For those of us trained in the technical/scientific fields, it’s been pounded into us to be “objective” all the time… and that our own subjective experience doesn’t really matter all that much. However, for many of us, this creates misery and problems. In this video, I explore why it is vital to re-engage our own subjective experience, especially if we want to excel at objective areas like research. It’s a bit ironic, but as you’ll see, important, that we drop the purely objective approach to life.
Enjoy the video, and let me know if you have questions or comments!
The amazing universe we live in, how did it come into being? Blame it on randomness.
Music and art? How did humans develop those capacities? Blame it on randomness…
The laws of physics as we know them? How did they arise from the primordial soup of the Big Bang? Blame it on randomness…
Eyeballs, ears, and these amazing brains we have? How did they evolve from pond slime? Blame it on …. you guessed it! … randomness.
Yes, that’s what adherents of the materialist paradigm are saying. At the bottom of it, it’s all random. Really, it is, we promise!
Of course, when you quiz such a person about what exactly is it in randomness that can create galaxies, stars, and brains, you’ll hear a bunch of gobbledygook and hand-waving about deterministic processes and initial conditions.
“But wait!” the astute listener to the hand-waving exclaims – “you’re saying that there were some random initial conditions of the universe that somehow then led to all of this?”
The answer provided is simply: “yes, isn’t it obvious?”
Um, about as obvious as rabbits with wings flying. For some odd reason, the random odds weren’t stacked in favor of rabbits with wings. Go figure!
And the even more astute listener might ask: well, okay, how did those “random initial conditions of the universe come about, i.e. in what context exists such possibility, and what are the odds of that occurring?” Unfortunately, such questions will be met with a stone-wall: that’s philosophy, not science!
“Okay, so you’re saying it’s ‘philosophy’ to ask what led to the so-called random starting conditions of the universe, but it’s not also ‘philosophy’ to assume that it’s all random at its core, as you do dear skeptic?”
If you were ever to ask such a question of such a person, this is the point at which they will probably be turning red, fuming a bit, and attempting to disengage from the conversation.
Maybe this whole “it’s random” crutch that the skeptical/materialist/atheist industrial complex rely on so much needs some deeper examination? *
Just sayin’…
(BTW – just because I personally don’t buy the “blame it on the randomness” approach that so many of the hardcore materialists assume to be true, doesn’t mean that I automatically go in the other direction and believe in a white-dude-in-the-sky who has created a quite judgmental universe separated into sinners and saints… bottom line is I examine all premises and reject any that are silly and not supported by facts… that includes both the basis of much of what the materialists claim, along with what religions claim).
* They won’t be the ones to do it however – they are blind to their own assumptions, just like nearly every person on the planet is, no matter
You may wonder, what’s this “fluff” about a concert all-of-a-sudden appearing on this previously low-activity blog? The answer is simple. Time to get the blog rockin’ and rollin’ again.
I haven’t shared enough of the insights and experiences that my dear readers seemed to enjoy in the past. It is time to restart, with a lesson/insight from spending a few hundred dollars – and almost a day of time – to go see one of the bands I enjoy with my family. The Barenaked Ladies have been rockin’ for 29+ years, and I first saw them about 24 years ago. They still have it…. but that’s not what the blog post is about. It’s about whether it was “rational” to spend that much money for my family and I to see a band play for just a few hours.
To some, spending this much money and time may seem irrational. If you’re not a fan of this particular band – or of going to concerts in general – your first thought may have been “Morgan is crazy, I would never do that!”
You may have different preferences. That’s what makes you different than me, and it would be mighty boring if we were all the same. Yet there’s this thing about “rational” versus “irrational” that gets people a bit confused.
If someone were to come along and judge this as an “irrational waste of money,” they might actually be thinking rationally to conclude that there are better ways to spend it. Win for rationality! Yeah!
But hold your horses: there’s this little X-factor in there that messes it up. Their rationality is based upon their preferences. And those preferences are never rational. If you don’t believe it, come visit one day as we have a family argument about whether broccoli is “good” or “bad.” It doesn’t matter how much evidence any side provides.
