Statesman Mrs. Teresa May

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

This week’s essay, like my other blog posts, is intended to be an “evergreen” post: still relevant next winter, and long after Brexit has receded to nothing but a blip on time’s horizon.

Hello Reader,

Got project skills?

Years from now, if you are reading this essay in some dusty digital library, you may be thinking that my peers and I, during these seasons, were correct in judging that Brexit, as in Britain leaving the European Union, (EU) is one of the greatest projects of our time.

The summary so far: The people had a referendum in 2016. It would be, they were told, a “once in a lifetime” referendum, meaning: no second chances, no do-overs, meaning: a result closer to a grave Constitution than to a light bylaw easily changed. Today’s prime minister was an MP back then, and a “remainer”—until the vote was in. Then of course she tried to honour the referendum. Other MPs do not have such honour, and by journalists today they are openly called remainers.

Soon after the referendum there was an election where the people voted into power a minority government, partly because, while a big majority government might strengthen Britain’s hand for negotiating with the EU, few voters imagined a majority government would be critically needed for Brexit. I know I for one, back then, thought Brexit had already been decided.

You, years away, may be calm and objective about it all—but today we sure aren’t! In fact, as I write this, “tens of thousands” are marching for the issue of a second referendum—even though it’s Saturday March 23, 2019, with the exit—until yesterday—lawfully set for this coming Friday. A little late to be marching, eh?

As for the details of what the marchers want, and the details of Brexit: All of this, dear student researcher, you must already know as you “compare and contrast” and “document and footnote” old archives… So let me, today, only give you a single lens, like Grandmother peering through her monocle, for seeing the world. Not to see the important details, but to merely see a few concepts.

Here’s a controversial concept: If this is a great project, then perhaps  Prime Minister Teresa May, now being widely derided and disrespected, is a great statesman. Not like the other MPs. In my recent reading of newspapers, no other MP has said anything great, and a great many have said things that made me groan. 

I am reminded (to paraphrase Swift) of the slogan: “You know a great person by this detail: there is a confederacy of dunces against her…” Maybe there is a reason the rest of the Honourable Members of Parliament are unable to come up with a ghost of a start to a beginning of any agreed-upon plan; maybe they have pointy caps.

I first began to realize this one day in 2018 when Mrs. May was headed off to “the continent” to negotiate the terms of the exit, no doubt praying and firmly grasping her economic papers, while keenly scanning for the umpteenth time what terms she could fight to the bitter end on. May reminded me of that other lady prime minister, the Iron Lady, and the British forces in the Falklands, on a bright and fearful morning, moving off to manoeuvre over “no man’s land” to finally cross the wire and close with the Argentinian forces, each man firmly grasping his rifle—and praying. 

And May’s critics in parliament? On the very day she flew? They were asking what Ms May’s “plan B” was. 

Good lord! When you are down to the wire, whether on a jet plane to Brussels or about to cross a smoky battle field, the final thing to do is not to make a plan B—it’s to synchronize your watches. (Yes, I was a soldier once) Like a civilian plowing a long straight furrow, you don’t distract yourself by “taking your eyes off the prize.” (Nor does an army or corporation broadcast it's plan B "in the clear" to competitors and negotiators)

In fact, any plan B, such as secretly wanting to "remain" back in (the EU) your own trenches, is like a stab in your courage tank, letting out all your air. For a desperate battle, the Holy Bible talks about the folly of having the trumpet give an uncertain sound.

(By spring of 2019, with the drawn-out agony of Brexit, "remain" is no longer a secret but something to want publicly. It is still a secret, but now an open secret, that the calls for a "confirmatory vote" referendum is actually meant to torpedo Brexit)

I knew then, as the prime minister was in the air, that many learned folks in parliament had come to their seats not from managing projects but from desks in law offices. Not the same.

As I said back in January, in my archived essay Billy Bragg and Brexit, all of the prime minister’s critics thought she should take her eye off the ball. Not just in smaller ways such as while she is flying to Brussels, but in bigger ways too. For example, some MPs advised she should stop everything to have a general election. I reply, “Really? I mean, yes it’s exciting to campaign with long days and short sleepless nights… and then get re-elected… and then? …Then time has flowed by while you were too distracted to keep your eye on the Brexit ball.

Projects, like businesses in general, need a laser focus. In business one might, as Avis rent-a-car did, invest in meetings for six months to come up with a concise definition of purpose, so the company can then take steps to avoid distractions. No point in a profitable distraction; that’s why Avis dumped their limousine service. 

