Five Contrarian Truths About Behavior Modification

I’ve been thinking about a thesis I cooked up about a year ago, which, if it continues to feel valid as I write about it, will become a book.

The thought is this: We (as individuals and citizens and as members of social organizations and religious groups) spend a not insignificant amount of our time, energy, and money trying to improve the world by improving people who have tendencies and habits we judge to be unhealthy, unwanted, and/ or destructive.

Just in terms of well-known national and international organizations, we have a plethora of programs for alcoholics, drug addicts, and overeaters, plus anger management programs, dozens of programs whose purpose is to prevent criminal recidivism, and even programs for people that are addicted to sex.

This would make sense if these programs worked – if they were largely successful in effecting the desired change. But most of them are not.

Take, for example, programs for treating drug and alcohol addiction. The success rate is very low. So low that it is difficult to find the numbers, because the organizations that make their money running such programs don’t want the public to know how unsuccessful they are.

If you spend several hours digging and verifying the numbers you are able to find, you will discover that the 12-month success rate for alcohol and drug rehabilitation is about 15%. Put differently, drug and alcohol recovery organizations fail in achieving their goals at a rate of about 85%.

The War on Poverty, started by President Johnson in 1964, was a massive government initiative of more than 40 individual programs. There are plenty of phony ways to measure the success of that program that show positive results. However, if you look at the only metric that is honest – the “absolute poverty line” (the threshold below which families have insufficient income to provide the food, shelter, and clothing needed to preserve health – the rate has fallen insignificantly: from 10.5% in 1966 to 10.1% today.

The War on Drugs, started by President Nixon in 1971, is another big one. In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a critical report, declaring: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.” In 2015, the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for an end to the war on drugs, estimated that the US spends $51 billion annually on the effort to stop illegal drug use. In 2021, after 50 years, others have estimated that the US has spent a cumulative $1 trillion on it.

The result? More Americans are taking illegal drugs than ever before, and the number of Americans incarcerated for illegal drug use has risen 500% since 1971.

Question: Is there anything that you would commit your time and money to if you knew the failure rate was that high?

It’s said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. You can attempt to open a locked door by continuously slamming your head into it. But if, after your first attempt, the door stays firmly shut, slamming your head into it even harder makes no sense.

You would have to be an absolute idiot to believe that if we kept on with the same enormously expensive programs, they would one day achieve their goals. Yet that is exactly what we have been doing… for more than 80 years!

The reason is simple: the irrational but persistent belief that we – as individuals or organizations – can change (improve) unfavorable behaviors of people to any meaningful degree.

I believe there is a better way to deal with the massive failure rate of these programs. And that is to give up, once and for all, the false belief that, in a free country, anyone other than the sovereign individual can change his or her behavior.

Here are a few axioms to consider:

1. When it comes to character flaws, negative temperament, and bad habits, adult Homo sapiens seem to be almost incapable of change. Whether the issue is drug or alcohol addiction, overeating, leaving the toilet seat up, or general grouchiness, the percentage of people that successfully and permanently change are few and far between. Despite this obvious fact, most people, including educated people, refuse to believe that other people can’t change.

2. Trying to beat the odds by scolding or cajoling someone into changing their ways does no good at all. On the contrary, it usually has two bad results: It reduces the very slim chance that the person you are trying to change will change. And it creates a void between the two of you that is almost always filled with lying, anger, and resentment.

3. If you love the people in your life in whom you want to see change, begin by asking yourself if you would feel better if your relationships with them got worse or ended. Because that is, again, the most likely outcome of trying to change them.

4. If the answer to the above question is no – i.e., that you would not like to further damage or destroy your relationships with people you care about – the only reasonable thing to do is accept those things you don’t like about them. And even – if those things are annoying rather than damaging (to you or to them) – find a way to enjoy them.

5. If the behavior you want to see changed is damaging and destructive (to one or both of you), the only thing you can do is end the relationship gently but firmly. You must say goodbye. And you must mean it.