I can hear the health nuts responding: but wait – if you want to live longer and healthier, then of course Broccoli is good – the evidence shows that it is! Unfortunately, you can’t escape the trap, even with that kind of argument. That’s because you’re just shifting the role of preference from whether a food is desirable or not, to a broader question of which is more important to you: 1) your longevity and health; 2) enjoying yourself here and now by not filling your mouth regularly with food you hate; or 3) some combination thereof.
If you’re still in doubt, try to justify a desire for longevity based on pure rationality. The arguments fall down pretty quickly, especially when you start looking at a graph of world population and realizing that what’s going on with population is likely not very sustainable for long. (Exponential growth of anything never is, because it’s exponential – if you’re not familiar with the math, look up that term).
World Population since 1300 AD: An Explosion Illustration by Matt Lemmon https://www.flickr.com/photos/mplemmon/3203403780 – licensed under Creative Commons, right to use with attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
In my day job, I work with scientists and researchers. I do the best I can to help them with things like writing better grant proposals – and even enjoying their careers more by getting more of the good stuff done and not working as hard to do so.
However, one of the largest stumbling blocks I run into that prevent both goals from occurring is this particular belief many researchers have been taught to hold that “as scientists, we are to strive to be objective at all times.” Yet if anyone observes the grant reviewing process for long, it becomes clear quite quickly: on the surface reviewers are very good at constructing rational-sounding arguments for the scores they give a proposal, but if you dig deeper, there’s always some subjective preference underlying why they did or didn’t like a proposal. If a grant writer doesn’t get this, she is very likely to trip over hidden, unexpected landmines.
Yet hard as I try, so many clients are resistant to the idea that we actually have to embrace a measure of subjectivity to be successful. Objective “rationality” never by itself wins the day when it comes to grant proposals, careers, productivity, or much of anything else that truly matters.
There’s a lot more on this topic to discuss, but I’ll leave you for now with this set of questions: 1. Do you ever find yourself working to rationally/logically justify something, which at the end of the day is really just a preference? 2. Is it worth the time and energy cost to do so? 3. What if you were to simply acknowledge that you are a subjective human who has subjective preferences which you can’t escape, and instead of pretending to be I, Robot, you embraced that part of your humanity?
If you chose to do so, it can be quite an amazing journey.
* I have to put a disclaimer here for the skeptics who may freak out and say I’m advocating for abandoning reason. To such persons: if you use your reason to analyze what I am saying (and not saying) here, and you do so in a truly objective way, you will conclude that I have said no such thing as abandoning reason. It has its place. But many people have come to far over-rely on reason, while ignoring their own subjectivity by pretending it doesn’t exist.
One of the chronic, often devastating conditions I run into nearly everyday is this:
“There’s not enough money out there, it is scarce and hard to come by, and it requires a struggle to get it!”
It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about money for the household, money for the business, or grant money for the research lab… there never seems to be enough of it.
This condition can be every bit as serious and life-destroying as chronic health conditions. It leads to a sort of money-repellancy that is at odds with the surface-level goals that a lot of people state that they want (such as: “I want more money”). When we compare a want like this to a deeper belief such as “money is scarce,” the belief always wins out in the end. Beliefs are far more powerful than wants.
Let’s take a simple example to illustrate. Say that you’re participating in a scavenger hunt. If the organizers tell you there’s a $100 bill to be found, you will likely believe them unless there’s reason not to. Based on that belief, you’re probably going to search quite hard to find that $100, and many of the participants will not give up until someone finds it.
On the other hand, let’s say you have organizers that like to mess with your mind. They have hidden a $100 bill as part of the hunt, but they didn’t tell anyone about it. How hard is anyone going to work to find that $100? Since nobody believes there’s a $100 bill hidden, the participants aren’t going to search particularly hard for it. It may remain hidden and unfound for a long time, unless the organizers go reclaim it.
