I’m walking on my treadmill with my makeshift desk, typing out the broad-brush concept of my Echoes short story, thinking about the beliefs and possibilities we either cling to or cast aside.
“What weakens certain dreams?” I write. “What broke down the belief ‘I am beautiful’ or ‘I can be a writer’ or ‘I will find my true love’ in this fictional character? What breaks that down in each of us?”
Over the last few days, I’ve found new interest in conversations where co-workers discuss the struggles involved in trying to change their lifestyles or develop better, healthier habits. I’ve noted in myself as much as in others the ease with which we settle on the worst possible outcome in certain situations, seemingly assured by past experience that there’s no point in hoping for something better.
Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves really suck.
A muffled voice and motion in my peripheral vision gets my attention, and I pop out an earbud.
“Daddy,” my wild middle boy asks, “can I go outside and play?”
“Sure, if Mom’s cool with it.”
He darts off, and I notice our 4 year old Dude trailing behind him down the hall. And back again, as his brother heads for the door wearing a sweatshirt hoodie on Okinawa. I call his brother back and tell him to change his shirt into something more appropriate to the humidity and heat. And there goes the Dude, following his brother back down the hall once more like a duckling with its mother.
Who do we follow in life? Who do we look to for inspiration? Whose statements about the world around us hold the most weight in our minds? Whose statements about us do we accept as obviously true?
I have a coworker and friend who is a fitness beast. He does all that CrossFit / TacFit stuff that scares the crap out of me… stuff where you pile a bunch of weights onto some torture device and walk down the street, or you lay out giant tires and pound them with sledgehammers, or you squat untill your legs erupt in fire like volcanoes (and then you squat some more). He and his wife built themselves a gym in the garage, and he posts pictures of their workout efforts fairly often.
He’s also a great photographer with a gift for capturing beautiful moments with his wife and kids. One of his recent pictures came to mind as a perfect example of what I’m writing about here:
Photograph and copyright – Bryan Holm. Used with permission.
Who are we looking up to in life? Whose example are we consciously or unconsciously following?
And who might be looking at us, deciding what stories to believe about themselves based on our words and actions?
Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves really suck.
Packing a bag again for a few days away from home. At least it’s not months.
Explaining to my 4 year old that I’ll be gone for a little while. At least I’m leaving when he’s awake and I get to say bye for now.
Cancelling my leave that was scheduled for six months in advance because “we don’t have the bodies.” At least I didn’t spend any money on it and it’s not use-or-lose leave that might disappear on October 1st.
Stepping onto a plane for the 11th time in 13 days. At least I’m supposed to get some down time later this month.
Hitting my maximum allowable flight hours within a particular period and then got the waiver to just fly more. At least they’re still paying attention to the rules. At least we’re not in a situation like combat where dire and urgent need trumps the regulations for routine missions.
Flying several days for questionable reasons with little chance of accomplishing the mission. At least it was with a good crew that is in the same frustrating circumstance with me, so our individual miseries have great company.
Landing each day with enough time to get home, sleep, and go do it again the next day. At least the schedule changed so I usually see my kids’ faces for a few minutes before they go to bed or before I leave for work.
At least I am coming home each day (usually). At least I am not in a combat zone, threatened in the air or hunkered down on the ground. At least my family is well taken care of, and at least my wife is unquestioningly supportive and undeservedly patient.
I often joke that “I love my job” when there are reasons to complain. At least there are parts of it that I really do love.
Not all our servicemembers can say the same. Not all of them can claim the “at leasts” that I can. My heartfelt thanks to my brothers and sisters in arms in crappier places working longer hours doing harder jobs in worse conditions. Much appreciation also to the family members, friends, and loved ones who provide that support to the men and women wearing America’s various uniforms. You all make me proud.
I raised my right hand and swore an oath of my own free will. At least I serve a nation that–while admittedly imperfect–rewards honorable service in support of lofty ideals instead of demanding subservience to the whims of a dictator or ideology.
A friend posted a riddle presented in his managment class. “If the day before the day before yesterday is Tuesday, what is the day after the day after tomorrow?”
I came up with Monday, since ‘today’ in the riddle seems to me to be Friday. He had the same answer. The instructor said he was wrong, and the answer to the riddle was Friday. My linguist friends and I started tearing this apart trying to sort out what the right answer is and how to arrive at it. Some argued that the conditional ‘if’ phrase is trumped by the present tense verb ‘is,’ kind of like a grammar version of PEMDAS, the rule that guides which part of a math equation one must complete first. Had the question been stated “was Tuesday” instead of “is,” then Monday would have been correct.
