Here’s a quiz for you. 

Let’s imagine that you have a car that can fly. Let’s also imagine that the cab of your car is pressurized and has a good heater.

Now, imagine that you’ve decided that you’d like to hop in the car and fly to the International Space Station to drop off some cookies. How long would it take you to get there at standard freeway speed, assuming you time it right so that you can rendezvous with the ISS when it orbits overhead? The answer might surprise you. At freeway speed, say, 65 miles-per-hour, you’ll arrive at the ISS in about three-and-a-half hours. You don’t even have to pack a lunch.

Now: how about the Moon? That’s a different story. The Moon is roughly 239,000 miles away, which means that at freeway speed, well, let’s just say that you’re going to want to pack a lunch. In fact, at freeway speed, it’s going to take you five months to get there. Big lunch.

So now, let’s talk Mars. Mars is, on average, 140 million miles from Earth. At 65 miles per-hour, it’s a 2,991-month journey. That’s just shy of 250 years. You’re going to have to pack a lunch for your great-great-great-grandkids.

That’s why we don’t drive to Mars.

But humans are going to Mars, in a reasonable amount of time, and I’ve figured out how. I have a new book coming out soon, and it’s a great story. Stay tuned!

I discovered a new online resource the other day. I’m not going to name it because that would be unfair, and because some of the comments I’m about to make could be construed as subjective. But this resource had all the earmarks of something that would be quite valuable to me as a writer. 

As you no doubt know, one of the things that Amazon does with its authors is help them market their books in a variety of ways. This is particularly true of Kindle eBooks, and one of the strategies they recommend is to run campaigns occasionally in which the author prices their book at a very low price—99 cents, or even free—for one week, as a way to introduce new readers to their titles. It’s a good strategy, and it works well—except when it doesn’t.

I’m an author, and while the vast majority of the books I’ve written have been released by established publishing houses like McGraw-Hill, Wiley, Business Week, Aspatore, Aletheia, and a few others. I have self-published a few—about six out of the one hundred or so books I’ve written to-date. I self-published them for a variety of reasons: I couldn’t get a publisher to bite, or it was a title that I knew would enjoy a very small market and would therefore not be of interest to a standard publisher, or it was about a topic so esoteric that there was no point in even trying. In every case, I did my homework, laid the proper groundwork, and they sold successfully. 

So, back to my ‘discovered resource.’ At any point, Amazon has large numbers of authors, often self-published, running a ‘free week’ campaign. This resource I mentioned collects all those free book announcements in one place, and then sends the list to its subscribers, making them aware of the availability of free or very inexpensive titles that they might like.

It sounded too good to be true (it was). But I signed up, filled out the form about my reading preferences, and began to receive daily notices about books that aligned with my interests.

The descriptions were well-written, the covers were professional and compelling, and who could argue with the price? So, over the course of a month or so, I diligently read the daily newsletter, often found a title that intrigued me, and downloaded it. Over the course of a month, I ‘bought’ 15 books, most of them fiction. They fell within the genres I enjoy: fantasy; espionage; SCUBA diving-related tales; historical fiction; a bit of science fiction; a couple of hard-boiled detective novels (‘For readers of David Baldacci…’).

I only have two of them remaining on my eReader. I managed to get partway through the first chapter of the other 13, and then gave up and deleted them—with prejudice.

Here’s why. For years, I have taught business writing workshops for many of my customers, not to mention writing workshops for general audiences. For example, I ran a writing workshop at our local Barnes and Noble that was open to the public. It was attended by a core group of people who had all been bitten by the writing bug (once it sets its teeth it rarely lets go) and who wanted to become published authors. Many of them did.

The topics I cover in those workshops are what you would expect: Composition. Editing. Grammar. Editing. Flow. Editing. Vocabulary. Editing. Dialogue. Editing. Do you detect a theme, here? Good. One of the messages I always drive home early in the workshop is this: Just because Microsoft Word has 3,887 features available with the click of a button doesn’t mean you should use them. And just because it offers hundreds of fancy, frilly fonts, doesn’t mean you should use them. Here’s the real message, buried in those snarky comments: It’s too easy to write a first draft, right and left justify and pleasingly space the text, select a beautiful font like Book Antiqua or Bookman Old Style or Garamond, sprinkle in a few judiciously placed italics and underlines and emboldened words for emphasis, and call it done. No: It’s a beautifully formatted, incomplete, inchoate, embryonic, first draft. But because it looks pretty, it’s easy to declare victory and call it quits. As one of my writing students told me in response to my observation that you can’t polish a turd, he said, “Yeah, but you can roll it in glitter!”

He’s right. Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers and the author of Bird by Bird, one of the best books I know about the writing craft, has observed that the first thing a writer must do is ‘write a really shitty first draft.’ And, she’s right: the creative process rarely, if ever, yields perfection on the first pass. 

So, back to my initial observation about the 15 books I downloaded for nothing or almost nothing from Amazon. Apparently, there’s some truth to the adage that you get what you pay for. 13 of them were so poorly written that I didn’t make my way through the first chapter before discarding them. Basic editorial process should never have allowed them to see the light of day. 

When I write a book, or article, or script, or white paper, the first thing I do is hand it off (and it’s never my first draft—it’s usually my fifth or sixth rewrite) to my ‘Council of Druids.’ This is a small group of people whom I’ve known for a long time and who have been editing my writing since 1978. They constitute a collectively annoying pain in my ass and are also one of my most treasured gifts as a writer. Why? Because none of them are afraid to say to me, “Steve, with all the love in my heart, you need to take this piece of crap and put it back under the rock where you found it. This is NOT ready for public viewing, and here’s why.” It’s that ‘here’s why’ part that is most important. There is nothing more useless to a writer than a raised thumb in front of a half-crazed smile, delivered by a well-meaning person who didn’t really read something a writer asked them to read with a critical, editorial eye. My Druidic editorial council are the people who make my writing as good as I can possibly make it, and they’re the reason that all of my books go through no fewer than 35 complete rewrites before I will even consider publishing them. That’s a real number: Since 1980, I have written 101 books and countless other pieces, and on average, that’s the number of times—35—my work gets a complete rework to make it ready for the world to see. Why? Because these editors see things that I don’t. They catch misspellings that I miss. They spot flow issues that work beautifully in my head (because I know what I’m saying) but that move around on paper or screen like the ball in a pinball machine. They catch technical errors that I pass over. They chastise me when my choice of vocabulary doesn’t jibe with the character using it, or when I make mental leaps that don’t translate to the page. 

I know what some of you are thinking: I discarded the books because they weren’t my style, or because the plot was too simple or too complex, or because I didn’t bond with the characters. None of those are true. Some of them had very well-developed and likeable characters. I discarded them because:

• One book had 15 misspellings in the first chapter, which was 13 pages long. Spellchecking is free, people!
• Another, which had a SCUBA diving theme (and you should know that I used to be a professional commercial diver), kept referring to the divers’ oxygen tanks. NO: SCUBA divers breathe air, not oxygen, because pure oxygen at depth is toxic. On the same page, the author had the main character lift their mask off their face and raise it to their forehead. Again, NO. The first wave that comes along will grab that mask and remove it from their head, never to be seen again. Experienced divers, who this character was supposed to be, pull their masks down below their chins if they don’t want them on their faces. Get your facts straight. If you don’t have firsthand experience with the subject you’re writing about, find someone who does and ask them to edit the piece.
• Another book had such awful dialogue that I just couldn’t bear reading it. PEOPLE DON’T TALK LIKE THAT. Buy a copy of the book, “Shut Up! He Explained,” and read it. Better yet, read your own manuscript to yourself out loud and pay attention.
• Yet another book kept changing the narrative form. One chapter started out in the first person, but by the end of the chapter it had switched to the third person. I felt like I was reading a book by someone with multiple personality disorder.
• And another? A whole range of things: Excessive use of the passive voice. Improper use of commas, semicolons, em-dashes, and colons. Wrong placement of quote marks. And an important character’s name that was spelled two different ways in the first chapter. 

