

In every era, some people have been successful in deeply satisfying ways, and others have found any significant form of life achievement more elusive. Some people have been happy, and many others have lacked this basic attainment. Some have experienced inner peace. Many have not. There have been those who have felt a deep current of fulfillment in their work. Some have had an overarching sense of meaning in their lives.

I believe that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle saw these differences and wondered what might be responsible for them. And then they realized that communities and societies might reflect these gaps as well. They wanted to know what might put us on the better side of each of these distinctions. And so they analyzed human belief, behavior, and the full inner side of our being in the world. And they left us their thoughts, for our productive use, and to spark our own.

In my experience, philosophy, the "love of wisdom," is just the ongoing adventure of our best efforts to understand these and many other facets of the human experience, as well as the deeper contours of the world we're all in.

As Aristotle saw, politics is ideally all about how best to live well together. Ethics is about how to live our best individual lives, as well as to make the best of that communal existence we inevitably share. Both these enterprises are about how to draw on and channel our highest resources for the greater good of each, and the deep flourishing of all.

Lao Tsu saw the need. So did Confucius. And many other wise people around the world and throughout history have felt philosophy to be among the most important activities available to us in this life. Our society, and much of our world in our own time, seems to think and feel very differently. And I believe this is tragically wrong, as can be seen every day when a lack of wisdom is played out all around us at every level.

Some problems may be far beyond our solving. This one isn't. So I urge you to join me in pointing out to those who may have forgotten this fact that philosophy, at its best, is crucially important in our time, as it has been throughout history. How we think determines how we live. And how well we do either is related to the other.

Ritz Crackers

I'm newly smitten with Ritz Crackers. It's as if, in a springtime long ago, a beautiful French croissant suddenly fell in love with a sturdy American saltine. It was a surprise, and certainly a forbidden liaison. And yet, a whirlwind courtship and marriage was then inevitable, followed by the arrival of boxes full of round little cherubic children named for the place of their conception, the famous Ritz Hotel in Paris, in the 1st arrondissement, overlooking the Place Vendôme at number 15. These delightful children now bring to us the best of their parents, in a magical mix perfectly made for our own new springtime snacks.

And now, I'll end the metaphor, so as not to seem like a character in a Greek Myth or Germanic fable when I begin to eat the children. I enjoy my round delights festooned with Sun Nut Butter and Bonne Maman orange marmalade, and paired with a hot dark roasted coffee. C'est bon!

I can't always just talk about philosophy here. I like to share whatever moves or enlightens me. But now, perhaps, I'll go read some Camus. C'est la vie.

Resurrection

I just realized on this Easter Weekend that I’ve been writing about resurrection for seven years without realizing I was doing so.

Our word comes from Latin roots, from a verb that meant to rise again or arise anew. Since February of 2011, I’ve been writing and editing a story about a boy and his friends in a reimagined Egypt in 1934 and 1935. As the story played out like a vivid movie in my spirit, I gradually learned that the story is about the power of the mind, the depth of the human spirit, the strength of love, the nature of true friendship, the vital importance of wisdom in everything we do, and the many contours of goodness. It's also about the special abilities we all have available to us that we too rarely experience. What I didn’t realize was that perhaps resurrection is the main thread around which all the others are woven.

Can a boy rise anew from the life of an ordinary child in a small village to serve his kingdom as a prince? Can a nation rise from the ashes of turmoil and great political damage to a new and better life? But finally, and most importantly, is a moral and spiritual resurrection possible within the confines of this life or beyond for a individual whose journey has been corrupted by decades of wrong choices and motivations?

As a Christian, I celebrate a unique resurrection this weekend. But as the best theologians of my tradition have long pointed out, the myth of resurrection has long been present in the human spirit, across cultures, and throughout history. The distinctive Christian claim is that at one particular place and time, and in a distinct individual from another small village, the myth was finally embodied and made real at a new level, for the benefit of us all.