I like how May, as a good project leader, keeps her eye on the ball in contrast to other MPs including the head of the opposition party, Jeremy Corbyn. You might think another party leader, greatness-wise, would be in the same ball park as Ms May. Nope, not in this case. 

Corbyn’s advice to everyone reminds me of some Quebec leaders, before their calling for voting on an exit from Canada, telling everyone Quebec could have a “sovereignty association” with Canada, even though there was no clarity as to what the heck that would mean. Corbyn is talking about some sort of unprecedented association between the United Kingdom and the European Union, but I can’t explain it here, because nobody can. No one—certainly no leader in the EU—can say exactly what Corbyn’s unwritten, unprecedented, unlegal plan might be.

What I can say, using Granny’s simple monocle, is that Corbyn is taking his eye off the ball by calling for the UK to be in the same customs union as the EU, without being in the EU. Call it, to paraphrase the Americans, “Customization without representation.” Yet the Brexit ball presumably means freedom from the EU, full sovereignty, not partial freedom.

Right now, through my lens, I see MPs believing the people’s vote doesn’t count until the majority of confused MP’s vote to agree with them. I think of parliament as a ruling mini-democracy, complete with jokers and anarchists: folks in the guise of “remainer” MPs. How queer, because by my monocle the 2016 referendum supersedes the current parliamentary session. As clear headed project managers would say, “A done deal. Move on to the next step.” 

As I see it, the people of a great democracy didn’t say: Brexit only if the EU agrees, or, only if we get a good deal, or, only if we get no deal, also known as a “hard Brexit.”  To the people? “Brexit means Brexit.”  This Teresa May has quoted. I can’t attribute who she got the quote from, since it’s such a wide spread “no brainer.”

Good foundations, or good first decisions, as with an engineer’s postulates and theorems, are the bedrock, the sine qua non (without which not) of every engineering or business project.

Dear future student reader, I am feeling quite at ease, with no emotional need to weigh and balance the latest “six options”… because, although I am not from the future, I am from Canada. I will merely note that creative brainstorming is best for the start of a project, not at the end. 

Below are some creative options, stated this very weekend, by the MPs. My classroom exercise for you, oh learned student, is this:

To look through a monocle at each option in turn to ask: Does this take eyes off the ball?… 

Surely in her clarity of intention, against stormy waves of harsh MPs, Mrs. Teresa May is a rock of Gibraltar. …

God save the Queen.

END NOTE: 

HERE ARE THE OPTIONS  

From the BBC web site, with bolding by me, for Friday 22nd March:

QUOTE

in the coming days, as many as six other options, in addition to Mrs May's deal, could be voted on:

• Revoking Article 50 and cancelling Brexit
• Another referendum
• The PM's deal plus a customs union
• The PM's deal plus both a customs union and single market access
• A Canada-style free trade agreement
• Leaving the EU without a deal

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who wants his alternative plan for a customs union and guarantees on workers rights to be among those voted on, said there was support for a different way forward.

Conservative MP Sir Oliver Letwin, who is spearheading the move with senior Labour MPs including Hilary Benn, said he believed enough MPs would back an amendment to a government motion on Monday to trigger the so-called "indicative" votes later in the week.

But Conservative Brexiteer Marcus Fysh said the idea of giving MPs a menu of options after two years of negotiations was "ludicrous and childish", while ex-minister Steve Baker said it would end in "national humiliation”.

UNQUOTE

Sean Crawford

Under serene prairie Skys,

Alberta, March 24, 2019

***Update, March 27: May has promised that If MPs vote to back her deal with the EU, Then she will resign. (Because they will be voting for Brexit, at last)
***Update, April 3: 
Wow, talk about keeping your eye on the ball: May has put getting a deal for Brexit above party unity. Here is an editorial about her sacrifice. Her fellow conservative-party MPs will be angry, but they couldn't be counted on to vote for Brexit. (They opposed everything, including her negotiated deal with the EU)
***Below is from March 27, I think..

@AlanDuncanMP

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I don’t care what her critics say about my view - I have massive admiration for Theresa May’s fortitude and sense of duty. How has she managed to go through every day taking so much flak from less decent people?

Replying to @AlanDuncanMP

Agreed. She has been bullied by almost everyone in parliament. But she has stood firm and may just about make it out the other side. The fact she is prepared to give her job away in order to respect the referendum result should be applauded and respected. Thankyou PM.

Footnotes: 

~As an evergreen post, archived January 2019, I weaved together MP’s, Politically Correct guys criticizing idealistic folk singer Billy Bragg, and polarized politics in Billy Bragg and Brexit.

