Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 528

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism," by Sarah Wynn-Williams.

My issues at the UN? A lot of protecting. Protecting biodiversity, protecting oceans, protecting whales, protecting endangered species. Climate change. 

At first, I loved every minute of it, digging into the kinds of big, global problems that cross borders, stuff you can only make a dent in with international cooperation. But after years of endless negotiations and discussion that didn’t seem to result in much change in the world, I found myself in the bowels of the United Nations’ New York headquarters, a charmless warren of cramped meeting rooms with cheap furniture and dated décor, enduring another grueling late-night session on conserving ocean life. We were drafting the annual report on the “law of the sea,” dozens of lawyers sitting in a circle, and the delegates were literally arguing over punctuation. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason. Norwegian, Russian, and Chinese lawyers tussled over whether to insert a semicolon or a comma after some word in a paragraph deep in a document no one would ever read.

But after all that, there’s no question in Mark’s email of “Should we operate in China?” or “How do we manage the inevitable moral dilemmas that are sure to come?” China is, in Mark’s eyes, just the end of a to-do list, the last major project to tackle. Like he’s playing a game of Risk and he needs to occupy every territory. 

I don’t believe Facebook is going to get into China. The mission of the company—making the world more open and connected—is the exact opposite of what the Chinese Communist Party wants, particularly under President Xi Jinping. I can’t imagine they’d allow us in. And I don’t want to help Facebook try. The way I see it, the only way in will be to collaborate with the CCP and make compromises we shouldn’t. 

I’ve managed Facebook’s presence at Davos for years, but this time, Tom’s also going to be there, on assignment for the Financial Times. So we have to bring the baby. When I confide in other staffers about this plan, they say, alarmed, “Don’t let Sheryl know. She needs to know all your attention is on her.” Which told me all I really need to know about Sheryl’s real attitude to combining work and motherhood. In fact, when a woman I work with closely expresses surprise upon learning I have a child, she tells me, “Good job!”—openly admiring the fact that she’d had no idea—and I feel a flush of pride. Both of us acknowledging the success (and the necessity) of the subterfuge. 

I decide we’ll be smuggling our daughter to Davos. Tom disapproves but suggests no alternative. We decide reluctantly that the only thing to do is to bring our nanny to watch Sasha while we’re working. We’ve never traveled with her before and it feels like a big ask, but she’s excited to go. 

We’re traveling in the dead of winter and the baby gets sick. After 4:00 A.M. in the seventies-inspired faux log cabin of the Sheraton Hotel Davos, when Sasha vomits into my hair again, as the three of us lie in bed exhausted and unsleeping in the stiflingly hot room, Tom turns to me and says, “This is, beyond doubt, the worst idea we have ever had. I am never coming to Davos again.” And he keeps his word.

Around this dull Swiss town, the World Economic Forum has constructed a byzantine social structure where they control the minimal resources available. These are then dished out by their grace and favor according to status. Everything at Davos—every speaking slot, every car pass, every drinks invitation, every meeting room, the distance you sit at dinner from the front table—is distributed according to social status. The ultimate type A personalities at Davos understand these minute power calibrations and spend their time comparing each and every one, constantly striving for more. So you overhear people saying sniffily that they’re surprised that a certain prime minister is staying in the Hilton Garden Inn rather than the Seehof Hotel, or that a celebrity mistakenly tried to cut in line for a panel, too uneducated to realize they were pushing past a Nobel laureate. The narcissism of small differences. 

In other words, the WEF has weaponized the concept of status envy to create a Hunger Games for the 0.001 percent. Maybe that’s why they all seem to love this place. It’s like the status Olympics—a chance for them to measure themselves not just against their own industry but across business, politics, entertainment, and media. A bunch of the richest people in the world. 

Know who this setup is not so great for? Anyone trying to do their job with a baby in tow. Know who it’s made for? Sheryl Sandberg. At Davos, every cell in her body is tingling, primed and hard at work weighing, assessing, and measuring whom we should stop to speak to, who gets a selfie, whom we share information with or give swag to, and who has committed some past slight that renders them ineligible for even a polite head nod. And they’re all doing this! Being around all this constant calculation is exhausting.

European leaders are telling us that things aren’t right—they’ve noticed Facebook is making gobs of money from their citizens and that isn’t translating into jobs or money for them. They’re not happy. At the moment they’re being reasonable and asking Facebook to find a way to invest, but it’s clear that’s going to change. I actually believe it’s only fair that Facebook should pay more taxes, and that’s what I suggest. It’s not a crazy idea. Starbucks had just volunteered to scrap its tax-dodging tactics and pay more tax in the UK, agreeing to contribute as much corporate tax in 2015 as it did in its first fourteen years in the country. Compromising now on taxes is not just the right thing to do, I say. Giving a little now is smart strategy; it might prevent worse regulations and taxes later. 

Sheryl ignores me, as if I hadn’t said anything. Seriously, it’s so off the map she doesn’t even bother to respond. Instead she taps out her conclusion to Mark and the rest of the Facebook executives: “The best thing we can do is invest in getting policy-makers to use Facebook to communicate and politicians to win elections.” 

