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Time & Money

These are the notes of a short presentation I will give at one of our conferences.

Nothing we do is rocket science.  My guess is that most people think they already do most of the things we will talk about.   But proper management is like diet and exercise. The principles are simple and well known, simple and well known, but not easy to do consistently and not much followed.

We worry about budget cuts.  Let me stipulate right here and now that money is important.  My programs might improve if I had more money, but maybe not.  It depends on how it is used. Ben Franklin said that time is money.  You can indeed sometimes trade one for the other. You might be able to buy a rush job.  But time is less flexible than money and I will talk more about using time wisely and well than I will talk about specifically saving money.  Time is our limiting factor because of how we work today.  Our paradigm is partnership, not patronage.  This means deploying intelligence to find points of maximum leverage and sometimes not contributing any money at all. 

It is time for my short digression, my suitable story. This one is about a guy who is locked out of his office.  He needs to get in immediately and calls a locksmith, who tells him that he can help him out, but it will cost $50.  The guy agrees and the locksmith shows up.  He takes a look at the lock and gives it a little tap.  The lock springs open, whereupon the locksmith asks for his money.  “$50, the guy protests, for making a little tap.  Let me see an itemized bill.”  The locksmith gives him what he asks.  The receipt reads: $.05 for tapping the lock open; $49.95 for knowing where and how to do it.

As I said, nothing we do is rocket science.  Our value added also comes from knowing where and how to do what we do.

We want sustainable programs.  Sustainable implies something that can survive WITHOUT our continued infusion of OUR resources, so I have been trying to avoid things that cost a lot of money and mostly succeeding.  Although has been said that some people have too much money but nobody has enough, I sometimes have enough money; I never have enough time.

Do important things – do the most important things.  This implies saying “no” more often than saying “yes.”

I once heard piece of music composed by John Cage in 1952 called “Four thirty-three”.   It is a three movement composition in which the musician plays nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.  The first time I “heard” this this I was not impressed.  When the musician told me that most people could not understand that “silence too is music,” I stood firmly with most people.

But the idea is not that nothing happens, but rather that listeners fill in the lacunas with their own thoughts and maybe become more aware of ambient sounds & other environmental factors.

I still don’t really appreciate this “music” but I do respect the idea that you can sometimes be doing a lot by doing less or doing nothing.  The spaces between are sometimes as important as the words or notes. 

Some of us think that if we are in charge and doing something, that nothing is happening.  This is probably true for bad leaders and poor managers, but it should not be the case for us.

This is my long way around saying that choosing what won’t do is as important as deciding what we will do.  Making the right choices does indeed allow us to do more with less, at least more of the right things. This is a simple concept, but not easy.  We have to cut good programs in order to have the time to do better ones.

Here are a few one liners

·         Pick the low hanging fruit

·         Do the easy things first

·         Don’t spend a dollar to do make a dime decision

·         Work through others

·         It may be better to be a small part of something big than a big part of something small

This last one is a big part of our success in Brazil. We played an important role in Science w/o Borders, an ambitious program to send 101,000 young Brazilians overseas to study in the STEM fields. This is much bigger and will have more lasting effects than anything we could have done on our own. It is not our program, but I believe that we were necessary, if not sufficient for its success. There are only two ways to get anything done. Success comes from a combination of pushing harder and removing barriers.  The mix matters. People often prefer to push harder, since it seems more active, but removing barriers is often more sustainable because it creates conditions where events naturally flow. It is like cutting a channel for water to run naturally rather than installing a pump to move the water.

So far, more than 15,000 students have gone to the U.S. on SwB program. It is an example of a true partnership.  Our goals and those of our Brazilian partners are perfectly compatible. Our job is to make their lives easier, to make it clear and easy to do what they want, what we all want.  A recent example is the acceptance in SwB of professional master’s degrees. It is the perfect SwB program, IMO, because it combines hands-on training with academic rigor. We worked to make information about such programs readily available to decision makers and make sure the pathway into American universities was clear and easy.  After the President of Brazil accepted the inclusion, the Minister of Education announced that 1000 slots would be made available, all for the U.S.  Why the U.S.?  Only the U.S. offers such degrees. We like a level playing field where we own the grass. Everyone benefits and we have a natural and sustainable system.

