Category: Old Curmudgeon

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You Can’t be Generous with Other People’s Money

I don’t begrudge the old folks that extra $250 … well maybe I do.   The cost of living actually went down this year.   That means that Social Security recipients will not get an automatic increase this year, since the increase is tied to the cost of living. 

The President proposes just giving everybody an extra $250, justifying it as a sort of second (or third) stimulus that will not come from the SS trust fund.  It is hard to be against this generosity.  It is great to be generous, but since we already are living on the national credit card the money will come from additional government borrowing.  That means that the younger generation will have to pay this back – with interest. 

$250 doesn’t seem like much money and it is not – until you multiply it by the number of times you are going to give it out.   But the problem is NOT this particular small money.  It is the whole principle behind the quick resort to pushing the gold out the door.  It shows how difficult it is for government to stand up to any powerful group.  Entitlements already make up 2/3 of the Federal budget.   All the wars, parks, roads etc are included in the other 1/3 and that % is ever shrinking (it used to be 2/3 only a generation ago) because politicians like to be generous, but they cannot be.  All they can do is take from some to give to others.  It is not even up to a zero sum transaction, since some significant percentage leaks out in administrative costs or plain waste.    

There is a long tradition for politicians to bribe “the people” with their own money. Roman politicians got themselves into bidding wars for the loyalty of the people.  They lowered the price of grain with state subsidies until they were giving it away for free and sponsoring ever more elaborate entertainment for the mobs of people hanging around the city of Rome. Gladiators killed each other.  Prisoners were killed by wild animals.  The people loved to watch the spectacle while being fed at public expense.  The famous “bread and circuses” corrupted both the Roman state and the Roman people. 

It was easier for Roman politicians to be generous with the public purse than it was to help create the conditions for jobs and prosperity.  In fact, having a bribable mob at their disposal was a positive benefit and a preferred outcome for many.   In other words, some politicians did their best to KEEP the people in a state of resentful dependence. The people receiving this “generosity” thought watching gladiators kill each other was better than working and it became a self-sustaining downward spiral that contributed mightily to the decay and fall of the Roman Republic.  Nero, Caligula and Commodus (the one featured on the movie “Gladiator”) are probably three of the best known Roman emperors today.  They were all very bad and spectacularly corrupt.   But if you look closely at the ancient sources, you find that they remained popular with “the people” because they made sure the bread was plentiful and the circuses exciting. 

There are lots of good things we have inherited from the Romans.   I have written many times about those things.  But we don’t have to take their bad habits with the good and maybe after 2000 years we should not repeat their mistakes.

The picture up top is the Coliseum in Rome, BTW.  Despite its impressive structure, it was essentially a place where the Roman mob was placated by watching mass slaughter.  

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Wasted (on) Youth

It is not surprising that an aspiring geezer like me would think that the “youth market” is overemphasized in public affairs, but let me give you some of my reasons. (BTW – notice the suspension of good taste characteristic of the 1970s in the youthful picture on the left  You can’t see the platform shoes, very unpractical on the icy streets of Milwaukee.)

There is no Successor Generation, Just a Succession of Generations

We talk of a successor generation, but what we really have is a succession of generations, i.e. one after another.   Rearranging the words slightly as I just did almost completely changes the paradigm and drains a little of the urgency.   I really have to do the tedious digression in order to explain why we still view the world through this kind of generational prism.

The idea of the successor generation and the concept of generations on steroids in general is suited to a particular historical period that is now ending.   The “greatest generation,” the one that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II, is implicitly taken as the starting point.  The worldwide apocalyptic effects of this conflict and the economic depression preceding it, coupled with the never before reach of mass communication meant that people who experienced the war and its aftermath had a unique common experience that shaped them as a generation in a way not seen before or since. 

The end of the wars, both WWI and WWII that so comprehensively changed the world was a kind of a starting point for a new world. This created the idea of a generational personality and this impression was strengthened when people with the war experience ruled the world and set the pace for an unusually long time. Their numerous children were the baby boom, the largest and most affluent up until that time.  The Boomer conflict with GI-Generation parents played out as a clash of titan generations rather than normal piecemeal generational change.  This was also something very unusual, but since we grew up with it and in its shadow, we think of it as normal.  