The idea reverberates through all of life. In the world of vegetation, there is death and then revival. In our careers in the world, we’re sometimes like the fantastical Phoenix, who goes down in flames and rises afresh from the ashes. We want to believe in radical and positive transformation. But is it really possible? I think it is. And that’s an implication of the message of Easter, when a tragic death brings new and transformed life. I see now that I’ve been writing about it without realizing I was doing so for the past seven years—its possibility and hope and reality.

My Easter wish is that we all experience that possibility and hope and reality anew in this special season and throughout the days to come.

The Arts, The Humanities, and Business Success

When young people study the Arts and Humanities, they can prepare themselves in deep, untold and currently unappreciated ways for a successful business life.

The Arts: Every art involves complexity and mastery, two of the deepest features of any highly accomplished business life. We can think of a painting as a solution to a problem—or better yet, as thousands of solutions to thousands of problems. When it embodies Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity, it succeeds best. And this is true of a business, or a business deal. The same is also true of a piece of music, a dance, or a sculpture. Art hones many intellectual qualities and personal traits like perseverance in the pursuit of perfection, or even happy imperfection.

The Humanities: Let's begin with what's broadly called literature, encompassing poetry and prose, short stories, essays, and novels. Let's even throw in the best of film. When we study great literature, we can prepare ourselves for deeply satisfying business success. First, in reading well-told stories, we learn to tell stories well. And there's nothing more important in business life than telling powerful stories about what we're doing, want to do, and can possibly do. One famous film producer, Peter Guber, has said in his delightful book "Tell to Win" that during his career, whenever he went into a meeting with facts and figures, he never got what he wanted, but whenever he showed up with a great story, he got everything he wanted and more. Secondly, we come to understand character more deeply through the lens of a masterful story. Great literature is full of cautionary tales for leaders and high achievers: Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Don Quixote, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, and Jack London's Sea Wolf, among many others. And in these tales of greatness and tragedy, we see the truth of what Heraclitus said long ago, "Character is Destiny."

History: Of course the lessons here are obvious. The long-term link between character and excellence throughout the course of our world up to now, The Law of Unintended Consequences, from even the most modest decisions, the balance of risk and reward that attends any bold action, the inevitable mess that arises from wild interventionism, and the catastrophes that democracy is intended to prevent.

Psychology: Coming more deeply to understand what motivates people just might be the most important key to business success. It's crucial for forming more positive relationships, building a great business culture, and diagnosing what can go wrong between people. The recent turn to positive psychology has provided us with new tools for excellence in everything we do.

Philosophy: As a philosopher, what can I say? When young people encounter the best of world philosophy, they learn about belief and skepticism, appearance and reality, love and purpose, evidence and folly, wisdom and virtue. They prepared themselves for a deeper and more lasting form of success in whatever they do. And the same is true for older people. The more we learn the insights of the great practical philosophers and use them relentlessly, the better we can be at anything we do. The truth of this has been on display in the talks I've given to business groups over the years, at this point far surpassing a thousand. One company has had me speak more than sixty-five times, offering me for each of those hours more than my annual salary once was at Notre Dame. Why would any business do such a thing? Because of the fact that they see the great value of philosophy. You can't have a great business without great philosophical foundations.

Ode to Odie

One small cat, age 5, left this world on March 14, 2018, leaving it better than he found it, and my life greatly enriched.

An Ode for Odie.

If you want to know how good a cat

he was in this world: It would be my great honor and joy

to clean his litter box twice a day in eternity, forever.

*****

He prayeth best, who loveth best/ all things both great and small: for the dear God who loveth us,/ he made and loveth all. - Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge.

Ethics in Business and Sport

Today while walking the dogs, I was thinking about parallels between business and sport. No, not the aspect that first might leap to mind, about winners and losers. And you know, I don’t think either business or sport is primarily about those two categories in the first place. 