In the fields of education and English teaching, our Mission teams and those of our Brazilian friends work seamlessly together.  This remarkable achievement is based on trust and confidence.  Our friends know that they can come to us with questions and problems and we will try to find answers and solutions.  Beyond that, those connections can be and are made at the working level. Our connections are like Velcro, with lots of little hooks. We can do that because our people are energized.

Empower colleagues – This means what it says.  If I get a request or task, I try to put the most appropriate person in charge.  This may be an American; it may be a LES.  But I give them the task.  And this is the key point.   When they ask me whether I want to see it before the send it to Washington/DCM/Ambassador, my answer is often “no, just copy me.”  I usually don’t check it before it goes up. If I do check it, I pride myself on making few or no changes.  They know what they are doing.

My colleagues also have authority to do many things autonomously.   If it is within their scope of authority, they need not ask permission or fear retribution.  I expect that they will consult with colleagues as appropriate.  I may suggest that they work with particular ones, but I try not to. If they are the most appropriate person to do the job, I presume that they know more about the details than I do.  It is presumptuous and arrogant for me to believe that I know better and it wastes a lot of time, mine and that of others.

Letting go is very hard in our State culture.  All FSOs are smart. We have the capacity to remember lots of things and this gives us the illusion of control as well as the inclination to substitute our judgment for that of others.  As leaders, our job is to create conditions where others can exercise judgment.  We all can buy into this in theory, but in practice it means that I will never be able to know all that is happening in my organization.  I don’t even try anymore.  This is not because I am lazy (well, maybe). It is because I choose to use my limited time to do things more important, more appropriate for my particular talents or position or using my time in places where my value added is greatest.

There is a story about the dictator of North Korea, Kim Il Sung.  According to the story, Kim knew pretty much everything and once when his engineers were building a dam, he immediately saw that they had not chosen the right location and made them move it.  You can see why the place works as it does, but there is a meta-lesson.  People evidently think it is a compliment to claim that the big boss would have the specific knowledge greater than his engineers.  We know that if that is true, you either have a horrible leader or horrible engineers, probably both.

It is hard not to want to seem to know more than we do.  We FSO don’t fear dismemberment or death as much as we fear being exposed as wrong or ignorant in front of our peers.  We hate it when an Ambassador or DCM or pretty much any of our applicable colleagues asks for details and we just don’t know.  The proper response is, “My colleague or partners are doing that.  I trust them to get it right.”  But are we comfortable with that answer?

We recently had a very successful visit by John Kerry.  The PA part was to set up a kind of science fair, highlighting our successful partnership with Brazilians in the STEM fields.  As usual, we had only a few hours to get going.  I relied on my Brazilian partners.  Only they could marshal and manage the resources we needed to make it happen on a Friday for a Monday program.   When Kerry’s team asked me for details of what would be done, I had to tell them I was confident that our partners would do great work.  When they wanted to do a final walkthrough, I had to tell them we could not impose on our  our Brazilian government partners to open and pay overtime on a Sunday.  When they wanted to make last minute changes, I had to tell them it was not possible.  I explained to them that their putative (I did not use this precise adjective) needs were my most urgent priority, but the key to success, both now and later, was maintaining and strengthening relations with the Brazilian partner. They would still be here after Kerry left.  To their credit, the team seemed to understand or at least did not stand in the way.