~Aw, shucks! The British Business community still ain’t worried enough, as the pound is nearly the strongest ever on a 120-day graph. Fine, but I want to buy cheap pounds!

~Surely frustration causes fantasy: A recurring fantasy, one printed again today, is that if May took her eyes off the ball by resigning, then “somebody,” never named, could somehow lead the MPs to a solution that has somehow eluded them—including those remainers, which implies the same chaps who won’t honour a referendum will somehow honour a new leader. This fantasy I somehow doubt. 

From what I have read from over in Canada I reply: Get real; not even Abraham Lincoln could possibly lead MPs like Corbyn, or those other MPs with their fantasies that are not sustainable unless they keep their eyes off the ball. I suppose even Lincoln confined his leadership to his own cabinet.

Christmas and Brine

essysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got stinging second person?

Preface:

One of my joys in life is writing on Free Fall Fridays. Thanks to the miracle of finding writing societies on the web, last Friday we were joined by a visiting writer from Alaska. With the snow still “four feet high” (I.3 meters) in her back yard, I had to be honest and tell her, “This is only our second day above freezing since January. (While still below freezing in the mornings, of course) So that’s why everyone’s so happy today!” 

You may wonder: What does an Alaskan, (retired, kids grown) living off the grid, hours from town, do during her one week vacation in Calgary? Culture. Stock up on culture: museums, stage plays and her hotel restaurant—never motel-suite cooking!—to name only three. I told her I too relish hotels as part of any road trip, partly because I have no TV. (Except for DVDs)

Here are three pieces my peers liked from a Friday close to Christmas. 

(In Free Fall, as invented by W.O. Mitchel, we get a prompt then fall as fast as we can—no editing, no regrets) 

Too close. It would not have been right for me to immediately post these bitter stories, not near Christmas, so I held them back for 2019.

Prologue:

Dad served overseas during the war. He survived. When a boy I knew was killed in action in Afghanistan Dad blamed old men, just as he must have done in his youth. He was born in 1919.

Prompt-

 next time chew

The number was 25. The place was South Korea, before being unified with North Korea, which idea was receding into the distance behind falling sleet. It was December, and of course the South Koreans—might as well get used to adding the geographical adjective—knew what that meant: They had lots of missionaries, after all, and lots of home grown preachers, too. But not too many young beauties wanted to be nuns, thank goodness.

What, you don’t think I should be thinking of beauties amongst this stupid falling snow, hundreds of miles from the territory of Hawaii, 

with the winds, 

under the influence of the spinning earth, 

coming not from the moderating sea but from the vast inland cold continent? 

Cold, yes, but Christ wouldn’t mind if I warmed myself up thinking of beauty. Let me tell you, everybody had a pin up girl under the lid of their footlocker. Mine was a blond, but good thing I’m not prejudiced—few blonds for a hundred miles.

I was in a stupid foxhole, sometimes a blessed foxhole, trying to see with the damn wind in my eyes coming from the enemy fields, when I felt movement from behind me. I felt safe, trusted my buddies to keep the line intact, but still… I turned, and I guess you know who would be out in this weather: Not a chummy adult, but some crazy children. 

I had nothing in the way of America’s contribution to Asian relationships: no candy. I did have a few ration cans: four to be exact, for four children. I was warm enough, actually, I didn’t need the extra food to drum up calories and besides: Man does not live by bread alone. Amongst their rags I could tell there was two girls and two boys. We exchanged a few smiles, and a few words. And best of all: “Christian.” “Me too,” I said, “Christ is number 1.” There wasn’t much to say, so I kept an eye on the sleet to the front, and I sang Holy night. And they joined in.

prompt- 

you stand there braced

So there you are, on a chilly autumn afternoon as a hidden sun is descending behind the clouds. The cliff on which you stand is barren of foliage, barren of lichen, overlooking a briny barren sea. Land or sea? Stand or fall? To be existing, or not to be existing? A cold gull cries uncaring off to the left, in an aimless un-beautiful flight. 

The twilight hours, and the twilight seasons, are the worst. Now it is both, and she’s not here. Nor is your best friend, Butch. For Butch fell afoul of a speeding car, and her—you just don’t know, do you? Still? You could try to escape into anger at her, but you are just too honest, and just too depleted of spirit.

You stand there, braced against the offshore gusts. The brine is in your eyes, in the air, in your very heart. There is no answer, except the postulate, the theorem, that we all have to go on living.