All of this boils down to one simple thing: laziness, with some impatience thrown in for good measure. 

Look: Many people want to write, and I celebrate that. In fact, I encourage it in others every chance I get. But I do so with a caveat: writing the story is only half of the effort, and unfortunately, it’s the easy half. Hemingway is credited with once saying that “Writing is easy—you just sit at your typewriter and stare at the paper until droplets of blood form on your forehead.” And yes, sometimes it feels that way. But here’s a critical dose of reality. The other half of giving birth to a book is the editorial process, the moment when the author relinquishes control of his or her baby to the editor, whose job it is to turn the literary fetus into a laughing, smiling bundle of literary joy, ready to face the world. And that’s a very hard thing to do.

Most of the time, people who want to write a book don’t really want to write a book. What they really want is to see their name on the cover of one, and be able to say that they wrote it (past tense). I would love to be able to tell people what it’s like to stand on the summit of Everest and look down on the planet from the roof of the world, but there’s no way in Hell I’m crazy enough to actually go there. That’s the difference. Writing is hard work—HARD work. It requires effort, confidence, truckloads of humility, doggedness, and commitment to craft and process. It also requires the writer to eventually give up a great deal of control, not of the story, the narrative, but of the road that leads to it.

It requires editing.

My email signature line says this: Writing is my craft. Reading is my gym. I mean that in the truest sense: the single greatest contributor to whatever skill I have as a writer comes as much from reading as it does from writing. Yes, it’s true: If you want to be a better writer, write. That’s true of every skill or craft. But one of the things that turns a good chef into a great chef is their willingness to eat anything and everything to learn what’s out there, to explore the culinary possibilities that lie before them. 

So, don’t just read the genre you want to write in—read everything! I read a lot—I average about 130 books a year—and I read it all: fiction, non-fiction, history, poetry, romance, mystery, technology, political intrigue, nature essays, and lots and lots of classics—Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and Robert Service and Jack London and Jane Austen and William Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson, have all been on my reading list in the past year. I read them because I want to experience the way they write, how they use language and sentence structure, and how they create plot and flow and tension and story. 

Reading matters to me because it makes me better at something that’s important to me professionally. That, combined with a desire to write something, anything, just about every day, and the unceasing, dedicated efforts of my editors, make me a better writer. Does my stuff emerge from the process, perfect? Of course not. There are still errors—there always will be. But I know that there were a lot more before the process started, and that the book would be far less readable had I not gone through it.

I was lucky: My first major book got picked up by a traditional publisher in 1998. I had submitted it to no less than 35 publishers, and so far, I had received 33 rejection letters. Then, sitting at the desk in my hotel room in Perth, Australia, where I was doing some work for the national telephone company, Telstra, I received an email message from a publisher, telling me that they would like to publish my book. I stood up, and I cried. I earned those tears.

Had I known what was yet to come, though, I might have saved them for later, because the editorial process had not yet begun. 

Editing is a form of literary vivisection. You have created your baby, and you just know, deep inside, that (1) it will come to be known as the greatest book ever written and (2) will require a slight bit of polishing by the editor.

You, my friend, are delusional.

 What happens in the editing process is easy to describe, but horrible to experience. The editor carefully takes your baby from your arms and gently places it on a warm table. Then, with deft skill, the same editor takes a linguistic rapier and chops off the head, legs and arms of your baby. They then disjoint all the limbs, remove the fingers and toes, enucleate the eyes, sew the nose closed, remove the ears and hair from the head, and then put the whole thing back together—the way it should have been assembled in the first place. 

The first time this happens, the writer feels violated, defamed, defaced, invaded, desecrated. Clearly, they did something to this editor in elementary school, something unspeakable but not remembered that was indescribably horrible and that they have been carrying around with them for just this moment. Revenge is a dish best served cold. The writer gasps, and postures, and utters bombastic arguments, and then notices with great reluctance that the book is better than it was when they turned it over to the editor. The baby is prettier, and healthier, and happier.

You may have heard the old joke that says that there are two things you never want to watch being made, with sausage being the first thing. The other thing, in this case, is a book. Editing is a messy process, not for the squeamish or faint of heart. The dismemberment of a baby is not pleasant, but it is necessary. Stephen King once observed that sometimes, you have to kill your children (talking about manuscripts, of course). Editing is the process of taking raw material and turning it into a finished, sleek, elegant product that you will be proud to have others read. Editors don’t do what they do to make the author feel as if they should perhaps seek a career in the commercial food industry; they do what they do to give the writer their best possible chance of being in the writing industry.

I’ve been lucky. As I said earlier, the vast majority of my books have been published through traditional channels, which means that I had the opportunity to work with teams of professional editors who existed to make my books as good as they could possibly be. 

But somewhere along the line, I decided to self-publish one of my books. It was a small collection of essays about the natural world, and I couldn’t get a publisher to look at it. But I believed it was good, so I decided to self-publish, as much to experience the process as to get the book out there (it sold well, by the way).

I quickly realized that I was swimming in the deep end of the pool without flotation and without a lifeguard. I was on my own. Here’s what I knew: I’m a decent writer. I’ve had three bestsellers, so I must have SOME skill buried in there. But I didn’t have access to an editorial staff, and I quickly realized that I also knew next to NOTHING about formatting, cover design, layout, marketing, pricing, distribution, sales strategy, or the myriad other things that create the sausage, as it were, because all those things were done behind the scenes by my publishers. I never saw them; I just benefitted from them.

So, I had to tackle the learning curve of learning curves. It took months, and I got there, and I have now self-published six books, all of which have sold well—including one novel that became a global bestseller on Amazon. But the learning effort was significant. I don’t tell you this to discourage you; I tell you this because of how I started this article. The authors of the books I read and quickly dismissed paid good money to have creative, compelling covers designed; formatted them reasonably well in the (most likely) Amazon-provided book templates; and uploaded them to Amazon using the self-publishing tools provided free-of-charge by Amazon. When viewed online, they look as attractive and professional as any other book on the Amazon site, but with books, it’s what’s inside that counts. Remember: You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter. If you self-publish, great. But do the hard work to ensure that your book’s quality is as good as it can possibly be. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it can be a soul-sucking process. But this is your baby. Do everything you can to make it something people will want to hug and coo over, and that will motivate others to buy it from you.  

It’s no secret that I have a love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with social media. From its early beginnings, I was puzzled by the mania that characterized it; I didn’t understand what people were getting out of it that was so compelling. But I played along. Mostly, I used it to see the latest pictures of my kids and grandkids.

As most of you know, I’m a writer. I write books, articles, scripts, all kinds of things. A few years ago, I wrote and published a novel called “The Nation We Knew.” In it, I described an American president who took to task all of the fossilized and ineffective processes and procedures and institutions and practices that no longer work, and who then had the audacity to suggest new ways of doing things that actually got things done. The book, I’m happy to say, rose to the top of Amazon’s political fiction category and became an international best-seller for a short time. It still sells well. Its message is hopeful, purposeful, and realistic.

I want to reiterate that the book is a novel. That means fiction—you know, invented. Made up. Fiction. But about ten days after the book came out and was doing well, the Internet trolls got ahold of it, and began to trash it on social media. Whatever—criticism is part of the game. The positive reviews far outweighed the negative, but at one point the negative comments grew dark and threatening. 

I tend to ignore reviews for the most part. Sure, I scan them occasionally to see if someone has found some boneheaded error on my part that needs to be fixed, but trying to read every review or comment is just not possible. But when the reviews got nasty and began to threaten me and my family, I drew a line in the sand. 

I found it puzzling that a large percentage of the negative reviews began with variations of, “Well, I haven’t read it, but it’s clearly…” seriously? You haven’t read the book, but you get to post a review?

So, I contacted the organizations where the offensive and meaningless posts were appearing. I won’t give you their names, but I’ll give you hints. One of them is the largest online retailer on Earth; the other is the largest social media platform on Earth. Their response? Crickets. Despite numerous attempts on my part to get them to rein in the trolls, I got nothing. They didn’t even dignify my concerns with responses or suggestions.