That’s the power of belief. The willingness to search for the $100 is in proportion to people’s belief in the possibility that they might find it. This same principle is true in all of our relationships with money:
“The willingness to work to make/find/get the money we desire is in proportion to our belief that it is possible for us to do so.”
I talk to scientists who want more grant funding, all the time. Yet when it comes to doing the things it takes to get it (such as writing a really awesome grant application), there’s all sorts of self sabotage because the belief isn’t there to support the want.
This is true with the entrepreneurs and consultants I work with also. Many of them want a successful endeavor, but can never seem to find the clients to support it – the belief isn’t there.
Money madness
What seems to be missing in these kinds of “money is scarce” worries is the understanding that money is attracted or repelled based on your attitudes about it.
So, if you’re a scientist asking a funder to give you, say, a $1.25 million grant to support your research, and yet you have a negative belief that the money is nearly impossible to actually get, are your efforts going to be the full-out, best possible? Of course not. You’ll likely suffer lots of doubts and fears as you proceed, and that will come across as a not-so-strong proposal.
It’s a condition I have plenty of experience with. My father was a product of the great depression, his formative years during the height of joblessness and fear of the time. As a result, he learned to stockpile and save. That led to things such as having 10 cases of expired cans of tuna sitting around in the basement, ultimately needing to be thrown away… or a thousand pounds of grain in the basement that were fodder for mice.
In his efforts to scrimp and save because of “scarcity,” my father was throwing away money and resources that could have been used for better causes. It’s not that saving up for a rainy day is bad – it’s good. But to expect that bad things are going to happen, that scarcity is normal, is not healthy.
When I was in the height of my own scarcity mentality, I managed to go deeply into debt while earning a six figure salary (most of that debt came from starting a bike shop based on the notion of a scarcity of oil and other resources). I went into debt because I had a bad relationship with money.
I hate money… give me more of it
A lot of people I encounter think of money as a “necessary evil.” Imagine if you had a friend or lover that you thought of that way: “I want you around, but I resent you.”
Not many friends or lovers would stick around if you have that kind of attitude towards them.
Money is no different. If you resent it, and resent the people who have it, do you think it’s going to stick around in your life? There’s no chance. You repel it.
Money is neutral. It can be used for good, or for bad. However, if you want more of it in your life or work, you have to focus on the good aspects, and make friends with it. Otherwise, it’s highly unlikely you’ll get more of it.
The more you focus on “lack of money” the more you’ll experience “lack of money.” If that’s you, why not try a shift, just for a week: look around at all the places money IS, and appreciate how much of it is floating around. Practice shifting your attitude from “it’s really hard to get” to “look how easily it comes to me.”
If you alter your beliefs about it, you’ll be amazed at what a difference that makes over the long term in your ability to find ways that bring it to you. This applies to both money for your own purposes, and money for things you believe in, such as your research that needs grant funding.
One last thing: If you’re currently experiencing money challenges, I suggest that you make an “inventory of money attitudes” to see what you really think about money. Take out a piece of paper and writing utensils, and write “money” at the top. Then, spend 10 minutes just writing whatever comes to mind as you look at that word. To go even deeper with this, write down what you think your parents think about money – what you heard and saw them do around this topic. Because chances are, unless you’ve made a conscious effort to think otherwise, you’ve just adopted their viewpoint! (I know I did).
Once you’re done, review what you wrote, then ask yourself “what do I really believe about money?” and “are those beliefs about money serving me?” If the answer to the second question is “no” it may be time to start installing some different beliefs in the firmware of your mind.
Once, a long time ago in a place not so far away, universities and research institutions were the shining beacon of hope for our society.
They were going to cure cancer.
They were helping send us to the moon.
They were discovering penicillin and the polymerase chain reaction (which allows us to sequence DNA).
We had high hopes, so we invested in them heavily.
We believed in them, and they in turn opened their doors to our masses.
Giving nearly every kid the opportunity for a college education, we thought our future was bright.
Then something happened.
I’m not sure exactly what it was. I can come up with some smart-sounding theories, but in the end they matter not.
The only thing that matters is where we’re at, and what to do about it.
