Ernie The Attorney

A funny sign of open-mindedness...

Think That You Might Be Wrong: New Orleans Mystery Art

My daughter's charity run

My daughter Charlotte is running a relay (the "My Reason Relay") to benefit the American Cancer Society.  She asked me if I'd put the word out on my blog in case anyone wanted to donate to help her team out.  So, here's a link to her page.  Her goal is $100, and so any amounts, even small amounts, are welcome.  Thanks!

Iceland, what made you think you were so special?

Michael Lewis' recent article in Vanity Fair is a must read on so many levels.  First, it's fascinating account of how Iceland, a quaint little country that has been isolated from the world of International finance for more than a millennium, suddenly became a careening high roller.  And then promptly became bankrupt. As in: 'the whole country became bankrupt.'

But there's another level (as their always is when Lewis looks at a situation) that I find more Interesting. How did a bunch of people who made their money for hundreds of years by fishing come to believe that they had an aptitude for high finance?  This short blurb, in which Lewis talks with an Icelandic fellow, kind of sums it up:

It took years of training for him to become a captain, and even then it happened only by a stroke of luck. When he was 23 and a first mate, the captain of his fishing boat up and quit. The boat owner went looking for a replacement and found an older fellow, retired, who was something of an Icelandic fishing legend, the wonderfully named Snorri Snorrasson. “I took two trips with this guy,” Stefan says. “I have never in my life slept so little, because I was so eager to learn. I slept two or three hours a night because I was sitting beside him, talking to him. I gave him all the respect in the world—it’s difficult to describe all he taught me. The reach of the trawler. The most efficient angle of the net. How do you act on the sea. If you have a bad day, what do you do? If you’re fishing at this depth, what do you do? If it’s not working, do you move in depth or space? In the end it’s just so much feel. In this time I learned infinitely more than I learned in school. Because how do you learn to fish in school?”

This marvelous training was as fresh in his mind as if he’d received it yesterday, and the thought of it makes his eyes mist.

“You spent seven years learning every little nuance of the fishing trade before you were granted the gift of learning from this great captain?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“And even then you had to sit at the feet of this great master for many months before you felt as if you knew what you were doing?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you think you could become a banker and speculate in financial markets, without a day of training?”

“That’s a very good question,” he says. He thinks for a minute. “For the first time this evening I lack a word.” As I often think I know exactly what I am doing even when I don’t, I find myself oddly sympathetic.

Funny how easy it is for us to believe that we suddenly understand something that common sense should tell us is not that easily known.  I suggest that this a human (as opposed to an Icelandic) phenomenon by the way.  But of course we already knew that, didn't we?

The perils of lambhood

P.T. Barnum had a side-show attraction where a lamb, a wolf, a leopard, and a lion had been trained to stay with each other in one cage. Asked if this was difficult Barnum said, "No. But every now and then we have to get a new lamb."

Obama on religion

From an interview given by Barack Obama four years ago, shortly after he'd be elected to the U.S. Senate:

"I retain from my childhood and my experiences growing up a suspicion of dogma. And I'm not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I've got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others."

Amen, brother.

How to prioritize ideas

Herb Kelleher, the founder and CEO of Southwest Airlines, was approached by a young woman in the marketing department about a proposal. She told him that surveys showed that passengers on the Houston to Las Vegas flight might enjoy a light entrée. "All we offer now is peanuts," she pointed out, "and a nice chicken Caesar salad would be popular..." Kelleher pondered her proposal for a few seconds before responding: "Tracy, will adding the chicken Caesar salad make us THE low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas? Because if it doesn't help us become the unchallenged low-fare airline, we're not serving any damn chicken salad."

This story is recounted in a highly-recommended book called Made to Stick. I don't know why it's taken me so long to read this book, as it has been recommended a dozen times and I knew it contained valuable information. So now that I'm reading it, what's so great about it?

Well, it offers a simple and concrete blueprint for finding core principles and then communicating them to other people. In the practice of law, at least the part that involves litigation, this is the most important thing you can learn. And, sadly, it's something that most lawyers have trouble with. Partly, it's because we don't teach this in law school. But mostly it's because nobody has offered us the blueprint. Made to Stick contains the blueprint.

You would think that finding the core idea is easy, and sometimes it is. But even when it is (and that's less common than most people think), communicating a core idea is extremely difficult. It requires persistent clarity, and relentless focus. Herb Kelleher gets up every day and reminds himself what the core idea of his business is: "Southwest is THE low fare airline." Then he struggles to remind everyone else as they doggedly pursue undiscovered ideas that are very good.

The core idea is 'core' not because it is a good idea. It's the best idea, but it doesn't stay in everyone's focus by that fact alone. Made to Stick explains why people drift away from the core idea, and why they have trouble communicating it. Lawyers who want to improve their powers of persuasion would do well to read this book. However, I don't recommend it to every lawyer. For example, I wouldn't recommend that my opponents read it. Ever.

The power of one

"Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man."

—John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Subtlety & Fear

What if every day you showed up to work, eager to do something really good? Something meaningful.

What if you came up with ideas on how to do things better? Not at first, but only after you felt confident that you understood the point of the work and all of the subtle forces surrounding it.

What if, upon hearing your suggestions, your boss rejected them without much consideration? What if he made you feel small, suggesting that you were distracted? Your boss directs your attention to the goal: "do it this way," he says. The "goal" is to do it by a certain method. There is nothing subtle about the goal, or how to achieve it. Systems are never subtle.

Eventually you become demoralized. You wonder what the point of your work is. Why do you feel disloyal? Why doesn't your boss appreciate you?

Well, stop being so selfish. Get a grip.