Think about this for a moment: Book reviews are being posted on these platforms that begin with the phrase, “well, I haven’t read it yet…” Apparently, that’s okay in their minds. No one should have to read a book to review it. 

The better the book sold, the more vitriolic the comments became, some of them noting where I lived. That was it. I pulled down all my social media accounts. I don’t miss them.

I also found it interesting that when I dumped social media (and I should say, I didn’t suspend it—I deleted it), I had thousands of so-called ‘friends’ on the platform. Most of them I couldn’t pick out of a lineup. But what I found intriguing was that no one—not a single person on that list of ‘friends’ —sent me a message asking if I was okay, given that I hadn’t been on Facebook in some time and my account was gone. Friends? Really? The people I consider to be my friends stay in touch, just like I stay in touch with them. We write (yep—letters), we meet for coffee, we talk on the phone, we Zoom, we send emails.

I just finished reading Jaron Lanier’s book, “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Account Right Now.” For those of you who don’t know Jaron Lanier, take a few minutes to dive into his rabbit hole. Based in Berkeley, he created the original concept of Virtual Reality, and was one of the creators of the online world, Second Life. He’s a bit of a whackadoodle, but he’s also a serious technologist—he’s got major creds—and he’s a musician, a husband, a father, and an author.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m a realist. I do have a background in tech, because I spent 43 years in the telecom and IT industries. I know how this stuff works. That includes the algorithms that power social media platforms. Lanier understands them, as well. In fact, he gives a great example to illustrate just how powerful and potentially harmful they are.

Think about Wikipedia. We all use it. But when I was a kid, if I wanted to look something up, I grabbed the dictionary or encyclopedia off the shelf, and after I finished being distracted by the mylar overlays of the systems of the human body, or some weird animal that appeared on whatever random page I turned to, I looked up whatever it was that I wanted to understand. It gave me the same result, every time.

Wikipedia emulates this. If I look up Jaron Lanier on Wikipedia, I get the biographical entry that is typical of Wikipedia: brief summary, early life and education, personal life, in the media, creative works, awards, and so on. It doesn’t matter who looks him up, or where they are, or what they do, or what they believe—everybody gets the same information about Jaron Lanier, just like looking up a historical character in the encyclopedia. Yes, there might be a slight tweak here and there, but only to correct an error or expand the information presented.

But now imagine a different outcome. What if the results delivered to you by Wikipedia for a particular lookup—again, I’ll pick on Jaron Lanier—were different, depending on who you are. If someone is a technophile and artist and they look up Lanier, they get a long, glowing biography of a devoted family man who uses both sides of his brain equally well because he’s both a brilliant technologist and gifted musician (he is). But if the person executing the search is a technological luddite who believes that AI and virtual reality will bring on the destruction of human civilization, the result the person gets will portray a dreadlocked nutcase. In other words, in both scenarios, algorithmic processes analyze the person conducting the search, paying close attention to their search history, where they live, what they buy, how much money they make, what party they are affiliated with, who their online friends are, what they watch, what kinds of restaurants they visit, what music they listen to, and a thousand-thousand other things, all in a fraction of a second. And in that same fraction of a second, the application formulates a customized search result and places it carefully in front of the person, a result that reinforces their belief—their personal bias. The results for the technophile and the technophobe are completely different, yet they ask identical questions of the same system. And the result? A wedge is driven between people from each camp, and ‘what we believe’ becomes more important than ‘what we know.’ ‘What we know’ becomes the false narrative. 

This is precisely how social media works. The deck is stacked against the user; it favors the house, in this case the House of Zuckerberg. I have always exhorted participants in my workshops or keynotes to listen carefully when I say, “Don’t be fooled: when the product is free, you are the product.” 

Social media platforms destroy inclusive community and force us to behave in more of an exclusionary tribal fashion. These companies make money by personalizing the content they deliver, but not in a benevolent way: the content is designed to sell more targeted advertising, which causes users to spend more money. But the results are insidious, and some would argue (and I’m one of them) that they endanger the very tenets of democratic society. Every time we click on a post or advertisement, we help the platform companies to more narrowly target the ad content they put before us. The result is that what we see gets narrower and narrower, ultimately forcing us into ‘one-person tribes’ who fear the tribes around us. There’s a reason that sociologists have issued warnings about the impact that social media has on teenagers. At a time in their lives when socialization is of utmost importance, social media pits young people against each other, making them believe that they’re not smart enough, pretty enough, athletic enough, or popular enough to deserve self-worth. That’s not sad: that’s criminal.

I have come to the conclusion that humans are the incubators of wisdom and the distributors, however badly, of understanding.

When we’re young, we store data—the zeroes and ones of life that have superficial value in their raw form, like the transmitted bytes of a streaming video that make no sense until we interpret and display them on our tablets or TVs. In essence, we’re storage devices. But as we grow older, we add insight and logic and knowledge to our toolboxes of life, along with the ability to learn from the mistakes we make.

It occurs to me, though, that as we approach the later stages of life, the end of our careers, “the third trimester of life,” we realize that working deep within our bodies is a machine that up until then we didn’t know we had. It’s a digester and fermenter, similar to those used in wineries and paper plants and whiskey distilleries. But instead of making paper pulp or aging fine wine or barreling sour mash whiskey, our chemistry creates a different product.

This complex process, during which data becomes information, and information mixes with experience to become knowledge, and knowledge mixes with application to become insight, and finally, insight mixes with reflection to become wisdom, this process defines the chemical plant, the refinery of human progress, and its ultimate distillate, understanding.

Throughout the first phases of life—infancy, childhood, adulthood—we take in the experiences of life and store them for the future, for an incalculably valuable application that comes later. As we enter the phase known as elderhood, we realize that another substance has been made increasingly available to us, something fleeting and ephemeral: time. And time? Time’s a catalyst, an accelerant, the change agent that converts all that we know internally into something of immense value when it is shared externally. 

As we pass into elderhood, our wisdom becomes our currency, our mechanism for continuing to bring value to the society in which we play a part. But at this stage of our lives, for the most part, anyway, we no longer do; that’s not our job. However, we observe, we reflect, we advise. We become a feeder mechanism, a contributor to the process of perfection, offering small additions to the whole that bring bursts of efficiency and effectiveness to the efforts of those who are in the earlier stages, still collecting and processing and fighting to make sense of it all. We’ve already done that, and we know how it ends. Let us offer a suggestion, not because the way you’re doing it is wrong, but because we know where the pitfalls are, and we’d like to save you the trouble.

The other morning, I sat with a group of retired people who gather every day at the local coffee shop. I laughed quietly when I reflected on the fact that I was pretty much the same age as these…old people. 

The conversation swirled around grandchildren; whose kids had changed jobs or moved house; whose knees creaked the loudest; a smattering of quickly dismissed political disgust. And then, the conversation made its inevitable shift.

“Do you remember when…”

“I remember that time when…”

“When I was just starting out…”

When. The indicator of time spent.

There it was. “The good old days.” But as I sat and listened, a realization dawned. Is that really what the conversation was about? Were these just wistful reminiscences of a time and place and way of life long past? Some of them, perhaps; as humans, we do have a tendency to long for the illusion of better times. But as I listened, and as I later thought about the conversation during my long walk home, I realized that these discussions among people who have made 60 or 70 or more journeys around the sun aren’t just about the myth of better times past. They’re about process. They serve as validation, a form of error checking, of the machinery that got them this far, more or less intact, with a store of hard-fought wisdom that they’re willing to share with anyone willing to listen. It isn’t about ‘my way is better;’ it’s about the fact that there are different ways, all with merit, and the more of them you have in your toolbox, the better prepared you are to handle the challenges you’ll confront during your own exciting life. 

So, here’s what I know. 

I’ve come to understand that skill and knowledge are applied in life against a fabric of ‘what,’ while wisdom is applied against the weave and weft of ‘why.’ Let me explain that meaningless observation. ‘What’ is a tactical question that speaks to something executable: Here’s what we’re going to do. The objective of ‘what’ requires skill to do it right, and knowledge to do it efficiently.