As our colleges and universities go, so goes society. As much as I love entrepreneurial activities and my own current independence from academia, we as a society need these institutions to carry forth the great intellectual traditions that have led to so much advancement for our species.
So, let’s start with the present tense. Let’s look at two examples of the lunacy that seems to be spreading throughout our halls of higher ed.
Example 1: Get Grants Or Be Fired
“If you don’t get at least one federal grant in the next six months, you’ll be out on the street, jobless, sweeping floors at the local burger joint… so get your butt in gear writing grants!” This is a proclamation handed down by an administrator to more than one researcher I know lately. In each one of these cases, the recipients of the proclamation were already working blood, sweat, and tears on grants, but that is not enough. The proclaimer felt like adding some pressure to make sure that the “lazy” researcher in question got the message loud and clear.
A bit of background for my non-academic readers. When you get hired to do research, you are expected to go out and get money to pay for your research. This usually comes in the form of grant money from various federal and state agencies, along with foundations. Grants come in all shapes and sizes, from small $5,000 grants to buy a piece of equipment to some that pay as much as $2,000,000 per year or more to support a whole team doing research on a topic like cancer.
It’s always been a challenge to get grant funding. I remember back in the 1980’s when my father ran a science lab, how much he’d stress out about writing grant proposals – these thick stacks of paper justifying every little detail of a project that hadn’t happened yet. I’d see him up late at night and then up again early, with circles drawing under his eyes, as he’d finish up one of these things for submission.
Yet, in the past few years, it’s become a whole new ballgame, kiddos. The new ballgame is definitely a pro’s only sport. For big grant-giving agencies like the National Institutes of Health, less than 1 in 10 proposals get funded. It takes months to hear back whether you’ll get funded or not, and if you get a rejection, reviewer’s comments are generally cryptic and don’t really help much.
Throwing Young Faculty Into The Ring With Pro Fighters
So here we have in one corner: new faculty who’ve never had grants before, never had any deep training in persuasive writing, being hired by big universities and thrown into the ring to duke it out.
The all pervasive mantra is “just fight more fights!!!”
As if getting knocked out and bloodied frequently is a substitute for real training. (It’s not).
In the other corner, we have university administrators. They’re coming out of their corners with gloves swinging, sweat dripping, and a big hard-on for grant money. Their fight is driven by the mantra “we need more money to pay the bills! so YOU are going to fight, whether you’re prepared or not!”
The bizarrely stupid thing about the threats I regularly hear lobbed at faculty over the need to get grants “or else” is that those doing the threatening are ignoring the very clear research that’s been done on human motivation.
How to Motivate Workers in Modern Enterprises (or… Not)
Dan Pink summarizes this in his book, Drive. If you put more pressure on people using a carrot and stick method, it works okay for simple mechanical tasks like assembly line work. You can use the carrot and stick to get more “productivity” out of those “damn workers.”
BUT: If you use this kind of punishment and reward scenario on people involved in complex cognitive tasks that involve creative thinking, forget it. The more you incentivize, the more you get just the opposite of what you want. It takes people longer to solve those big problems that need solving.
So let me riddle you this: Is writing a grant proposal an assembly-line job, or a complex cognitive task requiring creative thinking?
If you answered “assembly-line job” you joined the chorus of those misguided souls who think that grant proposals can be written by robots (robots that happen to be of the skin and bones variety). Last I checked, nobody has been able to build a grant writing robot.
No, grant writing – like much of what professionals and business owners do, involves complex thinking. It can’t be carrot-and-stick’d into happening faster or better.
The Creation of a Robot Monoculture
As a result of this pressure, there’s a sort of “natural selection” that’s going on in these institutions. It is weeding out the creative thinkers, the innovators, and the future Nobel laureates to produce a monoculture of pseudo-robots that follow orders blindly and manage to just scrape by though a process of sacrificing family time, sleep time, and even their own health in the name of satisfying the hungry dollar-sucking institutions they work for.