Our part of the visit worked perfectly.   In fact, it was outstanding, because our Brazilian partners came through, as I knew they would.  I am morally certain that if I had interfered more or facilitated more interference, it would have been less good, maybe even a failure.  The difference is that when I did what I did, I bought the risk for myself.  Had it failed, the failure would have been on me.  Had I done the usual, chances of failure would have been much greater, but blame would not affix to me.   I hope that John Maynard Keynes was wrong when he said, it is often better for the reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.  But it is a risk we have to take.  It is not an option; it is our duty.

You might think that I have drifted from the idea of saving money and time, but I have not.  In the example of the visit, we saved time, money and stress.  I did not deploy scores of people for this visit.  We brought in no TDY. In fact, during the visit, we maintained previously scheduled a CAO conference. In other words, we handled the SecState visit, as we did a visit by Biden a couple weeks earlier, as business as usual that did not require extraordinary disruptions in our important priorities.  We really did accomplish more with less of our own time and money by relying on outside partners and maintaining a disciplined approach of matching appropriate resources to the need, rather than throwing all we had at it.

Up top, I used the analogy of diet and exercise.  We all know what to do, but often don’t do it. A VIP visit would be analogous to binge eating.  We sometimes lose our discipline when we are beguiled or intimidated by important people.   It is precisely at these times when we need to be stronger.

Let me finish with another story, only one last time. This is a story close to my heart.  As some of you know, forestry is my hobby.  I studied forestry in college and I own around 430 acres of forest land in Virginia.  They seem very different,  but forestry works a lot like public affairs.  Things take a long time to develop and you can never control all the variables.  In these complex and dynamic systems, results are often not commensurate with inputs, i.e. sometimes lots of inputs produce nothing, while little things can be decisive, but the key to success if understanding the environment, choosing the appropriate actions and then giving them time to develop in the way you know they will.  A truly well-managed forest often seems like it is not much managed at all.  It seems natural because we are working with natural systems. 

Since 2005, I have had the pleasure of writing a quarterly article for Virginia Forests Magazine.  I think my most recent article applies to both of my professional passions – forestry and public affairs.

What I said to my follow forestry folks applies to us in public affairs and I will quote it directly.  “We are in a controversial business. Whether or not we want to acknowledge it, most (not some most) people misunderstand what we do. But our story is important and we should tell it with eagerness and vigor, not just to each other but to all who want to listen, and maybe even to some who don’t. Our narrative is not one of “leaving a smaller footprint” or “reducing damage.” Ours is the affirmative story or renewal and regeneration, of imagination, intelligence and innovation making things better.”

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I bought a scale

I am not skinny and don’t want to be, but was getting too fat, year-by-year the weight just ratcheted up. So I bought a scale back in may to measure the problem. I wanted to get below 200lbs. At my height and build I think that is okay. The last time I was down to that level was back in 1995, before I “filled out.” I doubt I put on more muscle in the last 18 years, so it was not a good thing.  I gained in winter and lost almost as much during the summer running season. It ratcheted up. You can make “adjustments” to the mirror; the scale is more precise.  My new scale told me I weighed 217lb. There is some daily variation, but I was tipping in at an average of 215.

You cannot reverse years in days or even weeks; real success comes from thinking systemically. In a complex system, like our own behaviors, little changes, over time, make big changes.  You have to address the pressure points and it can take time to show results. I identified habits and triggers. I was thoughtlessly eating candy, cookies & chips. The trigger was minor anxiety, usually around ten in the morning and two in the afternoon.  I couldn’t really fight the habit, so I altered the trigger.  When I felt the anxiety, I still got up, but instead of buying cookies etc. I just walked around or bought a bottle of Coke Zero. That is almost all it took. 

They say that it doesn’t make much sense to weigh yourself every day, but it does. It is true that there are variations in water retention etc. that make the false the precision of the statistic.  But knowing that you will weight yourself the next morning affects late night snacking the day before.  When I reach for the cheese and crackers at 10pm … well I don’t do that anymore either.  