(Or so they claim. I have my doubts. Not to mention, searching for versions of that riddle on Google pointed toward a similar-but-clearly-worded variant, one which doesn’t play a trick based on verb tenses but simply asks the reader to figure out the puzzle. I suspect the lesson writers or instructor copied the riddle wrong from the start. But I’m arrogant about these things.)
My frustration with the explanation boils down to playing a trick of grammar rules and definitions. Rather than speak clearly, the riddle as explained by my linguist friends ignores common usage of language and depends on an oft-ignored rule that supposedly shifts the meaning completely from what is implied. It’s someone claiming a simple answer depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is–technically accurate and a proper debate tactic, but readily dismissed as shady or truth-dodging by the average person.
I thought of this little exchange when my Facebook exploded with a mixture of Cecil the Lion and all the videos about Planned Parenthood. I very nearly posted a tweet something to the effect of
Maybe if there was a market for lion parts, PP supporters could get behind hunting. #profitsmatter
Then I realized that would do no good. It alienates rather than persuades. It mocks issues people care about deeply. And I think we have plenty of that already.
I got the video link for a feminist declaring “Planned Parenthood Isn’t Selling Baby Parts, You F@#$ing Idiots” and a day later, the right-wing response “Planned Parenthood IS Selling Baby Parts, You Freaking Feminist Hosebeast.” (They also sanctimoniously called out the feminist for dropping f-bombs left and right, while they stooped to a ‘clean’ version of name-calling that is no better in my opinion.)
Meanwhile plenty of people point out the disparity between response to the PP videos and the slaying of Cecil the Lion. Plenty of tweets and posts encouraging the murder of that dentist, whether by lion mauling or by drilling him a new orifice. Whichever side of the aisle your circle of friends leans toward, no doubt you’re seeing a ton of outrage that invariably paints dissenters as morons, idiots, worthless human beings devoid of morality. “How can anyone support this?!” both sides scream, while talking about two different subjects.
We’re talking past each other. Everyone’s speaking but no one is listening.
When the right yells about baby parts, the left sighs at best or swears at them, because the legal definition in our country is “fetal tissue” or “medical waste” produced by a legal and optional medical procedure. There may be aspects that are legally questionable, like whether “sales” are taking place or procedures are being altered from what the patients consented to in order to produce better remains. But “by definition” they’re not selling baby parts, duh, because you have to remember what the definition of “fetus” is.
And the right shouts, “How can you care about a stupid lion more than you care about the horrors depicted in those leaked videos? Look at the evidence; listen to the words of the doctors and the staff.” Many will admit if pressed that they’d like to see the hunter who killed Cecil prosecuted for where he broke the law, if indeed that can be proven. But to most, it’s just a lion, and doesn’t compare with the human remains shown in the PP videos. Going from a religious or moral definition of all human life as being precious, the anti-abortion / pro-life crowd can’t help but be furious about the sale of baby parts — because you have to remember what the definition of “life” is.
We’re all heavily invested emotionally into so many various societal and cultural issues that it can be hard to hit the brakes and take a look around. Maybe it’s a debate about white privilege and the #blacklivesmatter trend. Maybe it’s the Confederate flag, or gun control. Maybe it’s a fight for rights we feel we’ve been denied, or a challenging sense that the comfortable culture we once knew is slipping and changing into something far different.
The river of outrage in this country seems neverending. It’s easy to forget that there are people just like us on both banks.
Locking in on my one point of view and refusing to consider the opposition only creates tension, division, and strife. Yes, we might never agree… but at least I can do you the courtesy of listening to find out exactly what I’m disagreeing with, and vice versa. (For example, here is a challenging view on Planned Parenthood from a Christian man faced with an impossible choice.)
I’m grateful for my friends on all sides of these discussions who are willing to have conversations and dig down to the roots of where our points of view diverge. I spent a good chunk of yesterday morning discussing the value of life and the question “When is it justifiable to kill another human being?” I don’t think either of us walked away with a different point of view, but we maintained the mutual respect we’ve developed over the years.