Sadly, there seems to be a nearly limitless supply of such robots, so that when one of the monoculture succumbs to cancer, another steps up to gladly take the place of the fallen ones.
Yet, lest ye think this is sustainable, think again. As has been discovered with agricultural crops, growing monocultures is a fragile situation. It’s susceptible to breakage if anything unexpected happens, such as pests or bad weather. In academia, the precise nature of future shocks can’t be predicted, but we can know for sure that they will happen. The unexpected is part of life, everywhere and every time.
I am honestly sad for these administrators. I think at least some of them are well-intentioned. But they find themselves in a situation that requires true leadership and vision, without the skills and tools to exhibit leadership and vision. So they resort to carrots, sticks, and “incentives” as a substitute. And they don’t realize that they are doing the opposite of leading in the process. True leaders inspire (think of MLK, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ganhdi, etc…). False leaders cajole.
So let’s consider the second scenario, again from a recent interaction within academia:
Example 2: The Only Real Way To Succeed Is To Join an R1
“You’re about to get your PhD, and to be a success you have to take a serious research job at an R1 institution. If you take that teaching job you want from that small college, you’ll be relegated forever to that third-tier, stuck in the backwaters as a nobody. So, c’mon, ignore your distaste for the direction research is going in the field, get with the program, do some fundable research, and start applying for real jobs at real universities!”
I remember the cliques in high school. If you weren’t part of the clique, you were a “nobody.” Well, I wasn’t part of the popular cliques – the jocks, the cheerleaders, the A-students. I have yet to return to a high school reunion, but I may do so someday to see what has happened to all those folks.
I suspect this: that 1) I earn more money than most of them; 2) I have more free time than most of them; 3) I spend more quality time with my family than most of them; 4) I am doing what I love unlike most of them; 5) I am having a positive impact in the world unlike most of them; and 6) that almost none of them has all of 1-5 going on in their lives. (I know this because it seems like less than 1 in 1,000 that has all this going for them).
No, I didn’t get to where I am by listening to the “advice” of the cliques. It’s a damn good thing that I never was really a part of one, so I got spared that kind of mind-numbing groupthink.
Sadly, much of this cliquey groupthink has now infected academia – and our world. If you’re not part of the “R1 clique” you are a “nobody.” (R1 refers to the exclusive group of 50 or so top-tier, well funded research universities, including those brand names we’ve all heard). Forget what you’re good at, your individual talents and contributions and join us in the “IN” group.
OMG. Gag me with a spoon! No, wait… gag me with a bucketful of stupidity!
It’s not that the individuals in a clique aren’t smart. Sometimes they are. But groupthink is almost never smart. So when one subsumes her own smartness to the groupthink, it produces an immediate 30 point drop in IQ.
That’s what is happening in this highly toxic advice that someone gave this soon-to-be-minted new Doctoral researcher.
What’s so sad about this groupthink-spawned advice to our erstwhile PhD is that I think these folks giving the advice actually believe that there could be nothing better than life at an R1 research institution. They seem to actually believe that the sacrifices of family, free time, and health are worth it. They seem to believe that the constant treadmill of robotic grant writing and “publish or perish” is just a fact of life. Worse still, they actually believe that the current funding system leads to the best research being done, when it is just the opposite. The groupthink that happens in grant review committees usually produces a lowest-common-denominator approach to research progress that stifles creativity and innovation (how else can you explain the billions spent on cancer and no big cures to date?)
No. It is a case of the blind leading the young off the cliff into oblivion.
Do. Not. Listen. To. Groupthink.
Listen to what’s right for you. That should be the only criterion for any decision, ever. Sadly, we’ve programmed ourselves to listen to others, to follow orders, and to totally ignore our inner wisdom and intelligence.
And people ask me why I left academia… maybe a picture is emerging?
When this kind of terrible advice being doled out to our students is par for the course, it’s a sign that the system is more and more bent on breeding clones instead of creative, innovative researchers who could actually make a difference in the world.
It is truly sad, this state of affairs that’s represented by these two brief glimpses I’ve shared with you here.