‘Why,’ on the other hand, is a strategic question, one that asks for slowness and patience. Before we do anything, let’s first ask why we’re going to do it in the first place. The objective of ‘why’ requires insight and wisdom to ensure that there’s a good reason to do something in the first place. Why waste the time and energy and other resources on a task that has no merit?

Here’s what else I know. The way I did things won’t work for some, but will work for others. If it helps, it’s yours to take.

Finally, I know this. 

The challenges and trials that my children and their children will face during their lifetimes, at a human, societal level, are the same as those that I and my generational peers faced, and the same as those that Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians faced off against. They’re the same challenges faced by people who stared into the reality of the American Civil War and two world wars, and every other conflict fought in the name of some existential cause. They’re the same as those that confront Sana’a Bushmen and the Panará and the Sentinelese and the Toromona and the Awá, groups of people most of us have never heard of, and who like it that way, thank you very much.

Some will argue that today’s problems are different, that modern challenges are more serious, or impactful, or deadly, or extensive, or permanent than those faced by prior generations. With respect, I disagree. Homo sapiens has been around for 300,000 years, give or take, and the last ice age ended 25,000 years ago, which means that we shivered as we sorted it out for many years of uninterrupted winter. I’d call that serious. The Krakatoa eruption in Indonesia in 1883 killed 36,000 people instantly, and caused the planet to cool by almost a degree for an entire year.

Internecine warfare on every continent has existentially threatened entire populations and cultures over countless centuries, some of them recorded, some not. Some of those nations and cultures lost themselves and slipped beneath the waves of human memory. 

In the 1960s, the air in many cities was deadly. Rivers caught fire from industrial waste that was wantonly dumped into them. The careless use of pesticides almost made our national symbol and many of its cousins extinct. And school children—I was among them—had to respond to nuclear attack drills by traipsing into the hallway of the school, sitting down, facing the cinderblock wall, and covering our heads with our arms—as if that would protect against thermonuclear incineration.

As I close in on my 70th birthday, a little back-of-the-calculator astronomical math tells me that I have traveled forty billion, five-hundred-and-eighty-eight-million miles aboard spaceship Earth since my birth in Amarillo, Texas. That has to count for something. And here’s what I believe it counts for. Said a different way, here’s what my own hard-fought wisdom has taught me, or causes me to conclude.

The planet routinely tosses challenges our way because it’s a planet that has an atmosphere that supports life as we know it. It holds no special prejudice against humans; other species are affected by these challenges as much as we are. Is the planet currently in a warming state? Absolutely. Did we contribute to it? No question—the science is clear on that. Does the Earth care? Not even a little bit. If we survive, so be it. If not, well, nice experiment, curious creatures, but move along, please. Now serving species nine billion and one. The planet doesn’t care.

The concept of human supremacy is fatally flawed. We see ourselves as exceptional, not because we are, but because we choose to believe it. There is no evidence whatsoever that demonstrates human exceptionalism. Want proof? Okay. Watch Arctic terns migrate 19,000 miles every year, between the Arctic and Antarctic poles, following the planet’s magnetic lines of force to return, year after year, to precisely the same spot where they started, often to the very same nest site. Look at the intricate engineering of a weaver bird’s or oriole’s nest. While you’re at it, have a look at a hummingbird’s egg cup, at the underground architecture of an ant colony, at the lonely beauty of hidden messages in whale song. Marvel at the sub-sonic rumbles that elephants use to communicate with one another over miles of distance. Witness an orb weaver’s web, the monarch’s 3,000-mile annual journey, the intricate dance of courting birds of paradise. Dig into the rich culture of a wolf pack, or a lion pride, or a cheetah family, or a herd of elephants. Watch a murmuration of starlings, or a massive hover of sardines, as they move as one, creating fantastic shapes in the sky or water to do—what, exactly? We have no idea.

Travel to the Blue Ridge at one magical time of year, when tens of thousands of fireflies light the forest, flashing in synchrony. Look at the waters off the eastern end of Vieques Island in the eastern Caribbean, as bioluminescent plankton set the ocean afire with their glow.  Witness the many, many species that anticipate earthquakes and tsunamis without benefit of the U.S. Geological Survey and move to high ground before they strike. 

Then, there are our so-called inventions. That shimmery red paint on new cars? Nope. Copied from the prismatic structure of songbird feathers. Those innovative chimney designs for highly effective natural air conditioning in the houses of the Middle East? Copied from African termite mounds. Airplane wings? Bird wings. That Olympic swimmer who has a fraction of a second of advantage over her equally gifted peers? She’s wearing a swimsuit with fabric that mimics the drag-resisting denticles of sharkskin. Velcro? Burdock. I can continue, but I think you catch my drift. We’re not all that exceptional, unless you consider thievery and copycatting to be special traits. 

So, what’s my point with this wandering essay. Go back to the beginning. We have mastered the alchemy that converts data to information, information to knowledge, knowledge to insight, and insight to wisdom. We do those well. But here’s what we do poorly. First, we have largely lost the reverence we once had for wisdom. Here’s an example of just how damaging that can be.

In the late-1980s, a patient came into an emergency room complaining of chronic fatigue, belly pain, and weakness in his left knee. The ER staff went to work, but after hours of examination, they had no idea what the patient was suffering from. So, they admitted him and gave him medication for pain.

The next morning, the patient had a temperature of 106 degrees and was paralyzed from his hairline to the tips of his toes. He was breathing with such difficulty that they had to give him a tracheostomy and intubate him.

This was the medical equivalent of a four-alarm fire. Before long, the patient’s bed was surrounded by an army of specialists in Neurology. Cardiology. Endocrinology. Infectious disease. Psychiatry. Each of them performed an examination. Each of them came back with a diagnosis. Each of them was wrong.

One of the staff physicians was an elderly doctor who no longer actively practiced, but who still visited patients because he cared and wanted to stay active. He was looked on by the younger staff members as a doddering old guy who meant well, and as long as he stayed out of the way, they tolerated him. But none of them took him seriously.

One morning, two weeks into the patient’s mysterious illness with zero progress on diagnosis, this older doctor stuck his head in the door. “You know,’ he said, “these are the same symptoms I used to see in polio patients back in the 40s.” Well, you can imagine the reaction. The gathered experts rolled their eyes, patted him on the head, and sent him on his way. Polio indeed. Polio, they smirked, is extinct.

The patient had polio.

Interesting thing about polio: it’s a virus that attacks the intestines, and from there it spreads into the bloodstream. When polio vaccines first became available, the first one was an injection of Inactivated Polio Vaccine, which meant that even though the polio virus was dead, it still caused an immune response. Because this first vaccination was injected, it created antibodies in the bloodstream, not the intestines, and prevented the virus from traveling through the blood to the brain or spinal cord, preventing paralysis. It was considered a SECONDARY defense against the virus.

The Oral Polio Vaccines that came later consisted of a few drops of the vaccine, dripped onto a sugar cube—I remember them well. We all lined up at the school gymnasium to get our sugar cubes, which we ate. These oral vaccnes were created by WEAKENING the polio virus. The weakened virus created an immune response in the intestines, but wasn’t strong enough to cause the disease. And because polio is a gut virus which can spread to the bloodstream, the two oral vaccines were the FIRST line of defense against polio, because they kept the virus from doing that.

But there’s a caveat. The weakened virus particles do a good job of creating an immune response in the gut without giving the patient polio. But very rarely, they can evolve back to their infective state. One-in-700,000 people were victims of this—including our patient. But how did he get infected? Well, it turns out that his young son was given a second dose of the Oral Polio Vaccine, and it mutated. The baby was unaffected—but his father, who never got the third vaccine and wasn’t sufficiently immunized, caught polio while changing his son’s diaper. He never recovered.

It wasn’t skill and knowledge that identified the cause of the patient’s illness: it was wisdom. 