This is how Sheryl wants us to address the growing hatred toward Facebook and the regulations and taxes that are likely to come. Facebook has an ace that the other tech companies don’t; we can make Facebook essential to electoral success. The more that politicians are indebted to Facebook, the better it is for us: “Where policy makers have a positive experience using Facebook for campaigns or governance, they’re more open to partnering with us to address policy issues.” It’s a shift that will have far-reaching consequences.

On August 21, 2015, Mark assembles all the senior men working on what’s now called Free Basics and me in his conference room named the Aquarium. The guys are pretty tense and Mark addresses the group like a general addressing his troops—one who is displeased with their performance. 

Mark opens the meeting by talking admiringly about what he calls “street fighter tactics” that Uber is employing against politicians around the world and how successful they’ve been. I’d thought there was a general agreement that Facebook didn’t use these underhand tactics and we certainly didn’t admire them. 

Uber weaponizes their drivers and riders, creating strikes, protests, and transportation chaos, forcing authorities to the table. They’re sponsoring the soccer teams of the children of key Brazilian senators responsible for decisions that impact their business, insisting on having UBER plastered across their kids’ uniforms. They propose compiling opposition research on journalists. It’s dirty. But what becomes clear the more Mark speaks is that not only does he not judge what Uber is doing, he’s judging us for not doing it. Mark believes Facebook could have a lot more leverage with politicians than Uber ever could, and we’re failing him by not using these tactics. 

He launches into a spiel about Emperor Augustus, his favorite emperor, who led the transformation of Rome from a republic to an empire. He talks about “offense.” He wants to mobilize Facebook users. He wants pro-Facebook activists. He wants protests. 

Then he talks “defense.” He wants lists of adversaries, whether they’re companies, individuals, organizations, or governments. He wants to know how we can use the platform and tools we have to win against these adversaries. He doesn’t want us to constrain ourselves to our usual Internet.org tools. He wants us to leverage all of Facebook to find the right things to offer our enemies in order to pull them over to our side. He wants us to invent ways to use the platform and the algorithm to pressure them. He wants to establish a team within Facebook to figure out how to build the tools that will use the algorithm and platform to pressure adversaries, including politicians who oppose us, to bolster the policy team. 

I try to catch Joel’s eye to see if he’s also shocked by what he’s hearing. He won’t look at me. He looks chastened, not surprised. As if he’s heard all this before. 

“When you say ‘adversary,’ who do you mean?” I raise my hand and ask tentatively, a little concerned about what will happen to anyone on one of these lists. 

“Anyone who opposes us is an adversary,” Mark responds firmly. Not acknowledging that when it comes to Free Basics, that’s basically everyone. All I can think is how horrified politicians would be if they knew Facebook was harnessing the platform and its power to put the screws to their thumbs. 

He’s angered nearly every human rights group we work with, they’re now on the list of adversaries, and he’s about to torch all the trust we’ve spent years building with politicians and leaders around the world. And he doesn’t care. In fact, he’s doubling down and compiling an enemies list, going after anyone who raises reasonable concerns about Internet.org. After years at the company, I’d never seen him go on the offense like this, with such ferocity and hostility. There’s no idealism there at all, not about Facebook or Free Basics or anything. This isn’t the revolution I signed up for. This isn’t who I thought Mark would become, when I first tried to coax him into international politics. I don’t want to be part of any of that. But I’m pregnant and showing and it’s no time to start looking for a job. So I make a decision. Up till now, I’ve done everything I could to help Facebook grow. But now is a turning point. For the first time since I pitched this job to Facebook, I won’t exhaust everything I have to deliver what my bosses want. I won’t do all I can to develop creative strategies to advocate and convince governments and civil society that they’re wrong because I don’t think they are. Instead, I’ll focus my efforts on Facebook’s leadership, keep raising objections in meetings and emails at Facebook. I’ll execute Mark’s orders halfheartedly—focusing on the ones I agree with and not putting particular effort into the others. I’ll no longer try to do the impossible to make things happen for Facebook. When civil society groups and the Brazilian government point out problems with Free Basics, I won’t try to buy them off with “thoughtful partnerships.” I will keep bringing their issues—that there’s no encryption, no privacy policy, and no moderation of content on Free Basics—to the teams responsible for them at Facebook, knowing they probably won’t fix them. And they don’t. 

This feels so weird to me. I know how much Mark wants Internet.org and believes in it. But I tell myself I joined Facebook because I believed the platform was a force for good that would change the world. I didn’t join for Mark.

This year everyone at Davos is focused on terrorism. This is just two months after suicide bombers and gunmen killed 130 people in Paris, including 90 at a concert in the Bataclan theater. Sheryl emails the leadership team from Davos breathlessly highlighting how terrorism is working to Facebook’s advantage: “Terrorism means the conversation on privacy is ‘basically dead’ as policymakers are more concerned about intelligence/security.” In other words, this is a moment when governments are more interested in surveillance than people’s privacy. Which is good for Facebook’s business.

