When I was 17, I registered as a conscientious objector. There were two options: (1) I won’t go under any circumstances, or (2) I’ll go, but I won’t carry a gun. I took the second option. I was drafted and had an appointment with my draft board to defend myself. I was told I would not succeed, that I’d go to prison instead. I was okay with that. When the day came to defend myself, I somehow missed the appointment. I got a call from my draft board saying I was going to jail. I heard nothing more from them after that.

The invasion of Ukraine has me thinking again about the morality and practicality of war. I wish I had the clarity of mind I had when I was younger. Defending one’s home and homeland certainly feels justifiable. Invading other countries? No. But what if, as in the case of Ukraine, the invader believes that it is a form of self-defense?

I don’t know. But my general sentiment about war is cynical. I do like what Tolstoy had to say on the subject. He believed that the upper class uses war to dominate the working class:

“They stir up their own people [against some] foreign government, and then pretend that for the well-being, or the defense, of their people they must declare war: which again brings profit only to generals, officers, officials, merchants, and, in general, to the rich. In reality war is an inevitable result of the existence of armies; and armies are only needed by Governments to dominate their own working classes.”

Holding Fast to the Stories We Want to Believe 

I got into an interesting discussion about a comment I made in reviewing King Richard. I said:

“Before I saw the film, all I knew of Richard Williams was the character the media portrayed him to be: fanatical, egotistical, and abusive. The story told here, which was approved by Venus and Serena, showed evidence of the former two traits but none of the last. On the contrary, the Richard we see in King Richard is a loving and devoted father, doing his best to raise five healthy, successful daughters.

“I haven’t done any research to determine the veracity of this portrayal. If it’s good enough for Serena and Venus, it’s good enough for me.”

A friend took issue with that last sentence. “By all accounts,” he said, “Williams was more horrible than the movie indicated.”

One man. Two stories. Which should we believe? The extremely negative characterization put out by the media for so many years? Or the more benign view presented by Richard Williams’s daughters in the movie?

We debated the question earnestly. But neither of us was persuaded by the other’s arguments.

Afterwards, I was thinking about other, similar media characterizations. There was Woody Allen. Then Mel Gibson. And Alec Baldwin. And Jussie Smollett. And at the top of the YouTube hit list right now: Johnny Depp.

In each of these cases, there were two narratives. A very damaging one that caught fire in the tabloids. And another, more nuanced, view supported by a few friends and colleagues. For all but Jussie Smollett, the damaging story prevailed. Johnny Depp’s trial may determine whether he can restore his professional and personal reputation.

The same phenomenon has occurred in recent years with many public figures. Professional athletes. TV personalities. Politicians. And even social media influencers. The most flagrant example is narratives we’ve been sold about Donald Trump. One has him as a populist hero in touch with the working class. The other as a racist, narcissistic, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist megalomaniac. And even now, two years after he vacated the White House, those two stories have not changed. Nor has the number of Americans – approximately 100 million each – that believe them.

As someone that’s spent a lifetime selling ideas and information, I’m attentive to the mechanisms of persuasion. And, as any experienced marketer will tell you, the single most powerful way to persuade someone of anything is to begin your sales pitch with a dramatic story. Facts are helpful in supporting one’s beliefs. But the beliefs are born in storytelling.

Stories activate the imagination. And, as neurobiological studies have shown, the imagination conjures up the same sensations – visual, auditory, olfactory, even the sense of motion – that are aroused by real life experiences. (In remembering experiences, the brain cannot distinguish between what was imagined and what was real.)

Facts are processed differently than stories. They are taken in and stored in the neocortical center of the brain, which is designed for logical and rational thinking. It does not have receptors or storage for feelings. (This is the part of the brain that makes Homo sapiens sapient.)

That is why we trust our feelings. They are stored unconsciously and are felt more deeply and more strongly than stored facts. Once rooted, they are almost impossible to deracinate.

