Machiavelli and Ethics

When someone calls an action "Machiavellian" it tends to imply that person acting is doing so entirely out of a desire to acquire and retain power, without any regard to ethics. The thing I've always found so interesting about most unethical behavior - political, financial, social - is that in the best of situations, it's generally a wash. That peon you're screwing over to win favor with your boss - she might be your boss in five years. Not too bright, Machiavelli. That social program you're shutting down? It might be saving your budget this year, but the problems it causes are going to cost taxpayers much more than what you're saving. That river you're polluting to save yourself the cost of upgrading your plant? You're going to have to pay the piper eventually, whether it's when legislation catches up and you have to pay to clean it up, or you get your ass sued off for giving a bunch of people leukemia. Somehow, I don't think that Machiavelli was such a short-term thinker. A fast power grab today is not a good idea if it permanently tarnishes your reputation in the future. I think you can be a heartless bastard and still understand this fact.

I think the orientation towards long-term thinking is the rational side of ethics. We've so divorced ourselves from the "softer" side of our humanity in regards to work, that it's sometimes difficult to argue for ethical, respectful behavior. There seems to be a gulf between what is "professional" and what is "ethical", and I've spent a lot of time over the last two years contemplating why this may be. I have some theories, but they're not ready for prime time.

What I do know is that I can make a damn fine argument for behaving ethically to the most self-interested person on the planet. The thing is, I'm a fairly big fan of the free-market economy, in theory. But that economy is currently so short-term focused, that ethical atrocities seem to be taking place unchecked. If we could all pull our heads out of our collective asses and look down the line a few years, we might come to understand that instant karma is going to get you eventually, if not instantly. So the next time you humiliate an employee just because you can, or you vote against a needed social program because you don't want to pay $200 more in taxes per year, think about the potential long-term cost of those actions. Machiavelli would be proud.

s'more thoughts

I've been reading a book called Healing Through the Dark Emotions, by Miriam Greenspan. It's pretty cool, because it validates a lot of my own synthesis of the things I've learned from experience and study. Humans, especially modern American humans, have a tendency to run away from emotional pain. Back in the day, when our culture was less secular, we rationalized pain by saying that God was punishing us for our sins. Nowadays, we pathologize it and claim that not only are we suffering because we've done something wrong (not eaten right, not exercised enough, not prayed to the right God), but that suffering itself is dangerous to our health and should be eradicated. Newsflash, people, suffering is unavoidable. Also, life is terminal. Not happy facts, but facts nonetheless.

Greenspan (and the Buddah) believe that accepting suffering is the path to greater awareness, and a more fulfilling, awake, meaningful life. Greenspan thinks we're medicating ourselves into numbness and through avoiding our own pain, we blind ourselves to that of others resulting in things like emotional and physical violence.

I tend to concur. When I'm feeling scared or upset, I want to fix or eradicate it somehow. I often blame myself for suffering and try to find some way I caused it. This means that I've absorbed the idea that I can somehow prevent myself from suffering (that there was something I should have done differently), and I hurt because I've made a mistake. This seems pretty pointless, as a good portion of the time we don't cause our own suffering. Lots and lots of things that cause us to suffer that are unavoidable. I think that the idea of personal responsibility and personal power is great for helping you focus on your goals, but it's fairly shit for dealing with suffering. Suffering is a fact, and it doesn't matter if you brought it on yourself, your neighbor brought it on you, or it was an earthquake. All suffering deserves compassion, and I think that at least some of the people who espouse personal responsibility in this way (Stephen Covey, I'm talking to you) do so to not only avoid their own pain, but to inure themselves from the pain of others.

It's not that we shouldn't reflect and learn from our mistakes. I just think that in the moment that we experience emotional pain who or what is to blame is not so relevant, and the search for the source is a way we avoid the experience. After the storm has passed, reflection is a good idea and helps give meaning to our suffering and allows us to feel compassion for others. But in that moment, I think the best thing to do is actually check out that storm - is it rainy with sorrow, or full of jarring, bright, scary lightening? Not all pain feels the same, I feel fear in my stomach sometimes, and grief more in my back. Greenspan talks about the value of checking in with the body when we feel emotional pain and letting ourselves experience it rather than fight it. It's tricky, but when I have managed to do so, I've generally come out the other end a little wiser and much calmer.

While this may seem a bit of a jump, I think the topic actually relates closely to leadership and ethics. Leaders have responsibility to those who follow them, whether it's a transactional relationship (like a job), or a transformational relationship (like a priest or teacher). If a leader has no relationship to their own suffering, then the organization they lead can become a reflection of that inner disconnect.