Imagine that an industry or even a profession is like a sport. Healthcare, tech, banking, investments, law, medicine, academics, manufacturing, are in a sense analogous to big overall team sports like football, baseball, basketball, and soccer. Individual companies, firms, or practices in those industries or professions are akin to teams, and they have within them more teams. An industry, or profession, like a sport, provides us human beings with a framework where we can develop our talents, grow, and make a difference in the world.

Hang with me for a minute. Let’s think of business and sport as frameworks, or matrices, within which human talent can be developed, molded, and unleashed to pursue excellence, and perhaps greatness. As such, they are spiritual endeavors. Leaders are needed in all such frameworks. So are strategies and tactics and education or training. And I think talent then has to be developed in three ways:

1. Through the development of skill.

2. Through the development of character.

3. Through the development of intellect.

Excellence depends on all three. The skill component is the most obvious. Football players need to learn to tackle, and block, and handle a ball. Basketball players need to develop skills of moving, defending, passing, rebounding, and shooting. But character is just as important. Excellence in any competitive sport or industry requires courage, grit, tenacity, determination, persistence and honesty. At its highest and broadest levels, it requires empathy, kindness, and fairness to others. And then there is the mind. Great performers hone their minds, cultivate their intellectual understanding, and then know how to use the deeper realms of the mind, such as the unconscious, or the imagination, to go where no one has gone before and do what no one has done before.

Ethics in business, a profession, or a sport, is about being true to those three forms of development, while being true to yourself and others. Nothing less is ever genuinely great. So ethics is never just icing on the cake. It’s a crucial aspect of the entire baking endeavor, and the cake itself. Of course, the Greek word from which ethics derives, ethos, meant character. The character of a team, business, or professional endeavor depends on the development of individual skill, character, and intellect on the part of all the players involved. Their proper personal growth makes possible great teamwork, which then makes possible further growth, in what philosophers call a virtuous circle of flourishing. This is the power of ethics in everything.

Me, Myself, and I—Oh, You!

I’m reading a wonderful little book by Japanese Billionaire and Buddhist Priest Kazuo Inamori, A Compass to Fulfillment: Passion and Spirituality in Life and Business, and he tells a simple and powerful story. I'll retell it briefly in my own words.

A young Buddhist comes up to his priest and says, “Can you explain to me the difference between heaven and hell?”

The priest says, “Well, both places are a lot alike, as places. It’s the people that are different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well in hell, people have all their meals at large round tables seating eight. They discover on arrival, to their surprise, that all the chopsticks are three or four feet long, and must be held in the proportionately normal place. When they dip into the big pot in the middle of the table to get their noodles, and try to eat, they find to their great frustration that the sticks are far too long and they can’t get the food to their mouths. They keep trying and failing, and it goes on and on. Everyone is starving and irritated and angry.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yes. Then, in heaven, the setup is the same, but the actions are quite different. Realizing what they’re confronted with, everyone there uses the long chopsticks to pick up the noodles and offer them to the person directly across the table, for their enjoyment. And that person does the same. Everyone feeds his neighbor and is fed by him, and a great and wonderful feast is enjoyed by all.”

Good Work

The man here is mowing a very big field. And he's accomplishing it one step at a time. Nothing he's doing is newsworthy. No one is going to be on the sidelines cheering him on. And if he were to stand still and look around, gazing over the entire field, the size of the task he has might feel overwhelming. But he's not doing that. He's moving forward, bit by bit, and with persistence through time, the job will be done. And then, of course, it will soon need to be done again. And again. And again.

Very little in life is lasting. Most of what we face and accomplish is temporary. But there is great and lasting worth in the doing, when it's done well. And that's what we're called to focus on and be responsible for: doing what needs to be done, and doing it well. If we want the result to be beautiful in every way, though, I suspect we need to do whatever we do in love, from love, and for love. That's the great motivator and goal both. Whatever the field of endeavor, that's the ultimate secret and source of power for good work.