When I joined the FS, we were in the stages of transition to the “successor generation.”  Supposedly, the new generations of leaders would be harder to deal with because they lacked strong direct memories of U.S. contributions during the war and American largess in helping rebuild Europe with the Marshall Plan.   Worse, the heroic World War II generation was going to be replaced by the generation of ’68, with its formative memories coming from the riots, disorder and unrest of those days.  Some of the former radicals still talked the talk, but twenty years of experience had made them a lot more reasonable.  Our fears that the radicals would bring down the system were unjustified (unless you meant the socialist systems of the Soviet Empire.)

The Stone Throwers of ’68 Became the Capitalists of ‘88

If the youth that rioted to overthrow capitalism in 1968 – in Europe it was even worse than it was in the U.S. – could turn into the tranquil bankers and bureaucrats of 1988, maybe capturing the youth in their formative ages is not so crucial.  But think of the even greater challenge that history just glosses over. The bureaucrats and bankers, the staunch U.S. allies facing down those rioters in 1968 had grown up during the severe indoctrination of Nazi Germany. It seems that people grow as they mature and they change with changing circumstances. Of course, maybe it is self-selecting bias, as the most extreme trouble makers just dropped out. 

There is an old saying, variously quoted, that if you are not a radical when you are twenty, you have no heart, but if you are still a radical when you are forty, you have no brain.  As I said, it is an old saying, at least a century old.  Some changes don’t change or put more elegantly – plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Anyway, the big, lumpy generational changes that seemed have been the rule during our lifetimes were an anomaly.   It will not be that way going into the future.  Instead we will have more constant change spread across the generational spectrum. The need to make your impression on “the youth” in the first-formative stages of their lives will be less crucial, even if you still think it is crucial at all after looking at the history of the transitions between the self-consciously patriotic generation of ’45 and the self-described ’68 radicals.   

For Everything there is a Season

Experience indicates that the best time to reach people is NOT when they are 18-20, much less an even younger age.  They just get bored. You are a lot better off if you wait until they are 28-30.   Few 18 year olds really care about politics, with good reasons.  They don’t have a real feel for what they want and they have only a vague idea of what directions their lives will take. It is like asking them to choose door #1, #2 or #3, w/o knowing what is behind.  They make better choices when they get better perspective, after experience begins to replace passion.

(BTW – I am not addressing basic tendencies and values, which seem to be established very early and may even be influenced by genetics.  Here we are talking about things that we might express in public affairs messages.)

People are very much subject to natural unfolding development.  There is a right time for everything.  You cannot teach a kid to talk or walk before he is ready and the same goes for a lot of things. It is possible to be too late, but it is more likely that you will be too early.  There are times in their lives when they are ready to hear a message or to make a change and a time when they are not.   

Most 18 year olds are not ready for serious public affairs messages.  I wasn’t.  My kids weren’t.  Reaching out to kids too early is like planting your flower seeds in February.   Most will not germinate and those you plant in April will easily overtake and surpass any that do poke up through the frost.  It is a waste to be too early.   Beyond that, you face the constraint of selection.  Only a minority of a generational cohort will be interested and/or able to act on any public affairs message.  Among 18-year-olds you have an undifferentiated mass.   To extend my garden metaphor, you are not only planting too early, you are also doing it indiscriminately, sowing seeds on rocks, sidewalks, sand and soil.   Seven or ten years later you can make much better choices since you can better see which among them are or will be opinion leaders.

Ephemeral v Enduring

Anyway, patience is a virtue and waiting until the time is right is wisdom.  Youth is overrated.  People are much more influenced by the realities of their own life cycles than by the skinny dipping they made into an ideological pool as callow youth.  If you are selling things that don’t last long, such as trendy clothes, cool games, fast food or various specific forms of entertainment, get those kids.  If you are “selling” ideas meant to last – and be acted on – for a lifetime, wait until the time is right.

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What is Art?

I saw an exhibit of state capitol buildings.  The artist, a woman called Susan Cassidy Wilhoit, shown in the picture, went around the country and painted all fifty of them.   I told her that the journey around the U.S. to all the states to paint the pictures would be a great story in itself.  I like representational art with a story.

Most of the capitols look a lot alike.   Classical domes – more or less resembling the national capitol – are most popular, but there is a significant share of non-descript tall office buildings.   North Dakota & Nebraska have particularly drab capitols.   That is Nebraska’s against the far war, BTW.  In fact, I wonder if those buildings even deserve the name capitol, which implies a more august building. Below is Wisconsin’s capitol.