I know how futile and possibly depressing this may sound. But I’ve found that letting go of the mythology of change is very positive. I’ll talk more about that next week.

It’s a Serious, Scientific Catalog. So… Is This a Joke?

I was paging through one of my catalogs on trees this morning and I came across this entry for Woman’s Tongue Tree (Albizia lebbeck), otherwise known as East Indian Walnut: “This tree is well known for producing an abundance of long, brittle pods containing small seeds which, when driven by a light breeze, rattle endlessly. What connection this might have with a woman’s tongue is not clear.”

Aging Anecdotes: Forgot Your ID? 

AS writes to say: “I was making a purchase today and the 50-something clerk asked me for ID. I didn’t have my license on me and told him so. Then I said, ‘What do you think could possibly have happened to me in my life that I could look like this and still not be 21?’ He took another look at me and said, ‘All right, forget it.’”

Five Contrary Truths I Learned Too Late in My Life. 
If You Are Younger Than 73, You Can Be Five Steps Ahead of Me!

I’ve spent what probably amounts to an unhealthy amount of my spare time trying to figure out why so much of life is difficult or weird or crazy. I’ve spent an equal amount of time trying to figure out how I could get more of what I need (these days, mostly peace of mind) out of what I’ve got (mostly relationships).

I’ve got dozens, if not hundreds, of these thoughts filed away in the recesses of my aging mind. And I keep thinking that some of them might be helpful to one or several of my readers. So, before they flee completely from my cobwebbed memory banks, I thought I’d put them down here in my blog post – perhaps four or five at a time.

These first five are connected in some ways – but whatever connection they have, I’ve already forgotten. So, please take them as individual observations, and decide for yourself if they make sense to you.

1. Equal opportunity and equal treatment under the law are worthy and achievable goals for a civilized society. But believing that equality is a natural or divine law of some kind is foolish and destructive. Equality – true equality – is a rare and momentary anomaly. And that is because the universe, including all its elements, all its forces, and all its creatures, is designed to move relentlessly towards inequality. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is just one of innumerable observations that scientists and philosophers have made about this fact.

2. Equity – the objective of achieving equal outcomes in terms of education, income, scientific or artistic achievement, etc. – is a goal that will always result in communal degradation and can be achieved only by theft and the threat of violence. And even then, it cannot last, because it is based on equality. (See above.)

3. If the universe has any meaning, it is ironic – that life is a joke laughing at itself. All the best art and music is, happily or sadly, acceptingly or in anguish, a recognition of the fundamental irony of life and living.

4. The quality of our lives is largely determined by what we pay attention to. The more we focus our attention outside ourselves, the greater our sense of accomplishment and well-being. The more we focus our attention on ourselves, the greater our unhappiness, including ennui, neuroticism, and depression.

5. Every truth about life has an equal and opposite truth. Including the four above.

Have You Heard of Swatting? It’s Not Good. And It’s Becoming More Common.

Last week, Judge Tanya Chutkan found out what “swatting” means after an anonymous caller told her local police precinct that there was a shooting at her Washington home. Officers arrived at her home shortly thereafter to find that the call was bogus. No shooting had taken place. Two weeks earlier, federal marshals had rushed to special counsel Jack Smith’s home in Maryland where, they found out, there had been no shooting.

Swatting has emerged in recent years as a method of harassing and intimidating public figures,
and political targets have been bipartisan. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claims to have been swatted several times. And in 2022, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who was presiding over the trial of a Jan. 6. rioter, also seems to have been swatted.

The danger with swatting political figures is not just the unnecessary diversion of emergency resources, but the physical risk any confrontation with law enforcement poses to victims and police.

Things I’ve Been Thinking About Lately 

White Privilege, Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, Identity Politics… How Academia’s Dumbest Ideas Became So Popular 
 
I had just finished a chapter of a book I’m writing in which, among other things, I consider why so many of the most popular ideas and ideologies being propounded in colleges and universities today are not just wrong, but downright stupid.