In modern companies, fear is often viewed as an undiscussable and taboo emotion. To show fear is to admit weakness, and in our patriarchal organizations weakness is not tolerated. So the leader who not only hides their fear from others, but also from themselves, has no little incentive to experience compassion for the followers who feel fear, trepidation, or insecurity when facing a challenge. A culture then emerges where fear is banished from what is espoused, creating a powerful undertow that erodes at the morale, relatedness, and development of employees, and damages the organization as a whole. I believe that in this way unsurfaced and undiscussable emotions create entropy that organizations have tremendous difficulty diagnosing, let alone overcoming.

Thoughts on personal ethical responsibility

"As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side." - Gandhi

This encapsulates for me the issues I've struggled with in Buddhism. Gandhi, a Hindu, points out that the teachings of one religious leader or another never, ever, trump morality. If you behave in a way that is immoral (or unethical) you are acting against the will of your spiritual practice - REGARDLESS of what your pastor, priest, rabbi, or guru says.

I had a personal falling out with Shambala after I read some of the details of the founder's behavior. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche did some seriously unethical things in his life. He was promiscuous with his followers, he was known for being verbally abusive, was a raging drunk, and he even encouraged and condoned the promiscuity of his HIV-positive successor, resulting in several people becoming infected. Rinpoche did some amazing things in his life, too, and a lot of his teachings are really wonderful. Now, if you follow Buddhist teaching, everyone is allowed to be a fuck-up. Fucking up is part of what it means to be human. But in my estimation, he took this a step further, and found a way to conveniently sanctify his screw ups. He claimed that a guru could behave in an irrational, abusive, and destructive manner towards his student, if he felt that the student needed that experience to progress in his or her personal growth. He called this "crazy wisdom." Uh-huh.

Let's review Gandhi's quote again, shall we?

"As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side."

So do non-theistic Buddhists have a loophole because they have no God to answer to? As a non-theist, I'm going to answer with a resounding "no." If anything, we non-theists should understand with perfect clarity how important it is to strive to be ethical and compassionate in our lives, since we don't have a strong belief in a post-mortality cosmic spanking or reward. What you do on earth matters, because as far as we know, it's all we have. If you're unkind, cruel, or abusive towards another person, no matter how "enlightened" you are, I don't believe that it's justifiable. I'm not saying that you can be a teacher and never hurt someone's feelings. We're not talking about being truthful, we're talking about being deliberately hurtful.

Since the Buddah said that the first noble truth of life is suffering, I believe that life presents us enough opportunities to suffer and then grow, without some crazy-ass guru screwing with us. Call me crazy. Just don't call me crazy-wise.

There are countless examples throughout human history of a movement, religion, or organization deciding at some point that it supersedes the boundaries of morality. We all know, in retrospect anyway, that the Spanish Inquisition, the concentration camps, and 80's hairstyles were all fundamentally wrong (okay maybe not the last one, but you know what I mean).

I had a point here. What was it? Oh, right. No matter what you believe, you don't get a golden ticket that says you can turn your ethical decision making process over to someone else. And even if you think you do, you don't. Whether you have to answer to a God at the end of your life, or just your own conscience, your actions are your own.

Wherin the old and new intersect

I've been thinking a lot lately about my previous life as an opera singer, and trying to figure out how all that history integrates with the path I'm on now. For a while I've been feeling as if the "new" career is totally independent of the old one, and nothing that I learned in the music world applies to what I do now.

But really, that's not true. I've been part of many different types of organizations. Musical theater productions, operas, conservatory, orchestras, agencies, start-ups, corporations, and now grad school. Each shared some characteristics with some of the others. What I find especially interesting about reflecting on some of those less corporate environments is this: in some ways, they were the most functional and effective teams I've ever worked on. Now don't get me wrong. Performers, directors, conductors, the whole lot of them are notoriously narcissistic nutbags. There are very few exceptions. Impulse control, self-reflection, and other emotionally intelligent traits are not much in evidence. Verbal abuse, sexual harassment, and other misbehavior abounds. But somehow, maybe due to the nature of the endeavor, the show goes on. And it usually goes on alarmingly well. Everyone remembers their lines, makes their entrances, gets the lighting cues right, plays the right notes. When someone flubs, everyone helps to get the ball rolling again. The most assinine, self-centered conductor will help a singer out of a jam - mouthing the words or catching up if they rush. Sopranos who are snitty, petty competitors off the stage work beautifully together during a duet.

So what is the source of all this heroism? How do people who are generally less mature and self-realized somehow transcend the ethical and interpersonal quagmire that is corporate existence? Well, they don't, exactly. Misconduct is pretty common, but the funny thing is it rarely jeopardizes the final product. I think that something about the nature of the organization pre-disposes it to function properly and well, despite all the machinations of the individuals.

