Hey everybody,
What a dramatic week in the US, to put it mildly!
As I start to shift from this wonderful year of travels, and the relaxed musings of reflective personal writing in Life Notes, I’m bringing us back to my original aim of sharing a curation of the most interesting things I’ve observed and learnt during the week (yes, still working on brevity!).
In weeks to come, you’ll see the content start to shift in reflection of the new career direction I will be announcing 🙂 This has me spending days and nights swilling in fascinating conversations, reading learning to bring a new angle into my past work in the climate, energy and natural resources sectors.
And, it was funny this week too to find myself remembering a ‘game’ I invented, sitting bored and drained in spirit in an institutional finance conference room in May 2017, more below…
Ultra – Podcast Documentary by Rachel Maddow (Link) – On Fascism Burrowing Into America in the 1940s
Rachel Maddow’s Ultra series has been an intriguing weekend listen, a 5-part podcast series sharing the story of the language manipulation efforts that sponsored the break-down of democratic functions and rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
It’s an accessible listen, enjoyable story telling – in particular in Maddow’s interview in the Bonus Episode (link). And, a powerful reminder of what we are now facing in the dark language games for the control of power going on in America.
“These things are easier for us to see when we see them in other countries, and when we see them in other time periods.”
-Rachel Maddow, MSNBC political analyst
Maddow is one of the most highly regarded Politics anchors in US News, and works for MSNBC.
Understanding America and The Cult of Personality
I was chatting with C today, and sharing how in my early days in America in 2011, I learnt much from stumbling on a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking (Link).
‘Quiet’ was applauded as “The best business/management/leadership book of the century” by management guru Tom Peters, but the part I found fascinating was the opening chapters on the history of the “culture of personality” growing in America during the post-war period, from corporate sales culture (thus Arthur Miller’s famous 1949 play Death of A Salesman) to the growth of the Evangelist Churches through their wonderfully exuberant services and the oratory skills of pastors, to the TV-culture of politics developing.
Quiet investigates the history of the culture of extroversion and roots it in the 1950s. The early chapters really added to my own ‘hunch’ that there was a fine line between the aspects of American personality, culture and values that were a blend of ‘crazy good’ (friendliness and service levels, business creativity and drive, innovation and music forms that I loved like jazz and hip hop), and those aspects that were ‘crazy bad’ (crazed gun use, obesity, the level of ‘bullshitting‘ and overstatement in language in the US).
From teenage holidays in Canada and California, and watching the trends in rugby as it professionalized while I was playing, and in noticing British politics start to razzmatazz a little with Tony Blair’s New Labour, in all of those things and many more, I could see how American values of extroversion and entertainment worked in an engagement sense, whether you liked them or not, and were spreading around the world.
And from wanting to buy a million things every time we were over here on holiday, and from starting to buy American fitness magazines in teenage years in the UK, and noticing the cheesy copywriting in advertisements there, I started to observe the power and manipulation of language that is particularly sharp in US culture (and it’s not just America, this is an aspect of communication cultures that has its flavor in all countries, and that we’re all trying to do every time we’re in a debating conversation).
I asked ChatGPT to summarize the thesis set out in the early chapters of the book and it wrote:
“Cain describes how, in the early 20th century, the Western world, particularly the United States, shifted from a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality.
The Culture of Character, prevalent in the 19th century, valued traits such as integrity, humility, and hard work. However, with urbanization and the advent of the industrial age, societal values shifted. The Culture of Personality emerged, emphasizing charisma, assertiveness, and the ability to attract attention. This shift was driven by the rise of big business, public relations, and the burgeoning entertainment industry.
Cain discusses influential figures like Dale Carnegie, whose teachings on public speaking and self-improvement epitomized the new ideal. The shift led to an increased emphasis on extroverted qualities, which became seen as essential for success in both personal and professional realms”.
I remember too that Cain also references an author and pastor, foundational to this formation of the Culture of Personality, Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Peale talked about the importance of optimism and extroversion in our lives, encouraged adoption of a confident, outgoing demeanor as a means to achieve success and happiness.
Norman Vincent Peale was pastor to a young Donald Trump at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, New York, where the Trump family attended.
Isn’t that interesting!?
The reason Quiet was so fascinating for me was that what I learnt in the early chapters started to sew together observations of the American personality from before I came to America, and in my early years, with observation of American language in commerce, in selling retail and services, and in the vast American ‘self-improvement’ genre that exploded too with the internet in the last 15 to 20 years.
I started to understand just how significantly words matter in human culture. Not to state the obvious, but the choice of our words, and how we weave them together, and the tone and posture in which we wrap them, is a very defining aspect to our individuality and to our group behaviour. And, I’ll be writing more about this, because it’s a natural fascination of mine, whether in shops and malls, or in politics, or in the business and politics of sustainability (which isn’t getting good enough results).
And in the last eight years then, this antenna of mine has been on over-buzz seeing how profound is the skill in word framing and manipulation is at the heart of the rise of Donald Trump. I remember watching Donald Trump’s Republican National Congress nomination speech and Hillary Clinton’s at the Democratic convention and thinking “uh oh….”.
I’m finding it a little hard seeing it happen all over again, with all the more drama…
What Room?
Cycling across the Golden Gate Bridge the other morning, a conversation the night before had given me a memory of sitting in a conference in May 2017 in Toronto.
I invented a game called ‘What Room?’, daydreaming of a career shift ‘one day’ and I wrote about this here.
Seven years on, I’m finally playing…”What Room?” 🙂
Riding Above The Fog…
It’s that time of year when we get these stunning ‘thermal inversions’ where a thin layer of cold air from the Pacific is compressed under a well-defined blanket of warm air from the desert interior.
The famous fingers of fog getting pulled around the Golden Gate Bridge. Photos 1 and 2 below were about 3 or 4 minutes apart, and another 15 minutes later we were at the top of a coastal headland looking down on it all…