White Privilege, intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, identity politics, etc. – I’ve written about all of them here before, wondering how they could be so obviously nonsensical and yet so strongly promoted and consumed.

I was thinking about it again last week after watching the clown show that took place during the Congressional hearings on the pro-Palestinian protests at many of our most prestigious universities. I was trying to understand how the presumably intelligent presidents of Harvard, MIT, and U Penn – people who were all about student behavior codes that banned such “microaggressions” as using misgendered pronouns – could publicly defend student protesters that repeatedly called for the extinction of the Jewish state?

How could they be so dumb on both issues at the same time?

Moreover, how could all those pro-Palestinian student protesters believe their cause was right? That the largest genocide of Jews since the Holocaust was a legitimate “act of resistance” against an oppressive, colonialist, racist, and apartheid state of White supremacy?

Even more disturbingly, why did the media portray them in a positive light?

I have not yet developed a theory that feels complete, much less defensible. But here is what I’m thinking.

A college professor can have a splendid career at an “ordinary” college by being an excellent teacher as well as an actual expert in the subject he or she teaches. 

My father, who was an exceptionally learned man, is an example. His dream was to be a playwright. But after writing several plays that were not commercially successful, he accepted the fact that, to support a family (that would soon include eight children), he had to get a “real” job. So, he became a professor of English, Greek, and Latin Literature at a local college on Long Island. He earned his living that way, supplemented by side gigs teaching mathematics and “speed” reading, for his entire career. He knew his Shakespeare and Homer and Joyce. He was also a very good teacher – so good that his classes were always maxed out early in the registration process.

His considerable skills would have been insufficient to get him tenure had he been teaching at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. At those lofty institutions, success requires not just expertise, but the continuous production of scholarly papers and books that would demonstrate his bona fides.

In other words, he would have had to play the “publish or perish” game.

And here’s where we get into the question of how highly educated people can end up embracing stupid ideas.

Professors at prestige universities must write books and essays that are published by academic publishers. But academic publishers – and this is true to some extent of all nonfiction publishers – are reluctant to spend money on books that, however solid they may be in terms of research, are unlikely to get attention. Books that get attention draw attention to the publishers themselves. And that means growth, prestige, and profits.

So, if the goal of the professor/writer is limited to merely being edifying, there is no natural incentive to propose theses that are unable to get lots of attention.

In theory, academic publishers should be satisfied with books that correct some minor technical flaws in the accepted scholarly literature, the idea being that scholarship is advanced by strengthening and extending widely respected theories. (Scholarly research and writing was always thought to be a scrupulous and humble pastime.)

But however successful books like that may be at inching forward towards a deeper understanding of some esoteric subject, they will receive, at best, approval and praise from other scholars that are unknown to the larger world.

If modern scholars want to make a “splash” – if they want to propel their careers forward – they have to write something that, in some way, is bold and ambitious. Put differently, they must challenge or refute, in whole or in part, the accepted wisdom of the day.

It’s not easy to overturn or reinvent or even reshape ideas that have dominated a field of study. Standard academic ideas are standard for a good reason: They have resisted critical challenges time and time again, sometimes for centuries.

Faced with the task of coming up with an idea that is different, it’s nearly impossible for a modern scholar to resist the temptation to compose, instead, one that is simply new. An idea that is, however flawed, nonetheless exciting, superficially cogent, and, most importantly, appealing in some way to the current gestalt of the larger academic community.

Such ideas are not only attractive to academic publishers, they are attractive to the scholars that critique them in academic journals because they, too, are under pressure to have something new to write about.

They are all looking for ideas that are fresh but not flat-out nonsensical, newish and clever, but also supportive of the academic vibe of the time. These are the ideas that are endorsed and embraced.

So what academia gets, with every new generation of scholars and critics, is a set of “new” ideas that may be flawed, but at least have the benefit of seeming to be reasonable given the cultural prejudices of the day. And though they may have lost any relationship to logic, fact, or common sense, they are eventually accepted as “true.”

