Action Figure Daniel

Category: Essays

  • Slow Degradation in a Metaphorical Fire

    Analogies are powerful tools. We use them a lot, really we do. We use them anytime we are trying to describe a complex topic when all other metaphors fail. Analogies are in fact a form of metaphor that we use to describe something in parallel to something else. When we use a metaphor we use other items to describe the subject at hand; with an analogy we compare the subject at hand to another topic and thus infer using “if, then” statements how one works based on the other.

    Analogies simply enough; you pick a complex topic, say ‘life’, then you pick a less complex thing to compare it to, ‘skydiving’: life is like skydiving. This statement is of course true, to a point. When you go skydiving you instructions from an expert while you’re on the ground, then you load up in a plane, take off and jump. When you jump you get to prove how well you listened to the instructions. Once you’ve landed safely a little car comes and picks you up and takes you back to base. You get a little piece of paper congratulating you on a successful dive (and if you paid enough money you get pictures and a video too). Now you are a skydiving expert. So it is in life that you start out for about 18 years getting instructions from an ‘expert, before you load up into a plane called “school”, take off and then jump into your own life. When you jump you get to prove how well you listened to the instructions. Once you’ve landed safely you get in your little car and drive back to your home. You get a little piece of paper saying “you’re married” (and if you paid enough money you get pictures and a video too). Now you are an expert on life and can raise a family.

    Only it’s not really like that at all. Life isn’t so clearly divided into instruction and action. While skydiving even once gives you some experience, having been a child does little to teach effective parenting skills. Particularly considering how little of our earliest years we remember. Skydiving allows for little feedback in new experiences: that is you can’t keep making small tweaks the entire dive. On the other hand, life allows, and in many ways demands, that you make constant modifications in order to land safely.

    The metaphor works on the beginning levels – when talking about the stages of skydiving compared to the stage of life – but breaks down as it gets more analogous – when we continue the metaphor into having been a child allows one to be a good parent.

    Degradation should be expected as the analogy gets deeper. If there was something that was a perfect analogy of something else you would find that they are in fact the same thing, at least morally and philosophically. They have to be.

    But the point of an analogy is to help others understand something by relating it to something they already know or can at least imagine. In the skydiving example, most people can at least picture described process of preparing and jumping in a way they might not be able to imagine preparing and jumping into life. This parallelism is what makes analogies so rich and important in our daily communications: they are designed to expand understanding in a new field.

    It is important when participating in metaphors and analogies, or expanding our knowledge in any other way, to be able to separate the tools of expansion, that is the metaphor and the analogy, from the actual expansion itself: a deeper understanding of preparing for, and jumping into, life. Coupled with this ability to separate is the ability to identify when a given metaphor has grown into an analogy through complexity and later what the analogy has outgrown our knowledge, breaking down and falling apart, and thus is no longer able to sustain our newly gained understanding. This process is similar to the expansion of truth, rather our perception of truth, through time as we grow our understanding and expand our knowledge.

    As metaphors and analogies break down it may be necessary to develop a new analogy, but caution should be exercised before doing so. Remembering that the entire purpose of the metaphor or analogy was to help us understand something we couldn’t otherwise grasp we should ask: “has understanding expanded enough to allow us to learn the actual thing instead of something that is like the thing?” We should always strive to get along without any metaphor or analogy as they can hinder a more real understanding. Plus, not using the crutch of an analogy removes the problem of degradation altogether.

  • Where is the Agency in Compulsion?

    As of late I have been thinking “what use is it to teach logic and thinking only to then insist we all think and act the same way?” We claim as a society that we value our liberties above all other things. We state that the First Amendment should be upheld everywhere and thus promote free speech, that everyone in the world should have the right to choose their leaders and thus push democracy throughout the world, that everyone can achieve the “American Dream” and thus bolster education.

    We love liberty and revel in it, or at least in our own. When it comes to the liberties of others we slow down a little bit. We are happy that we can say whatever we want, but we cringe when we hear someone defending a distasteful opinion. We are joyous to vote for a leader, but then disrespectfully walk out of that leader’s speech because we didn’t choose him. We cherish our ability to achieve our dreams, but then get angry when others ‘have it easy’. How do we overcome these frustrating differences? We slowly manipulate the perception of world until our way is the only reasonable way and every other way is corrupt, evil and bad.