So, today I reached my goal. This morning I weighed in at 199.8.  Fifteen pounds in almost five months won’t be written up in the diet magazines, but I think the lifestyle changes are sustainable.  I still eat junk food, just not as much.  I go to McDonald’s still about once a week (I get the Big Mac menu with large fries) and have not given up Dunkin Donuts, although I cannot get them here so it is a mute question. I still like the beer and pizza too. I see no reason to push those things out.  Nothing too much. I am not sure how much more weight I will lose. There is no reason the weight will simply stop at 200 because I set that as an arbitrary goal.  My guess is that it will level out at around 195, although I admit I have no hard reason to pick that number either.

There is some irony here. When I was nineteen years old, I thought it would be good to weigh 200lbs. I tried to reach that level w/o success. I pushed up to around 190 and never could achieve more. Today getting to that weight from the other direction is a challenge.  Of course, as you see in the picture nearby, at 19 & 190 I was fat free as I will never be again.  Some things pass never to return. I had hair back then too.  (actually, I think I am 20 or 21 in the picture) I suppose you could say that I had my gains and losses.

My challenge is to avoid the accretion of bad habits.  I picked them up a little at a time and could do it again.  But I am okay for now. Losing weight proves that old idea that what is simple is often not easy.  Time and persistence seems to have worked.

My picture has nothing to do with the text. These are trees I saw growing in Brasilia.  I think they are what we call ficus plants when we have them indoors.  They get much bigger here. 

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An opportunity postponed

Brasília is not the kind of place with many surprises. It is a pleasant city, and I like to live here most of the time, but planners designed it to be uniform and boring and they succeeded.  The same pattern repeats with monotonous regularity. Brasília is the vision of the future projected by leftish planners from 1960. That future never arrived, but time froze here.

That is why I was happy to find something a little different. They are building bike lanes. You can see on the pictures that it is pleasant.  It really doesn’t go anywhere.  Like most things around here, it is not an organic development. They probably expect that you will drive to this place and then ride. The second picture shows the trail along one of the usual streets, green canyons.

Brasília is a postponed opportunity.  The location is superb.  It is mostly gently uphill from the lake and the man-made lake is pleasant.  Brasília sits in big-sky country.  And lots of things grow here with a little coaxing and a little care. The weather is pleasant all year around.  You could have been the perfect walking and biking city. A city for people.  But it was built for cars.

Brazilians have made this a pleasant place despite the design. Imagine how nice it could be if the start had been better.  It can be improved, retrofitted.  It is already better than it was and I am confident it will get still better. That is why I don’t think it is an opportunity lost, just postponed.

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A dry wet season

The rainy season has been unusually dry so far this year. This is good in that I can ride my bike to work for a longer season. But you can tell that the grass is dry, green mostly, but not that vibrant green common during the wet season. I suppose the rains will come. 

In the absence of rain, it gets pretty hot. The rainy season and the clouds usually keep the temperatures down.  I don’t use air-conditioning. Don’t have to in Brasília’s year-round pleasant weather. But I am thinking it might not be a bad idea.

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Feed the birds

Above you see part of my corn crop.  I looked at it this morning and figured that it needs a few more days.  Evidently the birds didn’t agree.  I have some bananas at the end of the yard.  They are still green and hard, but maybe I should harvest them before some bird, mammal or bug decides they are ready.  

We used to grow tomatoes when I was a kid, but always had to wait for a longer time to get our first taste. My father liked tomatoes while they were still green and hard.  He harvested them before anybody else wanted to eat them. We didn’t get our share until the productivity of the tomato vines overtook his daily consumption. 

I really don’t have much success with my food crops. I got one watermelon. It was good, but not very big and the vines took up lots of space.  I got a fair amount of tomatoes, but only after I changed to smaller, faster maturing varieties that beat the bugs.  I doubt I will get any corn.  I don’t like mangoes, but even if I did the fantastic production of the tree in my yard wouldn’t be worth much. The birds go after them high in the tree.  We get dozens of those florescent green bungees. They are kind of pretty, but their songs suck. They show up at dawn and squabble.  I suppose I can take pride in that I am feeding the birds, bugs and possums. It is a lot easier to buy produce at the supermarket. Given the actual yield from my gardens, it is probably cheaper too.