Fifty years ago, any academic that wrote a book promoting any of the crazy ideas out there today would have never seen that book in print.

The idea of White Privilege, for example, could not have become accepted were it not for Karl Marx’s idea, 100 years ago, that Capitalism and class conflict were the fundamental reasons for the unequal distribution of wealth. And the current ideas of intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, and identity politics could never have been taken seriously were it not for Marx’s illogical and false theories that power and class conflict were the root causes of inequality.

That is the situation we have today. The dominant social, political, and economic ideas embraced by elitist educational institutions are obviously and evidently ridiculous. But for those enclosed in academic echo chambers and social media algorithms, they seem not just perfectly reasonable, but virtuous and good.

“I Am 17 and I Don’t Know Where to Go with My Life”

I frequently get requests from my readers asking for advice, and I do my best to answer their questions and get them pointed in the right direction. Sometimes, much to my surprise, the requests come from young people who have read my books. For example, this one from JC, who wrote after reading Ready, Fire, Aim:

“I am 17 and I don’t know where to go with my life. I was thinking about going into sales because I want to learn a skill. Since you are an expert, I wanted to know what your insight would be. Any help would be appreciated.”

This is what I told him… 

The best thing you have going for you, JC, is that you are only 17 and you’ve already proven your ambition by taking the initiative to write to me. In my opinion, ambition + proactivity = 50% of success. So, you already have half of what you need to achieve your business and financial goals.

The other half is a combination of knowledge and skill.

By knowledge, I mean discovering the key elements that undergird all entrepreneurial businesses, which is exactly what Ready, Fire, Aim was written to explain.

And by skill, I mean the three essential skills of entrepreneurial success:

* Knowing how to sell products and services, generally and in the specific industry you work in
* Knowing how to safely and intelligently grow any entrepreneurial business
* Knowing how to create and manage healthy and sustainable profits

Smart You!

There is no bigger advantage to achieving significant goals than starting young. Not only do you have unlimited energy and perhaps the sharpest mind you will ever have, you also have decades of time. You have the time to learn the fundamental skills that will make you competent and comfortable in every situation and against every challenge you will face in the future. You have the time to decide, at any point, that the path you are on is not right. And you have the time to start over.

Lucky You! 

There are many ways to become wealthy and successful. So if you begin your journey without a particular profession or business in mind, as seems to be the case with you, don’t fret about it. You have a BIG advantage over someone that wants to be, for example, a successful doctor or software technician or CEO in a particular industry. Because you haven’t locked yourself into a niche, you are free to choose a path that – depending on the skill sets you have now – will be the fastest and easiest to get you where you want to go.

What Should You Do First? 

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that goals – any goals – should be undertaken one step at a time. The moment I decided that I wanted to be financially successful, I could see that there were a half-dozen things I needed to do, and I needed to start doing all of them immediately.

Suggestion #1. At this point, you are not sure what profession or business you want to become a part of. And, as I said, that is to your advantage. Because what you must start doing immediately is learn the fundamentals of how all businesses work. Not just by reading Ready, Fire, Aim, but by treating it as a reference that you refer to daily.

Suggestion #2. Take a sales job. Any sales job. Every successful entrepreneur I know spent at least a year or two in his/her youth selling products and services directly – either by phone or door-to-door, in a retail office or on a car lot. There is nothing that will teach you how to sell anything better and faster than simply doing it. No book or manual can come close. And don’t be afraid to move around a bit from one type of sales job to another. To truly master the skill of selling, you have to have experience with soft selling (as you would be doing in a retail store) and hard selling (on the phone or door-to-door).

Suggestion #3. Once you become comfortable with your selling chops, make the move to become head of sales, either in the company you are working for or another one. Running a sales department requires essential skills that you won’t get by being one of the salespeople. Heading a sales team will teach you how to manage, monitor and, most of all, motivate salespeople. And that is an enormously important skill that you must learn if you want to get to the top of whatever industry you eventually land in.