It’s sad because I have so many friends and colleagues still in the system, trying to survive with some sense of self retained. It’s sad that it’s getting harder and harder to do.
The solution
I could write a lot about all the things that need to change, but in this case I think simplicity is the best policy.
The solution is the epitome of simple: we need leaders to stand up and step up, facing off with these negative forces, and saying “enough is enough! no more stupidity will be allowed in our halls of higher education! let’s start living sane lives again!”
I saw this recently happen with a PhD student whom I inspired, who then went and stood up to a borderline-abusive supervisor.
I don’t think unions are the answer. The only time, ever, that unions have made a difference is when they have strong, inspiring leaders. But unions bring lots of baggage with them – including the very groupthink that’s part of the problem. You can’t fix a problem by substituting it with another equal (or worse) problem!
Great leadership is a solution, always and every time throughout human history.
I just got an email from someone I have worked with. This person decided to walk away from a faculty job next year – disgusted by what’s been happening. (Like most sane people are).
While I applaud the decision for the person’s own sake, it is sad that some of the best and brightest are choosing to leave rather than to stand up as leaders to fix the problem. (mea culpa, I am one of those who left, because I didn’t know how to stand up to it at the time – I didn’t have the skills needed).
These academic institutions are like a car on the road that’s just run out of gas, and which is now coasting on momentum end elevation gained during better times. If we don’t start seeing some real leadership, these institutions will soon run out of momentum and come to a jerky, shaking halt.
Are you ready to step up and be a leader, be a visionary?
Because if our instituions of higher learning are going to live up to our belief in them as great institutions, then things need to change. We need leaders who are willing to step up and take risks, change the way the model operates, and CREATE a vision of an institution that is not just spewing out well-trained robots who join the existing rat race of chasing money.
And if these institutions fall, then what does that mean for the rest of us? Where will intellectual traditions be fostered? What will we look towards for the future of progress?
If you aren’t willing to step up, then you are participating in a slow-but-sure death of the system. Rest assured that things will get worse before they get better.
If you are, be prepared for a difficult but rewarding journey of change and struggle. Leadership is never easy, yet it is the only thing that brings true success. It is leading by example, leading with love, leading with a vision and passion. If you choose this path, you may be like a real-life Frodo Baggins, with dark forces amassed against you – but you will ultimately prevail.
I was seven when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. We were camping with family friends on a plot of land on the shore of Lake George, site of our future summer camp. Dad had car batteries, an inverter, and a small black and white TV. Reception was horrible. We had never watched TV at the lake before – this was something special. In the midst of the VietNam war, which I was largely isolated from, we had a man walking on the moon. It was late, I was tired, but I watched intently. America could do anything. Looking back at the last 43 years, it is very hard not to feel that we have fallen extremely short of our potential. I miss that dream. [emphasis added]
Indeed, how and why has America fallen so far?
Think about rock stars. Most of them rise up to fame for a short period, then they loose it… they fade slowly back into oblivion. When they’re on tour (if they are), they always replay the great hits, because that’s what the crowd wants.
There are exceptions. Those are the bands and players that keep going for a decade or more, folks like The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd.
The reasons for America’s fall are hidden in the distinction between these two. Before the “big reveal,” let’s consider another case: that of the science professor.
The science professor works her ass off through graduate school and a postdoc position (kind of like a Medical residency) just to get offered a starting faculty position. Then she works even harder for 5-7 years to earn tenure. Tenure just means that her colleagues approve of her, and permanently accept her into the fold. Once tenured, it’s very hard to fire her.
The period of working towards tenure is often the most intensive of a scientist’s life. I know, because I did that.
When I was done, I lost the dream.
I wandered aimlessly through a land of mental cynicism and angst for several years after tenure.
The challenge was gone. The dream was over. I’d reached the pinnacle. All that I could see in front of me was more of the same, but without the challenge, without the goal, without the prize to reach for.
How did I regain the dream and recover from the cynical post-tenure blues? Therein lies the secret of how America could, if its people wanted to, recover from the slump.