I suppose some people would decry the lack of imagination among legislatures.   I don’t.  When you got a good thing, stick with it.  Most “innovative” architecture sucks, especially when a government is paying the bills and the architects can run wild with the public purse.  Left unchecked, they often indulge their idiosyncratic proclivities and pursue novelty w/o value.  It gets to be like the “Emperor’s New Clothes.”   Few people like those awful buildings, but who wants to say so out loud and appear to be a philistine in front of the cool sophisticates?   

Most great art and great architecture derives from the tension between artists trying push the limits to express their own particular vision and someone paying the bills and mitigating the creative but selfish impulses of the visionary, which, IMO, is why artists work better when they have to satisfy patrons, markets or somebody else in general.  Give an artist a no-strings-attached grant and they fall off the deep end of autoerotic peculiarity.   

Above is the Germania Building in Milwaukee, built in 1898. This is interesting, although not unique, architecture. The domes look like Kaiser helmets and my mother told me that there was some gnashing of teeth about that during WWI.  The vagaries of memory are funny.  When I looked at this building last week it stimulated a previously buried memory from when I was eleven years old.  My mother used to take me downtown to visit a Dr Rath.  He was bone specialist who looked after me after I broke my leg. His job was to make sure my legs stayed more or less the same length and he succeeded. I would get to take a day off from school and my mother would take me around downtown after the appointment.  Of course, she didn’t have any more personal memory of the WWI history of the Germania building than I do, and I cannot find confirmation on the Internet, but I think it is true. 

Another example of derivative but beautiful architecture is St. Stanislaw Church below.  

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Revenge of the Geezers

I am getting to that age where I get annoyed when I think we spend too much time thinking about the youth.   Don’t get me wrong.   My children are young and I used to be young myself.  I would be younger if I could. Youth has definite advantages.   But society is changing in ways that are leading us away from the youth domination of the recent past, which – BTW – may well have been a historic anomaly. 

Let me focus on the one area (other than physical prowess) where youth is supposed to enjoy the greatest advantage: technology.  A funny thing has happened on the way to complicated technology. As technology becomes more complicated inside, its use becomes more transparent and as it gets easier to use, more people easily use it.  You see this in the evolution of connectedness.  Early adapters were young, cutting edge and tech savvy.  Today the fastest growing user segment of Facebook is retired or close to it, those with the least familiarity with the newest technologies find them no more complicated than using a telephone. That’s progress.  If I asked you to picture an avid user of the new technology, I bet you would come up with someone young, maybe looking like that actor who plays the Mac on the PC v Mac commercial. But as I mentioned above, this is less and less true.   In fact, the most revolutionary aspect of the new media will be how it engages older people and brings or keeps them in the mainstream of society.   Older people have long excelled at sitting at home.  What does a guy with a computer do most of the time?  

Ironically, old people tend to resemble young people in a couple of important respects: many don’t have full time jobs and they have time on their hands.   Increasingly, that idle time is being invested online in both groups.

Labor force participation by ageI am not the first to say this, let me be among the most energetic in repeating that this age wave, supported by new technology is already happening.   You will see a continued diminution in the relative influence of the young.  IMO, marketers and politicians are insufficiently aware of this, despite obvious signals, and it is already biting them.  Take a look at this Pew Study from a couple days ago.  Let me hit the key quote, “According to one government estimate, 93% of the growth in the U.S. labor force from 2006 to 2016 will be among workers ages 55 and older.”

Watch the news reports of those town hall meetings.   Almost everybody who attends – pro and con – is either a senior citizen or soon will be.   And if you dig a little deeper, you find that they were often energized, informed and brought there by new media techniques, such as Facebook and Twitter.  The same technologies that keep you in touch with your grandchildren and fishing buddies can be turned to political or business goals w/o significant modification.  Those with their eyes on the youth didn’t see this coming.

The new media has already spread widely and it will continue to do so.  Nobody can ever keep up with all the permutations of technology. You may not have to as use becomes simpler. The day of the geek is coming to the close as we greet the bright dawn geezer.      

The Downside of Gray Power

I am not entirely happy about the new geezer power, even though I am more closely aligned with the geezer than the geek segments of society.   The biggest challenge our country will face is the exponential growth of entitlements, including Medicare and Social Security.  Entitlements already take up 2/3 of the Federal budget, up from 1/3 a generation ago.  That means that all the military, roads, foreign aid, post office, science, national parks etc spend only take up half as much of the budget as entitlements.   At current trends, in around twenty-five entitlements will take up ALL of what we now spend in Federal dollars (and we already spend too much).