Below is my giant compost heap produced by the spring cleaning.  Supposedly things decompose really fast in the tropics, but I have not noticed that it happens faster than in Virginia. To be fair, I suppose I am thinking only of the warm months in Virginia. Nothing much decomposes in the cold. The tree in the front with the interesting leaves is a breadfruit.  This is what Captain Bligh was supposed to bring back on the Bounty when that famous mutiny took place.  It was a Polynesian plant and is one of the most productive food sources.  Breadfruit is starchy and hard to prepare.  My tree doesn’t have much fruit and if it did I would not work too hard to cook. 

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Green AND Growing – U.S. CO2 emissions drop again

The U.S. economy grew 2.8% last year, But energy use DROPPED by 2.4% and CO2 emission DROPPED even more, by 3.8%. And despite the overall decline in renewables, the carbon intensity of power generation still fell by 3.5 percent, mostly because natural gas is replacing coal. We are figuring out how to grow the economy, keep the free market and still go green.  

This provides a good case study. Our European friends, who talk green, have not achieved both growth and carbon reduction. They have also sometimes reduced CO2, but at the expense of growth. Meanwhile, the U.S. is successfully separating growth from increased energy use and energy from increased carbon emissions. 

This is not the first time we have responded well. Our American market system just works better than the planners in other places. It often doesn’t seem that way. Planners have a rhetorical advantage. They can point to their plan. We can only respond with the true but unsatisfying, “Our plan is to let millions of people make plans in the belief that what they come up with will be better than your experts.”

This is something I have noticed in my years of travel and living overseas. Many places are nicer than the U.S. in theory. People have more rights, in theory. They get more stuff, in theory. But Americans do better in reality. I think it is just difficult for academics to understand the U.S. market economy. Market forces are as protean as they are ubiquitous. They defy explanation. So for many years, since before we were even a country, intellectuals have been predicting our imminent demise.

The CO2 problem remains, however. China and others are emitting enough CO2 to swamp any improvements we make. In less than ten years, China will emit more CO2 all by itself than the whole world did in 1990.

We can figure out how to make the future work;  I have less confidence in some others.

My picture shows elm trees at the White House. These elms resist Dutch elm disease that wiped out so many elms in the 1960s and 1970.

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Something to Share

I wrote this article for “Virginia Forests” magazine. Presumably a similar, maybe improved, version will be out soon.   

People who own or work with forestry are in a controversial business. Whether or not we want to acknowledge it, most (not some most) people misunderstand what we do and a significant number of people consider a term like “logger” a type of insult.  

This point of view is mostly based on ignorance, but it is ignorance that we cannot ignore.  In a democracy, policies are based on the desires of the majority and, yes, on their misconceptions and prejudices too. If a majority does not understand, they can be pushed into doing dumb things by vocal minorities. As development comes closer and even into our forests, more people are interested in what we do; it is our interest to make sure their interest turns into understanding.

I was reminded of this need while reading about the recent disastrous fires in the West. One article talked about the need to thin forests in order to improve forests’ health and make them more fire resistant. I didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know from the article itself, but the comments were very enlightening. By the time it was all done, there were dozens of comments. Some  readers were evidently appalled that anyone would even suggest that a human activity like thinning would be proposed for nature’s forests.  Others thought they might accept thinning, but wanted to make sure that nobody made a profit from it.

Comments are not necessarily representative of the general population, but they do come from people who have an opinion and who care enough to take the time to write about it, in other words, motivated people more likely to take action.