The problem with achievement
There’s one big problem with achievement of any kind – whether it’s putting a man on the moon, writing a hit song, or getting tenure.
Those achievements can breed a festering fear. It’s a fear that comes from a few sources:
Fear of having lost the dream. Once the dream has been achieved, it’s no longer a dream. Seems obvious, right?! Yet for the person experiencing this firsthand, it’s almost never obvious what the problem is. There’s just a gnawing inner sense of “now what?” We’re not taught as a society how to deal with the “now what?” Think about all the popular stories and movies (e.g. Star Wars): they always center around a challenge, a dream, or a problem, and at the end of the story, the problem is resolved or the dream is achieved. But those stories never show what happens next… unless a new challenge arises in the sequel.
Fear of loosing the status. A related fear is that of loosing the status achieved in pursuing the dream. When I got my first big science grant with a score that put me in the top few percentile, I thought to myself: there’s no way I can repeat that! It’s impossible! I had a fear that I couldn’t top my own success. I was gun-shy. That fear slowed me down. I didn’t want to submit another grant and be knocked from my pedestal. It reminds me of a TED talk by author Elizabeth Gilbert, who discussed the angst that comes with having written a bestselling book, centered around the question: “can I do it again?”
Because of these fears, achieving something great after a first-time achievement is often just as difficult (if not more so) than the first time was.
These fears lead to cynicism. They lead to skepticism. They can even lead to mental poverty.
Which pretty much describes the state of America today.
We’ve been suffering from both of the above-named fears, as part of a sort of collective, zombified sleepwalking state after our successes of the early to mid 20th century.
And so we can find a way out, in the same way that great bands and musicians, and great writers repeat their success over and over again. We can find a way out in the same way that I found a joie de vivre again after the post-tenure angst.
Actually, there are two ways, but I believe one way is far inferior to the other.
The first way is that we lie dormant in our sleepwalking, zombified state until a new problem or challenge comes our way, which forces us to get sufficiently inspired and motivated that we get off our asses and creatively rise to the challenge. The recent economic challenges have done this for some people, but not enough to really make a difference.
The problem with this approach is that it leaves us waiting for the right challenge to come along, and for that challenge to happen to inspire the right feelings of motivation and even anger such that we get un-zombified and into action. Those kinds of challenges can be pretty random, and personally I think it’s foolish to leave one’s future to randomness.
The second way is to take charge and to create a new dream for ourselves.
Kennedy pushed the dream of a Man on the Moon. When he pushed it, we had no idea how we’d accomplish that feat – yet we did.
What happened after we achieved it? We didn’t replace the dream with something even more inspiring. That’s why we are so stuck. That’s why we are so cynical. Stuck just like I was in my life, until I built a new dream for myself after getting tenure.
Recently I was at a conference with some high-powered scientists. A debate erupted over science funding, and one of the scientists pointed at the moon walk as a “boondoggle,” whose money should have instead been spent on “important” science like cancer research.
I responded by showing the population graph of the world, which happens to be an exponential curve (if you know what that means, you know that it’s a wee bit scary). We have no shortage of people. But we do have a shortage of inspiring dreams.
Having lost my father to cancer, I’d like to see that particular problem solved. However, when we solve it, what are we going to do with all those extra people living longer lives? Especially if many of them are just as aimless and dream-less as most of the population is?
I quipped that, indeed, we needed to send a few more people into space (and there would be no shortage of willing volunteers for a Mars mission)!
The “cancer research” vs “moon landing” debate is revealing. It speaks of an attitude that says, “dreams are unimportant, only facts and figures are important.” One can look at the number of cancer deaths, and argue readily that “cancer should be cured!” without ever contemplating the biggure picture, or the “then what?!”
With facts and figures, one can argue that we should spend more on cancer research than space exploration, without ever asking ourselves the key question: does cancer research inspire the next generation of scientists in the same way as curing cancer? (the answer is: no, it does not)
Ultimately, science is supposed to be fun. Life is supposed to be fun. We’ve lost that understanding somewhere in a sea of “grim statistics” which lead to skewed priorities and lost dreams.