For me, that respect is what matters. Rather than debate words and call each other names, we’ve made sure to define our friendship first. We’ve defined our individual morality to include striving to show respect for others, and we make sure our conversations on these subjects are guided by that definition.
A mind that won’t listen can’t be changed. And when my first thought is that someone else is guilty of this, usually I figure out that it’s me.
Let’s not categorize ourselves with “us” and “them” on this or any other issue. We are not engaged in a civil war despite all the cultural issues and debates. We have to figure out how to be “we the people” because that’s what this nation is founded upon and defined by.
The other day a Facebook post showed me a white police officer with the quote:
“It’s really simple–obey the law, and we’ll get along just fine.”
We do like our one-liners and hashtags when we talk about culture and politics in America. But anything that distills a complicated social issue down to one line is inherently ignorant, brushing aside facets and facts to make a punchy point.
I don’t think we should settle for ignorance, even if it sounds cool.
For example, on obeying the law, there’s a viral video showing what happens when two men legally carry their AR-15 rifles in public.
In case you don’t watch it, here’s the story:
The first man (average Joe white guy) is walking with a couple friends, all recording what comes next. A policeman shows up, exits his vehicle, approaches and asks for their IDs. The man says, “No, you have no need to take my ID, I’m not doing any crime.” The officer accepts this and begins questioning why the man is walking with an AR-15. The man replies, “Just exercising my rights as a legal firearm owner.” While the officer isn’t happy with this, the camera fades and we see nothing else after that.
The second man, who the video description calls a black man, walks down a street with his AR hanging at his side, untouched. His pregnant wife follows behind, both recording everything that happens next. A policeman stops in the street, steps out of his vehicle, draws his weapon and yells, “Get down on the street.” While the man lays in the street, he explains what he’s doing. “I am a legal firearm owner, exercising my rights to open carry, are you detaining me, sir?”
Not only is he detained, his wife is too. She is ordered (at 7 months pregnant) to sit on the curb while all this is sorted out. More police arrive, first one with gun drawn, then another car, then two others and still another. The police calmly approach and remove the AR, then search the man despite his protests and refusal to consent to search. He is led off to the sidewalk, his gun is taken (presumably for a check against some database), and a K9 unit arrives.
Both men obeyed the law but experienced a very different situation. One man was able to challenge the officer and flat out refuse to comply. One man’s life was threatened immediately for an extended duration.
Should I still believe it’s as simple as “Obey the law, and you’ll be fine” then?
But the sword of ignorance cuts both ways. There’s more to the story than the viral video suggests (go figure).
The two videos were shot in two different towns, one in Oregon, one in Nevada. What are the crime rates and demographics of those towns? We don’t know. From the video’s limited view, they do appear to represent two different economic levels. Is violent crime more prevalent in one than the other? Several factors can affect how police respond.
Both men set out to make videos about open carry rights, not anything race-related. The “black” man is actually a Hispanic Filipino. Certainly other minorities also can endure disparate treatment, so I’m not saying that to downplay the ridiculous difference in responses.
Supposedly a report was filed about the second man brandishing the weapon, but the video (and the longer original version) shows proof he did no such thing. Still, that report might partly explain a much more aggressive response.
The point is, an argument that chalks everything up to race might miss some key points. More importantly, I’m concerned by what seems like misleading and inaccurate presentation by this group claiming some kind of fair experiment where the only difference in the two clips is skin color of the gun owner.
In the process of writing a novel about racial tensions, I took time to research others’ experiences as well as what drives our reactions to race. I believe race is a factor in how we respond to one another on an unconscious level. I believe it because there is scientific proof.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink goes into this snap-judgment mechanism that helps our mind process myriad flows of information on a subconscious level. His book shows how this can be good in some cases, detrimental in others. In making his points, he presents examples of properly conducted scientific and sociological experiments. He addresses how our minds deal with the many emotions and notions we bring to the subject of race.
The end result? Turns out we’re all pretty racist, on the subconscious level. Thankfully, most of us control or resist those feelings very quickly, because we believe it’s wrong to judge someone on skin color. Yet experiments prove there’s still a delay between our conscious better reasoning and our unconscious first judgment.
Most of us–even the enlightened and progressive, even the cops–respond differently at first to the darker skinned person in cornrows than to a lighter skinned man.
Knowing that means we can think about it, talk about it, recognize it and work to reduce how long we operate off that misguided initial snap judgment. And then we can also talk about all those other factors and sides of the story that influence race relations.