Prompt- 

The annual war began around the Christmas table. I know, that’s a stupid phrase, right?

Stupid civilians misuse the term war. You know what war is? It’s when the people get involved. Anything you call a police action, anything you leave to the civil servants and armed forces, is not a war.

Why do civilians say “war” and then turn their backs saying, “Let George do it.” I don’t know. 

Apathy means ‘without spirit.’ If you don’t have spirit then in the name of heaven, don’t send our boys into harms way. A stupid ‘police action’ is beneath you. And don’t think the boys don’t know whether you care or not.

George made it home, made his bundle, and made it back to Korea. He told me, “If you could see those Korean kids with nice playgrounds, nice schools, and running water, you would not wonder whether it was worth it or not. But,” he said, “I still despise—” I  knew who he meant. Some things the statute of limitations does not forgive.

If you have something to say at the gathering, then say it the day before, or the day after. If you can’t be bothered to take an extra day, then I can’t be bothered to hear you. In fact, you have 364 other days to say your piece. So do so.

But not on the day when I sang Holy Night while you were under a roof listening to Amos and Andy on the radio, on a stuffed chair, next to a stuffed full table. Show a little perspective, for heaven’s sake.

God bless America.

Epilogue: 

Time passes. The boy was Corporal Nathan Hornburg. The boy’s mother is passed on, the father died last year on the Camino pilgrim trail, the dear family dog is gone too. Only the girl, now married, is left. I don’t think I would know her on the sidewalk today.

Sidebar On Education:

Dear reader, do you “get” US citizens? I ask because this week I might have hurt the feelings of an Illinois professor on his blog.

I don’t know. As our Company commander warned us before we left to go train at a U.S. base: “Don’t think that just because you watch the same television, you understand them.”

A professor blogged about the scandal of rich celebrities getting their kids into university under false pretences, such as fake sports for scholarships. 

I opined that this was from “too much vanity.” After all, if a rich kid is born with only a normal I.Q. then she could always go to Brandeis University, the one where they dis-invited Aayan Hirsi Ali from speaking during the war on terror. (As noted in my “25-posts milestone” essay Acid Blog, Stupid Yankee University archived May 2014)

Also I reasoned how, unlike in Canada, 

(and unlike in Europe, judging by the essays of Paul Graham) 

the fact that Americans put the adjective “good” in front of a university, implies there must be lots of not-good ones, and these ones a not-vain kid could access to “punch her ticket” and do partying.

For my part, for that professor, I regard Americans as not worrying about “saving face” as much as other nationalities do, and as being downright proud of “being honest” in contrast to, say, Asians. Well. Did I hurt feelings? I ask because my comment was never posted; meanwhile comments of other folks on that post, comments that I thought were harmless enough to totally forget them, were taken down.

If “I done wrong,” then you may say so.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

Winter

2019

Fear in Fiction, with Martians

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

“I think when H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds, he knew his Pompeii.”

Sean Crawford

“Roaring and flashing hellish light, the volcano poured forth a weird cloud whose top spread out and out. Birds dropped dead from the sky….

Thousands fled at once. They were wise to flee—and the wisest kept on travelling all that afternoon and night. Nothing else could have put them outside the circle of death that Vesuvius was drawing round itself.”

Donald and Louise Peattie, Reader’s Digest Junior Omnibus, page 66.

Hello Reader,

Got fear?

As a writer, as happens to all artists if they progress, I have reached the point where I don’t learn much from the “how to write” books of other writers. Now I am into uncharted “on my own” waters. For example, I was delighted to grasp something from Robert Heinlein’s young adult novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. It was published when a popular cowboy hat and pistol set included business cards showing a chessboard knight that read, “Have gun, will travel.” (I can still sing the theme song for that show about the cowboy Paladin, as the boys sing in the movie Stand By Me) 

The teen hero is abducted into a flying saucer by a scary alien from outer space. Then what? During his first night of imprisonment he has a terrible nightmare. Why? Because things are relative. Because relative to the nightmare, he (and the reader) is calmer, better able to focus on the need to escape… Of course that was the only nightmare he had. I’m so pleased I figured that out on my own.

It’s like when I was an abused child escaping into fairy tales with scary witches. The stories made real life easier, somehow. Perhaps our present day black-and-white comic books about The Walking Dead serve the same purpose, in this fearsome and complex society. A little fear is good for us.

It logically follows: If I were to do a collection of poems about The War of the Worlds in Britain, then maybe my first few poems should be relatively more scary than the rest; Or at least involve fleeing; Maybe I could do a prologue from over in western Canada. 