    A Lack of Diversity

    It goes something like this: Someone does something we don’t like so we institute a rule against it. They continue to do things we don’t like and we continue to make rules. Each rule by itself seems mostly harmless, but when gathered collectively they create an intricate web of social do’s and don’ts as determined by whoever made the rules. The problem is that the cumulative rules prevent anyone from being ‘unacceptably’ different from us. Time and again history has shown us that a lack of diversity is not just bad but can bring ruin. Let us look at Ireland’s Great Famine:

    One of the bounties of the New World was the potato. This marvelous new food could easily be grown in a large variety of places and climates. Europe loved this magic new food and embraced it whole heartedly. Not long after its introduction the potato became a staple of the Irish diet. Along came the 1840’s bringing with it a potato disease that attacked only a certain kind of potato. It happened to be the one kind that the Irish, and most of Europe, used for food. The results were devastating, causing a 20% decline in Ireland’s population over the next decade from death and emigration. The Indians of the New World never experience this sort of famine. The reason was simple: the Indians had planted up to a hundred different varieties of potatoes and the Irish one. When disease comes along and wipes out one of a hundred different varieties of food it is no big deal, when it wipes out one of ten varieties it is devastating.

    By creating such strong restrictions so as to greatly limit diversity we invite the devastation of the Great Famine and risk complete failure, all because of a lack of tolerance.

    Removing the Grey Matter

    Another form of compulsion is to limit choice so much that people must choose between two extremes. This method gives the illusion that people still have a choice, and technically they do, but they have no viable options. For example, pretend I switched all of my roommate Red’s shirts with Peran Sea monster shirts. Red still technically has choices: he can wear the Peran Sea monster or the Peran Sea monster. In the end Red will have to wear a Peran Sea monster shirt (which are actually quite good looking shirts, though I am biased). Red does have some other non-viable choices though: he can choose run away instead of wearing the shirts; he can choose to go shirtless; he can choose to defy me and buy a T-Rex shirt. None of these are considered viable options for one reason: humans innately desire to do and be good. Society teaches us that running away is bad; running around in public shirtless is evil and rebelling against the established order is corrupt. Therefore Red is left with the choice of Peran Sea monster shirt.

    I will concede that non-viable options are sometime exercised, but I would ask “why?” Is it because the individual doesn’t know they are bad? Not likely. In fact, I think that often rebellion happens only because it is rebellion; because it is outside the established norm that the action is chosen to express contempt for authority. If the action is suddenly brought within the norm, it is a useless form of expression as it is no longer contempt.

    Back to the grey matter. Most decision have clearly white (right, correct, good) and black (wrong, incorrect, bad) boundaries, at least in our own minds. The trouble comes when we encounter situations that fall between our clearly defined limits into the grey zone where white and black mingle. Because every person has different experiences and looks at those experiences differently, everyone has different grey zones. These zones are important to our individuality. They are the zones that we feel like we can safely experience the thrill of something new and different without being outright in the black. They are higher risk from what we are used to, but not so far away from the white that we feel like we have gone too far. Grey zones allow us to experiment with the unknown without being ‘wrong’. When the grey zone is removed, and with it our ability to safely experiment, we are forced to choose: Do we want to fulfill our innate need to be ‘right’ as others define it and loss our ability to express our uniqueness or do we want to fulfill our desire to be recognized as a unique individual and be considered ‘wrong’ by others? Compacted: we must choose someone else’s white or black and either be seen as complacent or rebel, really good or really bad, because all the middle ground has been removed.

    Balance

    A healthy balance needs to be struck between allowing us the satisfaction of exploring curiosity and protecting us from harm. Though I do not clam to be an expert at finding this balance, I know that it is important. Limiting choices to the point where people must decide whether to forsake their agency or go into open rebellion in not agency at all and in the face of ‘logical disease’ a group that is devoid of any grey material will be devastated and an ensuing intellectual famine will follow.