I said earlier that wisdom, a quality that we should revere, is one of the refined distillates of data and knowledge and insight. But there’s something even more valuable than wisdom that sugars off in this alchemical process, and that’s understanding. We don’t do that particularly well, either. And that, in my mind, is reckless, and even dangerous. Why? Because understanding, which comes from wisdom, especially when wisdom is applied to current data and knowledge, drives responsible action. Action drives change. But all too often, READY-AIM-FIRE become READY-FIRE-AIM. What’s the old expression? ‘Planning without action is futile. Action without planning is fatal.’ Or, as you’ve heard me say before, ‘Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.’ 

Just because we have a bigger brain than most creatures doesn’t mean that we use it effectively. We think of ourselves as logical creatures, but are we? I wonder. Those doctors who clung to their blind conclusions—I’m a cardiologist, therefore it has to be a cardiac problem—may very well have contributed to that patient’s paralysis and ultimate death. Never mind what the facts are telling us. Remember the story of the five blind men and the elephant? 

Wisdom ignored is opportunity lost.

Just something to think about.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. 

–Edmund Burke, 1770.

I had a conversation this morning with a dear friend, and she reminded me about this post and suggested that I re-issue it, especially given that we’re heading into another election circus. Thanks, Liz.

I am not a political scientist, nor am I a historian or sociologist. Here’s what I am: well-educated, with an undergrad degree from UC Berkeley in Spanish; a master’s from St. Mary’s in International Business; and a Doctorate from the Da Vinci Institute in South Africa, where I studied technology and its sociological impacts across the world. I’ve worked very hard to become this well-educated, and I continue to, so I won’t apologize for the fact. I am well read, averaging 120 books per year, including everything from fiction of all kinds, to poetry, history, geography, travel, narrative essay, biography, technology, children’s books, and biology. I’m well-traveled: I spent my teen years in Francisco Franco’s Spain, I’ve lived and worked in more than 100 countries, and one of my favorite genres to read is the travel essay, which gives me insights into places I haven’t had the opportunity to visit. Finally, I’m a professional writer, speaker, and educator, with 80 books and hundreds of articles and white papers on the market.

Edmund Burke wrote that opening line in 1770 as part of a longer letter to Thomas Mercer. I find it particularly appropriate today, as unprecedented—and unwarranted—attacks are flying in Washington, much of it driven by harsh language from the White House, all of it targeting four first-term congresswomen, all of them women of color who had the audacity to criticize the treatment of immigrants at our southern border, where there are children living in cages because they have been willfully separated from their parents. I have tried for the longest time to ignore what is happening in this country—MY country—but I can’t do it anymore. I have just returned from another trip outside of the United States where I was once again forced to confront a fundamental question, asked this time most poignantly by my taxi driver. 

“When I was a child in Nigeria, whenever I saw the American flag or heard your national anthem, it made me cry with such a sense of overwhelming joy, because it represented everything that is good and true and strong in this world. The United States represented hope, and faith in a better life, and gentle strength. It made me look at myself and say, ‘I, too, can have hope, because I see the example that America sets for the world.’ I no longer feel that way. I am afraid that America has become a country of bullies, and no one is willing to stand up to Mr. Trump. How can his behavior be allowed in a country that has forever meant so much to the world?”

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. 

Let me tell you where this is coming from—and please, read to the end. First, I’m ferociously curious. I liveto ask the question, ‘Why?’ I’m not satisfied simply knowing what something does, or even how. That serves me well in my role as a consulting analyst to executive teams, who want advice on their strategic decision-making processes. I’m not satisfied with something because somebody supposedly said it—I want to know why, and I want to know that it’s true. That’s hard work; it means I have to check my sources, and more often than not take the time to dig into the facts before I accept a conclusion. If more people were willing to do that simple thing, to exercise their right, obligation, and responsibility to be healthily skeptical, to respond to a stated fact with, “Are you sure about that? I’m going to check one more source to verify,” the fake news issue wouldn’t be an issue. Like it or not, believe it or not, the Earth is not flat, vaccines work and do not cause autism, we really have been to the moon, the universe is expanding, climate change is real and people do affect it, and evolution is a fact, not a theory. Science is science for a reason: because by its very definition, the things it proposes have been exhaustively verified through a rigorous, competitive process of validation. It’s not opinion: it’s fact. Furthermore, news is precisely that—news. It isn’t opinion. Two talking heads on CNN or Fox or CNBC yammering away at each other is a battle of opinions, not any form of news. Yet in the minds of many, the two are conflated, and far too many people are willing to just accept what they hear or read without question. THAT is an abdication of responsibility as a citizen in a free country.

When we moved to Spain in 1968, we were indoctrinated in the rules of the expatriate road. Do NOT make public comments about the government. Do NOT criticize any public figure. Be wary of the police; they are not your friends. There were two television channels, one sporadically broadcasting Spanish soap operas and cartoons for the kids, the other what we called the “All Franco, All the Time” channel—hours and hours of the Generalísimo standing on a stage, waving his arms.

Let me be clear: I loved growing up in Europe; Spain will forever be in my blood. The experience played a large part in making me who I am today, a person entranced by languages, diverse cultures, strange foods, and the allure of travel. But it also put me in a place where I had the intellectual wherewithal to critically compare the USA to other countries, especially when I started traveling extensively for a living.

America’s involvement in Vietnam was just starting to wind down when I started college. Like so many young people, I was critical of our involvement, because there was no logical reason whatsoever that I could discern for our presence there, certainly no tangible return that was worth the loss of life that that ugly war created. But I remained an ardent supporter of the United States, the Shining City on a Hill, in spite of my disagreement about Southeast Asia.

Years later, I became what I am today—writer, teacher, audio producer, photographer, speaker, observer of the world. I’ve worked all over the planet and have had the pleasure and honor to experience more countries, cultures, linguistic rabbit holes, ways of life, and food than most people will ever see. For that I am truly, deeply grateful.

But it hasn’t always been good. I’ve spent my share of time in totalitarian countries, seeing how people who have no other choice must live, and feeling slightly embarrassed by the fact that I have the choice—the choice—not to live that way. In China, in Tiananmen Square, I was stopped by police and questioned aggressively for quite some time by the police, because I was carrying a professional-looking camera. In that same country, I was told that I had to register my laptop and mobile phone because, as a non-Chinese, I could be bringing in or distributing subversive materials that could be detrimental to the state. In Venezuela, my client would not allow me to go anywhere by myself, assigning me a round-the-clock bodyguard to keep me out of trouble. In Yugoslavia, while driving in a car on the highway, I was frantically hushed by the other people in the car because they were afraid that my question about life under the current regime might be overheard by people outsidethe car. I listened and tried to understand the logic of a Russian man, who, when I took him (at his request) to a grocery store in California to see what it was like, stopped halfway down the coffee aisle, turned to me, and asked, “So many coffees! Why don’t theyjust pick the best one and give us that one?” It took me a few minutes to understand, and my hair stood on end. Why would I want they,whoever theyis, picking my coffee? And in Africa (and frankly, parts of the American south), I watched as institutionalized racism turned my stomach. In Australia, I got into a cab, and soon after outof a cab, when the driver began spewing racial epithets and talking about the new Abo bars he had installed on his car. In Australia, many cars have pipe bumpers on the front that they call “Roo Bars,” referring to the fact that they are designed to keep kangaroos, when struck by the car, from damaging it. Abo bars refer to Aboriginal people—you understand why I got out of the cab. The man was a pig.

Here’s my point. There’s a lot to criticize about the United States. Racism, sexism, gender bias and ageism are alive and well in America—the country was founded, after all, by a group of white slave owners.. There is a growing income gap, driven by the overzealous forces of capitalism, that is tearing at the very fabric of the national society. Educationally, we are in a tailspin, and the perceived value of education for the sake of education and its profound impact on the future of the country is at an all-time low. 

Politically, we’ve never been more polarized. Some months ago, I had a conversation with a very well-educated man—I emphasize that, well-educated—in the deep south, who took exception to something I said about the polarized nature of American politics. So, I invited him to have a conversation. 

“What do you believe?” I asked him.

“I’m a Republican,” he replied. 

“That’s not a belief—that’s a club you belong to,” I pushed back. He couldn’t get past that. So, I tried to make it easier. 

