hara-kiri

January 28, 2008 at 10:38 am | In Culture Wars | Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , ,

Imagine being stupid enough to strap yourself to a lie detector on national television and subsequently asked questions designed to make not only you, but your wife and family laughing stocks of the entire nation. That’s the premise of FOX’s new “Moment of Truth” reality show.

Lets just say that the host of the show, an amazing well groomed and expertly painted Mark Wahlberg, asks you a loaded question. (That is, after all, the premise of the show.) Your wife and kids are in the audience, watching and if you get this one ‘right’ you win the big money ($500,000.00). “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

Lie detectors measure changes in perspiration, blood pressure and pulse. You’re nervous because there’s $500,000 on the line, your hot & sweaty from the lights, and your wife is sitting there, shocked and embarrassed by the question. You realize this was a horrible idea, and your blood pressure shoots up. You’ve never even thought about cheating on your wife. You tell the truth, but the lie detector says you are lying. Not only did you not get the money, but you’ve now just sunk an ax into your marriage. Sure, you can explain to your wife that the lie detector got it wrong and that you’ve never cheated on her. Lets say she’s a saint and she believes you,. She’ll still have to walk down the street with people muttering behind her back: “Her husband got caught cheating on her on that ‘Moment of Truth’ show!” And what about the kids? They get to go to school the next day and face their peers. We all know how kind and supportive children can be to one another.

seppuku: medieval japanese ritual suicide aka hara-kari. That’s what shows like this are. You take a risk at getting the big prize, but if you fail it’s all over. You don’t just lose the big money, but you lose your self-respect, and you embarrass your entire family. In medieval japan, a samurai would commit ritual suicide rather than live with this kind of public embarrassment.

Shows like this hurt my head. It hurts to know that there are people greedy/stupid enough to air their dirty laundry not just in public, but in prime-time. But even more, it hurts my head to know that there are people out there who like to watch. They actually have nothing better to do than watch another human being commit social hara-kiri. They are entertained by it. 23.2 million people tuned in to watch the premier of “The Moment of Truth.” The most watched premier in over a year.

To be fair, I can understand that some people might have ‘checked it out’ after “American Idol” ended, and found that they then couldn’t look away. Perhaps they were caught by the shock and awe of it. Like a train wreck: you want to look away, but you can’t. You watch the horrible even from beginning to end. My sympathies to these people. With luck they’ve learned to stay away from FOX television.

As if all of that weren’t bad, what about the flip side? The scumbags who do everything wrong. They lie, cheat and steal and, more to the point, they are good liars. These people can go on a show like this and reap huge rewards that a decent wo/man could never gain. The show rewards liars and (potentially) punishes people who have the decency to be embarrassed when asked deeply private and personal questions in public.

It’s possible that I may be missing something. I wasn’t one of the 23.2 million viewers who watched the premier, so maybe theres a deeply spiritual and uplifting heart to this show that hasn’t made it onto the blogosphere. Somehow, I doubt it. And its certain that I’ll never know.

X Marks the Spot

January 23, 2008 at 9:52 pm | In communications | Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , ,

In my first post I introduced the concept of the Big X and how we are each at the center of our own “X.” While it’s important to recognize that we are in the center of our own experience, there is still a need to understand where that center exists.

To do this, I provide my clients with a simple list of adjectives describing personality traits along each of the four axes. Clients are then asked to mark which they believe apply to them. A person might mark 4 extrovert traits, 6 “heart” traits, 2 introvert traits and 1 “mind” trait. Scores along the same axes (extrovert/introvert and mind/heart) are then compared and the individuals core personality traits are revealed. In the example above, the person is a mild extrovert (extrovert 4 minus introvert 2 = extrovert 2) and moderate “heart” person (heart 6 minus mind 1 = heart 5). This person’s “center” is E4H5.

(It is important to keep in mind that while the person in our example has a core personality trait of extrovert/heart, the person still has introvert and mind traits. More on that in a later post.)

Now lets say a second person takes the same test and scores E4H9. Both people scored Extrovert/Heart, but to our E4H5 person, the E4H9 person is wildly emotional, while the E3H9 person might view E4H5 as thoughtful – perhaps even as cold. The way these two people view each other illustrates how we each see ourselves at the center, regardless of how “extreme” or “subdued” our personality traits might be.

