More of the Latest from Edward Snowden

Yesterday Edward Snowden has surfaced back in the news, having appeared by video at the SXSW convention in Texas. Still in his secret hiding place somewhere in Russia, Snowden wants the world to know that he has done great good for America and the world by revealing U.S. secrets—which he had earlier voluntarily sworn to protect– to the British press and to the world. In the brief excerpt from his remarks that I saw, he charged his viewers to join his fight for….I’m not sure for what.

As I wrote earlier, I am surprised that his hosts in Russia haven’t already shipped him off to some country like Brazil, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. What possible benefit can the Russians extract from him that they haven’t already obtained?

I for one would like it if Snowden got on Facebook or started a blog, mainly to keep the few of us fellow countrymen and the few others who are interested up to speed on how his life goes in Russia, for example is he learning Russian, is he dating, and is he working.

Knowing Russia a bit as I do, I can only hope that Snowden inquires around over there to discover the probable fate of a Russian citizen who did to his country what Snowden did to his. An almost certain death penalty would be his fate, so Snowden ought to rest easy while he can.

Figuring out a workable life strategy for Snowden now is not easy, but I do have ideas. First he should date and marry in haste, have a couple of kids, and quickly launch an internet career broadcasting and marketing his views and behavior to all who will listen. If he’s a diligent communicator, he ought to within a year or so, be able to lay the groundwork for a semi-successful re-surfacing in the U.S. That way he could at least know his family and have them know his wife and children.

Of course he will have to serve some time in prison, but with successful self-promotion, some tearful explaining and much imaginative self justification, he could perhaps be a free man in ten or so years.

Not bad for a cowardly traitor, huh?

Internet Spam Can Educate Us

I never thought that I could learn anything from monitoring spam messages, but I have recently gleaned interesting Marketing information from the very few minutes a day I spend reviewing some of the many spam messages daily coming into my email.

Many spam messages tellingly indicate many things, for example, what some unscrupulous people hope to gain financially from those who are blindly—and foolishly– expecting a possible financial windfall from nothing they have actually done to create it. Others are re-packaging age-old personal offers in the hopes of luring takers in a new way.

That these spammers continue to ply their trade tells us, at a minimum, that there are those being solicited who are ready to believe and to participate. In an environment of low-cost internet communication, where solicitation is cheap, spam must somehow work for its creators, even as their appeals change and evolve with analyzed marketing results.

Spam offers ought to be seen as an interesting indicator of a portion of our society’s prevalent human vulnerabilities. Spammers look for the easiest, most convenient path for the ready financial or other score, so they become proficient at mining the needs, hopes and expectations of those most eager to believe among us. Spammers are marketers, too, as hard as that is for marketing people like me to acknowledge.

From the changing spam offerings, traditional marketers can infer the results that previous spam appeals have garnered. Main-stream marketers learn from the results of their offerings, and spam marketers necessarily learn as well.

Re-packaging and re-naming offers is something traditional marketers do continually, so it is no surprise that scammers do this too.

For example, relatively few men want to patronize prostitutes, but prostitution re-packaged as an exciting fling with a “married woman”, a “college girl”, or another less objectionable category than “prostitute” might cleanse the activity in the minds of naïve men. The re-naming of an activity may sometimes be sufficient to re-define it in the minds of some potential clients. Traditional marketers are quite adept at re-naming and re-defining offers.

But there are legal issues surrounding some spam offers as well. Pretending to be the Head of the FBI could land one in trouble with the law ( I have received such spam representations from false FBI officers), as could the assertion that one is the head of a foreign bank looking for U.S.-based help in parking funds. The law has yet to catch up with all the scam possibilities, but we can hope that it eventually will.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in Marketing, spend only a few minutes monitoring your spam, because your doing so might make you smarter.

Just don’t take the offers.

Hopeful Future Business Expectations Rather Than Current Positive Business Results

Have we reached the point in business where we now value what might conceivably be in some distant future over what demonstrably now is?  Perhaps some of us have reached that point.