Our problem seems to be that a significant number of people view forestry as a kind of mining.  Their attitude seems to be that nature provides forests that humans disrupt and exploit. And then they are gone, maybe for years and maybe forever. This is a silly idea to people who work in forests, especially older people who might have seen several thinnings and harvests on the same tract of land. We must not overlook, however,  that the narrative of loss, destruction, exploitation and the heavy footprint of man is firmly and passionately believed by some people who vote and influence policies toward forests. We should also accept that their passion is based on good will. They think they are the good guys. The facts are on our side, but that doesn’t diminish the intensity of their passion.

This is not a discussion we can or should want to avoid. We are doing the right things and trying with each planting and with each harvest to do them better. Tree farmers act today with the promise of the future firmly in mind.  Sustainability is our concept, one practiced by foresters long before it was stylish or even described. Each of us lives from the gifts of the past and leaves more for those who come after us. This is what sustainable means. 

Our story is important and we should tell it with eagerness and vigor, not just to each other but to all who want to listen, and maybe even to some who don’t. Our narrative is not one of “leaving a smaller footprint” or “reducing damage.” Ours is the affirmative story or renewal and regeneration, of imagination, intelligence and innovation making things better. Generations of tree farmers have been protecting water, soils and wildlife while producing wood and forest products.  It is what we do. We know it works because we see it, smell it in the air we breathe and feel it under our feet as we walk across the land. It is something to share.

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Average not normal

A normal man has two arms, two arms and two eyes.  The average man has just a little less, since some men have fewer than two arms and nobody has more.  That illustrates the difference between normal and average and maybe some of the dangers of talking about averages.  The median American has all the parts and is much closer to normal.

The average man is changing all the time.  The average American is getting shorter and fatter.  Shorter is a statistically artifact.  As the ethnic mix of the U.S. changes, on average we get shorter.  Consider how it works with immigration. The average Hispanic-American is almost three inches shorter than the average non-Hispanic American.  As that population grows in relation to the total population, the average changes.

Becoming fatter is a matter of changing lifestyles.

I read an interesting articles showing the average American.  Take a look. It is interesting.  

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Lost, found & maybe lost again

Things should be lost and only sometimes found.  We try too hard to preserve things for a posterity that should be left alone to discover for themselves what we knew, what we were and what they have become.  It is sad when something of old beauty disappears and tragic when hard-won lessons are lost, but it might be sadder and more tragic still if they persist and crowd new beauty and lessons to be learned by another age.  

We have a passion to preserve, or at least try to.  We embrace change in theory but in practice try to hold onto everything, memorialize each moment.  But things pass and when they are gone they cannot be persevered, perhaps only fossilized, a lifeless impression reminiscent of the vital living thing, but w/o any of its essence. The essence of vital life is change and the fossil preserved cannot do that.  

Sometimes just let go, let that moment pass into obscurity, with maybe some lingering meaning to be discovered by an explorer or an antiquarian of a future generation, when it will be rediscovered and misinterpreted to fit their needs.  

Things preserved are things dead.  The world should belong to the living. My historian’s heart loves the past and knows that we can learn from the experience of others.   Our ancestors left us a wonderful legacy and I count as MY ancestor every human who came before me whose legacy I touch: good, bad and indifferent. Events change but human nature abides.   But with all due respect to what went before, the future is what matters. Knowing what came before should enable us, not hold us down. They are our ancestors but we have no responsibility for what they did. 

I often feel most awe in lonely places. I recall coming on a big pile of rocks while hiking in Norway.  It turns out that it was a Neolithic monument.  Thousands of years ago, the local hunters and farmer just piled rocks.  There was a marker, which is how I knew what it was, but it didn’t really have a good explanation. Maybe it was just that somebody started to do it and other just did it too.  The tradition perhaps persists along hiking trails, where you find piles of rocks that people create as a type of fetish.

When I come on a sign of some great past event, I feel pensive but also connected. I feel connected, however fleetingly, to humans who like me strives, achieved, failed and overcame.  I know that all I do will soon be like all they did.  I take a moment to respect them and also myself.  I try to take a lesson and then I move on.  