I return to work in August 2016. My first day back, Joel decides to do a performance review, as he says “it’s performance review season.” A quick Google search confirms my suspicion that you are not supposed to be given a performance review of your maternity leave. In fact, I understand that pushing someone to work during their maternity leave is against the law. Nevertheless. 

“You weren’t responsive enough,” he says. 

"In my defense, I was in a coma for some of it.” 

“It’s not just me, Sarah. Some of your other colleagues found it challenging to engage with you.” 

“I mean, you know, I was in hospital, in a coma and near death, but I accept that this did make it hard to engage with me at times.” 

Irrespective, this leads him to conclude that there were “issues limiting my effectiveness” and both he and my peers say I was “difficult to work with during this period.” Sadly, he notes that he is unable to put a formal performance rating in the system to accompany this feedback because I was “out of the system” for most of the performance cycle, but he wants me to know that if he could, it would be bad.

Over the course of the ten-hour flight to Lima, Elliot patiently explains to Mark all the ways that Facebook basically handed the election to Donald Trump. It’s pretty fucking convincing and pretty fucking concerning. Facebook embedded staff in Trump’s campaign team in San Antonio for months, alongside Trump campaign programmers, ad copywriters, media buyers, network engineers, and data scientists. A Trump operative named Brad Parscale ran the operation together with the embedded Facebook staff, and he basically invented a new way for a political campaign to shitpost its way to the White House, targeting voters with misinformation, inflammatory posts, and fundraising messages. Boz, who led the ads team, described it as the “single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period.” 

Elliot walks Mark through all the ways that Facebook and Parscale’s combined team microtargeted users and tweaked ads for maximum engagement, using data tools we designed for commercial advertisers. The way I understand it, Trump’s campaign had amassed a database, named Project Alamo, with profiles of over 220 million people in America. It charted all sorts of online and offline behavior, including gun registration, voter registration, credit card and shopping histories, what websites they visit, what car they drive, where they live, and the last time they voted. The campaign used Facebook’s “Custom Audiences from Custom Lists” to match people in that database with their Facebook profiles. 

Then Facebook’s “Lookalike Audiences” algorithm found people on Facebook with “common qualities” that “look like” those of known Trump supporters. So if Trump supporters liked, for example, a certain kind of pickup truck, the tool would find other people who liked pickup trucks but were not yet committed voters to show the ads to. Then they’d pair their targeting strategy with data from their message testing. People likely to respond to “build a wall” got that sort of message. Moms worried about childcare got ads explaining that Trump wanted “100% Tax Deductible Childcare.” Then there was a whole operation to constantly tweak the copy and the images and the color of the buttons that say “donate,” since slightly different messages resonate with different audiences. At any given moment, the campaign had tens of thousands of ads in play, millions of different ad variations by the time they were done. These ads were tested using Facebook’s Brand Lift surveys, which measure whether users have absorbed the messages in the ads, and tweaked accordingly. Many of these ads contained inflammatory misinformation that drove up engagement and drove down the price of advertising. The more people engage with an ad, the less it costs. Facebook’s tools and in-house white-glove service created incredibly accurate targeting of both message and audience, which is the holy grail of advertising. 

Trump heavily outspent Clinton on Facebook ads. In the weeks before the election, the Trump campaign was regularly one of the top advertisers on Facebook globally. His campaign could afford to do this because the data targeting enabled it to raise millions each month in campaign contributions through Facebook. In fact, Facebook was the Trump campaign’s largest source of cash. Parscale’s team also ran voter suppression campaigns. They were targeted at three different groups of Democrats: young women, white liberals who might like Bernie Sanders, and Black voters. These voters got so-called dark posts—nonpublic posts that only they would see. They’d be invisible to researchers or anyone else looking at their feed. The idea was: feed them stuff that’ll discourage them from voting for Hillary. One made for Black audiences was a cartoon built around her 1996 sound bite that “African Americans are super predators.” In the end, Black voters didn’t turn out in the numbers that Democrats expected. In an election that came down to a small number of votes in key swing states, these things mattered. 

Mark quietly takes it all in. At first, he’s skeptical and pushing back, but that gradually turns into curiosity. He starts to ask questions, trying to understand the mechanics of it all. He doesn’t seem upset that the platform would be used this way, not in the slightest. If anything, there’s admiration for the ingenuity of it. Like, these tools were there all the time for anyone to use this way. How smart that they figured it out.

I tell Elliot about Joel’s behavior, Joel’s scheduling meetings and work for me during maternity leave, and the systemic problems of sexual harassment across his department. Elliot seems both unsurprised and unconcerned. He listens to me, nods along, says next to nothing. When I’m done talking, he tells me he’s sure all of this is solvable and will work itself out. And the meeting’s over. He couldn’t make it clearer that he doesn’t want any part of this. I rise and walk to the door. Elliot starts typing on his laptop. 