FDR was very clever when he set up Social Security.    He made the retirement age 65, when life expectancy in 1933 was only 63 and he sold it as a fund, when it actually is a giant pyramid scheme.   The system worked well when giant generation of baby-boomers was working to support the smaller generations of their parents.   But now the baby boom is hitting the old folks’ home like that lump in the snake.  My generation will have to accept relatively less from these sorts of government funds than our parents did.   Politically, this is going to be the hardest thing ever.

I hope my baby boom generation – the biggest, richest and most assertive generation in American history – uses its new media leveraged gray power wisely. We cannot take all we are “entitled” to; we have to leave something on the table for the next generation.  They are OUR children, after all.  They need to keep more of their money.  The trends look good for us to stay active.  We are healthier, sharper, more able and many are willing to work longer, as the figures I mentioned above indicate.  Maybe it is better if we work and save just a little bit more for ourselves, work a little longer and let the kids off the hook a bit.  Continuing to be productive is (or should be) the price of staying influential. 

Social Security has been a fantastic success and there has been a lot of progress in America.  Back when FDR created the program, most people worked at jobs requiring hard physical labor.  They were literally worn out after a life at work.  Most retired when they couldn’t work anymore and shuffled off this mortal coil soon after.  Life has improved and so has liveliness of old age.  Yes, things have changed since the 1930s.

BTW – there is an interesting article about what might happen to assets as the baby boom retires at this link.   

BTW2 – people asked me about the cat in the picture above.  I just needed a picture and that is just a strange looking cat Alex and I saw in Rome.  We thought he looked a little like Hitler. 

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Nasty Little Losers

I watched a rerun of Annie Hall. It has been around long enough that it evidently has become a classic; it was on PBS, so it must be classy. I mostly watched it for old time’s sake and as a kind of thought provoking commentary on a particularly shallow part of human nature. I used to like Woody Allen, but I now find his persona on-screen merely annoying.  

I would credit Woody Allen with creating a hateful character just to call showcase the flaws, but  his on-screen personality is evidently better than his real-life one, so he is just being a better version of himself.  And there are a lot of people like him, so let’s consider the real characters that Woody’s screen character represents. 

In one scene, Woody’s character complains that he cannot be happy as long as he knows that one person on earth is miserable.   He implies that this is somehow noble. Of course it’s just stupid.  But it is worse than stupid in many cases. Here’s why.

I have known many of those guilty types who claim to feel terrible about the world’s suffering. But they very rarely do much about it. IMO, they think that the fact that they feel guilty is a kind of penance that absolves them of the responsibly to do anything proactive. The Woody Allen character is a horrible human being, for example. He is selfish, unreliable, dishonest, weak and just a general shithead. He causes suffering in the people around him. BUT he says the politically correct things and he feels bad about the state of the world. This, in his opinion, buys him an indulgence. 

We sometimes mistake such attitudes as intellectual.   Of course, we have to recognize that intellectual does not equal intelligent, at least in the current conception. An interesting definition of a modern intellectual is that he loves all mankind, but cannot think of too many individual people he likes.  This is the Woody Allen character and unfortunately there are more. 

I wonder why I ever found this funny. I don’t object to the sharp, cynical or even nasty humor. It is just that the wimpy perpetual victim is not funny or attractive. I guess I can make the excuse that I was a lot younger and less experienced. That kind of pseudo-wisdom appeals to the pseudo-educated and that was me back when Annie Hall came out. IMO, you have to pass through that stage, where you are a little selfish and cynical AND you think the rest of the world is that way too. If you are lucky, it passes quickly, although some, like Woody Allen himself, seem never to recover. It is sad really.

If everybody likes you, you are probably a kiss-ass w/o a strong personality or values. On the other hand, if nobody likes you, you are probably an asshole. It is unlikely that you are that seriously  misunderstood. It is not nice to “blame the victim” but sometimes the victim is to blame and some people are not only unhappy themselves, but they inspire unhappiness in others.  No good can come from being around them.  And since you probably already know how to be unhappy, you cannot learn much from them. Well … I suppose you can learn by negative example, and maybe I should thank Woody Allen for showing me things I would never want to be.