These three suggestions will get you started. There will be other skills you will need to develop as you move closer to your ultimate goals. But for now, since you are just starting out, this will be more than enough to focus on.

Oh, and One Other Thing… 

While you are working full-time at various jobs to develop your selling and sales management skills, don’t neglect your general education. If you choose not to go to college, you should nevertheless spend several hours a day taking online courses that will provide you with the knowledge and intellectual sophistication you will need in order to wisely spend the wealth you will eventually acquire.

Worth Considering

The Continuing Mystery of Ray Epps, Sr. 

On Jan. 5, the man pictured above was videotaped energetically encouraging Trump supporters to storm the Capitol. The next day, in the midst of the chaos outside the Capitol building, he was videotaped asking law enforcement officers how he could help them.

This got Tucker Carlson and some other conservative commentators wondering: Who was this guy? And what the heck was he doing? Was he bipolar? Or could he be working for the Feds, provoking the crowd to enter the Capitol?

For months, they asked: Who is that mystery man? And why wasn’t he among the 1,000+ Jan. 6 protestors that were suspected of criminal activity, identified, and arrested? For months, there were no answers. And then, finally, he was named: Ray Epps, Sr., a 60-something ex-Marine who, when questioned before the now-defunct House Select Committee, said that he wasn’t a federal agent and wasn’t working for the CIA, the National Security Agency, or the Metropolitan Police Dept.

What he couldn’t explain was his strange behavior.

Since then, more than 700 Jan. 6 protesters have been charged with various crimes, with more than half of them convicted. Most of those that had done nothing more than be photographed at the scene received sentences of several months. But the sentences of some who were involved in the planning and execution of the protest were severe.

Stewart Rhodes, a Yale graduate and military veteran who was convicted of planning the protest, received 18 years in prison for “seditious conspiracy.” Peter Schwartz, who was accused of throwing a chair at a group of policemen and then pepper-spraying them, got a 14-year sentence. And Thomas Webster, a retired New York City police officer, got 10 years for tackling a DC officer and grabbing his gas mask.

The most-publicized protestor, of course, was Jacob Chansley, who wasn’t accused of assaulting law enforcement or destroying property. He was sentenced to 41 months in jail for, apparently, simply being inside the Capitol Building, shirtless and wearing a headdress.

So, what do I think about the whole Ray Epps thing?

It might be the biggest political farce of the last 10 years, and we have had plenty of those. In terms of facts and common sense, his testimony and the government’s stated position on him and his story have the intellectual solidity of gender fluidity theory.

I still have questions.

Why, after the contradictory videos of him went viral, weren’t the FBI, the CIA , and the Metropolitan police, who had thousands and thousands of images of all the protestors that day, able to identify him?

And then why, when he was identified, did it take so long for the police to charge him?

And then why, after he was arrested, did the Justice Department make a special plea to the court for how they felt he should be treated?

Could it be that they were afraid that if he got a much stiffer sentence, five or 10 years, for example, he might start talking?

Boys Will Be Boys 

I was backing up. I would have fallen over the barbell on the floor behind me had Paulo, my trainer, not stopped me.

I asked him, “As a kid, in Brazil, did you ever play that prank where you keep backing someone up until he falls over another guy who’s on all fours behind him?”

He had. It was common practice.

“In Brazil, too,” I said. “That’s funny.”

He asked, “Did you ever do that thing where you hyperventilate for a few seconds and then one of your friends gives you a bearhug till you pass out?”

“We did that,” I admitted.

“There must be other dumb and dangerous things that all boys do,” I said.

“Like jumping from a bridge when you don’t know how deep the water is below?”

“Exactly.”

“What the hell were we thinking?” we wondered.

My guess: We weren’t thinking at all. We were playing the kind of games that adolescent boys have been playing for hundreds – even thousands – of years. Stupid, semi-dangerous descendants of ancient coming-to-manhood rituals that have been practiced since Homo sapiens became sapient.