You might be thinking: “That’s great, but what good does it do me?” First and foremost, this system gives us a measurable mechanic for how one person thinks differently from another. Let me put it another way: We all know someone that we just don’t “get.” With this system, we have a measurable, quantified means of understanding why we don’t understand the other person.

But, it goes farther than that. Some people don’t work well together because their personality types are so different. But others who are very different, might work together very well. The hard-charging Extrovert/Mind tends to just run right over the top of the soft-spoken Introvert/Heart. But the energetic Extrovert/Heart stimulates the Introvert/Heart and kicks them into even higher levels of productivity. Meanwhile, the Introvert/Mind can reign in the Extrovert/Heart, keeping him/her from racing out of control.

Understanding how the Extroverts, Introverts, Hearts and Minds work together and influence one another can really help turn an uncomfortable work environment into a happier – and more productive – place.

All this Extrovert/Mind, Introvert/Heart stuff gets to be a bit of a mouthful however, so I’ve come up with mnemonics to help describe them and keep them separate in our heads. But we’ll get to that in a later post.

Mitt Romney: Political Chameleon

January 20, 2008 at 9:53 am | In Politics | 5 Comments

Of all the people currently running for the office of President of the United States, I think Mitt Romney is the one who worries me the most. Mr. Romney has shown a remarkable ability to throw out his “deeply held” personal beliefs in favor of whatever happens to be politically expedient at the time. In other words, the only thing Mitt Romney truly believes in is the promotion and elevation of Mitt Romney. My guess is that Mr. Romney is running for President of the United States not because he believes he can lead us into a better tomorrow, but because it’s the highest office in the land. In the realm of self-promotion, it doesn’t get any higher than President of the United States.

The press has, for the most part, stopped talking about it, so I thought I’d throw this reminder out there. Mitt Romney has reversed his position on following issues:

There are more issues that the Governor has flipped on, including campaign finance reform, minimum wage increases, stem cell research, I only included those above because they seem to be ‘core’ Republican values – items that the majority of Republicans seem to agree on. For a more comprehensive list, take a look at this site.

Republicans I ask you this: do you want a man in the oval office who represents nothing but his own self-promotion? Mitt Romney is using your beliefs – beliefs that he does not hold in his own heart – as a spring board to the presidency. If elected, what do you think Romney will do with the power at his disposal? You can only assume that he’ll use that power to further promote himself.

So, if you are supporting Mitt Romney’s run for the highest office in the land, I urge you to re-think your support.

Improving Communications

January 16, 2008 at 8:09 pm | In communications | Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , ,

As I mentioned in the “About Me” page, I do communications consulting on the side. It seems appropriate, therefore, to explain my communications strategy to start this blog off.

To my mind, a person’s personality exists on a coordinate system set up by two axes. These axes are introversion/extroversion (aka shy/outgoing) and mind/heart (or intellectual/emotional). No point on the resulting grid is any more important or valid than any other point, and to illustrate this, then entire structure is placed on it’s side, like a large letter “X”. I encourage each person to think of themselves as the center of the coordinate system. They are not ‘extremely shy’ or ‘very emotional’ or ’somewhat bland.’ Each person, is instead, just right; exactly in the center and the people they know exist in the continuum around them.

One of the key elements of The Big X however, is its mutability.  This is best explained by example: Perhaps you want to be more intellectual, you put effort into this, and over time slightly modify your personality to be less emotional and more thoughtful.   Rather than move farther along the “mind” axis, however, your position on the grid remains in the exact center, but the people around you move slightly to along the “heart” axis.

Staying in the center of our grid might seem odd.   After all, we changed, not the rest of the world.  But in reality, we continue to be the center of our own existence.  We continue to rate people in relation to ourselves.  We might occasionally compare one of our contemporaries to another, but for the most part, we think of the people we know in terms of ourselves.  We might say “Bob is not as shy as I am.” or “I wish I was more intellectual, like Jane.”

In a later post, I’ll explain how we determine where the center is, and how we explain our presence there.

-C

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.