“And if it doesn’t work itself out?” I ask. Elliot looks up from his laptop and stares me straight in the eyes. 

“Well, that would be a shame, but I’d be happy to write you a reference.” 

It lands like a physical blow.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 527

 

Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "Everything Sad is Untrue," by Daniel Nayeri.

Here's another fact about rugs, and then I'll get back to the story. They are graded by how many knots they have crammed in every square centimeter. So if it only has sixty knots in one centimeter of carpet, then you'd see that rug on the floor of a tea house in the bazaar, and you'd be welcome to step on it. But some rugs have 400 knots in one centimeter, and if you owned one as small as a pillowcase, you'd still be rich.

But no matter which grade or pattern - no matter even if the greatest grandmother in the whole world wove it - every rug has a Persian flaw.

The artisans of Kashan and Isfahan and Tabriz and Mashad all knew that only God is perfect - the only one who could listen to and speak the perfect truth. To remind themselves, and to show their humility, they would purposefully include one missed knot in every rug, one imperfection.

I think it's pretty funny that people would mistake themselves for perfect if they didn't include a hole in a rug.

But that's the whole point of the Persian flaw - it's there to remind you of all the other flaws, and even the flaw that makes you unable to see them in the first place.

What Makes a Good Listener

 

I would not consider myself a naturally good listener. But I pride myself on understanding the importance of listening and on putting in the work to listen well. It makes me feel good when people share something with me and tell me they appreciated my hearing them out. It occurs to me that it may be helpful for me and others to explore further what goes into good listening. To me it boils down to five things:

1. Availability. You can't listen if you're not around, duh. But I think it's more than that. How many people are we are around all the time and yet the setting is not right for a meaningful conversation. So it's not just being around for people but seeking out opportunities where there is sufficient time and space to go deep. For me that's usually a meal, a walk in the park, or a round of golf, but your platforms may vary.

2. Reciprocity. We are around people all day yet share so little of ourselves. And that is appropriate, since some conversations are for some places and settings and not all. But, I have found many relationships where the possibility was there to go deeper, and someone needed to break the ice. My own sharing about struggles and hardships is a bright flashing sign to those I feel comfortable sharing with, that I value their knowing something about me and that I in turn am willing to bear anything they would want to confide in me.

3. Curiosity. Every conversation involves a unique combination of two people and therefore holds the possibility of unlocking something in us that we hadn't previously accessed. Hence, I could've shared something with my spouse or my best friend or my therapist, but if I run it by someone else in my life they may have new insights I had not thought of before. So I find, when I'm on the listening end, that I ask questions and make points that others had not heard before, such that my curiosity about their situation allows them to break new ground in what they are realizing within themselves and sharing with someone else.

4. Empathy. The hardest part about sharing is wondering what others will think of us. How we are viewed by others is so important, and we don't want to ruin it by disclosing something that will make others think we are weak or bad or ignorant. The thing about empathy is, it takes us from thinking about someone's situation from our perspective and gets us to think about someone's situation from their perspective. Which makes it easier to avoid judgment and dismissal, and to express sympathy and solidarity, the former of course being traits of bad listeners and the latter being traits of good ones.

5. Confidentiality. Sharing in a conversation is literally entrusting something valuable to another person. If that person is sloppy or reckless with a valuable possession, we would not ask them to be a steward of it for us. So it is with confiding in someone. It is important to me that I am someone that is deemed trustworthy enough to be told something and keep it in confidence. 

Good listening is in high demand and short supply. I hope, perhaps using some of the tips in this post, we will all work harder to be good listeners. We can be a tremendous blessing to others in this way.

Celebrating a Diversity of Diversity on Campus

 

For eight years I have been a member of the James Brister Society, which celebrates and advocates for diversity on the University of Pennsylvania campus. I am glad to have so many ongoing ties to my alma mater, and JBS events are always among of my most cherished and insightful in any given year. 

Diversity on campus, and in this country, are of course increasingly contentious things to define, push back on, and fight for. What I have appreciated about Penn, and about JBS, is the recognition of the diversity of expressions of diversity on a campus like Penn's. Which sounds both logical and clunky, but hear me out.

For starters, I particularly dislike when "diversity" is treated in a monolithic sense, narrowing it in a way that makes it easier for some to attack and others to uphold, but in a way that does a disservice to the topic. Which is ironic, since the whole point of diversity is that we are different and should celebrate and accept that, and yet too often we take the easy road and homogenize things to the point of fluff.