“Look—I’m going to give you a series of questions; answer any one of them. Here we go: Tell me one thing that we could do in this country to fix the education system, or healthcare, or the economy, or infrastructure, or political gridlock, or the widening economic divide.”

He was unable to answer. But he reiterated his position as a Republican three times. 

This is part of the problem. In the 60s and 70s, the chant that was often heard or seen on bumper stickers was, “My country, right or wrong.” Today, it seems to be, “My party, or my candidate, right or wrong.” And this is where I have a fundamental problem. 

In the United States, we have a tricameral government to ensure checks and balances, to prevent one of the three from becoming more powerful than the other two. And, we have a two-party system, because they are ideologically different. One conservatively stresses small government, big business, and a culture of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. I applaud that, when it’s possible. 

The other party advocates for larger, more involved government, expanded social programs, and a more liberal approach to success. We need both, because somewhere in the middle lies the fundamental essence of democratic freedom. Today, however, there is a massive, unfathomably wide gap between the two ideologies, driven by political zealotry, greed, and government representatives who have forgotten that public service was never intended to be a career, an opportunity to feather one’s own nest. Government is not a business—and yet, based on the money that changes hands, and the extraordinary influence it wields over decisions that affect the governed, it is.  

And yet: I support American Democracy, the so-called American Experiment, because I’ve seen the other side. I know what happens when totalitarianism is allowed to flourish, eroding individual freedoms, crushing the hope of women and minorities, destroying entire swaths of regional and national economies, stifling individual and organizational innovation, forcing businesses to flee to more open countries, slapping down the will of the people, and shuttering the media.

And this is why I wrote an essay on Facebook, in response to the so-called Helsinki Summit a year or so ago, in which I said this:

I never express political arguments on a public forum, but for this, I make an exception. As someone who grew up in a country run by a dictator, and has traveled and worked in more than 100 countries, many of them run by despots and autocrats whose police harassed me because I carried a camera, required me to register my phone and laptop because I might engage in subversive activities, and suppressed the rights of their people to have a basic, fulfilling life and denied them a voice over their own destiny, I say ENOUGH. I can tolerate a lot, but this decision on Donald Trump’s part to ignore and openly criticize what we stand for as a free people and as a democratic nation goes far beyond ‘a misstep.’ This is not politically motivated on my part: it is motivated by indignation, anger, disappointment and shame. I am tired of having to spend the first half-hour of every class I teach outside of this country, trying to explain the actions of this pompous fool who pretends to represent our country. ENOUGH. ENOUGH. ENOUGH.

That paragraph above, that talks about what happens when totalitarianism and one-person rule are allowed to become the law of the land, describes Russia, North Korea, China, Turkey, Venezuela, Myanmar, the Philippines, and others. 

Now, cast an eye on the United States. Singlehanded, unilateral decisions, in the interests of big business, are swiping away vast swaths of public wildlands and National Park and Monument holdings. The current president and his appointees are giving a voice to extreme right-wing ultra-nationalists and white supremacists, destroying years of civil rights work. Women are once again fearful that their individual reproductive rights will be taken away, thanks to conservative appointments. News flash: a woman’s body is her and hers alone to govern, and governments cannot and should not legislate morality. That model is already taken: It’s called Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. 

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. 

And what of the incipient trade wars looming on the horizon? Yes, there may be reasons to engage in tough conversations with our economic allies about trade imbalances, but waging a tariff-based trade war is not the answer. Here’s what we know from economic history that goes back to 15th-century China, when they were the dominant economic force on the planet. Global competition keeps the price of many goods down, which is good for everybody—and which is severely impacted in a tariff war. Free trade allows access to a wide range of services and goods, which tariffs diminish. Many of the gains of protectionism are short-lived and counter-productive; in fact, periods of protectionism have a historical habit of ending in economic downturn, most notably the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Closer to home, and more relevant in today’s world, when trade barriers go up, jobs that rely on the Internet disappear, as the barriers to the free movement of capital and labor get higher. Companies that are protected from outside competition may flourish in the short term but are invariably less efficient in the longer term. Finally, foreign importers may cut costs to offset the impact of tariffs, which further exacerbates the problem. 

A couple of months ago, I was in Northern California and southeastern Oregon, and I got into a conversation with a farmer who runs an enormous operation—thousands and thousands of acres. I asked him how things were going, given the talk of tariffs and such. He told me that tariffs were the least of his concerns, although they wereconcerns. His biggest issue was that his entire workforce had disappeared, because of fears of immigration coming down on them. And, all thoughts to the contrary, he couldn’t find local people willing to do the work that his previously Hispanic workforce was willing to do. He told me that he was down 80% of his staff, and that that was common across all the farms in the area. His solution? “Easy,” he told me. “Since Trump’s immigration policies have made my workforce disappear, I can’t operate my farm. So, I’m moving my farm to Mexico. The country is giving me tax breaks, so it’s a great deal.” 

Great deal indeed. If the workers can’t come to the farm, the farm goes to the workers. And, of course, any products shipped out of Mexico to the United States will be classified as agricultural imports and will therefore be taxed at a higher rate—which means higher prices at the grocery store. Very smart.

Finally, I have to speak out on behalf of the Press. I believe fervently that the single most important Freedom listed in the Bill of Rights is the first one: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.One thing that makes our system of government as good as it is, is that the press has the right, the obligation, and the responsibilityto question government at every turn. That’s its job. When I hear our current president taking potshots at the Fifth Estate, it chills my blood. If you don’t want the press questioning your actions, then don’t engage in controversial actions that attract their attention—or if you do, have a cogent reason why to share with them. And by the way, be happy that you live in a country where the press has the right to do precisely that—and doesn’t serve as a marketing arm of the government. Again: that’s called Iran, or Russia, or North Korea. The free Press serves as our collective societal conscience, and today we need it more than ever.

So yes—our government is not perfect, by any measure. It has warts, ugly parts, and is prone to make mistakes. But it also has an obligation and responsibility to ultimately do the right thing for the people of this country. Yet here we stand, watching the chief executive of our country hurl racial epithets at elected officials because he doesn’t like the fact that they are doing their jobs. Are they young, perhaps naïve, and inexperienced? Yes, some of them are. They are also correct. Giving voice to white supremacy, putting children in cages, sanctioning the kind of jingoistic, racist chants that have no place in this country—I say, ENOUGH.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. 

From the consent of the governed—not the other way around. 

This is not about blame: it’s about responsibility. It is not a partisan issue; it is a People of the United States issue, and ‘people’ includes those that we, the governed, place in office to serve us—not the other way around. As I told one person, this challenge is not political—it’s genital. It’s time for the people of this country, starting with the so-called Republican Party that refuses to sanction the man they put into office, to grow a set, put on our big boy pants, and do the hard work of being responsible by reminding Washington, through our voices and actions at the polls, that this country is better than its government, and that the government serves the will of the people. I’ve spent too much of my life seeing firsthand what the alternative looks like in less-privileged countries: we mustnot and willnot allow despotism or nationalism to define who we are. We’re better than that.

Here’s the full text of Edmund Burke’s letter. Pay particular attention to the final paragraph.

Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. 

No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

I close with this. I recently read Brené Brown’s book, Braving the Wilderness. In it, she suggests four actions that would go a long way toward helping us get through this dysfunctional, angry, blame-ridden period. She says,

1.    People are hard to hate close up. Move in.

2.    Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil.

3.    Hold hands. With strangers.

4.    Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart. 

Those four statements are profound, and they define, as clearly as anything I’ve ever read, the soul of America. It’s time to get back to that, to the Shining City on the Hill, the model of strength, kindness, reason, and diplomacy that much of the world holds up as the model of global decorum. Speak up, think, be curious, and act, people. It’s your right, and it’s your responsibility. We owe this to our children, and we owe this to the world.

Hi folks, thanks for dropping by. This is an essay about a topic that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and the more I think about it, the more important it becomes in my mind. It’s so important that I’ve decided it deserves both a paper, which you can find a link to in the show notes, or and its own episode. The topic is reverence. I know—it’s kind of an odd subject. But trust me—you’ll be glad you read this (or listened to the Podcast version at the Natural Curiosity Project). More than a few listeners have told me that this is the most important program I’ve written since I started the Podcast.