Twitter comes out as an IPO at 20-something a share and soon vaults to 40-something a share. Still they’ve not yet made any money—but rather lost a lot– and yet they’re suddenly valued in the billions. And Amazon, for example, continues to spend lavishly and acquire assets without recent regard to profitability.

Is this all about the artful juxtaposition of the carefully constructed fantasy of what might be as opposed to the reality of what now clearly is?  Yes, I believe, it is at least that.

More concretely, I see an new and dangerous business philosophy:  current profitability be damned, it’s all about churning internet traffic– even though it be meaningless– and generating interest to be purchased, and we’ll let the business onlookers and pundits sort out the heroes and villains of the piece later.

More than that, it seems to me that the luring business paradigm in the internet age is all about some out-there as yet undefined business success rather than the discipline of current profitability. It’s become all about one’s ability to vanquish competitors rather than building now a profitable business model.  Does this situation create a looming bubble?

I believe it does. Within the next year or two, I believe, the edifice constructed of fanciful future potential versus actual current performance will come crashing down, exposing its adherents to the embarrassment of abject failure, if indeed they are able still to be embarrassed by their self-serving behavior.

Shockingly and sadly, there is even a more cynical view: that is that the current practitioners of the non-profitable and future-hopeful model know that there must be a downfall certainly coming, but they wish to get out with substantial money just before that event occurs. To plan in advance for self-serving failure in business must be the most cynical attitude a business person can have. Planning to fail in business while profiting from that failure is for me a new business approach.

Addressing this issue by potential investors leaves them with only two choices: first, either play the business game by the new either ignorant or cynical rules or refuse to play this game at all, perhaps opting instead to play by the more conventional rules of planning to play the business game to win, or at least to compete fairly.

Spying, Whistle-Blowing and All That

Ever since Edward Snowden leaked to the British press America’s national secrets he had previously sworn to uphold, we’ve had this national and almost-global upheaval and debate about the NSA’s data-collection activities. There’s so much fireless smoke and political posturing going on, it’s hard to tell what the real issues—if indeed there are any—are. And now I read in the New York Times this morning that Mr. Snowden, from his closely monitored and prosecution-free haven in Russia, is asking America no longer to consider him a traitor.

Now that the political pundits and some others have declared the Cold War to be over, there are those who evidently feel that there is little justification for the NSA, the CIA and other of our government’s intelligence agencies to collect information from countries—including our own—around the world.  In my view those who tread even close to such a view are engaging in mindless wishful thinking, and thinking that is potentially dangerous to America’s future.

This entire world continues to be a very dangerous place for peace-loving people, as recent events around the world have dramatically shown. The pace of seemingly random violence has picked up over the last years since 2001, when our own country was attacked for the first time since the event in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in December of 1941. How can we as a nation anticipate and prevent violence against our nation and people if we lack the means to know about possible looming violence and those who seek to perpetrate it? Asking terrorists and others similarly inclined simply to step forward and declare their intentions seems like a poor strategy for one’s self-protection.

The simple fact is that all nations able to do so routinely collect intelligence from friend and foe alike, and they logically do so in secret. They often deny participating in intelligence-gathering, in part to avoid awkward public discussions like the ones going on now in the world’s media. This practice of collecting intelligence by whatever means is not going significantly to change, or to stop, despite some glib and essentially meaningless assurances to the contrary by some national politicians.

What amazes me is that some European governments, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are pretending a degree of ignorance of the practice of widespread global spying, and are even claiming to be offended by it. How can they be ignorant of, and offended by, the practice when they themselves are routinely doing it—and carefully monitoring others who are doing it to them? I’m waiting for some rational world politician to call out these “victims” of intelligence gathering, and to label them what they are:  always publicity- and sometimes benefit-seeking hypocrites.

This brings us to the question of Edward Snowden, now languishing in Russia and hoping to return to unfettered freedom in America and a few hoped-for book, movie or speaking-gig deals. I hope he does come back—back to face the legal consequences of his perfidy.  Any future for him in America that does not include prosecution and conviction for his obvious criminal acts, as well as the denial of profits from anything he writes or otherwise creates on this sad subject, would be a travesty of justice and an intolerable offence to those who every day serve their country faithfully and honestly.