Becoming a man originally meant learning how to participate in dangerous things like hunting and warfare. It required not just bravery, but fierce loyalty to the clan – and, thus, to the survival of the species.

Girls must always have had coming-to-womanhood rituals. Note to self: Find out what they were.

Loving, Loyalty, and Pragmatism 

I came across this the other day: According to research by Dr. Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist from Stanford University (as well as numerous other studies), women initiate more than 70% of all divorces.

That surprised me. Maybe it shouldn’t have. Does it surprise you?

I did a bit of digging and found other facts about women vs. men in matters of marriage and divorce. For example:

* Did you know that, after the divorce, women move on to other relationships much faster than men? I didn’t.

* And how about this? According to several reports, women are more likely than men to have love partners before the divorce. It not only surprised me, it reminded me of a story I heard about a colleague of mine: By the time she told her husband she was divorcing him, she had already purchased a house for herself and her until-then-secret boyfriend!

* Here’s another thing I discovered: According to one survey, 98.7% of women surveyed a year after being divorced said their lives were “better” or “much better” than they were while married.

I’ve been thinking about why I was surprised by these facts. I suspect it’s because I’ve always assumed that women are naturally more loving and loyal than men, whereas men are naturally more pragmatic than women. I guess I’m going to have to rethink those assumptions.

And here’s something that any young man planning on playing house-husband in an upcoming marriage should know: According to a University of Chicago study, when women earn as much as or more than their husbands, the marriages are 50% more likely to end in divorce.

Things I’ve Been Thinking About Lately: 
Does Personal vs. Political Hypocrisy Matter? 

I’ve noticed that there is often a gulf between the political and the personal when it comes to theories about what is right and wrong.

And a parallel difference in what people believe about how governments should solve problems and how they solve these same problems in their own lives.

I’m not exempt.

For example, I am theoretically opposed to everything about Communism, including the massive and authoritarian distribution of wealth. The idea is so obviously idiotic, it seems to me, that I shouldn’t have to provide historical examples to prove how destructive it is.

Yet, in my personal life, it is not infrequent that I find myself giving cash and other sorts of financial assistance to people to help them achieve or acquire something sensible and helpful to them.

In doing this, I recognize the hypocrisy. But I repress my internal critic because I enjoy the experience. And, after all, it’s my own money. I can do what I want with it!

Over decades of giving away money this way (privately and personally as opposed to contributing to charities that I control), I have developed some “rules” I try to follow to mitigate the many forms of damage that giving people “free” money creates:

* I don’t give money to anyone that asks for it. The idea here is that I consider asking for money to be a moral flaw. That’s my rule. I do break it from time to time.

* I attach zero expectations to my gift. The moment it goes from my hand or bank account to the other person, the transaction is finished. And I have no interest in knowing if the recipient did with it what they said they would do. The pleasure is in giving the money. Finding out later that I was bamboozled or the person I had hopes for failed will only bring me unhappiness.

* I do expect a thank-you. And a sincere one. As GG, a Zen master and friend of mine once said, “Gratitude is what nature demands from a gift. Without it, the exchange is unbalanced. That said, I prefer thank-yous that are short and sweet. If they are longwinded or groveling, they are embarrassing.

Interestingly, these rules are pretty much the opposite of the rules my family and I have established for FunLimón, our community development center in Nicaragua.

There, we:

* Give financial assistance only to people who are willing to not just ask for help but ask for it formally and provide justification for what they want.

* Make it clear that when they get or borrow money from FunLimón, they accept the obligations that come with it, including, in some cases, paying it back (with or without interest), paying it back in labor, or “passing it forward” in the future.

* Require recipients of our financial aid to keep us posted on their use of our funds and meet certain requirements as they spend the money.

* Demand a formal thank-you, because we believe that saying thank you is a moral obligation.

So, that’s how I – a diehard free market/ Libertarian thinker – commit hypocrisy.