I recently read Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which a couple of con men come to town and proceed to fool everyone into believing that the cloth from which they tailor fine clothing is so special that only exceptionally intelligent people can see it. Stupid people see nothing, so when the con men hold up “clothing” made from this magical material, no one actually sees anything, but at the same time no one wants to look stupid, so everybody oohs and aahs about the beauty of this fine, fine cloth—up to and including the emperor, who can’t see it either. But he orders a suit made from the stuff, which he then displays, publicly. Everything is going fine until a small child asks, “Why is the emperor walking around naked?”

This story has a lot to teach us about modern society. The child wasn’t being courageous when he asked why the emperor was naked, but he was being curious, making an observation that only the truly innocent can reasonably make. But adults? When they toss common sense and critical thinking to the winds and agree with their equally myopic neighbors that the emperor’s new clothes look quite fine indeed, they do no one any favors, least of all the emperor. 

If you’ve read my book, the Nation We Knew, then you know that I have a love-hate relationship with social media that leans more toward the hate than the love. In today’s society, this drive to act, do and think like everybody else—this groupthink—is dangerous. I deeply believe that social media—and I mean virtually ALL platforms—drive this behavior, making us all feel more important than we actually are, while at the same time mentally and emotionally driving us to feel inadequate in the face of all those people we see online who are CLEARLY head and shoulders better off, richer, more important, happier, better adjusted, better traveled, better fed, and more respected than we are. I’m sorry, but that’s just awful, and it’s patently false. Social media does something to us that is destructively ironic: it creates the illusion that we are special, that we stand out from the crowd, but it does so by actually making us indistinguishable from the crowd, while simultaneously punishing us when we don’t play along. Every time we get a thumbs-up or a like, we take that as subliminal, endorphin-driven confirmation of our individual value. The result? “Look at me-look at me-look at me” becomes the mantra of society. 

We call our contacts on social media our friends, yet we couldn’t pick most of those people out of a lineup. We base our self-worth on the number of electronic responses we get from a system that is carefully designed to feed our ego, instead of basing it on the number of people we made smile today, or gave hope to, or opened a door for, or helped carry a heavy package to their car. 

In our ‘uber-polarized’ world, whether we’re talking about politics, or science, or medicine, or education, or any other topic that only seems to exist in a binary form—usually best described as “my way, or wrong” —people who have grown weary of the intransigence on both sides often pull out the phrase, “Let’s seek common ground.” But like so many things, that phrase has lost its meaning. 

Common ground doesn’t just exist; it isn’t just out there, ready for two or more people or groups or ideologies who fundamentally disagree to simultaneously stumble across it and shriek, ‘Eureka!’ Common ground—let’s just call it what it is, ‘agreement’ —has to be actively sought out, hammered together, fought over, and deliberately created, with all sides actively listening to all the other sides. Think about it: If common ground freely existed, then we wouldn’t have the intensity of disagreement that has paralyzed so many processes today. So, in my mind, ‘seek common ground’ is about as useful as ‘hopes and prayers.’ Lots of smoke, but no heat, and even less motivation for action that creates meaningful change.

I just finished reading, “Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue,” by Paul Woodruff. Woodruff defines reverence as “The well-developed capacity to have feelings of awe, respect, and shame, when these are the right feelings to have.” He defines awe as that overwhelming sensation we have when we’re in the presence of something bigger than ourselves, like the Grand Canyon or the Pacific Ocean, or when we’re standing in the nave of a medieval European cathedral, or watching a magnificent sunset, or when we hear a poem or a piece of music that brings us to tears. Awe defines a transcendent moment.

Respect is exactly that—a deep feeling of admiration. And shame? Shame is the hard one among the three, because we typically associate it with guilt. But that’s not what it means here. Woodruff defines shame as the ability to look inside ourselves and feel remorse for having done something that we’re not proud of. Shame is the force that drives us to be better. 

Woodruff also draws a strong connection between reverence, community, and ceremony, in the sense that ceremony without reverence for what the ceremony represents is just a meaningless ritual, and does nothing to create a sense of shared community purpose. A good example is religion. Different religions believe different things, and while a reverent Christian will disagree with the fundamental beliefs of a Jew or a Muslim, reverence says that the Christian can still show reverence for Judaic or Muslim beliefs. 

This made me think about the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, DC, one of our most sacred national monuments. The reverence displayed at that ceremony makes it stand for something—something profoundly important. And if someone giggles, or talks, or in any way shows disrespect for the ceremony, a soldier walks over and in no uncertain terms gets in the offender’s face and makes it crystal clear that their behavior will not be tolerated. Why? Reverence. 

This is important, because the instant we lose reverence for what this ceremony and others like it represent, is the moment that democracy begins to fail. When reverence is lost, the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is reduced to a theme park display, and the soldiers might as well be replaced by animatronic characters. Ceremony becomes mere ritual, a process of going through meaningless motions.

When I look at the ongoing political turmoil that plagues any number of countries today, an idea strikes me. Think about the extreme right and left wings’ actions in the US over the last few years. The extreme right attacks the recent presidential election as being fraudulent; they attack the voting process as being corrupt; they attack opposition candidates for any number of venomous and usually half-baked reasons; they physically attack the national capitol. 

Meanwhile, the extreme left attacks organized religion; often vilifies national pride; declares capitalism to be irretrievably corrupt; paints the police with a generalized brush of undeserved evil; and declares entire industries to be like great plagues. All those behaviors are uniformly awful. But after reading Woodruff’s book, it occurs to me that what they’re actually attacking, and attempting to destroy, is the reverence that we as a nation hold for all of those ceremonial symbols of our democracy. In other words, they’re not attacking the voting process; they’re attacking our reverence for the voting process, one of the underpinnings of a free, democratic society. Because if they succeed in doing that, they destroy our reason to fight for it as a powerful symbol of national community, the sanctity of national self. You don’t have to like the outcome of an election, but you do have to accept the results with grace because of our shared reverence for the election process, which has been in place since the beginning of the nation, and which has proven to work, properly, time and time and time again. About this, Woodruff says,

Voting is a ceremony. It is an expression of reverence—not for our government or our laws, not for anything man-made, but for the very idea that ordinary people are more important than the juggernauts that seem to rule them. If we do not understand why we should vote in this country, that is because we have forgotten the meaning of ceremony. And the meaning of ceremony is reverence.

And power? Woodruff says this:

Power without reverence is aflame with arrogance, while service without reverence is smoldering toward rebellion. Politics without reverence is blind to the general good and deaf to advice from people who are powerless. 

More than a few bells are going off in my head as I read those words. 

As I think about this theme of secular reverence, and how it is being attacked, the ghost of poet W. B. Yeats is whispering his poem, “The Second Coming,” in my ear:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 

The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world; 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity. 

If you’re a regular listener, you know that one of the themes I return to repeatedly is the battle between tribe and community. With that in mind, I offer this hypothesis. The application of group wisdom and the practice of reverence lead to a tight-knit, functional community, whether we’re talking about town, country, nation-states, or a business. On the other hand, groupthink, the worship of the status quo which all forms of social media harness as they strive to fuel the flames of confirmation bias, together with the worship of unfounded secular beliefs as opposed to facts (vaccine resistance comes to mind), lead to tribalism. The difference between the two is profound. Community leads to courage; tribalism leads to recklessness. Community is about inclusivity; tribalism is about exclusivity. Community unites; tribalism divides.

Processes, like technologies, come and go as the times change. That’s the sign of a vibrant, evolving society. What must be protected at all costs, however, is reverence for the drivers behind those processes. Whether we vote with a paper ballot, or by raising our hands in town meeting, as we often do here in Vermont, electronically, or by mail-in ballot, doesn’t matter. What matters is why we do those things. Therein lies the priceless and precious essence of living in a free society.