That conversation won’t be simplified to a one-liner, and we can’t be satisfied with attempts to do so, regardless of which viewpoint we support.
This is a long post from about a year ago, written by Sam Harris, noted atheist (or perhaps anti-theist).
As with any complex issue, the subject of Israel and the Palestinians is not easily resolved or reduced to a clear-cut solution. But Mr. Harris points out what I know I’ve felt is a great disparity, and he lays out his case in a careful, thoughtful manner.
I don’t agree with everything he wrote, of course. But his assessment of this situation seems spot-on to me.
There’s a lot of froth and excitement on the Interwebs about the recent episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which involved a graphic rape scene.
For a number of fans, this crossed a line and forced them to give up the show–a show which up to now has been extensively violent and sexual, with depictions of incest, dismemberment, beheadings, sadism, murder of children, murder of a pregnant woman and her unborn child, and the exploding of a human head with one’s bare hands… to name a few choice subjects.
The series is full of questionable matter, but we all draw our lines in the sand differently.
On the one hand, some question what makes rape any different from the above. The show’s writers are clearly depicting a horrible world in which people with power often abuse those without power, including through sexual assault. The perpetrator is an already-established cruel villain delighted by inflicting pain and stripping his victims of any shred of humanity left to them. Defenders of the show might say this accurately depicts evil, both in the individual perpetrator and in the world at large. This is the grim reality of the world Martin created in the novels and all too often reflective of the world around us. At this point, there’s sort of a sense that “you knew what you were in for when you clicked on this show, and you could turn it off if you really wanted to.”
On the other hand, is a rape scene necessary at all? Or is it a trope and a symptom of lazy writing? Abuse of women is all too common even in our modern “progressive” society, let alone medieval times–something I hope we’d all prefer to see changed. Doesn’t portraying such violence glorify or encourage the act? Is it just a cheap grab at the “feels” of the reader, an easy way to engender compassion or empathy for a character? Does the scene require graphic and detailed explanation? Will this moment serve a purpose? Or is it only there to prove the grittiness of the storyline? Are we pushing an edge to say something meaningful, or simply because there’s an edge to push?
I have to ask, what’s wrong with a simple fade-to-black? When the lovers passionately kiss and start pawing at each other, they can close the bedroom door without showing anything specific, and the meaning of that moment isn’t lost. When the sadistic villain makes obvious threats about what he intends to do with his captive, again, we don’t need to see it take place to guess at what actually takes place between scenes. When the killer is bearing down on his intended victim, we don’t have to see a knife plunge repeatedly into someone’s body to understand the peril of the moment.
I know, that’s a nicety for the prudes and the oddities who don’t want or need to see nudity and blood splashed on every other scene. There’s a reason this particular show plays on HBO and not NBC primetime.
And this leads me to think about writing and storytelling. Whether we’re talking graphic sex, graphic violence, or a combination of the two, I have to ask: What’s the point of it? Is it shock value or storytelling?
I’ve seen the question posed long before this episode of Game of Thrones. And I’ve given it some thought, but only in the distant sense of conjecture. Then I considered my fantasy novel, currently in first-draft form being read by a selection of alpha readers.
There’s a scene early on where the main character is assaulted. When writing, it struck me that rough men willing to murder an innocent and isolated woman would probably also have no qualms about taking advantage of her situation. I don’t provide a heap of details, and the moment “fades to black” before anything graphic takes place. In this case, the desperation she feels in the moment triggers activation of a hidden power as yet undiscovered, which leads to the rest of the events of the book.
One of my friends pointed out that the scene lacks the sense of utter powerlessness and helplessness that would take hold during an actual assault. There’s a sudden crippling realization, I’m told, that nothing you can do is going to stop this from happening.
Maybe that’s part of the fantasy, I guess… that in this one case, someone trapped in such a terrible situation suddenly finds empowerment and escape, and stops the assault before it goes too far.
A mantra I’ve often heard among writers is that “every word has to do double work” meaning every word counts and serves a purpose. There’s no room for bloat and fat. So if we include anything graphic in our creative works, it ought to have a greater point than mere spectacle or sensationalism. We can show how evil respects no boundary formed by civil society; that doesn’t mean we simply violate social bounds to show off.
I’m not sure that’s the guideline the show is following, but it works for me.