So here’s the way to recapture the dream: forget about the statistics. Stop being so damn “rational*” and left-brained. Start dreaming again. Think big again. Enjoy life again, and inspire others to think big, too.
The only way to do this is from the bottom up. That means you, and that means I.
One at a time, we can each start being dreamers again.
And one at a time, we can help America regain the dream again.
Morgan
* About “rational” thinking: it’s almost never as rational as it seems. There are always underlying beliefs that “rational thought” is based upon, and those underlying beliefs are not often rational in their own right. Even if you try to get to the bottom of those beliefs through rational analysis, you must refer to deeper beliefs. There is no bottom to this: instead, you’ll find yourself in an infinite loop of drilling deeper into beliefs, one beneath the other. Here’s the left-brained version of that: Logician Kurt Gödel showed us that, in fact, there is no self-complete logical system that is “provable.” Look up Gödel’s theorems if you want an enthralling left-brained read about the nature of “logic.”
No, it’s not the writing part that bugs me. I actually like that part. Being able to put together well-constructed plans and rationales is fun. Describing a project-to-be is fun.
But… there’s another part about it that I really hate. It’s that you can’t be authentic.
I often use the analogy between writing a grant and “marketing.” In a grant, you’re trying to “market” a project or idea.
However…. there’s one important difference. In a real marketplace, you don’t have to please anyone and everyone. You only have to please a particular segment of people. For example, if you open a used car dealership, your marketing will be targeted to a segment of people that buy used cars. It’s very different from the segment of people that you might target if you open a Mercedes dealership.
The grant marketplace is artificial. In order to get a grant funded, you get assigned a random group of peers, and you have to please all of them.
Imagine a car dealership where you get randomly assigned customers by some outside entity, and if you don’t please every single one of them, you fail.
This leads to excessive conservatism. If your idea is “too innovative” then you’ll displease at least one reviewer, and your proposal is toast.
On the other hand, if it’s not innovative enough, you’ll bore all your reviewers, and you’ll also end up a bit burnt and crispy.
So it’s a game of trying to be just innovative enough, without ever crossing that line of being even slightly speculative.
In other words, it’s a game of make-believe. You either avoid innovation (and never accomplish anything really great), or you pretend in your grant to not be innovative, then once you get the grant, you be innovative despite the ruse. This is a risky game, because if your being-innovative-despite-their-conservativism doesn’t pan out over the short term, then you’re left trying to explain why you spent all that grant money that was supposed to be for a conservative (but boring) project on something innovative that didn’t work out. So, most people I know – if they do this at all – they only do it with a tiny fraction of their grant money. Yet the truly innovative ideas often require more than just a tiny little trickle of resources and money. So they stall out. Yes, I’ve had it happen.
Everyone (ok, not everyone, but most intelligent people) knows that good science actually requires risks and innovation. A look at the history of Nobel Prizes demonstrates that many of the ideas were, at the time they were first announced, considered utterly heretical. In other words, un-fundable. Just check out this video featuring Dan Schectman, the discoverer of Quasicrystals:
This game of make-believe is not only annoying, it’s damaging. It hurts progress. It damages the reputation of the scientific community (i.e. why, after 10’s of billions in cancer research don’t we have better cures? The main answer is in what I just wrote above. And don’t be deceived, the public does notice the lack of sufficient progress!).
If others are interested in “playing the game,” I can help them play it better (based on what I learned over many years of doing it successfully). That’s what my business has been all about for the past two years, and I’ve helped many people achieve grant success.
But I have no interest in continuing to play that game for my own work, dumbing down all my innovative ideas to please overly conservative review panels by pretending that the ideas aren’t actually all that innovative (or altogether hiding the innovation).
So, if you’re going to play the grant game, realize what you’re in for. If you enjoy doing incremental projects (with the occasional bit of innovation thrown in), then the system may work fine. But if you prefer to really innovate and go beyond… well, then, be prepared to do a lot of pretending that you’re not quite so innovative.