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Sustainable Health &Fitness

Alex was making fun of my workout.   He said that I didn’t work out that long, I went too fast and my form was not good. He is right.   But I explained to him that he was missing the point.  My workout is SUSTAINABLE. I have been consistently working out w/o significant breaks since I was in 7th grade that is more than forty years.  So I figure have the right to pontificate about these things.

My weight workout consists of only eleven exercises three times a week.  I use the machines at Gold’s Gym and I can do the whole thing in less than ten minutes if nobody gets in my way. Of course, somebody usually does get in the way. Some people have the obnoxious habit or resting while sitting on the machines, but that is a subject for another post. 

The exercises are balanced to let one set of muscles rest while the others work.  I don’t know what the exercises are really called, so I will just name them what I think they are.  In order they are curls on the isolation pad, complete pull down to knees, sitting bench press, sitting rowing, flies, wing pull downs, inclined bench press, pull downs, bench press, dumbbell curls, military press.  Moderation in all things is important, so I don’t push the weights up too high.  My highest weight is the bench press where I use 240lbs. I have learned NOT to push too hard or add too much. 

I think warm up and stretching are overrated. I get warm up enough riding my bike over to the gym.   I also think hydration is overrated.  I never bother to drink during workouts, even when I run or ride my bike and am out for hours.  There is time enough to drink before and after. I drink from bubblers if I find one, but otherwise I go with Coke Zero.   I sometimes put ice in the glass. I also like to eat watermelon or pineapple when I am thirsty.  And I think water is overrated.   I spent a year in Iraq hydrating with Coca-Cola, BTW.  I don’t say everybody should follow my idiosyncratic habits, but it works for me.

I have been running regularly since 1973.  I started out of necessity. I used to like to be in the woods, but the woods near Stevens Point, Wisconsin (where I was an undergraduate) were so full of mosquitoes that I had to move at a trot to avoid being eaten alive. But it wasn’t really running for workout until 1978.  That was about the time they invented decent running shoes. I had some “waffle stompers” and used to run along the lake trails in Madison or through Warnimont and Grant Parks along Lake Michigan. 

My system for running is actually time, not distance based. You have to run at least twenty minutes to get a decent workout.   When I go to a new place, I run out for twenty minutes.   Usually I walk back, which is good exercise in itself.    Now I have several variations of the run. My favorite local runs are around the Mall in DC.   But I have run in some great places. In Norway, there was a run through a place called Bygdoy. It was a mix of forest and nice farm fields with crops and good looking cattle.  The King of Norway owned the farm.   He evidently didn’t need to make a profit, so it was beautifully maintained in a traditional form.   In Poland, I used to run in Las Wolski, among some of the most magnificent beech forests I have ever seen.  As I have written on several occasions, running is more than exercise, but it IS good exercise. 

I think it is nearly impossible to be truly fit w/o running, but I bet I log more total aerobic hours on my bike.   I ride for transportation and I almost never ride just for pleasure.   But it is a pleasure to ride.   My ride to work is seventeen miles, or it was to SA 44. It is around 15 minutes less to my new office, but I still have to ride to the old SA 44 Metro stop.  I just have to finish the ride after work. I am allowed bring my bike on the Metro after 7pm, but it is way too crowded by the time it gets to Foggy Bottom.  Oh yeah, I have compromised on the riding both ways.

BTW – You see the picture of my bike and me at the top.  Notice that I don’t have those silly lycra tight shorts.  Below are storm clouds gathering over the Potomac, seen from my office window.

I ride to work in the morning, when it is relatively cool, but I take the Metro home.  I think this actually means I ride MORE total miles because I do it almost every day and it extends the biking season.  I don’t like to ride in the dark or the twilight.  I work until 6pm or later and it takes around 1:20 to get home, so that means that if I need to ride home my biking season doesn’t start until April and is over in early September. The one-way trip buys at least another month on both sides of the season. I also admit that I am lazy about the ride home.  I used to do both ways, but I more often found good reasons not to use the bike.  I also used to get caught in afternoon thunder showers a lot.  Now I know if it is not raining when I take off in the morning, I am probably okay.  Besides, it is mostly up hill on the way home and often against the wind.  The Metro is a good choice.