I’m curious: what are your thoughts as a reader or viewer regarding graphic violence and sexuality in a written story, movie, or television show?
In the aftermath of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo’s offices, social media filled up with images and hashtags proclaiming solidarity with the victims and the importance of free speech. Yes, perhaps the act of drawing a caricature of the Prophet of Islam might be offensive to many, but that offense did not justify brazen violence and murder in retribution.
The countries of the West always love to proclaim the value of freedom, especially freedom of speech. Yet the conversation changes more and more toward: “Freedom of speech is an essential foundation to civilized society, but…”
That “but” is the problem.
From the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. The artist must not have gotten the memo about drawings of the Prophet… pretty sure that’s white out.
Garland, Texas is fresh on my mind even if most of America has moved on to the new royal baby or whether or not Tom Brady and the Patriots were punished enough for Deflategate.
It’s on my mind because of news reports that cast the failed attackers as the victims and the event organizer as the true villain. It’s on my mind because of opinion pieces that question whether this sort of free speech is really an American value. It’s on my mind because the reaction–not to the violence but to the expression that supposedly instigated it–flies in the face of my experience of what it means to live in a pluralistic and tolerant society.
Tolerance and pluralism do not excuse blaming and shaming the targets of attempted murder.
But victim-blaming works for news stories, like the headline: “Pam Geller won’t apologize for event that ended in 2 dead.” As though their decision to attack and attempt murder was completely taken out of their hands the moment the event was announced. Maybe she should apologize for failing to die in a hail of gunfire along with several cartoonists and the Dutch politician that also attended?
And it works for op-eds that argue “that’s not the kind of American values we want to encourage.” Yes, free speech and all, we’re told… but not THAT sort of free speech, because it offends sensibilities. (Forget that plenty of other free speech offends plenty of other people’s sensibilities, but it’s still protected because that’s how this works.)
We even have world leaders like the President and the Pope giving this argument some weight.
When the President says “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam” then it makes one wonder. Who does the future belong to? What level of critique or even satire is acceptable? What other religious figures are equally off-limits?
Yet the name of the Christian savior is most commonly heard as a form of profanity. “Jesus Christ, did you see what that other driver did?” The figures of Christianity are regularly made into caricatures believers rightly call blasphemous. No one’s name-dropping Buddha or Mohammed as a swear word.
I see multiple episodes of South Park with a soft-spoken Jesus Christ running a public access show to announce his return. A quick Google search gave me pages of image results from the show as well as links to the wiki describing Jesus as a regular guest apperance.
But the show’s creators made one episode with one segment several years ago depicting Mohammed and giving him a taste of the same biting wit they regularly employ against everyone and everything else. And that show has been removed from Comedy Central’s archives and blocked from (easy) access online because… why?
Surely it’s not out of respect or concern that “these aren’t the sort of American values we should encourage.” Otherwise, all those Jesus episodes should likewise vanish. So… what’s the difference between the two circumstances?
When the Pope responds with (and I paraphrase) “if you make disparaging remarks about my mother, you’re gonna get punched in the face,” he admits that sometimes violence is an acceptable response to words we don’t like. Then it’s hard to deny that there must be some cases where this logic justifies taking action. Maybe it’s in response to words we don’t like. Or drawings, or belief systems, or lifestyles, or being female.
This line of thinking matches well with a different (arguably) religious figure: ISIS propagandist Junaid Hussein. His statement in response to the attempted attack in Garland was, “If there is no check on the freedom of your speech, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions.”
It echoes Muhammed Atta’s false promise to the passengers on the hijacked plane: Just stay quiet, and you will be okay.
I’m not okay with that. We’re finally growing past excusing violence based on the victim’s behavior and characteristics in many segments of American society. And by growing past, I mean more of us are more vocal about calling out and condemning that sort of misplaced shame.
We’re not there yet. But fewer people buy lines like, “Look at her short skirt–she wanted it” as an excuse. We won’t let a husband claim, “she made me hit her because she burned dinner again.” We don’t accept “I thought he might come onto me and it creeped me out” as a justification for bullying homosexual kids. We question the narratives we’re given when use of police force seems unjustly applied.