  • Quorum Sensing (or Natural Leadership Vetting)

    Quorum sensing is the component of swarm intelligence that allows a swarm (or group) to settle on a decision and begin acting on that decision. It is used in a large variety of natural and artificial systems. I’ll use a rock dwelling ant colony to illustrate the concept of quorum sensing:

    A colony of ants happily dwells in their rocky home until the rocks shift causing extensive damage to their colony. The shifted rocks are no longer a suitable habitation for the colony and worker ants venture out looking for a new home. Every possible nook and cranny is explored until one large enough is found. The individual worker ant inspects the crevice and assesses its suitability for the colony including lighting, water flow and air ways. After the inspection the ant heads back to the colony and waits.

    The waiting period is inversely tied to the quality of the new site. The poorer quality the site is the longer the ant waits, the better the site the less it waits. Once the waiting time is over the initial worker ant solicits other ants to follow him to inspect the new site. After the second inspection is complete the ants return and again wait, the same waiting rules apply, before soliciting yet another group of ants to inspect. At a critical point, the worker ants that remained in the colony realize that enough ants have approved a site and they pack up to follow them to the new site and the whole colony is relocated.

    The timing of the waiting period is critical. The worker ant is basically waiting to see if another worker returns bursting into the colony with a ‘must have’ site. If no other ant solicits before they do then the ant can assume their selected site is the best site currently available. If a better site is located the returning worker ant would also start soliciting ants and the cascading effect ensues but at a faster rate because of the superior site.

    The quorum part is the large number of ants going to the same prospective site. The sensing part is realizing that the quorum has reached a critical mass and thus a decision has been made. Quorum sensing is used in nearly every type of swarm including ants and bees, fireflies, light emitting bacteria, fish that swim in schools, even mobs and businesses. Each organization using quorum sensing differently, but the principles remain the same. Fireflies use quorums to determine where they should gather, light emitting bacteria to know when there are enough of them to make their light noticeable. Ants and bees use it to determine the most suitable location for the swarm without the time or danger of each member inspecting each site. Mobs use quorum sensing to determine why they are mobbing and what or whom they are going to mob.

    Often in society we like to think that we are above such a fundamental practice of quorum sensing, but in reality we are steeped in it. No change can ever be effected unless a significant group, either is quantity or quality, approves the change. This is true in the corporate boardroom where leaders are appointed and even for the president of the United States who is elected. Swarms of people wait when new technology and products are introduced for a quorum, usually a select group of famous people, to endorse them new items before they themselves begin using them. Have you ever heard the phrase “I’m waiting until the next version to buy it” or “we’ll see how well to works”? These are both cases of waiting until the quorum concludes that the change is acceptable. Another version implies that enough ‘ants’ approved the earlier version, usually by purchasing it, that the manufacturer could survive long enough to make the next version thus the quorum has been reached. Waiting for reviews of a new product is waiting for another ‘ant’ to solicit your use of the product; the early ‘ant’ is convincing you to inspect the new ‘site’ thus building the quorum.

    Quorum dynamics are the governing principles behind quorum sensing. Quorum dynamics consists of two parts as briefly mentioned earlier: quality and quantity.

    Quality is the voting power a particular member has. Some members have a lot of sway, unofficially and officially, while others do not. Some people can give a thousand word opinion and not convince another soul while others can give a single look and convince the whole quorum. In a family the mom would be expected to carry a higher quality rating than a child and an adult child more than a juvenile. Quality ratings aren’t always along predictable or constant: an adult child would carry a higher quality rating than their mom on their wedding day.

    The second attribute in quorum sensing is quantity, simply the number of agreeable members in the quorum. The total number of members is of little importance as few decisions rely on raw votes. For example, the decision over where a family will eat out likely rests with the parents not the four children. The parent’s decision may be overruled if the children orchestrated a loud protest, thus exercising their voting power and the quorum decision would have achieved critical mass.