OK:

When the Martians Stir, Don’t Stop Moving 

I am a scared rabbit.

Wheels roll fast,

my car is hurtling straight down the mountain highway.

The narrow valley has a river, a railway, and mountains rising sheer.

I know how rabbits are caught.

They are channeled into narrow trails.

They put their little heads right through thin wire snares.

I speed as fast as I can.

Behind me the Martians of nightmares are stirring.

Before me, past Hell’s Gate, past Hope,

the valley opens broad and green with room to hide.

Behind me will soon be the blasted wrecks of cars too slow.

The mountains channel the highway as I race for my life.

Thin Martian rays will stab through cars,

asphalt bubbling and sagging.

No breath to scream, no rabbit death-cry.

I drive into the darkening night.

I do nothing but drive.

On a Black Winding Graveyard

Between steep mountains

on the transCanada highway,

the gun emplacements are shockingly bare.

Concrete spools are stripped of their iron mounts,

nothing left to receive 106 mm recoilless rocket guns.

Why? 

I speed along, I grit my teeth.

I imagine the freckled soldier boys on their final day.

“Load!”

“Load.”

“Check back-blast area!”

“Back-blast area checked.” 

Then the warm slap on the shoulder.

Ready.

Soldiers don’t waste words swearing, not during their tight gun drills.

But—

If they see giant Martian machines striding up the road,

Will they swear, helplessly, as the Martians burn them from the world?

I drive past gun emplacements, grimly.

Past another,

and another,

concrete headstones 

on a long black winding graveyard.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

March

2019

Footnote: The guns had been used to trigger avalanches.

Fear and Complexity

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got perspective? 

on a life of quiet desperation?

Let’s start with a metaphor: Everyone knows the usual way to cross the overpass and then enter a freeway is with a small simple semi circle into a merge lane. 

But nevertheless, I travel a long, winding oblong merge road, winding around with the skyscrapers of downtown first on the right, then ahead, later on the left, and still later, now hidden by grassy canyons, astern at six o’clock, as at last, I attempt an all too short merge. I know two drivers who time their trips to avoid that dreaded merge during rush hour. And—get this—at some point, long before the freeway merge, the road narrows into one lane. 

You might think our road engineers would be as practical as old Roman town planners, putting our roads on a classical grid, but no—I think our engineers flunked out of art school. That long spaghetti road to merge is fun for me only because I am used to it, and only because, as I drive with narrowed eyes, seldom does anyone pass me before the road narrows. In fact, unlike nearly everyone else, you are unlikely to see my brake lights before any of the precipitous blind turns—although I will ride with my foot nudging the brake pedal, in case I see a deer: So if I have to panic I won’t STOMP on the wrong pedal, as people have been known to do. It’s been years since I owned a sports car: These days, taking that road so fast, leaving cars behind in my mirrors, is my sole bit of silly male showing off. Hurray for me!

It was writer Larry Niven who pointed out that a driver will take a stretch of road faster and faster until he is at the very limit of his capability, a capability that he finds out the hard way. Perhaps through a harmless flash of fear. To me, Niven’s drivers are a metaphor for our society: We are going ever faster paced, ever more complex, roaring around corners right up to the sidewall of failure… and inevitably, by this model, some people get left behind. Or squashed on the sidewall.

In the merry old days no one was left behind. I am imagining a quaint English village, back in Europe in the time of long bows when only members of the aristocracy would ride a horse. Who would I have been, among the villagers, back then? With my same gender as today, would I have been a broad shouldered fellow, perhaps too nervous for battle, but very good at steering a straight plow? Would I have been a skinny troubadour, good for rousing songs of battle and good cheer, but only average at working the farm? Would I have been the village idiot, happy to contribute to the harvest by copying what others were doing? One thing is sure: The complexity and pace of society would have been slow enough that even as an idiot I felt included as a valued villager. Not left out.

For some people their first “village,” as children, is their school. You might think a school would be scientifically designed so every one would be valued, safe within a section of folks of their own sort of ability. Not so. Of the musically inclined, in band class, some play only “third chair.” For learning arithmetic, according to a teacher on the radio, some kids “feel punished” when others get awards: He was against awards. And many children in school, too many, feel dumb. For a few, without the power from feeling accomplishment, their only way to feel power is to bully others. (On an episode of The Simpsons some bullies smash Bart’s trophy saying, “We hate kids who do things.”)