Conversely, lots of corporations are filled with people with good intentions, much clearer ethical rules, and subject to far more public and legal scrutiny. And yet, huge ethical lapses are becoming more and more obvious. If you've heard me talk about this before, you know the saw. The structure of the publicly held corporation - the fact that shareholders are not ethically or legally responsible for the actions of the employees - seems to predispose it to violating established ethical and legal norms.

I think this provides a pretty good argument for the foundation of our thesis. The organization has it's own personality, tendencies, and pre-dispositions that are a complicated blend of the collective culture, the values and goals of the founders and execs, and the market pressures. So much of the literature we've read for this program talks about personal responsibility. "Be the change you want to see in the world." Covey, Titchy, many of the others say that if you don't change it yourself, quit your bitching. But there are much stronger forces at play, and while I'm all in favor of setting a good example, there's another saying I tend to believe more: "Culture eats change for breakfast." And I'd like to add to this to the mix: the personality of the organization far supersedes the personalities of the individuals. And the legalistic or even conventional structure of the organization has a huge effect on that personality. Perhaps even an insurmountable effect.

Another thing that occurs to me is that concept of heroism. To be heroic (or to fit the hero archetype) one has to have something at stake - risk of loss, and some kind of transformational process. So a lot of the literature on teams and heroism often have a foundation or at the least a lot of case studies on the military. But in the military, there's a very immediate danger of death or dismemberment. So people have a lot to lose if they don't work together effectively, and the consequences of poor leadership and poor teamwork are dire.

While performing is not life-threatening, it can feel that way. Anyone who's ever had stage fright can attest that your body does not know the difference between that fear and a tiger running towards you. Your brain may say, "no reason to be afraid, just singing for some industry big shots." but your body says, "Tiger!" So again, the stakes are high, immediate, and the consequences of screwing up are psychological death and dismemberment of not only yourself, but your peers (and probably your reputation and career).

In the corporate world, obviously some survival instinct also comes into play, but not with the immediacy of a more time-restricted scenario like a battle or a performance. Maybe that's why dysfunction can creep in unnoticed, fester and grow, and then surprise the shit out of everyone when suddenly they realize that, oh, growth is at -30% and the CEO has been diverting money into his Swiss bank account. I also have a really hard time buying the CEO as Hero myth. No babies are being rescued from burning buildings, and the idea of a CEO making a major sacrifice for someone else (what with those compensation packages) is pretty laughable. So for me, that idea just does not resonate. Maybe we need to look at organizations through a different lens, and stop trying to find our heroes in those with positional power. Maybe the organization will be heroic when it re-defines itself into something more ethical, responsible, and connected to all the people that comprise it.

Just a thought.

General updates

General update:
I have a total of 28 weeks of class left before I (theoretically) graduate. How I do thesis research and coursework at the same time is a bit of a puzzle. I'm unrealistically proud of my 4.0 average, but prioritization may come into play during my last two classes and necessitate a B. Which is really counter to my uber-perfectionist-secretly-afraid-I'm-really-a-slacker personality. Hopefully I can pull it all off and also not drive David completely insane. Come December, I will have three, count them, three degrees to my name. Woo! Anyone know where I can get a business ethics related PhD? I keed, I keed. I think.

Further thoughts on the nature of leadership, ethics, and organizational culture:
Most organizations really don't know what they're doing. The things that the founders/leaders are comfortable with or uncomfortable with become conventions, and then they become unsurfaced cultural artifacts - rules of conduct that we generally pick up intuitively and then promptly forget. The problem is most people don't give a lot of thought to the fact that when they form an organization they're creating a mini-society in their own image. And all of our personalities are limited and flawed. So unless our founders and leaders are introspective enough to recognize this fact, some really strange, counterintuitive, and bizarre behaviors can become codified.

I recently finished what I hope proves to be my FINAL paper on my Former Place of Employment, and the most interesting thing I learned was how a really self-referential, self-reinforcing culture can blind people to physical, obvious truths. It's not just about how the culture effects the way you see things, it's about whether or not the cultural constraints allow you to see it at all. And in the case of my former place of work, the espoused (projected) internal culture was so strong, and so embedded, that as long as you can speak the jargon, wear the tee-shirt, and shake the super secret handshake, you can get away with pretty much anything. As you might imagine, this leaves room for some teensy little ethical problems. It means that crafty and unscrupulous people figure out how to work the system, and work it they do. Meanwhile the execs continue to comment on the openness and beauty that is their organization, even when evidence to the contrary has been formally presented to them by people they pay to do just that.

What is it in our makeup that allows us to put our faith in human systems that are by their nature flawed? Seriously. We're human, we're flawed. But we're always holding out for that nirvana-like place where we no longer have to think critically, question, or suspend judgment either way. I'm highly inquisitive by nature, but I do it, too. What gives?

Anyway, those are my Deep Thoughts of the Day. Enjoy.