And yet, when statements or drawings are deemed offensive by the strictest interpretations of one religion, we fold like paper and shrug. “Yeah, I mean, why would someone do that? They knew it would set those guys off. It’s pretty rude. In fact, it’s downright un-American. I mean, violence is wrong, and everything. But if they wouldn’t do stupid things like that, then it wouldn’t be a problem.”
Does that sound like someone roaring “I am Charlie” in defiance against unjust aggression and attempts to instill fear? No. Is that a valiant defender of free speech standing up in solidarity with those who have died for expressing their views? No.
“Just don’t do what we don’t like, and we won’t hurt you” — terms of surrender, not peace, whether the threat comes from Muslims or Christian fundamentalists, liberals or conservatives, whites or blacks, heterosexual or homosexual.
We can post a je suis comfy hashtag, and call it American values if that makes it more palatable.
Last week, I read a few posts on friends’ FB walls about the Supreme Court hearing arguments for and against legalization of same-sex marriage. Friends who lean left are delighted at the prospect of marriage equality. Friends who lean right lament what seems like a further shifting of moral standards away from Christian values. Some discussions popped up about whether pastors could be prosecuted for refusing to condone or conduct same-sex marriages in their churches.
My gay friends hope that one day the government might afford them the same rights as heterosexuals.
On the other hand, religious friends fear that one day the government might punish the faithful for so-called hate speech and Orwellian “thoughtcrime.” And it makes them all the more adamant that they must stand up and stand firm on their beliefs in the face of the changing culture, no matter the odds stacked against them.
After all, that’s what devout people do.
I pondered the comments and posts I saw from my Christian peers last week, and one question came to mind: Why are we hoping in the law on this issue? What drives this all-consuming (and often failing) Right Wing push to stop same sex marriage? Since when did a law accomplish the kind of redemptive work of grace that we as Christians praise and proclaim?
Consider Paul’s words to the early church in Galatians 3. Did Christ die on the cross to put in place more laws, or to free us from them? Do we get right with God by strict adherence to the law or by grace through faith? If faith makes us right with God, then why would we set our hopes on establishing laws–a system that our holy book clearly shows could not and will not save a soul? And if the law doesn’t save a person, yet saving souls is the very mission Christ gave His church, then why are we putting laws in place to enforce Christian morals and beliefs on a secular nation?
And why limit our law-making to this one area? Why not fight for laws against greed? Pride? Gluttony? Laziness? We talk a lot about “America was founded on Christian values” and people fight to keep the Ten Commandments in front of the courtroom as though that’s the foundation for the American legal system or some kind of Bill of Rights. But where then are the laws against worshiping other gods (Commandment #1) or creating idols and symbols of worship (#2)? Why is our God’s name used in profanity with impunity (#3) and why do so many Americans work on Sunday (#4)? Where are the laws requiring honor and obedience toward parents (#5)? And why aren’t there laws making adultery illegal (#7)? Why can people get away with lying everywhere but when they’re under oath (#9), and why is it acceptable–even encouraged–to desire what belongs to others (#10)?
Admittedly, some of those were once laws on the books in various parts of the country. And over time, they’ve been removed. Not as an evil plot to draw America away from God and drag our nation down to hell, but out of respect for the idea that our government was never intended to legislate a religion, and our religion is founded on the idea that legislating morality is inherently doomed to failure.
Yet we’ll trot out our arguments once more, and claim this is the battleground of the day, the place where the line must be drawn in this culture war.
Well, I find myself waving the white flag. Not at the opposition, as if to say I give up my beliefs or my faith in God or my adherence to biblical principles. But at my own side, to say, “Cease fire, we’re shooting at the wrong target, doing more harm than any perceived good. Lay down the guns, lay down these attempts to use law as a weapon.”
I know most of my side is just going to keep firing away, convinced–in spite of our own doctrine to the contrary–that human nature can be fixed by a legal statute or amendment or court decision. And I’ll probably look to them like an enemy or at least a supporter of the opposition.
But I’ll keep making my own and waving that flag despite the odds. After all, that’s what devout people do, right?
White Flag, by Jan Jacobsen, available for use through Creative Commons.
On the day SecDef announced the new U.S. mission in Afghanistan, I hit my 20-year time-in-service mark.
The long-running Operation ENDURING FREEDOM is finished.
We didn’t hear about the change until the 31st, and then only through commercial news media. Everything official assumed we’d be called something else. My deployed crew and I were in the middle of planning the first sortie of the new year, so we went with Chuck Hagel as a pretty good source of guidance.