And that, I think, is why it is so difficult for us to give up the stories we have come to believe. It’s why my friend and I won’t give up our beliefs about what kind of father Richard Williams really was. Absent the prejudice of deeply stored feelings, we can have a rational discussion that can change our minds. But once we “live through” a dramatic story – whether it is real, imagined, or conjured by a clever journalist or copywriter – facts no longer matter to us. In our limbic and reptilian brains, giving up our stories feels like giving up our very lives.

What I Believe: About Honesty and Dishonesty

I’ve done no research to back this up. But I’d bet that the tendency for humankind to lie developed on the same timeline as our ability to speak.

An essential component of civility – if not civilization itself – is the prudent employment of dishonesty. I would further argue that most of the best attributes of culture – art, literature, dance, and sport – are rooted in the willingness to lie about what is possible in the actual world.

I also believe the idea that honesty is not a virtue, but a privilege. A privilege granted by nature to the young and beautiful, and by society to the powerful and protected.

Life without dishonesty would be unbearable.

What can one person do in a single lifetime? 

For the first 50 years of my life, I don’t think I read a single biography or autobiography. But as I stepped hesitatingly into what I optimistically thought of as Part II of my life, I became interested in people that left their marks on the world.

In the last two decades, I’ve read about a dozen biographies and one autobiography, as well as a handful of memoirs. Some were authors (Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Jack Kerouac, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Jane Austen, and Joan Didion). Some were businessmen (Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Donald Trump).

I read two biographies of Henry Flagler. I think it was because of how much he accomplished after he retired from building Standard Oil with John D. Rockefeller. He moved to Florida and spent the rest of his life basically building four of Florida’s most important cities. St. Augustine, Palm Beach, Miami, and Key West.

The standard view of aging is that, at 50, the slope of one’s life is downhill. But, of course, it doesn’t have to be. By the time I hit 50, I’d had some success in business, but failed to accomplish anything that I had dreamed about when I was younger. I’ve been busy knocking off some of the items on that list ever since.

I’m not sure why I’m telling you this. Perhaps to explain why, last week, when I had the chance to read a short biography of Noah Webster, I was once again inspired.

Some Say Liberals and Conservatives Have Different Core Values, and That’s What Separates Them. Is That True? 

I watched a TED Talk last week that promoted an idea that’s become popular in recent years among a certain faction of social scientists. The speaker argued that liberals and conservatives have different political views because they have different core emotional values. Liberals value openness and flexibility. Conservatives care more about vigilance and security.

When I was a young wannabe, I would have agreed. Favoring free love and legal marijuana, I saw myself as open and flexible. Moreover, I viewed my parents, and the rest of their generation, as “stiffs.” (That was the term we used.)

That pseudo-psychological assessment provided me with two levels of pride. I felt intellectually superior to my elders, and I felt proud of my willingness to tolerate them.

When I grew out of childhood, I had to abandon childish things. Including that specious sense of superiority. I continued to value openness and flexibility, but I had to give equal credit to caution and security.

I do believe that, as a group, conservatives tend to value stability and tradition. But I don’t believe they are always less open or less flexible.

As for the liberals, those I know are open in their willingness to criticize and condemn conservatives. But they are shockingly close-minded when it comes to conservative ideas.

A related myth about conservatives and liberals is that liberals are more open and flexible when it comes to sharing their wealth. In fact, all of the studies that I’ve seen (including the one below) show that conservatives give more to charity on a per capita, per income, and per net-worth basis.

A third myth about the core psychological traits of liberals vs. conservatives is that the latter promote fear to sell their political ideas, whereas liberals sell hope and optimism. But, once again, the evidence doesn’t support this claim. A recent example is the political response to the pandemic. In that case, it was the liberals selling fear and the conservatives arguing against it.

Those are the facts. And that’s how I see it. Let me know your thoughts. In the meantime, click here for another TED Talk I watched not long after watching the first one. This one, I thought, was a bit broader in topic, deeper in thoughtfulness, and generally more interesting.

How I Fell Into Real Estate Hell 

In the late 1970s, I made my first investment in real estate. It was a tidy little one-bedroom in a recently refurbished building on Massachusetts Ave. in Washington, DC. The woman that sold it to us happened to be the owner of a townhouse we were renting about half a mile away. She persuaded me to buy the apartment by explaining how prices had been escalating in the area and by offering me a loan that required me to put nothing down. Not a cent.