So what does diversity of diversity on campus mean? From the student's perspective, as discussed in JBS events and with Penn leaders, it means that there are lots of avenues for people to pursue what diversity means to them. For example:

* Some are eager to find "their people," and are glad for organizations they can join and feel accepted and celebrated

* Some are eager to use their time at Penn to explore a wider spectrum of perspectives than they were previously exposed to and themselves can directly access, and are glad that diversity-celebrating organizations are inclusive of the curious (e.g. Black attendees at Asian events)

* Some are eager to probe points of intersection, for purpose of education and advocacy, and are glad that Penn's historically inter-discplinary culture extends to its diverse organizations (e.g. Latino and LGBTQ+ groups coming together to process current events)

* Some are from historically under-represented groups but don't want their college experience to be defined by that aspect of their identity, and are glad to be supported as they devote their scarce time and resources to their primary goal of going to college which is to get an education and a degree

Penn is large and well-resourced, so perhaps it feels easier that there are an abundance of groups and platforms for its students to explore. But it still does take effort to be this thoughtful and thorough, and I applaud its administrative leaders and its student groups for creating the setting where a diversity of diversity can be celebrated. Yet another reason I am #ProudlyPenn!

My Musical Journey

 

Today's post is a bit autobiographical and has no point, which may make it rambly at times so proceed accordingly. I am curious to know if anyone can empathize with the relationship I've had with music over the seasons of my life, so I am documenting that this morning.

Like good Asian parents of their era, my mom and dad got me into piano lessons, from probably age 6 to when my school and extra-curricular activities started to take up too much of my time in my teen years. For me, that meant a pretty big dose of the classics - Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and so on - which was supplemented by the occasional concert my parents would take my sister and me to, not the professionals but rather California Youth Symphony, which funny enough a few of my friends performed in, so it was fun to see them on stage even if I thought at the time that sitting through a classical concert was a boring way to spend a weekend afternoon.

My deepest engagement with popular music was, which I suspect is common among my peers, junior high and high school. In that short span from grades 6 to 12, I went from not being able to name a single Top 40 artist to religiously listening to the latest hits on the radio. Of course, streaming wasn't available in the 1980s, and my parents were stereotypically thrifty, so fandom for me only peripherally extended to buying albums, attending concerts, and rocking merch. 

I find it interesting that my intersection with popular music took three somewhat distinct forms. One was your typical pop hits since those songs and images (and, a nascent platform, videos too!) were ubiquitous. One was what we called "modern rock" at the time, which was the Depeche Modes and the New Orders and the Erasures of the world, particularly popular among the various Asian crowds I ran in at school and in the Taiwanese youth group I was a part of. And one was various forms of hip-hop, from the poppy stuff like Fresh Prince to the crass stuff like 2 Live Crew to the enlightened stuff like Public Enemy. 

And then, just as quickly as music became a big deal in my life, it just as abruptly shrunk down to almost nothing in my college years. I went to an Ivy League school and was very active in my Christian fellowship, so there wasn't much time to just vibe out on tunes, although in my later years in on-campus ministry I tried to keep up with the latest as a point of connection to the younger men I was spending time with at the time. 

Similarly, in my years right after college, I got involved in my church's teen youth group, which was all urban and predominantly Black, so once again I kept tabs for relationship purposes rather than to indulge my own musical tastes. And then, after I became a dad, I made a half-hearted effort amid my work-life juggling to follow the music my older kids were into, namely alt-rock (Aaron) and k-pop (Jada). 

But, to bring things to the present, that's going on 30+ years of music not being something important to me that I spent time on for my own enjoyment, and only peripherally tried to be a bystander of in service of connection to people who have been important to me over the years. The childhood version of me might be horrified to learn I grow up and am not utterly obsessed with music of any kind. And, many of my peers are surprised to hear music is just not that important in my life.

But I guess that's not totally true. I've gotten back into classical music, nothing too serious, just enjoying the serenity of the really good stuff as background at work or while driving to the golf course. I will increasingly put Christian worship songs on first thing in the morning or late at night, to recenter myself at the beginning or end of a particularly crazy day. And, I forgot to mention that when I was in college, I had one brief, one year stint in a Christian acapella group, and I guess that lodged in me an appreciation for that art form, since I enjoy searching YouTube for covers of religious and secular tunes in that style.

So that's my musical journey. What's yours?

Check Your Blind Spots

 

Everyone who bikes regularly invariably has one or more scary incidents, which they hopefully live to tell about with little to no damage to life or property. One of mine, a relatively harmless one thankfully, involves racing down the street perpendicular to the Market-Frankford elevated line in West Philadelphia to make it through an intersection before the light turned red. I was even with and close to a car on my left, so while I had it in my mind that I could make the light, I also wanted to make sure I steered clear of this car that was trying to do the same. So I slowed to let it get ahead of me and put some distance between me and this two-ton steel box. But then it slowed too. So I slowed some more. Only to have it slow some more. And which point, somewhat suddenly and without using a turn signal, it swerved to its right and clipped me. Somehow I fell gracefully even though I’m usually pretty clumsy, and popped back up, just as the driver got out of the car, put her hands on her head, and said with panic, “oh my gosh, I didn’t see you, I’m so sorry!” 

This obviously could’ve been a lot worse, so I’m grateful I could emerge with a few scrapes and a vivid story. But the possibility of tragedy is amplified by the fact that the person at fault, the driver who did not see me, obviously did not intend to harm me. She simply did not see me and so took actions that were innocent to her but dangerous to me. If I had been more seriously hurt, I suppose I could’ve been upset that she was not more careful to check her blind spot. But I could not hold it against her that she was being malicious or hateful. The point I'm making, in this thankfully non-existent parallel situation, is that that wouldn’t have mattered, because I would’ve still been injured or worse. 