When we landed, at the end of the day, leadership was still confused about what named operation we supported… because their leadership was still confused. Multiple names floated around. No one had even heard of FREEDOM’S SENTINEL.
It’s frustrating… partly because it makes us all look like bumbling idiots trying to figure out the change, and mostly because the humor of my joke was lost:
We’re the good guys. We have America Lasers.
Sorry, it’s a hastily-done drawing on whiteboard. If you want a good picture, check imgur. I have missions to fly and stuff.
Comic book fans will recognize this as an old-school Sentinel, a giant death robot programmed to find and eliminate mutants like the X-Men. (If you saw the newest X-Men film, modern “cool-looking” Sentinels feature heavily.)
But given that our tasking and guidance remained exactly the same, it’s hard not to feel a sense of “So What?”
An individual on my crew put together this helpful chart that reinforces the point:
(And there’s years of missions flown all around these two countries… but that would get cumbersome if included.)
Sorry, whiteboard again. We had other things to do (or so I’ll maintain).
When I went through Professional Military Education, we had lengthy lessons on Change Management. The idea is, change is hard and scary, which causes people to resist it. So there’s a good way to implement change, and some bad ways to avoid.
If you can make a change known well in advance, you can get your experts on board to figure out how the plan will work. Questions are answered before they’re asked in the heat of the moment; problems are solved before they’re encountered on the flight line. Ideally everyone contributes, and the plan becomes both better and well-known. Then, when leadership says, “Execute the plan,” everyone carries out the change with enthusiasm and support that comes from ownership.
I’ve seen this process go poorly over the last 20 years.
I’ve seen leaders declare sweeping changes without considering what obstacles stand in the way. I’ve seen people ignore regulations governing how we do business, in order to shift to the “new” plan–when no one knows what it is.
Whole squadrons arrived at work wondering “What exactly is it that I’m supposed to do today?”
I sat in a conference room with the leaders of every office in the squadron at a meeting that opened with, “Since the re-organization took effect last week, we’re going to sit down now and figure out how we all fit in to accomplishing the basic mission of this unit.”
That’s a question that maybe could have been answered well in advance.
I left that meeting with a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities on my shoulders and on my peers. Better yet, I felt equipped to communicate that vision to my subordinates, who had the same questions I did.
I also stepped out of the room and immediately spoke in private with the officers in charge of operations. “Sir, if feedback flows both down and up, then can we make sure the message goes up the chain that what we’ve just done is the exact opposite of everything we teach about how to implement change in an organization?”
To their credit, both officers I spoke with agreed completely and admitted they’d felt the same frustrations. I overheard a conversation with higher-ups where one of the officers I’d spoken to conveyed my feedback and challenged the superior’s mistaken view that creating chaos and thrash in the unit was beneficial, since it would make everyone give 110% to figure out and implement the change.
When I look at this news and how this change has come about, it leads me to believe one of three things:
1) This name change is purely cosmetic. Since it seems nothing fundamental or practical is different from my last OEF sortie to my first “whatever we decide to call this” sortie, I find this very likely.
2) Too few in power care that we do things well–we just need to do things. We teach a right way to implement change that produces ideal effects. But we are often directed to execute the opposite–doing whatever someone higher up the chain desires, at once, regardless of whether its fit existing rules or structures. And asking questions to make sure we’re legal or compliant with standing regs is viewed as a frustration and hindrance. I’m not sure whether that all applies in this situation, but it smacks of the same “rush to change” I’ve seen elsewhere.
3) What I’d hoped was an isolated “one bad apple here or there” case of poor management seems to be a hydra of similar leaders. Ignorance of what’s going on–throughout a squadron, a community, a region, a theater of operations, and so on–that’s going to happen from time to time. But willful ignorance, once an issue is called out, is unacceptable. It’s also called negligence. Or apathy. Or complacency. But definitely not leadership. Again, I’m not sure this directly relates to our changing-but-not-really operations in Afghanistan. But it matches up with past experience.
True leaders realize what they lack, own up to the fault, and then make corrections and adjustments. It’s refreshing to see that happen. Those people stand out from among the drones and yes-men committed only to their own promotion.
We need more Sentinels of that sort, not the robots.
Happy New Year.
The home of David M. Williamson, writer of fantasy, sci-fi, short stories, and cultural rants.