Nice apartment. Recently remodeled building. Up-and-coming neighborhood. And zero out-of-pocket? It seemed like a no-brainer to me.

The no-brainer, it turned out, was me.

She was right in telling me that property values in that part of DC had been going up. And she did manage to get me a deed and the keys without taking a nickel from my wallet. But what she didn’t tell me was that the value of the property that was indicated on the mortgage was considerably higher than it was actually worth. Nor did she explain that the loan I had agreed to had a three-year term, and at a negatively amortizing rate.

What that meant was that my mortgage payments were not sufficient to cover the interest payments – or the principal. So, at the end of the three-year term, I had to refinance, which required me to shell out thousands. Plus, the amount I owed on the principal was more at the end of the term than it was when I first signed.

To make matters worse, I rented the place to a nice young woman that presented herself as a college student. As it turned out, she was earning her tuition by entertaining men in her apartment at night. This led to constant complaints from the neighbors and fines from the HOA. To add insult to injury, after the second month, she stopped paying rent.

I inquired as to the procedures for kicking her out and found that DC had such strong tenant “protection” regulations that it would take at least a year and probably two or three to get rid of her. I considered changing the locks when she was away, but was told that if I did that, I’d be arrested. I’d be in jail – still paying the mortgage, still losing money every month on the negatively amortizing loan, still paying fines to the HOA. And she’d be comfortably entertaining “clients” until the eviction procedure finally took hold.

I considered refinancing again. But alas, the mortgage I had signed was not backed by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. That meant that at the end of those three-year terms, I could be forced to pay out the entire balance of the mortgage. (Which was growing by about a thousand bucks a month.) I didn’t have that much money. So, I had to accept whatever predatory terms the shitty bank that held the mortgage offered me. I had fallen into real estate hell with no prospect of getting out.

It wasn’t until nearly four years later that I managed to pay off the mortgage and sell the damn place. Instead of the big profit my landlady had promised, I took a hit for nearly $40,000 – which was about $40,000 more than my net worth.

Responding to Injuries and Insults: Good at One. Bad at the Other.

 “I once met a man who had forgiven an injury. I hope someday to meet a man who has forgiven an insult.” – Samuel Johnson

I’ve been told that I’m often too forgiving. Too forgiving of employees stealing from me. Or friends lying to me. Or colleagues failing to keep promises.

When, for example, I discovered that a personal assistant had stolen $35,000 from me through fraudulent credit card purchases, I didn’t fire her. We talked about it. She apologized. I forgave her. And we continued to work together (but in a different capacity).

When I discovered that a good friend had been lying to me about circumstances in his life, circumstances that affected my life negatively, I didn’t dissolve our friendship. In this case, we didn’t talk about it, because I believed the lying was not circumstantial. It was an immutable aspect of his personality. I had to ask myself if I could enjoy his friendship going forward. The answer was yes. We are still friends.

When business colleagues (and others) make promises that I know they can’t keep, I encourage them to be realistic. If they insist they can achieve the impossible goal or meet the unrealistic deadline, I make a mental note to forgive them later when they fail. I do it because I believe that when they make the promise, they intend to keep it.

I know that when I’m criticized for being excessively forgiving, it’s meant to protect me from myself. To wake me up to a frailty that could eventually cause me harm. I get that. I appreciate it. But I don’t act on it.

I am not oblivious to the fact that there are people in the world willing to do me harm. I recognize that envy exists – and envy breeds contempt. I know that I am sometimes too direct in my critiques and criticisms – and that, too, can spark embers that flare up later. Most important, perhaps, I have learned that in helping people, we can create in those we help unconscious feelings of resentment.

All those things I accept as common elements of the human condition. But I don’t feel endangered by them. Or vulnerable. I see them for what they are: expressions of hurt. Sometimes warranted, mostly not.