Edward Snowden, here’s a message for you:  either stay in Russia, cowering in the daily fear that your continuing treachery may catch up to you, and learn Russian so you can at least order food and ask for directions, or man-up, return to your native country, and face the judgment of those who want you to be brought to whatever fate the American justice system holds for you.

Technique or Feelings: Which Defines Our Interpersonal Behavior

Of late I have been considering if it is primarily learned technique or settled emotional feelings that primarily guide and define our interpersonal behaviors, and what it means if one or the other predominates.

Certainly one can argue convincingly that both are important: learned technique is necessary to make our behavior generally credible and practically effective; and, conversely, we would be reluctant to admit, and disappointed to realize, that our actions are those of a calculating self-promoter, largely devoid of any underlying, motivating feelings and beliefs beyond our narrow and immediate self-interest.

Of course one can argue that the dichotomy between learned technique and innate feelings is a false one, presumably because—the argument would probably go—both learned technique and core feelings commingle to determine how we behave. That may be true, but I would still argue that which of the two forces predominates could help determine the success or failure of many of our interpersonal relationships and life choices.

With the luxury of adequate reflection and mature hindsight, most of us can remember with regret those who allowed their emotions, either alone or primarily, to dictate their behavior toward others , thereby often achieving poor results; on the other hand, we may also remember those people who seemed in retrospect to have little emotion and genuine feelings invested in a relationship or idea and instead relied mainly on tried, learned techniques to achieve their narrow relationship goals. The issue is which people we now miss (assuming that we’re now apart from them), and which people in retrospect are we feeling fortunate to have survived emotionally? That’s a reliable test of how we see our past relationships and what behavioral motivations were then at play.

A “reliable” test to be sure, but only if we have exhaustively examined our own motivations in life, that is, whether or not we are predominantly driven by genuine feelings or by learned, calculated techniques, the former largely absent and the latter well developed by years of studied experience and hard practice.

Years ago, there was a humorous—and extremely cynical– popular line asserting that one can never succeed in life until one can learn believably to “fake sincerity”. I wonder whether we ourselves have been doing that? It’s important to know whether or not we have been.

Assuming that we have reassured ourselves of our legitimate sincerity ( a matter, I believe we must constantly review), then we can in good conscience continue our quest to understand fully the elements underlying the sources, methods and motivations of our human relationships.

For every person this process will be uniquely personal.

Quiet Valor, Quiet Villainy

We live in a world that values and promotes the sensational, both positively and negatively. We want to cheer those obviously and exceptionally valiant efforts and people, and we are always ready to condemn those who flagrantly and publicly offend popularly held standards of what we commonly believe to be permissible and morally right. And the media, always hungry for a shocking story, good or bad, is accustomed to portray, with lurid drama, all the sins and virtues of both the famous and even of the more ordinary people.

What is routinely obscured by this process of our trumpeting the news of our outstanding virtues and vices is that much heroism and much villainy occur quietly, unnoticed beneath the din of that which is now deemed to be newsworthy. There are numerous unsung heroes out there, and there are many largely anonymous villains as well.

We all realize that people who dramatically save lives, while perhaps even surrendering theirs, are heroes. For every one such person there are countless others, routinely unsung, who save lives and promote wellness in others as a part of their daily lives. These people are heroes as well, and would be lauded as heroes if only their stories would be broadly told.

Similarly, we know that people who rob, cheat, steal, injure and kill are villains, and we hear, see and read some of their stories on the internet, in the print media, and on television. We do not routinely see and even hear about, however, those people who harm defenseless children, the vulnerable aged, and dependent creatures like domestic animals, many being quietly abused by simple—and undramatic and often unreported—neglect.

What is to be done to ameliorate this situation? The first requirement for us all is to recognize that it exists, and tragically so. A mere nodding of the head in the passive acknowledgment that there is this inequality in the fortunes of many run-of-the-mill heroes and villains is not enough to make us smarter and better people : we must find ways creatively to address this problem.