I think about metaphoric blind spots all the time. How many times are we driving down the lane of life, meaning no harm to others and yet taking actions that, because of our not having checked our blind spots, are putting others in peril, and perhaps causing them great and even grievous damage? 

In another context, it has been said that the most important things to mind are “the unknown unknowns,” or to elaborate, “we don’t know what we don’t know.” This saying was first used in a military intelligence setting, and it informed both what needed to be done to collect more information and how to think about the information we already did have. Meaning that, we know what we know, and we know what we don’t know, but we must understand that there is more to the world than just that, because there are things we don’t know, and we don’t know that we don't know them, and those are the very things that are harder to figure out and plan for and are therefore potentially most damaging to us. 

In a time of war, collecting intelligence and making decisions is literally life and death, so people are sober and thorough in response. For the rest of us civilians going about our day, we can find ourselves being oblivious to our blind spots. And, the fact that we don’t know they exist and we don’t know what they are is made worse by the fact that we often don’t care. Imagine, for example, the driver that clipped me, only her swerving caused me real damage. And, imagine, even worse, that after hitting me, she either saw and didn’t care or didn’t see and therefore had no reason to care, and after all that just drove off. According to our sensibilities and the laws on our books, that would literally be criminal. 

And yet we do this all the time in our lives, which is to harbor blind spots, and even worse, to do nothing to acknowledge their existence let alone change our angle of sight to see if there is anything in those blind spots that is in harm’s way. We may actually then do harm and not see or not care or both. And we do this over and over again, or at least I know I do. 

Perhaps this is a dated analogy, since newer cars have safety measures to mitigate against blind spot problems, like special cameras and beeping lights. But perhaps the analogy still holds: we have become more sophisticated as we travel through life, and it gives us a false sense that we no longer have any blind spots because we have rigged our metaphorical cars in ways that render it impossible to plow over someone without seeing them. And yet we continue to have blind spots, put people in harm’s way, and care not that we are complicit. 

If you’re wondering why I work so hard to expose myself to people different from me and then really try to understand and appreciate the different perspectives that they hold because of those differences, it is because I know I have blind spots and I can therefore harm others around me unknowingly. I may think that my vehicle is blind spot proof, but it is not. For example, my social circle is racially diverse, and while I am pretty well off I certainly don’t wall myself off in upper crust enclaves where my only social interactions are in high-power boardrooms and fancy country clubs. But that does not mean I can even get close to empathizing with the life experience of the typical Philadelphian. I may have seen all the shoes out there, but I have walked a mile in a very small subset of them! 

Sorry to mix metaphors but hopefully you get my point. I am like that driver who clipped me, going about my daily business with no desire to harm others around me but also with insufficient awareness of the existence of those around me. It takes work to check for blind spots. But they do exist, and so we must if we want to do right by our fellow man.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 526

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Frankenstein," by Mary Shelley.

One of the phaenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. I revolved these circumstances in my mind and determined thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which relate to physiology. Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome and almost intolerable. To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body. In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me—a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.

“I expected this reception," said the daemon. "All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.”

"My thoughts now became more active, and I longed to discover the motives and feelings of these lovely creatures; I was inquisitive to know why Felix appeared so miserable and Agatha so sad. I thought (foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to these deserving people. When I slept or was absent, the forms of the venerable blind father, the gentle Agatha, and the excellent Felix flitted before me. I looked upon them as superior beings who would be the arbiters of my future destiny. I formed in my imagination a thousand pictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of me. I imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanour and conciliating words, I should first win their favour and afterwards their love.

Tears streamed from my eyes. The rain had ceased for a moment, and I saw the fish play in the waters as they had done a few hours before; they had then been observed by Elizabeth. Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine or the clouds might lower, but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness; no creature had ever been so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the history of man.

The deep grief which this scene had at first excited quickly gave way to rage and despair. They were dead, and I lived; their murderer also lived, and to destroy him I must drag out my weary existence. I knelt on the grass and kissed the earth and with quivering lips exclaimed, "By the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the dæmon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. For this purpose I will preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will I again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth, which otherwise should vanish from my eyes for ever. And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me."

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know," by Malcolm Gladwell.

  

Is it any wonder why the meeting between Cortés and Montezuma has fascinated historians
for so many centuries? That moment—500 years ago—when explorers began traveling across oceans and undertaking bold expeditions in previously unknown territory, an entirely new kind of encounter emerged. Cortés and Montezuma wanted to have a conversation, even though they knew nothing about the other. When Cortés asked Montezuma, “Art thou he?,” he didn’t say those words directly. Cortés spoke only Spanish. He had to bring two translators with him. One was an Indian woman named Malinche, who had been captured by the Spanish some months before. She knew the Aztec language Nahuatl and Mayan, the language of the Mexican territory where Cortés had begun his journey. Cortés also had with him a Spanish priest named Gerónimo del Aguilar, who had been shipwrecked in the Yucatán and learned Mayan during his sojourn there. So Cortés spoke to Aguilar in Spanish. Aguilar translated into Mayan for Malinche. And Malinche translated the Mayan into Nahuatl for Montezuma—and when Montezuma replied, “Yes, I am,” the long translation chain ran in reverse. The kind of easy face-to-face interaction that each had lived with his entire life had suddenly become hopelessly complicated.