Imagine a technology that can instantly deploy a high-speed, wireless communications network that cannot be disrupted. Designed for disaster scenarios, but, as readers soon discover, it also serves as a powerful weapon against political disaster—namely, a totalitarian regime that depends on its ability to suppress the media and free press as a way to control the message.

In 1987, my friend and mentor, Tom Vairetta, and I were sitting at a table together in Pacific Bell’s headquarters building in San Ramon, California, drinking coffee and plotting global revolution, or whatever telephone company geeks and bit weenies did when drinking coffee in the company cafeteria. Even then, I was an author, cranking out articles for local magazines and book concepts—although my first published book was still ten years away. One day, Tom and I had a conversation that started with the phrase,’ what if…’ That was in 1986; 36 years later, I released BrightStar. 

BrightStar revolves around a fictitious technology that makes it possible to rapidly deploy a high-speed communications network that cannot be disrupted. It’s designed for use in disaster scenarios, but, as readers soon discover, it also serves as a powerful weapon against political disaster—namely, a totalitarian regime that depends on its ability to suppress the media and free press as a way to control the message. 

It’s a well-established truth that revolutionaries go out of their way to first control the public media when fomenting revolution. But what if a technology came along that made that impossible, a technology that, when deployed, could instantly establish a wide-area, high-speed network, with zero dependence on ground-based infrastructure? That’s the idea behind BrightStar. 

I’ve worked in the telecommunications industry since 1981, and have written

more than 30 books about the technologies that underlie our fixed and mobile networks. Somewhere along the way, I came to a realization. These technologies just work—period. And what they really do, what we usually forget they do, is connect people to people, people to opportunity, people to hope, people to their competitive advantage. That’s what matters: who cares how fast a network is; who really cares that I can download an 8K, feature length film in 1.5 seconds? What I really care about is this: If I deploy this technology, how will it create greater human potential? How will it create economic growth? How will it strengthen the power of a free press? How will it make education and healthcare more effective and efficient? How will it empower organizations to achieve competitive advantage? And how will it create more transparent government? 

In my two most recent novels, The Nation We Knew and BrightStar, technology plays a key role. Check them out—I guarantee a wild ride! And if you like those, check out my other novel, Inca Gold, Spanish Blood. It’s a great adventure built around SCUBA diving, salvage, treasure hunting, and life-threatening treachery.

#BrightStar #IncaGoldSpanishBlood

A lot of people ask me why I cast Mike Rowe, of Dirty Jobs fame, as the nation’s Chief Infrastructure Officer in my novel, The Nation We Knew. It’s a good question.

To summarize, The Nation We Knew is the story of national change that’s brought about by a singularly remarkable event. What would happen, the book asks, if the self-serving denizens of Washington (both sides, by the way) could set aside their ideological differences and put country ahead of party. What if, the new president asks, we could leave the donkeys and elephants outside to tear up the grass, and come together as responsible adults, intent on moving the country forward in every possible way in a bipartisan, common-sense fashion?

One of the ways she (yes, you heard me correctly, she) does that is by appointing a functional cabinet in which every member has deep expertise in the responsibility of their position. So: the person heading up defense has spent considerable time in the military. The person responsible for intelligence has been both a field operative and an administrator in one of the alphabet agencies. The person who owns education has actually served as a professional educator. And the person who owns infrastructure? They have hands-on experience in actually creating it and pulling together the kinds of people required to do so. And infrastructure? I’m not just talking about roads and bridges; I’m also talking about port facilities. Cybersecurity. Sustainable energy. Smart cities. Intelligent roadways. And, much more.

So, I got to thinking: what kind of expertise do we need to do that job? Well, clearly, we need people with degrees in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, architecture, and civil engineering. But we also need surveyors. Electricians. Designers. Heavy equipment operators. IT technicians. In other words, we need a combination of people with university degrees in complex fields, and we need people from the skilled trades. We can’t get the job done without both.

So, after a lot of thinking, it hit me like a brick in the head: Who better to be the nation’s Chief Infrastructure Officer than Mike Rowe? So, I asked his permission, and he graciously gave it. 

There’s another reason I placed him in that role. The United States is long overdue for a renaissance in the way we think about the skilled trades. Far too many people look at the trades as ‘the job you do if you can’t get a REAL job.’ Really? Without those skills and the people who know how to wield them, we wouldn’t enjoy the level of comfort that modern society affords us. Without electricians, plumbers, telecom technicians, heavy equipment operators, carpenters, framers, roofers, lots of medical and dental professionals, and myriad others, we wouldn’t have smart cities—in fact, we wouldn’t have cities. And by the way, have you ever had to call a plumber on a Sunday night because your pipes were frozen or your toilet wouldn’t work? Assuming you can even find one who has time to come out, you’re going to have to take out a second mortgage to pay the bill. And it’s not because they’re gouging the public—it’s because they’re making the salary that they’re worth, and it’s probably more than yours and mine combined.

There’s a lot more to the story in the book, so have a read and see for yourself. As it happens, even though he doesn’t think so, Mike Rowe is the perfect paradigm for a presidential cabinet member. We need more people like him in those jobs—you know, people who actually know something about whatever they’re responsible for.

I leave you with Putt’s Law: Technology is made up of two kinds of people: Those who manage that which they do not understand, and those who understand that which they do not manage.

#MikeRowe #TheNationWeKnew

Think about it.

The Nation We Knew on Amazon 

There’s an expression that I think comes out of Hollywood: “The only thing worse than people talking about you is nobody talking about you.” 

When I published The Nation We Knew, I quickly came to grips with the reality of that statement. Some of it was good; some of it wasn’t. And I find that curious.

Let me be clear: The Nation We Knew is a novel. It’s fiction. It’s not a treatise on political strategy, nor is it a political science textbook. It’s a fantasy. But based on the positive feedback I’ve gotten from the thousands of people who have read it, maybe it should be a political guidebook of some kind. And, based on the negative feedback the book garnered from the political fringes on both sides of the supposed ideological aisle, well, second that last comment. More than a few people have said to me, “This book should be required reading for anyone who runs for the position of dogcatcher all the way to those who have aspirations for the White House.’ Okay, I won’t go that far. Or maybe I will. Politicians have reached out with the same observation.

The novel is a thinly veiled exercise in leadership, the way I define leadership to be and as I’ve defined it for the last 30 years of successfully advising leadership teams on their approaches to being effective, courageous, passionate leaders. It’s about doing the right thing. And it’s about painting a picture for people of what could be, rather than a picture of what is. It’s about turning our backs on the status quo, about not accepting the phrase, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ about saying no to the idea that good enough is good enough. You know why? Because the moment we do that, we start moving backward, not forward.

When the book came out, it quickly rose to be the number one bestselling book in the world on Amazon in political fiction, and it stayed in that position for about two weeks. It still sells very well. But it also kicked off a firestorm of criticism: unrealistic, liberal, snowflake, and naïve were some of the words tossed at the book. But do you know what I found most interesting? More than half of the negative reviews—more than half—started out with a version of the following phrase: 

Well, I haven’t read it yet, but…

Seriously? And you’re therefore qualified to review the book because…?

Politically, I consider myself to be a centrist. I believe that we have two parties (I’m talking about the true Republican and Democratic parties, not the clown college that’s currently making noise in Washington) for a reason: They want the same things for the American people, and they approach those things differently. Fair enough. But I found it interesting that both I and the book were branded with the mark of the Liberal beast. 

I have a problem with labels, because labels are designed to oversimplify, to make it easy to categorize a person or idea or political stance without effort. So, I decided to go look up the definition of the label that had been affixed to my forehead. From the dictionary, I pulled this definition:

Liberal: “Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas.”

If that’s what ‘Liberal’ means, then I accept the label. What I don’t accept is the idea that different thinking means wrong thinking. Why? Because that kind of thought is what fossilizes us into the status quo, which is a deadly place to be.

The Nation We Knew is built around a very simple, but profoundly important, question:

What if.

There’s so much power in that. If only we gave ourselves permission to dream, and then acted on those dreams, it’s amazing what we could accomplish.

The Nation We Knew on Amazon