So if the first requirement is to acknowledge that the issue exists, the second need is for us to re-define heroism and villainy so we people—particularly the young and impressionable among us— identify, view and define our heroes and the villains more realistically, in a more measured way.  So we need to get to the point that we are sophisticated enough to ask just who are these heroes and villains?

The extreme cases, good and bad, are probably not the best grist for our education mill; it is the great middle ground of good and evil which is probably the most instructive and useful to the common person. We tend to learn most from people we think are most like us or from those we think are people we could conceivably be.

On the other hand, there is great emotional and intellectual safety for us  in considering the extreme cases, for we become licensed to think that, while these outstanding instances may be either inspirational or alarming, they have little or no relevance for our lives. Their extreme examples effectively may insulate us from achieving constructive learning leading to change in our attitudes and in our lives.

And the biblical admonition that we should not judge others, lest we be judged ourselves, is not particularly useful in our daily lives, since we all judge, instinctively and reflexively, according to what we experience and according to the prism through which we perceive and interpret what we encounter.

So the important thing for us to do is not to avoid judgments but rather to judge wisely, so that our judging results in our learning and in our making improvements in our values and behaviors and, beyond us, in the lives of others we touch.

Principles and Insights to Live and Work By

A nagging problem in life is that one generally receives very little good, actionable advice. Usually, those dispensing advice do so in very broad terms, leaving the person receiving the advice no better off, practically speaking, than before. We don’t need platitudes here; we need principles we can act on.

To be effective, advice must meet at least three standards: first, it must truly discriminate among competing ways of thinking and acting, thus allowing a person to choose one path, one way, over others. Second, advice, once adopted, must result in virtuous living, which I am defining as living in ways that treat others as ends, not means, and that cause no flagrant harm to one’s self, to the living environment or to others. Third, the sort of advice people most need should be universally applicable; advice that shifts with changing circumstance is arguably less useful than the sort of advice that one can always live by, wherever and whenever one is. What we need in the realm of advice is moral anchors in the storm of fluid existence.

I begin with the observation that much unhappiness in man is caused by the notion—which I believe to be wrong—that feelings are more important than performance. Many people believe that the quality of one’s love, for example, is primarily important, so the feelings tend to become ends in themselves.  On all fronts, and in all circumstances, people would be well advised to measure the worth of their lives by the quality of the acts they perform rather than the feelings they have. To be truly worthwhile, feelings must be made actual and real by deeds. To feel something is one thing; to pay those feelings off with acts is another. Feelings without performance should be seen as the self-indulgent stroking of the ego.

A second major principle many people overlook is the need to demand high quality in all that they do. Sadly, many of us have such low self-esteem that, over time, we have come to believe that Life—or those pesky “Others”—hold the keys to our behavior, and even to our happiness. While of course both Chance and Nature are powerful and we all know that accidents do happen, nevertheless, people who are determined and courageous can insist on leading a certain kind of life, no matter what others may do and say. We need to demand quality in our lives, and never to compromise on that standard.

Not to impose these personal demands on Life can leave one drifting about, like a character in a picaresque novel, living an empty life composed of a meaningless series of random events served up by sheer chance. What we need to do is to give meaning—ultimate meaning—to what is essentially an actuarial estimate of our time here on Earth. Giving unique meaning to one’s mere existence is what modern living is all about.

We need to think big, and expansively, for we tend to want to jump small hurdles, hoping somehow to be seen thereby as succeeding. As a matter of fact, it is success that is often equivocal, and it is rather great failures that are often the stuff of which great lives and destinies are made. To fail nobly is a lovely way to end up. At every juncture, both personal and professional, we need to ask ourselves, am I thinking boldly enough? Can I step closer to a concept that there is something I may do, even unwittingly, that could change the world for the better? We must always think bigger. 

We are wired to anticipate and embrace failure, those of us who come from challenged backgrounds. What we must do is to re-wire our minds and hearts for success; we must learn to anticipate success and victory over circumstance around every corner, rather than to look for our reliable and self-fulfilling friend, failure. Once we have achieved a paradigm for beauty and aspirational achievement, we can build on that for the world’s good.