I could ramble forever, so let me get to the bottom line. Every good exercise program must include both strength and aerobic training.   To be sustainable, it must be integrated into daily life and cannot be so hard that you will avoid doing it. That means that you sometimes have to compromise.  Sometimes it is good enough.   It is great to pursue excellence, but most of those people fall off the edge before they reach middle age.  It is also good to have something you can do cheaply and by yourself. It is hard to find any activity that is less expensive than running or walking.   You have to buy a new pair of shoes maybe once a year.   Biking is also cheap. I bought my bike in 1997 for around $700.   I have replaced a few tires and tubes and I had to replace a sprocket once. I expect to have the thing for several more years, so I figure it costs less than $100 a year.  If I figure in the gas and Metro fare saved, I bet I actually made money. 

The caption on one of my old running poster says it all about exercise in general, “the victory is not always to the swiftest or the contest to the strongest.  The winner is the one who keeps running.” 

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Anti-Isms & Bogus Assumptions

We fret a lot about anti-Americanism in my business.  And we watch every up and down blip in America’s image abroad.   But I have suffered a crisis of faith.  I no longer have faith that the GENERAL attitude U.S.  really matters very much and my years of weighing every permutation were as useful as charting waves on the surface of a lake.  I don’t believe the measures of the attitudes measure real attitudes, since they bounce around so widely and I don’t see that it translates much into any actual specific behaviors apart from gnashing of teeth and shouting.  According to recent surveys, our national image was edging up before last year, but now it has surged, but it doesn’t seem to have changed what is happening in a practical sense. No surprise. Most people just do not act out of general beliefs, even if they really know what those beliefs are, itself a questionable assumption.  You also have to understand that people think about us a lot less than we think they do. Let me give you an example about others, which will take away some of the bias we might have from looking at ourselves.  

Let’s put the shoes on the other feet.   Take a look at question # 20 and see what Americans think of various foreign countries.   Only 4% view China very favorably, but this is twice as much as the 2% who favor the Russians.   We like the Brits, but even they get only 41% very favorable, although if you add somewhat favorable you top 77% and only 4% are very unfavorable.    A majority of us even like the French (54% very or somewhat favorable).  So what does that mean to these countries?  Would you pay more for a computer made in France or UK (presuming you could find one) than you would for the Chinese-made model?   Would you favor a British over a Chinese job applicant for that reason alone?  I don’t think so.

You would base your judgment NOT on the GENERAL reputation, but rather on the SPECIFIC one you were considering.  Anything else would be … stupid and bigoted.  Why should we assume that others would be that way toward us that we would find so odious in ourselves?  They say that all politics is local and so it is at least most public affairs.   Of course we know our reputation varies in the countries of the world, but also is variable in within every place, situation and individual based on specific circumstances.  I remember seeing this paradoxical mix of emotions and reason in Iraq. The people said they wanted the U.S. to leave Iraq right away, but they wanted the Marines specifically guarding their homes to stay essentially forever. I think the wisdom on this is “Be careful what you wish for because you may get it.” That is why general sentiment often does not translate to concrete results.  People sometimes don’t say what they believe and/or they question with their intellect what they know in their hearts. And sometimes they really just haven’t thought it through.

I thought about all these things when I was reading this article.   We hear that the Chinese are moving money  all over the world and buying love in the developing world with their investments in infrastructure  and public works.   These investments often come with fewer strings attached (i.e. fewer demands for economic or human rights improvements) than similar investments from the U.S. or the EU. This makes the Chinese ostensibly more attractive partners to some sorts of governments and leaders who view democracy and humans rights with less enthusiasm.  We are exhorted to do something about this, although rarely specified is how, what or why.

But how’s it working for them, image wise? And what are the practical ramifications?  That’s hard to say about the image, but what you can do is count is the rising numbers of Chinese being attacked, targeted and even killed in places as disparate as Algeria and Zambia.  Ten years ago in Indonesia as many as 1500 Chinese were killed in race riots.   This stuff happens.  We just don’t read about it very much.   Both the Chinese investors and local authorities have some interests in not making a big deal about it.  Imagine if 1500 Americans were killed in anti-American riots.  It would be a big deal.   I bet we would pay attention and beat ourselves up with questions about “why do they hate us?”  In places like Indonesia or Malaysia they have a long history of these sorts of ethnic tensions and periodic pogroms, but when you are talking about Algeria or Zambia you wouldn’t guess there were even enough Chinese around to provoke attacks.  Certainly they have not been around long enough to permit the development of deep-seated ethnic or national animosity. 