As new adults, some of those kids, the ones who took algebra, will go on to university, there to quietly crash at midterms, fail at finals, and “graduate at Christmas.” The campus will have resources in place, of course, such as academic helpers and trained psycho-therapists. The problem, though, is partly psychological: Too many students, unaware of how swift and complex society is, think they are unique in their struggles. The counsellors report that they never even see a lot of the students who drop out.

Meanwhile, in the real world, many grown adults don’t have a perspective on how much they should try to “keep up with the Joneses.” The slick magazines are full of articles on what is sexy-normal, what is serene-normal ( ha-ha) and “How I learned to stop worrying and enjoy our frazzled modern style.” OK, I haven’t written that last one yet, but back in the 1950’s someone wrote a business nonfiction, The Organization Man. This was back when the usual thing for an ambitious man of business was to get hired by some “big corporation,” the bigger the better. Other tell-tale books of that time, of the fiction sort, were The Big Company Look and the classic The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson, a book that labeled a generation. In the days of black-and-white TV people knew, but didn’t know what to do.

If our society is overly complicated, then maybe modern life is not a problem to be solved, but a plight to be endured… and to be endured as sanely as possible. To me, sanity is realizing that society’s common sense “knowledge” has not yet caught up to our common “experience.” How many young students, up to their hips in alligators, truly realize that people are more alike than different, and that others, too, are just as sunk in the swamp?

In the Organization Man a businessman is quoted as being frustrated: He is not getting results with the exciting new idea of splitting a big meeting into smaller groups, groups that then report back to the main group. Merely “reporting back” is the usual remnant, today, of that old technique—with one person as recorder, and one as spokesman for, say, a group of six. The problem with this usual method, as practised today, is that it ignores fear. The good news is at least small groups are a chance to interact, in a left brain “just the facts and observations, Ma’am” fashion. And yes, at least there’s a little bit of group bonding. To be sure, the group won’t share honest emotions unless there is work for a clear problem, but… best results come when the chairman can secretly face the concept of “fear” and sneak it into his or her plans.

Hollywood is instructive. Not after the first world war, but only after the second, and then only after a decade had passed, would the war movies finally have a scene where a veteran tells new recruit, fresh into combat,: “Everybody’s scared…” This intelligence, besides being “nice,” is reality based, and results in the new guy feeling more normal, less paralyzed by a sense of personal inadequacy, and then better able to function. Which helps everyone, veterans and newbies alike.

In our modern peacetime culture, despite people commiserating with each other, we still don’t know, not truly, how much fear, anxiety and “everybody is scared” is normally out there. Said Henry Thoreau back in the 19th century (from memory) “The average man lives a life of quiet desperation”—words that still need to be said. 

Today in our business world, or our community halls, as regards those small groups that report back to the larger meeting, the underlying intention, if the chairpersons know their stuff, is to share emotions, discovering that others are anxious too, thereby reducing the flow of energy required for fear and protecting one’s ego, and therefore releasing energy to tackle the problem. Group problems are only solved when energy is available. (Other small groups using this principle of “emotional management through perception-checks” would be hallway conversations during meeting breaks) 

An extreme example may illustrate this principle: Teenagers. On student council. Remember? Jostling and fidgeting, maybe laughing a bit too loud, having nearly all their energy flowing to their self protection, 

(the underlying reason for much “impulsive” behaviour at their meetings) 

a flow hard to redirect… which is why, for example, anything complex, such as organizing to Save the Black Footed Ferret, is better left to college age people. 

We adults are older than we once were, but we still have our inner teenager…

Fear. Inadequacy. How ‘bout those roads? There’s a reason for the cliche of men going on road trips with their wives and then not admitting to problems with going too fast for the map, and with not wanting to ask strangers for directions. Yesterday morning I saw the cliche acted out, yet again, by Daddy Pig on the British children’s show Peppa Pig. 

In a society revved to the max, let’s give ourselves permission to see fear. Let us help each other. Let’s help the new recruit, help the village idiot, and help Albert Einstein too when he faces something new in his everyday life. Gone are the green pastoral villages of yesteryear. Today all of us, in this grey and complex world, can truly say, “I’m a stranger here myself.”

Sean Crawford

Somewhere in society

March

2019

Footnotes: 

~Reducing individual group member’s anxiety is part of the “bag of tricks” a chairman can use to break a group’s gridlock, a trick I learned from the mentor I wrote about in January of 2019. (See archive)

~One antidote to fear is self confidence. But confidence is like shyness: situational, not dispositional. 

At a job site where I was feeling unsafe and unsupported, my I.Q. would plummet as I walked over the threshold.