Chapter 13 - E Pluribus Unum
Elena had grown to expect that the call with Caroline would mostly be about money. They were in a growth phase now regarding the number of Affiliates and that growth demanded increasing revenue to support the operation. Small contributions from supporters were also growing, in fact they were keeping in step. But there had been a gap between such contributions and the need to support the back end of the operation, which had to grow in response to the Affiliate growth. This gap was filled by revenues donated by the high rollers. As a consequence, Caroline was having an increasingly hard time keeping them under wraps. The work for her was becoming even less rewarding than it had been.
Elena knew that and while Caroline was greatly appreciative of Elena’s work as the CEO, Caroline still had the itch to be doing that job herself. Rationally, of course, Caroline knew the stress would be too much and the current arrangement was for the best. But Caroline still had her emotions wrapped up in being the founder of The Minute Women tugging at her. Sometimes those emotions would get the better of her judgment.
While they never explicitly talked about that, Elena intuited much of it. Her inclination was to indulge Caroline as best as she could, as long as doing so wouldn’t take The Minute Women off the path that they were then following. So Elena was not surprised when Caroline expressed a desire to make another video, not directly about the work of The Minute Women, but indirectly related to it. It would concern what should come next, after The Minute Women achieve their goals. And it would be done in a benign way. They had been receiving many queries about what would come next and those served mainly as a distraction at this point, one they didn’t need. If with this video Caroline could quiet down that query flow, that would help. Elena actually ended up encouraging Caroline to make the video and offered the help of the Writing Group to smooth out what she wanted to say. Caroline accepted under those terms, though she was convinced that Elena also wanted to make sure what Caroline said didn’t raise any red flags.
* * * * *
DRAFT OF CAROLINE’S SPEECH
Hello.
I know there has been a good deal of questioning of what will come next, if and when The Minute Women achieve their goals. Should that happen, a truly bipartisan collection of voters will have achieved an enormous feat. People naturally wonder whether subsequent efforts of voters across the parties might also be possible and, if so, how those efforts will be directed.
I am neither a philosopher nor a political scientist and the truth is that I don’t know the answers here. Further, I’m not inclined to speculate on them. I don’t see such speculation as serving a useful purpose. But, as should be evident, there was a lot of idealism in me when founding The Minute Women. What I’d like to do here is share some further ideals of mine about what might come, probably not next, but I hope not too far into the future. And with that, I’d like to talk a little about what each of us can do as individuals now, to make it more likely that these ideals can be achieved. I will do this by making reference to lessons I learned in elementary school. I hope you learned them then as well. My purpose for using these familiar references is to keep the argument remarkably simple, though I will admit that even with trying for that there will be some complexity to consider near then end of my talk.
Eventually, I hope the organization we consider is the whole of the United States of America, and the goal is for U.S. citizens to feel they truly live in a united country. Even with the success of The Minute Women, it does not feel that way now. The divisions between us are strong. How might those divisions be overcome?
When I was in elementary school, we began every school day with The Pledge of Allegiance. I want to focus only on the last phrase - with liberty and justice for all. In elementary school, you are too young to ask whether this is a description of reality in America or if, instead, it is an aspiration for America that we’ve not yet reached. Recently, with so many people expressing what seem to me to be real grievances, it does not seem to me to be a description of reality.
Let’s consider this abstractly for just a second. Liberty would seem to mean that I’m free to do whatever I please. Maybe there are some prohibitions, such as the Ten Commandments, or laws that make sense to everyone - don’t drink and drive, for example - so that liberty means a lot of freedom but with acceptance of these restrictions. Might it still be the case that in my expression of freedom I do you an injustice? If that is possible, how might things be resolved to be consistent with the ideal expressed in The Pledge of Allegiance?
I have thought about this question on and off since I was a kid. This is what I have come up with, though I’m sure others have said it better and perhaps framed the question a little differently.
Sometimes we must consider the welfare of others before we consider our own welfare. Within the family, this is obvious. Parents need to take care of their kids, especially when they are too young to take care of themselves. An older sibling might have responsibility for a younger one, when they are away from home or even at home, when the parent isn’t there. A good friend needs to help out when the friend is having trouble of some kind. In the workplace it is clear that certain jobs in particular, being a school teacher or being a nurse come to mind, where the work itself means putting the needs of others first.
How far does this go, putting the needs of others first? I wish I had an answer to that question. I think that defining a clear boundary for this is difficult, and then situations will arise where in the heat of the moment a decision will need to be made, without fully working through whether the other’s need really should be primary. I would call a person who understands the need for putting others first a responsible person. Part of the solution to the dilemma I posed is that to achieve liberty and justice for all we need citizens to be responsible.