The evidence is that these troubles resulted from specific, local situations and events that got out of hand, not a general Chinese image problem that stretches from Algeria, through Zambia and Indonesia to Papua New Guinea and beyond. Properly addressing them would mean lots of local responses, none of them exactly the same. Causality regarding a practical overall image would probably run in the direction from the local to the general, not the other way around.   I think the wisdom on this is “watch you pennies and your dollars will look after themselves.”

So my faith in my profession is not gone, but I am zooming down more to ground level, maybe down to the dirt level.  Gone are the beliefs in sweeping transformations.    Sweeping rapid changes are ephemeral and episodic attention is probably pernicious.   What Aristotle said about anger (Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power, that is not easy.) also applies to public affairs.   You have to identify the specific issue and audience at the specific time and in a specific place. 

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Practical + Theoretical = Useful New Stuff?

I would like to bring together people for a conference including those who “do” public diplomacy using the new techniques and technologies such as augmented reality, social networking, text mining & mobile together along with those who develop and study those things in order to discuss practical applications.  

We need to discuss which technologies can be best used to deliver public diplomacy messages and that we and the larger public affairs community can use.  Integral to addressing these issues are our organizational and mission imperatives, which directly affect the extent of use and acceptance of new methods.  Not every new technology is useful for our work and not every useful technology can be used by us.

Subject clusters, along with notional times

8:30 – 9:00

Registration & seating

9 – 9:30

Introduction – new technologies and the new public diplomacy.    A discussion of what has worked so far and what is in the works for the next six months and beyond.

9:30-11:45 (with 15 minute break in middle)

The next big ideas – I envision a panel with an expert on each of these things giving a 15 minute explanation.  Following is a discussion among the panelists with questions from the floor.   We would ask what are the next big ideas and whether or not they are useful in public diplomacy. 

·         Augmented realty – what is it?  What does it do?  How might augmented reality augment public diplomacy?

·         Gaming platforms/virtual realities – what are they?  What is our public diplomacy experience in their use so far?   What are some future applications?  Will “holideck” functions come to dominate online collaboration?

·         Social networking systems – what are they?  What is our public diplomacy experience in their use so far?   What are some future applications?

·         “Old” new techniques (blogging, webpages, outreach) — what are they?  What is our public diplomacy experience in their use so far?   What are some future applications?

11:45-12:45

Content – how much do messages matter?  Can a content neutral or content free social network long endure?   Is such a network worth cultivating?   How can it be used to further public diplomacy goals?  Where will content come from in a post-MSM world (this one is for the journalist and journalism professors)?  Can user-generated content replace professionally crafted material? 

12:45- 1:30

Lunch

1:30-3:30

Putting it together – Panel session format as above

·         Integration/technological models – can one model encompass all/most forms of new technologies?   Can we understand the new technologies w/o an overall model or framework?  How can we determine the appropriate mix to use in various situations?

·         Integration/anthropological models – how do new techniques fit into and alter existing human networks & relationships, both inside and outside organizations?  

·         Integration/information management – can wikis function as information conduits and knowledge generators?  How will dispersed decision making change power structures and priority setting?   Can a series of tactical decisions become strategy?

3:30-5:00

Where do we go from here?  What is the future of public diplomacy?  Does public diplomacy need to be run by, or mostly run by, governments?  Can public diplomacy function successfully as only one voice among many?

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Is Viral Video Marketing Like Retirement Planning Based on Buying Lottery Tickets?

Marketing firms (and some of us) are trying to crack the viral video code. To the extent there is a solution, it is like buying lottery tickets. You cannot win if you don’t play. If you buy a lot of tickets, you increase your chances by a little, but any system for picking the right combination of numbers is just superstition.  And the only way to guarantee a win at the lottery is not to play. 

But people win just enough to keep the suckers piling in the cash.  The winners always have a plausible story to tell.   They often report that they were sure they were going to win that day, or at least they had a feeling.   Many have some kind of lucky number system, some quite complicated.   If you look at a group of lottery winners you can indeed find (or create) patterns among them.    (This is “survivor bias.”   In any kind of random event, somebody is going to win.   It doesn’t mean anything, but people will impose reasons ex-post facto.   The winner may even write a book explaining his system.   People following his precepts will have the same chances the lucky winner had of winning before he won.)