    Every person with voting power, regardless of quality rating, is a “valid quorum member” and every “valid quorum member” has voting power. Valid quorum members can be adapted to members present and as the situation dictates. For example, when a visiting uncle arrives, though not a member of the immediate family, he becomes a valid quorum member and can affect policy decisions. On the other hand, if a grandfather dies, his grandchildren may have no voting power in funeral arrangements though they might have voting power in decisions about the family’s summer vacation. It is also possible to be part of the quorum but to have no voting power. Parents to give a lot of advice to their newly married children and thus influence the outcome of the vote, but they themselves have no voting power.

    Quorum sensing’s critical mass is a function of quality times quantity. For a decision to be made enough people with enough voting power must reach consensus. In the example of the children going out to eat, their consensus overrode the decision of a single parent, but likely would not have withstood both parents’ consensus. The threshold for each decision varies based on the importance of that decision. Children will are more likely to influence important decisions like where the family will move to but have less influence over what kind of car the dad buys for commuting to work.

    Organizations use quorum sensing to sustain leaders and managers. A president may appoint a new department head, but the new department head will still need to get his department to ‘sustain’ him as a leader. While the quorum is vetting, the employees of the department will lack both trust and confidence in the leader. The quorum is likely to consist of key department staff, key in the sense of office politics and likeability not in the sense of job level or authority. A well liked janitor may have a higher quality rating than an annoying mid-level manager. It is important to remember that only valid quorum members can vote. The bimbo mail boy’s vote won’t be counted and neither will the department head even though he is part of the quorum. The length of the vetting depends on the perceived quality of the leader, just like the ant’s delay in soliciting others to inspect the new site is determined by the perceived quality of the site. The more confident quorum members are in the new leader the more excited they will be to rally behind them, the less confident they are the less excited. Once a quorum member approves of the new leader they will solicit others to rally with them. This process will continue until a critical mass is reached, in both quality and quantity or until the vote fails by default because it takes too long.

    If a sufficient quorum consensus is never reached then the quorum will either remain divided over the perceived competence level of the new leader, probably causing the larger quorum to divide into small quorums, or the quorum members who voted in the affirmative will retract their vote, and their support, until the new leader is left without a sustainable platform.

  • The Floor’s Non-Original Coloring

    (If the following paragraph seems a little out of place, it is. It originally came much later in the document, but after realizing that you are not required to read any, much less all of my blog as my teachers are, I thought it best to use the paragraph as a hook to explain why you should continue reading.)

    Why does any of this matter? Each of us will at some point will, and most probably already have, socially interact with other people. Each of the people we interact with has a varied potential for dysfunction, dysfunctions that may have a great impact on the quality of our interactions. Understanding where the dysfunction, the dirt and oil, come from can greatly improve the social interaction and also help the person to release some of the dysfunctions and become clean from them (if they choose to, of course).

    (I now return to the original document)

    Saturday was a busy day for cleaning. I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom. My roommates made some baked beans (literally, baked beans) and had managed to get traces of the beans from one end of the kitchen to the other. I had cleaned the dishes and the fridge and moved on to the floor. As I scrubbed the bean patches off the floor I made a startling discovery: our fake wood floor was no brown with specks of dark gray as I had long assumed, but rather brown with no specks in it at all. I realized that the gray specks were really dirt that was wedged into the tiny crevices of the boards and it had built up over the years until they were semi permanent coloring.

    The Dirty Floor. (Note the darkness of the grain, that is not the original coloring.)

    As I began to scrub the floor my mind began to wonder and having the random thinking that I have, my mind began to drift to the recent Conflict Management portion of my Communications class. Conflict resolution steps are few but critical. One of the most critical is to understand the view of the other party. This translates to a solid listening skill.

    Over time relationship dysfunctions (we can call them “little packets of dirt”) are tracked across the floor of a person’s life. Some of this dirt is brought in by the person themselves, others come from parents, friends, spouses, children, basically everyone and anyone that crosses our life. The dirt also comes from just being in a normal environment. As we settle into our work, play, relaxation or any other aspect of life, so too does dust and debris settle with us.