Cortés was taken to one of Montezuma’s palaces—a place that Aguilar described later as
having “innumerable rooms inside, antechambers, splendid halls, mattresses of large cloaks,
pillows of leather and tree fibre, good eiderdowns, and admirable white fur robes.” After dinner, Montezuma rejoined Cortés and his men and gave a speech. Immediately, the confusion began. The way the Spanish interpreted Montezuma’s remarks, the Aztec king was making an astonishing concession: he believed Cortés to be a god, the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy that said an exiled deity would one day return from the east. And he was, as a result, surrendering to Cortés. You can imagine Cortés’s reaction: this magnificent city was now effectively his.

But is that really what Montezuma meant? Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, had a
reverential mode. A royal figure such as Montezuma would speak in a kind of code, according to a cultural tradition in which the powerful projected their status through an elaborate false
humility. The word in Nahuatl for a noble, the historian Matthew Restall points out, is all but
identical to the word for child. When a ruler such as Montezuma spoke of himself as small and
weak, in other words, he was actually subtly drawing attention to the fact that he was esteemed and powerful.

“The impossibility of adequately translating such language is obvious,” Restall writes:

The speaker was often obliged to say the opposite of what was really meant. True meaning was embedded in the use of reverential language. Stripped of these nuances in translation, and distorted through the use of multiple interpreters…not only was it unlikely that a speech such as Montezuma’s would be accurately understood, but it was probable that its meaning would be turned upside down. In that case, Montezuma’s speech was not his surrender; it was his acceptance of a Spanish surrender.

You probably remember from high-school history how the encounter between Cortés and
Montezuma ended. Montezuma was taken hostage by Cortés, then murdered. The two sides went to war. As many as twenty million Aztecs perished, either directly at the hands of the Spanish or indirectly from the diseases they had brought with them. Tenochtitlán was destroyed. Cortés’s foray into Mexico ushered in the era of catastrophic colonial expansion. And it also introduced a new and distinctly modern pattern of social interaction. Today we are now thrown into contact all the time with people whose assumptions, perspectives, and backgrounds are different from our own. The modern world is not two brothers feuding for control of the Ottoman Empire. It is Cortés and Montezuma struggling to understand each other through multiple layers of translators. Talking to Strangers is about why we are so bad at that act of translation.

That sounds callous, because it’s easy to see all the damage done by people like Ana Montes and Bernie Madoff. Because we trust implicitly, spies go undetected, criminals roam free, and lives are damaged. But Levine’s point is that the price of giving up on that strategy is much higher. If everyone on Wall Street behaved like Harry Markopolos and trusted no one, there would be no fraud on Wall Street — but the air would be so thick with suspicion and paranoia that there would also be no Wall Street.

There are many people like my mother, equipped with a set of skills that make them good at talking to strangers. We do not encourage this kind of person to consider police work as a career. But maybe we should. I know my mother. Had she been in Brian Encinia's place that day in Prairie View, the outcome would have been very different. One minute into that traffic stop, she would have realized that this was a young woman with a difficult and complicated life, trying to make a new start. Two minutes in, she and Sandra Bland would have been deep in conversation. Do we want my unprepossessing mother arresting bank robbers? No we don't. But there is much, much more to police work than that. And the world would be a better place if we recognized the impossibility of the task we have given the police and took steps to rationalize their profession. They need our assistance. Let us offer it to them. After all, it is not just Brian Encinia who was bad at talking to a stranger. In one way or another, we all are.

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Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "Going to Meet the Man: Stories," by James Baldwin.

They hated him, and this hatred was blacker than their hearts, blacker than their skins, redder than their blood, and harder, by far, than his club. Each day, each night, he felt worn out, aching, with their smell in his nostrils and filling his lungs, as though he were drowning—drowning in ni**ers; and it was all to be done again when he awoke. It would never end. It would never end. Perhaps this was what the singing had meant all along. They had not been singing black folks into heaven, they had been singing white folks into hell.

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "My Broken Language," by Quiara Alegria Hudes.

 

My brat pack came to wave me off and started in on the obscene gestures whenever mom turned her back. Chien was first-­generation Vietnamese. Ben and Elizabeth, first-­gen Cambodian. Rowetha lost her Amharic after leaving Ethiopia. We all spoke English, unlike our parents, who all spoke different languages from one another. This was my West Philly crew, my pampers–­to–­pre-­K alphabet soup. I assumed all blocks everywhere were like it — ­as many languages as sidewalk cracks, one boarded-­up home for every lived-­in, more gum wads than dandelions.  