My left-leaning (and outright Socialist) friends are hypocritical in the opposite way.

They believe deeply in the redistribution of wealth – so long as it is the government or someone else that is paying for it. Ask them to contribute their “fair share” of the cost of whatever redistribution of wealth they are advocating, and they’ll tell you that they pay taxes… and, anyway, they are strapped for cash. “Let the one-percenters pay for it,” they say, looking me up and down.

Here is a funny video clip that demonstrates this.

This clip is about letting illegals stay in their homes. Watch till he asks if they could take in a migrant.

The point is that there is very often a gulf between our political/ social/ economic views on how companies or countries should redistribute wealth and what we do as private citizens with our families, our friends, and even strangers.

I don’t know if there is an “answer” to this contradiction. I justify my hypocrisy (in redistributing my own wealth to needy people) by pointing out that the money I’m giving away is my money. Even Ayn Rand would admit that there is nothing about free-market Capitalism that prohibits private charity.

On the other hand, I can’t think of a good justification for the hypocrisy of the Left. Can you?

Connecting the Dots:

Things I’ve Been Thinking About Lately

Irony and the Universe. About 30 years ago, I had a quirky insight into the old “meaning of life” question.

It came to me while I was sitting in a dental office, inhaling gas. Out of nowhere, this thought popped into my half-delirious mind – a voice that said: “Mark, I know how much you want to know it, so I’m going to tell you the secret now… Life is a joke laughing at itself!”

That was it. Nothing more. An explanation of the universe that might have been tucked in a fortune cookie. But, given my state of mind at the time, it felt profound. And true. It felt like a revelation. I was so excited that I had to restrain myself from jumping out of my chair and announcing it to my dentist, his staff, and everyone sitting in the waiting room.

We’ve all had ephemeral illuminations. They come to you. You get excited. But by the following day, your mind has returned to its former, stable perch. And the thought has ballooned into something farcical or shriveled into something embarrassing.

Not in this case. I’ve thought about that “secret” countless times since then. And it still feels true. It is always a helpful way to look at whatever prompted the thought in the first place.

Irony, I’ve come to believe, is a divine gift. It’s nature’s way of helping us understand the infinitely varied and constantly surprising ways that our lives confound us, especially when we think we have everything figured out.

Irony reminds us that we don’t know nearly as much as we want to believe we know, and have much less control over our lives than we would like to have.

Irony takes away certainty, but it gives back, or can give back, something better: self-acceptance.

Why I Don’t Serve on Pro-Bono Committees. Have you ever served on the board of a condo association? Or a charitable foundation?

If you have, you know how terrible it can be.

Six or eight intelligent people sitting around a table, most of whom have been successfully running large businesses or government bureaus or academic departments for decades. It’s a new board. And each member is willing and eager to provide his/her immense wisdom to guide the meeting towards fruitful decisions.

A half-hour later, tensions are rising. Another thirty minutes passes, and they have been unable to agree on agenda item one.

I’ve been a board member of both a college department and a local museum. The former was at first hopeful but ultimately frustrating and wasteful. The latter was a downright horror show. Initially, I explained away my disappointment by telling myself that the committee didn’t have the right mix of people. But eventually, I figured out the real reason committees like these don’t work: They are egalitarian.

Yes. That’s why they fail. It’s because they are decision-making groups where everyone has an equal say.

This realization is part of a much larger theme that I’ve written about (and will continue to write about): the very bad idea that equality is a good that we should strive for.

In the case of do-good boards and committees, when you allow everyone to have an equal say, what you get is endless bickering and mostly bad decisions. The reality is that in order for any group to work effectively, a hierarchy of power is necessary.

In my business life, I’ve always been happy to attend committee meetings so long it was clear that our discussions were going to be guided by some sort of hierarchy, whether formal or informal, stated or assumed.

Having a hierarchy isn’t a guarantee that the meeting will run smoothly and productively. But running a meeting without a hierarchy makes failure – either immediately or eventually – a certainty.