Misfortune happens; that’s undeniable. The innocent often die and the less worthy go free to continue their sordid lives. We must persevere in the face of this evident injustice. We must not get bitter or downtrodden; we must go forward with whatever philosophical justifications for this situation that we can personally muster, understanding that in some important sense, Life is a crapshoot. So plow on, undaunted: that’s my sure advice.

Now we come to the matter of people disappointing people. It’s common and it’s a situation always fraught with moral danger. Here’s my advice: to whomever has slighted you, to those who have done you wrong, and to those who have somehow disappointed your altogether reasonable expectations, forgive them as soon as possible, preferably immediately, but at any rate in short order. This is necessary because people whom you cannot forgive have an emotional and moral hold over you. It’s a burden that no person wanting to make a real and positive difference in the world can and should bear. Let it go, and have them—and you—live in peace.

A very good final piece of advice is this: make every interaction with strangers an opportunity to change attitudes and lives. Here’s the deal: someone you may encounter may have a life far different from your own. What you say to them, the respect that you show them, the impression that you leave with them, could make a difference for the good in their lives. This is your responsibility and your daily task: make every person you meet feel the better for having met you.

That’s my advice. 

Chronology in People Matters Greatly

I know many people who are fond of saying that, in determining people’ lives, one’s age does not matter. Those who deny that age matters often maintain, for example, that it’s how one feels that matters, not one’s age. For many of these people, a person’s outlook and approach to life, not his or her age, is what is really important.

If there ever was a more foolish statement or belief, I can’t now think of what it might be. Of course one’s age is very important and no amount of fantasizing otherwise will make a person’s age any less determinative of the nature and quality of a person’s life. This is so for several reasons, a few of which I will discuss here.

Those who discount the significance of age often point to increasing human longevity due to better medicine, better diet and the tendency of many people to exercise regularly. While it is certainly true that Americans, for example, are living longer, that fact alone does nothing to eliminate the significance of age in human affairs. On the contrary, the expansion of generations increases the phenomenon that with more generations living, the diversity of human experience increases and, accordingly, shared experience among people decreases. Who could reasonably argue that important to all close relationships are shared values, opinions and approaches to life.

When the average person could routinely die at 60, if not earlier, then that 60-year old would share many experiences, attitudes and opinions with those 20 years younger. With many people living to 80, 90 and beyond, the probability that those octogenarians will share common experiences and attitudes with those much younger dramatically decreases. This disparity in experience and culture among generations, producing a challenging lack of commonality among people becomes apparent in many areas of human activity.

To cite just one arbitrarily chosen example, few people who are now 50 or older would remember vigorous public debates about the inherent worth and desirability of obtaining a college education. This is so because such debates simply did not exist. Currently, the debate on whether or not getting a college degree is a useful or unnecessary or unwise thing is now going on in America, and there are those who are themselves college educated expressing the view that in modern America, going to college is largely a waste of time and money. It would be better—so the thinking goes– for young people to go into practical, hands-on training for an available job for which very costly modern higher education poorly prepares its students. So living longer in the rapidly evolving and changing modern era means having continually to learn about, and to cope with, huge societal change, such as the advent and growth of science, travel and communications, particularly of the internet.

Having little or nothing in common, in experience, and in opinions with many of those one naturally mixes with in daily living and working means that inter-generational relationships of all kinds may be increasingly difficult to start, develop and maintain. Over time, for example, many people of widely different ages falling in friendship and love discover that they actually share very little in common with those they’ve chosen to befriend or even marry. Earlier, when generations were fewer, shared values were more often than not, simply assumed.

 Another obvious example concerns men and woman who have served in the military. Many of them may find it difficult to share and compare that experience and its effects on one’s life and philosophy with those who, in the age of the all-volunteer army, many may never have chosen to enlist or to serve.

Similarly, parents of grown children often have little meaningful to share with parents of very young children. Times have changed and with those changing times the problems, accepted parenting methods and the challenges children and their parents face, have dramatically changed as well.