Malvern was only an hour outside Philly, but it was a whole different universe. The woods, donkeys, and horses didn’t account for the half of it. We had moved to a monolingual, pale world. Its language uniformity was so complete as to be creepy, zombie-esque. How the shopkeepers and mailmen spoke English confidently and pronounced all their vowels the same exact way. How within houses I visited, the kids, parents, and elders shared the same language and never paused for translation or to remember a word. Though Malvern folks didn’t pray to ancestors like mom did, I could tell that if they did, even their ghosts would speak English. 

 

I determined to get dad's take straight up, like I'd done with god. He met he at the train for a weekend visit and with each curve of the country road I wrestled my nerves. Did you have an affair with...Too accusatory. Did you cheat on...Too blunt. Did you have sex with...No way. Finally, we pulled into the driveway and my time was up. "Did you take off your clothes and get under the covers with Susan?" Even I was embarrassed by the naive wording. For a second, I worried he's misinterpreted my question as a birds-and-bees inquiry. But the way he slumped when switching off the ignition meant he knew. 

“They have no idea what they’re calling me! How do you say ‘whore’ en el barrio?” mom asked. How do you say it?”

“‘Puta?’”

“How else? Now tell me, Quiara, what is a ho?”

“‘Ho!’”

“¡Exacto! Ho! Who’s shamed for her sexuality is a ho?”

“It’s the shame men have given us from the get-go. The shame that is written into the Bible. But think, Quiara, what else is a ho? I want you to make this connection yourself.”

I came up short.

“‘HO!’” she yelled, as if volume was a code-cracker. “AZADA! AZADA! AZADA! What is a ho, Quiara?”

“A gardening tool.”

“And what does a hoe do?” she asked.

“It digs.”

“It’s an ancient tool with a sharp blade for clearing and turning the soil. When the earth gets tired, you break the earth, you wound the earth, digging narrow troughs and trenches so you can do what?”

“Plant seeds.”

“Plant seeds!” she rejoiced, all affirmation. “They think they’re shaming us, but they have no clue that they’re praising me. We are not whores, but we are hoes. We plant seeds of potential! We plow the land, we plow our reality! I am hoeing the potential of my hoeing in Sedo’s community. I have been hoeing my potential since day one, hija!”   

Mom, if you ever read this book (and make it this far without disowning me), I ask you one favor: break this English language today and the day after and the day after and bestow it new life upon this cracked colonial tongue. You language genius. This is your English. You earned it. I am only a guest here.

 

 

 

I corrected her in the car. I corrected her in the living room. No cash register or playground was too public to fix her pronunciation and should. As if the others ought to lease a mystical giantess. It was embarrassing which I pretended was too possible to fix for her. Sometimes it was the know-it-all cockiness of youth, but I never once said, "Fuck you, child, stop colonizing my ass."But she never changed her pronunciation, either.

 

 

 

At some birthday, back in grade school when I still spent weeks at Carroll Lane, he remembered my birthday, he made an event of driving me to Circuit City. Together we mazed through television aisles and surround-sound displays to the most extraordinary corridor in retail history: word processors. “Give ’em a spin,” he said. I typed my name on one machine after another, all the way up and down the aisle. One model could do italics and bold. One had built-in memory and could print copies. One did the accent in Alegría. Another could erase words or even sentences: I pressed delete and Quiara vanished from the page. Each had a three-digit price and I knew money was contentious between him and Sharon, but dad said choose anything. He bought me paper, ink ribbons, font inserts. Happiness tickled us in the checkout line. It was levity by the time the register guy called next! I was dad’s first child, the only one who knew his long hair and twenty-something laughter. If he had since pushed me from the airplane, the typewriter was a parachute made of our composite dreams. I set it up that same afternoon, typed in a frenzy about teenage heartthrobs, short stories. Treacly poems, fan essays, short stories. There was no connective aesthetic or topical focus, simply the act of imagination as a way to pass lonely days. When I wrote, I soared. If I ran out of ideas, I typed Top 40 lyrics to keep the jubilant racket going full-tilt. Dad took pride in the clatter: noisy proof of a fatherly triumph. He'd peek into my room, keep it up kid, then disappear again.

I didn't cry when mom and Pop drove off the freshman quad and Gabi craned back for one last wave. But betrayal's heavy veil descended when they turned onto Elm Street, out of view. I was a sister-leaver. I was cold turkey in an indifferent world. College meant abandoning Gabi midcourse, entrusting her flourishing to sinister hands. My fears, it turned out, were dead-on. Mean teachers would taunt the Norf Philly in her cadence, declare her remedial, put her in an ESL class. Four years of schoolyard fat jokes would pummel her. And I would miss it all, offer no nightly antidote.

 

 

You are a child of three catastrophes. You are born of three holocausts. The Native. The African. And the Jewish. You are a descendent of the survivors. It’s in your blood. The resilience. The deep memory and experience of survival.