Dear Reader,

A reminder: Starting with this issue, I’ll be publishing this blog once a week, rather than twice. I’m hoping this will allow me to finish a few of the 16 (no lie) books I am almost done writing. Plus, I hope to find a bit of extra time to cover a few more topics, particularly those you seem to like. As you can see, this particular issue is almost twice as long as a “regular” issue. But, hey – just read what piques your interest!

Mark Ford

Reminder: A Change Is Coming 

As I said on Tuesday, I’ve decided to start publishing this blog once a week instead of twice. So, starting next week, you can expect to receive one somewhat longer issue that will include more of the investment advice and commentary on the economy that my readers have been asking for.

Question: Would you rather receive it on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday?

Things I’ve Been Thinking About Lately

A Lesson I Learned Long Ago About Personal Relationships. How long have you been hoping that your friend would stop with that annoying habit he or she has had as long as you can remember? Or that your spouse would improve himself or herself in some way that would be more appealing to you and also better for him or her? How many times have you made a subtle suggestion, or a tactical criticism, or a simple plea for him or her to do something about whatever it is that’s bothering you? And how many of those efforts by you were successful?

We know the answer. Never or very rarely. And that’s because by the time Homo sapiens arrive at adulthood, 95+% of their instincts, emotional intelligence, reactions, behaviors, and habits are deeply etched into their brains.

That means you will have less than a 5% chance of ever being able to “help” a friend or spouse “improve” themself in any meaningful way. In other words, spending time, energy, and effort on trying to change anyone in your life is 95+% futile.

When I came to this conclusion, I realized that I had a choice. I could continue to try to encourage change in the people in my life and deal with the eventual disappointment years later when they did not change. Or I could accept the idea that they would not change and learn to accept them – even love them – for who they are.

There are all sorts of rational objections one could make against this approach. I know. I spent years making them. But to no avail. I ended up angry and resentful and eventually losing those personal relationships I had once valued.

Turns Out, This Is True in Business Relationships. Recently, at a business meeting, my partners and I were discussing the strengths and weaknesses of a number of our leading executives. We were talking about the various strengths and weaknesses these people bring to their jobs, and how much better they could be if they could learn to stop doing this or start doing that.

I was participating in the conversation willingly and happily when I suddenly realized that we’d been having basically the same conversation about these same execs at least a half-dozen times over the previous three or four years.

I challenged my partners with a thought experiment. “Assume, for a moment,” I said, “that no matter how much we urge them, inform them, or incentivize them, none of them will be able to change. Imagine that we had a crystal ball… that we looked five years into the future and saw that none of them had made a single substantial change. If that were the case… what would we be talking about today?”

The next ten minutes of our discussion were more rewarding than the dozens of hours we had spent devising strategies to evoke changes in these people that were never going to come.

Exceptions Don’t Prove the Rule. We can, to a significant degree, help our children terminate unwanted behaviors and develop desirable ones. Nature designed Homo sapiens to be mentally and emotionally malleable when they are young. So, although it may not seem possible, studies have shown that up to about 15 or 16 years of age, teenagers can make those positive behavioral changes. But by the time people reach adulthood, their habits and tendencies are too deeply engrained.

There are some exceptions. There are always some exceptions. But if you want to solve a problem, and especially a big, complicated problem, it makes zero sense to continue with or even double-down on a “solution” that has been failing for the majority of those involved for many years.

And yet, that is exactly what we do. We create programs – local, regional, and federal programs – that promise to solve a problem but never do. In fact, they often make matters worse! But instead of acknowledging and accepting the failure of the “solutions,” we conclude that the way to fix the failure is to spend more money on the programs. To do more of them or do them “harder.”

I’m talking about a very wide range of social “problems” here – from the failure of our educational institutions to educate, to the failure of our addiction programs to reduce drug and alcohol addiction, to our failure to reform criminals in the penal justice system.