There is a second idea I learned in elementary school (or perhaps at home during those early school years, I can’t remember now) from the Aesop Fable: The North Wind and the Sun. It is about interacting with others and that adopting a gentle tone is more likely to get a favorable response than using a harsh tone. When we put others first, we should try to do so with a gentle tone. In my experience, that means we are not angry. If we are filled with anger, our tone will be harsh.
It seems to me there is far too much anger in our society and some promote anger in others because doing so is profitable for them. I hope that is evident because I don’t want to elaborate on it. Instead, what I would like to observe is that prolonged bouts of anger make us unhealthy. The anger completely takes over our being. We can no longer be reasoned and gentle, and we are apt to over indulge in food or drink or other compensations, to seek comfort from the anger.
Thus, if we are to be responsible citizens, we need to limit our contact with those sources that promote our anger. This is easy to say but may be very hard to do, as anger can be addicting. It gives the person a sense of power, even when that is largely an illusion.
I now want to turn to those people who have legitimate grievances - they have yet to receive justice - and can I possibly reconcile their situation with what I’ve already said. Does suffering a serious injustice exempt the person from being responsible? In general, this question is too difficult for me to provide a satisfactory answer. So, instead, I will use myself as an example. I am able to answer the question in my case. I hope that sharing my answer will be useful in understanding the situation more broadly.
As many of you already know, I received death threats that were deemed credible by the FBI. At the time, the situation totally overwhelmed me. I stepped down as CEO of The Minute Women soon thereafter. What you don’t know, because I haven’t shared it until now, is that I had rather horrible nightmares about the experience, even after we hired an excellent security team to offer me, Elena, and the rest of The Minute Women team sufficient protection. I feel quite safe when I am awake. The nightmares, however, still come back to haunt me, though not quite as frequently as they did soon after the threats were received.
The way I feel now, if somebody asked me to turn the other cheek to the person who made the threats, as that person has confessed and offered a complete apology, I wouldn’t want to deal with it at all. Doing so might very well trigger more nightmares. If I reach the point where the nightmares seem to have stopped, then ask me again after that. I can’t say how I will answer then. Turning the other cheek now might be seen as the responsible thing to do. But I also have responsibility for my own self-protection. Under the circumstances, the best thing for me to do now would be to walk away from the situation.
With so many people having legitimate grievances, how can others possibly measure the severity of their trauma? They must do so themselves and thereby determine whether they merit an exemption from responsible behavior or not.
Now, let me return to my situation. I may be in a situation where responsibility is called for that has absolutely nothing to do with the death threats I received. I will try my best in this case to do what the situation calls for. There is no exemption for me from being a responsible citizen in such a circumstance.
But, a week or two after the experience, I needed some downtime to find my equilibrium again and to recover from the nightmares. It’s impossible to predict in advance how much downtime is needed. Let the individual and those providing support for the person make such a determination. After that, let the transition to being a responsible citizen happen gradually. That’s just common sense.
It may be that understanding what I’ve said, a truly selfish person feigns trauma in order to exempt themselves from the demands of being responsible. Alternatively, the person may not be fundamentally selfish, but may be so frightened about the prospect of trauma that the person fakes it as a self-protection strategy. These two are different but might look the same to a third party.
This may be stereotyping, but I tend to think of CEOs and other high level executives in unscrupulous companies as examples of truly selfish people, while some overprotective parents in upper middle class families may provide good examples of those who fear trauma. If we can make progress with everyone else, then we need some approach to address these type of folks. For now, the focus really should be on each and every one of you, who can chose to act responsibly or not, at your own discretion.
I would like to encourage those who are not behaving this way yet to give it a try and treat that as an experiment. Does anyone notice your change in behavior? Does the way you feel about things change as a consequence? You need to let such an experiment run for a while before drawing any conclusions, a few months at least. If you think of it as breaking an old habit and forming a new one in its place, you’ll have a good mindset under which to perform this experiment.
And for those were are already behaving this way, so it is obvious to others, I hope you will be supportive to someone who wants to try such an experiment. Their success might very well encourage others to give it a try.
Let me close by making some fun of myself. You know I’m an accountant by training. I do like to get a count on things, if that is possible. Can we measure what fraction of society is responsible in the way I’ve outlined? Likewise, can we track how many are engaging in such experiments?