Put yourself in your boss's shoes. He's worked in the system a long time; he know how things are supposed to be done. It's hard trying to get people to work within a system. Bosses don't have time for subtlety and novel ideas. They have to teach lots of people the old system, the one that they learned. Organizations like the one you work in need authority, and they need people to follow along without a lot of backtalk. What do you really want anyway?

Do you want something real?

What if every day you felt a sense of satisfaction about your work? What if you could try a new approach at the very moment you realized it was better? What if your boss completely supported this? What if you were the boss? What if you worked for yourself?

You would not be free of authority. But you would be free of institutional, corporate authority. Does that scare you? Then what are you afraid of?

You'll make mistakes, no doubt. But that's not what scares you, is it?

Fundamentalism & Religious Delusion

Richard Dawkins' excellent bookThe God Delusion is currently #12 on the NY Times best-seller list for paperback non-fiction. Dawkins is a scientist and wants to let people know that it's okay to be an atheist, despite strong resistance to the idea of questioning religious faith. His criticism of religious beliefs is polite and thoughtful, but of course that does not appease the faithful. The 'faithful' might also be called 'fundamentalists.'

What's a fundamentalist? Someone who looks at all new information to see if it matches their beliefs (or principles) and ignores that which doesn't match. The more extreme fundamentalists don't simply ignore the information, they become agitated. And really extreme fundamentalists have been known to attack. So offering new ideas can be harmful to your health. Especially if religion is involved. Just ask Galileo.

And where isn't religion involved? Even today, it's everywhere—even in places that seem implausible. Two hundred years ago our founders created a Constitution demanding the complete separation of church and state, but today practical reality tilts in precisely the opposite direction. Polls show that most Americans will elect only those political leaders who believe in God. Dawkins' is not running for U.S. President, but he has an important message: it's okay, sensible even, to question things that are unsupported by evidence. And he thinks that there isn't any meaningful evidence of God's existence.

Perhaps, though, he misunderstands the essence of religious faith.

The nice thing about a belief in God is that it offers us comfort and security. Who cares if it's provable? If it provides security then it must be a good thing. Non-fundamentalists, such as Dawkins, question even this proposition:

Then there is the security created by man in the idea of God. Many people ask me whether I believe in God, whether there is a God. You cannot discuss it. Most of our conceptions of God, of reality, of truth, are merely speculative imitations. Therefore, they are utterly false, and all our religions are based on such falsitites. A man who has lived all his life in a prison can only speculate about freedom; a man who has never experienced the ecstasy of freedom cannot know freedom. So it is of little avail to discuss God, truth; but if you have the intelligence, the intensity to destroy the barriers around you then you will know for yourself the fulfillment of life. You will no longer be a slave in a social or religious system.

By the way, the above words weren't written by Richard Dawkins, the scientist. They were spoken by J. Krishnamurti, a supremely spiritual man. His message was also that people should examine things for themselves, without preconceptions or conceptualizations. To him, this was the essence of spirituality.

Krishnamurti didn't want any followers, but he wound up having some, and still does. You don't hear much about them because they don't attract attention. They haven't started any wars, or persecuted people whose views they disagree with. Maybe they're deeply examining the world around them, which distracts them from the noble task of foisting views on others.

But back to Dawkins' book. Why is it called The God Delusion? It has to do with what the writer Robert Pirsig once observed: "When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

Amen to that, Brother Pirsig. Amen.

Learning when to quit

I just finished reading Seth Godin's excellent book, The Dip. It's "a little book that teaches you when to quit (and when to stick)." I have been thinking about this problem for several months now.

Mainly, I have thought about it in my yoga practice.

I've found that if I don't push myself I get bored, and of course I don't progress. But if I push too hard or in a thoughtless way then I tend to hurt myself. There seems to be this very fine balance point of (1) letting go and relaxing, while (2) creating a steady intention to go a bit farther. While thinking of those things, I also have to pay attention to my body's physical resistance, which is not always the same. Sometimes I can't go as far today as I have been going for the past week. And that's when I push, thinking I'm supposed to challenge myself. That's when I get injured.

There's an ego thing involved, of course.

Godin's book is interesting because it suggests that it's often a good idea to give up, a notion that at first seems completely heretical. Yet he shows that many successful people have become successful by quitting something big. Michael Crichton, after graduating from Harvard medical school, decided he didn't want to practice medicine (even though he would easily have made a lot of money) because he didn't think he'd be happy. He didn't even try it out for a few years. Instead he went on to be wildly successful doing something that he loved doing, but which presented a less certain future when he embarked on it. Smart people know when to quit, Godin says.

Usually.

He points out that smart people have one big weakness that usually keeps them from quitting at the right time. "Pride is the enemy of the Smart Quitter." This might be Hillary Clinton's problem. We all know that she's very smart, but somehow her campaign isn't winding up the way she first envisioned it. She's having financial trouble. The likelihood of her winning the nomination is getting smaller, and the cost of winning it is getting harder even from a non-financial standpoint. And despite it all, she proclaims she "won't quit."

Godin offers an interesting thought about the aftermath of quitting: it often feels very comforting. "One reason people feel really good after they quit a dead-end project is that they discover that hurting one's pride is not fatal." Obviously everyone wants to win, but it's true that learning how to lose is important too. Hillary touts herself as 'the experience candidate' and yet maybe she hasn't had enough experience learning when to give up. She's only run for elected office once (the U.S. Senate), and she won. That's the only elected position she's ever held, and now she's seeking one of the most important positions in our country.

It's true that a lot of skills can be learned on the job. But I can't think of too many world leaders who've learned the difficult art of quitting after they've been elected. That's probably the main reason so many wars continue even after it becomes clear they're both hopeless and unpopular.