I recognize that I feel immune to them because I am usually operating from a privileged and protected position. And even when I am injured, my reaction is not to strike back. First, because I know that it’s much healthier to forgive than to harbor bitterness. Also, because I recognize that I sometimes injure others.

The bottom line for me is this: I’m comfortable with this “overly” forgiving aspect of my nature.

But there is a kind of injury that I am unable to forgive. As adept as I’ve become at forgiving personal injuries, I cannot bring myself to forgive even the mildest personal insult.

Five things happen when someone insults me:

1. I am emotionally hurt by the insult.
2. I blame the insulter for my pain.
3. I take it personally – i.e., the insult is between him and me.
4. I never forget.
5. I seek revenge.

Example: Years ago, a well-known novelist and I got into a short public disagreement at a literary conference. I could tell that he was unsettled by the fact that someone from the audience would challenge something he had said. Later, at the cocktail reception, surrounded by his acolytes, he made fun of the tie I was wearing. It was a small slight. I could have, and probably should have, dismissed it. But I didn’t. Because he said it to hurt me. And so, the five steps kicked in. He became my enemy. I wished bad things on him. And I still do.

As I said, I don’t see my response as intelligent. Or useful. I am not justifying it. In fact, in recounting it here, it embarrasses me. But at 71, I’m not likely to change. And to tell the truth, I’m not trying to improve myself in this regard.

I wonder: Am I unusual in feeling this way? Do you forgive injuries? Are you able to forgive insults? Can you, unlike me, forgive both?

I wrote today’s review of King Richard before Will Smith had his sad and embarrassing Academy Award moment. What was worse? The slap? His tears in apologizing to everyone but Chris Rock? Or the standing ovation he received when he won?

Art, it is said, holds a mirror to life. Hollywood holds a mirror to our culture’s fundamental characteristic: our adolescent self-centeredness.

But boy was he good in King Richard!

I got my ass whooped. And it wasn’t fun. 

The Pan Am IBJJF is one of the three most important Jiu Jitsu competitions in the world. Each year, thousands of competitors from Brazil, the US, Canada, and the rest of Central and South America assemble to battle for the prestige of winning. In the Mar. 28 issue, I mentioned that I was preparing for this year’s event, which took place in Kissimmee, FL (near Orlando) from April 6 to April 10.

I’ve been practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) for more than 20 years. I got my black belt from Master Marcel Ferreira in 2015. I train four times a week. My training partners are national and world champions. They are much, much better than I am. Plus, they are younger, stronger, quicker, and more athletic. And so, most of the time when I’m training with them, I’m losing.

That doesn’t bother me. Quite the contrary. It feels like playing. I look forward to my lessons because they are fun.

BJJ is a very technical sport. It’s way more technical – in terms of the number of techniques you have to master – than any martial art I can imagine. But that is yet another thing that makes it so enjoyable. It is a constant learning experience.

Competing is another story. It is not playful. It’s not fun. And it’s not about learning. You want to completely dominate your opponent. You want to crush him, mentally and physically. You want to break his heart. Or, at the very least, break a limb.

Grammatically speaking, I’m using the second-person here to describe these feelings. But I’m implying, as second-person often does (ironically), that I’m describing my own feelings. I have no such desire when I step on the mat to grapple with an opponent. I’m too old to muster up the ferocity I used to have when fighting. My desire is to grapple well, score points, and, if possible, win.

But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with losing. Especially to someone I don’t know. It feels miserable. Completely terrible. It feels like I was beaten up and humiliated.

I lost to someone I didn’t know – except by his record and reputation. He is currently ranked number one in the world in Masters 6, the division I competed in. (Black belts older than 55. I am 71.) He is numero uno out of more than 1,000 active competitors. In the IBJJF alone.

He didn’t just beat me. He tapped me out. An expert in judo, he spent the first minute of the match tossing me around like a ragdoll. And then, after he put me on the ground (with an inside leg flip), he spent the next 90 seconds expertly defending my best technique – the “deep half-guard sweep.” In the midst of doing that, I made the small, momentary mistake of extending my arms too far ahead of me, which he seized to put me in an arm bar.