Truthfully, I’m more than a bit wary of trying to measure in this case. The measurement might adversely impact the behavior itself, especially if there is some external reward for good outcomes. So, for now, let’s be content that some people are trying to be more responsible, and let’s hope that in due course the ideal of liberty and justice for all becomes something we regard as attainable, while the divisions we now are experiencing fade in importance. This is the future I would like to be part of. I hope that you will want this future as well.
Thank you for watching.
Elena knew that and while Caroline was greatly appreciative of Elena’s work as the CEO, Caroline still had the itch to be doing that job herself. Rationally, of course, Caroline knew the stress would be too much and the current arrangement was for the best. But Caroline still had her emotions wrapped up in being the founder of The Minute Women tugging at her. Sometimes those emotions would get the better of her judgment.
While they never explicitly talked about that, Elena intuited much of it. Her inclination was to indulge Caroline as best as she could, as long as doing so wouldn’t take The Minute Women off the path that they were then following. So Elena was not surprised when Caroline expressed a desire to make another video, not directly about the work of The Minute Women, but indirectly related to it. It would concern what should come next, after The Minute Women achieve their goals. And it would be done in a benign way. They had been receiving many queries about what would come next and those served mainly as a distraction at this point, one they didn’t need. If with this video Caroline could quiet down that query flow, that would help. Elena actually ended up encouraging Caroline to make the video and offered the help of the Writing Group to smooth out what she wanted to say. Caroline accepted under those terms, though she was convinced that Elena also wanted to make sure what Caroline said didn’t raise any red flags.
* * * * *
DRAFT OF CAROLINE’S SPEECH
Hello.
I know there has been a good deal of questioning of what will come next, if and when The Minute Women achieve their goals. Should that happen, a truly bipartisan collection of voters will have achieved an enormous feat. People naturally wonder whether subsequent efforts of voters across the parties might also be possible and, if so, how those efforts will be directed.
I am neither a philosopher nor a political scientist and the truth is that I don’t know the answers here. Further, I’m not inclined to speculate on them. I don’t see such speculation as serving a useful purpose. But, as should be evident, there was a lot of idealism in me when founding The Minute Women. What I’d like to do here is share some further ideals of mine about what might come, probably not next, but I hope not too far into the future. And with that, I’d like to talk a little about what each of us can do as individuals now, to make it more likely that these ideals can be achieved. I will do this by making reference to lessons I learned in elementary school. I hope you learned them then as well. My purpose for using these familiar references is to keep the argument remarkably simple, though I will admit that even with trying for that there will be some complexity to consider near then end of my talk.
Eventually, I hope the organization we consider is the whole of the United States of America, and the goal is for U.S. citizens to feel they truly live in a united country. Even with the success of The Minute Women, it does not feel that way now. The divisions between us are strong. How might those divisions be overcome?
When I was in elementary school, we began every school day with The Pledge of Allegiance. I want to focus only on the last phrase - with liberty and justice for all. In elementary school, you are too young to ask whether this is a description of reality in America or if, instead, it is an aspiration for America that we’ve not yet reached. Recently, with so many people expressing what seem to me to be real grievances, it does not seem to me to be a description of reality.
Let’s consider this abstractly for just a second. Liberty would seem to mean that I’m free to do whatever I please. Maybe there are some prohibitions, such as the Ten Commandments, or laws that make sense to everyone - don’t drink and drive, for example - so that liberty means a lot of freedom but with acceptance of these restrictions. Might it still be the case that in my expression of freedom I do you an injustice? If that is possible, how might things be resolved to be consistent with the ideal expressed in The Pledge of Allegiance?
I have thought about this question on and off since I was a kid. This is what I have come up with, though I’m sure others have said it better and perhaps framed the question a little differently.
Sometimes we must consider the welfare of others before we consider our own welfare. Within the family, this is obvious. Parents need to take care of their kids, especially when they are too young to take care of themselves. An older sibling might have responsibility for a younger one, when they are away from home or even at home, when the parent isn’t there. A good friend needs to help out when the friend is having trouble of some kind. In the workplace it is clear that certain jobs in particular, being a school teacher or being a nurse come to mind, where the work itself means putting the needs of others first.
How far does this go, putting the needs of others first? I wish I had an answer to that question. I think that defining a clear boundary for this is difficult, and then situations will arise where in the heat of the moment a decision will need to be made, without fully working through whether the other’s need really should be primary. I would call a person who understands the need for putting others first a responsible person. Part of the solution to the dilemma I posed is that to achieve liberty and justice for all we need citizens to be responsible.