    The dirt itself is not the problem but is in fact a normal part of life on earth. It only takes sweeping and other basic maintenance to remove. The problem comes from memory (we can call it “natural oils that are emitted from our bodies and are around us everywhere”) which collects, stores and preserves the dirt in the tiny crevices of the floor. This oil and dirt storage issue is compounded by pressure (we can call it “outside forces of pressure, whether for good or bad”) from people walking on them, thus layer upon layer our commingled dirt and oil until enough is gathered to be noticeable to the naked eye.

    While these dysfunctions can be noticed, they are often not. This can be due to several reasons, one of the biggest is that those who come in contact with the dysfunctions assume (for varies reasons) that the floor is the way it was meant to be, it is its natural color. Only when closely examining the floor, at much closer levels than most ever care to get, does it become evident that the floor should be a different color. The issue of color frequently comes when we have not associated with a particular person for long (in comparison to the longevity of their life).

    Even for those who grew up with or around a person it can be hard to notice the often slow and methodical accumulation of the dirt, oil and pressure. The change happens so slowly that it is hard to remember back to a time when the dysfunctions weren’t there. Even then, the changes are still so subtle they can’t always be certain that the color was different, it could just be a glitch in memory.

    My personal favorite is: the comparison. A visitor comes over and notices the floor, it seems permanently dirty but they can’t remember their own floor clearly enough to be sure. After the visit is over, the guest returns home and analyzes their own floor to find that it is similarly marked but they can’t remember their friends floor clearly enough to be sure. Not wanting to make a big fuss over nothing, nor wanting to realize that their own floor is dirtied with dysfunctions and certainly not wanting to find out that their floor is dirtier than most, they continue to journey and make notes of comparison between their own floor and the floors of the various houses they visit. Due to a faulty memory (on purpose or not) and a lack of thorough comparison the observer never determines what the ‘normal’ state of the floor is or should be.

    Why does any of this matter? Each of us will at some point will, and most probably already have, socially interact with other people. Each of the people we interact with has a varied potential for dysfunction, dysfunctions that may have a great impact on the quality of our interactions. Understanding where the dysfunction, the dirt and oil, come from can greatly improve the social interaction and also help the person to release some of the dysfunctions and become clean from them (if they choose to, of course).

    Ideally, everyone would recognize their floor is dirty and take the proper actions to clean it. They don’t, not usually anyway. It is much easier to simply sweep the floor clean and maybe wipe it down with something wet every week or two. This was in fact my normal cleaning routine every month I have lived here. That changed this fateful Saturday. I tried three different techniques before finding the most efficient one.

    I started with a wet wash cloth. Some backed beans had stuck to the floor and I was wiping them up. After finally getting the beans off the floor I noticed that there was a ‘hole’ where the beans had been. There wasn’t really a hole, but there was a definite lack of dirt in the floor grain. This is very similar to working to change something in your life, perhaps a bad habit or distancing yourself from a negative influence. The ridding of the related dysfunction was not the intended benefit but rather an unanticipated side effect. This is a common person with a common goal. While this method works, it is a slow and tedious process that may take an entire lifetime to complete.

    My roommate upgraded me to a bathroom scrub brush (the kitchen brush flexed too much) and a bowl of soapy water. This is the method that cleaned most of the floor. It took a long time and a lot of effort. The bristles of the brush moved through the crevices to break apart the compounded dirt and the soap worked its magic to pull the oil away. This is a common person with an uncommon goal: the improve themselves by seeking out and eliminating dysfunctions and neutralizing bad memories. This is a noble and good work for anyone.

    Our brush started to die so I went to the store to get a new one and in so doing found a wonderful “wood floor cleaning solution”. When I got home I applied the solution and marveled at how quickly the solution, in conjunction with the brush, removed the packed in dirt and oil. The last quarter of the floor was done in minutes, not hours. This method is similar to the last, only improved. No longer is it simply a common person but a person with superior reaching and strivings. This is a person who does not simply work to become better, this person uses their intellect, experience and creativity to seek out (or develop as needed) and use new tools to help them become better. They are a better person before they even start working on their actual goal. Their goal becomes a reaching into the deeper possibilities of their humanity. The goal is specifically designed and catered to their exact position, strength and life plan. Though the goal might have been inspired by another, it is their own and they reach into the fathomless depths of personal effort to achieve the goal for their own sake, not because some else told them to. This is an uncommon person with an uncommon goal. When these two mix, limitless potential becomes available as the increase of self betterment and the far reaching goals unlock exponential growth. This is not because the person is a superior being, one set apart from the rest of humanity and destined for greatness. This is because the common person chose to be more and thus did become more.