The list of areas demonstrating how important one’ age is in determining the character and quality of one’s life goes on and on. The point is that one’s age matters and matters greatly, even if that truth causes chagrin to those who would have it differently.

The Curse of Modern Cynicism

The ancient Greek cynics espoused a philosophy of living a life of selfless virtue, rejecting wealth and the trappings of earthly success in favor of a modest life of dignity and goodness. They wanted the world to be perfect, and they wanted to arrange their lives and thoughts to help make it so.

Modern cynicism has virtually stood this view of life on its head, for modern cynicism is the belief that little good rarely happens, since people’s motives and actions are always suspect and therefore need to be under constant review, and one does well to anticipate the worst possible outcome of any human interaction, especially those involving stated altruistic personal agendas, protestations of good will, friendship and love.

In short, modern cynicism boils down to the belief that in this world nothing truly good can ever happen. This belief is at the heart of what cripples and limits us, what holds us back from daring to create a better personal life and world. Cynicism is the ultimate destroyer of human potential.

In modern life, cynicism stifles people’s ability to believe in worthy ideas and to trust in others, it thwarts relationships and, in general, drives people into passivity and hopelessness about individuals and life’s potential to improve. Cynicism also douses the fires of true passion, preferring to prompt a look beneath the stated passion to find the probable ulterior motives and hidden personal agendas.

While skepticism merely withholds acceptance pending examination, cynicism routinely prejudges all proffered propositions unworthy of acceptance and belief.

Why, then, would anyone today want to be a cynic? Probably because cynicism for the feint of heart seems like a safe, secure and lofty place to be. Never to truly believe in another person’s noble motives or good intentions is insurance against subsequent—and, cynics believe inevitable– disappointment. Never acknowledging the genuineness and therefore the worthiness of professed love or loyalty frees the cynic from a commitment to believe, from taking any leap of faith. Disengaging from the struggle for human betterment makes failure seem both logical and inevitable, rather than the fault of human actions or of cynicism itself as an approach to living.

In short, for the cynic never to try seems like a formula never to fail. Sadly, the truth is that never to try is always to fail—in relationships and in life.

Too Many Contractors

This recent debacle involving a 29-year old Booz-Allen Hamilton consultant to America’s top security organs reminds us that we may have reached the tipping point in the off-loading of the nation’s important work to private consultants. I’m afraid that it is now the profit-seeking consultants who are minding the store while many of  those in the government’s employ—supposedly in charge—are camped on the sidelines trying to follow—or even catch up to–  the important events taking place in the real world.

This Booz-Allen guy, now hiding out in Hong Kong and making occasional, self-serving statements to the press, didn’t even bother to get a high school diploma, but evidently he feels himself qualified and empowered to release the most classified national security information to the English press. He is reported to be an IT whiz, which gives me scant comfort, since I really don’t care about the professional preoccupations and accomplishments of those who would so readily betray their country.

We of course should extradite and try this pathetic, little person but even more important than that is that we as a nation learn something important from this experience: namely, that over time America seems in danger of becoming a nation of many persons who consider their primary function that of employing others to do the work those hiring consultants were themselves hired to do. I’d say that this is a prime example of what it means to “pass the buck”.

Clear to me is that the Congress and its researchers need to measure the extent to which payments to consultants by sensitive government security agencies have grown over time. Moreover, we ought to be taking a close interest in who among these consultants are routinely given Top-Secret security clearances.

These two numbers ought to make obvious our prudent course of future action: first, to limit the government’s spending—particularly in the area of national security—on external consultants and, second, to conduct an intensive review of all those consultants now holding top security clearances.

In short, we as a leading world power with extensive global interests and vulnerabilities need to straighten out our thinking and tighten up our procedures of whom we trust and how much we trust them to do what’s right for the country’s national interest.

As for Booz-Allen, they ought to have their management and policies and  procedures looked at by their Board and by the U. S. government—which incidentally is paying them billions—to determine what needs to be done to remedy this situation, which seems to me to be deteriorating.