There is a second idea I learned in elementary school (or perhaps at home during those early school years, I can’t remember now) from the Aesop Fable: The North Wind and the Sun. It is about interacting with others and that adopting a gentle tone is more likely to get a favorable response than using a harsh tone. When we put others first, we should try to do so with a gentle tone. In my experience, that means we are not angry. If we are filled with anger, our tone will be harsh.
It seems to me there is far too much anger in our society and some promote anger in others because doing so is profitable for them. I hope that is evident because I don’t want to elaborate on it. Instead, what I would like to observe is that prolonged bouts of anger make us unhealthy. The anger completely takes over our being. We can no longer be reasoned and gentle, and we are apt to over indulge in food or drink or other compensations, to seek comfort from the anger.
Thus, if we are to be responsible citizens, we need to limit our contact with those sources that promote our anger. This is easy to say but may be very hard to do, as anger can be addicting. It gives the person a sense of power, even when that is largely an illusion.
I now want to turn to those people who have legitimate grievances - they have yet to receive justice - and can I possibly reconcile their situation with what I’ve already said. Does suffering a serious injustice exempt the person from being responsible? In general, this question is too difficult for me to provide a satisfactory answer. So, instead, I will use myself as an example. I am able to answer the question in my case. I hope that sharing my answer will be useful in understanding the situation more broadly.
As many of you already know, I received death threats that were deemed credible by the FBI. At the time, the situation totally overwhelmed me. I stepped down as CEO of The Minute Women soon thereafter. What you don’t know, because I haven’t shared it until now, is that I had rather horrible nightmares about the experience, even after we hired an excellent security team to offer me, Elena, and the rest of The Minute Women team sufficient protection. I feel quite safe when I am awake. The nightmares, however, still come back to haunt me, though not quite as frequently as they did soon after the threats were received.
The way I feel now, if somebody asked me to turn the other cheek to the person who made the threats, as that person has confessed and offered a complete apology, I wouldn’t want to deal with it at all. Doing so might very well trigger more nightmares. If I reach the point where the nightmares seem to have stopped, then ask me again after that. I can’t say how I will answer then. Turning the other cheek now might be seen as the responsible thing to do. But I also have responsibility for my own self-protection. Under the circumstances, the best thing for me to do now would be to walk away from the situation.
With so many people having legitimate grievances, how can others possibly measure the severity of their trauma? They must do so themselves and thereby determine whether they merit an exemption from responsible behavior or not.
Now, let me return to my situation. I may be in a situation where responsibility is called for that has absolutely nothing to do with the death threats I received. I will try my best in this case to do what the situation calls for. There is no exemption for me from being a responsible citizen in such a circumstance.
But, a week or two after the experience, I needed some downtime to find my equilibrium again and to recover from the nightmares. It’s impossible to predict in advance how much downtime is needed. Let the individual and those providing support for the person make such a determination. After that, let the transition to being a responsible citizen happen gradually. That’s just common sense.
It may be that understanding what I’ve said, a truly selfish person feigns trauma in order to exempt themselves from the demands of being responsible. Alternatively, the person may not be fundamentally selfish, but may be so frightened about the prospect of trauma that the person fakes it as a self-protection strategy. These two are different but might look the same to a third party.
This may be stereotyping, but I tend to think of CEOs and other high level executives in unscrupulous companies as examples of truly selfish people, while some overprotective parents in upper middle class families may provide good examples of those who fear trauma. If we can make progress with everyone else, then we need some approach to address these type of folks. For now, the focus really should be on each and every one of you, who can chose to act responsibly or not, at your own discretion.
I would like to encourage those who are not behaving this way yet to give it a try and treat that as an experiment. Does anyone notice your change in behavior? Does the way you feel about things change as a consequence? You need to let such an experiment run for a while before drawing any conclusions, a few months at least. If you think of it as breaking an old habit and forming a new one in its place, you’ll have a good mindset under which to perform this experiment.
And for those were are already behaving this way, so it is obvious to others, I hope you will be supportive to someone who wants to try such an experiment. Their success might very well encourage others to give it a try.
Let me close by making some fun of myself. You know I’m an accountant by training. I do like to get a count on things, if that is possible. Can we measure what fraction of society is responsible in the way I’ve outlined? Likewise, can we track how many are engaging in such experiments?
Truthfully, I’m more than a bit wary of trying to measure in this case. The measurement might adversely impact the behavior itself, especially if there is some external reward for good outcomes. So, for now, let’s be content that some people are trying to be more responsible, and let’s hope that in due course the ideal of liberty and justice for all becomes something we regard as attainable, while the divisions we now are experiencing fade in importance. This is the future I would like to be part of. I hope that you will want this future as well.
Thank you for watching.
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