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Memories real and imagined

I watched a TED talk by Elizabeth Loftus, a researcher who studies when people remember wrong. She started with an example of a guy who was convicted of rape based on the absolute certainty that he was the perpetrator, but he wasn’t. Later they found the real guy.

Memory is not like a recording device.  It is more like Wikipedia.  It is reconstructed each time and can be changed by us AND by others.  Suggestive questions can cause memories to change and sometimes create whole new ones. Memory can also be contaminated by other witnesses.

Maybe twenty years ago, I read a book she wrote called, “Witness for the Defense,” where she talked about some cases she worked on. Of course, it is not always true that eyewitnesses get it wrong. But we put too much emphasis on eyewitness testimony and way too much influence on their supposed degree of certainty.  Expressing great confidence in a memory does not mean it is accurate. In fact, in some cases certainty interferes with accuracy. 

It reminds me of a joke.  At a trial a lawyer asks a witness, “How far were you from the scene?”  To which the witness says, “Precisely seven feet and three inches.” The lawyer retorts, “Ha, how can you be so certain?”  The response, “I knew some jackass lawyer would ask me that, so I measured it and wrote it down.”

In the 1990, there was a big scandal with “recovered memories.” This often had to do with supposedly remembered long ago abuse.  Relatives, friends, coworkers and others were accused, almost always w/o physical evidence.  In many of these situations some form of psychotherapy had actually created these memories. It is unlikely that the therapists did this on purpose, but they were too ready to accept and even be proactive.  Often they were driven by an ideology that assumed widespread abuse and wanted to expose the evils.  Loftus tells about the trouble she had when she pointed out the fallacy of these techniques. She was attacked by organized interests and even sued by a woman who “remembered” falsely that she has been abused as a child. During the 1990s, this repressed memory fiasco was very powerful and fraught with emotions.  It took great courage to stand against it and be accused of attacking abused women and children.  

Can a false memory really affect future behavior? Probably. People cannot distinguish the false memories from real ones and since we routinely act on what we remember, false memory is important.  In fact, a high percentage of our memories are wrong in many details and some are just plain wrong.  We remember things that happened to others as happening to us, or maybe the reverse and we often get mixed up about who did what to whom and when.    

You can see an ethical problem with this beyond the obvious one of eyewitness testimony wrongly convicting innocent people.  What we are as people is largely dependent on what happened to us and even more on what we remember about what happened to us.  Might it not be good to forget a traumatic event or alter it so that it was not so traumatic, maybe add a part where we came out on top of the bad situation, turning the memory from one of defeat and depression into one of triumph and overcoming?

I know that I have done this with my kids, myself and others; at least that’s what I remember. I didn’t think of it as planting false memories but rather as interpreting and reinterpreting. Usually, there are different, maybe conflicting memories and when you sort them out you really are choosing and altering “the facts.”  For example, in a stressful situation you are likely to feel both frightened and determined.  Remembering mostly the fear leads to one vision of yourself, while emphasizing the determination a very different one.  

You can extrapolate this to the wider world.  I have long wrested with the question about whether history is created by historians or if historians merely record it with greater or lesser accuracy and precision.  Of course it is both, but I have been leaning more and more toward the creation theory with the prosaic analogy of a cook on a show called “Chopped” that Chrissy likes to watch.  Chopped is an elimination contest.  The contestants get a bunch of ingredients.  They have to use only those ingredients and they have to use all of them, but they combine them as they believe most appropriate.  All are valid, but they taste, look and are very different.  

I have digressed from the TED talk and from Loftus.  I suggest you watch it and remember just because somebody tells you something they believe with confidence and passion doesn’t mean it is true, even if they tell a compelling story with precise details.  Precision and accuracy are not the same, BTW.  We need outside collaboration.

I think we need to apply to ourselves Ronald Reagan’s  the old adage “trust but verify” and, to adapt another old saying, know that it isn’t what we forget that gets us in trouble but it’s what we remember that isn’t so.