    Now our kitchen floor is clean and the cleaning detail has been augmented to include the broader and more intensive cleaning that will prevent this buildup from happening, at least as long as I live here.

    The Clean Floor. (Note the absence of dark grain. This is the original coloring.)

  • Don’t Mind the Stains (or Evidences of Organizational Longevity)

    I recently put on my white elastic banded socks and wore them all day. It wasn’t until that evening while visiting some friends that I removed my shoes and realized that I had worn the wrong socks. I have two pairs of white elastic banded socks. This pair was different from the other pair, and indeed all my other socks, in that they were heavily stained. While I was initially embarrassed over having worn stained socks I quickly remembered why they were stained: I had worn this very pair of socks a few years ago while playing football with some friends in muddy field on a wet Oregon day. The stains incurred were and are an ever present reminder of the fun game that was played and the victory that was achieved after much effort. I had kept the socks as something of a trophy from that game.

    These stained socks serve as a reminder of my accomplishment. Other stains do not have such fond memories attached to them. Juice stains in the carpet, oil stains on a favorite shirt or blood stains on pants. In many ways each of these was simply part of my life’s course. Each also has a memory attached to them, some better than others, and though each has a story none of them elicit the pride of my mud stained socks.

    Organizations also have stains. The longer they are around the more they will have. Some of the stains are like giant juice stains on the floor while others are small marks of personal accomplishment like my socks. Each has a story and reason behind it and these reasons have shaped the growth of that organization. Even if the stain is cleaned and is no longer visible, those who knew about the stain will still remember it was there.

    Sometimes you can catch the host stealing glances at the now clean carpet patch, or you notice they avoid it by walking around a perceptively good patch of carpet. Organizationally this may take form as employees refusing to do something because a specific person is supposed to handle it, even if that person is on vacation. They may provide excuses such as “I don’t know if I am allowed to do that” or they may lie saying “I’ll take care of it” while they are secretly waiting for the absent person to come back and handle it. Sometimes they will blatantly refuse, “Oh, no I can’t. Carl has to do it.”

    Policy formation can be greatly affected by minor stains like a pair of old pants that you can’t part with, but you never wear because they have a ketchup stain on the thigh. These can be an embarrassing moment the owner had with a customer, a mid-level manager who was publically humiliated by a superior or an employee who said the wrong thing to a customer and was severely disciplined. Each situation can cause new policies that forbid the wearing of the tarnished garment, but not the disposal of it because you never know when you have need a mostly useless policy.

    Behavioral ethics can also be influenced by stains, or rather the threat of new stains. This happens when people are especially careful around certain individuals who sometimes have “accidents” that may cause a spill and subsequent stain. It may be a viscous manager who, upon offense, spreads your shame across the company, a co-worker who is known to spread gossip and rumors to any who will listen or even an accidental run-in that may cause some awkward questions to be asked. This careful avoidance of potential staining is very different from the careful attention given while wearing special clothing.

    Not all stains remain hidden. Some are shown off and even publicly aired. These stains, much like the mud stained socks, are symbols of the organization’s victory, near death experiences and staying power. They are aired in defiance of their competition and their display are a challenge to their opponents. These stains can be more liberal customer return policies put in place after a viscous battle with a competitor, a special greeting among members in honor of a beloved leader or a signature service performed “because that’s way we’ve always done it”. These stains are not always metaphorical, like most of the other organizational stains, but are sometimes literal: burn marks from a fire that nearly destroyed a warehouse or cracks a building’s walls caused by a strong earthquake. Often these stains are glorified and incorporated into the organization’s myths.

    The longer the organization has been around, the more stains it is bound to have. Not all stains are bad, in fact many can lead to improved moral and loyalty, but often these stains lead to the creation and sustaining of policies that don’t really make sense and can be damaging to the organization and those that associate with it.