That was the end of that. The referee held up his hand. My head was down.

“Great fight,” he said, afterwards. I don’t know whether he was serious or being courteous. In either case, my thought was, “Thanks. Fuck you.”

I spent the rest of the day and evening stewing on it.

Renato, one of my instructors who had persuaded me to enter, wrote me to say that when you compete you give yourself two possible happy outcomes: “to win or to learn.” I would have preferred the former. I’m working on the latter.

What can I learn from this?

To be better prepared? I don’t think so. I spent a month training very hard before the match. I was in good shape. I had lost 28 pounds. My cardiovascular capacity was good – better than it’s been in years. And my instructors and I had studied my opponent’s “game” and trained for it. No, I can’t say that I should have been better prepared.

In that Mar. 28 issue, I talked about what I was doing to reduce the stress I was experiencing as fight day approached. I also said that I knew I had to prepare myself for the possibility that I might lose. But I did not – as I should have done – imagine myself losing… and being okay with that. This last bit of preparation, I did not do.

So, here I am, mentally climbing, inch by inch, out of this well I dug of disappointment and self-recrimination. When I get to the surface, I will have to accept something that I should have been able to contemplate all along: that there are people out there, even older guys, that are better than I am at Jiu Jitsu. When I put this in print, and read it back, the absurdity of my ego is embarrassingly obvious.

Oh… I almost forgot. One oddly happy thing happened within minutes of my loss. I was making my way out of the crowded arena when I was stopped by a young man, a Brazilian, who identified me as Michael Masterson. He was very excited to meet me. He said that he’d heard me speak in Sao Paulo two years ago and had put one of my ideas to work for him. He asked for a photo with him. I smiled as well as I could.

Life Cycles of Big, Whacky Ideas

In a recent issue of his blog, Peter Diamandis tells the story of Tony Spear, a NASA jet propulsion expert, who, in 1997, was given the impossible job of engineering the successful landing of a probe on Mars with a budget of only $150 million. A fraction of the $3.5 billion (in 1997 dollars) NASA had spent on the Viking mission in 1976.

One of Spear’s key ideas for getting it done was to use airbags, rather than retrorockets and propulsion systems, to cushion the craft’s landing. It was a novel idea. But the experts, Spear remembers, had two responses to it:

1. “Don’t use airbags.”
2. “No, we’re totally serious, don’t even consider using airbags.”

“Two of them,” said Spear, “told me flat out that I was wasting government money and should cancel the project. Finally, when they realized I wasn’t going to give up, they decided to dig in and help me.”

Together, they tested more than a dozen designs, skidding them along a faux rocky Martian surface to see which would survive without shredding to pieces.

“In the weeks just prior to landing,” said Spear, “everyone was very nervous, speculating whether we’d have a big splat when we arrived.”

But when the landing was a success, everyone was thrilled. And relieved. And a week later, they claimed to have known, all along, that the airbags would work.

In an essay I posted here last year, I talked about this in terms of some of the novel ideas I’ve promoted in my career. Like Tony Spear’s airbag, many of my ideas were rejected out of hand. But almost all of the criticisms were about challenges and difficulties that could arise. In my book, petty problems that could and would be overcome. But my critics didn’t seem interested in making those ideas work. On the contrary, it was as if they were competing in a game called: Who Can Discount the Idea First?

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explained how big, new ideas go from a spark to a full-blown wildfire. He was writing about all sorts of social phenomena, but it applied perfectly to business. And that’s why I recommend The Tipping Point to anyone interested in starting a business.

Of course, Gladwell is not the only public intellectual to offer a viewpoint on how ideas grow and take hold. In that same issue of his blog, Peter Diamandis points out that Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the inventor of the geostationary communication satellite and author of dozens of bestselling science-fiction books, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, had discussed this problem with him many times. Clarke, he recalled, said all new ideas go through a three-phase acceptance cycle:

1. In the beginning, people will tell you that the idea is “crazy” – that it will never work.
2. Next, people will say: “Well, it might work but it’s not worth doing.”
3. Finally, they’ll say: “I told you that it was a great idea!”