Besides the usually urgent need in need of dental work & gym memberships, most lottery winners are regular players with some sort of system.  Statistically this makes sense.   Regular players buy more tickets so they have a greater chance of winning as a group and most of them develop some sort of system.   But the group odds often don’t make sense when reduced to the individual level.  The odds of winning the big jackpot are so small that the actual difference between a person who buys a thousand tickets and the person who buys only one doesn’t add up to much for any individual.

Anyway, the chances that you can create a video that goes viral are a lot like your chances of winning the lottery.  And the odds will only get worse as more people enter the contest.    Millions of people are trying to crack this code because it would mean millions of dollars to any individual or firm that figured it out. But if they did, others would quickly pile on and pull the odds of success back up to astronomical.   The system is reactive & self-correcting.

It gets worse.  Most successful viral videos are – in a word – dopey.   Let me make a few distinctions.  There are three types of viral videos.   The first results if you happen to be on the spot to get a video of something truly spectacular, such as a plane crash or meteor strike.  The second involves celebrities, who command attention because of their fame.  The video rides on them, not the other way around.   The third type is the miscellaneous or the manufactured, which is the only kind available to non-celebrities who don’t happen to be near a plane crash or meteor strike. 

If you are trying to manufacture the viral part, you increase your odds mostly by doing something silly, humiliating, prurient or shocking.    This is not something most individual or organizations want to do.  It might be better to remain unknown than to be known for your ability to pass gas to the tune of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. 

So let’s treat the great viral video quest the way a reasonable person treats the lottery.  We should do it because it is fun.  Almost everybody has bought a lottery ticket.  You are buying a little piece of a dream and it is a good thing.   But if you are spending too much, even neglecting other things & taking out loans or planning your retirement around your lottery winnings, you are unlikely to have a happy ending.

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Racism and Beer (& Brat) Consumption

Equality can sometimes debase into a type of leveling that is the enemy of real diversity of variety. That was clear in an article in the Washington Post on “The Racial Politics of Beer” decrying the fact that “American brewing was and largely remains a white man’s world.”   What a supremely stupid thing to worry about.   But it is even worse than ordinary stupid.  It betrays that leveling mindset that find discrimination and conspiracy in every human difference that makes life interesting and enjoyable.

None of us has the same culture as our parents, because culture is in a constant state of change, but we can see the persistence of habits & values.  It would be very surprising – and very bad – if everybody just reacted the same way to everything. The basis of true diversity is difference and when you get differences you get different results. Let me write that in a separate line.

The basis of true diversity is difference and when you get differences you get different results.

Let’s think about beer.   They say that the ancient Egyptians brewed a type of beer, but we are heirs to a beer culture that originated in Central Europe in the lands that used to be part of the Holy Roman Empire.  This includes Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, along with parts of what is now Poland, France & Northern Italy.   The Germans even had a beer purity law called the Reinheitsgebot.  The English and the Irish also have a significant beer culture, as do the Danes and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians.   It tapers off from that home area.  What do you notice about the people living in these places?  Now people drink beer all over, but they still don’t always do it the same way or with equal enthusiasm.  Beyond that, many consumers of beer are not really part of the culture of beer.

Beer culture was not merely a matter of chance.    Beer is consumed in between the places where they can easily grow grapes for wine and where it is too cold and people consume hard booze.  Europe traditionally had essentially three zones from south to north and from west to east from wine to beer to vodka.   Water was not consumed much in pre-industrial days because it was so polluted and carried diseases.   People, even children, instead drank beer or wine, although the daily beer was a weaker version – small beer.

I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was a center for the American beer industry.  The other center was St Louis and there were significant smaller centers in Cincinnati and Western Pennsylvania.   What these places all have in common were lots of German immigrants. (I still drink beer.  I also eat bratwurst and liverwurst.  I guess that is just because I am privileged.)

In the early part of the 19th Century, one of the criticisms against immigrants was in fact that they were beer drinking boozers.  Beer drinking was not always a cool thing to do.   It still is not.

If you analyzed beer drinking, I am sure you would find significant geographical differences.  I am sure you would also find big difference based on ethnicity.     Big deal.   These differences are based on different preferences.

If you look for them, you can find differences in everything.  This is the way everything is. If you believe racism exists everywhere, you can find it in all of life’s variation and joy.  It is really true that people’s habitual view of the world is a confession of their own characters.  Maybe those who see crooks, racists, shirkers and idiots everywhere are just looking in the mirror.